LETTER XII
IN WHICH I MISS HALF A DINNER
Dear Mom:
I have just got back from Mrs. Edgerton’s party and I have sure got some news now.
How I did wished I could of had you here to advise with. The best guess I could make was that Mrs. Edgerton was figuring to show her husband the difference between a real lady and a manicure girl but Mrs. Budd she says “Maybe she really wants to know you because why,” she says, “if a woman’s husband is got to talk about politics with manicure girls any wife would rather it was where she could be around.” But I think Mrs. Budd must of been impressed by that squirrel-skin coat for of course any landlady will trust you more if you have got a thing like that on.
Well anyhow I says that I am going there and do the best I know how and talk with Mr. Edgerton just the same as all the other times. Because after all the main thing is that he has got this great work to do to tell the Spokesman what to say to the whole American people. He has ast me to advise him and I am not going to let no jealous wife scare me off.
I have not got time to get home to fix myself up after work so I give myself a lick and a promise in the beautyparlors and pile myself into a street car and get pretty much mussed up in the crowd and I ride until I get to Alexander Hamilton Place. But then it is too early and I have read in the etiquette book that it is not good form to arrive for dinners ahead of time so I take a little walk though I don’t mind admitting to my dear old Mom that my knees is kind of weak for walking. But I am not scared in the head and I think up some good conversation and remember some ideas in Pop’s letters and so I go back to the house.
It is one of these gosh-almighty swell apartment-houses made out of pink and green marble and red plush curtains and palm trees and colored boys with brass buttons. But I have got my new clothes and I am not going to worry even if Mrs. Edgerton does know that her husband bought them for me. I am announced by the telephone and I ride up in the elevator and there comes a maid with a white apron and a cap and I am took into a dressing room and then a room with a piano and some books and lights that is dim and mysterious.
Well I have had the hope that I might see Mr. Edgerton first so as to get a line on what is coming but she don’t mean to give me no such advantage she comes sweeping in. “Good evening Miss Riggs,” she says and I remember that the etiquette books says that some ladies shake hands and some do not and she is one of them that does not. She is very polite but a little too gushy and I says to myself right off Mamie Riggs she is worse scared than you are.
Well she starts to tell about the late winter we are having and of course I know as much about the weather as anybody and after we have finished with winter in Washington D. C. I tell her about winter in Camden New Jersey.
Then Mr. Edgerton comes in and he is the same old friend and we do shake hands and like we meant it and then I see that he is going to play the game like there wasn’t nothing wrong. So I says, “Well Mr. Edgerton and how goes the economy program with the Spokesman?”
He says, “Well it is not going so good as it might because you know how it is with economy it is a fine word for the campaign but when you come to put it into practice you find that it means letting somebody out of a job and it always turns out to be the third cousin of some congressman or maybe of a district leader.”
“Yes,” I says, “some of them fellers that is setting with their feet up on their desks smoking long cigars.”
“Exactly,” he says, “and there is nothing that worries theSpokesman so much as thinking about them fellers. You see how it is when it comes to election time they are all busy rustling out the vote for Him and after that He has got to find something for them to do.”
Well I had thought I must be careful not to leave Mrs. Edgerton out of this conversation so I says, “A little while ago, Mrs. Edgerton I thought I understood about this here economy business but now I find it is complicated and there is something that Mr. Edgerton or maybe yourself might explain.”
“And what is that?” she says.
“Well it is this business that you can never economize in nothing without turning somebody out of work. But it is a terrible thing for working people to be out of jobs,” I says, “right now my Pop is scared that he may lose his job at the gas-works and him with a half a dozen kids growing up and why should them kids have to starve just because some people is took it into their heads to economize on gas-bills?”
“Perhaps we had better go in to the table,” says Mrs. Edgerton and so there is the dining room and gee Mom if you could see how them people live they are surely making jobs for the poor. The table is all got a solid piece of glass over the whole top and there is a centre-piece that is hand-embroidered lace and you have got a hand-embroidered doily in front of your place and there is real silver and what I guess is cut-glass and there is little electric candles at each place and there is two sorts of wine glasses well Mom all I can say is that I am glad I have took your advice and studied the etiquette books and practiced them so that now I do not have to be rattled but can give my thoughts to being intellectual.
Well we have got started on some oyster cocktails and I says, “Have you thought up any way to undo them blunders of ours and get the people to liking the Spokesman again?” And he says, “No I have not.”
