The fog

I

We hear much comment about Genius in this clay-and-paint age. Mediocrity is amazed that there can be persons capable of doing many things and doing them exceptionally well. It fails to grasp that the same brain power and caliber which makes a success of a specialty can be turned with equal success into any line of endeavor and approximate the same general result.

Nathan had gone on the road for the Thorne Knitting Mills as a traveling salesman. He had business experience; he had brains whetted by dilemmas in the box-shop. But most of all he had imagination. And that same imagination, whether applied to poetry, paper boxes or the sale of union suits, brought the same satisfying result.

My friend started at “two thousand a year and commission.” His territory was eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and a portion of middle New York. At the end of his first year he had realized four thousand dollars and Milly wondered if her prospects were not looking up and she hadn’t been a bit wrong about that business of being buncoed? Four thousand a year is nearly eighty dollars a week. The Forges left the Pine Street cottage and took a better house on Preston Hill. And Nathan did a manly thing. He started the task of making the poor mill girl he had married into a lady. He began by taking Milly with him on some of his trips and letting her see life outside a drab Vermont country town.

New York was a revelation to Milly. She had always been a frump in her dress, but Fifth Avenue kindled a spark of incentive in her, and under Nat’s gentle encouragement, she honestly tried to make something of herself. She came back to Paris full of ideas and aspirations. And give her credit. The first thing she did was to junk all the jumble of assorted furniture, get rid of her Woolworth trimmings and try to Be Somebody.

Try to Be Somebody! Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to—try to be somebody!

Anyhow, the Forges refurnished their house and Milly’s pride in its altered appearance was such that she put down her foot on all her relatives treating it like their personal ash box. Thereupon the Richards family, individually and collectively, turned up their noses and averred that Mildred was trying to be tony and put on style and be a snob. Her mother “just ran up” one spring day and asked to borrow ten dollars. For the first time in their lives Milly demanded to know what the money was wanted for. When Mother Richards announced that as usual Popper was out of work and Sarah wanted a new dress to wear to the Knights of Columbus Dance on St. Patrick’s day, Milly told her mother that if Sarah wanted a new dress let her stick to her job in the Bon Ton and earn it, not get peeved at Miss Morgan and quit whenever the proprietress wanted her to work overtime. Mother Richards departed, fully persuaded that in her case also, no serpent’s tooth is sharper than an ungrateful child.

The fact of the matter was, Milly had found some House Beautiful magazines with “classy interiors” illustrated therein and was straining Nathan’s pay envelope to get the wherewithal to buy a set of Hepplewhite furniture for her dining room. It was no especial consideration for her husband that made her turn down her mother. Her motive was entirely selfish. Also I learned later that whereas I had lately taken unto myself a wife, Milly wanted to awe me with the “class” in her home and prove to Nathan he had annexed a more aristocratic helpmate than had been acquired by his lifelong friend.

II

Anna Forge, as usual, had not found life any bed of roses. She had managed to retain the property on Vermont Avenue but at a disturbing price. For she discovered that whereas property was property and the house was appraised on the tax list at ten thousand dollars, yet even a ten-thousand-dollar house did not stand for the epitome of worldly wealth and affluence when there were no funds forthcoming to pay those taxes, keep up repairs, heat the place and give her the wherewithal to feel and clothe herself so she could reside therein. She had to sell the house and furnishings, retaining only enough of the latter to make two rooms livable in the top of the Norwalk block where she finally sat down in her loneliness and meditated darkly on the ingratitude of all flesh.

In July an alluring oil prospectus fell into her hands. Without consulting her son, fully expectant of realizing a fortune within three months—the prospectus inferred that she would—she gave up all but a few hundreds of dollars for some sheets of beautifully lithographed paper delivered by a well-dressed young man who had “a nice face.”

Edith in Montreal had presented her husband with triplets! The husband had seen no advantage in triplets, however, and had been inclined to act peevish. Anna sent Edith five hundred of the remaining nine hundred dollars “to help out dear daughter.” And dear daughter’s husband had commandeered the money, played a bucket shop and taken a better job down in Pennsylvania.

In September Anna Forge was reduced to seventy-nine dollars. Where the balance had gone the Lord only knew. Thereupon her thoughts turned to her better half who had “skun out and left her to starve” and she brought her troubles to Nathan, the idea being that Nathan should get the law after his father and have him brought back and made to support his wife.

But threescore wrathful stockholders and two national banks had also voted that Johnathan should be apprehended and brought back, quite a time before. The difficulty in both cases had been that neither knew exactly where to go to apprehend Johnathan and bring him back. So Johnathan had not been brought back and the matter languished.

