the Young Men's Sunday Evening Club service at the Congregational church,
and in his town there had been no Sophy Epsteins in too-tight princess
dresses, cut into a careless V. But Sophy was a city product--I was
about to say pure and simple, but I will not--wise, bold, young, old,
underfed, overworked, and triumphantly pretty.
"How-do!" cooed Sophy in her best baby tones. Louie's disapproving eyes
jumped from the objectionable V in Sophy's dress to the lure of Sophy's
face, and their expression underwent a lightning change. There was no
disapproving Sophy's face, no matter how long one had dwelt in Oskaloosa.
"I won't bite you," said Sophy. "I'm never vicious on Tuesdays. We'll
start here with the misses' an' children's, and work over to the other
side."
Whereupon Louie was introduced into the intricacies of the sample shoe
business. He kept his eyes resolutely away from the V, and learned many
things. He learned how shoes that look like six dollar values may be
sold for two-fifty. He looked on in wide-eyed horror while Sophy fitted
a No. 5 C shoe on a 6 B foot and assured the wearer that it looked like a
made-to-order boot. He picked up a pair of dull kid shoes and looked at
them. His leather-wise eyes saw much, and I think he would have taken
his hat off the hook, and his offended business principles out of the
shop forever if Sophy had not completed her purchase and strolled over to
him at the psychological moment.
She smiled up at him, impudently. "Well, Pink Cheeks," she said, "how do
you like our little settlement by the lake, huh?"
"These shoes aren't worth two-fifty," said Louie, indignation in his
voice.
"Well, sure," replied Sophy. "I know it. What do you think this is? A
charity bazaar?"
"But back home----" began Louie, hotly.
"Ferget it, kid," said Sophy. "This is a big town, but it ain't got no
room for back-homers. Don't sour on one job till you've got another
nailed. You'll find yourself cuddling down on a park bench if you do.
Say, are you honestly from Oskaloosa?"
"I certainly am," answered Louie, with pride.
"My goodness!" ejaculated Sophy. "I never believed there was no such
place. Don't brag about it to the other fellows."
"What time do you go out for lunch?" asked Louie.
"What's it to you?" with the accent on the "to."
"When I want to know a thing, I generally ask," explained Louie, gently.
Sophy looked at him--a long, keen, knowing look. "You'll learn," she
observed, thoughtfully.
Louie did learn. He learned so much in that first week that when Sunday
came it seemed as though aeons had passed over his head. He learned that
the crime of murder was as nothing compared to the crime of allowing a
customer to depart shoeless; he learned that the lunch hour was invented
for the purpose of making dates; that no one had ever heard of Oskaloosa,
Iowa; that seven dollars a week does not leave much margin for laundry
and general recklessness; that a madonna face above a V-cut gown is apt
to distract one's attention from shoes; that a hundred-dollar nest egg is
as effective in Chicago as a pine stick would be in propping up a stone
wall; and that all the other men clerks called Sophy "sweetheart."
Some of his newly acquired knowledge brought pain, as knowledge is apt to
do.
He saw that State Street was crowded with Sophys during the noon hour;
girls with lovely faces under pitifully absurd hats. Girls who aped the
fashions of the dazzling creatures they saw stepping from limousines.
Girls who starved body and soul in order to possess a set of false curls,
or a pair of black satin shoes with mother-o'-pearl buttons. Girls
whose minds were bounded on the north by the nickel theatres; on the east
by "I sez to him"; on the south by the gorgeous shop windows; and on the
west by "He sez t' me."
Oh, I can't tell you how much Louie learned in that first week while his
eyes were getting accustomed to the shifting, jostling, pushing,
giggling, walking, talking throng. The city is justly famed as a hot
house of forced knowledge.
One thing Louie could not learn. He could not bring himself to accept
the V in Sophy's dress. Louie's mother had been one of the old-fashioned
kind who wore a blue-and-white checked gingham apron from 6 A.M. to 2
P.M., when she took it off to go downtown and help the ladies of the
church at the cake sale in the empty window of the gas company's office,
only to don it again when she fried the potatoes for supper. Among other
things she had taught Louie to wipe his feet before coming in, to respect
and help women, and to change his socks often.
