Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: "We don't know what he struck, but he certainly struck
something."--That Motor Boat of Algie's]
*Imperfectly Proper*
*By P. O'D. (Peter Donovan)*
Illustrated by
R. E. JOHNSTON
McCLELLAND & STEWART
Publishers - - Toronto
COPYRIGHT, CANADA 1920
BY MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED, TORONTO
1st Edition, Nov., 1920
2nd Edition, Feby., 1921
PRINTED IN CANADA
*Preface*
It is with extreme diffidence that the author presents--but then is any
healthy author ever really as modest as he makes himself out in his
foreword? Probably not, or there wouldn't be any book. The author,
however, is quite conscious of the many defects of these sketches, and
only hopes that in book form they will meet with the indulgence which
greeted their original appearance. They have been gathered from the
pages of _Toronto Saturday Night_ and are here reprinted, through the
courtesy of the publisher and editor, with such additions and
alterations as have been suggested by the increasing years and wisdom of
the writer--and the removal of the censorship. And they are dedicated
to those two splendid and long-suffering friends, "Constant Reader" and
"Old Subscriber," by their very grateful liegeman, the author.
PETER DONOVAN.
Toronto, Sept. 1920.
*Contents*
That Motor Boat of Algie's
Aesthetics and Some Tea
Beauty in the Bank
Koncerning Kosmetics
Clurks and Clarks
Ventilation
City Chickens
Porters, Pullmans and Patience
Helping Our Friends to Economize
Refreshments at Five
Manners for the Masses
Raiment and Mere Clothes
That Fur Coat
Spring in the City
Moving Day
Vacation Vagaries
Lawnless Tennis
That Glorious First Drive
That Awful First Game
On Keeping Cool
Back to Nature in a Limousine
Stringencies and How to Stringe in Them
Taming the Furnace
Mike
Dogs
On Being Handy with Tools
Bumps and a Brogue
[Illustration: THAT MOTOR BOAT OF ALGIE'S]
*That Motor-Boat of Algie's*
His name really isn't Algie. It wouldn't do to use his real name--he
has a very nice wife, you know. So we shall call him Algie, partly as a
disguise, and partly because we wish to be offensive. We want to hurt
his feelings. It is our earnest desire that he should read this account
and writhe painfully. We claim to be as patient and forgiving as the
next one, but there are some subjects--and that motor-boat picnic is one
of them. When, in addition to being made sea-sick, being scared into
acute heart-disease, and being banged about in a locoed launch like a
bean in a coal-scuttle, a gentleman is forced to ruin his second-best
pair of--but we anticipate.
For two or three weeks prior to the fatal invitation and the fatal day
on which he perpetrated the picnic, Algie had been coming down to the
office late every morning--so late in fact that his coming amounted to
an afternoon call. Furthermore, his face and shirt bore mysterious
smudges of train-oil. And though Algie was never what is known as a
"swell dresser," he was always a very neat sort of chap in the matter of
his personal adornment.
As soon as he arrived he would immediately begin calling up all sorts of
mechanics, plumbers, boiler-makers, painters, boat-builders, and
electricians. Lengthy conferences would ensue in which frequent
references would be made to cylinders and hulls and carburetors and
propellers, and the time when certain jobs should have been done, and
what a helluva nerve they had to ask any such price. The language was
usually very technical. But it was occasionally quite lucid and human,
though not of a nature to bear repetition in print which is intended to
go into Christian homes.
During the two or three hours in the afternoon when Algie was with us,
he would run out every few minutes and come back with a coil of lead
pipe, or a dry battery, or a can of gasoline. And then he would slip
away at about four o'clock with an intensely preoccupied air.
We all knew where he was going and what he was going to do. He had
bought a motor-boat from a friend, and he was trying to put it in such
condition that he could go out in it without having to wear a life-belt.
Of course, the friend had guaranteed it as the safest, speediest,
staunchest, and trimmest little craft that ever got in front of a
ferry-boat on the Bay. But one should never buy a motor-boat from a
friend. Better buy it from a deadly enemy. Then you may discover a big
hole in the bottom of it, or a dynamite bomb stowed away forward with a
clock attachment. But that is all. Once you have patched up the hole
or thrown the bomb overboard, you are all right. But when you buy a
motor-boat from a friend you are never done with trouble.
After Algie had had the Gladiolus--his wife christened it--for about a
week, he realized that he had to put a new engine in it. He put the
engine in, got the thing started, and headed for the Island. He got
there just in time--to save his life, that is. The Gladiolus sank
gently to rest on a sand-bar in three feet of water. The liquid
composing the Bay is admittedly rather thick, but it managed to ooze
into that boat in about four hundred and forty different places. Algie
said afterwards that it had looked to him as though the boat were being
invaded by an army of angle-worms.
With a marine derrick they enticed the Gladiolus out of the bosom of the
sand-bar, and got her back to dry-dock. Then Algie started in to put a
new hull around the engine. It amounted to that by the time he got all
the repairs made. Then she had to be painted. Also she had to have a
new propeller, ditto some chairs, ditto lanterns and a search-light,
ditto a set of cushions. But at last the work was done. Algie was tired
but happy; and he wanted to share his bliss.
