The things we are ashamed of are an acid test of our souls. Kedzie
Thropp was constantly improving the quality of her disgusts.
A few months ago she was hardly ashamed of sleeping under a park bench.
And already here she was sliding through the street in a limousine. It
was a shabby limousine, but she was not yet ready to be ashamed of any
limousine. She was proud to have it lent to her, proud to know anybody
who owned such a thing.
What she was ashamed of now was the home it must take her to and the
jobless husband waiting for her there. She was ashamed of herself for
tying up with a husband so soon. She had married in haste and repented
in haste. And there was a lot of leisure for more repentance.
Already her husband was such a handicap that she had refrained from
mentioning his existence to the great moving-picture director who had
opened a new world of glory to her--thrown on a screen, as it were,
a cinemation of her future, where triumphs followed one another with
moving-picture rapidity. He had made a scenario of her and invited her
to dinner.
She smiled a little at the inspiration that had saved her from
confessing that she was Mrs. Gilfoyle. It was neat of her to tell Mr.
Ferriday that she could be addressed “in care of Mrs. Gilfoyle.” In care
of herself! That was just what she was. Who else was so interested in
Kedzie's advancement as Kedzie?
She was a bitterly disappointed Kedzie just now. Ferriday had told her
to go to Lady Powell-Carewe and get herself a bevy of specially designed
gowns at the expense of the firm. There was hardly a woman alive who
would not have rejoiced at such a mission. To Kedzie, who had never had
a gown made by anything higher than a sewing-woman, the privilege was
heavenly. Also, she had never met a Lady with a capital L.
The dual strain might have been the death of her, but she was saved by
the absence of Lady Powell-Carewe. Kedzie went back to the street, sick
with deferred hope. Ferriday's chauffeur was waiting to take her home.
She felt grateful for the thoughtfulness of Ferriday and crept in.
The nearer Kedzie came to her lowly highly flat the less she wanted even
the chauffeur of Mr. Ferriday's limousine to see her enter it. He would
come for her again at night, but the building did not look so bad at
night.
So she tapped on the glass and told him to let her out, please, at the
drug-store, as she had some marketing to do.
“Sure, Miss,” said the chauffeur.
Kedzie liked that “Miss.” It was ever so much prettier than “Mizzuz.”
She bought some postage-stamps at the drug-store and some pork chops
at the butcher's and went down the street and up the stairs to her
life-partner, dog on him!
Gilfoyle was just finishing a poem, and he was the least attractive
thing in the world to her, next to his poem. He was in his sock feet;
his suspenders were down--he would wear the hateful things! his collar
was off, his sleeves up; his detachable cuffs were detached and stuck on
the mantelpiece; his hair was crazy, and he had ink smears on his nose.
“Don't speak to me!” he said, frantically, as he thumped the table with
finger after finger to verify the meter.
“No danger!” said Kedzie, and went into the bedroom to look over her
scant wardrobe and choose the least of its evils to wear.
She shook her head at her poverty and went to the kitchen to cook lunch
for her man. He followed her and read her his poem while she slammed the
oven door of the gas-stove at the exquisitely wrong moments. She broke
his heart by her indifference and he tore up the poem, carefully saving
the pieces.
“A whole day's work and five dollars gone!” he groaned. He was so sulky
that he forgot to ask her why she had come home so early. He assumed
that she had been turned off. She taxed her ingenuity to devise some way
of getting to the dinner with Ferriday without letting Gilfoyle know of
it. At last she made so bold as to tell her husband that she thought she
would drop in at her old boarding-house and stay for dinner if she got
asked.
“I'm sick of my cooking,” she said.
“So am I, darling. Go by all means!” said Gilfoyle, who owed her one for
the poem.
Kedzie was suspicious of his willingness to let her go, but already she
had outgrown jealousy of him. As a matter of fact, he had been invited
to join a few cronies at dinner in a grimy Italian boarding-house. They
gave it a little interest by calling it a “speak-easy,” because the
proprietor sold liquor without a license. Gilfoyle's cronies did not
know of his marriage and he was sure that Kedzie would not fit. She did
not even know the names of the successful, therefore mercenary, writers
and illustrators, much less the names of the unsuccessful, therefore
artistic and sincere.
To Kedzie's delight, Gilfoyle took himself off at the end of a perfect
day of misery. He left her alone with her ambitions. She was in very
grand company. She hated the duds she had to wear, but she solaced
herself with planning what she should buy when money was rolling in.
