Books: Roast Beef, Medium
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Edna Ferber >> Roast Beef, Medium
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In surprise Emma McChesney turned at the door for another look at the
hair, figure, complexion and kimono.
"Oh, you're an actress! Well, if you think mine is a hard life for a
woman, why--"
"Me!" said the green-gold blonde, and laughed not prettily. "I ain't a
woman. I'm a queen of burlesque.
"Burlesque? You mean one of those--" Emma McChesney stopped, her
usually deft tongue floundering.
"One of those 'men only' troupes? You guessed it. I'm Blanche LeHaye,
of the Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles. We get into North Bend at six to-
morrow morning, and we play there to-morrow night, Sunday." She took a
step forward so that her haggard face and artificially tinted hair
were very near Emma McChesney. "Know what I was thinkin' just one
second before you come out here?"
"No; what?"
"I was thinkin' what a cinch it would be to just push aside that
canvas thing there by the steps and try what the newspaper accounts
call 'jumping into the night.' Say, if I'd had on my other lawnjerie
I'll bet I'd have done it."
Into Emma McChesney's understanding heart there swept a wave of pity.
But she answered lightly: "Is that supposed to be funny?"
The plump blonde yawned. "It depends on your funny bone. Mine's got
blunted. I'm the lady that the Irish comedy guy slaps in the face with
a bunch of lettuce. Say, there's something about you that makes a
person get gabby and tell things. You'd make a swell clairvoyant."
Beneath the comedy of the bleached hair, and the flaccid face, and the
bizarre wrapper; behind the coarseness and vulgarity and ignorance,
Emma McChesney's keen mental eye saw something decent and clean and
beautiful. And something pitiable, and something tragic.
"I guess you'd better come in and get some sleep," said Emma
McChesney; and somehow found her hand resting on the woman's shoulder.
So they stood, on the swaying, jolting platform. Blanche LeHaye, of
the Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles, looked down, askance, at the hand on
her shoulder, as at some strange and interesting object.
"Ten years ago," she said, "that would have started me telling the
story of my life, with all the tremolo stops on, and the orchestra in
tears. Now it only makes me mad."
Emma McChesney's hand seemed to snatch itself away from the woman's
shoulder.
"You can't treat me with your life's history. I'm going in."
"Wait a minute. Don't go away sore, kid. On the square, I guess I
liked the feel of your hand on my arm, like that. Say, I've done the
same thing myself to a strange dog that looked up at me, pitiful. You
know, the way you reach down, and pat 'm on the head, and say, 'Nice
doggie, nice doggie, old fellow,' even if it is a street cur, with a
chawed ear, and no tail. They growl and show their teeth, but they
like it. A woman--Lordy! there comes the brakeman. Let's beat it.
Ain't we the nervy old hens!"
The female of the species as she is found in sleeping-car dressing-
rooms had taught Emma McChesney to rise betimes that she might avoid
contact with certain frowsy, shapeless beings armed with bottles of
milky liquids, and boxes of rosy pastes, and pencils that made arched
and inky lines; beings redolent of bitter almond, and violet toilette
water; beings in doubtful corsets and green silk petticoats perfect as
to accordion-plaited flounce, but showing slits and tatters farther
up; beings jealously guarding their ten inches of mirror space and
consenting to move for no one; ladies who had come all the way from
Texas and who insisted on telling about it, despite a mouthful of
hairpins; doubtful sisters who called one dearie and required to be
hooked up; distracted mothers with three small children who wiped
their hands on your shirt-waist.
[Illustration: "'You can't treat me with your life's history. I'm
going in'"]
So it was that Emma McChesney, hatted and veiled by 5:45, saw the
curtains of the berth opposite rent asunder to disclose the rumpled,
shapeless figure of Miss Blanche LeHaye. The queen of burlesque bore
in her arms a conglomerate mass of shoes, corset, purple skirt, bag
and green-plumed hat. She paused to stare at Emma McChesney's trim,
cool preparedness.
