We Can\'t Have Everything

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Proximity is said to breed love, but priority has its virtues no less.
Skip Magruder was the first New-Yorker to help Kedzie in her hour
of dismay, and she thought him a great and powerful being profoundly
informed about the city of her dreams.

Skip did know a thing or two--possibly three. He was a New-Yorker
of a sort, and he had his New York as well as Jim Dyckman had his
or Peter Cheever his. He sized Kedzie up for the ignoramus she was,
but he was good to her in so far as his skippy faculties permitted.
He dropped the paper he was reading when she wandered in, and won
her at once by not calling her "Cutie."

"W'at 'll y'ave, lady?" he said as he skirled a plate and a glass of
ice-water along the oil-cloth with exquisite skill, slapped a knife
and fork and spoon alongside, and flipped her a check to be punched
as she ordered, and a fly-frequented bill of fare to order from.

Kedzie was stumped by the array of dishes. Skip volunteered his aid
--suggested "A nor'nge, ham 'n'eggs, a plate o' wheats, anna cuppa
corfee."

"All right," said Kedzie, wondering how much such a barbecue
would cost.

Skip went to bellow the order through a sliding door and grab it when
it should be pushed forth from a mysterious realm. Kedzie picked up
a newspaper that Skip had picked up after some early client left it.

Kedzie glanced at the front page and saw that the Germans had taken
three towns and the Allies one trench. She could not pronounce
the towns, and trenches meant nothing in her life. She was about to
toss the paper aside when a head-line caught her eye. She read with
pardonable astonishment:

SPANKED GIRL GONE

Beautiful Kedzie Thropp, Western Society Belle, Deserts Her Wealthy
Parents at Biltmore and Vanishes

POLICE OF NATION IN SEARCH

Kedzie felt the world blow up about her. Her name was in the New York
papers the second morning of her first visit! Her father and mother
were called wealthy! She was a society belle! Who could ever hereafter
deny these ideal splendors, now that there had been a piece in the
paper about them?

But dog on it! Why did they have to go and do such a thing as put
in about her being spanked? She blushed all over with rage. She had
once planned to go back home with wondrous gossip of her visit to
the big city. She had seen herself gloating over the other girls
who had never been to a big city.

Now they would all give her the laugh. The boys would make up rhymes
and yell them at her from a safe distance. She could kill her father
for being so mean to her. It was bad enough to hurt her as he did,
but to go and tattle when her back was turned was simply awful. She
could never go home now. She'd rather die.

Yet the paper said the police of the nation were searching for her.
She understood how Eliza felt with the bloodhounds after her. She
must keep out of sight of the police. One good thing was the picture
of her that they printed in the paper. It was not her picture at all,
and nothing like her. Besides, she had selected a new name. "Anita
Adair" was a fine disguise. It sounded awful swell, too. It sounded
like her folks had money. She was glad to be rid of "Kedzie Thropp."
She would never be Kedzie Thropp again.

Then the waiter came with her breakfast. It smelled so grand that
she forgot to be afraid for a while. The coffee smoked aroma; the
ham and eggs were fragrant; and the orange sent up a golden fume
of delight.

Skip entered into conversation as she entered into the orange.
"Where you woikin' now?" he said.

Kedzie did not know what his dialect meant at first. When she learned
that "woikin'" was the same as "wurrkin"' she confessed that she
had no job. She trembled lest he should recognize her from the paper.
He eyed her narrowly and tried to flirt with her across the very
head-lines that told who she was.

She could not be sure that he did not know her. He might be
a detective in disguise looking for a reward.

Skip had been reading about Kedzie when she came in. But he
never dreamed that she was she. He befriended her, however, out
of the goodness of his heart and the desire to retain her in
the neighborhood--also out of respect for the good old brass rule,
"Do good unto others now, so that they will do good to you later."

Slap told Kedzie that he knew a place right near where a goil was
wanted. When he told her that it was a candy-store she was elated.
A candy-store was her idea of a good place to work.

Skip told Kedzie where to go and what to say, and to mention that
Skip sent her.

Skip also recommended lodgings next his own in the flat of Mr. and
Mrs. Rietzvoller, delicatessen merchants.

"Nice rooms reasonable," he said, "and I'll be near to look after
you."

"You're awful fresh, seems to me, on short acquaintance," was
Kedzie's stinging rebuke.

Skip laughed. "Didn't you see the special-delivery stamp on
me forehead? But I guess you're a goil can take care yourself."

