VII
It was probably due to ill temper, but it was attributed to my wonderful business foresight that I did not ship those goods. Mr. Reddiman sent for me on Monday morning and praised my wisdom, good sense, and judgment. That customer was to be dropped.
This praise did not make me happy, but quite the contrary. I knew I didn’t deserve it—in this instance, that is. I was already very remorseful on the score of Miss Clare. I remembered things of which I hadn’t been aware at the time—her white face, her quivering lip, her wide, tearful eyes. She had gone away, after listening to every word I said, and she had not returned.
It would be hard to describe how startling, how conspicuous, was her absence. I missed her from rooms, from desks, where she had certainly never been. The wan sunshine made phantoms of her bright head in dim corners. Other and very different voices took on fleeting resemblances to hers. Once I saw the neat, spare form of Miss Kelly taking a drink at the water cooler, and she seemed to melt into the gracious outlines of that lost one.
My conscience troubled me. My heart was heavy. Very long was the day; and at the end of it I secured her address and went off to see her.
Never mind the eloquent speech I had prepared, for I never uttered one word of it. Suffice it to say that I intended to offer Miss Clare a permanent position, with no possibility of being fired.
She lived in an apartment house on a side street uptown on the West Side—a street that was just on the border of a slum—a street of woeful and dismal gentility. I rang the bell, blundered down a black, narrow hall, and would have gone upstairs if a voice behind me hadn’t murmured:
“Clare?”
Turning, I asserted that a Clare was what I sought, and I was bidden to step[Pg 89] through an open door and into a prim little sitting room. It was dismal there, too, but light enough for me to see that I was confronted by a mother out of a book—a gray-haired, delicate little creature with a smile of invincible innocence and good will.
I said that I came from the office to see Miss Clare. Strictly speaking, this was true; but the implication was not, for my business had nothing to do with the office.
“Am sorry ma daughter’s not in,” said Mrs. Clare, in her slurred Southern accent. “If you’d care to wait, Ah don’t think she’ll be long.”
So I sat down, and was instantly fed with tea and cake.
“Rosemary made the cake,” Mrs. Clare explained. “She’s wonderful at baking!”
She was; nothing could have been more delectable. Naturally I praised it, and naturally Mrs. Clare rose to the praise like a trout to a fly. There was something very touching in her artless talk about her child, and something still more touching in the picture she created for me of their gracious and gentle life together.
“Ah’ve never heard a sharp word from Rosemary,” she assured me. “Ah don’t think you could say the same of many other girls in the same circumstances. There’s not only her business career that she’s so interested in, but she does almost all of the housekeeping as well. She’s a wonderful manager, and so clever with her needle! Ah never saw a girl so handy in the house. Of co’se Ah know a girl with her brains and education is just naturally adapted for business, but—” She stopped, with a smile. “Ah’m an old-fashioned woman, Ah reckon. Ah’m glad Rosemary’s going to give it up.”
“Going to give up business?” said I, astounded.
“She’s been engaged for two years,” said she. “That’s long enough. Of co’se, dear Denby understood how she felt about proving her ability befo’ she settled down, but Ah’m glad it’s over. He came up from No’folk yesterday, and he persuaded her to give up her position.”
I was suddenly aware that it was late, and that I couldn’t wait another minute.
“Ah’m sorry,” said she. “Rosemary’ll be back sho’tly. She just took Denby to see the Woolworth Building. Ah wish you could have stayed to see Denby.”
I said how remarkably sorry I was not to see this Denby, but go I would and did.
As I left the house, I ran into Graves, about to enter.
“Old man,” said I, “come along with me. I want to talk to you.”
I believe I took his arm. Anyhow, I felt like doing so.
“Graves,” I said, “I hope you won’t thing I’ve been underhand or treacherous about this. I’d have told you, only that it came on pretty suddenly. I didn’t really know until this morning, and then it put everything else out of my head. I acted upon impulse, Graves—upon my word I did! I missed her so much in the office to-day—”
“Yes,” said he, with a sigh. “It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”
“And I just hurried off, you know—to call upon her. Graves, old man, it’s—in fact, there’s nothing doing. She’s engaged—she’s been engaged for two years to some young—”
“Oh, I knew that,” said Graves.
