PRICE-TAGS
When Mr. Chadwick Champneys had visualized to himself Milly's niece,
it had always been in Milly's image and likeness--sweet, fair,
brave, merry, gentle, and strong. Milly's niece, of course, would be
companionable. He would only have to put upon her the finishing
touches, so to speak, embellish her natural graces with a finer
social polish. At the very worst, he hadn't dreamed that anybody
belonging to Milly could be like this red-headed Nancy. Perhaps,
though, she would be less objectionable when she was properly clad.
"Drive to the best department store in town," he told the driver,
briefly.
Once in the store he summoned the manager and briefly stated his
needs. The young lady must be furnished with everything she needed,
and as quickly as possible. She needed, it appeared, about
everything. The shrewd young Jew looked her over with his trained
eyes.
"Should you prefer our Miss Smith to proffer aid and advice? Miss
Smith is an expert."
Mr. Champneys reacted almost with terror against Nancy Simms's
probable choice.
"See that the young lady gets the best you have; and make Miss
Smith the final authority," he said, briefly.
At the end of two hours Nancy returned, the two clerks and the
manager accompanying her. The store people were slightly flushed,
Nancy herself sullenly acquiescent. For the first time in her life
she had had the opportunity to buy enough clothes of her own, and
yet she hadn't been allowed to choose what she really wanted. Gently
but inexorably they had rejected the garments Nancy selected,
smoothly insisting that these weren't "just the thing" for her. They
slid her into quiet-colored, plainly cut things that she wouldn't
have looked at if left to her own devices. It took their united
tact, firmness, and diplomacy to steer Nancy over the reefs of what
the manager called hired-girl taste.
Nancy was silent when she appeared before Mr. Champneys in her new
clothes. She thought that if she had been allowed to pick them out
for herself, instead of having been hypnotized--"bulldozed" is what
she called it--into plain old dowdy duds by two shopwomen and a Jew
manager, she'd have given him more for his money.
Mr. Champneys, looking her over critically, admitted that the girl
was at least presentable. From hat to shoes she gave the impression
of being well and carefully dressed. But her aspect breathed
dissatisfaction, her bearing was ungraciousness itself; nor did the
two women clerks, trained to patience, tact, and politeness as they
were, altogether manage to conceal their unfavorable opinion of
her; even the clever, smiling young Jew, used to managing women
shoppers, failed to hide the fact that he was more than glad to get
this one off his hands.
Nancy hadn't taken time to eat her dinner before leaving the Baxter
house, nor had Mr. Champneys had his lunch. They drove to his hotel,
both hungry, and had their first meal together. Nancy hadn't been
trained to linger over meals: one ate as much as one could get, in
as short a space of time as possible. Mr. Champneys was grateful to
a merciful Providence that he had ordered that repast served in his
private sitting-room.
Her hunger quite satisfied, she shoved her plate aside, sighed,
stretched luxuriously, and yawned widely, like the healthy animal
she was.
"What we got to do now? Them women at the store said they'd get the
rest of my things here, along with the travelin'-bags, in a coupla
hours. I got a swell suit-case, didn't I? And oh, them toilet
things! But between now and then, what you want I should do?"
It was then half-after four, and the train they were to take didn't
leave until half-after seven.
"What would you like to do?" he asked.
"Can I go to the movies?"
He thought it an excellent idea. It would give him some idea of the
girl's mental processes; the psychology of the proletariat, he
thought, could be studied to advantage in their reaction to the
movies.
He sat beside her for an unhappy hour while a famous screen
comedian did the things with his feet and his backbone for which his
managers paid him more in one year than the United States pays its
Presidents in ten. At each impossible climax Nancy shrieked with
laughter, the loud, delighted laughter of a pleased child. Her
enthusiasm for the slapstick artist provoked him, but at the same
time that gay laughter tickled his ears pleasantly. There's plenty
of good in a girl who can laugh like that! After the grimacing
genius there followed a short drama of stage mother-love, in which
the angel-child dies strenuously in his little white bed. Nancy
dabbled her eyes, and blew her nose with what her captious companion
thought unnecessary vigor.
"Ain't it movin'?"
"Yes. Moving pictures," was the cold response. And to himself he was
saying, defiantly: "Well, what else could I expect? She's not a whit
worse than the vast majority! She's got the herd-taste. That's
perfectly natural, under the circumstances. When I get her well in
hand, she will be different."
"You don't like funny things, an' you got no feelin' for sad
things," she ruminated, as they left the theater. In silence they
walked back to their hotel.
