CITY FOLKS

I

Joe and Mattie Harper lived in Harlem. They lived in a four-room apartment in the second of a row of brown, unattractive-looking apartment buildings—six of them just alike—in One Hundred and Thirty-second Street.

They lived in Apartment 52, which means the fifth floor, and there was no elevator. But the rent was reasonable, fifty dollars, and both Joe and Mattie said they didn’t mind a “walk-up” at all—you get used to it after a while, and Mattie knew it kept her hips down. Then, too, by going to the fifth floor, you get a much better view, though why a view of the building across the street—another brown barracks of exactly the same age and design—is desirable, only Joe and Mattie and other similarly situated folks know. The air was cleaner, though, on the fifth floor—they felt that any one would know that.

One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, Harlem, lacked all outstanding features. If the street signs had suddenly disappeared, there would have been nothing to identify it, to pin it to—a bleak street, without trees, a fairly clean street, decent and neat looking (after the garbage man had passed and the tins had disappeared), wide enough to lack misery, narrow enough to lack grandeur.

We are about to have two meals with Joe and Mattie—the most important meals of their day, for Joe’s lunch was usually a sandwich and a glass of milk at the Automat, or beans or a beef stew in the lunch room across from his office; Mattie’s a glass of soda and a sandwich or a dish of ice cream, if she were down-town—it is a shame about the new price of sodas—a scramble of left overs from last night’s dinner, if she spent the day at home.

Breakfast:

The alarm clock had buzzed at six-thirty, as it always did. It was a good alarm clock and had cost $1.48 at Liggett’s, two years before.

Mattie’s little dog, who slept in the front hall, had heard the alarm and scrambled into their bedroom with his usual yip of pleasure—he was rather deaf, but he could make out sounds as definite as the ringing of a bell and he listened for the alarm each morning. He was a nice fellow, a white poodle, overly fat, with red-rimmed eyes. If you didn’t molest him nor try to pet him nor step on him, he wouldn’t snap or try to bite you. Mattie and Joe were quite fond of him and took him for walks in Central Park on Sundays or around Harlem in the evenings. His name had, in turn, been, stylishly, Snowball, Snoodles and Snookums and had at last reached Ikkle Floppit, all of which he answered to with stolid indifference.

Joe had heard the alarm, had jumped up and turned it off, and had waked Mattie, who slept more soundly. Ikkle Floppit had jumped, wheezily, upon the bed and licked all visible portions of Mattie’s face. Mattie, then, had given up trying to doze again and had stroked the dog’s uneven coat with a fond hand.

Toilets followed, rapid plunges into the dwarf-sized white tub with its rather insecure shower attachment—Joe talking while he shaved, about the office, the men who worked with him, his boss who didn’t appreciate him, the weather that was still too warm for comfort, their friends, the Taylors, who they both agreed were too stuck up for words since Taylor had got his new job.

“His people aren’t anything at all,” Mattie had said, “awfully ordinary—and the way they do put on airs, you’d think they amounted to something. Why, my cousin Mabel knew his sister in Perryville, where they used to live, and she said they weren’t anything at all there. And now, how they do go on with a maid and a car. They’ve never even taken us for a ride in their old car and they can hold their breath until I’d step into it. It beats all—”

And Joe, his face twisted for the razor’s path beyond the possibilities of conversation, had grunted assent.

Now Mattie had completed the simple breakfast, six pieces of toast, buttered unevenly and a bit burned on the edges, as always, a halved orange for each of them, some coffee and some bought preserves with a slight strawberry-like flavour. She and Joe faced each other over the almost clean tablecloth—it had been clean on Sunday and this was just Tuesday morning.

The dining-room was small, lighted vaguely with two court windows. Even now, at seven-thirty, the electric light had been turned on in the red and green glass electrolier.

Mattie knew the electrolier was out of fashion, she would have preferred a more modern “inverted bowl,” but this one was included with the apartment, so there seemed nothing to do about it. She would also have preferred mahogany to the fumed oak dining-room set, bought eight years before—she had bought the mahogany tea wagon with her last year’s Christmas money from Joe, looking forward to the time when they could buy a whole new mahogany set.

