No, I ain't goin' out to Blenmont these days. Jarvis does his exercisin'
here, and he says his mother's havin' a ball room made out of that gym.
I've been stickin' to the pavements, like I said I would. Lookin'
cheerful, too? Why not? If you'd been a minute sooner you'd heard me
wobblin' "Please, Ma-ma, nail a rose on me." But say, I'll give you the
tale, and then maybe you can write your own ticket.
You see, I'd left Swifty Joe runnin' the Physical Culture Studio, and I
was doin' a lap up the sunny side of the avenue, just to give my holiday
regalia an airing. I wasn't thinkin' a stroke, only just breathin' deep
and feelin' glad I was right there and nowhere else--you know how the
avenue's likely to go to your head these spring days, with the carriage
folks swampin' the traffic squad, and everybody that is anybody right on
the spot or hurrying to get there, and everyone of 'em as fit and
finished as so many prize-winners at a fair?
Well, I wasn't lookin' for anything to come my way, when all of a sudden
I sees a goggle-capped tiger throw open the door of one of them
plate-glass benzine broughams at the curb, and bend over like he has a
pain under his vest. I was just side-steppin' to make room for some
upholstered old battle-ax that I supposed owned the rig, when I feels a
hand on my elbow and hear some one say: "Why, Shorty McCabe! is that
you?"
She was a dream, all right--one of your princess-cut girls, with the
kind of clothes on that would make a turkey-red check-book turn pale.
But you couldn't fool me, even if she had put a Marcelle crimp in that
carroty hair of hers, and washed off the freckles and biscuit flour. You
can't change Irish-blue eyes, can you? And when you've come to know a
voice that's got a range from maple-sugar to mixed pickles, you don't
forget it, either. Know her? Say, I was brought up next door to
Sullivan's boarding-house.
"You didn't take me for King Eddie, did you, Miss Sullivan?" says I.
"I might by the clothes," says she, runnin' her eyes over me, "only I
see you've got him beat a mile. But why the Miss Sullivan?"
"Because I've mislaid your weddin'-card, and there's been other things
on my mind than you since our last reunion," says I. "But I'm chawmed to
meet you again, rully," and I begins to edge off.
"You act it," says she. "You look tickled to death--almost. But I'm
pleased enough for two. Anyway, I'm in need of a man of about your
weight to take a ride with me. So step lively, Shorty, and don't stand
there scaring trade away from the silver shop. Come, jump in."
"Not me," says I. "I never butts into places where there's apt to be a
hubby to ask who's who and what's what."
"But there isn't any hubby now," says she.
"North Dakotaed him?" says I.
"No," says she; "I've got a decree good in any State. His friends called
it heart failure. I can't because I used to settle his bar bills. You're
not shy of widows, are you?"
Now say, there's widows and widows--grass, baled hay, and other
kinds--and most of 'em I passes up on general principles, along with
chorus girls and lady demonstrators; but somehow I couldn't seem to
place Sadie Sullivan in that line. Why, her mother 'n' mine used to
borrow cupfuls of flour of each other over the back fence, and it was to
lick a feller who'd yelled "brick-top" after Sadie that started me to
takin' my first boxin' lessons in Mike Quigley's barn.
"I ain't much used to traveling in one of these rubber-tired show
windows," says I; "but for the sake of old times I'll chance it once,"
and with that I climbs in; the tiger puts on the time-lock, and we
joins the procession. "Your car's all to the giddy," I remarks. "Didn't
it leave you some short of breath after blowin' yourself to this,
Sadie?"
"I buy it by the month," says she, "including Jeems and Henri in front.
It comes higher that way; but who cares?"
"Oh," says I, "he left a barrel, then?"
"A cellarful," says Sadie.
And on the way up towards the park I gets the scenario of the acts I'd
missed. His name was Dipworthy--you've seen it on the labels,
"Dipworthy's Drowsy Drops, Younsgters Yearn for 'Em"--only he was
Dipworthy, jr., and knew as little about the "Drop" business as only
sons usually do about such things. Drops wa'n't his long suit; quarts
came nearer being his size.
It was while he was having a sober spell that he married Sadie; but that
was about the last one he ever had. She stuck to him, though; let him
chase her with guns and hammer her with the furniture, until the purple
monkeys got him for good and all. Then she cashed in the "Drop"
business, settled a life-insurance president's salary on her mother,
bought a string of runnin' ponies for her kid brother, and then hit New
York, with the notion that here was where you could get anything you had
the price to pay for.
