Chapter III: Part 3

Two more years drug on, with about two letters from Vida, and then I get a terrible one announcing the grand crash. First, the boarding house had died a lingering death, what from Vida buying the best the market afforded and not having learned to say "No!" to parties that got behind, and Clyde having had to lend a couple hundred dollars to a fraternity brother that was having a little hard luck. She'd run the business on a narrow trail for the last two months, trying to guard every penny, but it got so she and Clyde actually had to worry over his next club dues, to say nothing of a new dress suit he was badly needing. Then some parties she owed bills to come along and pushed her over the cliff by taking her furniture. She was at first dreadfully worried about how her boy would stand the blow, but he'd took it like the brave, staunch man he was, being such a help to her when they had to move to a furnished room near the old home where they both had been so happy. He'd fairly made the place ring with his musical laughter and his merry jesting about their hardships.

Then she'd got a good job as cashier in a big grocery she'd dealt with, not getting a million dollars a year, to be sure, but they were doing nicely, because Clyde took most of his meals with his thoughtful friends--and then crash out of a clear sky a horrible tragedy happened that for a minute darkened the whole world.

Yes, it was a bitter tragedy. Clyde's two-year-old dress suit, that he was bravely wearing without a murmur, had needed pressing and she promised to do it; but she overslept herself till seven-thirty that morning, which made her late at the store, so she'd asked the girl in this rooming house to do it down in the kitchen. The girl had been willing but weak-minded. She started with too hot an iron and didn't put a damp cloth between the iron and the goods. In the midst of the job something boiled over on the stove. She got rattled and jumped for that, and when she come back the dress coat of darling Clyde was branded for fair in the middle of the back--a nifty flatiron brand that you could of picked him out of a bunch of animals by in one second. The girl was scared stiff and hung the clothes back in the closet without a word. And poor Clyde discovered the outrage that night when he was dressing for a class reunion of his dear old Alvah Mater.

I had to read between the lines some, but I gathered that he now broke down completely at this betrayal of his trusting nature. Vida must of been suffering too keenly herself to write me all the pitiful details. And right on top of this blow comes the horrible discovery, when he takes his mandolin out of the case, that it has been fatally injured in the moving. One blow right on another. How little we realize the suffering that goes on all about us in this hard world. Imagine the agony in that furnished room this night!

Clyde wasn't made of iron. When the first flood of grief subsided he seems to of got cold and desperate. Said Vida in this letter: "My heart stopped when he suddenly declared in cool, terrible tones: 'There's always the river!' I could see that he had resolved to end it all, and through the night I pleaded with my boy."

I bet she made mistakes as a grocer's cashier next day, but it was worth it because her appeals to Clyde's better nature had prevailed. He did disappear that day, getting his trunks from the house while she was at the store and not being able to say good-bye because he couldn't remember which store she was accepting a situation at. But he left her a nice note. He wasn't going to end it all in the river. He was going off on the private steamboat of one of his dearest friends for a trip round the world that might last a year--and she mustn't worry about the silly old dress coat, because his new dinner-jacket suit would be ample for a boat trip. Also she'd be glad to know that he had a new mandolin, though she wasn't to worry about the bill for it, because the man didn't expect his pay on time and, anyway, he could wait, so with fondest love!

And Vida was so relieved at this good fortune. To think that her despondent boy was once more assured of his rightful position for a whole year, while she was saving her princely wages till she got enough to start another boarding house that would be more like a home. Wasn't it all simply too good to be true--wasn't it always darkest just before dawn!

I didn't trust myself to answer that letter, beyond wiring her that if she ever felt she was having any really hard luck to be sure and call on me. And she went on working and putting her money by. It was two years later when I next saw her. I looked her up the first thing when I got to New York.

She was still accepting a position in this grocery, but of course had changed to a much smaller furnished room where she could be cozy and feed herself from a gas stove on the simple plain foods that one just can't seem to get at high-priced restaurants.

She'd changed a lot. Lines in her face now, and streaks in her brown hair, and she barely thirty. I made up my mind to do something harsh, but couldn't just tell how to start. She'd had a picture card from her boy the first year, showing the Bay of Naples and telling how he longed for her; but six months later had come a despondent letter from Japan speaking again of the river and saying he often felt like ending it all. Only, he might drag out his existence a bit longer because another wealthy old chum was in port and begging him to switch over to his yacht and liven up the party, which was also going round the world--and maybe he would, because "after all, does anything in life really matter?"