After a month of Chicago Louie forgot the first lesson; had more
difficulty than I can tell you in reverencing a woman who only said, "Aw,
don't get fresh now!" when the other men put their arms about her; and
adhered to the third only after a struggle, in which he had to do a small
private washing in his own wash-bowl in the evening.
Sophy called him a stiff. His gravely courteous treatment of her made
her vaguely uncomfortable. She was past mistress in the art of parrying
insults and banter, but she had no reply ready for Louie's boyish air of
deference. It angered her for some unreasonable woman-reason.
There came a day when the V-cut dress brought them to open battle. I
think Sophy had appeared that morning minus the chain and La Valliere.
Frail and cheap as it was, it had been the only barrier that separated
Sophy from frank shamelessness. Louie's outraged sense of propriety
asserted itself.
"Sophy," he stammered, during a quiet half-hour, "I'll call for you and
take you to the nickel show to-night if you'll promise not to wear that
dress. What makes you wear that kind of a get-up, anyway?"
"Dress?" queried Sophy, looking down at the shiny front breadth of her
frock. "Why? Don't you like it?"
"Like it! No!" blurted Louie.
"Don't yuh, rully! Deah me! Deah me! If I'd only knew that this
morning. As a gen'ral thing I wear white duck complete down t' work, but
I'm savin' my last two clean suits f'r gawlf."
Louie ran an uncomfortable finger around the edge of his collar, but he
stood his ground. "It--it--shows your--neck so," he objected, miserably.
Sophy opened her great eyes wide. "Well, supposin' it does?" she
inquired, coolly. "It's a perfectly good neck, ain't it?"
Louie, his face very red, took the plunge. "I don't know. I guess so.
But, Sophy, it--looks so--so--you know what I mean. I hate to see the
way the fellows rubber at you. Why don't you wear those plain shirtwaist
things, with high collars, like my mother wears back home?"
Sophy's teeth came together with a click. She laughed a short cruel
little laugh. "Say, Pink Cheeks, did yuh ever do a washin' from seven to
twelve, after you got home from work in the evenin'? It's great!
'Specially when you're living in a six-by-ten room with all the modern
inconveniences, includin' no water except on the third floor down.
Simple! Say, a child could work it. All you got to do, when you get
home so tired your back teeth ache, is to haul your water, an' soak your
clothes, an' then rub 'em till your hands peel, and rinse 'em, an' boil
'em, and blue 'em, an' starch 'em. See? Just like that. Nothin' to it,
kid. Nothin' to it."
Louie had been twisting his fingers nervously. Now his hands shut
themselves into fists. He looked straight into Sophy's angry eyes.
"I do know what it is," he said, quite simply. "There's been a lot
written and said about women's struggle with clothes. I wonder why
they've never said anything about the way a man has to fight to keep up
the thing they call appearances. God knows it's pathetic enough to think
of a girl like you bending over a tubful of clothes. But when a man has
to do it, it's a tragedy."
"That's so," agreed Sophy. "When a girl gets shabby, and her clothes
begin t' look tacky she can take a gore or so out of her skirt where it's
the most wore, and catch it in at the bottom, and call it a hobble. An'
when her waist gets too soiled she can cover up the front of it with a
jabot, an' if her face is pretty enough she can carry it off that way.
But when a man is seedy, he's seedy. He can't sew no ruffles on his
pants."
"I ran short last week," continued Louie. "That is, shorter than usual.
I hadn't the fifty cents to give to the woman. You ought to see her! A
little, gray-faced thing, with wisps of hair, and no chest to speak of,
and one of those mashed-looking black hats. Nobody could have the nerve
to ask her to wait for her money. So I did my own washing. I haven't
learned to wear soiled clothes yet. I laughed fit to bust while I was
doing it. But--I'll bet my mother dreamed of me that night. The way
they do, you know, when something's gone wrong."
Sophy, perched on the third rung of the sliding ladder, was gazing at
him. Her lips were parted slightly, and her cheeks were very pink. On
her face was a new, strange look, as of something half forgotten. It was
as though the spirit of Sophy-as-she-might-have-been were inhabiting her
soul for a brief moment. At Louie's next words the look was gone.
"Can't you sew something--a lace yoke--or whatever you call 'em--in that
dress?" he persisted.
"Aw, fade!" jeered Sophy. "When a girl's only got one dress it's got to
have some tong to it. Maybe this gown would cause a wave of indignation
in Oskaloosa, Iowa, but it don't even make a ripple on State Street. It
takes more than an aggravated Dutch neck to make a fellow look at a girl
these days. In a town like this a girl's got to make a showin' some way.
