CHAPTER I
MR AND MRS SETH APPLEBY were almost old They called each other “Father” and “Mother” But frequently they were guilty of holding hands or of cuddling together in corners and Father was a person of stubborn youthfulness For something over forty years Mother had been trying to make him stop smoking yet every time her back was turned he would sneak out his amber cigaretteholder and puff a cheap cigarette winking at the shocked crochet tidy on the patent rocker Mother sniffed at him and said that he acted like a young smart Aleck but he would merely grin in answer and coax her out for a walk
As they paraded the sun shone through the fuzzy silver hair that puffed out round Father’s2 crabapple face and an echo of delicate silver was on Mother’s roseleaf cheeks
They were rustic as a meadowringed orchard yet Father and Mother had been born in New York City and there lived for more than sixty years Father was a perfectly able clerk in Pilkings’s shoestore on Sixth Avenue and Pilkings was so much older than Father that he still called him “Hey you Seth” and still gave him advice about handling lady customers For three or four years some ten years back Father and Mr Pilkings had displayed illfeeling over the passing of the amiable elasticsided Congress shoe But that was practically forgotten and Father began to feel fairly certain of his job
There are three sorts of native NewYorkers East Side Jews and Italians who will own the city the sons of families that are so rich that they swear off taxes and the people descendants of shopkeepers and clerks who often look like NewEnglanders and always listen with timid admiration when NewYorkers from Ohio or Minnesota or California give them information about the city To this meek race doing the city’s work and forgotten by the city they have built belonged the Applebys They3 lived in a brown and dusky flat with a tortoiseshell tabby and a canary and a china hen which held their breakfast boiled eggs Every Thursday Mother wrote to her daughter who had married a prosperous and severely respectable druggist of Saserkopee New York and during the rest of her daytimes she swept and cooked and dusted went shyly along the alien streets which had slipped into the cobblestoned village she had known as a girl and came back to dust again and wait for Father’s nimble step on the four flights of stairs up to their flat She was as used to loneliness as a hotel melancholiac the people they had known had drifted away to far suburbs In each other the Applebys found all life
In July Father began his annual agitation for a vacation Mr Pilkings of Pilkings Son’s Standard Shoe Parlor didn’t believe in vacations He believed in staying home and saving money So every year it was necessary for Father to develop a cough not much of a cough merely a small polite noise like a mouse begging pardon of an irate bee yet enough to talk about and win him a two weeks’ leave Every year he schemed for this leave and almost ruined his throat by sniffing snuff to make4 him sneeze Every year Mr Pilkings said that he didn’t believe there was anything whatever the matter with Father and that even if there was he shouldn’t have a vacation Every year Mother was frightened almost to death by apprehension that they wouldn’t be able to get away
Father laughed at her this July till his fluffy hair shook like a dog’s ears in flytime He pounded his fist on the prim centertable by which Mother had been solemnly reading the picturecaptions in the Eternity Filmco’s Album of Funny Film Favorites The statuettes of General Lafayette and Mozart on the false mantel shook with his lusty thumping He roared till his voice filled the livingroom and hollowly echoed in the porcelain sink in the kitchen
“Why” he declaimed “you poor little dried codfish if it wasn’t for me you’d never have a vacation You trust old dad to handle Pilkings We’ll get away just as sure as God made little apples”
“You mustn’t use cursewords” murmured Mother undiscouraged by forty years of trying to reform Father’s vocabulary “And it would be a just judgment on you for your high mightiness5 if you didn’t get a vacation and I don’t believe Mr Pilkings will give you one either and if it wa’n’t for—”
“Why I’ve got it right under my hat”
“Yes you always think you know so much more—”
Father rounded the table stealthily and treacherously put his lips at her ear and blew a tremendous “Zzzzzzzz” which buzzed in her ear like a file on a sawblade
Mother leaped up furious and snapped “I’m simply ashamed of you the way you act like you never would grow up and get a little common sense what with scaring me into conniption fits and as I was just going to say and I only say it for your own good if you haven’t got enough sense to know how little sense you have got you at your time of life why well all I can say is—you ought to know better”
Then Father and Mother settled peacefully down and forgot all about their disagreement
Since they had blessedly been relieved of the presence of their talented daughter who until her marriage had been polite to them to such an extent that for years they had lived in terror they had made rather a point of being naughty6 and noisy and happy together but by and by they would get tired and look affectionately across the table and purr Father tinkered away at a broken lampshade till suddenly without warning he declared that Mother scolded him merely to conceal her faith in his ability to do anything She sniffed but she knew that he was right For years Mother had continued to believe in the cleverness of Seth Appleby who in his youth had promised to become manager of the shoestore and gave the same promise today
Father justified his shameless boast by compelling Mr Pilkings to grant him the usual leave of absence and they prepared to start for West Skipsit Cape Cod where they always spent their vacations at the farmhouse of Uncle Joe Tubbs
Mother took a week to pack and unpack to go panting downstairs to the corner drugstore for new tubes of toothpaste and a presentable sponge to remend all that was remendable to press Father’s flappy shapeless little trousers with the family flatiron to worry over whether she should take the rosepink or the daffodilyellow wrapper—which had both faded to approximately the same shade of gray but which7 were to her trusting mind still interestingly different Each year she had to impress Mrs Tubbs of West Skipsit with new metropolitan finery and this year Father had no peace nor comfort in the ménage till she had selected a smart new hat incredibly small and close and sinking coyly down over her ear He was only a man folk he was in the way incapable of understanding this problem of fashion and Mother almost slapped him one evening for suggesting that it “wouldn’t make such a goshawful lot of difference if she didn’t find some new fad to impress Sister Tubbs”
But Mother wearied of repacking their two cheap wicker suitcases and the brown pasteboard box and Father suddenly came to the front in his true capacity as boss and leader He announced loudly on the evening before they were to depart “We’re going to have a party tonight old lady”
At the masterful tones of this man of the world who wasn’t afraid of train or travel who had gone successfully through the mysteries of purchasing transportation clear to Cape Cod Mother looked impressed But she said doubtfully “Oh do you think we better Father We’ll be traveling and all—”
8 “Yessiree We’re going to a movie and then we’re going to have a banana split and I’m going to carry my cane and smoke a seegar You know mighty well you like the movies as well as I do”
“Acting up like a young smarty” Mother said but she obediently put on her hat—Lord no not the new small hat that was kept to impress West Skipsit Massachusetts—and as she trotted to the movies beside him the two of them like solemn white puppies venturing away from their mother she occasionally looked admiringly up a whole inch up at her hero
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9CHAPTER II
THEY took the steamer for Massachusetts at five o’clock When the band started to play when Mother feared that a ferry was going to collide with them when beautiful youths in boating hats popped out of staterooms like chorusmen in a musical comedy when children banged small sandpails when the steamer rounded the dreamcastles of lower New York when it seemed inconceivable that the flagstaff could get under Brooklyn Bridge—which didn’t clear it by much more than a hundred feet—when a totally new New York of factories and docks of steamers bound for Ceylon and yachts bound for Newport was revealed to these old NewYorkers—then Mother mingled a terrific apprehension regarding ships and water with a palpitating excitement over sailing into the freedom which these two grayhaired children had longed for all their lives and had found during two weeks of each year
10 Father was perfectly tremendous He apprehensive Why he might have been the original man to go down to the sea in ships Mother wailed that all the deckchairs had been taken Father found mountains of chairs and flipped a couple of them open as though he were a steward with service stripes He was simply immense in his manner of thrusting Mother and himself and his chairs and a mound of shawls and coats into the midst of the crowd gathered at the bow He noted Mother’s nervousness and observed casually “Mighty safe these boats Like ferries Safer ’n trains Yes they’re safer ’n staying home in bed what with burgulars and fires and everything”
“Oh do you really think they are safe” breathed Mother comforted
Admirable though Father was he couldn’t sit still He was wearing a decorative new traveling cap very smart and extensive and expensive shaped like a muffin and patterned with the Douglas tartan and an Etruscan border He rather wanted to let people see it He was no Pilkings clerk now but a worldgalloper With his cap clapped down on one side and his youthful cigaretteholder cocked up on the other and in his buttonhole a carnation jaunty as a red11 pompon with the breeze puffing out the light silver hair about his temples and his pink cheeks glowing in the westering sun he promenaded round and round the hurricanedeck and stopped to pat a whimpering child But always he hastened back lest Mother get frightened or lonely Once he imagined that two toughs were annoying her and he glared at them like a sparrow robbed of a crumb
As he escorted her into the diningsaloon Father’s back was straight his chin very high He was so prosperous of aspect so generous and proudly affectionate that people turned to look It was obvious that if he had anything to do with the shoe business he must be a manufacturer in a large way with profitsharing and model cottages
The sun went down Long Island Sound was shot with red gold as little waves reached up hands at the wonder of light Father and Mother gazed and ate chocolate icecream and large quantities of cake with the naïve relish of people who usually dine at home
They sat on deck till Mother yawned and nodded and at last said the “Well—” which always means “Let’s go to bed” Father had so inspired her with faith in the comparative12 safety of their wild voyaging that she was no longer afraid but just sleepy She nestled in her chair and smiled shamefacedly and said “It’s only halfpast nine but somehow—” In her drowsiness the wrinkles smoothed away from round her eyes and left her face like that of a plump tired happy little girl
When they were at home Father’s and Mother’s garments had a way of getting so familiarly mixed that even Mother could scarcely keep their bureau drawers separate But when they traveled they were aristocrats and they had entirely separate suitcases and berths From the pompous manner in which Father unpacked his bag you would have been utterly beguiled and have supposed him to be one of those high persons who have whole suites to themselves and see their consorts only at state banquets when there are celery and olives and the squire invited to dinner There was nothing these partners in life more enjoyed than the one night’s pretense that they were aloof But they suddenly forgot their rôles they squealed with pleasure and patted each other’s shoulders fondly For simultaneously they had discovered the surprises In Mother’s suitcase inside her secondbest boots Father had hidden four13 slender beribboned boxes of the very best chocolate peppermints while in Father’s seemly nightgown was a magnificent new mouthorgan
Father was an artist on the mouthorgan He could set your heart prancing with the strains of “Dandy Dick and the Candlestick” But his old mouthorgan had grown wheezy Now he sat down and played softly till their tiny inside stateroom was filled with a tumbling chorus of happy notes
When Mother was asleep in the lower berth and Father was believed to be asleep in the upper he slipped on his coat and trousers and kittenfooted out of the stateroom to a dark corner of the deck For very secretly Father was afraid of the water He who had insouciantly reassured Mother had himself to choke down the timorous speculations of a shopbound clerk While the sun was fair on the water and there were obviously no leviathans nor anything like that bearing down upon them he was able to conceal his fear—even from himself But now that he didn’t have to cheer Mother now that the boat rolled forward through a black nothingness he knew that he was afraid He sat huddled and remembered all the tales he had heard of fire and collision14 and reefs He vainly assured himself that every stateroom was provided with an automatic sprinkler He made encouraging calculations as to the infrequency of collisions on the Sound and scoffed at himself “Why the most shipping there could be at night would be a couple of schooners maybe a torpedoboat” But dread of the unknown was on him
Father went through this spasm of solitary fear each first night of vacation It wasn’t genuine fear It was the growingpain of freedom The cricket who chirped so gaily when he was with Mother was also a weary man a prisoner of daily routine He had to become free for freedom
Laughingly then bitterly he rebuked himself for fear And presently he was bespelled by the wonder of the unknown Beyond the water through which they slid black and smooth as polished basalt he saw a lighthouse winking From his steamer timetable he learned that it must be Great Gull Island light Great Gull Island It suggested to him thunderous cliffs with surf flung up on beetling rock screaming gulls and a smuggler on guard with menacing rifle He lost his fear of fear he ceased to think about his accustomed life of two aisles15 and the showcase of new models and the background of boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes—tokens of the drudgery that was ground into him like grit The Father who worried was changing into the adventurous wanderer that henceforward he would be—for two weeks He stretched out his short arms and breathed deeply of the night wind
Half an hour later he was asleep But not it must be confessed in the aristocratic seclusion of his own berth He was downily curled beside Mother his cheek nuzzled beside her delicate old hand
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16CHAPTER III
THEY changed from steamer to railroad about eleven in the morning they stepped out at West Skipsit Cape Cod Uncle Joe Tubbs and Mrs Tubbs were driving up in a country buggy Father and Mother filled their nostrils with the smell of the salt marshes their ears with the long murmur of the miledistant surf their eyes with the shine of the great dunes and the demure peace of a New England white cottage standing among firs and appletrees—scent and sound and sight of their freedom
“Father we’re here” Mother whispered her eyes wet Then “Oh do be careful of that box There’s a hat there that’s going to make Matilda Tubbs catch her death from envy”
To the Tubbses though they were cynical with a hoary wisdom in regard to NewYorkers and summerites and boarders in general the annual coming of the Applebys was welcome as cider and buttered toast—yes they even gave17 Father and Mother the best chamber with the fourposter bed and the mirror bordered with Florida shells at a much reduced rate They burrowed into their grim old hearts as Uncle Joe Tubbs grubbed into the mud for clams and brought out treasures of shy affection
As soon as they reached the Tubbs farmhouse the two women went off together to the kitchen while the men sneaked toward the inlet Mother didn’t show her new hat as yet that was in reserve to tantalize Mrs Tubbs with the waiting Besides for a day or two the women couldn’t take down the bars and say what they thought But the men immediately pounded each other on the back and called each other “Seth” and “Joe” and keeping behind banks lest they be seen by young uns they shamefacedly paddled barefoot—two old men with bare feet and silvery shanks chuckling and catching crabs in a salt inlet among rolling hillocks covered with sedgegrass that lisped in the breeze The grass hollows were filled with quiet and the sound of hovering flies Beyond was a hill shiny with laurel
They dug for LittleNeck clams in the mud by the Pond they discussed the cranberry bog and the war and the daily catch of the traps18 they interrupted their sage discourse to whoop at a mackerel gull that flapped above them they prowled along the inlet to the Outside and like officials they viewed a passing pogieboat Uncle Joe Tubbs ought to have been washing dishes and he knew it but the coming of the Applebys annually gave him the excuse for a complete loaf Besides he was sure that by now Mother Appleby would be in apron and gingham helping the protesting yet willing Mrs Tubbs
The greatest philosophical theory in the world is that “people are people” The Applebys who had mellowed among streets and shops were very much like the Tubbses of Cape Cod Father was in his unquenchable fondness for Mother like Romeo like golden Aucassin But also in his sly fondness for loafing on a sunny grassbank smoking a vile pipe and arguing that the war couldn’t last more than six months he was very much like Uncle Joe Tubbs As for Mother she gossiped about the ancient feud between the West Skipsit Universalists and Methodists and she said “wa’n’t” exactly like Mrs Tubbs
There were other boarders at the Tubbses’ and before them at supper both of the old19 couples maintained the gravity with which vainly Age always endeavors to impress Youth Uncle Joe was crotchety and Mrs Tubbs was brisk about the butter and the Applebys were tremendously dignified and washed and brushed and not averse to being known as superior star boarders from that superior city New York personages to whom the opera and the horseshow were perfectly familiar Father dismissed a small amateurish war debate by letting it be known that in his business—nature of business not stated—he was accustomed to meet the diplomatic representatives of the very choicest nations and to give them advice Which indeed he did—regarding shoes For Pilkings Son had a rather élite clientele for Sixth Avenue and Father had with his own hands made glad the feet of the Swedish consul and the Bolivian trade agent
A man from South Bromfield started to cap the pose as low persons always do in these boardinghouses but Father changed the subject in a slightly peppery manner Father could be playful with Mother but like all men who are worth anything he could be as Olympian as a king or a woman author or a boxoffice manager when he was afflicted by young20 men who chewed gum and were chatty He put his goldbowed eyeglasses on the end of his nose and looked over them so wealthily that the summerites were awed and shyly ate their applesauce to the last dreg
Twelve o’clock dinner at the Tubbses’ was a very respectable meal with roasts and vegetables to which you could devote some skill and energy But supper was more like an afterthought a sort of afternoon tea without the wristwatch conversation It was soon over the dishes soon washed and by seven o’clock the Applebys and Tubbses gathered in the sacred parlor where ordinary summerites were not welcome where the family crayonenlargements hung above the green plush settee from Boston which was flanked by the teak table which Uncle Joe’s Uncle Ira had brought from China and the whale’s vertebræ without which no highcaste Cape Cod household is virtuous With joy and verbal fireworks with highly insulting comments on one another’s play began the annual series of cribbage games—a world’s series a Davis cup tournament Doffing his usual tobaccochewing collarless jocose manner Uncle Joe reverently took from the whatnot the ancestral cribbageboard carved from21 a solid walrustooth They stood about exclaiming over it then fell to “Fifteentwo fifteenfour and a pair is six” rang out triumphantly Finally as happened every year on the occasion of their first game when the men had magnificently won Mrs Tubbs surprised them with refreshments—they would have been jolly well surprised if she hadn’t surprised them—and Father played recent New York musical comedy songs on his new mouthorgan stopping to explain the point of each whereupon Mother shook her head and said warningly “Now Father you be careful what you say Honestly I don’t know what the world is coming to Mrs Tubbs the way men carry on nowadays” But she wasn’t very earnest about it because she was gigglingly aware that Uncle Joe was stealing Mrs Tubbs’s share of the doughnuts
They were all as hysterical as a girls’ school during this annual celebration But Father peeped out of the parlor window and saw the lush moonlight on marsh and field To Mother with an awed quiet “Sarah it’s moonlight like it used to be—” The Tubbses seemed to understand that the sweethearts wanted to be alone and they made excuses to be off to bed22 On the porch wrapped in comforters and coats against the seaside chill Father and Mother cuddled together They said little—everything was said for them by the moonlight silvery on the marshes wistful silver among the dunes while the surf was lulled and the whole spacious night seemed reverent with love His hand cradled hers as the hand of a child would close round a lily leaf
Halcyon days of sitting in rockingchairs under the beechtrees on locustzizzing afternoons of hunting for shells on the backside shore of the Cape of fishing for whiting from the landing on the bay side of musing among the manycolored grasses of the uplands They would have gone ambling along such dreamland roads to the end of their vacation had it not been for the motorcar of Uncle Joe’s soninlaw
That car changed their entire life Among the hills of peace there was waiting for them an adventure
Uncle Joe’s soninlaw lived in a portable bungalow a mile away He rotated crops He peddled fish with a motorcar In five minutes he could detach from the back of his car the box in which he carried the fish clap on a rather rickety tonneau and be ready to compete in23 stylish pleasures with the largest limousine from Newport or Brookline Father and Mother went wheezing about the country with him Father had always felt that he had the makings of a motorist because of the distinct pleasure he had felt in motorbus rides on New York Sundays and he tactfully encouraged the soninlaw in the touring mania So it was really Father’s fault that they found the tearoom
The six of them the Applebys the Tubbses and soninlaw and daughter somewhat cramped as to space and dusty as to garments had motored to Cotagansuit Before them out across the road hung the sign Ye Tea Shoppe
“Say by Jiminy let’s go into that Tea Shoppy and have some eats” said Father “My treat”
“Nope it’s mine” said the Tubbses’ soninlaw hypocritically
“Not a word out of you” sang out Father gallantly “Hey there chauffeur stop this new car of mine at the Shoppy”
As the rusty car drew up Mrs Tubbs and Mother looked rather agitatedly at a group of young people girls in smocks and men in white flannels who were making society noises before24 the brown barn which had been turned into a tearoom The two old women felt that they weren’t quite dressed for a party they were shy of silken youth Mrs Tubbs’s daughter was conscious of the fact that her 198 washdress shapeless from many washings was soiled in front But Uncle Joe the old hardshell was never abashed at anything He shifted his tobacco quid and “guessed he’d have to get some white pants like that young redheaded fellow’s”
Then Father again proved himself magnificent Wasn’t he a NewYorker “No flossy tearoom and no bunch of young fellows in icecream breeches—probably they were only clerks anyway if the truth was known—was going to scare your Uncle Dudley offn tea Not that he cared so much for tea itself ’drather have a good cup of coffee any time but he didn’t want Joe Tubbs to think he wasn’t used to fashionable folks” So with a manner of wearing goggles and gauntlets he led the women and the shambling soninlaw and the brazenly sloppy Uncle Joe through the flowery youth and into the raftered room with its new fireplace and old William and Mary chairs its highboy covered with brassware and its little25 teatables with slender handicraft vases each containing one marigold Father ignored all these elegances and commanded a disdainful waitress with a frilly white apron “Let’s have a couple of tables together here eh” He himself shifted chairs and made a joke and started to select impressive food
He was used to New York restaurants and to quite expensive hotels for at least once a year on his birthday Mr Pilkings took him to lunch at the Waldorf While he had apparently been devoting himself to arranging the tables his cunning old brain had determined to order tea and French pastry Apparently the Tea Shoppe was neutral There was no French pastry on the bill but instead such curious edibles as cinnamon toast cream cheese walnut sandwiches Martha Washington muffins Nor was the tea problem so easy as it had seemed To Father there were only two kinds of tea—the kind you got for a nickel at the Automat and the kind that Mother privately consumed But here he had to choose intelligently among orange pekoe oolong Ceylon and Englishbreakfast teas
Father did a very brave thing though he probably will never get the Carnegie medal for26 it Instead of timidly asking the lofty waitress’s advice he boldly plunged in and ordered two kinds of sandwiches cinnamon toast and because he liked the name orange pekoe He rather held his breath but apparently the waitress took him quite seriously and some time in the course of the afternoon actually brought him what he had asked for
Ye Tea Shoppe was artistic You could tell that by the fact that none of the arts and crafts wares exposed for sale were in the least useful And it was too artistic too far above the sordidness of commercialism to put any prices on the menucards Consequently Father was worried about his bill all the time he was encouraging his guests to forget their uncomfortably decorative surroundings and talk like regular people But when he saw how skinny were the sandwiches and how reticent the cinnamon toast he was cheered He calculated that the whole bill couldn’t in decency be more than ninety cents for the six of them
In the midst of his nicest flow of fancy about Mother’s fear of mice the bill was laid decorously on its face beside him Still talking but hesitating somewhat he took a peep at the bill It was for three dollars and sixty cents
27 He felt congealed but he talked on He slid a fivedollar bill from his diminutive roll and gallantly paid up His only comment when in the car Mother secretly asked how much he had been overcharged was the reflection “They certainly ought to make money out of those tearooms Their profit must be something like five hundred per cent That strikes me as a pretty good way to earn a living old lady You live in a nice comfortable place in the country and don’t have to do any work but slice bread and stick in chicken or cream cheese and make five hundred per cent Say—”
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28CHAPTER IV
HE didn’t say it But Father had been knocked breathless by an idea He was silent all the way home He made figures on the last leaf of his little pocket accountbook He manoeuvered to get Mother alone and exultantly shot his idea at her
