WHEN I SET OUT TO DO a thing, I do it,” stated Papa several times and with increasing complacency. No one, least of all his three doting daughters, could deny this. There they were, almost by magic, so swiftly had Papa acted, back in the London Junction Hotel for the season, under the eye of the manager’s wife, Mrs. Purdy. They had been escorted by Papa to the school superintendent’s office and examined for their proper places in school, Florrie admitted to the kindergarten. They had been regally outfitted on credit at the Fair Store; they had been assigned a small, unpainted table in the hotel kitchen for their private use; and Papa and Mr. Purdy had sat up late, vowing friendship over a bottle of whiskey. Friendship was what men had as protection from the cruelties of women and fate. Mr. Purdy declared that in all his twenty years of hotel business he had never come across as decent a fellow as Harry Willard, and he didn’t care who heard him say it. He said it was a rotten shame that life had treated him so badly, leaving him helpless with his family, but then life was, as that piece said, like a game of cards. The figure was so apt that he and Papa soon vanished into a distant chamber with a pair of Chicago shoe salesmen to check on the simile. The girls, still dazzled by their swift reestablishment, didn’t see Papa again for a week; but the Purdys, in fact the whole hotel, took good care of them.
The hotel was in the middle of town, with the train tracks running directly in front of it and the ticket office opening off the hotel lobby. The freight office and yards were further down, connecting with the ticket office by a long covered shed. An all-night cafeteria was on the other side of the ticket office, and here those railroad men who were not dressed for the privileges of the regular hotel dining room might feel at ease. Train talk was the thing in both places, however, with the daily schedules of Number Nine, Number Forty-six, Number Six, etc., all discussed as if they were race horses instead of engines. Indeed, these engines panted and snorted as joyfully into the very doors of the London Junction Hotel as if they were pet stallions showing off for their proud masters, anxious for a pat of approval. Their records hung conspicuously in both cafeteria and hotel lobby, and were studied intently by everyone, regardless of any plans for travel. “Did you hear about Twenty-six? Broke down twenty-two minutes out of Columbus, had to back up for repairs, got in an hour and forty minutes late. Shorty was firing. Old Hank in the cab.” The commercial travelers liked to know all these things—something to season their conversation while they were selling.
The hotel was four stories high, of red brick, with glasswalled lobby, behind which the residents lolled in Morris chairs and viewed the passing trains, or, as they shifted from view, the marketplace on the other side of the tracks. Mr. Purdy, owner and manager, was a man of forty, thin, beak-nosed, bald, with a nasal eastern voice and general air of cosmopolitan distinction, due to a neatly cropped brown moustache, rimless glasses on a black ribbon, and a fur-collared greatcoat. He kept his wife and other family details tucked away somewhere in the back of the house, and was known to freeze Mrs. Purdy with a look when she ventured into the doorway of the lobby. The rule was that she was to use the back entrance, and though Mr. Purdy dined with his guests in the dining room, and so did Mrs. Hazy, his housekeeper, Mrs. Purdy was protected from this commercial scene by being screened off with her offspring into a corner of the kitchen. Far from being displeased, Mrs. Purdy basked in the special protection provided for her, not at all resentful that it was her money which had bought the hotel so that she might have deserved some say in its management. The isolation had further point in that the Purdy offspring, at two years old, showed signs to all but his mother of being imbecilic, though in a silent, unobtrusive way.
Papa had engaged a large corner bedroom for his family, with two big brass beds in it so that when he was at home he could sleep there too. In the mornings the chambermaid helped them get ready for school. The older girls brought Florrie home from kindergarten at noon and she was permitted to tag at the chambermaid’s skirts the rest of the day. Mrs. Purdy’s niece, Bonnie, the cashier, also took a personal interest in Florrie, and allowed her to play in the lobby under her fond but casual eye. Florrie took turns sitting on the laps of the various residents, ate limitless bonbons and cookies, and showed off.