“What?” I cried.
“She told me in the very beginning,” said Graves. “Naturally she didn’t want it talked about, but she explained it to me. It seems this fellow didn’t take her seriously enough. He had plenty of money, but he expected her to settle down there in Norfolk and just be his wife. She didn’t say so, but I gathered that he’s a domineering sort of young chap. She said that if they started in that way, they’d never be happy. She had to show him that she amounted to something on her own account; and he was impressed when she got a job here with us. She showed me a letter, or a part of a letter, from him about it. He got down from his high horse, I can tell you—said he knew she’d be making a sacrifice to give up her career and marry him, but he’d do his best to make it up to her, and so on.”
He paused.
“So you see,” he said, “it would have been a very bad thing for her—a very serious thing—if she’d been fired. Might have spoiled her whole future life. After she told me that, and appealed to me, why, I had to—don’t you see?”
“But, Graves,” said I, “didn’t you—weren’t you—personally—”
“Pshaw!” said Graves, turning red. “D’you know, my boy, I read a story once about a hangman who was a pretty good sort of fellow when he was at home. Ever occur to you that even the matador mayn’t be as black as he’s painted?[Pg 90]”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JULY, 1923
Vol. LXXIX NUMBER 2
A Hesitating Cinderella
THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF MADELINE, THE PRETTY WAITRESS AT COMPSON’S CHOPHOUSE
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“I’M no jazz baby,” Madeline declared indignantly.
“Well, I never said you were, did I?” demanded Mr. Ritchie.
“Well, you think so,” she replied.
“Well, if you can read my mind, it’s no use me trying to talk,” said he.
“I never asked you to talk!”
They were both aware that their badinage had lost its fine edge.
“Well, I never asked you to listen,” Mr. Ritchie said valiantly, but he knew very well that this was not a clever retort.
At that moment he was greatly dissatisfied both with his wit and his person. He thought it brutal on the part of fate that a young man as passionate and resolute as himself should have so frail a form, and that after having taken a correspondence course in rhetoric and oratory he should still be so tongue-tied—especially with Madeline.
He could see himself in the mirror opposite. He sat so straight that he leaned over backward a little, but this did not disguise the fact that his shoulders were narrow and not quite even, and his chest somewhat hollow. Neither had his studies or his burning thoughts left any visible impress on his sallow, rather ratlike face; and all this hurt his terribly sensitive soul.
“I never said you were a jazz baby,” he insisted. “I only said lots of girls were—and that’s a fact. Why, a lot of those girls wouldn’t spend a cent to get a decent, well balanced meal! All they care about is clothes and—”
“I don’t guess you know such a lot about girls,” Madeline interrupted.
Her tone was scornful, and the outrageously sensitive Mr. Ritchie at once saw all sorts of implications. She meant that girls wouldn’t bother with him. She meant that he was nothing but a mechanic. She meant that his clothes were shabby, and that he was small and slight. She meant everything that could affront his manly pride.
His face grew crimson.
“All right!” he said loftily. “Have it your own way!”
He turned away his head, though he was a little alarmed as he did so. He had always felt that chivalry required him to keep his head turned rigidly toward Madeline, to atone for the fact that she stood while he sat. Of course, that was not his fault. Madeline being a waitress, and he a customer, anything more gallant was impossible.
He certainly did not enjoy being waited on by this splendid girl. In fact, he so bitterly disliked it that he would have ceased coming to Compson’s Chophouse, if he had not realized that in his absence she would very likely be waiting on some other man, possibly not so chivalrous.
It was altogether a sacrifice on his part, because the food did not conform to his standards. He could not get here the well balanced rations necessary for building up his physique. Of what use to work night and morning with a patent exerciser, if he did not get the proper muscle-building foods? This worried him very much, for he desired a fine physique as greatly as he desired a master mind.
