pink and green marble and red plush curtains and palm trees and colored
boys with brass buttons. But I have got my new clothes and I am not
going to worry even if Mrs. Edgerton does know that her husband bought
them for me. I am announced by the telephone and I ride up in the
elevator and there comes a maid with a white apron and a cap and I am
took into a dressing room and then a room with a piano and some books
and lights that is dim and mysterious.
Well I have had the hope that I might see Mr. Edgerton first so as to
get a line on what is coming but she don’t mean to give me no such
advantage she comes sweeping in. “Good evening Miss Riggs,” she says
and I remember that the etiquette books says that some ladies shake
hands and some do not and she is one of them that does not. She is very
polite but a little too gushy and I says to myself right off Mamie
Riggs she is worse scared than you are.
Well she starts to tell about the late winter we are having and of
course I know as much about the weather as anybody and after we have
finished with winter in Washington D. C. I tell her about winter in
Camden New Jersey.
Then Mr. Edgerton comes in and he is the same old friend and we do
shake hands and like we meant it and then I see that he is going to
play the game like there wasn’t nothing wrong. So I says, “Well Mr.
Edgerton and how goes the economy program with the Spokesman?”
He says, “Well it is not going so good as it might because you know
how it is with economy it is a fine word for the campaign but when you
come to put it into practice you find that it means letting somebody
out of a job and it always turns out to be the third cousin of some
congressman or maybe of a district leader.”
“Yes,” I says, “some of them fellers that is setting with their feet up
on their desks smoking long cigars.”
“Exactly,” he says, “and there is nothing that worries the Spokesman
so much as thinking about them fellers. You see how it is when it comes
to election time they are all busy rustling out the vote for Him and
after that He has got to find something for them to do.”
Well I had thought I must be careful not to leave Mrs. Edgerton out
of this conversation so I says, “A little while ago, Mrs. Edgerton I
thought I understood about this here economy business but now I find
it is complicated and there is something that Mr. Edgerton or maybe
yourself might explain.”
“And what is that?” she says.
“Well it is this business that you can never economize in nothing
without turning somebody out of work. But it is a terrible thing for
working people to be out of jobs,” I says, “right now my Pop is scared
that he may lose his job at the gas-works and him with a half a dozen
kids growing up and why should them kids have to starve just because
some people is took it into their heads to economize on gas-bills?”
“Perhaps we had better go in to the table,” says Mrs. Edgerton and so
there is the dining room and gee Mom if you could see how them people
live they are surely making jobs for the poor. The table is all got a
solid piece of glass over the whole top and there is a centre-piece
that is hand-embroidered lace and you have got a hand-embroidered doily
in front of your place and there is real silver and what I guess is
cut-glass and there is little electric candles at each place and there
is two sorts of wine glasses well Mom all I can say is that I am glad
I have took your advice and studied the etiquette books and practiced
them so that now I do not have to be rattled but can give my thoughts
to being intellectual.
Well we have got started on some oyster cocktails and I says, “Have you
thought up any way to undo them blunders of ours and get the people to
liking the Spokesman again?” And he says, “No I have not.”
And so I says, “I have been thinking hard about it and I have been
looking at the pictures of the Spokesman that I see in the papers and
it seems to me they are wrong. Have you ever thought about them?” “No,”
he says, “I can’t say that I have what is it?”
And so I tell him, “They are all pictures that is took in regular
clothes like a business Man with a white collar and one of them hundred
and twenty-five dollars suits on. But the most of the people in this
country don’t look like a fashion model,” I says, “and they don’t wear
white collars except on Sunday and the Fourth of July. It seems to me
they would be a lot more interested in listening to the Spokesman’s
advice about how to live their lives if they thought He lived the same
kind of lives that they do.”
So he sits very thoughtful and he says, “That might be a worthwhile
idea,” he says. “What would you suggest Miss Riggs?”
“Well,” I says, “what was it that the Spokesman done when He was young
back there in the State of North Carolina?”
“North Carolina?” says he. “You mean Vermont, don’t you?”
“Well I can never keep them states straight,” I says. “I knew it was up
in the North somewhere, but what was it He done?”
“Well He was raised on a farm.”