"But I made a wrong guess, Shorty," says she. "It isn't all in having
the money; it's in knowing how to make it get you the things you want."
"There's plenty would like to give you lessons in that," says I.
"You?" says she.
"Say, do I look like a con. man?" says I.
"There, there, Shorty!" says she. "I knew better, only I've been
gold-bricked so much lately that I'd almost suspect my own grandmother.
I've got two maids who steal my dresses and rings; a lady companion who
nags me about the way I talk, and who hates me alive because I can
afford to hire her; and even the hotel manager makes me pay double rates
because I look too young for a real widow. Do you know, there are times
when I almost miss the late Dippy. Were you ever real lonesome, Shorty?"
"Once or twice," says I, "when I was far from Broadway."
"That's nothing," says she, "to being lonesome _on_ Broadway. And I've
been so lonesome in a theatre box, with two thousand people in plain
sight, that I've dropped tears down on the trombone player in the
orchestra. And I was lonesome just now, when I picked you up back there.
I had been into that big jewelry store, buying things I didn't want,
just for the sake of having some one to talk to."
"Ah, say," says I, "cut it in smaller chunks, Sadie. I'm no pelican."
"You don't believe me?" says she.
"I know this little old burg too well," says I. "Why, with a
hundred-dollar bill I can buy more society than you could put in a
hall."
"But don't you see, Shorty," says she, "that the kind you can buy isn't
worth having? You don't buy yours, do you? And I don't want to buy mine.
I want to swap even. I'm not a freak, nor a foreigner, nor a quarantine
suspect. Look at all these women going past--what's the difference
between us? But they're not lonesome, I'll bet. They have friends and
dear enemies by the hundreds, while I haven't either. There isn't a
single home on this whole island where I can step up and ring the front
door-bell. I feel like a tramp hanging to the back of a parlor-car. What
good does my money do me? Suppose I want to take dinner at a swell
restaurant--I wouldn't know the things to order, and I'd be afraid of
the waiters. Think of that, Shorty."
I tried to; but it was a strain. If anyone else had put it up to me that
Sadie Sullivan, with a roll of real money as big as a bale of cotton,
could lose her nerve just because she didn't have a visitin'-list, I'd
have told 'em to drop the pipe. She was giving me straight goods,
though. Why, her lip was tremblin' like a lost kid's.
"Chuck it!" says I. "For a girl that had a whole bunch of Johnnies on
the waitin' list, and her with only one best dress to her name at the
time, you give me an ache. I don't set up for no great judge of form and
figure; but my eyesight's still good, I guess, and if I was choosin' a
likely looker, I'd back you against the field."
That makes her grin a little, and she pats my hand kind of sisterly
like. "It isn't men I want, you goose; it's women--my own kind," says
she, and the next minute she gives me the nudge and whispers: "Now,
watch--the one in the chiffon Panama."
"Shiff which?" says I. But I sees the one she means--a heavy-weight
person, rigged out like a dry-goods exhibit and topped off with
millinery from the spring openin', coming toward us behind a pair of
nervous steppers. She had her lamps turned our way, and I hears Sadie
give her the time of day as sweet as you please. She wasn't more'n six
feet off, either; but it missed fire. She stared right through Sadie,
just as if there'd been windows in her, and then turned to cuddle a
brindle pup on the seat beside her.
"Acts like she owed you money," says I.
"We swapped tales of domestic woe for two weeks at Colorado Springs
season before last," said Sadie; "but it seems that she's forgotten.
That's Mrs. Morris Pettigrew, whose husband--"
"That one?" says I. "Why, she ain't such a much, either. I know folks
that think she's a joke."
"She feels that she can't afford to recognize me on Fifth-ave., just the
same. That's where I stand," says Sadie.
"It's a crooked deal, then," says I.
And right there I began to get a glimmer of the kind of game she was up
against. Talk about freeze-outs!
"I'll show her, though, and the rest of 'em!" says Sadie, stickin' out
her cute little chin. "I'm not going to quit yet."
"Good for you!" says I. "It's a pastime I ain't up in at all; but if you
can ever find use for me behind the scenes anywhere, just call on."
"I will, Shorty," says she, "and right now. Come on down to Sherry's
with me for luncheon."
"Quit your kiddin'," says I. "You don't want to queer the whole program
at the start. I'd be lost in a place like that--me in a sack suit and
round-top dicer! Why, the head waiter'd say 'Scat!' and I'd make a dive
under the table."
