MRS. BUDLONG'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
BY
RUPERT HUGHES
AUTHOR OF "EXCUSE ME," "THE OLD NEST," ETC.
MCMXII
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I AT THE SIGN OF THE PIANO LAMP
II CHRONICLES OF A CRAFTSMAN
III MISTRESS OF THE REVELS
IV ONLY A MILLIONAIRE
V THE BITER BIT
VI DESPAIR AND AN IDEA
VII FOILED
VIII FOILED AGAIN
IX WORSE, AND MORE OF IT
X A WELL LAID PLAN
XI GANG AGLEY AGAIN
XII AN AMAZING CHRISTMAS
MRS. BUDLONG'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
I
AT THE SIGN OF THE PIANO LAMP
The morning after Christmas Eve is the worst morning-after there is.
The very house suffers the headache that follows a prolonged spree.
Remorse stalks at large; remorse for the things one gave--and did not
give--and got.
Everybody must act a general glee which can be felt only
specifically, if at all. Everybody must exclaim about everything Oh!
and Ah! and How Sweet of You! and Isn't it Perfectly Dear! The very
THING I Wanted! and How DID you EVER Guess it?
Christmas morning in the town of Carthage is a day when most of the
people keep close at home, for Christmas is another passover. It is
Santa Claus that passes over.
People in Carthage are not rich; the shops are not grandiose, and
inter-family presents are apt to be trivial and futile--or worse yet,
utile.
The Carthaginian mother generally finds that Father has credited the
hat she got last fall, to this Christmas; the elder brothers receive
warm under-things and the young ones brass-toed boots, mitts and
mufflers. The girls may find something ornamental in their
stockings, and their stockings may be silk or nearly--but then girls
have to be foolishly diked up anyway, or they will never be married
out. Dressing up daughters comes under the head of window-display or
coupons, and is charged off to publicity.
Nearly everybody in Carthage--except Mrs. Ulysses S. G.
Budlong--celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it
easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing
how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The
formula is usually: "We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house.
What did I get? Oh, so many things I can't reMember!"
But Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong does not celebrate her Christmasses
behind closed doors--or rather she did not: a strange change came
over her this last Christmas. She used to open her doors
wide--metaphorically, that is; for there was a storm-door with a
spring on it to keep the cold draught out of the hall.
As regular as Christmas itself was the oh-quite-informal reception
Mrs. Budlong gave to mitigate the ineffable stupidity of Christmas
afternoon: that dolorous period when one meditates the ancient
platitude that anticipation is better than realization; and suddenly
understands why it is blesseder to give than to receive: because one
does not have to wear what one gives away.
On Christmas Mrs. U. S. G. Budlong took all the gifts she had
gleaned, and piled them on and around the baby grand piano in the
back parlor. There was a piano lamp there, one of those illuminated
umbrellas--about as large and as useful as a date-palm tree.
Along about that time in the afternoon when the Christmas dinner
becomes a matter of hopeless remorse, Mrs. Budlong's neighbors were
expected to drop in and view the loot under the lamp. It looked like
hospitality, but it felt like hostility. She passed her neighbors
under the yoke and gloated over her guests, while seeming to
overgloat her gifts.
But she got the gifts. There was no question of that. By hook or by
crook she saw to it that the bazaar under the piano lamp always
groaned.
One of the chief engines for keeping up the display was the display
itself. Everybody who knew Mrs. Budlong--and not to know Mrs.
Budlong was to argue oneself unknown--knew that he or she would be
invited to this Christmas triumph. And being invited rather implied
being represented in the tribute.
Hence ensued a curious rivalry in Carthage. People vied with each
other in giving Mrs. Budlong presents; not that they loved Mrs.
Budlong more, but that they loved comparisons less.
The rivalry had grown to ridiculous proportions. But of course Mrs.
Budlong did not care how ridiculous it grew; for it could hardly have
escaped her shrewd eyes how largely it advantaged her that people
should give her presents in order to show other people that some
people needn't think they could show off before other people without
having other people show that they could show off, too, as well as
other people could. The pyschology must be correct, for it is
incoherent.
Mrs. Budlong herself was never known to break any of the
commandments, but in her back parlor her neighbors made flitters of
the one against coveting thy neighbor's and-so-forth and so-on.
It was when Mr. and Mrs. County Road Supervisor Detwiller were
walking home from one of these occasions, that Mr. Detwiller was
saying: "Well, ain't Mizzes Budlong the niftiest little gift-getter
that ever held up a train? How on earth did We happen to get stung?"
"I don't know, Roscoe. It's one of those things you can't get out of
without getting out of town too. Here we've been and gone and
skimped our own children to buy something that would show up good in
Mrs. Budlong's back parlor, and when I laid eyes on it in all that
clutter--why, if it didn't look like something the cat brought in,
I'll eat it!"
Mr. Detwiller had only one consolation--and he grinned over it:
"Well, there's no use cryin' over spilt gifts. But did you see how
she stuck old Widower Clute for that Japanese porcelain vace--I
notice she called it vahs?"
"Porcelain?" sniffed Mrs. Detwiller. "Paper musshay!"
"Well, getting even a paper--what you said--from old Clute is equal
to extracting solid gold from anybody else. He's the stingiest man
in sev'n states. He don't care any more for a two dollar bill than
he does for his right eye. I bet she gave him ether before he let
go."