“All right then that is fine there is still lots of farmers in this
country I guess. So why don’t He go up there to the old homestead and
get some pictures took while He is pitching the hay?”
“You are a little ahead of time,” says Mr. Edgerton. “I am afraid they
have still got snow on that homestead up there.”
“Well then let Him go shovel the snow it will do just as good.”
“He is hardly a husky enough Man for snow-shovelling,” says Mr.
Edgerton.
“That is all right,” I says, “it don’t take long to get a picture not
even a movie,” I says. “The point is that the plain people can see the
Spokesman with His coat and collar off and looking like them. I know
how it is with my own Pop if he was to see a picture of the Spokesman
in a pair of blue overalls and a big wrench in His hand and it was
headed the Spokesman mends His own gas pipe up there at the big white
house why I know that Pop would vote for Him till the water-pipes bust
in hell,” I says.
And so then Mr. Edgerton is excited and he says he believes that is
the solution of the problem the way for him to get back into favor
and put Senator Buttles into the discard. And we go on talking about
what is to be in these pictures I can’t remember all we said but it
was like that and I may be awful dumb but I honestly thought it was an
intellectual conversation. But I have got so interested that I guess I
must of forgot to bring Mrs. Edgerton in. Anyhow we have et some soup
and we are eating some fish and I am talking hard when suddenly I hears
the wife give a sniff and I looks and she is sitting very straight and
her face is got bright and it seems she is hopping mad and all of a
sudden up she hops with her napkin in her hand and cries, “Oh this is
intolerable!”
Of course I stares and I says, “Why Mrs. Edgerton!”
She says, “You are making a fool of me both of you!”
I says bewildered like, “Why ma’am what do you mean?”
“You really expect me to believe such rubbish?” she cries.
“Well ma’am,” I says. “It may be rubbish but it seems like good
political business to me. I don’t understand you at all.”
But she only gets redder and madder so that she can hardly talk but
only sort of gasp and she says looking at her husband, “To bring her
into my home to mock at me! The shame of it!”
Says Mr. Edgerton very cold, “You invited her here and you undertook to
behave yourself.”
“Oh,” she says, “I can’t stand it I can’t stand it!” And suddenly she
busts into tears and clasps her napkin to her eyes and rushes out of
the room and there the two of us is left staring at each other.
“Well Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I am very much puzzled about this because
what have I done?”
“You have not done nothing,” he says.
“Is it that she thinks I have been too familiar talking about the
Spokesman like He was one of us plain people?”
But he says no that is not it. “The truth is Miss Riggs I have not been
able to persuade my wife that you and I are seriously interested in
public questions and so when you sit and talk about helping me it seems
to her that we are playing a game to make her ridiculous.”
“Oh that is it!” I says. “But does she not know that this is a free
country and that I have got a vote the same as she has?”
“You are perfectly right,” he says, “and let us go on with our
conversation and our dinner.”
But of course I am not hungry no more I have got some self-respect for
all my needing a meal and I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will have to be
some other time because I don’t think I had ought to stay in this house
it would only be making your wife angrier than ever.”
First he tries to stop me but then he says that he will drive me
home--imagine him taking me in that electric coop that he drives her
in! I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will not be the first time that I have
gone home in a street car and I will do it once more,” I says.
“But Miss Riggs,” he says, “am I to lose your political counsel?”
“No,” I says, “you can phone me tomorrow but right now I want you to
go in and see your wife and try to fix it up with her,” I says, “and
not make her no madder by taking me home alone.” And so I make him get
my things and I walk home and gee Mom all the way I am thinking I will
never know what was going to be the rest of that dinner!
LETTER XIII
IN WHICH I MISS ANOTHER HALF DINNER
DEAR MOM:
Of course I was on pins and needles all day waiting for Mr. Edgerton
to call me so as I could find out what had happened between him and
his wife. And just when I was done work and ready to go out of the
beauty parlor he phoned and gee then I had to break a date with Adaire
Huggins to go to a show with her and all the girls is getting more and
more sorer because I am so up-stage with them having an affair with a
gentleman and not telling them nothing.