“Where is your Mama, Baby?” the gentlemen would ask, and Florrie would point heavenward. This always resulted in someone pressing a coin upon her, and a display of handkerchiefs with several sentimental bachelors blowing their noses ostentatiously. As Mr. Sweeney, who was frequently present, said, “There are times when a man isn’t ashamed to shed an honest tear.”
Bonnie Purdy was a trim, complacent little figure, very stylish, since she had a pass on all the railroads and could make trips all over the country on the spur of the moment to see shows, buy hats, or go to parties. She was considered full of life, admired for her jauntily swaying hips and high-stepping when she was fixed up, and the intimations of plumply curved legs revealed by her skirts. She was no chippy, the men respectfully declared, but a fine little girl, high school and business college graduate, a little lady even if she did work around men. She was up on all the latest songs and taught them to Marcia and Lena, accompanying them on the dining room piano. She even took them with her to Eastern Star Entertainments, where she had them sing. She was an earnest performer herself, specializing in musical recitations. For these she looked particularly fine, wearing a white Greek-style wool dress with a red collar that set off her smooth black hair, parted in the middle and drawn smoothly back like pictures of the Madonna. Her cheeks were full, her eyes large and expressive, her mouth childishly pretty but solemn. She sat on the platform in a large armchair, and recited “Sandolphin, the Angel of Mercy, Sandolphin, the Angel of Prayer,” while a lodge sister played the Flower Song on the piano. It was considered a very refined performance. She always came up to say good night to the children, bringing them glasses of milk, and anxiously assuring them there was nothing to be afraid of. But no one could be afraid with the genial trains romping in and out of the room all night—or so it seemed—and the friendly male voices in the halls or outside on the train platform.
Florrie still sobbed in the night for her mother. Marcia, too, had one recurrent dream of her mother. She saw her crossing a street, in her dream, bent over with a bushel bag of potatoes on her back, and her face so tired it did not even smile. Another time she saw her mother carrying her bed on her back, again all bent over like an old woman. In her dreams her mother never smiled, but was always bent with a heavy burden, so Marcia dreaded these dreams and was glad if Florrie woke her up with her crying. Then she would manage to keep her quiet by telling her stories, never-ending stories, in the course of which they both fell asleep. The stories were about a boy named Niky who was a million years old and lived in a tree, with a Whistle Fairy who could transform him anywhere in any shape when Niky whistled. If Florrie was fretful, Marcia made extravagant promises of producing Niky in person, though at the crucial moment she announced he had been disguised as the tangerine Florrie had just eaten. As Lena considered this sort of thing childish, Marcia tried to save it for the nights Lena spent at her friend Mary Evelyn’s.
It was to be expected that Aunt Lois was perturbed over Harry’s solution to his domestic problem but, as the other relatives felt too, she realized that interference meant taking on the responsibility oneself, and she had worry enough with Grandma. She insisted that they spend Saturdays and Sundays with her, scrubbing them from top to toe, mending and darning them, and looking over their report cards. She wanted to keep Florrie, indeed everyone wanted to keep Florrie, even Isobel and Chris, poor as they were, for Florrie was a “little doll,” they all said. But Papa vowed poor Daisy would never want the girls separated. Besides, it was Florrie who looked after him, trying to do all the things she had seen her mother do, bringing him his matches and ashtray, admiring his neckties, worrying over his frowns, lisping consolation.
“She’s a second Daisy,” declared Papa fondly. “I wouldn’t take a million for her.”
The kitchen help at the hotel provided spontaneous entertainment and occasional discipline for the children. Their love affairs, the town and hotel scandals were freely aired, and later conducted to school by Marcia and Lena for the recess secrets with their classmates. Mrs. McGuire, the cook; Pete, the pastry cook; Kitty and Fanny, the two helpers, knew everything that was going on in town, and were not afraid to make suitable comments. Sometimes on the Friday night Knights of Columbus dances in Eagle Hall, they took Lena to sit by the orchestra and watch the dancing. In good-humored idle hours they taught the children to waltz and two-step and schottische, and twice they took all three girls to the dances to show off Marcia and Lena dancing together and all three singing “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.” After school they rode in the engines in the switchyard with the engineers, and played in the telegraph tower with Oley, the Swedish operator. He let them hang on to wires and get electric shocks unless the inspector or dispatcher was around to chase them.