I'm my own stage manager. They look at my dress first, an' grin. See?
An' then they look at my face. I'm like the girl in the story. Muh face
is muh fortune. It's earned me many a square meal; an' lemme tell you,
Pink Cheeks, eatin' square meals is one of my favorite pastimes."
"Say looka here!" bellowed the boss, wrathfully. "Just cut out this here
Romeo and Juliet act, will you! That there ladder ain't for no balcony
scene, understand. Here you, Louie, you shinny up there and get down a
pair of them brown satin pumps, small size."
Sophy continued to wear the black dress. The V-cut neck seemed more
flaunting than ever.
It was two weeks later that Louie came in from lunch, his face radiant.
He was fifteen minutes late, but he listened to the boss's ravings with a
smile.
"You grin like somebody handed you a ten-case note," commented Sophy,
with a woman's curiosity. "I guess you must of met some rube from home
when you was out t' lunch."
"Better than that! Who do you think I bumped right into in the elevator
going down?"
"Well, Brothah Bones," mimicked Sophy, "who did you meet in the elevator
going down?"
"I met a man named Ames. He used to travel for a big Boston shoe house,
and he made our town every few months. We got to be good friends. I
took him home for Sunday dinner once, and he said it was the best dinner
he'd had in months. You know how tired those traveling men get of hotel
grub."
"Cut out the description and get down to action," snapped Sophy.
"Well, he knew me right away. And he made me go out to lunch with him.
A real lunch, starting with soup. Gee! It went big. He asked me what I
was doing. I told him I was working here, and he opened his eyes, and
then he laughed and said: 'How did you get into that joint?' Then he
took me down to a swell little shoe shop on State Street, and it turned
out that he owns it. He introduced me all around, and I'm going there to
work next week. And wages! Why say, it's almost a salary. A fellow can
hold his head up in a place like that."
"When you leavin'?" asked Sophy, slowly.
"Monday. Gee! it seems a year away."
Sophy was late Saturday morning. When she came in, hurriedly, her cheeks
were scarlet and her eyes glowed. She took off her hat and coat and fell
to straightening boxes and putting out stock without looking up. She
took no part in the talk and jest that was going on among the other
clerks. One of the men, in search of the missing mate to the shoe in his
hand, came over to her, greeting her carelessly. Then he stared.
"Well, what do you know about this!" he called out to the others, and
laughed coarsely, "Look, stop, listen! Little Sophy Bright Eyes here has
pulled down the shades."
Louie turned quickly. The immodest V of Sophy's gown was filled with a
black lace yoke that came up to the very lobes of her little pink ears.
She had got some scraps of lace from--Where do they get those bits of
rusty black? From some basement bargain counter, perhaps, raked over
during the lunch hour. There were nine pieces in the front, and seven in
the back. She had sat up half the night putting them together so that
when completed they looked like one, if you didn't come too close. There
is a certain strain of Indian patience and ingenuity in women that no man
has ever been able to understand.
Louie looked up and saw. His eyes met Sophy's. In his there crept a
certain exultant gleam, as of one who had fought for something great and
won. Sophy saw the look. The shy questioning in her eyes was replaced
by a spark of defiance. She tossed her head, and turned to the man who
had called attention to her costume.
"Who's loony now?" she jeered. "I always put in a yoke when it gets
along toward fall. My lungs is delicate. And anyway, I see by the
papers yesterday that collarless gowns is slightly passay f'r winter."
IV
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
This is not a baseball story. The grandstand does not rise as one man
and shout itself hoarse with joy. There isn't a three-bagger in the
entire three thousand words, and nobody is carried home on the shoulders
of the crowd. For that sort of thing you need not squander fifteen cents
on your favorite magazine. The modest sum of one cent will make you the
possessor of a Pink 'Un. There you will find the season's games handled
in masterly fashion by a six-best-seller artist, an expert mathematician,
and an original-slang humorist. No mere short story dub may hope to
compete with these.
In the old days, before the gentry of the ring had learned the wisdom of
investing their winnings in solids instead of liquids, this used to be a
favorite conundrum: When is a prize-fighter not a prize-fighter?
Chorus: When he is tending bar.
