Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 33

"Ach, now, Becky, ain't it a shame you should take on so? Ain't it a shame before the servants? Come, baby, in a half-hour it's time for our drive. Come, baby!"

Beneath the fine linen Miss Meyerburg dug with her toes into the mattress, her head burrowing deeper and the black mane of her hair rippling backward in maenadic waves. "If you don't let me alone, ma, if you don't just let me lay here in peace, I'll scream. I'll faint. Faint, I tell you," and smothered her words in the curve of her elbow.

Mrs. Meyerburg breathed outward in a sigh and sat down hesitant on the bed edge, her hand reaching out to the bare white shoulder and smoothing its high l.u.s.ter.

"Come, Becky, and get up like a good girl. Don't you want, baby, to come over by mamma's room and see the plans for the Memorial?"

"No! No! No!"

"They got to be sent back to-day, Becky, before Goldfinger leaves for Boston with them. I got to get right away busy if I want the boys should have their surprise this time next year. To no one but my baby girl have I said yet one word. Don't you want, Becky, to see them before they go down by Goldfinger's office, so he can right away go ahead?"

"No! No!"

"Becky, ain't you ashamed, your own papa's Memorial?"

"Please, mamma, please. If you only won't Becky me."

"Betty."

"If you only will go and--and leave me alone."

"I ask you, Betty, should a girl what's got everything that should make her happy just like an angel, a girl what has got for herself heaven on earth, make herself right away sick the first time what things don't go smooth with her?"

"If I could only die! If I could die! Why don't I die to-day?"

The throb of a sob lay on her voice, and she sat up suddenly, pushing backward with both hands the thick rush of hair to her face. Grief had blotched her cheeks, but she was as warm and as curving as Flora. It was as if her deep-white flesh was deep-white plush and would sink to the touch. The line and the sheen of her radiated through her fine garment.

"Why don't I die?" repeating her vain question, and her eyes, darker because she was so white, looking out and past her parent and streaming their bitter tears.

"You'm a bad girl, Becky, and it's a sin you should talk so. _Gott sei dank_ your poor papa ain't alive to hear such bad words from his own daughter's lips."

"If pa was living things would be different--let me tell you that."

In a flare of immediate anger Mrs. Meyerburg's head shot forward. "Du--"

she cried; "du--you--you bad girl--du--"

"If he had lived they would!"

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg's face, with the lines in it held tight, relaxed to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff silk shushing as she swayed.

"Ach, that I should live to hear from my own child that I 'ain't done by her like her father would want that I should do. Every hour since I been left alone, to do by my six children like he would want has been always my only thought, and now--"

"I mean it! I mean it! If he had lived he would have settled it on me easy enough when he saw what I was doing for the family. Two million if need be! He was the one in this family that made it big, because he wasn't afraid of big things."

Further rage trembled along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, and the fingers she waggled trembled, too, of that same wrath. "You'm a bad girl, Becky!

You'm a bad girl with thought only for yourself. Always your papa said by each child we should do the same. Five hundred thousand dollars to each son when he marries a fine, good girl. More as one night I can tell you I laid awake when Felix picked out for himself Trixie, just wondering what papa would want I should do it or not."

"Can't you keep from picking on that girl, mamma? It's through her, if you want to know it, that I first got in with--with the marquis and that crowd."

"Always by each child we should do the same, he said. Five hundred thousand dollars to our girl when she marries a fine, good man. Even back in days when he had not a cent to leave after him, always he said alike you should all be treated. Always, you hear? Always."

Fire had dried the tears in Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and her face had resumed its fixity of lines. Only her finger continued to tremble and two near-the-surface nerves in her left temple.

"But, mamma, you know yourself he never dreamt we could climb up to this. That for a miserable five hundred thousand more we--"

"A miserable five hundred thousand she calls it like it was five hundred thousand cents!"

"That for a miserable five hundred thousand dollars we could raise our family up to the n.o.bility. The Marquis Rosencrantz, ma, who--"

"Becky, it ain't that I got a word to say against this young man Rosencrantz--but--"

"Marquis Rosencrantz, mamma."

"All right then, Marquis Rosencrantz; but it's like your brother Ben says--a marquis in a country where there ain't no more any of them made could just as well be called a mister. Not a word I got to say against this young Rosencrantz, but--"

"Marquis, ma, please remember! M-a-r-q-u-i-s. Whether there are any more of them or not in France, he still goes by the t.i.tle over here, and that's what he is, ma. Please remember!"

"Marquis Rosencrantz. But when a young man, Becky, don't talk my own language, it ain't so easy for me to know if I like him--"

"Like him. Huh!" Sitting there upright in bed, her large, white arms wrapped about her knees, Miss Meyerburg regarded her mother with dry eyes, but through a blur of scorn. "She don't know if she likes him! Let me tell you, ma, we can worry if he likes us, not if we like him."

"I always say, Becky, about these fine people what you meet traveling in Europe with your brother Felix and his wife with her gay ways, you--"

"A marquis comes her way and she don't know whether she likes him or not. That's rich!"

"For the price what you say he hinted to you last night he's got to have before he can get married, I guess _oser_ I can say if I like him or not."

"I should think, ma, if you had any pride for the family after the way we've been spit on by a certain bunch in this town, you'd be glad to grab a marquis to wave in their stuck-up faces."

"For such things what make in life men like wild beasts fighting each other I got no time. I ain't all for style. All what I want is to see my little girl married to a fine, good--"

"Yes, yes, ma. I know all that fine, good man stuff."

"Ja, I say it again. To a fine, good man just like nearly all your brothers married fine, good women."

"The marquis, just let me tell you, ma, is a man of force--he is. Maybe those foreigners don't always show up, but I've seen him on his own ground. I've seen him in Paris and Monte Carlo and I--"

"I 'ain't got a word to say against this young man what followed you all the way home from Paris. What I don't know I can't talk about. Only I ask you, Becky, ain't it always in the papers how from Europe they run here thick after the girls what have got money?"

"What are you always running down Europe for, ma? Where did you come from, yourself, I'd like to know!"

"I don't run it down, baby. I don't. You know how your papa loved the old country and sent always money back home. But he always said, baby, it's in America we had all our good luck and to America what gave us so much we should give back too. Just because your brother Felix and his wife what was on the stage like such doings over there is no reason--"

"It's just those notions of yours, ma, that are keeping this family down, let me tell you that--you and Ben and Roody and Izzy and all the rest of them with their old-fogyness."

"Your brothers, let me tell you, you bad girl, you, are as fine, steady men as your papa before them."

"We could have one of the biggest names in this town and get in on the right kind of charities, if you and they didn't--"