The big town - Ritchey - (2)

“Of course not,” I said.
    “But,” says Ella, “he says, ‘Don’t take no offense. I think we’re next door neighbors. Don’t you live acrost the hall on the sixth floor of the Lucius?’ So of course I had to tell him I did.”
    “Of course,” I said.
    “And then he said,” says Ella, “‘Is that your sister living with you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she lives with my husband and I.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you’ll get in and let me take you home, I’ll tell you what a beautiful girl I think she is.’ So I seen then that he was all right, so I got in and come home with him. And honestly, Sis, he’s just wild about you!”
    “What is he like?” says Katie.
    “He’s stunning,” says the wife. “Tall and wears dandy clothes and got a cute mustache that turns up.”
    “How old?” says Kate, and the Mrs. kind of stalled.
    “Well,” she said, “he’s the kind of a man that you can’t tell how old they are, but he’s not old. I’d say he was, well, maybe he’s not even that old.”
    “What’s his name?” asked Kate.
    “Trumbull,” said the Mrs. “He said he was keeping bachelor quarters, but I don’t know if he’s really a bachelor or a widower. Anyway, he’s a dandy fella and must have lots of money. Just imagine living alone in one of these apartments!”
    “Imagine living in one of them whether you’re a bachelor or a Mormon,” I says.
    “Who said he lived alone?” asked Katie.
    “He did,” says the Mrs. “He told me that him and his servants had the whole apartment to themselves. And that’s what makes it so nice, because he’s asked the three of us over there to dinner to-morrow night.”
    “What makes it so nice?” I asked her.
    “Because it does,” said Ella, and you can’t ever beat an argument like that.
    So the next night the two girls donned their undress uniforms and made me put on the oysters and horse radish and we went acrost the hall to meet our hero. The door was opened by a rug peddler and he showed us into a twin brother to our own living room, only you could get around it without being Houdini.
    “Mr. Trumbull will be right out,” said Omar.
    The ladies was shaking like an aspirin leaf, but in a few minutes, in come mine host. However old Ella had thought he wasn’t, she was wrong. He’d seen baseball when the second bounce was out. If he’d of started his career as a barber in Washington, he’d of tried to wish a face massage on Zachary Taylor. The only thing young about him was his teeth and his clothes. His dinner suit made me feel like I was walking along the station platform at Toledo, looking for hot boxes.
    “Ah, here you are!” he says. “It’s mighty nice of you to be neighborly. And so this is the young sister. Well,” he says to me, “you had your choice, and as far as I can see, it was heads you win and tails you win. You’re lucky.”
    So when he’d spread all the salve, he rung the bell and in come Allah with cocktails. I don’t know what was in them, but when Ella and Katie had had two apiece, they both begin to trill.
    Finally we was called in to dinner and every other course was hootch. After the solid and liquid diet, he turned on the steam piano and we all danced. I had one with Beautiful Katie and the rest of them was with my wife, or, as I have nicknamed them, quarrels. Well, the steam run out of three of us at the same time, the piano inclusive, and Ella sat down in a chair that was made for Eddie Foy’s family and said how comfortable it was.
    “Yes,” says Methuselah, “that’s my favorite chair. And I bet you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much it cost.”
    “Oh, I’d like to know,” says Ella.
    “Two hundred dollars,” says mine host.
    “Do you still feel comfortable?” I asked her.
    “Speaking about furniture,” said the old bird, “I’ve got a few bits that I’m proud of. Would you like to take a look at them?”
    So the gals said they would and we had to go through the entire apartment, looking at bits. The best bits I seen was tastefully wrapped up in kegs and cases. It seemed like every time he opened a drawer, a cork popped up. He was a hundred per cent. proofer than the governor of New Jersey. But he was giving us a lecture on the furniture itself, not the polish.
    “I picked up this dining room suit for eighteen hundred,” he says.
    “Do you mean the one you’ve got on?” I asked him, and the gals give me a dirty look.
    “And this rug,” he says, stomping on an old rag carpet. “How much do you suppose that cost?”
    It was my first guess, so I said fifty dollars.
    “That’s a laugh,” he said. “I paid two thousand for that rug.”
    “The guy that sold it had the laugh,” I says.
    Finally he steered us into his bedroom.
    “Do you see that bed?” he says. “That’s Marie Antoinette’s bed. Just a cool thousand.”
    “What time does she usually get in?” I asked him.
    “Here’s my hobby,” he said, opening up a closet, “dressing gowns and bathrobes.”