"You must have started to dress as soon's you come in last night. I
never slep' a wink till just about half a hour ago. I bet I ain't got
more than eleven minutes to dress in. Ain't this a scorcher!"
When the train stopped at North Bend, Emma McChesney, on her way out,
collided with a vision in a pongee duster, rose-colored chiffon veil,
chamois gloves, and plumed hat. Miss Blanche LeHaye had made the most
of her eleven minutes. Her baggage attended to, Emma McChesney climbed
into a hotel 'bus. It bore no other passengers. From her corner in the
vehicle she could see the queen of burlesque standing in the center of
the depot platform, surrounded by her company. It was a tawdry,
miserable, almost tragic group, the men undersized, be-diamonded,
their skulls oddly shaped, their clothes a satire on the fashions for
men, their chins unshaven, their loose lips curved contentedly over
cigarettes; the women dreadfully unreal with the pitiless light of the
early morning sun glaring down on their bedizened faces, their
spotted, garish clothes, their run-down heels, their vivid veils,
their matted hair. They were quarreling among themselves, and a flame
of hate for the moment lighted up those dull, stupid, vicious faces.
Blanche LeHaye appeared to be the center about which the strife waged,
for suddenly she flung through the shrill group and walked swiftly
over to the 'bus and climbed into it heavily. One of the women turned,
her face lived beneath the paint, to scream a great oath after her.
The 'bus driver climbed into his seat and took up the reins. After a
moment's indecision the little group on the platform turned and
trailed off down the street, the women sagging under the weight of
their bags, the men, for the most part, hurrying on ahead. When the
'bus lurched past them the woman who had screamed the oath after
Blanche LeHaye laughed shrilly and made a face, like a naughty child,
whereupon the others laughed in falsetto chorus.
A touch of real color showed in Blanche LeHaye's flabby cheek. "I'll
show'm she snarled. That hussy of a Zella Dacre thinkin' she can get
my part away from me the last week or so, the lyin' sneak. I'll show'm
a leadin' lady's a leadin' lady. Let 'em go to their hash hotels. I'm
goin' to the real inn in this town just to let 'em know that I got my
dignity to keep up, and that I don't have to mix in with scum like
that. You see that there? She pointed at something in the street. Emma
McChesney turned to look. The cheap lithographs of the Sam Levin
Crackerjack Belles Company glared at one from the bill-boards.
"That's our paper," explained Blanche LeHaye. "That's me, in the
center of the bunch, with the pink reins in my hands, drivin' that
four-in-hand of johnnies. Hot stuff! Just let Dacre try to get it away
from me, that's all. I'll show'm."
She sank back into her corner. Her anger left her with the suddenness
characteristic of her type.
"Ain't this heat fierce?" she fretted, and closed her eyes.
Now, Emma McChesney was a broad-minded woman. The scars that she had
received in her ten years' battle with business reminded her to be
tender at sight of the wounds of others. But now, as she studied the
woman huddled there in the corner, she was conscious of a shuddering
disgust of her--of the soiled blouse, of the cheap finery, of the
sunken places around the jaw-bone, of the swollen places beneath the
eyes, of the thin, carmined lips, of the--
Blanche LeHaye opened her eyes suddenly and caught the look on Emma
McChesney's face. Caught it, and comprehended it. Her eyes narrowed,
and she laughed shortly.
"Oh, I dunno," drawled Blanche LeHaye. "I wouldn't go's far's that,
kid. Say, when I was your age I didn't plan to be no bum burlesquer
neither. I was going to be an actress, with a farm on Long Island,
like the rest of 'em. Every real actress has got a farm on Long
Island, if it's only there in the mind of the press agent. It's a kind
of a religion with 'em. I was goin' to build a house on mine that was
goin' to be a cross between a California bungalow and the
Horticultural Building at the World's Fair. Say, I ain't the worst,
kid. There's others outside of my smear, understand, that I wouldn't
change places with."