They were beginning to get old the city was almost too much for them They would pick out some pretty rustic spot and invest their savings in a tearoom At fivehundred per cent they would make enough during three months of summer to keep them the rest of the year If they were located on Cape Cod perhaps they could spend the winter with the Tubbses They would have a garden they would keep chickens dogs pussies yes a cow they would buy land acre by acre they would have a farm to sustain them when they were too old for work maybe they would open a whole chain of tearooms and ride about supervising29 them in a motorcar big as a house they would—
“Now hold your horses Father” she begged dizzily “I never did see such a man for running on You go on like a house afire You ought to know more at your time of life than to go counting your chickens before—”
“I’m going to hatch them Don’t they tell us in every newspaper and magazine you can lay your hand on that this is the Age of the Man with the Idea Look here Two slices of homemade bread I calc’late don’t cost more than threefifths of a cent I shouldn’t think and cream cheese to smear on them about half a cent there’s a little over a cent and overhead—’course you wouldn’t take overhead into account and then you go and say I ain’t practical and hatching chickens and all but let me tell you Sarah Jane Appleby I’m a business man and I’ve been trained and I tell you as Pilkings has often said to me it’s overhead that makes or breaks a business that’s what it is just like he says yes sir overhead So say we’ll allow—now let me see ten plus ten is twenty and one sixhundredth of twenty would be—six in two is—no two in six is—well anyway to make it absolutely safe we’ll allow a30 cent and a half for each sandwich to cover overhead and rent and fuel and then they sell a sandwich at fifteen cents which is uh the way they figure percentage of profit—well make it say seven hundred per cent ’Course just estimating roughly like Now can you beat that And tearooms is a safe sound interesting genteel business if there ever was one What have you got to say to that”
Father didn’t often thus deluge her with words but then he didn’t often have a Revolutionary Idea She had never heard of “overhead” and she was impressed though in some dim confused way she rather associated “overhead” with the rafters of the tearoom She emerged gasping from the shower and all she could say was “Yes it would be very genteel And I must say I always did like them handpainted artistic things But do you really think it would be safe Father”
“Safe Pooh Safe’s the bank”
They were in for it Of course they were going to discuss it back and forth for months and sit up nights to make figures on the backs of laundrybills But they had been fated the moment Father had seen Mother and himself as delightful hosts playing with people in silk31 sweaters in a general atmosphere of roses fresh lobster and gentility
They explored the Cape for miles around looking for a place where they might open a tearoom if they did decide to do so They said goodby to the Tubbses and returned to New York to the noisy streets and the thankless drudgery at Pilkings Son’s
In December they definitely made up their minds to give up the shoe business take their few hundred dollars from the bank and the coming summer open a tearoom in an old farmhouse on the Cliffs at Grimsby Head Cape Cod
Out of saving money for the tearoom that winter the Applebys had as much fun as they had ever found in spending They were comrades partners in getting along without things as they had been partners in working to acquire little luxuries They went to the movies only once a month—that made the movies only the more thrilling On the morning before they were to go Father would pound softly on the pillow by Mother’s head and sing “Wake up It’s a fine day and we’re going to see a photoplay tonight”
Mother did without her chocolate peppermints and Father cut his smoking down to one32 cigarette after each meal—though occasionally being but a mortal man he would fall into sinful ways and smoke up three or four cigarettes while engaged in an enthralling conversation regarding Mr Pilkings’s meanness with fellowclerks at lunch at the Automat Afterward he would be very repentant he would have a severe case of conviction of sin and Mother would have to comfort him when he accused himself
“Seems as if I couldn’t doggone never learn to control myself I ain’t hopeless am I I declare I’m disgusted with myself when I think of your going without your chocolates and me just making a profane old razorback hog of myself”
There was no sordidness in their minute economy no chill of poverty they were saving for an excursion to paradise They crowed as they thought of the beauty of their discovery lonely Grimsby Head where the sea stretched out on one side of their house and moors on the other with the State road and its motorists only two hundred feet from their door Though they should live in that sentinel house for years never would they enjoy it more than they now did in anticipation when they sat of an evening33 in their brown flat looking down on a delicatessen a laundry and a barbershop and planned to invest in their house of accomplished dreams the nickels they were managing to save
The only thing that worried Father was the fact that their project put upon Mother so great a burden in the way of preparations At first he took it for granted that only women could know about tea and teacups decorations and paper napkins and art and the disposal of garbage He determined to learn By dint of much deep ratiocination while riding in the Elevated between flat and store he evolved the new idea—cheapness
It was nonsense he decided to have eggshell china and to charge fifteen cents for tea Why not have neat inexpensive china good but not exorbitant tea and charge only five or ten cents as did the numerous luncheonplaces he knew Mother eagerly agreed
Then the man of ideas began to turn his brain to saving Mother the trouble of selecting the tearoom equipment It was not an easy problem for him This gallant traveler who wore his cap so cockily and paid a threedollarandsixtycent check so nonchalantly when he was traveling was really an underpaid clerk
34 He began by informing himself on all the technicalities of tearooms He lunched at tearooms He prowled in front of tearooms He dreamed about tearooms He became a dabster at tucking paper napkins into his neat little waistcoat without tearing them He got acquainted with the waitress at the Nickleby Tavern which was not a tavern though it was consciously painstakingly seriously quaint and he cautiously made inquiry of her regarding tea and china During his lunchhours he frequented auction sales on Sixth Avenue and became so sophisticated in the matter of secondhand goods that the youngest clerk at Pilkings Son’s a child of forty who was about to be married respectfully asked Father about furnishing a flat He rampaged through department stores without buying a thing till store detectives secretly followed him He read the bargainsale advertisements in his morning paper before he even looked at the warnews headlines
Father was no fool but he had been known to prefer kindliness to convenience When he could get things for the same price he liked to buy them from small struggling dealers rather than from large and efficient ones—thereby35 in his innocent way helping to perpetuate the old system of weak unskilled casual chaotically competitive businesses This kindliness moved him when during his search for information about tearoom accessories he encountered a feeble but pretentious racketstore which a young Hungarian had established on Twentysixth Street just off Sixth Avenue The Hungarian and one girl assistant were trying by futile garish windowdecorations to draw trade from the great department stores and the fiveandtencent stores on one side of them and the smart shops on the other side But the Hungarian was clever too clever He first found out all of Father’s plans then won Father’s sympathy He coughed a little and with a touching smile which was intended to rouse admiration declared that his lungs were bad but never mind he would fight on and go away for a rest when he had succeeded He insinuated that as he was not busy now he could do all the buying and get better terms from wholesalers or bankruptcy bargain sales than could Father himself The Hungarian’s best stock in trading with Father was to look young and pathetically threadbare to smile and shake his head and say playfully as though36 he were trying to hide his secret generosity by a pretense of severity “But of course I’d charge you a commission—you see I’m a hardhearted fella”
It was January In a month now Mother would be grunting heavily and beginning the labor of buying for the tearoom So far she had done nothing but crochet two or three million tidies for the tearoom chairs “to make them look homey”
The Hungarian showed Father teacups with huge quantities of gold on them He assured Father that it was smarter to buy odd cups—also cheaper as thus they could take advantage of broken lots and closingout sales Fascinated Father kept hanging around and at last he bolted frantically and authorized the Hungarian to purchase everything for him
Which the Hungarian had already done knowing that the fly was on the edge of the web
You know the things didn’t look so bad not so very bad—as long as they were new
Teacups and saucers gilded like shavingmugs and equally thick Goldenoak chairs of midChautauquan patterns with backs of sawmill Heppelwhite chairs of cane and rattan with fussy scrolls and curlicues of wicker37 the backs set askew Reed tables with gollops of wicker plain black wooden tables that were like kitchen tables once removed foldingtables that may have been suitable to cardplaying if you didn’t play anything more exciting than casino Flat silver that was heavily plated except where it was likely to wear Teapots of mottled glaze and creamjugs with knobs of gilt and square china ashtrays on which one instinctively expected to find the legend “Souvenir of Niagara Falls” Too many cakebaskets and too few sugarbowls Dark blue plates with warts on the edges and melancholy landscapes painted in the centers Chintzes and wallpapers of patterns fashionable in 1890 Teacartons that had the most inspiring labels cocoa that was bitter and pepper that was mild preserves that were generous with hayseed and glucose
But everything was varnished that could be varnished everything was tied with pink ribbon that would stand for it the whole collection looked impressively new to a man accustomed to a shabby flat the prices seemed reasonable and Mother was saved practically all the labor of buying
She had clucked comfortably every time he38 had worried aloud about her task Yet she was secretly troubled It gave her a headache to climb down the four flights of stairs from their flat The acrid dust of the city streets stung her eyes the dissonant grumble of a million hurrying noises dizzied her and she would stand on a streetcorner for five minutes before daring to cross When Father told her that all the buying was done and awaiting her approval she gasped But she went down with him was impressed by the shininess and newness of things—and the Hungarian was given a good share of the Applebys’ lifesavings agitatedly taken out of the savingsbank in specie
They had purchased freedom The house at Grimsby Head was eager for them Mother cried as she ripped up the carpet in their familiar flat and saw the treasured furniture rudely crated for shipment to the unknown She felt that she was giving up ever so many metropolitan advantages by leaving New York so prematurely Why she’d never been inside Grant’s Tomb She’d miss her second cousin—not that she’d seen the cousin for a year or two And on the desert moors of Grimsby she couldn’t run across the street to a delicatessen But none of the inconveniences of going away so39 weighed upon her spirit as did the memory of their hours together in this flat
But when she stood with him on the steamer again bound for the Cape when the spring breeze gave life to her faded hair she straightened her shoulders and stood like a conqueror
“Gee we’ll be at Grimsby tomorrow” piped Father throwing his coat open and debonairly sticking his thumbs into his lower waistcoat pockets “The easy life for me old lady I’m going to sit in a chair in the sun and watch you work”
“How you do run on” she said “You wait and find out the way you have to wash dishes and all We’ll see what we see my fine young whiffet”
“Say James J Jerusalem but I’ve got a fine idea I know what we’ll call the tearoom— ‘The T Room’—see not spelling out the T Great eh”
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40CHAPTER V
IT was May in Arcady and those younghearted old lovers Mr and Mrs Seth Appleby were almost ready to open the tearoom They had leased for a term of two years an ancient and weathered house on the gravel cliffs of Grimsby Head From the cliffs the ocean seemed more sweepingly vast than when beheld from the beach and the plain of it was colored like a pearly shell To the other side of their dreamhouse were moors that might have been transplanted from Devon rolling uplands covered with wiry grass that was springy to the feet dappled with lichens which gave to the spacious land its lovely splashes of color—rose and green and sulphur and quiet gray
It was a lonely countryside the nearest signs of human life were a church gauntly silhouetted on the hill above Grimsby Center two miles away and a lifesaving station squat and sandcolored slapped down in a hollow of41 the cliffs But near the Applebys’ door ran the State road black and oily and smooth on which even at the beginning of the summer season passed a procession of motors from Boston and Brockton Newport and New York all of them unquestionably filled with people who would surely discover that they were famished for tea and preserves and tremendous quantities of sandwiches as soon as Father and Mother hung out the sign “The T Room”
They would open in a day or two now when Mother had finished the livid chintz windowcurtains The serviceroom was already crammed with chairs and tables till it resembled a furniturestore A maid was established a Cape Verde Portygee girl from Mashpee All day long Father had been copying the menu upon the florid cards which he had bought from a bankrupt Jersey City printer—thick giltedged cards embossed with forgetmenots in colors which hadn’t quite registered
From their upper rooms in which Mother had arranged the furniture to make the new home resemble their New York flat the Applebys came happily downstairs for the sunset They were still excited at having country and sea at their door still felt that all life would42 be one perpetual vacation Every day now they would have the wild peace of the Cape for two weeks of which each year they had had to work fifty weeks Think of stepping out to a view of the sea instead of a view of Brambach’s laundry They were in fact as glad to get into the open as the cityseeking youngster is to get away from it
On the landward side of the bleak house crimsonrambler roses were luxuriant and a stiff shellbordered garden gave charily of small marigolds Riches were these by comparison with the two geraniums in a windowbox which had been their New York garden But they had an even greater pride—the rosearbor Sheltered by laurel from the sea winds was a whitewashed lattice covered with crimson ramblers Through a gap in the laurels they could see the ocean stabbingly blue in contrast to the white dunes which reared battlements along the top of the gravel cliff Far out a coasting schooner blossomed on the blue skyline Bees hummed and the heart was quiet Already the Applebys had found the place of brooding blossoms for which they had hoped already they loved the rosearbor as they had never loved the city He nuzzled her cheek43 like an old horse out at pasture and “Old honey” he whispered
Two days more and they had the tearoom ready for its opening
Father insisted on giving the evening over to wild ceremonies He played “Juanita” and “Kelly with the Green Necktie” and other suitable chants upon that stately instrument the mouthorgan and marched through the tearoom banging on a dishpan with the wooden saladspoon Suddenly he turned into the first customer and seating himself in a lordly manner with his legs crossed his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his hands waving fanwise he ordered “Lettuce sandwiches sodywater a tenderloin steak fishballs a bottle of champagne and icecream with beef gravy and hustle my order young woman”
Mother was usually too shy for makebelieve but this time she was stirred to stand with her fat dollarms akimbo and to retort “You’ll get nothing here young fellow This is a place for ladies and gents only”
They squealed and hugged each other From the kitchen door the Portygee maid viewed her employers with lofty scorn as Father gave a whole series of imitations of the possible first44 customer who as variously presented might be Jess Willard Senator Lodge General von Hindenburg or Mary Pickford
At four next afternoon with the solemn trembling of an explorer hoisting the flag to take possession of new territory they hung out their sign stepped back to admire it as it swung and shone against the crimson ramblers and watched for the next motorcar
It was coming It was a sevenpassenger car filled with women in blanket coats One of them actually waved as the car approached the little couple who were standing in the sun unconsciously arm in arm Then the car had streaked by was gone round the bend
The second car passed them and the third A long intense period when the road was vacant Then the fourth and fifth cars almost together and the file of motorists turned from exciting prospects into just motorists passing strangers oblivious of the two old people under their hopeful sign
While they were forlornly reentering the house the eleventh car suddenly stopped and five hungry people trooped into the tearoom with demands for tea and muffins and cake The Applebys didn’t have muffins but they45 did have sandwiches and everybody was happy Mother shooed the maid out into the kitchen and herself with awkward eagerness to get orders exactly right leaned over the teatable In the kitchen Father stuffed kindling into the stove to bring the water to a boil again and pantingly seized the breadknife and attacked a loaf as though he were going to do it a violence Mother entered took the knife away from him and dramatically drove him out to cut up more kindling
The customers were served While they ate and drank and talked about what they had eaten and drunk at lunch at an inn they were unconscious of two old pairs of eyes that watched them from the kitchen door as brightly as furtively as excitedly as two birds in a secret thicket The host paid without remarks what seemed to the Applebys an enormous bill a dollar and sixty cents and rambled out to the car still unknowing that two happy people wanted to follow him with their blessings This history is unable to give any further data regarding him when his car went round the bend he disappeared from the fortunes of the Applebys and he was not to know how much blessing he had scattered I say perhaps he46 was you who read this—you didn’t by any chance happen to be motoring between Yarmouth and Truro May 16 1915 did you With five in the party coffeecolored car with one mudguard slightly twisted
The season was not quick in opening To the Applebys the time between midMay and midJune was crawlingly slow On some days they had two orders some days none at all Of an evening before they could sink into the sunsetcolored peace of the rosearbor they had to convince themselves that they couldn’t really expect any business till the summerites had begun to take their vacations There was a curious psychological fact It had always been Father the brisk burdenbearer who had comforted the secluded Mother He had brought back to the flat the strenuousness of business But inactivity was hard on his merry heart he fretted and fussed at having nothing to do he raged at having to throw away unused bread because it was growing stale It was Mother who reminded him that they couldn’t expect business before the season
MidJune came the stream of cars was almost a solid parade the Portygee maid brought the news that there were summer boarders at47 the Nickerson farmhouse and the Applebys when they were in Grimsby Center buying butter and bread saw the rockingchair brigade mobilizing on the long white porches of the Old Harbor Inn
And trade began
There was no rival tearoom within ten miles Father realized with a thumping heart that he had indeed chosen well in selecting Grimsby Head Ten twelve even fifteen orders a day came from the motorists The chronic summerites they who came to Grimsby Center each year walked over to see the new tearoom and to purchase Mother’s homemade doughnuts On June 27th the Applebys made a profit of 467 net
As they rested in the rosearbor at dusk of that day Father burst out in desperate seriousness “Oh my dear my dear it is going to go I was beginning to get scared I couldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d let you in for something that would have been a failure Golly I’ve been realizing that we would have been pretty badly up against it if the tearoom hadn’t panned out right I’d have wanted to shoot myself if I’d been and gone and led you into want old honey”
48 Then after the first of July when the Cape Cod season really began business suddenly fell away to nothing They couldn’t understand it In panic they reduced the price of tea to five cents No result They had about one customer a day They had not looked to Grimsby Center for the cause That they might personally attend to business they had been sending the maid to the Center for their supplies while they stuck at home—and wore out their hearts in vain hoping in terrified wonder as to why the invisible gods had thus smitten them Not for a week a week of draining expense without any income to speak of did they find out
One July evening they walked to Grimsby Center Halfway down they came to a new sign shaped like a teapot declaring in a striking block of print
MISS MITCHIN OF BROOKLINE ANNOUNCES THE QUAINTEST TEAROOM ON THE CAPE HISTORIC SOULE MANSION GRIMSBY CENTER CRUMPETS AND SALLY LUNNS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM OPEN JULY 1
And the Applebys had never heard of crumpets or Sally Lunns
While the light turned the moors to a wistful49 lavender the little old couple stood in a hollow of the road looking mutely up at the sign that mocked them from its elevation on a bare gravel bank beside the way Father’s shoulders braced he bit his lips he reached out for Mother’s hand and patted it He led her on and it was he who spoke first
“Oh that kind of mifflebusiness won’t hurt us any Girlygirly stuff that’s what it is Regular autoists would rather have one of your homemade doughnuts than all the crumples in the world and you can just bet your bottom dollar on that Sary Jane”
He even chuckled but it was a feeble chuckle and he could find no other solace to give as they trudged toward Grimsby Center two insignificant people hand in hand dim in the melancholy light which made mysterious the stretching moors Presently they and the black highroad disappeared Only the sandy casual trails and mirrorbright tiny pools stood out in the twilight
Yet there was light enough for them to see the silhouettes of two more teapot signs before they entered Grimsby Center
The village was gay comparatively There was to be a motionpicture show in the town50 hall and the sign advertising it was glaring with no less than four incandescent lights In the Old Harbor Inn the guests were dancing to phonograph music after their early supper A man who probably meant well was playing long yellowish twilit wails on a cornet somewhere on the outskirts Girls in sailor jumpers with vivid V’s of warmly tanned flesh or in sweaters of green and rose and violet and canary yellow wandered down to the postoffice To the citybred Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild activity after their farmhouse weeks indeed Father suggested “We ought to stay and see the movies Look Royal X Snivvles in ‘The Lure of the Crimson Cobra’—six reels—that sounds snappy” But his exuberance died in a sigh A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign lightencircled teapot shaped hung out from a great elm Without explanations they turned toward it
They passed a mansion of those proud old days when whalers and China traders and WestIndiamen brought home gold and blacks Cashmere shawls and sweet sandalwood Malay oaths and the jawbones of whales The Applebys could see by the electric lights bowered in51 the lilacbushes that a stately grass walk lined with Madonna lilies and hollyhock and phlox led to the fanlightcrested white door above which hung the mocking teapot sign The house was lighted the windows open To the right of the hall was the artsshop where among walls softened with silky Turkish rugs and paintings of blue dawn amid the dunes were tables of blackandwhite china sports hats and Swiss toys which the Grimsby summer colony meekly bought at the suggestion of the sprightly Miss Mitchin
To the left was the diningroom full of small white candlelighted tables and the sound of laughter
“Gosh they even serve supper there” Father’s voice complained He scarcely knew that he had spoken Like Mother he was picturing their own small tearoom and the cardboardshaded oillamp that lighted it
“Come don’t let’s stand here” said Mother fiercely and they trailed forlornly past They were not so much envious as in awe of Miss Mitchin’s it seemed to belong to the same unattainable world as Newport and the giant New York hotels
The Applebys didn’t know it but Grimsby52 Center had become artistic They couldn’t know it but that sharpnosed geniushound Miss Mitchin was cashing in on her salon She came from Brookline hence Massachusetts Brahmins of almost pure caste could permit themselves to be seen at her tearoom But nowadays she spent her winters in New York as an artistic photographer and she entertained interior decorators minor fictionwriters and minus poets with free food every Thursday evening It may be hard to believe but in ad 1915 she was still calling her grabbag of talent a “salon” It was really a saloon with a literary freelunch counter In return whenever they could borrow the price from commercialized friends the yearners had her take their photographs artistically which meant throwing the camera out of focus and producing masterpieces which were everything except likenesses
When Miss Mitchin resolved to come to Grimsby Center her group of writers who had protected themselves against the rude crude world of business men and lawyers by living together in Chelsea Village were left defenseless They were in danger of becoming human So they all followed Miss Mitchin to Grimsby53 and contentedly went on writing about one another
There are many such groups with the same summer wateringplaces and the same winter beeringplaces Some of them drink hard liquor and play cards But Miss Mitchin’s group were very mild in manner though desperately violent in theory The young women wore plattersized tortoiseshell spectacles and smocks that were homedyed to a pleasing shrimp pink The young men also wore tortoiseshell spectacles but not smocks—not usually at least One of them had an Albanian costume and a beard that was a cross between the beard of an early Christian martyr on a diet and that of a hobo who merely needed a shave Elderly ladies loved to have him onestep with them and squeeze their elbows
All of the yearners read their poetry aloud very superior and rising in the inflections It is probable that they made a living by taking in one another’s literary washing But they were ever so brave about their financial misfortunes and they could talk about the ballet Russe and also charlotte russes in quite the nicest way Indeed it was a pretty sight to see them playing there on the lawn before the54 Mitchin mansion talking about the novels they were going to write and the revolutions they were going to lead
Had Miss Mitchin’s ballet of hobohemians been tough newspapermen they wouldn’t have been drawingcards for a tearoom But these literary ewelambs were a spectacle to charm the languishing eyes of the spinsters who filled the Old Harbor Inn and the clubwomen from the yellow water regions who were viewing the marvels of nature as displayed on and adjacent to the ocean Practically without exception these ladies put vine leaves in their hair—geranium leaves anyway—and galloped to Miss Mitchin’s to drink tea and discuss Freud and dance the foxtrot in a wild free artistic somewhat unstandardized manner
