Chapter VI: Part 6

"But, ma dear, you come, too, and--"

"No, no, Becky; to-day I got not time."

"But, ma--ma, you ain't mad at me, dear? You can see now for yourself, can't you, dear, what a big thing it is for the family and how you--"

"Yes, yes, Becky. Look, go over by your young man. See how he stands there and not one word what Ben is hollering so at him can he understand."

Across the room, alongside a buffet wrought out of the powerful Jacobean period, Mr. Ben Meyerburg threw a violent contortion.

"Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?" he shouted, the apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.

_"Pardon?"_

"Smoke? Do you smoke? Smokez-vous? Cigarez-vous? See, like this. Fume. Blow. Do you smoke? Smokez-vous?"

_"Pardon?"_ said the marquis, bowing low.

* * * * *

In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg's bedchamber, the buzz of departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it as if an echo or so still lingered.

Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among a page of figures. After a while the finger ceased to move across the page, but lay passive midway down a column. After another while she slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past. Resuming her beat up and down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and not unlike the tune of quinine singing in the head.

The ormolu clock struck, and from various parts of the house musical repetitions. A French tinkle from her daughter's suite across the hall; from somewhere more remote the deep, leisurely tones of a Nuremberg floor clock. Finally Mrs. Meyerburg dropped into the overstuffed chair beside her window, relaxing into the attitude her late years had brought her, head back, hands stretched out along the chair sides, and full of rest. An hour she sat half dozing, and half emerging every so often with a start, then lay quietly looking into space, her eyes quiet and the erstwhile brilliancy in them gone out like a light.

Presently she sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded across the carpet. From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it. From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet grayish with age and the bow not perky. Her movements were brief and full of decision. When she opened her door it was slyly and with a quick, vulpine glance up and down the grave quiet of the halls. After a cocked attitude of listening and with an incredible springiness almost of youth, Mrs. Meyerburg was down a rear staircase, through a rear hallway, and, unseen and unheard, out into the sudden splendor of a winter's day, the side street quiet before her.

"Gott!" said Mrs. Meyerburg, audibly, breathing deep and swinging into a smart lope eastward. Two blocks along, with her head lifted and no effort at concealment, she passed her pantry-boy walking out with a Swedish girl whose cheeks were bursting with red. He eyed his mistress casually and without recognition.

At Third Avenue she boarded a down-town street-car, a bit winded from the dive across cobbles, but smiling. Within, and after a preliminary method of paying fare new and confusing to her, she sat back against the rattly sides, her feet just lifted off the floor. She could hardly keep back the ejaculations as old streets and old memories swam into view.

"Look at the old lay-dee talking to her-sel-uph," sang an urchin across the aisle.

"Shut up," said the mother, slapping him sidewise.

At one of the most terrific of these down-town streets Mrs. Meyerburg descended. Beneath the clang and bang of the Elevated she stood confused for the moment and then, with her sure stride regained, swung farther eastward.

Slitlike streets flowed with holiday copiousness, whole families abroad on foot--mothers swayback with babies, and older children who ran ahead shouting and jostling. Houses lean and evil-looking marched shoulder to shoulder for blocks, no gaps except intersecting streets. Fire-escapes ran zigzag down the meanest of them. Women shouted their neighborhood jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg smiled as she hurried.

Midway in one of these blocks and without a pretense of hesitancy she turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back full span.

"_Gott in Himmel_, Mrs. Meyerburg! Mrs. Meyerburg! _Kommen Sie herein_. Mrs. Meyerburg, for why you didn't let me know? To think not one of my children home and to-day a holiday, my place not in order--"

"Now, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you go to one little bit of trouble, right away I got no more pleasure. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Ach, if you 'ain't got on your pantry shelfs just the same paper edge like my Roody used to cut out for me."

"Come, come, Mrs. Meyerburg, in parlor where--"

"Go way mit you. Ain't the kitchen where I spent seventeen years, the best years in my life, good enough yet? Parlor yet she wants to take me."

An immediate negligée of manner enveloped her like an old wrapper. A certain tulle of bewilderment had fallen. She was bold, even dictatorial.

"Don't fuss round me so much, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Just like old times I want it should seem. Like maybe I just dropped in on you a lump of butter to borrow. No, no, don't I know where to hang mine own bonnet in mine own house? Ach, the same coat nails what he drove in himself!"

"To think, Mrs. Meyerburg, all my children gone out for a good time this afternoon, my Tillie with Morris Rinabauer, who can't keep his eyes off her--"

"How polished she keeps her stove, just like I used to."