When Ferriday's car came for her she was standing in the doorway. She
hopped in like the Cinderella that Ferriday had called her. When the car
rolled up to the Knickerbocker Hotel she pretended that it was her own
motor.
Ferriday was standing at the curb, humbly bareheaded. He wore a
dinner-jacket and a soft hat which he tucked under his arm so that he
might clasp her hands in both of his with a costume-play fervor. He had
been an actor once--and he boasted that he had been a very bad one.
Kedzie felt as if he were helping her from a sedan chair. She imagined
her knee skirts lengthened to a brocaded train, and his trousers
gathered up into knee breeches with silver buckles.
Bitterness came back to her as she entered the hotel and her slimpsy
little cloth gown must brush the Parisian skirts of the richly clad
other women.
She pouted in right earnest and it was infinitely becoming to her.
Ferriday was not thinking of the price or cut of her frock. He was
perceiving the flexile figure that informed it, the virginal shoulders
that curved up out of it, the slender, limber throat that aspired from
them and the flower-poise of her head on its white stalk.
“You are perfect” he groaned into her ear, with a flattering agony of
appreciation.
That made everything all right and she did not tremble much even before
the _maitre d'hotel_. She was a trifle alarmed at the covey of waiters
who hastened to their table to pull out the chairs and push them in and
fetch the water and bread and butter and silver and plates. She was glad
to have long gloves to take off slowly while she recovered herself
and took in the gorgeous room full of gorgeous people. Gloves are most
useful coming off and going on.
Kedzie was afraid of the bill of fare with its complex French terms, but
Ferriday took command of the menu.
When he was working Ferriday could wolf a sandwich with the greed of a
busy artist and give orders with a shred of meat in one hand and a mug
of coffee in the other. But when he luxuriated he luxuriated.
Tonight he was tired of life and dejected from a battle with the stingy
backers, who had warned him for the last time once more that he had to
economize. He needed to forget such people and the loathsome enemy of
fancy, economy.
“I want to order something as exquisite as you are,” he said. “Of
course, there could be nothing as exquisite as you are, Miss Adair--you
were curled up on a silver dish with a little apple in your mouth like a
young roast pig. Ever read Lamb on pig?”
Kedzie laughed with glancing tintinnabulations as if one tapped a row of
glasses with a knife.
Ferriday sighed. He saw that she had never heard of Lamb and thought he
was perpetrating an ancient pun. But he did not like bookish women and
he often said that nothing was more becoming to a woman than ignorance.
They should have wisdom, but no learning.
Ferriday was one of those terrifying persons who know, or pretend
to know, curious secrets about restaurants and their resources.
Wine-cellars and the individualities of chefs had no terror for him so
far as she could see. He expressed contempt for apparent commonplaces
that Kedzie had never heard of. He used French words with an accent that
Kedzie supposed to be perfect.
The waiters knew that he did not know much and had merely picked up a
smattering of dining-room lore, but they humored his affectations. And
of all affectations, what is more futile than the printing of American
bills of fare in French?
“Would you prefer the Astrakhan caviar?” he began on Kedzie, “or some
or-durv? The caviar here is fairly trustworthy.”
Kedzie shrugged her perfectly accented shoulders in a cowardly evasion,
and he ordered the first caviar Kedzie had ever eaten. It looked as if
it came from a munitions-factory, but she liked it immensely, especially
as a side-long glance at the bill of fare told her that it cost one
dollar and twenty-five cents per person.
Next he proposed either a potage madrilene or a creme de volaille, Marie
Louise.
Kedzie chose the latter because it was the latter. She mumbled:
“I think a little cremmy vly Marie Louisa would be nice.”
She was amazed to find later how much it tasted like chicken soup.
“We don't want any fish, do we?” Ferriday moaned. “Or do we? They don't
really understand the supreme de sole a la Verdi here, so suppose we
skip to the roast, unless you would risk the aigulette de pompano,
Coquelin. The last time I had a troncon de saumon here I had to send it
back.”
Kedzie said, “Let's skip.”
She shuddered. The word reminded her, as always, of Skip Magruder. She
remembered how he had hung over the table that far-away morning and
recommended ham 'n'eggs. His dirty shirt-sleeves and his grin came back
to her now. The gruesome Banquo reminded her so vividly of her early
guilt of plebeiancy that she shivered. The alert Ferriday noticed it and
called:
“Have that window closed at once. There's an infernal draught here.”