"Oh, she works all the old bachelors and widowers that way," said
Mrs. Detwiller, with a mixture of contempt and awe. "Invites 'em to
a dinner party or two around Christmas marketing time, and begins to
talk about how pretty the shops are and how tempting everything she
wants is; says she saw a nimitation bronze clock at Strouther and
Streckfuss's that it almost broke her heart to leave there. But o'
course she couldn't afford to buy those kind of things for herself
now when she's got to remember all her dear friends, and she runs on
and on and the old batch growls, 'Stung again!' and goes to Strouther
and Streckfuss's and tells Mr. Streckfuss to send Mrs. Budlong that
blamed bronze clock she was admiring. And that's how she gets
things. I could do it myself if I'd a mind to."
Mr. Detwiller felt that there was more envy than truth in this last
remark, and he was rash enough to speak up for justice: "You could if
you'd a mind to? Yep. If you'd a mind to! That's what somebody
said about Shakespeare's plays. 'I could a wrote 'em myself if I'd a
mind to,' says he, and somebody else said, 'Yes, if you'd a mind to,'
he says. And that's about it. Any body could do what Mizzes Budlong
does if they had the mind to; but the thing is, she's got the mind
to. She goes after the gifts--and gits 'em. She don't almost git
'em, and she ain't goin' to git 'em. She gits 'em. And what gits me
is how she gits 'em."
"Roscoe Detwiller, if you're goin' to praise that woman in the
presence of your own lawful wife, I'll never speak to you the longest
day I live." "Who's praisin' her? I was just sayin'--"
"Why, Roscoe Detwiller, you did, too! And I should think you'd be
ashamed of yourself."
"Say, what ails you? Why, I was roastin' her to beat the band."
"And to think that on Christmas day of all days I should live to hear
my own husband that I've loved and cherished and worked my fingers to
the bone and never got any thanks and other women keepin' two and
three hired girls, and after him denyin' his own children things to
get expensive presents for a shameless creature like that Budlong
woman--"
All over Carthage on Christmas afternoons couples were similarly at
loggerheads over Mrs. Budlong's annual triumph.
Now of course Mrs. Budlong did not get all those presents without
giving presents. Not in Carthage! It might have been possible to
bamboozle these people one Christmas, but never another. Mrs.
Budlong gave heaps of presents. Christmas was an industry with her,
an ambition; Christmas was her career. It had long ago lost its
religious significance for her, as for nearly everybody else in
Carthage. Even Mr. Frankenstein (the Pantatorium magnate) is one of
the most ardent advertisers of Christmas bargains, while Isidore
Strouther and Esau Streckfuss are "almost persuaded" every December.
They might be entirely persuaded if it were not for the scenes they
witness in their aisles during the last weeks of Yuletide and the
aftermath of trying to collect from the Gentile husbands during
Billtide.
Mrs. Budlong's Christmas presents were of two sorts: those she made
herself and those she made her husband pay for. He was the typical
husband who never fails to settle his wife's bills, so long as he may
raise a row about them till his wife cries and looks like an
expensive luxury which only a really successful man could afford.
Then he subsides until the first of the next month.
II
CHRONICLES OF A CRAFTSMAN
Mrs. Budlong's campaign was undertaken with the same farsightedness
as a magazine editor's. On or about the Fourth of July she began to
worry and plan. By the second week in August she had her tatting
well under way. By the middle of September she was getting in her
embroidered doilies. The earliest frost rarely surprised her with
her quilts untufted. And when the first snow flew, her sachet bags
were all stuffed and smelly.
She was very feminine in her sense of the value of her own time. At
missionary meetings she would shed tears over the pathetic pictures
of Oriental women who spent a year weaving a rug which would sell for
a paltry hundred dollars and last a mere century or two. Then she
would cheerfully devote fifteen days of incessant stitching at
something she carried round in a sort of drumhead. At the end of
that time she would have completed a more or less intolerable piece
of colored fabric which she called a "drape" or a "throw." It could
not be duplicated at a shop for less than $1.75, and it would wash
perhaps three times.
Mr. Budlong once figured that if sweat-shop proprietors paid wages at
the scale Mrs. Budlong established for herself, all the seamstresses
and seamsters would curl up round their machines and die of
starvation the first week. But he never told Mrs. Budlong this.
Fancy stitching did not earn much, but it did not cost much; and it
kept her mysteriously contented. She was stitching herself to her
own home all the time.
The Christmas presents Mrs. Budlong made herself were not all a
matter of needle and thread. Not at all! One year she turned her
sewing room into a smithy. She gave Mr. and Mrs. Doctor Tisnower the
loveliest hand-hammered brass coal scuttle that ever was seen--and
with a purple ribbon tied to its tail. They kept flowers in it
several summers, till one cruel winter a new servant put coal in it
and completely scuttled it.
The same year she gave Mrs. ex-Mayor Cinnamon a hammered brass
version of a C. D. Gibson drawing. The lady and gentleman looked as
if they had broken out with a combination of yellow fever and
smallpox, or suffered from enlarged pores or something. And the
plum-colored plush frame didn't sit very well on the vermilion wall
paper. But Mrs. Cinnamon hung it over the sofa in the expectation of
changing the paper some day. It stayed there until the fateful
evening when Mr. Nelson Chur called on Miss Editha Cinnamon and was
just warming up a proposal that had held over almost as long as the
wall paper, when bang! down came the overhanging brass drawing and
bent itself hopelessly on Mr. Chur's skull. Mr. Chur said something
that may have been Damocles. But he did not propose, and Mrs.
