how certain parties kowtowed to me so they'd get to meet her. I found
that about every woman under fifty in our town is sure she was born for
this here picture work, from Henrietta Templeton Price to Beryl Mae
Macomber, who's expecting any day to be snapped up by some shrewd manager
that her type is bound to appeal to, she being a fair young thing with
big eyes and lots of teeth, like all film actresses. Metta Bigler,
that teaches oil painting and burnt wood, give Vida a reception in her
Bohemian studio in Red Gap's Latin Quarter--the studio having a chain
of Chianti bottles on the wall and an ash tray with five burnt cigarette
ends on a taboret to make it look Bohemian--and that was sure the biggest
thrill our town has had since the Gus Levy All Star Shamrock Vaudeville
Company stranded there five years ago. It just shows how important my
little actress friend is--and look what she come up from!"
I said I wouldn't mind looking what she come up from if she had started
low enough to make it exciting.
Ma Pettengill said she had that! She had come up from the gutter. She
said that Vida Sommers, the idol of thousands, had been "a mere daughter
of the people." Her eyes crinkled as she uttered this phrase. So I chose
a chair in the shadow while she built a second cigarette.
Ten years ago I'm taking a vacation down in New York City. Along comes a
letter from Aunt Esther Colborn, of Fredonia, who is a kind of a third
cousin of mine about twice removed. Says her niece, Vida, has had a good
city job as cashier of a dairy lunch in Boston, which is across the river
from some college, but has thrown this job to the winds to marry the only
college son of a rich New York magnate or Wall Street crook who has cast
the boy off for contracting this low alliance with a daughter of the
people. Aunt Esther is now afraid Vida isn't right happy and wants I
should look her up and find out. It didn't sound too good, but I obliged.
I go to the address in Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side and find
that Vida is keeping a boarding house. But I was ready to cheer Aunt
Esther with a telegram one second after she opened the door on me--in
a big blue apron and a dustcap on her hair. She was the happiest young
woman I ever did see--shining it out every which way. A very attractive
girl about twenty-five, with a slim figure and one of these faces that
ain't exactly of howling beauty in any one feature, but that sure get
you when they're sunned up with joy like this one was.
She was pleased to death when I told her my name, and of course I must
come in and stay for dinner so I could see all her boarders that was like
one big family and, above all, meet her darling husband Clyde when he got
home from business. The cheeriest thing she was, and I adore to meet
people that are cheery, so I said nothing would please me better. She
took me up to her little bedroom to lay my things off and then down to
the parlour where she said I must rest and excuse her because she still
had a few little things to supervise. She did have too. In the next hour
and a half she run up and down two flights of stairs at least ten times.
I could hear her sweeping overhead and jamming things round on the stove
when she raced down to the kitchen. Yes, she had several little things to
supervise and one girl to help her. I peeked into the kitchen once while
I was wandering through the lower rooms, and she seemed to be showing
this girl how to boil potatoes. I wondered if she never run down and if
her happy look was really chronic or mebbe put on for my benefit. Still,
I could hear her singing to herself and she moved like a happy person.
In looking round the parlour I was greeted on every wall by pictures
of a charming youth I guessed was darling Clyde. A fine young face he
had, and looked as happy as Vida herself. There was pictures of him
with a tennis racket and on a sailboat and with a mandolin and standing
up with his college glee club and setting on a high-powered horse and
so forth, all showing he must be a great social favourite and one born
to have a good time. I wondered how he'd come to confer himself on
the cashier of a quick-lunch place. I thought it must be one of these
romances. Then--I'm always remembering the foolishest things--I recalled
a funny little absent look in Vida's eyes when she spoke of her darling
coming home from business. I thought now it must of been pride; that he
was performing some low job in a factory or store while she run the
boarding house, and she didn't want me to know it. I thought he must
be a pretty fine rich man's son to stand the gaff this way when cast
off by his father for mixing up with a daughter of the people.