That was the last line. I read it myself while Vida watched me, setting on her little iron bed after work one night. She had a plain little room with no windows but one in the roof, though very tastefully furnished with photos of Clyde on every wall. The only other luxury she'd indulged in was a three-dollar revolver because she was deathly afraid of burglars. She'd also bought a hammer to shoot the revolver off with, keeping 'em both on the stand at the head of her bed. Yes; she said that was the way the man was firing it off in the advertisement--hitting it on a certain spot with a hammer. She was a reckless little scoundrel. She told me all about how to shoot a revolver while I was thinking up what to say about Clyde.

I finally said if he had ended it all she must cheer up, because it might be for the best. She considered this sadly and said she didn't believe dear Clyde had been prepared to die. I could see she was remembering old things that had been taught her in Sabbath school about God and wickedness and the bad place, so I cheered her on that point. I told her they hadn't been burning people for about thirty years now, the same not being considered smart any longer in the best religious circles. I also tried in a delicate manner to convince her that her boy would never end it all by any free act of his. I offered to bet her a large sum of money on this at any odds she wanted--she could write her own ticket. I said I knew men well enough to be certain that with this one it would be a long life but a merry one. Gee! The idea of this four-carder hurting himself!

And I had to cheer her up on another point. This was that she didn't have about three babies, all the image of their father. Yes, sir; she was grieving sorely about that. It give me a new line on her. I saw all at once she was mostly mother--a born one. Couldn't ever be anything else and hadn't ever really felt anything but mothersome to this here wandering treasure of hers. It give me kind of a shock. It made me feel so queer I wanted to swear.

Well, I wrastled with that mulish female seven straight days to make her leave that twelve-hour job of hers and come out here with me. I tried everything. I even told her what with long hours and bum food she was making herself so old that her boy wouldn't give her a second look when he got back. That rattled her. She took hold of her face and said that massage cream would take all those silly lines out when she got time to rub it in properly; and as for the gray in her hair, she could never bring herself to use a dye, but if Clyde come back she might apply a little of the magic remedy that restores the natural colour. She also said in plain words that to come out here with me would look like deserting her boy. Do you get that?

"Dear Clyde is so sensitive," she says. "I couldn't bear the thought of his coming back and finding that I had left our home."

My work was cut for me, all right. I guess I'd failed if I hadn't been helped by her getting a sick spell from worry over what the good God would do to Clyde if he should end it all in some nasty old river, and from the grocery being sold to a party that had his own cashier. But I won, she being too sick to hunt another job just then. A least I got a fair compromise.

She wouldn't come here to live with me, but she remembered that Clyde had often talked of Southern California, where he had once gone with genial friends in a private car. He had said that some day when he had acquired the means he would keep a home there. So she was willing to go there herself and start a home for him. I saw it was the best I could get from her, so I applauded.

I says: "That's fine. You take this three hundred and eighty dollars you got saved and I'll put a few dollars more with it and get you a little country place down there where you can be out of doors all day and raise oranges and chickens, and enough hogs for table use, and when the dear boy comes back he'll be awful proud of you."

"Oh, he always was that," says Vida. "But I'll go--and I'll always keep a light in the window for him."

And a lot of folks say women ought to vote!

So we start for Los Angeles, deserting Clyde just as mean as dirt. Sure, I went with her! I didn't trust her to finish the trip. As it was, she wanted to get off the train twice before we got to Chicago--thinking of the shock to her boy's tender heart if he should come back and find himself deserted.

But then, right after we left Chicago, she got interested. In the section across from us was a fifty-five-year-old male grouch with a few gray bristles on his head who had been snarling at everyone that come near him ever since the train left New York. The porters and conductors had got so they'd rush by him like they was afraid of getting bit on the arm. He had a gray face that seemed like it had been gouged out of stone. It was like one of these gargles you see on rare old churches in Europe. He was just hating everyone in the world, not even playing himself a favourite. And Vida had stood his growling as long as she could. Having at last give up the notion of tracking back to New York, she plumped herself down in the seat with this raging wild beast and begged for his troubles. I looked to see her tore limb from limb, instead of which in three minutes he was cooing to her in a rocky bass voice. His trouble was lumbago or pleurisy or some misery that kept him every minute in this pernickety state.

That was all old mother Vida needed to know. She rustled a couple hot-water bags and kept 'em on the ribs of this grouch for about two thousand miles, to say nothing of doping him with asperin and quinine and camphor and menthol and hot tea and soothing words. He was the only son in sight, so he got it good. She simply has to mother something.