She said she didn't care a red apple for that. She wanted to sail in
there and throw a bluff, only she couldn't go alone, and she guessed
I'd do just as I was.
Course, I couldn't stand for no fool play of that kind; but seein' as
she was so dead set on the place, I said we'd make it a 'leven-o'clock
supper, after the theatre; but it must be my blow.
"I've got the clothes that'll fit into a night racket," says I, "and
besides, I've got to get a few points first."
"It's a go," says she.
So we made a date, and Sadie drops me at the Studio. I goes right to the
'phone and calls up Pinckney at the club. Didn't I tell you about him?
Sure, that's the one. You wouldn't think though, to see him and me
tappin' each other with the mitts, that he was a front ranker in the
smart push. But he's all of that. He's a pacemaker for the swiftest
bunch in the world. Say, if he should take to walkin' on his hands,
there wouldn't be no men's shoes sold on Fifth-ave. for a year.
Well, he shows up here about an hour later, lookin' as fresh as though
he'd just come off the farm. "Did you say something about wanting
advice, Shorty?" says he.
"I did," says I.
"Religious, or otherwise?" says he. "But it makes no difference; I'm
yours to command."
"I don't ask you to go beyond your depth," says I. "It's just a case of
orderin' fancy grub. I'm due to blow a lady friend of mine to the
swellest kind of a supper that grows in the borough; no two-dollar
tabble-doty, understand; but a special, real-lace, eighteen-carat feed,
with nothing on the bill of fare that ain't spelled in French."
"Ah!" says he, "something like _Barquettes Bordellaise_, _poulet en
casserole_, _fraises au champagne_, and so on, eh?"
"I was about to mention them very things," says I. "But my memory's on
the blink. Couldn't you write 'em down, with a diagram of how they look,
and whether you spear 'em with a fork, or take 'em in through a straw?"
"Why, to be sure," says he. So he did, and it looked something like
this:
"_Consomme au fumet d'estaragon_ (chicken soup--big spoon).
"_Barquettes Bordellaise_ (marrow on toast, with mushrooms--fork only).
"_Fonds d'artichauts Monegosque_ (hearts of artichokes in cream
sauce--fork and breadsticks)."
There was a lot more to it, and it wound up with some kind of cheese
with a name that sounded like breakin' a pane of glass.
I threw up my hands at that. "It's no go," says I. "I couldn't learn to
say all that in a month. How would it do for me to slip the waiter that
program and tell him to follow copy?"
"We'll do better than that?" says Pinckney. "Where's your 'phone?"
Pretty soon he gets some one on the wire that he calls Felix, and they
has a heart-to-heart talk in French for about ten minutes.
"It's all arranged," says he. "You are to hand my card to the man at the
door as you go in, and Felix will do the rest. Eleven-fifteen is the
hour. But I'm surprised at you, Shorty. A lady, eh? Ah, well! In the
spring the young man's fancy gently turns--"
"Ah, say!" says I. "There ain't no call for any funny cracks about this.
You know me, and you can guess I'm no Willie-boy. When I get a soft spot
in my head, and try to win a queen, it'll be done on the dead quiet, and
you won't hear no call for help. But this is a different proposition.
This is a real lady, who's been locked out by the society trust, and who
takes an invite from me just because we happened to know each other when
we was kids."
"Oh-ho!" says Pinckney, snappin' them black eyes the way he does when he
gets real waked up. "That sounds quite romantic."
"It ain't," says I. "It's just as reg'lar as takin' your aunt to a
sacred concert."
He seemed to want to know the details, though; so I told him all about
Sadie, and how she'd been ruled out of her class by a lot of stiffs who
wa'n't one-two-sixteen with her, either for looks or lucre.
"And it's a crooked decision," says I. "Maybe Sadie wasn't brought up by
a Swedish maid and a French governess from Chelsea, Mass.; but she's on
velvet now, and she's a real hand-picked pippin, too. What's more, she's
a nice little lady, with nothin' behind her that you couldn't print in a
Sunday-school weekly. All she aims to do is to travel with the
money-burners and be sociable. And say, that's natural, ain't it?"
"It's quite human," says Pinckney, "and what you've told me about her is
very interesting. I hope the little supper goes off all right. Ta-ta,
Shorty."