Because it was talked about and crowded ordinary untutored motorists judged Miss Mitchin’s the best place to go and permitted their wives to drag them past the tortoiseshell spectacles and the unprostituted art and the angular young ladies in baggy smocks breaking out in sudden irresponsible imitations of Pavlova
None of this subtlety this psychoanalysis and fellowship of the arts was evident to the Applebys They didn’t understand the problem55 “Why is a Miss Mitchin” All that they knew as they dragged weary joints down the elmrustling road and back to the bakery on Main Street was that Miss Mitchin’s caravanserai was intimidatingly grand—and very busy
They were plodding out of town again when Mother exclaimed “Why Father you forgot to get your cigarettes”
“No I— Oh I been smoking too much Do me good to lay off”
They had gone half a mile farther before she sighed “Cigarettes don’t cost much ’Twouldn’t have hurt you to got ’em You get ’em the very next time we’re in town—or send Katie down I won’t have you denying—”
Her voice droned away They could think of nothing but mean economies as they trudged the wide and magic night of the moors
When they were home and the familiar goldenoak chairs and tidies blurred their memory of Miss Mitchin’s crushing competition Father again declared that no dinky teapot inn could permanently rival Mother’s homemade doughnuts But he said it faintly then and more faintly on the days following for inactivity again enervated him—made him for the first time in his life feel almost old
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56CHAPTER VI
APPARENTLY the Applebys’ customers had liked “The T Room” well enough—some of them had complimented Mrs Appleby on the crispness of her doughnuts the generousness of her chicken sandwiches Those who had quarreled about the thickness of the bread or the vagueness of flavor in the tea Father had considered insulting and he had been perky as a fightingsparrow in answering them A good many must have been pleased for on their trip back from Provincetown they returned exclaimed that they remembered the view from the rosearbor and chatted with Father about the roads and New York and fish As soon as the first novelty of Miss Mitchin’s was gone the Applebys settled down to custom which was just large enough to keep their hopes staggering onward and just small enough to eat away their capital a few cents a day instead of giving them a profit
57 In the last week of July they were visited by their daughter Lulu—Lulu the fair Lulu the spectacled Lulu the lily wife of Harris Hartwig the uptodate druggist of Saserkopee New York
Lulu had informed them two weeks beforehand that they were to be honored with the presence of herself and her son Harry and Father and Mother had been unable to think of any excuse strong enough to keep her away Lulu wasn’t unkind to her parents rather she was too kind she gave them good advice and tried to arrange Mother’s hair in the coiffures displayed by Mrs Edward Schuyler Deflaver of Saserkopee who gave smart teas at the Woman’s Exchange Lulu cheerily told Father how well he was withstanding the hand of Time which made him feel decrepit and become profane
In fact though they took it for granted that they adored their dear daughter Lulu they knew that they would not enjoy a single game of cribbage nor a single recital by Signor Sethico Applebi the mouthorgan virtuoso as long as she was with them But she was coming and Mother frantically cleaned everything and hid her favorite old shoes
58 Mrs Lulu Hartwig arrived with a steamertrunk two new gowns a camera and Harry She seemed disappointed not to find a large summer hotel with dancing and golf next door to “The T Room” and she didn’t hesitate to say that her parents would have done better—which meant that Lulu would have enjoyed her visit more—if they had “located” at Bar Harbor or Newport She rearranged the furniture but as there was nothing in the tearoom but chairs tables and a fireplace there wasn’t much she could do
She descended on Grimsby Center and came back enthusiastic about Miss Mitchin’s She had met the young man with the Albanian costume and he had talked to her about vorticism and this jolly new Polish composer with his suite for tomtom and cymbals She led Father into the arbor and effervescently demanded “Why don’t Mother and you have a place like that dear old mansion of Miss Mitchin’s and all those clever people there and all”
Father fairly snarled “Now look here young woman the less you say about Miss Mitten the more popular you’ll be around here And don’t you dare to speak to your mother about that59 place It’s raised the devil with our trade and I won’t have your mother bothered with it And if you mean the young fellow that needs a decent pair of pantaloons by this ‘Albanian costume’ business why I sh’d think you’d be ashamed to speak of him”
“Now Father of course you have particularly studied artists—”
“Look here young woman when you used to visit us in New York it was all right for you to get our goats by sticking your snub nose in the air and asking us if we’d read a lot of newfangled books that we’d never heard of I’ll admit that was a good way to show us how superior you were But this Miss Mitten place is a pretty serious proposition for us to buck and I absolutely forbid you to bother your mother with mentioning it”
Father stood straight and glared at her There was in him nothing of the weary little man who was in awe of Miss Mitchin’s Even his daughter was impressed She forgot for a moment that she was Mrs Hartwig now and had the best phonograph in Saserkopee But she took one more shot
“All the same it would be a good thing for you if you had some clever people—or60 some society people—coming here often It would advertise the place as nothing else would”
“Well we’ll see about that” said Father—which meant of course that he wouldn’t see about it
Lulu Hartwig was a source of agitation for two weeks After Father’s outbreak she stopped commenting but every day when business was light they could feel her accusingly counting the number of customers But she did not become active again till the Sunday before her going
The Applebys were sitting upstairs that day holding hands and avoiding Lulu Below them they heard a motorcar stop and Mother prepared to go down and serve the tourists The brazen beloved voice of Uncle Joe Tubbs of West Skipsit blared out “Where’s the folks heh Tell ’em the Tubbses are here”
And Lulu’s congealed voice in answer “I don’t know whether they are at home If they are who shall I tell them is calling please”
“Huh Oh well just say the Tubbses”
“Mr and Mrs Tubbs”
61 “Yes yes yes yes yes”
By this time Father and Mother were galloping downstairs They welcomed the Tubbses with yelps of pleasure the four of them sat in rockers on the grass and talked about the Tubbses’ boarders and the Applebys admired to hear that Uncle Joe now ran the car himself But all of them were conscious that Lulu in a chiffon scarf and eyeglasses was watching them amusedly and the Tubbses uneasily took leave in an hour pleading the distance back to West Skipsit
Not till evening when he got the chance to walk by himself on the beach below the gravel cliffs did Father quite realize what his daughter had done—that with her superior manner she had frightened the Tubbses away Yet there was nothing to do about it
Even at her departure there was a certain difficulty for Lulu developed a resolution to have her parents visit her at Saserkopee Perhaps she wished to show them in what state she now lived or it may conceivably be that in her refined and determined manner she was fond of her parents She kissed them repeatedly and was gone with much waving of a handkerchief and yelps of “Now don’t forget—you’re62 you’re to visit me—be sure and write—Harry don’t stick your head out of the window d’yuhhearme”
Lulu’s visit had two effects upon the lives of Father and Mother They found that their quiet love had grown manyfold stronger sweeter in the two weeks it had been denied the silly fondnesses of utterance They could laugh now that there was no critic of their shy brand of humor Father stopped on the step and winked an immense shameless wink at Mother and she sighed and said with unexpected understanding “Yes I’m afraid Lulu is a little—just a leetle bit—”
“And I reckon we won’t be in such a goshawful hustle to visit her”
Mother was so vulgar as to grunt “Well I guess not”
That evening they sat in the rosearbor again And had tone poems on the mouthorgan And dreamed that something would happen to make their investment pay
Another result there was of Lulu’s visit Father couldn’t help remembering her suggestion that they ought to bag a social or artistic lion as an attraction for “The T Room” He63 was delighted to find that after weeks of vacuous worry he had another idea
Now that August the height of the season had come he would capture Mrs Vance Carter herself
Mrs Vance Carter was the widow of the Boothbay Textile Mills millions She was a Winslow on her father’s side a Cabot on her mother’s and Beacon Street was officially swept from end to end and tidied with little pink feather dusters whenever she returned to Boston She was so solid that society reporters didn’t dare write little items about her and when she was in Charleston she was invited to the Saint Cecilia Ball Also she was rather ignorant rather unhappy and completely aimless She and her daughter spent their summers three miles from Grimsby Head in an estate with a gatehouse and a conservatory and a golf course and a house with three towers and other architecture When America becomes a military autocracy she will be Lady Carter or the Countess of Grimsby
The Applebys saw her go by every day in a landaulet with liveried chauffeur and footman
With breathless secrecy Father planned to entice Mrs Vance Carter to “The T Room64” Once they had her there she would certainly appreciate the wholesome goodness of Mother’s cooking He imagined long intimate conversations in which Mrs Carter would say to him “Mr Appleby I can’t tell you how much I like to get away from my French cook and enjoy your nice old house and Mrs Appleby’s delicious homey doughnuts” It was easy to win Mrs Carter in imagination Sitting by himself in the rosearbor while Mother served their infrequent customers or stood at the door unhappily watching for them Father visualized Mrs Carter exclaiming over the view from the arbor the sunset across the moors as seen from their door—which was Father believed absolutely the largest and finest sunset in the world He even went so far as to discover in Mrs Vance Carter Mrs CabotWinslowCarter a sneaking fondness for cribbage which in her exalted social position she had had to conceal He saw her send the chauffeur away and cache her lorgnette and roll up her sleeves and simply wade into an orgy of cribbage with pleasing light refreshments of cider and cakes waiting by the fireplace Then he saw Mrs Carter sending all her acquaintances to “The T Room” and the establishment so prosperous that Miss65 Mitchin would come around and beg the Applebys to enter into partnership
Father was not such a fool as to believe all his fancies But hadn’t he heard the most surprising tales of how friendly these great folk could be Why here just the other day he had been reading in the boilerplate innards of the Grimsby Recorder how Jim Hill the railroad king had dropped off at a little station in North Dakota one night incog and talked for hours to the young stationmaster
He was burning to do something besides helping Mother in the kitchen—something which would save them and pull the tearoom out of the hole Without a word to Mother he started for Grimsby Hill the estate of Mrs Vance Carter He didn’t know what he was going to do but he was certain that he was going to do something
As he arrived at the long line of iron picket fence surrounding Grimsby Hill he saw Mrs Carter’s motor enter the gate It seemed to be a good omen He hurried to the gate peered in then passed on He couldn’t go and swagger past that exclusivelooking gatehouse and intrude on that sweep of rhododendronlined private driveway He walked shyly along the66 iron fence for a quarter of a mile before he got up courage to go back rush through the towering iron gateway and past the gatehouse into the sacred estate He expected to hear a voice—it would be a cockney servant’s voice—demanding “’Ere you wot do you want” But no one stopped him no one spoke to him he was safe among the rhododendrons He clumped along as though he had important business secretly patting his tie into shape and smoothing his hair Just let anybody try to stop him He knew what he was about But he really didn’t know what he was about he hadn’t the slightest notion as to whether he would go up and invite their dear cribbagecompanion Mrs Carter to come and see them or tack up a “T Room” advertisement on the porch
He came to a stretch of lawn with the house and all its three towers scowling down at him Behind it were the edges of a group of outbuildings He veered around toward these Outside the garage he saw the chauffeur with his livery coat off polishing a fender Great Perhaps he could persuade the chauffeur to help him He put on what he felt to be a New York briskness furtively touched his tie again and skipped up to the chauffeur
67 “Fine day” he said breezily starting with the one neutral topic of conversation in the world
“What of it” said the chauffeur and went on polishing
“Well uh say I wanted to have a talk with you”
“I guess there’s nothing stopping you G’wan and have your talk I can’t get away The old dragon wanted to have a talk with me too this morning So did the housekeeper Everybody does” And he polished harder than ever
“Ha ha” Which indicates Father’s laughter though actually it sounded more like “Hick hick” As carelessly as he could Father observed “That’s how it goes all right I know When I was in the shoe business—”
“Waal waal you don’t say so Si Haow’s the shoe business in Hyannis papa”
“Hyannis hell I’ve been in business in New York City New York for more than forty years”
“Oh”
Father felt that he had made an impression He stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets—as he had not done these six gloomy weeks—threw68 out his chest and tried to look like Thirtyfourth and Broadway with a dash of Wall Street and a flavor of Fifth Avenue
The chauffeur sighed “Well all I can say is that any guy that’s lived in New York that long and then comes to this Godforsaken neck of land is a nut”
With an almost cosmic sorrow in his manner and an irritated twist in his suspenders the chauffeur disappeared into the garage Father forlornly felt that he wasn’t visibly getting nearer to the heart and patronage of Mrs Vance Carter
He stood alone on the cement terrace before the garage The square grim back of the big house didn’t so much “look down on him” as beautifully ignore him A maid in a cap peeped wonderingly at him from a window A man in dun livery wheeled a vacuum cleaner out of an unexpected basement door An undergardener appearing at the corner dragging a cultivator stared at him Far off somewhere he heard a voice crying “Fif’ love” He could see a corner of a sunken garden with stiff borders of box He had an uneasy feeling that a whole army of unexpected servants stood between him and Mrs Vance Carter that at69 any moment a fat sidewhiskered expensive butler like the butlers you see in the movies would pop up and order him off the grounds
The unsatisfactory chauffeur reappeared In a panic Father urged “Say my name’s Appleby and I run the tearoom at Grimsby Head—you know couple of miles this side of the Center It would be pretty nice for our class of business if the Madam was to stop there some time and I was just wondering just kinda wondering if some time when she felt thirsty you c—”
“She don’t never tell me when she’s thirsty She just tells me when she’s mad”
“Well you know some time you might be stopping to show her the view or something—you fix it up and— Here you get yourself some cigars” He timidly held out a twodollar bill It seemed to bore the chauffeur a good deal but he condescended to take it Father tried to look knowing and friendly and sophisticated all at once He added “Any time you feel like a good cup o’ tea and the finest homemade doughnuts you ever ate why you just drop in yourself and ’twon’t cost you a cent”
“All right ’bo I’ll see what I can do” said the chauffeur and vanished again
Father airily stamped along the driveway70 His head was high and hopeful He inspected the tenniscourts as though he were Maurice McLoughlin He admitted that the rhododendrons were quite extensive In fact he liked Grimsby Hill
He had saved their fortunes—not for himself but for Mother He whistled “The HarumScarum Rag” all the way home interrupting himself only to murmur “I wonder where the back door of that house is Not at the back anyway Never saw even a garbagepail”
And then for two weeks he sat with Mother in the sun and watched the motors go by
They were almost ready to admit now that their venture was a complete failure that they were ruined that they didn’t know what they would do with no savings and a rainy day coming
They let their maid go They gave the grocer smaller and smaller orders for bread and butter and cheese—and even these orders were invariably too large for the little custom that came their way
For a week Father concealed the fact that Mrs Vance Carter would be coming—not now but very soon Then he had to tell Mother the secret to save her from prostrating worry They71 talked always of that coming miracle as they sat with hand desperately clutching hand in the evening they nearly convinced themselves that Mrs Carter would send her friends September was almost here and it was too late for Mrs Carter’s influence to help them this year but they trusted that somehow by the magic of her wealth and position she would enable them to get through the winter and find success during the next year
They developed a remarkable skill in seeing her car coming far down the road When either of them saw it the other was summoned and they waited tremblingly But the landaulet always passed with Mrs Carter staring straight ahead grayhaired and hooknosed sometimes with Miss Margaret Carter whose softly piquant little nose would in time be hooked like her mother’s Father’s treacherous ally the chauffeur never even looked at “The T Room” Sometimes Father wondered if the chauffeur knew just where the house was perhaps he had never noticed it He planned to wave and attract the chauffeur’s attention but in face of the prodigious Mrs Carter he never dared to carry out the plan
September 1st The Applebys had given up72 hope of miracles They were making up their minds to notify Mr Pilkings of Pilkings Son’s Sixth Avenue Standard Shoe Parlor that Father again wanted the job he had held for so many years
They must leave the rosearbor for the noise of that most alien of places their native New York
Mother was in the kitchen Father at the front door aimlessly whittling He looked up saw the Vance Carter motor approach He shrugged his shoulders growled “Let her go to the dickens”
Then the car had stopped and Mrs Vance Carter and Miss Margaret Carter had incredibly stepped out had started up the path to the tearoom
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73CHAPTER VII
FATHER’S hand kept on aimlessly whittling while his eyes poked out like those of a harassed fiddlercrab when he saw Mrs Vance Carter actually stop It was surely a dream In his worry over inactivity he had found himself falling into queer little illusions lately He was conscious that the chauffeur whom he had bribed to stop some day was winking at him in a vulgar manner not at all appropriate to his dovegray uniform He had a spasm of indignant wonder “I’ll bet a hat that fellow didn’t have a thing to do with this he’s a grafter” Then he sprang up bowing
Mrs Carter rustled up to him and murmured “May we have some tea here and a cake do you know”
“Oh yes ma’am Won’t you step right in Fine day ma’am”
Mrs Carter seemed not to have any opinions regarding the day Quite right too it wasn’t an especially fine day just a day
74 She marched in gave one quick nervous look and said with tremendous politeness “May we have this table by the window You have such a charming view over the cliffs”
“Oh yes ma’am We hoped some day you’d take that table Kind of kept the view for you” said Father with panting gallantry fairly falling over himself as he rushed across the floor to pull out their chairs and straighten the tablecloth
Mrs Carter paid no attention to him whatsoever She drew a spectaclecase from her small handbag and set upon her beetling nose a huge pair of hornrimmed eyeglasses She picked up the menucard as though she were delicately removing a bug—supposing there to be any bug so presumptuous as to crawl upon her smart tan suit She raised her chin and held the card high
“Uh tea lettuce sandwiches creamcheese sandwiches chicken sandwiches doughnuts cinnamon toast” she read off to her daughter
So quickly that he started she turned on Father and demanded “What sort of tea have you please”
“Why uh—just a minute and I’ll ask”
Father bolted through the door into the75 large clean woodeny oldfashioned kitchen where Mother was wearily taking a batch of doughnuts out of the fatkettle
“Mother” he exulted “Mrs Carter—she’s here”
Mother dropped the doughnuts back into the kettle The splashing fat must have burnt her but beyond mutely wiping the grease from her hand she paid no attention to it She turned paper white “Oh Seth” she groaned Then in agony “After your going and getting them here I haven’t a thing ready for them but lettuce sandwiches and fresh doughnuts”
“Never mind I’ll make them take those Say what kind of tea have we got now”
“Oh dear we haven’t got a thing left but just—well it’s just tea mixed”
He galloped back into the tearoom frightened lest the royal patrons leave before they were served On the way he resolved to lie—not as the pinching tradesman lies smugly and unconsciously but desperately to save Mother
“We have orange pekoe and oolong” he gasped
“Then you might give us some orange pekoe and—oh two chicken sandwiches”
76 “Gee I’m awfully sorry ma’am but we’re just out of chicken sandwiches If we’d only known you were coming— But we have some very nice fresh lettuce sandwiches and I do wish you would try some of our doughnuts They’re freshmade just this minute”
He clasped his hands pressed them till the fingers of one gouged the back of the other Father was not a Uriah Heep At Pilkings Son’s he had often “talked back” to some of his best customers But now he would gladly have licked Mrs Vance Carter’s spatted shoes
“No—oh bring us some lettuce sandwiches and some orange pekoe I don’t think we care for any doughnuts” said Mrs Carter impatiently
Father bolted again and whispered to Mother who stood where he had left her “Lettuce sandwiches and tea and for Heaven’s sake make the tea taste as much like orange pekoe as you can”
The Applebys had no delicately adjusted rule about the thickness of bread in sandwiches Sometimes Mother was moved to make them very dainty very thin and trim But now because he was in such a fever to please the Carters Father fairly slashed their last loaf of77 bread and slapped in the lettuce while Mother was drawing tea In two minutes he was proudly entering with the servicetray He set it down before the Carters he fussed with a crumb on the tablecloth with the rather faded crimson rambler in the ornate pressedglass vase Mrs Carter glanced at him impatiently He realized that he was being officious and rushed away
Mother was sitting by the wide kitchen table which was scarred with generations of use of cleaver and breadknife and steakpounder The kitchen door was open to the broad land which flowed up to the sill in a pleasant sea of waving grass But she was turned from it staring apprehensively toward the tearoom Round her swirled the heat from the stove and restless flies lighted on her cheek and flew off at hectic tangents
Father tiptoed up to her smiling “I’ve left the door open wide enough so you can see them” he whispered “Come and take a look at them Mrs Vance Carter—gee And her daughter’s a mighty pretty girl—not that I think much of these blouses that are cut so low and all”
“Oh I wouldn’t dare—”
Mother stopped short Quiet as they were78 they could distinctly hear the voices from the other room
The Carter girl—she who was known as “Pig Carter” at Miss Severance’s school—was snapping “What in the world ever made you come to this frightful hole mama”
“Simply because I wanted to stop some place and I really can’t stand that mincing Miss Mitchin and her halfbaked yearners and that odious creature with the beard and the ballet skirt again”
“At least Mitchin’s shop is better than this awful place Why this might be one of those railroad lunchrooms you see from a train”
“I’m not so sure this really is worse than the Mitchin creature’s zoo Marky At least this is a perfect study in what not to do I fancy it would be a good thing for every interior decorator to come here and learn what to avoid And you know they really might have done something with this place—rather a decent old house with a good plain fireplace But then any one could make a charming room and only a genius could have imagined this combination—an oak diningroom chair with a wicker table and a cotton tablecloth I’m sure that Exhibition of Bad Taste—wasn’t it I don’t79 pore over the newspapers as you do—that they held in New York would have been charmed to secure that picture of the kittens and the infant”
All this conveyed in the Carters’ clear highbred voices Father and Mother heard perfectly The picture of kittens and a baby they had bought just after Lulu’s birth and it had always hung above the couch in their livingroom in New York
Margaret Carter was continuing “I don’t mind the bad taste a bit but I was hungry after motoring all day almost and I did want a decent tea If you could see that horrid Victorian drawingroom at Miss Severance’s you could stand even sticky kitties—in a picture I don’t care about the interior decoration as long as Marky’s little interior gets decorated decently But this tea is simply terrible Orange pekoe Why even Miss Severance’s horrid Ceylon is better than this and she does give you cream instead of this milk of magnesia or soapy water or whatever the beastly stuff is And to have to drink it out of these horrid thick cups—like toothbrush mugs I’m sure I’ll find a chewedup old toothbrush when I get to the bottom”
80 “Don’t be vulgar Marky You might remember this is Massachusetts not New York”
“Well this Massachusetts lettuce—I’m perfectly convinced that they used it for floorrags before they went and lost it in the sandwiches—and this thick crumby bread—oh it’s unspeakable I do wish you wouldn’t poke around in these horrid places mama or else leave me in the car when you are moved to go slumming I’m sure I don’t feel any call to uplift the poor”
“My dear child I seem to remember your admiring Freddy Dabney because he is so heroically poor It’s very good for you to come to a place like this Now you know what it’s like to be poor Marky You can see precisely how romantic it really is”
“Oh I’ll admit Marky is a perfect little devil But I do want you to observe that she’s been brave enough to eat part of her sandwich Let’s go Where is the nice smiling little man Let’s pay our bill and go”
Twenty feet from the bored Carters was tragedy Grayfaced dumb Father stood by Mother’s chair stroking her dull hair as she laid her head on the crude kitchen table and sobbed Mechanically back and forth back81 and forth his hand passed over her dear comfortable head while he listened even as on the stairs to the guillotine a gallant gentleman of old France might have caressed his marquise
“Mother—” he began It was hard to say anything when there was nothing to say “It’s all right They’re just silly snobs They—”
Yes the Applebys could not understand every detail of what the wellbred Carters had said “Interior decoration”—that didn’t mean anything to them All that they understood was that they were fools and failures in the beginning of their old age that they belonged to the quite ludicrously inefficient
Father realized presently that the Carters were waiting for their bill For a minute more he stroked Mother’s hair If the Carters would only go from this place they had desecrated and take their damned money with them But he had been trained by years of dealing with selfsatisfied people in a shoestore at least to make an effort to conceal his feelings He dragged himself into the tearoom kept himself waiting with expressionless face till Mrs Carter murmured