Kedzie guessed she was. But she was in need of help. Where else
could she turn? Whom else had she for a beau in this multitude
of strangers? So she laughed encouragingly.

"All right. You're elected. Gimme the address."

Skip wrote it on one of the business cards of the bakery. He added:

"Another thing: I know a good expressman will rustle your trunk
over from--Where you boardin' at now?"

Kedzie flushed. She could hardly tell him that she had boarded
in a park up-town somewhere.

Skip saw that she was confused. He showed exquisite tact.

"I'm wise, goilie. She's holdin' your trunk out on you. I been
in the same boat m'self."

Kedzie was willing to let it go at that, but Skip pondered:

"But, say--that ain't goin' to make such a hell of a hit--scuse me,
lady--but I mean if you tell your new landlady about your trunk
bein' left on your old one, that ain't goin' to get you nothin' but
the door-slam in the snoot.... I tell you: tell her you just come
in on the train and your wardrobe-trunk is on the way unless it
got delayed in changin' cars at--oh, any old place. I guess you did
come in, at that, from Buffalo or Pittsboig or some them Western
joints, didn' you?"

Kedzie just looked at him. Her big eyes lied for her, and he
hastened to say:

"Well, scuse me nosin' in on your own business. Tell the landlady
what you want to, only tell her it was me sent you. That's as good
as a guarantee--that she'll have to wait for her money."

Kedzie laughed at his excruciating wit, but she was touched also
by his courtesy, and she told him he was awful kind and she was
terrible obliged.

That bowled him over. But when she rose with stateliness and,
reaching for her money, offered to pay, he had the presence of mind
to snarl, amiably:

"Ah, ferget it and beat it. This meal's on me, and wishing you many
happy returns of the same."

He certainly was one grand gentleman. The proprietor was away,
and Skip could afford to be generous.

Kedzie left him and found the landlady and got a home; and then she
found the store and got a job. For a time she was in Eden. The doleful
proprietor's doleful wife was usually down-cellar making ice-cream
while her husband was out in the kitchen cooking candy. Kedzie was
free to guzzle soda-water at her will. Her forefinger and thumb went
along the stacks of candy, dipping like a robin's beak. She was
forever licking her fingers and brushing marshmallow dust off her
chest. She usually had a large, square caramel outlined in one round
cheek.

But the ecstasy did not abide. Kedzie began to realize why Mr. and
Mrs. Fleissig were sad. Sweets were a sour business; the people who
came into the shop were mainly children who spent whole half-hours
choosing a cent's worth of burnt sugar, or young, foolish girls who
giggled into the soda bubbles, or housewives ordering ice-cream for
Sunday.

If a young man appeared it was always to buy a box of candy for
some other girl. It made Kedzie cynical to see him haggle and ponder,
trying to make the maximum hit with a minimum of ammunition. It made
her more distrustful to see young men trying to flirt with her while
they bought tributes of devotion to somebody else. But Kedzie also
found out that several of the neighborhood girls accepted candy
from several gentlemen simultaneously, and she drew many cynical
conclusions from the candy business.

Skip Magruder was attentive and took her out to moving pictures
when he was free. In return for the courtesy she took her meals at
"The Bon-Ton Bakery by Joe Gidden." Whenever he dared, Skip skipped
the change. He could always slip her an extra titbit.

On that account she had to be a little extra gracious to him when
he took her to the movies. Holding hands didn't hurt.

Not a week had gone before Skip had rivals. He caught Kedzie in
deceptions. She kept him guessing, and the poor fool suffered
the torments and thrills of jealousy. A flip young fellow named Hoke,
agent for a jobber in ice-cream cones, and a tubby old codger named
Kalteyer, who facetiously claimed to own a chewing-gum mine, were
added competitors for Kedzie's smiles, while Skip teetered between
homicide and suicide.

Skip was wretched, and Kedzie was enthralled by her own success.
She had conquered New York. She had a job in a candy-store, a room
in a flat with the family of a delicatessen merchant; she had as
many flirtations as she could carry, and an increasing waiting-list.
What more could woman ask?

And all this was in far upper Third Avenue. She had not yet been
down to First Street. In fact, she was in New York two weeks before
she got as far south as 100th Street. She had almost forgotten that
she had ever dwelt elsewhere than in New York. Her imitative instinct
was already exchanging her Western burr for a New York purr.

Her father and mother would hardly have known her voice if they
had heard it. And they would hardly meet her, since they had
given her up and gone back home, far sadder, no wiser, much poorer.
They did not capture the insurance money, and they had no rewards
to offer for Kedzie.

