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@@ -0,0 +1,5331 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Buttered Side Down, by Edna Ferber + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Buttered Side Down + +Author: Edna Ferber + +Release Date: March 28, 2008 [EBook #352] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUTTERED SIDE DOWN *** + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +BUTTERED SIDE DOWN + + +STORIES + +BY + +EDNA FERBER + + + + + +MARCH, 1912 + + + + +FOREWORD + + +"And so," the story writers used to say, "they lived happily ever after." + +Um-m-m--maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers +were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner redolent of +the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be +more careful of her finger-nails and grammar? After Puss in Boots had +won wealth and a wife for his young master did not that gentleman often +fume with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, refused to call on the +lady of the former poor miller's son? + +It is a great risk to take with one's book-children. These stories make +no such promises. They stop just short of the phrase of the old story +writers, and end truthfully, thus: And so they lived. + +E. F. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE + II. THE MAN WHO CAME BACK + III. WHAT SHE WORE + IV. A BUSH LEAGUE HERO + V. THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR + VI. ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS + VII. MAYMEYS FROM CUBA + VIII. THE LEADING LADY + IX. THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING + X. THE HOMELY HEROINE + XI. SUN DRIED + XII. WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH + + + + +BUTTERED SIDE DOWN + + +I + +THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE + +Any one who has ever written for the magazines (nobody could devise a +more sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who does a humorous article +on the subject of his troubles, and the neglected wife next door, who +journalizes) knows that a story the scene of which is not New York is +merely junk. Take Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to five +thousand words, and there you have the ideal short story. + +Consequently I feel a certain timidity in confessing that I do not know +Fifth Avenue from Hester Street when I see it, because I've never seen +it. It has been said that from the latter to the former is a ten-year +journey, from which I have gathered that they lie some miles apart. As +for Forty-second Street, of which musical comedians carol, I know not if +it be a fashionable shopping thoroughfare or a factory district. + +A confession of this kind is not only good for the soul, but for the +editor. It saves him the trouble of turning to page two. + +This is a story of Chicago, which is a first cousin of New York, although +the two are not on chummy terms. It is a story of that part of Chicago +which lies east of Dearborn Avenue and south of Division Street, and +which may be called the Nottingham curtain district. + +In the Nottingham curtain district every front parlor window is +embellished with a "Rooms With or Without Board" sign. The curtains +themselves have mellowed from their original +department-store-basement-white to a rich, deep tone of Chicago smoke, +which has the notorious London variety beaten by several shades. Block +after block the two-story-and-basement houses stretch, all grimy and +gritty and looking sadly down upon the five square feet of mangy grass +forming the pitiful front yard of each. Now and then the monotonous line +of front stoops is broken by an outjutting basement delicatessen shop. +But not often. The Nottingham curtain district does not run heavily to +delicacies. It is stronger on creamed cabbage and bread pudding. + +Up in the third floor back at Mis' Buck's (elegant rooms $2.50 and up a +week. Gents preferred) Gertie was brushing her hair for the night. One +hundred strokes with a bristle brush. Anyone who reads the beauty column +in the newspapers knows that. There was something heroic in the sight of +Gertie brushing her hair one hundred strokes before going to bed at +night. Only a woman could understand her doing it. + +Gertie clerked downtown on State Street, in a gents' glove department. A +gents' glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its +clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing +"lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails. +Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot +leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with +a bristle brush and an orangewood stick. + +Now clerking, as Gertie would tell you, is fierce on the feet. And when +your feet are tired you are tired all over. Gertie's feet were tired +every night. About eight-thirty she longed to peel off her clothes, drop +them in a heap on the floor, and tumble, unbrushed, unwashed, +unmanicured, into bed. She never did it. + +Things had been particularly trying to-night. After washing out three +handkerchiefs and pasting them with practised hand over the mirror, +Gertie had taken off her shoes and discovered a hole the size of a silver +quarter in the heel of her left stocking. Gertie had a country-bred +horror of holey stockings. She darned the hole, yawning, her aching feet +pressed against the smooth, cool leg of the iron bed. That done, she had +had the colossal courage to wash her face, slap cold cream on it, and +push back the cuticle around her nails. + +Seated huddled on the side of her thin little iron bed, Gertie was +brushing her hair bravely, counting the strokes somewhere in her +sub-conscious mind and thinking busily all the while of something else. +Her brush rose, fell, swept downward, rose, fell, rhythmically. + +"Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety---- Oh, darn it! What's +the use!" cried Gertie, and hurled the brush across the room with a crack. + +She sat looking after it with wide, staring eyes until the brush blurred +in with the faded red roses on the carpet. When she found it doing that +she got up, wadded her hair viciously into a hard bun in the back instead +of braiding it carefully as usual, crossed the room (it wasn't much of a +trip), picked up the brush, and stood looking down at it, her under lip +caught between her teeth. That is the humiliating part of losing your +temper and throwing things. You have to come down to picking them up, +anyway. + +Her lip still held prisoner, Gertie tossed the brush on the bureau, +fastened her nightgown at the throat with a safety pin, turned out the +gas and crawled into bed. + +Perhaps the hard bun at the back of her head kept her awake. She lay +there with her eyes wide open and sleepless, staring into the darkness. + +At midnight the Kid Next Door came in whistling, like one unused to +boarding-house rules. Gertie liked him for that. At the head of the +stairs he stopped whistling and came softly into his own third floor back +just next to Gertie's. Gertie liked him for that, too. + +The two rooms had been one in the fashionable days of the Nottingham +curtain district, long before the advent of Mis' Buck. That thrifty +lady, on coming into possession, had caused a flimsy partition to be run +up, slicing the room in twain and doubling its rental. + +Lying there Gertie could hear the Kid Next Door moving about getting +ready for bed and humming "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its +Own" very lightly, under his breath. He polished his shoes briskly, and +Gertie smiled there in the darkness of her own room in sympathy. Poor +kid, he had his beauty struggles, too. + +Gertie had never seen the Kid Next Door, although he had come four months +ago. But she knew he wasn't a grouch, because he alternately whistled +and sang off-key tenor while dressing in the morning. She had also +discovered that his bed must run along the same wall against which her +bed was pushed. Gertie told herself that there was something almost +immodest about being able to hear him breathing as he slept. He had +tumbled into bed with a little grunt of weariness. + +Gertie lay there another hour, staring into the darkness. Then she began +to cry softly, lying on her face with her head between her arms. The +cold cream and the salt tears mingled and formed a slippery paste. +Gertie wept on because she couldn't help it. The longer she wept the +more difficult her sobs became, until finally they bordered on the +hysterical. They filled her lungs until they ached and reached her +throat with a force that jerked her head back. + +"Rap-rap-rap!" sounded sharply from the head of her bed. + +Gertie stopped sobbing, and her heart stopped beating. She lay tense and +still, listening. Everyone knows that spooks rap three times at the head +of one's bed. It's a regular high-sign with them. + +"Rap-rap-rap!" + +Gertie's skin became goose-flesh, and coldwater effects chased up and +down her spine. + +"What's your trouble in there?" demanded an unspooky voice so near that +Gertie jumped. "Sick?" + +It was the Kid Next Door. + +"N-no, I'm not sick," faltered Gertie, her mouth close to the wall. Just +then a belated sob that had stopped halfway when the raps began hustled +on to join its sisters. It took Gertie by surprise, and brought prompt +response from the other side of the wall. + +"I'll bet I scared you green. I didn't mean to, but, on the square, if +you're feeling sick, a little nip of brandy will set you up. Excuse my +mentioning it, girlie, but I'd do the same for my sister. I hate like +sin to hear a woman suffer like that, and, anyway, I don't know whether +you're fourteen or forty, so it's perfectly respectable. I'll get the +bottle and leave it outside your door." + +"No you don't!" answered Gertie in a hollow voice, praying meanwhile that +the woman in the room below might be sleeping. "I'm not sick, honestly +I'm not. I'm just as much obliged, and I'm dead sorry I woke you up with +my blubbering. I started out with the soft pedal on, but things got away +from me. Can you hear me?" + +"Like a phonograph. Sure you couldn't use a sip of brandy where it'd do +the most good?" + +"Sure." + +"Well, then, cut out the weeps and get your beauty sleep, kid. He ain't +worth sobbing over, anyway, believe me." + +"He!" snorted Gertie indignantly. "You're cold. There never was +anything in peg-tops that could make me carry on like the heroine of the +Elsie series." + +"Lost your job?" + +"No such luck." + +"Well, then, what in Sam Hill could make a woman----" + +"Lonesome!" snapped Gertie. "And the floorwalker got fresh to-day. And +I found two gray hairs to-night. And I'd give my next week's pay +envelope to hear the double click that our front gate gives back home." + +"Back home!" echoed the Kid Next Door in a dangerously loud voice. "Say, +I want to talk to you. If you'll promise you won't get sore and think +I'm fresh, I'll ask you a favor. Slip on a kimono and we'll sneak down +to the front stoop and talk it over. I'm as wide awake as a chorus girl +and twice as hungry. I've got two apples and a box of crackers. Are you +on?" + +Gertie snickered. "It isn't done in our best sets, but I'm on. I've got +a can of sardines and an orange. I'll be ready in six minutes." + +She was, too. She wiped off the cold cream and salt tears with a dry +towel, did her hair in a schoolgirl braid and tied it with a big bow, and +dressed herself in a black skirt and a baby blue dressing sacque. The +Kid Next Door was waiting outside in the hall. His gray sweater covered +a multitude of sartorial deficiencies. Gertie stared at him, and he +stared at Gertie in the sickly blue light of the boarding-house hall, and +it took her one-half of one second to discover that she liked his mouth, +and his eyes, and the way his hair was mussed. + +"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid Next Door, in surprise. + +Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the first man that's been deceived +by a pig-tail braid and a baby blue waist. I could locate those two gray +hairs for you with my eyes shut and my feet in a sack. Come on, boy. +These Robert W. Chambers situations make me nervous." + +Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a passion for +detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great city at night, +when a few million people within it are sleeping, or ought to be. They +work in the clang of a distant owl car, and the roar of an occasional "L" +train, and the hollow echo of the footsteps of the late passer-by. They +go elaborately into description, and are strong on the brooding hush, but +the thing has never been done satisfactorily. + +Gertie, sitting on the front stoop at two in the morning, with her orange +in one hand and the sardine can in the other, put it this way: + +"If I was to hear a cricket chirp now, I'd screech. This isn't really +quiet. It's like waiting for a cannon cracker to go off just before the +fuse is burned down. The bang isn't there yet, but you hear it a hundred +times in your mind before it happens." + +"My name's Augustus G. Eddy," announced the Kid Next Door, solemnly. +"Back home they always called me Gus. You peel that orange while I +unroll the top of this sardine can. I'm guilty of having interrupted you +in the middle of what the girls call a good cry, and I know you'll have +to get it out of your system some way. Take a bite of apple and then +wade right in and tell me what you're doing in this burg if you don't +like it." + +"This thing ought to have slow music," began Gertie. "It's pathetic. I +came to Chicago from Beloit, Wisconsin, because I thought that little +town was a lonesome hole for a vivacious creature like me. Lonesome! +Listen while I laugh a low mirthless laugh. I didn't know anything about +the three-ply, double-barreled, extra heavy brand of lonesomeness that a +big town like this can deal out. Talk about your desert wastes! They're +sociable and snug compared to this. I know three-fourths of the people +in Beloit, Wisconsin, by their first names. I've lived here six months +and I'm not on informal terms with anybody except Teddy, the landlady's +dog, and he's a trained rat-and-book-agent terrier, and not inclined to +overfriendliness. When I clerked at the Enterprise Store in Beloit the +women used to come in and ask for something we didn't carry just for an +excuse to copy the way the lace yoke effects were planned in my +shirtwaists. You ought to see the way those same shirtwaist stack up +here. Why, boy, the lingerie waists that the other girls in my +department wear make my best hand-tucked effort look like a simple +English country blouse. They're so dripping with Irish crochet and real +Val and Cluny insertions that it's a wonder the girls don't get +stoop-shouldered carrying 'em around." + +"Hold on a minute," commanded Gus. "This thing is uncanny. Our cases +dovetail like the deductions in a detective story. Kneel here at my +feet, little daughter, and I'll tell you the story of my sad young life. +I'm no child of the city streets, either. Say, I came to this town +because I thought there was a bigger field for me in Gents' Furnishings. +Joke, what?" + +But Gertie didn't smile. She gazed up at Gus, and Gus gazed down at her, +and his fingers fiddled absently with the big bow at the end of her braid. + +"And isn't there?" asked Gertie, sympathetically. + +"Girlie, I haven't saved twelve dollars since I came. I'm no tightwad, +and I don't believe in packing everything away into a white marble +mausoleum, but still a gink kind of whispers to himself that some day +he'll be furnishing up a kitchen pantry of his own." + +"Oh!" said Gertie. + +"And let me mention in passing," continued Gus, winding the ribbon bow +around his finger, "that in the last hour or so that whisper has been +swelling to a shout." + +"Oh!" said Gertie again. + +"You said it. But I couldn't buy a secondhand gas stove with what I've +saved in the last half-year here. Back home they used to think I was a +regular little village John Drew, I was so dressy. But here I look like +a yokel on circus day compared to the other fellows in the store. All +they need is a field glass strung over their shoulder to make them look +like a clothing ad in the back of a popular magazine. Say, girlie, +you've got the prettiest hair I've seen since I blew in here. Look at +that braid! Thick as a rope! That's no relation to the piles of jute +that the Flossies here stack on their heads. And shines! Like satin." + +"It ought to," said Gertrude, wearily. "I brush it a hundred strokes +every night. Sometimes I'm so beat that I fall asleep with my brush in +the air. The manager won't stand for any romping curls or hooks-and-eyes +that don't connect. It keeps me so busy being beautiful, and what the +society writers call 'well groomed,' that I don't have time to sew the +buttons on my underclothes." + +"But don't you get some amusement in the evening?" marveled Gus. "What +was the matter with you and the other girls in the store? Can't you hit +it off?" + +"Me? No. I guess I was too woodsy for them. I went out with them a +couple of times. I guess they're nice girls all right; but they've got +what you call a broader way of looking at things than I have. Living in +a little town all your life makes you narrow. These girls!--Well, maybe +I'll get educated up to their plane some day, but----" + +"No, you don't!" hissed Gus. "Not if I can help it." + +"But you can't," replied Gertie, sweetly. "My, ain't this a grand night! +Evenings like this I used to love to putter around the yard after supper, +sprinkling the grass and weeding the radishes. I'm the greatest kid to +fool around with a hose. And flowers! Say, they just grow for me. You +ought to have seen my pansies and nasturtiums last summer." + +The fingers of the Kid Next Door wandered until they found Gertie's. +They clasped them. + +"This thing just points one way, little one. It's just as plain as a +path leading up to a cozy little three-room flat up here on the North +Side somewhere. See it? With me and you married, and playing at +housekeeping in a parlor and bedroom and kitchen? And both of us going +down town to work in the morning just the same as we do now. Only not +the same, either." + +"Wake up, little boy," said Gertie, prying her fingers away from those +other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a +kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my +lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used to +think he was too slow. But say, he's got the nicest little painting and +paper-hanging business you ever saw, and making money. He's secretary of +the K. P.'s back home. They give some swell little dances during the +winter, especially for the married members. In five years we'll own our +home, with a vegetable garden in the back. I'm a little frog, and it's +me for the puddle." + +Gus stood up slowly. Gertie felt a little pang of compunction when she +saw what a boy he was. + +"I don't know when I've enjoyed a talk like this. I've heard about these +dawn teas, but I never thought I'd go to one," she said. + +"Good-night, girlie," interrupted Gus, abruptly. "It's the dreamless +couch for mine. We've got a big sale on in tan and black seconds +to-morrow." + + + + +II + +THE MAN WHO CAME BACK + +There are two ways of doing battle against Disgrace. You may live it +down; or you may run away from it and hide. The first method is +heart-breaking, but sure. The second cannot be relied upon because of +the uncomfortable way Disgrace has of turning up at your heels just when +you think you have eluded her in the last town but one. + +Ted Terrill did not choose the first method. He had it thrust upon him. +After Ted had served his term he came back home to visit his mother's +grave, intending to take the next train out. He wore none of the prison +pallor that you read about in books, because he had been shortstop on the +penitentiary all-star baseball team, and famed for the dexterity with +which he could grab up red-hot grounders. The storied lock step and the +clipped hair effect also were missing. The superintendent of Ted's +prison had been one of the reform kind. + +You never would have picked Ted for a criminal. He had none of those +interesting phrenological bumps and depressions that usually are shown to +such frank advantage in the Bertillon photographs. Ted had been +assistant cashier in the Citizens' National Bank. In a mad moment he had +attempted a little sleight-of-hand act in which certain Citizens' +National funds were to be transformed into certain glittering shares and +back again so quickly that the examiners couldn't follow it with their +eyes. But Ted was unaccustomed to these now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't +feats and his hand slipped. The trick dropped to the floor with an awful +clatter. + +Ted had been a lovable young kid, six feet high, and blonde, with a great +reputation as a dresser. He had the first yellow plush hat in our town. +It sat on his golden head like a halo. The women all liked Ted. Mrs. +Dankworth, the dashing widow (why will widows persist in being dashing?), +said that he was the only man in our town who knew how to wear a dress +suit. The men were forever slapping him on the back and asking him to +have a little something. + +Ted's good looks and his clever tongue and a certain charming Irish way +he had with him caused him to be taken up by the smart set. Now, if +you've never lived in a small town you will be much amused at the idea of +its boasting a smart set. Which proves your ignorance. The small town +smart set is deadly serious about its smartness. It likes to take +six-hour runs down to the city to fit a pair of shoes and hear Caruso. +Its clothes are as well made, and its scandals as crisp, and its pace as +hasty, and its golf club as dull as the clothes, and scandals, and pace, +and golf club of its city cousins. + +The hasty pace killed Ted. He tried to keep step in a set of young folks +whose fathers had made our town. And all the time his pocketbook was +yelling, "Whoa!" The young people ran largely to scarlet-upholstered +touring cars, and country-club doings, and house parties, as small town +younger generations are apt to. When Ted went to high school half the +boys in his little clique spent their after-school hours dashing up and +down Main street in their big, glittering cars, sitting slumped down on +the middle of their spines in front of the steering wheel, their sleeves +rolled up, their hair combed a militant pompadour. One or the other of +them always took Ted along. It is fearfully easy to develop a taste for +that kind of thing. As he grew older, the taste took root and became a +habit. + +Ted came out after serving his term, still handsome, spite of all that +story-writers may have taught to the contrary. But we'll make this +concession to the old tradition. There was a difference. + +His radiant blondeur was dimmed in some intangible, elusive way. Birdie +Callahan, who had worked in Ted's mother's kitchen for years, and who had +gone back to her old job at the Haley House after her mistress's death, +put it sadly, thus: + +"He was always th' han'some divil. I used to look forward to ironin' day +just for the pleasure of pressin' his fancy shirts for him. I'm that +partial to them swell blondes. But I dinnaw, he's changed. Doin' time +has taken the edge off his hair an' complexion. Not changed his color, +do yuh mind, but dulled it, like a gold ring, or the like, that has +tarnished." + +Ted was seated in the smoker, with a chip on his shoulder, and a sick +horror of encountering some one he knew in his heart, when Jo Haley, of +the Haley House, got on at Westport, homeward bound. Jo Haley is the +most eligible bachelor in our town, and the slipperiest. He has made the +Haley House a gem, so that traveling men will cut half a dozen towns to +Sunday there. If he should say "Jump through this!" to any girl in our +town she'd jump. + +Jo Haley strolled leisurely up the car aisle toward Ted. Ted saw him +coming and sat very still, waiting. + +"Hello, Ted! How's Ted?" said Jo Haley, casually. And dropped into the +adjoining seat without any more fuss. + +Ted wet his lips slightly and tried to say something. He had been a +breezy talker. But the words would not come. Jo Haley made no effort to +cover the situation with a rush of conversation. He did not seem to +realize that there was any situation to cover. He champed the end of his +cigar and handed one to Ted. + +"Well, you've taken your lickin', kid. What you going to do now?" + +The rawness of it made Ted wince. "Oh, I don't know," he stammered. +"I've a job half promised in Chicago." + +"What doing?" + +Ted laughed a short and ugly laugh. "Driving a brewery auto truck." + +Jo Haley tossed his cigar dexterously to the opposite corner of his mouth +and squinted thoughtfully along its bulging sides. + +"Remember that Wenzel girl that's kept books for me for the last six +years? She's leaving in a couple of months to marry a New York guy that +travels for ladies' cloaks and suits. After she goes it's nix with the +lady bookkeepers for me. Not that Minnie isn't a good, straight girl, +and honest, but no girl can keep books with one eye on a column of +figures and the other on a traveling man in a brown suit and a red +necktie, unless she's cross-eyed, and you bet Minnie ain't. The job's +yours if you want it. Eighty a month to start on, and board." + +"I--can't, Jo. Thanks just the same. I'm going to try to begin all over +again, somewhere else, where nobody knows me." + +"Oh yes," said Jo. "I knew a fellow that did that. After he came out he +grew a beard, and wore eyeglasses, and changed his name. Had a quick, +crisp way of talkin', and he cultivated a drawl and went west and started +in business. Real estate, I think. Anyway, the second month he was +there in walks a fool he used to know and bellows: 'Why if it ain't +Bill! Hello, Bill! I thought you was doing time yet.' That was enough. +Ted, you can black your face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some +fine day, sooner or later, somebody'll come along and blab the whole +thing. And say, the older it gets the worse it sounds, when it does come +out. Stick around here where you grew up, Ted." + +Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can't figure out +why you should care how I finish." + +"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned one. I wasn't ever in love with +your ma, like the guy on the stage; and I never owed your pa a cent. So +it ain't a guilty conscience. I guess it's just pure cussedness, and a +hankerin' for a new investment. I'm curious to know how'll you turn out. +You've got the makin's of what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen, +even if you did fall down once. If I'd ever had time to get married, +which I never will have, a first-class hotel bein' more worry and expense +than a Pittsburg steel magnate's whole harem, I'd have wanted somebody to +do the same for my kid. That sounds slushy, but it's straight." + +"I don't seem to know how to thank you," began Ted, a little husky as to +voice. + +"Call around to-morrow morning," interrupted Jo Haley, briskly, "and +Minnie Wenzel will show you the ropes. You and her can work together for +a couple of months. After then she's leaving to make her underwear, and +that. I should think she'd have a bale of it by this time. Been +embroidering them shimmy things and lunch cloths back of the desk when +she thought I wasn't lookin' for the last six months." + +Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with his nerve between his teeth and +the chip still balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes later +Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo Haley introduced the two +jocularly, knowing that they had originally met in the First Reader room, +Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduction icily by lifting her left +eyebrow slightly and drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her air of +hauteur was a triumph, considering that she was handicapped by black +sateen sleevelets. + +I wonder how one could best describe Miss Wenzel? There is one of her in +every small town. Let me think (business of hand on brow). Well, she +always paid eight dollars for her corsets when most girls in a similar +position got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the basement. Nature had +been kind to her. The hair that had been a muddy brown in Minnie's +schoolgirl days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand. Birdie +Callahan always said that Minnie was working only to wear out her old +clothes. + +After the introduction Miss Wenzel followed Jo Haley into the lobby. She +took no pains to lower her voice. + +"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, you've got a fine nerve! If my gentleman +friend was to hear of my working with an ex-con I wouldn't be surprised +if he'd break off the engagement. I should think you'd have some respect +for the feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and engaged to a swell +fellow like Mr. Schwartz." + +"Say, listen, m' girl," replied Jo Haley. "The law don't cover all the +tricks. But if stuffing an order was a criminal offense I'll bet your +swell traveling man would be doing a life term." + +Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that his jaws ached next +morning. Minnie Wenzel spoke to him only when necessary and then in +terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time came she divested herself +of the black sateen sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a la +Patricia O'Brien, produced a chamois skin, and disappeared in the +direction of the washroom. Ted waited until the dining-room was almost +deserted. Then he went in to dinner alone. Some one in white wearing an +absurd little pocket handkerchief of an apron led him to a seat in a far +corner of the big room. Ted did not lift his eyes higher than the snowy +square of the apron. The Apron drew out a chair, shoved it under Ted's +knees in the way Aprons have, and thrust a printed menu at him. + +"Roast beef, medium," said Ted, without looking up. + +"Bless your heart, yuh ain't changed a bit. I remember how yuh used to +jaw when it was too well done," said the Apron, fondly. + +Ted's head came up with a jerk. + +"So yuh will cut yer old friends, is it?" grinned Birdie Callahan. "If +this wasn't a public dining-room maybe yuh'd shake hands with a poor but +proud workin' girrul. Yer as good lookin' a divil as ever, Mister Ted." + +Ted's hand shot out and grasped hers. "Birdie! I could weep on your +apron! I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Just to look at +you makes me homesick. What in Sam Hill are you doing here?" + +"Waitin'. After yer ma died, seemed like I didn't care t' work fer no +other privit fam'ly, so I came back here on my old job. I'll bet I'm the +homeliest head waitress in captivity." + +Ted's nervous fingers were pleating the tablecloth. His voice sank to a +whisper. "Birdie, tell me the God's truth. Did those three years cause +her death?" + +"Niver!" lied Birdie. "I was with her to the end. It started with a +cold on th' chest. Have some French fried with yer beef, Mr. Teddy. +They're illigent to-day." + +Birdie glided off to the kitchen. Authors are fond of the word "glide." +But you can take it literally this time. Birdie had a face that looked +like a huge mistake, but she walked like a panther, and they're said to +be the last cry as gliders. She walked with her chin up and her hips +firm. That comes from juggling trays. You have to walk like that to +keep your nose out of the soup. After a while the walk becomes a habit. +Any seasoned dining-room girl could give lessons in walking to the +Delsarte teacher of an Eastern finishing school. + +From the day that Birdie Callahan served Ted with the roast beef medium +and the elegant French fried, she appointed herself monitor over his food +and clothes and morals. I wish I could find words to describe his bitter +loneliness. He did not seek companionship. The men, although not +directly avoiding him, seemed somehow to have pressing business whenever +they happened in his vicinity. The women ignored him. Mrs. Dankworth, +still dashing and still widowed, passed Ted one day and looked fixedly at +a point one inch above his head. In a town like ours the Haley House is +like a big, hospitable clubhouse. The men drop in there the first thing +in the morning, and the last thing at night, to hear the gossip and buy a +cigar and jolly the girl at the cigar counter. Ted spoke to them when +they spoke to him. He began to develop a certain grim line about the +mouth. Jo Haley watched him from afar, and the longer he watched the +kinder and more speculative grew the look in his eyes. And slowly and +surely there grew in the hearts of our townspeople a certain new respect +and admiration for this boy who was fighting his fight. + +Ted got into the habit of taking his meals late, so that Birdie Callahan +could take the time to talk to him. + +"Birdie," he said one day, when she brought his soup, "do you know that +you're the only decent woman who'll talk to me? Do you know what I mean +when I say that I'd give the rest of my life if I could just put my head +in my mother's lap and have her muss up my hair and call me foolish +names?" + +Birdie Callahan cleared her throat and said abruptly: "I was noticin' +yesterday your gray pants needs pressin' bad. Bring 'em down tomorrow +mornin' and I'll give 'em th' elegant crease in the laundry." + +So the first weeks went by, and the two months of Miss Wenzel's stay came +to an end. Ted thanked his God and tried hard not to wish that she was a +man so that he could punch her head. + +The day before the time appointed for her departure she was closeted with +Jo Haley for a long, long time. When finally she emerged a bellboy +lounged up to Ted with a message. + +"Wenzel says th' Old Man wants t' see you. 