light that showed up more lines than ever in her face. She was looking
close to forty now--I guess them crying scenes had told on her, and her
yearning for the lost Clyde--anyway she was the last woman on earth could
of got herself insulted even if she had tried her prettiest, only she
didn't know that. And she'd had her little thrill. We've all dreamed of
how we'd some day turn down some impossible party who was overcome by our
mere beauty.
I said I'd always known this director was an unspeakable scoundrel,
because he insisted on calling me Mrs. Pettijohn.
Then we had a nice talk about Clyde. She'd had no word for a year now,
the last being a picture card saying he would spend the winter in Egypt
with some well-known capitalists that wouldn't take no for an answer.
And did I believe he might now be wandering over the face of the earth,
sick and worn, and trying to get back to her; didn't I think some day he
would drag himself to her door, a mere wreck of his former self, to be
soothed at last on her breast? That was why she kept a light burning in
the front window of this here bungalow. He would know she had waited.
Well, I'd never said a word against Clyde except in conversation with
myself, and I wasn't going to break out now. I did go so far as to hint
that an article that had come out about her in this same magazine might
draw Clyde back a little quicker than the light in the window. The
article said her salary was enormous. I thought its rays might carry.
So I come home again and near a year later I get a telegram from Vida:
"Happy at last--my own has come home to me." I threw up my hands and
swore when I read this. The article had said her salary was seven hundred
and fifty dollars a week.
The next winter I run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now looking
a good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not a
line nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign of
writer's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in five
years. She'd been afraid he'd come back worn to the bone.
But listen! By the time I got there Clyde was also drawing money. He'd
felt a little hurt at first to find his wife a common actress, and asked
to see her contract because you couldn't believe what you see in these
magazines. Then he'd gone round the lot and got to be an actor himself.
I gathered that he hadn't been well liked by the men at first, and two or
three other directors, when Vida insisted he should have a chance to act,
had put him into rough-house funny plays where he got thrown downstairs
or had bricks fall on him, or got beat up by a willing ex-prize fighter,
or a basket of eggs over his head, or custard pies in his perfect
features, with bruises and sprains and broken bones and so forth--I
believe the first week they broke everything but his contract.
Anyway, when he begun to think he wasn't meant for this art, who steps in
but this same director that had made such a beast of himself with Vida?
He puts Clyde into a play in which Vida is the mother and Clyde is the
noble son that takes the crime on his shoulders to screen the brother of
the girl he loves, and it was an awful hit. Naturally Vida was never so
good before and Clyde proved to be another find. He can straighten up and
look nobler when he's wrongfully accused of a crime than any still actor
I ever see. He's got now to where they have to handle him with gloves
or he'd leave 'em flat and go with another company. Vida wrote me only
last week that they had a play for him where he's cast off on a desert
island with a beautiful but haughty heiress, and they have to live there
three months subsisting on edible foods which are found on all desert
islands. But Clyde had refused the part because he would have to grow
whiskers in this three months. He said he had to think of his public,
which would resent this hideous desecration. He thought up a bully way
to get out of it. He said he'd let the whiskers grow for a few scenes and
then find a case of safety razors washed ashore, so he could shave
himself just before the haughty millionaire's daughter confessed that she
had loved him from the first and the excursion steamer come up to rescue
'em. I believe he now admits frankly that he wrote most of the play, or
at least wrote the punch into it. A very happy couple they are, Clyde
having only one vice, which is candy that threatens his waistline. Vida
keeps a sharp watch on him, but he bribes people to sneak chocolate
creams into his dressing room. The last night I was there he sung
"Good-night, Good-night, Beloved!" so well that I choked up myself.
Of course women are crazy about him; but that don't bother Vida a little
bit. She never wanted a husband anyway--only a son. And Clyde must have
had something wake up in his brain them years he was away. He had a queer
look in his eyes one night when he said to me--where Vida couldn't hear:
"Yes, other women have loved me, but she--she knows me and loves me!"
It's the only thing I ever heard him utter that would show he might be
above a pet kitten in intellect.
