LETTER XI
IN WHICH I PLAY A BIG SCENE
Dear Mom:
Well I hate to be writing you blue letters and you having such a hard time what with the baby having the croup and Pop not sure of his job. Tell him I thank him for his fine ideas but the truth is just now I have not got no heart for the work I have been trying to do it seems to me like I had better just be a plain manicure girl like I used to be and not try to understand these great world affairs that is too much for my poor head.
The reason is because it don’t seem to me like people was honest like I thought they was. When I told Mr. Edgertonto have the Spokesman give out to the newspapers all them stories about Him and the Spokeslady being so economical and not buying no new clothes I thought They was really going to not do it and it was all going to be straight. But the way Mr. Edgerton talked They just didn’t bother about the truth at all and it has made me sort of ashamed. If They are going to do things that way I just aint interested in helping Them at all because They are really not doing the plain people no good.
Of course I aint had no chance to ask Mr. Edgerton about it because he aint called me up again so I am just waiting. The girls in the Elite Beauty Parlors they seen I had something on my mind and Ada Huggins, she says, “What’s the matter Mame you seem sort of deestraight.” You see since she has changed her name to Adaire she is always trying to use French words and I do sure hate affected people.
I says, “I have got important matters to occupy my mind and I have not got no time for idle chatter,” I says. And she says, “Well now will you listen to that, of all the airs! Who do you think you are the Spokesman up in the big white house?” “You are getting warm,” I says but of course I didn’t say no more because it is what Mr. Edgerton calls a state secret that I am helping him.
P. S. Well, I went home thinking about that mysterious lady that has been to call on me and that I am pretty sure is Mrs. Edgerton. And Mrs. Budd my landlady says she aint come again. She is awful curious about such a great lady coming to see a girl that has got the cheapest room in her house and she says, “Is it some lost aunt of yours dearie?” But I says, “It is just a friend I think.”
She says, “You could talk to her in my parlor if you like.” And of course I know that is just so that she can listen in but what can I do can I expect a visitor to climb four flights of stairs and where could I put her in this room that is only six by eight and I have to shove the oil stove and what is left of my dinner under the bed before I can get to the door. So I says, “Thank you very kindly.” And she says, “I will call you if she comes and you can come down.” I says, “Do please and keep her entertained while I am getting my curl-papers off.”
You see I wanted to fix myself as decent as I could so as not to shame Mr. Edgerton too much for knowing me. So I wash my face and put my hair up to curl and I get mysupper of potato chips and pickles in a hurry and I am just in the middle of getting it down with my new dress I have took off all over the bed when I hear a step in the hall and there comes a knock on the door and I think of course it is Mrs. Budd and I says, “Come in,” and the door opens and my God there she is!
Well Mom you could of knocked me over with an orange stick. I just stand there with half a dill pickle in my mouth and the other half in my hand and stare at her like a boob. It is the same lady that I seen getting out of the electric coop with Mr. Edgerton and she has got on the same squirrel-skin coat and all. She wouldn’t have to be a very big lady to seem awful big standing in the doorway and she is red from climbing the stairs and there is red in her eyes too she gives me the glare and holds herself stiff and straight and gee Mom I feel like a worm must feel when it is going to be stepped on.
“Are you Miss Mamie Riggs?” she says and I gives a gulp at the pickle. “And so you are the woman that is going with my husband!” she says.
So then I see it is going to be a war and I thinks what kind? She has got me penned in a corner and there is just a window and no fire-escape and a long ways to the ground and she has got a big squirrel-skin muff that she holds in her left hand with her hand inside it and I thinks to myself there is your death Mamie Riggs because of course she must have a gun in that hand and gee Mom it sure makes your hair rise up to watch that muff and wonder what is going to happen will she let the muff fall and show the gun or will she shoot through the muff? But no she won’t be apt to do that because she won’t think no manicure girl worth spoiling a fine muff over. It is exactly like the big scene in a play you know how it is Mom only you really don’t because it is another thing altogether when it is real.
Well I have got the pickle out of the way and so I say real careful like, “I have the honor to be a friend of Mr. Edgerton,” I says. And then I have a sudden bright idea and I raise my voice and call, “Come in Mrs. Budd.” Then I listen and I say again louder yet, “Please come in Mrs. Budd.” For of course I know that she is not going to lose her chance to find out what is going on but will be at the door listening and sure enough the door opens kind of timid and I hear her voice behind the big lady, “Did you call me Miss Riggs?”
“You might come in,” I says. “I have a lady caller she isthe wife of a gentleman friend of mine. Meet Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “Mrs. Budd.”
And Mrs. Budd gives a courtsey that is not answered being that she is behind and aint saw and so I sweep my clothes into a heap and I says, “Come and sit on the bed,” I says. And so of course Mrs. Edgerton has to let her get by and sit down and then I feel a little better because my landlady is between us and I think maybe if there should trouble start she might shove her hand up or rattle her and spoil her aim.
But I have made a bum guess from seeing too many movies I guess for it aint anything like that. All of a sudden the lady lets her muff drop and puts her two hands up to her face white kid gloves and all and busts into tears! And there she stands shaking and sobbing and says to herself, “Oh the shame of it, the shame of it!”
So then of course I remember that she is supposed to be a sick woman and what she is going through and I am sorry and I says, “Look here Mrs. Edgerton you have got this all wrong things between your husband and me aint at all what you think,” I says.
So then she flares all hot again and drops her hands. “Do you mean to say you have not been going to dinners with my husband all the time?”
