FINE FEATHERS
I
One feature of that funeral I’ll be a long time forgetting was the
unexpected appearance of old Caleb Gridley.
Old Caleb had traveled much since he lost his Duchess and disposed of
his tannery. He had made money and knew how to make more money, but for
the first time in his life he had begun to enjoy a little of it himself.
He spent several winters in Florida and a couple in California. He was
absent much in New York and Boston. Between times he turned a quick
dollar wherever opportunity presented,—in timber lands, wood pulp,
short-term notes or sure things in the stock market.
Nobody knew he was in town until the hour for the services. He came to
the front door and rang the muffled bell. He was duly admitted and for
the first time in my life, I truthfully believe, I saw the old tanner
without his derby hat. He looked nude without it,—horribly nude. He held
it, old style, by the brim in the crook of his left arm, at the same
time proffering Mother Richards a little bouquet of pink rosebuds with
his right.
“Bought ’em myself,” he announced in a husky whisper, “fer the baby.” He
said it like an apology. “Babies always seemed to me like pink rosebuds.
Just gimme a seat next the door. I’ll be goin’ presently.”
But the old man did not go presently. He sat through the entire services
and when Nathan had helped his hysterical young wife away, it was Caleb
who gave the undertaker what assistance was required.
“Come up and see me, bub,” he invited Nathan, meeting the young man when
that distressing afternoon was a thing of the past and Milly had gone
home to her mother’s. “Now and then I hanker for the old days when you
an’ me used to read poetry.”
Nathan went. No place other than Caleb’s room in the hotel could have
been more appropriate or consoling for him at the moment. Gridley
loosened his vest and clothes, a process he designated as “easin’ up for
comfort”, and the queer pair sat down together, it being several moments
before either broke the silence. Finally the old man, with his massive
chin thrust deep in his shirt, one big leg thrown over the other and a
slipper sole swinging, cleared his throat. With his eyes averted, he
declared huskily:
“Bub, you an’ me always liked poetry and read a heap o’ the stuff, ain’t
we? And some of it was mighty good, specially Tennyson. But do you know,
I made a discovery t’other day. I come across a copy o’ the Bible down
to Bosting where the Psalms was all laid out, poetry-fashion. I never
seen ’em that way before and it struck me they was the best sort o’
poetry I’d ever stumbled over. Specially the Twenty-third Psalm. Ever
read the Twenty-third Psalm like verses o’ poetry, bub?”
“I don’t know that I have, Mr. Gridley.”
“Wonder if they gotta Bible here? I’ll show ye!”
There was a Gideon Bible in one of the dresser drawers. And the tanner
resumed his seat. Then whether by design or no—but I rather suspect it
was by design—old “God-Damning” Gridley, as some folk called him, tried
to heal the wound in the boy’s spirit by the beautiful cadences of that
masterpiece of all poems:
“The Lord is my shepherd,” he began, “I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my soul.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death,
I will fear no evil.
For thou art with me, ...
Thy rod and Thy staff—they comfort me.”
Nathan said afterward it would be impossible to repeat the infinite
pathos and tenderness in the hard-boiled old business man’s voice as he
intoned the lines, his dangling slipper swinging time with the rhythm.
“Bub,” said the old man finally, “I lost a boy when I was ’bout your
age. Nobody in Paris ever knew about it. It was them lines helped me
most of all. Great stuff—poetry!”
II
Through Caleb’s maneuvering it was, some time later, that Nathan was
called one afternoon into Ted Thorne’s offices at the knitting mill.
“Nat,” announced that young commercial dignitary, “the old man and I
have been talking you over. Gridley was in here the other day—you know
who I mean—old duffer who used to run the tannery. Well, he owns a
rotten lot of stock in this mill. Put it in when dad first started. And
the old man goes by Gridley’s advice a lot. Seems old Gridley’s scraped
up an interest in you somewhere and first father and I knew, old Caleb
was cussin’ like a Malay pirate and laying down the law about how we
ought to reconstruct our sales force. But it looks as if we might get
drawn into the war and we’re watching our step.”
“Yes, it does look like war,” returned Nat gravely. “I just read the
President’s message to Congress this morning.”
“It’s this way, Nat. Mosely, who’s been running our New York offices, is
unmarried. He’ll probably go if they call for volunteers. He says he
wants to go, anyhow. You’re married and have your wife and mother to
care for, and probably you’ll get exempted, if they resort to a draft.
So dad and I put two and two together—Mosely’s going to war and
Gridley’s cussin’ in your behalf—and I’m prepared to make you a
proposition.”
“But why should Mr. Gridley do any such thing? I’ve got a fair position
already.”
Ted smoked a moment in silence, loath to prod into Nat’s personal
affairs. But apparently it had to be.
“Nat, you married old Jake Richards’ oldest girl, didn’t you? I remember
her as a kid in school—she sat across the aisle from me in a couple of
the early grades.”
“Yes. But what of it?”