The grouch got a little human himself the last day out and begun to ask Vida questions about herself. Being one that will tell any person anything at all, she told him her life history and how her plans was now unsettled, but she hoped to make a home out on this coast. The grouch come right out and asked her how big her roll was, saying he lived out here and it cost something to make a home. Vida told him she had her two years' savings of three hundred and eighty good dollars and that I had promised to loan her a few dollars to piece out with. At this the old boy looked me over carefully and could see no signs of vast wealth because I never wear such in Pullman cars, so he warns her that I'll have to piece out her savings with a few thousand instead of a few dollars if she's to start anything worth keeping, because what they do to you in taxes down there is a-plenty.

After which he goes to sleep.

Vida moves over and asks what I meant by saying I'd only have to put in a few dollars when I must of known it would take a few thousand, and didn't I realize that Clyde would be hurt to the quick if he come back and found she hadn't been independent? She indignantly said she'd have to give up the country place and work till she had enough to start another home for paying guests.

I was so mad at this truthful grouch for butting in on my game that I up and told her flat she could never run a boarding house and make it pay; that no woman could who hadn't learned to say "No!" and she was too much of a mush-head for that. She was quite offended by this and says firmness has always been considered a strong point in her personality. A first-class palmist had told her this only two weeks before. While we are squabbling back and forth the grouch wakes up again and says that he's in the moving-picture business and will give her a good job in the wardrobe department of the company he's with, so she must show up there at eight o'clock the next morning. Just like that! He didn't ask her. He told her.

Vida is kind of took off her feet, but mumbles "Yes, sir!" and puts his card in her bag. Me? I was too mad to talk, seeing the girl get into the mill again when I'd tried so hard to get her out. But I swore to myself I'd stick round and try to get some sense into the cup-custard she called her brain.

So the next morning I took her out to this moving-picture joint that they call a studio--not a bit like Metta Bigler's studio in Red Gap--and sure enough here's the grouch ready to put Vida on a job. The job is in a room about ninety feet long filled with boxes and sewing machines and shelves full of costumes, and Vida is to be assistant wardrobe mistress. Yes, sir; a regular title for the job. And the pay is twenty-five a week, which is thirteen more than she'd ever dreamed of making before. The grouch is very decent to her and tells everybody she's a friend of his, and they all pay polite attention to him because he's someone important in the works. It seems he's a director. He stands round and yells at the actors how to act, which I had always supposed they knew already but it seems not. Anyway, I left Vida there to get on to her new duties.

She was full of good reports that night about how well she'd got along, and how interesting the work was, and how she'd helped doctor up another boy. She said he was one of the world's greatest actors, because if they give him four or five stiff drinks first he would fall off a forty-foot cliff backwards into the ocean. She'd helped bandage a sprained wrist for him that he got by jumping out of a second-story window in a gripping drama replete with punch and not landing quite right.

I said to myself it must be a crazy joint and she'd soon give up and let me get her a nice little place on the edge of town that I'd already looked over. So I let her go three days more, but still she stuck there with great enthusiasm. Then I had to be leaving for home, so the afternoon of the fourth day I went out to see for myself how things looked.

Vida is tickled to see me and takes me right in where they're beginning to act a gripping feature production. Old Bill Grouch is there in front of a three-legged camera barking at the actors that are waiting round in their disguises--with more paint on 'em than even a young girl will use if her mother don't watch her. The grouch is very polite to Vida and me and shows us where to stand so we won't get knocked over by other actors that are carrying round furniture and electric light stands and things.

They got a parlour in a humble home where the first scene is to be. There's a mother and a fair-haired boy of twenty and a cop that's come to pinch him for a crime. The play at this point is that the mother has to plead with the cop not to drag her boy off to a prison cell, and she has to do it with streaming eyes. It was darned interesting. The boy is standing with bowed head and the cop is looking sympathetic but firm, and mother is putting something into her eyes out of a medicine dropper. I whisper to Vida and she says it's glycerine for the tears. She holds her head back when she puts 'em in and they run down her cheeks very lifelike when she straightens up.

So mother comes forward with her streaming face and they're all ready to act when the grouch halts things and barks at the boy that he ain't standing right. He goes up and shows him how to stand more shamefully. But the tears on mother's face have dripped away and have to be renewed. She was a nice, kind-appearing mother all right, but I noticed she looked peeved when this delay happened. Vida explains that glycerine don't damage the eyes really, but it makes 'em smart a lot, and this actress, Miss St. Clair, has a right to feel mad over having to put in some more.

But she does it, though with low muttering when the grouch calls "All right, Miss St. Clair!" and is coming forward to act with this here second batch of tears when the grouch stops it with another barking fit. He barks at the policeman this time. He says the policeman must do more acting.