"Right when you knocked I was thinking, well, I clean up a bit. Please, Mrs. Meyerburg, let me fix you right away a cup coffee--"

"Right away, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you begin to make fuss over me, I don't enjoy it no more. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, right here in this old rocker-chair by the range let me, please, sit quiet a minute."

In the wooden rocker beside the warm stove she sat down quietly, lapping her hands over her waist-line.

_"Gott in Himmel,"_ sitting well away from the chair-back and letting her eyes travel slowly about the room, "just like it was yesterday; just like yesterday." And fell to reciting the phrase softly.

"Ja, ja," said Mrs. Fischlowitz, concealing an unwashed litter of dishes beneath a hastily flung cloth. "I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, my house ain't always this dirty; only to-day not--"

"Just like it was yesterday," said Mrs. Meyerburg, musing through a tangle of memories. She fell to rocking. A narrow band of sunshine lay across the bare floor, even glinted off a pan or two hung along the wall over the sink. Along that same wall hung a festoon of red and green peppers and a necklace of garlic. Toward the back of the range a pan of hot water let off a lazy vapor. Beside the scuttle a cat purred and fought off sleep.

"Already I got the hot water, Mrs. Meyerburg, to make you a cup coffee if--"

"Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, let me rest like this. In a minute I want you should take me all through in the children's room and--"

"If I had only known it how I could have cleaned for you."

"Ach, my noodle-board over there! How grand and white you keep it."

"Ja, I--"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

"Yes, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you want to--to give me a real treat I tell you what. I tell you what!"

"Ja, ja, Mrs. Meyerburg; anything what I can do I--"

"I want you should let me mix you on that old board a mess noodles!"

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, your hands and that grand black-silk dress!"

"For why not, Mrs. Fischlowitz? Wide ones, like he used to like. Just for fun, please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-morrow I send you two barrels flour for what I use up."

"But, Mrs. Meyerburg, I should make for you noodles, not you for me--"

"It's good I should learn, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to get back my hand in such things. Maybe you don't believe me, but I ain't so rich like I was yesterday when you seen me, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-day I'm a poor woman, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with--"

Mrs. Fischlowitz threw out two hands in a liberal gesture. "Such a good woman she is! In my house where I'm poor she wants, too, to play like she's a poor woman. That any one should want to play such a game with themselves! Noodles she wants to make for me, instead I should wait on her like she was a queen."

"It takes me back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to old times. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to-morrow I send you two barrels."

"Like you ain't welcome to everything what I got in the house. All right, noodles you should make and always I keep 'em for remembrance. Just let me run down to cellar and bring you up flour. No, no, you set there and let me fold down the board for you. Rock there, Mrs. Meyerburg, till I come up with the flour. Eggs plenty I got."

"And a little butter, Mrs. Fischlowitz, the size of an egg, and always a pinch of salt."

"The neighbors should see this! Mrs. Simon Meyerburg making for me noodles in my kitchen!" She was off and down a small rear stairway, a ribbon of ejaculations trailing back over one shoulder.

In her chair beside the warm range Mrs. Meyerburg sat quiescent, her head back against the rest, eyes half closed, and slanting toward the kitchen door. Against the creaking floor her chair swayed rhythmically. Tears ran down to meet the corners of her mouth, but her lips were looped up in a smile.

The cat regarded her through green eyes slit down their middle. Toward the rear of the stove the pan of water seethed.

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg leaned forward with a great flash across her face. "Simon," she cried, leaning to the door and stretching forward quavering arms. "Simon, my darling!" She leaned further, the rims of her eyes stretched wide. "Simon--come, my darling. Simon!"

Into the opposite doorway, smirched with flour and a white pail of it dangling, flashed Mrs. Fischlowitz, breathing hard from her climb.

"What, Mrs. Meyerburg, you want something?"

"Simon," cried Mrs. Meyerburg, her voice lifted in a paean of welcome; "come, my darling, come in. Come!" And she tried to rise, but sat back, quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat.

Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice, and she let fall her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill. "Mrs. Meyerburg, there ain't nobody there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs. Meyerburg!"

"Simon!"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Nobody's there! Ach--help--doctor--Tillie!"

Back against Mrs. Fischlowitz's frenzied arms lay Mrs. Meyerburg, very gray, her hand against her left breast and down toward the ribs.

"Gott! Gott! Please, Mrs. Meyerburg--Mrs. Meyerburg!" dragging back one of the weary eyelids and crying out at what she saw there. "Help doctor--Tillie--quick--quick--"

She could not see, poor dear, that into those locked features was crystallized the great ecstasy of reunion.

