The change which a marcelled pompadour, kimona sleeves, a peach-basket
hat, and a hobble skirt wrought in the appearance of Mrs. Andy P. Symes,
nee Kunkel, was a source of amazement to Crowheart. Her apologetic
diffidence was now replaced by an air of complacency arising from the
fact that since her return she began to regard herself as a travelled
lady who had seen much of life. The occasions upon which she had sat
blushing and stammering in the presence of her husband's friends were
fast fading from mind in the agreeable experience of finding herself
treated with deference by those who formerly had seemed rather to
tolerate than desire her society. Until her return to Crowheart she had
not in the least realized what a difference her marriage was to make in
her life.
In that other environment she had felt like a servant girl taken
red-handed and heavy-footed from the kitchen and suddenly placed in the
drawing-room upon terms of equality with her mistress and her
mistresses's friends, but she had profited by her opportunities and now
brought back with her something of the air and manner of speech and
dress of those who had embarrassed her. While Crowheart laughed a little
behind her back it was nevertheless impressed by the mild affectations.
It is no exaggeration to say that Crowheart's eyes protruded when Mrs.
Symes returned the neighborly visits of the ladies who had "just run in
to see how she was gettin' on," by a series of formal afternoon calls.
No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs.
Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she
picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots
still encumbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr.
and Mrs. Alva Jackson.
There was a pair of eyes staring unabashed at every front window in the
neighborhood when Mrs. Symes stood on Mrs. Jackson's "stoop" and removed
a piece of baling wire from the lace frill of her petticoat before she
wrapped her handkerchief around her hand to protect her white kid
knuckles and knocked with lady-like gentleness upon Mrs. Jackson's door.
Mrs. Jackson, who had been peering through the foliage of a potted
geranium on the window-sill, was pinning frantically at her scolding
locks, but retained sufficient presence of mind to let a proper length
of time elapse before opening the door. When she did, it was with an
elaborate bow from the waistline and a surprised--
"Why, how do you do, Mis' Symes!"
Mrs. Symes smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson's
hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid
gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before
bouncing back and inquiring--
"Won't you come in, Mis' Symes?"
"Thanks." Mrs. Symes took a pinch of the front breadth of her skirt
between her thumb and finger and stepped daintily over the door-sill.
"Set down," urged Mrs. Jackson making a dash at a blue plush
rocking-chair which she rolled into the centre of the room with great
energy.
When the chair tipped and sent Mrs. Symes's feet into the air Mrs.
Jackson's burst of laughter was heard distinctly by Mrs. Tutts across
the street.
"Trash!" exclaimed that person in unfathomable contempt.
Mrs. Jackson had two missing front teeth which she had lost upon an
occasion to which she no longer referred, also a voice strained and
husky from the many midnight choruses in which she had joined before she
sold her goodwill and fixtures. She now rested her outspread fingers
upon each knee and wildly ransacked her brain for something light and
airy in the way of conversation.
Mrs. Symes, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the plush rocking-chair
with her long, flat feet pressed tightly together, tweaked at the only
veil in Crowheart and cleared her throat with subdued and lady-like
restraint before she inquired--
"Isn't it a lovely day?"
"Oh, lovely!" Mrs. Jackson answered with husky vivacity. "Perfeckly
lovely!"
Another silence followed and something of Mrs. Jackson's mental state
could be read in her dilated pupils and excited, restless eyes. Finally
she said in a desperate voice--
"It's a grand climate anyhow."
"If it wasn't for the wind; it's one drawback."
Another burst of laughter from Mrs. Jackson who covered her mouth with
her hand after the manner of those who have been unfortunate in the
matter of front teeth.
"Cats!" hissed Mrs. Tutts across the street. "I'll bet they are laffin'
at me!"
"We had charming weather while we were gone," continued Mrs. Symes
easily. The word was new to her vocabulary and its elegance did not
escape Mrs. Jackson.
"That's good."
"The change was so beneficial to me. One so soon exhausts a small town,
don't you think so, Mrs. Jackson?"
Mrs. Jackson could not truthfully say that she ever had felt that she
had exhausted Crowheart, but she agreed weakly--
"Uh-huh."
"I had so many new and delightful experiences, too." Mrs. Symes smiled a
sweetly reminiscent smile.
"You musta had."
"Going out in the train we had cantelope with cracked ice in it. You
must try it sometimes, Mrs. Jackson--it's delicious."
"I can't say when I've et a cantelope but, Oh Lord, I has a hankerin'
for eggs! I tell Jackson the next time he ships he's gotta take me
along, for I want to git out where I can git my mitt on a pair of eggs."
