girl from the Elite Beauty Parlors and Mr. Edgerton is a good and true
man and it is almost like what you might call a platonic friendship. It
is extra wonderful right now because there was the greatest Man in the
whole world miserable and not able to think about international affairs
at all because all the papers was making fun of Him because He had got
a camelephant to exercise His liver. And I was the one that fixed it up
all right with my idea about the economy stories.
Of course you will of saw them by now. Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman
did not change a word of what I said. The Spokeslady is not to get no
new Easter hat but is making Her old one over and the Spokesman Himself
is getting one spring suit that is to cost Him only sixty-five dollars.
I suppose that Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman knows about what is the
right price but it seems an awful lot of money to me I know that Pop
never paid more than half that for a suit at least if he did he had the
senst never to let you find it out. I think it is a little hard for
great and rich folks like Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman to remember
how it is to be real poor. They have left that job to me and so I don’t
worry that my underwear is all darns and patches because it reminds me
that I am keeping close to the heart of the plain people all the time.
Them stories was published only yesterday but already you can see that
they have changed the whole tone of the papers. In the one I get there
is a very respectful editorial, saying that it is a providential thing
for the country in this age of jazz and flappers to have a great Leader
that is a believer in the pioneer virtue of thrift. And Florabelle her
that works next to me in the Elite Beauty Parlors she says, “Well, if
the Spokeslady can stand it I suppose I can so I will save the price
of a new hat and I can see fifteen or twenty shows with it,” she says
and so you can see what a great influence I am having even with the
Floradumbelles.
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom, I am very much puzzled for I have just got this
afternoon’s papers and there is another story about the Spokesman and
the Spokeslady and it contradicts every word of the other story because
it says now that the Spokeslady has got Herself three especially
beautiful new Easter hats and far from getting along with only one
sixty-five dollar suit of spring clothes the fact is that the Spokesman
has just bought Himself a dozen suits of spring clothes that cost a
hundred and twenty-five dollars each.
And it is a story that seems to be give out from the big white house
just like all the other stories that Mr. Edgerton has had charge of and
I don’t see what it can mean because it will ruin everything I have
done and what are the plain people going to think when they see one
story one day and then exactly the opposite the next day they will stop
believing anything they read in the papers and how will the Spokesman
be able to instruct them in what they had ought to do?
I am terrible worried about it because what can I think except that
some of them Bolshiviki fellers has got in their dirty work somewheres
undermining American institutions and spoiling the work that I am doing
for the Spokesman? I am on pins and needles waiting for Mr. Edgerton
to call again and hope it will be soon. I am not allowed to call him
because of course it would not do for him to be making dates with
ladie’s voices over the telephone at the big white house where the
Spokesman speaks.
* * * * *
P. S. Again. Well it is another day and I have not heard from Mr.
Edgerton and it is a shame there had surely ought to of been some way
that I could get hold of him in a time of public danger like this. It
seems to me like the Reds is running away with the country and I could
not sleep good all night I dreamed that I seen twelve Spokesmen all
alike riding around on twelve electric camels and each one of Them
had on a hundred and twenty-five dollar suit of clothes. And there is
an editorial in the paper this morning saying that of course it is
necessary for the Spokesman to be clad adequate to His high Station and
of course He would not be stingy to His wife at this joyous Eastertide.
And Floradumbelle says she guesses she will have to have her new hat
after all and she will stick some gentleman friend for her movie
tickets so you can see how the whole country is getting demoralized
again.
* * * * *
P. S. Once More. Well Mr. Edgerton called up and I met him at the
restaurant but he was scared to speak to me he is being shadowed all
the time by these mysterious enemies. He signed for me to follow him
and I seen that something was wrong so I followed and we dodged about a
while till we was sure there was nobody following and then he went to a
big art gallery and we sat there and talked. He said that was a private
enough place because nobody that had to do with politics in Washington
would ever go into no place like an art gallery.