THE NTH COMMANDMENT

The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn. Such social sores--the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour--such sores may run and fester, but not to sicken public eyes.

For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men's hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose draymen's backs are bent and whose salesgirls' feet are swollen plaster each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering merchandise.

In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.

Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex, fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.

Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.

The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven, predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men's hands involuntarily close into tight fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and curse their God when the reckoning comes.

Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.

"If the rush hadn't quit right this minute I--I couldn't have lasted it out till closing, honest I couldn't."

"Poor tired little filly!"

"Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram's office they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin."

"Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll, it ain't every little girl I'd coax like this."

"I--Jimmie--I--"

"I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas tree--a poor little baby doll like you!"

"The kid, too, Jimmie, I--oughtn't!"

"Didn't you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a whippersnapper? Don't be a quitter Doll, didn't you?"

"Yes, but--"

"A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain't nothing too good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night--eh, Doll?"

"Yes--Jimmie!"

"Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!"

"I--can't--go, Jimmie, him layin' there, and the kid and all!"

"Didn't I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn't you glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that you lemme blow you--wasn't you?"

"Yes, Jimmie, but--"

"Didn't I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you even after the big show was over, and wouldn't I have blown you to yellow instead of the red if you hadn't been a little cheap skate and wanted the red? Didn't I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn't I blow you for proper?"

"It was swell, Jimmie!"

"Well, I'm going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It's Christmas Eve and--"

"Yes, it's Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he--he had one of his bad hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she--she's too little to know she's getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee--a--a kid oughtta have something--a tree or something."

He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. "It's _you_ oughtta have something, Doll."

"I--I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got home, he--he was laying there like a rag."

"I like you, Doll. I'm going to blow in the stack of my winnings on you--that's how much I like you. There ain't nothing I wouldn't do for a little filly like you."

"Jimmie!"

"There ain't!"

"Aw!"

"You wouldn't be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn't sneaked off two years ago and done it while I wasn't looking. Nearly two whole years you lemme lose track of you! That ain't a nice way to treat a fellow that likes you."

"We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the department two months ago, after he got so bad. 'Ain't I told you how things just kinda happened?"

"I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in the gents' furnishing that wasn't wide from nothing but padding. I could have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could have told you."

"Jimmie, ain't you ashamed! Jimmie!"

"Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain't real on that true-blue stuff, Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you're bustin' to lemme blow you. That's what you get, sweetness, when you don't ask your Uncle Fuller first. If you'd have asked me I could have told you he was weak in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you'd be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and supportin' a--"

"You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you--"

"Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a rose--a whole bouquet of them."

"You--you don't know nothing about him. He--he never knew he had a lung till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents' furnishing over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him."

"Sure, he didn't, Doll; no harm meant. That's right, stand by him. I like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me you'd have married him if he'd had three bum lungs, that crazy you was!"

"Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn't sound we--I wouldn't be in this mess, I--we--I wouldn't!"

Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.

"Poor little filly!"

More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of her self-compassion. "You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain't cryin', only I'm dog tired from nursin' and drudgin', drudgin' and nursin'."

"Hard luck, little un!"

"Him layin' there and me tryin' to--to make things meet. You gotta excuse me, Jimmie, I'm done up."

"That's why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can't bear to see a little filly like you runnin' with the odds dead agin her."

"You been swell to me, Jimmie."

"The sky's my limit, Doll."

"Maybe it wasn't right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him layin' there, and the kid and all, but a girl's gotta have something, don't she, Jimmie? A girl that's got on her shoulders what I got has gotta have something--a laugh now and then!"

"That's the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to."

"Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my hat for trimming the other night, just like they didn't cost nothing--honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole night's nursin'. Honest, I felt like in the old days before--before I was married."

"Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll--if you hadn't pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage--there ain't nothing I wouldn't have done for you."

"I--I didn't mean nothing, Jimmie."

"I ain't sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did, even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll, you!"

"Aw--you!"

"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen. I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"

"I--I can't, Jimmie. I--'S-s-s-s-h!"

A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge, patient.

Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds, then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand--light, lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God's own loom, from God's own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.

Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her throat as if to choke its gasp.

"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"

Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.

"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you and me!"

"Snowin'!"

"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab by the hour. I'm--"

"Snowin'!"

She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.

"He--he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if--if we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South before the first one--South, where the sun shines and he could feel it clear through him, he--Oh, ain't I--ain't I in a mess!"

"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and throbbing throat. "Poor little filly, all winded!"

"I--oh, I--"

"There's the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I'll buy you a taxicab. Hear it--there's the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll! Merry Christmas!"

