BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
STORIES
BY
EDNA FERBER
MARCH, 1912
FOREWORD
"And so," the story writers used to say, "they lived happily ever after."
Um-m-m--maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers
were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner redolent of
the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be
more careful of her finger-nails and grammar? After Puss in Boots had
won wealth and a wife for his young master did not that gentleman often
fume with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, refused to call on the
lady of the former poor miller's son?
It is a great risk to take with one's book-children. These stories make
no such promises. They stop just short of the phrase of the old story
writers, and end truthfully, thus: And so they lived.
E. F.
CONTENTS
I. THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
II. THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
III. WHAT SHE WORE
IV. A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
V. THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
VI. ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
VII. MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
VIII. THE LEADING LADY
IX. THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
X. THE HOMELY HEROINE
XI. SUN DRIED
XII. WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
I
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
Any one who has ever written for the magazines (nobody could devise a
more sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who does a humorous article
on the subject of his troubles, and the neglected wife next door, who
journalizes) knows that a story the scene of which is not New York is
merely junk. Take Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to five
thousand words, and there you have the ideal short story.
Consequently I feel a certain timidity in confessing that I do not know
Fifth Avenue from Hester Street when I see it, because I've never seen
it. It has been said that from the latter to the former is a ten-year
journey, from which I have gathered that they lie some miles apart. As
for Forty-second Street, of which musical comedians carol, I know not if
it be a fashionable shopping thoroughfare or a factory district.
A confession of this kind is not only good for the soul, but for the
editor. It saves him the trouble of turning to page two.
This is a story of Chicago, which is a first cousin of New York, although
the two are not on chummy terms. It is a story of that part of Chicago
which lies east of Dearborn Avenue and south of Division Street, and
which may be called the Nottingham curtain district.
In the Nottingham curtain district every front parlor window is
embellished with a "Rooms With or Without Board" sign. The curtains
themselves have mellowed from their original
department-store-basement-white to a rich, deep tone of Chicago smoke,
which has the notorious London variety beaten by several shades. Block
after block the two-story-and-basement houses stretch, all grimy and
gritty and looking sadly down upon the five square feet of mangy grass
forming the pitiful front yard of each. Now and then the monotonous line
of front stoops is broken by an outjutting basement delicatessen shop.
But not often. The Nottingham curtain district does not run heavily to
delicacies. It is stronger on creamed cabbage and bread pudding.
Up in the third floor back at Mis' Buck's (elegant rooms $2.50 and up a
week. Gents preferred) Gertie was brushing her hair for the night. One
hundred strokes with a bristle brush. Anyone who reads the beauty column
in the newspapers knows that. There was something heroic in the sight of
Gertie brushing her hair one hundred strokes before going to bed at
night. Only a woman could understand her doing it.
Gertie clerked downtown on State Street, in a gents' glove department. A
gents' glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its
clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing
"lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails.
Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot
leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with
a bristle brush and an orangewood stick.
Now clerking, as Gertie would tell you, is fierce on the feet. And when
your feet are tired you are tired all over. Gertie's feet were tired
every night. About eight-thirty she longed to peel off her clothes, drop
them in a heap on the floor, and tumble, unbrushed, unwashed,
unmanicured, into bed. She never did it.
Things had been particularly trying to-night. After washing out three
handkerchiefs and pasting them with practised hand over the mirror,
Gertie had taken off her shoes and discovered a hole the size of a silver
quarter in the heel of her left stocking. Gertie had a country-bred
horror of holey stockings. She darned the hole, yawning, her aching feet
pressed against the smooth, cool leg of the iron bed. That done, she had
had the colossal courage to wash her face, slap cold cream on it, and
push back the cuticle around her nails.
Seated huddled on the side of her thin little iron bed, Gertie was
brushing her hair bravely, counting the strokes somewhere in her
sub-conscious mind and thinking busily all the while of something else.
Her brush rose, fell, swept downward, rose, fell, rhythmically.
"Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety---- Oh, darn it! What's
the use!" cried Gertie, and hurled the brush across the room with a crack.
She sat looking after it with wide, staring eyes until the brush blurred
in with the faded red roses on the carpet. When she found it doing that
she got up, wadded her hair viciously into a hard bun in the back instead
of braiding it carefully as usual, crossed the room (it wasn't much of a
trip), picked up the brush, and stood looking down at it, her under lip
caught between her teeth. That is the humiliating part of losing your
temper and throwing things. You have to come down to picking them up,
anyway.
Her lip still held prisoner, Gertie tossed the brush on the bureau,
fastened her nightgown at the throat with a safety pin, turned out the
gas and crawled into bed.
Perhaps the hard bun at the back of her head kept her awake. She lay
there with her eyes wide open and sleepless, staring into the darkness.
At midnight the Kid Next Door came in whistling, like one unused to
boarding-house rules. Gertie liked him for that. At the head of the
stairs he stopped whistling and came softly into his own third floor back
just next to Gertie's. Gertie liked him for that, too.
The two rooms had been one in the fashionable days of the Nottingham
curtain district, long before the advent of Mis' Buck. That thrifty
lady, on coming into possession, had caused a flimsy partition to be run
up, slicing the room in twain and doubling its rental.