Now and then a Kedzie would be reported in some part of the country,
and a wild paragraph would be printed about her. Now and then she
would be found dead in a river or would be traced as a white slave
drugged and sold and shipped to the Philippine Islands. The stories
were heinously cruel to her father and mother, who mourned her
in Nimrim and repented dismally of their harshness to the best
and pirtiest girl ever lived.

Meanwhile Kedzie sold candy and ate less and less of it. She began
to see more pretentious phases of city life and to be discontent
with her social triumph. She began to understand how cheap her lovers
were. She called them "mutts." She came to suffer agonies of remorse
at the liberties she had given them.

Mr. Kalteyer, the chewing-gum prince, in an effort to overcome
the handicap of weight and age which Mr. Hoke did not carry, told
Kedzie that her picture ought to be on every counter in the world,
and he could get it there. He'd love to see her presented as a classy
dame showing her ivories and proving how "beneficiary" his chewing-gum
was for the teeth as well as the digestion.

Kedzie told the delicatessen merchant's wife all about his glorious
promises, and she said, very sagely:

"Bevare vit dose bo'quet fellers. Better as so many roses is it
he should brink you a slice roastbif once. Lengwidge of flowers is
nice, but money is de svell talker. Take it by me, money is de svell
talker!"

Kedzie was glad of such wisdom, and she convinced Mr. Kalteyer
that it took more than conversation to buy her favor. He kept
his word under some duress, and took Kedzie to Mr. Eben E. Kiam,
a manufacturer of show-cards and lithographs, with an advertising
agency besides.

Mr. Edam studied her poses and smiles for days before he got
her at her best. An interested observer and a fertile suggester
in his office was a young Mr. Gilfoyle, who wrote legends for
show-cards, catch-lines for new wares, and poems, if pressed.

Gilfoyle had the poet's prophetic eye, and he murmured to Mr. Kiam
that there were millions in "Miss Adair's" face and form if they were
worked right. He took pains to let Kedzie overhear this. It pleased
her. Millions were something she decided she would like.

Gilfoyle developed wonderfully in the sun of Kedzie's interest. He
told Kalteyer that there was no money in handling chewing-gum in
a small way as a piker; what he wanted was a catchy name, a special
selling-argument, and a national publicity campaign. He advised
Kalteyer to borrow a lot of money at the banks and sling himself.

Kalteyer breathed hard. Gilfoyle was assailed by an epilepsy
of inspirations. In place of "Kalteyer's Peerless Gum," he proposed
the enthralling title, "Breathasweeta." Others had mixed pepsin
in their edible rubber goods of various flavors. Gilfoyle proposed
perfume!

Kalteyer was astounded at the boy's genius. He praised him till
Kedzie began to think him worth cultivation, especially as he proposed
to flood the country with portraits of Kedzie as the Breathasweeta
Girl.

The muse of advertising swooped down and whispered to Gilfoyle
the delicious lines to be printed under Kedzie's smile.

Kiss me again. Who are you?
You use Breathasweeta. You must be all right.

Kalteyer was swept off his feet. He ran to the bank while Kiam raised
Gilfoyle's salary.

The life-size card of Kedzie was made with a prop to hold it up. It
was so much retouched and altered in the printing that her own father,
seeing it in a Nimrim drugstore, never recognized it. Nearly every
drug-store in the country set up a Kedzie in its show-window.

The Breathasweeta came into such demand that Kalteyer was temporarily
bankrupted by prosperity. He had to borrow so much money to float
his wares that he had none for Kedzie's entertainment.

Mr. Kiam took her up as a valuable model for advertising purposes.

He aroused in Kedzie an inordinate appetite for pictures of herself.
All day long she was posed in costumes for various calendars, as
a farmer's daughter, as a society queen, as a camera girl, as
a sausage nymph, and as the patron saint of a brewery.

In a week she had arrived at classic poses in Greek robes. One by one
these were abbreviated, till Kedzie was being very generally revealed
to the public eye.

The modesty her mother had whipped into her was gradually unlearned
step by step, garment by garment, without Kedzie's noticing the change
in her soul.

CHAPTER XIV

Just about the hour of that historic day when Kedzie was running away
from her father and mother Prissy Atterbury was springing his great
story about Jim Dyckman and Charity.

Prissy had gone on to his destination, the home of the Winnsboros
in Greenwich, but he arrived late, and the house guests were too
profoundly absorbed in their games of auction to make a fit audience
for such a story. So Prissy saved it for a correct moment, though he
nearly burst with it. He slept ill that night from indigestion due
to retention of gossip.