It come dinnertime; about a dozen boarders straggling in, with Vida in
a pretty frock anxious because darling Clyde was ten minutes late and
of course something fatal must of happened to him in crossing a crowded
street. But nothing had. He showed up safe and sound and whistling in
another ten minutes, and became the life of the party. He looked near as
happy as Vida did when she embraced him out in the hall, a fine handsome
young fellow, the best-natured in the world, jollying the boarders and
jollying me and jollying Vida that he called Baby Girl, or Babe. I saw,
too, that I must of been mistaken about the job he was holding down. He
was dressed in a very expensive manner, with neat little gold trinkets
half concealed about him, the shirt and collar exactly right and the
silk socks carefully matching the lavender tie.
He kept the table lively all through dinner with jokes and quips from the
latest musical comedies and anecdotes of his dear old college days, and
how that very afternoon he had won a silver cup and the pool championship
of his college club--and against a lot of corking good players, too, he
didn't mind saying. Also I noticed we was eating a mighty good dinner; so
darned good you didn't see how Vida could set it up at the price boarders
usually pay.
After dinner Clyde sat down to the piano in the parlour and entertained
one and all with songs of a comic or sentimental character. He knew a
piano intimately, and his voice was one of these here melting tenors that
get right inside of you and nestle. He was about the most ingratiating
young man I'd ever met, and I didn't wonder any more about Vida's look
of joy being permanent. She'd look in on the party every once in a while
from the kitchen or the dining room where she was helping her Swede do
the dishes for fifteen people and set the table for breakfast.
She was about an hour at this, and when at last she'd slipped out of her
big apron and joined us she was looking right tuckered but still joyous.
Clyde patted his Baby Girl's hand when she come in, and she let herself
go into an easy-chair near him that one of the boarders got up to give
her. I got the swift idea that this was the first time all day she'd set
down with any right feeling of rest.
Then Clyde sung to her. You could tell it was a song he meant for her and
never sung till she'd got the work done up. A right pretty old song it
was, Clyde throwing all the loving warmth of his first-class tenor voice
into the words:
Good night, good night, beloved!
I come to watch o'er thee,
To be near thee, to be near thee.
I forget the rest, but there was happy tears in Vida's eyes when he
finished in one climbing tenor burst. Then Clyde gets up and says he
has an engagement down to his college club because some of his dear old
classmates has gathered there for a quiet little evening of reminiscence
and the jolly old rascals pretend they can't get along without him. Vida
beams on him brighter than ever and tells him to be sure and have a good
time, which I'd bet money he'd be sure to.
It was a very pretty scene when they said good night. Vida pretended
that Clyde's voice was falling off from smoking too many cigarettes at
this club. "I wouldn't mind you're going there, but I just know you spend
most of the time in the club's horrid old smoking room!" She tells him
this with a pout. Smoking room of a club! The knowing little minx! And
Clyde chided her right back in a merry fashion. He lifted one of her
hands and said his Baby Girl would have to take better care of them
because the cunnun' little handies was getting all rough. Then they
both laughed and went out for a long embrace in the hall.
Vida come back with a glowing countenance, and the boarders having
dropped off to their rooms when the life of the party went to his club
we had a nice chat. All about Clyde. She hoped I did like him, and I
frankly said he was about the most taking young brat I'd ever been close
to. She explained how their union had been a dream; that during their
entire married life of a year and a half he had never spoken one cross
word to her. She said I couldn't imagine his goodness of heart nor his
sunny disposition nor how much everyone admired him. But the tired thing
got so sleepy in ten minutes, even talking about her husband, that she
couldn't keep back the yawns, so I said I'd had a wonderful evening and
would have to go now.
But up in the bedroom, while I'm putting my things on, she gets waked up
and goes more into detail about her happiness. I've never been able to
figure out why, but women will tell each other things in a bedroom that
they wouldn't dream of telling in any other room. Not that Vida went very
far. Just a few little points. Like how Clyde's father had cast him off
when they married and how she had felt herself that she was nothing but
a bad woman taking advantage of this youth, she being a whole year older
than he was; but Clyde had acted stunning in the matter, telling his
father he had chosen the better part. Also it turned out this father
hadn't cast him off from so much after all, because the old man went flat
broke in Wall Street a couple of months later, perishing of heart failure
right afterward, and about the only thing Clyde would of drawn from the
estate anyway was an old-fashioned watch of his grandfather's with a
chain made from his grandmother's hair when she was a bride.
