Torchy, Private Sec. Part 19

And you could hardly blame 'em. Them back-number costumes of hers looked odd enough mixed in with all the harem effects and wired-neck ruffs that the others wore down to work. But when it come to doin' her hair Ruby was in a cla.s.s by herself. No spit curls or French rolls for her! She sticks to the plain double braid, wound around her head smooth and slick, like the stuff they wrap Chianti bottles in, and with her long soup-viaduct it gives her sort of a top-heavy look. Sort of dull, ginger-colored hair it is too. Besides that she's a tall, s.h.i.+ngle-chested female, well along in the twenties, I should judge, and with all the earmarks of bein' an old maid.

So shock No. 2 is handed me when I discovers how the high-shouldered young husk with the wide-set blue eyes, that I'd seen hangin' round the Arcade on and off, was really waitin' for Ruby. Uh-huh! I stood and watched 'em sidle up to each other and go driftin' out into Broadway hand in hand. A swell pair they'd make for a Rube vaudeville act!

Honest, with a few make-up touches, they could have walked right on and had the gallery with 'em!

Believe me, I couldn't miss a chance to josh Ruby some on that. I shoves it at her next day when I comes back early from lunch and finds her brus.h.i.+n' her sandwich crumbs into the waste basket.

"Now don't spring any musty first-cousin gag on me," says I; "for it don't go with the fond, palm-pressin' act. Steady comp'ny, ain't he?"

Which was where you'd expect her to turn pink in the ears and let loose a giggle. But not Ruby. She's a solemn, serious-minded party, Ruby is.

"Do you mean Mr. Lindholm?" says she.

"Heavings!" says I. "Do you have relays of 'em? I'm referrin' to the stocky-built young Romeo that picked you up at the door last night."

"Oh, yes," says she placid, "Nelson Lindholm. We had Sanskrit together."

"Eh?" says I. "Sans-which? What kind of a disease is that?"

"It's a language," explains Ruby. "We were in the same cla.s.s. I thought it might help me in my foreign mission work. I'm sure I don't know why Nelson took it, though. He was studying electrical engineering."

"Maybe it was catchin', at that," says I. "Where was all this?"

"At the Co-ed," says Ruby. "But then I'd known Nelson before. He's from Naukeesha too."

"Come again," says I. "From what?"

"Naukeesha," repeats Ruby, just as if it was some common name like Patchogue or Hoboken.

"Is that an island somewhere," says I, "or just a mixed drink?"

"Why," says she, "it's a town; in Wisconsin, you know."

"Think of that!" says I. "How they do mess up the map! What's it like, this Naukeesha?"

And for the first time Ruby shows some traces of life. "It's nice," says she, "real nice. Not at all like New York."

"Ah come, not so rough!" says I. "What you got special against our burg here?"

Ruby lapses back into her vacant stare and sort of s.h.i.+vers. "It's so big and--and whirly!" says she. "I don't like things to be whirly. Then the people are so strange, and their faces so hard. If--if I should fall down in one of those crowds, I'm sure they would walk right over me, trample on me, without caring."

"Pooh!" says I. "You'll work up a rush-hour nerve in a month or so. Of course, havin' always lived in a place like Naukeesha----"

"But I haven't," corrects Ruby. "I was born in Kansas."

"As bad as that!" says I. "And your folks moved up there later, eh?"

"No," says she. "They--they--I lost them there. A cyclone, you know."

"You don't mean," says I, "that--that----"

"Yes," says she, "Mother, Father, and my two brothers. We were all together when it struck; that is, I was just coming in from the kitchen.

I'd been shutting the windows. I saw them all go--whirled off, just like that. The chimney fell, big beams came down, then it was all smoky and dark. I must have been blown through a window. My face was cut a little.

I never knew. Neighbors found me in a field by a stump. They found the others too--laid them side by side in the wagon shed. Nothing else was left standing. It's dreadful, being in a cyclone--the roar, you know, and things coming at you in the dark, and that feeling of being lifted and whirled. I was only twelve; but I--I can't forget. And when I'm in big, noisy places it all comes back. I suppose I'm silly."

Was she? Say, what's your guess about that? And, take it from me, I didn't wonder any more at that stary look of hers. She'd seen 'em all go--four of 'em. Good-night! I talked easy and soothin' to Ruby after that.

"Then I went up to live with Uncle Edward at Naukeesha," she trails along. "He's a minister there. It was he who suggested my going into foreign mission work. I had to do something, you know, and I'd always been such a good scholar. I love books. So I studied hard, and was sent to the Co-ed. But the languages took so much time. Then I had to skip several terms and work to help pay my expenses. I worked during vacations too, at anything. Now I'm waiting for a field. They send you out when there's a vacancy."