Lying there Gertie could hear the Kid Next Door moving about getting
ready for bed and humming "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its
Own" very lightly, under his breath. He polished his shoes briskly, and
Gertie smiled there in the darkness of her own room in sympathy. Poor
kid, he had his beauty struggles, too.
Gertie had never seen the Kid Next Door, although he had come four months
ago. But she knew he wasn't a grouch, because he alternately whistled
and sang off-key tenor while dressing in the morning. She had also
discovered that his bed must run along the same wall against which her
bed was pushed. Gertie told herself that there was something almost
immodest about being able to hear him breathing as he slept. He had
tumbled into bed with a little grunt of weariness.
Gertie lay there another hour, staring into the darkness. Then she began
to cry softly, lying on her face with her head between her arms. The
cold cream and the salt tears mingled and formed a slippery paste.
Gertie wept on because she couldn't help it. The longer she wept the
more difficult her sobs became, until finally they bordered on the
hysterical. They filled her lungs until they ached and reached her
throat with a force that jerked her head back.
"Rap-rap-rap!" sounded sharply from the head of her bed.
Gertie stopped sobbing, and her heart stopped beating. She lay tense and
still, listening. Everyone knows that spooks rap three times at the head
of one's bed. It's a regular high-sign with them.
"Rap-rap-rap!"
Gertie's skin became goose-flesh, and coldwater effects chased up and
down her spine.
"What's your trouble in there?" demanded an unspooky voice so near that
Gertie jumped. "Sick?"
It was the Kid Next Door.
"N-no, I'm not sick," faltered Gertie, her mouth close to the wall. Just
then a belated sob that had stopped halfway when the raps began hustled
on to join its sisters. It took Gertie by surprise, and brought prompt
response from the other side of the wall.
"I'll bet I scared you green. I didn't mean to, but, on the square, if
you're feeling sick, a little nip of brandy will set you up. Excuse my
mentioning it, girlie, but I'd do the same for my sister. I hate like
sin to hear a woman suffer like that, and, anyway, I don't know whether
you're fourteen or forty, so it's perfectly respectable. I'll get the
bottle and leave it outside your door."
"No you don't!" answered Gertie in a hollow voice, praying meanwhile that
the woman in the room below might be sleeping. "I'm not sick, honestly
I'm not. I'm just as much obliged, and I'm dead sorry I woke you up with
my blubbering. I started out with the soft pedal on, but things got away
from me. Can you hear me?"
"Like a phonograph. Sure you couldn't use a sip of brandy where it'd do
the most good?"
"Sure."
"Well, then, cut out the weeps and get your beauty sleep, kid. He ain't
worth sobbing over, anyway, believe me."
"He!" snorted Gertie indignantly. "You're cold. There never was
anything in peg-tops that could make me carry on like the heroine of the
Elsie series."
"Lost your job?"
"No such luck."
"Well, then, what in Sam Hill could make a woman----"
"Lonesome!" snapped Gertie. "And the floorwalker got fresh to-day. And
I found two gray hairs to-night. And I'd give my next week's pay
envelope to hear the double click that our front gate gives back home."
"Back home!" echoed the Kid Next Door in a dangerously loud voice. "Say,
I want to talk to you. If you'll promise you won't get sore and think
I'm fresh, I'll ask you a favor. Slip on a kimono and we'll sneak down
to the front stoop and talk it over. I'm as wide awake as a chorus girl
and twice as hungry. I've got two apples and a box of crackers. Are you
on?"
Gertie snickered. "It isn't done in our best sets, but I'm on. I've got
a can of sardines and an orange. I'll be ready in six minutes."
She was, too. She wiped off the cold cream and salt tears with a dry
towel, did her hair in a schoolgirl braid and tied it with a big bow, and
dressed herself in a black skirt and a baby blue dressing sacque. The
Kid Next Door was waiting outside in the hall. His gray sweater covered
a multitude of sartorial deficiencies. Gertie stared at him, and he
stared at Gertie in the sickly blue light of the boarding-house hall, and
it took her one-half of one second to discover that she liked his mouth,
and his eyes, and the way his hair was mussed.
"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid Next Door, in surprise.
Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the first man that's been deceived
by a pig-tail braid and a baby blue waist. I could locate those two gray
hairs for you with my eyes shut and my feet in a sack. Come on, boy.
These Robert W. Chambers situations make me nervous."
Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a passion for
detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great city at night,
when a few million people within it are sleeping, or ought to be. They
work in the clang of a distant owl car, and the roar of an occasional "L"
train, and the hollow echo of the footsteps of the late passer-by. They
go elaborately into description, and are strong on the brooding hush, but
the thing has never been done satisfactorily.
Gertie, sitting on the front stoop at two in the morning, with her orange
in one hand and the sardine can in the other, put it this way:
"If I was to hear a cricket chirp now, I'd screech. This isn't really
quiet. It's like waiting for a cannon cracker to go off just before the
fuse is burned down. The bang isn't there yet, but you hear it a hundred
times in your mind before it happens."
"My name's Augustus G. Eddy," announced the Kid Next Door, solemnly.
"Back home they always called me Gus. You peel that orange while I
unroll the top of this sardine can. I'm guilty of having interrupted you
in the middle of what the girls call a good cry, and I know you'll have
to get it out of your system some way. Take a bite of apple and then
wade right in and tell me what you're doing in this burg if you don't
like it."