Ted suddenly decided to be frank.
“Nat, according to Caleb, he thinks you’re unhappily married because
your wife has never had much of a chance to see other kind of existence
but life in a little town like Paris. Old Cal believed that if you and
Mildred could settle in some place like Boston or New York, where
Mildred could get out among people, it would change her so much and
broaden her so, that you and she might be drawn closer together. Don’t
take offense. We might as well talk things frankly.”
“What’s your proposition?” asked Nathan.
“I’ve told you! Running our New York office in Fred Mosely’s place.”
“That’s quite a step from my present job, Ted.”
“We think you may be more adapted for it; you had a great knack of
handling help while you and your father were in business here. There’s a
salary of eight thousand a year attached to it but in New York you’ll
find you’ll need it. And of course dad will always expect you to earn
it. But it’ll be a complete change and give your wife a new interest
in—things. How about it?”
“Whew!” cried Nathan. “I don’t know what to say!”
And he didn’t.
Three weeks later, however, he and Milly went down to New York, Nathan
to “look over” the New York office of the Thorne Mills and decide
whether he felt capable of filling the position.
III
Mosely, manager at the time, was some five or six years older than
Nathan,—a typical young New Yorker. His people were wealthy. His mother
was somewhat of a society woman. Her son had “taken up” the woolen
business and secured his present position through the influence of his
father,—a retired banker and semi-invalid who was intimately acquainted
with the Thornes.
“Wife with you?” asked Mosely, as one afternoon’s consultation drew to a
close. “Fine! Mother has a dinner affair on to-morrow night—not very
big—just a few friends. Say, you and your wife run up and I’ll introduce
you to a few fellows you’ll be doing business with if you get my place.”
With the limitations of the provincial, Nathan was at once
panic-stricken.
Mosely did not add or explain that he intended to ask his mother to lay
two more covers because he wanted to discern how far Nat had the ability
to associate with certain metropolitan types which would be absolutely
requisite to his success in the contemplated position.
Nathan reluctantly accepted and hurried to the hotel to advise Milly.
Milly was panic-stricken also,—but worse, far worse. She went weak all
over and had to sit down. Then she declared it was impossible for her to
go, she didn’t have a thing to wear. And when Nathan said she could have
what money she desired to get anything she wanted, she came out
flat-footed and confessed that she was “afraid to run with the swells”
because she’d never know how to act and they might laugh at her.
“Very well,” sighed Nathan. “But I must go—as a matter of business. You
can go to a movie.”
“What! Leave me all the evening alone in New York? And you off to a tony
party, enjoying yourself?”
“But what else is there to do? If you don’t want to go and don’t want to
stay at home, just what do you want?”
“I don’t want you to go, either. You could sneak out of it and go with
me to a show. I don’t believe I’ll ever get my fill of shows in New
York.”
“Unfortunately I feel I ought to go, Milly. You’ve always talked about
wanting to meet high-caste people and now when the chance is open,
you’re half-frightened to death.”
“You’re frightened too!”
“I’ll not deny it—not frightened so much as nervous. But it’s a chance
to go and learn something and show me what I lack. Those people can’t
eat me and I intend to take it. If I’ve got to learn, now’s as good a
time as any to start in.”
Milly gave a nasty little chuckle.
“And to think that once I thought you was my hero,” she observed, “as
far above me in class as the stars!”
“We won’t go into that, Milly. Do you care to go with me to this dinner
to-morrow night or do you not?”
“I’ll go,” snapped Milly, “but you needn’t blame me if I put my foot in
it.”
“Milly, did it ever strike you that you’re not trying to help me very
much as my wife—to get on, I mean—holding up your end?”
“I’m no different than I was when you married me! Kindly remember that!”
“How can I forget it, Milly?”
“You needn’t give me none o’ your nasty slurs—like your Pa was always
throwin’ your mother. Oh, I know all about ’em! Your mother told me and
I seen enough of him at the shop to know she warn’t far wrong!”
“Let’s not quarrel, Milly. If you’re going to the dinner you’ll need
some clothes—something new.”
“You bet I will!” cried Milly defiantly, then added as though the
expense might make Nathan think better of the rash engagement, “It’ll
cost you all of fifty dollars, Mr. Man!”
“Milly, this thing may mean a lot to me. I want you to appear extra
attractive. Fifty dollars! I’m going to give you _two hundred_ and fifty
dollars and I want to see you ‘dress to kill!’ Find a masseuse first and
have her doll you up and then go over in Fifth Avenue and splurge!—for
once—splurge!”
Two hundred and fifty dollars! Milly nearly had a spasm. She remained
struck voiceless as Nathan actually handed over the money with a vague
idea that some such sum would be necessary. Like many poor males, Nathan
held the subconscious notion that all that was necessary to dress a
woman “to kill” was money.
