THE HUMAN FLY
GENERAL PRICE was vastly amused over the account of Dee's sale of the
coffin to the amiable Dick. Miss Maria was frankly shocked, and Miss
Wilcox amazed and a little scornful.
"I never cared for slumming," she announced that night when we had
retired to the girls' wing.
"But helping Annie Pore keep store is not slumming," said Dee, the
dimple in her chin deepening.
Dee Tucker had a dimple in her chin just like her father. When father
and daughter got ready for a fight, those dimples always deepened.
"Most kind of you, I am sure, although that sort of adventure never
appealed to me. I have taught in the mission school in New York's East
Side, but when the class is over I always leave. I can't bear to mix
with the lower classes. It is all right to help them but not by
mixing."
"But you don't understand,--Annie Pore is one of our very best friends.
She is not the lower classes. She is better born than any of us and
prettier and better bred and more accomplished----"
"Ah, indeed! I should like to behold this paragon."
"Well, you shall behold her all right! She is going to join us here in a
day or so."
Jessie Wilcox looked very much astonished and quite haughty. She could
not understand the Prices asking such a person to meet her. The daughter
of a country storekeeper was hardly one whom she cared to know socially.
Dee had gone about it the wrong way to make the spoiled beauty look with
favor on the little English girl:--prettier, better born, better bred,
indeed! As for accomplishments: what accomplishments could a dowdy
little country girl have that she had not?
The Tuckers and Jessie Wilcox were not hitting it off very well in the
great bedroom which they shared. Dum had declared she would not move
the fluffy finery which was spread out on her bed and she stuck to her
word.
"What are you going to do with these duds?" she asked rather brusquely.
"Oh, you just put them back in my trunk," drawled the spoiled roommate.
"Humph! You had better ring for your maid. I'm not much on doing valet
work."
With that she caught hold of the four corners of the bedspread and with
a yank deposited the whole thing adroitly on the floor, butter side up.
Dee told me afterwards that Jessie's expression was one of complete
astonishment. She was not used to being treated like the common herd.
Much Dum cared! She got into the great four-posted bed with perfect
unconcern, while Dee tactfully helped the pouting Jessie to hang up her
many frocks.
"She had better be glad I didn't go to bed on them," stormed the
unrepentant Dum when she told me about it. "As for Dee: I was disgusted
with her for being so mealy-mouthed. Catch me hanging up anybody's
clothes! I bet you one thing,--I bet you she keeps her fripperies off
my bed after this."
I was in a way sorry for Jessie. I know it must be hard to be a spoiled
darling turned loose with the Tucker twins. They were always perfectly
square and fair in all their dealings, but they demanded squareness and
fairness in others. Jessie was evidently accustomed to being waited on
and admired, and the Tuckers refused to do either of these things
necessary for the happiness of their roommate. She had always chosen her
friends with a view to setting off her own charms, girls who were
homely, less vivacious, duller. It did not suit her at all to be
outshone in any way. She was certainly the prettiest girl in the
house-party, that is, before Annie arrived, but she was not the most
attractive. There never were more delightful girls in all the world than
the Tucker twins, witty, charming, vivacious, and very handsome. I could
see their development in the two years I had known them and realized
that they were growing to be very lovely women.
Mary Flannagan was nobody's pretty girl but she had something better
than beauty, at least something that proves a better asset in life:
extreme good nature and a sense of humor that embraced the whole
universe. She had humor enough to see a joke on herself and take it.
That, to me, is the quintessence of humor. Wherever Mary was there also
were laughter and gaiety. She had a heart as big as all Ireland, from
which country she had inherited her wit as well as her name.
Mary was not quite so bunchy as she had been. Two years had stretched
her out a bit, but she would always be something of a rolypoly. She was
as active as a cat, and so determined was she to end up as a character
movie actress she never stopped her limbering-up exercises. After I
would get in bed at night she would begin. She would turn somersaults,
stand on her head, walk on her hands, do cart-wheels, bend the crab,
fall on the floor at full length and do a hundred other wonderful
stunts.
