b.u.t.tered Side Down.
by Edna Ferber.
FOREWORD
"And so," the story writers used to say, "they lived happily ever after."
Um-m-m--maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the gla.s.s slippers were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella"s manner redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be more careful of her finger-nails and grammar? After Puss in Boots had won wealth and a wife for his young master did not that gentleman often fume with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, refused to call on the lady of the former poor miller"s son?
It is a great risk to take with one"s book-children. These stories make no such promises. They stop just short of the phrase of the old story writers, and end truthfully, thus: And so they lived.
E. F.
b.u.t.tERED SIDE DOWN
I
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
Any one who has ever written for the magazines (n.o.body could devise a more sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who does a humorous article on the subject of his troubles, and the neglected wife next door, who journalizes) knows that a story the scene of which is not New York is merely junk. Take Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to five thousand words, and there you have the ideal short story.
Consequently I feel a certain timidity in confessing that I do not know Fifth Avenue from Hester Street when I see it, because I"ve never seen it. It has been said that from the latter to the former is a ten-year journey, from which I have gathered that they lie some miles apart. As for Forty-second Street, of which musical comedians carol, I know not if it be a fashionable shopping thoroughfare or a factory district.
A confession of this kind is not only good for the soul, but for the editor. It saves him the trouble of turning to page two.
This is a story of Chicago, which is a first cousin of New York, although the two are not on chummy terms. It is a story of that part of Chicago which lies east of Dearborn Avenue and south of Division Street, and which may be called the Nottingham curtain district.
In the Nottingham curtain district every front parlor window is embellished with a "Rooms With or Without Board" sign. The curtains themselves have mellowed from their original department-store-bas.e.m.e.nt-white to a rich, deep tone of Chicago smoke, which has the notorious London variety beaten by several shades. Block after block the two-story-and-bas.e.m.e.nt houses stretch, all grimy and gritty and looking sadly down upon the five square feet of mangy gra.s.s forming the pitiful front yard of each. Now and then the monotonous line of front stoops is broken by an outjutting bas.e.m.e.nt delicatessen shop.
But not often. The Nottingham curtain district does not run heavily to delicacies. It is stronger on creamed cabbage and bread pudding.
Up in the third floor back at Mis" Buck"s (elegant rooms $2.50 and up a week. Gents preferred) Gertie was brushing her hair for the night. One hundred strokes with a bristle brush. Anyone who reads the beauty column in the newspapers knows that. There was something heroic in the sight of Gertie brushing her hair one hundred strokes before going to bed at night. Only a woman could understand her doing it.
Gertie clerked downtown on State Street, in a gents" glove department. A gents" glove department requires careful dressing on the part of its clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is particular about choosing "lookers," with especial attention to figure, hair, and finger nails.
Gertie was a looker. Providence had taken care of that. But you cannot leave your hair and finger nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with a bristle brush and an orangewood stick.
Now clerking, as Gertie would tell you, is fierce on the feet. And when your feet are tired you are tired all over. Gertie"s feet were tired every night. About eight-thirty she longed to peel off her clothes, drop them in a heap on the floor, and tumble, unbrushed, unwashed, unmanicured, into bed. She never did it.
Things had been particularly trying to-night. After washing out three handkerchiefs and pasting them with practised hand over the mirror, Gertie had taken off her shoes and discovered a hole the size of a silver quarter in the heel of her left stocking. Gertie had a country-bred horror of holey stockings. She darned the hole, yawning, her aching feet pressed against the smooth, cool leg of the iron bed. That done, she had had the colossal courage to wash her face, slap cold cream on it, and push back the cuticle around her nails.
Seated huddled on the side of her thin little iron bed, Gertie was brushing her hair bravely, counting the strokes somewhere in her sub-conscious mind and thinking busily all the while of something else.
Her brush rose, fell, swept downward, rose, fell, rhythmically.
"Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety---- Oh, darn it! What"s the use!" cried Gertie, and hurled the brush across the room with a crack.