'S in his office. Say, Mr. +Terrill, do yuh think they can play to-day? It's pretty wet." + +Jo Haley was sunk in the depths of his big leather chair. He did not +look up as Ted entered. "Sit down," he said. Ted sat down and waited, +puzzled. + +"As a wizard at figures," mused Jo Haley at last, softly as though to +himself, "I'm a frost. A column of figures on paper makes my head swim. +But I can carry a whole regiment of 'em in my head. I know every time +the barkeeper draws one in the dark. I've been watchin' this thing for +the last two weeks hopin' you'd quit and come and tell me." He turned +suddenly and faced Ted. "Ted, old kid," he said sadly, "what'n'ell made +you do it again?" + +"What's the joke?" asked Ted. + +"Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that way of talkin' won't help +matters none. As I said, I'm rotten at figures. But you're the first +investment that ever turned out bad, and let me tell you I've handled +some mighty bad smelling ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on +the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or so why----" + +"What's the joke, Jo?" said Ted again, slowly. + +"This ain't my notion of a joke," came the terse answer. "We're three +hundred short." + +The last vestige of Ted Terrill's old-time radiance seemed to flicker and +die, leaving him ashen and old. + +"Short?" he repeated. Then, "My God!" in a strangely colorless +voice--"My God!" He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though +they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm +with the grip of fear. "Jo! Jo! That's the thing that has haunted me +day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again. +Don't laugh at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights going over that +cursed business of the bank--over and over--till the cold sweat would +break out all over me. I used to figure it all out again, step by step, +until--Jo, could a man steal and not know it? Could thinking of a thing +like that drive a man crazy? Because if it could--if it could--then----" + +"I don't know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds darned fishy." He had a +hand on Ted's shaking shoulder, and was looking into the white, drawn +face. "I had great plans for you, Ted. But Minnie Wenzel's got it all +down on slips of paper. I might as well call her, in again, and we'll +have the whole blamed thing out." + +Minnie Wenzel came. In her hand were slips of paper, and books with +figures in them, and Ted looked and saw things written in his own hand +that should not have been there. And he covered his shamed face with his +two hands and gave thanks that his mother was dead. + +There came three sharp raps at the office door. The tense figures within +jumped nervously. + +"Keep out!" called Jo Haley, "whoever you are." Whereupon the door +opened and Birdie Callahan breezed in. + +"Get out, Birdie Callahan," roared Jo. "You're in the wrong pew." + +Birdie closed the door behind her composedly and came farther into the +room. "Pete th' pasthry cook just tells me that Minnie Wenzel told th' +day clerk, who told the barkeep, who told th' janitor, who told th' chef, +who told Pete, that Minnie had caught Ted stealin' some three hundred +dollars." + +Ted took a quick step forward. "Birdie, for Heaven's sake keep out of +this. You can't make things any better. You may believe in me, but----" + +"Where's the money?" asked Birdie. + +Ted stared at her a moment, his mouth open ludicrously. + +"Why--I--don't--know," he articulated, painfully. "I never thought of +that." + +Birdie snorted defiantly. "I thought so. D'ye know," sociably, "I was +visitin' with my aunt Mis' Mulcahy last evenin'." + +There was a quick rustle of silks from Minnie Wenzel's direction. + +"Say, look here----" began Jo Haley, impatiently. + +"Shut up, Jo Haley!" snapped Birdie. "As I was sayin', I was visitin' +with my aunt Mis' Mulcahy. She does fancy washin' an' ironin' for the +swells. An' Minnie Wenzel, there bein' none sweller, hires her to do up +her weddin' linens. Such smears av hand embridery an' Irish crochet she +never see th' likes, Mis' Mulcahy says, and she's seen a lot. And as a +special treat to the poor owld soul, why Minnie Wenzel lets her see some +av her weddin' clo'es. There never yet was a woman who cud resist +showin' her weddin' things to every other woman she cud lay hands on. +Well, Mis' Mulcahy, she see that grand trewsow and she said she never saw +th' beat. Dresses! Well, her going away suit alone comes to eighty +dollars, for it's bein' made by Molkowsky, the little Polish tailor. An' +her weddin' dress is satin, do yuh mind! Oh, it was a real treat for my +aunt Mis' Mulcahy." + +Birdie walked over to where Minnie Wenzel sat, very white and still, and +pointed a stubby red finger in her face. "'Tis the grand manager ye are, +Miss Wenzel, gettin' satins an' tailor-mades on yer salary. It takes a +woman, Minnie Wenzel, to see through a woman's thricks." + +"Well I'll be dinged!" exploded Jo Haley. + +"Yuh'd better be!" retorted Birdie Callahan. + +Minnie Wenzel stood up, her lip caught between her teeth. + +"Am I to understand, Jo Haley, that you dare to accuse me of taking your +filthy money, instead of that miserable ex-con there who has done time?" + +"That'll do, Minnie," said Jo Haley, gently. "That's a-plenty." + +"Prove it," went on Minnie, and then looked as though she wished she +hadn't. + +"A business college edjication is a grand foine thing," observed Birdie. +"Miss Wenzel is a graduate av wan. They teach you everything from +drawin' birds with tail feathers to plain and fancy penmanship. In fact, +they teach everything in the writin' line except forgery, an' I ain't so +sure they haven't got a coorse in that." + +"I don't care," whimpered Minnie Wenzel suddenly, sinking in a limp heap +on the floor. "I had to do it. I'm marrying a swell fellow and a girl's +got to have some clothes that don't look like a Bird Center dressmaker's +work. He's got three sisters. I saw their pictures and they're coming +to the wedding. They're the kind that wear low-necked dresses in the +evening, and have their hair and nails done downtown. I haven't got a +thing but my looks. Could I go to New York dressed like a rube? On the +square, Jo, I worked here six years and never took a sou. But things got +away from me. The tailor wouldn't finish my suit unless I paid him fifty +dollars down. I only took fifty at first, intending to pay it back. +Honest to goodness, Jo, I did." + +"Cut it out," said Jo Haley, "and get up. I was going to give you a +check for your wedding, though I hadn't counted on no three hundred. +We'll call it square. And I hope you'll be happy, but I don't gamble on +it. You'll be goin' through your man's pants pockets before you're +married a year. You can take your hat and fade. I'd like to know how +I'm ever going to square this thing with Ted and Birdie." + +"An' me standin' here gassin' while them fool girls in the dinin'-room +can't set a table decent, and dinner in less than ten minutes," cried +Birdie, rushing off. Ted mumbled something unintelligible and was after +her. + +"Birdie! I want to talk to you." + +"Say it quick then," said Birdie, over her shoulder. "The doors open in +three minnits." + +"I can't tell you how grateful I am. This is no place to talk to you. +Will you let me walk home with you to-night after your work's done?" + +"Will I?" said Birdie, turning to face him. "I will not. Th' swell mob +has shook you, an' a good thing it is. You was travelin' with a bunch of +racers, when you was only built for medium speed. Now you're got your +chance to a fresh start and don't you ever think I'm going to be the one +to let you spoil it by beginnin' to walk out with a dinin'-room Lizzie +like me." + +"Don't say that, Birdie," Ted put in. + +"It's the truth," affirmed Birdie. "Not that I ain't a perfec'ly +respectable girrul, and ye know it. I'm a good slob, but folks would be +tickled for the chance to say that you had nobody to go with but the +likes av me. If I was to let you walk home with me to-night, yuh might +be askin' to call next week. Inside half a year, if yuh was lonesome +enough, yuh'd ask me to marry yuh. And b'gorra," she said softly, +looking down at her unlovely red hands, "I'm dead scared I'd do it. Get +back to work, Ted Terrill, and hold yer head up high, and when yuh say +your prayers to-night, thank your lucky stars I ain't a hussy." + + + + +III + +WHAT SHE WORE + +Somewhere in your story you must pause to describe your heroine's +costume. It is a ticklish task. The average reader likes his heroine +well dressed. He is not satisfied with knowing that she looked like a +tall, fair lily. He wants to be told that her gown was of green crepe, +with lace ruffles that swirled at her feet. Writers used to go so far as +to name the dressmaker; and it was a poor kind of a heroine who didn't +wear a red velvet by Worth. But that has been largely abandoned in these +days of commissions. Still, when the heroine goes out on the terrace to +spoon after dinner (a quaint old English custom for the origin of which +see any novel by the "Duchess," page 179) the average reader wants to +know what sort of a filmy wrap she snatches up on the way out. He +demands a description, with as many illustrations as the publisher will +stand for, of what she wore from the bedroom to the street, with full +stops for the ribbons on her robe de nuit, and the buckles on her +ballroom slippers. Half the poor creatures one sees flattening their +noses against the shop windows are authors getting a line on the advance +fashions. Suppose a careless writer were to dress his heroine in a +full-plaited skirt only to find, when his story is published four months +later, that full-plaited skirts have been relegated to the dim past! + +I started to read a story once. It was a good one. There was in it not +a single allusion to brandy-and-soda, or divorce, or the stock market. +The dialogue crackled. The hero talked like a live man. It was a +shipboard story, and the heroine was charming so long as she wore her +heavy ulster. But along toward evening she blossomed forth in a yellow +gown, with a scarlet poinsettia at her throat. I quit her cold. Nobody +ever wore a scarlet poinsettia; or if they did, they couldn't wear it on +a yellow gown. Or if they did wear it with a yellow gown, they didn't +wear it at the throat. Scarlet poinsettias aren't worn, anyhow. To this +day I don't know whether the heroine married the hero or jumped overboard. + +You see, one can't be too careful about clothing one's heroine. + +I hesitate to describe Sophy Epstein's dress. You won't like it. In the +first place, it was cut too low, front and back, for a shoe clerk in a +downtown loft. It was a black dress, near-princess in style, very tight +as to fit, very short as to skirt, very sleazy as to material. It showed +all the delicate curves of Sophy's under-fed, girlish body, and Sophy +didn't care a bit. Its most objectionable feature was at the throat. +Collarless gowns were in vogue. Sophy's daring shears had gone a snip or +two farther. They had cut a startlingly generous V. To say that the +dress was elbow-sleeved is superfluous. I have said that Sophy clerked +in a downtown loft. + +Sophy sold "sample" shoes at two-fifty a pair, and from where you were +standing you thought they looked just like the shoes that were sold in +the regular shops for six. When Sophy sat on one of the low benches at +the feet of some customer, tugging away at a refractory shoe for a +would-be small foot, her shameless little gown exposed more than it +should have. But few of Sophy's customers were shocked. They were +mainly chorus girls and ladies of doubtful complexion in search of cheap +and ultra footgear, and--to use a health term--hardened by exposure. + +Have I told you how pretty she was? She was so pretty that you +immediately forgave her the indecency of her pitiful little gown. She +was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked little Puritan, or +a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted in +the middle, drawn severely down over her ears, framing the lovely oval of +her face and ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom +had told Sophy to eschew puffs. But I think her prettiness could have +triumphed even over those. + +If Sophy's boss had been any other sort of man he would have informed +Sophy, sternly, that black princess effects, cut low, were not au fait in +the shoe-clerk world. But Sophy's boss had a rhombic nose, and no +instep, and the tail of his name had been amputated. He didn't care how +Sophy wore her dresses so long as she sold shoes. + +Once the boss had kissed Sophy--not on the mouth, but just where her +shabby gown formed its charming but immodest V. Sophy had slapped him, +of course. But the slap had not set the thing right in her mind. She +could not forget it. It had made her uncomfortable in much the same way +as we are wildly ill at ease when we dream of walking naked in a crowded +street. At odd moments during the day Sophy had found herself rubbing +the spot furiously with her unlovely handkerchief, and shivering a +little. She had never told the other girls about that kiss. + +So--there you have Sophy and her costume. You may take her or leave her. +I purposely placed these defects in costuming right at the beginning of +the story, so that there should be no false pretenses. One more detail. +About Sophy's throat was a slender, near-gold chain from which was +suspended a cheap and glittering La Valliere. Sophy had not intended it +as a sop to the conventions. It was an offering on the shrine of +Fashion, and represented many lunchless days. + +At eleven o'clock one August morning, Louie came to Chicago from +Oskaloosa, Iowa. There was no hay in his hair. The comic papers have +long insisted that the country boy, on his first visit to the city, is +known by his greased boots and his high-water pants. Don't you believe +them. The small-town boy is as fastidious about the height of his heels +and the stripe of his shift and the roll of his hat-brim as are his city +brothers. He peruses the slangily worded ads of the "classy clothes" +tailors, and when scarlet cravats are worn the small-town boy is not more +than two weeks late in acquiring one that glows like a headlight. + +Louie found a rooming-house, shoved his suitcase under the bed, changed +his collar, washed his hands in the gritty water of the wash bowl, and +started out to look for a job. + +Louie was twenty-one. For the last four years he had been employed in +the best shoe store at home, and he knew shoe leather from the factory to +the ash barrel. It was almost a religion with him. + +Curiosity, which plays leads in so many life dramas, led Louie to the +rotunda of the tallest building. It was built on the hollow center plan, +with a sheer drop from the twenty-somethingth to the main floor. Louie +stationed himself in the center of the mosaic floor, took off his hat, +bent backward almost double and gazed, his mouth wide open. When he +brought his muscles slowly back into normal position he tried hard not to +look impressed. He glanced about, sheepishly, to see if any one was +laughing at him, and his eye encountered the electric-lighted glass +display case of the shoe company upstairs. The case was filled with pink +satin slippers and cunning velvet boots, and the newest thing in bronze +street shoes. Louie took the next elevator up. The shoe display had +made him feel as though some one from home had slapped him on the back. + +The God of the Jobless was with him. The boss had fired two boys the day +before. + +"Oskaloosa!" grinned the boss, derisively. "Do they wear shoes there? +What do you know about shoes, huh boy?" + +Louie told him. The boss shuffled the papers on his desk, and chewed his +cigar, and tried not to show his surprise. Louie, quite innocently, was +teaching the boss things about the shoe business. + +When Louie had finished--"Well, I try you, anyhow," the boss grunted, +grudgingly. "I give you so-and-so much." He named a wage that would +have been ridiculous if it had not been so pathetic. + +"All right, sir," answered Louie, promptly, like the boys in the Alger +series. The cost of living problem had never bothered Louie in Oskaloosa. + +The boss hid a pleased smile. + +"Miss Epstein!" he bellowed, "step this way! Miss Epstein, kindly show +this here young man so he gets a line on the stock. He is from +Oskaloosa, Ioway. Look out she don't sell you a gold brick, Louie." + +But Louie was not listening. He was gazing at the V in Sophy Epstein's +dress with all his scandalized Oskaloosa, Iowa, eyes. + +Louie was no mollycoddle. But he had been in great demand as usher at +the Young Men's Sunday Evening Club service at the Congregational church, +and in his town there had been no Sophy Epsteins in too-tight princess +dresses, cut into a careless V. But Sophy was a city product--I was +about to say pure and simple, but I will not--wise, bold, young, old, +underfed, overworked, and triumphantly pretty. + +"How-do!" cooed Sophy in her best baby tones. Louie's disapproving eyes +jumped from the objectionable V in Sophy's dress to the lure of Sophy's +face, and their expression underwent a lightning change. There was no +disapproving Sophy's face, no matter how long one had dwelt in Oskaloosa. + +"I won't bite you," said Sophy. "I'm never vicious on Tuesdays. We'll +start here with the misses' an' children's, and work over to the other +side." + +Whereupon Louie was introduced into the intricacies of the sample shoe +business. He kept his eyes resolutely away from the V, and learned many +things. He learned how shoes that look like six dollar values may be +sold for two-fifty. He looked on in wide-eyed horror while Sophy fitted +a No. 5 C shoe on a 6 B foot and assured the wearer that it looked like a +made-to-order boot. He picked up a pair of dull kid shoes and looked at +them. His leather-wise eyes saw much, and I think he would have taken +his hat off the hook, and his offended business principles out of the +shop forever if Sophy had not completed her purchase and strolled over to +him at the psychological moment. + +She smiled up at him, impudently. "Well, Pink Cheeks," she said, "how do +you like our little settlement by the lake, huh?" + +"These shoes aren't worth two-fifty," said Louie, indignation in his +voice. + +"Well, sure," replied Sophy. "I know it. What do you think this is? A +charity bazaar?" + +"But back home----" began Louie, hotly. + +"Ferget it, kid," said Sophy. "This is a big town, but it ain't got no +room for back-homers. Don't sour on one job till you've got another +nailed. You'll find yourself cuddling down on a park bench if you do. +Say, are you honestly from Oskaloosa?" + +"I certainly am," answered Louie, with pride. + +"My goodness!" ejaculated Sophy. "I never believed there was no such +place. Don't brag about it to the other fellows." + +"What time do you go out for lunch?" asked Louie. + +"What's it to you?" with the accent on the "to." + +"When I want to know a thing, I generally ask," explained Louie, gently. + +Sophy looked at him--a long, keen, knowing look. "You'll learn," she +observed, thoughtfully. + +Louie did learn. He learned so much in that first week that when Sunday +came it seemed as though aeons had passed over his head. He learned that +the crime of murder was as nothing compared to the crime of allowing a +customer to depart shoeless; he learned that the lunch hour was invented +for the purpose of making dates; that no one had ever heard of Oskaloosa, +Iowa; that seven dollars a week does not leave much margin for laundry +and general recklessness; that a madonna face above a V-cut gown is apt +to distract one's attention from shoes; that a hundred-dollar nest egg is +as effective in Chicago as a pine stick would be in propping up a stone +wall; and that all the other men clerks called Sophy "sweetheart." + +Some of his newly acquired knowledge brought pain, as knowledge is apt to +do. + +He saw that State Street was crowded with Sophys during the noon hour; +girls with lovely faces under pitifully absurd hats. Girls who aped the +fashions of the dazzling creatures they saw stepping from limousines. +Girls who starved body and soul in order to possess a set of false curls, +or a pair of black satin shoes with mother-o'-pearl buttons. Girls +whose minds were bounded on the north by the nickel theatres; on the east +by "I sez to him"; on the south by the gorgeous shop windows; and on the +west by "He sez t' me." + +Oh, I can't tell you how much Louie learned in that first week while his +eyes were getting accustomed to the shifting, jostling, pushing, +giggling, walking, talking throng. The city is justly famed as a hot +house of forced knowledge. + +One thing Louie could not learn. He could not bring himself to accept +the V in Sophy's dress. Louie's mother had been one of the old-fashioned +kind who wore a blue-and-white checked gingham apron from 6 A.M. to 2 +P.M., when she took it off to go downtown and help the ladies of the +church at the cake sale in the empty window of the gas company's office, +only to don it again when she fried the potatoes for supper. Among other +things she had taught Louie to wipe his feet before coming in, to respect +and help women, and to change his socks often. + +After a month of Chicago Louie forgot the first lesson; had more +difficulty than I can tell you in reverencing a woman who only said, "Aw, +don't get fresh now!" when the other men put their arms about her; and +adhered to the third only after a struggle, in which he had to do a small +private washing in his own wash-bowl in the evening. + +Sophy called him a stiff. His gravely courteous treatment of her made +her vaguely uncomfortable. She was past mistress in the art of parrying +insults and banter, but she had no reply ready for Louie's boyish air of +deference. It angered her for some unreasonable woman-reason. + +There came a day when the V-cut dress brought them to open battle. I +think Sophy had appeared that morning minus the chain and La Valliere. +Frail and cheap as it was, it had been the only barrier that separated +Sophy from frank shamelessness. Louie's outraged sense of propriety +asserted itself. + +"Sophy," he stammered, during a quiet half-hour, "I'll call for you and +take you to the nickel show to-night if you'll promise not to wear that +dress. What makes you wear that kind of a get-up, anyway?" + +"Dress?" queried Sophy, looking down at the shiny front breadth of her +frock. "Why? Don't you like it?" + +"Like it! No!" blurted Louie. + +"Don't yuh, rully! Deah me! Deah me! If I'd only knew that this +morning. As a gen'ral thing I wear white duck complete down t' work, but +I'm savin' my last two clean suits f'r gawlf." + +Louie ran an uncomfortable finger around the edge of his collar, but he +stood his ground. "It--it--shows your--neck so," he objected, miserably. + +Sophy opened her great eyes wide. "Well, supposin' it does?" she +inquired, coolly. "It's a perfectly good neck, ain't it?" + +Louie, his face very red, took the plunge. "I don't know. I guess so. +But, Sophy, it--looks so--so--you know what I mean. I hate to see the +way the fellows rubber at you. Why don't you wear those plain shirtwaist +things, with high collars, like my mother wears back home?" + +Sophy's teeth came together with a click. She laughed a short cruel +little laugh. "Say, Pink Cheeks, did yuh ever do a washin' from seven to +twelve, after you got home from work in the evenin'? It's great! +'Specially when you're living in a six-by-ten room with all the modern +inconveniences, includin' no water except on the third floor down. +Simple! Say, a child could work it. All you got to do, when you get +home so tired your back teeth ache, is to haul your water, an' soak your +clothes, an' then rub 'em till your hands peel, and rinse 'em, an' boil +'em, and blue 'em, an' starch 'em. See? Just like that. Nothin' to it, +kid. Nothin' to it." + +Louie had been twisting his fingers nervously. Now his hands shut +themselves into fists. He looked straight into Sophy's angry eyes. + +"I do know what it is," he said, quite simply. "There's been a lot +written and said about women's struggle with clothes. I wonder why +they've never said anything about the way a man has to fight to keep up +the thing they call appearances. God knows it's pathetic enough to think +of a girl like you bending over a tubful of clothes. But when a man has +to do it, it's a tragedy." + +"That's so," agreed Sophy. "When a girl gets shabby, and her clothes +begin t' look tacky she can take a gore or so out of her skirt where it's +the most wore, and catch it in at the bottom, and call it a hobble. An' +when her waist gets too soiled she can cover up the front of it with a +jabot, an' if her face is pretty enough she can carry it off that way. +But when a man is seedy, he's seedy. He can't sew no ruffles on his +pants." + +"I ran short last week," continued Louie. "That is, shorter than usual. +I hadn't the fifty cents to give to the woman. You ought to see her! A +little, gray-faced thing, with wisps of hair, and no chest to speak of, +and one of those mashed-looking black hats. Nobody could have the nerve +to ask her to wait for her money. So I did my own washing. I haven't +learned to wear soiled clothes yet. I laughed fit to bust while I was +doing it. But--I'll bet my mother dreamed of me that night. The way +they do, you know, when something's gone wrong." + +Sophy, perched on the third rung of the sliding ladder, was gazing at +him. Her lips were parted slightly, and her cheeks were very pink. On +her face was a new, strange look, as of something half forgotten. It was +as though the spirit of Sophy-as-she-might-have-been were inhabiting her +soul for a brief moment. At Louie's next words the look was gone. + +"Can't you sew something--a lace yoke--or whatever you call 'em--in that +dress?" he persisted. + +"Aw, fade!" jeered Sophy. "When a girl's only got one dress it's got to +have some tong to it. Maybe this gown would cause a wave of indignation +in Oskaloosa, Iowa, but it don't even make a ripple on State Street. It +takes more than an aggravated Dutch neck to make a fellow look at a girl +these days. In a town like this a girl's got to make a showin' some way. +I'm my own stage manager. They look at my dress first, an' grin. See? +An' then they look at my face. I'm like the girl in the story. Muh face +is muh fortune. It's earned me many a square meal; an' lemme tell you, +Pink Cheeks, eatin' square meals is one of my favorite pastimes." + +"Say looka here!" bellowed the boss, wrathfully. "Just cut out this here +Romeo and Juliet act, will you! That there ladder ain't for no balcony +scene, understand. Here you, Louie, you shinny up there and get down a +pair of them brown satin pumps, small size." + +Sophy continued to wear the black dress. The V-cut neck seemed more +flaunting than ever. + +It was two weeks later that Louie came in from lunch, his face radiant. +He was fifteen minutes late, but he listened to the boss's ravings with a +smile. + +"You grin like somebody handed you a ten-case note," commented Sophy, +with a woman's curiosity. "I guess you must of met some rube from home +when you was out t' lunch." + +"Better than that! Who do you think I bumped right into in the elevator +going down?" + +"Well, Brothah Bones," mimicked Sophy, "who did you meet in the elevator +going down?" + +"I met a man named Ames. He used to travel for a big Boston shoe house, +and he made our town every few months. We got to be good friends. I +took him home for Sunday dinner once, and he said it was the best dinner +he'd had in months. You know how tired those traveling men get of hotel +grub." + +"Cut out the description and get down to action," snapped Sophy. + +"Well, he knew me right away. And he made me go out to lunch with him. +A real lunch, starting with soup. Gee! It went big. He asked me what I +was doing. I told him I was working here, and he opened his eyes, and +then he laughed and said: 'How did you get into that joint?' Then he +took me down to a swell little shoe shop on State Street, and it turned +out that he owns it. He introduced me all around, and I'm going there to +work next week. And wages! Why say, it's almost a salary. A fellow can +hold his head up in a place like that." + +"When you leavin'?" asked Sophy, slowly. + +"Monday. Gee! it seems a year away." + +Sophy was late Saturday morning. When she came in, hurriedly, her cheeks +were scarlet and her eyes glowed. She took off her hat and coat and fell +to straightening boxes and putting out stock without looking up. She +took no part in the talk and jest that was going on among the other +clerks. One of the men, in search of the missing mate to the shoe in his +hand, came over to her, greeting her carelessly. Then he stared. + +"Well, what do you know about this!" he called out to the others, and +laughed coarsely, "Look, stop, listen! Little Sophy Bright Eyes here has +pulled down the shades." + +Louie turned quickly. The immodest V of Sophy's gown was filled with a +black lace yoke that came up to the very lobes of her little pink ears. +She had got some scraps of lace from--Where do they get those