Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 1

Every Soul Hath Its Song.

by Fannie Hurst.

SEA GULLIBLES

In this age of prose, when men's hearts turn point-blank from blank verse to the business of chaining two worlds by cable and of daring to fly with birds; when scholars, ever busy with the dead, are suffering crick in the neck from looking backward to the good old days when Romance wore a tin helmet on his head or lace in his sleeves--in such an age Simon Binsw.a.n.ger first beheld the high-flung torch of G.o.ddess Liberty from the fore of the steerage deck of a wooden ship, his small body huddled in the sag of calico skirt between his mother's knees, and the sky-line and clothes-lines of the lower East Side dawning upon his uncomprehending eyes.

Some decades later, and with an endurance stroke that far outcla.s.sed cla.s.sic Leander's, Simon Binsw.a.n.ger had swum the great h.e.l.lespont that surged between the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side, and, trolling his family after, landed them in one of those stucco-fronted, elevator-service apartment-houses where home life is lived on the layer, and the sins of the extension sole and the self-playing piano are visited upon the neighbor below. Landed them four stories high and dry in a strictly modern apartment of three dark, square bedrooms, a square dining-room ventilated by an airshaft, and a square pocket of a kitchen that looked out upon a zigzag of fire-escape. And last a square front-room-de-resistance, with a bay of four windows overlooking a distant segment of Hudson River, an imitation stucco mantelpiece, a crystal chandelier, and an air of complete detachment from its curtailed rear.

But even among the false creations of exterior architects and interior decorators, home can find a way. Despite the square dining-room with the stag-and-tree wall-paper design above the plate-rack and a gilded radiator that hissed loudest at mealtime, when Simon Binsw.a.n.ger and his family relaxed round their after-dinner table, the invisible cricket on the visible hearth fell to whirring.

With the oldest gesture of the shod age Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger dived into her work-basket, withdrew with a sock, inserted her five fingers into the foot, and fell to scanning it this way and that with a furrow between her eyes.

"Ray, go in and tell your sister she should come out of her room and stop that crying nonsense. I tell you it's easier we should all go to Europe, even if we have to swim across, than every evening we should have spoilt for us."

Ray Binsw.a.n.ger rose out of her shoulders, her eyes dazed with print, then collapsed again to the pages of her book.

"Let her cry, mamma."

"It's not so nice, Ray, you should treat your sister like that."

"Can I help it, mamma, that all of a sudden she gets Europe on the brain? You never heard me even holler for Arverne, much less Europe, as long as the boats were running for Brighton, did you, mom?"

"She thinks, Ray, in Europe it's a finer education for you both. She ain't all wrong the way she hates you should run to Brighton with them little snips."

"Just the same you never heard me nag for trips. The going's too good at home. Did you, pop, ever hear me nag?"

"Ja, it's a lot your papa worries about what's what! Look at him there behind his paper, like it was a law he had to read every word! Ray, go get me my gla.s.ses under the clock and call in your sister. Them novels will keep. Mind me when I talk, Ray!"

Miss Ray Binsw.a.n.ger rose reluctantly, placing the book face downward on the blue-and-white table coverlet. It was as if seventeen Indian summers had laid their golden blush upon her. Imperceptibly, too, the lanky, prankish years were folding back like petals, revealing the first bloom of her, a suddenly cleared complexion and eyes that had newly learned to drop upon occasion.

"Honest, mamma, do you think it would hurt Izzy to make a move once in a while? He was the one made her cry, anyway, guying her about spaghetti on the brain."

"Sure I did. Wasn't she running down my profesh? She's got to go to Europe for the summer, because the traveling salesmen she meets at home ain't good enough for her. Well, of all the nerve!"

"Just look at him, mamma, stretched out on the sofa there like he was a king!"

Full flung and from a tufted leather couch Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger turned on his pillow, flashing his dark eyes and white teeth full upon her.

"Go chase yourself, Blackey!"

"Blackey! Let me just tell you, Mr. Smarty, that alongside of you I'm so blond I'm dizzy."

"Come and give your big brother a French kiss, Blackey."

"Like fun I will!"

"Do what I say or I'll--"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger rapped her darning-ball with a thimbled finger.

"Izzy, stop teasing your sister."

"You just ask me to press your white-flannel pants for you the next time you want to play Palm Beach with yourself, and see if I do it or not.

You just ask me!"

He made a great feint of lunging after her, and she dodged behind her mother's rocking-chair, tilting it sharply.

"Children!"

"Mamma, don't you let him touch me!"

"You--you little imp, you!"

"Children!"

"I tell you, ma, that kid's getting too fresh."

"You spoil her, Izzy, more as any one."

"It's those yellow novels, and that gang of drugstore snips you let her run with will be her ruination. If she was my kid I bet I'd have kept her in school another year."

"You shut up, Izzy Binsw.a.n.ger, and mind your own business. You never even went as long as me."

"With a boy it's different."

"You better lay pretty low, Izzy Binsw.a.n.ger, or I can tell a few tales.

I guess I didn't see you the night after you got in from your last trip, in your white-flannel pants I pressed, dancing on the Brighton boat with that peroxide queen alrighty."

This time his face darkened with the blood of anger.

"You little imp, I'll--"

"Children! Stop it, do you hear! Ray, go right this minute and call Miriam and bring me my gla.s.ses. Izzy, do you think it's so nice that a grown man should tease his little sister?"

"I'll be glad when he goes out on his Western trip next week."

"Skidoo, you little imp!"

She tossed her head in high-spirited distemper and flounced through the doorway. He rose from his mound of pillows, jerking his daring waistcoat into place, flinging each knee outward to adjust the knifelike trouser creases, swept backward a black, pomaded forelock and straightened an accurate and vivid cravat.

"She's getting too fresh, I tell you, ma. If I catch her up round the White Front drug-store with that fresh crowd of kids I'll slap her face right there before them."

"Ach, at her age, Izzy, Miriam was just the same way, and now look how fine a boy has got to be before that girl will look at him. Too fine, I say!"

"Where's my hat, ma? I laid it here on the sewing-machine. Gee! the only way for a fellow to keep his hat round this joint is to sit on it!"