Our Little Girl/Chapter 2
II
PRIDE AND JOY
An unfortunate tradesman on Broadway within a few blocks of Eighty-eighth Street looked resentfully after the copious figure of Mrs. Loamford striding uptown with a swinging gait eloquent of indignation.
“If she wanted bird’s eye maple,” he informed his assistant, “why didn’t she say so? All she said was frame the damn diploma, so I framed the damn diploma. She didn’t say what wood—left it to me—used my judgment —then listen to the way she raised hell——”
Similar in tone if not in vocabulary were the reflections of Mrs. Loamford. Why had the idiot framed Dorothy’s diploma from Miss Blagden’s School for Girls in mission when she had specifically—she could remember her very words—told him that she wanted it done in bird’s eye maple? It would look all out of place in Dorothy’s room. What was the use of getting a girl an expensive set of bird’s eye maple furniture as a graduation present and then hanging up a diploma from Miss Blagden’s School—and that meant something—in mission? Dumb. That’s what he was. Dumb.
Her anger simmered down when she saw Dorothy in the newly furnished room, arranging her gift-books on the bird’s eye maple shelf which had been especially built in as a sort of memorial for her school days. Dorothy certainly was a pretty girl and a graceful vision as she smoothed out the irregular rows of volumes. She might be even prettier when she filled out a little here and there, but she was already a little woman, a little Reitz woman—and not so little a woman, at that!
“See what I’ve got for you, Dorothy!” cried out Mrs. Loamford, as she stopped by the open door of her daughter’s room on the third floor of the house. “A surprise!” The framer might have erred, but there was something about the diploma, even as a piece of parchment curled inside a red ribbon, that was undeniably eventful.
“Oh, mother!”
Dorothy’s voice, always smooth and cool, had a little tremor in it. The days before and after graduation had been full of lovely acquisitions, such as wrist-watches (from Uncle Elliott), a handsomely tooled set of Washington Irving (from cousin Ben Wheeler of Utica), an ivory desk set (from Aunt Elsa Reitz of Baltimore, who was said to be very old, very rich and very much interested in her grandniece) and father’s personal gift, a small checking account, along with a complete set of accounting books. What was mother’s surprise? And anyhow, ostentatious gratitude had become something of a habit in the past week.
“Look, Dorothy!”
Mrs. Loamford unwrapped her parcel dramatically, and held up the framed diploma, much as she might have held up an infant snatched from a whirlpool.
“It’s lovely, mother!”
Kisses. Thank-you kisses, to be sure, but hardly distinguishable from the genuine.
“It’s so good of you to have it framed!”
If Dorothy was so pleased, Mrs. Loamford thought, it would be just as well not to tell her of the framer’s blunder.
“I thought my little girl would like to hang it up in her room,” beamed Mrs. Loamford. “Put it over your new desk, Dorothy. It will be a reminder of your school days.”
Mrs. Loamford, exhausted by the effort of presenting the diploma to Dorothy, sank into the new easy chair.
“My, what a comfortable chair!” she said kittenishly. “You certainly are a lucky girl, Dorothy.”
Dorothy was hardened to this sort of felicitation. She responded automatically with a kiss.
“And I have another surprise,” continued Mrs. Loamford. “Guess what it is.”
Dorothy wondered whether there was much distinction between a donation and a conundrum, but the simplest way to ascertain this unknown benefaction was to ask. “Uncle Elliott is coming to dinner tonight,” explained Mrs. Loamford, as though prophesying a millennium, “and after dinner we're all going to see ‘Little Miss Mercy.’ It’s a very sweet play.”
Kisses.
“There!” said Mrs. Loamford, reciprocating Dorothy’s tokens of affection with a dynamic caress, “now my little girl can put on her beautiful new evening frock. You don’t know how proud I am of you!”
Dorothy shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly as her mother flounced from the room. She was a little weary of these surprises which involved dinner with Uncle Elliott. She liked Uncle Elliott—he was her uncle, you know—but there were more exciting people who might come to dinner. Why couldn’t her parents do what Clemence Earle’s father had done—have a famous tenor as guest of honor at a little supper for his daughter? If she was going to study singing seriously, a famous tenor would be more interesting than Uncle Elliott. They might at least have invited Arnold Deering. She would ask her motherBut perhaps it would be ungracious to ask her mother, after all the things that had been presented so lavishly. Still, it would have been thoughtful to have asked Arnold. It wasn’t much fun going out with a lot of old people. How could one hint about these things? But it was too late to ask Arnold now, anyway.