"You know you have a boy of your own," says he, "and how you'd hate to have him arrested for this crime, but you're also remembering that law is law and you're sworn to uphold it. Try to get that now. All ready, Miss St. Clair--we're waiting for you, Miss St. Clair!"

I'd watched this actress the second time her tears was spoiled and her expression didn't fit a loving mother's face one bit. Her breath come as in scenes of tense emotion, but she hotly muttered something that made me think I must of misunderstood her, because no lady actress would say it, let alone a kind old mother. However, she backs off and for the third time has this medicine dropper worked on her smarting eyes. Once more she comes forward with streaming eyes of motherly love, and I'm darned if this grouch don't hold things up again.

This time he's barking about a leather sofa against the far wall of the humble home. He says it's an office sofa and where in something is the red plush one that belongs to the set? He's barking dangerously at everyone round him when all at once he's choked off something grand by the weeping mother that has lost her third set of tears. She was wiping glycerine off her face and saying things to the grouch that must of give him a cold chill for a minute. I'm sometimes accused of doing things with language myself, but never in my life have I talked so interestingly--at least not before ladies. Not that I blamed her.

Everyone kept still with horror till she run down; it seems it's a fierce crime in that art to give a director what's coming to him. The policeman and the erring son was so scared they just stood there acting their parts and the grouch was frozen with his mouth half open. Probably he hadn't believed it at first. Then all at once he smiled the loveliest smile you ever seen on a human face and says in chilled tones: "That will be all, Miss St. Clair! We will trouble you no further in this production." His words sounded like cracking up a hunk of ice for the cocktail shaker. Miss St. Clair then throws up her arms and rushes off, shrieking to the limit of a bully voice.

It was an exciting introduction for me to what they call the silent drama.

Then I looked at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says:

"Here, don't you waste any tears on her. That's all in the day's work."

"I--wasn't thinking of her," sobs Vida.

"Then what you crying for?" says he.

"For that poor dear boy that's being dragged from his mother to prison for some childish prank," she blubbers.

Me, I laughed right out at the little fool, but the director didn't laugh.

"Well, I'll be damned!" says he in low, reverent tones.

Then he begins to look into her face like he'd lost something there. Then he backed off and looked into it a minute more. Then he went crazy all over the place.

"Here," he barks at another actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be on this scene all day."

Then, when everybody run off, he set down on the red plush sofa that was now in place, relighted a cigar that smelled like it had gone out three days before, and grinned at me in an excited manner.

"Your little friend is a find," he says. "Mark my words, Mrs. Pettijohn, she's got a future or I don't know faces. She'll screen well, and she's one of the few that can turn on the tears when she wants to. I always did hate glycerine in this art. Now if only I can get her camera wise--and I'll bet I can! Lucky we'd just started on this piece when St. Clair blew up. Only one little retake, where she's happy over her boy's promotion in the factory. She's bound to get away with that; then if she can get the water again for this scene it will be all over but signing her contract."

I was some excited myself by this time, you'd better believe. Nervous as a cat I found myself when Vida was led out in the sad mother's costume by this other actress that had made her up. But Vida wasn't nervous the least bit. She was gayly babbling that she'd always wanted to act, and once she had played a real part in a piece they put on at Odd Fellows' Hall in Fredonia, and she had done so well that even the Methodist minister said she was as good as the actress he saw in Lawrence Barrett's company before he was saved; and he had hoped she wouldn't be led away by her success and go on the real stage, because he could not regard it as a safe pursuit for young persons of her sex, owing to there being so little home life--and now what did she do first?

This director had got very cold and businesslike once more.

"Stop talking first," says he. "Don't let me hear another word from you. And listen hard. You're sitting in your humble home sewing a button on your boy's coat. He's your only joy in life. There's the coat and the button half sewed on with the needle and thread sticking in it. Sit down and sew that button on as if you were doing it for your own son. No pretending, mind you. Sew it on as if--"

He hesitated a minute and got a first-class inspiration.

"Sew it on as if it was a button on your husband's coat that you told me about. Every two or three stitches look up to show us how happy you are. When you get it sewed, take the coat up this way and hug it. You look still happier at that. Then you walk over to the mantel, pick up the photograph of your boy that's there by that china dog and kiss it. I won't tell you how to do that. Remember who he is and do it your own way, only let us see your face. Then put back the picture slowly, go get the coat, and start to the left as if you were going to hang it up in his room; but you hear steps on the stair outside and you know your boy has come home from work. We see that because your face lights up. Stand happy there till he comes in.

"You expect him to rush over to you as usual, but he's cast down; something has happened. You get a shock of fright. Walk over to him--slow; you're scared. Get your arms round him. He stiffens at first, then leans on you. He's crying himself now, but you ain't--not yet. You're brave because you don't know about this fight he's had with the foreman that's after your boy's sweetheart for no good purpose.