The bulk of her purchases had been sent from the store, and a huge
parcel awaited her in her room. It enchanted her to go over these
new possessions, to gloat over her new toilet articles, to sniff at
the leather of her traveling-kit. The smell of new leather was
always to linger subconsciously in Nancy's memory; it was the smell
of adventure and of change.
They dined together in Mr. Champney's sitting-room, although she
would have preferred the public dining-room. Mr. Champneys was an
abstemious man, but the girl was frankly greedy with the naïve greed
of one who had been heretofore stinted. She had seldom had what she
really craved, and at best she had never had enough of it. To be
allowed to order what and as much as she pleased, to be served
first, to have her wishes consulted at all, was a new, amazing, and
altogether delightful experience. Everything was brand-new to her.
She had never before traveled in a sleeping-car. It delighted her to
watch the deft porter make up the berths; she decided that the
peculiar etiquette of sleeping-cars required that all travelers,
male and female, should be driven to bed by lordly colored men in
white jackets, and there left in cramped misery with nothing but an
uncertain, rustling curtain between them and the world; this, too,
at an hour when nobody is sleepy. Nancy wondered to see free white
citizens meekly obey their dusky tyrant. She got into her own lower
berth, grateful that she hadn't to climb like a cat into an upper.
She lay there staring, while the train whizzed through the night.
This had been the most momentous day of her life. That morning she
had been the hopeless slavey in the Baxter kitchen, an unpaid drudge
with her hand against every man and every man's hand against her.
She had been bullied and beaten, she had eaten leavings, and worn
cast-offs. Since her mother's death she had known the life of an
uncared-for child, the minimum of care measured against the maximum
of labor squeezed out of it. Until to-day her fate had been the fate
of those who approach the table of Life with unshod feet and
unwashen hands.
And to-night all that was changed. She was here, flying farther and
farther away from all she had known. She wondered if she were not
dreaming it. Panicky at that, she sat up in her berth, pressed the
button that turned on the electric light, slipped her new kimono
about her, and looked long and earnestly at the new clothes within
reach of her hand. There they were, real to her touch; there was her
fine new hand-bag; and most real of all was the feel of the money in
it. Nancy fingered the money, thoughtfully smoothing out the bills.
"As soon as we are settled, you will have your allowance, and I
shall of course provide you with a check-book," Mr. Champneys had
told her. "In the meanwhile you will naturally want money for such
little things as you may need." And he had given her twenty
five-dollar bills. She had received the money dumbly. This had been
the crowning miracle--for she had never in the whole course of her
life had so much as one five-dollar bill to do as she pleased with.
She sat looking at the money, concrete proof of the reality of the
change that had befallen her, and wondered, and wondered. With a
sigh of content she thrust the hand-bag under her pillow, folded
her kimono at the foot of her berth, switched out the light, and
presently fell asleep.
In his berth opposite hers, Mr. Chadwick Champneys, more sleepless
even than Nancy, was tabulating his estimate of the young woman he
had acquired. It ran something like this:
Looks: bad; _may_ improve.
Manners: worse; _must_ improve. Particularly in speech.
Appetite: that of the seventeen-year locust. Must be restrained, to
prevent an early death.
Character in general: suspend judgment until further study.
General summary of personal appearance: Nice teeth on which a little
dentistry will work wonders. Not a bad figure, but doesn't know how
to carry herself; has a villainous fashion of slouching, with her
hands on her hips. Plenty of hair, but of terrifying redness; sullen
expression of the eyes; fiendish profusion of freckles: may have to
be skinned. Excellent nose. Speaks with appalling frankness at times
but is not talkative.
What must be done for her? _Everything_.
He groaned, turned over, and after a while managed to sleep.
Sufficient to the day was the red hair thereof; he couldn't afford
to lie awake worrying about to-morrow.
He had long since decided upon New York as a residence until all his
plans had matured. One had greater freedom to act, and far more
privacy, in so large a city. They would stay at some quiet hotel
until after the marriage; then he and Nancy would occupy the house
he had recently purchased, in the West Seventies. It was a fine old
house with a glimpse of near-by Central Park for an outlook, and
what he had paid for it would have purchased half Riverton. He
wanted its large, high-ceilinged rooms to be furnished as the old
house in Carolina had been furnished, this being his standard of all
that was desirable. He wished for Peter's wife such a background as
Peter's forebears had known; and Peter's wife must be trained to
appreciate and to fit into it, that's all!
