"Yes, sir; there she is at the top, drawing down big money, with a nice vine-clad home in this film town, furnished from a page in a woman's magazine, with a big black limousine like a hearse—all but the plumes—and a husband that she worships the ground he walks on. Everything the heart can desire, even to being mother to some of the very saddest persons ever seen on a screen. It shows what genius will do for a woman when she finds out what kind of genius she's got and is further goaded by the necessity of supporting a husband in the style to which he has been accustomed by a doting father. She's some person now, let me tell you.
"She spent a week with me in Red Gap last fall, and you'd ought to seen how certain parties kowtowed to me so they'd get to meet her. I found that about every woman under fifty in our town is sure she was born for this here picture work, from Henrietta Templeton Price to Beryl Mae Macomber, who's expecting any day to be snapped up by some shrewd manager that her type is bound to appeal to, she being a fair young thing with big eyes and lots of teeth, like all film actresses. Metta Bigler, that teaches oil painting and burnt wood, give Vida a reception in her Bohemian studio in Red Gap's Latin Quarter—the studio having a chain of Chianti bottles on the wall and an ash tray with five burnt cigarette ends on a taboret to make it look Bohemian—and that was sure the biggest thrill our town has had since the Gus Levy All Star Shamrock Vaudeville Company stranded there five years ago. It just shows how important my little actress friend is—and look what she come up from!"
I said I wouldn't mind looking what she come up from if she had started low enough to make it exciting.
Ma Pettengill said she had that! She had come up from the gutter. She said that Vida Sommers, the idol of thousands, had been "a mere daughter of the people." Her eyes crinkled as she uttered this phrase. So I chose a chair in the shadow while she built a second cigarette.
Ten years ago I'm taking a vacation down in New York City. Along comes a letter from Aunt Esther Colborn, of Fredonia, who is a kind of a third cousin of mine about twice removed. Says her niece, Vida, has had a good city job as cashier of a dairy lunch in Boston, which is across the river from some college, but has thrown this job to the winds to marry the only college son of a rich New York magnate or Wall Street crook who has cast the boy off for contracting this low alliance with a daughter of the people. Aunt Esther is now afraid Vida isn't right happy and wants I should look her up and find out. It didn't sound too good, but I obliged.
I go to the address in Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side and find that Vida is keeping a boarding house. But I was ready to cheer Aunt Esther with a telegram one second after she opened the door on me—in a big blue apron and a dustcap on her hair. She was the happiest young woman I ever did see—shining it out every which way. A very attractive girl about twenty-five, with a slim figure and one of these faces that ain't exactly of howling beauty in any one feature, but that sure get you when they're sunned up with joy like this one was.
She was pleased to death when I told her my name, and of course I must come in and stay for dinner so I could see all her boarders that was like one big family and, above all, meet her darling husband Clyde when he got home from business. The cheeriest thing she was, and I adore to meet people that are cheery, so I said nothing would please me better. She took me up to her little bedroom to lay my things off and then down to the parlour where she said I must rest and excuse her because she still had a few little things to supervise. She did have too. In the next hour and a half she run up and down two flights of stairs at least ten times. I could hear her sweeping overhead and jamming things round on the stove when she raced down to the kitchen. Yes, she had several little things to supervise and one girl to help her. I peeked into the kitchen once while I was wandering through the lower rooms, and she seemed to be showing this girl how to boil potatoes. I wondered if she never run down and if her happy look was really chronic or mebbe put on for my benefit. Still, I could hear her singing to herself and she moved like a happy person.
In looking round the parlour I was greeted on every wall by pictures of a charming youth I guessed was darling Clyde. A fine young face he had, and looked as happy as Vida herself. There was pictures of him with a tennis racket and on a sailboat and with a mandolin and standing up with his college glee club and setting on a high-powered horse and so forth, all showing he must be a great social favourite and one born to have a good time. I wondered how he'd come to confer himself on the cashier of a quick-lunch place. I thought it must be one of these romances. Then—I'm always remembering the foolishest things—I recalled a funny little absent look in Vida's eyes when she spoke of her darling coming home from business. I thought now it must of been pride; that he was performing some low job in a factory or store while she run the boarding house, and she didn't want me to know it. I thought he must be a pretty fine rich man's son to stand the gaff this way when cast off by his father for mixing up with a daughter of the people.
It come dinnertime; about a dozen boarders straggling in, with Vida in a pretty frock anxious because darling Clyde was ten minutes late and of course something fatal must of happened to him in crossing a crowded street. But nothing had. He showed up safe and sound and whistling in another ten minutes, and became the life of the party. He looked near as happy as Vida did when she embraced him out in the hall, a fine handsome young fellow, the best-natured in the world, jollying the boarders and jollying me and jollying Vida that he called Baby Girl, or Babe. I saw, too, that I must of been mistaken about the job he was holding down. He was dressed in a very expensive manner, with neat little gold trinkets half concealed about him, the shirt and collar exactly right and the silk socks carefully matching the lavender tie.
He kept the table lively all through dinner with jokes and quips from the latest musical comedies and anecdotes of his dear old college days, and how that very afternoon he had won a silver cup and the pool championship of his college club—and against a lot of corking good players, too, he didn't mind saying. Also I noticed we was eating a mighty good dinner; so darned good you didn't see how Vida could set it up at the price boarders usually pay.