    Well, they was at least a dozen of them hanging on hangers. They was all colors of the rainbow including the Scandinavian. He dragged one down that was redder than Ella’s and Katie’s cheeks.
    “This is my favorite bathrobe,” he said. “It’s Rose D. Barry.”
    So I asked him if he had all his household goods and garments named after some dame.
    “This bathrobe cost me an even two hundred,” he says.
    “I always take baths bare,” I said. “It’s a whole lot cheaper.”
    “Let’s go back in the living room,” says Katie.
    “Come on,” said Ella, tugging me by the sleeve.
    “Wait a minute,” I says to her. “I don’t know how much he paid for his toothbrush.”
    Well, when we got back in the living room, the two gals acted kind of drowsy and snuggled up together on the davenport and I and the old bird was left to ourself.
    “Here’s another thing I didn’t show you,” he says, and pulls a pair of African golf balls out of a drawer in his desk. “These dice is real ivory and they cost me twelve and a half berries.”
    “You mean up to now,” I said.
    “All right,” he said. “We’ll make it a twenty-five dollar limit.”
    Well, I didn’t have no business in a game with him, but you know how a guy gets sometimes. So he took them first and rolled a four.
    “Listen,” I says: “Do you know how many times Willard set down in the first round?”
    And sure enough he sevened.
    “Now solid ivory dice,” I said, “how many days in the week?”
    So out come a natural. And as sure as I’m setting here, I made four straight passes with the whole roll riding each time and with all that wad parked on the two thousand dollar rug, I shot a five and a three. “Ivory,” I said, “we was invited here to-night, so don’t make me pay for the entertainment. Show me eighter from Decatur.”
    And the lady from Decatur showed.
    Just then they was a stir on the davenport, and Ella woke up long enough to make the remark that we ought to go home. It was the first time she ever said it in the right place.
    “Oh,” I says, “I’ve got to give Mr. Trumbull a chance to get even.”
    But I wasn’t in earnest.
    “Don’t bother about that,” said Old Noah. “You can accommodate me some other time.”
    “You’re certainly a sport,” I says.
    “And thanks for a wonderful time,” said Ella. “I hope we’ll see you again soon.”
    “Soon is to-morrow night,” said mine host. “I’m going to take you all up the river to a place I know.”
    “Well,” I says to Katie, when we was acrost the hall and the door shut, “how do you like him?”
    “Oh, shut up!” says Katie.
    So the next night he come over and rung our bell and said Ritchey was waiting with the car and would we come down when we was ready. Well, the gals had only had all day to prepare for the trip, so in another half hour they had their wraps on and we went downstairs. They wasn’t nothing in front but a Rools-Royce with a livery chauffeur that looked like he’d been put there by a rubber stamp.
    “What a stunning driver!” said Katie when we’d parked ourself in the back seat.
    “Ritchey?” says mine host. “He is a nice looking boy, but better than that, he’s a boy I can trust.”
    Well, anyway, the boy he could trust took us out to a joint called the Indian Inn where you wouldn’t of never knew they was an eighteenth amendment only that the proprietor was asking twenty berries a quart for stuff that used to cost four. But that didn’t seem to bother Methuselah and he ordered two of them. Not only that but he got us a table so close to the orchestra that the cornet player thought we was his mute.
    “Now, what’ll we eat?” he says.
    So I looked at the program and the first item I seen was “Guinea Hen, $4.50.”
    “That’s what Katie’ll want,” I says to myself, and sure enough that’s what she got.
    Well, we eat and then we danced and we danced and we danced, and finally along about eleven I and Ella was out on the floor pretending like we was enjoying ourself, and we happened to look over to the table and there was Katie and Trumbull setting one out and to look at either you could tell that something was wrong.
    “Dance the next one with her,” says Ella, “and find out what’s the matter.”
    So I danced the next one with Katie and asked her.
    “He squeezed my hand,” she says. “I don’t like him.”
    “Well,” said I, “if you’d of ordered guinea hen on me I wouldn’t of stopped at your hand. I’d of went at your throat.”
    “I’ve got a headache,” she says. “Take me out to the car.”
    So they was nothing to it but I had to take her out to the car and come back and tell Ella and Trumbull that she wasn’t feeling any too good and wanted to go home.
    “She don’t like me,” says the old guy. “That’s the whole trouble.”
    “Give her time,” says Ella. “Remember she’s just a kid.”