“I hear you’re going to get a new mama,” the trainmen and the kitchen girls were always saying. “Is it that chippy in Newark your dad’s running with?”
“Your papa’s sweet on Bonnie, isn’t he?” the kitchen girls demanded, curiously, and receiving an astonished negative from Marcia they pursued the point with, “What was he doing with her at the Luna Park picnic last Sunday, then? What does she look after you kids for then? Believe me, it ain’t for money.”
It was true that every few weeks their father drew them on his knee for a grave conference.
“How do you like keeping house for your papa?” he would ask earnestly.
They would chorus their pleasure. Then he would whip out a cabinet photograph of a lady from his pocket and ask, “How would you like this lady for your new mama?” Ever pleased at any dramatic change they always expressed approval, though the ladies varied from the one in a long white robe with her hair down, seated at a harp, to a pop-eyed plump brunette in a black picture hat, leaning on a parasol. Whenever they confided excitedly in Bonnie about these ladies, Bonnie got cross and, one time, burst into tears. They couldn’t imagine what was the matter.
“It just goes to show,” Bonnie, weeping, explained. “A person does the best she knows how but all the good it does! A person could eat her heart out for a kind word for all some people care!”
“My papa likes you, Bonnie,” Florrie volunteered one day.
“Your papa hates the ground I walk on,” she stated darkly. “You can tell him I said so.”
Mr. Hartwell came over often, sometimes with his lady-friend Mabel. On these occasions Papa borrowed a screen from Mr. Purdy to place around the children’s bed, while he acted host to his two guests and Bonnie when she got off duty. Mabel was definitely stout, “a fine figure,” as Papa declared, with tightly curled bangs and yellow hair, a pink-and-white face, and two gold teeth. She had been Mr. Hartwell’s lady-friend for ten years, and was still half-dazzled and half-resentful of his hold on her, so that she divided her time between rumpling his glossy hair in her two plump little fists and cooing, “Whose honey sugar are you?” and next minute snapping, “Oh, shut your big mouth, you big fourflusher. I said Shut Up.” Mr. Hartwell usually remained polite toward her during both these treatments, since, as he often said, he had too big a respect for a real lady like Miss Purdy and his friend Willard to kick her rump right through her shoulder blades as many less cultivated men might do on similar provocation.
A card table was set up during these gay evenings and Five Hundred enjoyed with a pitcher of beer, pretzels, and cheese. Papa kidded Bonnie about all her beaux and treated Mabel with the cagey respect due a pal’s lady-friend. Sometimes he played the guitar for Bonnie to recite or sing, but often in the very middle he would stop abruptly and put the guitar away. “I guess it reminds him of Mama,” deduced Marcia and Lena, in bed listening but pretending for their own purposes to be asleep.
Mabel slept in Bonnie’s room on these occasions, and Mr. Hartwell tucked in the other brass bed with Papa. They snored and filled the room with fumes of cigar smoke and beer. In the night Florrie always stumbled into her father’s bed. Mr. Hartwell and Papa were usually waked up by Florrie putting her feet in their faces or butting them in the stomachs in her restless tossing. These were good times, the children thought, being part of Papa’s life, but after his parties he was silent and moody. Bonnie was always finding some reason to call when he was home, but he never seemed glad to see her when no one else was around.
“How’s Mr. Willard today?” Bonnie asked gayly. “I don’t suppose any power on earth would make him take a poor girl to the Elks’ dance in Lesterville tonight.”
“An old family man like me’s got no business at a dance,” Papa answered. “All I can do to get around on crutches as it is.”
“You wouldn’t have to dance,” Bonnie said. “I don’t give a snap about dancing, myself, but I enjoy good music. Maybe you’d like to walk down to the band concert later, when I get off. It always cheers me up.”
“I don’t want to cheer up,” Papa said. “I got a lot on my mind. You get one of those young fellows from the yard. You don’t want an old boy like me to tag along.”