“It would be very silly of me to deny that,” I says, “seeing that your detective has been sitting at the next table to us most of the times but what is the harm of dinners?”
“And him with a wife at home!” she says with the tears running down her cheeks again. “And the dinner on the table getting cold!”
“Well that is too bad,” I says, “it was a shame to waste so many dinners but I didn’t know about that Mrs. Edgerton,” I says. “A gentleman asked me to dinner and being hungry why shouldn’t I go?”
Well I see she is human after all and I am still more sorry so I goes on real friendly like. “I guess Mrs. Edgerton you have not knowed many working girls in your life,” I says, “and you aint realized how it feels when a gentleman offers you a dinner free of charge. They pay me eighteen-fifty a week at the Elite Beauty Parlors and I have got to live on that till the next Saturday night and if I have not got anything left on Friday night I do not have any dinner,” I says. “Mrs. Budd here will tell you that I have to give her six dollars a week that is what a girl has to pay to keep the rain off her in Washington D. C. And if I spend a dollar a day for my food then I have five dollars and a halfa week to dress myself like my profession requires and all the luxuries that you see in this room,” I says kind of sarcastic, “and for tooth-paste and what laundry I can’t do in the bath-tub downstairs without Mrs. Budd finding it out and for music and books and art,” I says, “and for doctor’s bills if I should—” I am just about to say, “If I should take up the notion that I have got the angina pectoris of the toe,” but I realize that would be nasty so I end kind of meek-like, “if I should be sick.”
She is staring and has got a kind of agonized curiosity in her face like she would like to know what sort of terrible animal I am. The tears is still there so I says, “What is it you believe, Mrs. Edgerton? Do you think I have been paying the woman’s price for my dinners?” I says. “Well it has been winter time and cold outside and where do you think I could of took him to? Would I bring him to this room?” I says. “If you think that just you ask Mrs. Budd here and she will show you down the stairs quick,” I says. And of course Mrs. Budd gives a snort and I says, “Do you run that sort of a house Mrs. Budd?” And she says, “Not that I know of!”
So there is a little pause and the lady still weeping silent so I goes on, “Has that dick been telling you lies so as to keep his job lady? If he has told you the truth it is this that I have et maybe a dozen dinners at your husband’s expense and I have walked a little ways on the street with him and sat once talking in an art-gallery and that is all. I have not even been into a taxi-cab with him and he left his own car at home for his wife or that is what he told me and if it aint true it is not my fault. And if it is the cost of the dinners that worries you it would of been easier to of saved all the money you must of paid to that there dick,” I says. “It was mostly in cheap places that we et because he was scared he would be saw.”
“And if you are so innocent why do you have to hide?” she cries.
“He said he had to Mrs. Edgerton and when a gentleman asks you to dinner at a cheap place you can’t hint for a better place at least not if you are a lady. I shouldn’t wonder if the reason was because he had a wife that he thought wasn’t reasonable and wouldn’t believe the truth if he told it to her.”
“But why does my husband have to dine with a woman I do not meet?”
“You will not like it,” I says, “if I tell you that you andyour lady friends can’t give your husband what he has to have in his political life. But you had ought to see it because you would scorn to know the things that his job requires him to know.”
“What things?”
“Things about the way the plain people of this country feel and what they want.”
“A manicure girl!” she kind of snorts.
“There is a lot of us,” I says, “and it aint only that we have got votes but we do a lot of talking and can be a political force if you get us real mad,” I says. “And then there’s Pop,” I says, “a gas-house worker in Camden New Jersey and if anybody was to ask you what such a man would say about the League of Nations for instance would you have any idea what to answer? No Mrs. Edgerton you wouldn’t but right there on my dressing table underneath the cold cream jar is a letter about it that I was intending to read to Mr. Edgerton the next time I meet him.”
Well she looks me over some more and then she says in what is meant to be icy tones of voice, “Why could his wife not attend these political conferences?”
“Indeed she could so far as I am concerned Mrs. Edgerton I have never had a word to tell to your husband that you might not of listened in on.”
So she thinks again and says, “It is a shame that there should be two dinners and one should wait and get cold,” she says.
“Yes ma’am,” I says. “I can see that is a waste.”
But her next one floors me. “Will you come to dine at my home Miss Riggs?” she says real sweet.
So then I have to think in a hurry. “What is that Mrs. Edgerton?” I says. “Are you expecting to make a boob out of me?”
“You have political information to give my husband,” she says, “and when a woman’s husband is in political life it is the custom for her to give dinner-parties to help his career. I invite you to dine with us.”
And so I gives a gulp like I had another pickle in my throat and I says, “Very well ma’am I will come.”
“And when?” says she. “The sooner the better will you come tomorrow evening?”
“I have no other date,” I says.
So she stoops down and picks up her muff and in it she has got not a pistol but a vanity case. Her fingers is trembling so that she can hardly open it but she does andthere is a gold pencil and a little note-book and she puts it against the wall and writes the address 2349 Alexander Hamilton Place Thursday at 7.30 and she hands it to me. “There it is and I hope you will not disappoint us.”
“Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “you must understand I have not got no good clothes for such a party—”
“Pray,” she says, “don’t give a thought to that. This is to be an intellectual and political occasion and you may wear your street dress that my husband has bought you,” she says, “and I will wear the same kind that he has bought me.”
And so then she sweeps out and leaves Mrs. Budd and I to spend the rest of the night talking it over. And gee Mom when I thought about her I had made up my mind that I would count it a victory if I got off without a bullet in me and here now I have got another free dinner coming!
Your delighted
Mame.