"This thing ought to have slow music," began Gertie. "It's pathetic. I
came to Chicago from Beloit, Wisconsin, because I thought that little
town was a lonesome hole for a vivacious creature like me. Lonesome!
Listen while I laugh a low mirthless laugh. I didn't know anything about
the three-ply, double-barreled, extra heavy brand of lonesomeness that a
big town like this can deal out. Talk about your desert wastes! They're
sociable and snug compared to this. I know three-fourths of the people
in Beloit, Wisconsin, by their first names. I've lived here six months
and I'm not on informal terms with anybody except Teddy, the landlady's
dog, and he's a trained rat-and-book-agent terrier, and not inclined to
overfriendliness. When I clerked at the Enterprise Store in Beloit the
women used to come in and ask for something we didn't carry just for an
excuse to copy the way the lace yoke effects were planned in my
shirtwaists. You ought to see the way those same shirtwaist stack up
here. Why, boy, the lingerie waists that the other girls in my
department wear make my best hand-tucked effort look like a simple
English country blouse. They're so dripping with Irish crochet and real
Val and Cluny insertions that it's a wonder the girls don't get
stoop-shouldered carrying 'em around."
"Hold on a minute," commanded Gus. "This thing is uncanny. Our cases
dovetail like the deductions in a detective story. Kneel here at my
feet, little daughter, and I'll tell you the story of my sad young life.
I'm no child of the city streets, either. Say, I came to this town
because I thought there was a bigger field for me in Gents' Furnishings.
Joke, what?"
But Gertie didn't smile. She gazed up at Gus, and Gus gazed down at her,
and his fingers fiddled absently with the big bow at the end of her braid.
"And isn't there?" asked Gertie, sympathetically.
"Girlie, I haven't saved twelve dollars since I came. I'm no tightwad,
and I don't believe in packing everything away into a white marble
mausoleum, but still a gink kind of whispers to himself that some day
he'll be furnishing up a kitchen pantry of his own."
"Oh!" said Gertie.
"And let me mention in passing," continued Gus, winding the ribbon bow
around his finger, "that in the last hour or so that whisper has been
swelling to a shout."
"Oh!" said Gertie again.
"You said it. But I couldn't buy a secondhand gas stove with what I've
saved in the last half-year here. Back home they used to think I was a
regular little village John Drew, I was so dressy. But here I look like
a yokel on circus day compared to the other fellows in the store. All
they need is a field glass strung over their shoulder to make them look
like a clothing ad in the back of a popular magazine. Say, girlie,
you've got the prettiest hair I've seen since I blew in here. Look at
that braid! Thick as a rope! That's no relation to the piles of jute
that the Flossies here stack on their heads. And shines! Like satin."
"It ought to," said Gertrude, wearily. "I brush it a hundred strokes
every night. Sometimes I'm so beat that I fall asleep with my brush in
the air. The manager won't stand for any romping curls or hooks-and-eyes
that don't connect. It keeps me so busy being beautiful, and what the
society writers call 'well groomed,' that I don't have time to sew the
buttons on my underclothes."
"But don't you get some amusement in the evening?" marveled Gus. "What
was the matter with you and the other girls in the store? Can't you hit
it off?"
"Me? No. I guess I was too woodsy for them. I went out with them a
couple of times. I guess they're nice girls all right; but they've got
what you call a broader way of looking at things than I have. Living in
a little town all your life makes you narrow. These girls!--Well, maybe
I'll get educated up to their plane some day, but----"
"No, you don't!" hissed Gus. "Not if I can help it."
"But you can't," replied Gertie, sweetly. "My, ain't this a grand night!
Evenings like this I used to love to putter around the yard after supper,
sprinkling the grass and weeding the radishes. I'm the greatest kid to
fool around with a hose. And flowers! Say, they just grow for me. You
ought to have seen my pansies and nasturtiums last summer."
The fingers of the Kid Next Door wandered until they found Gertie's.
They clasped them.
"This thing just points one way, little one. It's just as plain as a
path leading up to a cozy little three-room flat up here on the North
Side somewhere. See it? With me and you married, and playing at
housekeeping in a parlor and bedroom and kitchen? And both of us going
down town to work in the morning just the same as we do now. Only not
the same, either."
"Wake up, little boy," said Gertie, prying her fingers away from those
other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a
kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my
lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used to
think he was too slow. But say, he's got the nicest little painting and
paper-hanging business you ever saw, and making money. He's secretary of
the K. P.'s back home. They give some swell little dances during the
winter, especially for the married members. In five years we'll own our
home, with a vegetable garden in the back. I'm a little frog, and it's
me for the puddle."
Gus stood up slowly. Gertie felt a little pang of compunction when she
saw what a boy he was.
"I don't know when I've enjoyed a talk like this. I've heard about these
dawn teas, but I never thought I'd go to one," she said.
"Good-night, girlie," interrupted Gus, abruptly. "It's the dreamless
couch for mine. We've got a big sale on in tan and black seconds
to-morrow."
II
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
There are two ways of doing battle against Disgrace. You may live it
down; or you may run away from it and hide. The first method is
heart-breaking, but sure. The second cannot be relied upon because of
the uncomfortable way Disgrace has of turning up at your heels just when
you think you have eluded her in the last town but one.
Ted Terrill did not choose the first method. He had it thrust upon him.