And Milly? She swore she was being robbed when a masseuse had worked
over her an hour and a half and charged her ten dollars, though she was
not wholly displeased with the resultant change in her appearance. But
when she walked into Martinets, Incorporated, with an aplomb she did not
feel and discovered that “the cheapest dress they had” cost two hundred
and sixty dollars, her nerve fled and so did Milly. Over on Sixth Avenue
she bought something “perfectly stunning” for seventeen dollars and
ninety-eight cents,—a difference of two hundred and forty-two dollars
and two cents by traveling one block. Which only went to prove how much
money you could save in New York when you only knew where to shop!
The “perfectly stunning” creation was an afternoon dress of cerise
taffeta, gorgeously strung over the front with spangles. Milly went on
the theory that shine and “class” were synonymous,—“class” being Milly’s
favorite word and “shine” Milly’s favorite idea of beauty. And if the
lights of Mrs. Percival Mosely’s dining room didn’t shine on Milly’s
frock it was going to be through no fault of the goods whereof the said
frock was constructed. Milly also bought a dark bottle-green fan on the
principle that colors show off best by contrast.
Truly Milly was a “queen” when the adjustments were finally completed.
She wondered if she could go through with it.
The Moselys lived in the East Fifties, two blocks off The Avenue,—a
rather coldly impersonal house with a gray-stone front. At
seven-forty-five Milly permitted Nathan to help her alight from the
taxi. In fact, his help was extremely welcome. For Milly’s knees had
turned to tallow long before Nathan had “hooked her up”, not knowing
whether he exactly approved of Milly’s purchases or not. The fan shocked
him so badly that he absolutely forbade her carrying it. Likewise he
made her dispense with the twenty-cent aigrette she had purchased to add
“class” to her hair. On the whole, Milly did not object to dispensing
with these things, although she did wonder what she was going to do with
her hands.
When he had finally drawn off and looked at his wife, Nat knew there was
something vaguely wrong somewhere. But the time was going and if they
delayed longer they would be late. Milly insisted it was fashionable to
arrive late. Nevertheless, her husband believed in being punctual at so
critical a time to himself. As for Nathan, he had bought his first suit
of dinner clothes and, exceptional to recount, the fellow felt strangely
at home in them.
A second-man in full house livery tended the door,—the butler being busy
with last touches on the table. Nathan tried to nudge Milly to go ahead.
But Milly was too terror-stricken and shrank in his rear. The husband
instinctively felt foolish stumbling ahead with Milly tagging after like
a poor relation he could not shake off. But she clung to his arm as
though she might lose him.
The house-man conducted Nathan to the smoking room, raising his Celtic
eyebrows when Milly followed, as in a daze. The smoking room had been
set aside for the gentlemen’s street clothes.
“This way, madam, please,” he corrected, with a cough to hide his smile.
And with an expression of despair, Milly was borne away to where a maid
took her in charge at the end of the hall in a dressing-room set apart
for the ladies.
Mrs. Mosely had her drawing-room lighted with shaded lamps and adorned
with flowers. The curtains had been drawn and the piano opened. Milly
furtively watched for Nathan to appear and then almost ran across the
broad hall to join him. She clutched her husband again and “tagged after
him” despite the man’s quick whisper to go ahead. “I’m afraid,” she
choked. “You go ahead!” So Nathan and his wife moved into the big
drawing-room and Milly’s daze continued,—as though she were following
her husband into the glories of heaven.
Mosely senior, being bedridden, was not in evidence. Young Mosely was
assisting his mother in receiving. He caught sight of Nathan and moved
slightly forward with an outstretched hand. Milly dodged him and crept
behind her husband.
“Glad to see you, Forge,” was the young man’s easy greeting.
“Meet my wife,” suggested Nat, wondering if it was the right thing to
say, or rather, the right way to say it.
“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Forge.”
“Pleezeter meecher,” lisped Milly from a safe position halfway around
her husband’s back.
“I want to present you to my mother,” went on Fred Mosely. “Mother, may
I present Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Forge. Mr. Forge is the one I spoke
of—possibly taking my place at the office.”
Mrs. Mosely was a remarkable woman. Her coiffure was a classic. Despite
her sixty years, her face had an onyx beauty, unwittingly reflected in
her voice. She wore silver-satin and cobweb lace. Her shrewd eye
appraised both new arrivals and grasped the young country wife’s
distress at once. Regardless of who or what her guests might be, first,
last and foremost they were her guests always and must be put at their
ease. The fine, hard old society matron extended a blue-veined hand.
Milly shifted her clutch on Nat from her right hand to her left. But she
didn’t let go of him. He might fly through the windows, up through the
ceiling, down through the floor or explode in her face, if she failed to
hang on to him. She gave the hostess the hand thus disengaged.
Thereafter the next three minutes were one phonographic repetition of
“pleezeter-meechers”—as though the needle had slipped on a scratched
record and hiccoughed the word over and over again. Six other men and
six other women smiled quietly but affected not to notice.