I gathered they had been right up against it at this time, except for
the two thousand dollars that had been left Vida by her Uncle Gideon
in the savings bank at Fredonia. Clyde, when she drew this out, wanted
they should go to Newport with it where they could lead a quiet life
for a couple of months while he looked about for a suitable opening
for himself. But Vida had been firm, even ugly, she said, on this point.
She'd took the two thousand and started a boarding house that would be
more like a home than a boarding house, though Clyde kept saying he'd
never be able to endure seeing the woman bearing his name reduced to such
ignoble straits.
Still he had swallowed his foolish pride and been really very nice about
it after she got the business started. Now he was always telling her to
be sure and set a good table. He said if you were going to do a thing,
even if it was only keeping a boarding house, to do it well. That was his
motto--do it well or don't do it at all! So she was buying the best cuts
of meats and all fresh vegetables because of his strict ideas in this
matter, and it didn't look as if they'd ever really make a fortune at
it--to say nothing of there being more persons than I'd believe that had
hard luck and got behind in their payments, and of course one couldn't be
stern to the poor unfortunates.
I listened to this chatter till it seemed about time to ask what business
Clyde had took up. It seemed that right at the moment he was disengaged.
It further seemed that he had been disengaged at most other moments since
he had stooped to this marriage with a daughter of the people. I mustn't
think it was the poor boy's fault, though. He was willing at all times
to accept a situation and sometimes would get so depressed that he'd
actually look for work. Twice he had found it, but it proved to be
something confining in an office where the hours were long and conditions
far from satisfactory.
That's how she put it, with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks: "It
proved to be mere dull routine work not in the least suited to darling
Clyde's talents and the conditions were far from satisfactory. I had the
hardest time prevailing on him to give the nasty old places up and wait
patiently for a suitable opening. He was quite impatient with me when he
consented--but, of course, he's only a boy of twenty-four, a whole year
younger than I am. I tell him every day a suitable opening is bound to
occur very soon. You see, he had so many grand friends, people of the
right sort that are wealthy. I insist on his meeting them constantly.
Just think; only last week he spent Saturday and Sunday at one of the
biggest country houses on Long Island, and had such a good time. He's a
prime favourite with a lot of people like that and they're always having
him to dine or to the opera or to their balls and parties. I miss him
horribly, of course, and the poor dear misses me, but I tell him it will
surely lead to something. His old college chums all love him too--a boy
makes so many valuable friends in college, don't you think? A lot of them
try to put things in his way. I couldn't bear to have him accept a
situation unworthy of him--I know it would kill him. Why, he wilts like
a flower under the least depression."
Well, I set and listened to a long string of this--and not a word for
me to say. What could any one of said? Wasn't it being told to me by
the happiest woman I ever set eyes on? Yes, sir; I'd never believe how
gentle natured the boy was. Why, that very morning, being worried about
something that went wrong with breakfast, which she had to turn out at
five A. M. to get started hadn't she clean forgot to change his studs to
a fresh shirt? And, to make it worse, hadn't she laid out a wrong color
of socks with his lavender tie? But had he been cross to her, as most men
would of been? Not for one second! He'd simply joked her about it when
she brought up his breakfast tray, just as he'd joked her to-night about
her hands getting rough from the kitchen work. And so forth and so forth!
The poor thing had got so dead for sleep by this time that she was merely
babbling. She'd probably of fallen over in her clothes if I hadn't been
there. Anyway, I got her undressed and into bed. She said Clyde's
goodnight song always rung in her ears till she slept. It didn't ring
long this night. She was off before I got out the door. Darned if I
hadn't been kind of embarrassed by her talk, knowing it would never
do for me to bust in with anything bordering on the vicious, such as
suggesting that if Clyde now and then went into the kitchen and helped
Baby Girl with the dishes it would make a very attractive difference
in him. I took another good look at his pictures in the parlour before
I let myself out of the house. He still looked good--but hell!