Budlong was weeks wondering why Mrs. Cinnamon was so snippy to her.
The hammered brass era gave way to the opposite extreme of painted
velvet. They say it is a difficult art; and it may well be. Mrs.
Budlong's first landscape might as well have been painted on the side
of her Scotch collie.
Her most finished roses had something of the look of shaggy
tarantulas that had fallen into a paint pot and emerged in a towering
rage. It was in that velvetolene stratum that she painted for the
church a tasseled pulpit cloth that hung down a yard below the Bible.
Dr. Torpadie was a very soothing preacher, but no one slept o'sermons
during the reign of that pulpit cloth.
Mrs. Budlong was so elated over the success of it, however, that she
announced her intention of going in for stained glass. She planned a
series of the sweetest windows to replace those already in the
church. But she never got nearer to that than painted china.
The painted china era was a dire era. The cups would break and the
colors would run, and they never came out what she expected after
they were fired. Of course she knew that the pigments must suffer
alteration in the furnace, but there was always a surprise beyond
surprise.
She soon became accustomed to getting green roses with crimson
leaves, and deep blue apple blossoms against a pure white sky, but
when she finished one complete set of table china in fifty pieces,
each cup and saucer with a flower on it, the result looked so
startlingly like something from a medical museum, that she never
dared give the set away. She lent it to the cook to eat her meals
on. The set went fast.
During this epoch Master Ulysses Budlong Jr. was studying at school a
physiology ornamented with a few pictures in color representing the
stomachs of alcohol specialists. They were intended, perhaps, to
frighten little school children from frequenting saloons during
recess, or to warn them not to put whisky on their porridge.
It was at this time that Mrs. Budlong spent two weeks' hard labor
painting Easter lilies on an umbrella jug. When it came home from
the furnace, her husband stared at it and mumbled:
"It's artistic, but what is it?"
Little Ulysses shrieked: "Oh, I know!" and darting away, returned
with his physiology opened at one of those gastric sunsets,
and--well, it was this that impelled Mrs. Budlong to a solemn pledge
never to paint china again--a pledge she has nobly kept.
From smeared china she went to that art in which a woman buys
something at a store, pulls out half of it, and calls the remnant
drawn work. A season of this was succeeded by a mania for sofa
cushions. It fairly snowed sofa cushions all over Carthage that
Christmas; and Yale, Harvard and Princeton pillows could be found in
homes that had never known even a night school alumnus.
There ensued a sober period of burnt wood and a period of burnt
leather, during which excited neighbors with a keen sense of smell
called the fire department three times and the board of health once.
And now Indian heads broke out all over town and the walls looked as
if a shoemaker's apron had been chosen for the national pennant.
There were various other spasms of manufacture, each of them
fashionable at its time and foolish at anytime. As Mr. Detwiller
said:
"Somebody ought to write a history of Mrs. Budlong's Christmas
presents. It would tell the complete story of all the darned fool
fads that American women have been up to for twenty years."
But foolish soever, Mrs. Budlong was fair. A keen sense of
sportsmanship led her to give full notice to such people as she
planned to honor with her gifts. She knew how embarrassing it is to
receive presents from one to whom no present has been sent, and she
made it a point of honor somehow to forewarn her prospective
beneficiaries betimes. Her favorite method was the classic device of
pretending to let slip a secret. For instance:
"Yesterday morning, my dear, I had the Strangest exPerience. It was
just ten o'clock. I remember the hour so exactly because for the
last few days I have made it a rule to begin work on your Christmas
present just at ten--Oh, but I didn't mean to tell you. It was to be
a surprise. No, don't ask me, I won't give you an inkling, but I
really think it will please you. It's something you've been needing
for Such a long time."
And she left the victim to writhe from then on to Christmas, trying
alternately to imagine what gift was impending and what would be an
appropriate counter-gift.
III
MISTRESS OF THE REVELS
In more ways than one Mrs. Budlong kept Carthage on the writhe.
Christmas was merely the climax of a ceaseless activity. All the
year round she was at work like a yeast alert in a soggy dough.
She was forever getting up things. She was one of those terrible
women who return calls on time or a little ahead. That made it
necessary for you to return hers earlier. If you didn't, she called
you up on the telephone and asked you why you hadn't. You had to
promise to come over at once or she'd talk to you till your ear was
welded to the telephone. Then if you broke your promise she called
you up about that. She got in from fifty-two to a hundred and four
calls a year, where one or two would have amply sufficed for all she
had to say.
It was due to her that Carthage had such a lively social
existence--for its size. Once, when she fell ill, the people felt
suddenly as passengers feel when a street car is suddenly braked back
on its haunches. All Carthage found itself wavering and poised on
tiptoe and clinging to straps; and then it sogged back on its heels
and waited till the car should resume progress. Mrs. Budlong was the
town's motorman--or "motorneer," as they say in Carthage.
Before she was out of bed, she had invitations abroad for a
convalescent tea, and everybody said, "Here we go again!"
If strangers visited Carthage, Mrs. Budlong counted them her clients
the moment they arrived. Of course, the merely commercial visitors
she left to the hackmen at the station, but friends or relatives of
prominent people could not escape Mrs. Budlong's well-meant
attentions. It was sometimes embarrassing when relatives
appeared--for everybody has Concealed Relatives that he is perfectly
willing to leave in concealment.