She sat looking after it with wide, staring eyes until the brush blurred in with the faded red roses on the carpet. When she found it doing that she got up, wadded her hair viciously into a hard bun in the back instead of braiding it carefully as usual, crossed the room (it wasn"t much of a trip), picked up the brush, and stood looking down at it, her under lip caught between her teeth. That is the humiliating part of losing your temper and throwing things. You have to come down to picking them up, anyway.
Her lip still held prisoner, Gertie tossed the brush on the bureau, fastened her nightgown at the throat with a safety pin, turned out the gas and crawled into bed.
Perhaps the hard bun at the back of her head kept her awake. She lay there with her eyes wide open and sleepless, staring into the darkness.
At midnight the Kid Next Door came in whistling, like one unused to boarding-house rules. Gertie liked him for that. At the head of the stairs he stopped whistling and came softly into his own third floor back just next to Gertie"s. Gertie liked him for that, too.
The two rooms had been one in the fashionable days of the Nottingham curtain district, long before the advent of Mis" Buck. That thrifty lady, on coming into possession, had caused a flimsy part.i.tion to be run up, slicing the room in twain and doubling its rental.
Lying there Gertie could hear the Kid Next Door moving about getting ready for bed and humming "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its Own" very lightly, under his breath. He polished his shoes briskly, and Gertie smiled there in the darkness of her own room in sympathy. Poor kid, he had his beauty struggles, too.
Gertie had never seen the Kid Next Door, although he had come four months ago. But she knew he wasn"t a grouch, because he alternately whistled and sang off-key tenor while dressing in the morning. She had also discovered that his bed must run along the same wall against which her bed was pushed. Gertie told herself that there was something almost immodest about being able to hear him breathing as he slept. He had tumbled into bed with a little grunt of weariness.
Gertie lay there another hour, staring into the darkness. Then she began to cry softly, lying on her face with her head between her arms. The cold cream and the salt tears mingled and formed a slippery paste.
Gertie wept on because she couldn"t help it. The longer she wept the more difficult her sobs became, until finally they bordered on the hysterical. They filled her lungs until they ached and reached her throat with a force that jerked her head back.
"Rap-rap-rap!" sounded sharply from the head of her bed.
Gertie stopped sobbing, and her heart stopped beating. She lay tense and still, listening. Everyone knows that spooks rap three times at the head of one"s bed. It"s a regular high-sign with them.
"Rap-rap-rap!"
Gertie"s skin became goose-flesh, and coldwater effects chased up and down her spine.
"What"s your trouble in there?" demanded an unspooky voice so near that Gertie jumped. "Sick?"
It was the Kid Next Door.
"N-no, I"m not sick," faltered Gertie, her mouth close to the wall. Just then a belated sob that had stopped halfway when the raps began hustled on to join its sisters. It took Gertie by surprise, and brought prompt response from the other side of the wall.
"I"ll bet I scared you green. I didn"t mean to, but, on the square, if you"re feeling sick, a little nip of brandy will set you up. Excuse my mentioning it, girlie, but I"d do the same for my sister. I hate like sin to hear a woman suffer like that, and, anyway, I don"t know whether you"re fourteen or forty, so it"s perfectly respectable. I"ll get the bottle and leave it outside your door."
"No you don"t!" answered Gertie in a hollow voice, praying meanwhile that the woman in the room below might be sleeping. "I"m not sick, honestly I"m not. I"m just as much obliged, and I"m dead sorry I woke you up with my blubbering. I started out with the soft pedal on, but things got away from me. Can you hear me?"
"Like a phonograph. Sure you couldn"t use a sip of brandy where it"d do the most good?"
"Sure."
"Well, then, cut out the weeps and get your beauty sleep, kid. He ain"t worth sobbing over, anyway, believe me."
"He!" snorted Gertie indignantly. "You"re cold. There never was anything in peg-tops that could make me carry on like the heroine of the Elsie series."
"Lost your job?"
"No such luck."
"Well, then, what in Sam Hill could make a woman----"
"Lonesome!" snapped Gertie. "And the floorwalker got fresh to-day. And I found two gray hairs to-night. And I"d give my next week"s pay envelope to hear the double click that our front gate gives back home."