"Now go through it that far and see if you remember everything I told you. When we get down to the crying scene after the officer comes on, I'll rehearse you in that too, only for God's sake don't cry in the rehearsal! You'll go dry. Now then! Coat--button--sewing. Goon!"

Well, sir, I stood there trembling like a leaf while she went through what he'd told her like she'd been at it all her life--or rather like it was her dear Clyde's coat and her dear Clyde's photo and her dear Clyde that come in the door. Then he rehearsed her in the end of the scene where the cop comes on, and she got that, too, though alarming him because she couldn't even rehearse it without crying. I could see this director was nervous himself by this time, thinking she was too good to be true. But he got her into the chair sewing again, all ready for the real work.

"Remember only three things," he says: "Don't look at this machine, move slowly when you move at all, and don't try to act. Now then! Camera!"

It was a historic occasion, all right. The lad at the camera begun to turn a crank and Vida begun to act like she wasn't acting at all. The director just give her a low word when she had to move. He didn't bark now. And say, that crying scene! Darned if I didn't near cry myself looking at her, and I heard this stonefaced director breathing mighty short when she had to stand there with her hands clenched and watch her boy go out the door with this cop.

Vida was too excited to sleep that night. She said the director had advised her privately not to make a contract just yet, because she would get better terms when she'd showed 'em what she could really do. For this picture she would get paid seventy-five dollars a week. A week, mind you, to a girl that had been thinking herself lucky to get twelve in New York.

She was very let down and happy, and cried a little bit out of working hours for me because it was all so wonderful, and her drowned boy might be resting on some river bottom at that very moment. I said it was a safe bet he was resting, wherever he was; but she didn't get it and I didn't say it twice.

And such was the beginning of Vida Sommers' glittering sob career in the movies. She's never had but one failure and they turned that into a success. It seems they tried her in one of these "Should a Wife Forgive?" pieces in which the wife did not forgive, for a wonder, and she made a horrible mess of it. She was fine in the suffering part, of course, only when it come to not forgiving at the end--well, she just didn't know how to not forgive. They worked with her one whole day, then had to change the ending. She's said to be very noble and womanly in it.

I went home next day, leaving her in pursuit of her art. But I got glowing letters from her about every week, she doing new pictures and her salary jumping because other film parties was naturally after so good a weeper. And the next year I run down to see her. She was a changed woman all right. She had a home or bungalow, a car, a fashionable dog, a Jap cook, a maid and real gowns for the first time in her life. But the changes was all outside. She was still the same Vida that wanted to mother every male human on earth. She never seemed to worry about girls and women; her idea is that they're able to look out for themselves, but that men are babies needing a mother's protection as long as they live.

And of course one of these men she had mothered down there had took a base advantage of her--this same ugly old grouch of a director. She locked the bedroom door and told me about it in horrified whispers the first night I got there. She said it might of been her fault, that he might of misunderstood something she had said about Clyde. And anyway she'd ought to of remembered that some men are beasts at heart.

Anyway, this infamous brute had come to the house one night and insulted her in the grossest manner, and it was all true about moving-picture directors having designs on unprotected females that work for 'em. Yielding to his lowest brute instincts he had thrown decency to the winds and made her such an evil proposition that she could hardly bear to put it in words. But she did. It seems that the scoundrel had listened to some studio gossip to the effect that she had divorced the husband who deserted her, and so he come right out and said he had been deeply in love with her ever since that first day on the train, and now that she was free, would she marry him?

Of course she was insulted to the limit and told him so in what would probably of made a gripping scene of a good woman spurning the advances of a moral leper. She overwhelmed him with scorn and horror for his foul words. How dared he say her Clyde had deserted her, or think she would ever divorce him! That showed, what a vile mind he must have. She said he got awful meek and apologetic when he learned that she still clung to the memory of Clyde, who would one day fight his way back to her if he hadn't ended it all. She told him fully what a perfect man Clyde was, and she said at last the ugly old wretch just grinned weakly at her in a very painful way, like it hurt him, and said: "Oh, my dearest, you must try to forgive me. I didn't know--I didn't know half the truth." Then he patted her hand and patted her cheek and choked up and swallowed a couple of times, and says he:

"I was an old man dreaming and dreams make fools of old men!"

Then he swallowed again and stumbled out through her garden where the orange blossoms had just come. She said he'd never been offensive since that time, barking as nasty to her as to any of the others when she was acting, so that no one would dream what a foul heart he had, except that he always kept a bunch of white roses in her dressing room. But she hadn't cared to make him trouble about that because maybe he was honestly trying to lead a better life.