Mrs. Alex. (pronounced Ellick) Stubblebine never forgave Mrs. Budlong
for dragging into the limelight some obscure cousins of her husband's
who had drifted into Carthage to borrow money on their farm. Mrs.
Stubblebine was always bragging about her people, her own people that
is. Her husband's people, of course, were after all only
Stubblebines, while her maiden name was Dilatush; and the Dilatushes,
as everybody knew, were related by marriage to the Tatums.
But these were Stubblebines that came to town. Mrs. Stubblebine
could hardly slam the door in their faces, but she would fain have
locked the doors after them. She would not even invite them out on
the front porch. She told them the back porch was cosier and less
conspicuous. And then Mrs. Budlong had to call up on the telephone
and sing out in her telephoniest tone:
"Oh, my dear, I've just this minute heard you have guests--some of
your dear husband's relatives. Now they must come to me to dinner
to-morrow. Oh, it isn't the slightest trouble, I asSure you. I'm
giving a little party anyway. I won't take no for an answer."
And she wouldn't. Mrs. Stubblebine fairly perspired excuses, but
Mrs. Budlong finally grew so suspicious that she had to accept; or
leave the impression that the relatives were burglars or
counterfeiters in hiding. And they were not--they were pitifully
honest.
The result was even worse than she feared. Mr. Stubblebine's cousin
was so shy that he never said a word except when it was pulled out of
him, and then he said, "Yes, ma'am"!
In Carthage when you are at a dinner party and you don't quite catch
the last remark, you don't snap "What?" or "How?" or "Wha' jew say?"
Whatever your home habits may be, at a dinner party or before
comp'ny, you raise your eyebrows gracefully and murmur, "I beg your
pardon."
But Mr. Stubblebine's rural cousin grunted "Huh?"--like an Indian
chief trying to scare a white general. And he was perfectly frank
about the intimate processes of mastication.
And when he dropped a batch of scalloped oysters into his watch
pocket he solemnly fished them-out with a souvenir after-dinner
coffee spoon having the Statue of Liberty for a handle and Brooklyn
Bridge in the bowl.
And the wretch's wife was so nervous that she talked all the time
about people the others had never seen or heard of. And she said she
"never used tomattus." And she wasn't ashamed of what she was
chewing either.
Mrs. Stubblebine would have felt much obliged to fate if she had been
presented with an apoplectic stroke. But she had to sit the dinner
out. From what she said to her poor husband afterward, however, one
might have gathered that he picked out those relatives just to spite
her, when as a matter of fact he had always loathed them and
regretted them and the next day he borrowed enough money to lend them
and send them back to the soil.
Mrs. Budlong had constituted herself Entertainment Committee for all
sorts of visitors. If a young girl came home from boarding school
with a classmate, the real hostess had hardly time to show her to the
spare room, and say, "This is the bathroom, round here; watch out for
the step. And if the water don't run just wait--" when the telephone
would go Brrrrr! And there would be Mrs. Budlong brandishing an
invitation to a dinner party.
When the supply of guests ran low she would visit the sick. If a
worn-out housewife slept late some morning to catch up, Mrs. Budlong
would hear of it and rush over with a broth or something. It is said
that old Miss Malkin got out of bed with an unfinished attack of
pneumonia, just to keep from eating any more of Mrs. Budlong's wine
jellies.
In Carthage one pays for the telephone by the year. The company lost
money on Mrs. Budlong's wire. As a telephoner she was simply
interminable. She would spend a weekend at the instrument while the
prisoner at the other extreme of the wire shifted from ear to ear,
sagged along the wall, postponed household duties, made signals of
distress to other members of the family, and generally cursed Mr.
Alexander Graham Bell for his ingenuity.
Three wall telephones were changed to table phones on Mrs. Budlong's
account, and Mrs. Talbot had hers put by the bed. She used to take
naps while Mrs. Budlong talked and she trained herself to murmur,
"Yes, dear," at intervals in her sleep.
By means like this Mrs. Budlong kept Carthage more or less under her
thumb. Carthage squirmed but it could not crawl out from under.
This is the story of how the thumb was removed for good and all. It
was Mrs. Budlong herself that removed it. Carthage could never have
pried it up.
And strange to say the thumb came off because it grew popular.
Hitherto Mrs. Budlong had never been truly popular. People were
merely afraid of her. She was a whipper-in, a social bush-beater,
driving the populace from cover like partridges. She would not let
the town rest. The merchants alone admired her, for she was the
cause of much buying of new shoes, new hats, new clothes, fine
groceries, olives, Malaga grapes, salted almonds, raisins, English
walnuts and other things that one eats only at parties. She was the
first woman in Carthage that ever gave a luncheon and called it
breakfast, as years before she had been the first hostess to give a
dinner at any time except in the middle of the day. Also, she was
the first person there to say, "Come to me" when she meant "Come to
our house." It had a Scriptural sound and was thought shocking until
Carthage grew used to it.
It was due to her that several elderly men were forced into their
first evening dress. They had thought to escape through life without
that ordeal. Old Clute would have preferred to be fitted for a pine
box, and would have felt about as comfortable in it. He tried to
compromise with the tailor on a garment that could serve as a Prince
Albert by day and a "swaller tail" by night, but Mr. Kweskin could
not manage it even though his Christian name was Moses.
So Mr. Clute blamed Mrs. Budlong for yet another expense. Husbands
all over town were blaming Mrs. Budlong for running their families
into fool extravagances. Mothers were blaming her for dragging them
round by the nose and leaving them no rest. But everybody in town
resentfully obeyed Mrs. Budlong, though Mrs. Roscoe Detwiller wanted
to organize a HomeKeepers Union, and strike. For the women never
dared trust themselves about the house in a wrapper, since Mrs.
