The Project Gutenberg EBook of Every Soul Hath Its Song, by Fannie Hurst

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Title: Every Soul Hath Its Song

Author: Fannie Hurst

Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12763]

Language: English

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[Illustration: Fannie Hurst]

EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG

BY

FANNIE HURST

AUTHOR OF

Just Around the Corner

"Oh, the melody in the simplest heart"

BOOKS BY FANNIE HURST

EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG

JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Every Soul Hath Its Song

1912, 1916

TO

J.S.D.

CONTENTS

SEA GULLIBLES

ROLLING STOCK

HOCHENHEIMER OF CINCINNATI

IN MEMORIAM

THE NTH COMMANDMENT

T.B.

SUMMER RESOURCES

SOB SISTER

THE NAME AND THE GAME

EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG

SEA GULLIBLES

In this age of prose, when men's hearts turn point-blank from blank verse to the business of chaining two worlds by cable and of daring to fly with birds; when scholars, ever busy with the dead, are suffering crick in the neck from looking backward to the good old days when Romance wore a tin helmet on his head or lace in his sleeves—in such an age Simon Binswanger first beheld the high-flung torch of Goddess Liberty from the fore of the steerage deck of a wooden ship, his small body huddled in the sag of calico skirt between his mother's knees, and the sky-line and clothes-lines of the lower East Side dawning upon his uncomprehending eyes.

Some decades later, and with an endurance stroke that far outclassed classic Leander's, Simon Binswanger had swum the great Hellespont that surged between the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side, and, trolling his family after, landed them in one of those stucco-fronted, elevator-service apartment-houses where home life is lived on the layer, and the sins of the extension sole and the self-playing piano are visited upon the neighbor below. Landed them four stories high and dry in a strictly modern apartment of three dark, square bedrooms, a square dining-room ventilated by an airshaft, and a square pocket of a kitchen that looked out upon a zigzag of fire-escape. And last a square front-room-de-resistance, with a bay of four windows overlooking a distant segment of Hudson River, an imitation stucco mantelpiece, a crystal chandelier, and an air of complete detachment from its curtailed rear.

But even among the false creations of exterior architects and interior decorators, home can find a way. Despite the square dining-room with the stag-and-tree wall-paper design above the plate-rack and a gilded radiator that hissed loudest at mealtime, when Simon Binswanger and his family relaxed round their after-dinner table, the invisible cricket on the visible hearth fell to whirring.

With the oldest gesture of the shod age Mrs. Binswanger dived into her work-basket, withdrew with a sock, inserted her five fingers into the foot, and fell to scanning it this way and that with a furrow between her eyes.

"Ray, go in and tell your sister she should come out of her room and stop that crying nonsense. I tell you it's easier we should all go to Europe, even if we have to swim across, than every evening we should have spoilt for us."

Ray Binswanger rose out of her shoulders, her eyes dazed with print, then collapsed again to the pages of her book.

"Let her cry, mamma."

"It's not so nice, Ray, you should treat your sister like that."

"Can I help it, mamma, that all of a sudden she gets Europe on the brain? You never heard me even holler for Arverne, much less Europe, as long as the boats were running for Brighton, did you, mom?"

"She thinks, Ray, in Europe it's a finer education for you both. She ain't all wrong the way she hates you should run to Brighton with them little snips."

"Just the same you never heard me nag for trips. The going's too good at home. Did you, pop, ever hear me nag?"

"Ja, it's a lot your papa worries about what's what! Look at him there behind his paper, like it was a law he had to read every word! Ray, go get me my glasses under the clock and call in your sister. Them novels will keep. Mind me when I talk, Ray!"

Miss Ray Binswanger rose reluctantly, placing the book face downward on the blue-and-white table coverlet. It was as if seventeen Indian summers had laid their golden blush upon her. Imperceptibly, too, the lanky, prankish years were folding back like petals, revealing the first bloom of her, a suddenly cleared complexion and eyes that had newly learned to drop upon occasion.

"Honest, mamma, do you think it would hurt Izzy to make a move once in a while? He was the one made her cry, anyway, guying her about spaghetti on the brain."

"Sure I did. Wasn't she running down my profesh? She's got to go to Europe for the summer, because the traveling salesmen she meets at home ain't good enough for her. Well, of all the nerve!"

"Just look at him, mamma, stretched out on the sofa there like he was a king!"

Full flung and from a tufted leather couch Isadore Binswanger turned on his pillow, flashing his dark eyes and white teeth full upon her.

"Go chase yourself, Blackey!"

"Blackey! Let me just tell you, Mr. Smarty, that alongside of you I'm so blond I'm dizzy."

"Come and give your big brother a French kiss, Blackey."

"Like fun I will!"

"Do what I say or I'll—"

Mrs. Binswanger rapped her darning-ball with a thimbled finger.

"Izzy, stop teasing your sister."

"You just ask me to press your white-flannel pants for you the next time you want to play Palm Beach with yourself, and see if I do it or not. You just ask me!"

He made a great feint of lunging after her, and she dodged behind her mother's rocking-chair, tilting it sharply.

"Children!"

"Mamma, don't you let him touch me!"

"You—you little imp, you!"

"Children!"

"I tell you, ma, that kid's getting too fresh."

"You spoil her, Izzy, more as any one."

"It's those yellow novels, and that gang of drugstore snips you let her run with will be her ruination. If she was my kid I bet I'd have kept her in school another year."

"You shut up, Izzy Binswanger, and mind your own business. You never even went as long as me."

"With a boy it's different."

"You better lay