After Ted had served his term he came back home to visit his mother's
grave, intending to take the next train out. He wore none of the prison
pallor that you read about in books, because he had been shortstop on the
penitentiary all-star baseball team, and famed for the dexterity with
which he could grab up red-hot grounders. The storied lock step and the
clipped hair effect also were missing. The superintendent of Ted's
prison had been one of the reform kind.
You never would have picked Ted for a criminal. He had none of those
interesting phrenological bumps and depressions that usually are shown to
such frank advantage in the Bertillon photographs. Ted had been
assistant cashier in the Citizens' National Bank. In a mad moment he had
attempted a little sleight-of-hand act in which certain Citizens'
National funds were to be transformed into certain glittering shares and
back again so quickly that the examiners couldn't follow it with their
eyes. But Ted was unaccustomed to these now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't
feats and his hand slipped. The trick dropped to the floor with an awful
clatter.
Ted had been a lovable young kid, six feet high, and blonde, with a great
reputation as a dresser. He had the first yellow plush hat in our town.
It sat on his golden head like a halo. The women all liked Ted. Mrs.
Dankworth, the dashing widow (why will widows persist in being dashing?),
said that he was the only man in our town who knew how to wear a dress
suit. The men were forever slapping him on the back and asking him to
have a little something.
Ted's good looks and his clever tongue and a certain charming Irish way
he had with him caused him to be taken up by the smart set. Now, if
you've never lived in a small town you will be much amused at the idea of
its boasting a smart set. Which proves your ignorance. The small town
smart set is deadly serious about its smartness. It likes to take
six-hour runs down to the city to fit a pair of shoes and hear Caruso.
Its clothes are as well made, and its scandals as crisp, and its pace as
hasty, and its golf club as dull as the clothes, and scandals, and pace,
and golf club of its city cousins.
The hasty pace killed Ted. He tried to keep step in a set of young folks
whose fathers had made our town. And all the time his pocketbook was
yelling, "Whoa!" The young people ran largely to scarlet-upholstered
touring cars, and country-club doings, and house parties, as small town
younger generations are apt to. When Ted went to high school half the
boys in his little clique spent their after-school hours dashing up and
down Main street in their big, glittering cars, sitting slumped down on
the middle of their spines in front of the steering wheel, their sleeves
rolled up, their hair combed a militant pompadour. One or the other of
them always took Ted along. It is fearfully easy to develop a taste for
that kind of thing. As he grew older, the taste took root and became a
habit.
Ted came out after serving his term, still handsome, spite of all that
story-writers may have taught to the contrary. But we'll make this
concession to the old tradition. There was a difference.
His radiant blondeur was dimmed in some intangible, elusive way. Birdie
Callahan, who had worked in Ted's mother's kitchen for years, and who had
gone back to her old job at the Haley House after her mistress's death,
put it sadly, thus:
"He was always th' han'some divil. I used to look forward to ironin' day
just for the pleasure of pressin' his fancy shirts for him. I'm that
partial to them swell blondes. But I dinnaw, he's changed. Doin' time
has taken the edge off his hair an' complexion. Not changed his color,
do yuh mind, but dulled it, like a gold ring, or the like, that has
tarnished."
Ted was seated in the smoker, with a chip on his shoulder, and a sick
horror of encountering some one he knew in his heart, when Jo Haley, of
the Haley House, got on at Westport, homeward bound. Jo Haley is the
most eligible bachelor in our town, and the slipperiest. He has made the
Haley House a gem, so that traveling men will cut half a dozen towns to
Sunday there. If he should say "Jump through this!" to any girl in our
town she'd jump.
Jo Haley strolled leisurely up the car aisle toward Ted. Ted saw him
coming and sat very still, waiting.
"Hello, Ted! How's Ted?" said Jo Haley, casually. And dropped into the
adjoining seat without any more fuss.
Ted wet his lips slightly and tried to say something. He had been a
breezy talker. But the words would not come. Jo Haley made no effort to
cover the situation with a rush of conversation. He did not seem to
realize that there was any situation to cover. He champed the end of his
cigar and handed one to Ted.
"Well, you've taken your lickin', kid. What you going to do now?"
The rawness of it made Ted wince. "Oh, I don't know," he stammered.
"I've a job half promised in Chicago."
"What doing?"
Ted laughed a short and ugly laugh. "Driving a brewery auto truck."
Jo Haley tossed his cigar dexterously to the opposite corner of his mouth
and squinted thoughtfully along its bulging sides.
"Remember that Wenzel girl that's kept books for me for the last six
years? She's leaving in a couple of months to marry a New York guy that
travels for ladies' cloaks and suits. After she goes it's nix with the
lady bookkeepers for me. Not that Minnie isn't a good, straight girl,
and honest, but no girl can keep books with one eye on a column of
figures and the other on a traveling man in a brown suit and a red
necktie, unless she's cross-eyed, and you bet Minnie ain't. The job's
yours if you want it. Eighty a month to start on, and board."
"I--can't, Jo. Thanks just the same. I'm going to try to begin all over
again, somewhere else, where nobody knows me."
"Oh yes," said Jo. "I knew a fellow that did that. After he came out he
grew a beard, and wore eyeglasses, and changed his name. Had a quick,
crisp way of talkin', and he cultivated a drawl and went west and started
in business. Real estate, I think. Anyway, the second month he was
there in walks a fool he used to know and bellows: 'Why if it ain't
Bill! Hello, Bill! I thought you was doing time yet.' That was enough.