Budlong might happen in as like as not--rather liker than not.
And then, just as the town was fermenting for revolt, Mrs. Budlong
came into a lot of money.
IV
ONLY A MILLIONAIRE
That is, Mr. Budlong came into a lot of money. Which meant that Mr.
Budlong would be permitted to take care of it while his wife got rid of
it. One of those relatives, very common in fiction, and not altogether
unknown in real life, finally let go of her money at the behest of her
impatient undertaker. The Budlongs had the pleasure of seeing the
glorious news of their good fortune in big headlines in the Carthage
papers.
It was the only display Mr. Budlong ever received in that paper without
paying for it--excepting the time when he ran for Mayor on the
opposition ticket and was referred to in letters an inch high as
"Candidate Nipped-in-the-Budlong."
But now the cornucopia of plenty had burst wide open on the front
porch. It seemed as if they would have to wade through gold dollars to
get to their front gate--when the money was collected. When the money
was collected.
And now it was Mrs. Budlong's telephone that rang and rang. It was
she that was called up and called up. It was she that sagged along the
wall and shifted from foot to foot, from elbow to elbow and ear to ear.
After living in Carthage all her life she was suddenly, as it were,
welcomed to the city as a distinguished visiting stranger. And now she
had no need to invite people to return their calls. They came
spontaneously. Sometimes there were a dozen calling at once. It was a
reception every day. There were overflow meetings in the room which
Mrs. Budlong called Mr. Budlong's "den." This was the place where she
kept the furniture that she didn't dare keep in the parlor.
People who had never come to see her in spite of her prehensile
telephone, dropped in to pay up some musty old call that had lain
unreturned for years. People who had always come formally, even
funereally, rushed in as informally and with as devouring an enthusiasm
as old chums. People who used to run in informally now drove up in
vehicles from MacMulkin's livery stable; or if they came in their own
turn-outs they had the tops washed and the harness polished, and the
gardener and furnaceman who drove, had his hat brushed, was not allowed
to smoke, and was urged to sit up straight and for heaven's sake to
keep his foot off the dashboard.
People who had been in the habit of devoting a day or two to cleaning
up a year's social debts and went up and down the streets dropping
doleful calls like wreaths on headstones, walked in unannounced of
mornings. It was now Mrs. Budlong that had to keep dressed up all day.
Everybody accepted the inevitable invitations to have a cup of tea,
till the cook struck. Cook said she had conthracted to cuke for a
small family, not to run a continurous bairbecue. Besides she had to
answer the doorbell so much she couldn't get her hands into the dough,
before they were out again. And dinner was never ready. The amount of
tea consumed and bakery cake and the butter, began to alarm Mrs.
Budlong. And Carthage people were so nervous at taking tea with a
millionairess that they kept dropping cups or setting saucers down too
hard.
Mrs. Budlong had never a moment the whole day long to leave the house,
and she suddenly found herself without a call returned. She had so
many invitations to dinners and luncheons, that her life became a hop,
skip and jump.
During the first ecstasy of the good news, Mrs. Budlong had raved over
the places she was going to travel,--Paris (now pronounced Paree),
London, Vienna, St. Marks, the Lion of Lucerne--she talked like a
handbook of Cook's Tours. To successive callers she told the story
over and over till the rhapsody finally palled on her own tongue. She
began to hate Paree, London, Vienna, St. Marks, and to loathe the Lion
of Lucerne. All she wanted to do was to get out of town to some quiet
retreat. Carthage was no longer quiet. It simmered to the
boiling-over point.
Once it had been Mrs. Budlong's pride to be the social leader of
Carthage. Now that her husband was worth (or to be worth) a hundred
thousand dollars Carthage seemed a very petty parish to be the social
leader of. She began to read New York society notes with expectancy,
as one cons the Baedeker of a town one is approaching.
She lay awake nights wondering what she should wear at Mrs. Stuyvesant
Square's next party and at Mrs. Astor House's sociable. She fretted
the choice whether she should take a letter from her church to St.
Bartholomew's or to Grace or St. John's the Divine's. And all the
while she was pouring tea for the wives of harness makers and
druggists, dentists and grocers.
The more reason for not appearing before them in the same clothes
incessantly. But with a dinner or a reception or a tea or a ball every
night, her two dressy-up dresses became so familiar that at one party
when she was coming downstairs from laying off her cloak people spoke
to her dress before they could see her face. And she could hardly
afford to get new clothes, for after all she had not come into the
money. She had just come at it, or toward it; or as her husband began
to say, tip against it.
Mr. Budlong was kept on such tenterhooks by lawyers and papers to sign,
titles to clear, executors and executrices to consult, and waivers,
deeds, indentures and things that he had no time for his regular
business.
As there is housemaid's knee, and painter's colic, so there is
millionaire's melancholia. And the Budlongs were enduring the illness
without entertaining the microbe.
It is almost as much trouble to inherit money nowadays as to earn it in
the first place. Mr. Budlong was confronted with such a list of
post-mortem debts that must be postpaid for his deceased Aunt Ida that
he almost begrudged her her bit of very real estate in Woodlawn. And
the Budlongs began to think that tombstones were in bad form if
ostentatious. Heirs have notoriously simple tastes in monuments.
