The Four Million
presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as “Freshy,” who
rode on the Traction Company’s repair wagon, was going to give her a
poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth.
And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a
stock broker asked her to go to “Parsifal” with him.
“I don’t know where this place is,” said Aileen while talking it over
with Tildy, “but the wedding-ring’s got to be on before I put a stitch
into a travelling dress—ain’t that right? Well, I guess!”
But, Tildy!
In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented Bogle’s there was almost a
heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose, the hay-coloured hair, the
freckled skin, the bag-o’-meal figure, had never had an admirer. Not a
man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the
restaurant save now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger for
food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of
wit. None of them loudly “jollied” her of mornings as they did Aileen,
accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming, of late hours in the
company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise ring or
invited her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant “Parsifal.”
Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat at
her tables spoke to her briefly with quotations from the bill of fare;
and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavoured
accents, eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in their
chairs to gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy, that
Aileen’s pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their bacon and
eggs.
And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could receive
the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the short
Grecian. She was Aileen’s friend; and she was glad to see her rule
hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and lemon
meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-coloured hair the
unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but
coming to us alone.
There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly
bruised eye; and Tildy’s solicitude was almost enough to heal any
optic.
“Fresh guy,” explained Aileen, “last night as I was going home at
Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break. I
turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to
Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a good
one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look real
awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he
comes in for his tea and toast at ten.”
Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man had
ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the
twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one
and black one’s eye for love!
Among the customers at Bogle’s was a young man named Seeders, who
worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair,
and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too
diffident to aspire to Aileen’s notice; so he usually sat at one of
Tildy’s tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled
weakfish.
One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking beer.
There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When Mr.
Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around Tildy’s
waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the street,
snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied himself
to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade.
For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of Aileen
shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying:
“Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain’t you getting to be awful, Miss
Slyboots! First thing I know you’ll be stealing some of my fellows. I
must keep an eye on you, my lady.”
Another thing dawned upon Tildy’s recovering wits. In a moment she had
advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the
potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid, a
Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards.
Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden
and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous
piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her
uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned
it to her sheer embroidered lawn—the robe of Venus herself.
The freckles on Tildy’s cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both Circe
and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen herself had
been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant.
Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she
went and stood at Bogle’s desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried not to
let her words sound proud and boastful.
“A gentleman insulted me to-day,” she said. “He hugged me around the
waist and kissed me.”
“That so?” said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. “After this
week you get a dollar a week more.”
At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with whom
she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one whose
merit needed no bolstering:
“A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arm
around my waist and kissed me.”
The diners accepted the revelation in various ways—some incredulously,
some with congratulations; others turned upon her the stream of
badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. And Tildy’s
heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers of Romance
rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which she had for so long
travelled.
For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy
established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons,
and arranged her hair like Aileen’s, and tightened her waist two
inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders would
rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have loved her
desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly jealous.
Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy rather
hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal to
Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend.
At 4 o’clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in.
There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the
restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was
quartering pies. Mr. Seeders walked back to where they stood.
Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon
against her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore Venus’s
Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver
symbolic heart.
Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into his
hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.
“Miss Tildy,” said he, “I want to apologise for what I done the other
evenin’. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I wouldn’t
of done it. I wouldn’t do no lady that a-way when I was sober. So I
hope, Miss Tildy, you’ll accept my ’pology, and believe that I wouldn’t
of done it if I’d known what I was doin’ and hadn’t of been drunk.”
With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed, feeling
that reparation had been made.
But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon a
table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing her
heart out—out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel they with
blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had torn the red
hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she
had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who
might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland.
But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at
the false alarm; she must forevermore remain the Sleeping Beauty.
Yet not all was lost. Aileen’s arm was around her; and Tildy’s red hand
groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of her
friend’s.
“Don’t you fret, Til,” said Aileen, who did not understand entirely.
“That turnip-faced little clothespin of a Seeders ain’t worth it. He
ain’t anything of a gentleman or he wouldn’t ever of apologised.”