“Mr. Willard, you’re not much past thirty,” Bonnie tremulously protested. “I suppose you think I’m too old, too, being twenty! You don’t need to always act as if you were my father.”
“You’re a nice girl, Bonnie,” Papa said. “You go have a good time.”
“I pressed your suit, Mr. Willard,” Bonnie said, standing in the door, unwilling to leave without a friendlier contact. “No, don’t bother to pay me. I was pressing my own things anyway, so it was no trouble. Well, so long.”
Still she didn’t go. Papa started dealing himself a round of solitaire on the bed, pretending not to notice Bonnie’s uncertainty. The children, laboring over their schoolbooks, glanced up curiously at this scene, not understanding Papa’s gaiety in crowds and his moodiness when alone with their gay, beloved Bonnie.
“I suppose you’ll be gone three weeks this trip,” pursued Bonnie, swinging her keys nervously. “Maybe I might be running down to Columbus next Saturday, myself.”
“That so?” Papa listlessly said.
“Oh, something else,” Bonnie pursued, watching his face anxiously. “The lodge is putting on a show next Thursday night in the hall, and I thought the girls could sing ‘Go to Sleep, My Little Pickaninny,’ then ‘Hello, Central,’ for an encore. They’ll get paid fifty cents.”
Papa beamed now, and looked over with pride at his offspring.
“Their mama would be tickled to hear that,” he exclaimed. “By George, they’re getting to be real professionals.”
“I taught them,” Bonnie reminded him. “I thought it would be cute if they had Florrie in a cradle, rocking her for the first song.”
“Blacked up like a pickaninny?” Marcia asked, excitedly.
“She’s too big for a cradle,” said Lena.
“I am not,” wailed Florrie, clinging to Bonnie’s skirts. “I want to do what Bonnie says.”
Bonnie consoled her, finding a solution to her own vague embarrassment by picking her up to take downstairs with her.
“No objection to my sitting at your table for lunch, Mr. Willard, I hope?” she asked jauntily, and when Papa only shook his head she went away humming, with Florrie on her shoulder.
“Bonnie’s awful good to us, Papa,” said Lena. “Sometimes she reminds me of Mama.”
“Hush! Nobody’s like your Mama,” Papa said harshly. He got up and put on his hat. “Get to work on your lessons now, no more fooling!”
No matter how gloomy he was, alone in the room with them, he changed as soon as he entered a group. They tiptoed down the back stairs to listen outside the lobby or dining room door while he told stories and joked with the other men and the waitresses. No matter how quiet the place would be, Papa’s entrance made it immediately merry. His daughters huddled in the back hall, listening to the roars of laughter and their father’s contagious chuckle, not knowing what was so funny but proud as Punch when somebody cried out, “By George, you can’t beat Harry Willard! No, sir, he can’t be topped!”
The hotel and the intimacy with Papa was exciting for a while, but then it grew lonely, for the longer his absences were the more brusquely people treated the children. Mrs. McGuire and the kitchen help found them underfoot too much, and scolded, till their only refuge was in swiping cookies and oranges from the icebox and having some really good reason for a scolding. Lena stood up haughtily to the constant, though not really bad-tempered, nagging and regarded herself as an adult, not to be confused with her two younger sisters. She had a dignified private life with her friend Mary Evelyn, and made personal visits to the Friends’, and to her Aunt Lois to discuss family affairs and receive rewards due her advanced years in trinkets, small change, new bonnets, and ribbons. When Mrs. Purdy commissioned her to look after the idiot baby, Lena proudly announced that she was no nursemaid and stayed at Mary Evelyn’s for two days. The job therefore fell to Marcia. Even though Mrs. Purdy gave her twenty-five cents a week, it was humiliating to be caught by her classmates, wheeling the Purdy baby up and down back alleys. Florrie was a comfort, in that she liked to wheel anything, and ran along beside, begging to push the go-cart. Eventually Marcia perfected a scheme whereby she let Florrie wheel the empty go-cart around and as soon as Mrs. Purdy got out of her apartment for her missionary committee work, Marcia plumped the baby on the living room floor, barricaded it with chairs, and then sat on a stool outside the pen, reading all of Mrs. Purdy’s books. Schoolwork was easy to the point of boredom, but here in Mrs. Purdy’s overfurnished parlor was the culture of the ages. Last Days of Pompeii, the works of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Lucille, Miss Mulock’s works, The Old Mamzelle’s Secret, Three Musketeers, If I Were King, Wormwood, Henty stories, Horatio Alger books—all these Marcia devoured in a state of ecstasy unmarred by her inadequacy to digest many hard lumps of language or meaning, for the thrill was in the reading. Florrie loyally warned her of Mrs. Purdy’s approach, so the books and chairs could be replaced and the ever-ready explanation given that the baby cried so she brought it inside. When they weren’t counting the days till Papa returned, Florrie and Marcia were wandering up and down past Mary Evelyn’s house, hoping for Lena to come out.