They had always accounted Aunt Ida a hard-fisted miser before, but now
she began to look like a slippery-palmed spendthrift. They began
almost to suspect the probity of the poor old maid. Worse yet, they
feared that a later will might turn up bequeathing all her money to
some abominable charity or other. She had been addicted to occasional
subscriptions during her lifetime.
The Budlongs themselves were beginning, even at this distance from
their money-to-be, to suffer its infection, its inevitable reaction on
the character. Those who live beyond their means joyously when their
means are small, become small themselves, when their means get beyond
living beyond. The Budlongs began to figure percentages on sums left
in the bank or put out on mortgages. They began to think money; and
money is money, large or small. Mrs. Budlong began to feel that she
had been unjust to Aunt Ida. What she had called miserliness was
really prudence and thrift and other pleasant-sounding virtues. What
she had called liberality was wanton waste.
Finally her social debts reached such a mass that she decided to give a
large dinner to wipe off a great number at once. But now when she
calculated that the olives, the turkey, the Malaga grapes, the English
walnuts, the salted almonds and a man from the hotel to wait on table,
would total up twenty-five dollars or so, she found herself figuring
how much twenty-five dollars would amount to in twenty-five years at
compound interest.
She grew frantic to be quit of Carthage--to rub it off her visiting
list. Unconsciously her motto became Cato's ruthless _Carthago delenda
est_.
But she could neither delete Carthage from her map, nor free her feet
from its dust. Her husband's business required him yet awhile. Even
to close it up took time. And he would not, and could not, borrow
money on Aunt Ida's estate till he was sure that it was his.
But all the while the festival reveled on. People in Carthage to whom
New York was an inaccessible Carcassone, were now planning to visit
Mrs. Budlong there at the palatial home she had described. Some of
them frankly told her they were coming to see her. Wealth took on a
new discomfort.
Sally Swezey afflicted the telephone with gossip: "As Mrs. Talbot was
saying only yes'day, my dear, so many folks have threatened to visit
you in your home on Fifth Avenue that you'll have to hang hammocks in
your front yard."
And now they had spoiled even her future for her. What pride could she
take in having a gorgeous home on Fifth Avenue with all these Carthage
people rocking on the front porch. Probably some warm evening when
Mrs. Hotel Vanderbilt was driving by in her new barouche, it would be
just like Roscoe Detwiller to turn in at the gate, flounce down on the
top step and sit there with his vest unbuttoned, and his seersucker
coat under his arm, while he mopped the inside of his hat with his
handkerchief.
But that was the discomfort of the morrow. To-day had its own spawn.
One morning she was called to the telephone by the merciless Sallie
Swezey with a new infliction. There was something almost ghoulish in
Mrs. Swezey's cackling glee as she sang out across the wire:
"We're all so glad, my dear, that the next meeting of the Progressive
Euchre is to be at your house."
Mrs. Budlong's chin dropped. She had quite forgotten this. Sallie
chortled on:
"And say, do you know what?"
"What?"
"Everybody says you're going to give solid gold prizes and that even
your booby prize will be handsomer than the first prize was at Mrs.
Detwiller's."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Budlong in a tone that sounded just like the
spelling.
Mrs. Budlong's wealth seemed to be accepted as a sort of municipal
legacy. All Carthage assumed to own it in community, and to enjoy it
with her. Her walls rang with the hilarity of her neighbors. But her
laughter took on more and more the sound of icicles snapping from the
eaves of a shed.
She became the logical candidate for all the chief offices in clubs and
societies and circles. She suddenly found herself seven or eight
presidents and at least eleven chairwomen. The richest woman in town
heretofore was Mrs. Foster Herpers, wife of the pole and shaft
manufacturer. He owned about half of the real estate in town, but his
wife had to distill expenses out of him in pennies. With a profound
sigh of relief she resigned all her honors in Mrs. Budlong's favor.
Being president chiefly meant lending one's house for meetings as well
as one's china and tea and sandwiches, and being five dollars ahead of
anybody else in every subscription. Mrs. Budlong was panic-stricken
with her own success, for there is nothing harder to handle than a
dam-break of prosperity.
Worse yet, Mr. Budlong was ceasing to be the meek thing of yore. Every
day was the first of the month with him.
It was well on in November when he flung himself into a Morris chair
one evening and groaned aloud:
"I don't believe Aunt Ida ever left any money. If she did I don't
believe we'll ever get any of it. And if we do, I know we'll not have
a sniff at it before January. One of the lawyers has been called
abroad on another case. We've got to stay in Carthage, at least over
Christmas."
"Christmas!" The word crackled and sputtered in Mrs. Budlong's brain
like a fuse in the dark. The past month had been so packed with other
excitements that she had forgotten the very word. Now it blew up and
came down as if one of her own unstable Christmas trees had toppled
over on her with all its ropes of tinsel, its lambent tapers, and its
eggshell splendors.
V
THE BITER BIT
First, Mrs. Budlong felt amazement that she could have so ignored the
very focus of her former ambition. Then she felt shame at her
unpreparedness. She caught the evening paper out of her husband's
lap to find the date. November ninth and not a Christmas thing
begun. Yet a few days and the news-stands would have apprised her
that Christmas was coming, for by the middle of November all the
magazines put on their holly and their chromos of the three Magi and
their Santa Clauses, as women put on summer straw hats at Easter.