Introductions completed, the various groups returned to their
intercourse. Nathan and Milly stood apart, looking uncomfortable and
feeling worse. Nathan at length shook himself free of Milly’s
blood-binding clutch. Milly found her wits long enough to gasp hoarsely
in her husband’s ear, “Gee, ain’t it swell, Natie! Lookit! They got a
coon orchestra!” Then a moment later, “You stick by me, Natie! Don’t you
go lettin’ ’em set me off by myself away with folks I don’t know!”
“They’ll probably have place cards, Milly. This isn’t any Vermont church
supper.”
“Place cards! What’s them?”
But Mrs. Mosely had noted Milly and Nathan standing alone, and remarked
to a gorgeous creation in old-gold georgette and (to Milly) shocking
shoulders:
“For pity’s sake, Cynthia, go rescue that poor little girl in the
afternoon dress. Put her at her ease, or she’ll ruin my party!”
So before Nat could explain about place cards, the girl Cynthia
interrupted.
“Oh, Mrs. Forge!” she cried, “do let me show you the new study by
Roerich that Mrs. Mosely just secured at the Aldine Galleries. I’m sure
you’ll be interested.”
Milly shrank from the onslaught as though Cynthia
What-ever-her-last-name-was had jabbed the deadly muzzle of an automatic
into her midriff. She sent a desperate appeal to Nathan with her eyes as
though Nathan should speak up and put the Cynthia person in her place
with, “No thank you, Madame; my wife has absolutely no interest in
Roerich—or any one or anything else but her husband.” But Nathan did
nothing or the sort. He even looked relieved. Relieved until he saw his
wife moving down the big library beside the old-gold gown. Milly wasn’t
only a frump: she was a monstrosity! That flaming cerise with those
awful spangles! Could it be possible that Milly had paid two hundred and
fifty dollars for that? Where was Milly’s taste, anyway? Must he not
only support his wife and shelter and feed her and educate her,—but turn
modiste as well? It was sickening!
Cerise Taffeta and Old-Gold Georgette brought up before a large canvas
at the northern end of the library. Milly duly recognized that it was a
picture because it was bounded by a gold frame and had a shade of
inverted lights above it.
“Have you ever seen any of Roerich’s work before?” queried the Cynthia
person. She was amused in a way, but it was a painful amusement.
“No,” gulped Milly.
“This is called the ‘Rain Princess,’” went on Old Gold Georgette. “You
know, I dearly love Roerich. He has so much tartaric virility—such bold,
wide sweep and atmosphere. His brown steppes, his blue seas, and his
purple mountains seem to come from a borderland——”
“Yes,” gulped Milly. “It—it—ain’t painted very plain, is it?”
“Roerich is always the colorist, the emotionalist. And in the East, form
ever remains subservient to color, you know.”
“I like paintin’s,” averred Milly, “where you can tell what you’re
lookin’ at. There was an artist come to Paris one time. He painted
pictures in the window of The Modern Bargain Store—painted ’em right
while you watched—houses and trees and things. He asked ten dollars
apiece for ’em. But it did seem a pity to pay him so much—he did ’em so
quick.”
“Paris, France?” demanded the puzzled Cynthia.
“Lord, No! Paris, Vermont.”
“Oh!” said the other quickly.
“Me,—I go in for sepia,” confided Milly, gaining a bit of
self-confidence and evincing the volubility of the provincial once
started. “I’m doing my sitting room in browns and such. I got a print of
St. Cecilia at Michalman’s. He lemme have it for seven dollars because
the frame was scratched. But you never’d notice unless you looked close.
And it was a fifteen-dollar picture!”
“How interesting!” murmured the other in slight distress.
“Oh, I know how to buy, once I have the money to buy with! I got a whole
set of that funny furniture with the twisted legs to Blake Whipple’s for
our dining room. Only fifty-nine dollars! It was marked a hundred and
fifteen but Whipple lemme have it because he got stuck with it. Folks in
our town ain’t much on stylish stuff. They want chairs that has good
strong legs, made to be set on and not much else.”
“Undoubtedly!”
“Madam, dinner is served,” came a somewhat sonorous voice off toward the
left. A butler in complete evening livery—a rare and an awesome sight
for Milly whose only contact with butlers had been in the motion
pictures—stood by the dining-room door. Instantly the hum of
conversation ceased.
A rapier stab of fright pierced Milly’s vitals. Where was Nathan and
would he wait for her? The wife abandoned the Cynthia person abruptly
and frantically tried to pick her husband from the seven men all dressed
alike. Horror of horrors!—Nathan was talking to that stout girl in
silver-gray; she had a hand on his arm and they were moving toward the
dining room.
Milly had a wild impulse to flee. She would have flown if she had dared
search out the dressing-room alone. In her pitiful panic young Mosely
approached her.
“May I take you in, Mrs. Forge?” he asked easily.
“I guess so,” the girl responded dazedly.