"You simply got to come, old man," he said in a spirit of exuberant
hospitality, "won't take no for an answer. Ten sharp, Sunday morning,
at Sunnyside--the Missus and I will be right there as you get off the
car. We'll run up beyond Port Credit and have lunch by the lakeside.
Sharp at ten, mind!"
In a moment of weakness we consented. Nay, more, we looked forward to
it. We had visions of ourself leaning back in one of the sumptuous
deck-chairs of the Gladiolus, as that beauteous speed-devil ate up the
watery miles on old Ontario. We could imagine the shores whizzing by,
and the Hamilton boats being left hopelessly behind. So we prayed for
fine weather. And when we say we prayed we don't mean that we issued an
order to Divine Providence like a parson, but we made a timid and
tentative appeal. It was answered. It was one of the finest Sundays we
have ever seen. We don't suppose we were really the cause of it, you
know, but we felt gratified. When a chap doesn't pray to excess, he
naturally is surprised and delighted to get what he asks for. But,
alas, we knew not what we did.
When we got off the car at Sunnyside--a popular local beach--there was
Algie, sure enough, in white ducks and a stern expression of
countenance. Just imagine the face of Admiral Sir David Beatty as he
prepared to take the battle-cruisers into action off Jutland, and you
will have a faint notion of the concentrated solemnity and sense of
responsibility which sat upon Algie's features as he shook our hand in
an absent-minded manner and told us to hustle aboard. We did hustle.
We don't mind admitting that we were impressed. We felt that here was a
seaman who entered upon the grave duties of his position in no frivolous
spirit--a true sailor who loved and yet feared the mighty deep.
When we got to the wharf where the gasoline wonder reposed her graceful
length, we found Mrs. Algie and two other guests. They were very nice
people, very nice indeed. The husband was a clerical-looking chap--his
facial make-up suggested a curate in an ineffectual disguise. But his
conversation was at times decidedly unclerical--at least, it wasn't the
sort of thing one gets from clergymen in their more professional
moments. When that big wave came over and sloshed down his neck, he
said--but again we anticipate.
Algie and his wife were in nautical costume as befitted the skipper and
skipperess. Algie wore a nice pair of white ducks and a white shirt
very open at the throat. Mrs. Algie was also in ducks--cut on a
different pattern, of course. It was a very fetching little costume.
We say "little" advisedly. The skirt had been made remarkably short, or
it had grown that way from too long and too intimate association with
steam-laundries. The effect, in any case, was to keep it hovering about
midway between the nautical and the naughty.
The rest of us were in the ordinary Sunday garb of churchgoers who
happen to be going somewhere else. Our clothes were sober and
restrained, but natty. They expressed the sombre atmosphere of the
Sabbath, with a dash of outing flavor. Personally, we wore that grey
suit with the black-line pattern which everyone admired so much. You
may have noticed it--two-button coat and cuff-bottom trousers. Really a
very pretty thing. We don't mention this from any feeling of childish
vanity, but merely because it has a bearing on later developments.
When we saw the Gladiolus we must confess we were disappointed. We had
been hearing so much about it, and Algie had spoken with such
enthusiasm, that we had formed an idea of a vessel combining the luxury
and grace of the Astor family yacht with the rakishness and speed of a
torpedo-destroyer. Instead of that gorgeous conception, here was a boat
which looked like a very long and narrow packing-case, pointed at one
end. It contained an engine that suggested a coffee-mill with a very
chunky fly-wheel. Abaft--that, we believe is the technical term--abaft
the engine were a couple of cane-chairs.
The Gladiolus, however, was very strong in the matter of decoration.
There were stencilled flower-designs in every possible place, and a huge
flag drooped over the stern. The cushions presented florid designs of
young ladies in sailor-blouses. A large and highly polished
search-light glared over the bow like the eye of an enraged Cyclops.
There was no acetylene for the light, but it looked well, and it made
one feel so much safer.
The party fitted itself into the boat as best it could. It was a very
tight fit. Two people seated themselves on the little bench in the
stern. They were jammed in so tight that when one was pulled out it made
a noise like drawing an obstinate cork. And two sat on the cane-chairs,
when they weren't sitting on the bottom of the boat to keep her steady.
The skipper had a bench all to himself, so that he could get up and
wrestle with the fly-wheel every time the engine paused to think.
When we were all in the boat, she settled down to within three inches of
the water--or so it seemed to us personally. We made a hesitating
comment on the subject to Algie. He smiled a wintry smile.
"Guess you don't know much about motor-boats, old man," he said in a
glacial tone. "You can't have speed unless you have narrow lines and a
low free-board. Of course, if you want something built like a
grain-barge----"
Hastily we disclaimed any desire for a grain-barge. We stated our
entire agreement with him on the subject of low free-boards. Our
concurrence was all the more enthusiastic that we didn't know the
difference between a low free-board and a loose plank in the fence.
Soothed by our submission, Algie stepped gingerly forward, taking great
care not to kick the engine over. He gazed sternly about. We watched
anxiously. Algie bent down with dignity, grasped the fly-wheel with
both hands, and gave a mighty heave. The engine coughed asthmatically
and relapsed into silence. Algie heaved again. The engine cleared its
throat--only that and nothing more. Algie smiled a sickly smile,
muttered something about the sparker, toyed with a few cocks and
levers--that engine seemed to possess more of them than any piece of
mechanism we have ever seen--and then heaved that blessed wheel for
fifteen minutes without stopping. Nothing doing! Algie was red in the
face, his lovely ducks were all smudged with oil, and still the engine
preserved the meditative silence of a paralyzed yogi.