“The bill please”
82 Tonelessly he said “Thirty cents”
Mrs Carter took out not three but four dimes—four nice shiny new dimes she sometimes said at her bank that really she couldn’t touch soiled money She dropped them on the tablecloth and went modestly on her way an honorable clever rather kindly and unhappy woman who had just committed murder
Father picked up the tencent tip With loathing he threw it in the fireplace Then went knelt down and picked it out again Mother would need all the money he could get for her in the coming wintry days of failure—failure he himself had brought upon her
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83CHAPTER VIII
HAVING once admitted hopelessness it was humanly natural that they should again hope that they hoped For perhaps two weeks after the Carters’ visit they pretended that the tearoom was open and they did have six or seven customers But late in September Father got his courage up took out the family pen and bottle of ink the tablet of ruled stationery and a stampedenvelope and wrote to Mr J Pilkings that he wanted his shoestore job back
When he had mailed the letter he told Mother She sighed and said “Yes that is better after all”
An Indian summer of happiness came over them They were going back to security Again Father played the mouthorgan a little and they talked of the familiar city places they would see They would enjoy the movies—weeks since they had seen a movie And they would have Father chucklingly declared “a84 bangup dinner at Bomberghof Terrace with music and yes by Jiminy and cocktails”
For a week he awaited an answer waited anxiously though he kept reassuring himself that old Pilkings had promised to keep the job open for him He received a reply But it was from Pilkings’s son It informed him that Pilkings père was rather ill with grippe and that until he recovered “no action can be taken regarding your valued proposition in letter of recent date”
Bewildered incredulous Father had a flash of understanding that he who felt himself so young and fit was already discarded
Mother sat across the kitchen table from him pretending to read the Grimsby Recorder but really watching him
He held his forehead looked dizzy and let the letter slip from his fingers “I—uh—” he groaned “I— Is there anything I can do for you around the house”
“Tell me—what did the letter say”
“Oh Mother Mother maybe I won’t get my job back at all I honestly don’t know what we can do”
Running to her he hid his face in her lap—he the head of the family the imperturbable adventurer85 changed to a child And Mother she who had always looked to him for inspiration was indeed the mother now She stroked his cheek she cried “Never mind—’course you’ll get it back or a better one” She made fun of his tousled hair till she had him ruefully smiling Her voice had a crisp briskness which it had lacked in the days when she had brooded in the flat and waited for her man
Father could not face another indefinite period of such inactivity as had been sapping him all summer He longed for the dusty drudgery of Pilkings Son’s longed to be busy all day and to bring home news—and money—to Mother at night
Aside from his personal desires what were they going to do They had left in actual money less than fifty dollars
Father did not become querulous but day by day he became more dependent on Mother’s cheer as October opened as chilly rains began to shut them in the house When she was not busy and he was not cutting wood or forlornly pecking away at useless cleanings of the cold and empty tearoom they talked of what they would do Father had wild plans of dashing down to New York of seeing young Pilkings86 of getting work in some other shoestore But he knew very little about other stores He was not so much a shoeclerk as a Pilkings clerk It had been as important a part of his duties these many years to know what to say to Mr Pilkings as to know what to show to customers Surely when Pilkings senior was well he would remember his offer to keep the job open
Mother cautiously began to suggest her plan She spoke fondly of their daughter Lulu of their grandson Harry of how estimable and upright a citizen was their soninlaw Mr Harris Hartwig of Saserkopee New York As Father knew none of these suggestions to have any factual basis whatever his clear little mind was bored by them Then after a stormy evening when the fire was warm and they had cheered up enough to play cribbage Mother suddenly plumped out her plan—to go to Saserkopee and live with daughter till something turned up
Father shrank He crouched in his chair a wizened frightened unhappy oldish man “No no no no” he cried “She is a good girl but she would badger us to death She wouldn’t let us do one single thing our way She always87 acts as though she wanted to make you all over and I love you the way you are I’d rather get a job cooking on a fishing schooner than do that”
But he knew Mother’s way of sticking to an idea and he began to persuade himself that Saserkopee was a haven of refuge Whenever they seemed to be having a peaceful discussion of Lulu Hartwig’s canaryyellow sweater they were hearing her voice wondering if they could tolerate its twangy comments the rest of their lives
If the weather was clear they sat out in the rosearbor as though they were soon to lose it The roses were dead now but a bank of purple asters glowed by the laurelbushes and in the garden plucky pansies withstood the chill They tried to keep up a pretense of happiness but always they were listening—listening
There were two or three October days when the sea was blue and silver sharply and brightly outlined against the far skyline where the deep blue heavens modulated to a filmy turquoise Gulls followed the furrows of the breakers Father and Mother paced the edge of the cliff or sat sunrefreshed in the beloved arbor88 Then a day of iron sea cruelly steelbright on one side and sullenly black on the other with broken rolling clouds and sand whisking along the dunes in shallow eddies rain coming and the breakers pounding in with a terrifying roar and the menace of illimitable power Father gathered piles of pineknots for the fire whistling as he hacked at them with a dull hatchet—trimming them not because it was necessary but because it gave him something energetic to do Whenever he came into the kitchen with an armful of them he found Mother standing at the window anxiously watching the flurries of sand and rain
“Be a fine night to sit by the fire” he chirruped “Guess we’ll get out the old mouthorgan and have a little bandconcert admission five bucks eh” Something of the old command was in his voice Mother actually needed his comfort against the black hours of storm
Though they used a very prosaic stove for cooking the old farmhouse fireplace still filled half the back of the kitchen and this had become the center of their house Neither of them could abide the echoing emptiness and shabby grandeur of the tearoom Before the89 fireplace they sat after a supper at which Father had made much of enjoying fish chowder though they had had it four times in eight days Cheaper And very nourishing
The shutters banged sand crashed against the panes rain leaked in a steady drip down one corner of the room and the sea smashed unceasingly But Father played “My Gal’s a Highborn Lady” and “Any Little Girl That’s a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl for Me” and other silly cheerful melodies which even the handorgans had forgotten
There was a sense of glaring mounting light through the window which gave on the cliff
“I wonder what that is” Mother shuddered “It’s like a big fire I declare it seems as though the whole world was coming to an end tonight” She turned from the window and shivered over the embers in her goldenoak rocker which Father had filled with cushions
He kissed her boyishly and trotted over to the window The fact that they were alone against the elements with no apartmenthouse full of people to share the tumultuous night weakened her but delighted him He cried out with a feeling of dramatic joy
There was a fire below on the beach where90 there should be nothing but sand and the terror of the storm The outer edge of the cliff was outlined by the light
“It’s a wreck” he whooped “It’s the lifesavers Mother I’m going down Maybe there’s something I can do I want to do something again Maybe some poor devil coming ashore in the breeches buoy—help him ashore— Don’t suppose I could row—”
He darted at the closet and yanked out his ineffectual city raincoat and rubbers and the dreary wreck of what had once been his pert new vacation travelingcap
“No no don’t please don’t” Mother begged “You couldn’t do anything and I don’t dast to go out—and I’m afraid to stay here alone”
But Father was putting on his raincoat “I’ll just run down and see—be right back”
“Don’t go a step farther than the top of the cliff” she wailed
He hesitated He wanted more than anything else in the world to be in the midst of heroic effort The gods had set the stage for epic action that night and his spirit was big with desire for bigness It was very hard to promise to put goloshes upon his winged feet
91 But Mother held out her hands “Oh I need you Seth You’ll stay near me won’t you”
There may have been lordly deeds in the surf that night—men gambling their lives to save strangers and aliens One deed there certainly was—though the movies which are our modern minstrelsy will never portray it While he strained with longing to go down and show himself a man—not just a scullion in an unsuccessful tearoom—Father stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the lifesavers launch the boat saw them disappear from the radius of the calcium carbide beachlight into the spume of surf He didn’t even wait to see them return Mother needed him and he trotted back to tell her all about it
They went happily to bed and she slept with her head cuddled on his left shoulder his left arm protectingly about her
It was still raining when they awoke a weary whining drizzle And Father was still virile with desire of heroism He scampered out to see what he could of the wreck
He returned suddenly His voice was low and unhappy as he demanded “Oh Mother it’s— Come and see”
He led her to the kitchen door and round the92 corner of the house The beloved rosearbor had been wrecked by the storm The latticework was smashed The gray bare stems of the crimson ramblers drooped drearily into a sullen puddle The green settee was smeared with splashed mud
“They couldn’t even leave us that” Father wailed in the voice of a man broken “Oh yes yes yes I’ll go to Lulu’s with you But we won’t stay Will we I will fight again I did have a little gumption left last night didn’t I Didn’t I But—but we’ll go there for a while”
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93CHAPTER IX
DOGGONIT I liked that cap It was a good one” said Father in a tone of settled melancholy
“Well it wa’n’t much of a cap” said Mother “but I do know how you feel”
They sat in their tremendously varnished and steamheated room on the second floor of daughter Lulu’s house and found some occupation in being gloomy For ten days now they had been her guests Lulu had received them with bright excitement and announced that they needn’t ever do any more work and were ever so welcome—and then she had started to reform them It may seem a mystery as to why a woman whose soul was composed of vinegar and chicken feathers as was Lulu Appleby Hartwig’s should have wanted her parents to stay with her Perhaps she liked them One does find such anomalies Anyway she condescendingly bought them new hats And her husband a large heavyblooded94 man made lumbering jokes at their expense and expected them to laugh
“The old boy still likes to play the mouthorgan—nothing like these old codgers for thinking they’re still kids” Mr Hartwig puffed at dinner then banged his fist and laughed rollingly He seemed surprised when Father merely flushed and tightened his tie For all his gross body Mr Hartwig was sensitive—so sensitive that he was hurt when people didn’t see the humor of his little sallies
The Hartwigs’ modest residence was the last word in cement and small useless sidetables and all modern inconveniences The furnace heat made you sneeze and the chairs which were large and tufted creaked In the diningroom was an electrolier made of seven kinds of inimical colored glass and a platerack from which were hung departmentstore steins On the parlor table was a kodak album with views of Harry in every stage of absurdity There was a small car which Mr Hartwig drove himself And there was a bright easy incredibly dull social life neighbors who went out to the country club to watch the tennis in summer and played “five hundred” every Saturday evening in the winter
95 Like a vast proportion of the inhabitants of that lonely city New York the Applebys were unused to society It is hard to tell which afflicted them more—sitting all day in their immaculate plastered and varnished room with nothing useful to do or being dragged into the midst of chattering neighbors who treated them respectfully as though they were old
Mother begged daughter to be permitted to dust or make beds Father suggested that he might rake the lawn But Lulu waggled her stringy forefinger at them and bubbled “No no What would the neighbors think Don’t you suppose that we can afford to have you dear old people take a rest Why Harris would be awfully angry if he saw you out puttering around Father No you just sit and have a good rest”
And then when they had composed to a spurious sort of rest the hands that were aching for activity the Applebys would be dragged out taken to teas shown off with their wellsetup backs and handsome heads as Lulu’s aristocratic parents
“My father has been a prominent business man in New York for many years you know” she would confide to neighbors
96 While the prominent business man longed to be sitting on a foolish stool trying shoes on a fussy old lady
But what could he do In actual cash Mother and he had less than seven dollars in the world
By the end of two weeks Father and Mother were slowly going mad with the quiet of their room and Lulu was getting a little tired of her experiment in having a visible parental background She began to let Mother do the sockdarning—huge uninteresting piles of Harris Hartwig’s faded mustardcolored cotton socks and she snapped at Father when he was restlessly prowling about the house “My head aches so I’m sure it’s going to be a sick headache and I do think you might let me have a nap instead of tramping and tramping till my nerves get so frazzled that I could just shriek”
With this slight damming of her flowing fount of filial love Lulu combined a desire to have them appear as features at a musicale she was to give come Saturday evening Mother was to be in a “dear ducky lace cap” and Father in a frilled shirt and a longtailed coat which Harris Hartwig had once worn in theatricals the two of them presiding at the refreshments table
97 “Like a prize Persian cat and a pet monkey” Father said
Against this indignity they frettingly rebelled Father snarled “Good Lord I’m not much older than your precious dumpling of a Harris” It was the snarl of a caged animal Lulu had them she merely felt misunderstood when they protested
Friday morning The musicale was coming next day and Lulu had already rehearsed them in their position as refreshment ornaments Father had boldly refused to wear the nice good frilled shirt and “movieactor coat” during the rehearsal
“Very well” said Lulu “but you will tomorrow evening”
Father wasn’t sure whether Lulu would use an ax or chloroform or tears on him but he was gloomily certain that she would have him in the shameless garments on Saturday evening
There was a letter for him on the ten o’clock morning mail He didn’t receive many letters—one a month from Joe Tubbs relating diverting scandal about perfectly respectable neighbors or an occasional note from Cousin George Henry of Stamford Lulu was acutely curious regarding it she almost smelled it with that quivering98 sharppointed nose of hers that could tell for hours afterward whether Father had been smoking “those nasty undignified little cigarettes—why don’t you smoke the handsome brier pipe that Harris gave you” She brightly commented that the letter was from Boston But Father didn’t follow her lead He defensively tucked the letter in his inside coat pocket and trotted upstairs to read it to Mother
It was from the Boston agency in whose hands he had left the disposal of the tearoom lease and of their furniture The agency had they wrote managed to break the lease and they had disposed of the tables and chairs and some of the china They inclosed a check for twentyeight dollars
With the six dollars and eightythree cents left from their capital the Applebys were the possessors of almost thirtyfive dollars
“Gee if we only had two or three times that amount we could run away and start again in New York and not let Lulu make us over into a darned old elderly couple” Father exulted
“Yes” sighed Mother “You know and I know what a fine sweet womanly woman Lulu99 has become but I do wish she hadn’t gone and set her heart on my wearing that lace cap My lands makes me feel so old I just don’t know myself”
“And me with a granddaddy outfit Why I never will dast to go out on the streets again” complained Father “I never did hear of such a thing before they making us old and we begging for a chance to be young and sitting here and sitting here and—”
He looked about their room from the broad window with its resolutely stiff starched net curtains to the very new bureau and the brass bed that looked as though no one had ever dared to sleep in it He kicked at one of the dollarninetyeightcent rugs and glared at the expanse of smirkingly clean plaster decorated with an English sporting print composed by an artist who was neither English nor sporting
“Say” continued Father “I don’t like this room It’s too—clean I don’t dast to wear slippers in it”
“Why Father it’s a nice room” marveled Mother Then with an outburst of frankness “Neither do I It feels like I never could loosen my stays and read the funnies in the100 last night’s paper Oh you needn’t to look at me so Many’s the time I did that when you were away at the store and I didn’t have to sit up and look respectable”
They laughed both of them with tender tears He came to sit on the arm of her rocker and pat her hand
He said quietly very quietly indeed “Mother we’re getting to be real adventurous Nothing very old about us I guess We’re going to sneak right smack out of this house this very day and run away to New York and I’ll get a job and we’ll stick right there in little old New York for the rest of our lives so help me Bob”
“Yes” she said “yes I’d like to But what—uh—what lie could we tell Lulu”
“Why Mother how you talk Do you know what St Peter would say to you if he heard you talk about lying He’d up and jam his halo down over his ears and he’d say ‘You can’t come in here Sarah Jane Appleby You’re a liar And you know what you can do don’t you You can go—’”
“Now you see here Seth Appleby I just won’t have you cursing and swearing and being sacrilegious I sh’d think you’d be101 ashamed man of your age that ought to know better acting up like a young smarty and cursing and swearing and—”
“And cursing and swearing Don’t forget to put that in Mother”
He was delighted It was the first time since September that Mother had scolded him She was coming back to life again He tickled her under the chin till she slapped viciously at his finger then he crowed like a rooster till a shamefaced smile chased away her lively olddame wrath and shaking her head with a pretense of disgust she said comfortably “I declare I never did see such a man not in all my born days” She let him take her hand again and their expression half smiles half musing was like the sunshine of a calm late afternoon They were happy For they knew that as soon as they should have debated and worried and planned and fussed in a manner appropriate to the great event they would run away from the overheated respectability of “Lulu’s pretty little home”
With enough agony of literary effort to have composed a war article and a column of Household Hints they sinfully devised a letter for Lulu in which they stated that “a dear old102 friend you would not remember him as we have met him since you were married writes us from Boston that he is sick and we are going to him we are stealing out this way because we don’t want you to trouble about it with party coming on tomorrow even’g know you are so kind you would take all sort of trouble if knew we were going so just slip away hope party is great success Your loving Father Mother PS May not be back for some time as friend may need us”
In the wreck of their fortunes the Applebys had lost their own furniture down to the last beloved picture They had only a suitcase and a steamertrunk the highly modern steamertrunk which Father had once bought for a vacation trip to West Skipsit and the Tubbses But it required manoeuvering to get even this light baggage to the station
Mother went nosing about till she discovered that Lulu was going calling that afternoon Father hired an expressman who was to be ready to come the instant he telephoned
Lulu went out at three and Father stole downstairs to telephone But the maid had taken a fancy to dusting the livingroom where the telephone lived In all her domestic history103 the maid had never done that before—attest many sarcastic remarks of Lulu
They had planned to catch the fouro’clock train for New York Halfpast three now The maid was polishing the silver in the diningroom which was separated from the livingroom only by an open arch Father dared not telephone lest she instantly send for Lulu
Mother tiptoed down and the runaways plotted in whispers Upon which conspiracy Lulu brightly entered through the front door
For a second Father had a wild courageous desire to do the natural thing to tell Lulu that they were going But he quailed as Lulu demanded “Have you tried on the coat and frilled shirt for tomorrow evening yet papa You know there may have to be some alterations in them I’m sure mama won’t mind making them will you mama Oh you two will be so cute and dear I know everybody will love you and it will give such a homey oldfashioned touch that—”
“No I haven’t tried it on yet and I ain’t sure I’m agoing—” Father gallantly attempted
Lulu glared at him and said in a voice of honey and aloes “I’m sure papa dear I don’t ask very much of you and when I do ask just104 this one little thing that I’m sure anybody else would be glad to help me with and me doing my very best to make you happy—”
No No no Father didn’t tell her they were going to New York He was glad enough to escape upstairs without having the monkey coat tried on him by force
Their suit case and steamertrunk stood betrayingly in the middle of the room With panting anxiety heaving and puffing the two domestic anarchists lifted the steamertrunk slipped it under the bed and kicked the suitcase into the closet and sat down to wait for the next train to New York which left at eleven P M
At dinner—such a jolly family dinner with Mr Hartwig carving and emitting little jokes with Harry whining about his homework and Lulu telling the maid what an asphyxiated fool she was to have roasted the lamb too long— Father was highly elaborate in his descriptions of how he had tried on the tailcoat and found it to be a superb fit As the coat was the personal theatricalsequipment of Mr Harris Hartwig who was shaped like the dome of the county courthouse Lulu looked suspicious but Harry was discovered making bread pills and she was105 so engaged in telling him what she thought—Lord what a thinker the little woman was—that she forgot to follow the subject
Out of this life of roast lamb and lies domesticity and evasions the Applebys plunged into a tremor of rebellious plotting They sat in their room waiting for the Hartwigs to go to bed Every five minutes Father tiptoed to the door and listened
At five minutes past ten he shook his fingers with joy He heard the Hartwig family discursively lumbering up to bed He stood at the door unmoving till the house was quiet while Mother nervously hung their farewell note on the electric light and slipped into her overcoat and the small black hat that was no longer new and would scarce be impressive to Matilda Tubbs now
They had decided to abandon the steamertrunk though Mother made a bundle of the more necessary things The second the house was quiet Father was ready He didn’t even have to put on an overcoat—he hadn’t any worth putting on His old overcoat had finally gone to seed and was the chief thing abandoned with the steamertrunk He turned up his coatcollar and slung his muffler about his neck106 put his brown slouchhat impudently on one side of his white head and stood rejuvenated an adventurer
Just below their window was the roof of the low garage which was built as part of the house Father opened the window eased out the suitcase followed it and gave his hand to Mother who creakingly crawled out with her bundle It was an early November evening chilly a mist in the air After their day in the enervating furnace heat the breeze seemed biting and the garage roof was perilously slippery Mother slid and balanced and slid on the roof irritably observing “I declare to goodness I never thought that at my time of life I’d have to sneak out of a window on to a nasty slippery shedroof like a thief in the night when I wanted to go avisiting”
“H’sh” demanded Father “They’ll hear us and lug us back”
“Back nothing” snapped Mother “Now that I’ve been and gone and actually snook out of a window and made a common gallivanting old hex out of myself this way I wouldn’t come back not if Lulu and Harry and that lump of a Harris Hartwig was all ahanging on to my pettiskirts and trying to haul me back”
107 “Oofflumpf”
This last sound was made by the soft mud beside the garage as Mother landed in it She had jumped from the roof without once hesitating and she picked up her bundle and waited quite calmly till Father came flying froglike through the mist
They hadn’t many minutes to wait for the New York train but they were anxious minutes Lest Lulu or the lordly Harris Hartwig descend on them they nervously lurked in the dark doorway of the baggageroom With no overcoat Father shivered—and hid the shiver
The engine came glaring in through the mist the train seemed impatient enormous dwarfing the small station The prodigal parents hastily tugged suitcase and bundle aboard They found a seat together They fussily tucked away their luggage He held her hand firmly concealing the two hands with a fold of her overcoat You have seen old folk quite simple and rustic old folk who are apparently unused to travel sit motionless for hour after hour of traintravel and you have fancied that they were unconscious of life of speed of wonder So sat Father and Mother but they were gloriously conscious of each other108 and now and then when he was sure that no one was looking he whispered “Old honey there’s nothing holding us apart now no more We’re partners again and Lord how we’ll fight I’ll go in and I’ll take Pilkings’s business clean away from him I will Old honey we’re free again And we’re going to see—New York Lord I just can’t believe it”
“Yes—why—why it’s our real honeymoon”
Not till they had ridden for an hour did she demand “Seth what are we going to do in New York”
“Why fiddle I swear I don’t know But—we’ll find something I guess if we can bamboozle a modern fash’nable daughter we won’t be afraid of just New York”
“No”
Till four in the morning the Applebys sat unmoving awake and happy When the train passed the row on row of apartmenthouses that mean New York no youngster first seeing the infinitely possible city and the future glory it must hold for him was ever more excited than the invading Innocents
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109CHAPTER X
WITH twentyseven dollars as capital and a bundle of garments of rather uncertain style as baggage and the pawnticket for a rather good suitcase as insurance Mr and Mrs Seth Appleby established themselves in a “furnished housekeeping room” on Avenue B and prepared to reconquer New York It was youth’s hopeful sally They had everything to gain Yet they were irretrievably past sixty