"How about Nelson?" says I. "He's goin' to be a missionary too?"

"He doesn't want me to go," says Ruby, shakin' her head. "That is why he came on. He had charge of the electric light plant too, a good place.

And here he gets only odd jobs. I tell him he's silly to stay. I can't see why he does."

"Asked him, have you?" says I.

"Why, no," says Ruby.

"Shoot it at him to-night," says I.

But she shakes her head, opens her notebook, and feeds in a copyin'

sheet as the clock points to 1. I looks up just in time to catch a couple of them cheap bondroom sports nudgin' each other as they pa.s.ses by. Thought I'd been jos.h.i.+n' the Standin' Joke, I expect. Well, that's the way I started in, I'll admit.

It's only a day or so later I has the luck to run across Oakley Mills.

Something had come up that needed to be pa.s.sed on by Mr. Robert, and as he was still out lunchin' I scouts over to his club, and finds him stowed away at a corner table with this chatty playwright party.

He's quite a swell, Oakley is, you know; and I guess with one Broadway hit in its second year, and a lot of road comp'nies out, he can afford to flit around under the white lights. Him and Mr. Robert has always been more or less chummy, and every now and then they get together like this for a talkfest. As Mr. Mills seems to be right in the middle of something as I drifts in, Mr. Robert waves me to a chair and signals him to keep on, which he does.

"It's a curious mess, that's all," says Oakley, spreadin' out his manicured fingers and shruggin' his shoulders under his Donegal Norfolk.

"I'm not sure if the new piece will ever go on."

"Another procrastinating producer?" asks Mr. Robert careless.

"No, a finicky author this time," says Oakley. "You see, there is one part, a character part, which I'm insisting must be cast right. It seemed easy at first. But these women of our American stage! No training, no facility, no understanding! Not one of them can fill it, and we've tried nearly a dozen. If I could only find the original!"

"Eh?" says Mr. Robert, who's been payin' more attention to manipulatin'

the soda siphon than to Oakley's beefin'. "What original?"

"The dumbest, woodenest, most conscientious young female person it has ever been my lot to meet," goes on Mr. Mills. "Talk about your rare types! You should have known Faithful Fannie (my name for her, you know). It was out in the Middle West last summer. I had two or three weeks' work to do on the new piece, revising it to fit Amy Dean. All stars of that magnitude demand it, you understand.

"Well, I should have stayed right here until it was done, but some Chicago friends wanted me to go with them up into the lake region, promised me an ideal place to work in--all that. So I went. I might have had better sense. You know these bungalow colonies in the woods--where they live in fourteen-room log cabins, fitted with electric lights and English butlers? Bah! It was bridge and tennis and dancing day and night, with a new mob every week-end. Work? As well try it in the middle of the Newport Casino.

"So I hunted up a little third-rate summer hotel a mile or so off, where the guests were few and the food wretched, and camped down with my mangled script and my typewriter. There I met Fannie the Unforgetful.

She was the waitress I happened to draw out of a job lot. I suppose it was her debut at that sort of thing. For the sake of hungry humanity I hope it was. What she did not know about serving was simply amazing; but her capacity for absorbing suggestions and obeying orders was profound.

'Could I have a warm plate?' I asked at the first meal. 'Oh, certainly, Sir,' says Fannie, and from then on every dish she brought me was piping hot, even to the cold-meat platter and the ice cream saucer. It was that way with every wish I was rash enough to express. Fannie never forgot, and she kept to the letter of the law.

"Also she would stand patiently and watch me eat. That is, she would fix her eyes on me intently, never moving, and keep them there for a quarter of an hour at a time. A little embarra.s.sing, you know, to be so constantly observed. She had such big, stary eyes too, absolutely without any expression in them. To break the spell I would order things I didn't want, just to get her out of the way for a moment or so while I s.n.a.t.c.hed a few unwatched bites. You know how it is? There's green corn.

Now I like to tackle that with both hands; but I don't care to be closely inspected while I'm at it. I used to fancy that her gaze was somewhat critical. 'Good heavens, Girl!' I said one day. 'Can't you look somewhere else--at the ceiling, or out of the window?' She chose the ceiling. It was a bit weird to have her stationed opposite me, her eyes rolled heavenward. Uncanny! It attracted the attention of the other guests. But it was something of a relief. I could watch her then.

"There was something fascinating about Faithful Fannie, though, as there is about all unusually plain persons. Not that she was positively homely. Her features were regular enough, I suppose. But she was such a tall, slim, colorless, neutral creature! And awkward! You've seen a young turkey, all legs and neck, with its silly head bobbing above the tall gra.s.s? Well, something like that. And as I never read at my meals I had nothing else to do but study that sallow, unmoving face of hers with its steady, emotionless, upward gaze. Was she thinking? And what about!