A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd turned about, faced, thinned, died.

Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry. "Snowin'!"

"A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll. The kind you read about."

"It--it don't mean nothing to me, but--"

"Sure, it does; I'm goin' to blow you right, Doll. Half the money is yourn, anyways. You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much as me, girlie. If I hadn't named that filly after you she'd 'a' been left at the post."

"You--you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me. There ain't a girl ever went out with you that you 'ain't named one after. You--you never had the right to!"

"I took it, kiddo, 'cause I like you! Gad! I like you! Nix, it ain't every little girl I'd name one of my stable after. 'Violet!'--some little pony that, odds ag'in her and walks off with the money."

"I--honest, I sometimes--I--just wish I was dead!"

"No, you don't, Doll. You know you just wanna go to-night, but you 'ain't got the nerve. I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that'll leave any Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post. Gad! look out there, will you? I'm going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm if it costs every cent the filly won for us!"

Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water when summer's moment is bluest. Her lips, that were meant to curve, straightened in a line of decision.

"I'll go, Jimmie."

"That's the goods!"

"A girl's just gotta have something to hold herself together, don't she? It--it ain't like the kid and Harry was layin' awake for me--last Tuesday they was both asleep when I got home. They don't let each other get lonesome, and Harry--he--There ain't nothing much for me to do round home."

"Now you're talkin' the English language, Doll."

"I'll go, Jimmie."

He extended his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across the other.

"Sure, you're going! A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed, sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin' but trouble for your Christmas stockin'. A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!"

"A girl's gotta have something! You knew me before I was married, Jimmie, and there never was a girl more full of life."

"Sure I knew you. But you was a little cold-storage queen and turned me down."

"He--Harry, he never asks me nothing when I come in, and the kid's asleep, anyways."

"Color up there a little, Doll. Where I'm going to take you there ain't nothing but live ones. I'm going to take you to a place where the color scheme of your greenbacks has got to be yellow. Color up there, Doll. You ain't going dead, are you?"

She stretched open her eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a tendril and curled round the brim.

"Going dead! Say, my middle name is Speed! It's like Harry used to tell me when we wasn't no farther along in the marriage game than his sneaking over here from the gents' furnishing three times a day to price bill-folders--he used to say that I was a live wire before Franklin flew his kite."

"Doll!"

"I ain't tired, Jimmie. Not countin' the year and a half I was home before Harry took sick, I been through the Christmas hell just six times. The seventh don't mean nothing in my life. I've seen 'em behind these very counters cursing Christmas with tears in their eyes and spending their merry holiday in bed trying to get some of the soreness out. It takes more than one Christmas to put me out of business."

"Here, lemme tuck that curl in for you, Doll."

"Quit!"

"Doll!"

"Quit, I say!"

"Color up there, girlie. Look live!"

She rubbed her palms briskly across her cheeks to generate a glow, and they warmed to color as peaches blush to the kiss of the sun.

"See!"

"Pink as cherries!"

"That's right, kid me along."

"Tried to dodge me to-night, didn't you, kitten?"

"I--I didn't think I ought to go to-night."

"It's a good thing my feelings ain't hurt easy."

"Honest, Jimmie, I didn't try to dodge you. I--I only thought, with the girls here gabbling so much about last Tuesday night and all, it wouldn't look right. And he had a spell last night again, and the doctor said we--we ought to get him South before the first snow--South, where the sun shines. But he's got as much chance of gettin' South as I have of climbing the South Pole!"

"A pretty little thing like you climbing the South Pole! I'd be there with field-glasses all-righty!"

"I--I went up and talked and begged and begged and talked to old Ingram up at the Aid Society to-day, but the old skinflint says they can't do nothing for an employee after he's been out of his department more'n eight weeks, and--and Harry's been out twelve. He says the Society can't do nothing no more, much less send him South. Just like a machine he talked. I could have killed him!"

"Poor little filly! I was that surprised when I seen you was back in the store again! There ain't been a classy queen behind the counter since you left."

"Aw, Jimmie, no wonder the girls say you got your race-horses beat for speed."

"That's me!"

Aisles thinned and the store relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of trampled débris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left their pickings--a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of Christmastide, and reeking with foolish sweat.

"Button up there, Doll, and come on; it's a swell night for Eskimos."

Mr. Fitzgibbons folded over his own double-breasted coat, fitted his flat-brimmed derby hat on his well-oiled hair, drew a pair of gray suede gloves over his fingers, and hooked his slender cane to his arm.

"Ready, Doll?"