Mattie was not at all a bad-looking breakfast companion, seated there in her half-clean pink gingham bungalow apron—she wore these aprons constantly in the house to save her other clothes. She was a slender, brown-haired woman of about thirty, with clear brown eyes, a nose that turned slightly upward, a mouth inclined to be a little large, rather uneven but white teeth—indefinite features, a pleasant, usual, hard-to-place face.

And Joe, across from her, was equally pleasing, with a straight nose and rather a weak chin, dark hair starting to recede just a little at thirty-three, sloping shoulders inclined a bit to the roundness of the office man.

“What’s in the paper, Joe?” asked Mattie, already nibbling toast.

Joe, deep in the morning World, threw out interesting items—the progress of a murder trial, news of an airplane flight.

They talked about little things, a friend Joe had passed on the street the day before, the choice of a show for Friday or Saturday night—they tried to attend the theatre once each week, during the winter.

The door bell rang, three short rings. Ikkle Floppit gave three asthmatic yips. Mattie threw down her napkin, sprang to her feet.

“I’ll go,” she said, as she usually said it, “you go on eating or you’ll be late again. I bet it’s nothing but a bill, anyhow.”

She returned in a moment with a thick letter in her hand.

“From your mother, Joe,” she said.

She knew the printed address in the corner of the envelope, “The Banner Store, General Merchandise, E. J. Harper, Prop., Burton Center, Missouri,” the neat, old-fashioned handwriting, the post-mark.

Mattie and Joe had come from Burton Center, Mattie eight years and Joe nine years before. They had grown up together in Burton Center, one of the jolly crowd who attended the High School, went to Friday night dances, later were graduated into the older crowd, which meant a few more dances, went to the Opera House when a show came to town, had happy love affairs.

Joe and Mattie became engaged three years after Joe left High School, which was the year after Mattie graduated. Joe went to work at the Banner Store, under his father. But youth and ambition knew not Burton Center, so, a little later, Joe had come to New York in search of fortune.

He had not obeyed the usual law of fiction and forgotten Mattie, nor had Mattie changed while she waited. No, though Joe found neither fame nor fortune, he did get an office job that looked as if it might support two in comfort, if Mattie and Joe were the two concerned, took a vacation, went back to Burton Center, found Mattie even more alluring and dimpled and giggling than he had remembered her—how much prettier Burton Center girls looked than those in New York!—and they were married.

Eight years, then, of New York, of subway rides, of the weekly theatre, the weekly restaurant dinner, of apartment hunting about every second October, of infrequent clothes buying, of occasional calls on stray acquaintances, of little quarrels and little peace-makings, weekly letters from home—little lives going on—

Joe tore open the letter.

“Gee, it’s a thick one,” he said.

Then:

“Well, I guess they are all well or ma wouldn’t have written so much. Listen, Mattie.”

Joe read the letter, a folksy letter—Mrs. Harper, senior, was well and so was “your father,” as all mothers speak of their husbands to their children, in letters. She had seen Millie’s mother a few days before and she was looking well and hoping to see them soon in Burton Center. The youngest Rosemond girl was engaged to a Mr. Secor from St. Louis, who was in the lumber business.

Then there followed, long and unparagraphed, something that made Joe and Mattie look at each other, hard and seriously, across the table. For Joe’s mother had written something that they had always thought might be suggested to them but they had never discussed, even with each other:

“Your father isn’t as well as he once was, nor as young, you know, and, though you need not worry about him, he is eating and sleeping fine, even in hot weather, I think it would be better if you and Mattie came here to live. You could step right into the store and take charge of things as soon as you wanted to. It is not a big store as you know, but your father has always made a nice living from it and Burton Center is growing right along. The Millers have put up some new bungalows out on Crescent Hill, you’d be surprised to see how it has grown up out there, all of the young people are moving out there and with the new Thirteenth Street car line it is very convenient. The cottages are all taken but two, both white with green blinds and room back of them for garages and we could get you one of them if you wanted us to. The George Hendricks are living there and Mr. and Mrs. Tucker and the Williams boy, Phillip, I think that’s his name, you used to go with. The new country club isn’t far from there and you could play tennis after work, which would be good for you. I wish you could make up your mind at once, so you could get here before long or your father will have to get a man to help him, for he really ought to have more time to himself and take a nap after dinner, now that the season’s trade is starting. Talk this over with Mattie and let us know as soon as you can. I hope you are keeping well in this changeable weather. Your father sends love to both and so do I.