bits of +rusty black? From some basement bargain counter, perhaps, raked over +during the lunch hour. There were nine pieces in the front, and seven in +the back. She had sat up half the night putting them together so that +when completed they looked like one, if you didn't come too close. There +is a certain strain of Indian patience and ingenuity in women that no man +has ever been able to understand. + +Louie looked up and saw. His eyes met Sophy's. In his there crept a +certain exultant gleam, as of one who had fought for something great and +won. Sophy saw the look. The shy questioning in her eyes was replaced +by a spark of defiance. She tossed her head, and turned to the man who +had called attention to her costume. + +"Who's loony now?" she jeered. "I always put in a yoke when it gets +along toward fall. My lungs is delicate. And anyway, I see by the +papers yesterday that collarless gowns is slightly passay f'r winter." + + + + +IV + +A BUSH LEAGUE HERO + +This is not a baseball story. The grandstand does not rise as one man +and shout itself hoarse with joy. There isn't a three-bagger in the +entire three thousand words, and nobody is carried home on the shoulders +of the crowd. For that sort of thing you need not squander fifteen cents +on your favorite magazine. The modest sum of one cent will make you the +possessor of a Pink 'Un. There you will find the season's games handled +in masterly fashion by a six-best-seller artist, an expert mathematician, +and an original-slang humorist. No mere short story dub may hope to +compete with these. + +In the old days, before the gentry of the ring had learned the wisdom of +investing their winnings in solids instead of liquids, this used to be a +favorite conundrum: When is a prize-fighter not a prize-fighter? + +Chorus: When he is tending bar. + +I rise to ask you Brothah Fan, when is a ball player not a ball player? +Above the storm of facetious replies I shout the answer: + +When he's a shoe clerk. + +Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis. +There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar, +and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink +undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a +man's best points. Then too, a baseball suit requires so much in the +matter of leg. Therefore, when I say that Rudie Schlachweiler was a +dream even in his baseball uniform, with a dirty brown streak right up +the side of his pants where he had slid for base, you may know that the +girls camped on the grounds during the season. + +During the summer months our ball park is to us what the Grand Prix is to +Paris, or Ascot is to London. What care we that Evers gets seven +thousand a year (or is it a month?); or that Chicago's new South-side +ball park seats thirty-five thousand (or is it million?). Of what +interest are such meager items compared with the knowledge that "Pug" +Coulan, who plays short, goes with Undine Meyers, the girl up there in +the eighth row, with the pink dress and the red roses on her hat? When +"Pug" snatches a high one out of the firmament we yell with delight, and +even as we yell we turn sideways to look up and see how Undine is taking +it. Undine's shining eyes are fixed on "Pug," and he knows it, stoops to +brush the dust off his dirt-begrimed baseball pants, takes an attitude of +careless grace and misses the next play. + +Our grand-stand seats almost two thousand, counting the boxes. But only +the snobs, and the girls with new hats, sit in the boxes. Box seats are +comfortable, it is true, and they cost only an additional ten cents, but +we have come to consider them undemocratic, and unworthy of true fans. +Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne, who spends her winters in Egypt and her summers at +the ball park, comes out to the game every afternoon in her automobile, +but she never occupies a box seat; so why should we? She perches up in +the grand-stand with the rest of the enthusiasts, and when Kelly puts one +over she stands up and clinches her fists, and waves her arms and shouts +with the best of 'em. She has even been known to cry, "Good eye! Good +eye!" when things were at fever heat. The only really blase individual +in the ball park is Willie Grimes, who peddles ice-cream cones. For that +matter, I once saw Willie turn a languid head to pipe, in his thin voice, +"Give 'em a dark one, Dutch! Give 'em a dark one!" + +Well, that will do for the firsh dash of local color. Now for the story. + +Ivy Keller came home June nineteenth from Miss Shont's select school for +young ladies. By June twenty-first she was bored limp. You could hardly +see the plaits of her white tailored shirtwaist for fraternity pins and +secret society emblems, and her bedroom was ablaze with college banners +and pennants to such an extent that the maid gave notice every +Thursday--which was upstairs cleaning day. + +For two weeks after her return Ivy spent most of her time writing letters +and waiting for them, and reading the classics on the front porch, +dressed in a middy blouse and a blue skirt, with her hair done in a curly +Greek effect like the girls on the covers of the Ladies' Magazine. She +posed against the canvas bosom of the porch chair with one foot under +her, the other swinging free, showing a tempting thing in beaded slipper, +silk stocking, and what the story writers call "slim ankle." + +On the second Saturday after her return her father came home for dinner +at noon, found her deep in Volume Two of "Les Miserables." + +"Whew! This is a scorcher!" he exclaimed, and dropped down on a wicker +chair next to Ivy. Ivy looked at her father with languid interest, and +smiled a daughterly smile. Ivy's father was an insurance man, alderman +of his ward, president of the Civic Improvement club, member of five +lodges, and an habitual delegate. It generally was he who introduced +distinguished guests who spoke at the opera house on Decoration Day. He +called Mrs. Keller "Mother," and he wasn't above noticing the fit of a +gown on a pretty feminine figure. He thought Ivy was an expurgated +edition of Lillian Russell, Madame De Stael, and Mrs. Pankburst. + +"Aren't you feeling well, Ivy?" he asked. "Looking a little pale. It's +the heat, I suppose. Gosh! Something smells good. Run in and tell +Mother I'm here." + +Ivy kept one slender finger between the leaves of her book. "I'm +perfectly well," she replied. "That must be beefsteak and onions. Ugh!" +And she shuddered, and went indoors. + +Dad Keller looked after her thoughtfully. Then he went in, washed his +hands, and sat down at table with Ivy and her mother. + +"Just a sliver for me," said Ivy, "and no onions." + +Her father put down his knife and fork, cleared his throat, and spake, +thus: + +"You get on your hat and meet me at the 2:45 inter-urban. You're going +to the ball game with me." + +"Ball game!" repeated Ivy. "I? But I'd----" + +"Yes, you do," interrupted her father. "You've been moping around here +looking a cross between Saint Cecilia and Little Eva long enough. I +don't care if you don't know a spitball from a fadeaway when you see it. +You'll be out in the air all afternoon, and there'll be some excitement. +All the girls go. You'll like it. They're playing Marshalltown." + +Ivy went, looking the sacrificial lamb. Five minutes after the game was +called she pointed one tapering white finger in the direction of the +pitcher's mound. + +"Who's that?" she asked. + +"Pitcher," explained Papa Keller, laconically. Then, patiently: "He +throws the ball." + +"Oh," said Ivy. "What did you say his name was?" + +"I didn't say. But it's Rudie Schlachweiler. The boys call him Dutch. +Kind of a pet, Dutch is." + +"Rudie Schlachweiler!" murmured Ivy, dreamily. "What a strong name!" + +"Want some peanuts?" inquired her father. + +"Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?" + +"It ain't hardly legal if you don't," Pa Keller assured her. + +"Two sacks," said Ivy. "Papa, why do they call it a diamond, and what +are those brown bags at the corners, and what does it count if you hit +the ball, and why do they rub their hands in the dust and then--er--spit +on them, and what salary does a pitcher get, and why does the red-haired +man on the other side dance around like that between the second and third +brown bag, and doesn't a pitcher do anything but pitch, and wh----?" + +"You're on," said papa. + +After that Ivy didn't miss a game during all the time that the team +played in the home town. She went without a new hat, and didn't care +whether Jean Valjean got away with the goods or not, and forgot whether +you played third hand high or low in bridge. She even became chummy with +Undine Meyers, who wasn't her kind of a girl at all. Undine was thin in +a voluptuous kind of way, if such a paradox can be, and she had red lips, +and a roving eye, and she ran around downtown without a hat more than was +strictly necessary. But Undine and Ivy had two subjects in common. They +were baseball and love. It is queer how the limelight will make heroes +of us all. + +Now "Pug" Coulan, who was red-haired, and had shoulders like an ox, and +arms that hung down to his knees, like those of an orang-outang, +slaughtered beeves at the Chicago stockyards in winter. In the summer he +slaughtered hearts. He wore mustard colored shirts that matched his +hair, and his baseball stockings generally had a rip in them somewhere, +but when he was on the diamond we were almost ashamed to look at Undine, +so wholly did her heart shine in her eyes. + +Now, we'll have just another dash or two of local color. In a small town +the chances for hero worship are few. If it weren't for the traveling +men our girls wouldn't know whether stripes or checks were the thing in +gents' suitings. When the baseball season opened the girls swarmed on +it. Those that didn't understand baseball pretended they did. When the +team was out of town our form of greeting was changed from, +"Good-morning!" or "Howdy-do!" to "What's the score?" Every night the +results of the games throughout the league were posted up on the +blackboard in front of Schlager's hardware store, and to see the way in +which the crowd stood around it, and streamed across the street toward +it, you'd have thought they were giving away gas stoves and hammock +couches. + +Going home in the street car after the game the girls used to gaze +adoringly at the dirty faces of their sweat-begrimed heroes, and then +they'd rush home, have supper, change their dresses, do their hair, and +rush downtown past the Parker Hotel to mail their letters. The baseball +boys boarded over at the Griggs House, which is third-class, but they +used their tooth-picks, and held the postmortem of the day's game out in +front of the Parker Hotel, which is our leading hostelry. The postoffice +receipts record for our town was broken during the months of June, July, +and August. + +Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne started the trouble by having the team over to +dinner, "Pug" Coulan and all. After all, why not? No foreign and +impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as our town. They get only +as far as New York, or Newport, where they are gobbled up by many-moneyed +matrons. If Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne found the supply of available lions +limited, why should she not try to content herself with a jackal or so? + +Ivy was asked. Until then she had contented herself with gazing at her +hero. She had become such a hardened baseball fan that she followed the +game with a score card, accurately jotting down every play, and keeping +her watch open on her knee. + +She sat next to Rudie at dinner. Before she had nibbled her second +salted almond, Ivy Keller and Rudie Schlachweiler understood each other. +Rudie illustrated certain plays by drawing lines on the table-cloth with +his knife and Ivy gazed, wide-eyed, and allowed her soup to grow cold. + +The first night that Rudie called, Pa Keller thought it a great joke. He +sat out on the porch with Rudie and Ivy and talked baseball, and got up +to show Rudie how he could have got the goat of that Keokuk catcher if +only he had tried one of his famous open-faced throws. Rudie looked +politely interested, and laughed in all the right places. But Ivy didn't +need to pretend. Rudie Schlachweiler spelled baseball to her. She did +not think of her caller as a good-looking young man in a blue serge suit +and a white shirtwaist. Even as he sat there she saw him as a blonde god +standing on the pitcher's mound, with the scars of battle on his baseball +pants, his left foot placed in front of him at right angles with his +right foot, his gaze fixed on first base in a cunning effort to deceive +the man at bat, in that favorite attitude of pitchers just before they +get ready to swing their left leg and h'ist one over. + +The second time that Rudie called, Ma Keller said: + +"Ivy, I don't like that ball player coming here to see you. The +neighbors'll talk." + +The third time Rudie called, Pa Keller said: "What's that guy doing here +again?" + +The fourth time Rudie called, Pa Keller and Ma Keller said, in unison: +"This thing has got to stop." + +But it didn't. It had had too good a start. For the rest of the season +Ivy met her knight of the sphere around the corner. Theirs was a walking +courtship. They used to roam up as far as the State road, and down as +far as the river, and Rudie would fain have talked of love, but Ivy +talked of baseball. + +"Darling," Rudie would murmur, pressing Ivy's arm closer, "when did you +first begin to care?" + +"Why I liked the very first game I saw when Dad----" + +"I mean, when did you first begin to care for me?" + +"Oh! When you put three men out in that game with Marshalltown when the +teams were tied in the eighth inning. Remember? Say, Rudie dear, what +was the matter with your arm to-day? You let three men walk, and Albia's +weakest hitter got a home run out of you." + +"Oh, forget baseball for a minute, Ivy! Let's talk about something else. +Let's talk about--us." + +"Us? Well, you're baseball, aren't you?" retorted Ivy. "And if you are, +I am. Did you notice the way that Ottumwa man pitched yesterday? He +didn't do any acting for the grandstand. He didn't reach up above his +head, and wrap his right shoulder with his left toe, and swing his arm +three times and then throw seven inches outside the plate. He just took +the ball in his hand, looked at it curiously for a moment, and fired +it--zing!--like that, over the plate. I'd get that ball if I were you." + +"Isn't this a grand night?" murmured Rudie. + +"But they didn't have a hitter in the bunch," went on Ivy. "And not a +man in the team could run. That's why they're tail-enders. Just the +same, that man on the mound was a wizard, and if he had one decent player +to give him some support----" + +Well, the thing came to a climax. One evening, two weeks before the +close of the season, Ivy put on her hat and announced that she was going +downtown to mail her letters. + +"Mail your letters in the daytime," growled Papa Keller. + +"I didn't have time to-day," answered Ivy. "It was a thirteen inning +game, and it lasted until six o'clock." + +It was then that Papa Keller banged the heavy fist of decision down on +the library table. + +"This thing's got to stop!" he thundered. "I won't have any girl of mine +running the streets with a ball player, understand? Now you quit seeing +this seventy-five-dollars-a-month bush leaguer or leave this house. I +mean it." + +"All right," said Ivy, with a white-hot calm. "I'll leave. I can make +the grandest kind of angel-food with marshmallow icing, and you know +yourself my fudges can't be equaled. He'll be playing in the major +leagues in three years. Why just yesterday there was a strange man at +the game--a city man, you could tell by his hat-band, and the way his +clothes were cut. He stayed through the whole game, and never took his +eyes off Rudie. I just know he was a scout for the Cubs." + +"Probably a hardware drummer, or a fellow that Schlachweiler owes money +to." + +Ivy began to pin on her hat. A scared look leaped into Papa Keller's +eyes. He looked a little old, too, and drawn, at that minute. He +stretched forth a rather tremulous hand. + +"Ivy-girl," he said. + +"What?" snapped Ivy. + +"Your old father's just talking for your own good. You're breaking your +ma's heart. You and me have been good pals, haven't we?" + +"Yes," said Ivy, grudgingly, and without looking up. + +"Well now, look here. I've got a proposition to make to you. The +season's over in two more weeks. The last week they play out of town. +Then the boys'll come back for a week or so, just to hang around town and +try to get used to the idea of leaving us. Then they'll scatter to take +up their winter jobs-cutting ice, most of 'em," he added, grimly. + +"Mr. Schlachweiler is employed in a large establishment in Slatersville, +Ohio," said Ivy, with dignity. "He regards baseball as his profession, +and he cannot do anything that would affect his pitching arm." + +Pa Keller put on the tremolo stop and brought a misty look into his eyes. + +"Ivy, you'll do one last thing for your old father, won't you?" + +"Maybe," answered Ivy, coolly. + +"Don't make that fellow any promises. Now wait a minute! Let me get +through. I won't put any crimp in your plans. I won't speak to +Schlachweiler. Promise you won't do anything rash until the ball +season's over. Then we'll wait just one month, see? Till along about +November. Then if you feel like you want to see him----" + +"But how----" + +"Hold on. You mustn't write to him, or see him, or let him write to you +during that time, see? Then, if you feel the way you do now, I'll take +you to Slatersville to see him. Now that's fair, ain't it? Only don't +let him know you're coming." + +"M-m-m-yes," said Ivy. + +"Shake hands on it." She did. Then she left the room with a rush, +headed in the direction of her own bedroom. Pa Keller treated himself to +a prodigious wink and went out to the vegetable garden in search of +Mother. + +The team went out on the road, lost five games, won two, and came home in +fourth place. For a week they lounged around the Parker Hotel and held +up the street corners downtown, took many farewell drinks, then, slowly, +by ones and twos, they left for the packing houses, freight depots, and +gents' furnishing stores from whence they came. + +October came in with a blaze of sumac and oak leaves. Ivy stayed home and +learned to make veal loaf and apple pies. The worry lines around Pa +Keller's face began to deepen. Ivy said that she didn't believe that she +cared to go back to Miss Shont's select school for young ladies. + +October thirty-first came. + +"We'll take the eight-fifteen to-morrow," said her father to Ivy. + +"All right," said Ivy. + +"Do you know where he works?" asked he. + +"No," answered Ivy. + +"That'll be all right. I took the trouble to look him up last August." + +The short November afternoon was drawing to its close (as our best talent +would put it) when Ivy and her father walked along the streets of +Slatersville. (I can't tell you what streets, because I don't know.) Pa +Keller brought up before a narrow little shoe shop. + +"Here we are," he said, and ushered Ivy in. A short, stout, proprietary +figure approached them smiling a mercantile smile. + +"What can I do for you?" he inquired. + +Ivy's eyes searched the shop for a tall, golden-haired form in a soiled +baseball suit. + +"We'd like to see a gentleman named Schlachweiler--Rudolph +Schlachweiler," said Pa Keller. + +"Anything very special?" inquired the proprietor. "He's--rather busy +just now. Wouldn't anybody else do? Of course, if----" + +"No," growled Keller. + +The boss turned. "Hi! Schlachweiler!" he bawled toward the rear of the +dim little shop. + +"Yessir," answered a muffled voice. + +"Front!" yelled the boss, and withdrew to a safe listening distance. + +A vaguely troubled look lurked in the depths of Ivy's eyes. From behind +the partition of the rear of the shop emerged a tall figure. It was none +other than our hero. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he struggled into +his coat as he came forward, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, +hurriedly, and swallowing. + +I have said that the shop was dim. Ivy and her father stood at one side, +their backs to the light. Rudie came forward, rubbing his hands together +in the manner of clerks. + +"Something in shoes?" he politely inquired. Then he saw. + +"Ivy!--ah--Miss Keller!" he exclaimed. Then, awkwardly: "Well, how-do, +Mr. Keller. I certainly am glad to see you both. How's the old town? +What are you doing in Slatersville?" + +"Why--Ivy----" began Pa Keller, blunderingly. + +But Ivy clutched his arm with a warning hand. The vaguely troubled look +in her eyes had become wildly so. + +"Schlachweiler!" shouted the voice of the boss. "Customers!" and he +waved a hand in the direction of the fitting benches. + +"All right, sir," answered Rudie. "Just a minute." + +"Dad had to come on business," said Ivy, hurriedly. "And he brought me +with him. I'm--I'm on my way to school in Cleveland, you know. Awfully +glad to have seen you again. We must go. That lady wants her shoes, I'm +sure, and your employer is glaring at us. Come, dad." + +At the door she turned just in time to see Rudie removing the shoe from +the pudgy foot of the fat lady customer. + + +We'll take a jump of six months. That brings us into the lap of April. + +Pa Keller looked up from his evening paper. Ivy, home for the Easter +vacation, was at the piano. Ma Keller was sewing. + +Pa Keller cleared his throat. "I see by the paper," he announced, "that +Schlachweiler's been sold to Des Moines. Too bad we lost him. He was a +great little pitcher, but he played in bad luck. Whenever he was on the +slab the boys seemed to give him poor support." + +"Fudge!" exclaimed Ivy, continuing to play, but turning a spirited face +toward her father. "What piffle! Whenever a player pitches rotten ball +you'll always hear him howling about the support he didn't get. +Schlachweiler was a bum pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow +wand, on a windy day, with the sun in his eyes." + + + + +V + +THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR + +The City was celebrating New Year's Eve. Spelled thus, with a capital C, +know it can mean but New York. In the Pink Fountain room of the Newest +Hotel all those grand old forms and customs handed down to us for the +occasion were being rigidly observed in all their original quaintness. +The Van Dyked man who looked like a Russian Grand Duke (he really was a +chiropodist) had drunk champagne out of the pink satin slipper of the +lady who behaved like an actress (she was forelady at Schmaus' Wholesale +Millinery, eighth floor). The two respectable married ladies there in +the corner had been kissed by each other's husbands. The slim, +Puritan-faced woman in white, with her black hair so demurely parted and +coiled in a sleek knot, had risen suddenly from her place and walked +indolently to the edge of the plashing pink fountain in the center of the +room, had stood contemplating its shallows with a dreamy half-smile on +her lips, and then had lifted her slim legs slowly and gracefully over +its fern-fringed basin and had waded into its chilling midst, trailing +her exquisite white satin and chiffon draperies after her, and scaring +the goldfish into fits. The loudest scream of approbation had come from +the yellow-haired, loose-lipped youth who had made the wager, and lost +it. The heavy blonde in the inevitable violet draperies showed signs of +wanting to dance on the table. Her companion--a structure made up of +layer upon layer, and fold upon fold of flabby tissue--knew all the +waiters by their right names, and insisted on singing with the orchestra +and beating time with a rye roll. The clatter of dishes was giving way +to the clink of glasses. + +In the big, bright kitchen back, of the Pink Fountain room Miss Gussie +Fink sat at her desk, calm, watchful, insolent-eyed, a goddess sitting in +judgment. On the pay roll of the Newest Hotel Miss Gussie Fink's name +appeared as kitchen checker, but her regular job was goddessing. Her +altar was a high desk in a corner of the busy kitchen, and it was an +altar of incense, of burnt-offerings, and of showbread. Inexorable as a +goddess of the ancients was Miss Fink, and ten times as difficult to +appease. For this is the rule of the Newest Hotel, that no waiter may +carry his laden tray restaurantward until its contents have been viewed +and duly checked by the eye and hand of Miss Gussie Fink, or her +assistants. Flat upon the table must go every tray, off must go each +silver dish-cover, lifted must be each napkin to disclose its treasure of +steaming corn or hot rolls. Clouds of incense rose before Miss Gussie +Fink and she sniffed it unmoved, her eyes, beneath level brows, regarding +savory broiler or cunning ice with equal indifference, appraising alike +lobster cocktail or onion soup, traveling from blue points to brie. +Things a la and things glace were all one to her. Gazing at food was +Miss Gussie Fink's occupation, and just to see the way she regarded a +boneless squab made you certain that she never ate. + +In spite of the I-don't-know-how-many (see ads) New Year's Eve diners for +whom food was provided that night, the big, busy kitchen was the most +orderly, shining, spotless place imaginable. But Miss Gussie Fink was +the neatest, most immaculate object in all that great, clean room. There +was that about her which suggested daisies in a field, if you know what I +mean. This may have been due to the fact that her eyes were brown while +her hair was gold, or it may have been something about the way her +collars fitted high, and tight, and smooth, or the way her close white +sleeves came down to meet her pretty hands, or the way her shining hair +sprang from her forehead. Also the smooth creaminess of her clear skin +may have had something to do with it. But privately, I think it was due +to the way she wore her shirtwaists. Miss Gussie Fink could wear a +starched white shirtwaist under a close-fitting winter coat, remove the +coat, run her right forefinger along her collar's edge and her left thumb +along the back of her belt and disclose to the admiring world a blouse as +unwrinkled and unsullied as though it had just come from her own skilful +hands at the ironing board. Miss Gussie Fink was so innately, +flagrantly, beautifully clean-looking that--well, there must be a stop to +this description. + +She was the kind of girl you'd like to see behind the counter of your +favorite delicatessen, knowing that you need not shudder as her fingers +touch your Sunday night supper slices of tongue, and Swiss cheese, and +ham. No girl had ever dreamed of refusing to allow Gussie to borrow her +chamois for a second. + +To-night Miss Fink had come on at 10 P.M., which was just two hours later +than usual. She knew that she was to work until 6 A.M., which may have +accounted for the fact that she displayed very little of what the fans +call ginger as she removed her hat and coat and hung them on the hook +behind the desk. The prospect of that all-night, eight-hour stretch may +have accounted for it, I say. But privately, and entre nous, it didn't. +For here you must know of Heiny. Heiny, alas! now Henri. + +Until two weeks ago Henri had been Heiny and Miss Fink had been Kid. +When Henri had been Heiny he had worked in the kitchen at many things, +but always with a loving eye on Miss Gussie Fink. Then one wild night +there had been a waiters' strike--wages or hours or tips or all three. +In the confusion that followed Heiny had been pressed into service and a +chopped coat. He had fitted into both with unbelievable nicety, proving +that waiters are born, not made. Those little tricks and foibles that +are characteristic of the genus waiter seemed to envelop him as though a +fairy garment had fallen upon his shoulders. The folded napkin under his +left arm seemed to have been placed there by nature, so perfectly did it +fit into place. The ghostly tread, the little whisking skip, the +half-simper, the deferential bend that had in it at the same time +something of insolence, all were there; the very "Yes, miss," and "Very +good, sir," rose automatically and correctly to his untrained lips. +Cinderella rising resplendent from her ash-strewn hearth was not more +completely transformed than Heiny in his role of Henri. And with the +transformation Miss Gussie Fink had been left behind her desk +disconsolate. + +Kitchens are as quick to seize upon these things and gossip about them as +drawing rooms are. And because Miss Gussie Fink had always worn a little +air of aloofness to all except Heiny, the kitchen was the more eager to +make the most of its morsel. Each turned it over under his tongue--Tony, +the Crook, whom Miss Fink had scorned; Francois, the entree cook, who +often forgot he was married; Miss Sweeney, the bar-checker, who was +jealous of Miss Fink's complexion. Miss Fink heard, and said nothing. +She only knew that there would be no dear figure waiting for her when the +night's work was done. For two weeks now she had put on her hat and coat +and gone her way at one o'clock alone. She discovered that to be taken +home night after night under Heiny's tender escort had taught her a +ridiculous terror of the streets at night now that she was without +protection. Always the short walk from the car to the flat where Miss +Fink lived with her mother had been a glorious, star-lit, all too brief +moment. Now it was an endless and terrifying trial, a thing of shivers +and dread, fraught with horror of passing the alley just back of +Cassidey's buffet. There had even been certain little half-serious, +half-jesting talks about the future into which there had entered the +subject of a little delicatessen and restaurant in a desirable +neighborhood, with Heiny in the kitchen, and a certain blonde, neat, +white-shirtwaisted person in charge of the desk and front shop. + +She and her mother had always gone through a little formula upon Miss +Fink's return from work. They never used it now. Gussie's mother was a +real mother--the kind that wakes up when you come home. + +"That you, Gussie?" Ma Fink would call from the bedroom, at the sound of +the key in the lock. + +"It's me, ma." + +"Heiny bring you home?" + +"Sure," happily. + +"There's a bit of sausage left, and some pie if----" + +"Oh, I ain't hungry. We stopped at Joey's downtown and had a cup of +coffee and a ham on rye. Did you remember to put out the milk bottle?" + +For two weeks there had been none of that. Gussie had learned to creep +silently into bed, and her mother, being a mother, feigned sleep. + +To-night at her desk Miss Gussie Fink seemed a shade cooler, more +self-contained, and daisylike than ever. From somewhere at the back of +her head she could see that Heiny was avoiding her desk and was using the +services of the checker at the other end of the room. And even as the +poison of this was eating into her heart she was tapping her forefinger +imperatively on the desk before her and saying to Tony, the Crook: + +"Down on the table with that tray, Tony--flat. This may be a busy little +New Year's Eve, but you can't come any of your sleight-of-hand stuff on +me." For Tony had a little trick of concealing a dollar-and-a-quarter +sirloin by the simple method of slapping the platter close to the +underside of his tray and holding it there with long, lean fingers +outspread, the entire bit of knavery being concealed in the folds of a +flowing white napkin in the hand that balanced the tray. Into Tony's +eyes there came a baleful gleam. His lean jaw jutted out threateningly. + +"You're the real Weissenheimer kid, ain't you?" he sneered. "Never mind. +I'll get you at recess." + +"Some day," drawled Miss Fink, checking the steak, "the house'll get wise +to your stuff and then you'll have to go back to the coal wagon. I know +so much about you it's beginning to make me uncomfortable. I hate to +carry around a burden of crime." + +"You're a sorehead because Heiny turned you down and now----" + +"Move on there!" snapped Miss Fink, "or I'll call the steward to settle +you. Maybe he'd be interested to know that you've been counting in the +date and your waiter's number, and adding 'em in at the bottom of your +check." + +Tony, the Crook, turned and skimmed away toward the dining-room, but the +taste of victory was bitter in Miss Fink's mouth. + +Midnight struck. There came from the direction of the Pink Fountain Room +a clamor and din which penetrated the thickness of the padded doors that +separated the dining-room from the kitchen beyond. The sound rose and +swelled above the blare of the orchestra. Chairs scraped on the marble +floor as hundreds rose to their feet. The sound of clinking glasses +became as the jangling of a hundred bells. There came the sharp spat of +hand-clapping, then cheers, yells, huzzas. Through the swinging doors at +the end of the long passageway Miss Fink could catch glimpses of dazzling +color, of shimmering gowns, of bare arms uplifted, of flowers, and +plumes, and jewels, with the rosy light of the famed pink fountain +casting a gracious glow over all. Once she saw a tall young fellow throw +his arm about the shoulder of a glorious creature at the next table, and +though the door swung shut before she could see it, Miss Fink knew that +he had kissed her. + +There were no New Year's greetings in the kitchen back of the Pink +Fountain Room. It was the busiest moment in all that busy night. The +heat of the ovens was so intense that it could be felt as far as Miss +Fink's remote corner. The swinging doors between dining-room and kitchen +were never still. A steady stream of waiters made for the steam tables +before which the white-clad chefs stood ladling, carving, basting, +serving, gave their orders, received them, stopped at the checking-desk, +and sped dining-roomward again. Tony, the Crook, was cursing at one of +the little Polish vegetable girls who had not been quick enough about the +garnishing of a salad, and she was saying, over and over again, in her +thick tongue: + +"Aw, shod op yur mout'!" + +The thud-thud of Miss Fink's checking-stamp kept time to flying +footsteps, but even as her practised eye swept over the tray before her +she saw the steward direct Henri toward her desk, just as he was about to +head in the direction of the minor checking-desk. Beneath downcast lids +she saw him coming. There was about Henri to-night a certain radiance, a +sort of electrical elasticity, so nimble, so tireless, so exuberant was +he. In the eyes of Miss Gussie Fink he looked heartbreakingly handsome +in his waiter's uniform--handsome, distinguished, remote, and infinitely +desirable. And just behind him, revenge in his eye, came Tony. + +The flat surface of the desk received Henri's tray. Miss Fink regarded +it with a cold and business-like stare. Henri whipped his napkin from +under his left arm and began to remove covers, dexterously. Off came the +first silver, dome-shaped top. + +"Guinea hen," said Henri. + +"I seen her lookin' at you when you served the little necks," came from +Tony, as though continuing a conversation begun in some past moment of +pause, "and she's some lovely doll, believe me." + +Miss Fink scanned the guinea hen thoroughly, but with a detached air, and +selected the proper stamp from the box at her elbow. Thump! On the +broad pasteboard sheet before her appeared the figures $1.75 after +Henri's number. + +"Think so?" grinned Henri, and removed another cover. "One candied +sweets." + +"I bet some day we'll see you in the Sunday papers, Heiny," went on Tony, +"with a piece about handsome waiter runnin' away with beautiful s'ciety +girl. Say; you're too perfect even for a waiter." + +Thump! Thirty cents. + +"Quit your kiddin'," said the flattered Henri. "One endive, French +dressing." + +Thump! "Next!" said Miss Fink, dispassionately, yawned, and smiled +fleetingly at the entree cook who wasn't looking her way. Then, as Tony +slid his tray toward her: "How's business, Tony? H'm? How many two-bit +cigar bands have you slipped onto your own private collection of nickel +straights and made a twenty-cent rake-off?" + +But there was a mist in the bright brown eyes as Tony the Crook turned +away with his tray. In spite of the satisfaction of having had the last +word, Miss Fink knew in her heart that Tony had "got her at recess," as +he had said he would. + +Things were slowing up for Miss Fink. The stream of hurrying waiters was +turned in the direction of the kitchen bar now. From now on the eating +would be light, and the drinking heavy. Miss Fink, with time hanging +heavy, found herself blinking down at the figures stamped on the +pasteboard sheet before her, and in spite of the blinking, two marks that +never were intended for a checker's report splashed down just over the +$1.75 after Henri's number. A lovely doll! And she had gazed at Heiny. +Well, that was to be expected. No woman could gaze unmoved upon Heiny. +"A lovely doll--" + +"Hi, Miss Fink!" it was the steward's voice. "We need you over in the +bar to help Miss Sweeney check the drinks. They're coming too swift for +her. The eating will be light from now on; just a little something salty +now and then." + +So Miss Fink dabbed covertly at her eyes and betook herself out of the +atmosphere of roasting, and broiling, and frying, and stewing; away from +the sight of great copper kettles, and glowing coals and hissing pans, +into a little world fragrant with mint, breathing of orange and lemon +peel, perfumed with pineapple, redolent of cinnamon and clove, reeking +with things spirituous. Here the splutter of the broiler was replaced by +the hiss of the siphon, and the pop-pop of corks, and the tinkle and +clink of ice against glass. + +"Hello, dearie!" cooed Miss Sweeney, in greeting, staring hard at the +suspicious redness around Miss Fink's eyelids. "Ain't you sweet to come +over here in the headache department and help me out! Here's the wine +list. You'll prob'ly need it. Say, who do you suppose invented New +Year's Eve? They must of had a imagination like a Greek 'bus boy. I'm +limp as a rag now, and it's only two-thirty. I've got a regular cramp in +my wrist from checkin' quarts. Say, did you hear about Heiny's crowd?" + +"No," said Miss Fink, evenly, and began to study the first page of the +wine list under the heading "Champagnes of Noted Vintages." + +"Well," went on Miss Sweeney's little thin, malicious voice, "he's fell +in soft. There's a table of three, and they're drinkin' 1874 Imperial +Crown at twelve dollars per, like it was Waukesha ale. And every time +they finish a bottle one of the guys pays for it with a brand new ten and +a brand new five and tells Heiny to keep the change. Can you beat it?" + +"I hope," said Miss Fink, pleasantly, "that the supply of 1874 will hold +out till morning. I'd hate to see them have to come down to ten dollar +wine. Here you, Tony! Come back here! I may be a new hand in this +department but I'm not so green that you can put a gold label over on me +as a yellow label. Notice that I'm checking you another fifty cents." + +"Ain't he the grafter!" laughed Miss Sweeney. She leaned toward Miss +Fink and lowered her voice discreetly. "Though I'll say this for'm. If +you let him get away with it now an' then, he'll split even with you. +H'm? O, well, now, don't get so high and mighty. The management expects +it in this department. That's why they pay starvation wages." + +An unusual note of color crept into Miss Gussie Fink's smooth cheek. It +deepened and glowed as Heiny darted around the corner and up to the bar. +There was about him an air of suppressed excitement--suppressed, because +Heiny was too perfect a waiter to display emotion. + +"Not another!" chanted the bartenders, in chorus. + +"Yes," answered Henri, solemnly, and waited while the wine cellar was +made to relinquish another rare jewel. + +"O, you Heiny!" called Miss Sweeney, "tell us what she looks like. If I +had time I'd take a peek myself. From what Tony says she must look +something like Maxine Elliot, only brighter." + +Henri turned. He saw Miss Fink. A curious little expression came into +his eyes--a Heiny look, it might have been called, as he regarded his +erstwhile sweetheart's unruffled attire, and clear skin, and steady eye +and glossy hair. She was looking past him in that baffling, maddening +way that angry women have. Some of Henri's poise seemed to desert him in +that moment. He appeared a shade less debonair as he received the +precious bottle from the wine man's hands. He made for Miss Fink's desk +and stood watching her while she checked his order. At the door he +turned and looked over his shoulder at Miss Sweeney. + +"Some time," he said, deliberately, "when there's no ladies around, I'll +tell you what I think she looks like." + +And the little glow of color in Miss Gussic Fink's smooth cheek became a +crimson flood that swept from brow to throat. + +"Oh, well," snickered Miss Sweeney, to hide her own discomfiture, "this +is little Heiny's first New Year's Eve in the dining-room. Honest, I +b'lieve he's shocked. He don't realize that celebratin' New Year's Eve +is like eatin' oranges. You got to let go your dignity t' really enjoy +'em." + +Three times more did Henri enter and demand a bottle of the famous +vintage, and each time he seemed a shade less buoyant. His elation +diminished as his tips grew greater until, as he drew up at the bar at +six o'clock, he seemed wrapped in impenetrable gloom. + +"Them hawgs sousin' yet?" shrilled Miss Sweeney. She and Miss Fink had +climbed down from their high stools, and were preparing to leave. Henri +nodded, drearily, and disappeared in the direction of the Pink Fountain +Room. + +Miss Fink walked back to her own desk in the corner near the dining-room +door. She took her hat off the hook, and stood regarding it, +thoughtfully. Then, with a little air of decision, she turned and walked +swiftly down the passageway that separated dining-room from kitchen. +Tillie, the scrub-woman, was down on her hands and knees in one corner of +the passage. She was one of a small army of cleaners that had begun the +work of clearing away the debris of the long night's revel. Miss Fink +lifted her neat skirts high as she tip-toed through the little soapy pool +that followed in the wake of Tillie, the scrub-woman. She opened the +swinging doors a cautious little crack and peered in. What she saw was +not pretty. If the words sordid and bacchanalian had been part of Miss +Fink's vocabulary they would have risen to her lips then. The crowd had +gone. The great room contained not more than half a dozen people. +Confetti littered the floor. Here and there a napkin, crushed and +bedraggled into an unrecognizable ball, lay under a table. From an +overturned bottle the dregs were dripping drearily. The air was stale, +stifling, poisonous. + +At a little table in the center of the room Henri's three were still +drinking. They were doing it in a dreadful and businesslike way. There +were two men and one woman. The faces of all three were mahogany colored +and expressionless. There was about them an awful sort of stillness. +Something in the sight seemed to sicken Gussie Fink. It came to her that +the wintry air outdoors must be gloriously sweet, and cool, and clean in +contrast to this. She was about to turn away, with a last look at Heiny +yawning behind his hand, when suddenly the woman rose unsteadily to her +feet, balancing herself with her finger tips on the table. She raised +her head and stared across the room with dull, unseeing eyes, and licked +her lips with her tongue. Then she turned and walked half a dozen paces, +screamed once with horrible shrillness, and crashed to the floor. She +lay there in a still, crumpled heap, the folds of her exquisite gown +rippling to meet a little stale pool of wine that had splashed from some +broken glass. Then this happened. Three people ran toward the woman on +the floor, and two people ran past her and out of the room. The two who +ran away were the men with whom she had been drinking, and they were not +seen again. The three who ran toward her were Henri, the waiter, Miss +Gussie Fink, checker, and Tillie, the scrub-woman. Henri and Miss Fink +reached her first. Tillie, the scrub-woman, was a close third. Miss +Gussie Fink made as though to slip her arm under the poor bruised head, +but Henri caught her wrist fiercely (for a waiter) and pulled her to her +feet almost roughly. + +"You leave her alone, Kid," he commanded. + +Miss Gussie Fink stared, indignation choking her utterance. And as she +stared the fierce light in Henri's eyes was replaced by the light of +tenderness. + +"We'll tend to her," said Henri; "she ain't fit for you to touch. I +wouldn't let you soil your hands on such truck." And while Gussie still +stared he grasped the unconscious woman by the shoulders, while another +waiter grasped her ankles, with Tillie, the scrub-woman, arranging her +draperies pityingly around her, and together they carried her out of the +dining-room to a room beyond. + +Back in the kitchen Miss Gussie Fink was preparing to don her hat, but +she was experiencing some difficulty because of the way in which her +fingers persisted in trembling. Her face was turned away from the +swinging doors, but she knew when Henri came in. He stood just behind +her, in silence. When she turned to face him she found Henri looking at +her, and as he looked all the Heiny in him came to the surface and shone +in his eyes. He looked long and silently at Miss Gussie Fink--at the +sane, simple, wholesomeness of her, at her clear brown eyes, at her white +forehead from which the shining hair sprang away in such a delicate line, +at her immaculately white shirtwaist, and her smooth, snug-fitting collar +that came up to the lobes of her little pink ears, at her creamy skin, at +her trim belt. He looked as one who would rest his eyes--eyes weary of +gazing upon satins, and jewels, and rouge, and carmine, and white arms, +and bosoms. + +"Gee, Kid! You look good to me," he said. + +"Do I--Heiny?" whispered Miss Fink. + +"Believe me!" replied Heiny, fervently. "It was just a case of swelled +head. Forget it, will you? Say, that gang in there to-night--why, say, +that gang----" + +"I know," interrupted Miss Fink. + +"Going home?" asked Heiny. + +"Yes." + +"Suppose we have a bite of something to eat first," suggested Heiny. + +Miss Fink glanced round the great, deserted kitchen. As she gazed a +little expression of disgust wrinkled her pretty nose--the nose that +perforce had sniffed the scent of so many rare and exquisite dishes. + +"Sure," she assented, joyously, "but not here. Let's go around the +corner to Joey's. I could get real chummy with a cup of good hot coffee +and a ham on rye." + +He helped her on with her coat, and if his hands rested a moment on her +shoulders who was there to see it? A few sleepy, wan-eyed waiters and +Tillie, the scrub-woman. Together they started toward the door. Tillie, +the scrubwoman, had worked her wet way out of the passage and into the +kitchen proper. She and her pail blocked their way. She was sopping up +a soapy pool with an all-encompassing gray scrub-rag. Heiny and Gussie +stopped a moment perforce to watch her. It was rather fascinating to see +how that artful scrub-rag craftily closed in upon the soapy pool until it +engulfed it. Tillie sat back on her knees to wring out the water-soaked +rag. There was something pleasing in the sight. Tillie's blue calico +was faded white in patches and at the knees it was dark with soapy water. +Her shoes were turned up ludicrously at the toes, as scrub-women's shoes +always are. Tillie's thin hair was wadded back into a moist knob at the +back and skewered with a gray-black hairpin. From her parboiled, +shriveled fingers to her ruddy, perspiring face there was nothing of +grace or beauty about Tillie. And yet Heiny found something pleasing +there. He could not have told you why, so how can I, unless to say that +it was, perhaps, for much the same reason that we rejoice in the +wholesome, safe, reassuring feel of the gray woolen blanket on our bed +when we wake from a horrid dream. + +"A Happy New Year to you," said Heiny gravely, and took his hand out of +his pocket. + +Tillie's moist right hand closed over something. She smiled so that one +saw all her broken black teeth. + +"The same t' you," said Tillie. "The same t' you." + + + + +VI + +ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS + +All of those ladies who end their conversation with you by wearily +suggesting that you go down to the basement to find what you seek, do not +receive a meager seven dollars a week as a reward for their efforts. +Neither are they all obliged to climb five weary flights of stairs to +reach the dismal little court room which is their home, and there are +several who need not walk thirty-three blocks to save carfare, only to +spend wretched evenings washing out handkerchiefs and stockings in the +cracked little washbowl, while one ear is cocked for the stealthy tread +of the Lady Who Objects. + +The earnest compiler of working girls' budgets would pass Effie Bauer +hurriedly by. Effie's budget bulged here and there with such pathetic +items as hand-embroidered blouses, thick club steaks, and parquet tickets +for Maude Adams. That you may visualize her at once I may say that Effie +looked twenty-four--from the rear (all women do in these days of girlish +simplicity in hats and tailor-mades); her skirts never sagged, her +shirtwaists were marvels of plainness and fit, and her switch had cost +her sixteen dollars, wholesale (a lady friend in the business). Oh, +there was nothing tragic about Effie. She had a plump, assured style, a +keen blue eye, a gift of repartee, and a way of doing her hair so that +the gray at the sides scarcely showed at all. Also a knowledge of +corsets that had placed her at the buying end of that important +department at Spiegel's. Effie knew to the minute when coral beads went +out and pearl beads came in, and just by looking at her blouses you could +tell when Cluny died and Irish was born. Meeting Effie on the street, +you would have put her down as one of the many well-dressed, +prosperous-looking women shoppers--if you hadn't looked at her feet. +Veteran clerks and policemen cannot disguise their feet. + +Effie Bauer's reason for not marrying when a girl was the same as that of +most of the capable, wise-eyed, good-looking women one finds at the head +of departments. She had not had a chance. If Effie had been as +attractive at twenty as she was at--there, we won't betray confidences. +Still, it is certain that if Effie had been as attractive when a young +girl as she was when an old girl, she never would have been an old girl +and head of Spiegel's corset department at a salary of something very +comfortably over one hundred and twenty-five a month (and commissions). +Effie had improved with the years, and ripened with experience. She knew +her value. At twenty she had been pale, anaemic and bony, with a +startled-faun manner and bad teeth. Years of saleswomanship had +broadened her, mentally and physically, until she possessed a wide and +varied knowledge of that great and diversified subject known as human +nature. She knew human nature all the way from the fifty-nine-cent +girdles to the twenty-five-dollar made-to-orders. And if the years had +brought, among other things, a certain hardness about the jaw and a line +or two at the corners of the eyes, it was not surprising. You can't rub +up against the sharp edges of this world and expect to come out without a +scratch or so. + +So much for Effie. Enter the hero. Webster defines a hero in romance as +the person who has the principal share in the transactions related. He +says nothing which would debar a gentleman just because he may be a +trifle bald and in the habit of combing his hair over the thin spot, and +he raises no objections to a matter of thickness and color in the region +of the back of the neck. Therefore Gabe I. Marks qualifies. Gabe was +the gentleman about whom Effie permitted herself to be guyed. He came to +Chicago on business four times a year, and he always took Effie to the +theater, and to supper afterward. On those occasions, Effie's gown, wrap +and hat were as correct in texture, lines, and paradise aigrettes as +those of any of her non-working sisters about her. On the morning +following these excursions into Lobsterdom, Effie would confide to her +friend, Miss Weinstein, of the lingeries and negligees: + +"I was out with my friend, Mr. Marks, last evening. We went to Rector's +after the show. Oh, well, it takes a New Yorker to know how. Honestly, +I feel like a queen when I go out with him. H'm? Oh, nothing like that, +girlie. I never could see that marriage thing. Just good friends." + +Gabe had been coming to Chicago four times a year for six years. Six +times four are twenty-four. And one is twenty-five. Gabe's last visit +made the twenty-fifth. + +"Well, Effie," Gabe said when the evening's entertainment had reached the +restaurant stage, "this is our twenty-fifth anniversary. It's our silver +wedding, without the silver and the wedding. We'll have a bottle of +champagne. That makes it almost legal. And then suppose we finish up by +having the wedding. The silver can be omitted." + +Effie had been humming with the orchestra, holding a lobster claw in one +hand and wielding the little two-pronged fork with the other. She +dropped claw, fork, and popular air to stare open-mouthed at Gabe. Then +a slow, uncertain smile crept about her lips, although her eyes were +still unsmiling. + +"Stop your joking, Gabie," she said. "Some day you'll say those things +to the wrong lady, and then you'll have a breach-of-promise suit on your +hands." + +"This ain't no joke, Effie," Gabe had replied. "Not with me it ain't. As +long as my mother selig lived I wouldn't ever marry a Goy. It would have +broken her heart. I was a good son to her, and good sons make good +husbands, they say. Well, Effie, you want to try it out?" + +There was something almost solemn in Effie's tone and expression. +"Gabie," she said slowly, "you're the first man that's ever asked me to +marry him." + +"That goes double," answered Gabe. + +"Thanks," said Effie. "That makes it all the nicer." + +"Then----" Gabe's face was radiant. But Effie shook her head quickly. + +"You're just twenty years late," she said. + +"Late!" expostulated Gabe. "I ain't no dead one yet." + +Effie pushed her plate away with a little air of decision, folded her +plump arms on the table, and, leaning forward, looked Gabe I. Marks +squarely in the eyes. + +"Gabie," she said gently, "I'll bet you haven't got a hundred dollars in +the bank----" + +"But----" interrupted Gabe. + +"Wait a minute. I know you boys on the road. Besides your diamond scarf +pin and your ring and watch, have you got a cent over your salary? Nix. +You carry just about enough insurance to bury you, don't you? You're +fifty years old if you're a minute, Gabie, and if I ain't mistaken you'd +have a pretty hard time of it getting ten thousand dollars' insurance +after the doctors got through with you. Twenty-five years of pinochle +and poker and the fat of the land haven't added up any bumps in the old +stocking under the mattress." + +"Say, looka here," objected Gabe, more red-faced than usual, "I didn't +know was proposing to no Senatorial investigating committee. Say, you +talk about them foreign noblemen being mercenary! Why, they ain't in it +with you girls to-day. A feller is got to propose to you with his bank +book in one hand and a bunch of life-insurance policies in the other. +You're right; I ain't saved much. But Ma selig always had everything she +wanted. Say, when a man marries it's different. He begins to save." + +"There!" said Effie quickly. "That's just it. Twenty years ago I'd have +been glad and willing to start like that, saving and scrimping and loving +a man, and looking forward to the time when four figures showed up in the +bank account where but three bloomed before. I've got what they call the +home instinct. Give me a yard or so of cretonne, and a photo of my +married sister down in Iowa, and I can make even a boarding-house inside +bedroom look like a place where a human being could live. If I had been +as wise at twenty as I am now, Gabie, I could have married any man I +pleased. But I was what they call capable. And men aren't marrying +capable girls. They pick little yellow-headed, blue-eyed idiots that +don't know a lamb stew from a soup bone when they see it. Well, Mr. Man +didn't show up, and I started in to clerk at six per. I'm earning as +much as you are now. More. Now, don't misunderstand me, Gabe. I'm not +throwing bouquets at myself. I'm not that kind of a girl. But I could +sell a style 743 Slimshape to the Venus de Milo herself. The Lord knows +she needed one, with those hips of hers. I worked my way up, alone. I'm +used to it. I like the excitement down at the store. I'm used to +luxuries. I guess if I was a man I'd be the kind thy call a good +provider--the kind that opens wine every time there's half an excuse for +it, and when he dies his widow has to take in boarders. And, Gabe, after +you've worn tailored suits every year for a dozen years, you can't go +back to twenty-five-dollar ready-mades and be happy." + +"You could if you loved a man," said Gabe stubbornly. + +The hard lines around the jaw and the experienced lines about the eyes +seemed suddenly to stand out on Effie's face. + +"Love's young dream is all right. But you've reached the age when you +let your cigar ash dribble down onto your vest. Now me, I've got a +kimono nature but a straight-front job, and it's kept me young. Young! +I've got to be. That's my stock in trade. You see, Gabie, we're just +twenty years late, both of us. They're not going to boost your salary. +These days they're looking for kids on the road--live wires, with a lot +of nerve and a quick come-back. They don't want old-timers. Why, say, +Gabie, if I was to tell you what I spend in face powder and toilette +water and hairpins alone, you'd think I'd made a mistake and given you +the butcher bill instead. And I'm no professional beauty, either. Only +it takes money to look cleaned and pressed in this town." + +In the seclusion of the cafe corner, Gabe laid one plump, highly +manicured hand on Effie's smooth arm. "You wouldn't need to stay young +for me, Effie. I like you just as you are, with out the powder, or the +toilette water, or the hair-pins." + +His red, good-natured face had an expression upon it that was touchingly +near patient resignation as he looked up into Effie's sparkling +countenance. "You never looked so good to me as you do this minute, old +girl. And if the day comes when you get lonesome--or change your +mind--or----" + +Effie shook her head, and started to draw on her long white gloves. "I +guess I haven't refused you the way the dames in the novels do it. Maybe +it's because I've had so little practice. But I want to say this, Gabe. +Thank God I don't have to die knowing that no man ever wanted me to be +his wife. Honestly, I'm that grateful that I'd marry you in a minute if +I didn't like you so well." + +"I'll be back in three months, like always," was all that Gabe said. "I +ain't going to write. When I get here we'll just take in a show, and the +younger you look the better I'll like it." + +But on the occasion of Gabe's spring trip he encountered a statuesque +blonde person where Effie had been wont to reign. + +"Miss--er Bauer out of town?" + +The statue melted a trifle in the sunshine of Gabe's ingratiating smile. + +"Miss Bauer's ill," the statue informed him, using a heavy Eastern +accent. "Anything I can do for you? I'm taking her place." + +"Why--ah--not exactly; no," said Gabe. "Just a temporary indisposition, +I suppose?" + +"Well, you wouldn't hardly call it that, seeing that she's been sick with +typhoid for seven weeks." + +"Typhoid!" shouted Gabe. + +"While I'm not in the habit of asking gentlemen their names, I'd like to +inquire if yours happens to be Marks--Gabe I. Marks?" + +"Sure," said Gabe. "That's me." + +"Miss Bauer's nurse telephones down last week that if a gentleman named +Marks--Gabe I. Marks--drops in and inquires for Miss Bauer, I'm to tell +him that she's changed her mind." + +On the way from Spiegel's corset department to the car, Gabe stopped only +for a bunch of violets. Effie's apartment house reached, he sent up his +card, the violets, and a message that the gentleman was waiting. There +came back a reply that sent Gabie up before the violets were relieved of +their first layer of tissue paper. + +Effie was sitting in a deep chair by the window, a flowered quilt bunched +about her shoulders, her feet in gray knitted bedroom slippers. She +looked every minute of her age, and she knew it, and didn't care. The +hand that she held out to Gabe was a limp, white, fleshless thing that +seemed to bear no relation to the plump, firm member that Gabe had +pressed on so many previous occasions. + +Gabe stared at this pale wraith in a moment of alarm and dismay. Then: + +"You're looking--great!" he stammered. "Great! Nobody'd believe you'd +been sick a minute. Guess you've just been stalling for a beauty rest, +what?" + +Effie smiled a tired little smile, and shook her head slowly. + +"You're a good kid, Gabie, to lie like that just to make me feel good. +But my nurse left yesterday and I had my first real squint at myself in +the mirror. She wouldn't let me look while she was here. After what I +saw staring back at me from that glass a whole ballroom full of French +courtiers whispering sweet nothings in my ear couldn't make me believe +that I look like anything but a hunk of Roquefort, green spots included. +When I think of how my clothes won't fit it makes me shiver." + +"Oh, you'll soon be back at the store as good as new. They fatten up +something wonderful after typhoid. Why, I had a friend----" + +"Did you get my message?" interrupted Effie. + +"I was only talking to hide my nervousness," said Gabe, and started +forward. But Effie waved him away. + +"Sit down," she said. "I've got something to say." She looked +thoughtfully down at one shining finger nail. Her lower lip was caught +between her teeth. When she looked up again her eyes were swimming in +tears. Gabe started forward again. Again Effie waved him away. + +"It's all right, Gabie. I don't blubber as a rule. This fever leaves +you as weak as a rag, and ready to cry if any one says 'Boo!' I've been +doing some high-pressure thinking since nursie left. Had plenty of time +to do it in, sitting here by this window all day. My land! I never knew +there was so much time. There's been days when I haven't talked to a +soul, except the nurse and the chambermaid. Lonesome! Say, the amount +of petting I could stand would surprise you. Of course, my nurse was a +perfectly good nurse--at twenty-five per. But I was just a case to her. +You can't expect a nurse to ooze sympathy over an old maid with the +fever. I tell you I was dying to have some one say 'Sh-sh-sh!' when +there was a noise, just to show they were interested. Whenever I'd moan +the nurse would come over and stick a thermometer in my mouth and write +something down on a chart. The boys and girls at the store sent flowers. +They'd have done the same if I'd died. When the fever broke I just used +to lie there and dream, not feeling anything in particular, and not +caring much whether it was day or night. Know what I mean?" + +Gabie shook a sympathetic head. + +There was a little silence. Then Effie went on. "I used to think I was +pretty smart, earning my own good living, dressing as well as the next +one, and able to spend my vacation in Atlantic City if I wanted to. I +didn't know I was missing anything. But while I was sick I got to +wishing that there was somebody that belonged to me. Somebody to worry +about me, and to sit up nights--somebody that just naturally felt they +had to come tiptoeing into my room every three or four minutes to see if +I was sleeping, or had enough covers on, or wanted a drink, or something. +I got to thinking what it would have been like if I had a husband and +a--home. You'll think I'm daffy, maybe." + +Gabie took Effie's limp white hand in his, and stroked it gently. +Effie's face was turned away from him, toward the noisy street. + +"I used to imagine how he'd come home at six, stamping his feet, maybe, +and making a lot of noise the way men do. And then he'd remember, and +come creaking up the steps, and he'd stick his head in at the door in the +funny, awkward, pathetic way men have in a sick room. And he'd say, +'How's the old girl to-night? I'd better not come near you now, puss, +because I'll bring the cold with me. Been lonesome for your old man?' + +"And I'd say, 'Oh, I don't care how cold you are, dear. The nurse is +downstairs, getting my supper ready.' + +"And then he'd come tiptoeing over to my bed, and stoop down, and kiss +me, and his face would be all cold, and rough, and his mustache would be +wet, and he'd smell out-doorsy and smoky, the way husbands do when they +come in. And I'd reach up and pat his cheek and say, 'You need a shave, +old man.' + +"'I know it,' he'd say, rubbing his cheek up against mine. + +"'Hurry up and wash, now. Supper'll be ready.' + +"'Where are the kids?' he'd ask. 