It was very trying, very. We all started in to make suggestions, and
Algie was so much at a loss that he even tried to carry some of them
out, thus losing caste terribly in our eyes. No skipper should ever
treat a suggestion with anything but withering contempt. At last he
lost his temper and gave the engine a kick. We don't know what he
struck, but he certainly struck something. The result was miraculous.
The engine started with a roar like an express-train on a bridge, and
before we knew we were shooting out into the Lake, just missing a canoe
in which a young man sprawled with a double-bladed paddle and beamed at
his "ladifren." As we whizzed by, nearly knocking the paddle out of his
hand, that young man sat straight up, and while we were within range his
conversation was of a character not countenanced by the Lord's Day
Alliance.
Thus we started. Of course we didn't keep it up long. After about a
hundred yards or so, the Gladiolus settled down to a steady clip of
about three miles an hour--when she was going. There were frequent
intervals when the engine stopped to get its breath. But we didn't
mind. It was a lovely bright day, and there was very little wind. So
with our one-lung engine we gayly coughed our way over the glassy
waters. We made many jokes, and occasionally burst into song--all except
Algie, of course. Algie insisted on preserving the best traditions of
British seamanship. On shore he might relax, but while he was at sea
and our lives depended on him, he stayed right there on the bridge, and
his stern eyes swept the waste of waters and the rock-bound coast lest
danger should lurk there. He must have seen a lot of dangers that no
one else saw, for he kept zigzagging and tacking about in the most
extraordinary manner.
Pleasantly the hours passed and the landmarks on shore--summer hotels,
gaudy villas smirking coquettishly through the trees, boating
establishments where gentlemen hire canoes for their ladies, or perhaps
ladies for their canoes. Slowly we drew near to Mimico. There is an
asylum at Mimico. We have heard friends of ours account for its
presence there on the ground that one must be out of one's mind to live
at Mimico; but as they had been fined for speeding through the village,
it is possible that their opinion was not entirely unbiased.
Inch by inch Mimico slipped past the beautiful low free-board of the
Gladiolus. And incidentally, that famous free-board began to seem lower
than ever. For some little time the wind had been rising, and the waves
kept growing bigger--"quite a sea kicking up," as Algie said--and now
and then there was an unmistakeable slap of spray over the side. The
original intention had been to go some miles further along the shore for
lunch, but Algie finally decided to turn back to Mimico--not that he
distrusted the seaworthy qualities of the Gladiolus or himself, but
merely as a concession to the fears of the ladies in the party. He
announced his intention of landing at the Asylum. He had been a visitor
or a guest or something there, and professed to know the doctor quite
well. Besides they had a good wharf, he said.
Algie managed to warp in the Gladiolus, after several determined efforts
to knock the end off the concrete pier. Then we landed the grub. Each
of the three gentlemen--we include Algie--assumed the white man's
burden, while the ladies tripped on gracefully ahead. We advanced into
the grounds of the Asylum. There were a number of the inmates strolling
about, but they made no attempt to accost us. Evidently they thought we
were new and more than usually weak-minded arrivals. There was much to
support such a view.
We found a nice spot for picnicking. It was on a low bluff overlooking
the Lake. Sombre pines cast romantic shadows about us. And the lunch
was excellent--just such a lunch as marooned sailors might dream to find
awaiting them in heaven. We even had initialed napkins. And as the food
went down our spirits rose. We felt that the perils of the deep were a
myth, and we said ha-ha in our hearts and asked for another piece of
pie. Then, having eaten and the chicken bones having been thrown over
the cliff, we lay about in graceful postures, listening to what the wild
waves were saying and quoting such verse as we remembered out of the
fifth reader.
Suddenly it occurred to someone that the wild waves were saying a good
deal and that they were talking in a big bass voice. We woke up to the
fact that the wind had wakened up some time previously.
"Lord, but it's going to be rough!" said Algie:
But none of us realized just how rough it was going to be, or we would
have all walked to town. Seen from above, waves are very different from
what they are when seen from below--a truth which no member of that
party will ever doubt again. We hastily packed up and made a run for
the wharf and the boat. When we got there we found that another boat
had also sought its shelter. Two sun-burned youths in extremely
primitive costumes brooded in it and smoked cigarettes and cursed their
engine. They had tried everything they could think of, including a lot
of language they had never thought of before, and the darn thing
wouldn't go. Thereupon Algie climbed into their boat and worked like an
African slave for half an hour, in spite of our appeals and unveiled
hints that he was an ass.
At last even Algie gave the task up and consented to get back into his
own boat and begin a little Graeco-Roman with his own engine. Strangely
enough, that temperamental machine was quite amenable this time. It
took only twelve minutes and a few damns to start it. Promptly we backed
into the other fellow's anchor rope and put several fancy stitches into
it with our propeller. Naturally our propeller became somewhat involved
in the process. The other gentlemen--and when we say
"gentlemen!"--refused to let us cut the rope, so there was nothing for
it but to land the ladies once more, shoo them away from the wharf,
undress Algie, and put him into the water. We kept him there till he
had untied the propeller, and then we dragged him in, half-frozen. When
he recovered sufficiently to be able to speak, he used some expressions
which we are personally treasuring up for an occasion of great mental
stress.