Then, too, he often had to wait a long while for Madeline to be free to attend to him, and he fretted at the waste of time. He couldn’t light a cigarette to beguile his tedium, for he knew that the smoker cannot have a fine physique. If he saw a smoker who looked as if he had one, Ritchie knew him to be a whited sepulcher, with a failing heart, exhausted lungs, and no will power.[Pg 92]
To be sure, he might have passed the time with some improving book. He always carried in his pocket a volume of a set he had bought—a set guaranteed to broaden his mind, and to contain all that he ought to read; but he couldn’t keep his mind on a book when Madeline was about.
“Have it your own way,” he repeated.
This time he said it with a new significance. He meant that, as far as he was concerned, Madeline might have everything her own way forever.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t there to hear him. She was waiting on a man at another table. She never so much as glanced at Ritchie. He knew she wouldn’t look at him, and he took a gloomy pleasure in staring at her.
She was worth looking at, was Madeline. Tall, spare, straight, in an austere white uniform and a sleek coiffure, she was a miracle to irradiate any chophouse. Her features were subtle—a delicate nose, a rounded chin, a mouth very red in her pale face. Her black brows made an incomparable line above her dark, steady eyes.
In spite of her thinness and her pallor, in spite of twenty years of bad air and wretched food, she was strong and tireless, with muscles like steel—a heritage from ancestors of Slavic peasant stock. She had a cool, careless manner, inclined to sudden hauteur when she thought it necessary, but she could also chat with the greatest affability—as she was doing now.
“Trying to make me jealous!” thought Ritchie. “What do I care?”
He had merely invited her, very politely, to a dance to be given by the Coyote Club that evening. He worked very hard all day as a mechanic in a garage. In addition to building up a fine physique and broadening his mind by reading, he was taking a correspondence course in mechanical draftsmanship; and the Coyote Club, of which he was treasurer, was his one frivolity.
Every week they engaged a pianist, a saxophonist, and a drummer, and had a dance in a hall over a restaurant on Eighth Avenue. There was no “rough stuff.” It was a seemly and refined entertainment—Madeline ought to have known that. Ritchie only meant that some of the girls brought by some of the Coyotes were jazz babies. The remark was not intended as personal, and she shouldn’t have taken it as such.
“Don’t know much about girls, don’t I?” he reflected angrily.
Nothing could have been more galling, especially as it was true. Ritchie had noble ideas about girls, though. He was not exactly in a position to marry at the present moment; but later on, when his heroic efforts began to show results, he intended to have a home, a garden, and a wife whom he would venerate and take to lectures and concerts.
He did not care to admit that that wife must be Madeline or no one. He was far too proud to acknowledge how much he cared for a girl with her silly ideas; but unhappily he was not clever enough to conceal it, and Madeline knew only too well.
These were her silly ideas. Knowing herself to be rare and seductive, she intended to marry a millionaire. She was weary and disgusted with her present condition. She wanted a life of exquisite refinement and languor. She hated the restaurant, she hated her home, her uniform. She turned up her delicate nose at everything about her, including Ritchie. Not that he wasn’t “refined,” for he surely was, and she secretly admired him; but it was not the right, the princely, sort of “refinement,” and she would have none of him.
Still, she felt a pang of regret when he went out. A girl as attractive as she, alone in the world, could not well help learning to appreciate the chivalry and restraint of Mr. Ritchie. He never “said anything,” and never would, until encouraged. He came every night to Compson’s for his dinner, and of late he had fallen into the habit of being on the corner when she came out, at ten o’clock. He never said that he was waiting for her, and she had manners enough to be surprised every time. He walked home with her, both of them conversing with the utmost formality.
He had never invited her anywhere, except to this dance at the Coyote Club. He had never so much as shaken hands with her. She knew very well that the reason for this was his severe sense of respect for her. While she admired this, she would have been better pleased with a little more impetuosity.
Still, it was no use denying that he left a gap. Madeline missed him. Even when she was busy, she had found comfort in the sight of his head bent over one of his little books.
“Now he’s mad,” she reflected. “He[Pg 93] won’t come back. All right! I don’t care! Let him go to his old dance and have a good time with the jazz babies!”
She consoled herself by imagining the balls she would go to in the future, when the millionaire arrived—balls like those she saw in the movies. She herself would wear a long, swathed dress and carry a feathered fan. She would be languid and scornful, and would flirt in a refined manner impossible to one who was at present a waitress in Compson’s Chophouse.