Well Mr. Edgerton took me to the Chink place again and we et some more
chop-guey and there was no detective watching us and we had a good
chat. And he says that Mrs. Edgerton is so angry she says she will
never speak to him again, and then she tells him that she is going
to write to the Spokesman about how her husband is taking a manicure
girl to dinners with him and pretending that this girl gives him the
ideas that the Spokesman has to say to all the newspaper reporters of
the whole world. And of course if she does that it will mean that Mr.
Edgerton will be out of his job because of course the Spokesman is
a very moral man and therefore somewhat suspicious and it would not
be possible to persuade Him that it was just for my ideas that Mr.
Edgerton was taking me to dinner and anyhow if it was true it would be
worse because it would insult Him to know where His ideas comes from.
And so Mr. Edgerton is very much worried and I says to him, “Do you
really think that she will do such a mean thing?”
He says, “I do not know for is it possible to say what a woman will do
when she is very angry?”
I says, “Yes it is possible,” I says, “if you do not mind answering me
a very personal question.”
“What is that Miss Riggs?”
“Will you tell me whether Mrs. Edgerton has got any money of her own?”
“No she has not.”
“Then Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you may rest quite easy for she is not
going to say a word to the Spokesman nor to anyone else that will tell
because don’t you see that if she done that she would be throwing her
bread and butter in the mud?” I says.
“But she is frightfully angry Miss Riggs almost hysterical.”
“That is all right,” I says. “But when a woman gets hysterical she
always keeps one corner of her brains that knows what she is doing and
why. Mrs. Edgerton has got a swell apartment and an electric coop and a
squirrel-skin coat and all them things is very nice and what is making
her angry is the idea that I am getting a part of them away from her.
But that is not going to make her give up the rest,” I says.
“Really now,” he says, “you are too cynical about women.”
“No,” I says, “but women have had to get what they have got from men
and they have had to learn how. But maybe these is things that it is
not right for women to tell to men so if you do not mind I will talk to
you about the Spokesman and what He thinks about my idea that He should
have a lot of pictures took showing Himself as a farmer’s Boy back on
the old homestead.”
Well he tells me that he has talked about the idea with the Spokesman
who is very much enthused about it and thinks it will be a great
publicity stunt. And He is going to send up word for them to water
the hay on the old place and grow it just as quick as they can and
when it is high enough He will take His private train with about a
hundred newspaper reporters up there and they can take pictures of the
great Man riding a hayrake and that will surely be better than riding
a camelephant. And Mr. Edgerton says he has spoke to the reporters
also and they are keen about it and one of them has got the promise
of a picture of the Spokesman with His arm about His favorite cow
that He milked when He was a boy and when the general manager of the
Amalgamated Press Association or something like that got wind about
what they was planning he telegraphed for a life-size picture of the
Spokesman leading old Dobbin home from the pasture.
Mr. Edgerton says it is a shame that hay grows so late in them artic
regions and there is no way you can imitate it in a motion picture
studio. And then I says, “Look-a-here Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I have
got a crow to pick with you and now is the time.”
“Did you get it out of the chop-guey?” he says because of course he is
feeling jolly over that idea I have give him and what a blow it will be
to Senator Buttles that grew up in a town and went to a college and is
no good at all for the old homestead stuff.
“But this is no joke,” I says. “I have had it in mind ever since you
sent out that story about the Spokesman buying a dozen spring suits
to help the wholesale clothing trade. What I want to know is has He
honestly bought them?”
“Well Miss Riggs,” he says, “I think we can feel reasonably certain
that He has because he is fifty-three years old and He surely must of
bought a spring suit every four years of His life.”
“That may be,” I says, kind of shocked, “but that is not what anybody
is going to make out of that story Mr. Edgerton it was meant to be
took that He had bought all them suits this year. And what I have got
to say to you is I have always been brought up to tell the truth and I
thought that I was helping to get the truth told to the plain people
and if them that is in charge is all cynical about it then I could not
be happy and I would rather have nothing to do with it.”
Well Mom he sees that I am serious and he says again that I am just
like the Spokesman I have a natural deep reverence for great ideals and
that is why I am able to understand Him so good. I says, “Yes but then
why does He let you give out stories about Him that is not true?”
He thinks for a while and then he says, “Miss Riggs I am going to
explain something to you that at first you may find hard to understand.