Ted, you can black your face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some
fine day, sooner or later, somebody'll come along and blab the whole
thing. And say, the older it gets the worse it sounds, when it does come
out. Stick around here where you grew up, Ted."
Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can't figure out
why you should care how I finish."
"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned one. I wasn't ever in love with
your ma, like the guy on the stage; and I never owed your pa a cent. So
it ain't a guilty conscience. I guess it's just pure cussedness, and a
hankerin' for a new investment. I'm curious to know how'll you turn out.
You've got the makin's of what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen,
even if you did fall down once. If I'd ever had time to get married,
which I never will have, a first-class hotel bein' more worry and expense
than a Pittsburg steel magnate's whole harem, I'd have wanted somebody to
do the same for my kid. That sounds slushy, but it's straight."
"I don't seem to know how to thank you," began Ted, a little husky as to
voice.
"Call around to-morrow morning," interrupted Jo Haley, briskly, "and
Minnie Wenzel will show you the ropes. You and her can work together for
a couple of months. After then she's leaving to make her underwear, and
that. I should think she'd have a bale of it by this time. Been
embroidering them shimmy things and lunch cloths back of the desk when
she thought I wasn't lookin' for the last six months."
Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with his nerve between his teeth and
the chip still balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes later
Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo Haley introduced the two
jocularly, knowing that they had originally met in the First Reader room,
Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduction icily by lifting her left
eyebrow slightly and drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her air of
hauteur was a triumph, considering that she was handicapped by black
sateen sleevelets.
I wonder how one could best describe Miss Wenzel? There is one of her in
every small town. Let me think (business of hand on brow). Well, she
always paid eight dollars for her corsets when most girls in a similar
position got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the basement. Nature had
been kind to her. The hair that had been a muddy brown in Minnie's
schoolgirl days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand. Birdie
Callahan always said that Minnie was working only to wear out her old
clothes.
After the introduction Miss Wenzel followed Jo Haley into the lobby. She
took no pains to lower her voice.
"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, you've got a fine nerve! If my gentleman
friend was to hear of my working with an ex-con I wouldn't be surprised
if he'd break off the engagement. I should think you'd have some respect
for the feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and engaged to a swell
fellow like Mr. Schwartz."
"Say, listen, m' girl," replied Jo Haley. "The law don't cover all the
tricks. But if stuffing an order was a criminal offense I'll bet your
swell traveling man would be doing a life term."
Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that his jaws ached next
morning. Minnie Wenzel spoke to him only when necessary and then in
terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time came she divested herself
of the black sateen sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a la
Patricia O'Brien, produced a chamois skin, and disappeared in the
direction of the washroom. Ted waited until the dining-room was almost
deserted. Then he went in to dinner alone. Some one in white wearing an
absurd little pocket handkerchief of an apron led him to a seat in a far
corner of the big room. Ted did not lift his eyes higher than the snowy
square of the apron. The Apron drew out a chair, shoved it under Ted's
knees in the way Aprons have, and thrust a printed menu at him.
"Roast beef, medium," said Ted, without looking up.
"Bless your heart, yuh ain't changed a bit. I remember how yuh used to
jaw when it was too well done," said the Apron, fondly.
Ted's head came up with a jerk.
"So yuh will cut yer old friends, is it?" grinned Birdie Callahan. "If
this wasn't a public dining-room maybe yuh'd shake hands with a poor but
proud workin' girrul. Yer as good lookin' a divil as ever, Mister Ted."
Ted's hand shot out and grasped hers. "Birdie! I could weep on your
apron! I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Just to look at
you makes me homesick. What in Sam Hill are you doing here?"
"Waitin'. After yer ma died, seemed like I didn't care t' work fer no
other privit fam'ly, so I came back here on my old job. I'll bet I'm the
homeliest head waitress in captivity."
Ted's nervous fingers were pleating the tablecloth. His voice sank to a
whisper. "Birdie, tell me the God's truth. Did those three years cause
her death?"
"Niver!" lied Birdie. "I was with her to the end. It started with a
cold on th' chest. Have some French fried with yer beef, Mr. Teddy.
They're illigent to-day."
Birdie glided off to the kitchen. Authors are fond of the word "glide."
But you can take it literally this time. Birdie had a face that looked
like a huge mistake, but she walked like a panther, and they're said to
be the last cry as gliders. She walked with her chin up and her hips
firm. That comes from juggling trays. You have to walk like that to
keep your nose out of the soup. After a while the walk becomes a habit.
Any seasoned dining-room girl could give lessons in walking to the
Delsarte teacher of an Eastern finishing school.
From the day that Birdie Callahan served Ted with the roast beef medium
and the elegant French fried, she appointed herself monitor over his food
and clothes and morals. I wish I could find words to describe his bitter
loneliness. He did not seek companionship. The men, although not
directly avoiding him, seemed somehow to have pressing business whenever
they happened in his vicinity. The women ignored him. Mrs. Dankworth,
still dashing and still widowed, passed Ted one day and looked fixedly at
a point one inch above his head. In a town like ours the Haley House is
like a big, hospitable clubhouse. The men drop in there the first thing
in the morning, and the last thing at night, to hear the gossip and buy a
cigar and jolly the girl at the cigar counter. Ted spoke to them when
they spoke to him. He began to develop a certain grim line about the
mouth. Jo Haley watched him from afar, and the longer he watched the
kinder and more speculative grew the look in his eyes. And slowly and
surely there grew in the hearts of our townspeople a certain new respect
and admiration for this boy who was fighting his fight.
