Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 38

"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by, Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."

Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.

"Madame!"

"Ja."

"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so well. Three spells of fainting, madame."

"Therese!"

"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come--"

With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out for the bal.u.s.trade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.

"Madame?"

When Mrs. Meyerburg spoke finally it was as if those seconds had been years, sapping more than their share of life from her. "I--now I don't go up, Therese. After a while I come, but--but not now. I want, though, you should go right away up to Miss Becky with a message."

"Oui, madame."

"I want you should tell her for me, Therese, that--that to-morrow New-Year's dinner with the family all here, I--I want she should invite the Marquis Rosencrantz. That everything is all right. Right away I want you should go and tell her, Therese!"

"Oui, madame."

Up in her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap at the door. She was there and waiting.

"Kemp, I want you should away take down this roll to Goldfinger's office in the Syndicate Building. Just say Mrs. Meyerburg says everything is all right--to go ahead."

"Yes, madam." And he closed the door after him, holding the k.n.o.b a moment to save the click.

In a Tudor dining-hall, long as the banquet-room of a thane, faced in thrice-weathered oak and designed by an architect too eminent to endure interference--except when Miss Meyerburg had later and at her own stealthy volition installed a Pompeian colored window above the high Victorian fireplace--the wide light of a brilliant New-Year's day lay against leaded window-panes, but shut out by thick hangings.

Instead, the yellow light from a ceiling sown with starlike bulbs lay over that room. At each end of the table, so that the gracious glow fell full upon the small figure of Mrs. Meyerburg at one end and upon the grizzled head of Mr. Ben Meyerburg at the other, two braces of candles burned softly, crocheting a flickering design upon the damask.

From the foot of that great table, his place by precedence of years, Mr.

Ben Meyerburg rose from his Voltairian chair, holding aloft a winegla.s.s like a torch.

"_Ma.s.seltov_, ma," he said, "and just like we drank to the happy couple who have told us the good news to-day, so now I drink to the grandest little mother in the world. _Ma.s.seltov_, ma." And he drained his gla.s.s, holding it with fine disregard back over one shoulder for refilling.

Round that table Mrs. Meyerburg's four remaining sons, towering almost twice her height, rose in a solemn chorus that was heavier than their libations of wine.

"_Ma.s.seltov_, ma."

"Ach, boys, my sons, _ich--ich--danke_." She was quivering now in the edge of tears and grasped tightly at the arms of her chair.

"_Ma.s.seltov_, ma," said Rebecca Meyerburg, raising her gla.s.s and her moist eyes s.h.i.+ning above it. The five daughters-in-law followed immediate suit. At Miss Meyerburg's left the Marquis Rosencrantz, with pointed features and a silhouette sharp as a knife edge, raised his gla.s.s and his waxed mustache and drank, but silently and over a deep bow.

"Mamma--mother dear, the marquis drinks to you."

Mrs. Meyerburg turned upon him with a great mustering of amiability and safely withdrawn now from her brink of tears. "I got now six sons what can drink to my health--not, Marquis?"

"She says, Marquis," translated Miss Meyerburg, ardently, to the sharp profile, "that now she has six sons to drink to her health."

_"Madame me fait trop d'honneur."_

"He says, mamma, that it is too great an honor to be your son."

From her yesterday's couch of mental travail Miss Meyerburg had risen with a great radiance turping out its ravages. She was Sheban in elegance, the velvet of her gown taken from the color of the ruby on her brow, and the deep-white flesh of her the quality of that same velvet with the nap raised.

"He wants to kiss your hand, ma. Give it to him. No, the right one, dearie."

"I--I'm much obliged, Marquis. I--well, for one little old woman like me, I got now six sons and six daughters, each one big enough to carry me off under his arm. Not?"

She was met with immediate acclaim from a large blond daughter-in-law, her soft, expansive bosom swathed in old lace caught up with a great jeweled lizard.

"Little old nothing, ma. I always say to Isadore you've got more energy yet than the rest of the family put together."

"Ach, Dora, always you children like to make me think I been young yet."

But she was smilingly tremulous and pushed herself backward in her heavy throne-like chair. A butler sprang, lifting it gently from her.

Immediately the great, disheveled table, brilliantly littered with crystal, frumpled napkins, and a great centerpiece of fruits and flowers, was in the confusion of disorganization.

Daughters-in-law and husbands moved up toward a pair of doors swung heavily backward by two servants.

Mrs. Isadore Meyerburg pushed her real-lace bodice into place and adjusted the glittering lizard. "Believe me," she said, exuding a sigh and patting her bosom on the swell of that deep breath, "I ate too much, but if I can't break my diet for the last engagement in the family, and to n.o.bility at that, when will I do it?"

"I should say so," replied Mrs. Rudolph Meyerburg, herself squirming to rights in an elaborate bodice and wielding an unostentatious toothpick behind the cup of her hand; "like I told Roody just now, if I take on a pound to-day he can blame his sister."

"Say, I wish you'd look at the marquis kissing ma's hand again, will you?"

"Look at ma get away with it too. You've got to hand it to them French, they've got the manners all right. No wonder our swell Trixie tags after them."

"Say, Becky shouldn't get manners yet with her looks and five hundred thousand thrown in. I bet, if the truth is known, and since ma is going to live over there with them, that there's a few extra thousand tacked on too."

"Not if the court knows it! Like I told Roody this morning, she's bringing a t.i.tle into the family, but she's taking a big wad of the Meyerburg money out of the country too."

"It is so, ain't it?"

Around her crowded Mrs. Meyerburg's five sons.

"Come with us, ma. We got a children's party up in the ballroom for Aileen this afternoon, and then Trixie and I are going to motor down to Sheepshead for the indoor polo-match. Come, ma."

"No, no, Felix. I want for myself rest this afternoon. All you children go and have your good times. I got home more as I can do, and maybe company, too."

"Tell you what, ma, come with Dora and me and the kids. She wants to go out to Hastings this afternoon to see her mother. Come with us, ma. The drive will do you good."