And, of course, these letters he gets don't mean anything in his life but
advertising--Oh, yes! I forgot to tell you that his stage name is J.
Harold Armytage. He thought it up himself. And the letters coming in
by the bushel really make Vida proud. In her heart she's sorry for the
poor fools because they can't have as much of dear Clyde as she has. She
says she's never deserved her present happiness. I never know whether I
agree with her or not.
She's a queer one. Darned if she don't make a person think
sometimes--listening to her chatter--that there must be something
kind of decent about human nature after all!
III
RED GAP AND THE BIG-LEAGUE STUFF
I waited beside Ma Pettengill at the open door of the Arrowhead ranch
house. It was a moment of tranquil expectancy; presently we would be
summoned to the evening meal. Down by the barn a tired janizary pumped
water into a trough for two tired mules still in harness. Halfway down
the lane, before a mirror tacked to the wall beside the bunk-house door,
two men hurriedly combed their damp hair. Blackbirds were still noisy in
the poplars. In the field at our left a lazy lot of white-faced cattle,
large and placid, lolled or grazed on the new spring grass.
Surveying these cattle with a fond eye--had she not that day refused all
of three hundred and twenty-five dollars a head for a score of these
pure-bred cows?--my hostess read me a brief lecture on the superior
fleshing disposition of the Hereford. No better rustler under range
conditions, said she, accumulating flesh at all ages, storing it in
seasons of plenty to draw on in seasons of want. Hadn't I noticed how
common cows got paunchy and how well the fat was distributed on the
pure-breds?
I had not noticed, cows being more or less cows to me, but I was prepared
to look with deep respect upon any cow for which three hundred and
twenty-five dollars could be sanely refused, and I now did so. I was
told that I forgot their calves, which would be worth a hundred and sixty
dollars the day they were weaned. This made it all more impressive. I
looked respectfully again at the bulky creatures, though listening, too,
for the stealthy-stepping Lew Wee; a day in the thin spring air along a
rocky trout stream had made even cattle on the hoof suggestive.
Ma Pettengill, with a last proud look at her jewels, swept the panoramic
camera of her eye round to the blacksmith shop on our right. Before it
were strewn the mutilated remains of four wood wagons. I had lately heard
the lady have words with Abner, the blacksmith, concerning repairs to
these. Abner himself had few of the words. They were almost entirely his
employer's. They were acutely to the effect that these here wagons would
be running again before the week was out or she would know the reason
why. The aggrieved Abner had tried to suggest that this reason she would
know would not be the right reason at all, because wasn't he already
working like a beaver? Possibly, said the lady. And beavers might be all
right in their place. What she needed at this precise time was someone
working like a blacksmith--someone!
Over her shoulder she had flung the word at him, blackened with emphasis.
"Any one hurt in the runaway?" I asked, observing her glance to linger
upon this snarl of wagon parts.
"Four wagons was mortally hurt," said the lady, "but of course not a
mule skinner touched. Talk about charmed lives! Besides, they wasn't
accidents; they was just incidents. It was part of our winter sports."
"I didn't know you had winter sports up here."
"I didn't either till I got down to Red Gap last winter and found out
that was what we had been having. Here I been gritting along winter after
winter, calling it work, and come to find out it's what parties go a long
distance to indulge in and have to wear careful clothes for it. Yes, sir;
society is mad about it. Red Gap itself was mad about it last winter,
when it got a taste of the big-league stuff. Next winter I'll try to get
the real sporting spirit into this gang of sedentaries up here; buy 'em
uniforms and start a winter-sports club. Their ideal winter sport so far
is to calk up every chink in the bunk house, fill the air-tight stove
full of pitch pine and set down with a good book by Elinor Glyn. They
never been at all mad about romping out in the keen frosty air that sets
the blood tingling and brings back the roses to their wan cheeks.