Ted got into the habit of taking his meals late, so that Birdie Callahan
could take the time to talk to him.
"Birdie," he said one day, when she brought his soup, "do you know that
you're the only decent woman who'll talk to me? Do you know what I mean
when I say that I'd give the rest of my life if I could just put my head
in my mother's lap and have her muss up my hair and call me foolish
names?"
Birdie Callahan cleared her throat and said abruptly: "I was noticin'
yesterday your gray pants needs pressin' bad. Bring 'em down tomorrow
mornin' and I'll give 'em th' elegant crease in the laundry."
So the first weeks went by, and the two months of Miss Wenzel's stay came
to an end. Ted thanked his God and tried hard not to wish that she was a
man so that he could punch her head.
The day before the time appointed for her departure she was closeted with
Jo Haley for a long, long time. When finally she emerged a bellboy
lounged up to Ted with a message.
"Wenzel says th' Old Man wants t' see you. 'S in his office. Say, Mr.
Terrill, do yuh think they can play to-day? It's pretty wet."
Jo Haley was sunk in the depths of his big leather chair. He did not
look up as Ted entered. "Sit down," he said. Ted sat down and waited,
puzzled.
"As a wizard at figures," mused Jo Haley at last, softly as though to
himself, "I'm a frost. A column of figures on paper makes my head swim.
But I can carry a whole regiment of 'em in my head. I know every time
the barkeeper draws one in the dark. I've been watchin' this thing for
the last two weeks hopin' you'd quit and come and tell me." He turned
suddenly and faced Ted. "Ted, old kid," he said sadly, "what'n'ell made
you do it again?"
"What's the joke?" asked Ted.
"Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that way of talkin' won't help
matters none. As I said, I'm rotten at figures. But you're the first
investment that ever turned out bad, and let me tell you I've handled
some mighty bad smelling ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on
the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or so why----"
"What's the joke, Jo?" said Ted again, slowly.
"This ain't my notion of a joke," came the terse answer. "We're three
hundred short."
The last vestige of Ted Terrill's old-time radiance seemed to flicker and
die, leaving him ashen and old.
"Short?" he repeated. Then, "My God!" in a strangely colorless
voice--"My God!" He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though
they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm
with the grip of fear. "Jo! Jo! That's the thing that has haunted me
day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again.
Don't laugh at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights going over that
cursed business of the bank--over and over--till the cold sweat would
break out all over me. I used to figure it all out again, step by step,
until--Jo, could a man steal and not know it? Could thinking of a thing
like that drive a man crazy? Because if it could--if it could--then----"
"I don't know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds darned fishy." He had a
hand on Ted's shaking shoulder, and was looking into the white, drawn
face. "I had great plans for you, Ted. But Minnie Wenzel's got it all
down on slips of paper. I might as well call her, in again, and we'll
have the whole blamed thing out."
Minnie Wenzel came. In her hand were slips of paper, and books with
figures in them, and Ted looked and saw things written in his own hand
that should not have been there. And he covered his shamed face with his
two hands and gave thanks that his mother was dead.
There came three sharp raps at the office door. The tense figures within
jumped nervously.
"Keep out!" called Jo Haley, "whoever you are." Whereupon the door
opened and Birdie Callahan breezed in.
"Get out, Birdie Callahan," roared Jo. "You're in the wrong pew."
Birdie closed the door behind her composedly and came farther into the
room. "Pete th' pasthry cook just tells me that Minnie Wenzel told th'
day clerk, who told the barkeep, who told th' janitor, who told th' chef,
who told Pete, that Minnie had caught Ted stealin' some three hundred
dollars."
Ted took a quick step forward. "Birdie, for Heaven's sake keep out of
this. You can't make things any better. You may believe in me, but----"
"Where's the money?" asked Birdie.
Ted stared at her a moment, his mouth open ludicrously.
"Why--I--don't--know," he articulated, painfully. "I never thought of
that."
Birdie snorted defiantly. "I thought so. D'ye know," sociably, "I was
visitin' with my aunt Mis' Mulcahy last evenin'."
There was a quick rustle of silks from Minnie Wenzel's direction.
"Say, look here----" began Jo Haley, impatiently.
"Shut up, Jo Haley!" snapped Birdie. "As I was sayin', I was visitin'
with my aunt Mis' Mulcahy. She does fancy washin' an' ironin' for the
swells. An' Minnie Wenzel, there bein' none sweller, hires her to do up
her weddin' linens. Such smears av hand embridery an' Irish crochet she
never see th' likes, Mis' Mulcahy says, and she's seen a lot. And as a
special treat to the poor owld soul, why Minnie Wenzel lets her see some
av her weddin' clo'es. There never yet was a woman who cud resist
showin' her weddin' things to every other woman she cud lay hands on.
Well, Mis' Mulcahy, she see that grand trewsow and she said she never saw
th' beat. Dresses! Well, her going away suit alone comes to eighty
dollars, for it's bein' made by Molkowsky, the little Polish tailor. An'
her weddin' dress is satin, do yuh mind! Oh, it was a real treat for my
aunt Mis' Mulcahy."
