We Can\'t Have Everything

R >> Rupert Hughes >> We Can\'t Have Everything

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

What she thought she understood of his socialistic scheme was that
every poor girl like herself was going to have her limousine and
her maid and a couple of footmen. She did not pause to figure out
how complicated that would be, since the maid would have to have
her maid, and that maid hers, and so on, _ad infinitum, ad
absurdum._

Later Kedzie found that Gilfoyle's first intention was to impoverish
the rich, elimousinate their wives, and put an end to luxury. It
astonished her how furious he got when he read of a ball given by
people of wealth, though a Bohemian dance at Webster Hall pleased
him very much, even though some of the costumes made Kedzie's Greek
vest look prudish.

But all this Kedzie was to find out after she had married the wretch.
One finds out so many things when one marries one. It is like going
behind the scenes at a performance of "Romeo and Juliet," seeing
the stage-braces that prop the canvas palaces, and hearing Juliet
bawl out Romeo for crabbing her big scene. The shock is apt to be
fatal to romance unless one is prepared for it in advance as
an inevitable and natural conflict.

CHAPTER XVII

Kedzie and Tommie enjoyed a cozy betrothal. He was busy at his shop,
and she was busy at hers. They did not see much of each other, and
that made for the prosperity of their love. They talked a great deal
of marriage, but it seemed expedient to wait till one or the other
acquired a raise of wage. The Silsby dancers were playing at cut
salaries in accord with the summer schedules, and business was very
light at the advertising agency.

The last week the troupe was playing at the Bronx Opera House, and
there Skip Magruder chanced to see her--to see more of her than he
had ever expected to on the hither side of matrimony.

His old love came back with a tidal rush, and he sent her a note
written with care in a barroom--or so Kedzie judged from the beery
fragrance of it. It said:

DEAR ANITA,--Was considerable supprise to see you to-night as didn't
know you was working in vawdvul and as I have been very loansome
for you thought would ask you would you care to take supper after
show with your loveing admirror and friend will wait for anser at
stage door hopping to see you for Old Lang's Sign.

PATRICK X. MAGRUDER--"SKIP."

Kedzie did not read this letter to the gang of nymphs. She blushed
bitterly and mumbled, "Well, of all the nerve!" After some hesitation
she wrote on Skip's note the "scatting" words, _"Nothing doing"_
and sent it back by the dismal stage doorkeeper.

She had hoped Skip would have the decency to go away and die quietly
and not hang round to see her leave with Mr. Gilfoyle. Skip had
a hitch in one leg, but Mr. Gilfoyle had a touch of writer's cramp,
and Kedzie had no desire to see the result of a conflict between two
such victims of unpreparedness.

She forgot both rivals in the excitement of a sudden incursion
of Miss Silsby, who came crying:

"Oh, girls, girls, what Do you sup-Pose has Happened? I have been
en-Gaged to give my dances at Noxon's--old Mrs. Noxon's, in Newport."

Miss Silsby always used the first person singular, though she never
danced; and if she had, in the costume of her charges, the effect
would have been a fatal satire.

By now Kedzie was familiar enough with names of great places
to realize the accolade. To be recognized by the Noxons was to
be patented by royalty. And Newport was Mecca.

The pilgrimage thither was a voyage of discovery with all
an explorer's zest. Her first view of the city disappointed her,
but her education had progressed so far that she was able to call
the pleasant, crooked streets of the older towns "picturesque."
A person who is able to murmur "How picturesque!" has made progress
in snobbical education. Kedzie murmured, "How picturesque!" when
she saw the humbler portions of Newport.

But there was a poignant sincerity in her admiration of the homes
of the rich. Bad taste with ostentation moved her as deeply as true
stateliness. Her heart made outcry for experience of opulence. She
now despised the palaces of New York because they had no yards.
Newport houses had parks. Newport was the next candy-shop she wanted
to work in.