Mosely held out his arm but Milly did not essay to take it. The idea of
such presumption! He should have taken _her_ arm, of course. All the
fellows had done it at the Saturday night dances in Foresters Hall
before she was married. So in a cold sweat and flaming fright, somehow
she moved toward the great double doors. Soft music started playing
behind a bank of palms on the landing.
Milly forgot her terror for an instant at sight of that “wonderful”
table. The overhead chandeliers had been extinguished. Shaded candle
lamps were so concentrated that every part of the cloth was in radiant
light. Upon the centerpiece of drawn work a low crystal bowl held a gay
mixture of blossoms, mostly small roses. Milly wondered where the food
was, what they intended to eat. All she saw in evidence were a few nuts
and some “soup plates filled with cracked ice.” Then she came back to
her dilemma. The “crowd” was wandering about the table, looking over the
napery and silverware, horribly ill-bred, Milly thought. Then she
grasped that they were reading names on “little cardboard signs” as she
told her mother afterward. Inertia took Milly forward. With a little
jolt she came upon her own name. It startled her.
She sat down at once and then got up again—hastily.
She expected that Nathan’s place would be beside her own; Mrs. Mosely
would have fixed it that way if she knew anything. But apparently Mrs.
Mosely didn’t know anything, because Milly found herself between two
disturbingly strange men, one a “bald-headed old fool” and “a tall,
sleek young man with a trick mustache who looked like Charley Chaplin.”
Milly beheld that she “was in for a sickening evening.” She wished that
awful Mrs. Mosely had at least put one woman beside her.
Guests finally took their seats when Mrs. Mosely had taken hers—up in
Paris a hostess was always the last seated and more usually out in the
kitchen, looking after things—and then Milly got her first shock of that
evening of shocks when she shook out her napkin and found some one had
hidden a roll in it. Down on the floor went the roll and Milly had quite
a time recovering. The fat gentleman told her not to mind and to leave
it for the servants to recover later. But Milly remarked, not without
some heat, that “somebody might step on it and work it into the carpet”,
and the roll episode being closed, she faced her “plate of cracked ice.”
In the next five minutes Milly discovered oyster cocktail and rather
approved of oyster cocktail; when she had held back to see which spoon
the Cynthia person employed and how she employed it, finding it to be a
fork,—“pickle fork, at that!” thought Milly. “And one for everybody!”
Then Milly “caught on” as to where the food was. As fast as you disposed
of one course the servants took your empty plate and brought another.
Great idea, but what an awful lot of dishes you had to have. And think
of the job of washing them afterward!
During the soup, Milly located Nathan. She was a little surprised at
Nathan. He was proceeding cautiously but did not appear at all
distressed. Nathan, in fact, looked as though he were actually enjoying
himself. He had the stout girl in silver-gray on one side and a tall,
cold-faced Amazon in black upon the other. And he was carrying on
conversation with both. Milly felt rather proud of Nathan. Never until
this moment had she noticed how well he parted his hair. Maybe she had
not done so poorly in marrying Nathan, after all.
A maid distributed plates from the left and after her came another,
laying knives and forks softly in their proper places. Then a manservant
presented the various dishes, and until Milly noticed that the others
were not doing it, she took the big dish from the servant’s hand as she
helped herself,—a proceeding which perturbed that worthy greatly.
The fellow with the trick mustache essayed several attempts at
conversation which Milly answered in monosyllables. Then the fat man at
her right turned to her with a suddenness which almost made her upset
her water glass and asked:
“Have you seen Barrymore in ‘Peter Ibbetson’ yet, Mrs. Forge?”
Milly had not seen Barrymore in “Peter Ibbetson.” In the first place she
had not the slightest notion who Barrymore was and in the second place
she had not the slightest idea of what he should be doing in “Peter
Ibbetson” or any one else, and how he managed it.
“Who’s Barrymore?” demanded Milly.
“My dear woman! Is it possible you don’t know the Barrymores?”
“One can’t know everybody,” remarked Milly witheringly. She considered
this neat and sophisticated, wishing at the same time she had bought a
dress with a low neck. She had as good shoulders as any one in the room.
Besides, this was New York. She would buy a “low neck”—a “very low
neck”—next day. She was glad she still had almost two hundred dollars
left of Nat’s money.
“But the Barrymores, Mrs. Forge. I mean Lionel and John.”
“Are they brothers—or something?”
“Yes,” collapsed the stout man. “Brothers? Oh, yes! Certainly!”
“And who’s Peter Ibbet’s Son?”
“Peter Ibbetson—_Ibbetson!_ A play, you know—at the Republic.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Milly. “You’re talkin’ about a show. What kind of show
is it? Funny?”
“No. I wouldn’t call it funny. Although first night was rather amusing.
One of the back drops caught somehow at the dark-change in the last act.
Some of the scenery was in distressing danger of coming down on
Barrymore’s bed.”