“Affectionately, your Mother.”

Mattie and Joe looked at each other, looked and looked and forgot their toast and coffee. But they saw each other not at all. Nor did they visualize One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, New York, drab and bare, nor even Fifth Avenue nor Broadway.

They saw a little town, with rows of old trees along its quiet streets, little white houses on little squares of green, each house with its hedge or its garden or its hammocked lawn, peace, and the smell of growing things after a rain—

“What say, Mattie?” asked Joe. “Sound pretty good? Of course, you’ve always said you loved New York and I don’t want to persuade you against your will. Perhaps you wouldn’t care to move—still, Burton Center, we’ve got some good friends there—it’d be sort of fun, seeing the old crowd, belong to a country club, tennis, things like that, even managing the business. But, of course, if you wouldn’t want to leave the city—”

Mattie, mentally, had far outdistanced him.

She clapped her hands, pleasantly excited.

“Joe can’t you just see that little house—I bet it’s awfully cute. Last summer, when we were out in the country, I certainly did envy people living in little houses—I get so tired of New York, sometimes. But I never wanted to say anything, knowing how much you liked it here. But that little house—we could sell all of our furniture except the tea wagon and the table in the living-room and my new dressing-table—it really would be cheaper to buy new things than to pay for shipping. And we could find out how many windows there are and I could get some new cretonne here—sort of set the styles in Burton Center. It sure would be funny, living back there and knowing everybody. Here I never see a soul I know in weeks, or talk to anybody. Honest, sometimes I get just hungry for—for people. The trouble is, we haven’t really got anything here.”

“I know,” Joe nodded. “New York’s all right for some people—if you’ve got money. It’s a great city all right, but we don’t get anything out of it. I get so sick of being squeezed into subways night and morning—hardly standing room all the way home—and no place to go Sundays or evenings but a movie or a show or to see people who live miles away and don’t care anything about you anyhow and who you see about twice a year. Burton Center will look awfully good—folks take an interest in you, there.”

“You bet they do.”

“And it isn’t as if I’ve failed here. I haven’t. I’m due for another raise pretty soon—but we aren’t putting anything aside, getting any place. It isn’t as if we were terribly poor. You look awfully well in your clothes on the street, but we are always having to skimp and do without things—we never have the best of anything, always cheap seats at shows or cheap meals in second-class restaurants, a cheap street to live on—it gets on a person’s nerves.”

“Why, I didn’t know you felt that way, Joe. I thought you liked New York. Why, it makes me so jealous, going down Fifth Avenue, seeing all those people in limousines, not a bit better nor better looking than I am, all dressed up, lolling back so—so superior, with nasty little dogs not near so nice as Floppit—and with chauffeurs and everything. Why, in Burton Center we’d be somebody, as good as any one. We could fix up that house awfully nice—and have a little garden and all that. But you said you hated the Banner Store so—now don’t go and make up your mind—”

“You needn’t worry about me. The Banner Store is all right—I think differently about things than I did years ago. I thought the city was just going to fall apart in my hand—but I found someone else got here first. I’m not complaining, you know. It isn’t that I’ve failed—why, in Burton Center they’ll look at us as a success, we’ll be city folks, don’t you see. They know I haven’t failed. I didn’t come sneaking back the year I left, the way Ray Wulberg did. No, sir, when folks came to New York to visit, we showed them a good time, took ’em to restaurants and shows—they think we got along fine here—that we’re all right—”

“You bet they do, Joe. But I just can hardly wait to see that cottage—and everybody. I bet Crescent Hill is awfully pretty. To-night, you write to your mother—don’t make it too sudden, you know, or too anxious—for you know how she is—she means fine, but she’ll like to spread the news about us coming back. You just say that, under the circumstances, as long as your father is getting old and needs you, you feel it’s your duty to go there and as soon as you can arrange your affairs and resign your position and train one of your assistants so that he can take care of your work—”

“You leave that to me. I can fix that part up all right.”