The splendor of the visit was dimmed for her, however, when she
learned that she would not be permitted to swim at Bailey's Beach.
Immediately she felt that swimming anywhere else was contemptible.

Still, she was seeing Newport, and she could not tell what swagger
fate might now be within reach of her hands--or her feet, rather--for
Kedzie was gaining her golden apples not by clutching at them, but by
kicking them off the tree of opportunity with her carefully manicured
little toes.

Also she said "swagger" now instead of "classy" or "swell." Also she
forgot to telegraph Tommie Gilfoyle, as she promised, of her safe
arrival. Also she was too busy to write to him that first night.

CHAPTER XVIII

When Prissy Atterbury started the gossip rolling that he had seen
Jim Dyckman enter the Grand Central Terminal alone and wait for
Charity Coe Cheever to come from the same train it did not take
long for the story to roll on to Newport. By then it was a pretty
definite testimony of guilt in a vile intrigue. When Mrs. Noxon
announced her charity circus people wondered if even she would dare
include Mrs. Cheever on her bead-roll. The afternoon was for guests;
the evening was for the public at five dollars a head.

One old crony of Charity's, a Mrs. Platen, revived the story for
Mrs. Noxon at the time when she was editing the list of invitations
for the afternoon. Mrs. Noxon seemed to be properly shocked.

"Of course, you'll not invite her now," said Mrs. Platen.

"Not invite her!" Mrs. Noxon snorted. "I'll invite her twice. In
the first place, I don't believe it of Charity Coe. I knew her mother.
In the second, if it's true, what of it? Charity Coe has done so much
good that she has a right to do no end of bad to balance her books."

To emphasize her support, Mrs. Noxon insisted on Charity Coe's coming
to her as a house-guest for a week before the fete. This got into all
the papers and redeemed Charity's good name amazingly. Perhaps Jim
Dyckman saw it in the papers. At least he and his yacht drifted into
the harbor the day of the affair. Of course he had an invitation.

The Noxon affair was the usual thing, only a little more so. People
dressed themselves as costlily as they could, for hours beforehand
--then spent a half-hour or more fuming in a carriage-and-motor
tangle waiting to arrive at the entrance, while the heat sweat all
the starch out of themselves and their clothes.

A constant flood poured in upon Mrs. Noxon, or tried to find her
at the receiving-post. She was usually not there. She was like
a general running a big battle. She had to gallop to odd spots
now and then.

The tradition of her selectness received a severe strain in the
presence of such hordes of guests. They trod on one another's toes,
tripped on one another's parasols, beg-pardoned with ill-restrained
wrath, failed to get near enough to see the sights, stood on tiptoe
or bent down to peer through elbows like children outside a
ball-park.

The entertainment was vaudeville disguised by expense. It was not
easy to hold the attention of those surfeited eyes and ears. Actors
and actresses of note almost perished with wrath and humiliation
at the indifference to their arts. Loud laughter from the back rows
broke in at the wrong time, and appalling silences greeted the times
to laugh.

The fame, or notoriety, of the Silsby dancers attracted a part of
the throng to the marble swimming-pool and the terraced fountain
with its deluged statuary. Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe suddenly
found themselves together. They hated it, but they could not easily
escape. Jim felt that all eyes were bulging out at them. He had
murder in his heart.

There was the usual delay, the frank impatience and leg-fag of people
unused to standing about except at receptions and dressmakers'.
Finally the snobbish string-orchestra from Boston, which played only
the most exclusive music, began to tune up, and at length, after much
mysterious wigwagging of signals to play, it played a hunting-piece.

Suddenly from the foliage came what was supposed to be a startled
nymph. The spectators were startled, too, for a moment, for her
costume was amazing. Even on Bailey's Beach it would have attracted
attention.

Kedzie was the nymph. She was making her debut into great society.
What would her mother have said if she could have seen her there?
Her father would have said nothing. He would have fainted
unobtrusively, for the first time in his life.