“That oughta been a riot,” observed Milly. She felt her self-confidence
returning again. She was, as it were, getting along famously. “We had a
show like that once at the Opera House up to Paris. Some of the scenery
fell flat and knocked the orchestra leader clean into the first violin.
They couldn’t ring down the curtain. They couldn’t do nothin’. Just
beller! Funniest part was, what different folks was doin’ behind the
scenes when the thing went over. One man was changin’ his pants. He got
outter sight awful quick!”
The fat man roared. But the real reason for that roar entirely missed
Milly. He wasn’t such a bad sort, after all.
Mrs. Mosely observed that Milly had sprung a highly entertaining _bon
mot_ and was amusing her near-by table companions greatly. She leaned
forward. The fat gentleman, in fact, was growing purple in the face and
giving alarming symptoms of sliding under the table.
“Really, Mrs. Forge, you must tell us the joke,” suggested the hostess.
“Yes, please do!” pleaded a few feminine voices.
The attention of the diners thus being focused on herself, Milly colored
scarlet and felt her scalp take fire. Conversation ceased. They were
waiting.
“I—I—this—this man and I—were talking about—a show that come to Paris
one night,” stammered Milly. “That’s our home town—Paris! Up in Vermont,
you know!”
“I understand,” smiled Mrs. Mosely. Her onyx voice was at its best. “And
what happened?”
“Some of the scenery fell flat and knocked the piano player clean into
the first violin. They couldn’t ring down the curtain. They couldn’t do
nothing—on the stage, I mean—just holler. But the funniest part was what
different folks happened to be doing at the moment the thing flopped
over. One man was—one man was——”
“Yes, my dear!”
“_One man was changing his pants!_” gulped Milly. And waited for the
explosion of applauding merriment.
But instead of an explosion of applauding merriment came a ghastly
silence. Mrs. Mosely tried to smile but turned a queer pea-green. The
stout girl beside Nathan looked wildly around the table and jabbed her
fork quickly into a morsel of roast. One of the men made a weird
noise,—it sounded as though he had swallowed a worm, a long,
upholstered, fuzzy one. A little red-haired girl giggled. And poor
Nathan! Nathan was suddenly out on the bounding billows of a raging main
looking avidly for a particularly inviting spot in which to drown with
neatness and despatch.
“How very interesting!” remarked Mrs. Mosely. She turned to her
ever-present help in time of trouble,—the Old Gold Georgette. “Cynthia,
my dear,” she suggested, “and suppose you tell us that other amusing
anecdote about De Carter when he tried to find Mr. Whitesmith at the
Hermitage, and ran into the character actor who looked just like him,
you know!”
Cynthia caught her cue and the cogs of the universe moved again. But it
had been a hideous ten seconds while it lasted.
Milly was the last to finish her food at each course and the dinner
dragged in consequence. She never noted she was holding up the dinner.
She essayed other conversation with the stout man after a time, waving
choice morsels on her fork as she did so, before putting them into her
mouth. Her knife leaned against her plate, or sprawled at rakish angles
from other dishes. She felt, however, that those present had not
appreciated the delicious comedy in her anecdote. “High-brow,” she
snapped to herself. She decided she detested Mrs. Mosely, and as for the
Cynthia person’s anecdote, it wasn’t funny at all.
At the conclusion of the dinner Mrs. Mosely led the way into the
drawing-room and left the men to cigars. The big double doors between
the two apartments were then closed. Again Milly was “thrown on her
own.” And——
She wished to Gawd she were home!
If this were high life in the brilliant metropolis, give her good old
Paris, where folks ate their food naturally and talked about subjects a
body could understand: the weather, perhaps, the latest film at the
Olympic, what bargains Michalman was showing in his basement, how many
chops Bud Jones gave for a dollar. What fun was there sitting around
like a lot of “dummies at a wake”, nibbling at a very little food in
slathers of dishes, having so many forks it took all the joy out of
eating to remember to use the right one, and made one’s head ache
beside?
What enjoyment was there for a woman to be stuck between two men whom
she just knew wanted to talk business, and be stiff and uncomfortable
and starched and nerve-racked to death for two mortal hours? Then a
séance in the big room afterward and music on the piano that sounded
like the player trying to see how many chords she could touch per minute
or how many trick combinations of sounds she could manufacture on the
keyboard? As for Milly, give her “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet”, or
“Alexander’s Rag Time Band.”
No, Milly didn’t like society. One agonizing evening was enough. She
would be a nervous wreck in two months if she had to endure it night
after night as a program. This thing she decided emphatically off in a
corner by herself. Nathan was not going to take any job where a steady
menu of this sort of thing might be necessary. Not if she could help
it,—and she flattered herself that she could and she would.
Milly was almost in tears when she finally culled out her husband.
“I wanner go home!” she almost cried. “And if you won’t come with me,
I’ll go alone!” That a lady and gentleman were talking with Nathan made
no difference to Milly. She had enough. She wanted to go home. She meant
what she said.