'The house is as quiet as the grave. +Hurry up and get well, kid. It's darn lonesome without you at the table, +and the children's manners are getting something awful, and I never can +find my shirts. Lordy, I guess we won't celebrate when you get up! +Can't you eat a little something nourishing for supper--beefsteak, or a +good plate of soup, or something?' + +"Men are like that, you know. So I'd say then: 'Run along, you old +goose! You'll be suggesting sauerkraut and wieners next. Don't you let +Millie have any marmalade to-night. She's got a spoiled stomach.' + +"And then he'd pound off down the hall to wash up, and I'd shut my eyes, +and smile to myself, and everything would be all right, because he was +home." + +There was a long silence. Effie's eyes were closed. But two great tears +stole out from beneath each lid and coursed their slow way down her thin +cheeks. She did not raise her hand to wipe them away. + +Gabie's other hand reached over and met the one that already clasped +Effie's. + +"Effie," he said, in a voice that was as hoarse as it was gentle. + +"H'm?" said Effie. + +"Will you marry me?" + +"I shouldn't wonder," replied Effie, opening her eyes. "No, don't kiss +me. You might catch something. But say, reach up and smooth my hair +away from my forehead, will you, and call me a couple of fool names. I +don't care how clumsy you are about it. I could stand an awful fuss +being made over me, without being spoiled any." + +Three weeks later Effie was back at the store. Her skirt didn't fit in +the back, and the little hollow places in her cheeks did not take the +customary dash of rouge as well as when they had been plumper. She held +a little impromptu reception that extended down as far as the lingeries +and up as far as the rugs. The old sparkle came back to Effie's eye. +The old assurance and vigor seemed to return. By the time that Miss +Weinstein, of the French lingeries, arrived, breathless, to greet her +Effie was herself again. + +"Well, if you're not a sight for sore eyes, dearie," exclaimed Miss +Weinstein. "My goodness, how grand and thin you are! I'd be willing to +take a course in typhoid myself, if I thought I could lose twenty-five +pounds." + +"I haven't a rag that fits me," Effie announced proudly. + +Miss Weinstein lowered her voice discreetly. "Dearie, can you come down +to my department for a minute? We're going to have a sale on imported +lawnjerie blouses, slightly soiled, from nine to eleven to-morrow. +There's one you positively must see. Hand-embroidered, Irish motifs, and +eyeleted from soup to nuts, and only eight-fifty." + +"I've got a fine chance of buying hand-made waists, no matter how +slightly soiled," Effie made answer, "with a doctor and nurse's bill as +long as your arm." + +"Oh, run along!" scoffed Miss Weinstein. "A person would think you had a +husband to get a grouch every time you get reckless to the extent of a +new waist. You're your own boss. And you know your credit's good. +Honestly, it would be a shame to let this chance slip. You're not +getting tight in your old age, are you?" + +"N-no," faltered Effie, "but----" + +"Then come on," urged Miss Weinstein energetically. "And be thankful you +haven't got a man to raise the dickens when the bill comes in." + +"Do you mean that?" asked Effie slowly, fixing Miss Weinstein with a +thoughtful eye. + +"Surest thing you know. Say, girlie, let's go over to Klein's for lunch +this noon. They have pot roast with potato pfannkuchen on Tuesdays, and +we can split an order between us." + +"Hold that waist till to-morrow, will you?" said Effie. "I've made an +arrangement with a--friend that might make new clothes impossible just +now. But I'm going to wire my party that the arrangement is all off. +I've changed my mind. I ought to get an answer to-morrow. Did you say +it was a thirty-six?" + + + + +VII + +MAYMEYS FROM CUBA + +There is nothing new in this. It has all been done before. But tell me, +what is new? Does the aspiring and perspiring summer vaudeville artist +flatter himself that his stuff is going big? Then does the stout man +with the oyster-colored eyelids in the first row, left, turn his bullet +head on his fat-creased neck to remark huskily to his companion: + +"The hook for him. R-r-r-rotten! That last one was an old Weber'n +Fields' gag. They discarded it back in '91. Say, the good ones is all +dead, anyhow. Take old Salvini, now, and Dan Rice. Them was actors. +Come on out and have something." + +Does the short-story writer felicitate himself upon having discovered a +rare species in humanity's garden? The Blase Reader flips the pages +between his fingers, yawns, stretches, and remarks to his wife: + +"That's a clean lift from Kipling--or is it Conan Doyle? Anyway, I've +read something just like it before. Say, kid, guess what these magazine +guys get for a full page ad.? Nix. That's just like a woman. Three +thousand straight. Fact." + +To anticipate the delver into the past it may be stated that the plot of +this one originally appeared in the Eternal Best Seller, under the +heading, "He Asked You For Bread, and Ye Gave Him a Stone." There may be +those who could not have traced my plagiarism to its source. + +Although the Book has had an unprecedentedly long run it is said to be +less widely read than of yore. + +Even with this preparation I hesitate to confess that this is the story +of a hungry girl in a big city. Well, now, wait a minute. Conceding +that it has been done by every scribbler from tyro to best seller expert, +you will acknowledge that there is the possibility of a fresh +viewpoint--twist--what is it the sporting editors call it? Oh, +yes--slant. There is the possibility of getting a new slant on an old +idea. That may serve to deflect the line of the deadly parallel. + +Just off State Street there is a fruiterer and importer who ought to be +arrested for cruelty. His window is the most fascinating and the most +heartless in Chicago. A line of open-mouthed, wide-eyed gazers is always +to be found before it. Despair, wonder, envy, and rebellion smolder in +the eyes of those gazers. No shop window show should be so diabolically +set forth as to arouse such sensations in the breast of the beholder. It +is a work of art, that window; a breeder of anarchism, a destroyer of +contentment, a second feast of Tantalus. It boasts peaches, dewy and +golden, when peaches have no right to be; plethoric, purple bunches of +English hothouse grapes are there to taunt the ten-dollar-a-week clerk +whose sick wife should be in the hospital; strawberries glow therein when +shortcake is a last summer's memory, and forced cucumbers remind us that +we are taking ours in the form of dill pickles. There is, perhaps, a +choice head of cauliflower, so exquisite in its ivory and green +perfection as to be fit for a bride's bouquet; there are apples so +flawless that if the garden of Eden grew any as perfect it is small +wonder that Eve fell for them. + +There are fresh mushrooms, and jumbo cocoanuts, and green almonds; costly +things in beds of cotton nestle next to strange and marvelous things in +tissue, wrappings. Oh, that window is no place for the hungry, the +dissatisfied, or the man out of a job. When the air is filled with snow +there is that in the sight of muskmelons which incites crime. + +Queerly enough, the gazers before that window foot up the same, year in, +and year out, something after this fashion: + +Item: One anemic little milliner's apprentice in coat and shoes that +even her hat can't redeem. + +Item: One sandy-haired, gritty-complexioned man, with a drooping ragged +mustache, a tin dinner bucket, and lime on his boots. + +Item: One thin mail carrier with an empty mail sack, gaunt cheeks, and +an habitual droop to his left shoulder. + +Item: One errand boy troubled with a chronic sniffle, a shrill and +piping whistle, and a great deal of shuffling foot-work. + +Item: One negro wearing a spotted tan topcoat, frayed trousers and no +collar. His eyes seem all whites as he gazes. + +Enough of the window. But bear it in mind while we turn to Jennie. +Jennie's real name was Janet, and she was Scotch. Canny? Not +necessarily, or why should she have been hungry and out of a job in +January? + +Jennie stood in the row before the window, and stared. The longer she +stared the sharper grew the lines that fright and under-feeding had +chiseled about her nose, and mouth, and eyes. When your last meal is an +eighteen-hour-old memory, and when that memory has only near-coffee and a +roll to dwell on, there is something in the sight of January peaches and +great strawberries carelessly spilling out of a tipped box, just like +they do in the fruit picture on the dining-room wall, that is apt to +carve sharp lines in the corners of the face. + +The tragic line dwindled, going about its business. The man with the +dinner pail and the lime on his boots spat, drew the back of his hand +across his mouth, and turned away with an ugly look. (Pork was up to +$14.25, dressed.) + +The errand boy's blithe whistle died down to a mournful dirge. + +He was window-wishing. His choice wavered between the juicy pears, and +the foreign-looking red things that looked like oranges, and weren't. +One hand went into his coat pocket, extracting an apple that was to have +formed the piece de resistance of his noonday lunch. Now he regarded it +with a sort of pitying disgust, and bit into it with the +middle-of-the-morning contempt that it deserved. + +The mail carrier pushed back his cap and reflectively scratched his head. +How much over his month's wage would that green basket piled high with +exotic fruit come to? + +Jennie stood and stared after they had left, and another line had formed. +If you could have followed her gaze with dotted lines, as they do in the +cartoons, you would have seen that it was not the peaches, or the prickly +pears, or the strawberries, or the muskmelon or even the grapes, that +held her eye. In the center of that wonderful window was an oddly woven +basket. In the basket were brown things that looked like sweet potatoes. +One knew that they were not. A sign over the basket informed the puzzled +gazer that these were maymeys from Cuba. + +Maymeys from Cuba. The humor of it might have struck Jennie if she had +not been so Scotch, and so hungry. As it was, a slow, sullen, heavy +Scotch wrath rose in her breast. Maymeys from Cuba. + +The wantonness of it! Peaches? Yes. Grapes, even, and pears and +cherries in snow time. But maymeys from Cuba--why, one did not even know +if they were to be eaten with butter, or with vinegar, or in the hand, +like an apple. Who wanted maymeys from Cuba? They had gone all those +hundreds of miles to get a fruit or vegetable thing--a thing so +luxurious, so out of all reason that one did not know whether it was to +be baked, or eaten raw. There they lay, in their foreign-looking basket, +taunting Jennie who needed a quarter. + +Have I told you how Jennie happened to be hungry and jobless? Well, then +I sha'n't. It doesn't really matter, anyway. The fact is enough. If +you really demand to know you might inquire of Mr. Felix Klein. You will +find him in a mahogany office on the sixth floor. The door is marked +manager. It was his idea to import Scotch lassies from Dunfermline for +his Scotch linen department. The idea was more fetching than feasible. + +There are people who will tell you that no girl possessing a grain of +common sense and a little nerve need go hungry, no matter how great the +city. Don't you believe them. The city has heard the cry of wolf so +often that it refuses to listen when he is snarling at the door, +particularly when the door is next door. + +Where did we leave Jennie? Still standing on the sidewalk before the +fruit and fancy goods shop, gazing at the maymeys from Cuba. Finally her +Scotch bump of curiosity could stand it no longer. She dug her elbow +into the arm of the person standing next in line. + +"What are those?" she asked. + +The next in line happened to be a man. He was a man without an overcoat, +and with his chin sunk deep into his collar, and his hands thrust deep +into his pockets. It looked as though he were trying to crawl inside +himself for warmth. + +"Those? That sign says they're maymeys from Cuba." + +"I know," persisted Jennie, "but what are they?" + +"Search me. Say, I ain't bothering about maymeys from Cuba. A couple of +hot murphies from Ireland, served with a lump of butter, would look good +enough to me." + +"Do you suppose any one buys them?" marveled Jennie. + + +"Surest thing you know. Some rich dame coming by here, wondering what +she can have for dinner to tempt the jaded palates of her dear ones, see? +She sees them Cuban maymeys. 'The very thing!' she says. 'I'll have 'em +served just before the salad.' And she sails in and buys a pound or two. +I wonder, now, do you eat 'em with a fruit knife, or with a spoon?" + +Jennie took one last look at the woven basket with its foreign contents. +Then she moved on, slowly. She had been moving on for hours--weeks. + +Most people have acquired the habit of eating three meals a day. In a +city of some few millions the habit has made necessary the establishing +of many thousands of eating places. Jennie would have told you that +there were billions of these. To her the world seemed composed of one +huge, glittering restaurant, with myriads of windows through which one +caught maddening glimpses of ketchup bottles, and nickel coffee heaters, +and piles of doughnuts, and scurrying waiters in white, and people +critically studying menu cards. She walked in a maze of restaurants, +cafes, eating-houses. Tables and diners loomed up at every turn, on +every street, from Michigan Avenue's rose-shaded Louis the Somethingth +palaces, where every waiter owns his man, to the white tile mausoleums +where every man is his own waiter. Everywhere there were windows full of +lemon cream pies, and pans of baked apples swimming in lakes of golden +syrup, and pots of baked beans with the pink and crispy slices of pork +just breaking through the crust. Every dairy lunch mocked one with the +sign of "wheat cakes with maple syrup and country sausage, 20 cents." + +There are those who will say that for cases like Jennie's there are soup +kitchens, Y. W. C. A.'s, relief associations, policemen, and things like +that. And so there are. Unfortunately, the people who need them aren't +up on them. Try it. Plant yourself, penniless, in the middle of State +Street on a busy day, dive into the howling, scrambling, pushing +maelstrom that hurls itself against the mountainous and impregnable form +of the crossing policeman, and see what you'll get out of it, provided +you have the courage. + +Desperation gave Jennie a false courage. On the strength of it she made +two false starts. The third time she reached the arm of the crossing +policeman, and clutched it. That imposing giant removed the whistle from +his mouth, and majestically inclined his head without turning his gaze +upon Jennie, one eye being fixed on a red automobile that was showing +signs of sulking at its enforced pause, the other being busy with a +cursing drayman who was having an argument with his off horse. + +Jennie mumbled her question. + +Said the crossing policeman: + +"Getcher car on Wabash, ride to 'umpty-second, transfer, get off at Blank +Street, and walk three blocks south." + +Then he put the whistle back in his mouth, blew two shrill blasts, and +the horde of men, women, motors, drays, trucks, cars, and horses swept +over him, through him, past him, leaving him miraculously untouched. + +Jennie landed on the opposite curbing, breathing hard. What was that +street? Umpty-what? Well, it didn't matter, anyway. She hadn't the +nickel for car fare. + +What did you do next? You begged from people on the street. Jennie +selected a middle-aged, prosperous, motherly looking woman. She framed +her plea with stiff lips. Before she had finished her sentence she found +herself addressing empty air. The middle-aged, prosperous, motherly +looking woman had hurried on. + +Well, then you tried a man. You had to be careful there. He mustn't be +the wrong kind. There were so many wrong kinds. Just an ordinary +looking family man would be best. Ordinary looking family men are +strangely in the minority. There are so many more bull-necked, tan-shoed +ones. Finally Jennie's eye, grown sharp with want, saw one. Not too +well dressed, kind-faced, middle-aged. + +She fell into step beside him. + +"Please, can you help me out with a shilling?" + +Jennie's nose was red, and her eyes watery. Said the middle-aged family +man with the kindly face: + +"Beat it. You've had about enough I guess." + +Jennie walked into a department store, picked out the oldest and most +stationary looking floorwalker, and put it to him. The floorwalker bent +his head, caught the word "food," swung about, and pointed over Jennie's +head. + +"Grocery department on the seventh floor. Take one of those elevators +up." + +Any one but a floorwalker could have seen the misery in Jennie's face. +But to floorwalkers all women's faces are horrible. + +Jennie turned and walked blindly toward the elevators. There was no +fight left in her. If the floorwalker had said, "Silk negligees on the +fourth floor. Take one of those elevators up," Jennie would have ridden +up to the fourth floor, and stupidly gazed at pink silk and val lace +negligees in glass cases. + +Tell me, have you ever visited the grocery department of a great store on +the wrong side of State Street? It's a mouth-watering experience. A +department store grocery is a glorified mixture of delicatessen shop, +meat market, and vaudeville. Starting with the live lobsters and crabs +you work your hungry way right around past the cheeses, and the sausages, +and the hams, and tongues, and head-cheese, past the blonde person in +white who makes marvelous and uneatable things out of gelatine, through a +thousand smells and scents--smells of things smoked, and pickled, and +spiced, and baked and preserved, and roasted. + +Jennie stepped out of the elevator, licking her lips. She sniffed the +air, eagerly, as a hound sniffs the scent. She shut her eyes when she +passed the sugar-cured hams. A woman was buying a slice from one, and +the butcher was extolling its merits. Jennie caught the words "juicy" +and "corn-fed." + +That particular store prides itself on its cheese department. It boasts +that there one can get anything in cheese from the simple cottage variety +to imposing mottled Stilton. There are cheeses from France, cheeses from +Switzerland, cheeses from Holland. Brick and parmesan, Edam and +limburger perfumed the atmosphere. + +Behind the counters were big, full-fed men in white aprons, and coats. +They flourished keen bright knives. As Jennie gazed, one of them, in a +moment of idleness, cut a tiny wedge from a rich yellow Swiss cheese and +stood nibbling it absently, his eyes wandering toward the blonde gelatine +demonstrator. Jennie swayed, and caught the counter. She felt horribly +faint and queer. She shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them a +woman--a fat, housewifely, comfortable looking woman--was standing before +the cheese counter. She spoke to the cheese man. Once more his sharp +knife descended and he was offering the possible customer a sample. She +picked it off the knife's sharp tip, nibbled thoughtfully, shook her +head, and passed on. A great, glorious world of hope opened out before +Jennie. + +Her cheeks grew hot, and her eyes felt dry and bright as she approached +the cheese counter. + +"A bit of that," she said, pointing. "It doesn't look just as I like it." + +"Very fine, madam," the man assured her, and turned the knife point +toward her, with the infinitesimal wedge of cheese reposing on its blade. +Jennie tried to keep her hand steady as she delicately picked it off, +nibbled as she had seen that other woman do it, her head on one side, +before it shook a slow negative. The effort necessary to keep from +cramming the entire piece into her mouth at once left her weak and +trembling. She passed on as the other woman had done, around the corner, +and into a world of sausages. Great rosy mounds of them filled counters +and cases. Sausage! Sneer, you pate de foies grasers! But may you know +the day when hunger will have you. And on that day may you run into +linked temptation in the form of Braunschweiger Metwurst. May you know +the longing that causes the eyes to glaze at the sight of Thuringer +sausage, and the mouth to water at the scent of Cervelat wurst, and the +fingers to tremble at the nearness of smoked liver. + +Jennie stumbled on, through the smells and the sights. That nibble of +cheese had been like a drop of human blood to a man-eating tiger. It +made her bold, cunning, even while it maddened. She stopped at this +counter and demanded a slice of summer sausage. It was paper-thin, but +delicious beyond belief. At the next counter there was corned beef, +streaked fat and lean. Jennie longed to bury her teeth in the succulent +meat and get one great, soul-satisfying mouthful. She had to be content +with her judicious nibbling. To pass the golden-brown, breaded pig's +feet was torture. To look at the codfish balls was agony. And so Jennie +went on, sampling, tasting, the scraps of food acting only as an +aggravation. Up one aisle, and down the next she went. And then, just +around the corner, she brought up before the grocery department's pride +and boast, the Scotch bakery. It is the store's star vaudeville feature. +All day long the gaping crowd stands before it, watching David the Scone +Man, as with sleeves rolled high above his big arms, he kneads, and +slaps, and molds, and thumps and shapes the dough into toothsome Scotch +confections. There was a crowd around the white counters now, and the +flat baking surface of the gas stove was just hot enough, and David the +Scone Man (he called them Scuns) was whipping about here and there, +turning the baking oat cakes, filling the shelf above the stove when they +were done to a turn, rolling out fresh ones, waiting on customers. His +nut-cracker face almost allowed itself a pleased expression--but not +quite. David, the Scone Man, was Scotch (I was going to add, d'ye ken, +but I will not). + +Jennie wondered if she really saw those things. Mutton pies! Scones! +Scotch short bread! Oat cakes! She edged closer, wriggling her way +through the little crowd until she stood at the counter's edge. David, +the Scone Man, his back to the crowd, was turning the last batch of oat +cakes. Jennie felt strangely light-headed, and unsteady, and airy. She +stared straight ahead, a half-smile on her lips, while a hand that she +knew was her own, and that yet seemed no part of her, stole out, very, +very slowly, and cunningly, and extracted a hot scone from the pile that +lay in the tray on the counter. That hand began to steal back, more +quickly now. But not quickly enough. Another hand grasped her wrist. A +woman's high, shrill voice (why will women do these things to each +other?) said, excitedly: + +"Say, Scone Man! Scone Man! This girl is stealing something!" + +A buzz of exclamations from the crowd--a closing in upon her--a whirl of +faces, and counter, and trays, and gas stove. Jennie dropped with a +crash, the warm scone still grasped in her fingers. + +Just before the ambulance came it was the blonde lady of the impossible +gelatines who caught the murmur that came from Jennie's white lips. The +blonde lady bent her head closer. Closer still. When she raised her +face to those other faces crowded near, her eyes were round with surprise. + +"'S far's I can make out, she says her name's Mamie, and she's from Cuba. +Well, wouldn't that eat you! I always thought they was dark complected." + + + + +VIII + +THE LEADING LADY + +The leading lady lay on her bed and wept. Not as you have seen leading +ladies weep, becomingly, with eyebrows pathetically V-shaped, mouth +quivering, sequined bosom heaving. The leading lady lay on her bed in a +red-and-blue-striped kimono and wept as a woman weeps, her head burrowing +into the depths of the lumpy hotel pillow, her teeth biting the +pillow-case to choke back the sounds so that the grouch in the next room +might not hear. + +Presently the leading lady's right hand began to grope about on the +bedspread for her handkerchief. Failing to find it, she sat up wearily, +raising herself on one elbow and pushing her hair back from her +forehead--not as you have seen a leading lady pass a lily hand across her +alabaster brow, but as a heart-sick woman does it. Her tears and +sniffles had formed a little oasis of moisture on the pillow's white +bosom so that the ugly stripe of the ticking showed through. She gazed +down at the damp circle with smarting, swollen eyes, and another lump +came up into her throat. + +Then she sat up resolutely, and looked about her. The leading lady had a +large and saving sense of humor. But there is nothing that blunts the +sense of humor more quickly than a few months of one-night stands. Even +O. Henry could have seen nothing funny about that room. + +The bed was of green enamel, with fly-specked gold trimmings. It looked +like a huge frog. The wall-paper was a crime. It represented an army of +tan mustard plasters climbing up a chocolate-fudge wall. The leading +lady was conscious of a feeling of nausea as she gazed at it. So she got +up and walked to the window. The room faced west, and the hot afternoon +sun smote full on her poor swollen eyes. Across the street the red brick +walls of the engine-house caught the glare and sent it back. The +firemen, in their blue shirt-sleeves, were seated in the shade before the +door, their chairs tipped at an angle of sixty. The leading lady stared +down into the sun-baked street, turned abruptly and made as though to +fall upon the bed again, with a view to forming another little damp oasis +on the pillow. But when she reached the center of the stifling little +bedroom her eye chanced on the electric call-button near the door. Above +the electric bell was tacked a printed placard giving information on the +subjects of laundry, ice-water, bell-boys and dining-room hours. + +The leading lady stood staring at it a moment thoughtfully. Then with a +sudden swift movement she applied her forefinger to the button and held +it there for a long half-minute. Then she sat down on the edge of the +bed, her kimono folded about her, and waited. + +She waited until a lank bell-boy, in a brown uniform that was some sizes +too small for him, had ceased to take any interest in the game of chess +which Bauer and Merkle, the champion firemen chess-players, were +contesting on the walk before the open doorway of the engine-house. The +proprietor of the Burke House had originally intended that the brown +uniform be worn by a diminutive bell-boy, such as one sees in musical +comedies. But the available supply of stage size bell-boys in our town +is somewhat limited and was soon exhausted. There followed a succession +of lank bell-boys, with arms and legs sticking ungracefully out of +sleeves and trousers. + +"Come!" called the leading lady quickly, in answer to the lank youth's +footsteps, and before he had had time to knock. + +"Ring?" asked the boy, stepping into the torrid little room. + +The leading lady did not reply immediately. She swallowed something in +her throat and pushed back the hair from her moist forehead again. The +brown uniform repeated his question, a trifle irritably. Whereupon the +leading lady spoke, desperately: + +"Is there a woman around this place? I don't mean dining-room girls, or +the person behind the cigar-counter." + +Since falling heir to the brown uniform the lank youth had heard some +strange requests. He had been interviewed by various ladies in +varicolored kimonos relative to liquid refreshment, laundry and the cost +of hiring a horse and rig for a couple of hours. One had even summoned +him to ask if there was a Bible in the house. But this latest question +was a new one. He stared, leaning against the door and thrusting one +hand into the depths of his very tight breeches pocket. + +"Why, there's Pearlie Schultz," he said at last, with a grin. + +"Who's she?" The leading lady sat up expectantly. + +"Steno." + +The expectant figure drooped. "Blonde? And Irish crochet collar with a +black velvet bow on her chest?" + +"Who? Pearlie? Naw. You mustn't get Pearlie mixed with the common or +garden variety of stenos. Pearlie is fat, and she wears specs and she's +got a double chin. Her hair is skimpy and she don't wear no rat. W'y no +traveling man has ever tried to flirt with Pearlie yet. Pearlie's what +you'd call a woman, all right. You wouldn't never make a mistake and +think she'd escaped from the first row in the chorus." + +The leading lady rose from the bed, reached out for her pocket-book, +extracted a dime, and held it out to the bell-boy. + +"Here. Will you ask her to come up here to me? Tell her I said please." + +After he had gone she seated herself on the edge of the bed again, with a +look in her eyes like that which you have seen in the eyes of a dog that +is waiting for a door to be opened. + +Fifteen minutes passed. The look in the eyes of the leading lady began +to fade. Then a footstep sounded down the hall. The leading lady cocked +her head to catch it, and smiled blissfully. It was a heavy, comfortable +footstep, under which a board or two creaked. There came a big, sensible +thump-thump-thump at the door, with stout knuckles. The leading lady +flew to answer it. She flung the door wide and