Well I have found about the stories and what went wrong. He says that
my economy stories was the awfulest flop that ever had went out from
the great white house and it has put him in the awfulest hole and most
ruined him with the Spokesman. He says it was not the Bolshivikis at
all but it was the business men no sooner did they see that story in
the papers than they run bear-headed and wild-eyed to the nearest
telegraft office and in the first two hours they had a hundred and
forty-seven telegrams of protest mostly from millinery manufacturers
and associations of cloak and suit dealers and they all wanted to know
whether the Spokesman had gone mad or was the Bolshivikis conspiring to
get Him to ruin the retail trade of the country. Here the Spokesman had
promised them prosperity and they had put up I forget how many millions
to elect Him, and now He goes and gives them this jab in the solar
plexus.
And Mr. Edgerton says it was something awful the panic in the big white
house because the Spokesman had gone out for a walk with His four
secret service men that is hired to pull Him out from under automobiles
and they couldn’t find Him and they begun telephoning to places on the
way to look for Him and so there was a report that the Bolshivikis had
blowed Him up and somebody called out all the fire-engines in the
city. But at last they got hold of Him and the contradiction was sent
out quick but not before eleven manufacturers in the Eastern states
alone had gone into bankruptcy and that is why they had to make it a
dozen suits the Spokesman had bought in the hope to save the wholesale
trade.
And Mr. Edgerton says that poor Mr. Grandaddy Prows sent a heart-broken
cablegram from the ship that he is sailing on to Europe because he is
sure that it is an effort to ruin the department-store business and
to punish him because he let the camelephant out of the stable. And
Senator Buttles is furious too because he makes linings for ladies hats
in one of his mills but he is glad too because he hates Mr. Edgerton
because he can’t bear to have nobody but him telling the Spokesman what
to say to the American people. But Mr. Edgerton says what would Senator
Buttles know to say because he has got only one idea in the whole world
and that is a ten percent reduction in the wages of his mill-hands.
Gee Mom it is terrible to be in a mix-up like this I had no idea that
high life was so complicated and for the first time I am doubting
whether I am big enough for my job. Just think of it to save the
situation they have had to send out another story to say that the cost
of keeping up the Spokesman’s private yacht that is really a ship of
the navy is two hundred thousand dollars a year and so everybody can
see that He lives like a Gentleman of His high Station had ought to do.
Well I seen that Mr. Edgerton was so blue I hated to tell him any more
troubles but I thought that he should know about how I had spoke to
that feller that has been following us and how he had walked home with
me. I said that some time the feller would of been bound to of found
out where I lived and Mr. Edgerton said that was right. And he said
that he would not give a whoop about it because the truth was he was
sick of his job and anybody that wanted it could have it for the price
of ten cents. And he would go and get a job with some big business
where a feller could do what he pleased and not have somebody snooping
on him all the time. Of course I tried to cheer him up I told him how
he must think about the plain people and he said something about the
plain people that was not nice for a lady to hear and him sitting right
in front of one of them Eyetalian madonnas in the art-gallery too.
I went home very sad and lonely and without no dinner and gee Mom what
should I run into at home? Mrs. Budd that is my landlady must of been
watching for me for she come running out and of course I was scared I
wonder if I will ever get so that I do not jump when I see a landlady
coming at me. But it wasn’t to get her money this time but to tell me
that there has been a lady here looking for me about a half an hour ago.
“A lady?” I says. “What sort of a lady?”
“A large soft lady,” she says, “a real sure enough one a swell looker.”
“And didn’t she leave no name?”
“No,” says Mrs. Budd, “she said she would come back again.”
And suddenly something hits me and I says, “How was she dressed?” She
says that she had on a long squirrel-skin coat that must of cost a
thousand dollars and gee Mom it most floored me for of course it must
be Mr. Edgerton’s wife. And of course that is what that feller was
following me home for and he has told her where I live and she has come
after me. And gee I feel like I was Lydia Lovelight--do you remember
how pathetic she was in “Passion’s Prey?” But do you really suppose
that crazy woman can be after me with a gun because she thinks that I
have took her husband away from her? I says to myself, “Mamie Riggs
you have wished that you could get to Hollywood and now its seems that
Hollywood is come to you!” Well, if anything happens you will see it in
the papers.
Your scared daughter
MAME.
LETTER XI
IN WHICH I PLAY A BIG SCENE
DEAR MOM:
Well I hate to be writing you blue letters and you having such a hard
time what with the baby having the croup and Pop not sure of his job.