But whenever they were fortunate enough to catch her, Lena was quite likely to strut past them with Mary Evelyn (dressed as nearly alike as their totally dissimilar charms would allow), and if she did speak, it was in no friendly spirit. “Go home and wash your face,” she was likely to admonish Marcia curtly. “You ought to be ashamed going around with your petticoat showing. For heaven’s sake, take Florrie home and blow her nose, and don’t you two come tagging around Mary Evelyn and me, or I’ll tell Papa.”
Dashed but not discouraged, Marcia and Florrie swiped sleeves across their faces, jerked at their offending skirts, yanked their garters and, after gawking at their fashionable sister’s progress down the street with her proud friend, they followed doggedly, utterly fascinated by the busy life Lena was able to make for herself. Lena and Mary Evelyn took walks to gather violets or mushrooms, they went to Epworth League meetings, they joined the Loyal Temperance Legion, a mysterious secret society that met after dark and sang songs and took pledges never to touch rum. Lena and Mary Evelyn did their studies together and made fudge, and they sewed things on the sewing machine. Marcia and Florrie were a little unhappy at Lena’s individuality, but proud and astonished too at her initiative. They tried to think of games to rival Mary Evelyn’s inducements, but the only thing that would hold Lena was Marcia’s final desperate offer to spend her quarter on ice cream, instead of saving it for the St. Nicholas Magazine. During Papa’s visits Lena gave up her friend, in case Papa would offer some treat which she might miss. She felt her responsibility, too, and usually devoted the first evening with Papa to a grave report on the bad behavior of her two sisters. Marcia was kept after school twice for not answering when spoken to, she was sent home by the teacher to wash her hands, she was slapped for impudence when she called the teacher a chippy. Florrie had bawled all during Sunday school, so they said she couldn’t come again, and she had jumped on the bed till it broke the slats. Lena then produced her report card with an A in deportment, which she felt offset the Cs in her studies, and partially convinced Papa, so that he saw only the D in Marcia’s deportment and not the As and Bs in studies.
“I don’t like deportment, that’s why,” Marcia belligerently explained. For her part she was able to tell Papa that Lena visited Aunt Lois all the time and told her everything that Papa was doing, so that Aunt Lois was madder than ever at him. She added that Lena now swore, and said “Lord” and “For heaven’s sake,” just like Mary Evelyn. This retaliation impressed Lena with her sister’s strategic abilities, so she treated her like an equal for fully three days.
Papa didn’t go on a trip for over a month. When Mr. Hartwell came over they didn’t celebrate, but talked in low voices far into the night. Bonnie Purdy came in at midnight, bringing coffee and sandwiches which she declared were just going to waste in the icebox. The children sensed something queer was going on from Papa’s silent spells and letter writing. One morning Bonnie came in at daybreak in her dressing gown to wake Papa for the Chicago train. He was gone two days. When he came back he had his hat once again cocked on the side of his head and chuckled at everything. Bonnie ran in the room after him, and they saw her reach up and kiss him warmly.
“I knew you’d get it,” she cried. “You can get anything you ever go for, Harry Willard, if you’d just listen to me!”