stood there, clutching +her kimono at the throat and looking up into a red, good-natured face. + +Pearlie Schultz looked down at the leading lady kindly and benignantly, +as a mastiff might look at a terrier. + +"Lonesome for a bosom to cry on?" asked she, and stepped into the room, +walked to the west windows, and jerked down the shades with a zip-zip, +shutting off the yellow glare. She came back to where the leading lady +was standing and patted her on the cheek, lightly. + +"You tell me all about it," said she, smiling. + +The leading lady opened her lips, gulped, tried again, gulped +again--Pearlie Schultz shook a sympathetic head. + +"Ain't had a decent, close-to-nature powwow with a woman for weeks and +weeks, have you?" + +"How did you know?" cried the leading lady. + +"You've got that hungry look. There was a lady drummer here last winter, +and she had the same expression. She was so dead sick of eating her +supper and then going up to her ugly room and reading and sewing all +evening that it was a wonder she'd stayed good. She said it was easy +enough for the men. They could smoke, and play pool, and go to a show, +and talk to any one that looked good to 'em. But if she tried to amuse +herself everybody'd say she was tough. She cottoned to me like a burr to +a wool skirt. She traveled for a perfumery house, and she said she +hadn't talked to a woman, except the dry-goods clerks who were nice to +her trying to work her for her perfume samples, for weeks an' weeks. +Why, that woman made crochet by the bolt, and mended her clothes evenings +whether they needed it or not, and read till her eyes come near going +back on her." + +The leading lady seized Pearlie's hand and squeezed it. + +"That's it! Why, I haven't talked--really talked--to a real woman since +the company went out on the road. I'm leading lady of the 'Second Wife' +company, you know. It's one of those small cast plays, with only five +people in it. I play the wife, and I'm the only woman in the cast. It's +terrible. I ought to be thankful to get the part these days. And I was, +too. But I didn't know it would be like this. I'm going crazy. The men +in the company are good kids, but I can't go trailing around after them +all day. Besides, it wouldn't be right. They're all married, except +Billy, who plays the kid, and he's busy writing a vawdeville skit that he +thinks the New York managers are going to fight for when he gets back +home. We were to play Athens, Wisconsin, to-night, but the house burned +down night before last, and that left us with an open date. When I heard +the news you'd have thought I had lost my mother. It's bad enough having +a whole day to kill but when I think of to-night," the leading lady's +voice took on a note of hysteria, "it seems as though I'd----" + +"Say," Pearlie interrupted, abruptly, "you ain't got a real good +corset-cover pattern, have you? One that fits smooth over the bust and +don't slip off the shoulders? I don't seem able to get my hands on the +kind I want." + +"Have I!" yelled the leading lady. And made a flying leap from the bed +to the floor. + +She flapped back the cover of a big suit-case and began burrowing into +its depths, strewing the floor with lingerie, newspaper clippings, +blouses, photographs and Dutch collars. Pearlie came over and sat down +on the floor in the midst of the litter. The leading lady dived once +more, fished about in the bottom of the suit-case and brought a crumpled +piece of paper triumphantly to the surface. + +"This is it. It only takes a yard and five-eighths. And fits! Like +Anna Held's skirts. Comes down in a V front and back--like this. See? +And no fulness. Wait a minute. I'll show you my princess slip. I made +it all by hand, too. I'll bet you couldn't buy it under fifteen dollars, +and it cost me four dollars and eighty cents, with the lace and all." + +Before an hour had passed, the leading lady had displayed all her +treasures, from the photograph of her baby that died to her new Blanche +Ring curl cluster, and was calling Pearlie by her first name. When a +bell somewhere boomed six o'clock Pearlie was being instructed in a new +exercise calculated to reduce the hips an inch a month. + +"My land!" cried Pearlie, aghast, and scrambled to her feet as nimbly as +any woman can who weighs two hundred pounds. "Supper-time, and I've got +a bunch of letters an inch thick to get out! I'd better reduce that some +before I begin on my hips. But say, I've had a lovely time." + +The leading lady clung to her. "You've saved my life. Why, I forgot all +about being hot and lonely and a couple of thousand miles from New York. +Must you go?" + +"Got to. But if you'll promise you won't laugh, I'll make a date for +this evening that'll give you a new sensation anyway. There's going to +be a strawberry social on the lawn of the parsonage of our church. I've +got a booth. You shed that kimono, and put on a thin dress and those +curls and some powder, and I'll introduce you as my friend, Miss Evans. +You don't look Evans, but this is a Methodist church strawberry festival, +and if I was to tell them that you are leading lady of the 'Second Wife' +company they'd excommunicate my booth." + +"A strawberry social!" gasped the leading lady. "Do they still have +them?" She did not laugh. "Why, I used to go to strawberry festivals +when I was a little girl in----" + +"Careful! You'll be giving away your age, and, anyway, you don't look +it. Fashions in strawberry socials ain't changed much. Better bathe +your eyes in eau de cologne or whatever it is they're always dabbing on +'em in books. See you at eight." + +At eight o'clock Pearlie's thump-thump sounded again, and the leading +lady sprang to the door as before. Pearlie stared. This was no +tear-stained, heat-bedraggled creature in an unbecoming red-striped +kimono. It was a remarkably pretty woman in a white lingerie gown over a +pink slip. The leading lady knew a thing or two about the gentle art of +making-up! + +"That just goes to show," remarked Pearlie, "that you must never judge a +woman in a kimono or a bathing suit. You look nineteen. Say, I forgot +something down-stairs. Just get your handkerchief and chamois together +and meet in my cubbyhole next to the lobby, will you? I'll be ready for +you." + +Down-stairs she summoned the lank bell-boy. "You go outside and tell Sid +Strang I want to see him, will you? He's on the bench with the baseball +bunch." + +Pearlie had not seen Sid Strang outside. She did not need to. She knew +he was there. In our town all the young men dress up in their pale gray +suits and lavender-striped shirts after supper on summer evenings. Then +they stroll down to the Burke House, buy a cigar and sit down on the +benches in front of the hotel to talk baseball and watch the girls go by. +It is astonishing to note the number of our girls who have letters to +mail after supper. One would think that they must drive their pens +fiercely all the afternoon in order to get out such a mass of +correspondence. + +The obedient Sid reached the door of Pearlie's little office just off the +lobby as the leading lady came down the stairs with a spangled scarf +trailing over her arm. It was an effective entrance. + +"Why, hello!" said Pearlie, looking up from her typewriter as though Sid +Strang were the last person in the world she expected to see. "What do +you want here? Ethel, this is my friend, Mr. Sid Strang, one of our +rising young lawyers. His neckties always match his socks. Sid, this is +my friend, Miss Ethel Evans, of New York. We're going over to the +strawberry social at the M. E. parsonage. I don't suppose you'd care +about going?" + +Mr. Sid Strang gazed at the leading lady in the white lingerie dress with +the pink slip, and the V-shaped neck, and the spangled scarf, and turned +to Pearlie. + +"Why, Pearlie Schultz!" he said reproachfully. "How can you ask? You +know what a strawberry social means to me! I haven't missed one in +years!" + +"I know it," replied Pearlie, with a grin. "You feel the same way about +Thursday evening prayer-meeting too, don't you? You can walk over with +us if you want to. We're going now. Miss Evans and I have got a booth." + +Sid walked. Pearlie led them determinedly past the rows of gray suits +and lavender and pink shirts on the benches in front of the hotel. And +as the leading lady came into view the gray suits stopped talking +baseball and sat up and took notice. Pearlie had known all those young +men inside of the swagger suits in the days when their summer costume +consisted of a pair of dad's pants cut down to a doubtful fit, and a +nondescript shirt damp from the swimming-hole. So she called out, +cheerily: + +"We're going over to the strawberry festival. I expect to see all you +boys there to contribute your mite to the church carpet." + +The leading lady turned to look at them, and smiled. They were such a +dapper, pink-cheeked, clean-looking lot of boys, she thought. At that +the benches rose to a man and announced that they might as well stroll +over right now. Whenever a new girl comes to visit in our town our boys +make a concerted rush at her, and develop a "case" immediately, and the +girl goes home when her visit is over with her head swimming, and forever +after bores the girls of her home town with tales of her conquests. + +The ladies of the First M. E. Church still talk of the money they +garnered at the strawberry festival. Pearlie's out-of-town friend was +garnerer-in-chief. You take a cross-eyed, pock-marked girl and put her +in a white dress, with a pink slip, on a green lawn under a string of +rose-colored Japanese lanterns, and she'll develop an almost Oriental +beauty. It is an ideal setting. The leading lady was not cross-eyed or +pock-marked. She stood at the lantern-illumined booth, with Pearlie in +the background, and dispensed an unbelievable amount of strawberries. +Sid Strang and the hotel bench brigade assisted. They made engagements +to take Pearlie and her friend down river next day, and to the ball game, +and planned innumerable picnics, gazing meanwhile into the leading lady's +eyes. There grew in the cheeks of the leading lady a flush that was not +brought about by the pink slip, or the Japanese lanterns, or the skillful +application of rouge. + +By nine o'clock the strawberry supply was exhausted, and the president of +the Foreign Missionary Society was sending wildly down-town for more +ice-cream. + +"I call it an outrage," puffed Pearlie happily, ladling ice-cream like +mad. "Making a poor working girl like me slave all evening! How many +was that last order? Four? My land! that's the third dish of ice-cream +Ed White's had! You'll have something to tell the villagers about when +you get back to New York." + +The leading lady turned a flushed face toward Pearlie. "This is more fun +than the Actors' Fair. I had the photograph booth last year, and I took +in nearly as much as Lil Russell; and goodness knows, all she needs to do +at a fair is to wear her diamond-and-pearl stomacher and her set-piece +smile, and the men just swarm around her like the pictures of a crowd in +a McCutcheon cartoon." + +When the last Japanese lantern had guttered out, Pearlie Schultz and the +leading lady prepared to go home. Before they left, the M. E. ladies +came over to Pearlie's booth and personally congratulated the leading +lady, and thanked her for the interest she had taken in the cause, and +the secretary of the Epworth League asked her to come to the tea that was +to be held at her home the following Tuesday. The leading lady thanked +her and said she'd come if she could. + +Escorted by a bodyguard of gray suits and lavender-striped shirts Pearlie +and her friend, Miss Evans, walked toward the hotel. The attentive +bodyguard confessed itself puzzled. + +"Aren't you staying at Pearlie's house?" asked Sid tenderly, when they +reached the Burke House. The leading lady glanced up at the windows of +the stifling little room that faced west. + +"No," answered she, and paused at the foot of the steps to the ladies' +entrance. The light from the electric globe over the doorway shone on +her hair and sparkled in the folds of her spangled scarf. + +"I'm not staying at Pearlie's because my name isn't Ethel Evans. It's +Aimee Fox, with a little French accent mark over the double E. I'm +leading lady of the 'Second Wife' company and old enough to be--well, +your aunty, anyway. We go out at one-thirty to-morrow morning." + + + + +IX + +THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING + +We all have our ambitions. Mine is to sit in a rocking-chair on the +sidewalk at the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets, and watch the +crowds go by. South Clark Street is one of the most interesting and +cosmopolitan thoroughfares in the world (New Yorkers please sniff). If +you are from Paris, France, or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be +in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news stand to buy your +home-town paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is +nothing of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He has the voice of a +fog-horn, the purple-striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a +racetrack tout, and the savoir faire of the gutter-bred. You'd never +pick him for a newsboy if it weren't for his chapped hands and the +eternal cold-sore on the upper left corner of his mouth. + +It is a fascinating thing, Tony's stand. A high wooden structure rising +tier on tier, containing papers from every corner of the world. I'll +defy you to name a paper that Tony doesn't handle, from Timbuctoo to +Tarrytown, from South Bend to South Africa. A paper marked Christiania, +Norway, nestles next to a sheet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can get +the War Cry, or Le Figaro. With one hand, Tony will give you the Berlin +Tageblatt, and with the other the Times from Neenah, Wisconsin. Take +your choice between the Bulletin from Sydney, Australia, or the Bee from +Omaha. + +But perhaps you know South Clark Street. It is honeycombed with good +copy--man-size stuff. South Clark Street reminds one of a slatternly +woman, brave in silks and velvets on the surface, but ragged, and rumpled +and none too clean as to nether garments. It begins with a tenement so +vile, so filthy, so repulsive, that the municipal authorities deny its +very existence. It ends with a brand-new hotel, all red brick, and white +tiling, and Louise Quinze furniture, and sour-cream colored marble lobby, +and oriental rugs lavishly scattered under the feet of the unappreciative +guest from Kansas City. It is a street of signs, is South Clark. They +vary all the way from "Banca Italiana" done in fat, fly-specked letters +of gold, to "Sang Yuen" scrawled in Chinese red and black. Spaghetti and +chop suey and dairy lunches nestle side by side. Here an electric sign +blazons forth the tempting announcement of lunch. Just across the way, +delicately suggesting a means of availing one's self of the invitation, +is another which announces "Loans." South Clark Street can transform a +winter overcoat into hamburger and onions so quickly that the eye can't +follow the hand. + +Do you gather from this that you are being taken slumming? Not at all. +For the passer-by on Clark Street varies as to color, nationality, +raiment, finger-nails, and hair-cut according to the locality in which +you find him. + +At the tenement end the feminine passer-by is apt to be shawled, swarthy, +down-at-the-heel, and dragging a dark-eyed, fretting baby in her wake. +At the hotel end you will find her blonde of hair, velvet of boot, plumed +of head-gear, and prone to have at her heels a white, woolly, pink-eyed +dog. + +The masculine Clark Streeter? I throw up my hands. Pray remember that +South Clark Street embraces the dime lodging house, pawnshop, hotel, +theater, chop-suey and railway office district, all within a few blocks. +From the sidewalk in front of his groggery, "Bath House John" can see the +City Hall. The trim, khaki-garbed enlistment officer rubs elbows with +the lodging house bum. The masculine Clark Streeter may be of the kind +that begs a dime for a bed, or he may loll in manicured luxury at the +marble-lined hotel. South Clark Street is so splendidly indifferent. + +Copy-hunting, I approached Tony with hope in my heart, a smile on my +lips, and a nickel in my hand. + +"Philadelphia--er--Inquirer?" I asked, those being the city and paper +which fire my imagination least. + +Tony whipped it out, dexterously. + +I looked at his keen blue eye, his lean brown face, and his punishing +jaw, and I knew that no airy persiflage would deceive him. Boldly I +waded in. + +"I write for the magazines," said I. + +"Do they know it?" grinned Tony. + +"Just beginning to be faintly aware. Your stand looks like a story to +me. Tell me, does one ever come your way? For instance, don't they come +here asking for their home-town paper--sobs in their voice--grasp the +sheet with trembling hands--type swims in a misty haze before their +eyes--turn aside to brush away a tear--all that kind of stuff, you know?" + +Tony's grin threatened his cold-sore. You can't stand on the corner of +Clark and Randolph all those years without getting wise to everything +there is. + +"I'm on," said he, "but I'm afraid I can't accommodate, girlie. I guess +my ear ain't attuned to that sob stuff. What's that? Yessir. Nossir, +fifteen cents. Well, I can't help that; fifteen's the reg'lar price of +foreign papers. Thanks. There, did you see that? I bet that gink give +up fifteen of his last two bits to get that paper. O, well, sometimes +they look happy, and then again sometimes they--Yes'm. Mississippi? +Five cents. Los Vegas Optic right here. Heh there! You're forgettin' +your change!--an' then again sometimes they look all to the doleful. +Say, stick around. Maybe somebody'll start something. You can't never +tell." + +And then this happened. + +A man approached Tony's news stand from the north, and a woman approached +Tony's news stand from the south. They brought my story with them. + +The woman reeked of the city. I hope you know what I mean. She bore the +stamp, and seal, and imprint of it. It had ground its heel down on her +face. At the front of her coat she wore a huge bunch of violets, with a +fleshly tuberose rising from its center. Her furs were voluminous. Her +hat was hidden beneath the cascades of a green willow plume. A green +willow plume would make Edna May look sophisticated. She walked with +that humping hip movement which city women acquire. She carried a +jangling handful of useless gold trinkets. Her heels were too high, and +her hair too yellow, and her lips too red, and her nose too white, and +her cheeks too pink. Everything about her was "too," from the black +stitching on her white gloves to the buckle of brilliants in her hat. +The city had her, body and soul, and had fashioned her in its metallic +cast. You would have sworn that she had never seen flowers growing in a +field. + +Said she to Tony: + +"Got a Kewaskum Courier?" + +As she said it the man stopped at the stand and put his question. To +present this thing properly I ought to be able to describe them both at +the same time, like a juggler keeping two balls in the air at once. +Kindly carry the lady in your mind's eye. The man was tall and rawboned, +with very white teeth, very blue eyes and an open-faced collar that +allowed full play to an objectionably apparent Adam's apple. His hair +and mustache were sandy, his gait loping. His manner, clothes, and +complexion breathed of Waco, Texas (or is it Arizona?) + +Said he to Tony: + +"Let me have the London Times." + +Well, there you are. I turned an accusing eye on Tony. + +"And you said no stories came your way," I murmured, reproachfully. + +"Help yourself," said Tony. + +The blonde lady grasped the Kewaskum Courier. Her green plume appeared +to be unduly agitated as she searched its columns. The sheet rattled. +There was no breeze. The hands in the too-black stitched gloves were +trembling. + +I turned from her to the man just in time to see the Adam's apple leaping +about unpleasantly and convulsively. Whereupon I jumped to two +conclusions. + +Conclusion one: Any woman whose hands can tremble over the Kewaskum +Courier is homesick. + +Conclusion two: Any man, any part of whose anatomy can become convulsed +over the London Times is homesick. + +She looked up from her Courier. He glanced away from his Times. As the +novelists have it, their eyes met. And there, in each pair of eyes there +swam that misty haze about which I had so earnestly consulted Tony. The +Green Plume took an involuntary step forward. The Adam's Apple did the +same. They spoke simultaneously. + +"They're going to pave Main Street," said the Green Plume, "and Mrs. +Wilcox, that was Jeri Meyers, has got another baby girl, and the ladies +of the First M. E. made seven dollars and sixty-nine cents on their +needle-work bazaar and missionary tea. I ain't been home in eleven +years." + +"Hallem is trying for Parliament in Westchester and the King is back at +Windsor. My mother wears a lace cap down to breakfast, and the place is +famous for its tapestries and yew trees and family ghost. I haven't been +home in twelve years." + +The great, soft light of fellow feeling and sympathy glowed in the eyes +of each. The Green Plume took still another step forward and laid her +hand on his arm (as is the way of Green Plumes the world over). + +"Why don't you go, kid?" she inquired, softly. + +Adam's Apple gnawed at his mustache end. "I'm the black sheep. Why +don't you?" + +The blonde lady looked down at her glove tips. Her lower lip was caught +between her teeth. + +"What's the feminine for black sheep? I'm that. Anyway, I'd be afraid +to go home for fear it would be too much of a shock for them when they +saw my hair. They wasn't in on the intermediate stages when it was +chestnut, auburn, Titian, gold, and orange colored. I want to spare +their feelings. The last time they saw me it was just plain brown. +Where I come from a woman who dyes her hair when it is beginning to turn +gray is considered as good as lost. Funny, ain't it? And yet I remember +the minister's wife used to wear false teeth--the kind that clicks. But +hair is different." + +"Dear lady," said the blue-eyed man, "it would make no difference to your +own people. I know they would be happy to see you, hair and all. One's +own people----" + +"My folks? That's just it. If the Prodigal Son had been a daughter +they'd probably have handed her one of her sister's mother hubbards, and +put her to work washing dishes in the kitchen. You see, after Ma died my +brother married, and I went to live with him and Lil. I was an ugly +little mug, and it looked all to the Cinderella for me, with the coach, +and four, and prince left out. Lil was the village beauty when my +brother married her, and she kind of got into the habit of leaving the +heavy role to me, and confining herself to thinking parts. One day I +took twenty dollars and came to the city. Oh, I paid it back long ago, +but I've never been home since. But say, do you know every time I get +near a news stand like this I grab the home-town paper. I'll bet I've +kept track every time my sister-in-law's sewing circle has met for the +last ten years, and the spring the paper said they built a new porch I +was just dying to write and ask'em what they did with the Virginia +creeper that used to cover the whole front and sides of the old porch." + +"Look here," said the man, very abruptly, "if it's money you need, +why----" + +"Me! Do I look like a touch? Now you----" + +"Finest stock farm and ranch in seven counties. I come to Chicago once a +year to sell. I've got just thirteen thousand nestling next to my left +floating rib this minute." + +The eyes of the woman with the green plume narrowed down to two +glittering slits. A new look came into her face--a look that matched her +hat, and heels and gloves and complexion and hair. + +"Thirteen thousand! Thirteen thous---- Say, isn't it chilly on this +corner, h'm? I know a kind of a restaurant just around the corner +where----" + +"It's no use," said the sandy-haired man, gently. "And I wouldn't have +said that, if I were you. I was going back to-day on the 5:25, but I'm +sick of it all. So are you, or you wouldn't have said what you just +said. Listen. Let's go back home, you and I. The sight of a Navajo +blanket nauseates me. The thought of those prairies makes my eyes ache. +I know that if I have to eat one more meal cooked by that Chink of mine +I'll hang him by his own pigtail. Those rangy western ponies aren't +horseflesh, fit for a man to ride. Why, back home our stables were---- +Look here. I want to see a silver tea-service, with a coat-of-arms on +it. I want to dress for dinner, and take in a girl with a white gown and +smooth white shoulders. My sister clips roses in the morning, before +breakfast, in a pink ruffled dress and garden gloves. Would you believe +that, here, on Clark Street, with a whiskey sign overhead, and the +stock-yard smells undernose? O, hell! I'm going home." + +"Home?" repeated the blonde lady. "Home?" The sagging lines about her +flaccid chin took on a new look of firmness and resolve. The light of +determination glowed in her eyes. + +"I'll beat you to it," she said. "I'm going home, too. I'll be there +to-morrow. I'm dead sick of this. Who cares whether I live or die? +It's just one darned round of grease paint, and sky blue tights, and new +boarding houses and humping over to the theater every night, going on, +and humping back to the room again. I want to wash up some supper dishes +with egg on 'em, and set some yeast for bread, and pop a dishpan full of +corn, and put a shawl over my head and run over to Millie Krause's to get +her kimono sleeve pattern. I'm sour on this dirt and noise. I want to +spend the rest of my life in a place so that when I die they'll put a +column in the paper, with a verse at the top, and all the neighbors'll +come in and help bake up. Here--why, here I'd just be two lines on the +want ad page, with fifty cents extra for 'Kewaskum paper please copy.'" + +The man held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and please excuse me if +I say God bless you. I've never really wanted to say it before, so it's +quite extraordinary. My name's Guy Peel." + +The white glove, with its too-conspicuous black stitching, disappeared +within his palm. + +"Mine's Mercedes Meron, late of the Morning Glory Burlesquers, but from +now on Sadie Hayes, of Kewaskum, Wisconsin. Good-bye and--well--God +bless you, too. Say, I hope you don't think I'm in the habit of talking +to strange gents like this." + +"I am quite sure you are not," said Guy Peel, very gravely, and bowed +slightly before he went south on Clark Street, and she went north. + +Dear Reader, will you take my hand while I assist you to make a one +year's leap. Whoop-la! There you are. + +A man and a woman approached Tony's news stand. You are quite right. +But her willow plume was purple this time. A purple willow plume would +make Mario Doro look sophisticated. The man was sandy-haired, raw-boned, +with a loping gait, very blue eyes, very white teeth, and an +objectionably apparent Adam's apple. He came from the north, and she +from the south. + +In story books, and on the stage, when two people meet unexpectedly after +a long separation they always stop short, bring one hand up to their +breast, and say: "You!" Sometimes, especially in the case where the +heroine chances on the villain, they say, simultaneously: "You! Here!" +I have seen people reunited under surprising circumstances, but they +never said, "You!" They said something quite unmelodramatic, and +commonplace, such as: "Well, look who's here!" or, "My land! If it +ain't Ed! How's Ed?" + +So it was that the Purple Willow Plume and the Adam's Apple stopped, +shook hands, and viewed one another while the Plume said, "I kind of +thought I'd bump into you. Felt it in my bones." And the Adam's Apple +said: + +"Then you're not living in Kewaskum--er--Wisconsin?" + +"Not any," responded she, briskly. "How do you happen to be straying +away from the tapestries, and the yew trees and the ghost, and the pink +roses, and the garden gloves, and the silver tea-service with the +coat-of-arms on it?" + +A slow, grim smile overspread the features of the man. "You tell yours +first," he said. + +"Well," began she, "in the first place, my name's Mercedes Meron, of the +Morning Glory Burlesquers, formerly Sadie Hayes of Kewaskum, Wisconsin. +I went home next day, like I said I would. Say, Mr. Peel (you said Peel, +didn't you? Guy Peel. Nice, neat name), to this day, when I eat lobster +late at night, and have dreams, it's always about that visit home." + +"How long did you stay?" + +"I'm coming to that. Or maybe you can figure it out yourself when I tell +you I've been back eleven months. I wired the folks I was coming, and +then I came before they had a chance to answer. When the train reached +Kewaskum I stepped off into the arms of a dowd in a +home-made-made-over-year-before-last suit, and a hat that would have been +funny if it hadn't been so pathetic. I grabbed her by the shoulders, and +I held her off, and looked--looked at the wrinkles, and the sallow +complexion, and the coat with the sleeves in wrong, and the mashed hat (I +told you Lil used to be the village peach, didn't I?) and I says: + +"'For Gawd's sakes, Lil, does your husband beat you?' + +"'Steve!' she shrieks, 'beat me! You must be crazy!' + +"'Well, if he don't, he ought to. Those clothes are grounds for +divorce,' I says. + +"Mr. Guy Peel, it took me just four weeks to get wise to the fact that +the way to cure homesickness is to go home. I spent those four weeks +trying to revolutionize my sister-in-law's house, dress, kids, husband, +wall paper and parlor carpet. I took all the doilies from under the +ornaments and spoke my mind on the subject of the hand-painted lamp, and +Lil hates me for it yet, and will to her dying day. I fitted three +dresses for her, and made her get some corsets that she'll never wear. +They have roast pork for dinner on Sundays, and they never go to the +theater, and they like bread pudding, and they're happy. I wasn't. They +treated me fine, and it was home, all right, but not my home. It was the +same, but I was different. Eleven years away from anything makes it +shrink, if you know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I remember that +I used to think that the Grand View Hotel was a regular little oriental +palace that was almost too luxurious to be respectable, and that the +traveling men who stopped there were gods, and just to prance past the +hotel after supper had the Atlantic City board walk looking like a back +alley on a rainy night. Well, everything had sort of shriveled up just +like that. The popcorn gave me indigestion, and I burned the skin off my +nose popping it. Kneading bread gave me the backache, and the blamed +stuff wouldn't raise right. I got so I was crazy to hear the roar of an +L train, and the sound of a crossing policeman's whistle. I got to +thinking how Michigan Avenue looks, downtown, with the lights shining +down on the asphalt, and all those people eating in the swell hotels, and +the autos, and the theater crowds and the windows, and--well, I'm back. +Glad I went? You said it. Because it made me so darned glad to get +back. I've found out one thing, and it's a great little lesson when you +get it learned. Most of us are where we are because we belong there, and +if we didn't, we wouldn't be. Say, that does sound mixed, don't it? But +it's straight. Now you tell yours." + +"I think you've