The buzzer of the dumb-waiter zinged into their talk.

“Joe, there’s the janitor. It’s late. You’d better hurry. You know the call-down you got last week for being late.”

Mattie and Joe arose simultaneously, Joe grabbed his paper, folded it conveniently, hurried to the door, Mattie after him.

“Going down-town to-day?” he asked.

“Thought I would, when I get the house straightened up. I want to look at a new waist. My good one is starting to tear at the back.”

“All right. I’ll be home early, about six-thirty—won’t have to stay over-time. In a few months, I’ll be my own boss, no hurrying off in the morning or rushing home in subways—we’ll fix that letter up to-night.”

He brushed off his mouth with his hand and gave Mattie the usual and rather hearty good-bye kiss and, closing the door behind him, Joe and Mattie parted for the day with visions of little houses nestling in green gardens uppermost in their minds.

II

Dinner:

Dinner times with the Harpers varied slightly according to the way Mattie had spent the afternoon, the amount of work at Joe’s office and where the Harpers were dining. They usually dined at home, but, once a week, usually Saturday, when they followed the feast with a visit to the theatre, they ate at one of the table d’hote restaurants some place within ten blocks of Broadway and Forty-second Street.

They thought themselves quite cosmopolitan because they had been to Italian, Greek, French, Chinese, Russian and Armenian restaurants, choosing in each the dish prepared for the curious—and eating it according to American table customs as they practised them.

This particular Tuesday they were dining at home.

Joe reached the apartment exactly at six-thirty, the trip home taking nearly an hour. Joe had been watching the clock for the last twenty minutes of his business day so as to escape at the first possible opportunity.

Mattie, in the kitchen, heard his key in the lock and hurried to greet him. They kissed quite as fondly as they had in the morning, Floppit gave a little yip of welcome and received a pat on the head in reply.

Dinner was nearly ready, Mattie informed Joe, table set and all.

Joe hurried with his ablutions and reached the dining-room, accompanied by his newspaper, the Journal this time, at a quarter of seven. He divided the paper so that Mattie might have the last page, where are shown the strips of comics—he had read them hanging to a strap in the subway. Then he helped Mattie to bring in the hot dishes from the kitchen.

There was a small platter of five chops, fried quite brown, two for each one of them and one—to be cut into bits later—for Ikkle Floppit. Mattie always fried chops or steaks the days she went down-town, and sometimes other days besides.

There were potatoes, in their jackets to save her the trouble of peeling them, a dish of canned corn. There was a neat square of butter, too, and some thinly sliced bread on a silver-plated bread plate—a last year’s Christmas present from one of Mattie’s aunts—and a small dish of highly-spiced pickles.

Besides this, on the new tea wagon stood two pieces of bakery pastry, of a peculiarly yellow colour that had aimed at but far surpassed the result of eggs in the batter.

They sat down. Joe served the chops, Mattie the potatoes and corn. Mattie had put on her bungalow apron as soon as she returned home—so as to save her suit from the spots and wear incidental to dinner-getting. Joe looked just as he had in the morning, plus a small amount of beard and minus his coat and vest.

Yet, as the morning’s conversation had been spontaneous and enthusiastic and happy, this evening’s meal had a curious cloud of restraint over it.

“Good dinner,” said Joe, after his first mouthful.

“Yes, it does taste good,” agreed Mattie.

“Go down-town?”

“Uh-huh, I went down about eleven. Just got home an hour ago. I looked at the waists, but didn’t get any—they seemed awfully high. I may go down and get one to-morrow or Thursday. Any news in the paper?”

“Not much doing,” Joe rustled his own sheets.

He never really read at dinner but he liked to have the paper near him.

“Look at Floppit, Joe. Isn’t he cute, standing up that way? I’ve just got to give him a bite. It won’t make him too-fat, not what I give him. Come here, Missus’ lamb.”