"We became quite surfeited with eggs, Phidias and I," observed Mrs.
Symes with an air of ennui.
Mrs. Jackson blinked.
"I can't go 'em onless they're plumb fresh," she replied non-committally.
"I've had _such_ a pleasant call." Mrs. Symes rose.
"Run in agin." Mrs. Jackson's eyes were glued upon the leather card-case
from which Mrs. Symes was endeavoring to extract a card with fingers
which she was unable to bend.
"Thanks. I've been so busy getting settled and all but now I mean to
keep a servant and shall have more time."
Mrs. Jackson had read of ladies who kept servants but never had hoped to
know one.
"Where you goin' to git--it? From Omyhaw or K. C.?"
"Grandmother has promised to come to me," said Mrs. Symes languidly.
Mrs. Jackson's jaw dropped.
"Gramma Kunkel ain't a servant, is she? she's 'help.'"
"'Help' are servants," explained Mrs. Symes with gentle patience as she
laid her printed visiting card upon the centre table.
"Gosh! that strikes me funny." Mrs. Jackson was natural at last.
"Not at all," replied Mrs. Symes with hauteur. "She must work, so why
not for me? She's strong and very, very capable."
"Oh, she's capable all right, but," persisted Mrs. Jackson unconvinced,
"it strikes me funny. Say, is Essie Tisdale a servant, too?"
Mrs. Symes smiled ever so slightly as she fumbled with her visiting card
and laid it in a more conspicuous place.
"Certainly."
"Was that why she wasn't ast to the banquet?"
Again Mrs. Symes smiled the slow, deprecating smile which she was
assiduously cultivating.
"Society must draw the line somewhere, Mrs. Jackson."
Mrs. Jackson gulped with a clicking sound, and at the door shook hands
with Mrs. Symes, wearing the dazed expression of one who has bumped his
head on a shelf corner. Through the potted geranium she watched Mrs.
Symes picking her way across another vacant lot to the dwelling of the
Sylvanus Starr's.
Mrs. Abe Tutts with her blue flannel yachting cap set at an aggressive
angle over one eye paddled across the street and was upon Mrs. Jackson
before that person was aware of her presence.
"Has that guttersnipe gone?" A quite superfluous question, as Mrs.
Jackson was well aware.
"Of who are you speakin'?" inquired Mrs. Jackson coldly.
"Who would I be speakin' of but Gus Kunkel?" demanded Mrs. Tutts
belligerently.
"Look here, Mis' Tutts, I don't want to have no words with you, but----"
"What's that?" interrupted Mrs. Tutts eyeing the visiting card which
Mrs. Jackson had been studying intently. "Is she leavin' tickets for
somethin'?"
"Oh, no," replied. Mrs. Jackson in a blase tone, "this is merely her
callin' card."
"Callin' card! You was to home, wasn't you?"
"It's the new style to leave your callin' card whether they're to home
or not," explained Mrs. Jackson, hazarding a guess.
Mrs. Jackson's air of familiarity with social mysteries was most
exasperating to Mrs. Tutts.
"What's the sense of that? Lemme see it."
Mrs. Tutts read laboriously and with unmitigated scorn:
MRS. ANDREW PHIDIAS SYMES
At Home
Thursday 2-4
She sank cautiously into the blue rocking-chair and removed a hatpin
which skewered her yachting cap to a knob of hair.
"That beats _me_! 'Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes!'" Mrs. Tutts saw no reason
to slight the letter p and pronounced it distinctly. "At home Thursdays
between two and four! What of it? Ain't we all generally home Thursdays
between two and four?"
"Gussie has improved wonderful," replied Mrs. Jackson pacifically.
"_Improved!_ If you call goin' around passin' of them up that she's
knowed well 'improved' why then she has improved wonderful. Snip!"
"I don't think she really aimed to pass you up."
"I wasn't thinkin' of myself," replied Mrs. Tutts hotly, "I was thinking
of Essie Tisdale. I hope Mis' Symes don't come around to call on me--I'm
kind of perticular who I entertain."
Mrs. Jackson's hard blue eyes began to shine, but Mrs. Jackson had been
something of a warrior herself in her day and knew a warrior when she
saw one. She had no desire to engage in a hand to hand conflict with
Mrs. Tutts, whose fierceness she was well aware was more than surface
deep, and she read in that person's alert pose a disconcerting readiness
for action. It was a critical moment, one which required tact, for a
single injudicious word would precipitate a fray of which Mrs. Jackson
could not be altogether sure of the result. Besides, poised as she was
like a winged Mercury on the threshold of Society, she could not afford
any low scene with Mrs. Tutts. Conquering her resentment, Mrs. Jackson
said conciliatingly--
"Yes, of course, now we 're married it's different--we _have_ to be
perticular who we entertain. As Mis' Symes says--'Society must draw the
line somewhere!'"