said it all," began Guy Peel. "It's queer, isn't it, how +twelve years of America will spoil one for afternoon tea, and yew trees, +and tapestries, and lace caps, and roses. The mater was glad to see me, +but she said I smelled woolly. They think a Navajo blanket is a thing +the Indians wear on the war path, and they don't know whether Texas is a +state, or a mineral water. It was slow--slow. About the time they were +taking afternoon tea, I'd be reckoning how the boys would be rounding up +the cattle for the night, and about the time we'd sit down to dinner +something seemed to whisk the dinner table, and the flowers, and the men +and women in evening clothes right out of sight, like magic, and I could +see the boys stretched out in front of the bunk house after their supper +of bacon, and beans, and biscuit, and coffee. They'd be smoking their +pipes that smelled to Heaven, and further, and Wing would be squealing +one of his creepy old Chink songs out in the kitchen, and the sky would +be--say, Miss Meron, did you ever see the night sky, out West? Purple, +you know, and soft as soap-suds, and so near that you want to reach up +and touch it with your hand. Toward the end my mother used to take me +off in a corner and tell me that I hadn't spoken a word to the little +girl that I had taken in to dinner, and that if I couldn't forget my +uncouth western ways for an hour or two, at least, perhaps I'd better not +try to mingle with civilized people. I discovered that home isn't always +the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your +everyday clothes are, and where somebody, or something needs you. They +didn't need me over there in England. Lord no! I was sick for the sight +of a Navajo blanket. My shack's glowing with them. And my books needed +me, and the boys, and the critters, and Kate." + +"Kate?" repeated Miss Meron, quickly. + +"Kate's my horse. I'm going back on the 5:25 to-night. This is my +regular trip, you know. I came around here to buy a paper, because it +has become a habit. And then, too, I sort of felt--well, something told +me that you----" + +"You're a nice boy," said Miss Meron. "By the way, did I tell you that I +married the manager of the show the week after I got back? We go to +Bloomington to-night, and then we jump to St. Paul. I came around here +just as usual, because--well--because----" + +Tony's gift for remembering faces and facts amounts to genius. + +With two deft movements he whisked two papers from among the many in the +rack, and held them out. + +"Kewaskum Courier?" he suggested. + +"Nix," said Mercedes Meron, "I'll take a Chicago Scream." + +"London Times?" said Tony. + +"No," replied Guy Peel. "Give me the San Antonio Express." + + + + +X + +THE HOMELY HEROINE + +Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods and notions, beckoned me with her +finger. I had been standing at Kate O'Malley's counter, pretending to +admire her new basket-weave suitings, but in reality reveling in her +droll account of how, in the train coming up from Chicago, Mrs. Judge +Porterfield had worn the negro porter's coat over her chilly shoulders in +mistake for her husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a funny story in a way +to make the after-dinner pleasantries of a Washington diplomat sound like +the clumsy jests told around the village grocery stove. + +"I wanted to tell you that I read that last story of yours," said Millie, +sociably, when I had strolled over to her counter, "and I liked it, all +but the heroine. She had an 'adorable throat' and hair that 'waved away +from her white brow,' and eyes that 'now were blue and now gray.' Say, +why don't you write a story about an ugly girl?" + +"My land!" protested I. "It's bad enough trying to make them accept my +stories as it is. That last heroine was a raving beauty, but she came +back eleven times before the editor of Blakely's succumbed to her charms." + +Millie's fingers were busy straightening the contents of a tray of combs +and imitation jet barrettes. Millie's fingers were not intended for that +task. They are slender, tapering fingers, pink-tipped and sensitive. + +"I should think," mused she, rubbing a cloudy piece of jet with a bit of +soft cloth, "that they'd welcome a homely one with relief. These +goddesses are so cloying." + +Millie Whitcomb's black hair is touched with soft mists of gray, and she +wears lavender shirtwaists and white stocks edged with lavender. There +is a Colonial air about her that has nothing to do with celluloid combs +and imitation jet barrettes. It breathes of dim old rooms, rich with the +tones of mahogany and old brass, and Millie in the midst of it, +gray-gowned, a soft white fichu crossed upon her breast. + +In our town the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons +that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are +institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as +an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's for so +many years that she is rumored to have stock in the company, may be said +to govern the fashions of our town. She is wont to say, when we express +a fancy for gray as the color of our new spring suit: + +"Oh, now, Nellie, don't get gray again. You had it year before last, and +don't you think it was just the least leetle bit trying? Let me show you +that green that came in yesterday. I said the minute I clapped my eyes +on it that it was just the color for you, with your brown hair and all." + +And we end by deciding on the green. + +The girls at Bascom's are not gossips--they are too busy for that--but +they may be said to be delightfully well informed. How could they be +otherwise when we go to Bascom's for our wedding dresses and party favors +and baby flannels? There is news at Bascom's that our daily paper never +hears of, and wouldn't dare print if it did. + +So when Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods and notions, expressed her +hunger for a homely heroine, I did not resent the suggestion. On the +contrary, it sent me home in thoughtful mood, for Millie Whitcomb has +acquired a knowledge of human nature in the dispensing of her fancy goods +and notions. It set me casting about for a really homely heroine. + +There never has been a really ugly heroine in fiction. Authors have +started bravely out to write of an unlovely woman, but they never have +had the courage to allow her to remain plain. On Page 237 she puts on a +black lace dress and red roses, and the combination brings out unexpected +tawny lights in her hair, and olive tints in her cheeks, and there she +is, the same old beautiful heroine. Even in the "Duchess" books one +finds the simple Irish girl, on donning a green corduroy gown cut square +at the neck, transformed into a wild-rose beauty, at sight of whom a +ball-room is hushed into admiring awe. There's the case of jane Eyre, +too. She is constantly described as plain and mouse-like, but there are +covert hints as to her gray eyes and slender figure and clear skin, and +we have a sneaking notion that she wasn't such a fright after all. + +Therefore, when I tell you that I am choosing Pearlie Schultz as my +leading lady you are to understand that she is ugly, not only when the +story opens, but to the bitter end. In the first place, Pearlie is fat. +Not, plump, or rounded, or dimpled, or deliciously curved, but FAT. She +bulges in all the wrong places, including her chin. (Sister, who has a +way of snooping over my desk in my absence, says that I may as well drop +this now, because nobody would ever read it, anyway, least of all any +sane editor. I protest when I discover that Sis has been over my papers. +It bothers me. But she says you have to do these things when you have a +genius in the house, and cites the case of Kipling's "Recessional," which +was rescued from the depths of his wastebasket by his wife.) + +Pearlie Schultz used to sit on the front porch summer evenings and watch +the couples stroll by, and weep in her heart. A fat girl with a fat +girl's soul is a comedy. But a fat girl with a thin girl's soul is a +tragedy. Pearlie, in spite of her two hundred pounds, had the soul of a +willow wand. + +The walk in front of Pearlie's house was guarded by a row of big trees +that cast kindly shadows. The strolling couples used to step gratefully +into the embrace of these shadows, and from them into other embraces. +Pearlie, sitting on the porch, could see them dimly, although they could +not see her. She could not help remarking that these strolling couples +were strangely lacking in sprightly conversation. Their remarks were but +fragmentary, disjointed affairs, spoken in low tones with a queer, +tremulous note in them. When they reached the deepest, blackest, +kindliest shadow, which fell just before the end of the row of trees, the +strolling couples almost always stopped, and then there came a quick +movement, and a little smothered cry from the girl, and then a sound, and +then a silence. Pearlie, sitting alone on the porch in the dark, +listened to these things and blushed furiously. Pearlie had never +strolled into the kindly shadows with a little beating of the heart, and +she had never been surprised with a quick arm about her and eager lips +pressed warmly against her own. + +In the daytime Pearlie worked as public stenographer at the Burke Hotel. +She rose at seven in the morning, and rolled for fifteen minutes, and lay +on her back and elevated her heels in the air, and stood stiff-kneed +while she touched the floor with her finger tips one hundred times, and +went without her breakfast. At the end of each month she usually found +that she weighed three pounds more than she had the month before. + +The folks at home never joked with Pearlie about her weight. Even one's +family has some respect for a life sorrow. Whenever Pearlie asked that +inevitable question of the fat woman: "Am I as fat as she is?" her +mother always answered: "You! Well, I should hope not! You're looking +real peaked lately, Pearlie. And your blue skirt just ripples in the +back, it's getting so big for you." + +Of such blessed stuff are mothers made. + +But if the gods had denied Pearlie all charms of face or form, they had +been decent enough to bestow on her one gift. Pearlie could cook like an +angel; no, better than an angel, for no angel could be a really clever +cook and wear those flowing kimono-like sleeves. They'd get into the +soup. Pearlie could take a piece of rump and some suet and an onion and +a cup or so of water, and evolve a pot roast that you could cut with a +fork. She could turn out a surprisingly good cake with surprisingly few +eggs, all covered with white icing, and bearing cunning little jelly +figures on its snowy bosom. She could beat up biscuits that fell apart +at the lightest pressure, revealing little pools of golden butter within. +Oh, Pearlie could cook! + +On week days Pearlie rattled the typewriter keys, but on Sundays she +shooed her mother out of the kitchen. Her mother went, protesting +faintly: + +"Now, Pearlie, don't fuss so for dinner. You ought to get your rest on +Sunday instead of stewing over a hot stove all morning." + +"Hot fiddlesticks, ma," Pearlie would say, cheerily. "It ain't hot, +because it's a gas stove. And I'll only get fat if I sit around. You +put on your black-and-white and go to church. Call me when you've got as +far as your corsets, and I'll puff your hair for you in the back." + +In her capacity of public stenographer at the Burke Hotel, it was +Pearlie's duty to take letters dictated by traveling men and beginning: +"Yours of the 10th at hand. In reply would say. . . ." or: "Enclosed +please find, etc." As clinching proof of her plainness it may be stated +that none of the traveling men, not even Max Baum, who was so fresh that +the girl at the cigar counter actually had to squelch him, ever called +Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a date with her. Not that Pearlie +would ever have allowed them to. But she never had had to reprove them. +During pauses in dictation she had a way of peering near-sightedly, over +her glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling salesman who was +rolling off the items on his sale bill. That is a trick which would make +the prettiest kind of a girl look owlish. + +On the night that Sam Miller strolled up to talk to her, Pearlie was +working late. She had promised to get out a long and intricate bill for +Max Baum, who travels for Kuhn and Klingman, so that he might take the +nine o'clock evening train. The irrepressible Max had departed with much +eclat and clatter, and Pearlie was preparing to go home when Sam +approached her. + +Sam had just come in from the Gayety Theater across the street, whither +he had gone in a vain search for amusement after supper. He had come +away in disgust. A soiled soubrette with orange-colored hair and baby +socks had swept her practiced eye over the audience, and, attracted by +Sam's good-looking blond head in the second row, had selected him as the +target of her song. She had run up to the extreme edge of the footlights +at the risk of teetering over, and had informed Sam through the medium of +song--to the huge delight of the audience, and to Sam's red-faced +discomfiture--that she liked his smile, and he was just her style, and +just as cute as he could be, and just the boy for her. On reaching the +chorus she had whipped out a small, round mirror and, assisted by the +calcium-light man in the rear, had thrown a wretched little spotlight on +Sam's head. + +Ordinarily, Sam would not have minded it. But that evening, in the vest +pocket just over the place where he supposed his heart to be reposed his +girl's daily letter. They were to be married on Sam's return to New York +from his first long trip. In the letter near his heart she had written +prettily and seriously about traveling men, and traveling men's wives, +and her little code for both. The fragrant, girlish, grave little letter +had caused Sam to sour on the efforts of the soiled soubrette. + +As soon as possible he had fled up the aisle and across the street to the +hotel writing-room. There he had spied Pearlie's good-humored, homely +face, and its contrast with the silly, red and-white countenance of the +unlaundered soubrette had attracted his homesick heart. + +Pearlie had taken some letters from him earlier in the day. Now, in his +hunger for companionship, he, strolled up to her desk, just as she was +putting her typewriter to bed. + +"Gee I This is a lonesome town!" said Sam, smiling down at her. + +Pearlie glanced up at him, over her glasses. "I guess you must be from +New York," she said. "I've heard a real New Yorker can get bored in +Paris. In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the +girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are +higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or +the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in +the world. Ain't they?" + +"Oh, now," protested Sam, "quit kiddin' me! You'd be lonesome for the +little old town, too, if you'd been born and dragged up in it, and hadn't +seen it for four months." + +"New to the road, aren't you?" asked Pearlie. + +Sam blushed a little. "How did you know?" + +"Well, you generally can tell. They don't know what to do with +themselves evenings, and they look rebellious when they go into the +dining-room. The old-timers just look resigned." + +"You've picked up a thing or two around here, haven't you? I wonder if +the time will ever come when I'll look resigned to a hotel dinner, after +four months of 'em. Why, girl, I've got so I just eat the things that +are covered up--like baked potatoes in the shell, and soft boiled eggs, +and baked apples, and oranges that I can peel, and nuts." + +"Why, you poor kid," breathed Pearlie, her pale eyes fixed on him in +motherly pity. "You oughtn't to do that. You'll get so thin your girl +won't know you." + +Sam looked up quickly. "How in thunderation did you know----?" + +Pearlie was pinning on her hat, and she spoke succinctly, her hatpins +between her teeth: "You've been here two days now, and I notice you +dictate all your letters except the longest one, and you write that one +off in a corner of the writing-room all by yourself, with your cigar just +glowing like a live coal, and you squint up through the smoke, and grin +to yourself." + +"Say, would you mind if I walked home with you?" asked Sam. + +If Pearlie was surprised, she was woman enough not to show it. She +picked up her gloves and hand bag, locked her drawer with a click, and +smiled her acquiescence. And when Pearlie smiled she was awful. + +It was a glorious evening in the early summer, moonless, velvety, and +warm. As they strolled homeward, Sam told her all about the Girl, as is +the way of traveling men the world over. He told her about the tiny +apartment they had taken, and how he would be on the road only a couple +of years more, as this was just a try-out that the firm always insisted +on. And they stopped under an arc light while Sam showed her the picture +in his watch, as is also the way of traveling men since time immemorial. + +Pearlie made an excellent listener. He was so boyish, and so much in +love, and so pathetically eager to make good with the firm, and so happy +to have some one in whom to confide. + +"But it's a dog's life, after all," reflected Sam, again after the +fashion of all traveling men. "Any fellow on the road earns his salary +these days, you bet. I used to think it was all getting up when you felt +like it, and sitting in the big front window of the hotel, smoking a +cigar and watching the pretty girls go by. I wasn't wise to the packing, +and the unpacking, and the rotten train service, and the grouchy +customers, and the canceled bills, and the grub." + +Pearlie nodded understandingly. "A man told me once that twice a week +regularly he dreamed of the way his wife cooked noodle-soup." + +"My folks are German," explained Sam. "And my mother--can she cook! +Well, I just don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out of my mind. +And her roast beef tasted and looked like roast beef, and not like a wet +red flannel rag." + +At this moment Pearlie was seized with a brilliant idea. "To-morrow's +Sunday. You're going to Sunday here, aren't you? Come over and eat your +dinner with us. If you have forgotten the taste of real food, I can give +you a dinner that'll jog your memory." + +"Oh, really," protested Sam. "You're awfully good, but I couldn't think +of it. I----" + +"You needn't be afraid. I'm not letting you in for anything. I may be +homelier than an English suffragette, and I know my lines are all bumps, +but there's one thing you can't take away from me, and that's my cooking +hand. I can cook, boy, in a way to make your mother's Sunday dinner, +with company expected, look like Mrs. Newlywed's first attempt at 'riz' +biscuits. And I don't mean any disrespect to your mother when I say it. +I'm going to have noodle-soup, and fried chicken, and hot biscuits, and +creamed beans from our own garden, and strawberry shortcake with real----" + +"Hush!" shouted Sam. "If I ain't there, you'll know that I passed away +during the night, and you can telephone the clerk to break in my door." + +The Grim Reaper spared him, and Sam came, and was introduced to the +family, and ate. He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson, and Ben +Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table manners were better. He almost +forgot to talk during the soup, and he came back three times for chicken, +and by the time the strawberry shortcake was half consumed he was looking +at Pearlie with a sort of awe in his eyes. + +That night he came over to say good-bye before taking his train out for +Ishpeming. He and Pearlie strolled down as far as the park and back +again. + +"I didn't eat any supper," said Sam. "It would have been sacrilege, +after that dinner of yours. Honestly, I don't know how to thank you, +being so good to a stranger like me. When I come back next trip, I +expect to have the Kid with me, and I want her to meet you, by George! +She's a winner and a pippin, but she wouldn't know whether a porterhouse +was stewed or frapped. I'll tell her about you, you bet. In the +meantime, if there's anything I can do for you, I'm yours to command." + +Pearlie turned to him suddenly. "You see that clump of thick shadows +ahead of us, where those big trees stand in front of our house?" + +"Sure," replied Sam. + +"Well, when we step into that deepest, blackest shadow, right in front of +our porch, I want you to reach up, and put your arm around me and kiss me +on the mouth, just once. And when you get back to New York you can tell +your girl I asked you to." + +There broke from him a little involuntary exclamation. It might have +been of pity, and it might have been of surprise. It had in it something +of both, but nothing of mirth. And as they stepped into the depths of +the soft black shadows he took off his smart straw sailor, which was so +different from the sailors that the boys in our town wear. And there was +in the gesture something of reverence. + + +Millie Whitcomb didn't like the story of the homely heroine, after all. +She says that a steady diet of such literary fare would give her blue +indigestion. Also she objects on the ground that no one got +married--that is, the heroine didn't. And she says that a heroine who +does not get married isn't a heroine at all. She thinks she prefers the +pink-cheeked, goddess kind, in the end. + + + + +XI + +SUN DRIED + +There come those times in the life of every woman when she feels that she +must wash her hair at once. And then she does it. The feeling may come +upon her suddenly, without warning, at any hour of the day or night; or +its approach may be slow and insidious, so that the victim does not at +first realize what it is that fills her with that sensation of unrest. +But once in the clutches of the idea she knows no happiness, no peace, +until she has donned a kimono, gathered up two bath towels, a spray, and +the green soap, and she breathes again only when, head dripping, she +makes for the back yard, the sitting-room radiator, or the side porch +(depending on her place of residence, and the time of year). + +Mary Louise was seized with the feeling at ten o'clock on a joyous June +morning. She tried to fight it off because she had got to that stage in +the construction of her story where her hero was beginning to talk and +act a little more like a real live man, and a little less like a clothing +store dummy. (By the way, they don't seem to be using those +pink-and-white, black-mustachioed figures any more. Another good simile +gone.) + +Mary Louise had been battling with that hero for a week. He wouldn't +make love to the heroine. In vain had Mary Louise striven to instill red +blood into his watery veins. He and the beauteous heroine were as far +apart as they had been on Page One of the typewritten manuscript. Mary +Louise was developing nerves over him. She had bitten her finger nails, +and twisted her hair into corkscrews over him. She had risen every +morning at the chaste hour of seven, breakfasted hurriedly, tidied the +tiny two-room apartment, and sat down in the unromantic morning light to +wrestle with her stick of a hero. She had made her heroine a creature of +grace, wit, and loveliness, but thus far the hero had not once clasped +her to him fiercely, or pressed his lips to her hair, her eyes, her +cheeks. Nay (as the story-writers would put it), he hadn't even devoured +her with his gaze. + +This morning, however, he had begun to show some signs of life. He was +developing possibilities. Whereupon, at this critical stage in the +story-writing game, the hair-washing mania seized Mary Louise. She tried +to dismiss the idea. She pushed it out of her mind, and slammed the +door. It only popped in again. Her fingers wandered to her hair. Her +eyes wandered to the June sunshine outside. The hero was left poised, +arms outstretched, and unquenchable love-light burning in his eyes, while +Mary Louise mused, thus: + +"It certainly feels sticky. It's been six weeks, at least. And I could +sit here-by the window--in the sun--and dry it----" + +With a jerk she brought her straying fingers away from her hair, and her +wandering eyes away from the sunshine, and her runaway thoughts back to +the typewritten page. For three minutes the snap of the little disks +crackled through the stillness of the tiny apartment. Then, suddenly, as +though succumbing to an irresistible force, Mary Louise rose, walked +across the room (a matter of six steps), removing hairpins as she went, +and shoved aside the screen which hid the stationary wash-bowl by day. + +Mary Louise turned on a faucet and held her finger under it, while an +agonized expression of doubt and suspense overspread her features. +Slowly the look of suspense gave way to a smile of beatific content. A +sigh--deep, soul-filling, satisfied--welled up from Mary Louise's breast. +The water was hot. + +Half an hour later, head swathed turban fashion in a towel, Mary Louise +strolled over to the window. Then she stopped, aghast. In that half +hour the sun had slipped just around the corner, and was now beating +brightly and uselessly against the brick wall a few inches away. Slowly +Mary Louise unwound the towel, bent double in the contortionistic +attitude that women assume on such occasions, and watched with melancholy +eyes while the drops trickled down to the ends of her hair, and fell, +unsunned, to the floor. + +"If only," thought Mary Louise, bitterly, "there was such a thing as a +back yard in this city--a back yard where I could squat on the grass, in +the sunshine and the breeze---- Maybe there is. I'll ask the janitor." + +She bound her hair in the turban again, and opened the door. At the far +end of the long, dim hallway Charlie, the janitor, was doing something to +the floor with a mop and a great deal of sloppy water, whistling the +while with a shrill abandon that had announced his presence to Mary +Louise. + +"Oh, Charlie!" called Mary Louise. "Charlee! Can you come here just a +minute?" + +"You bet!" answered Charlie, with the accent on the you; and came. + +"Charlie, is there a back yard, or something, where the sun is, you +know--some nice, grassy place where I can sit, and dry my hair, and let +the breezes blow it?" + +"Back yard!" grinned Charlie. "I guess you're new to N' York, all right, +with ground costin' a million or so a foot. Not much they ain't no back +yard, unless you'd give that name to an ash-barrel, and a dump heap or +so, and a crop of tin cans. I wouldn't invite a goat to set in it." + +Disappointment curved Mary Louise's mouth. It was a lovely enough mouth +at any time, but when it curved in disappointment--ell, janitors are but +human, after all. + +"Tell you what, though," said Charlie. "I'll let you up on the roof. It +ain't long on grassy spots up there, but say, breeze! Like a summer +resort. On a clear day you can see way over 's far 's Eight' Avenoo. +Only for the love of Mike don't blab it to the other women folks in the +buildin', or I'll have the whole works of 'em usin' the roof for a +general sun, massage, an' beauty parlor. Come on." + +"I'll never breathe it to a soul," promised Mary Louise, solemnly. "Oh, +wait a minute." + +She turned back into her room, appearing again in a moment with something +green in her hand. + +"What's that?" asked Charlie, suspiciously. + +Mary Louise, speeding down the narrow hallway after Charlie, blushed a +little. "It--it's parsley," she faltered. + +"Parsley!" exploded Charlie. "Well, what the----" + +"Well, you see. I'm from the country," explained Mary Louise, "and in +the country, at this time of year, when you dry your hair in the back +yard, you get the most wonderful scent of green and growing things--not +only of flowers, you know, but of the new things just coming up in the +vegetable garden, and--and--well, this parsley happens to be the only +really gardeny thing I have, so I thought I'd bring it along and sniff it +once in a while, and make believe it's the country, up there on the roof." + +Half-way up the perilous little flight of stairs that led to the roof, +Charlie, the janitor, turned to gaze down at Mary Louise, who was just +behind, and keeping fearfully out of the way of Charlie's heels. + +"Wimmin," observed Charlie, the janitor, "is nothin' but little girls in +long skirts, and their hair done up." + +"I know it," giggled Mary Louise, and sprang up on the roof, looking, +with her towel-swathed head, like a lady Aladdin leaping from her +underground grotto. + +The two stood there a moment, looking up at the blue sky, and all about +at the June sunshine. + +"If you go up high enough," observed Mary Louise, "the sunshine is almost +the same as it is in the country, isn't it?" + +"I shouldn't wonder," said Charlie, "though Calvary cemetery is about as +near's I'll ever get to the country. Say, you can set here on this soap +box and let your feet hang down. The last janitor's wife used to hang +her washin' up here, I guess. I'll leave this door open, see?" + +"You're so kind," smiled Mary Louise. + +"Kin you blame me?" retorted the gallant Charles. And vanished. + +Mary Louise, perched on the soap box, unwound her turban, draped the damp +towel over her shoulders, and shook out the wet masses of her hair. Now +the average girl shaking out the wet masses of her hair looks like a +drowned rat. But Nature had been kind to Mary Louise. She had given her +hair that curled in little ringlets when wet, and that waved in all the +right places when dry. + +Just now it hung in damp, shining strands on either side of her face, so +that she looked most remarkably like one of those oval-faced, great-eyed, +red-lipped women that the old Italian artists were so fond of painting. + +Below her, blazing in the sun, lay the great stone and iron city. Mary +Louise shook out her hair idly, with one hand, sniffed her parsley, shut +her eyes, threw back her head, and began to sing, beating time with her +heel against the soap box, and forgetting all about the letter that had +come that morning, stating that it was not from any lack of merit, etc. +She sang, and sniffed her parsley, and waggled her hair in the breeze, +and beat time, idly, with the heel of her little boot, when---- + +"Holy Cats!" exclaimed a man's voice. "What is this, anyway? A Coney +Island concession gone wrong?" + +Mary Louise's eyes unclosed in a flash, and Mary Louise gazed upon an +irate-looking, youngish man, who wore shabby slippers, and no collar with +a full dress air. + +"I presume that you are the janitor's beautiful daughter," growled the +collarless man. + +"Well, not precisely," answered Mary Louise, sweetly. "Are you the +scrub-lady's stalwart son?" + +"Ha!" exploded the man. "But then, all women look alike with their hair +down. I ask your pardon, though." + +"Not at all," replied Mary Louise. "For that matter, all men look like +picked chickens with their collars off." + +At that the collarless man, who until now had been standing on the top +step that led up to the roof, came slowly forward, stepped languidly over +a skylight or two, draped his handkerchief over a convenient chimney and +sat down, hugging his long, lean legs to him. + +"Nice up here, isn't it?" he remarked. + +"It was," said Mary Louise. + +"Ha!" exploded he, again. Then, "Where's your mirror?" he demanded. + +"Mirror?" echoed Mary Louise. + +"Certainly. You have the hair, the comb, the attitude, and the general +Lorelei effect. Also your singing lured me to your shores." + +"You didn't look lured," retorted Mary Louise. "You looked lurid." + +"What's that stuff in your hand?" next demanded he. He really was a most +astonishingly rude young man. + +"Parsley." + +"Parsley!" shouted he, much as Charlie had done. "Well, what the----" + +"Back home," elucidated Mary Louise once more, patiently, "after you've +washed your hair you dry it in the back yard, sitting on the grass, in +the sunshine and the breeze. And the garden smells come to you--the +nasturtiums, and the pansies, and the geraniums, you know, and even that +clean grass smell, and the pungent vegetable odor, and there are ants, +and bees, and butterflies----" + +"Go on," urged the young man, eagerly. + +"And Mrs. Next Door comes out to hang up a few stockings, and a jabot or +so, and a couple of baby dresses that she has just rubbed through, and +she calls out to you: + +"'Washed your hair?' + +"'Yes,' you say. 