Nathan excused himself as adroitly as he could. And Milly “sashayed”
from the drawing-room, straight to the dressing-room door.
“We must say good night to Mrs. Mosely,” said Nathan, before he started
for his own wraps.
“Oh, you can do it for me! I don’t ever want to speak to her again! I
think she’s horrid! She asked me that joke about the pants and then made
me feel like thirty cents when I told it.”
“But, Milly, it’ll be almost insult to walk out this way; ordinary
courtesy demands you come with me and bid her good night. Don’t you want
to be courteous?”
“Not to such as her! No! She’s too much of a high-brow! She makes me
sick! You can tell her I said so!”
Milly got her street clothes and put them on in the hallway,—as she
might have “gone off mad” at a surprise party up home when some one
present had “slapped her face.”
Nathan went to Mrs. Mosely and apologized for his wife’s indisposition.
“She’s taken suddenly ill,” he explained, “and I must hurry to the hotel
with her at once.”
Milly was anything but ill when they went down the steps at last and
headed west in the invigorating night air toward the Avenue. Milly
continued her comment anent Mrs. Mosely and all Mrs. Mosely’s guests,
comparing them to sundry “honest-to-God” folks up in Paris. Nathan was
at last stung to remark:
“That was a rotten break you made! I should think your own intuitive
good taste would have told you that those people think along a little
higher plane than a stage hand changing his pants. That might be
excellent humor for your father up in Gridley’s tannery. But in a New
York drawing-room——”
“Well, Gridley’s tannery and Paris and my father are good enough for me!
And you needn’t think you’re so all-fired high-brow, either. It wasn’t
only a few years ago you was helpin’ skin cows right alongside my
father.”
“I didn’t do it from choice. I was made to do it.”
“I suppose you’ll be telling me next that a continual bill of fare of
the ‘class’ we had to-night is what you’d ‘like from choice’?”
“Certainly it is! You bet it is! And I intend to have it—if it’s
possible to get.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Nathan Forge, you’ll have it without me!
If that’s ‘high-brow’, then gimme the ‘flats,’ where people live natural
and enjoy themselves!”
“What do you mean—you’ll have it without me?”
“Just what I said. I’ll go back to Ma—for good. Oh, I guess I can earn
my own living again! I did it once, remember. You used to say I was the
smartest girl in the box-shop—once!” And Milly began to sob openly as
she trotted along by Nathan’s side. Pedestrians on the Avenue turned and
stared.
IV
Extract from a letter mailed from the New York office of the Thorne
Knitting Mills under date of October 3, 1916, to Theodore E. Thorne,
vice president and sales manager at the main offices and plant, Paris,
Vermont:
...I hardly know what to say, Ted. You’re putting me in a rotten
dilemma. God knows I’m no knocker. Also the last thing in the
world I’d want on my conscience would be the dirty work of
knifing a poor devil in the back because he hasn’t had
advantages which some of us have been lucky to receive. But what
alternative are you leaving me when you put it up as a question
of policy affecting the welfare of the Company?
Forge came down here and spent the better part of a week going
over things. As I’m leaving anyway, I was absolutely
unprejudiced—you believe that, don’t you? I showed him all there
was to show. He impressed me as being a fair business man,
considering his age, a little higher than the average, perhaps.
He’s got imagination and executive ability, especially the last,
and there’s not a doubt he’d work his head off to make good. I
think he’s especially endowed with the faculty for managing
help. But this isn’t a factory down here, Ted. The office help
requiring management, or even the local sales staff, are almost
negligible. This job calls for a “mixer,” a diplomat, and a
personality capable of holding the trade and adding to it by
adroit business politics. I can conceive of Forge being a fair
success out in the boardwalk towns, selling union suits to
merchants who wait on the feminine trade with their vests
unbuttoned and a toothpick between their lips. But running up
against such smooth articles as old Anstruther, or the Caldwell
boys or the Perkinsnaith people, they’d walk through him like a
crooked lawyer driving a coach through a will written on the
back of wall-paper.
You know that this business, as the New York territory has
always done, contains a big portion of the personal element.
Many’s the time we might have lost business with some of the
heavy-weights if I hadn’t been “in right” personally with their
families and womenfolk. Take Haymarker and the Tonowanda affair
last June: you may not have known it, but I got old Haymarker
and his wife to come out to the Long Island place for the
week-end—or mother did, which amounts to the same thing—and
played around with him until the psychological moment. Before he
returned to town he clapped me on the shoulder and said: “Let’s
forget the business fuss, Fred. We’re too good friends in a
social way to let a matter of a few dollars break up our
relations outside the office.”
...and that’s how young Forge must carry on, and I’m frank to
tell you, Ted, I don’t believe he’s there. Oh, he may catch on
in a year or so, but the cost to the company in the meantime may
be ruinous. Why should the Thorne Knitting Mills pay for the
education of a man who should have received that education at
home from his parents? It’s a cruel handicap he’s under, but
business is business. What his folks can have been thinking of
is beyond me. And his wife—oh, my God!