Mrs. Budlong's hands sought and wrung each other as if in mutual
reproach. They had been pouring tea and passing wafers when they
should have been Dorcassing at their Christmas tasks. It had been
left for her husband of all people to warn her that her own special
Bacchanal was imminent.
If he had been a day later, the neighbors would have anticipated him
as well as the magazines. The Christmas idea seemed to strike the
whole town at once. Mrs. Budlong became the victim of her own
classic device of pretending to let slip a secret. The townswomen
shamelessly turned her own formula against her.
Mrs. Detwiller met her at church and said:
"Yesterday morning at eleven I had the most curious presentiment, my
dear. I remember the hour so exactly because I've been making it a
rule to begin work on your Christmas present every morning at-- Oh,
but I didn't inTend to let you know. No, dearie, I won't tell you
what it is. But I can't help believing it's Just what you'll need in
New York."
Myra Eppley, with whom Mrs. Budlong had never exchanged Christmas
presents, at all, but with whom an intimacy had sprung up since Mrs.
Budlong came into the reputation of her money--Myra Eppley had the
effrontery to call up on the telephone and say:
"Would you mind telling me, my dear, the shade of wall paper you're
going to have in your New York parlor, because I'm making you the
daintiest little--well, no matter, but will you tell me?"
Poor Mrs. Budlong almost swooned from the telephone. She did not
know what the color of her wall paper would be in New York. She did
not know that she would ever have wall paper in New York. She only
knew that Myra Eppley, too, was calling her "my dear." Myra Eppley
also was going to give her a Christmas present. And would have to be
given one.
Mrs. Budlong had received fair warning, but she felt about as
grateful as a wayfarer feels to the rattlesnake that whizzes "Make
r-r-r-ready for the corrroner-r-r."
Next, young Mrs. Chur (Editha Cinnamon as was, for she had finally
landed Mr. Chur in spite of the accident--or because of it) called up
to say:
"Oh, my dear, my husband wants to know what brand of cigars your
husband smokes; and would you tell me, dearie--it's rather personal,
but--what size bath-slippers you wear?"
When Sally Swezey came to the Progressive Euchre skirmish at Mrs.
Budlong's she noted with joy that her hint had borne fruit. The
prizes were indeed of solid gold. Mr. Budlong did not learn it till
the first of the following month when the bill came in from Jim
Henderson's jewelry store.
As if she had not done enough in forcing solid gold prizes on Mr.
Budlong, Sally had to say:
"I'm just dying to see your back parlor, my dear, this next Christmas
afternoon. It has always been a sight for sore eyes; but this
Christmas it will be a perfect wonder, for I do declare everybody in
town is going to send you something nice."
This conviction was already chilling Mrs. Budlong's marrow. Of old
she would have rejoiced at the golden triumph, but now she could only
realize that if everybody in Carthage sent her something nice, it was
because everybody in Carthage expected something nicer. And her
Christmas crops were hopelessly backward. At a time when she should
be half done, she could not even begin. She had not tatted or
smeared or hammered a thing.
VI
DESPAIR AND AN IDEA
Days and days went by in a stupor of dull hopelessness. Thanksgiving
came and the Budlong turkey might as well have been a crow. In
desperation she decided to make a tentative exploration of the shops
now burgeoning with Christmas splendor; every window a spasm of
gewgaws. Since she had no time to make, she must buy.
The length of her list sent her to the cheaper counters, but she was
not permitted to browse among them. At Strouther and Streckfuss's, Mr.
Strouther came up and said with reeking unctuousness:
"Vat is Mees Bootlonk doink down here amonkst all this tresh? Come see
our importet novelties."
And he led her to a region where the minimum price was MBBA-BDJA, which
meant that it cost 12.25 and could be safely marked down to 23.75.
She eluded him and got back to the 25-cent realm only to be apprehended
by Mr. Streckfuss, who beamed:
"Ah, nothink is here for a lady like you are. Only fine kvality suits
such a taste you got."
By almost superfeminine strength she evaded purchasing anything. She
went to other shops only to be haled to the expensive counters.
Storekeepers simply would not discuss cheap things with the
millionairess-elect.
She crept home and threw herself on her husband's mercy. He had none
and she lighted hard. It was the first of December, and in addition to
his monthly rage, Mr. Budlong was working himself up to his regular
pre-Christmas frenzy, when he always felt poor and talked poorer to
keep the family in check.
His face was a study when he had heard his wife's state of mind.
Forthwith he delivered the annual address on Christmas folly that one
hears from fathers of families all round the world at this time:
"Christmas has quit being a sign of people's affections," Mr. Budlong
thundered. "It has become a public menace. It's worse than Wall
Street. Wall Street is supposed have started as the thermometer of the
country's business and now it's gone and got so goldum big that the
thermometer is makin' the weather. When Wall Street feels muggy it's
got to rain and the sun don't dare shine without takin' a peek at the
thermometer first off.
"Christmas ain't any longer an opportunity to show good will to your
neighbors. It's a time when you got to show off before your neighbors.
You women make yourselves and us men sick the way you carry on all
through December. And the children!--they're worse'n the grown-ups.
"Old-fashioned Christmas was like old-fashioned circuses--mostly meant
for the young ones. Nowadays circuses have growed so big and so
improper that nobody would dast take a child to one, or if you do, they
get crazy notions.
"When I was a boy, if I got a drum and a tin horn I was so happy I
couldn't keep quiet. But last Christmas little Ulie Junior cried all
day because he got a 'leven dollar automobile when he wanted a
areaplane big enough to carry the cat over the barn.