And so I says, “I have been thinking hard about it and I have been looking at the pictures of the Spokesman that I see in the papers and it seems to me they are wrong. Have you ever thought about them?” “No,” he says, “I can’t say that I have what is it?”
And so I tell him, “They are all pictures that is took in regular clothes like a business Man with a white collar and one of them hundred and twenty-five dollars suits on. But the most of the people in this country don’t look like afashion model,” I says, “and they don’t wear white collars except on Sunday and the Fourth of July. It seems to me they would be a lot more interested in listening to the Spokesman’s advice about how to live their lives if they thought He lived the same kind of lives that they do.”
So he sits very thoughtful and he says, “That might be a worthwhile idea,” he says. “What would you suggest Miss Riggs?”
“Well,” I says, “what was it that the Spokesman done when He was young back there in the State of North Carolina?”
“North Carolina?” says he. “You mean Vermont, don’t you?”
“Well I can never keep them states straight,” I says. “I knew it was up in the North somewhere, but what was it He done?”
“Well He was raised on a farm.”
“All right then that is fine there is still lots of farmers in this country I guess. So why don’t He go up there to the old homestead and get some pictures took while He is pitching the hay?”
“You are a little ahead of time,” says Mr. Edgerton. “I am afraid they have still got snow on that homestead up there.”
“Well then let Him go shovel the snow it will do just as good.”
“He is hardly a husky enough Man for snow-shovelling,” says Mr. Edgerton.
“That is all right,” I says, “it don’t take long to get a picture not even a movie,” I says. “The point is that the plain people can see the Spokesman with His coat and collar off and looking like them. I know how it is with my own Pop if he was to see a picture of the Spokesman in a pair of blue overalls and a big wrench in His hand and it was headed the Spokesman mends His own gas pipe up there at the big white house why I know that Pop would vote for Him till the water-pipes bust in hell,” I says.
And so then Mr. Edgerton is excited and he says he believes that is the solution of the problem the way for him to get back into favor and put Senator Buttles into the discard. And we go on talking about what is to be in these pictures I can’t remember all we said but it was like that and I may be awful dumb but I honestly thought it was an intellectual conversation. But I have got so interested that I guess I must of forgot to bring Mrs. Edgerton in. Anyhowwe have et some soup and we are eating some fish and I am talking hard when suddenly I hears the wife give a sniff and I looks and she is sitting very straight and her face is got bright and it seems she is hopping mad and all of a sudden up she hops with her napkin in her hand and cries, “Oh this is intolerable!”
Of course I stares and I says, “Why Mrs. Edgerton!”
She says, “You are making a fool of me both of you!”
I says bewildered like, “Why ma’am what do you mean?”
“You really expect me to believe such rubbish?” she cries.
“Well ma’am,” I says. “It may be rubbish but it seems like good political business to me. I don’t understand you at all.”
But she only gets redder and madder so that she can hardly talk but only sort of gasp and she says looking at her husband, “To bring her into my home to mock at me! The shame of it!”
Says Mr. Edgerton very cold, “You invited her here and you undertook to behave yourself.”
“Oh,” she says, “I can’t stand it I can’t stand it!” And suddenly she busts into tears and clasps her napkin to her eyes and rushes out of the room and there the two of us is left staring at each other.
“Well Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I am very much puzzled about this because what have I done?”
“You have not done nothing,” he says.
“Is it that she thinks I have been too familiar talking about the Spokesman like He was one of us plain people?”
But he says no that is not it. “The truth is Miss Riggs I have not been able to persuade my wife that you and I are seriously interested in public questions and so when you sit and talk about helping me it seems to her that we are playing a game to make her ridiculous.”
“Oh that is it!” I says. “But does she not know that this is a free country and that I have got a vote the same as she has?”
“You are perfectly right,” he says, “and let us go on with our conversation and our dinner.”
But of course I am not hungry no more I have got some self-respect for all my needing a meal and I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will have to be some other time because I don’t think I had ought to stay in this house it would only be making your wife angrier than ever.”
First he tries to stop me but then he says that he willdrive me home—imagine him taking me in that electric coop that he drives her in! I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will not be the first time that I have gone home in a street car and I will do it once more,” I says.
“But Miss Riggs,” he says, “am I to lose your political counsel?”
“No,” I says, “you can phone me tomorrow but right now I want you to go in and see your wife and try to fix it up with her,” I says, “and not make her no madder by taking me home alone.” And so I make him get my things and I walk home and gee Mom all the way I am thinking I will never know what was going to be the rest of that dinner!