"The girls, Jimmie--look at 'em rubbering and gabbling like ducks! It--it ain't like I could do any good at home, it ain't."

"I'd be the first to ship you there if you could. You know me, Doll!"

His words deadened her doubts like a soporific. She glanced about for the moment at the Dionysian spectacle of the Mammoth Store ravished to chaos by the holiday delirium; at the weary stream of shoppers and workers bending into the storm as they reached the doors; at the swift cancan of snowflakes dancing whitely and swiftly without; at Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons standing attendant. Then she smiled.

"Come on, Jimmie!"

"Come on yourself, Doll!"

Snow beat in their faces like shot as they emerged into the merry night.

She shivered in her thin coat. "Gee! ain't it cold!"

"Not so you can notice it. Watch me, Doll!" He hailed a passing cab with a double flourish of cane and half lifted her in, his fingers closing tight over her arm. "Little Doll, now I got you! And we understand one another, don't we, Doll?"

"Yes, Jimmie."

She leaned back, quiescent, nor did his hold of her relax. A fairy etching of snow whitened the windows and wind-shield, and behind their security he leaned closer until she could feel the breath of his smile.

"Doll, we sure understand each other, don't we, sweetness? Eh? Answer me, sweetness, don't we? Eh? Eh?"

"Yes, Jimmie."

Over the city bells tolled of Christmas.

* * * * *

The gentle Hestia of Christmas Eve snug beside her hearth, with little stockings dangling like a badly matched row of executed soldiers, the fire sinking into embers to facilitate the epic descent from the chimney, the breathing of dreaming children trembling for their to-morrow--this gentle Hestia of a thousand, thousand Christmas Eves was not on the pay-roll of Maxwell's thousand-dollar-a-week cabaret.

A pandering management, with its finger ever on the thick wrist of its public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and mistletoe commingling with the grape.

An electric fountain shot upward its iridescent spray, now green, now orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, white limbed, bathed in light.

On the topmost of a flight of marble steps a woman sang of love who had defiled it. At candle-shaded tables thick tongues wagged through thick aromas and over thick foods, and as the drama was born rhythmic out of the noisy dithyramb, so through these heavy discords rose the tink of Venetian goblets, thin and pure--the reedy music of grinning Pan blowing his pipes.

Rose-colored light lay like a blush of pleasure over a shining table spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs. Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder. Following her Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons, smiling.

"Here, sit on this side of the table, Doll, so you can see the big show."

"Gee!"

"It's the best table in the room to see the staircase dancing."

"Gee!"

"Told you I was going to show you a classy time to-night, didn't I, Doll?"

"Yeh, but--but I ain't dressed for a splash like this, Jimmie, I--I ain't."

"Say, they know me round here, Doll. They know I'd fall for a pair of eyes like yourn, if you was doing time on a rock-pile and I had to bring you in stripes."

"I'm--a--sight!"

"If you wasn't such a little pepper-box I'd blow you to a feather or two."

"Ain't no pepper-box!"

"You used to be, Doll. Two years back there wasn't a girl behind the counter ever gimme the cold storage like you did. I liked your nerve, too, durned if I didn't!"

"I--I only thought you was guyin'."

"I 'ain't forgot, Doll, the time I asked you out to dinner one night when you was lookin' pretty blue round the gills, and you turned me down so hard the whole department gimme the laugh. It's a good thing I 'ain't got no hard feelings."

"Honest, Jimmie, I--"

"That was just before you stole the march on me with the Charley from the gents' furnishing. I ain't holding it against you, Doll, but you gotta be awful nice to me to make up for it, eh?"

A shower of rose-colored rain from the fountain threw its soft blush across her face.

"Aw, Jimmie, don't rub it in! Ain't I tryin' hard enough to--to square myself? I--I was crazy with the heat two years ago. I--aw, I--Now it's different. I--It's like you say, Jimmie, you 'ain't got no hard feelings." She swallowed a rising in her throat and took a sip of clear, cold water. A light film of tears swam in her eyes. "You 'ain't, have you, Jimmie?"

He leaned across the table and out of the hearing of the attendant waiter. "Not if we understand each other, Doll. You stick to me and you'll wear diamonds. Gad! I bet if I had two more fillies like Violet I'd run Diamond Pat Cassidy's string of favorites back to pasture, you little queenie, you!"

Her timid glance darted like the hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf. "I ain't much of a looker for a Broadway palace like you've brought me to, Jimmie. Look at 'em, all dolled up over there. Honest, Jimmie, I--I feel ashamed."