By October, unbeknown to Milly, Nathan was mailing his mother a few dollars a week for her food and room rent. When he came in off the road he occasionally brought her new clothes. Mrs. Forge was grateful for the clothing but felt it would have been “nicer” in Nathan to give her the money and let her buy her clothes herself. But Nathan wanted the money to go for clothes.

She talked quite a lot about it, and not within the immediate family circle, either.

III

In November, when the Forge house was furnished after some of the most gorgeous and least expensive plans in House Beautiful, Milly and Nathan sent my wife and self an invitation to “come up some night and have dinner.” Mary Ann had made a wry face. But for Nathan’s sake—with whose vicissitudes she had become more or less acquainted—she finally consented.

Milly had acquired a certain middle-class pride in her establishment by this time. But it was the narrow, pathetic, provincial, poorly bred sort of pride which is ofttimes the worst vulgarity, since it admits a knowledge of the existence of etiquette but refuses to reason it out or work out the finesse of detail which makes living on a certain well-mannered, soft-toned, fine-grained plane an existence of beauty and a joy forever.

Milly’s idea of serving a perfect meal was bulk—attuned to brilliance. But in the fine epicurean points of housewifery, she was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. She was careful to procure a three-dollar roast, cook it to the best of her ability (and Farmers Cook Book) bedeck it with pretty garnishes, and,—let it set around somewhere until it was clammy and greasy as cold-storage goose and about as delectable. She worked hard to get the appropriate flowers for a centerpiece and forgot the butter plates. She would spend half an afternoon preparing a lavish dessert, and by the time it came to the table the hour was so late and so much that was over-hearty had gone before, that her guests could only nibble at it. Then she accused them of not liking it or finding something the matter with it. She wept angrily when she was finally alone and declared “she wouldn’t get up another feed for nobody” if the whole world starved. Poor Milly! It was a hectic thing,—Trying to Be Somebody!

Well, Mary Ann and I went up to Nathan’s. Little Mary, their child, was about six years of age at the time, a red-cheeked, obstreperous little bumpkin who meant well enough but never knew exactly what it was she was supposed to mean. Immediately we got into the house, Milly and her child viewed us as “company” and acquired that same old agonizing woodenness of the lowly-born known as “remembering their manners.”

Milly came to greet us cordially enough, then excused herself to oversee preparations for her dinner in the kitchen. Nathan led us into the living room. Through the archway into the dining room I could not help noting a profusion of white linen, silver, cut glass and flowers. But the savor of the forthcoming meal was strong through the house, along with something which has scorched acridly. To close the door between dining room and kitchen never occurred to Milly. It was her house, wasn’t it? What did a door or two matter? From my position at table when we were subsequently placed, I sat throughout the meal with a kitchen vista before me in a chaotic mass of pots, pans, kettles and paper bags, all but the bags greasy and sooty and piled in the sink in plain sight over Milly’s shoulder.

In the interval before dinner, however, regardless of the fact that we were ostensibly there to visit her parents, little Mary assumed that it devolved upon her to entertain us. Which she did in all childish innocence and utter good intention, but which became quickly embarrassing even to the point of wholesome exasperation.

We had not been in the place four minutes before she dug up dolls, doll carriages, toy houses and games and insisted that we interest ourselves in all of them. Again and again Nathan reprimanded her or sent her out. Back she would come in a moment with the utmost self-assurance. “Mamma says I can!” she explained to her father each time and finally shoved a primer in my face with the persistent demand, did I want to hear her read? Now I like youngsters and so does Mary Ann. But God knows there’s a time and place for everything, even children. And little Mary soon got on my nerves. Nathan tried to “save his face” and send her out as patiently and kindly as he could. But Mary continued to run appealing to her mother and demanded to know if “Uncle Billy couldn’t hear her read?” and I overheard Milly retort “Certainly!” as though astonished that any one might not want to hear a first-grade reading lesson as prelude to a five-course dinner. So back came Mary, poked up into my arms, conveyed kitchen flour all over my clothes and started to out-talk her father with such asinine twaddle as, “I see a cat. Can the cat run? Yes, the cat can run. It is a black cat. Oh, see the pretty kittens.” Etc., etc., etc.

Nathan colored, grew grim of lip, ordered the child from the room in no mild tone. And little Mary started for the kitchen with a sudden, high-pitched, heartbroken bawl. In the kitchen she stayed permanently this time, to bounce back a few moments later, loll at the corner of the doorway and announce:

“Ma says to come and eat while everything’s hot because food ain’t no good when it’s cold.” On the strength of this startling information, we went into the dining room. Thereupon we had more Child. “I wanner sit side o’ Uncle Billy! Ma says I can! Pa, I wanner sit side of Uncle Billy!” And when she had ascertained for a certainty that she could sit side of Uncle Billy, she danced around the table, pointing out each of our places and then dragged a high chair noisily from the opposite end of the room over between Nathan and myself. There was also some confusion about the transfer of a patent-rimmed infant’s plate, a mug, a spoon, a napkin.