Well, it began frosty enough; for when it came to pilotin' a lady into
that swell mob, I had the worst case of stage-fright you ever saw. Say,
them waiters is a haughty-lookin' lot, ain't they? But after we'd found
Felix, and I'd passed him a ten-spot, and he'd bowed and scraped and
towed us across the room like he thought we held a mortgage on the
place, I didn't feel quite so much as if I'd got into the wrong flat.
I did have something of a chill when I caught sight of a
sheepish-looking cuss in the glass. He looked sort of familiar, and I
was wondering what he'd done to be ashamed of, when I sees it was me.
Then I squints around at the other guys and say, more'n half of 'em wore
the same kind of a look. It was only the women that seemed right to
home. There wasn't one in sight that didn't have her chin up and her
shoulders back, and carrying all the dog the law allows. They treated
them stiff-necked food-slingers like they was a lot of wooden Indians.
You'd see 'em pilin' their wraps on one of them lordly gents just as if
he was a chair. Then they'd plant themselves, spread out their
dry-goods, peel off their elbow gloves, and proceed to rescue the cherry
from the bottom of the glass.
And Sadie? Well, say, you'd thought she'd never had a meal anywhere else
in her life. The way she bossed Felix around, and sized up the other
folks, calm as a Chinaman, was a caution. And talk! I never had so much
rapid-fire conversation passed out to me all in a bunch before. Course,
she was just keepin' her end up, and makin' believe I was doing my
share, too. But it was a mighty good imitation. Every now and then she'd
tear off a little laugh so natural that I could almost swear I'd said
something funny, only I knew I hadn't opened my head.
As for me, I was busy tryin' to guess what was under the silver covers
that Felix kept bringin' in, and rememberin' what Pinckney had said
about forks and spoons. Say, I suppose you've been up against one of
those little after-the-play-is-over suppers that they serve behind the
lace curtains on Fifth-ave.; but this was my first offense. Little
suppers! Honest, now, there was more'n I'd want if I hadn't been fed for
a week. Generally I can worry along with three squares a day, and when I
do feel like havin' a bite before I hit the blankets, a _sweitzerkase_
sandwich does me. But this affair had seven acts to it, and everyone was
a mystery.
"Why, I didn't know you were such an epicure," says Sadie.
"Me either," says I; "but I'd never let myself loose before. Have some
more _pulley_ from the _carrousell_ and help yourself to the--the other
thing."
"Shorty, tell me how you managed it," says she.
"I've been taking lessons by mail," says I.
"You're a dear to do it, anyway," says she. "Just think of the figure
I'd cut coming here by my lonesome. It's bad enough at the hotel, with
only Mrs. Prusset. And I've been wanting to come for weeks. What luck it
was, finding you to-day!"
"Say, don't run away with the idea that I'm makin' a day's work of
this," says I. "I'm havin' a little fun out of this myself. There's
worse company than you, y'know."
"And I've met a heap of men stupider than Shorty McCabe," says she,
givin' me the jolly with that sassy grin of hers, and lettin' go one of
those gurgly laughs that sounds as if it had been made on a clarinet.
It was just about then that I looks up and finds Pinckney standing on
one foot, waitin' for a chance to butt in.
"Why, professor! This is a pleasure," says he.
"Hello!" says I. "Where'd you blow in from?"
Then I makes him acquainted with Sadie, and asks him what it'll be. Oh,
he did it well; seemed as surprised as if he hadn't seen me for a year,
and begins to get acquainted with Sadie right away. I tried to give her
the wink, meanin' to put her next to the fact that here was where she
ought to come out strong on the broad A's, and throw in the
dontcher-knows frequent; but it was no go. She didn't care a rap. She
talked just as she would to me, asked Pinckney all sorts of fool
questions, and inside of two minutes them two was carryin' on like a
couple of kids.
"I'm a rank outsider here, you know," says she, "and if it hadn't been
for Shorty I'd never got in at all. Oh, sure, Shorty and I are old
chums. We used to slide down the same cellar door."
S'elp me, I was plumb ashamed of Sadie then, givin' herself away like
that. But Pinckney seemed to think it was great sport. Pretty soon he
says he's got some friends over at another table, and did she mind if he
brought 'em over.
"Think you'd better?" says she. "I'm the Mrs. Dipworthy of the 'Drowsy
Drops,' you know, and that's a tag that won't come off."
"If you'll allow me," says he, "I'll attend to the tag business. They'll
be delighted to meet you."