We rounded the break-water, incidentally scraping all the paint off one
side of the boat, and then everything happened at once. A great big
wave with a white head saw us coming, gave a glad, wild shout, and
jumped aboard. The Gladiolus shuddered and groaned, and we all
shuddered and groaned. But it was only the beginning. The big wave was
followed by a bigger, which also climbed playfully aboard and coiled up
in our laps. And then all Lake Ontario seemed to crowd in on us at
once. We were breathing, drinking, and absorbing water which we had
intended using solely for purposes of navigation.
The way the Gladiolus acted would have been a revelation to a builder of
submarines. That rakish craft, with the long, narrow lines and the
lovely low freeboard, dived into every wave and shipped it gracefully
all over the passengers. With a very little coaxing, she would have
plunged down and run along the bottom. Now and then she came up to
breathe, and then we all looked a mute farewell at one another and
disappeared once more beneath the foam. None of us ever expected to see
Yonge Street and the department-stores again.
The most extraordinary thing about the whole damp business was the way
the engine kept going. A real engine would have stopped dead the first
time a wave came in and lay down beside it. But this rheumatic and
asthmatic old bunch of junk, which some heartless pirate had sold to
Algie for an engine, kept coughing and sputtering through it all. There
was no spray-hood, and the water was about a foot deep all around the
machine, but it hammered away with a steadiness it would never have
displayed in happier circumstances.
We would have turned back if we could, but we couldn't. Algie was in no
condition of mind to steer, and the boat wouldn't answer the rudder
anyway. So we just chug-chugged through the welter, holding our breaths
when we were under water, and gasping for air when we could get any.
Now and then we caught sight of Algie hanging on to the wheel, evidently
prepared to go to his God like a sailor. It was noble but it wasn't
seamanship.
For years and years we kept plunging into huge waves that rose up from
the nether abyss, towered over our heads, and then crashed down upon us
like the side of the Woolworth Building. Once or twice we caught a
fleeting glimpse of the shore, with peaceful cottages upon it, and we
remembered that somewhere the sun was shining and somewhere hearts were
light. But we had little time for reflection.
Suddenly, after a century or two of submarine existence, we found that
we were at Sunnyside once more. We were very much at Sunnyside. We were
on the beach, with huge waves breaking over us, and three hundred people
yelling directions at us. Some noble life-savers stood on the end of a
wharf and threw us a rope. Algie grabbed it and performed prodigies of
pulling. But it was no use. There we stuck, and a lot more waves came
tumbling in to play with us. That is where we personally saw our duty,
and we did it. We got out and pushed. It sounds simple. Most heroic
things do. But it took the eye that saw and the legs that dared. We
clambered out in the bosom of a wave, got a firm toe-hold on the
submerged soil of Sunnyside, laid our head lovingly against the polished
side of the Gladiolus, and shoved her out into the Lake. Then we held
her there and got in again, carrying about a barrel of water with us,
like a Newfoundland dog coming back with a stick he has retrieved.
Far be it from us to dwell upon this part of the adventure, though we
know men who have got their pictures into the paper and the pictures of
their entire families for deeds no braver. And these men have been
sailors, hardened to the perils of the splashy deep, while we are a raw
amateur whose favorite exercise is running a typewriter. But let us
pass on.
Little remains to be told. Algie finally managed to blunder into the
shelter of the Humber River. There we fished the ladies out of the
boat, wrung them out, and we all walked rapidly home. We walked to keep
from being chilled to death--also because there wasn't the slightest
chance of them letting us board a street-car in that condition.
Fortunately, home wasn't more than a mile or so away--Algie's home. But
it seemed farther. Our clothes stuck lovingly to our personalities, and
passers-by made unfeeling remarks.
Algie and Mrs. Algie did their very best for us. They fed us, gave us
old clothes while ours were drying, made us take a little something with
hot water and lemon in it, and rendered all the first aids usual in such
circumstances. When we came away we told them we had had a lovely time.
"You must come out again in her," said Algie, "when I have had her
decked in, and a new four-cylinder engine...."
But that was a long time ago, and we are still resisting the
temptation--tactfully, we trust, but firmly.
[Illustration: AESTHETICS AND SOME TEA]
*AEsthetics and Some Tea*
Why anyone should invite us to an aesthetic tea is one of those
insoluble mysteries which Heaven alone can penetrate--supposing that
Heaven would so far condescend as to notice the matter at all. We are
not aesthetic, and we don't care a darn about tea.
What's more, we hate dressing up for it. There might be some sense in
dressing up for a case of beer or a couple of bottles of Scotch. But why
people should get into afternoon gowns and morning-coats for tea and
postage-stamp sandwiches--well, it beats us, dear reader, it beats us.
Of course, nothing was stated in the invitation about it being an
aesthetic tea. But we were asked to meet Mrs. De Frizac-Jones, and we
knew what that meant. The reader may not know Mrs. De Frizac-Jones--at
least, not by that name--but she is a very real person. She is the
arch-priestess of the higher cultchaw in our town. And she makes it
pay--about five thousand a year and unlimited kudos! But more of her
anon.