Silence, then, save for the sound of knife against plate, a curious silence, a silence of avoidance. Then meaningless sentences, bits about anything, a struggle to appear happy, indifferent.

Joe, then,

“See any one down-town you know? Where’d you have lunch? Thought maybe you’d call up and have lunch with me.”

“I did think of it, but I didn’t come down your way. I stopped at Loft’s and had chocolate cake and a cherry sundae. No—I didn’t see any one I knew—exactly.... Anything happen at the office?”

“Well, nothing much. We got that Detroit order.”

“Did you, Joe? I’m sure glad of that.”

A silence. Then, Joe, suddenly, enthusiastically, as if some barrier had broken, as if he could no longer stay repressed, upon the path he had set for himself.

“Say, Mattie, guess what happened this afternoon! You know Ferguson, the fellow who used to be in our office, whose brother is in the show business? Well, he came in and gave me a couple of seats to see ‘Squaring the Triangle’ for Friday night. They say it’s a good show and in for a long run, but they want to keep the house filled while the show is new, till it gets a start.”

“Did he, honestly? Say, that’s great, isn’t it? Where are they, downstairs?”

“Sure. You don’t think he’d give away balcony seats, or at least offer them to me, do you? Remember, he gave us some last Spring. That makes three times this year we’ve been to shows on passes. Pretty good, eh, Mattie?”

“Well, I guess yes. We’re some people, knowing relatives of managers. I tell you, I think—”

A pause, then.

Mattie’s face lost its sudden smile and resumed its sadness of the earlier part of the meal.

“What’s the matter?” asked Joe.

“Nothing the matter with me.”

“Something else happened, too,” Joe went on, enthusiastically, “at noon, I’d just left Childs’—and guess who I passed on the street?”

“Some one we know?”

“We don’t know him exactly.”

“Oh, I can’t guess. Tell me.”

“I know you can’t—well, it was—William Gibbs McAdoo! Honest to goodness—McAdoo. It sure seemed funny. There he was, walking down the street, just like I’ve seen him in the movies half a dozen times. It sure gives you a thrill, seeing people like that.”

Why the mention of William G. McAdoo should bring tears to the eyes of a woman who had never met him may be inexplicable to some. But tears came into the eyes of Mattie Harper. She wiped her eyes on the corner of her bungalow apron, sniffed a little, came over to Joe, put her arms around him.

“I just—just can’t stand it,” she sobbed. “I’ve been worrying and worrying. Your seeing McAdoo seems the strangest thing, after what happened to me.”

“What was it, Mattie?”

Quite kindly and understandingly, Joe pushed his chair back from the table, gathered his wife on his knee.

“What was it, honey? Come tell Joe.”

“It wasn’t anything—anything to cry about. I—don’t know what’s the matter with me. It—it was in Lord & Taylor’s, this afternoon. I was looking at gloves—and I looked up—and there, right beside me, not two feet away, stood Billie Burke. Honestly! I know it was her. She looked exactly like her pictures—and I saw her in ‘The Runaway’ years ago, and not long ago in the movies. Yes, sir, Billie Burke. Joe, she’s simply beautiful.”

“Well, well, think of seeing Billie Burke!”

“And Joe, when I saw her, the awfulest feeling came over me. I tried not to tell you about it—after the letter this morning. I’d been thinking about Burton Center—but seeing Billie Burke just knocked it all out. Joe, you know I love you and want to do what you want—but, I—I just can’t move to Burton Center—unless you’ve got your heart set on it. I’d go then, of course—any place. But I don’t want to be—buried alive in that little town. Imagine those people—never seeing or doing anything—no new shows or famous people—nor any kind of life. And here I went down-town and saw Billie Burke and you—”

Joe’s pats became even fonder. He smoothed her hair with his too-pale hand.

“There, there, don’t cry. It’s all right. Nobody’s asking or expecting you to go to Burton Center. Funny thing, that. I had the same feeling. First, passing McAdoo—and then those theatre tickets. I guess there’s something about New York that gets you. They’ve got to forget that stuff about Burton Center, I can tell you that.”