"Say," says I, soon as he'd left, "don't be a sieve, Sadie. Just forget
auld lang syne, and remember that you're travelin' high."
"They've got to take me for what I am, or not at all," says she.
"Yes, but you ain't got no cue to tell the story of your life," says I.
"That's my whole stock in trade, Shorty," says she.
I was lookin' for her to revise that notion when I sees the kind of
company Pinckney was luggin' up to spring on us. I'd seen their pictures
in the papers, and knew 'em on sight. And the pair wasn't anything but
the top of the bunch. You know the Twombley-Cranes, that cut more ice in
July than the Knickerbocker Trust does all winter. Why say, to see the
house rubber at 'em as they came sailin' our way, you'd thought they was
paid performers stepping up to do their act. It was a case of bein' in
the lime-light for us, from that on.
"Hully chee!" says I. "Here's where I ought to fade."
But there wasn't any show to duck; for Felix was chasin' over some more
chairs, and Pinckney was doin' the honors all round, and the first thing
I knew we was a nice little fam'ly party, chuckin' repartee across the
pink candle shades, and behavin' like star boarders that had paid in
advance.
It was Sadie, though, that had the centre of the stage, and I'll be
staggered if she didn't jump in to make her bluff good. She let out
everything that she shouldn't have told, from how she used to wait on
table at her mother's boarding-house, to the way she'd got the frozen
face ever since she came to town.
"But what am I expected to do?" says she. "I've got no Hetty Green grip
on my bankbook. There's a whole binful of the 'Drowsy Drop' dollars, and
I'm willing to throw 'em on the bonfire just as liberal as the next one,
only I want a place around the ring. There's no fun in playing a lone
hand, is there? I've been trying to find out what's wrong with me,
anyway?"
"My dear girl," says Mrs. Twombley-Crane, "there's nothing wrong with
you at all. You're simply delicious. Isn't she, now, Freddie?"
And Freddie just grinned. Say, some men is born wise. "Professor McCabe
and I are exchanging views on the coming light-weight contest," says he.
"Don't mind us, my dear."
Perhaps that's what we were gassin' about, or why is a hen. You can
search me. I was that rattled with Sadie's nerve display that I didn't
follow anything else real close.
But when it was all over, and I'd been brought to by a peep at the bill
the waiter handed me, I couldn't figure out whether she'd made a
bull's-eye or rung in a false alarm.
One thing I did notice, as we sails out, and that was the stout
Pettigrew person who'd passed Sadie the pickled pig's foot on the avenue
that afternoon. She was sitting opposite a skimpy little runt with a
bald head, at a table up near the door where the waiters juggled soup
over her feathers every time they passed. Her eyes were glued on Sadie
as we came up, and by the spread of the furrows around her mouth I see
she was tryin' to crack a smile.
"Now," thinks I, "here's where she collects chilblains and feels the
mercury drop."
But say! would you look for it in a dream book? What does Sadie do but
pass her out the glad hand and coo away, like a pouter pigeon on a
cornice, about being tickled to see her again. Oh, they get me dizzy,
women do!
That wa'n't a marker though, to the reverse English carom Sadie takes
after we'd got into a cab and started for her hotel. Was there a jolly
for me, or a "Thank you, Shorty, I've had the time of my life?" Nothin'
like it. She just slumped into her corner and switched on the boo-hoos
like a girl that's been kept after school.
"Enjoy yourself, Sadie," says I. "Only remember that this is a hansom,
not a street sprinkler."
That didn't fetch her; so after a while I tries her again. "What went
wrong?" says I. "Was she stringin' you, or was it the way I wore my face
that queered the show?"
"It's all right, Shorty," says she between weeps. "And nothing's wrong,
nothing at all. Mrs. What's-Her-Name's asked me to stay a week with her
at their Newport place, and old Mrs. Pettigrew will turn green before
morning thinking of me, and I've shaken the hoodoo at last. But it all
came so much in a lump that I just had to turn on the sprayer. You know
how I feel, don't you, Shorty?"
"Sure," says I, "just as well as if you'd sent me a picture postal of
the place you boarded last."
But say, I turned the trick, didn't I? I didn't know what was comin' out
of the box, of course; and maybe I was some jolted at throwin' three
sixes to a pair, but there they lay.
No, I ain't goin' into the boostin' line as a reg'lar thing; but I guess
if any amateur in the business gets a rose nailed on him, I ought to be
the gent. Not?