I wrote Aunt Esther the same evening not to worry one minute about Vida's
happiness, because I wished we could all be as happy as she was. All the
same I took pains to go round to that boarding house a couple times more
because it seemed like the girl's happiness might have a bum foundation.
Darling Clyde was as merry and attentive as ever and Vida was still
joyous. I guess she kept joyous at her work all day by looking forward to
that golden moment after dinner when her boy would sing Good night, good
night, beloved--he'd come to watch o'er her! How that song did light her
face up!
She confided to me one of these times that the funny men are always
making jokes about how much it costs a woman for clothes, and she
wondered why they didn't make some of their old jokes about how much it
costs for men's clothes too. She said I wouldn't believe how much they
had to lay out on Clyde's clothes so he'd be sure to look right when a
suitable opening occurred. I could take the item of shirts alone that had
to be made to order and cost seven-fifty each, to say nothing of collars
and ties and suits from what Clyde said was the only tailor in New York
that could dress a gentleman so he looked like one. She said if these
funny humourists could see what they spent on her clothes and what they
had to spend on Clyde's, she bet they'd feel mighty cheap. She laughed
like she had a bully joke on the poor things.
She was glad, too, for Clyde's sake that a suitable opening was just
about to occur any moment, because the poor chap said himself it was a
dog's life he was leading, with nothing much to do every day but go to
the club and set round. And how thankful she'd ought to be that he never
drank--the least bit of liquor made him ill--and so many young men of
his class nowadays drank to excess.
No; nothing for me to say and nothing to do. Here was one happy love
match. So I come home, making Vida promise to write often.
She did write about six times in the next three years. The chief fact
standing out was that the right opening for Clyde hadn't opened yet--and
he was getting more impatient every day. He always had something in view.
But I judged he was far-sighted. And some way when he had got his rope
over a job the hondoo wouldn't seem to render. He couldn't cinch
anything. He was as full of blandishment as ever, though, and not a one
of his staunch old friends had dropped him on account of his unfortunate
marriage. He was a great diner-out and spent lots of week-ends, and just
now was on a jolly houseboat in Florida for three months with an old
college mate worth nine million dollars, and wasn't that nice! She could
just see him keeping the whole party gay with his mandolin and his songs.
The summer before that this same friend had let Clyde have an elegant
motor car for his own use, and the foolish boy had actually took her out
in it one Sunday, there being a pongee motor coat in the car that fit her
beautifully so that none of his rich friends could have told she wasn't
dressed as smartly as they was. He not only kept her out all afternoon,
but would have took her to dinner some place only she had to get back to
the boarding house because you couldn't trust these raw Swedes.
And there was one thing she was going to bring herself to confess to
me, no matter if it did sound disloyal--a dreadful thing about Clyde.
It was ugly of her to breathe a word against him, but she was greatly
worried and mebbe I could help her. The horrible truth was that her boy
was betraying an inclination to get fat, and he'd only laugh at her when
she warned him. Many a night her pillow had been wet with tears on this
account, and did I believe in any of these remedies for reducing? Wasn't
there something she could slip into his pudding that would keep him down
without his knowing it, because otherwise, though it was a thing no true
wife ought to say, her beloved would dig his grave with his teeth.
I thought that was about enough and even ample. I started a hot answer to
this letter, saying that if darling Clyde was digging his grave with his
teeth it was her own fault because she was providing the spade and the
burial plot, and the quickest way to thin her darling down would be for
her to quit work. But shucks! Why insult the poor thing? I got back my
composure and wrote her a nice letter of sympathy in her hour of great
trouble. I didn't say at all that if I had been in her place Mr. Clyde
would of long since had my permission to go to the devil. Yes, sir; I'd
have had that lad going south early in the second year. Mebbe not at
that! A woman never really knows how some other man might of made a
fool of her.