Kedzie was scared. She had stage-fright of all these great people
so overdressed when she was not even underclothed.

"Poor little thing!" said Charity, and began to applaud to cheer her
up. She nudged Jim. "Come on, help her out. Isn't she beautiful?"

"Is she?" said Jim, applauding.

It did not seem right to praise one woman's beauty to another. It
was like praising one author's work to another, or praising another
preacher's sermon to a preacher's face.

Still, Jim had to admit that Kedzie was pretty. Suddenly he wanted
to torment Charity, and so he exclaimed:

"You're right, she is a little corker, a very pleasant dream!" Anger
at Charity snatched away the blindfold which is another name for
fidelity. Scales fell from his eyes, and he saw truth in nakedness.
He saw beauty everywhere. All about him were beautiful women in rich
costume. He saw that beauty is not a matter of opinion, a decision
of love's, but a happening to be regular or curvilinear or warm of
color or hospitable in expression.

Particularly he saw the beauty of Kedzie. There was more of her
to see than of those other women behind their screens of silk and
lace and linen. His infatuation for Charity Coe had befuddled him,
wrapped him in a fog through which all other women passed like
swaddled figures. He felt free now.

Over Charity's shoulder and through the spray of the goura on
her hat he saw Kedzie sharp and stark, her suavities of line and
the milk-smooth fabric of her envelope. He studied Kedzie with
emancipation, not seeing Charity at all any more--nor she him.

For Charity studied Kedzie, too. She felt academically the delight
of the girl's beauty, a statue coming to life, or a living being
going back into statue--Galatea in one phase or the other. She felt
the delight of the girl's successful drawing. She smiled to behold
it. Then her smile drooped, for the words of the old song came back
crooning the ancient regret:

How small a part of time they share--

There was elegy now in Kedzie's graces. Youth was of their essence,
and youth shakes off like the dust on the moth's wing. Youth is gone
at a touch.

In her sorrow she turned to look up at Jim. She was shocked to
see how attentively he regarded Kedzie. He startled her by the
fascination in his mien. She looked again at Kedzie.

Somehow the girl immediately grew ugly--or what beauty she had was
that of a poisonous snake. And she looked common, too. Who else but
a common creature would come out on a lawn thus unclothed for a few
dollars?

She looked again at Jim Dyckman, and he was not what he had been. He
was as changed as the visions in Lewis Carroll's poem. She saw that
he had his common streak, too: he was mere man, animal, temptable.
But she forgave him. Curiously, he grew more valuable since she felt
that she was losing him.

There was an impatient shaking at her breast. In anybody else she
would have called it jealousy. This astounded her, made her afraid
of herself and of him. What right had she to be jealous of anybody
but Peter Cheever? She felt that she was more indecent than Kedzie.
She bowed her head and blushed. Scales fell from her eyes also. She
was like Eve after the apple had taught her what she was. She wanted
to hide. But she could not break through the crowd. She must stand
and watch the dance through.

All this brief while Kedzie had stood wavering. There had been
a hitch somewhere. The other nymphs were delayed in their entrance.
One of them had stepped on a thorny rose and another had ripped her
tunic--she came in at last with a safety-pin to protect her from
the law; but then, safety-pins are among the primeval inventions.

According to the libretto, the wood-nymphs, terrified by a hunting-
party, ran to take refuge with the water-nymphs. The water-nymphs
were late likewise. The dryads came suddenly through Mrs. Noxon's
imported shrubs, puncturing them with rhythmic attitudes. These lost
something of their poetry from being held so long that equilibria
were lost foolishly.

Finally, the water-sprites came forth from cleverly managed
concealment in a bower and stood mid-thigh in the water about
the fountain. They attitudinized also, with a kind of childish
poetry that did not quite convince, for the fountain rained on
them, and some of them shivered as cold gouts of water smote their
shoulder-blades. One little Yiddish nymph gasped, "Oi, oi!" which
was perfect Greek, though she didn't know it. Neither did anybody
else. Several people snickered.