Some entertainment Vida give me, telling this, setting on her bed under a light that showed up more lines than ever in her face. She was looking close to forty now--I guess them crying scenes had told on her, and her yearning for the lost Clyde--anyway she was the last woman on earth could of got herself insulted even if she had tried her prettiest, only she didn't know that. And she'd had her little thrill. We've all dreamed of how we'd some day turn down some impossible party who was overcome by our mere beauty.

I said I'd always known this director was an unspeakable scoundrel, because he insisted on calling me Mrs. Pettijohn.

Then we had a nice talk about Clyde. She'd had no word for a year now, the last being a picture card saying he would spend the winter in Egypt with some well-known capitalists that wouldn't take no for an answer. And did I believe he might now be wandering over the face of the earth, sick and worn, and trying to get back to her; didn't I think some day he would drag himself to her door, a mere wreck of his former self, to be soothed at last on her breast? That was why she kept a light burning in the front window of this here bungalow. He would know she had waited.

Well, I'd never said a word against Clyde except in conversation with myself, and I wasn't going to break out now. I did go so far as to hint that an article that had come out about her in this same magazine might draw Clyde back a little quicker than the light in the window. The article said her salary was enormous. I thought its rays might carry.

So I come home again and near a year later I get a telegram from Vida: "Happy at last--my own has come home to me." I threw up my hands and swore when I read this. The article had said her salary was seven hundred and fifty dollars a week.

The next winter I run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now looking a good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not a line nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign of writer's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in five years. She'd been afraid he'd come back worn to the bone.

But listen! By the time I got there Clyde was also drawing money. He'd felt a little hurt at first to find his wife a common actress, and asked to see her contract because you couldn't believe what you see in these magazines. Then he'd gone round the lot and got to be an actor himself. I gathered that he hadn't been well liked by the men at first, and two or three other directors, when Vida insisted he should have a chance to act, had put him into rough-house funny plays where he got thrown downstairs or had bricks fall on him, or got beat up by a willing ex-prize fighter, or a basket of eggs over his head, or custard pies in his perfect features, with bruises and sprains and broken bones and so forth--I believe the first week they broke everything but his contract.

Anyway, when he begun to think he wasn't meant for this art, who steps in but this same director that had made such a beast of himself with Vida? He puts Clyde into a play in which Vida is the mother and Clyde is the noble son that takes the crime on his shoulders to screen the brother of the girl he loves, and it was an awful hit. Naturally Vida was never so good before and Clyde proved to be another find. He can straighten up and look nobler when he's wrongfully accused of a crime than any still actor I ever see. He's got now to where they have to handle him with gloves or he'd leave 'em flat and go with another company. Vida wrote me only last week that they had a play for him where he's cast off on a desert island with a beautiful but haughty heiress, and they have to live there three months subsisting on edible foods which are found on all desert islands. But Clyde had refused the part because he would have to grow whiskers in this three months. He said he had to think of his public, which would resent this hideous desecration. He thought up a bully way to get out of it. He said he'd let the whiskers grow for a few scenes and then find a case of safety razors washed ashore, so he could shave himself just before the haughty millionaire's daughter confessed that she had loved him from the first and the excursion steamer come up to rescue 'em. I believe he now admits frankly that he wrote most of the play, or at least wrote the punch into it. A very happy couple they are, Clyde having only one vice, which is candy that threatens his waistline. Vida keeps a sharp watch on him, but he bribes people to sneak chocolate creams into his dressing room. The last night I was there he sung "Good-night, Good-night, Beloved!" so well that I choked up myself.

Of course women are crazy about him; but that don't bother Vida a little bit. She never wanted a husband anyway--only a son. And Clyde must have had something wake up in his brain them years he was away. He had a queer look in his eyes one night when he said to me--where Vida couldn't hear: "Yes, other women have loved me, but she--she knows me and loves me!" It's the only thing I ever heard him utter that would show he might be above a pet kitten in intellect.

And, of course, these letters he gets don't mean anything in his life but advertising--Oh, yes! I forgot to tell you that his stage name is J. Harold Armytage. He thought it up himself. And the letters coming in by the bushel really make Vida proud. In her heart she's sorry for the poor fools because they can't have as much of dear Clyde as she has. She says she's never deserved her present happiness. I never know whether I agree with her or not.

She's a queer one. Darned if she don't make a person think sometimes--listening to her chatter--that there must be something kind of decent about human nature after all!