I rise to ask you Brothah Fan, when is a ball player not a ball player?
Above the storm of facetious replies I shout the answer:
When he's a shoe clerk.
Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis.
There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar,
and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink
undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a
man's best points. Then too, a baseball suit requires so much in the
matter of leg. Therefore, when I say that Rudie Schlachweiler was a
dream even in his baseball uniform, with a dirty brown streak right up
the side of his pants where he had slid for base, you may know that the
girls camped on the grounds during the season.
During the summer months our ball park is to us what the Grand Prix is to
Paris, or Ascot is to London. What care we that Evers gets seven
thousand a year (or is it a month?); or that Chicago's new South-side
ball park seats thirty-five thousand (or is it million?). Of what
interest are such meager items compared with the knowledge that "Pug"
Coulan, who plays short, goes with Undine Meyers, the girl up there in
the eighth row, with the pink dress and the red roses on her hat? When
"Pug" snatches a high one out of the firmament we yell with delight, and
even as we yell we turn sideways to look up and see how Undine is taking
it. Undine's shining eyes are fixed on "Pug," and he knows it, stoops to
brush the dust off his dirt-begrimed baseball pants, takes an attitude of
careless grace and misses the next play.
Our grand-stand seats almost two thousand, counting the boxes. But only
the snobs, and the girls with new hats, sit in the boxes. Box seats are
comfortable, it is true, and they cost only an additional ten cents, but
we have come to consider them undemocratic, and unworthy of true fans.
Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne, who spends her winters in Egypt and her summers at
the ball park, comes out to the game every afternoon in her automobile,
but she never occupies a box seat; so why should we? She perches up in
the grand-stand with the rest of the enthusiasts, and when Kelly puts one
over she stands up and clinches her fists, and waves her arms and shouts
with the best of 'em. She has even been known to cry, "Good eye! Good
eye!" when things were at fever heat. The only really blase individual
in the ball park is Willie Grimes, who peddles ice-cream cones. For that
matter, I once saw Willie turn a languid head to pipe, in his thin voice,
"Give 'em a dark one, Dutch! Give 'em a dark one!"
Well, that will do for the firsh dash of local color. Now for the story.
Ivy Keller came home June nineteenth from Miss Shont's select school for
young ladies. By June twenty-first she was bored limp. You could hardly
see the plaits of her white tailored shirtwaist for fraternity pins and
secret society emblems, and her bedroom was ablaze with college banners
and pennants to such an extent that the maid gave notice every
Thursday--which was upstairs cleaning day.
For two weeks after her return Ivy spent most of her time writing letters
and waiting for them, and reading the classics on the front porch,
dressed in a middy blouse and a blue skirt, with her hair done in a curly
Greek effect like the girls on the covers of the Ladies' Magazine. She
posed against the canvas bosom of the porch chair with one foot under
her, the other swinging free, showing a tempting thing in beaded slipper,
silk stocking, and what the story writers call "slim ankle."
On the second Saturday after her return her father came home for dinner
at noon, found her deep in Volume Two of "Les Miserables."
"Whew! This is a scorcher!" he exclaimed, and dropped down on a wicker
chair next to Ivy. Ivy looked at her father with languid interest, and
smiled a daughterly smile. Ivy's father was an insurance man, alderman
of his ward, president of the Civic Improvement club, member of five
lodges, and an habitual delegate. It generally was he who introduced
distinguished guests who spoke at the opera house on Decoration Day. He
called Mrs. Keller "Mother," and he wasn't above noticing the fit of a
gown on a pretty feminine figure. He thought Ivy was an expurgated
edition of Lillian Russell, Madame De Stael, and Mrs. Pankburst.
"Aren't you feeling well, Ivy?" he asked. "Looking a little pale. It's
the heat, I suppose. Gosh! Something smells good. Run in and tell
Mother I'm here."
Ivy kept one slender finger between the leaves of her book. "I'm
perfectly well," she replied. "That must be beefsteak and onions. Ugh!"
And she shuddered, and went indoors.
Dad Keller looked after her thoughtfully. Then he went in, washed his
hands, and sat down at table with Ivy and her mother.
"Just a sliver for me," said Ivy, "and no onions."
Her father put down his knife and fork, cleared his throat, and spake,
thus:
"You get on your hat and meet me at the 2:45 inter-urban. You're going
to the ball game with me."