You may for many years have been a NewYorker yet not know Avenue B where Jewish apartmenthouses and bakeries are sullenly held back by the gashouse district and threestory houses of muddy halls and furtive people who have lost ambition The genus “furnished housekeeping room” is a filthy box with a stove a table a bed a few seats many cockroaches and from one to twenty people all thrown in and shaken up like a grabbag Here in this world of tired and beaten slinkers the Innocents110 with their fresh faces and kindly eyes excitedly made themselves another home
With carbolic acid and soap Mother cleaned away much of the smell of former inhabitants while Father propped up the rusty stove with a couple of bricks and covered the drably patternless wallpaper with pictures cut from old magazines which he bought at two for five cents on Fourteenth Street One of them was a chromo of a child playing with kittens which reminded him of the picture they had had in more prosperous days Mother furiously polished the battered knives and forks and arranged the chipped china on shelves covered with fresh pink scalloped paper When she was away Father secretly pursued the vulgar but socially conscious sport of killing cockroaches with a slipper
As the Applebys passed along the hopeless streets past shops lighted with single gasjets or through halls where suspicious women in frowsy wrappers peered at them they were silent But in their one room they were hopeful again and they celebrated its redecoration with music energetically performed by Father on the mouthorgan Also they ventured to go out to dinner in a real restaurant of the great111 city their city On Fourteenth Street was a noble inn where the menu was printed in English and Hungarian where for thirtyfive cents each they had soup and goulash and coffee and pudding in three colors chloroformed beets and vast pale uneasylooking pickles electric lights in red globes and a tinseled ceiling hung with artificial flowers the music of a violin and the sight of eager city faces
“I’m as excited as a boy with his first pair of redtop boots” declared Father “Pretty fine to see people again heh And pretty soon we’ll be dining at the WaldorfAstorya heh”
“How you do run on” said Mother mechanically placid dreaminess in her face as she listened to the violin that like a river bore the flotsam of Hungarian and Jewish voices
Alone jobless yet they were so recklessly happy that they went to a tencent movie and watched the extreme heroism of a young district attorney with the motionless eager credulity of the simplehearted
As soon as they had installed themselves Father edged shyly into his old haunt the shoestore of Pilkings Son
He found Son brusquely directing the cleaning out of an old stock of huntingboots112 which Pilkings père had always believed would sell
Pilkings fils was bald and narrow between the eyes He looked at Father and nodded as though it hurt him
“I— Is your father around Mr Edward” Father inquired “I didn’t hear from you again—been waiting—thought maybe I’d get a letter—I hope he has recovered—I know how bad the grippe—”
While he was talking he realized that Edward Pilkings was in mourning
Young Pilkings looked shallowly grieved and muttered “The old gentleman passed beyond a week ago Thursday”
“Oh Mr Edward I can’t tell you— It’s a blow to me a very great blow I was with your father for so many many years”
“Yes—uh— Yes”
“Is there— I wonder if I couldn’t send a letter or some flowers or something to your mother”
“Why yes I guess there’s nothing to prevent Boy you be careful of those boxes What the deuce do you think you’re trying to do There that’s a little better Try to show some sense about your work even if you ain’t113 got any” Edward Pilkings’s voice crackled like wood in a fireplace
Desperately Father tried again “Fact is Mr Edward I’ve given up my tearoom on Cape Cod Didn’t go so very well I guess my forty like the fellow says is sticking to selling shoes Mrs Appleby and I have just got back to town and got settled down and— Fact is I’d be glad to go back to work”
His hesitant manner invited refusal It was evident that Mr Edward Pilkings was not interested
Shyly Father added “You know your father promised to keep a place open for me”
“Well now I’ll tell you Appleby it ain’t that you aren’t a good salesman but just now I’m—well kind of reorganizing the business I sort of feel the establishment ought to have a little more pep in it and so— You see— But you leave your address and as soon as anything turns up I’ll be mighty glad to let you know”
For years Father had pityingly heard applicants for jobs disposed of with the request to “leave their addresses”
“No” he said “no maybe I’ll come in and see you again some day Good day Good luck to you Mr Edward”
114 He greeted his old acquaintances among the clerks They were cordial but they kept an eye on Mr Edward Pilkings
He shivered as he walked out It was warm and busy in the shoestore but outside it was rather chilly for a man with no overcoat—or job It seemed incredible that he should have found his one place of refuge closed to him
He walked from shoestore to shoestore hopelessly “Oldfashioned place” the shoemen said when he mentioned his experience with Pilkings Son’s “Be glad to do what we can for you Mr Appleby but just now—”
He had reached the departmentstore section Already the holiday rush had begun Holly was in the windows Salvation Army solicitors tinkled irritating bells on every corner
Department stores had always rather bewildered this man of small business but he inquired for the helpemployment bureau in the largest of them and his shyness disappeared as he found a long line of applicants filling out blanks Here he did not have to plead with some one man for the chance to work He was handled quickly and efficiently On a blank he gave his age his experience how much he expected115 and a brisk impersonal clerk told him to return next day
On that next day the world became wonderful for Father wonderful and young again for some one did actually want him He had a temporary holidayhelp job in the leathergoods department at eight dollars a week
Father’s first day of work in the leathergoods department was the most difficult he had ever known His knowledge of shoes and leather had become purely mechanical a few glances at new stock and at trade journals had kept him aware of changing styles Now he had suddenly to become omniscient in regard to handbags portfolios writingcases musicrolls learn leathers which he had never handled—cobraseal walrus écrasé monkeyskin He had to appear placidly official almost pontifical when vague ladies appeared poked clippings from holiday magazines at him and demanded “I want something like that” “That” usually depicted articles of whose use he had the most indefinite notions Other ladies ponderous ladies who wanted vast quantities of free advice before purchasing Christmas presents desired encyclopedic information about sewingcases116 picnicsets traveling pillowcases telephonepads guestbooks and “a cover for my Social Register and I want you to be sure it’s the very latest thing”
He was defenseless He could not dodge them Anybody could come up and ask him anything—and did And while he could learn something about the new leathers still it was difficult for him to remember the Long Island Railroad timetable well enough to reply instantly when an irate shopper snapped at him “Do you know what’s the next train for Hempstead”
The most difficile woman in a shoestore has at least a definite tangible foot to fit But the holiday crowd were buying presents for persons of whom Father knew nothing—though the shoppers expected him to know everything from the sizes of their wrists to their tastes in billfolds They haggled and pushed and crowded they wanted it to be less expensive as well as more blessed to give than to receive He spent twenty minutes in showing the entire line of diaries to one woman She apparently desired to make sure that they were all of them moral or something of the sort At the end of the time she sighed “Oh dear it isn’t time for117 the matinée even yet Shopping is so hard” And oozed away into the crowd
Father had started his first day with a superior manner of knowing all about leather and the ways of cranky customers He ended it with a depressed feeling that he knew nothing about anything that he couldn’t keep up the holiday pace of the younger clerks—and that the assistant buyer of the department had been watching him He walked home with strained weary shoulders but as he turned into the gloomy hallway leading to their room he artificially brightened his expression that he might bring joy home to Mother who would have been lonely and anxious and waiting all day
He pictured her as sitting there hunched up depressed He would bounce in with news of a good day He tried the door carefully Mother stood in the middle of the floor in a dream In the dimness of the room the coal fire shone through the front draught of the stove and threw a faint rose on her crossed hands Taller she seemed and more commanding Her head was back her eyes sparkling She was cleancut and strong against the unkempt walls
“Why Mother You look so happy What is it”
118 “I’m going to help I’m not going to be a lazybones I’ve got a job too In the toydepartment at Regalberg’s And they are going to pay me nine dollars a week How’s that for your stupid old woman”
“Why—why—you don’t need— I don’t know as I like—” began the conventional old Father to whom woman’s place was in the home whether or not there was a home in which to have a place Then the new Father the adventurer declared “I think it’s mighty fine Mother Mighty fine If it won’t be too hard on you”
“I’m going to take you to dinner tonight instead of you taking me That is if you’ll lend me a dollar”
Laughing till they nearly cried with Father shamelessly squeezing her arm on public thoroughfares they again plunged into the Roman pleasures of the little tinsel restaurant And like two lovers like the telephonegirl in your office and the clerk next door they made an engagement to meet at noon next day in a restaurant halfway between Regalberg’s and Father’s store
When she came breathlessly into that beefstew and papernapkin restaurant at noon119 Mother already had something of the busy unselfconscious look of the woman who can compete with men Her cheeks were flushed with walking Her eyes were young She glanced about the room found Father smiled quickly and proceeded to order her own lunch in a businesslike way
“They told me to be back in half an hour” she said “but I don’t mind a bit It’s been nice all morning This is the first time in my life I ever did have all the children to talk to that I wanted And the sweet toys Think of me gadding around like this and enjoying it I swear to goodness I don’t know myself And what do you think I’m going to do if either of us gets a raise I’m going to buy you an overcoat”
Father felt that he didn’t know her either She did most of the talking at lunch and hurried cheerfully back to her job while Father plodded wearily away speculating as to whether he could keep bustling on tired stinging feet till six like the younger holiday help with whom he was in competition
He couldn’t seem to please the assistant buyer of the department at all that afternoon though in his eager way he tried to be the perfect salesman
120 On Saturday morning there was a little note for him in which the superintendent was obsequiously Father’s servant and humbly informed Father that his services wouldn’t be needed after that day Would he if it was quite convenient call for his pay the following Tuesday and not fail to turn in his lockerkey before leaving the establishment
The assistant buyer came around and unhappily told Father that they were letting him go because the department was overstocked with younger liver men “I’m mighty sorry and I wish you good luck” he said with flash of the real man under the smooth steely exterior
Father scarcely heard him though he smiled faintly He read the note many times as he stumbled home But he couldn’t get himself to show it to Mother till Sunday afternoon so proud was she of helping him and proving herself a business woman—succeeding in a ninedollar job while Father who had once been worth twentytwo good dollars a week hadn’t been able to keep an eightdollar job Being quite human Father felt a scornful envy of her for a minute when she repeated all the pleasant things that had been said to her But she was121 so frank so touchingly happy that he could not long harden his heart
When he told her of his illfortune she put her hand to her breast and looked desperately afraid It was only with a dry gasp that she could say “Never mind Seth you’ll find something else I’m glad you don’t have to handle all those silly cardcases and all And so—so—oh I do hope you find something”
“You won’t think I’m entirely a failure”
“I won’t have you use that word Don’t I know—haven’t I seen you for years Why I depend on you like—it sounds like a honeymoon but you’re just about my religion Seth”
But she went to bed very early to be absolutely certain of being on time at Regalberg’s Monday morning
So began for Seth Appleby the haunted days when drifting through the gray and ghostly city of winter he scarce knew whether he was a real man or a ghost Down prison corridors that the city calls streets among Jewish and Italian firms of which he had never heard he wandered aimlessly asking with more and more diffidence for work any kind of work His shoes were ground down at the heel now and122 cracked open on one side In such footgear he dared not enter a shoestore his own realm to ask for work that he really could do As his December drifted toward Christmas like a rudderless steamer in a fog the cold permitted him to seek for work only an hour or two a day for he had no overcoat and his coat was very thin Seth Appleby didn’t think of himself as one of the rank of paupers but rather as a man who didn’t have an overcoat
He had the grippe and for a week he never left the house While Mother proudly carried on the moneyearning he tried to do the housework With unskilled hands he swept—leaving snags of dirt in the corners he washed—breaking a dish now and then he even got down on protesting sore knees and sloshed around in an attempt at scrubbing the knotty splintery floor He tried to cook dinner and breakfast but his repertoire consisted of frying—fried eggs fried bacon fried bread fried pork chops which Mother pretended to like though they gave her spasms of indigestion In the richest city in the world he haggled with abusive pushcart peddlers over five cents’ worth of cabbage He was patient but wrinkled with hopelessness
123 With two warm days in succession and the grippe gone Father found work as a noontime waiter in a piggery on Third Avenue where contractors’ workmen devoured stew and sour coffee and the waiters rushed gaspingly about in filthy white aprons After the lunch hour he washed dishes in soapy water that quickly changed from white to greasefilmed black For this he received fifty cents a day and his lunch He hid the depressing fact of such employment from Mother but religiously saved the daily fifty cents to give to her at Christmas He even walked for an hour after each lunch to get the smell of grease out of his clothes lest she suspect A patient quiet anxious courteous little aging man in a lunchroom that was noisy as a subway nasty as a sewer excavation
Without admitting it to himself he had practically given up the search for work After Christmas—something would happen he didn’t know what Anyway they wouldn’t go back to their daughter’s prisonplace unless Mother became ill
He discovered the life of idle men in New York—not the clubmen but those others Shabby shuffling his coatcollar turned up and124 secured with a safetypin he poked through Tompkins Square on sunny days or talked for hours to hoboes who scorned him as a man without experience of brakebeam and rods of hoboes’ hangouts and the Municipal Lodging House
When it was too cold to sit in the park he tried to make himself respectable of aspect by turning down his coatcollar and straightening his streaky tie before he stalked into the Tompkins Square branch of the public library where for hours he turned over the pages of magazines on whose text he could concentrate less each day that he was an outcast accepting his fate When he came out the cold took him like the pain of neuralgia and through streets that were a smear of snow and dust and blackened remains of small boys’ bonfires he shuffled off with timorous rapidity eying shop windows full of cheap bread cheap cakes cheap overcoats cheap novels on the joy of being poor all too expensive for him
Clean and upright and longing to be merry in a dour world he sank down among the spotted the shiftless the worthless But perhaps when he struck bottom—
He was not quite beaten He never varied125 in the wistful welcome he gave to Mother when she dragged herself home from work But with an increasing humbleness he accepted her as the master of the house and she unconsciously took the rôle She petted him and comforted him and worked for him She announced with the gaiety that one uses with a dependent small boy that they would have a wonderful party on Christmas Eve and with the animation of a dependent child he begged her to tell him about it
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126CHAPTER XI
THE day before Christmas—an anxious day in Regalberg’s department store where the “extra help” were wondering which of them would be kept on Most of them were given dismissals with their payenvelopes Mother’s fate was not decided She was told to report on the following Monday the toydepartment would be reduced but possibly they would find a place for her in the children’s dresses department for the January white sale At the very least they would be glad to give her an excellent recommendation the buyer told her More distraught than one stunned by utter hopelessness and ruin she came home and as Father had once been wont to do for her she made her face bright to deceive him
Under her arm she carried a wonderful surprise a very large bundle Father was agitated about it when she plumped gaily into their housekeeping room At last she let him open127 it He found an overcoat a great warm highcollared overcoat
He had an overcoat—an overcoat He could put it on any time and go about the streets without the pinned coatcollar which is the sign of the hobo He could walk all day looking for a job—warm and prosperous He could find work and support Mother He had an overcoat He was a gentleman again
With tears he kissed her lingeringly then produced his own present which he had meant to keep till Christmas Day itself It was seven dollars which he had earned as waiter at the piggery
“And we’re going out and have dinner on it too” he insisted
“Yes yes we will We’ve been economizing—so much”
But before they went they carefully cached in the windowbox the cabbage he had cooked for dinner
With a slow luxurious joy in every movement he put on the overcoat Even in the pocket in which he stuck the seven Christmas dollars he had a distinct pleasure for his undercoat pockets were too torn too holey to carry anything in them They went prancing to the128 Hungarian restaurant They laughed so much that Father forgot to probe her about the overcoat and did not learn that she had bought it secondhand for three dollars and had saved the three dollars by omitting lunch for nearly four weeks
They had a table at the front of the restaurant near the violin They glowed over soup and real meat and coffee There were funny people at the next table—a man who made jokes Something about the “Yiddisher gavotte” and saying “We been going to dances a lot but last night the wife and I wanted to be quiet so I bought me two front seats for Grant’s Tomb” It was tremendous Father and Mother couldn’t make many jokes these days but they listened and laughed The waiter remembered them they had always tipped him ten cents he kept coming back to see if there was anything they wanted as though they were important people Father thanked her for the overcoat in what he blithely declared to be Cape Cod dialect and toasted her in coffee They were crammed with good cheer when Mother paid the check from a dollar she had left over and they rose from the table
Father stood perplexedly gazing at the hatrack129 behind them He gasped “Why where—Why I hung it——”
He took down his old hat with a pathetic bewildered hesitancy and he whispered to Mother “My overcoat is gone—it’s been stolen—my new overcoat Now I can’t go out and get a job—”
They cried out and demanded restitution of the waiter the headwaiter the manager None of these officials could do more than listen and ask heavy questions in bad English and ejaculate “Somebody stole it from right behind you there when you weren’t looking”
One of the guests dramatically said that he had seen a man who looked suspicious and for a moment every one paid attention to him but that was all the information he had The other guests gazed with apathetic interest stirring their coffee and grunting one to another “He ought to watched it”
The manager pointed at one of the signs “This restaurant is not responsible for the loss of hats coats or packages” and he shouted “I am very sorry but we can do nuttin’ Somebody stole it from right behind you there—no one was looking If you leaf your name and address—”
130 Father didn’t even hear him He was muttering to himself “And the seven dollars that I saved for Sarah was in it”
He took Mother’s arm he tried to walk straight as he turned his back on the storm of windy words from the manager
Once they were away from spectators on dark Fifteenth Street Father threw up his hands and in a voice of utter agony he mourned “I can’t do anything more I’m clean beaten I’ve tried and I’ve looked for work but now— Be better if I went and jumped in the river”
She took his arm and led him along as though he were a child and helpless She comforted him as well as she could but there was nothing very convincing to say As she grew silent her thoughts grew noisy They shouted separate hard brutal sentences so loudly that she could not hear even the scraping feet of the stooped man beside her They clamored
“I can’t do anything more either
“I don’t believe I will be kept on at the store after all Only through January anyway
“All the money we’ve got now is the nine dollars they gave me today
“Suppose that’s been stolen too from our room
131 “Suppose I died
“What would happen to Father if I died He’d have to go—some dreadful place—poorhouse or some place—
“What would happen to me if he died I’d be so lonely I couldn’t stand it He’s always been so dear to me
“That clerk in the bookdepartment that died from asphyxiation—I wonder if it was accident after all They said so but she was so unhappy and all when she talked to me at lunch
“‘Better jump in the river’ That would be cold and he hasn’t got an overcoat No of course that wouldn’t make any difference—
“I wonder if gas suicide hurts much
“If we could only die together and neither of us be left—
“God wouldn’t call that suicide—oh He couldn’t not when there’s two people that nobody wants and they don’t ask anything but just to be together That nobody really wants—my daughter don’t—except maybe the Tubbses And they are so poor too Nobody needs us and we just want to find a happy way to go off together where we can sleep Oh I wouldn’t think that would be wrong would it”
132 They were at home She hastened to burrow among the pile of stewpans for the nine dollars her week’s salary which she had hidden there When she found that it was safe she didn’t care so much after all What difference would it have made if the money had been gone
Father staggered like a drunkard to one of the flimsy straight uncomfortable chairs But he got himself up and tried to play on the mouthorgan a careless tune of grassy hills and a summer breeze While he played he ridiculed himself for such agony over the loss of an overcoat but his philosophizing didn’t mean anything He had lost the chance of finding work when he had lost the overcoat He couldn’t really think and the feeble trickle of music had a tragic absurdity He petulantly threw the mouthorgan on the bed then himself slumped on the coverlet His face was grayly hopeless like ashes or dust or the snow of great cities
Mother had been brooding She was only distantly conscious of his final collapse She said suddenly bluntly “Let’s go away together If we could only die while we are still together and have some nice things to remember—”
Hers was the less conventional mind of the133 two He protested—but it was a feeble mumble The world had come to seem unreal the question of leaving it rather unimportant
Much they talked possibly for hours but the talk was as confused as the spatter of furniture in that illlighted room—lighted by a gasjet All that they said was but repetition of her first demand
While he lay on the bed flat his arms out like a prisoner on a rack wondering why all his thoughts had become a void in which he could find no words with which to answer her she slowly stood up turned out the gas then again opened the gascock
She hastily stripped off her overcoat and fitted it over the crack at the bottom of the door where showed a strip of light from the slimy hall without She caught up the red cotton tablecloth and stuffed it along the window moving clumsily through the room in which the darkness was broken only by pallid light that seeped through the window from cold walls without She staggered over and lay down beside him Her work was done and in the darkness her worried frown changed to a smile of divine and mothering kindliness which did not lessen as a thin stinging acid vapor of134 illuminating gas bit at her throat and made her cough
Father raised his head in stupefied alarm She drew him down put his head on her shoulder She took his hand to lead him her little boy into a land of summer dreams where they would always be together The Innocents were going their way asking no one’s permission yet harming no one His hand was twitching a little he coughed with a sound of hurt bewilderment but she held his hand firmly and over this first rough part of the road the mother of tenderness led him pityingly on
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135CHAPTER XII
OUT of a black curdled ocean where for ages he had struggled and stifled Seth Appleby raised his head for an instant and sank again For longer ages and more black more terrible he fought on the bottom of the ocean of life He had reached the bottom now He began to rise His coughing was shaking him into a halfconsciousness and very dimly he heard her cough too He feverishly threw out one hand It struck the mouthorgan he had thrown upon the bed struck it sharply with a pain that pierced to his nervecenters
He had the dismaying thought “I’ll never play the mouthorgan to her again We won’t ever sit in the rosearbor while I play the mouthorgan to her Where is she Yes Yes This is her hand” He was trying to think now Something said to him sharply “Suicide is wicked”
Yes he reflected in the tangles of a halfthought136 he had always been told that suicide was wicked Let’s see What was it he was trying to think—suicide wicked—blame the cowards who killed themselves—suicide wicked— No no That wasn’t the thought he was trying to lay hold of What was it he was trying to think Suicide wicked— God how this cough hurt him What was it— Suicide No He violently pushed away the thought of suicide and its wickedness and at last shouted within himself “Oh that’s what I was thinking I must play to Mother again Where is she She needs me She’s ’way off somewhere she’s helpless she’s calling for me—my poor little girl”
He hurled himself off the bed to find her in that cold darkness He stood wavering under the gasjet “Why—oh yes we turned on the gas” he realized
He thrust his hand up and reached the gasjet Then staggering feeling inch by inch for leagues along the edge of the cupboard raising his ponderous hand with infinite effort he touched a plate feebly fitted his fingers over its edge and with a gesture of weak despair hurled it at the window The glass shattered He fell to the floor
137 Strained with weeks of trying to appear young and brisk in the store Mother had become insensible before the gas could overcome him and he awoke there limp on the floor before she revived The room was still foul with gasfumes and very cold for they had not rekindled the fire when they had returned after dinner