A dozen apologies surged to Emma McChesney's lips just as the driver
drew up at the curbing outside the hotel and jumped down to open the
door. She found herself hoping that the hotel clerk would not class
her with her companion.
At eleven o'clock that morning Emma McChesney unlocked her door and
walked down the red-carpeted hotel corridor. She had had two hours of
restful sleep. She had bathed, and breakfasted, and donned clean
clothes. She had brushed the cinders out of her hair, and manicured.
She felt as alert, and cool and refreshed as she looked, which speaks
well for her comfort.
Halfway down the hail a bedroom door stood open. Emma McChesney
glanced in. What she saw made her stop. The next moment she would have
hurried on, but the figure within called out to her.
Miss Blanche LeHaye had got into her kimono again. She was slumped in
a dejected heap in a chair before the window. There was a tray, with a
bottle and some glasses on the table by her side.
"Gawd, ain't it hot!" she whined miserably. "Come on in a minute. I
left the door open to catch the breeze, but there ain't any. You look
like a peach just off the ice. Got a gent friend in town?"
"No," answered Emma McChesney hurriedly, and turned to go.
"Wait a minute," said Blanche LeHaye, sharply, and rose. She slouched
over to where Emma McChesney stood and looked up at her sullenly.
"Why!" gasped Emma McChesney, and involuntarily put out her hand,
"why--my dear--you've been crying! Is there--"
"No, there ain't. I can bawl, can't I, if I _am_ a bum burlesquer?"
She put down the squat little glass she had in her hand and stared
resentfully at Emma McChesney's cool, fragrant freshness.
"Say," she demanded suddenly, "whatja mean by lookin' at me the way
you did this morning, h'm? Whatja mean? You got a nerve turnin' up
your nose at me, you have. I'll just bet you ain't no better than you
might be, neither. What the--"
Swiftly Emma McChesney crossed the room and closed the door. Then she
came back to where Blanche LeHaye stood.
"Now listen to me," she said. "You shed that purple kimono of yours
and hustle into some clothes and come along with me. I mean it.
Whenever I'm anywhere near this town I make a jump and Sunday here.
I've a friend here named Morrissey--Ethel Morrissey--and she's the
biggest-hearted, most understanding friend that a woman ever had.
She's skirt and suit buyer at Barker & Fisk's here. I have a standing
invitation to spend Sunday at her house. She knows I'm coming. I help
get dinner if I feel like it, and wash my hair if I want to, and sit
out in the back yard, and fool with the dog, and act like a human
being for one day. After you've been on the road for ten years a real
Sunday dinner in a real home has got Sherry's flossiest efforts
looking like a picnic collation with ants in the pie. You're coming
with me, more for my sake than for yours, because the thought of you
sitting here, like this, would sour the day for me."
Blanche LeHaye's fingers were picking at the pin which fastened her
gown. She smiled, uncertainly.
"What's your game?" she inquired.
"I'll wait for you downstairs," said Emma McChesney, pleasantly. "Do
you ever have any luck with caramel icing? Ethel's and mine always
curdles."
"Do I?" yelled the queen of burlesque. "I invented it." And she was
down on her knees, her fingers fumbling with the lock of her suitcase.
Only an Ethel Morrissey, inured to the weird workings of humanity by
years of shrewd skirt and suit buying, could have stood the test of
having a Blanche LeHaye thrust upon her, an unexpected guest, and with
the woman across the street sitting on her front porch taking it all
in.
At the door--"This is Miss Blanche LeHaye of the--er--Simon--"
"Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles," put in Miss LeHaye. "Pleased to meet
you."