'It was something awful, and I wanted it nice for +Tuesday night. But I suppose I won't be able to do a thing with it.' + +"And then Mrs. Next Door stands there a minute on the clothes-reel +platform, with the wind whipping her skirts about her, and the fresh +smell of the growing things coming to her. And suddenly she says: 'I +guess I'll wash mine too, while the baby's asleep.'" + +The collarless young man rose from his chimney, picked up his +handkerchief, and moved to the chimney just next to Mary Louise's soap +box. + +"Live here?" he asked, in his impolite way. + +"If I did not, do you think that I would choose this as the one spot in +all New York in which to dry my hair?" + +"When I said, 'Live here,' I didn't mean just that. I meant who are you, +and why are you here, and where do you come from, and do you sign your +real name to your stuff, or use a nom de plume?" + +"Why--how did you know?" gasped Mary Louise. + +"Give me five minutes more," grinned the keen-eyed young man, "and I'll +tell you what make your typewriter is, and where the last rejection slip +came from." + +"Oh!" said Mary Louise again. "Then you are the scrub-lady's stalwart +son, and you've been ransacking my waste-basket." + +Quite unheeding, the collarless man went on, "And so you thought you +could write, and you came on to New York (you know one doesn't just +travel to New York, or ride to it, or come to it; one 'comes on' to New +York), and now you're not so sure about the writing, h'm? And back home +what did you do?" + +"Back home I taught school--and hated it. But I kept on teaching until +I'd saved five hundred dollars. Every other school ma'am in the world +teaches until she has saved five hundred dollars, and then she packs two +suit-cases, and goes to Europe from June until September. But I saved my +five hundred for New York. I've been here six months now, and the five +hundred has shrunk to almost nothing, and if I don't break into the +magazines pretty soon----" + +"Then?" + +"Then," said Mary Louise, with a quaver in her voice, "I'll have to go +back and teach thirty-seven young devils that six times five is thirty, +put down the naught and carry six, and that the French are a gay people, +fond of dancing and light wines. But I'll scrimp on everything from +hairpins to shoes, and back again, including pretty collars, and gloves, +and hats, until I've saved up another five hundred, and then I'll try it +all over again, because I--can--write." + +From the depths of one capacious pocket the inquiring man took a small +black pipe, from another a bag of tobacco, from another a match. The +long, deft fingers made a brief task of it. + +"I didn't ask you," he said, after the first puff, "because I could see +that you weren't the fool kind that objects." Then, with amazing +suddenness, "Know any of the editors?" + +"Know them!" cried Mary Louise. "Know them! If camping on their +doorsteps, and haunting the office buildings, and cajoling, and fighting +with secretaries and office boys, and assistants and things constitutes +knowing them, then we're chums." + +"What makes you think you can write?" sneered the thin man. + +Mary Louise gathered up her brush, and comb, and towel, and parsley, and +jumped off the soap box. She pointed belligerently at her tormentor with +the hand that held the brush. + +"Being the scrub-lady's stalwart son, you wouldn't understand. But I can +write. I sha'n't go under. I'm going to make this town count me in as +the four million and oneth. Sometimes I get so tired of being nobody at +all, with not even enough cleverness in me to wrest a living from this +big city, that I long to stand out at the edge of the curbing, and take +off my hat, and wave it, and shout, 'Say, you four million uncaring +people, I'm Mary Louise Moss, from Escanaba, Michigan, and I like your +town, and I want to stay here. Won't you please pay some slight +attention to me. No one knows I'm here except myself, and the rent +collector.'" + +"And I," put in the rude young man. + +"O, you," sneered Mary Louise, equally rude, "you don't count." + +The collarless young man in the shabby slippers smiled a curious little +twisted smile. "You never can tell," he grinned, "I might." Then, quite +suddenly, he stood up, knocked the ash out of his pipe, and came over to +Mary Louise, who was preparing to descend the steep little flight of +stairs. + +"Look here, Mary Louise Moss, from Escanaba, Michigan, you stop trying to +write the slop you're writing now. Stop it. Drop the love tales that +are like the stuff that everybody else writes. Stop trying to write +about New York. You don't know anything about it. Listen. You get back +to work, and write about Mrs. Next Door, and the hair-washing, and the +vegetable garden, and bees, and the back yard, understand? You write the +way you talked to me, and then you send your stuff in to Cecil Reeves." + +"Reeves!" mocked Mary Louise. "Cecil Reeves, of The Earth? He wouldn't +dream of looking at my stuff. And anyway, it really isn't your affair." +And began to descend the stairs. + +"Well, you know you brought me up here, kicking with your heels, and +singing at the top of your voice. I couldn't work. So it's really your +fault." Then, just as Mary Louise had almost disappeared down the +stairway he put his last astonishing question. + +"How often do you wash your hair?" he demanded. + +"Well, back home," confessed Mary Louise, "every six weeks or so was +enough, but----" + +"Not here," put in the rude young man, briskly. "Never. That's all very +well for the country, but it won't do in the city. Once a week, at +least, and on the roof. Cleanliness demands it." + +"But if I'm going back to the country," replied Mary Louise, "it won't be +necessary." + +"But you're not," calmly said the collarless young man, just as Mary +Louise vanished from sight. + +Down at the other end of the hallway on Mary Louise's floor Charlie, the +janitor, was doing something to the windows now, with a rag, and a pail +of water. + +"Get it dry?" he called out, sociably. + +"Yes, thank you," answered Mary Louise, and turned to enter her own +little apartment. Then, hesitatingly, she came back to Charlie's window. + +"There--there was a man up there--a very tall, very thin, very rude, +very--that is, rather nice youngish oldish man, in slippers, and no +collar. I wonder----" + +"Oh, him!" snorted Charlie. "He don't show himself onct in a blue moon. +None of the other tenants knows he's up there. Has the whole top floor +to himself, and shuts himself up there for weeks at a time, writin' +books, or some such truck. That guy, he owns the building." + +"Owns the building!" said Mary Louise, faintly. "Why he looked--he +looked----" + +"Sure," grinned Charlie. "That's him. Name's Reeves--Cecil Reeves. +Say, ain't that a divil of a name?" + + + + +XII + +WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH + +This will be a homing pigeon story. Though I send it ever so far--though +its destination be the office of a home-and-fireside magazine or one of +the kind with a French story in the back, it will return to me. After +each flight its feathers will be a little more rumpled, its wings more +weary, its course more wavering, until, battered, spent, broken, it will +flutter to rest in the waste basket. + +And yet, though its message may never be delivered, it must be sent, +because--well, because---- + +You know where the car turns at Eighteenth? There you see a glaringly +attractive billboard poster. It depicts groups of smiling, white-clad +men standing on tropical shores, with waving palms overhead, and a +glimpse of blue sea in the distance. The wording beneath the picture +runs something like this: + +"Young men wanted. An unusual opportunity for travel, education, and +advancement. Good pay. No expenses." + +When the car turns at Eighteenth, and I see that, I remember Eddie +Houghton back home. And when I remember Eddie Houghton I see red. + +The day after Eddie Houghton finished high school he went to work. In +our town we don't take a job. We accept a position. Our paper had it +that "Edwin Houghton had accepted a position as clerk and assistant +chemist at the Kunz drugstore, where he would take up his new duties +Monday." + +His new duties seemed, at first, to consist of opening the store in the +morning, sweeping out, and whizzing about town on a bicycle with an +unnecessarily insistent bell, delivering prescriptions which had been +telephoned for. But by the time the summer had really set in Eddie was +installed back of the soda fountain. + +There never was anything better looking than Eddie Houghton in his white +duck coat. He was one of those misleadingly gold and pink and white men. +I say misleadingly because you usually associate pink-and-whiteness with +such words as sissy and mollycoddle. Eddie was neither. He had played +quarter-back every year from his freshman year, and he could putt the +shot and cut classes with the best of 'em. But in that white duck coat +with the braiding and frogs he had any musical-comedy, white-flannel +tenor lieutenant whose duty it is to march down to the edge of the +footlights, snatch out his sword, and warble about his country's flag, +looking like a flat-nosed, blue-gummed Igorrote. Kunz's soda water +receipts swelled to double their usual size, and the girls' complexions +were something awful that summer. I've known Nellie Donovan to take as +many as three ice cream sodas and two phosphates a day when Eddie was +mixing. He had a way of throwing in a good-natured smile, and an easy +flow of conversation with every drink. While indulging in a little airy +persiflage the girls had a great little trick of pursing their mouths +into rosebud shapes over their soda straws, and casting their eyes upward +at Eddie. They all knew the trick, and its value, so that at night +Eddie's dreams were haunted by whole rows of rosily pursed lips, and seas +of upturned, adoring eyes. Of course we all noticed that on those rare +occasions when Josie Morehouse came into Kunz's her glass was heaped +higher with ice cream than that of any of the other girls, and that +Eddie's usually easy flow of talk was interspersed with certain +stammerings and stutterings. But Josie didn't come in often. She had a +lot of dignity for a girl of eighteen. Besides, she was taking the +teachers' examinations that summer, when the other girls were playing +tennis and drinking sodas. + +Eddie really hated the soda water end of the business, as every soda +clerk in the world does. But he went about it good-naturedly. He really +wanted to learn the drug business, but the boss knew he had a drawing +card, and insisted that Eddie go right on concocting faerie queens and +strawberry sundaes, and nectars and Kunz's specials. One Saturday, when +he happened to have on hand an over-supply of bananas that would have +spoiled over Sunday, he invented a mess and called it the Eddie Extra, +and the girls swarmed on it like flies around a honey pot. + +That kind of thing would have spoiled most boys. But Eddie had a +sensible mother. On those nights when he used to come home nauseated +with dealing out chop suey sundaes and orangeades, and saying that there +was no future for a fellow in our dead little hole, his mother would give +him something rather special for supper, and set him hoeing and watering +the garden. + +So Eddie stuck to his job, and waited, and all the time he was saying, +with a melting look, to the last silly little girl who was drinking her +third soda, "Somebody looks mighty sweet in pink to-day," or while he was +doping to-morrow's ball game with one of the boys who dropped in for a +cigar, he was thinking of bigger things, and longing for a man-size job. + +The man-size job loomed up before Eddie's dazzled eyes when he least +expected it. It was at the close of a particularly hot day when it +seemed to Eddie that every one in town had had everything from birch beer +to peach ice cream. On his way home to supper he stopped at the +postoffice with a handful of letters that old man Kunz had given him to +mail. His mother had told him that they would have corn out of their own +garden for supper that night, and Eddie was in something of a hurry. He +and his mother were great pals. + +In one corner of the dim little postoffice lobby a man was busily tacking +up posters. The whitewashed walls bloomed with them. They were gay, +attractive-looking posters, done in red and blue and green, and after +Eddie had dumped his mail into the slot, and had called out, "Hello, +Jake!" to the stamp clerk, whose back was turned to the window, he +strolled idly over to where the man was putting the finishing touches to +his work. The man was dressed in a sailor suit of blue, with a +picturesque silk scarf knotted at his hairy chest. He went right on +tacking posters. + +They certainly were attractive pictures. Some showed groups of stalwart, +immaculately clad young gods lolling indolently on tropical shores, with +a splendor of palms overhead, and a sparkling blue sea in the distance. +Others depicted a group of white-clad men wading knee-deep in the surf as +they laughingly landed a cutter on the sandy beach. There was a +particularly fascinating one showing two barefooted young chaps on a +wave-swept raft engaged in that delightfully perilous task known as +signaling. Another showed the keen-eyed gunners busy about the big guns. + +Eddie studied them all. + +The man finished his task and looked up, quite casually. + +"Hello, kid," he said. + +"Hello," answered Eddie. Then--"That's some picture gallery you're +giving us." + +The man in the sailor suit fell back a pace or two and surveyed his work +with a critical but satisfied eye. + +"Pitchers," he said, "don't do it justice. We've opened a recruiting +office here. Looking for young men with brains, and muscle, and +ambition. It's a great chance. We don't get to these here little towns +much." + +He placed a handbill in Eddie's hand. Eddie glanced down at it +sheepishly. + +"I've heard," he said, "that it's a hard life." + +The man in the sailor suit threw back his head and laughed, displaying a +great deal of hairy throat and chest. "Hard!" he jeered, and slapped one +of the gay-colored posters with the back of his hand. "You see that! +Well, it ain't a bit exaggerated. Not a bit. I ought to know. It's the +only life for a young man, especially for a guy in a little town. +There's no chance here for a bright young man, and if he goes to the +city, what does he get? The city's jam full of kids that flock there in +the spring and fall, looking for jobs, and thinking the city's sittin' up +waitin' for 'em. And where do they land? In the dime lodging houses, +that's where. In the navy you see the world, and it don't cost you a +cent. A guy is a fool to bury himself alive in a hole like this. You +could be seeing the world, traveling by sea from port to port, from +country to country, from ocean to ocean, amid ever-changing scenery and +climatic conditions, to see and study the habits and conditions of the +strange races----" + +It rolled off his tongue with fascinating glibness. Eddie glanced at the +folder in his hand. + +"I always did like the water," he said. + +"Sure," agreed the hairy man, heartily. "What young feller don't? I'll +tell you what. Come on over to the office with me and I'll show you some +real stuff." + +"It's my supper time," hesitated Eddie. "I guess I'd better not----" + +"Oh, supper," laughed the man. "You come on and have supper with me, +kid." + +Eddie's pink cheeks went three shades pinker. "Gee! That'd be great. +But my mother--that is--she----" + +The man in the sailor suit laughed again--a laugh with a sting in it. "A +great big feller like you ain't tied to your ma's apron strings are you?" + +"Not much I'm not!" retorted Eddie. "I'll telephone her when I get to +your hotel, that's what I'll do." + +But they were such fascinating things, those new booklets, and the man +had such marvelous tales to tell, that Eddie forgot trifles like supper +and waiting mothers. There were pictures taken on board ship, showing +frolics, and ball games, and minstrel shows and glee clubs, and the men +at mess, and each sailor sleeping snug as a bug in his hammock. There +were other pictures showing foreign scenes and strange ports. Eddie's +tea grew cold, and his apple pie and cheese lay untasted on his plate. + +"Now me," said the recruiting officer, "I'm a married man. But my wife, +she wouldn't have it no other way. No, sir! She'll be in the navy +herself, I'll bet, when women vote. Why, before I joined the navy I +didn't know whether Guam was a vegetable or an island, and Culebra wasn't +in my geography. Now? Why, now I'm as much at home in Porto Rico as I +am in San Francisco. I'm as well acquainted in Valparaiso as I am in +Vermont, and I've run around Cairo, Egypt, until I know it better than +Cairo, Illinois. It's the only way to see the world. You travel by sea +from port to port, from country to country, from ocean to ocean, amid +ever-changing scenery and climatic conditions, to see and study the----" + +And Eddie forgot that it was Wednesday night, which was the prescription +clerk's night off; forgot that the boss was awaiting his return that he +might go home to his own supper; forgot his mother, and her little treat +of green corn out of the garden; forgot everything in the wonder of this +man's tales of people and scenes such as he never dreamed could exist +outside of a Jack London story. Now and then Eddie interrupted with a, +"Yes, but----" that grew more and more infrequent, until finally they +ceased altogether. Eddie's man-size job had come. + +When we heard the news we all dropped in at the drug store to joke with +him about it. We had a good deal to say about rolling gaits, and +bell-shaped trousers, and anchors and sea serpents tattooed on the arm. +One of the boys scored a hit by slapping his dime down on the soda +fountain marble and bellowing for rum and salt horse. Some one started +to tease the little Morehouse girl about sailors having sweethearts in +every port, but when they saw the look in her eyes they changed their +mind, and stopped. It's funny how a girl of twenty is a woman, when a +man of twenty is a boy. + +Eddie dished out the last of his chocolate ice cream sodas and cherry +phosphates and root beers, while the girls laughingly begged him to bring +them back kimonos from China, and scarves from the Orient, and Eddie +promised, laughing, too, but with a far-off, eager look in his eyes. + +When the time came for him to go there was quite a little bodyguard of us +ready to escort him down to the depot. We picked up two or three more +outside O'Rourke's pool room, and a couple more from the benches outside +the hotel. Eddie walked ahead with his mother. I have said that Mrs. +Houghton was a sensible woman. She was never more so than now. Any +other mother would have gone into hysterics and begged the recruiting +officer to let her boy off. But she knew better. Still, I think Eddie +felt some uncomfortable pangs when he looked at her set face. On the way +to the depot we had to pass the Agassiz School, where Josie Morehouse was +substituting second reader for the Wilson girl, who was sick. She was +standing in the window as we passed. Eddie took off his cap and waved to +her, and she returned the wave as well as she could without having the +children see her. That would never have done, seeing that she was the +teacher, and substituting at that. But when we turned the corner we +noticed that she was still standing at the window and leaning out just a +bit, even at the risk of being indiscreet. + +When the 10:15 pulled out Eddie stood on the bottom step, with his cap +off, looking I can't tell you how boyish, and straight, and clean, and +handsome, with his lips parted, and his eyes very bright. The +hairy-chested recruiting officer stood just beside him, and suffered by +contrast. There was a bedlam of good-byes, and last messages, and +good-natured badinage, but Eddie's mother's eyes never left his face +until the train disappeared around the curve in the track. + +Well, they got a new boy at Kunz's--a sandy-haired youth, with pimples, +and no knack at mixing, and we got out of the habit of dropping in there, +although those fall months were unusually warm. + +It wasn't long before we began to get postcards--pictures of the naval +training station, and the gymnasium, and of model camps and of drills, +and of Eddie in his uniform. His mother insisted on calling it his +sailor suit, as though he were a little boy. One day Josie Morehouse +came over to Mrs. Houghton's with a group picture in her hand. She +handed it to Eddie's mother without comment. Mrs. Houghton looked at it +eagerly, her eye selecting her own boy from the group as unerringly as a +mother bird finds her nest in the forest. + +"Oh, Eddie's better looking than that!" she cried, with a tremulous +little laugh. "How funny those pants make them look, don't they? And +his mouth isn't that way, at all. Eddie always had the sweetest mouth, +from the time he was a baby. Let's see some of these other boys. +Why--why----" + +Then she fell silent, scanning those other faces. Presently Josie bent +over her and looked too, and the brows of both women knitted in +perplexity. They looked for a long, long minute, and the longer they +looked the more noticeable became the cluster of fine little wrinkles +that had begun to form about Mrs. Houghton's eyes. + +When finally they looked up it was to gaze at one another questioningly. + +"Those other boys," faltered Eddie's mother, "they--they don't look like +Eddie, do they? I mean----" + +"No, they don't," agreed Josie. "They look older, and they have such +queer-looking eyes, and jaws, and foreheads. But then," she finished, +with mock cheerfulness, "you can never tell in those silly kodak +pictures." + +Eddie's mother studied the card again, and sighed gently. "I hope," she +said, "that Eddie won't get into bad company." + +After that our postal cards ceased. I wish that there was some way of +telling this story so that the end wouldn't come in the middle. But +there is none. In our town we know the news before the paper comes out, +and we only read it to verify what we have heard. So that long before +the paper came out in the middle of the afternoon we had been horrified +by the news of Eddie Houghton's desertion and suicide. We stopped one +another on Main Street to talk about it, and recall how boyish and +handsome he had looked in his white duck coat, and on that last day just +as the 10:15 pulled out. "It don't seem hardly possible, does it?" we +demanded of each other. + +But when Eddie's mother brought out the letters that had come after our +postal cards had ceased, we understood. And when they brought him home, +and we saw him for the last time, all those of us who had gone to school +with him, and to dances, and sleigh rides, and hayrack parties, and +picnics, and when we saw the look on his face--the look of one who, +walking in a sunny path has stumbled upon something horrible and +unclean--we forgave him his neglect of us, we forgave him desertion, +forgave him the taking of his own life, forgave him the look that he had +brought into his mother's eyes. + +There had never been anything extraordinary about Eddie Houghton. He had +had his faults and virtues, and good and bad sides just like other boys +of his age. He--oh, I am using too many words, when one slang phrase +will express it. Eddie had been just a nice young kid. I think the +worst thing he had ever said was "Damn!" perhaps. If he had sworn, it +was with clean oaths, calculated to relieve the mind and feelings. + +But the men that he shipped with during that year or more--I am sure that +he had never dreamed that such men were. He had never stood on the +curbing outside a recruiting office on South State Street, in the old +levee district, and watched that tragic panorama move by--those nightmare +faces, drink-marred, vice-scarred, ruined. + +I know that he had never seen such faces in all his clean, hard-working +young boy's life, spent in our prosperous little country town. I am +certain that he had never heard such words as came from the lips of his +fellow seamen--great mouth-filling, soul-searing words--words unclean, +nauseating, unspeakable, and yet spoken. + +I don't say that Eddie Houghton had not taken his drink now and then. +There were certain dark rumors in our town to the effect that favored +ones who dropped into Kunz's more often than seemed needful were +privileged to have a thimbleful of something choice in the prescription +room, back of the partition at the rear of the drug store. But that was +the most devilish thing that Eddie had ever done. + +I don't say that all crews are like that one. Perhaps he was unfortunate +in falling in with that one. But it was an Eastern trip, and every port +was a Port Said. Eddie Houghton's thoughts were not these men's +thoughts; his actions were not their actions, his practices were not +their practices. To Eddie Houghton, a Chinese woman in a sampan on the +water front at Shanghai was something picturesque; something about which +to write home to his mother and to Josie. To those other men she was +possible prey. + +Those other men saw that he was different, and they pestered him. They +ill-treated him when they could, and made his life a hellish thing. Men +do those things, and people do not speak of it. + +I don't know all the things that he suffered. But in his mind, day by +day, grew the great, overwhelming desire to get away from it all--from +this horrible life that was such a dreadful mistake. I think that during +the long night watches his mind was filled with thoughts of our decent +little town--of his mother's kitchen, with its Wednesday and Saturday +scent of new-made bread--of the shady front porch, with its purple +clematis--of the smooth front yard which it was his Saturday duty to mow +that it might be trim and sightly for Sunday--of the boys and girls who +used to drop in at the drug store--those clear-eyed, innocently +coquettish, giggling, blushing girls in their middy blouses and white +skirts, their slender arms and throats browned from tennis and boating, +their eyes smiling into his as they sat perched at the fountain after a +hot set of tennis--those slim, clean young boys, sun-browned, laughing, +their talk all of swimming, and boating, and tennis, and girls. + +He did not realize that it was desertion--that thought that grew and grew +in his mind. In it there was nothing of faithlessness to his country. +He was only trying to be true to himself, and to the things that his +mother had taught him. He only knew that he was deadly sick of these +sights of disease, and vice. He only knew that he wanted to get +away--back to his own decent life with the decent people to whom he +belonged. And he went. He went, as a child runs home when it had +tripped and fallen in the mud, not dreaming of wrong-doing or punishment. + +The first few hundred miles on the train were a dream. But finally Eddie +found himself talking to a man--a big, lean, blue-eyed western man, who +regarded Eddie with kindly, puzzled eyes. Eddie found himself telling +his story in a disjointed, breathless sort of way. When he had finished +the man uncrossed his long lean legs, took his pipe out of his mouth, and +sat up. There was something of horror in his eyes as he sat, looking at +Eddie. + +"Why, kid," he said, at last. "You're deserting! You'll get the pen, +don't you know that, if they catch you? Where you going?" + +"Going!" repeated Eddie. "Going! Why, I'm going home, of course." + +"Then I don't see what you're gaining," said the man, "because they'll +sure get you there." + +Eddie sat staring at the man for a dreadful minute. In that minute the +last of his glorious youth, and ambition, and zest of life departed from +him. + +He got off the train at the next town, and the western man offered him +some money, which Eddie declined with all his old-time sweetness of +manner. It was rather a large town, with a great many busy people in it. +Eddie went to a cheap hotel, and took a room, and sat on the edge of the +thin little bed and stared at the carpet. It was a dusty red carpet. In +front of the bureau many feet had worn a hole, so that the bare boards +showed through, with a tuft of ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie +Houghton sat and stared at the worn place with a curiously blank look on +his face. He sat and stared and saw many things. He saw his mother, for +one thing, sitting on the porch with a gingham apron over her light +dress, waiting for him to come home to supper; he saw his own room--a +typical boy's room, with camera pictures and blue prints stuck in the +sides of the dresser mirror, and the boxing gloves on the wall, and his +tennis racquet with one string broken (he had always meant to have that +racquet re-strung) and his track shoes, relics of high school days, flung +in one corner, and his gay-colored school pennants draped to form a +fresco, and the cushion that Josie Morenouse had made for him two years +ago, at Christmas time, and the dainty white bedspread that he, fussed +about because he said it was too sissy for a boy's room--oh, I can't tell +you what he saw as he sat and stared at that worn place in the carpet. +But pretty soon it began to grow dark, and at last he rose, keeping his +fascinated eyes still on the bare spot, walked to the door, opened it, +and backed out queerly, still keeping his eyes on the spot. + +He was back again in fifteen minutes, with a bottle in his hand. He +should have known better than to choose carbolic, being a druggist, but +all men are a little mad at such times. He lay down at the edge of the +thin little bed that was little more than a pallet, and he turned his +face toward the bare spot that could just be seen in the gathering gloom. +And when he raised the bottle to his lips the old-time sweetness of his +smile illumined his face. + +Where the car turns at Eighteenth Street there is a big, glaring +billboard poster, showing a group of stalwart young men in white ducks +lolling on shores, of tropical splendor, with palms waving overhead, and +a glimpse of blue sea in the distance. The wording beneath it runs +something like this: + +"Young men wanted. An unusual opportunity for travel, education and +advancement. Good pay. No expenses." + +When I see that sign I think of Eddie Houghton back home. And when I +think of Eddie Houghton I see red. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Buttered Side Down, by Edna Ferber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUTTERED SIDE DOWN *** + +***** This file should be named 352.txt or 352.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/352/ + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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