United States or Cayman Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the crowded apartment, furnished after the most exuberant of the various exuberant French periods, Miss Rebecca Meyerburg lay on a Louis Seize bed, certified to have been lifted, down to the casters, from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette.
On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back full span. "Gott in Himmel, Mrs. Meyerburg! Mrs. Meyerburg! Kommen Sie herein. Mrs. Meyerburg, for why you didn't let me know?
Meyerburg stepped quickly through the slit, as if to ward off its too heavy closing. A French maid, in the immemorial paraphernalia of French maids, stood by like a slim sentinel on stilts, her tall, small heels clicked together. Perfume lay on the artificial dusk of that room. "Therese, you can go down awhile. When Miss Becky wants she can ring." "Oui, madame."
"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 knob a moment to save the click.
James takes you all the way home, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I get out because my Becky likes I should get home early and get dressed up for dinner." "But Mrs. Meyerburg " "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."
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."
And she tried to rise, but sat back, quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat. Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice, and she let fall her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill. "Mrs. Meyerburg, there ain't nobody there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs. Meyerburg!" "Simon!" "Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Nobody's there! Ach help doctor Tillie!" Back against Mrs.
At evening, Simon Meyerburg, with rims of dirt under his nails, entering that kitchen door, the girl child turning from her breast to leap forward.... Sometimes in her stately halls, caught, as it were, in passing from room to room, Mrs. Simon Meyerburg would pause, assaulted by these memories of days so remote that her mind could not always run back to meet them.
You you could run the big estate for us, ma, order and " "You heard what I said, Becky." "Well, then, ma, why why don't you get the Memorial out of your head, dear? Pa built his own Memorial, ma. His memory lasts with everybody, anyway." Aspen trembling laid hold of Mrs. Meyerburg, muddling her words. "You ach from her dead father yet she would take away the marble to his memory." "Ma!"
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.
Word Of The Day