Ain't Angie Awful!/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEANIVOROUS RIT
ANGELA was now only sixteen. But what does that matter, when one is young! She held a responsible position in a Swedish match factory. She it was who, when the matches were all finished, dipped the tips in water to make sure they would not light.
Would I might describe her sloe-black, fast-black hair, her high-brow eyebrows, her nice cool high-school eyes whose pupils were always playing truant whenever she winked. But I see you are not listening. You want me to resume the offensive, with a capital offense.
Well then, although Angie was as happy as a fried egg, her friend Conscience had begun to tell her, “You’re another!”
For the Soul, beloved brethren, hath also its traffic cops, warning us at all life’s crossroads, “GO” or “STOP.” But somehow, whenever Angie’s conscience showed green she was apt to see red.
“Fat gentlemen with side whiskers,” it was now whispering, “who present young girls with popcorn and peanuts on the Elevated trains are nice, but naughty.” But, though he had his neck shaved, he was wealthy, and could evidently afford it. If, then, he choose to drop buttered popcorn
and peanuts down the back of her neck, why shouldn’t she accept the gifts in the spirit in which they were given? For they were given in the very highest of spirits.
Angela’s view of life, you see, was a little cross-eyed. She should, of course, have kicked him gently in the face and then called upon the handiest marine hard by to finish him up and spit him out the window. If she couldn’t find a marine—and sometimes one can’t, although they are the first to fight—she might, at the nearest jewelers, at least have got an aquamarine.
But instead, she gave him a little two-for-five smile (you should have seen one of her large 85c ones, when she was lapping up a cucumber sundae!) and coyly mentioned telephone number. It wasn’t hers, really though; it belonged to the undertaker on ground floor—and that was a funny thing, too, for Angie had often said she wouldn’t be found dead in his shop.
One day the undertaker who was always undertaking people, undertook to call her down to the phone. Angie always hated to be called down, but condescending she descended. It was her fat friend; she knew it was, because she could smell peanuts in the receiver.
“Say, meet me at the Ritz, will you, Peacho? Right away!”
Angela frowned. But it wasn’t that, upon such short acquaintance, he called her by her botanical name. It wasn’t that something seemed to be stirring and moaning inside the coffin on which she sat. It wasn’t even that the undertaker was listening, as usual, for he wasn’t; he was drinking as usual—embalming fluid. No—“the Ritz”—it was something that often happened when she tried to think—a sudden rush of mud to the head.
“But what are rits?” she faltered. “Is it a breakfast food, or something like a Yonker?”
“Oh, take a taxi, and ask the engineer. Hurry!” and he had hung up before she could say Jack Dempsey. She hadn’t time even to think of saying it. It didn’t occur to her till hours afterwards.
She didn’t take a taxi, but a taxi took her to the hotel whose bills towered high over the adjacent roofs. There she paid the chauffeur—’twas all she had—a compliment. The poor girl could ill afford it, seriously ill; she had now but two left, and no more coming in till Saturday!
But she was going to meet a man! This time love’s guerdon would be hers! Angie thought a guerdon was some kind of a locket or lavalliere, perhaps even with diamond chips in it!
******
We now come to the party of the second part—a rather entertaining Friday Night party, from 8 till 10.
He was large and blond; rather blond than large, though he was large, too—too large. Tanned by the fierce tropical rays of the electric light, his honest, leather-beaten features and even portions of his face and visage showed him to be a strap-hanger of more than usual vigor—one who could step on a dozen feet at once, not including his own.
In full view of the audience, he was eating eight peanuts, with nothing up his sleeves and a silk hat. As he ate, he breathed; and as he breathed, he ate. Long practise had enabled him to do both at once. But he couldn’t do both and be surprised at the same time. He had to stop something, so he stopped breathing—for lo, Angela was before him, the love light in her ears.
“Here I be!” she cried. It was a grammatic moment.
He gave her one look. But then, he was always giving her things. He had been generous from the first. Not content with that, he gave her a cuff on the jaw. It was one of his best cuffs, too.
“You are late, girl! Come up to my room on the fourth story, the only story, unfortunately, with a happy ending. It is in the East wing, near the wishbone. Follow me!”
Did it bode murder, or marriage? Angie hardly cared. All she knew was that she was beautiful and desperate and slightly bowlegged; and heaven helping her, she would make this man her slave. If heaven wouldn’t help her, it would be hell.
How they ever got up to the room she never knew—so why should I—or you? Perhaps they crawled up the mail chute. Perhaps they were carried up on a tray, disguised as two near-gin rickeys and a liverwurst sandwich. But they are in the room already and we’ll have to hurry to catch up to them.
At last she was alone with him and two dozen mouse-traps. They were all arranged upon the bed, all different nationalities, though most of them were females. Why had he set a trap for her in this lonely place? As both her hands were in her muff she could not shut her eyes and thus conceal her blushes.
“Now here is my best seller,” he went on as if nothing had happened, which, in fact, it had. He displayed a small silver contraption looking like the skull of a rheostat. “This is devised for the use of ladies who are afraid of mice. Just attach it to the garter, and it catches them on the way up, thus rendering it unnecessary to mount a chair or other quadruped. You, my dear, are to peddle them; you will have all rights north of Fifth Avenue. You have brains and temperament and freckles, and should do well. I have picked you out of the whole of New York, but I shall return you. Now here is another, a trap with a chain to be fastened to the wall, grand piano or anything heavy, like a mortgage, or afternoon caller. You see, little one? The mouse, when caught, can neither pull the trap into his hole, nor the hole into his trap. You will work on a commission, say a captain’s, or, if you do well, a major’s.”
But Angela Bish had a soul above mouse-traps. She would catch larger game; and the wealthy peanut-eater, whose victims strewed the floor, not to speak of shuddering peanuts yet to be eaten, pale with fear, had the makings of a he-husband. Her chance had come.
With a scarlet cry she hurled herself into his arms, and, by the hard-boiled kiss she gave him he perceived, too late, that she was virtuous. Amazed, shocked, he wrenched
And alas, Angie, in her excitement—she had hardly known what excitemeant before—had sprung the trap, and behold, she now found herself firmly held by the left ear at the end of a long silver chain. Struggle as she might or might not, she could not escape. She couldn’t even get away. The room was filled with wails and peanuts. No one came.
THE PLUMBER, WHO CUT OFF HER EARS WITH HIS TIN SHEARS, HARDLY KNEW HER
******
It was hours before they found her. She had aged terribly. The plumber, who cut off her ear with his tin shears, hardly knew her. But then, he had never seen her before, and we must forgive him; besides, peanuts change one considerably, especially when eaten without a spoon.