Nathan sent an appealing glance at his wife.

“Oh, leave the child alone!” cried Milly wearily, in front of her guests. “You’re always picking on her; she never does anything that suits you.” And so Nathan “left the child alone.” But it was noisily incumbent on me to lift her into her high chair and tie her bib. Thereupon little Mary started to “make music” with the cutlery on the edge of her plate and announce to us of what the forthcoming meal was to consist.

“Start right in, folks,” Milly invited. “I’ve got some things to see to upstairs before I can eat,” and she went above to dress, leaving her husband and guests to await her return or eat without her, also leaving a little girl who suddenly remembered her “manners”, sat with her hands folded school-fashion on the edge of her plate and alleviated the distressing pauses by entertaining us with choice bits of household information, such as: that Ma had on all her best dishes; such as: that the green pitcher came from the five-and-ten; such as: that Ma came near not puttin’ on that pickled preserve because when she opened the jar and smelled it, she thought it had spoiled; such as—oh, bother!

Poor Nathan! He sat with the steaming food before him and then said thickly, “She’ll probably be a considerable time. Perhaps we hadn’t better wait.” But I knew he was wondering why his wife could not have negotiated her wardrobe before our arrival and thrown off a mere apron or something of the sort, to do the honors of her table.

Little Mary cried shrilly above my wife’s attempt at sympathetic conversation with Nathan to inform her father what particular portion of the roast she desired and what vegetables and what drinkables. Finally Nat could stand it no longer. Milly being out of earshot, he frankly apologized for the child. But I read behind his apology the heartache of a tired man who did his best to train his child as opportunity offered and he himself had enlightenment. But a man at business ninety per cent. of the time may easily have much good work discounted by a child’s propinquity with an unbred mother. He ended finally by telling the child that another word from it would earn instant dismissal from the board. That worked admirably until Milly’s appearance when the roast was almost finished. Little Mary then recounted to her mother what her father had instructed her, etc., etc.

I will forbear a detailed account of that dinner. It was an ordeal. The table was crammed with dishes, there was no one to take away emptied plates and nowhere to set them. Nathan had to arise and take them away himself. Twice little Mary scrambled down and followed him into the kitchen, leaving Mary Ann and myself alone and feeling rather foolish.

Mary Ann settled down into an hour of agony. Little Mary pushed her food upon her broad fork with her fingers. She threw back her head and sucked the last drop from her water glass. She arose in her high chair, would have stood upon it and reached for her own butter if Nathan had not stopped her. Milly was in her place by this time and Nathan asked her if she couldn’t “see to little Mary.” Whereat Milly smoothed back the child’s hair, fiddled with a hairpin to twine the hair up from the child’s eyes, patted it and said bless her, she was mother’s little daughter, wasn’t she, and was remembering her manners, wasn’t she, too; and little Mary agreed that she was remembering her manners and demanded to know if mamma had yet “let on” to Uncle Billy that they had ice cream among other items for dessert.

The dessert came at last, about the time when I was wondering if Mary Ann were going to live to partake of it.

“We’ve got some cheese, that horribly smelly kind that Nat likes so well, if anybody wants any of it but him,” was Milly’s final comment anent a most delectable Camembert.

“Yeah!” piped up Mary. “And it comes in a wooden box and when you take the cover off it, you could almost think there was sompin’ dead inside it!”

We got away from the table.

Mary Ann went home and to bed, and if I could have spared the time, I would have had Doctor Johnson “fix me up” too.

What was it Nathan had told himself that night in the office when he had gazed upon Milly after the Carol Gardner disappointment?—Something about “one woman being as good as another?” Sex versus Ladyhood.

“The trouble with most young colts who fly into matrimony with the first exhibit of the sex that sashays along, is that they seem to forget they’re gonna have thirty to fifty years of it,” comments Uncle Joe Fodder, when he hears of some particularly rash marriage about the village. “If a feller can’t be good, b’dam, why can’t he be careful?”

IV

Milly gave it out that Mary Ann was snobbish and “stuck up”, that she couldn’t be sociable and neighborly if it cost her a leg—because she never accepted another invitation from Milly—and her personal opinion was that Nathan’s bosom friend had married a “quince.”

Mary Ann gave a dinner party for a number of the summer colonists on Preston Hill shortly afterward and neglected to invite Milly.

“After me about breakin’ my neck to give her that swell feed to our house in March!” lamented Milly. “She’s a cat and I hope she chokes on her own cream.”

Nathan never referred to the dinner thereafter, however.