She wondered whether she ought to place Arnold’s picture on her dresser. There was nothing romantic between them, but Arnold was the nicest young man she had met. He had a very young sister at Miss Blagden’s School and Milly Deering had had a crush on Dorothy. The crush led to the introduction of Arnold to Dorothy, and Dorothy had introduced Arnold to the family. Arnold was about twenty-five—he looked younger, but that was because he dressed “collegiate,” as the academic nomenclature of Miss Blagden’s under-graduates had it. He was a college man, which was a guarantee of the solidity of his intellectual attainments, he danced beautifully, and he really was good-looking. Dorothy looked at the cabinet picture which he had given her at one of his early visits. It didn’t do him justice. It didn’t show the shimmer of his wavy black hair, and his interesting smile was reduced to a senseless grimace. The photographer apparently had insisted on Arnold folding his arms, which made him look stout, and he wasn’t. He was athletic-looking. A lot of girls didn’t know anybody as nice as Arnold, and he was getting along wonderfully in the firm of Emerson, Goldberg and Emerson, bankers and brokers, in which his father had an interest. And Arnold didn’t have to work! Dorothy admired him for traveling all the way to Wall Street at the far end of the city every morning when he might have stayed at home or amused himself by motoring in the country. For a frugal grandfather had left to Arnold a complicated estate which provided what the girls of Miss Blagden’s School called a marrying income.
Arnold’s picture would look well on the dresser and it would impress the girls who came to see Dorothy—but her mother would be sure to make such remarks that it would have to be removed. Mrs. Loamford wasn’t cooperative where Arnold was concerned. Otherwise she would have thought of asking him to attend the little dinner and theatre party for Dorothy.
Mr. Loamford, in fact, had made some such suggestion, but his wife had declined to consider it.
“I like Arnold Deering,” she had admitted, “but it’s too pointed to invite him. Don’t be absurd, Samuel. It'll give Dorothy wrong ideas, and she’s too young to think of anything like that.”
This vague reference to wrong ideas and “anything like that” usually served to dispose of any conversational starts which might lead to a discussion of Dorothy’s matrimonial prospects.
“He’s a good, clean young man of good family,” Mrs. Loamford conceded, “and very nice, too. I really like him, but Dorothy’s only a child, and——”
Here came an inevitable clincher.
“Then there’s her career to be considered.”
The dinner party, therefore, was purely a family affair. Dorothy’s modest—a frock, a sleeveless little more modest creation in mauve, was than necessary, Dorothy thought—but effective. It set off her large gray-blue eyes prettily and it blended with her thick, dark brown hair, which had been waved for the occasion and puffed out becomingly over the ears. It was a little long—what was the use of having slender ankles and fetching legs if you couldn’t show them?—but it gave to her misses’ size figure just the slightly billowy effect which Dorothy admired. As Dorothy contemplated herself in the mirror, she regretted more than ever that Arnold hadn’t been invited. It was almost a pity to look so well for the benefit of the family.
She could imagine this function carried off properly. It would take place in an expensive apartment on lower Riverside Drive rather than in a private four-story house on Eighty-eighth Street, where one could hear the elevated trains rattle by when the windows were open. It would be in a dining-room with painted walls, illuminated by shaded wall brackets rather than in what had once been a “back-parlor,’ with nondescript green wall-paper and a glaring overhead candelabra. It would be served by a uniformed butler rather than by Lena, a pudgy household institution. There would be all kinds of distinguished people present (and Arnold) rather than the family. It would be followed by a party which occupied all of the boxes at the season’s most successful offering rather than attendance on a comedy which had been damned with the adjective “wholesome.”
“Dorothy-y!”
Her mother’s voice ended the hypothetical reconstruction of the evening. She went down to the sitting-room (second floor front) to be greeted by a heavy smack from Uncle Elliott, who wore a senatorial full dress suit. Her mother had on a tight-fitting black net dress which, as Tommy Borge had once observed, curves rather than speed. Her father entertained in evening clothes which seemed too long and his collar appeared to be too large. His white bow tie was of the ready-made order. He was sensitive about his inability to tie a presentable bow-knot and looked suspiciously on anyone who referred to his formal neckwear. His thin brown hair was matted down restively and he wore the rimless glasses which betokened a presumably memorable occasion.