"Just you stick to me, peaches, and there ain't one at that table that's got on anything you can't have twice over. I know that gang--the pink queen and all. 'Longside of you they look like stacks o' bones tied up in a rag o' satin."

"Aw, Jimmie, look at 'em, so blond and all!"

"They're a broken-winded bunch. Look at them bottles on their table! We're going to have twice as many and only one color in our glasses, kiddo. Yellow, the same yellow as your hair, the kinda yellow that's mostly gold. That's the kind of bubble water we're going to buy, kiddo!"

"Jimmie, such a spender!"

"That's me!"

"It's sure like the girls say--the sky's your limit."

"Look, Doll, there's the swellest little dancer in this town--one swell little pal and a good sport. Watch her, kiddo--watch her do that staircase dance. Ain't she a lalapaloo!"

A buxom nymph of the grove, whose draperies floated from her like flesh-colored mist, spun to the wild passion of violins up the eight marble steps of the marble flight. A spotlight turned the entire range of the spectrum upon her. She was like a spinning tulip, her draperies folding her in a cup of sheerest petals, her limbs shining through.

"Classy, ain't she, Doll?"

"Well, I guess!"

"Wanna meet her? There ain't none of 'em that 'ain't sat at my table many a time."

"I like it better with just you, Jimmie."

"Sweetness, don't you look at me like that or you'll get me so mixed up I'll go out and buy the Metropolitan Tower for your Christmas present. Whatta you want for Christmas--eh, Doll?"

"Aw, Jimmie, I don't want nothing. I 'ain't got no right to take nothing from you!" She played with the rich, unpronounceable foods on her plate and took a swallow of golden liquid to wash down her fiery confusion. "I--'ain't got no right."

"When I get to likin' a little girl there ain't nothing she 'ain't got a right to."

"Aw, Jimmie, when you talk like that I feel so--so--"

"So what, Doll?"

"So--so--"

"Gowann, Doll."

"Aw, I can't say it. You'll think I'm fresh."

But she regarded him with the nervous eyes of a gazelle and the red swam high up into her hair, and he drained his glass down to the bottom of its hollow stem and leaned his warming face closer.

"You treat me white, sweetness, and understand me right, and you won't be sorry for nothing you say. Drink, Doll, drink to you 'n' me--you 'n' me."

Their bubble-thin glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr. Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched her cheek lightly, gritting his teeth in a fine frenzy of delight.

"That's the way to make 'em sit up and take notice, Doll, that's the way I like 'em. Live! As live and frisky as colts!"

An attendant placed a souvenir of the occasion beside her plate--a white wool bear, upright and with bold bead eyes and a flare of pink bow beneath its chin.

"Oh-h-h!"

"See, Doll, a Teddy bear! By Gad! a Teddy bear with his arms stretched out to hug her! Gad! if I was that Teddy I'd hug the daylight out of her, too! Gad! wouldn't I!"

Mrs. Violet Smith wafted the bead-eyed toy a kiss, then slapped him sharply sidewise, toppling him in a heap, and her easy laughter mingled with her petulance.

"I wanna big grizzly, Jimmie; a great big brown grizzly bear with a grin. I wanna big brown grizzly."

"'Ain't you got one, Doll? A little white one with a pink bow. Here, let's give him a drink!"

But the petulance grew upon her, nor would she be gainsaid. "I wanna big brown grizzly--a great big brown one with a grin."

"Aw, Doll, look at this little white one--a classy little white one. Look at his nose, cutie, made out of a button. Look, ain't that some nose! Look, ain't--"

"A big brown one that I can dance with, Jimmie. I wanna dance. Gee! who could dance with a little dinky devil like that! I wanna dance, Jimmie, honest I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I--Gee, I wanna dance. Jimmie, honest, I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I--Gee! I wanna dance, Jimmie! Gee, I wanna--"

He whacked the table and flashed the twinkle of a wink to the waiter. "Gad! Doll, if you look at me with them frisky eyes I--"

"I wanna bear, Jimmie, a great big brown--"

"Waiter!"

"A great big brown one, Jimmie, with a grin. Tell him a great big brown one!"

"Waiter, that ain't no kind of a souvenir to bring a lady--a cheap bunch o' wool like that. Bring her a great big brown one--"

"A great big brown one with a grin, tell him, Jimmie."

"We have no brown ones, sir; only the small white ones for the ladies."

"Get one, then! Get out and buy the biggest one they got on Broadway. Get out and get one then!"

"But, sir, the--"

"If the stores ain't open, bust 'em open! I ain't the best customer this joint has got not to get service when my lady friend wants to dance with a great big brown bear. If my lady friend can't get a great big brown bear--"

"With a grin, Jimmie."