So we shook the camphor out of our morning-coat, and put a little
indelible ink on the places where the lining showed through the more
recent moth-holes in the vest. We sewed a button or two on our striped
trousers, took a spot off one leg, rectified the line of our shirt-bosom
and cuffs by clipping the feathers off the edges, read a couple of
chapters of a book of etiquette--all about leaving your hat and stick in
the hall without fear, and making a bright, spontaneous remark to your
hostess on entering and leaving (a different remark each time, we
presume)--and we felt prepared for the massed attacks of the enemy,
including gas.
When we arrived there was already a goodly company
assembled--thirty-seven ladies and three men. The ladies were bubbling
over with unsuppressed excitement, and the air was filled with extremely
cultured badinage involving the frequent mention of Maeterlinck and Mrs.
Inez Haynes Gilmore. The three men didn't seem excited. They weren't
saying a word. Till we were introduced to them, we thought they were
the hired help.
The expression of intense eagerness with which every lady's face was
turned to the door as we stepped in, caused a flush of pride and modest
confusion to mantle our Grecian features. Not that we are entirely
unused to such manifestations of feminine approval--but thirty-seven all
at once!
When they saw it was only us--that is, when they saw it was only we--O
Lord, we mean when they saw who it was, thirty-six of the ladies turned
around again and began talking to the nearest person in loud, casual
tones, with a unanimity that we can only describe as unpleasantly
marked. The thirty-seventh was our hostess. She, poor woman, had to
look at us, and she came forward with a wan smile and her hand stretched
out.
"Oh, I'm so glad you have come," she assured us without conviction.
"You will adore Mrs. De Frizac-Jones--her influence makes so powerfully
for sweetness and light, as dear Matthew Arnold would say. And you
newspapermen--you are so dreadfully cynical, so _tout a fait cynique_!
She will be here any moment now. We are all longing for her. She is
wonderful--so psychic, you know."
So that was why they all looked at the door when we first came in--they
thought we were the priestess herself. And we were going to be
uplifted. Also we were to be psyched--a hilarious prospect for a
healthy, single man! We told our hostess, however, that we were sure we
would adore Mrs. De Hyphen-Jones, as we always liked 'em psychic. We
were about to explain that as a rule we preferred psychic blondes, but
that a good psychic brunette with a neat ankle--our hostess, however,
turned and addressed the company at large.
"Just to show you how wonderful she is," she warbled ecstatically, "the
very first time she honored our little home with her presence, she
simply telephoned to say she was coming, and when I began to tell her
the address and how to get here, she stopped me at once. 'Don't tell
me,' she said, 'don't even tell me the number. For when I come down the
street, I will know at once the house where you dwell by its emanation
of your personality, its you-ness, so to speak.' And she did! She came
straight to the door."
On every side were heard gurgles of wonder and delight--"Marvellous!"
"Isn't she just too wonderful?" "Extraordinary creature of genius!" And
right in the midst of that liquid chorus of enthusiasm, we had to break
in with one of those inept and devastating remarks which have time and
again blasted our hopes of social preferment.
"But if she telephoned to you," we said in a loud voice like the
imbecile we are, "she must have seen your address in the telephone
book."
There was a chilling pause of indignation and a universal glassy stare.
We felt the finger of scorn burning a hole in our shirt-bosom just above
our heart. It was a hideous situation for us. We glanced about
anxiously for a nice, low sofa to crawl under, when there was a sudden
diversion to the right.
Mrs. De Frizac-Jones!--we were a lot gladder to see her than we had ever
expected to be. She stood in the doorway, a middle-aged vision in
powder-blue (or so we heard one lady describe the color). She carried
her head slightly on one side, and a pensive smile lit up the shadows
under her blue hat with a blue-and-black ostrich-mount (more
eavesdropping on our part). She held out her hand to the hostess as
though it were an orchid.
"So sorry to be late," we heard her say. And then the phalanx of ladies
charged as one woman, leaving us four men stranded in the middle of the
floor. We looked furtively at one another, but no one winked. We were
all gentlemen. Besides, we were all badly scared.
"I am so utterly exhausted," Mrs. De Frizac-Jones explained languidly,
when the first wild enthusiasm of welcome had somewhat subsided. "I have
been lecturing to a class of dear girls on rhythm and deportment, you
know, and it takes so much out of one. But their sweet sympathy and
intelligence are very reviving. I was teaching them how they must
walk--stooping slightly forward, with the face gracefully uptilted. The
mannish swagger of most girls nowadays is so very frightful. I told
them that when they glide across a room, they must say to themselves, 'I
am a lily swaying in the breeze.' And they understood at once--they are
so exquisitely plastic."
All the ladies, talking together, said it was really miraculous how she
thought of such lovely metaphors. And it brought the idea home to one
so beautifully--a lily swaying in the breeze! Personally, we recalled
that the last time we saw anyone trying to walk like a lily swaying in
the breeze, was about 1.35 a.m. on a down-town thoroughfare. The person
in question was trying to carry a most splendiferous slosh past a
watchful guardian of the law without affording an excuse for police
intervention. The result was something like a lily, and also something
like a wrecking-crane that had got out of control. But we didn't tell
the company this bright thought of ours. We didn't tell anybody--we had
had enough of telling.