The next forenoon he watched as the week-end prisoners dawdled down
from their gorgeous cells, to a living-room as big and as full
of seats as a hotel lobby. They threw themselves, on lounges and
huge chairs and every form of encouragement to indolence. They threw
themselves also on the mercy and the ingenuity of their hostess.
But Mrs. Winnsboro expected her guests to bring their own plans
and take care of themselves. They were marooned.

When the last malingerer arrived with yawns still unfinished, Prissy
seized upon a temporary hush and began to laugh. Pet Bettany, who was
always sullen before luncheon, grumbled:

"What ails you, Priss? Just seeing some joke you heard last night?"

Priss snapped, "I was thinking."

"You flatter yourself," said Pet. "But I suppose you've got to
get it off your chest. I'll be the goat. What is it?"

Prissy would have liked to punish the cat by not telling her a single
word of it, but he could not withhold the scandal another moment.

"Well, I'll tell you the oddest thing you ever heard in all
your life."

Pretending to tell it to Pet, he was reaching out with voice and eyes
to muster the rest. He longed for a megaphone and cursed such big
rooms.

"I was passing through the Grand Central to take my train up here,
you understand, and who should I see walk in from an incoming
express, you understand, but--who, I say, should I see but--oh,
you never would guess--you simply never would guess. Nev-vir-ir!"

"Who cares who you saw," said Pet, and viciously started to change
the subject, so that Prissy had to jump the prelude.

"It was Jim Dyckman. Well, in he comes from the train, you
understand, and looks about among the crowd of people waiting
for the train--to meet people, you understand."

Pet broke in, frantically: "Yes, I understand! But if you say
'understand' once more I'll scream and chew up the furniture!"

Prissy regarded her with patient pity and went on:

"Jim didn't see me, you un--you see--and--but just as I was about
to say hello to him he turns around and begins to stare into the
crowd of other people getting off the same train that he got off, you
underst--Well, I had plenty of time for my train, so I waited--not
to see what was up, you un--I do say it a lot, don't I? Well, I
waited, and who should come along but--well, this you never would
guess--not in a month of Sundays."

A couple of flanneled oaves impatient for the tennis-court stole
away, and Pet said,

"Speed it up, Priss; they're walking out on you."

"Well, they won't walk out when they know who the woman was. Jim
was waiting for--he was waiting for--"

He paused a moment. Nobody seemed interested, and so he hastened
to explode the name of the woman.

"Charity Coe! It was Charity Coe Jim was waiting for! They had come
in on the same train, you understand, and yet they didn't come up
the platform together. Why? I ask you. Why didn't they come up
the platform together? Why did Jim come along first and wait? Was
it to see if the coast was clear? Now, I ask you!"

There was respect enough paid to Prissy's narrative now. In fact,
the name of Charity in such a story made the blood of everybody
run cold--not unpleasantly--yet not altogether pleasantly.

Some of the guests scouted Prissy's theory. Mrs. Neff was there,
and she liked Charity. She puffed contempt and cigarette-smoke at
Atterbury, and murmured, sweetly, "Prissy, you're a dirty little
liar, and your long tongue ought to be cut out and nailed up on
a wall."

Prissy nearly wept at the injustice of such skepticism. It was Pet
Bettany, of all people, who came to his rescue with credulity. She
was sincerely convinced. A voluptuary and intrigante herself, she
believed that her own ideas of happiness and her own impulses were
shared by everybody, and that people who frowned on vice were either
hypocrites or cowards.

She could not imagine how small a part and how momentary a part evil
ambitions play in the lives of clean, busy souls like Charity. In
fact, Pet flattered herself as to her own wickedness, and pretended
to be worse than she was, in order to establish a reputation for
candor.

Vice has its hypocrisies as well as virtue.

Pet had long been impatient of the celebration of Charity Coe's
saintly attributes, and it had irked her to see so desirable
a catch as Jim Dyckman squandering his time on a woman who was
already married and liked it. He might have been interested in Pet
if Charity had let him alone.

Pet also was stirred with the detestation of sin in orderly people
that actuates disorderly people. She broke out with surprising
earnestness.

"Well, I thought as much! So Charity Coe is human, after all,
the sly devil! She's fooling even that foxy husband of hers. She's
playing the same game, too--and a sweet little foursome it makes."

She laughed so abominably that Mrs. Neff threw away her cigarette
and growled:

"Oh, shut up, Pet; you make me sick! Let's go out in the air."