Birdie walked over to where Minnie Wenzel sat, very white and still, and
pointed a stubby red finger in her face. "'Tis the grand manager ye are,
Miss Wenzel, gettin' satins an' tailor-mades on yer salary. It takes a
woman, Minnie Wenzel, to see through a woman's thricks."
"Well I'll be dinged!" exploded Jo Haley.
"Yuh'd better be!" retorted Birdie Callahan.
Minnie Wenzel stood up, her lip caught between her teeth.
"Am I to understand, Jo Haley, that you dare to accuse me of taking your
filthy money, instead of that miserable ex-con there who has done time?"
"That'll do, Minnie," said Jo Haley, gently. "That's a-plenty."
"Prove it," went on Minnie, and then looked as though she wished she
hadn't.
"A business college edjication is a grand foine thing," observed Birdie.
"Miss Wenzel is a graduate av wan. They teach you everything from
drawin' birds with tail feathers to plain and fancy penmanship. In fact,
they teach everything in the writin' line except forgery, an' I ain't so
sure they haven't got a coorse in that."
"I don't care," whimpered Minnie Wenzel suddenly, sinking in a limp heap
on the floor. "I had to do it. I'm marrying a swell fellow and a girl's
got to have some clothes that don't look like a Bird Center dressmaker's
work. He's got three sisters. I saw their pictures and they're coming
to the wedding. They're the kind that wear low-necked dresses in the
evening, and have their hair and nails done downtown. I haven't got a
thing but my looks. Could I go to New York dressed like a rube? On the
square, Jo, I worked here six years and never took a sou. But things got
away from me. The tailor wouldn't finish my suit unless I paid him fifty
dollars down. I only took fifty at first, intending to pay it back.
Honest to goodness, Jo, I did."
"Cut it out," said Jo Haley, "and get up. I was going to give you a
check for your wedding, though I hadn't counted on no three hundred.
We'll call it square. And I hope you'll be happy, but I don't gamble on
it. You'll be goin' through your man's pants pockets before you're
married a year. You can take your hat and fade. I'd like to know how
I'm ever going to square this thing with Ted and Birdie."
"An' me standin' here gassin' while them fool girls in the dinin'-room
can't set a table decent, and dinner in less than ten minutes," cried
Birdie, rushing off. Ted mumbled something unintelligible and was after
her.
"Birdie! I want to talk to you."
"Say it quick then," said Birdie, over her shoulder. "The doors open in
three minnits."
"I can't tell you how grateful I am. This is no place to talk to you.
Will you let me walk home with you to-night after your work's done?"
"Will I?" said Birdie, turning to face him. "I will not. Th' swell mob
has shook you, an' a good thing it is. You was travelin' with a bunch of
racers, when you was only built for medium speed. Now you're got your
chance to a fresh start and don't you ever think I'm going to be the one
to let you spoil it by beginnin' to walk out with a dinin'-room Lizzie
like me."
"Don't say that, Birdie," Ted put in.
"It's the truth," affirmed Birdie. "Not that I ain't a perfec'ly
respectable girrul, and ye know it. I'm a good slob, but folks would be
tickled for the chance to say that you had nobody to go with but the
likes av me. If I was to let you walk home with me to-night, yuh might
be askin' to call next week. Inside half a year, if yuh was lonesome
enough, yuh'd ask me to marry yuh. And b'gorra," she said softly,
looking down at her unlovely red hands, "I'm dead scared I'd do it. Get
back to work, Ted Terrill, and hold yer head up high, and when yuh say
your prayers to-night, thank your lucky stars I ain't a hussy."
III
WHAT SHE WORE
Somewhere in your story you must pause to describe your heroine's
costume. It is a ticklish task. The average reader likes his heroine
well dressed. He is not satisfied with knowing that she looked like a
tall, fair lily. He wants to be told that her gown was of green crepe,
with lace ruffles that swirled at her feet. Writers used to go so far as
to name the dressmaker; and it was a poor kind of a heroine who didn't
wear a red velvet by Worth. But that has been largely abandoned in these
days of commissions. Still, when the heroine goes out on the terrace to
spoon after dinner (a quaint old English custom for the origin of which
see any novel by the "Duchess," page 179) the average reader wants to
know what sort of a filmy wrap she snatches up on the way out. He
demands a description, with as many illustrations as the publisher will
stand for, of what she wore from the bedroom to the street, with full
stops for the ribbons on her robe de nuit, and the buckles on her
ballroom slippers. Half the poor creatures one sees flattening their
noses against the shop windows are authors getting a line on the advance
fashions. Suppose a careless writer were to dress his heroine in a
full-plaited skirt only to find, when his story is published four months
later, that full-plaited skirts have been relegated to the dim past!
I started to read a story once. It was a good one. There was in it not
a single allusion to brandy-and-soda, or divorce, or the stock market.
The dialogue crackled. The hero talked like a live man. It was a
shipboard story, and the heroine was charming so long as she wore her
heavy ulster. But along toward evening she blossomed forth in a yellow
gown, with a scarlet poinsettia at her throat. I quit her cold. Nobody
ever wore a scarlet poinsettia; or if they did, they couldn't wear it on
a yellow gown. Or if they did wear it with a yellow gown, they didn't
wear it at the throat. Scarlet poinsettias aren't worn, anyhow. To this
day I don't know whether the heroine married the hero or jumped overboard.