Tell him I thank him for his fine ideas but the truth is just now I
have not got no heart for the work I have been trying to do it seems to
me like I had better just be a plain manicure girl like I used to be
and not try to understand these great world affairs that is too much
for my poor head.
The reason is because it don’t seem to me like people was honest like I
thought they was. When I told Mr. Edgerton to have the Spokesman give
out to the newspapers all them stories about Him and the Spokeslady
being so economical and not buying no new clothes I thought They was
really going to not do it and it was all going to be straight. But the
way Mr. Edgerton talked They just didn’t bother about the truth at all
and it has made me sort of ashamed. If They are going to do things that
way I just aint interested in helping Them at all because They are
really not doing the plain people no good.
Of course I aint had no chance to ask Mr. Edgerton about it because he
aint called me up again so I am just waiting. The girls in the Elite
Beauty Parlors they seen I had something on my mind and Ada Huggins,
she says, “What’s the matter Mame you seem sort of deestraight.” You
see since she has changed her name to Adaire she is always trying to
use French words and I do sure hate affected people.
I says, “I have got important matters to occupy my mind and I have not
got no time for idle chatter,” I says. And she says, “Well now will you
listen to that, of all the airs! Who do you think you are the Spokesman
up in the big white house?” “You are getting warm,” I says but of
course I didn’t say no more because it is what Mr. Edgerton calls a
state secret that I am helping him.
* * * * *
P. S. Well, I went home thinking about that mysterious lady that has
been to call on me and that I am pretty sure is Mrs. Edgerton. And Mrs.
Budd my landlady says she aint come again. She is awful curious about
such a great lady coming to see a girl that has got the cheapest room
in her house and she says, “Is it some lost aunt of yours dearie?” But
I says, “It is just a friend I think.”
She says, “You could talk to her in my parlor if you like.” And of
course I know that is just so that she can listen in but what can I do
can I expect a visitor to climb four flights of stairs and where could
I put her in this room that is only six by eight and I have to shove
the oil stove and what is left of my dinner under the bed before I can
get to the door. So I says, “Thank you very kindly.” And she says, “I
will call you if she comes and you can come down.” I says, “Do please
and keep her entertained while I am getting my curl-papers off.”
You see I wanted to fix myself as decent as I could so as not to shame
Mr. Edgerton too much for knowing me. So I wash my face and put my hair
up to curl and I get my supper of potato chips and pickles in a hurry
and I am just in the middle of getting it down with my new dress I have
took off all over the bed when I hear a step in the hall and there
comes a knock on the door and I think of course it is Mrs. Budd and I
says, “Come in,” and the door opens and my God there she is!
Well Mom you could of knocked me over with an orange stick. I just
stand there with half a dill pickle in my mouth and the other half in
my hand and stare at her like a boob. It is the same lady that I seen
getting out of the electric coop with Mr. Edgerton and she has got on
the same squirrel-skin coat and all. She wouldn’t have to be a very
big lady to seem awful big standing in the doorway and she is red from
climbing the stairs and there is red in her eyes too she gives me the
glare and holds herself stiff and straight and gee Mom I feel like a
worm must feel when it is going to be stepped on.
“Are you Miss Mamie Riggs?” she says and I gives a gulp at the pickle.
“And so you are the woman that is going with my husband!” she says.
So then I see it is going to be a war and I thinks what kind? She has
got me penned in a corner and there is just a window and no fire-escape
and a long ways to the ground and she has got a big squirrel-skin muff
that she holds in her left hand with her hand inside it and I thinks
to myself there is your death Mamie Riggs because of course she must
have a gun in that hand and gee Mom it sure makes your hair rise up to
watch that muff and wonder what is going to happen will she let the
muff fall and show the gun or will she shoot through the muff? But no
she won’t be apt to do that because she won’t think no manicure girl
worth spoiling a fine muff over. It is exactly like the big scene in a
play you know how it is Mom only you really don’t because it is another
thing altogether when it is real.
Well I have got the pickle out of the way and so I say real careful
like, “I have the honor to be a friend of Mr. Edgerton,” I says. And
then I have a sudden bright idea and I raise my voice and call, “Come
in Mrs. Budd.” Then I listen and I say again louder yet, “Please come
in Mrs. Budd.” For of course I know that she is not going to lose her
chance to find out what is going on but will be at the door listening
and sure enough the door opens kind of timid and I hear her voice
behind the big lady, “Did you call me Miss Riggs?”