Since there was no other audience available, Papa was obliged to do his talking to his small family. He paced up and down the room, with his thumbs in his vest, and said, thank God, he didn’t have to slave for a flathead like Carson any more, a man who wouldn’t trust an old employee, criticizing expense accounts, pinching pennies like no first-class company ever did. He was glad he could lift his head up again on his trips, hold his own with other men representing high-class firms such as the London Furniture Company could never be with a dumbbell like Bert Carson at the head, a spying, suspicious old cheapskate who didn’t appreciate what a hell of a lot of guts it took to build up a business on the road. He should have listened to Hartwell two years ago and quit then instead of waiting for this kick in the pants. But you couldn’t keep Harry Willard down, no, sir! He was signed up now with the Emperor Mausoleum Company, traveling out of Chicago, working for one of the biggest men in the business, Colgate Custer.
“You can tell that to your Aunt Lois next time she tries to pump you,” Papa instructed Lena. “Just say your father’s making twice the money and working for Colgate Custer. I’ll drop in on your grandma next week and tell her. She’s the only friend I’ve got in the whole damn family.”
He went off next day in high spirits, without saying when he would be back. Mr. Purdy came in to see him and was surprised to find him gone.
“Did he leave anything with you?” he asked Lena.
Lena said no, and Mr. Purdy, after a thoughtful look around the room, went out, stroking his chin.
“I suppose Papa never paid this bill, either,” said Lena, scowling. “I get sick and tired of it!”
Florrie and Marcia stared in horror at this evidence of rising disloyalty to Papa.
“Aunt Lois says we owe everybody in town,” Lena stated.
“Mary Evelyn’s mother said Papa’s never paid a bill in his life, and the only reason the Purdys let us stay here, never paying, is that Bonnie Purdy is stuck on Papa. Aunt Lois said Papa borrowed fifty dollars from Mr. Sweeney for the first month we were here and never paid anything since.”
Florrie began to cry. Every word Lena said hurt Marcia. Even if it was true, you couldn’t come right out and say such things, not, oh never, about Papa. Lena’s pretty, rosy face was drawn into an angry frown, her lips pulled tightly together. She looked almost grown-up and very much like Aunt Lois, with her hair frizzed and pulled back into a bun.
“I don’t believe what Mary Evelyn’s mother says,” Marcia said. “She’s just a store clerk.”
This high-handed attack again impressed and surprised Lena so that she looked at Marcia with grudging respect. Carried away with her success Marcia made so bold as to ask Bonnie outright, before Lena, if Papa owed a lot of money.
“He’ll pay it back, don’t you worry about that,” Bonnie said firmly. “You children ought to be ashamed criticizing your father. Why, your father is one of the finest, loveliest men that ever breathed.”
“What will Mr. Purdy do with us if Papa doesn’t pay the bill?” Marcia asked.
Bonnie merely tousled both girls’ heads, and looked fondly down at them.
“You poor kids worrying that way!” she exclaimed. “But don’t you go worrying your papa about things! He’s got enough on his mind, three motherless children, nobody but strangers willing to look after them, poor man!”
As usual Lena’s pride was roused.
“We have plenty of relations, we don’t have to have strangers,” she said with a toss of her head. “We’ve got Chris and Isobel and Uncle Louie and Grandpa Willard, and plenty other relations.”
“They never come to see us,” said Marcia candidly. “When Papa wrote we were coming to visit them they never answered.”
“They were just afraid they’d have you on their hands for good,” Bonnie suggested. “It costs money to bring up three children, and they maybe weren’t sure they could afford you.”
“But we only wanted to visit them,” Marcia said. “Papa told them.”
“I guess they didn’t believe him,” Lena said.
Bonnie shook her finger at them.
“Not another word about your father, now! Lena, don’t you listen to that bad Mary Evelyn. Your father’s doing the best he can; he’s a wonderful man and don’t you forget it.”
Lena was as pleased as the others to have this reassurance. She punished Mary Evelyn by staying home and allowing Marcia to spend her ten cents on nougats which they ate playing cassino on the floor.