You see, one can't be too careful about clothing one's heroine.
I hesitate to describe Sophy Epstein's dress. You won't like it. In the
first place, it was cut too low, front and back, for a shoe clerk in a
downtown loft. It was a black dress, near-princess in style, very tight
as to fit, very short as to skirt, very sleazy as to material. It showed
all the delicate curves of Sophy's under-fed, girlish body, and Sophy
didn't care a bit. Its most objectionable feature was at the throat.
Collarless gowns were in vogue. Sophy's daring shears had gone a snip or
two farther. They had cut a startlingly generous V. To say that the
dress was elbow-sleeved is superfluous. I have said that Sophy clerked
in a downtown loft.
Sophy sold "sample" shoes at two-fifty a pair, and from where you were
standing you thought they looked just like the shoes that were sold in
the regular shops for six. When Sophy sat on one of the low benches at
the feet of some customer, tugging away at a refractory shoe for a
would-be small foot, her shameless little gown exposed more than it
should have. But few of Sophy's customers were shocked. They were
mainly chorus girls and ladies of doubtful complexion in search of cheap
and ultra footgear, and--to use a health term--hardened by exposure.
Have I told you how pretty she was? She was so pretty that you
immediately forgave her the indecency of her pitiful little gown. She
was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked little Puritan, or
a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted in
the middle, drawn severely down over her ears, framing the lovely oval of
her face and ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom
had told Sophy to eschew puffs. But I think her prettiness could have
triumphed even over those.
If Sophy's boss had been any other sort of man he would have informed
Sophy, sternly, that black princess effects, cut low, were not au fait in
the shoe-clerk world. But Sophy's boss had a rhombic nose, and no
instep, and the tail of his name had been amputated. He didn't care how
Sophy wore her dresses so long as she sold shoes.
Once the boss had kissed Sophy--not on the mouth, but just where her
shabby gown formed its charming but immodest V. Sophy had slapped him,
of course. But the slap had not set the thing right in her mind. She
could not forget it. It had made her uncomfortable in much the same way
as we are wildly ill at ease when we dream of walking naked in a crowded
street. At odd moments during the day Sophy had found herself rubbing
the spot furiously with her unlovely handkerchief, and shivering a
little. She had never told the other girls about that kiss.
So--there you have Sophy and her costume. You may take her or leave her.
I purposely placed these defects in costuming right at the beginning of
the story, so that there should be no false pretenses. One more detail.
About Sophy's throat was a slender, near-gold chain from which was
suspended a cheap and glittering La Valliere. Sophy had not intended it
as a sop to the conventions. It was an offering on the shrine of
Fashion, and represented many lunchless days.
At eleven o'clock one August morning, Louie came to Chicago from
Oskaloosa, Iowa. There was no hay in his hair. The comic papers have
long insisted that the country boy, on his first visit to the city, is
known by his greased boots and his high-water pants. Don't you believe
them. The small-town boy is as fastidious about the height of his heels
and the stripe of his shift and the roll of his hat-brim as are his city
brothers. He peruses the slangily worded ads of the "classy clothes"
tailors, and when scarlet cravats are worn the small-town boy is not more
than two weeks late in acquiring one that glows like a headlight.
Louie found a rooming-house, shoved his suitcase under the bed, changed
his collar, washed his hands in the gritty water of the wash bowl, and
started out to look for a job.
Louie was twenty-one. For the last four years he had been employed in
the best shoe store at home, and he knew shoe leather from the factory to
the ash barrel. It was almost a religion with him.
Curiosity, which plays leads in so many life dramas, led Louie to the
rotunda of the tallest building. It was built on the hollow center plan,
with a sheer drop from the twenty-somethingth to the main floor. Louie
stationed himself in the center of the mosaic floor, took off his hat,
bent backward almost double and gazed, his mouth wide open. When he
brought his muscles slowly back into normal position he tried hard not to
look impressed. He glanced about, sheepishly, to see if any one was
laughing at him, and his eye encountered the electric-lighted glass
display case of the shoe company upstairs. The case was filled with pink
satin slippers and cunning velvet boots, and the newest thing in bronze
street shoes. Louie took the next elevator up. The shoe display had
made him feel as though some one from home had slapped him on the back.
The God of the Jobless was with him. The boss had fired two boys the day
before.
"Oskaloosa!" grinned the boss, derisively. "Do they wear shoes there?
What do you know about shoes, huh boy?"
Louie told him. The boss shuffled the papers on his desk, and chewed his
cigar, and tried not to show his surprise. Louie, quite innocently, was
teaching the boss things about the shoe business.
When Louie had finished--"Well, I try you, anyhow," the boss grunted,
grudgingly. "I give you so-and-so much." He named a wage that would
have been ridiculous if it had not been so pathetic.
"All right, sir," answered Louie, promptly, like the boys in the Alger
series. The cost of living problem had never bothered Louie in Oskaloosa.
The boss hid a pleased smile.
"Miss Epstein!" he bellowed, "step this way! Miss Epstein, kindly show
this here young man so he gets a line on the stock. He is from
Oskaloosa, Ioway. Look out she don't sell you a gold brick, Louie."
But Louie was not listening. He was gazing at the V in Sophy Epstein's
dress with all his scandalized Oskaloosa, Iowa, eyes.