“You might come in,” I says. “I have a lady caller she is the wife of
a gentleman friend of mine. Meet Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “Mrs. Budd.”
And Mrs. Budd gives a courtsey that is not answered being that she is
behind and aint saw and so I sweep my clothes into a heap and I says,
“Come and sit on the bed,” I says. And so of course Mrs. Edgerton has
to let her get by and sit down and then I feel a little better because
my landlady is between us and I think maybe if there should trouble
start she might shove her hand up or rattle her and spoil her aim.
But I have made a bum guess from seeing too many movies I guess for it
aint anything like that. All of a sudden the lady lets her muff drop
and puts her two hands up to her face white kid gloves and all and
busts into tears! And there she stands shaking and sobbing and says to
herself, “Oh the shame of it, the shame of it!”
So then of course I remember that she is supposed to be a sick woman
and what she is going through and I am sorry and I says, “Look here
Mrs. Edgerton you have got this all wrong things between your husband
and me aint at all what you think,” I says.
So then she flares all hot again and drops her hands. “Do you mean to
say you have not been going to dinners with my husband all the time?”
“It would be very silly of me to deny that,” I says, “seeing that your
detective has been sitting at the next table to us most of the times
but what is the harm of dinners?”
“And him with a wife at home!” she says with the tears running down her
cheeks again. “And the dinner on the table getting cold!”
“Well that is too bad,” I says, “it was a shame to waste so many
dinners but I didn’t know about that Mrs. Edgerton,” I says. “A
gentleman asked me to dinner and being hungry why shouldn’t I go?”
Well I see she is human after all and I am still more sorry so I goes
on real friendly like. “I guess Mrs. Edgerton you have not knowed many
working girls in your life,” I says, “and you aint realized how it
feels when a gentleman offers you a dinner free of charge. They pay
me eighteen-fifty a week at the Elite Beauty Parlors and I have got
to live on that till the next Saturday night and if I have not got
anything left on Friday night I do not have any dinner,” I says. “Mrs.
Budd here will tell you that I have to give her six dollars a week that
is what a girl has to pay to keep the rain off her in Washington D. C.
And if I spend a dollar a day for my food then I have five dollars and
a half a week to dress myself like my profession requires and all the
luxuries that you see in this room,” I says kind of sarcastic, “and
for tooth-paste and what laundry I can’t do in the bath-tub downstairs
without Mrs. Budd finding it out and for music and books and art,” I
says, “and for doctor’s bills if I should--” I am just about to say,
“If I should take up the notion that I have got the angina pectoris of
the toe,” but I realize that would be nasty so I end kind of meek-like,
“if I should be sick.”
She is staring and has got a kind of agonized curiosity in her face
like she would like to know what sort of terrible animal I am. The
tears is still there so I says, “What is it you believe, Mrs. Edgerton?
Do you think I have been paying the woman’s price for my dinners?” I
says. “Well it has been winter time and cold outside and where do you
think I could of took him to? Would I bring him to this room?” I says.
“If you think that just you ask Mrs. Budd here and she will show you
down the stairs quick,” I says. And of course Mrs. Budd gives a snort
and I says, “Do you run that sort of a house Mrs. Budd?” And she says,
“Not that I know of!”
So there is a little pause and the lady still weeping silent so I goes
on, “Has that dick been telling you lies so as to keep his job lady?
If he has told you the truth it is this that I have et maybe a dozen
dinners at your husband’s expense and I have walked a little ways on
the street with him and sat once talking in an art-gallery and that is
all. I have not even been into a taxi-cab with him and he left his own
car at home for his wife or that is what he told me and if it aint true
it is not my fault. And if it is the cost of the dinners that worries
you it would of been easier to of saved all the money you must of paid
to that there dick,” I says. “It was mostly in cheap places that we et
because he was scared he would be saw.”
“And if you are so innocent why do you have to hide?” she cries.
“He said he had to Mrs. Edgerton and when a gentleman asks you to
dinner at a cheap place you can’t hint for a better place at least not
if you are a lady. I shouldn’t wonder if the reason was because he had
a wife that he thought wasn’t reasonable and wouldn’t believe the truth
if he told it to her.”
