Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
She did care, though, as a naturally neat and thrifty woman cares for
her household goods which have, through years of care of them and
association with them, become her household gods. The clock on the
mantel wasn't a clock, but a plump friend with a white smiling face and
a soothing tongue; the low, ample davenport wasn't a davenport only, but
a soft bosom that pillowed her; that which lay spread shimmering beneath
her window was not New York alone--it was her View. To a woman like
this, letting her apartment furnished is like farming out her child to
strangers.
She had told her lessee about her laundress and her cleaning woman and
how to handle the balky faucet that controlled the shower. She had said
good-bye to Ken entirely surrounded by his books, magazines, fruit, and
flowers. She was occupying a Pullman drawing room paid for by the
free-handed filmers. She was crossing farm lands, plains, desert. She
was wondering if all those pink sweaters and white flannel trousers
outside the Hollywood Hotel were there for the same reason that she was.
She was surveying a rather warm little room shaded by a dense tree whose
name she did not know. She was thinking it felt a lot like her old
trouping days, when her telephone tinkled and a voice announced Mrs.
Lissome. Lissome? Lesam. Irish Mary, of course. Harrietta's maid,
engaged for the trip, had failed her at the last moment. Now her glance
rested on the two massive trunks and the litter of smart, glittering
bags that strewed the room. A relieved look crept into her eyes. A knock
at the door. A resplendent figure was revealed at its opening. The look
in Harrietta's eyes vanished.
Irish Mary looked like the mother of a girl who was earning five
thousand a week. She was marcelled, silk-clad, rustling, gold-meshed,
and, oh, how real in spite of it all as she beamed upon the dazzled
Harrietta.
"Out with ye!" trumpeted this figure, brushing aside Harrietta's
proffered chair. "There'll be no stayin' here for you. You're coming
along with me, then, bag _and_ baggage." She glanced sharply about.
"Where's your maid, dearie?"
"Disappointed me at the last minute. I'll have to get someone----"
"We've plenty. You're coming up to our place."
"But, Mary, I can't. I couldn't. I'm tired. This room----"
"A hole. Wait till you see The Place. Gardens and breakfast rooms and
statues and fountains and them Jap boys runnin' up and down like mice.
We rented it for a year from that Goya Ciro. She's gone back East. How
she ever made good in pictures I don't know, and her face like a
hot-water bag for expression. Lyddy's going to build next year. They're
drawin' up the plans now. The Place'll be nothin' compared to it when
it's finished. Put on your hat. The boys'll see to your stuff here."
"I can't. I couldn't. You're awfully kind, Mary dear----"
Mary dear was at the telephone. "Mrs. Lissome. That's who. Send up that
Jap boy for the bags."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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