"This Christmas trust business ought to be investigated by the gov'ment
and dissolved. Talk about your tariff schedules! What we need is
somebody to pare down this Christmas gouge. It's the one kind of tax
you can't swear off.
"And as for you--why, you're goin' daffy. Other years I didn't mind so
much. You spent a lot of time and some money on your annual splurge,
but I will say, you took in better'n you gave. But now you're on the
other side the fence. These Carthage women have got you on the run.
You'll have to give 'em twice as good as they send or you're gone.
You're gone anyway. If you gave each one of 'em a gold platter full of
diamonds they'd say you'd inherited Aunt Ida's stinginess as well as
her money."
Mrs. Budlong went on twisting her fingers: "Oh, of course you're right,
Ule. But what's the use of being right when it's so hateful? All I
can think of is that Everybody in town is going to give me a present!
Everybody!"
"Can't you take your last year's presents and pass 'em along to other
folks?"
"Everybody would recognize them, and I'd be the talk of the town."
"You're that anyway, so what difference does it make?"
"I'd rather die."
"You'd save a lot of money and trouble if you did."
"Just look at the list of presents I must give."
She handed him a bundle of papers. He pushed up his spectacles and put
on his reading glasses, and instantly snorted:
"Say! What is this? the town directory?"
He had not read far down the list when he missed one important name.
"You've overlooked Mrs. Alsop."
"Oh, her! I've quarreled with her. We don't speak, thank heaven."
"It would be money In your pocket, if you didn't speak to anybody.
Gosh!" he slapped his knee. "I have an idea. Stop speaking to
everybody."
"Don't he silly."
"I mean it."
VII
FOILED
Ulysses S. G. Budlong was a man fertile in ideas and unflinching in
their execution. Otherwise he would never have attained his present
unquestioned supremacy, as the leading hay and feed merchant in
Carthage.
"It's as easy as falling off a log," he urged. "You women are always
spatting about something. Now's your chance to capitalize your spats."
"Men are such im-boo-hoo-ciles!" was Mrs. Budlong's comment, as she
began to weep. Her husband patted her with a timid awkwardness as if
she were the nose of a strange horse. "There! there! we'll fix this up
fine. What did you quarrel with Mrs. Alsop about?"
"She told Sally Swezey and Sally Swezey told me--that I used my
Carthage presents to send to relatives in other towns."
"She flattered you at that," said Mr. Budlong unconsolingly. "But
don't you dream of forgiving her till after Christmas."
Mrs. Budlong was having such a good cry, and enjoying the optical hath
so heartily, that her grief became very precious to her. It suggested
what a beautiful thing grief is to those who make a fine art of it.
She smiled wet-liddedly. "There is nothing in your idea, Ulie, but it
has suggested a good one to me. I'll announce that I can't celebrate
Christmas because of our great grief for Aunt Ida."
"Great grief!" Mr. Budlong echoed. "Why, you couldn't have celebrated
Aunt Ida's finish more joyous without you'd serenaded her in Woodlawn
with a brass band."
"Ulysses Budlong! you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying such a
thing!" But she suddenly heard, in fancy, the laugh that would go up
if she sprung such an excuse. She gave in:
"We'll have to quarrel with somebody then. But what excuse is there?"
"Women don't need any real excuse. You simply telephone Sally Swezey
that a certain person told you--and you won't name any names--that she
had been making fun of you and you'd be much obliged if she never spoke
to you again for you'd certainly never speak to her again."
"But how do I know Sally Swezey has been making fun of me?"
"Oh, there ain't any doubt but what everybody in town is doing that."
"Ulysses Budlong! how can you talk so!"
"If people without money couldn't make fun of people with--what
consolation would they have? Anyway, it's not me but the other folks
you're supposed to quarrel with. You spend an hour at that telephone
and you can get the whole town by the ears."
"But I can't use the same excuse for everybody."
"You'll think up plenty once you put your mind to it." And with that
another excuse came in pat. Came in howling and flagrant.
Ulysses Junior burst into the room, as if he had forgotten the presence
of the door. He was yelping like a coyote and from his tiny nose an
astonishing amount of blood was spouting.
"What on earth is the matter!" the startled mother gasped. "Come here
to me, you poor child---and be careful not to bleed on the new rug."
Ulysses' articulation was impeded with sobs and the oscillations of
three semi-detached teeth, that waved in the breeze as he screamed:
"Little Clarence Detwiller LICKED me! so he did! and I on'y p-pushed
him off his sled into a puddle of ice wa-wa-water and he attackted me
and kicked my f-f-Face-ace off."
Mr. and Mrs. Budlong were so elated with the same idea that they forgot
to console their heart-broken offspring with more than Mr. Budlong's
curt, "First teeth anyway; saves you a trip to the dentist." He nodded
to his wife.
"Just the excuse we were looking for."
"Sent direct from heaven," nodded Mrs. Budlong. "You call up Roscoe
Detwiller this minute and tell him his son has criminal tendencies and
ought to be in jail and will undoubtedly die on the gallows. Then he
won't speak to you to-morrow."
"You bet he won't. He'll just quietly do to me what his boy did to
Ulie. No, my dear, you tell all that to Mrs. Detwiller yourself."
Mrs. Budlong tossed her head with fine contempt. "What cowards men
are! always shielding themselves behind women's skirts. Well, if
you're afraid, I'm not. I'll give her the biggest talking to she ever
had in her born days."