There is a difference between public life and other life and there is
a kind of truth for each. I think maybe it will be easier for you to
understand because you tell me that your mother was once an actress.”
“Yes,” I says, “she was a great actress she played Eliza in Uncle Tom’s
Cabin for many years.”
“Well,” he says, “then you must of been to plays and maybe behind
the scenes and you know that a play can be true as a play and yet it
don’t have to be true in other ways. For instance suppose your mother
is playing the part of a young girl well she makes up that way and she
pretends to be happy and the audience is all delighted and they get a
truth out of that play. But it may be that really your mother is older
and has got children at home and one of them has got the croup--I
believe you told me one of them had--and your mother is not feeling
happy that night at all yet she has got to play that she is happy
because that is the play-truth but if she was to act the real truth and
cry on the stage why she would spoil the show and the audience would
not get the truth of the play at all and they would go home sore.”
Of course I can see that. But I says, “This that we are talking about
is real life--”
“But are you sure?” he says. “Suppose you was to get behind the scenes
and discover that this game of politics is another kind of a play and
that everybody in it has got to pretend that they are different from
their real selves.”
Well of course I am kind of stunned and he can see it in my face and he
says, “Does that shock you so much?” he says. “Don’t you see that the
people have got to have ideals they have got to believe in great men?”
“Yes,” I says, “but aren’t there no real great men?”
“There is now and then a great man,” he says, “but he is very scarce
and most generally you will find that he is not available for
Spokesman. There can be a thousand different reasons maybe he is not
acceptable to the Knights of Columbus or maybe he was born in Kishineff
or maybe he believes in evolution or maybe his wife has divorced him
or maybe none of the big bankers is ever met him. So you have got to
take somebody that has been careful and not made no enemies and then
when you have got him you have got to do the best you can by him and
the daughter of a famous actress should ought to understand how much
a skillful make-up and the right costumes can do to say nothing of a
highly skilled press agent and a good lady assistant,” he says with a
bow.
But his little compliment don’t help him for I says, “Then you are all
the time fooling the plain people!” I says.
“Miss Riggs,” he says, “you are a serious young lady and I want you to
stop and think what would happen to this country if the people was to
lose their reverence for the Spokesman that lives up in the big white
house and tells them what to think and what to do?”
Well of course I cant think what would happen but Mr. Edgerton he says,
“Look here I have got a piece out of a paper from a town in the middle
west and there was a man from that town that come to Washington and he
shook the hand of the Spokesman and then he went back home and when
the word got out that he had actually shook the hand of the Spokesman
the members of his lodge passed a resolution and they stood him up by
the door and every one of the seventy-five men in the lodge filed by
him and shook the hand that had shook the hand of the Spokesman. And
that is what you call Faith Miss Riggs that is having an ideal and if
all them seventy-five men was to lose it what would happen to them the
whole seventy-five would get drunk and go home and beat their wives.”
And he goes on, “Yes Miss Riggs,” he says, “it would mean riot and
red revolution. You can go and ask any of them Bolshivikis if there
is anything they would like better than to have the American people
get the idea that the Man they have got for Spokesman is a poor
little Feller with carroty hair and a sallow skin that suffers from
constitutional timidity and has got where He is by always waiting for
His mind to be made up for Him--just you ask them Bolshivikis and hear
them whoop with delight.”
“Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you must know I have never met no Bolshivikis
and don’t never expect to.”
“There is a plenty of them,” he says, “right here in Washington D.
C. some of them is in the Senate and I tell you it puts a grave
responsibility on you and me and other loyal Americans. Because this
is what has happened Miss Riggs right in the middle of the show the
leading Gentleman has went and died and the Understudy has took
His place and it is the most awful job that has ever fell onto a
theatrical management in the entire history of the American drama,”
he says. “Because in this here political play there is no way that
the Understudy can ever have a chance to rehearse with the rest of
the company, one minute He is just a sort of callboy sitting out on a
cracker-box and the next minute He must put on full regimentals and
walk out into the spotlight and make a speech. And that means Miss
Riggs a most dreadful problem for the rest of the cast that has got
to get behind and support Him and for the stage-directors and the
scene-shifters and worst of all the critics that has got to write up
the show next morning. And that is the God’s truth about my job and
why I have got to have help so bad and you as a good loyal citizen and
the daughter of a great actress has got to understand me and help with
your great experience.”