Kedzie was thrilled at his autocratic manner. He scared off the ghost of
Magruder.
Ferriday pondered aloud the bill of fare as if it were the plot of a new
feature film.
“Capon en casserole, milk-fed guinea-hen escoffier, plover en cocotte,
English golden pheasant, partridge--do any of those tiresome things
interest you?”
It was like asking her whether she would have a Gorham tea-set, a Balcom
gown, or a Packard landaulet. She wanted them all.
But her eyes caught the prices. Four dollars for an English pheasant! No
wonder they called it golden. It seemed a shame, though, to stick such a
nice man, after he had already ordered two dollars and a half's worth of
caviar.
She chose the cheapest thing. She was already falling in love with
Ferriday.
The plover was only a dollar. She was not quite sure what kind of animal
it would turn out to be. She had a womanly intuition that it was a fowl
of some breed. She wanted to know. She had come to the stomach school.
“I think I'll take a bit of the plover,” she said.
“Nice girl!” thought Ferriday, who recognized her vicarious economy.
“Plover it is,” he said to the waiter, and added, “tell Pierre it's for
me and he'd better not burn it again.”
The waiter was crushed by Pierre's lapse, especially as the chef's name
was Achille.
Ferriday went on: “With the plover we might have some champignons frais
sous cloche and a salade de laitue avec French dressing, yes? Then a
substantial sweet: a coupe aux marrons or a nesselrode pudding, yes?”
Kedzie wanted to ask for a plain, familiar vanilla ice-cream, but she
knew better. She ordered the nesselrode--and got her ice-cream, after
all. There were chestnuts in it, too--so she was glad she had not
selected the coupe aux marrons.
Ferriday did not take a sweet, but had a cheese instead, after an
anxious debate with the waiter about the health of the Camembert and
the decadence of the Roquefort. When this weighty matter was settled he
returned to Kedzie:
“Now for something to drink. A little sherry and bitters to begin with,
of course; and a--oh, umm, let me see--simple things are best; suppose
we stick to champagne.” He called it “shah pine,” according to Kedzie's
ear, but she hoped he meant shampane. She had always wanted to taste
“wealthy water,” as Gilfoyle called it, but never called for it.
Kedzie was a trifle alarmed when Ferriday said: “I hope you don't like
it sweet. It can't be too dry for me.”
“Me, either,” Kedzie assured him--and made a face implying that she
always took it in the form of a powder.
Ferriday smiled benignly and said to the waiter: “You might bring us een
boo-tay de Bollinger Numero--er--katter--vang--kanz.” He knew that the
French for ninety-five was four-twenties-fifteen, but the waiter could
not understand till he placed his finger on the number with his best
French accent. He saved himself from collapse by a stern post-dictum:
“Remember, it's the vintage of nineteen hundred. If you bring that
loathsome eighteen ninety-three I'll have to crack the bottle over your
head. You wouldn't want that, would you?”
“_Non, m'zoo, oui, monzoo_,” said the German waiter.
“Then we'll have some black coffee and a liqueur--a Curacao, say, or a
green Chartreuse, or a white mint. Which?”
Naturally Kedzie said the white mint, please.
With that Ferriday released the waiter, who hurried away, hoping that
Ferriday's affectations included extravagant tips.
Kedzie gobbled prettily the food before her. Ferriday could tell that
she was anxiously watching and copying his methods of attack. He soon
knew that this was her first real meal _de luxe_, but he did not mind
that. Columbus was not angry at America because it had never seen an
explorer before.
It delighted Ferriday to think that he had discovered Kedzie. He would
say later that he invented her. And she wanted tremendously to be
discovered or invented or anything else, by anybody who could find a
gold-mine in her somewhere and pay her a royalty on her own mineral
wealth.
When her lips met the shell-edge of the champagne-glass and the essence
of all mischief flung its spray against the tip of her cleverly whittled
nose she winced at first. But she went boldly back, and soon the sprites
that rained upward in her glass were sending tiny balloons of hope
through her brain. They soared past her small skull and her braided hair
and the crown of her hat and on up through the ceiling, and none of them
broke--as yet.
Her soul was pleasantly a-simmer now and she could not tell whether the
wine made her exultant or she the wine. But she was sure that she had at
last discovered her life.