The New York hotel, with its deft and deferential servants who
seemed to anticipate her wishes, its luxury, its music, its
shifting, splendidly dressed patrons, its light and glitter, filled
Nancy with the same wonder that had fallen upon Aladdin when he
found himself in the magic cave with all its treasures gleaming
before his astounded, ignorant young eyes.
She hadn't thought the whole world contained so many people as she
saw in New York in one day. Fifth Avenue amazed and absorbed more
than it delighted her. The expressionless expressions of the women,
their hand-made faces, their smart shoes, the way they wore their
hair, the way they wore their clothes; the men's air of being well
dressed, of having money to spend, of appearing importantly busy at
any cost; a certain pretentiousness, as if everything were shown at
once and there were no reserve of power, nothing held in disciplined
abeyance, interested her profoundly. She had a native shrewdness.
"They're just like the same kind of folks back home, but there's
more of 'em here," she decided.
The huge policemen she saw at every turn, lordly and massive
monoliths rising superbly above lesser humanity, filled her with the
deepest respect and admiration. The mere policemen in her home town
were to these magnificent beings as daubs to Titians, as pigmies to
Titans. If in those first days the girl had been called upon to do
the seven bendings and the nine knockings before the one New York
institution which impressed her most profoundly, she undoubtedly
would have singled out one of those mastodons a-bossing everything
and everybody, with a prize-ham paw.
She was cold to the Woolworth Building, as indifferent to the
Sherman monument as Mr. Chadwick Champneys was acridly averse to it,
and not at all interested in the Public Library. The Museum of
Natural History failed to win any applause from her; the
Metropolitan Museum bored her interminably, there was so much of it.
Most of the antiquities she thought so much junk, and the Egyptian
and Assyrian remains were so obviously the plunder of old graveyards
that she couldn't for the life of her understand why anybody should
wish to keep them above ground.
Mr. Champneys explained, patiently. He wished, by way of aiding and
abetting the education he had in view for her, to arouse her
interest in these remains of a lost and vanished world.
She stood by the glass case that contains the old brown mummied
priest with his shaven skull, his long, narrow feet, his flattened
nose and fleshless hands, and the mark of the embalmer's stone knife
still visible upon his poor old empty stomach. And she didn't like
him at all. There was something grisly and repellent to her in the
idea that living people should make of this poor old dead man a
spectacle for idle curiosity.
"There was a feller in our town used to keep stuffed snakes an'
monkeys an' birds, an' dried grasshoppers an' bugs an' things like
that in glass cases; but I never dreamed in all my born life that
anybody'd want to keep dried people," she commented disgustedly. "I
don't see no good in it: it's sickenin'." She turned her back upon
mummied Egypt with a gesture of aversion. "For Gawdsake let's go see
somethin' alive!"
He looked at her a bit helplessly. Plainly, this young person's
education wasn't to be tackled off-hand! Agreeably to her wishes he
took her to a certain famous shop filled at that hour with
fashionable women wonderfully groomed and gowned. Here, seated at a
small table, lingering over her ice-cream, Nancy was all observant
eyes and ears. Not being a woman, however, Mr. Champneys was not
aware that her proper education was distinctly under way.
A day or two later he took her to the Bronx Zoo. Here he caught a
glimpse of Nancy Simms that made him prick up his ears and pull his
mustache, thoughtfully. He had discovered how appallingly ignorant
she was, how untrained, how undisciplined. To-day he saw how really
young she was. She ran from cage to cage. Her laughter made the
corners of his mouth turn up sympathetically.
There was something pathetic in her eager enjoyment, something so
fresh and unspoiled in that laughter of hers that one felt drawn to
her. When she forgot to narrow her eyes, or to furrow her forehead,
or to screw up her mouth, she was almost attractive, despite her
freckles! Her eyes, of an agaty gray-green, were transparently
honest. She had brushed the untidy mop of red hair, parted it in the
middle, and wore it in a thick bright plait, tied with a black
ribbon. She wore a simple middy blouse and a well-made blue skirt.
Altogether, she looked more like a normal young girl than he had yet
seen her.
The Zoo enchanted her. She hurried from house to house. Once, she
told him, when she was a little kid, a traveling-man had taken her
to a circus, because he was sorry for her. That was the happiest day
she had ever spent; it stood out bright and golden in her memory.
There had been a steam-piano hoo-hooing "Wait till the clouds roll
by, Jenny." Wasn't a steam-piano perfectly grand? She liked it
better than anything she'd ever heard. She'd long ago made up her
mind that if she was ever really rich and had a place of her own,
she'd have a big circus steam-piano out in the barn, and she'd play
it on Sundays and holidays--_hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo-hoo_--like
that, you know.