“But why does my husband have to dine with a woman I do not meet?”
“You will not like it,” I says, “if I tell you that you and your lady
friends can’t give your husband what he has to have in his political
life. But you had ought to see it because you would scorn to know the
things that his job requires him to know.”
“What things?”
“Things about the way the plain people of this country feel and what
they want.”
“A manicure girl!” she kind of snorts.
“There is a lot of us,” I says, “and it aint only that we have got
votes but we do a lot of talking and can be a political force if you
get us real mad,” I says. “And then there’s Pop,” I says, “a gas-house
worker in Camden New Jersey and if anybody was to ask you what such a
man would say about the League of Nations for instance would you have
any idea what to answer? No Mrs. Edgerton you wouldn’t but right there
on my dressing table underneath the cold cream jar is a letter about it
that I was intending to read to Mr. Edgerton the next time I meet him.”
Well she looks me over some more and then she says in what is meant to
be icy tones of voice, “Why could his wife not attend these political
conferences?”
“Indeed she could so far as I am concerned Mrs. Edgerton I have never
had a word to tell to your husband that you might not of listened in
on.”
So she thinks again and says, “It is a shame that there should be two
dinners and one should wait and get cold,” she says.
“Yes ma’am,” I says. “I can see that is a waste.”
But her next one floors me. “Will you come to dine at my home Miss
Riggs?” she says real sweet.
So then I have to think in a hurry. “What is that Mrs. Edgerton?” I
says. “Are you expecting to make a boob out of me?”
“You have political information to give my husband,” she says, “and
when a woman’s husband is in political life it is the custom for her to
give dinner-parties to help his career. I invite you to dine with us.”
And so I gives a gulp like I had another pickle in my throat and I
says, “Very well ma’am I will come.”
“And when?” says she. “The sooner the better will you come tomorrow
evening?”
“I have no other date,” I says.
So she stoops down and picks up her muff and in it she has got not a
pistol but a vanity case. Her fingers is trembling so that she can
hardly open it but she does and there is a gold pencil and a little
note-book and she puts it against the wall and writes the address 2349
Alexander Hamilton Place Thursday at 7.30 and she hands it to me.
“There it is and I hope you will not disappoint us.”
“Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “you must understand I have not got no good
clothes for such a party--”
“Pray,” she says, “don’t give a thought to that. This is to be an
intellectual and political occasion and you may wear your street dress
that my husband has bought you,” she says, “and I will wear the same
kind that he has bought me.”
And so then she sweeps out and leaves Mrs. Budd and I to spend the
rest of the night talking it over. And gee Mom when I thought about
her I had made up my mind that I would count it a victory if I got off
without a bullet in me and here now I have got another free dinner
coming!
Your delighted
MAME.
LETTER XII
IN WHICH I MISS HALF A DINNER
DEAR MOM:
I have just got back from Mrs. Edgerton’s party and I have sure got
some news now.
How I did wished I could of had you here to advise with. The best guess
I could make was that Mrs. Edgerton was figuring to show her husband
the difference between a real lady and a manicure girl but Mrs. Budd
she says “Maybe she really wants to know you because why,” she says,
“if a woman’s husband is got to talk about politics with manicure girls
any wife would rather it was where she could be around.” But I think
Mrs. Budd must of been impressed by that squirrel-skin coat for of
course any landlady will trust you more if you have got a thing like
that on.
Well anyhow I says that I am going there and do the best I know how and
talk with Mr. Edgerton just the same as all the other times. Because
after all the main thing is that he has got this great work to do to
tell the Spokesman what to say to the whole American people. He has ast
me to advise him and I am not going to let no jealous wife scare me off.
I have not got time to get home to fix myself up after work so I give
myself a lick and a promise in the beauty parlors and pile myself into
a street car and get pretty much mussed up in the crowd and I ride
until I get to Alexander Hamilton Place. But then it is too early and
I have read in the etiquette book that it is not good form to arrive
for dinners ahead of time so I take a little walk though I don’t mind
admitting to my dear old Mom that my knees is kind of weak for walking.
But I am not scared in the head and I think up some good conversation
and remember some ideas in Pop’s letters and so I go back to the house.