Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 11

They were jamming up the crowded stairway and out to the sun-washed deck. Women in gay corsages and bright-colored veils strolled with an air of immediate adjustment. Men already in steamer caps and tweeds leaned against the railings. Travelers were rapidly separating themselves from stay-at-homes. Already the near-side decks were lined with faces, some wet-eyed and some smiling, and all with kerchiefs or small flags ready for adieus.

"All off! All off!"

"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't worry!"

"Irving, you be good to my Miriam. It's just like you got from me a piece of my heart. Be good to my baby, Irving. Be good!"

Ray tugged at her mother's skirts. "'Sh-h-h-h, mamma, the whole boat don't need to know."

"Be good to her, Irving!"

"Like I--just like I could be anything else to her, mamma!"

"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't cry so, I tell you! Let me go, please, mamma, please! Good-by, papa darling, take good care of yourself and--I--just love you, papa! Ray, have a grand time and don't miss none of it. That's right, kiss Irving; he's your brother-in-law now. Don't cry, mamma darling! Good-by! Good-by!"

A tangle of adieus, more handkerchiefing, more tears and laughter, more ear-splitting shrieks of steam and a black plume of smoke that rose in a billow, and hand in hand Miriam and Irving Shapiro joggling down the gang-plank to the pier.

From the bow of the top deck the ship's orchestra let out a blare of music designed to cover tears and heartaches. The gang-plank drew up and in like a tongue, separating land from sea. From every deck faces were peering down into the crowd below.

Miriam grasped her husband's coat-sleeve, in her frenzy taking a fine pinch of flesh with it. Tears rained down her cheeks.

"There they are, Irving, all three of 'em on the second deck, waving down at us! Good-by, mamma, papa, Ray! Oh, Irving, I just can't stand to see 'em go! Papa, Ray, mamma darling!"

"Now, now, Miriam, think what a grand time they're going to have and how soon they're going to be home again."

"Oh, my darlings!"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger sopped at her eyes, waving betimes the small black cap rescued in the up-deck rush.

Laughter crept with a tinge of hysteria into Miriam's voice. "Oh, darlings, I--I just can't bear to have you go. They're--they're moving, Irving! I--Oh, mamma, papa, darlings! They're moving, Irving!"

Out into the bay where the sunlight hung between blue water and bluer sky, a sea-gull swinging round her spar, the _Roumania_ steamed, unconscious of her freight.

"Good-by, mamma, good-by. Let's follow them to the end of the pier, Irving. I--I want to watch them till they're out of sight."

"Don't cry so, darling!"

"Look! look, see that black speck; it's papa! Oh, I love him, Irving.

Good-by, my darlings! Good-by! They didn't want to go except for me, and--Oh, my darlings!"

"Come, dear, we can't see them any more. Come now, it's all over, dear."

They picked their way through the dispersing crowd back toward the dock gates.

"See, dear, how grand everything is! You and me happy here and--"

"Oh, Irving, I know, but--"

"But nothing."

"Pin my veil for me, dear, to--to hide my eyes. I bet I'm a sight!"

"You're not a sight, you're a beauty!"

"'Sh-h-h-h, I don't feel like making fun, Irving!"

"It's a hot day, dear, so we got to celebrate some cool way. Let's take a cab and--"

"No, Irving dear, we can't afford another one."

"To-day we can afford any old thing we want."

"No, no, dear."

"I got it, then! If we ride down to the Battery we can catch a boat for Brighton. Then we can have a little boat-ride all our own, eh? You and me, darling, on a boat-trip all our own."

She turned her shining eyes full upon him. "That'll be just perfect, Irving!" she said.

ROLLING STOCK

In the great human democracy, revolution cannot uncrown the builder of bridges to place upon his throne the builder of pantry shelves. Gray matter and blue blood and white pigment are not dynasties of man's making. Accident of birth, and not primogeniture, makes master minds and mulattoes, seamstresses and rich men's sons. Wharf-rats are more often born than made.

That is why, in this dynasty not of man's making, weavers gone blind from the intricacies of their queen's coronation robe, can kneel at her hem to kiss the cloth of gold that cursed them. A peasant can look on at a poet with no thought to barter his black bread and lentils for a single gossamer fancy. Backstair slaveys vie with each other whose master is more mighty. And this is the story of Millie Moores who, with no anarchy in her heart and no feud with the human democracy, could design for women to whom befell the wine and pearl dog-collars of life, frocks as sheer as web, and on her knees beside them, her mouth full of pins and her sole necklace a tape-measure, thrill to see them garbed in the glory of her labor.

Indeed, when the iridescent bubble of reputation floated out from her modest dressmaking rooms in East Twenty-third Street, Millie Moores, whom youth had rushed past, because she had no leisure for it, felt her heart open like a grateful flower when life brought her more ch.o.r.es to do. And when one day a next-year's-model limousine drew up outside her small doorway with the colored fashion sheet stuck in the gla.s.s panel, and one day another, and then one spring day three of them in shining procession along her curb, something cheeped in Millie Moores's heart and she doubled her prices.

And then because ladies long of purse and short of breath found the three dark flights difficult, and because the first small fruit of success burst in Millie Moores's mouth, releasing its taste of wine, she withdrew her three-figure savings account from the Manhattan Trust Company, rented an elevator-service, mauve-upholstered establishment on middle Broadway, secured the managerial services of a slender young man fresh from the Louis Quinze rooms of Madam Roth--Modes, Fifth Avenue, tripled her prices, and emerged from the brown coc.o.o.n of Twenty-third Street, Madam Moores, Modiste.

Two years later, three perfect-thirty-six sibyls promenaded the mauve display rooms, tempting those who waddle with sleeveless frocks that might have been designed for the Venus of Milo warmed to life.

The presiding young man, slim and full of the small ways that ingratiate, and with a pomaded glory of tow hair rippling back in a double wave that women's fingers itched to caress and men's hands itched to thresh, pushed forward the mauve velvet chairs with a waiter's servility, but none of his humility; officiated over the crowded pages of the crowded appointment-book, jotted down measurements with an imperturbability that grew for every inch the tape-line measured over and above.

Last, Madam Moores, her small figure full of nerves; two spots of red high on her cheeks; her erstwhile graying hairs, a bit premature and but a sprinkling of them, turned to the inward of a new and elaborate coiffure; and meeting this high tide with a smile, newly enhanced by bridge-work and properly restrained to that dimension of insolence demanded by the rich of those who serve them well.

In the springtime Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue turn lightly to thoughts of Narragansett Pier and Bronx Park. Fifth Avenue sheds its furs and Sixth Avenue its woolen underwear. At the dusk of one such day, when the taste of summer was like poppy leaves crushed between the teeth, and open streetcars and open shirtwaists blossomed forth even as the distant larkspur in the distant field, Madam Moores beheld the electric-protection door swing behind the last customer and relaxed frankly against a table piled high with fabrics of a dozen sheens.

"Whew! Thank heavens, she's gone!"

To a symphony of six-o'clock whistles the rumble of machines from the workrooms suddenly ceased.

"Turn out the shower lights, Phonzie, and see that Van Nord's black lace goes out in time for opera to-night. When she telephoned at noon I told her it was on the way."

Mr. Alphonse Michelson hurtled a mauve-colored footstool and hastened rearward toward the swinging-door that led to the emptying workrooms.

The tallest of the perfect-thirty-sixes, stepping out of her beaded slippers into st.u.r.dier footwear of the street, threw him a smile as he pa.s.sed that set her glittering earrings and metal-yellow ringlets bobbing like bells in a breeze.