He feebly opened the window even the door A passing woman cried “Gas in the room My Gawd my old man almost croaked himself last year with one of them quarter meters” She bustled in a corpulent baggy unclean kindly effectual soul and helped him fan the gas out of the room She drove away other inquisitive neighbors revived Mother Appleby and left them with thickvoiced words of cheer muttering that “her old man would kill her if she didn’t get a hustle on herself and chase that growler”
With the broken windowpane stuffed up the gas lighted and the fire started the Applebys faced life again and were very glad They couldn’t have been long under the gas Father’s eons of drowning struggle must have been seconds Propped up in bed Mother refused a doctor and smiled—though confusedly with the bewilderment of one who had felt the numbness of death
138 “I’ll tell you how it is” cried Father “We— Lord how glad I am to have you again It’s like this We felt as if we’d gone the very limit and nothing ever would come right again But it’s just like when we were a young married couple and scrapped and were so darn certain we’d have to leave each other That’s the way it’s been with us lately and we needed something big like this to get our nerve up I guess Now we’ll start off again and think honey whatever we do will be a vict’ry—it’ll be so much bigger than nothing
“Let’s see New York doesn’t want us But somewhere there must be a village of folks that does We’ll start out right now walking through New York and we’ll hunt till we find it even if we have to go clean out to San Francisco Gee think we’re free no job or nothing and we could go to San Francisco Travel like we’ve always wanted to And we won’t have any more pride now to bother us not after—that I’ll play the mouthorgan for pennies Come on we’ll start for Japan and see the cherryblossoms Come on old partner we’re going to pioneer like our daddies that went West”
And he struck up “Susanna” on his mouthorgan
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139CHAPTER XIII
THE Applebys didn’t start for Japan on Christmas Eve Also they didn’t go defiantly with pack on back through the streets of New York like immigrants to youth It took Mother Appleby two days to recover from gas and two more to recover from lifelong respectability to the end that she should become a merry beggar gathering pennies while Father piped upon that antic instrument the mouthorgan
Father labored with her and cooked beans for her She made him agree to get as far from New York as their nine dollars would take them before they should begin to be vagrants It’s always easier to be a bold adventurer in some town other than the one in which you are
The train took them about eighty miles into New Jersey They debouched rather shyly and stood on the station platform in a town consisting of a trust a saloon a druggist’s and a general store The station loafers stared at140 them Father would no more have dared play the mouthorgan to these gangling youths than he would have dared kiss a traffic policeman at Fortysecond and Fifth Avenue
They edged around the corner of the station and gingerly stepped off into an ocean of slush deaf to the yells of the busdriver who hopefully represented that he would take them practically anywhere in the world for fifty cents
They were an odd couple Father had no need of an overcoat now He was wearing three shirts two waistcoats two pairs of trousers and three pairs of socks to say nothing of certain pages of an evening newspaper cunningly distributed through his garments crackly but warm He waddled chubbily and somewhat stiffly but he outfaced the winter wind as he had not done for many weeks In this outfit he could never have gone the rounds of offices looking for work but in the open he had the appearance of a hardy woodsman—or at least the father of a woodsman He wore defiantly the romantic wreck of that plaid cap which he had bought for Cape Cod which his daughter had sequestered at Saserkopee and which he had stolen back from her Also he had a secret joy in the fact that his shirt—that141 is his outer and most visible shirt—was a coarse garment of blue flannel a very virile and knightly tabard with large white buttons which Mother had never let him wear in public It was such a noble habiliment as a fireman might have worn or a longshoreman or Dan’l Boone
Mother was almost equally bulky with an unassayed number of garments but over them all she wore a still respectable Raglan town coat
They both carried bundles and in Father’s right hand was a red pasteboard case which protected the mouthorgan This as they modestly trotted through the village he tried to conceal in the palm of his hand and he glared at a totally innocent passerby whom he suspected of wanting to hear the mouthorgan
Mother didn’t know of his mental struggles She was thinking more about her feet She looked up with mild astonishment when as they left the town by the highroad southward Father burst out “I’ll play if I want to but I can’t stand the gawping gumps here”
“Why Father” she said trustingly
The noontime sun came out To conceal from his stomach the fact that it was hungry142 Father grew boyishly enthusiastic about going Southward “Gee” he burbled “we’ll hit down toward Florida—palms and alligators and—and everything—Land of Flowers What’s this hotel—the Royal Points de Anna Play the mouthorgan there Make a hit Then we’ll strike New Orleans and jump to San Francisco Gee it’s a long way between houses along here”
They approached a farmyard Father was tremendously urging himself to play the mouthorgan there to skip and be nimble and gain a minstrel’s meed Meaning lunch
Frowning with intentness he stopped before the house Mother meekly halted beside him She had not lost quite all of the training in selfdependence she had got from a business life these last weeks but she looked to him for leadership in the new existence
Father swung his shapeless pack from his shoulders set it down on the ground reluctantly drew his mouthorgan from its case He became aware that a large astonished woman was staring from the kitchen window He stared back The mouthorgan was left suspended in air Hastily he stuck it in his pocket and as though hypnotized moved toward the143 kitchen door He had to give the woman some explanation for encamping in her yard Why She might have thought that he had intended to make a fool of himself by playing the mouthorgan there
The woman opened the door curiously stared over Father’s head at Mother then back at the little man with his pink cheery face and whiff of delicate silver hair
“I—uh—I— Could I cut some wood or something for you” said Father “Mrs—uh—Mrs Smith and I are tramping across the United States—San Francisco and New Orleans and so on—and—”
“Why you poor things you must be terribly cold and tired Think of it San Francisco You tell Mrs Smith to come right in and warm herself by the fire and I guess I can find some dinner for both of you”
Father scuttled out informed Mother that she had become Mrs Smith and before her slightly dazed mind could grasp it all she was in at a kitchen table near the stove and eating doughnuts salt pork beans apple pie and vast cups of coffee Not but that Father himself was also laying in the food with a lustiness that justified his lumberjack’s blueflannel shirt144 From time to time he dutifully mentioned his project of cutting wood but the woman was more interested in him as a symbol
In a dim quite unanalytic way Father perceived that to this woman this drab prisoner of kitchen and woodshed it was wonderful to meet a man and woman who had actually started for—anywhere
She sighed and with a look of remembering old dreams she declared “I wish my old man and I could do that Gawd I wouldn’t care how cold we got Just get away for a month Then I’d be willing to come back here and go on cooking up messes He goes into town almost every day in winter—he’s there now—but I stay here and just work”
Father understood that it would have desecrated her vision of the heroic had he played the mouthorgan for pay perceived that she didn’t even want him to chop wood Mother and he were to this woman a proof that freedom and love and distant skies did actually exist and that people just folks not rich could go and find them
When she had warmed Mother’s feet and given them her wistful good wishes the woman let them go and the Smiths recently Applebys145 went comfortably and plumply two more miles on their way to Japan
Father’s conscience was troubling him not because he had taken food from the woman—she had bestowed it with the friendly and unpatronizing graciousness of poor women—but because he had been too cowardly to play the mouthorgan When Mother had begun to walk wearily and Father had convinced himself that he wouldn’t be afraid to play next chance he had they approached a crude roadhouse merely a roadside saloon with carriagesheds a beer sign and one lone rusty iron outdoor table to give an air of al fresco
“I’m going over there and play” said Father
“I won’t have you hanging around saloons” snapped Mother
“Now Mother I reckon I wouldn’t more than drink a couple of horses’ necks or something wild like that”
“Yes and that’s just the way temptation gets you” said Mother “drinking horses’ necks and all them brandy drinks I wish I’d never tasted that nasty cocktail you made me take last year I wish I’d joined the WhiteRibboners like Mrs Tubbs wanted me to”
“Well we’ll organize a Hoboes’ Chapter of146 the W C T U and have meetings under the watertank at the depot—”
They were interrupted by a hail from the roadhouse A large man with a detective’s mustache and a brewer’s cheeks a man in shirtsleeves and a white apron stood on the porch calling “Hey Mr and Mrs Smith Come right in and get warm”
Father and Mother stared at each other “He means us” gasped Father
Mechanically the Innocents straggled across the road
The saloonkeeper shook hands with both of them and bellowed “Lady telephoned along the line—great things for gossip these rural telephones—said you was coming this way and we’re all watching out for you You come right into the parlor No booze served in there Mrs Smith Make yourselves comfortable and I’ll have the Frau cut you up a coupla sandwiches How’d you leave San Francisco Pretty warm out there ain’t it”
He had by this time shooed them into the plush and crayonenlargement parlor behind the barroom His great voice overawed them—and they were cold Mother secretively looked for evidences of vice for a roulettetable or a147 blackjack but found nothing more sinful than a box of dominoes so she perched on a cane chair and folded her hands respectably
“How’s San Francisco” repeated the saloonkeeper
“Why—uh—um—uh—how do you mean” Father observed
“Yes I heard how you folks ’ve tramped from there How is it nice climate out there”
“Why it’s pretty nice—orange groves ’most everywhere Nice climate” said Father avoiding Mother’s accusing look and desperately hoping she wouldn’t feel moved to be veracious and virtuous
“Hey Mamie here’s the old couple that ’ve tramped clear from San Francisco” bawled the saloonkeeper
A maternal German woman with a white apron of about the proportions of a cup defender’s mainsail billowed into the room exclaimed over Mother’s wet feet provided dry stockings and felt slippers for her and insisted on stuffing both of them with fried eggs and potato salad The saloonkeeper and a select coterie of farmers asked Father questions about San Francisco Kansas rainy seasons the footandmouth disease irrigation Western148 movie studios and the extent of Mormonism Father stuck pretty closely to a Sundaynewspaper description of the PanamaPacific Exposition for answers to everything and satisfied all hands to such an extent that they humbly asked him how much danger there was of a Japanese invasion of the Philippines and how long did he think the great European war would last
Abashed prickly with uncomfortableness Father discovered that the saloonkeeper was taking up a collection for them It was done very quietly and the man slipped a dollar and fifteen cents into his hand in so casual a manner so much as though he were merely making change that Father took it and uneasily thrust it into his pocket He understood the kindly spirit of it because he himself was kindly He realized that to these stayathomes the Applebys’ wandering was a thing to revere a heroism like prizefighting or religion or going to war But he didn’t psychologize about it He believed in “the masses” because he belonged to the masses
As a matter of fact Father had very little time to devote to meditation when they hit the road again He was busy defending himself149 while Mother accused him of having lied scandalously He protested that he had never said that he had been to San Francisco they had made that mistake themselves
“Now don’t you go trying to throw dust in my eyes I just won’t have this lying and prevaricating and goingson I’m just going to— What’s the matter Seth You’re limping Are your feet cold”
And that was the end of Mother’s moral injunctions for Father with a most unworthy cunning featured the coldness of his feet till she had exhausted her vocabulary of chiropodal sympathy after which he kept her interested in the state of his ears his hands and the tip of his nose She patted him consolingly and they toiled on together forgetting in the closeness of their comradeship the strangeness of being on an unknown road homeless as a chilly sunset spread bands of cold lemon and gray across the enormous sky and all decent folk thought of supper
Then everything went wrong with the wandering Innocents
About suppertime Father made another attempt to get himself to play the mouthorgan150 at a mean farmhouse which came in sight after a lonely stretch Mother was sinking with weariness He hitched the mouthorgan out of its case but again he shrank and he feebly said to a tumblehaired farmer in overalls “Can I split some wood for you Mrs Smith and I are tramping—”
The farmer ungenerously took him at his word For an hour he kept Father hacking at a pile of wood while Mother crouched near trying to keep warm with his coat over her feet Father’s back turned into one broad ache and his arms stung but he stuck to it till the farmer growled “I guess that’ll do Now don’t hang around here”
He handed Father a bundle Father thought of throwing it at him but simultaneously he thought of keeping it and consuming its contents He gasped with the insult He became angrier and angrier as he realized that the insult applied to Mother also But before he could think of a smart crushing NewYorkish reply the farmer grumped away into the house
The Applebys dragged themselves back to the highroad Father was blaming himself for having brought her to this “But I did try to get a job first” he insisted and remembered151 how he had once begged the owner of a filthy shoestore on Third Avenue for a place as porter shoeblack anything
Their road led them by a clump of woods
“We’ll have a fire here and camp” cried Father
He had never made a fire in the open and he understood it to be a most difficult process But he was a young lover his sweetheart was cold he defied man and nature Disdaining any possible passerby he plunged into the woodland With bare hands he scooped the light fall of snow from between two rocks and in the darkness fumbled for twigs and leaves Gruntingly he dragged larger boughs piled the wood with infinite care lighted it tremblingly
They sat on the rocks by the fire and opened the farmer’s bundle There were cold gristly roast beef bread and cheese and a large angrylooking sausage
“Um” meditated Father then “I’ll heat up the roast beef” Which he grandly did on little sticks and they ate it contemplatively while their souls and toes relaxed in the warmth and the black treetrunks shone cozily in the glow
152 “No cockroaches and no smell of fried fish here like there is on Avenue B” said Father “And we don’t have to go home from our picnic I wonder why folks let themselves get all old and housebound when they could be like us”
“Yes” said Mother drowsily
He hadn’t nerved himself to play the mouthorgan not all day but now with the luxury of fire and solitude he played it and what’s more he tried to whistle a natty little ballad which touchingly presented a castaway as “longlonglonging for his Michigan his wishagain hooome”
Yet Father wasn’t altogether satisfied with his fire The dry twigs he kept feeding to it flared up and were gone The Innocents huddled together closer and closer to the coals Father gave little pats to her shoulder while she shivered and began to look anxious
“Cold old honey”
“Yes but it don’t matter” she declared
“Come on I guess we’d better go look for a place to sleep I’m afraid—don’t know as I could keep this fire up all night after all”
“Oh I can’t walk any Oh I guess it will be all right when I get going again” She tried to153 smile at him and with the slowness of pain she reached for her bundle
He snatched it from her “I can carry all our stuff anyway” he said
Leaning on him moving step by step every step an agony of soreness and cold lifting her feet each time by a separate effort of her numbed will she plodded beside him while he tried to aid her with a hand under her elbow
“There There’s where we’ll go” he whispered as the shapes of farmbuildings lifted against the sky “We won’t ask permission We mightn’t get it Like that last farmer And I won’t let you go one step farther We’ll butt right into the barn and sleep in the hay”
“But—do you—think we’d better”
“We will”
The mouselike Father was a very lion emboldened by his care for her He would have faced ten farmers terrible with shotguns Without one timorous glance he led her to the small sidedoor of the barn eased down the latch lifted her over the sill closed the door In the barn was a great blackness but also a great content It seemed warm and was intimate with the scent of cows and hay alive154 with the quiet breathing of animals Father lit a match and located the stairs to the haymow
Mother was staggering With his arm about her waist very tender and reverent he guided her to the stairs and up them step by agonized step to the fragrant peace of the haymow She sank down and he covered her so deep with hay that only her face was left uncovered
“Warm Mother”
She did not answer She was already asleep
Through a night haunted by vague monsters of darkness—and by sneezes whenever spears of hay invaded his indignant city nose—Father turned and thrashed But he was warm and he did sleep for hours at a time At what must have been dawn he heard the farmer at the stalls in the stable below He felt refreshed cozily drowsy and he did a shameless thing a trick of vagrants and roadwallopers he put his thumb to his nose aimed his hand toward the supposititious location of the farmer below and twirled his outspread fingers in a flickering manner It is believed that he intended to convey spirited defiance or possibly insult by this amazing gesture He grinned contentedly and went to sleep again Fortunately155 Mother was asleep and did not see him acting—as she often but vainly defined it—“like a young smart Aleck”
Father awakened from an agitating dream of setting the barn afire and beheld Mother sitting up amid the hay—an amazing a quite incredible situation for Mrs Seth Appleby She mildly dabbled at her gray hair which was still neat and looked across in bewilderment Like a jackinthebox Father came up out of the hay to greet her
“How do you like your room in the WaldorfAstorya” he said “Sleep well old honey”
“Why—why I must have” she marveled “I don’t hardly remember coming here though”
“Ready to tramp on”
She swore that she was And indeed her cheeks were ruddy with outdoors the corners of her eyes relaxed But she was so stiff that they had hobbled a mile and Father had shucked several tons of corn in return for breakfast before she ceased feeling as though her legs were made of extraordinarily brittle glass
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156CHAPTER XIV
SOMETIMES they were fêted adventurers who were credited with having tramped over most of the globe Sometimes they were hoboes on whom straggly women shut farmhouse doors But never were they wandering minstrels Father went on believing that he intended to play the mouthorgan and entertain the poor but actually he depended on his woodchopping arm and every cord he chopped gave him a ruddier flush of youth a warmer flush of ambition
Most people do not know why they do things—not even you and I invariably know though of course we are superior to the unresponsive masses Many people are even unconscious that they are doing things or being things—being gentle or cruel or creative or parasitic Quite without knowing it Father was searching for his place in the world The New York shoestores had decided that he was too old to be useful But age is as fictitious as157 time or love Father was awakening from the sleep of drudgery in the one dusty shop and he was asking what other place there was for him He was beginning to have another idea a better idea which he pondered as he came to shoestores in small towns They weren’t very well windowdressed the signs were feeble Maybe some day he’d get back into the shoe business in some town and he’d show them—only how could he talk business to a shoeman when he was shabby and wintertanned and none too extravagant in the care of his reddening hands
But he was learning something more weighty—the art of handling people in the two aspects thereof—bluffing and backing up the bluff with force and originality He came to the commonplace people along the road as something novel and admirable a man who had taken his wife and his poverty and gone seeing the world When he smiled in a superior way and said nothing people immediately believed that he must have been places done brave things He didn’t so much bluff them as let them bluff themselves He had never been able to do that in his years as a foggyday shadow to the late J Pilkings
158 It is earnestly recommended to all uncomfortable or dissatisfied men over sixty that they take their wives and their mouthorgans and go tramping in winter whether they be bank presidents or shoeclerks or writers of fiction or just plain honest men Though doubtless some of them may have difficulty in getting their wives to go
It was early March a snowy blustery March and the Applebys were plodding through West Virginia No longer were they the mysterious “Smiths” Father was rather proud now of being Appleby the pedestrian Mother looked stolidly content as she trudged at his side ruddy and placid and accustomed to being wept over by every farmwife
At an early dusk with a storm menacing with the air uneasy and a wind melancholy in the trees they struck off by a forest road which would they hoped prove a short cut to the town of Weatherford They came to crosspaths and took the more trodden way which betrayed them and soon dwindled to a narrow rut which they could scarcely follow in the twilight Father was frightened They would have to camp in the woods—and a blizzard was coming
159 He saw a light ahead a shifting evasive light
“There’s a farmhouse or something” he declared cheerily “We’ll just nach’ly make ’em give us shelter Going to storm too bad to do much work for ’em and I bet it’s some cranky old shellback farmer living ’way out here like this Well we’ll teach the old codger to like music and this time I will play my mouthorgan Ain’t you glad we’re young folks that like music and dancing—”
“How you run on” Mother said trustingly
From the bleakness ahead came a cracked but lusty voice singing “Hello ’Frisco”
“Man singing Jolly That’s a good omen” chuckled Father “All the folks that are peculiar—like we are—love to sing”
“Yes and talk” However much she enjoyed Father’s chatter Mother felt that she owed it to her conscience—which she kept as neat and well dusted now that they were vagrants as she had in a New York flat—to reprove him occasionally for his own good
“Say this is exciting That’s a bonfire ahead” Father whispered
They slowed their pace to a stealthy walk Behind them and beside them was chilly darkness160 lurking in caverns among black bare treetrunks Before them they could see a nebulous glow and hear the monotonous voice singing the same words over and over
Mother shrieked They stopped A vast lumbering bulk of a man plunged out from the woods hesitated stooped brandished a club
“Tut tut No need to be excited mister We’re just two old folks looking for shelter for the night” wavered Father with spurious coolness
“Huh” growled a thick greasy voice “Where d’yuh belong”
“Everywhere We’re tramping to San Francisco”
As he said it Father stood uneasy looking into the penetrating eye of an electric torch which the man had flashed on him The torch blotted out the man who held it and turned everything—the night the woods the storm mutters—into just that one hypnotizing ball of fire suspended in the darkness
“Well well” gasped the unknown “a moll swelp me Welcome to our roost ’bo You hit it right This is Hoboes’ Home There’s nine ’boes of us got a shack up ahead Welcome ma’am What’s your line Con game or just busted”
161 “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean young man” snapped Mother
“Well if you two are like me nothing but just honest workmen you better try and make ’em think you’re working some game—tell ’em you’re the Queen of the Thimbleriggers or some dern thing like that Come on now Been gathering wood got enough You can follow me The bunch ain’t so very criminal—not for hoboes they ain’t”
The large mysterious man started down the path toward the glow and Father and Mother followed him uncomfortably
“It’s a den of vice he’s taking us into” groaned Father “And if we go back they’ll pursue us Maybe we better—”
“I don’t believe a con game is a nice thing whatever it is” said Mother “It sounds real wicked I never heard of thimblerigging How do you rig a thimble”
“I don’t know but I think we better go back”
They stopped The large man turned on them and growled “Hustle up”
Obediently the Innocents trailed after his dark shaggy back that in his tattered overcoat seemed as formidable as it was big The glow162 grew more intense ahead of them They came into a clearing where round a fire beside a rude shanty sat several men one of whom was still droning “Hello ’Frisco”
“Visitors” shouted the guide
The group sprang up startled threatening—shabby evillooking men
Father stood palsied as grim unshaven faces lowered at him as a sinister man with a hooked nose stalked forward his fist doubled
But Mother left his side darted past the hooknosed man and snapped “That’s no way to peel potatoes young man You’re losing all the best part next to the skin Here give me that I’ll show you Waste and carelessness—”
While Father and the group of circled hoboes stared Mother firmly took a huge jackknife away from a slight redheaded man who was peeling potatoes and chucking them into a pot of stew that was boiling on the fire
“Well—I’ll—be—darned” said every one almost in chorus
“Who are you” the hooknosed man demanded of Father But his voice sounded puzzled and he gazed incredulously at Mother as she cozily peeled potatoes her delicate cheeks and placid eye revealed in the firelight163 She was already as sturdily industrious and matteroffact as though she were back in the tearoom
“I’m Appleby the pedestrian” said Father “Wife and I went— Say ain’t she the nicestlooking woman in that firelight Great woman let me tell you We went broke in New York and we’re tramping to ’Frisco Can you take us in for the night I guess we’re all fellowhoboes”
“Sure will” said the hooknosed man “Pleased to have you come fellowbum My name’s Crook McKusick I’m kind of camp boss The boys call me ‘Crook’ because I’m so honest You can see that yourself”
“Oh yes” said Father quite innocently
“The lad that the madam dispossessed is Reddy and this fishfaced duck here is the K C Kid But I guess the most important guy in the gang is Mr Mulligan the stew If your missus wants to elect herself cook tonight and make the mulligan taste human she can be the boss”
“Bring me the salt and don’t talk so much You’ll have the stew spoiled in about one minute” Mother said severely to Crook McKusick and that mighty leader meekly164 said “Yes ma’am” and trotted to a box on the far side of the fire
The rest of the band—eight practical romanticists each of whom was in some ways tougher than the others—looked rather sullenly at Mother’s restraining presence but when the mulligan was served they volunteered awkward compliments Veal and chicken and sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes and carrots and corn were in the stew and it was very hot and there was powerful coffee with condensed milk to accompany it