    “Yes, but what a kid!” he says.
    So then he paid the check without no competition and we went out and clumb in the big limmie. Katie was pretending like she was asleep and neither Ella or Trumbull acted like they wanted to talk, so the conversation on the way home was mostly one-sided, with me in the title rôle. Katie went in the apartment without even thanking mine host for the guinea hen, but he kept Ella and I outside long enough to say that Ritchey and the car was at our service any time we wanted them.
    So Ella told her that the next noon at breakfast. “And you’d ought to be ashamed of yourself,” says Ella, “for treating a man like that like that.”
    “He’s too fresh,” says Katie.
    “Well,” said Ella, “if he was a little younger, you wouldn’t mind him being fresh.”
    “No,” said Katie, “if he was fresh, I wouldn’t care if he was fresh. But what’s the number of the garage?”
    And she didn’t lose no time taking advantage of the old bird. That same afternoon it seemed she had to go shopping and the bus wasn’t good enough no more. She was out in Trumbull’s limmie from two o’clock till pretty near seven. The old guy himself come to our place long about five and wanted to know if we knew where she was at. “I haven’t no idear,” said Ella. “I expected her home long ago. Did you want to use the car?”
    “What’s the difference,” I said, “if he wanted to use the car or not? He’s only the owner.”
    “Well,” says Trumbull, “when I make an offer I mean it, and that little girl is welcome to use my machine whenever she feels like it.”
    So Ella asked him to stay to dinner and he said he would if we’d allow him to bring in some of his hootch, and of course I kicked on that proposition, but he insisted. And when Katie finally did get home, we was all feeling good and so was she and you’d never of thought they’d been any bad feelings the night before.
    Trumbull asked her what she’d been buying.
    “Nothing,” she says. “I was looking at dresses, but they want too much money.”
    “You don’t need no dresses,” he says.
    “No, of course not,” said Katie. “But lots of girls is wearing them.”
    “Where did you go?” said Ella.
    “I forget,” says Katie. “What do you say if we play cards?”
    So we played rummy till we was all blear-eyed and the old guy left, saying we’d all go somewheres next day. After he’d gone Ella begin to talk serious.
    “Sis,” she says, “here’s the chance of a lifetime. Mr. Trumbull’s head over heels in love with you and all as you have to do is encourage him a little. Can’t you try and like him?”
    “They’s nobody I have more respect for,” said Katie, “unless it’s George Washington.”
    And then she give a funny laugh and run off to bed.
    “I can’t understand Sis no more,” said Ella, when we was alone.
    “Why not?” I asked her.
    “Why, look at this opportunity staring her in the face,” says the Mrs.
    “Listen,” I said: “The first time I stared you in the face, was you thinking about opportunity?”
    Well, to make a short story out of it, I was the only one up in the house the next morning when Kathleen said we had a caller. It was the old boy.
    “I’m sorry to be so early,” he says, “but I just got a telegram and it means I got to run down to Washington for a few days. And I wanted to tell you that wile I’m gone Ritchey and the car is at your service.”
    So I thanked him and he said good-by and give his regards to the Mrs. and especially Katie, so when they got up I told them about it and I never seen a piece of bad news received so calm as Katie took it.
    “But now he’s gone,” I said at the breakfast table, “why not the three of us run out to Bridgeport and call on the Wilmots?”
    They’re cousins of mine.
    “Oh, fine!” said Ella.
    “Wait a minute,” says Katie. “I made a kind of an engagement with a dressmaker for to-day.”
    Well, as I say, to make a short story out of it, it seems like she’d made engagements with the dressmaker every day, but they wasn’t no dresses ever come home.
    In about a week Trumbull come back from Washington and the first thing he done was look us up and we had him in to dinner and I don’t remember how the conversation started, but all of a sudden we was on the subject of his driver, Ritchey.
    “A great boy,” says Trumbull, “and a boy you can trust. If I didn’t like him for nothing else, I’d like him for how he treats his family.”
    “What family?” says Kate.
    “Why,” says Trumbull, “his own family: his wife and two kids.”
    “My heavens!” says Katie, and kind of fell in a swoon.
    So it seems like we didn’t want to live there no more and we moved back to the Baldwin, having sublet the place on the Drive for three thousand a year.
    So from then on, we was paying a thousand per annum for an apartment we didn’t live in two weeks. But as I told the gals, we was getting pretty near as much for our money as the people that rented New York apartments and lived in them, too.
    CHAPTER III