"I am so plain I'll have to go in for slap-stick comedy and maybe work
up to the legit., but go in I will. Why, Page, there is oodlums of
money in movies and think of the life!"
"I can see you, Mary, as a side partner to Douglas Fairbanks. Can you
climb up a wall like a fly?" I laughed.
"No-o, not yet but soon! I can't get much practice in wall scaling. I am
dying to try this wall outside our window. It is covered with ivy and
would be easy as dirt, I know," and she poked her head out the window,
gazing longingly at the tempting perpendicularity of the wall beneath.
Mr. Thomas Hawkins, alias Shorty, thought Mary was just about the best
chum a fellow could have, and great was his joy when Fate landed him at
the same country house with the inimitable Mary. Shorty, too, had made
out to grow a bit since first we saw him make the great play in the
football game at Hill Top. He was a very engaging lad with his tousled
mane, rosy cheeks and clear boy's eyes.
"Is Shorty going to get into the movies, too?" I teased.
"No,--navy!"
"Oh, how splendid! I didn't know he had decided."
"Yes! He has talked to me a lot about it," said Mary quite soberly.
"What do you think about it?"
"Me? Why, I think our navy is going to have to be enlarged and I can't
think of anybody better suited to it than Shorty. He is a descendant of
Sir John Hawkins, you know, and that means seafaring blood in his
veins."
How little did Mary and I think, as we lay in that great four-post bed
and wisely discussed preparedness, that our country would really be at
war in not so very many months, and that Shorty's entering the navy
would be a very serious matter to all of his friends, if not to him.
No thoughts of war were disturbing us. The great war was going on, but
then we were used to that and we were too young and thoughtless for it
to bother us. It was across the water and no one we knew personally was
implicated. Maxton was too peaceful a spot for one to realize that such
a thing as bloodshed could go on anywhere in all the world. Our great
room with its two huge beds and massive wardrobe, bureau and washstand,
had once sheltered Washington and later on Lafayette; and then as the
ages had rolled by, General Lee had visited the Prices and had slept in
the very bed where Mary and I were lying so sagely and smugly arguing
for preparedness. Perhaps the mocking-bird that every now and then gave
forth a silvery trill in the holly tree near our window was descended
from the same mocking-bird that no doubt had sung to the great warrior
as he lay in the four-poster.
How quiet it was! A whippoorwill gave an occasional cry away off in the
woods, and once I heard the chugging of a small steamboat puffing its
way up the river, and then a little later the swish swash on the shore
of the waves made by the stern wheel. But for that, the night was
absolutely still.
"Page," whispered Mary, "are you asleep?"
"Fortunately not, or I'd be awake," I laughed.
"I'm thinking about getting up and trying to scale that wall. I am
'most sure I could do it with all that ivy to dig my toes in."
"Why don't you wait until morning?"
"Because I don't want an audience. It is best to practice these stunts
without anyone looking."
"Suppose you fall!"
"That's something movie actresses have to expect. I won't fall far if I
do fall."
"Will you mind if I look on?"
"No, indeed! I can pretend you are the director."
Everything was as quiet as the grave when Mary bounced out of bed to
practice her stunt. I followed, nothing loath to see more of the
wonderful night. Some nights are too beautiful to waste in sleeping. It
has always seemed such a pity to me that we could not fill up on sleep
in disagreeable weather, and then when a glorious moonlight night
arrives, be able to draw on that reserve fund of sleep and just sit up
all night.
"Isn't it splendid out on the lawn? And only look at the river in the
moonlight. I'd certainly like to be out there in a boat this minute
with some very nice interesting person to recite poetry to me," I mused.
"I heard Wink White begging you to take a row with him."
"Yes, but I see myself doing it."
"Don't you like him?" asked Mary, sitting in the window ready for the
trial descent.
"Of course I like him, but he's such a goose."
"Shorty thinks he is grand."
"So he is--grand, gloomy, and peculiar. If he'd only not be so sad and
lonesome when he is with me."