"Take last winter. Not knowing it was sport it seemed at times like
toil. First it snowed early and caught a lot of my cows and calves in
the mountains. While we sported round with these, working 'em down into
the valley, the weather changed. It snowed harder. Just oodles of the
most perfectly darling snow. Then distemper broke out among the saddle
horses. Then being already shorthanded, what does the fool vaquero boss
do but pick a splinter out of his thumb with a pin and get blood poison
enough to lay him off? Too much trouble for cussing. I tried that out
scientifically. So I had to get out and make a hand. If I heard someone
say I did as much as any three of these mollycoddles up here I'd just
simper in silence and look down. Only I wish I'd known it was a
fashionable winter sport. I'd of been more carefree.
"Then come the best of our winter sports--wood hauling through the drifts
over a rocky road down the mountains. My lands, but it was jolly! On a
quiet day there'd be only one runaway, one wagon fetched to the shop in
sections, like a puzzle. Then another day all hands would seem to be
quite mad about the sport, and nothing but the skinners and the mules
would get back to camp that night--with the new outfit of harness and
the hoodlum wagon going back next morning to see what could be salvaged.
"Finally we got the cows and calves home, got our wood in and started a
general rodeo for the dry stock--Nature's fleecy mantle getting thicker
every minute. And none of us ever suspecting that it was a sport only
the wealthy have a right to. If I'd suggested building an ice palace as
a sporty wind-up I'll bet the help wouldn't of took it right. Anyway, I
didn't. With everything under shelter or fence at last I fled down to Red
Gap, where I could lead a quiet life suitable to one of my years--where
I thought I could."
From the doorway Lew Wee softly called, "You come now!" We both heard
him. Inside my hostess stealthily closed the door upon the gentle spring
night; closed and locked it. Furtively she next drew curtains over the
two windows. Then, candle in hand, she went lightly across the big living
room to a stern and businesslike safe that stands against the farther
wall. Kneeling before this she rapidly twirled the lock to a series of
mystic numbers and opened the formidable doors.
"Leave us keep the home fires burning," said she impressively, and
withdrew from an exposed cavern a bottle of Scotch whisky. Standing
before the safe we drank chattily. We agreed that prohibition was a good
thing for the state of Washington. We said we were glad to deny ourselves
for the sake of those weaker natures lacking self-control, including Mr.
Bryan, whom the lady characterized as "just a water-spout."
The bottle restored to security my hostess shut the thick doors upon it
and twirled the lock. Then she raised the curtains and reopened the door
to the innocent spring night, after which we sat to our meatless and
wheatless repast. In place of meat we sternly contented ourselves with
stewed chicken, certain of the Arrowhead fowls having refused to do their
bit in eggs and now paying the penalty in a crisis when something is
expected from everyone. In place of wheat we merely had corn muffins of a
very coaxing perfection. Even under these hardships I would patriotically
practice the gospel of the clean plate.
As her exploring spoon wandered over the platter of half-submerged
chicken Ma Pettengill casually remarked that carefree Bohemians was
always the first to suffer under prohibition, and that you couldn't have
a really good Latin Quarter in a dry town. I let it go. I must always
permit her certain speeches of seeming irrelevance before she will
consent to tell me all. Thus a moment later as she lavished valuable
butter fat upon one of the spirituelle muffins she communicated the
further item that Cousin Egbert Floud still believed Bohemians was glass
blowers, he having seen a troupe of such at the World's Fair. He had, it
is true, known some section hands down on the narrow gauge that was also
Bohemians, but Bohemians of any class at all was glass blowers, and that
was an end of it. No use telling him different, once he gets an idea into
his poor old head.
This, too, I let pass, overcome for the moment by the infatuating
qualities of the chicken stew. But when appetites, needlessly inflamed by
the lawless tippling, had at last been appeased and the lady had built
her first cigarette I betrayed a willingness to hear more of the hinted
connection between winter sports and Latin Quarters peopled by Bohemians,
glass-blowing or otherwise. The woman chuckled privately through the
first cigarette, adeptly fashioned another, removed to a rocking-chair
before the open fire and in a businesslike fervour seized a half-knitted
woollen sock, upon which she fell to work.