III

RED GAP AND THE BIG-LEAGUE STUFF

I waited beside Ma Pettengill at the open door of the Arrowhead ranch house. It was a moment of tranquil expectancy; presently we would be summoned to the evening meal. Down by the barn a tired janizary pumped water into a trough for two tired mules still in harness. Halfway down the lane, before a mirror tacked to the wall beside the bunk-house door, two men hurriedly combed their damp hair. Blackbirds were still noisy in the poplars. In the field at our left a lazy lot of white-faced cattle, large and placid, lolled or grazed on the new spring grass.

Surveying these cattle with a fond eye--had she not that day refused all of three hundred and twenty-five dollars a head for a score of these pure-bred cows?--my hostess read me a brief lecture on the superior fleshing disposition of the Hereford. No better rustler under range conditions, said she, accumulating flesh at all ages, storing it in seasons of plenty to draw on in seasons of want. Hadn't I noticed how common cows got paunchy and how well the fat was distributed on the pure-breds?

I had not noticed, cows being more or less cows to me, but I was prepared to look with deep respect upon any cow for which three hundred and twenty-five dollars could be sanely refused, and I now did so. I was told that I forgot their calves, which would be worth a hundred and sixty dollars the day they were weaned. This made it all more impressive. I looked respectfully again at the bulky creatures, though listening, too, for the stealthy-stepping Lew Wee; a day in the thin spring air along a rocky trout stream had made even cattle on the hoof suggestive.

Ma Pettengill, with a last proud look at her jewels, swept the panoramic camera of her eye round to the blacksmith shop on our right. Before it were strewn the mutilated remains of four wood wagons. I had lately heard the lady have words with Abner, the blacksmith, concerning repairs to these. Abner himself had few of the words. They were almost entirely his employer's. They were acutely to the effect that these here wagons would be running again before the week was out or she would know the reason why. The aggrieved Abner had tried to suggest that this reason she would know would not be the right reason at all, because wasn't he already working like a beaver? Possibly, said the lady. And beavers might be all right in their place. What she needed at this precise time was someone working like a blacksmith--someone!

Over her shoulder she had flung the word at him, blackened with emphasis.

"Any one hurt in the runaway?" I asked, observing her glance to linger upon this snarl of wagon parts.

"Four wagons was mortally hurt," said the lady, "but of course not a mule skinner touched. Talk about charmed lives! Besides, they wasn't accidents; they was just incidents. It was part of our winter sports."

"I didn't know you had winter sports up here."

"I didn't either till I got down to Red Gap last winter and found out that was what we had been having. Here I been gritting along winter after winter, calling it work, and come to find out it's what parties go a long distance to indulge in and have to wear careful clothes for it. Yes, sir; society is mad about it. Red Gap itself was mad about it last winter, when it got a taste of the big-league stuff. Next winter I'll try to get the real sporting spirit into this gang of sedentaries up here; buy 'em uniforms and start a winter-sports club. Their ideal winter sport so far is to calk up every chink in the bunk house, fill the air-tight stove full of pitch pine and set down with a good book by Elinor Glyn. They never been at all mad about romping out in the keen frosty air that sets the blood tingling and brings back the roses to their wan cheeks.

"Take last winter. Not knowing it was sport it seemed at times like toil. First it snowed early and caught a lot of my cows and calves in the mountains. While we sported round with these, working 'em down into the valley, the weather changed. It snowed harder. Just oodles of the most perfectly darling snow. Then distemper broke out among the saddle horses. Then being already shorthanded, what does the fool vaquero boss do but pick a splinter out of his thumb with a pin and get blood poison enough to lay him off? Too much trouble for cussing. I tried that out scientifically. So I had to get out and make a hand. If I heard someone say I did as much as any three of these mollycoddles up here I'd just simper in silence and look down. Only I wish I'd known it was a fashionable winter sport. I'd of been more carefree.

"Then come the best of our winter sports--wood hauling through the drifts over a rocky road down the mountains. My lands, but it was jolly! On a quiet day there'd be only one runaway, one wagon fetched to the shop in sections, like a puzzle. Then another day all hands would seem to be quite mad about the sport, and nothing but the skinners and the mules would get back to camp that night--with the new outfit of harness and the hoodlum wagon going back next morning to see what could be salvaged.

"Finally we got the cows and calves home, got our wood in and started a general rodeo for the dry stock--Nature's fleecy mantle getting thicker every minute. And none of us ever suspecting that it was a sport only the wealthy have a right to. If I'd suggested building an ice palace as a sporty wind-up I'll bet the help wouldn't of took it right. Anyway, I didn't. With everything under shelter or fence at last I fled down to Red Gap, where I could lead a quiet life suitable to one of my years--where I thought I could."