...perhaps the average outsider would say that a man’s wife down
here would have little bearing on his job. But believe me, Ted,
it isn’t so. Maybe I’m over-emphasizing the social part, but
business is sometimes a bit more than price asked and price
paid. There are times when personality, family connections,
tact, diplomacy, politics played by a fellow’s wife in a social
way can mean thousands of dollars in the course of a year. And
poor Forge has a millstone around his neck and an anvil tied to
each wrist.
...I’ve nothing against her because she comes from a small town.
But just because a person comes from a small town is no license
to show themselves as mud-hut peasants who wear their boots to
bed. A certain nicety of taste is expected of the least of us.
And honestly, Ted, that girl Forge calls his wife is absolutely
impossible. He must have found her and married her from the
lowest class of factory help, just because she was female.
...she came to the dinner in a cheap afternoon frock whose
shrieking color would stop a train—she clutched him like a poor
relation—mother was almost a nervous wreck when the ordeal was
over, and I should have been kicked for pulling any such stunt.
She’s been all the week figuring out ways to apologize to her
guests. The height of Mrs. Forge’s mentality and idea of dinner
wit was an anecdote about somebody up in your town changing his
trousers.
...of course you’re running your own business and it’s none of
my affair. But I do hate to see all the good work I’ve tried to
do and the organization I’ve built leak away or go to smash
through being turned over to a poor country boob with a wife who
remarks that “the servants mustn’t be onto their job in this
place” because they’ve neglected to set out the toothpicks along
with the demitasses—and actually thinks they aren’t.
...Forge wants to learn all right and he probably will. But the
New York office of the Thorne Knitting Mills isn’t the place to
teach him, and because his wife is so pitifully deficient in the
common fundamentals of etiquette, I’m afraid the opportunity is
not for him. I’m no snob, as you know, Ted. But there are some
things that simply are not done.
Nathan entered the Paris offices of the knitting mills the day following
and instinctively felt that something was wrong. A certain cordiality
and solicitation were missing in the sales manager’s manner. His
behavior, in fact, was a bit apologetic, furtive.
“Nat,” began the other, “it seems to us that the Pennsylvania and
middle-New York territory is in such a precarious state just now, on
account of the prospect of war, that the directors have decided it for
the best interests of the company not to transfer you to New York for a
while. We want you to keep on as you have been going—drumming the
department-store trade.”
Nat’s disappointment was heart-rending,—for a moment.
“Back to the road again?” he whispered wearily. “It’s sort of
monotonous, Ted; the same thing over and over, week after week——”
“I know, Nathan. But unfortunately there are those kinds of jobs in the
world and somebody’s got to fill ’em. With war in prospect, we really
don’t feel warranted in making the shift. That’s about all I can say.
After all, you know, I’m under my directors.”
“That’s tough,” commented Nat finally. “I’d sort of set my heart on
getting a big office job like that and really showing what I feel
capable of doing. And—and—well, I’ve sort of grown beyond small-town
living, and New York made me feel as though it was the sort of thing I’d
hungered for, without exactly knowing what made that hunger.”
“I’m sorry, Nat. But business is business.”
That night Mrs. Anna Forge met her son on Main Street.
“...and he came down from upstairs, Nat! I’ll swear he came down from
upstairs! And what could he have been doing up there that was all level
and on the square?”
“What were you doing up at the house, to catch him?”
“Well, I—I—went up to see you and hear all about your New York trip.
Milly’s bragging all over town about a swell dinner they gave you down
there, and how you’re going down there to live and have swell dinners
all the year ’round.”
“Don’t worry, Ma, I’m not going. The Thornes have changed their minds.”
Nathan went on toward home at the end of another ten minutes. Grimly he
considered two things to which his mother had given voice, her worst
fears about the man who had come down from the upstairs of Nathan’s home
in company with Milly and—his mother’s comment after she had forced him
to tell her all about the “swell” dinner.
“Oh, Natie,” she had cried anxiously, “I do hope you remembered your
manners and said ‘please’ and folded your napkin afterwards, like I
always tried to teach you at home!”
V
“Milly,” demanded the husband when he faced his wife in the kitchen half
an hour later, “what was Si Plumb doing upstairs with you, when mother
called the first of the afternoon?”
The girl flashed him a look of defiance.
“So! Your mother’s been carryin’ tales, has she? Well, it’s just like
her! If you want to know, Mr. Smartie, I sent for Si to come and tighten
the faucets in the upstairs bathroom.” Si had long since quit the
tannery and become a steam-fitter in the village.
But somehow Milly’s explanation sounded thin.
“I could have done such a simple job as that,” Nathan observed. “You
didn’t need to call Si and run up a plumber’s bill!”
“You tighten bathroom faucets? You’re a high-brow, remember! You’re
above tightening bathroom faucets these days, Nat Forge!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------