Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 9

He leaned across the table for her hand, whispering, with an entire flattening of tone, "Miriam, don't go!"

"Irving, don't--talk so--so silly!"

"Miriam, let's--let's you and me stay at home!"

"Irving!"

"Let's, Miriam!"

"Irving, are you crazy?" But her voice yearned toward him.

"Miriam, right at this table I've got an idea. We can do it, Miriam; we can do it if you're game."

"Do what?"

He flashed out his watch. "We've got two hours and twenty minutes before she sails."

"Irving!"

"We have, dear, to--to get a special license and the ring and do the trick."

"Why, I--"

"Two hours and twenty minutes to make it all right for you to stay back with me. Miriam, are you game, dear?"

They regarded each other across the table as if each beheld in the other a vision.

"Irving, you--you must be crazy!"

"I'm not, dear. I was never less crazy. What's the use of us having to get apart after we just got each other? What's all those phony counts and picture-galleries and high-sounding stunts compared to us staying home and hitting it off together, Miriam? Just tell me that, Miriam."

"Irving, I--we just couldn't! Look at mamma and papa and Ray, all down at the boat maybe by now waiting for me, and none of them wanting to go except me. For a whole year I had to beg them for this, Irving. They wouldn't be going now if it wasn't for me. I--Irving, you must be crazy!"

He leaned closer and out of range of the waiter, his voice repressed to a tight whisper.

"None of those things count when a girl and a fellow fall in love like you and me, Miriam."

Even in her crisis her diffidence inclosed her like a sheath. "I never said I--I was in love, did I?"

"But you are! They'll go over there, Miriam, without you and have the time of their lives. We'll stay home and keep the flat open for them so your mother won't have to worry any more about burglars. After the first surprise it won't be a trick at all. We got two hours and fifteen minutes, dearie, and we can do the act and be down at the boat with bells on to tell 'em good-by. Now ain't the time to think about the little things and waste time, Miriam. We got to do it now or off you go hiking, just like--like we had never met, a whole ocean between us, Miriam!"

"Irving, you--you mustn't."

She pushed back from the table. He paid his check with a hand that trembled, resuming, even as he crammed his bill-folder into a rear pocket:

"Be a sport, Miriam! I tell you we got the right to do it because we're in love. We'll just tell them the truth, that at the last minute we--we just couldn't let go. I'll do the talking, Miriam; I'll tell the old folks."

"Ray she--"

"If you ain't afraid to start out on a hundred a month and commissions, dear, we don't need to be scared of nothing. I'll tell them just the plain truth, dear. Just think, if we do it now, when they come back in ten weeks we can be down at the pier to meet them, eh, Miriam, just like an--an old married couple--eh, Miriam--eh, Miriam, dear!"

She rose. A red seepage of blood flooded her face; her bosom rose and fell.

"Are you game, Miriam? Are you, darling--eh, Miriam, eh?"

"Yes, Irving."

Alongside her pier, white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed and stoked, the _Roumania_ reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose tapering toward the blue harbor and the blue billows beyond.

Within the narrow confines of a first-deck stateroom, piled round with luggage and its double-decker berths freshly made up, Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger applied an anxious eye to the port-hole, straining tiptoe for a wider glimpse of deck.

"I tell you this much, papa, in another five minutes when that child don't come, right away off the boat I get and go home where I belong."

In the act of browsing among the lower contents of his wicker hand-bag Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger raised a perspiring face.

"Na, na, mamma, thirty minutes' time yet she's got to get here.

Everybody don't got to come on four hours too soon like us."

"Ja, you should worry about anything, so long as you got right in front of you your newspapers and your tobacco. Right away for his tobacco he has to dig when he sees so worried I am I can't see. Why don't our Ray come back now if she can't find 'em and say she can't find 'em?"

"I tell you, Carrie, if you let me go myself I can find 'em and--"

"Right here you stay with me, Simon Binsw.a.n.ger! We don't get separated no more as we can help. I ain't--Ach, look such a crowd, and no Miriam.

I--"

"Na, na, Carrie!"

"So easy-going he is! My daughter should keep me worried like this!

To lunch the day what she sails to Europe she has to go! Always she complains that salesmen ain't good enough for her yet, and on the day she sails she has to go to lunch with one. Why, I ask you, Simon, why don't that Ray come back?"

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger packed his pipe tight and adjusted a small, close-fitting black cap. "To travel with women, I tell you, it ain't no pleasure."

"Ach, du Himmel! Right away off that cap comes, Simon! With my own hands right away out of sight I hide it. Just once I want Miriam should see you in that skull-hat! Right away off you take it, Simon!"

"Ach, Carrie, on my own head I--"

"I tell you already ten times I wish I was back in my flat. I guess you think it's a good feeling I got to lock up my flat for Himmel knows who to break in, and my son Isadore 'way out in Ohio and not even here to--to say to his mother good-by. Already with such a smell on this boat and my feelings I got a homesickness I don't wish on my worst enemy. My boy should be left like this in America all alone!"

"Ach, Carrie, for why--"

Of a sudden Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger's face fell into soft creases, her eyes closed, and cold tears oozed through, zigzagging downward. "My boy out West with--"

"Na, na, Carrie! Don't you worry our Izzy don't take care of hisself better as you. For what his expense accounts are--always a parlor car he has to have--he can take care of hisself twice better as us, mamma.

Mamma, you should feel fine now we got started. I wish, mamma, you could see such a card-room and such a dining-room they got up-stairs--gold chairs like you never seen. We should go up on deck, Carrie, and--"

"Ach, Simon, Simon, why don't that child come! So nearly crazy I never was in my life. And now on top my Ray gone too. In a few minutes the boat sails, and I don't know yet if I got a child on board. I tell you, Simon, when Ray comes back I think it's better we carry off our trunks and--"