The hunting-music died away, and the wood-nymphs decided not to go
into the water home; instead, they implored the water-nymphs to come
forth from their liquid residence. But the water-nymphs refused.
The dryads tried to lure them with gestures and dances. It was all
dreadfully puerile, and yet somehow worth while.

The wood-nymphs wreathed a human chain about the marge of the pool.
Unfortunately the marble had been splashed in spots by the fountain
spray, and it was on the slipperiest of the spots that Kedzie had to
execute a pirouette.

Her pivotal foot slid; the other stabbed down in a wild effort
to restore her balance. It slipped. She knew that she was gone.
She made frenzied clutches at the air, but it would not sustain her.
She was strangely sincere now in her gestures. The crowd laughed--
then stopped short.

It was funny till it looked as if the nymph might be hurt. Jim
Dyckman darted forward to save her. He knocked Charity aside roughly
and did not know it. He arrived too late to catch Kedzie.

Kedzie sat into the pool with great violence. The spray she cast up
fatally spotted several delicate robes. That would have been of some
consolation to Kedzie if she had known it. But all she knew was that
she went backward into the wrong element. Her wrath was greater than
her sorrow.

Her head went down: she swallowed a lot of water, and when she kicked
herself erect at last she was half strangled, entirely drenched, and
quite blinded. The other nymphs, wood and water, giggled and shook
with sisterly affection.

Kedzie was the wettest dryad that ever was. She stumbled forward,
groping. Jim Dyckman bent, slipped his hands under her arms,
and hoisted her to land. He felt ludicrous, but his chivalry was
automatic.

Kedzie was so angry at herself and everybody else that she flung
off his hands and snapped, "Quit it, dog on it!"

Jim Dyckman quit it. He had for his pains an insult and a suit
of clothes so drenched that he had to go back to his yacht, running
the gantlet of a hundred ridicules.

When he vanished Kedzie found herself in garments doubly clinging
from being soaked. She was ashamed now, and hid her face in her arm.

Charity Coe took pity on her, and before the jealous Charity could
check the generous Charity she had stepped forward and thrown about
the girl's shoulders a light wrap she carried. She led the child to
the other wood-nymphs, and they took her back into the shrubbery.

"Wait till you hear what Miss Silsby's gotta say!" said one dryad,
and another added:

"Woisse than that is this: you know who that was you flang out at
so regardless?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," sobbed Kedzie.

"You would care if you was wise to who His Nibs was!"

"Who was it?" Kedzie gasped.

"Jim Dyckman--no less! You was right in his arms, and you hadda go
an' biff him."

"Oh, Lord!" sighed Kedzie. "I'll never do." She was thinking that
destiny had tossed her into the very arms of the aristocracy and
she had been fool enough to fight her way out.

Jim Dyckman, meanwhile, was clambering into his car with clothes
and ardor dampened. He was swearing to cut out the whole herd of
women.

And Charity Coe Cheever was chattering flippantly with a group of
the dispersing audience, while her heart was in throes of dismay
at her own feelings and Jim Dyckman's.

THE SECOND BOOK

MRS. TOMMIE GILFOYLE HAS HER PICTURE TAKEN

CHAPTER I

The scene was like one of the overcrowded tapestries of the
Middle Ages. At the top was the Noxon palace, majestic, serene,
self-confident in the correctness of its architecture and not
afraid even of the ocean outspread below.

The house looked something like Mrs. Noxon at her best. Just now she
was at her worst. She stood by her marble pool and glared at her mob
of guests dispersing in knots of laughter and indifference. There
were hundreds of men and women of all ages and sizes, and almost all
of them were startling the summer of 1915 with the fashion-plates
of 1916.