Father shook his head and tried to make himself believe that he really was where he was—in a rim of bare woods reddened with firelight surrounding a little stumpy clearing on one side of which was a shack covered with tarpaper fastened with laths The fire hid the storm behind its warm curtain The ruffians about the fire seemed to be customers in a new “T Room” as Mother fussed over them and kept their plates filled
Gradually the hoboes thawed out and told the Applebys that they had permission from the owner of the land to occupy this winter refuge but that they liberally “swiped” their supplies from the whole countryside
165 Mother exclaimed “You poor boys I don’t suppose you know any better Father I think we’ll stay here for a few days and I’ll mend up the boys’ clothes and teach them not to steal You boys—why here you are great big grownup men and you can jus’ as well go out every day and work enough to get your supplies No need to be leading an immoral life jus’ because you’re tramps I don’t see but what being tramps is real interesting and healthy if you jus’ go about it in a nice moral way Now you with the red hair come here and wipe the dishes while I wash them I swear to goodness I don’t believe these horrid tin plates have been washed since you got them”
As Mother’s bland determined oration ended Crook McKusick the hooknosed leader glanced at her with a resigned shrug and growled “All right ma’am Anything for a change as the fellow said to the ragged shirt We’ll start a Y M C A I suppose you’ll be having us take baths next”
The youngster introduced as the K C Kid piped up truculently “Say where do you get this moral stuff This ain’t a Sundayschool picnic it’s a hoboes’ camp”
Crook McKusick vaulted up with startling166 quickness seized the K C Kid by the neck wrenched his face around and demanded “Can that stuff Kid If you don’t like the new stunt you can beat it This here lady has got more nerve than ten transcontinental bums put together—woman lady like her out battering for eats and pounding the roads She’s the new boss see But old Uncle Crook is here with his mits too see”
The Kid winced as Crook’s nails gouged his neck and whimpered “All right Crook Gee you don’t need to get so sore about it”
Unconscious that there had been a crisis Mother struck in “Step lively now boys and we’ll clean the dishes while the water’s hot”
With the incredulous gentry of leisure obeying her commands Mother scoured the dishes picked up refuse then penetrated the sleepingshack and was appalled by the filth on the floor and by the gunnysacking mattresses thrown in the crude wooden bunks
“Now we’ll tidy this up” she said “and maybe I can fix up a corner for Mr Appleby and me—sort of partition it off like”
The usual evening meditations and geographical discussions of the monastery of hoboes had been interrupted by collecting garbage and by167 a quite useless cleaning of dishes that would only get dirty again They were recuperating returning to their spiritual plane of perfect peace in picturesque attitudes by the fire They scowled now Again the K C Kid raised his voice “Aw let the bunkhouse alone What d’yuh think this is A female cemetery”
Crook McKusick glared but Reddy joined the rebellion with “I’m through I ain’t no Chink laundryman”
The bunch turned their heads away from Mother and pretended to ignore her—and to ignore Crook’s swaying shoulders and clenching fists In low but most impolitesounding voices they began to curse the surprised and unhappy Mother Father ranged up beside her protectingly He was sure there was going to be a fight and he determined to do for some one anyway He was trapped desperate Crook McKusick stood with them too but his glance wavered from them to the group at the fire and back again and he was clearing his throat to speak when—
“Hands up” came a voice from the shadows beyond the fire
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168CHAPTER XV
WHILE he was raising his arms so high that his cuffs were pulled halfway down to his elbows Father was conscious that the hoboes by the fire even the formidable Crook McKusick were doing the same Facing them in the woods border was a farmer in a coonskin overcoat aiming a doublebarreled shotgun beside him two other farmers with rifles under their arms It seemed to Father that he was in a wild Western melodrama and he helplessly muttered “Gosh Can you beat it”
The man with the leveled shotgun drawled “I’m the deputy sheriff for this locality and I’ll give you dirty bums just five minutes to pick up your duffle and git out and keep agoing I guess we don’t need you around here You been robbing every henroost for ten miles Now step lively and no funny business”
“Stung” muttered Crook McKusick hopelessly “Got us”
Suddenly a downy figure—who might herself169 have come from a large peaceful human henroost—fluttered straight at the muzzle of the sheriff’s shotgun It was Mother
“Hands up I told juh” stormed the sheriff amazedly
“Oh look out Mother” wailed Father rushing after her his own hands going down to his sides in his agitation
“Look out aunty” echoed Crook McKusick “That’s a bad actor that guy”
But Mother continued straight at the gun snapping “Don’t point that dratted thing at me You bother me”
The sheriff wavered The gun dropped “Who are you” he demanded
“Never you mind who I am young man I’m responsible for these boys though And they promised me they wouldn’t do no more stealing They’re going to work for what they get And they got a right here on this land They got permission That’s more than you got I venture with your nasty guns and all coming around here— Have you got a warrant”
“No I ain’t but you—”
“Then you just step yourself away young man Coming here fairly shaking a body’s170 nerves I vow you almost scare me carrying on— Put down that dratted gun I told you You’ll either go Mr Deputy Monkey or I’ll see your boss and we’ll see what we’ll see”
With which Mother—who was rapidly becoming almost impolite in her indignation over this uninvited visit from a person whom she couldn’t find it in her heart to like—seized the muzzle of the gun pushed it down and stood glowering at the sheriff her arms akimbo
“Well ma’am I don’t know who you are but if you got any idee that this bunch of cutthroats is likely to turn into any W C T U pinktea party—”
“Now none of your nonsense and impudence and sneering young man and be off with you or I’ll see somebody that’ll have something to say to you Illegal goingson that’s what they are no warrant or nothing”
One of the sheriff’s companions muttered “Come on Bill I think she’s the wife of that nosey new preacher over to Cordova”
“All right” said the sheriff Before he turned away he threatened “Now if I hear of anything more from you boys I’ll get that warrant all righty and you’ll land in the calaboose where you belong”
171 But the hoboes about the fire cheered derisively and as the sheriff disappeared in the woods they surrounded Mother in a circle of grins and shining eyes and the K C Kid was the first to declare “Good for you aunty You’re elected camp boss and you can make me perm’nent cookee if you want to”
“Well then” said Mother calmly “let’s get that nasty shack cleaned up right away I do declare I’m beginning to get sleepy”
Nothing in his life was more to Father’s credit than the fact that he did not envy Mother the credit of having become monarch of the camp and protector of the poor “I’m with you Mother” he said “What you want me to do Let’s hustle Blizzard coming—with a warrant”
Round a campfire in the woods a group of men were playing cards wirebearded men in rough coats and greasy flannel shirts but the most violent thing they said was “Doggone it” and sometimes they stopped to listen to the strains of “Dandy Dick and the Candlestick” which a whitehaired cheerful old gentleman rendered on the mouthorgan
Father was perched on a powdercan His172 feet were turned inward with comfort and soulsatisfaction and now and then he jerked his head sideways with an air of virile satisfaction The collar of his blueflannel shirt poked up beside his chin as cockily as the ear of a setter pup Father didn’t know it but he was making believe be King of the Bandits
Across the fire in an aged and uncertain rockingchair placid as though she were sitting beside a gaslog instead of a campfire overgloomed with winter woods was Mother darning a sock and lecturing the homicidallooking Crook McKusick on cursing and swearing and carryingson Crook stared down at her adoringly and just when she seemed to have penetrated his tough hide with her moral injunctions he chuckled “By golly I believe I’ll marry and settle down—just as soon as I can find a moll that’ll turn into a cute old lady like you aunty”
“Now Mr McKusick” she said severely “you want to reform for the sake of reforming not just to please some girl—not but what a nice sweet woman would be good—”
“Nothing will ever be good for me aunty I’m gone This sweet civilization of ours has got me The first reform school I went to reformed173 me all right—formed me into a crook I used to show signs of growing up to be fair to middling intelligent once But now—nothing to it You people though you’re twice as old as I am you’re twice as young You got a chance Look here Uncle Appleby why don’t you go out for being one of these famous old pedestrians that get their mugs in the papers Will you do what I tell you to if I train you I’ve trained quite some pugs before—before I quit”
Mother acerbically declined to learn the art of physical culture “Me at my time of life learning to do monkeyshines and bending and flapping my arms like a chicken with its head cut off” But Father enthusiastically and immediately started in to become the rival of the gentlemen in jerseys who wear rubber heels in the advertisements and spend their old ages in vigorously walking from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific merely in order to walk back again
While his fellowhoboes about the fire jeered Father bent over forty times and raised himself on his toes sixty and solemnly took breathingexercises
Next day he slowly trotted ninety times about174 the clearing his chin up and his chest out while Crook McKusick excited at being a trainer again snapped orders at him and talked about form A ludicrous figure a little old man his white locks flapping under a mushy cap as he galloped earnestly through the light snow But his cheeks were one red glow his eyes were bright and in his laugh when he finished was infinite hope
If it had been Mother who had first taken charge of the camp and converted it to respectability and digestible food it was Father who really ran it for he was the only person who could understand her and Crook McKusick and the sloppy Kid all at once
Crook McKusick had long cultivated a careful habit of getting drunk once a week But two weeks after the coming of the Applebys he began to omit his sprees because Mother needed him to help her engineer variations of the perpetual mulligan and Father needed him for his regular training
To the training Crook added a course in psychology As a hobo he was learned in that science The little clerk the comfortable banker the writer of lovestories—such dull plodders have their habits all set out for them175 But the hobo who has to ride the rods amid flying gravel today and has to coax food out of a nice old lady tomorrow must have an expert working knowledge of psychology if he is to climb in his arduous profession
Father and Mother had started out from New York on a desperate flight with no aspirations beyond the hope that they might be able to make a living It was the hobo Crook McKusick who taught Father that there was no reason why with his outdoor life and his broadened experience he should not be a leader among men wherever he went be an Edward Pilkings and a Miss Mitchin yea even a Mrs Lulu Hartwig instead of a meek obedient little Seth Appleby It was Crook who out of his own experience in doing the unusual taught Father that it was just as easy to be unusual to live a life excitedly free as to be a shopbound clerk Adventure like fear of adventure consisted in going one step at a time keeping at it forming the habit So an outcast among outcasts grubbily bunked in a camp of hoboes talking to a filthy lean man with an evil hooked nose Seth Appleby began to think for himself to the end that he should be one of the class that rules and is unafraid
176 The amiable boarders at Hoboes’ Home didn’t at all mind Mother’s darning their socks They didn’t much mind having her order them to wash their faces at a hole through the ice in the nearby creek before coming to dinner But it took her many days to get them used to going off to work for money and supplies Yet every day half the camp grumblingly disappeared to shuck corn mend fences repair machinery and they came back with flour potatoes meat coffee torn magazines and shirts Father regularly went out to work with them and was the first to bring water to cut wood They all took a pride in the camp They kept the bunkhouse scrubbed and inordinately admired the new mattresses stuffed with fresh straw and covered with new calico which Mother made for them In the evenings the group about the campfire was not so very different from any other happy family—except that there was an unusually large proportion of bright eyes and tanned faces
But when spring cleared the snow away made the bare patches of earth quiver with coming life sent the crows and an occasional flock of ducks overhead—vagrants of the air calling to their vagrant brothers about the177 fire—there was no sorrow in the breakup of the family but only a universal joy in starting off for new adventures
That honest workman “Struck Dumb” disappeared one afternoon telling Crook that he heard of much building at Duluth
Crook laughed when Mother admired Mr Struck Dumb’s yearning for creative toil “That guy” Crook declared “is an honest workman except that he ain’t honest and he won’t work He’ll last about two days in Duluth and then he’ll pike for Alberta or San Diego or some place He’s got restless feet same like me”
The K C Kid and Reddy jigged and shouted songs all one evening and were off for the north At last no one but Father and Mother and Crook was left And they too were stareyed with expectation of new roads new hills They sat solemnly by the fire on their last evening Mother was magnificent in a new cloak to buy which Father had secretly been saving pennies out of the dimes that he had earned by working about the country
Usually Crook McKusick was gravely cynical when he listened to Father’s cataract of excited178 plans but he seemed wistful tonight and he nodded his head as though for once he really did believe that Father and Mother would find some friendly village that would take them in
Father was telling a story so ardently that he almost made himself believe it Some day Mother and he would be crawling along the road and discover a great estate The owner a whimsical man a lonely and eccentric bachelor of the type that always brightens English novels would invite them in make Father his steward and Mother his lady housekeeper There would be a mystery in the house—a walledoff room a sound of voices at night in dark corridors where no voices could possibly be a hidden tragedy and at last Father and Mother would lift the burden from the place and end their days in the rosecovered dowerhouse Not that Father was sure just what a dowerhouse was but he was quite definite and positive about the rosecovering
“How you run on” Mother yawned
“Aw let him” Crook cried with sudden fierceness “My Gawd you two almost make me believe that there is such a thing as faith left in this dirty old world that’s always seemed to me just the back of an eternal saloon Maybe—maybe179 I’ll find my ambition again Well—g’ night”
When with their pack and their outlooking smiles the Applebys prepared to start next day and turned to say goodby to Crook he started cried “I will” and added “I’m coming with you for a while”
For two days Crook McKusick tramped with them suiting his lean activity his sardonic impatience to their leisurely slowness He called to the blackbirds he found pasqueflowers for them and in the sunbaked hollows between hillocks coaxed them to lie and dream
But one morning they found a note
Dear Aunty and Uncle
Heard a freighttrain whistle and I’m off But some day I’ll find you again I’ll cut out the booze anyway and maybe I’ll be a human being again God bless you babes in the woods
C McK
“The poor boy God will bless him too and keep him because he’s opened his heart again” whispered Mother “Are we babes in the woods Seth I’d rather be that than a queen long as I can be with you”
East and west north and south the hoboes journeyed and everywhere they carried with180 them fables of Mr and Mrs Seth Appleby the famous wanderers who at seventy eighty ninety were exploring the world Benighted tramps in city lockups talking to bored police reporters told the story and it began to appear in little filler paragraphs here and there in newspapers
Finally a featurewriter on a Boston paper a man with imagination and a sense of the dramatic made a onecolumn Sunday story out of the adventures of Mr and Mrs Appleby He represented them as wealthy NewYorkers who were at once explorers and exponents of the simple life He said nothing about a shoestore a tearoom a hobocamp
The idea of these old people making themselves a new life caught many imaginations The Sunday story was reprinted and reprinted till the source of it was entirely forgotten The names of the Applebys became stock references in many newspaper offices—Father even had a new joke appended to his name as though he were an actor or an author or Chauncey Depew
The Applebys were largely unconscious of their floating fame But as they tramped westward through West Virginia as the flood tide of spring and the vigor of summer bore them across181 Ohio and into Indiana they found that in nearly every town people knew their names and were glad to welcome them as guests instead of making them work for food When Father did insist on cutting wood or spading a garden it was viewed as a charming eccentricity in him a consistent following of the simple life and they were delighted when he was so whimsical as to accept pay for his work
But he never played the mouthorgan—except to Mother
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182CHAPTER XVI
THEY were in Indiana now They had saved up six dollars and twenty cents despite the fact that Father had overborne her caution and made her dine at a lunchroom now and then or sleep at a hotel while he cheerfully scavenged in the neighborhood
The shoes he had bought in West Virginia were impossible They had been mended and resoled but the new soles had large concentric holes Mother discovered the fact and decisively took the problem out of his hands He was going to take that six dollars and twenty cents he was and get new shoes It was incredible luxury
He left Mother at a farmhouse He stood meditatively before the window of a shoestore in Lipsittsville Indiana Lawyer Vanduzen who read the papers guessed who he was and imparted the guess to the loafers in front of the Regal Drug Store who watched him respectfully
183 Inside the shoestore the proprietor was excited “Why” he exclaimed to his assistant “that must be Appleby the pedestrian—fellow you read so much about—the Indianapolis paper said just this morning that he was some place in this part of the country—you know the fellow who’s tramped all over Europe and Asia with his wife and is bound for San Francisco now” His one lone clerk a youth with adenoids gaped and grunted It was incredible to him that any one should walk without having to
Father was aware of the general interest and as he was becoming used to his rôle as public character he marched into the store like the Lord Mayor of London when he goes shopping in his gold coach with three men and a boy in powdered wigs carrying his train
The proprietor bowed and ventured “Glad to see you with us Mr Appleby It is Mr Appleby isn’t it”
“Uhhuh” growled Father
“Well well Tramping like yours is pretty hard on the footgear and that’s a fact Well well Believe me you’ve come to just the right store for sport shoes We got a large line of smart new horsehide shoes Dear me Tut tut184 tut tut What a pity the way the tramping has worn out yours—fine shoe too I can see that Well well well well how it surely does wear out the shoes this long tramping Peter bring a pair of those horsehide shoes for Mr Appleby Nice small aristocratic foot Mr Appleby If you worked in a shoestore you’d know how uncommon—”
“Huh Don’t want horsehide Try a pair o’ those pigskin shoes over there that you got a sale on”
“Well well you do know what you want” fawned the shoeman “Those pigskins are a very fine grade of shoe and very inexpensive very good for tramping—”
“Yump They’ll do”
“Going to be with us long” inquired the shoeman after trying on the shoes and cursing out Peter the adenoidic clerk in an abstracted hopeless manner
“Nope” Father was wonderfully bored and superior Surely not this Seth Appleby but a twin of his a weakkneed inferior twin had loafed in Tompkins Square and wavered through the New York slums longing for something to do He didn’t really mean to be curt but his chief business in life was to get his shoes and185 hurry back to Mother who was waiting for him a mile from town at a farm where the lordly Father had strung fencewire and told highcolored stories for his breakfast
The fascinated shoeman hated to let him go The shoeman knew few celebrities and a fivemile motor ride was his wildest adventure But by the light of a secret lamp in the bathroom when his wife supposed him to have gone to bed he breathlessly read the Back o’ the Beyond Magazine and slew pirates with a rubber sponge and made a Turkish towel into a turban covered with quite valuable rubies and coldly defied all the sharks in the bathtub He was an adventurer and he felt that Father Appleby would understand his littleappreciated gallantry He continued “The madam with you”
“Yump”
“Say—uh—if I may be so bold and just suggest it we’d be honored if you and the madam could take dinner at our house and tell us about your trip The wife and me was talking about it just this morning The wife said guessed we’d have to pike out and do the same thing Hee hee And Doc Schergan—fine bright man the doc very able and cultured and educated—he’s crazy to meet you We were talking about186 you just this morning—read about your heading this way in the Indianapolis paper Say” he leaned forward and whispered after a look at his clerk which ought to have exterminated that unadventurous youth—“say is it true what they say that you’re doing this on a tenthousanddollar bet”
“Well” and Father thawed a little “that’s what they’re all saying but confidentially and don’t let this go any further it isn’t as much as that This is between you and I now”
“Oh yessss” breathed the flattered shoeman “There’s your shoes Mr Appleby Four dollars please Thank you And let me tell you confidentially you got the best bargain in the store I can see with half an eye you’ve learned a lot about shoes I suppose it’s only natural tramping and wearing them out so fast and visiting the big burgs and all—”
“Huh Ought to know shoes Used to be in business Pilkings Son’s little old New York Me and old Pilky practically started the business together as you might say”
“Well well well well” The shoeman stared in reverent amazement Then as he could think of nothing further to say he justly observed “Well”
187 “Yump That reminds me Make that boy of yours rearrange that counter case there Those pinksatin evening slippers simply lose all their display value when you stick those redkid bedslippers right up ferninst them that way
“Yes yes that’s so I’m much obliged to you for the tip Mr Appleby That’s what it is to be trained in a big burg But I’ll have to rearrange it myself That boy Peter is no good I’m letting him go come Saturday”
“That so” said Father then authoritatively “Peter my boy you ought to try to make good here Nothing I’d like better—if I had the time—than to grow up in a shoestore in a nice pretty village like this”
“Yes that’s what I’ve told him many’s the time Do you hear what Mr Appleby says Peter Say Mr Appleby does this town really strike you as having the future for the shoe business”
“Why sure”
“Are you ever likely to think about going back into the shoe business again some day ’Course” apologetically “you wouldn’t ever want to touch anything in as small a burg as this but in a way it’s kind of a pity I was188 just thinking of how the youngsters here would flock to have you give ’em your expert advice as a sporting gentleman instead of hanging around that cheapJohn shoestore that those confounded worthless Simpson boys try to run”
Father carefully put down the bundle of his new shoes drew a long breath then tried to look bored again Cautiously “Yes I’ve thought some of going back into business ’Course I’d hate to give up my exploring and all but— Progress you know hate to lay down the burden of big affairs after being right in the midst of them for so long” Which was a recollection of some editorial Father had read in a stray roadside newspaper “And you mustn’t suppose I’d be sniffy about Lipsittsville No no no indeed Not at all I must say I don’t know when I’ve seen a more wideawake pretty town—and you can imagine how many towns I must have seen Maples and cement walks and nice houses and—uh—wideawake town Well who knows Perhaps some day I might come back here and talk business with you Ha ha Though I wouldn’t put in one cent of capital No sir Not one red cent All my money is invested with my soninlaw—you189 know Harris Hartwig the famous chemical works Happen to know um”
“Oh yes indeed Harry Sartwig I don’t know him personally but of course I’ve heard of him Well I do wish you’d think it over some day Mr Appleby Indeed I understand about the capital If you and me ever did happen to come to terms I’d try to see my way clear to giving you an interest in the business in return for your city experience and your expert knowledge and fame and so on as an explorer—not that we outfit so many explorers here Hee hee”
“Well maybe I’ll think it over some day Well—well maybe I’ll see you again before I get out of town I’m kind of planning to stick around here for a day or two I’ll talk over the suggestion with Mrs Appleby Me I could probably call off my wager but she is really the one that you’d have to convince She’s crazy for us to hike out and tramp clear down into Mexico and Central America Doesn’t mind bandits and revolutions no more than you and I would a mouse”
In his attempt to let people bluff themselves and accept him as a person to be taken seriously Father kept on trying to adhere to the truth190 But certainly this last statement of his was the grossest misrepresentation of Mother’s desires Mother Appleby with her still unvanquished preference for tea and baths did not have the slightest desire to encounter bandits snakes deserts or cacti of any variety
“Well look here Mr Appleby if you are going to be around couldn’t you and the madam come to dinner as I was so bold as to suggest awhile ago That would give us a chance to discuss things Aside from any future business dicker between you and me personally I’d like to show you just why Lipsittsville is going to be a bigger town than Freiburg or Taormina or Hongkong or Bryan or any of the other towns in the county let ’em say what they like Or couldn’t you come to supper tonight Then we could let the ladies gossip and I’ll have Doc Schergan come in and maybe him and me between us could persuade you to think of taking a partnership with me—wouldn’t cost you a cent of capital neither Why the doc was saying just this morning when we was speaking of having read about you in the paper—he was saying that you were the kind of man we need for president of our country club instead of some dude like that sissified Buck Simpson191 Buck is as punk an athlete as he is a shoeman and believe me Mr Appleby we’ve got the makings of a fine country club We expect to have a clubhouse and tenniscourts and golluflinks and all them things before long We got a croquetground right now And every Fourthajuly we all go for a picnic Now can’t the madam come Make it supper this evening But say I want to warn you that if we ever did talk business I don’t see how I could very well offer you more than a fortypercent interest in any case”
“No” growled Father “wouldn’t take over a third interest Don’t believe in demanding too much Live and let live that’s my motto”