A few minutes later we were presented to the great woman. Our hostess
did it with the air of one consciously heaping coals of fire on our
head. She murmured something about our being a literary critic--as a
matter of fact, the Managing-Editor makes us review such books as come
in, because the stenographer has too much other work to do, and the last
office-boy he tried it on quit.
"Ah-h-h!" said the prophetess giving us her hand, and promptly
dismissing that limb from her thoughts--we nearly put it in our
vest-pocket we were so embarrassed. "Ah-h-h! And where is your
centre?"
Just casually like that--just as though she were asking us where was our
favorite hotel. In fact, for a wild moment we did think she might mean
where did we usually hang out socially, and we almost said that we could
generally be found after office-hours in the Press Club playing poker or
waiting for a friendly boot-legger. But the slight vestige of sanity
remaining to us prevented this final catastrophe, and we managed to
stammer out that we were not aware of possessing any centre at all--none
to speak of.
"Oh, but you must have a centre," she persisted brightly. "We who are
engaged in the sacred service of the arts and muses must have a centre,
a guiding beacon leading us ever onward and upward to the stars. Have
you no star?"
We hadn't the heart to tell the dear lady that the star to which we
generally turned our longing eyes in the service of the arts and muses
was the hope that the Business Office of the journal on which we work
would increase the weight and thickness of our weekly envelope--(the
printer will please not spell this "weakly," however appropriate and
true the epithet may be). We did not care to introduce these mercenary
considerations, so we said nothing and blushed. We may be a benighted
newspaperman, but we retain certain rudiments of delicacy. She smiled
on us in imitation of a Pre-Raphaelite madonna, and floated away.
Then we had tea--not right away, but after half an hour or so of pained
wonder whether or not we were going to get anything at all, and where
the dickens the people were all drifting away to. They disappeared, two
or three at a time, and none of them came back. We began to suspect
that we were being ostracized, when our hostess came up and collected
us.
"Oh, you naughty, naughty man," she said in that mischievous and knowing
tone which some married ladies love to adopt towards bachelors, "you
don't deserve that I should bother about you at all, but you really must
have something to eat. Come out to the dining-room."
We went out to the dining-room, disguising as well as we could our
extreme eagerness for vittles of some sort or other; and there we found
that assemblage of giant intellects wandering about picking sandwiches
and little cakes and cups of tea off the mantel, off the side-board, off
the window-sill, off chairs, and even off the stairs in the hall. They
were taking their food the way the Twentieth Century Limited takes
water, scooping it up on the run. We must have looked a little amazed,
for our hostess deigned to explain.
"That is the way we eat now," she said. "We do it spontaneously and
almost unconsciously. Mrs. De Frizac-Jones suggested it. She said there
was something so gross and premeditated about sitting down deliberately
to food. One should eat as the bees sip honey, flitting about from
flower to flower."
We said we thought it a very delightful idea--no doubt, the cook does,
too. Then we walked six miles and a half around the place trying to get
enough to sustain the vital forces till supper-time. We finished up by
nearly sitting in a plate of angel-cake. And we were still hungry. It
may be a good system for humming-birds, but it has its drawbacks for
people gifted with the usual thirty-two feet of internal equipment.
When the sandwiches had at last been all tracked down and destroyed
spontaneously and unconsciously, there was a general demand that Mrs. De
Frizac-Jones should read something to us. After the usual amount of
ah-do-pleasing on our part and no-I-rully-can'ting on hers, she suddenly
remembered that she had Maeterlinck's "Death of Tintagiles" with her,
and if they rully insisted--and, of course, they rully did.
The company draped itself in attitudes more or less graceful all over
the furniture and the window-ledges, and assumed expressions of gloomy
concentration. Mrs. De Frizac-Jones cleared her throat two or three
times in a silvery way, and then began to read in a deadly monotone of
the soul-freezing sort which villains used to employ in the
"ten-twenty-thirt's" before the movies killed the spoken drama.
Personally, we feared the worst from the very moment that the name of
Maeterlinck was mentioned. It acts like a spell. We have seen big,
bouncing matrons, accustomed to bully their husbands and run large
families, turn pale and tremble at the sound of it. We have known it to
reduce to silence even the sort of prosperous business person who talks
continually in a loud voice about his new car, and the cost of its
tires, and the number of its cylinders, and the oceans of gasoline it
consumes every time it runs around the block. The word makes them feel
like a greenhorn at a Spiritist sceance watching a visitor from another
plane materialize in the corner of the room.
The only people who seem to thrive on a diet of Maeterlinck are the
aesthetes like Mrs. De Frizac-Jones. The gloomier the twilight of his
scene, the more mournful the voices that float down the wind, the more
the real enthusiasts expand and burgeon. Just give them a nice poetic
strangling or something like that, and they are perfectly happy.
Certainly, Mrs. De Frizac-Jones seemed to get a lot of fun out of "The
Death of Tintagiles."
It was a cheerful little piece, all about a dear child and a black
castle and a vampire queen. His young sisters try to shield him in their
arms, but the queen's servants tear him away, and she slowly strangles
him to death behind a big iron door while his sisters beat in despair
upon it.