Mrs. Noxon turned from them to the dispersing nymphs of Miss Silsby's
troupe. The nymphs were dressed in the fashion of 916 B.C. They also
were laughing and snickering, as they sauntered toward the clump
of trees and shrubs which masked their dressing-tent. One of them
was not laughing--Kedzie. She was slinking along in wet clothes and
doused pride. The beautiful wrap that Mrs. Charity Cheever had flung
about her she had let fall and drag in a damp mess.

Mrs. Noxon was tempted to hobble after Kedzie and smack her for
her outrageous mishap. But she could not afford the luxury. She must
laugh with her guests. She marched after them to take her medicine
of raillery more or less concealed as they went to look at the other
sideshows and permit themselves to be robbed handsomely for charity.

Kedzie was afraid to meet Miss Silsby, but there was no escape.
The moment the shrubs closed behind her she fell into the ambush.
Miss Silsby was shrill with rage and scarlet in the face. She swore,
and she looked as if she would scratch.

"You miserable little fool!" she began. "You ought to be whipped
within an inch of your life. You have ruined me! It was the biggest
chance of my career. I should have been a made woman if it hadn't
been for you. Now I shall be the joke of the world!"

"Please, Miss Silsby," Kedzie protested, "if you please, Miss
Silsby--I didn't mean to fall into the water. I'm as sorry as
I can be."

"What good does it do me for you to be sorry? I'm the one to be
sorry. I should think you would have had more sense than to do
such a thing!"

"How could I help it, dog on it!" Kedzie retorted, her anger
recrudescent.

"Help it? Are you a dancer or are you a cow?"

Kedzie quivered as if she had been lashed. She struck back with
her best Nimrim repartee, "You're a nice one to call me a cow,
you big, fat, old lummox!"

Miss Silsby fairly mooed at this.

"You--you insolent little rat, you! You--oh, you--you! I'll never
let you dance for me again--never!"

"I'd better resign, then, I suppose," said Kedzie.

"Resign? How dare you resign! You're fired! That's how you'll resign.
You're fired! The impudence of her! She turns my life-work into
a laughing-stock and then says she'd better resign!"

"How about to-night?" Kedzie put in, dazed.

"Never you mind about to-night. I'll get along without you if
I have to dance myself."

The other nymphs shook under this, like corn-stalks in a wind.

But Kedzie was a statuette of pathos. She stood cowering barelegged
before Miss Silsby, fully clothed in everything but her right mind.
There was nothing Grecian about Miss Silsby except the Medusa glare,
and that turned Kedzie into stone. She finished her tirade by
thrusting some money into Kedzie's hand and clamoring:

"Get into your clothes and get out of my sight."

Rage made Miss Silsby generous. She paid Kedzie an extra week and
her fare to New York. Kedzie had no pocket to put her money in. She
carried it in her hand and laid it on the table in the tent as she
bent to whip her lithe form out of her one dripping garment.

The other nymphs followed her into the tent and made a Parthenonian
frieze as they writhed out of their tunics and into their petticoats.
They gathered about Kedzie in an ivory cluster and murmured their
sympathy--Miss Silsby not being within ear-shot.

Kedzie blubbered bitterly as she glided into her everyday things,
hooking her corsets askew, drawing her stockings up loosely, and
lacing her boots all wrong. She was still jolted with sobs as she
pushed the hat-pins home in her traveling-hat.

She kissed the other girls good-by. They were sorry to see her go,
now that she was going. And she was very sorry to go, now that she
had to.

If she had lingered awhile Miss Silsby would have found her there
when she relented from sheer exhaustion of wrath, and would have
restored her to favor. But Kedzie had stolen away in craven
meekness.

To reach the trade-entrance Kedzie had to skirt the accursed pool of
her destruction. Charity Coe was near it, seated on a marble bench
alone. She was pensive with curious thoughts. She heard Kedzie's
childish snivel as she passed. Charity looked up, recognized the
girl with difficulty, and after a moment's hesitation called to her:

"What's the matter, you poor child? Come here! What's wrong?"