Two more years drug on, with about two letters from Vida, and then I
get a terrible one announcing the grand crash. First, the boarding house
had died a lingering death, what from Vida buying the best the market
afforded and not having learned to say "No!" to parties that got behind,
and Clyde having had to lend a couple hundred dollars to a fraternity
brother that was having a little hard luck. She'd run the business on a
narrow trail for the last two months, trying to guard every penny, but
it got so she and Clyde actually had to worry over his next club dues,
to say nothing of a new dress suit he was badly needing. Then some
parties she owed bills to come along and pushed her over the cliff by
taking her furniture. She was at first dreadfully worried about how her
boy would stand the blow, but he'd took it like the brave, staunch man
he was, being such a help to her when they had to move to a furnished
room near the old home where they both had been so happy. He'd fairly
made the place ring with his musical laughter and his merry jesting
about their hardships.
Then she'd got a good job as cashier in a big grocery she'd dealt
with, not getting a million dollars a year, to be sure, but they were
doing nicely, because Clyde took most of his meals with his thoughtful
friends--and then crash out of a clear sky a horrible tragedy happened
that for a minute darkened the whole world.
Yes, it was a bitter tragedy. Clyde's two-year-old dress suit, that
he was bravely wearing without a murmur, had needed pressing and she
promised to do it; but she overslept herself till seven-thirty that
morning, which made her late at the store, so she'd asked the girl in
this rooming house to do it down in the kitchen. The girl had been
willing but weak-minded. She started with too hot an iron and didn't
put a damp cloth between the iron and the goods. In the midst of the
job something boiled over on the stove. She got rattled and jumped for
that, and when she come back the dress coat of darling Clyde was branded
for fair in the middle of the back--a nifty flatiron brand that you could
of picked him out of a bunch of animals by in one second. The girl was
scared stiff and hung the clothes back in the closet without a word. And
poor Clyde discovered the outrage that night when he was dressing for a
class reunion of his dear old Alvah Mater.
I had to read between the lines some, but I gathered that he now broke
down completely at this betrayal of his trusting nature. Vida must of
been suffering too keenly herself to write me all the pitiful details.
And right on top of this blow comes the horrible discovery, when he takes
his mandolin out of the case, that it has been fatally injured in the
moving. One blow right on another. How little we realize the suffering
that goes on all about us in this hard world. Imagine the agony in that
furnished room this night!
Clyde wasn't made of iron. When the first flood of grief subsided he
seems to of got cold and desperate. Said Vida in this letter: "My heart
stopped when he suddenly declared in cool, terrible tones: 'There's
always the river!' I could see that he had resolved to end it all, and
through the night I pleaded with my boy."
I bet she made mistakes as a grocer's cashier next day, but it was worth
it because her appeals to Clyde's better nature had prevailed. He did
disappear that day, getting his trunks from the house while she was at
the store and not being able to say good-bye because he couldn't remember
which store she was accepting a situation at. But he left her a nice
note. He wasn't going to end it all in the river. He was going off on the
private steamboat of one of his dearest friends for a trip round the
world that might last a year--and she mustn't worry about the silly old
dress coat, because his new dinner-jacket suit would be ample for a boat
trip. Also she'd be glad to know that he had a new mandolin, though she
wasn't to worry about the bill for it, because the man didn't expect his
pay on time and, anyway, he could wait, so with fondest love!
And Vida was so relieved at this good fortune. To think that her
despondent boy was once more assured of his rightful position for a
whole year, while she was saving her princely wages till she got enough
to start another boarding house that would be more like a home. Wasn't
it all simply too good to be true--wasn't it always darkest just before
dawn!
I didn't trust myself to answer that letter, beyond wiring her that if
she ever felt she was having any really hard luck to be sure and call on
me. And she went on working and putting her money by. It was two years
later when I next saw her. I looked her up the first thing when I got to
New York.
She was still accepting a position in this grocery, but of course had
changed to a much smaller furnished room where she could be cozy and feed
herself from a gas stove on the simple plain foods that one just can't
seem to get at high-priced restaurants.