The reader will recognize at once how much better and stronger one feels
when a play like this is over. Personally we almost gave three cheers
when the poor little beggar was finally and completely killed. It put
him out of pain--us, too. But fortunately Mrs. De Frizac-Jones checked
us in time.
"No applause!" she commanded the company. "No applause! Silence is
best."
We heroically restrained our desire to clap with our hands and pound
with our feet on the rug; and everyone else sat still and frowned in
intense thought. While they were wrestling with their souls, we slipped
out into the hall. There we found one of the other men slipping away,
too. Neither spoke a word, till we were both safely out on the
sidewalk. Then he turned and pointed with his thumb to the house.
"Don't they beat hell!" he said.
[Illustration: BEAUTY IN THE BANK]
*Beauty in the Bank*
Somehow we enjoy going to the bank nowadays far more than we used to.
It isn't that we are more solvent than heretofore--our solvency does not
seem to increase with our years--but the banks are much more interesting
resorts than in the old days before the war filled them up with young
ladies. The banks now have more color and animation, so to
speak--especially since the girls have taken to wearing those gaudy
pull-over sweaters.
We were reminded of this changed aspect of our sterner financial
institutions the other day, when we caught ourself going in to have our
bank-book made up for the third time in the week. Formerly it had been
our custom to wait till we got a short and nasty note from the
accountant asking us to call around and fix up that overdraught. But
now we run right in every time we pass and have a little book-keeping
done for us.
Instead of the gloomy young man who used to preside over the records of
the savings department, they now have a bright young woman. This
naturally introduces a very pleasing social atmosphere. We no longer
chuck our bankbook in through the wicket with an air of weary
nonchalance, or gaze coldly at the clerk as though daring him to make an
insolent remark about the size of our balance and the amount of
book-keeping it involves. Our account is still small and very lively,
but we don't gaze coldly--on the contrary!
Now we take off our hat, and try to think up something sprightly to say
about the weather. If it is a nice day in the summer, for instance, this
leads naturally to a discussion of the best place to spend one's
vacation, and whether or not one likes sailing, and does one do much
dancing in the summer, and how good the roads are for motoring just now.
If it is winter or the weather is bad, it brings one at once to the
tragic impossibility of going anywhere or doing anything, and how dull
town is just now, and the theatre and the movies--especially the movies!
This last is an opening we have found invariably successful. Once you
mention Mary Pickford or Francis X. Bushman, acquaintance ripens
visibly. Young ladies who turn coldly from almost any other
conversational bait rise voraciously to this one, and take it hook,
line, and sinker.
A great thing, too, about discussing film-favorites is that it furnishes
a most useful index to character. Girls who like Mary Pickford and
Douglas Fairbanks, for instance, are apt to be of the merry, hoydenish
sort--fond of romping, you know, and caramels and practical jokes, and
all that sort of jolly rot. The admirers of Clara Kimball Young or Mr.
Bushman, on the other hand, are usually of the yearning, soulful type,
the kind of girl who wants you to recite poetry to her in the twilight,
and longs for some strong man to protect her--this sort of thing usually
leads to solitaire-diamond rings. But the young ladies who enthuse over
Theda Bara and Pauline Frederick--well, when we run across one of these
we always look around for help. When one meets an amateur of vamping
one had best not get too far from one's strategic reserves.
This conversational gambit, is all right, but the trouble in the banks
is that they keep changing the young ladies around. Just as soon as we
have got things moving along nicely, and have reached the point where we
can talk about the young lady's preferences in the matter of supper, or
can throw out general suggestions in the direction of an evening's
paddle in the Island lagoon, they remove her to an inaccessible portion
of the building--perhaps they confine her in the main vault--and we have
to start all over again. It is a little discouraging, even though our
heart is in the work. Bank managers and chief accountants certainly
seem to be jealous devils.
Business men, too, are an awful nuisance. They have a way of breaking in
disastrously on our little _tete-a-tetes_ at the wicket. One day last
summer an awfully nice girl was reading a cheque we brought in, while we
playfully seized her other hand which she had left carelessly within
reach. Naturally she didn't notice that we were holding it--wonderful
concentration these business women have! And naturally neither of us
was paying much attention to anyone else--not while this particular
business matter was being settled.
"Say, what is this?" a wheezy voice asked at our ear. "Is this a bank
or have I butted into a manicuring parlor?"
We looked at the person, a fat and clammy merchant with a bunch of
colored cheques in his flabby fist, the sort of human hippo who wears a
pink shirt with a Palm Beach suit, and perspires on the end of the nose.
We looked coldly down him from the gaudy band on his Panama, to the
gilded buckle of his belt--everything below that was concealed by the
overhang--but we couldn't think of a darn thing to say. Nothing
suitable for a bank, that is.
Fortunately the lady was more than equal to the occasion. She raised
her eyebrows and looked at the cheques he held.
"Do you want to cash those?" she asked in silvery tones of hauteur.
"I do," he said with unabashed assurance, "if you can spare the
time--and a hand."
"Well, then you had better run out and get someone to identify
you--perhaps one of the other butchers might be willing."
We could see the ripples of rage run up the back of that fat financier's
neck. He turned a rich magenta, and the diamond on his little finger
wobbled about as though he were trying to send a distress message by
heliograph.