"Come in," said Miss Ethel Morrissey without batting an eye. "I just
'phoned the hotel. Thought you'd gone back on me, Emma. I'm baking a
caramel cake. Don't slam the door. This your first visit here, Miss
LeHaye? Excuse me for not shaking hands. I'm all flour. Lay your
things in there. Ma's spending the day with Aunt Gus at Forest City
and I'm the whole works around here. It's got skirts and suits beat a
mile. Hot, ain't it? Say, suppose you girls slip off your waists and
I'll give you each an all-over apron that's loose and let's the breeze
slide around."
Blanche LeHaye, the garrulous, was strangely silent. When she stepped
about it was in the manner of one who is fearful of wakening a
sleeper. When she caught the eyes of either of the other women her own
glance dropped.
When Ethel Morrissey came in with the blue-and-white gingham aprons
Blanche LeHaye hesitated a long minute before picking hers up. Then
she held it by both sleeves and looked at it long, and curiously. When
she looked up again she found the eyes of the other two upon her. She
slipped the apron over her head with a nervous little laugh.
"I've been a pair of pink tights so long," she said, "that I guess
I've almost forgotten how to be a woman. But once I get this on I'll
bet I can come back."
She proved it from the moment that she measured out the first cupful
of brown sugar for the caramel icing. She shed her rings, and pinned
her hair back from her forehead, and tucked up her sleeves, and as
Emma McChesney watched her a resolve grew in her mind.
The cake disposed of--"Give me some potatoes to peel, will you?" said
Blanche LeHaye, suddenly. "Give 'em to me in a brown crock, with a
chip out of the side. There's certain things always goes hand-in-hand
in your mind. You can't think of one without the other. Now, Lillian
Russell and cold cream is one; and new potatoes and brown crocks is
another."
[Illustration: "'Now, Lillian Russell and cold cream is one; and new
potatoes and brown crocks is another'"]
She peeled potatoes, sitting hunched up on the kitchen chair with her
high heels caught back of the top rung. She chopped spinach until her
face was scarlet, and her hair hung in limp strands at the back of her
neck. She skinned tomatoes. She scoured pans. She wiped up the white
oilcloth table-top with a capable and soapy hand. The heat and bustle
of the little kitchen seemed to work some miraculous change in her.
Her eyes brightened. Her lips smiled. Once, Emma McChesney and Ethel
Morrissey exchanged covert looks when they heard her crooning one of
those tuneless chants that women hum when they wring out dishcloths in
soapy water.
After dinner, in the cool of the sitting-room, with the shades drawn,
and their skirts tucked halfway to their knees, things looked
propitious for that first stroke in the plan which had worked itself
out in Emma McChesney's alert mind. She caught Blanche LeHaye's eye,
and smiled.
"This beats burlesquing, doesn't it?" she said. She leaned forward a
bit in her chair. "Tell me, Miss LeHaye, haven't you ever thought of
quitting that--the stage--and turning to something--something--"
"Something decent?" Blanche LeHaye finished for her. "I used to. I've
got over that. Now all I ask is to get a laugh when I kick the
comedian's hat off with my toe."
"But there must have been a time--" insinuated Emma McChesney, gently.
Blanche LeHaye grinned broadly at the two women who were watching her
so intently.
"I think I ought to tell you," she began, "that I never was a
minister's daughter, and I don't remember ever havin' been deserted by
my sweetheart when I was young and trusting. If I was to draw a
picture of my life it would look like one of those charts that the
weather bureau gets out--one of those high and low barometer things,
all uphill and downhill like a chain of mountains in a kid's
geography."
She shut her eyes and lay back in the depths of the leather-cushioned
chair. The three sat in silence for a moment.
"Look here," said Emma McChesney, suddenly, rising and coming over to
the woman in the big chair, "that's not the life for a woman like you.
I can get you a place in our office--not much, perhaps, but something
decent--something to start with. If you--"
"For that matter," put in Ethel Morrissey, quickly, "I could get you
something right here in our store. I've been there long enough to have
some say-so, and if I recommend you they'd start you in the basement
at first, and then, if you made good, they advance you right along."