She now remarked that there must be along the Front millions of sweaters
and wristlets and mufflers and dewdads that it looked well to knit in
public, so it seemed to be up to her to supply a few pairs of socks. She
said you naturally couldn't expect these here society dames that knitted
in theatres and hotel corridors to be knitting anything so ugly as socks,
even if they would know how to handle four needles, which they mostly
wouldn't; but someone had to do it. Without the slightest change of key
she added that it was a long story and painful in spots, but had a happy
ending, and she didn't know as she minded telling me.
So I come down to Red Gap about December first hoping to hole up for
the winter and get thoroughly warmed through before spring. Little did
I know our growing metropolis was to be torn by dissension until you
didn't know who was speaking to who. And all because of a lady Bohemian
from Washington Square, New York City, who had crept into our midst
and started a Latin Quarter overnight. The first day I was downtown I
overheard two ladies saying something about the new Latin Quarter. That
mystified me, because I knew the town had been lidded tight since Lon
Price went out of office as mayor. Then I meet Mrs. Judge Ballard in the
Boston Cash Store and she says have I met a Miss Smith from New York who
is visiting here. I said I had not. It didn't sound exciting. Some way "a
Miss Smith" don't excite you overly, no matter where she hails from. So I
dismissed that and went on with my shopping. Next I meet Egbert Floud,
who is also down for the winter to rest beside a good coal stove, and we
ask each other what's the good word and is anything new. Cousin Egbert
says nothing is new in Red Gap except a Bohemian glass blower from
Grinitch Village, New York. He says he ain't seen her blow glass yet,
but he's going some night, because them Bohemian glass blowers down to
the fair was right fascinating, and don't I think Grinitch is a bum name
for a town? He says when I see this glass blower I'll feel like asking
animal, vegetable, or mineral, because he has seen her in the post office
with Metta Bigler and she looks like a nut.
I tell the poor old zany he sounds simple-minded himself and I can't make
a lick of sense out of what he's said, except I know this village ain't
spelled that way. He's telling me that's the way it's spoken anyway, and
about how he brought home a glass watch chain that these Bohemians blowed
at the fair, when along come Metta Bigler herself and stops to shake
hands, so Cousin Egbert slinks off.
I got to tell you about Metta. She's our artist; gives lessons in oil
painting and burnt wood and other refinements. People can take six
lessons off Metta and go home and burn all the Indian heads on leather
sofa pillows that you'd ever want to see. Also she can paint a pink fish
and a copper skillet and a watermelon with one slice cut out as good as
any one between here and Spokane. She's a perfectly good girl, falling on
thirty, refers to herself without a pang as a bachelor girl, and dresses
as quiet as even a school-teacher has to in a small town.
Well, Metta rushes up to me now, all glowing and girlish, and says
I must come to her studio that very afternoon and meet her dear old
chum, Vernabelle Smith, that is visiting her from Washington Square,
New York. She and Vernabelle met when they were completing their art
education in the Latin Quarter of Chicago, and Vernabelle had gone down
to New York and got into all the new movements and among people who was
doing things, and was now very, very advanced being what you might call
an intellectual; but I would be sure to like her because she was so
delightfully Bohemian, not standing on ceremony but darting straight
to the heart of life, which is so complex to most of us who live within
convention's shell and never get in touch with the great throbbing centre
of things. She didn't say what things. It was a new line of chatter from
Metta. Usually she'd have been telling me her troubles with Chinese help,
or what a robber the Square Deal meat market was, or, at the most, how
her fruit-and-fish piece had carried off the first prize of twenty
dollars at the Kulanche County Fair.
So I say I'll be sure to look in on her and her new friend. I reckoned
she must be the Miss Smith and the glass blower I'd already heard about
that morning. Of course "Miss Smith" didn't sound like much, but
Vernabelle Smith was different. That name Vernabelle made all the
difference in the world. You sort of forgot the ensuing Smith.
That same afternoon about four P.M. I dropped round to the Bigler house.
Metta's mother let me in. She's a neat and precise old lady with careful
hair, but she looked scared as she let me in and led me to the door of
Metta's studio, which is a big room at the back of the house. She didn't
go in herself. She pulled it open and shut it on me quick, like it was a
lion's den or something.