"Where--where's the Manager?" he spluttered. "I want the Manager. I'll
report you, that's what I'll do--you--you minx!"
"Second door at the left of the main entrance," she said sweetly, and
reached for a ledger. She did not seem flustered in the least, but our
little conversazione was over--this sort of interruption makes it so
difficult to recapture the first fine careless rapture.
It was our own fault. We shouldn't have gone in at an hour when
business men were likely to be shouldering their way up to the financial
trough. In order to take advantage of the social possibilities of
present-day banking, it is best to call early--say, around ten o'clock.
Then the commercial machine has not got properly under way and little
flowers of romance may be made to bloom in the arid paths of business.
But, of course, one mustn't go too early. One must give the girls a
chance to exchange their little confidences with one another about the
sort of time they had the night before, and what canoe club he belongs
to, and how many fox-trots she had with him, and what she said to Reggie
when Reggie objected to her going around with a former aviator--aviators
presumably being men of flighty notions of morality--and the other vital
topics that ladies discuss the morning after.
We made that mistake one morning two or three months ago. A fellow had
given us a cheque--it was rather a surprise, we admit--and we were quite
short of money, which is never a surprise to us. We needed it and we
needed it quickly, so we were at the door of his bank just one minute
and a half after it opened. We didn't want to give anyone else a chance
to beat us to his bank-balance, so we were there at
nine-thirty-six-and-a-half.
The young ladies were present all right--most of them, at any rate--but
they had not yet turned their minds to the business of the day. About a
dozen of them were gathered in chatty little groups, from which stray
snatches of conversation reached our ears.
"I think I'd have frills on it, my dear," said one. "You know those net
and muslin frills are all the rage. Gertie was over at Buffalo last
week, and she said that the girls were wearing them all over."
How "all over?" But another broke in.
"Say, have you girls seen Maud's new Dew-Kist silk skirt?" she burbled.
"It's just too sweet. But don't you think Dew-Kist is an awful
nuisance?--everything sticks to it, you know. And it gets so fuzzy when
it's rubbed."
Dew-Kist!--it certainly was a very pretty name. A Dew-Kist skirt
suggested Arcadian gambols about the morning meadows, with singing and
laughter and--well, there is no need of leaving all the kissing to the
dew. But we decided not to rub one of those skirts--not if it was going
to get all fuzzy and give us away like that. We even made a brief
mental prayer that the vogue of Dew-Kist silk would be a short one, much
as we liked the name.
Then we waited patiently for another five minutes, while the
conversation turned lightly to chenille hats and knitted sweaters.
"I am doing mine in old-rose silk," one young lady informed the other
girls and the banking public generally, as represented by us. "Wool is
getting so common, don't you think? And the silk clings to the figure
much better. You don't get that bulkiness around the waist."
Under the circumstances, we were strong for silk, and we were glad to
think the girls were taking it up. In fact, we found the whole
conversation very pleasant and improving. But we could not help
reflecting that our financial purpose in visiting the bank was not being
furthered by it, and that the Managing Editor might perhaps be impatient
for our presence at the office. Of course, his humor would all depend on
what sort of golf he had played the afternoon before, but one mustn't
count too confidently on a good score.
So we coughed. We coughed gently at first, and then louder and louder,
until finally we were tearing the fur lining out of our throat. A
couple of fair bankeresses glanced at us as though we were an obnoxious
June-bug. And then one of them--we think it was Claire--sauntered over
to us humming one of Al Jolson's newest records. She laid a powder-puff
on the desk and stretched a languid hand for our cheque. She read the
cheque. She seemed to read it over several times. Then she laid it on
the ledger and walked back to the group. An idea had evidently struck
her--we thought she was going to call the police.
"Oh, girls," she said, "do you know what that dirty little cat,
Edith...."
We wouldn't have minded so much if we had been able to catch the rest of
it, but she lowered her voice, their heads all drew together, and we
were left to beat our forehead against the brass grating in impotent
rage. We also thumped on the desk with the end of our cane. They heard
us--you could hear us two blocks away--but they heeded not.
Finally, the only man in sight came out of the teller's cage--if we
worked in a bank these days, we also would wish to be kept in a cage.
We would feel much safer that way. He was a comparatively young man but
he looked harassed and worn. He came up to the wicket, and we pointed
to our cheque--we were too hoarse to speak. He picked it up.
"Say, would some of you ladies kindly consent to attend to this?" he
asked in an O-my-gawd tone of voice. It was the voice of a man who had
suffered much and saw no relief in sight.
Claire came back, still humming. Her manner indicated that she despised
us both. The Paying Teller--at least, that was the name on his
cage--went into the big vault in the back of the office. Then he
returned.
"Have you changed your combination, Miss Jenkins," he asked curtly, "or
do you wish me to do it for you?"
Her combination--great heavens! We gasped and the purple flood of
embarrassment mantled our particularly open countenance. But Claire was
perfectly cool.
"Thanks," she said without the quiver of an eyelid, "but I want to get
used to doing it myself."
She handed us our cheque and then she disappeared into the vault. No
wonder they have big iron doors on those things!
[Illustration: KONCERNING KOSMETICS]
*Koncerning Kosmetics*