From the doorway Lew Wee softly called, "You come now!" We both heard him. Inside my hostess stealthily closed the door upon the gentle spring night; closed and locked it. Furtively she next drew curtains over the two windows. Then, candle in hand, she went lightly across the big living room to a stern and businesslike safe that stands against the farther wall. Kneeling before this she rapidly twirled the lock to a series of mystic numbers and opened the formidable doors.

"Leave us keep the home fires burning," said she impressively, and withdrew from an exposed cavern a bottle of Scotch whisky. Standing before the safe we drank chattily. We agreed that prohibition was a good thing for the state of Washington. We said we were glad to deny ourselves for the sake of those weaker natures lacking self-control, including Mr. Bryan, whom the lady characterized as "just a water-spout."

The bottle restored to security my hostess shut the thick doors upon it and twirled the lock. Then she raised the curtains and reopened the door to the innocent spring night, after which we sat to our meatless and wheatless repast. In place of meat we sternly contented ourselves with stewed chicken, certain of the Arrowhead fowls having refused to do their bit in eggs and now paying the penalty in a crisis when something is expected from everyone. In place of wheat we merely had corn muffins of a very coaxing perfection. Even under these hardships I would patriotically practice the gospel of the clean plate.

As her exploring spoon wandered over the platter of half-submerged chicken Ma Pettengill casually remarked that carefree Bohemians was always the first to suffer under prohibition, and that you couldn't have a really good Latin Quarter in a dry town. I let it go. I must always permit her certain speeches of seeming irrelevance before she will consent to tell me all. Thus a moment later as she lavished valuable butter fat upon one of the spirituelle muffins she communicated the further item that Cousin Egbert Floud still believed Bohemians was glass blowers, he having seen a troupe of such at the World's Fair. He had, it is true, known some section hands down on the narrow gauge that was also Bohemians, but Bohemians of any class at all was glass blowers, and that was an end of it. No use telling him different, once he gets an idea into his poor old head.

This, too, I let pass, overcome for the moment by the infatuating qualities of the chicken stew. But when appetites, needlessly inflamed by the lawless tippling, had at last been appeased and the lady had built her first cigarette I betrayed a willingness to hear more of the hinted connection between winter sports and Latin Quarters peopled by Bohemians, glass-blowing or otherwise. The woman chuckled privately through the first cigarette, adeptly fashioned another, removed to a rocking-chair before the open fire and in a businesslike fervour seized a half-knitted woollen sock, upon which she fell to work.

She now remarked that there must be along the Front millions of sweaters and wristlets and mufflers and dewdads that it looked well to knit in public, so it seemed to be up to her to supply a few pairs of socks. She said you naturally couldn't expect these here society dames that knitted in theatres and hotel corridors to be knitting anything so ugly as socks, even if they would know how to handle four needles, which they mostly wouldn't; but someone had to do it. Without the slightest change of key she added that it was a long story and painful in spots, but had a happy ending, and she didn't know as she minded telling me.

So I come down to Red Gap about December first hoping to hole up for the winter and get thoroughly warmed through before spring. Little did I know our growing metropolis was to be torn by dissension until you didn't know who was speaking to who. And all because of a lady Bohemian from Washington Square, New York City, who had crept into our midst and started a Latin Quarter overnight. The first day I was downtown I overheard two ladies saying something about the new Latin Quarter. That mystified me, because I knew the town had been lidded tight since Lon Price went out of office as mayor. Then I meet Mrs. Judge Ballard in the Boston Cash Store and she says have I met a Miss Smith from New York who is visiting here. I said I had not. It didn't sound exciting. Some way "a Miss Smith" don't excite you overly, no matter where she hails from. So I dismissed that and went on with my shopping. Next I meet Egbert Floud, who is also down for the winter to rest beside a good coal stove, and we ask each other what's the good word and is anything new. Cousin Egbert says nothing is new in Red Gap except a Bohemian glass blower from Grinitch Village, New York. He says he ain't seen her blow glass yet, but he's going some night, because them Bohemian glass blowers down to the fair was right fascinating, and don't I think Grinitch is a bum name for a town? He says when I see this glass blower I'll feel like asking animal, vegetable, or mineral, because he has seen her in the post office with Metta Bigler and she looks like a nut.

I tell the poor old zany he sounds simple-minded himself and I can't make a lick of sense out of what he's said, except I know this village ain't spelled that way. He's telling me that's the way it's spoken anyway, and about how he brought home a glass watch chain that these Bohemians blowed at the fair, when along come Metta Bigler herself and stops to shake hands, so Cousin Egbert slinks off.