And with it all she was dreadfully canny. She was only a little village
girl unused to city ways, and the handsome city stranger was plying her
with wine; but she was none of your stencil figures that blot romance.
Kedzie was thinking over the cold, hard precepts that women acquire
somehow. She was resolving that since she was to be as great as he said
she should be, she must not cheapen herself now.
Many of these little village girls have come to town since time was and
brought with them the level heads of icily wise women who make love a
business and not a folly. Many men are keeping sober mainly nowadays
because it is good business; many women pure for the same reason.
Turkish sultans as fierce as Suleiman the Magnificent have bought
country girls kidnapped by slave-merchants and have bought tyrants in
the bargain. Ferriday the Magnificent was playing with holocaust when he
set a match to Kedzie.
But now she was an attractive little flame and he watched her soul
flicker and gave it fuel. He also gave it a cigarette; at least he
proffered her his silver case, but she shook her head.
“Why not?” he asked. “All the women, old and young, are smoking here.”
She tightened her plump lips and answered, “I don't like 'em; and they
give me the fidgets.”
“You'll do!” he cried, softly, reaching out and clenching her knuckles
in his palm a moment. “You're the wise one! I felt sure that pretty
little face of yours was only a mask for the ugliest and most valuable
thing a woman can possess.”
“What's that?” said Kedzie, hoping he was not going to begin big talk.
“Wisdom,” said Ferriday. “A woman ought to be as wise as the serpent,
but she ought to have the eyes of a dove. Your baby sweetness is worth
a fortune on the screen if you have brains enough to manage it, and I
fancy you have. Here's to you, Miss Anita Adair!”
He drank deep, but she only touched the brim. She saw that he was
drinking too much--he had had several cocktails while he waited for her
to arrive. Kedzie felt that one of the two must keep a clear head. She
found that ice-water was a good antidote for champagne.
When Ferriday sharply ordered the waiter to look to her glass she shook
her head. When he finished the bottle and the waiter put it mouth down
in the ice as an eloquent reminder Ferriday accepted the challenge and
ordered another bottle. He was just thickened of tongue enough to say
“boddle.”
Kedzie spoke, quickly: “Please, no. I must go home. It's later than I
thought, and--”
“And Mrs. Gilfoyle will wonder,” Ferriday laughed. “That's right, my
dear. You've got to keep good hours if you are going to succeethe on
the screen. Early to bed, for you must early-to-rise. _Garcon, garcon,
l'addition, s'il vous_ please.”
While he was paying the bill Kedzie was thinking fleetly of her next
problem. He would want to take her home in his car, and it would be
just her luck to find her husband on the door-step. In any case, she was
afraid that Ferriday would be sentimental and she did not want Ferriday
to be sentimental just yet. And she would not tolerate a sentiment
inspired or influenced by wine. Love from a bottle is the poorest of
compliments.
Already she was a little disappointed in Ferriday. He was a great man,
but he had his fault, and she had found him out. If he were going to be
of use to her she must snub that vinous phase at once.
The cool air outside seemed to gratify Ferriday and he took off his hat
while the carriage-starter whistled up his car. Now Kedzie said:
“Please, Mr. Ferriday, just put me in a taxicab.”
“Nonsense! I'll take you home. I'll certainly take you home.”
“No, please; it's 'way out of your way, and I--I'd rather--really I
would.”
Ferriday stared hard at her as if she were just a trifle blurred. He
frowned; then he smiled.
“Why, bless your soul, if you'd rather I wouldn't oppose you, I
wouldn't--not for worlds. But you sha'n't go home in any old cabby
taxishab; you'll take my wagon and I'll walk. The walk will do me good.”
Kedzie thought it would, too, so she consented with appropriate
reluctance. He lifted her in and closed the door--then leaned in to
laugh:
“Give my love to old Mrs. Gilfoyle. And don't fail to be at the shudio
bright and early. We'll have to make sun while the hay shines, you know.
Good night, Miss Adair!”
“Good night, Mr. Ferriday, and thank you ever so much for the perfectly
lovely evening.”
“It has been l-l-lovely. Goo-ood night!”
The car swept away and made a big turn. She saw Ferriday marching
grandiosely along the street, with his head bared to the cool moonlight.
She settled back and snuggled into the cushions, imagining the car her
very own.
She left her glory behind her as she climbed the long stairs, briskly
preparing her lies and her defensive temper for her husband's wrathful
greeting.
He was not there.