Mrs. Tutts searched her face in quick suspicion.
"Who'd she say it about?"
"Promise me that this won't go no further--hope to die?--but to tell the
truth we was speakin' of Essie Tisdale."
Mrs. Tutts looked mystified.
"What's she done?"
In unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes, Mrs. Jackson curled her little
finger and smiled a slow, deprecating smile--
"You see she works _out_--she's really a servant."
Mrs. Tutts nodded in entire comprehension.
"I know; back East in Dakoty we always looked down on them more or less
as was out'n out hired girls. But out here I've aimed to treat everybody
the same."
"I'll say that for you, Mis' Tutts," declared Mrs. Jackson generously,
"you've never showed no diffrunce to nobody."
"I'm glad you think so," said Mrs. Tutts modestly, "and I don't mean to
pass Essie Tisdale up altogether."
"Ner me," declared Mrs. Jackson, "she's a perfeckly good girl so far as
I know."
"Where do you suppose Mis' Symes got them cards printed?" inquired Mrs.
Tutts. "I gotta git Tutts to git to work and git me some."
"Over to the _Courier_ office I should think," Mrs. Jackson added. "It's
lucky I got some in the house since they've started in usin' em."
There was a moment's silence in which Mrs. Tutts eyed Mrs. Jackson with
unfriendly eyes. It seemed very plain to her that her neighbor was
trying to "put it over her." The temptation against which she struggled
was too strong and she inquired pointedly while she discreetly arose to
go--
"Business cards, Mis' Jackson--some you had left over?"
Diplomacy was scattered to the four winds.
"No; not business cards, Mis' Tutts! Callin' cards. I'll show you one
since I've no notion you ever saw one back there in that beer garden
where you cracked your voice singin'!"
Mrs. Tutts put on her yachting cap and pulling it down on her head until
her hair was well covered, advanced menacingly.
"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson," she said with ominous calm.
Mrs. Jackson retreated until the marble-topped centre table formed a
protecting barrier.
"Don't you start no rough-house here, Mis' Tutts."
Mrs. Tutts continued to advance and her lips had contracted as though an
invisible gathering string had been jerked violently.
"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson." Unwavering purpose was in her
voice.
"I'll have the law on you if you begin a ruckus here." Mrs. Jackson
moved to the opposite side of the table.
"The law's nothin' to me." Mrs. Tutts went around the table.
"I haven't forgot I'm a lady!" Mrs. Jackson quickened her gait.
"Everybody else has." Mrs. Tutts also accelerated her pace.
"Don't you dast lay hands on me!" Mrs. Jackson broke into a trot.
"Not if I can stomp on you," declared Mrs. Tutts as the back fulness of
Mrs. Jackson's skirt slipped through her fingers.
"What's the use of this? I don't want to fight, Mis' Tutts." Mrs.
Jackson was galloping and slightly dizzy.
"You will onct you git into it," encouraged Mrs. Tutts, grimly measuring
the distance between them with her eye.
"You ought to have your brains beat out for this!" On the thirteenth lap
around the table Mrs. Jackson was panting audibly.
"Couldn't reach yours th'out cuttin' your feet off!" responded Mrs.
Tutts, in whose eyes gleamed what sporting writers describe as "the joy
of battle."
The strength of the hunted hostess was waning visibly.
"I've got heart trouble, Mis' Tutts," she gasped in desperation, "and
I'm liable to drop dead any jump!"
"No such luck." Mrs. Tutts made a pass at her across the table.
"This is perfeckly ridic'lous; do you at all realize what you're doin'?"
"I won't," Mrs. Tutts spoke with full knowledge of the deadly insult; "I
won't until I git a few handfuls of your _red_ hair!"
Mrs. Jackson stopped in her tracks and fear fell from her. Her roving
eye searched the room for a weapon and her glance fell upon the potted
geranium. Mrs. Tutts already had possessed herself of the scissors.
"My hair may be red, Mis' Tutts," her shrill voice whistled through the
space left by her missing teeth, as she stood with the geranium poised
aloft, "but it's _my own_!"
Mrs. Tutts staggered under the crash of pottery and the thud of packed
dirt upon her head. She sank to the floor, but rose again, dazed and
blinking, her warlike spirit temporarily crushed.
"There's the door, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson drew herself up with regal
hauteur and pointed. "Now get the hell out of here!"
X