Mattie jumped off Joe’s lap, took the used dishes from the table, put on the pastry and sat down in her own place, across from Joe.

“This is good,” said Joe, taking a bite; “where’d you get it?”

“At that little new French pastry shop we passed the night the black dog tried to bite Floppit.”

“Oh, yes, looked nice and clean in there.”

They ate their pastry slowly. Mattie dried her eyes. Joe spoke to her:

“Say, Mattie, don’t worry for a minute more about that Burton Center stuff. After eight years of living in the city, seeing famous people, living right in the center of things—didn’t we see all the warships and airplanes nearly every day? They can’t expect us to live in a rube place like Burton Center. We’re used to more, that’s all there is to it.”

“I know,” said Mattie, “I’d just die if I couldn’t walk down Fifth Avenue and see what people wore. It’s just weighed on me, terribly. I just saw us on the train going out there, and living in an awful little house without hot water or steam heat—and seeing Billie Burke just—”

The ’phone burred into the conversation.

Mattie answered it, as usual, assuming a nonchalant, society air.

“Yes, this is the Harpers’ apartment. Yes, this is Mrs. Harper speaking. Who? Oh, Mrs. Taylor. How do you do. I haven’t heard your voice in ages. We’re fine, thank you.... No, I don’t know much news. A friend of Mr. Harper’s, a brother of Ferguson, the theatrical producer, invited us to see ‘Squaring the Triangle’ as his guests on Friday. They say it’s a wonderful show. We saw ‘The Tattle-tale’ last Saturday. Yes, we liked it a great deal.... Saturday afternoon? Wait and I’ll ask Mr. Harper if he has an engagement.”

Hand over telephone mouthpiece, then:

“Want to go riding with the Taylors in their new car Saturday afternoon and stop at some road house for supper?”

Resuming the polite conversational tone of the telephone:

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Harper and I will be delighted to go. Awfully nice of you. At four? Fine. By the way, did I tell you I saw Billie Burke to-day? I did. She looked simply beautiful, not a day older than she looked last year. Wonderful hair, hasn’t she? And Mr. Harper passed William G. McAdoo on the street. Yes, New York is a wonderful city. You did? Isn’t that nice! All right, we’ll be ready on Saturday—don’t bother coming up, just honk for us, that’s what all our friends do. Thanks so much, good-bye.”

Mattie sat down at the table again.

“Well,” she said, “it’s time they asked us—they’ll take us now and be through for a year. Still, we may have a nice time. But—what we were talking about—you sure you are in earnest about Burton Center?”

“You bet I am. The folks at home had the wrong dope, that’s all. Why, I’ve got my position here, too important to give up at any one’s beck and call. Didn’t the boss congratulate me to-day on the way I wrote those Detroit letters? I bet I get a raise in another three months.”

They folded their napkins into their silver-plated napkin-rings, rose from the table, walked together into the living-room, stood looking out into the drab bleakness of One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, across to the factory-like, monotonous row of apartment houses opposite, where innumerable lights twinkled from other little caves, where other little families lived, humdrum, unmarked, inconsequential, grey. And from the minds of Mattie and Joe faded the visions of little white houses and cool, green lanes.

They remembered, instead, the city, their city—Mattie had seen a moving picture taken, once, from a Fifth Avenue bus—three years ago Joe had been introduced to—actually taken the hand of—William Jennings Bryan—they had both seen James Montgomery Flagg draw a picture for the Liberty Loan on the Public Library steps—a woman in a store had pointed out Lady Duff Gordon to Mattie—they had seen, on the street, a man who looked exactly like Charles M. Schwab—it might easily have been....

“I’ll write that letter right away and have it over with,” said Joe, “I won’t hurt ma’s feelings—she and Dad mean all right. Living in Burton Center all their lives we can’t expect them to understand things. It’s ridiculous, of course. I don’t know what came over us for a minute this morning. Of course we’ve got the crowded subways, here, and it costs a lot to live and—and all that. You can’t expect a place to be perfect. But—New Yorkers like us couldn’t stand that dead Burton Center stuff for five minutes. Why, we’re, we’re—city folks!”