The dinner started with grape-fruit. Dorothy was not the only one at the table who felt the need of guests derived from other than family sources. If there had been outsiders present Mr. Loamford would have coughed gently, and said, “Don’t think we have grapefruit every night,” snickered, and coughed gently again. He regarded this as a delicately humorous sally. Uncle Elliott, however, needed no alien stimulus.
“Grape-fruit,” he remarked, digging a trench in the hemisphere before him. “We didn’t have anything like this when we graduated from school, eh, Loamford?”
“We weren't like Dorothy,” responded Mr. Loamford with an air of gallantry.
“You did win a medal for penmanship,” demurred his wife.
Mr. Loamford grinned as though pride would be unseemly. “Well, the only medals I won,” boomed Uncle Elliott, “were the hidings I got in the school of hard knocks.”
He hollowed out his grape-fruit solemnly as he thought of his alma mater. Before the advent of publicized guides to gustatory niceties, he would have squeezed the liquid contents of the rind into his spoon.
“You deserve another medal, Loamford,” he continued with a sudden change of mood, “for having such a fine-looking daughter. I guess Miss Blagden’s School is a pretty first-rate one to graduate from, too, isn’t it, Dorothy?”
What could one say in answer to such a question?
“It’s the best in the city,” said Mrs. Loamford, smugly. It was a distinction to have a diploma from Miss Blagden’s School, Dorothy thought. Her father had never completed high school and her mother had drifted about in various public schools, never, apparently, obtaining any certificates of recognition. Dorothy reflected how easily she had gone through Miss Blagden’s curriculum. The imposing catalogue issued by that institution showed that an alumna must have a broad grasp on all of the arts and sciences. Dorothy had “taken” nearly everything available, although the intricacies of algebra had caused the abandonment of that subject in favor of music appreciation, which contributed an equal number, of credits toward a diploma, and which required little more than attention to performances of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on a player-piano. The college preparatory course might have been more difficult, but the “liberal arts” program was better adapted for one looking forward to a musical career. It was especially recommended to girls who “hoped to become home-makers,” and to those whose choice of studies was “not governed by college entrance regulations.”
There was something satisfying and ennobling in the possession of a diploma from Miss Blagden’s School. It was an order of merit. It was, as the valedictorian had said, “something that no time nor tide could take away from you.”
Uncle Elliott, who always led the conversation at family affairs, asked Mr. Loamford about a new bond issue. Mr. Loamford answered statistically, and the economic debate lasted through several courses. It bored Dorothy terribly.
But with the demi-tasse (why wasn’t it served in the parlor after the meal?) Uncle Elliott arose, with his cigar pointing at an imaginary heap of penciled notes. “Before the waiters clear away the dishes,” he began, not so jocularly as one might think, “I wish to take this opportunity to say a few words about our charming guest of honor, Miss Dorothy Reitz Loamford.”
Mrs. Loamford applauded self-consciously, and her husband coughed out a “Hear, hear.”
“This is only the beginning of bigger things,” Uncle Elliott continued. “I can see in my mind’s eye another table, a larger table, at which distinguished people from all parts of the city—no, of the country—will be sitting. The guest of honor will be"
He bowed and waved his cigar.
“Dorothy Reitz Loamford, the famous singer. I only hope that I may have the honor of presiding on this occasion—may I have it, Dorothy?”
He was a dear old thing, although his speech sounded a little silly.
“Certainly, Uncle Elliott.”
She smiled pleasantly. Her smile was good and she knew it.
“And this banquet—for such it will be—I forecast for the not too distant future. How long does it take to be a great singer, Dorothy?”
The doorbell saved Dorothy.
“Our taxi!” exclaimed Mrs. Loamford. “We must hurry! Samuel, have you the tickets?”
Uncle Elliott stood staring at his cigar. Evidently it would be impossible to recapture the attention of his audience. His audience, in fact, had risen and was looking for coats and hats. Uncle Elliott overtook Dorothy as she was leaving the room, and hugged her.
“You certainly are sweet enough to eat,” he grunted through a kiss. “When you're a great singer, I guess you won’t care about your old Uncle Elliott, eh?”
He put a hand on each of her shoulders and surveyed her at arm’s length.
“Well, girl,” he said, nodding his head up and down, as though he were arriving at some portentous decision, “no matter what happens, we’ll never be prouder of our little Dorothy than we are this very minute!”