Well Mom of course I am floored. All I can do is to sit there and at
last I says, “Mr. Edgerton I have heard what you tell me and I suppose
it is right but I hope you won’t mind it has shocked me so that I do
not think I can eat no more Chinese dinner,” I says, “but I will go
home and think it over and decide what I can do to help my country.”
Your bewildered daughter
MAME.
LETTER XIV
IN WHICH I GO ON A STRIKE
DEAR MOM:
I have not saw Mr. Edgerton for three days and I am just as glad
because it has give me time to think things over and get your letter.
You are right I suppose if we cannot get what we want in this world we
have got to make out with what we have. I know that you would not of
chose to live in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey if you
could of had your own way nor would I maybe of had so many brothers and
sisters.
Well Mr. Edgerton did not call up. I have noticed that gentlemen likes
to have you pretty and cheerful and if you take things too serious and
worry them with questions they do not call up so often. But all the
same I had to get over my shock of hearing him say that the work he
does for the Spokesman up there in the big white house is only a sort
of a play and that I have got to get used to the idea of not telling
the truth about the Spokesman. And then too I am wondering what Mr.
Edgerton’s wife is doing and if she is going to tell on him and me and
I am sore because she should think that because I am a manicure girl I
cannot be fit to know her husband and help him with his politics.
* * * * *
P. S. Well he has called again and we have went to dinner and a movie
and it was a lovely sweet story called “Heart’s Athrob” and Mr.
Edgerton says to me, “There now you see Miss Riggs are we not better
and purer and sweeter for having saw such a lovely story about great
souls and pitiful sufferings?” And of course I cannot deny that we are
for I have got tears in my eyes and he says, “Just such a beautful
picture as that I wish to make for the American people to look upon and
I have got to make it out of that poor little Man that lives up there
in the big white house and you have got to help me,” he says, “and we
will be the greatest pair of showmen in the whole of creation.”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton I am going to try my best but it seems to me that
all the inspiration goes out of me when I have been told that it is not
the truth. I don’t understand how it can of happened and I want you to
tell me more about this game of politics how it come about that a Man
like what you say the Spokesman is can of got in such a high office.”
He says, “It was a series of strange accidents Miss Riggs like what
you would see in a melodrama. To begin with this little Man was a sort
of political Office-boy for the rich men in his state that put him
into office because He would always do what they said. It is a state
with a lot of Catholics in it and so if you are going to get elected
to anything you have got to learn to walk like you had broken bottles
under your feet and He was the best bottle-walker of them all so He
come to be Governor but then He had a crisis to deal with there was a
strike in the city of the policemen--”
“Policemen?” I says. “But I thought that policemen was to put down
strikes!”
“So it is supposed to be but this time the policemen went on a strike
themselves.”
“Well,” I says, “but that must of been the Reds!”
“So the papers said but the policemen said it was because they couldn’t
live on their wages. You know that policemen is mostly Irish Catholics
that don’t usually go Bolshiviki but always vote the Democratic ticket
and it happened that the mayor of the city was a Democrat and he
fixed it up with them to give them a raise in wages and the strike
was to be called off. But the bankers and the business men don’t like
no wage-raises because it sets a bad example and so they went to
the Governor and they says, ‘Governor you was elected on a program
of strict economy and law and order and here this Irish Catholic
Democratic son-of-a-sea-cook is going to get all the votes away from
you.’ So they say for the Governor to break up the settlement and He
does it because the Governor is bigger than the mayor you see. He goes
to the city and Him and the mayor has a meeting in a hotel-room and the
mayor pastes Him one in the eye and knocks Him down.”
“But I thought you said the Governor was bigger!” I says.
“I mean bigger legally. He has got more power.”
“Well then but why didn’t he put the mayor in jail?”
“Well Miss Riggs I will tell you the Spokesman, that was the Governor
He has always been a deeply religious man you have perhaps noticed in
His speeches He tells the people that the solution of their problems
must be found in spirituality.”