"Of course all of us have noticed how different he is with you, never
laughing and joking as he does with us but sighing like a furnace. But
here goes! This is no time for analyzing the character of young Doctor
Stephen White,--this is a play of action."
"But, Mary, ought you try to climb down in your nighty? It might get
tangled around your feet."
"Oh, but the movie ladies always have to get out of windows in their
nighties. I must practice in costume to get used to it."
"Barefooted, too?"
"Of course! I need all these toes to hang on by. Next time I am going to
have my ch-e-i-ild, but this first time perhaps I had better not try to
carry anything."
"I should think not,--but, Mary, do be careful."
I was looking down the perpendicular wall and it began to seem to me to
be a crazy undertaking. The vines were very thick and would no doubt
offer a foot-rest to the daring girl, but suppose she lost her head or
the vine pulled loose from the wall!
It is a much easier matter to climb up and get in a window than it is to
get out of one and climb down. There is something very scary about
projecting one's bare foot into the unknown. Mary, however, was too
serious in her desire to perfect herself for her chosen profession to
stop and wiggle her toes with indecision. She was out of the window in a
moment. I held my breath.
"Oh, God save her! Oh, God save her!" I whispered.
"Fireman, save my ch-e-i-ild!" came back in sibilant tones from Mary.
I couldn't help laughing although I was trembling with fright. I almost
beat Mary to the ground I leaned so far out of the window. Sometimes the
thick ivy hid her from my sight and again she would loom out very white
in the moonlight.
Down at last! I felt like shouting for joy. Now began the ascent which
was a small matter compared to the descent.
When the climber was about half-way up, I suddenly became aware of
figures on the edge of the lawn. "The servants returning from church," I
thought. Harvie had told me that "big meetin'" was going on and his aunt
was quite concerned about her servants, as they had a way of taking
French leave at "big meetin'" time. With the house-party in session, a
paucity of servants would be quite serious. Extra inducements had been
offered and the whole corps had promised to remain, taking turn about
in getting off early for night church.
[Illustration: I ALMOST BEAT MARY TO THE GROUND I LEANED SO FAR OUT OF
THE WINDOW.
Page 74.]
Anyone who has lived in the country, where colored servants are the only
ones, knows what a serious time "big meetin'" can be. The whole negro
population seems to go mad in a frenzy of religious fervor. Crops that
are inconsiderate enough to ripen at that period remain ungathered; the
washwoman lets soiled clothes pile up indefinitely; cooks refuse to
cook; housemaids have a soul above sweeping; cows go dry for lack of
milking; horses go uncurried and vehicles unwashed and ungreased.
I smiled when I saw that straggling group returning from church, knowing
they would not be fit for any very arduous tasks the next day. I
remembered how Mammy Susan used to berate our darkies for their
delinquencies on days following meetings. As the churchgoers approached
the house, which they had to pass to reach the quarters on the other
side of the great house, they suddenly became aware of Mary's white
figure hanging midway between heaven and earth.
Shouts and groans arose! One woman fell to the ground and, regardless of
her finery, rolled on the grass imploring her Maker to save her. I
trembled for fear Mary would fall, but she clung to the vine and
scrambled up and in the window. The darkies ran like frightened rabbits.
"They thought you were a ghost, I believe."
"Well, I came mighty near giving up the ghost. When I heard those groans
I thought something had me sure," panted the great actress, looking
ruefully at a long rent in her very best nighty. "I did it all right,
but being a great movie actress who is to play opposite Douglas
Fairbanks is certainly hard on one's rags. Look, here's another tear!
Another and another! I did that when the first darky squealed."
Of course we went to bed giggling.
"I wish Tweedles had seen you, but they would not have been willing to
be mere audience. As for me,--I have no desire to be classified as a
human fly. I wonder if we will hear some wild tale from those silly
darkies."
But Mary was fast asleep before she could express her opinion. I could
not sleep until I got the following limerick out of my system:
THE HUMAN FLY
Our Mary, an actress so flighty,
Scaled a wall in her very best nighty.
A nail proved a snag
And tore her fine rag,
She came back a la Aphrodite.