"--with a grin, there are other places where she can get two great big brown bears if she wants 'em."

"I'll see, sir. I'll see what I can do."

Mr. Fitzgibbons brought a fist down upon the table so that the dishes rattled and the wine lopped out of the glasses. "Sure you'll see, and quick, too! A great big brown bear, d'you hear? My lady friend wants to dance, don't you, Doll? You wanna dance, and nothing but a great big brown bear won't do--eh, Doll?"

"With a grin, Jimmie!"

"With a grin, d'ye hear?" He whacked at her hand in delight and they laughed in right merry duet.

"Oh, Jimmie, you're killing!"

"The sky's my limit!"

She nibbled at a peach whose cheeks were pink as her own, and together from the great overflowing bowl of fruits they must trim her hat with its boyish brim. First, a heavy bunch of black hothouse grapes that she pinned deftly to the crown, a cluster of cherries, a purple plum, a tangerine stuck at a gay angle. They surveyed their foolish labor of caprice with little rills of laughter that rose and fell, and when she replaced her hat the cherries bobbed and kissed her cheek and the adjoining group leaned to her in the kinship of merriment.

"It's a sweller trimming than I gave it last Tuesday, Jimmie. Look how tight it's all pinned on. Look at the cherries! I'm going to blow 'em right off and then eat 'em--eat 'em! Pf-f-f-f!"

She made as if to catch them with pursed lips, but they bobbed sidewise, and he regarded her with a swelling pride, then glanced about the room, pleased at the furor that followed her little antics.

"Gad, Doll, you're a winner! I can pick 'em every time! You ain't dolled up like the rest of 'em, but you're a winner!"

"Oh-oh-oh!"

"That's the ticket, waiter! I knew there wasn't nothing round here that tin wouldn't buy. I guess that ain't some great big brown grizzly with a grin for you, Doll!"

"Oh-oh-oh!"

"I guess they didn't rustle round when your Uncle Fuller began to get sore, and get a great big brown one for you! Gad! the biggest I ever seen--almost as big as you, Doll! That's the ticket! There ain't anything in this town tin can't buy!"

"Oh-oh-oh!" She lifted the huge toy off the silver tray held out to her and buried her shining face in the soft, silky wool. "Ain't he a beauty? Ain't he the softest, brownest beauty?"

"Now, peaches, now cherries, now you little fancy-fruit stand, there goes the music. Let's see that dance!"

"Aw, Jimmie, I--I was only kiddin'!"

"Kiddin' nothing! Come now, Doll, I blew me ten bucks if I blew me a cent for that bunch of wool. Come now, let's see that dance you been blowing about! Go as far as you like, Doll!"

"I--honest, I was only guyin', Jimmie."

"Don't be a quitter and make me sore, Doll! I wanna show 'em I pick the live ones every time. There's the music!"

"Aw, I--"

"Go as far as you like, Doll. Here, gimme your hat! Go to it, sister. If you land in the fountain by mistake I'll blow you to the swellest new duds on the Avenue."

"I don't know no dances no more, Jimmie. I--I can't dance with this big old thing anyways. Look, he's almost as big as me!"

"Go it alone, then, Doll; but get up and show 'em. Get up and show 'em that I don't pick nothing but the livest! Get up and show 'em, Doll; get up and show 'em!"

She set down her glass suddenly and pirouetted to her feet. "Here--I--go--Jimmie!"

"Go to it, Doll!"

She leaped forward in her narrow little skirt, laughing. Chairs scraped back and a round of applause went with her. Knives and forks beat tattoo on frail glasses; a tinsel ball flung from across the room fell at her feet. She stooped to it, waved it, and pinned it to her bosom. Her hair, rich as Australian gold, half escaped its chignon and lay across her shoulders. She danced light as the breeze up the marble stairway, and at its climax the spotlight focused on her, covering her with the sheen of mica; then just as lightly down the steps again, so rapidly that her hair was tossed outward in a fairy-like effect of spun gold.

"Go to it, Doll. I'm here to back you!"

"Dare me, Jimmie?"

"Dare what?"

"Dare me?"

"Yeh, I dare you to do anything your little heart desires. Gad! you--Gad! if she 'ain't!"

Like a bird in flight she danced to the gold coping, paused like an audacious Undine in a moment of thrilled silence, and then into the purple and gold, violet and red rain of the electric fountain, her arms outstretched in a radiant _tableau vivant_, water crowding in about her knees, spray dancing on her upturned face.

"Gad! the little daredevil! I didn't think she had it in her. Gad! the little devil!"