Kedzie suffered herself to be checked. She dropped on the bench
alongside Charity and wailed:

"I fell into that damn' pool, and I've lost my jah-ob!"

Charity patted the shaken back a moment, and said, "But there are
other jobs, aren't there?"

"I don't know of any."

"Well, I'll find you one, my dear, if you'll only smile. You have
such a pretty smile."

"How do you know?" Kedzie queried, giving her a sample of her best.

Charity laughed. "See! That proves it. You are a darling, and too
pretty to lack for a job. Give me your address, and I'll get you
a better place than you lost. I promise you."

Kedzie ransacked her hand-bag and found a printed card, crumpled
and rouge-stained. She poked it at Charity, who read and commented:

"Miss Anita Adair, eh? Such a pretty name! And the address, my
dear--if you don't mind. I am Mrs. Cheever."

"Oh, are you!" Kedzie exclaimed. "I've heard of you. Pleased to
meet you."

Then Kedzie whimpered, and Charity wrote the address and repeated
her assurances. She also gave Kedzie her own card and asked her to
write to her. That seemed to end the interview, and so Kedzie rose
and said: "Much obliged. I guess I gotta go now. G'-by!"

"Good-by," said Charity. "I'll not forget you."

Kedzie moved on humbly. She looked back. Charity had fallen again
into a listless reverie. She seemed sad. Kedzie wondered what on
earth she could have to be sorry about. She had money and a husband,
and she was swagger.

Kedzie slipped through the gate out to the road. She did not dare
hire a carriage, now that she was jobless. She wished she had not
left paradise. But she dared not try to return. She was not "classy"
enough. Suddenly a spasm of resentment shook the girl.

She felt the hatred of the rich that always set Tommie Gilfoyle afire.
What right had such people to such majesty when Kedzie must walk?
What right had they to homes and yards so big that it tired Kedzie
out just to trudge past? Who was this Mrs. Cheever, that she should
be so top-lofty and bend-downy? Kedzie ground her teeth in anger and
tore Charity's card to bits. She flung them at the sea, but the wind
brought them back about her face stingingly. She walked on, loathing
the very motors that flashed by, flocks of geese squawking contempt.

She walked and walked and walked. The overpowering might of the big
houses in their green demesnes made her feel smaller and wearier, but
big with bitterness. She would have been glad to have a suit-case
full of bombs to blow those snobbish residences into flinders.

She was dog tired when, after losing her way again and again, she
reached the boarding-house where the dancers lodged. She packed
her things and went to the train, lugging her own baggage. When she
reached the station she was footsore, heartsore, soulsore. Her only
comfort was that the Silsby dancers had been placed early enough
on Mrs. Noxon's program for her to have failed in time to get home
the same day. She hated Newport now. It had not been good to her.
New York was home once more.

"When's the next train to New York?" she asked a porter.

"It's wint," said the porter. "Wint at four-five."

"I said when's the next train," Kedzie snapped.

"T'-marra' marnin'," said the porter.

"My Gawd!" said Kedzie. "Have I gotta spend the night in this hole?"

The porter stared. He was not used to hearing Mecca called a hole.

"Well, if it's that bad," he grinned, "you might take the five-five
to Providence and pick up the six-forty there. But you'll have to
git a move on."

Kedzie got a move on. The train swept her out along the edge of
Rhode Island. She knew nothing of its heroic history. She cared
nothing for its heroic splendor. She thought of it only as the
stronghold of an embattled aristocracy. She did not blame Miss
Silsby for her disgrace, nor herself. She blamed the audience,
as other actors and authors and politicians do. She blazed with
the merciless hatred of the rich that poor people feel when they
are thwarted in their efforts to rival or cultivate or sell to
the rich. Their own sins they forget as absolved, because the
sins have failed. It is the success of sin and the sin of success
that cannot be forgiven.