And to-day reminded her of that long-ago circus day, with even more
animals to look at! She had never seen as many different animals as
she wanted to see, until now. She admitted that she sort of loved
wild things--she even liked the wild smell of 'em. There was
something in here--she touched her breast lightly--that felt kin to
them.
There was not the usual horde of visitors, that day being a pay-day.
A bearded man with a crutch was showing one or two visitors around,
and at a word from him a keeper unlocked a cage door, to allow a
young chimpanzee to leap into his arms. It hugged him, exhibiting
extravagant affection; it thrust out its absurd muzzle to kiss his
cheek, and patted him with its small, leathery, unpleasantly human
hands.
"It's just like any other baby," said the keeper, petting it.
"I sure hope it ain't like any _I_'ll ever have," said Nancy, so
naïvely that the man with the crutch laughed. He looked at her
keenly.
"Go over and see the baby lion," he suggested; and he added,
smiling, "It's got red hair."
"It can afford to have red hair, so long as it's a lion," said
Nancy, sturdily; and she added, reflectively: "I'd any day rather
have me a lion-child with red hair, than a monkey-child with any
kind of hair."
Somehow that blunt comment pleased Mr. Champneys. When he took his
charge back to their hotel that evening, it was with something like
a glimmering of real hope in his heart.
The next day, as he joined her at lunch, he said casually:
"I had a message from my nephew this morning. He will be here in a
few days."
She turned pale; the hand that held her fork began to tremble.
"Is it--soon?" she asked, almost unaudibly.
"The sooner the better. I think we'd better have it here, in our
sitting-room, say at noon on Wednesday. Don't be seared," he added,
kindly. "All you have to do is just to stand still and say, 'I
will,' at the right moment."
"An'--an' then?"
"My nephew's boat sails at about two. He drives to the pier. You and
I go to our apartment, until our own house is ready for us. You see
how nicely it's all arranged."
"I ain't--I mean, I don't have to see him nor talk to him before, do
I?" She looked panic-stricken. "Because I won't! I can't! There's
some things I just can't stummick, an' meetin' that feller before
the very last minute I got to do it, is one of 'em."
"Of course, of course! You sha'n't meet him until the very last
minute. Though he's a mighty nice chap, my nephew Peter is--a mighty
nice chap."
"He must be! We're both of us a mighty nice pair, ain't we? Him
goin' one way an' me goin', another way, all by our lonesomes!"
"The arrangement does not suit you?" he inquired politely.
"Oh, it suits me all right," she said, after a moment. "I said I'd
do what I was told, an' I'll do it--I ain't the sort backs down. But
I ain't none too anxious to get any better acquainted with this
feller than what I am right now. I ain't stuck on men, noways."
"You are only sixteen, my dear," he reminded her.
"Women know as much about men when they're sixteen as they do when
they're sixty," said she, coldly. "There ain't but one thing to
believe about 'em--an' that is, you best not believe any of 'em."
"I hope," said he, stiffly, "that you have no just cause to
disbelieve me, Nancy? Have I been unkind to you?"
"It ain't _me_ you're either kind or yet unkind to," she told him.
"It's Aunt Milly's niece: you're a little crazy on that head, I
guess. It's Aunt Milly's niece you aim to marry to that nephew of
yours. If I was just me myself without bein' any kin to her, you
wouldn't wipe your old shoes on me." She gave him a clear, level
look. "Let's don't have any lies about this thing," she begged. "I'm
a poor hand for lies. I know, and I want you should know I know, and
deal with me honest."
She surprised him. Her next question surprised him even more.
"What about my weddin'-dress?" she demanded. "I got nothin' fittin'
to be married in."
"I should think a plain, tailored suit--" he began.
"Then you got another think comin' to you," she said, in a hard
voice. "I got nothin' to do with pickin' out the groom: you fixed
that to suit yourself. But I don't let no man alive pick out my
dress. I want a weddin'-dress. I want one I want myself. I want it
should be white satin' an' real bride-like. I've saw pictures of
brides, an' I know what's due 'em. I ain't goin' to resemble just me
myself, standin' up to be married in a coat-suit you get some
floor-walker to pick out for me. White satin or nothin'. An' a veil
and white satin slippers."
He looked at her helplessly. "White satin, my dear? And a veil?"
"Yes, sir. An' a shower bokay," said she, firmly. "I got to insist
on the shower bokay. If I got to be a bride I'll be my kind of bride
and not yours."
"My dear child, of course, of course. You shall choose your own
frock," said he, hastily. "Only--under the circumstances, I can't
help thinking that something plain, something quite plain and
simple, would be more in keeping."