Blanche LeHaye stood up and, twisting her arm around at the back,
began to unbutton her gingham apron.
"I guess you think I'm a bad one, don't you? Well, maybe I am. But I'm
not the worst. I've got a brother. He lives out West, and he's rich,
and married, and respectable. You know the way a man can climb out of
the mud, while a woman just can't wade out of it? Well, that's the way
it was with us. His wife's a regular society bug. She wouldn't admit
that there was any such truck as me, unless, maybe, the Municipal
Protective League, or something, of her town, got to waging a war
against burlesque shows. I hadn't seen Len--that's my brother---in
years and years. Then one night in Omaha, I glimmed him sitting down
in the B. H. row. His face just seemed to rise up at me out of the
audience. He recognized me, too. Say, men are all alike. What they see
in a dingy, half-fed, ignorant bunch like us, I don't know. But the
minute a man goes to Cleveland, or Pittsburgh, or somewhere on
business he'll hunt up a burlesque show, and what's more, he'll enjoy
it. Funny. Well, Len waited for me after the show, and we had a talk.
He told me his troubles, and I told him some of mine, and when we got
through I wouldn't have swapped with him. His wife's a wonder. She's
climbed to the top of the ladder in her town. And she's pretty, and
young-looking, and a regular swell. Len says their home is one of the
kind where the rubberneck auto stops while the spieler tells the crowd
who lives there, and how he made his money. But they haven't any kids,
Len told me. He's crazy about 'em. But his wife don't want any. I wish
you could have seen Len's face when he was talking about it."
She dropped the gingham apron in a circle at her feet, and stepped out
of it. She walked over to where her own clothes lay in a gaudy heap.
"Exit the gingham. But it's been great." She paused before slipping
her skirt over her head. The silence of the other two women seemed to
anger her a little.
[Illustration: '"Why, girls, I couldn't hold down a job in a candy
factory'"]
"I guess you think I'm a bad one, clear through, don't you? Well, I
ain't. I don't hurt anybody but myself. Len's wife--that's what I call
bad."
"But I _don't_ think you're bad clear through," tried Emma McChesney.
"I don't. That's why I made that proposition to you. That's why I want
you to get away from all this, and start over again."
"Me?" laughed Blanche LeHaye. "Me! In a office! With ledgers, and sale
bills, and accounts, and all that stuff! Why, girls, I couldn't hold
down a job in a candy factory. I ain't got any intelligence. I never
had. You don't find women with brains in a burlesque troupe. If they
had 'em they wouldn't be there. Why, we're the dumbest, most ignorant
bunch there is. Most of us are just hired girls, dressed up. That's
why you find the Woman's Uplift Union having such a blamed hard time
savin' souls. The souls they try to save know just enough to be wise
to the fact that they couldn't hold down a five-per-week job. Don't
you feel sorry for me. I'm doing the only thing I'm good for."
Emma McChesney put out her hand. "I'm sorry," she said. "I only meant
it for--"
"Why, of course," agreed Blanche LeHaye, heartily. "And you, too." She
turned so that her broad, good-natured smile included Ethel Morrissey.
"I've had a whale of a time. My fingers are all stained up with new
potatoes, and my nails is full of strawberry juice, and I hope it
won't come off for a week. And I want to thank you both. I'd like to
stay, but I'm going to hump over to the theater. That Dacre's got the
nerve to swipe the star's dressing-room if I don't get my trunks in
first."
They walked with her to the front porch, making talk as they went.
Resentment and discomfiture and a sort of admiration all played across
the faces of the two women, whose kindness had met with rebuff. At the
foot of the steps Blanche LeHaye, prima donna of the Sam Levin
Crackerjack Belles turned.
"Oh, say," she called. "I almost forgot. I want to tell you that if
you wait until your caramel is off the stove, and then add your
butter, when the stuff's hot, but not boilin', it won't lump so. H'm?
Don't mention it."
