Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.
"Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap to sit in the light," said Birdie.
He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.
"What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?"
"Sure I'm not," he said. "I'm just catching up on sleep."
They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers abruptly.
"Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated how Mr. Latz sells cigars."
"To-night," he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair and exhaling loudly, "I feel as funny as a funeral."
"Marcus," she said, "honest, you don't look right; you're pale!"
He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate _vis-a-vis_. The light played over them.
"You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you."
Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump. He was a well-set-up young man--solidly knit and close packed--but five inches short of the stuff that matinee idols and policemen are made of. Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.
This facetious mood, however, was further emphasized in the large, well-formed ears, which flared away from his head as if alarmed, and in a wide, heavy-set mouth, which seemed straining to meet those respective ears; yet when Mr. Gump smiled he showed a double deck of large white teeth, dazzling as snow, and his eyes illuminated, and small-rayed wrinkles spread out from the corners and gave them geniality.
"Your mamma was here at the whist this afternoon, Marcus. We think she's a grand woman!"
His face lighted.
"I was afraid she wouldn't come on account of the weather. I meant to telephone from the factory to take a cab, but I had a hard day of it. What's the difference, I always say in a case like that, whether it costs a little more or a little less? Recreation is good for her."
"It's a terrible night, isn't it? Papa says even the horses can't walk--it's so slippery."
"I care a lot how slippery it is when I come to see you, Birdie." He sighed and regarded her nervously.
"Aw, Marcus! Jollier!" She colored the red of the deepest peony in the garden and giggled like water purling over stones.
"You can believe me, I wish I was jollying! Until I met you it was all right to say that about me; but now--but--Oh, well, what's the use of talking?"
He rose from the divan in some agitation, thrust his hands into his pockets, hitched his trousers upward, and walked away.
Birdie remained on the divan, observing the rules of the oldest game, clasped her hands on her knees, and held the silence. When she finally spoke her voice was filtered by the benign process of understanding.
"Look how easy he gets mad," she said, querulously; "just like I'm not glad he wasn't jollying!"
There was a pause; the large onyx clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly and impersonally, as if its concern were solely with time and not with man.
Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses--a sloe black and a virgin white--rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.
"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway. It's like I said to you last night--if a fellow can't give you what you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."
"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like that!"
Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood fizzing through their veins.
"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell--"
At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate in low seas, hove in.
"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well--ain't it?"
"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."
"Just like Mr. Katzenstein--ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works! Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less, I tell him."
"You got a swell apartment here, Mrs. Katzenstein. Some cousins of my poor father's--the Morris Jacobs--live in this same house."
"Are those Jacobs your cousins? Such grand people--the knit-underwear Jacobs, Birdie! I never meet the old lady in the elevator that she don't ask me to come up and see her. It's terrible the way I don't pay calls. Birdie, we must go up soon."
"Yes, mamma."
"Yes, we got a nice little apartment here, Mr. Gump; but for what we pay it might be better. If I didn't dread the _gedinks_ of moving we could do better for the money; but we got comfort here, even if it ain't so grand. Sometimes, on account of Birdie, I say we take a bigger place; but who knows how long she is at home--not that we're in a hurry with her, but you know how it is when a girl reaches a certain age."
"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gump.
"I'm in no hurry," said Birdie.
"I don't say that, neither. When a girl meets the right one it's different. Look at Ray--two hours before she was engaged she didn't know it was going to happen!"
"Come right in, papa. Mr. Gump is here--so tired he is he hates to come in."
There are a few epics waiting to be dug out of remote corners. One day an American drama will be born in a Western shack or under some East Side stairway; one day a prophet will look within the dingy temple of a Mr. Katzenstein at the warm red heart beating beneath a hairy chest, and there find a classic rune to the men who moil and toil, and pay millinery bills with a three-figure check; another day an elegiac will be written to the men who slip the shoes off their aching feet in the merciful seclusion of their alternate Wednesday-night subscription boxes and sit through four hours of Wagner--facing an underdressed daughter, two notes due on the morrow, and a remote stageful of vocalizing figures especially designed for his alternate and inquisitional Wednesday nights.
Life had whacked hard at Mr. Katzenstein, writ across his face in a thousand welts and wrinkles, bent his knees and fingers, and calloused his hands.
"Good evening, Mr. Gump--good evening! I say to mamma the young folks got no time for us in here. I'm right?"
"The more the merrier!" said Mr. Gump, reseating himself.
"Mr. Katzenstein says he used to know your father, Mr. Gump."
"Rudolph Gump! I should say so--yes. Believe me, I wish I had half a dollar for every shirtwaist I bought off him in my life! Your father and me played side by each down on Cedar Street before you was born. I knew him longer as you--he was a good silk man, was Rudolph Gump. Have a cigar, young man?"
"Thanks--I don't smoke."
"Ain't it wonderful, though, that in a city like this my husband should know you before you was born?"
Mrs. Katzenstein clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and patted her hands together. Birdie regarded the company with polite interest.
"Wonders never cease!" she said.
"Birdie, go get your papa his chair out from the dining-room--since he's got lumbago these straight-backs ain't comfortable for him."
"Let me go for you, Miss Birdie."
"Oh no, Marcus--I know just where it is." She smiled at him with her eyes--bright eyes that were full of warmth and reflected firelight.
Mr. Katzenstein groped in his side-pocket for a match, ran his tongue horizontally along a cigar, and puffed it slowly into life.
"How's business?" he said, between puffs, with the lighted match still applied to the end of his cigar.
"We can't complain, Mr. Katzenstein. If this strike don't reach to the piece-workers we can't complain."
"I hear your firm opens a new factory."
"Yes; we're going to put in a line of March Hare neckwear and manufacture it in Newark."
"My wife tells me you manage the new factory--eh?"
"Oh, I can't say that, Mr. Katzenstein; in fact--"
"_Ach_, papa, I didn't say for sure; the ladies this afternoon--"
"Here's you chair, papa."
Mr. Grump sprang to her aid.
"Thanks, Marcus," she said.
"What do you think of my girl there, Gump? She's a fine one--not?"