All the curtains was down, candles lighted, and the room not only hot but
full of cigarette smoke and smoke from about forty of these here punk
sticks that smoldered away on different perches. It had the smell of a
nice hot Chinese laundry on a busy winter's night. About eight or ten
people was huddled round the couch, parties I could hardly make out
through this gas attack, and everyone was gabbling. Metta come forward
to see who it was, then she pulled something up out of the group and said
"Meet dear Vernabelle."
Well, she was about Metta's age, a short thirty, a kind of a slaty blonde
with bobbed hair--she'd been reached fore and aft--and dressed mostly in
a pale-blue smock and no stockings. Nothing but sandals. I could hardly
get my eyes off her feet at first. Very few of our justly famous sex can
afford to brave the public gaze without their stockings on. Vernabelle
could ill afford it. She was skinny, if you know what I mean, lots of
tendons and so forth, though I learned later that Vernabelle called it
being willowy. She had slaty-gray eyes and a pale, dramatic face with
long teeth and a dignified and powerful-looking nose. She was kind of
hungry-looking or soulful or something. And she wore about two yards of
crockery necklace that rattled when she moved. Sounded like that Chinaman
with his dishes out there in the kitchen. I learned later that this was
art jewellery.
Vernabelle greeted me with many contortions like she was taking an
exercise and said she had heard so much about me and how interesting
it was to meet one who did things. I said I was merely in the cattle
business. She said "How perfect!" and clasped her hands in ecstasy over
the very idea. She said I was by way of being the ideal type for it. And
did I employ real cowboys; and they, too, must be fascinating, because
they did things. I said they did if watched; otherwise not. And did I
acquire an ascendancy over their rough natures. I said we quickly parted
forever if I didn't do that. Then she clanked across to the couch, where
she set down on her feet. I give her credit for that much judgment. That
girl never did just plain set down. It was either on one foot or on both
feet, or she draped herself along the furniture to show how willowy she
could be without its hurting.
She now lighted a new cigarette from her old one and went on telling the
fish-faces about her how little colour she had found here. She said we
was by way of being a mere flat expanse in dull tints. But what could
be expected of a crude commercialism where the arts was by way of being
starved. Ah, it was so different from dear old Washington Square, where
one was by way of being at the heart of life. It took me some time to
get this by-way-of-being stuff, but the others was eating it up. Metta
Bigler hovered round proud as Lucifer and trying to smoke for the first
time in her life, though making poor work of it, like she was eating
the cigarette and every now and then finding bits she couldn't swallow,
and holding it off at arm's length in between bites. Mrs. Henrietta
Templeton Price was making better work of the cigarettes, and Beryl Mae
Macomber, a wealthy young society heiress and debutante, aged seventeen,
was saying that she had always felt this lack in Red Gap and would of
been in the movies long since if her aunt had listened to reason. The
only man present was Edgar Tomlinson, who is Red Gap's most prominent
first-nighter and does the Lounger-in-the-Lobby column for the Recorder,
reviewing all the new films in an able and fearless manner. Edgar was
looking like he had come into his own at last. He was wearing a flowing
tie and a collar that hardly come higher than his chest and big wind
shields on a black cord, and had his hair mussed up like a regular
Bohemian in a Sunday paper. Vernabelle was soon telling him how
refreshing it was to meet away out here one who was by way of doing
things, and she had read that very morning his review of the film
entitled A Sister of Sin, and had found it masterly in its clear-cut
analysis, but why did he waste himself here when the great world lay
open. Edgar thrust back his falling hair with a weary hand and tried to
look modest, but it was useless. Vernabelle devoted most of her chat to
Edgar. She was an incessant person but it seemed to take a man to bring
out all that was best in her.
Pretty soon Metta went over to a table and brought back some glasses
of wine on a tray, of which all partook with more or less relish. I
recognized it from the bottle. It was elderberry wine that Metta's
mother had put up. You have to be resourceful in a dry state.
"I'm afraid you'll all think me frightfully Bohemian," said Metta
proudly.