Mrs. Neff was old enough to say such things, and Pet dampered
her noise a trifle. But she held Prissy back and made him recount
his adventure again. They had a good laugh over it--Prissy giggling
and hugging one knee, Pet whooping with that peasant mirth of hers.

The same night, at just about the hour when Kedzie Thropp was
falling asleep in Crotona Park and Jim Dyckman was sulking alone
in his home and Charity was brooding alone in hers, Prissy Atterbury
was delighted to see a party of raiders from another house-party
motor up to the Winnsboros' and demand a drink.

Prissy was a trifle glorious by this time. He had been frequenting
a bowl of punch subtly liquored, but too much sweetened. He leaned
heavily on a new-comer as he began his story. The new-comer pushed
Prissy aside with scant courtesy.

"Ah, tell us a new one!" he said. "That's ancient history!"

"What-what-what," Prissy stammered. "Who told you s'mush?"

"Pet Bet. telephoned it to us this morning. I heard it from three
other people to-day."

"Well, ain't that abslooshly abdominable."

Prissy began to cry softly. He knew the pangs of an author
circumvented by a plagiarist.

The next morning his head ached and he rang up an eye-opener or
two. The valet found him in violet pajamas, holding his jangling
head and moaning:

"There was too much sugar in the punch."

He remembered Pet's treachery, and he groaned that there was too much
vinegar in life. But he determined to fight for his story, and he did.
Long after Pet had turned her attention to other reputations, Prissy
was still peddling his yarn.

The story went circlewise outward and onward like the influence of
a pebble thrown into a pool. Two people who had heard the story and
doubted it met; one told it to the other; the other said she had
heard it before; and they parted mutually supported and definitely
convinced that the rumor was fact. Repetition is confirmation, and
history is made up of just such self-propelled lies--fact founded
on fiction.

We create for ourselves a Nero or a Cleopatra, a Washington or
a Molly Pitcher, from the gossip of enemies or friends or imaginers,
and we can be sure of only one thing--that we do not know the true
truth.

But we also do wrong to hold gossip in too much discredit. It gives
life fascination, makes the most stupid neighbors interesting. It
keeps up the love of the great art of fiction and the industry of
character-analysis. A small wonder that human beings are addicted
to it, when we are so emphatically assured that heaven itself is
devoted to it, and that we are under the incessant espionage of our
Deity, while the angels are eavesdroppers and reporters carrying
note-books in which they write with indelible ink the least things
we do or say or think.

CHAPTER XV

To see into other people's hearts and homes and lives is one of
the primeval instincts. In that curiosity all the sciences are
rooted; and it is a scientific impulse that makes us hanker to
get back of faces into brains, to push through words into thoughts,
and to ferret out of silences the emotions they smother.

Gossip is one of the great vibrations of the universe. Like rain,
it falls on the just and on the unjust; it ruins and it revives;
it quenches thirst; it makes the desert bloom with cactuses and
grotesque flowers, and it beats down violets and drowns little birds
in their nests.

Gossip was now awakening a new and fearful interest in Charity Coe
and Jim Dyckman.

Two women sitting at a hair-dresser's were discussing the gossip
according to Prissy through the shower of their tresses. The manicure
working on the nails of one of them glanced up at the coiffeur and
gasped with her eyes. The manicure whispered it to her next customer
--who told it to her husband in the presence of their baby. The baby
was not interested, but the nurse was, and when she rode out with
the baby she told the chauffeur. The chauffeur used the story as
a weapon of scorn to tease Jim Dyckman's new valet with. Jules would
have gone into a frenzy of denial, but Jules was by now wearing the
livery of his country in the trenches. The new valet--Dallam was
his name--tried to sell the story to a scavenger-editor who did not
dare print it yet, though he put it in the safe where he kept such
material against the day of need. Also he paid Dallam a retainer
to keep him in touch with the comings and goings of Dyckman.

And thus the good name of a good woman went through the mud like
a white flounce torn and dragged and unnoticed. For of course
Charity never dreamed that any one was giving such importance to
the coincidence of her railroad journey with Jim Dyckman.

No more did Dyckman. He knew all too well what gulfs had parted
him from Charity even while he sat with her in the train. He had
suffered such rebuffs from her that he was bitterly aggrieved. He
was telling himself that he hated Charity for her stinginess of
soul at the very time that the whispers were damning her too great
generosity in his favor.

While gossip was recruiting its silent armies against her for her
treason to her husband, Charity was wondering why her loyalty to
him was so ill paid. She did not suspect Cheever of treason to her.
That was so odious that she simply could not give it thought room.