"Ball game!" repeated Ivy. "I? But I'd----"
"Yes, you do," interrupted her father. "You've been moping around here
looking a cross between Saint Cecilia and Little Eva long enough. I
don't care if you don't know a spitball from a fadeaway when you see it.
You'll be out in the air all afternoon, and there'll be some excitement.
All the girls go. You'll like it. They're playing Marshalltown."
Ivy went, looking the sacrificial lamb. Five minutes after the game was
called she pointed one tapering white finger in the direction of the
pitcher's mound.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"Pitcher," explained Papa Keller, laconically. Then, patiently: "He
throws the ball."
"Oh," said Ivy. "What did you say his name was?"
"I didn't say. But it's Rudie Schlachweiler. The boys call him Dutch.
Kind of a pet, Dutch is."
"Rudie Schlachweiler!" murmured Ivy, dreamily. "What a strong name!"
"Want some peanuts?" inquired her father.
"Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?"
"It ain't hardly legal if you don't," Pa Keller assured her.
"Two sacks," said Ivy. "Papa, why do they call it a diamond, and what
are those brown bags at the corners, and what does it count if you hit
the ball, and why do they rub their hands in the dust and then--er--spit
on them, and what salary does a pitcher get, and why does the red-haired
man on the other side dance around like that between the second and third
brown bag, and doesn't a pitcher do anything but pitch, and wh----?"
"You're on," said papa.
After that Ivy didn't miss a game during all the time that the team
played in the home town. She went without a new hat, and didn't care
whether Jean Valjean got away with the goods or not, and forgot whether
you played third hand high or low in bridge. She even became chummy with
Undine Meyers, who wasn't her kind of a girl at all. Undine was thin in
a voluptuous kind of way, if such a paradox can be, and she had red lips,
and a roving eye, and she ran around downtown without a hat more than was
strictly necessary. But Undine and Ivy had two subjects in common. They
were baseball and love. It is queer how the limelight will make heroes
of us all.
Now "Pug" Coulan, who was red-haired, and had shoulders like an ox, and
arms that hung down to his knees, like those of an orang-outang,
slaughtered beeves at the Chicago stockyards in winter. In the summer he
slaughtered hearts. He wore mustard colored shirts that matched his
hair, and his baseball stockings generally had a rip in them somewhere,
but when he was on the diamond we were almost ashamed to look at Undine,
so wholly did her heart shine in her eyes.
Now, we'll have just another dash or two of local color. In a small town
the chances for hero worship are few. If it weren't for the traveling
men our girls wouldn't know whether stripes or checks were the thing in
gents' suitings. When the baseball season opened the girls swarmed on
it. Those that didn't understand baseball pretended they did. When the
team was out of town our form of greeting was changed from,
"Good-morning!" or "Howdy-do!" to "What's the score?" Every night the
results of the games throughout the league were posted up on the
blackboard in front of Schlager's hardware store, and to see the way in
which the crowd stood around it, and streamed across the street toward
it, you'd have thought they were giving away gas stoves and hammock
couches.
Going home in the street car after the game the girls used to gaze
adoringly at the dirty faces of their sweat-begrimed heroes, and then
they'd rush home, have supper, change their dresses, do their hair, and
rush downtown past the Parker Hotel to mail their letters. The baseball
boys boarded over at the Griggs House, which is third-class, but they
used their tooth-picks, and held the postmortem of the day's game out in
front of the Parker Hotel, which is our leading hostelry. The postoffice
receipts record for our town was broken during the months of June, July,
and August.
Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne started the trouble by having the team over to
dinner, "Pug" Coulan and all. After all, why not? No foreign and
impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as our town. They get only
as far as New York, or Newport, where they are gobbled up by many-moneyed
matrons. If Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne found the supply of available lions
limited, why should she not try to content herself with a jackal or so?
Ivy was asked. Until then she had contented herself with gazing at her
hero. She had become such a hardened baseball fan that she followed the
game with a score card, accurately jotting down every play, and keeping
her watch open on her knee.
She sat next to Rudie at dinner. Before she had nibbled her second
salted almond, Ivy Keller and Rudie Schlachweiler understood each other.
Rudie illustrated certain plays by drawing lines on the table-cloth with
his knife and Ivy gazed, wide-eyed, and allowed her soup to grow cold.