VI
SIMPLY SKIRTS
They may differ on the subjects of cigars, samples, hotels, ball teams
and pinochle hands, but two things there are upon which they stand
united. Every member of that fraternity which is condemned to a hotel
bedroom, or a sleeper berth by night, and chained to a sample case by
day agrees in this, first: That it isn't what it used to be. Second:
If only they could find an opening for a nice, paying gents'
furnishing business in a live little town that wasn't swamped with
that kind of thing already they'd buy it and settle down like a white
man, by George! and quit this peddling. The missus hates it anyhow;
and the kids know the iceman better than they do their own dad.
On the morning that Mrs. Emma McChesney (representing T. A. Buck,
Featherloom Petticoats) finished her talk with Miss Hattie Stitch,
head of Kiser & Bloch's skirt and suit department, she found herself
in a rare mood. She hated her job; she loathed her yellow sample
cases; she longed to call Miss Stitch a green-eyed cat; and she wished
that she had chosen some easy and pleasant way of earning a living,
like doing plain and fancy washing and ironing. Emma McChesney had
been selling Featherloom Petticoats on the road for almost ten years,
and she was famed throughout her territory for her sane sunniness, and
her love of her work. Which speaks badly for Miss Hattie Stitch.
Miss Hattie Stitch hated Emma McChesney with all the hate that a flat-
chested, thin-haired woman has for one who can wear a large thirty-six
without one inch of alteration, and a hat that turns sharply away from
the face. For forty-six weeks in the year Miss Stitch existed in Kiser
& Bloch's store at River Falls. For six weeks, two in spring, two in
fall, and two in mid-winter, Hattie lived in New York, with a capital
L. She went there to select the season's newest models (slightly
modified for River Falls), but incidentally she took a regular
trousseau with her.
All day long Hattie picked skirt and suit models with unerring good
taste and business judgment. At night she was a creature transformed.
Every house of which Hattie bought did its duty like a soldier and a
gentleman. Nightly Hattie powdered her neck and arms, performed sacred
rites over her hair and nails, donned a gown so complicated that a
hotel maid had to hook her up the back, and was ready for her
evening's escort at eight. There wasn't a hat in a grill room from one
end of the Crooked Cow-path to the other that was more wildly barbaric
than Hattie's, even in these sane and simple days when the bird of
paradise has become the national bird. The buyer of suits for a
thriving department store in a hustling little Middle-Western town
isn't to be neglected. Whenever a show came to River Falls Hattie
would look bored, pass a weary hand over her glossy coiffure and say:
"Oh, yes. Clever little show. Saw it two winters ago in New York. This
won't be the original company, of course." The year that Hattie came
back wearing a set of skunk everyone thought it was lynx until Hattie
drew attention to what she called the "brown tone" in it. After that
Old Lady Heinz got her old skunk furs out of the moth balls and
tobacco and newspapers that had preserved them, and her daughter cut
them up into bands for the bottom of her skirt, and the cuffs of her
coat. When Kiser & Bloch had their fall and spring openings the town
came ostensibly to see the new styles, but really to gaze at Hattie in
a new confection, undulating up and down the department, talking with
a heavy Eastern accent about this or that being "smart" or "good this
year," or having "a world of style," and sort of trailing her toes
after her to give a clinging, Grecian line, like pictures of Ethel
Barrymore when she was thin. The year that Hattie confided to some one
that she was wearing only scant bloomers beneath her slinky silk the
floor was mobbed, and they had to call in reserves from the basement
ladies-and-misses-ready-to-wear.
Miss Stitch came to New York in March. On the evening of her arrival
she dined with Fat Ed Meyers, of the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company.
He informed her that she looked like a kid, and that that was some
classy little gown, and it wasn't every woman who could wear that kind
of thing and get away with it. It took a certain style. Hattie smiled,
and hummed off-key to the tune the orchestra was playing, and Ed told
her it was a shame she didn't do something with that voice.
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