Clang! Clang! Tink! Tink! "Bravo, kiddo! Who-o-o-p!"

Shaking the spray out of her eyes, her hair, she emerged to a grand orchestral flare. The same obsequious hands that applauded her helped her from the gold coping. Waiters dared to smile behind their trays. Up to her knees her dark-cloth skirt clung dankly. Water glistened on her shoulders, spotted her blouse. Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons lay back in his chair, weak from merriment.

"Gad! I didn't think she had it in her! Gad! I didn't!"

"Bo-o-o-o!" She shook herself like a dainty spaniel, and he grasped the table to steady himself against his laughter.

"Gad! I didn't!"

"Fine weather for ducks!"

"Gad!"

"I'm a nice girl and they treat me like a sponge."

"Gad!"

"April weather we're havin', ain't it?"

"You ain't much wet, are you, Doll?"

"Bo-o-o-o!"

"Here, waiter, get the lady a coat or something. Gad! you're the hit of the place, Doll! Aw, you ain't cold, hon? Look, you ain't even wet through--what you shaking about?"

She drew inward little breaths of shivery glee. "I ain't wet! Say, whatta you think that fountain's spouting--gasoline? I--ain't--wet! Looka my hair curling up like it does in a rain-storm! Feel my skirt down here at the hem! Can you beat it? I ain't wet, he says!"

"Here, drink this, Doll, and warm up."

"No."

She threw a dozen brilliant glances into the crowd, tossed an invitational nod to the group adjoining, and clapped her hands for the iridescent Christmas ball that dangled over their table.

"Here, send 'er over--here, give you leave. I'm some little catcher myself."

It bounded to her light as air, and she caught it deftly, tossed it ceilingward until it bounced against an incandescent bulb, tossed it again, caught it lightly, nor troubled to heed the merry shouts for its return.

From across the room some one threw her a great trailing ribbon of gilt paper. She bound it about her neck like a ruff. A Christmas star with a fluted tissue-paper edge floated into her lap. She wore it like an earring, waggling it slyly so that her curls were set a-bobbing.

"Gimme my bear."

She hugged the woolly image to her as if she would beg its warmth, her teeth clicking the while with chill.

"Take a little swallow or two to warm you up, Doll!"

"Gee! I took your dare, Jimmie--and--and--br-r-r-r!"

"A little swallow, Doll!"

"I took your dare, Jimmie, and I--I can feel my skirt shrinking up like it was rigging. I--I guess I'll have to go to work next week in a sheet."

"Didn't I tell you I was backing this toot, sister?"

"I didn't have no right to dive in there and spoil my duds, Jimmie. I--"

"Who had a better right?"

"Ain't it just like a nut like me? But I 'ain't had a live time for so long I--I lost my head. But I 'ain't got no right to spoil the only duds I got to my back. Looka this waist; the color's running. I ought to--I--Oh, like I wasn't in enough of a mess already without--without--acting the crazy nut!"

"Aw, Doll, cut the tragedy! Didn't I tell you I was going to blow you to anything your little heart desires?"

"But the only duds I got to my back, Jimmie! Oh, ain't I a nut when I get started, Jimmie! Ain't I a nut!"

She regarded him with tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her lips. A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her smile broke out into sunshine.

"Ain't I a nut, though!"

"You're a real, full-blooded little winner, that's what you are, and you can't say I ain't one, neither, Doll. Here's your damages. Now go doll yourself up like a Christmas tree!"

He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to the floor.

"I--Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am? There, take your money. I--honest, I--What kind of a girl do you think I am?"

"Now, now, sister, don't we understand each other? Them's damages, kiddo. Wasn't it me dared you? Ain't it my fault you doused your duds?"

"Yes, but--"

"Aw, come now, Doll, don't pull any of that stuff on me! You and me understand each other--not?"

"Yes, but--"

"Take and forget it. You won it. That ain't even interest on the filly's winnings. Take it. I never started nothing in my life I couldn't see the finish to. Take it and forget it!" He crammed the bill into her reluctant fingers, closed them over it, and sealed her little fist with a grandiose pat. "Forget it, Doll!"

But her lids fluttered and her confusion rose as if to choke her. "I--honest, I--Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am?"

"I told you I think you're the sweetest, livest little queen I know."

"Aw!"

"Come on, little live wire. Put on your swell, hothouse-trimmed hat. I'm going to take you to a place farther up the street where there are two staircases and a fountain twice as big for you to puddle your little footsies in. Waiter--here--check--get a cab! Here, little Doll, quit your shivering and shaking and lemme help you on--lemme help you."