“Yes sir and a fine motto it is too” admired the shoeman
“What time is supper”
“ and before I get through with it I’ll own a chain of shoestores from here to Indianapolis” said Father “I’ll be good for twenty years’ more business and I’ll wake this town up”
“I do believe you will Father But I just can’t believe yet that you’ve actually signed the contract and are a partner” Mother yearned “Why it ain’t possible”
192 “Guess it is possible though judging by this hundred dollar advance” Father chuckled “Nice fellow that shoeman—or he will be when he gets over thinking I’m a tin god and sits down and plays crib like I was an ordinary human being We ought to have larger showwindows We’ll keep Peter on—don’t want to make the boy lose his job on account of me Give him another chance I’m just wambling Mother but I’m so excited at having a job again—”
With tiny pats of her arm he stalked the street conscious of the admiring gaze of the villagers among whom ran the news that the famous explorer was going to remain with them
When the landlord himself had preceded them upstairs to the two rooms which the shoeman had engaged for the Applebys at the Star Hotel Father chuckled “Does it look more possible now with these rooms eh Let’s see we must get a nice little picture of a kitten in a basket to hang over that radiator Drat the landlord I thought he’d stick here all evening and—I want to kiss you my old honey my comrade”
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193CHAPTER XVII
THE Lipsittsville Pioneer Shoe Store found Mr Seth Appleby the best investment it had ever made The proprietor was timorous about having given away thirtythree per cent of his profits But Mr Appleby did attract customers—from the banker’s collegebred daughter to farmers from the other side of the Lake—and he really did sell more shoes He became a person of lasting importance
In a village every clerk every tradesman has something of the same distinctive importance as the doctors the lawyers the ministers It really makes a difference to you when Jim Smith changes from Brown’s grocery to Robinson’s because Jim knows what kind of sugarcorn you like and your second cousin married Jim’s best friend Bill Blank the tailor is not just a mysterious agent who produces your clothes but a real personality whose wife’s bonnet is worth your study even though you are the wife of the mayor So to every person in194 Lipsittsville Mr Seth Appleby was not just a lowly person on a stool who helped one in the choice of shoes He was a person he was their brother to be loved or hated If he had gone out of the shoe business there would have been something else for him to do—he would have sold farm machinery or driven on a rural mail route or collected rents and have kept the same acquaintances
It was very pleasant to Father to pass down the village street in the sun to call the town policeman “Ben” and the town banker “Major” and the town newspaperman “Lym” and to be hailed as “Seth” in return It was diverting to join the little group of G A R men in the back of the Filson Land and Farms Company office and have even the heroes of Gettysburg pet him as a promising young adventurer and ask for his tales of tramping
Father was rather consciencestricken when he saw how the town accepted his pretense of being an explorer but when he tried to tell the truth everybody thought that he was merely being modest and he finally settled down contentedly to being a hero to the great satisfaction of all the town which pointed out to unfortunate citizens of Freiburg and Hongkong195 and Bryan and other rival villages that none of them had a real uptodate hero with all modern geographical improvements In time as his partner the shoeman had predicted Father was elected president of the clubless country club and organized a crosscountry hike in which he outdistanced all the others including the young and boastful Buck Simpson
He was slowly recognized as being “in society” To tell the truth most of Lipsittsville was in society but a few citizens weren’t—Barney Bachschluss the saloonkeeper Tony who sawed wood and mowed lawns the workmen on the brickyard and on the railway Father was serenely established upon a social plane infinitely loftier than theirs
He wore a giddy spotted batwing tie and his grand good gray trousers were rigidly creased He read editorials in the Indianapolis paper and discussed them with Doc Schergan at the drugstore
The only trouble was that Mother had nothing to do She was discontented in their two rooms at the Star Hotel No longer could she as in her long years of flat life in New York be content to sit dreaming and reading the paper She was as brisk and strong and effective as196 Father Open woods and the windy road had given her a restless joy in energy She made a gown of gray silk and joined the Chautauqua Circle but that was not enough
On an evening of late August when a breeze was in the maples when the sunset was turquoise and citron green and the streets were serenely happy Father took her out for a walk They passed the banker’s mansion with its big curving screened porch and its tower and brought up at a row of modern bungalows which had just been completed
“I wanted you to see these” said Father “because some time—this is a secret I been keeping—some time I guess we’ll be able to rent one of these Don’t see why we can’t early next year the way things are going”
“Oh Father” she said almost tearfully
“Would you like it”
“Like it With a real house and something to keep my hands busy And maybe a kitty And I would make you tea I’m so tired of hotel food and we would sit out here on the porch—”
“Yes you’d have old Mr Seth Appleby for tearoom customer He’s better ’n anybody they got on Cape Cod”
197 “Yes and you are better too Father”
“You old honeymooner Say I’ve got an idea I wonder if we couldn’t sneak in a look inside of one of these bungalows Let’s try this door”
He shook the doorknob of a bungalow so new that laths and mortar were still scattered about the yard The door was locked He tried the windows as well But he could not get in Three other bungalows they tried and the fourth the last of the row was already occupied But they did steal up on the porch of one bungalow and they exclaimed like children when they beheld the big livingroom the huge fireplace the builtin shelves and beyond the livingroom what seemed to be the diningroom with an enormous chandelier which may not perhaps have been of the delicate reticence of a silver candlestick but whose jags and blobs of ruby and emerald and purple glass filled their hearts with awe
“We will get one of these houses” Father vowed “I thought you’d like them I swear I’ll cut out my smoking if necessary Say Got another idea I wonder if we couldn’t make up some excuse and butt into the bungalow that’s been rented and see how it looks198 furnished I understand there’s some newcomers living there We’ll sort of make them a neighborly call”
“Oh do you think we ought to”
Mother she who had faced a sheriff’s shotgun was timorous about facing an irate matron and she tagged hesitatingly after Father as he marched along the row of bungalows up the steps of the one that was rented and rang the bell
The door was opened by a maid in a Lipsittsville version of a uniform
“Lady or gent o’ the house in” asked Father airily sticking his new derby on one side of his head and thrusting a thumb in an armhole very impudent and fresh and youthful
“No sir” said the maid stupidly
Mother sighed To tell the truth she had wanted to see the promised land of this bungalow
“Well say girl Mrs Appleby and I are thinking of renting one of these here bungalonies like the fellow says and I wonder if we could take a look at this house to see how it looks furnished”
The maid stared dumbly at him looked suspiciously at Mother Apparently she decided199 that though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal everything in the house Mother was a person to be trusted and she mumbled “Yass I gass so”
Father led the way in and Mother stumbled over every possible obstacle so absorbed was she by the intimate pleasantness which furniture gave to this big livingroom—as large as the whole of their flat in New York Actually the furniture wasn’t impressive—just a few good willow chairs a big couch a solid table There were only two or three pictures one rug and in the builtin shelves no books at all But it had space and cheerfulness it was a home
“Here’s the diningroom with butler’s pantry and that door on the right looks like it might be a bedroom” Father announced after a hasty exploration while the maid stared doubtfully He went on half whispering “Let’s peep into the bedroom”
“No no we mustn’t do that” Mother insisted but regretfully For she was already wondering where if she were running things she would put a sewingmachine She had always agreed with Matilda Tubbs that sewingmachines belonged in bedrooms
200 While the maid shadowed him and Mother opened her mouth to rebuke him Father boldly pushed open the door on the right He had guessed correctly It was a bedroom Mother haughtily stayed in the center of the livingroom but she couldn’t help glancing through the open door and she sighed enviously as she saw the splendor of twin beds with a little table and an electric light between them and the open door of a tiled bathroom It was too much that the mistress of the house should have left her canaryyellow silk sweater on the foot of one bed Mother had wanted a silk sweater ever since she had beheld one flaunted on Cape Cod
Father darted out seized her wrists dragged her into the bedroom and while she was exploding in the lecture he so richly deserved she stopped transfixed Father was pointing to a picture over one bed and smiling strangely
The picture was an oldish one in a blackened old frame It showed a baby playing with kittens
“Why” gasped Mother—“why—why it’s just like the picture—it is the picture—that we got when Lulu was born—that we had to leave on the Cape”
201 “Yump” said Father He still smiled strangely He pointed at the table between the twin beds On the table was a little brown dusty book Mother gazed at it dazedly Her step was feeble as she tottered between the beds picked up the book opened it It was the New Testament which she had had since girlhood which she had carried all through their hike which she supposed to be in their rooms back at the Star Hotel
There was a giggle from the doorway and the apparently stupid maid was there bowing
“Lena has our trunk come from the hotel” Father asked
“Yessir I just been sneaking it in the back way Welcome home mum” said the maid and shut the door—from the other side
Mother suddenly crumpled burrowed her head against Father’s shoulder and sobbed “This is ours Our own Now”
“Yes Mother it sure am ours” Father still tried to speak airily but in his voice were passion and a grave happiness “It’s ours—yours And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already I didn’t tell you how well we’re doing at the store Say golly I sure did have a time training Lena to play202 the game like she didn’t know us She thought I was plumb nutty at first”
“And I have a maid too” marveled Mother
“Yes and a garden if you want to keep busy outdoors And a phonograph with nineteen records musical and comic by Jiminy”
To prove which he darted back into the livingroom started “Molly Magee My Girl” and to its cheerful strains he danced a fantastic jig while the maid stared from the diningroom and Mother at the bedroom door wept undisguisedly murmuring “Oh my boy my boy that planned it all to surprise me”
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203CHAPTER XVIII
MOTHER had after an energetic September succeeded in putting all the furniture to rights and in evoking curtains and linen Anybody even the impractical Father can fill a house with furniture but it takes two women and at least four weeks to make the furniture look as though it had grown there She had roamed the fields and brought home goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies and maple leaves She no longer panted or felt dizzy when she ran up the stairs She was a far younger woman than the discreet brown hermit of the dusty New York flat just as the new Father who had responsibility and affairs was younger than the Pilkings clerk of old
Always she watched for Father’s homecoming He usually came prancing home so happily that one evening when Mother saw him slowly plod down the street his head low his hands sagging his pockets she ran out to the porch204 and greeted him with a despairing “What is it Seth”
“Oh nothing much” Before he would go on Father put his arm about her ample waist and led her to the new porchswing overlooking the raw spaded patch of earth that would be a rosegarden some day—that already to their imaginations was brilliant with blossoms and alive with birds
She observed him mutely anxiously He handed a letter to her It was in their daughter’s handwriting
Dear Papa and Mama
I don’t know if this letter will reach you but have been reading pieces in Saserkopee N Y papers about your goingson and hear you are at a town called Lipsittsville oh how could you run away from the beautiful home Harris I gave you I am sure if there was anything we didn’t do for y’r comfort happiness you had only to ask here you go and make us a laughing stock in Saserkopee we had told everyone you would be at our party suddenly you up disappear it has taken us months to get in touch with you such a wicked untruthful lie about friend sick in Boston all Harris heard from a traveling salesman he agreed with Harris how thoughtless and wilful you are he told Harris that you are at this place Lipsittsville so I will address you there try see if letter reaches you tell you that though you must be ashamed of your conduct by now we are willing to forgive forget I was never one to hold a grudge I am sure if you had just stopped and thought you would have realized to what worry and inconvenience you have put205 us if this does reach you by now I guess you will have had enough of being bums or pedestrians or whatever fancy name you call yourself and be glad to come back to a good home and see if you can’t show a little sense as you ought to at your time of life just think of what the effect must be on Harry when his very own grandparents acts this way If you will telegraph me or write me if you have not got enough money for telegraphing Harris will come for you we will see what can be done for you We think and hope that a place can be found for you in the Cyrus K Ginn Old People’s Home where you can spend your last days I guess this time you will want to behave yourselves and Harris I will be glad to have you at our home from time to time After all my love thoughtfulness for you—but I guess I need not say anything more by this time you will have learned your lesson
Your loving daughter
Lulu
Father and Mother had sat proudly on their porch the night before and they had greeted passersby chattily like people of substance people healthy and happy and responsible Now they shrank on the swing they saw nothing but Lulu’s determined disdain for their youthful naughtiness heard nothing but her voice hard unceasing commenting complaining and the obese and humorless humor of Mr Harris Hartwig
“She can’t make us go back—confine us in this here home for old folks can she legally” It was Mother who turned to Father for reassurance
206 “No no Certainly not I don’t think so” They sat still They seemed old again
Just before dinner he started up from the swing craftily laid his finger beside his nose and whispered something very exciting and mysterious to Mother who kept saying “Yes yes Yes yes Yes I’d be willing to Though it would be hard” Immediately after dinner they walked sedately down the village street while blackbirds whistled from the pond and children sang ancient chants of play under the arclights at corners and neighbors cried “’Evenin’” to them from chairs on porches They called upon the town newspaperman old Lyman Ford and there was a conference with much laughter and pounding of knees—also a pitcher of lemonade conjointly prepared by Mrs S Appleby and Mrs L Ford Finally the Applebys paraded to the telegraphoffice and to Mr Harris Hartwig at Saserkopee they sent this message
Come see us when can Wire at once what day and train Will meet
A sodden and pathetic figure in his notorious blueflannel shirt and the suit or the unsuit which he had worn into Lipsittsville in the days207 when he had been a hobo Father waited for the evening train and for Mr Harris Hartwig
Mr Hartwig descended the car steps like a general entering a conquered province Father nervously concealed his greasy shirtfront with his left hand and held out his right hand deprecatingly Mr Hartwig took it into his strong virile but slightly damp clasp and held it a thing which Father devoutly hated while he gazed magnanimously into Father’s shy eyes and in a confidential growl which could scarce have been heard farther away than Indianapolis condescended “Well here we are I’m glad there’s an end to all this wickedness and foolishness at last Where’s Mother Appleby”
“She wasn’t feeling jus’ like coming” Father mumbled “I’ll take you to her”
“How the devil are you earning a living”
“Why the gent that owns the biggest shoestore here was so kind as to give me sort of work round the store like”
“Yuh as porter I’ll venture You might just as well be sensible for once in your life Father and learn that you’re past the age where you can insist and demand and get any kind of work or any kind of a place to live in that just208 suits your own sweetfancy Business ain’t charity you know and all these working people that think a business is run just to suit them— And that’s why you ought to have been more appreciative of all Lulu did for you—and then running away and bringing her just about to the verge of nervous prostration worrying over you”
They had left the station now and were passing along Maple Avenue with its glory of trees and shining lawns the new Presbyterian church and the Carnegie Library Mr Hartwig of Saserkopee was getting far too much satisfaction out of his rôle as sage and counselor to notice Maple Avenue He never had the chance to play that rôle when the wife of his bosom was about
“Another thing” Mr Hartwig was booming as they approached the row of bungalows where the Applebys lived “you ought to have understood the hardship you were bringing on Mother by taking her away from our care—and you always pretending to be so fond of her and all I don’t want to rub it in or nothing but I always did say that I was suspicious of these fellows that are always petting and stewing over their wives in public—you can be dead sure that in private they ain’t got any more real209 consideration ’n’ thoughtfulness for ’em than—than anything And you can see for yourself now— Here you are Why just one look at you is enough to show you’re a failure Why my garbageman wears a betterlooking suit than that”
Though Father felt an acute desire to climb upon a convenient carriageblock and punch the noble Roman head of Mr Harris Hartwig he kept silent and looked as meek as he could and encouraged his dear soninlaw to go on
“We’ll try to find some decent respectable work for you” said Mr Hartwig “You’ll be at liberty to be away from the Old People’s Home for several hours a day perfect freedom and perhaps now and then you can help at a sale at a shoestore Saserkopee is as you probably know the best town of its size in New York and if you did feel you had to keep in touch with business I can’t for the life of me see why you came clear out here to the West—little dinky town with no prospects or nothing Why even you at your age could turn a few dollars in Saserkopee ’Course with my influence there I could throw things your way” Then bitterly “Though of course I wouldn’t expect any thanks”
210 They turned a corner came to a row of new bungalows
The whole block was filled with motorcars small black village ones but very comfortable and dependable In a bungalow at the end of the block a phonograph was being loud and cheery
“Somebody giving a party” Mr Hartwig oracularly informed Father
“Why Sure enough So somebody is Yes yes It must be my boss That’s where I live Boss lets us bunk in the dustbin”
Father’s voice was excited slightly hysterical Mr Hartwig looked at him wonderingly “What do you mean ‘in the dustbin’” he asked in a puzzled way
“I’ll show you” said Father and in a low poisonous voice he added certain words which could not be made out but which sounded curiously like “you great big fat weevily ham”
“We can’t butt into this party” protested Mr Hartwig suddenly feeling himself in a strange town among strangers as Father took his arm in front of the bungalow where the party was being fearlessly enacted
“I never knew you to hesitate about butting in before” said Father “Some day I hope you211 butt into the Cyrus K Ginn Home for Old Fossils but now—”
While Mr Hartwig followed him in alarm Father skipped up the steps jabbed at the pushbutton The door opened on the livingroom—and on a tableau
In the center of a group of expensivelooking people stood Mother gorgeous in a gown like a herald’s clothofgold tabard She was as magnificent as one of the larger chairs in a New York hotel lobby Her hair was waved She was coldly staring at Harris through a platinum lorgnon Round her were the élite of Lipsittsville—the set that wore dinner coats and drove cars A slim and pretty girl in saffroncolored silk bowed elaborately A tall man with an imperial chuckled
“Why Harris this is ver’ ver’ pleasant I had almost forgotten you were coming” Mother said languidly Harris could not know that the distinguished pedestrian actor impresario and capitalist Mr Seth Appleby had spent two hours and seventeen minutes in training the unwilling Mother to deliver this speech If Mother stumbled somewhat as she went on that merely enhanced her manner of delicate languor “So pleasant to see you212 Just a few of our friends dropped in for a little informal gathering Would you like to wash up and join us Seth dear will you ring for Lena and have her take dear Harris’s bag to his room Did you bring your evening clothes Harris”
One time in his life Harris had rented evening clothes but otherwise—
They didn’t give Harris a chance to ask for explanations When still in his dusty bulbous gray sack suit he hesitated out of his pleasant room he found that Father had changed to dinner coat and a stock which he was old enough to wear with distinction Harris was firmly introduced to Mr Lyman Ford sole owner and proprietor of the Lipsittsville Ozone He was backed into a corner and filled with tidings about the glories of Mr and Mrs Seth Appleby their social position and athletic prowess and financial solidity and the general surpassing greatness of Lipsittsville In fact Mr Ford overdid it a little and Mr Hartwig began to look suspicious—like a man about to sneeze or one who fears that you are going to try to borrow money from him
But with an awkward wonder which expressed itself in his growing shyness his splayfooted213 awkwardness his rapidly increasing deference to Father Mr Hartwig saw Lena the maid spread forth tables for the social and intellectual game of progressive euchre saw Father combat mightily with that king of euchreplayers Squire Trowbridge saw the winners presented with expensivelooking prizes And there were refreshments The Lipsittsville Ozone would in next Thursday’s issue be able to say “Dainty refreshments consisting of angel’sfood icecream coffee macaroons and several kinds of pleasing sandwiches were served”
Miss Mattie Ford the society editor of the Ozone was at her wittiest during the foodconsumption and a discussion of Roosevelt and the cooperative creamery engaged some of the brightest minds in Lipsittsville Father listening entranced whispered to Mother as he passed her with his tray of icecream “I guess Harris don’t hear any bright talk like this in Saserkopee Look at him Goggleeyed I always said he looked like a frog Except that he looks more like a hog”
“I won’t have you carrying on and being rude” Mother said most convincingly
The party did not end till clear after eleven When the street was loud with the noise of cars214 starting and quantities of ladies in silk wraps laughingly took their departure Mr Harris Hartwig stood deserted by the fireplace When the door had closed on the last of the revelers Father returned glanced once at him coldly stopped to pick up a chair which had been upset then stalked up to Harris and faced him boring him with an accusing glance
“Well” said Harris uneasily “you sure got— Say I certainly got to hand it to you Father Appleby” Like a big blubbery smearfaced schoolboy he complained “Gee I don’t think it’s fair making a goat of me this way when I came to do you a service and take you home and all”
He was so meek that Father took pity on him
“We’ll call it square” he said “I guess maybe you and Lulu will quit worrying now at last”
“Yes I guess we’ll have to Say Father this seems to be a fine live prosperous town Say I wonder what’s the chances for opening a drugstore here Competition is getting pretty severe in Saserkopee”
For the first time since he had married the lovely Lulu Harris Hartwig seemed to care for his fatherinlaw’s opinion
Father took one horrified glance at Mother215 The prospect of the Hartwigs planted here in Eden like a whole family of the most highly irritating serpents seemed to have paralyzed her It was Father who turned Harris’s flank Said he
“Well I’m afraid I can’t encourage you There’s three good stores here and the proprietors of all of them are friends of mine and I’m afraid I couldn’t do a thing about introducing you In fact I’d feel like a traitor to them if I was responsible for any competition with them So— But some time perhaps we can have Lulu and Harry here for a visit”
“Thank you Father Well—”
“Well I guess we all better be saying good night”
Father ostentatiously wound up the clock and locked the doors Harris watched him his Adam’s apple prettily rising and falling as he prepared to speak and hesitated again and again Finally as Father yawned and extended his hand Harris burst out “Say how—the—deuce—did you get this house and all What’s the idea anyway”
For this Father had been waiting He had nineteen large batteries concealed in ambush And he fired them He fixed Harris with a glance that was the condensed essence of all the216 fathersinlaw in the world “Young man” he snorted “I don’t discuss my business affairs But I don’t mind saying that I am partner in one of the most flourishing mercantile concerns in the State I knew that Lulu and you would never believe that the poor old folks could actually run their own business unless you came and saw for yourself I stand ready to refund the railroad fare you spent in coming here Now are you satisfied”
“Why—why yes—”
“Well then I guess we’ll say good night”
“Good night” said Harris forlornly
It was a proof of their complete recovery from HarrisHartwigism that while they were undressing the Applebys discussed Mr Hartwig only for a moment and that Father volunteered “I actually do hope that Lulu and Harry will come to pay us a visit now Maybe we can impress her too I hope so I really would like a chance to love our daughter a little Don’t seem natural we should always have to be scared of her Well let’s forget the Hartwigs They’ll come around now Catch them not knowing where their bread is buttered Why think maybe Lulu will let me kiss her some day217 without criticizing my necktie while I’m doing it”
The Innocents the conquering babes in the wood put out all the lights except the bedside lamp on the table between their twin beds These aristocratic beds were close enough together so that they could lie with their outstretched hands clasped They had left the door into the livingroom open and the low lights from the coals in the fireplace made a path across the polished floor and the new rugs—a vista of spaciousness and content
“It’s our first real home” murmured Father “My old honey we’ve come home We’ll have the Tubbses here from the Cape come Christmastime Yes and Crook McKusick if we ever hear from him And we’ll play cribbage I bet I can beat Joe Tubbs four games out of five Say look here young woman don’t you go to sleep yet I’m a hardworking man and it’s Doc Schergan’s orders that I got to be played with and hold your hand like this for fourteen minutes every night before I go to sleep My old honey”
“How you do run on” said Mother drowsily
THE END