"With me? 'T wouldn't, neither. It'd be something fierce, an' I
won't stand for it. I don't mind bein' buried in somethin' plain,
but I won't get married in it. Ain't it hard enough as it is,
without me havin' to feel more horrid than what I do already? I want
something to make me feel better about it, and there ain't anything
can do that except it's a dress I want myself."
Mr. Champneys capitulated, horse and foot.
"We will go to some good shop immediately after lunch, and you shall
choose your own wedding-dress," he promised, resignedly, marveling
at the psychology of women.
It was a very fine forenoon, with a hint of coming autumn in the
air. Even an imminent bridegroom couldn't altogether dampen the
delight of whizzing through those marvelous streets in a taxi. Then
came the even more marvelous world of the department store, which,
"by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches, in all sorts of
things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich
apparel," put one in mind of the great fairs of Tyre when Tyre was a
prince of the sea, as set forth in the Twenty-seventh Chapter of
Ezekiel.
Nancy would have been tempted to marry Bluebeard himself for the
sake of some of the "rich apparel" that obliging saleswomen were
setting forth for her inspection. Getting married began to assume a
rosier aspect, due probably to the reflection of the filmy and lacy
miracles that she might have for the mere choosing. She would almost
have been willing to be hanged, let alone married, in a pink-silk
combination.
The saleswomen scented mystery and romance here. The girl was no
beauty, but then, she was astonishingly young; and the old gentleman
was very distinguished-looking--quite a personage. They thought at
first that he was the prospective bridegroom; learning that he
wasn't deepened the mystery but didn't destroy the romance.
Americans are all but hysterically sentimental. Sentimentality is a
national disease, which rages nowhere more virulently than among
women clerks. Would they rush through the necessary alterations, set
an entire force to work overtime, if necessary, in order to have
that girl's wedding-dress at her hotel on time? _Wouldn't_ they,
though! And they did. Gown, gloves, veil, shoes, fan, everything;
all done up with the most exquisite care in reams of soft tissue
paper.
She was to be married on the noon of Wednesday. On Tuesday night
Nancy locked her door, opened her boxes, and spread her wedding
finery on her bed. The dress was a magnificent one, as magnificent a
dress as a great store can turn out; its lines had been designed by
a justly famous designer. There was a slip, with as much lace as
could be put upon one garment; such white satin slippers as she had
never hoped to wear; and the texture of the silk stockings almost
made her shout for joy. Achilles was vulnerable in the heel: fly,
O man, from the woman who is indifferent to the lure of a silk
stocking!
Nancy got into her kimono and turned on the hot water in her bath.
At Baxters' there had never been enough hot water with which to wash
the dishes, not to mention Nancy herself. Here there was enough to
scald all the dishes--and the people--on earth, it seemed to her.
She could hardly get used to the delight and the luxury of all the
hot water and scented soap and clean towels she wanted, in a
bath-room all to herself. Think of not having to wait one's turn, a
very limited turn at that, in a spotted tin tub set in a
five-by-seven hole in the wall, with an unshaded gas-jet sizzling
about a foot above one's head! The shower-bath was to her an
adventure--like running out in the rain, when one was a child. She
couldn't get into the tub, and slide down into the warm, scented
water, without a squeal of pleasure.
She skipped back to her bedroom, red as a boiled lobster, a rope of
damp red hair hanging down her back, sat down on the floor, and drew
on those silk stockings, and loved them from a full heart. She
wiggled her toes ecstatically.
"O Lord!" sighed Nancy, fervently, "I wish You'd fix it so's folks
could walk on their hands for a change! My feet are so much prettier
than my face!"
Slipping on the satin slippers, she teetered over and reverently
touched the satin frock. All these glories for her, Nancy Simms, who
had worn Mrs. Baxter's wretched old clothes cut down for her!
She was afraid to refold the dress, almost afraid to touch it, lest
she rumple it. It looked so shining, so lustrous, so fairy-like and
glorious and almost impossible, glistening there on her bed!
Carefully she smoothed a fold, slightly awry. Reverently she placed
the thin tulle veil beside it, as well as the rest of her Cinderella
finery, including the satin slippers and the fine silk stockings
which her soul loved.
She took the two pillows off her bed, secured two huge bath-towels
from her bath-room by way of a mattress and a coverlet; and with a
last passionate glance at the splendors of her wedding-frock, and
never a thought for the unknown groom because of whom she was to don
it, the bride switched off her light, curled herself up like a cat,
and in five minutes was sound asleep on the floor.