“Cleopatra, Portia, Minerva, Nemesis, and the Queen of Sheba,” said Henry, “and you’re 173 all five in one package. I retract everything I said. And if I may be permitted to kiss the hem of your garment, to show I’m properly humbled, why––in plain English, that idea has a full set of molars!”
He left the mechanics of it to Anna, who merely conferred with Bob Standish, and then with one of her girl-friends, and sent out a little circular among the high elect; but even Anna was amazed at the prompt response. The response was due partly to friendship, and partly to convenience, but whatever the reason, Anna brought in checks for a hundred season-tickets, and turned the worst night of the week into the best. As she had sensed, because the insiders of society were willing to commit themselves to Monday, the outsiders would have paid four times, instead of merely double, to be there, too. It was socially imperative.
“That boosts us up another fifty a week,” said Henry appreciatively. “And we must have a thousand in the bank, haven’t we?... Say, Anna, this bread and cheese racket is all right when you can’t afford anything else, but 174 honestly, won’t you just get a cook? I don’t care if she’s rotten, but to think of you giving those dishes a sitz-bath twice a day––”
“Not yet, dear. We aren’t nearly out of the woods. Society Night’s helped a lot, but we aren’t averaging over two hundred and twenty yet, are we? That’s eighty a week short. So if we don’t think up some more schemes, why, what we’re saving now’ll have to be our capital next year.”
“But when a man has this much income––”
“Yes, and you owe ten thousand on a mortgage, and the tax bills haven’t come in yet, and you’ll have an income tax to pay.... We’ll save awhile longer.”
It was greater heroism than he realized, for she had never lost, for a single instant, her abhorrence of the kitchen; nor was she willing to cater to her prejudice, and work with only the tips of her fingers. She had two principal defences––she wore rubber gloves, and she sang––but whenever she had to put her hands into greasy water, whenever she scrubbed a kettle, whenever she cleaned the sink, a series of cold chills played up and down her spine as fitfully 175 as a flame plays on the surface of alcohol. She detested every item which had to do with that kitchen; and yet, to save Henry the price of a cook––now seventy dollars a month––she sacrificed her squeamishness. There were nights when she simply couldn’t eat––she couldn’t draw a cloud over her imagination, and forget what the steak had looked like, and felt like, uncooked. There were six days in seven when the mere sight of blackened pots and pans put her nerves on edge. But she always remembered that Henry was supposed to be irresponsible, and that a penny in hand is worth two in prospect; so that she sang away, and tried to dispel her thoughts of the kitchen by thinking about the Orpheum.
It was in early December that she conceived the Bargain Matinee, which wasn’t the ordinary cut-price performance, but the adaptation of an old trick of the department stores. The Tuesday and Friday matinees were the poorest attended, so that Anna suggested––and Henry ordered––that beginning at half past four on Tuesdays and Fridays, the fifty-cent seats were reduced at the rate of a cent a minute. In other 176 words, the Orpheum challenged the public to buy its entertainment by the clock; a person who came a quarter hour late saved fifteen cents, and the bargain-hunter who could find a vacant seat at twenty minutes past five could see the last two reels for nothing. It didn’t bring in a tremendous revenue, but it caught the popular fancy, and it was worth another thirty dollars a week.
And Anna discovered, too, that the unfinished second story of the theatre had possibilities. She had it plastered and gaily papered, she put up a frieze of animals from Noah’s ark; she bought toys and games and a huge sand-box––and for a nominal fee, a mother could leave her angel child or squalling brat, as the case might be, in charge of a kindergarten assistant, and watch the feature film without nervousness or bad conscience. There was no profit in it, as a department, but it was good advertising, and helped the cause.
In the meantime Henry, who at this season of the year would ordinarily have gone to Lake Placid for the winter sports or to Pinehurst for golf, was watching the rise and fall of the 177 box-office receipts as eagerly as he would have watched the give and take of match-play in tournament finals. He kept his records as perfectly, and studied them with as much zest, as once he had kept and studied the records of the First Ten in the tennis ranking, and of all teams and individuals in first-class polo. To Henry, the Orpheum had long ceased to be a kitchen; he had almost forgotten that a few months ago, his soul had been corrugated with goose-flesh at the prospect of this probation. Since August, he had done more actual work than in all his previous life, and the return from it was approximately what his allowance had been from Mr. Starkweather, but Henry had caught the spark of personal ambition, and he wouldn’t stop running until the race was over. He wouldn’t stop, and furthermore he wouldn’t think of stopping. But now and then he couldn’t help visualizing his status when he did stop, or was ruled off the track.