THE BRIEF DEBUT OF TILDY

If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your

loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you

should be interested to know how the other half consumes provisions. And

if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are things of moment,

you should know Bogle's, for there you get your money's worth--in

quantity, at least.

Bogle's is situated in that highway of _bourgeoisie_, that boulevard of

Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in

the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster-stand, containing

cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a

cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From

the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should extract a

sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet will his prowess be balked

when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each table

stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made "from the recipe of a

nobleman in India."

At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, and

takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks he makes your change,

files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about the

weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement you

would better not venture. You are not Bogle's friend; you are a fed,

transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing

of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go--to the devil if

you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments.

The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and a

Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen. She was tall, beautiful,

lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There

was no more necessity for another name at Bogle's than there was for

finger-bowls.

The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda?

Please listen this time--Tildy--Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and

too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to yourself once

or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate infinite.

The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen, and

did not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen Voice, and

contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the

waitresses concerning food.

Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she

donned a few hundred dollars' worth of clothes and joined the Easter

parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so

yourself.

The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait

upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for

the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They

who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light

of her smiles. Every man there--and they were mostly men--tried to make

his impression upon her.

Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at once. And

every smile that she sent forth lodged, like pellets from a scatter-gun,

in as many hearts. And all this while she would be performing

astounding feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, ham-and,

sausage-and-the-wheats, and any quantity of things on the iron and in

the pan and straight up and on the side. With all this feasting and

flirting and merry exchange of wit Bogle's came mighty near being a

salon, with Aileen for its Madame Recamier.

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the

regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the

steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening.

At least twice a week some one took her to a theatre or to a dance.

One stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened "The

Hog" presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as

"Freshy," who rode on the Traction Company's repair wagon, was going

to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract

in the Ninth. And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and

said he was a stock broker asked her to go to "Parsifal" with him.

"I don't know where this place is," said Aileen while talking it over

with Tildy, "but the wedding-ring's got to be on before I put a

stitch into a travelling dress--ain't that right? Well, I guess!"

But, Tildy!

In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented Bogle's there was almost a

heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose, the hay-coloured hair, the

freckled skin, the bag-o'-meal figure, had never had an admirer. Not

a man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the

restaurant save now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger

for food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges

of wit. None of them loudly "jollied" her of mornings as they did

Aileen, accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming, of late

hours in the company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a

turquoise ring or invited her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant

"Parsifal."

Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat

at her tables spoke to her briefly with quotations from the bill of

fare; and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavoured

accents, eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in

their chairs to gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy,

that Aileen's pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their

bacon and eggs.

And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could

receive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the

short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and she was glad to see her

rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and

lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-coloured hair

the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not

vicarious, but coming to us alone.

There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly

bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was almost enough to heal any

optic.

"Fresh guy," explained Aileen, "last night as I was going home at

Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break.

I turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to

Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a

good one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look

real awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when

he comes in for his tea and toast at ten."

Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man

had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the

twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow

one and black one's eye for love!

Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who

worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair,

and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was

too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one

of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled

weakfish.

One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking beer.

There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When Mr.

Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around

Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the

street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied

himself to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade.

For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of

Aileen shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying:

"Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss

Slyboots! First thing I know you'll be stealing some of my fellows.

I must keep an eye on you, my lady."

Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she

had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of

the potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for

Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet

boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable.

The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a

miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth

of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and

returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn--the robe of Venus herself.

The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both

Circe and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen

herself had been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant.

Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she

went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried not

to let her words sound proud and boastful.

"A gentleman insulted me to-day," she said. "He hugged me around the

waist and kissed me."

"That so?" said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. "After

this week you get a dollar a week more."

At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with

whom she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one

whose merit needed no bolstering:

"A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arm

around my waist and kissed me."

The diners accepted the revelation in various ways--some

incredulously, some with congratulations; others turned upon her the

stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone.

And Tildy's heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the

towers of Romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which

she had for so long travelled.

For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy

established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought

ribbons, and arranged her hair like Aileen's, and tightened her waist

two inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders

would rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have

loved her desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly

jealous.

Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy

rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal

to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend.

At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in.

There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the

restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was

quartering pies. Mr. Seeders walked back to where they stood.

Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon

against her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore Venus's

Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver

symbolic heart.

Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into

his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.

"Miss Tildy," said he, "I want to apologise for what I done the other

evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I

wouldn't of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that a-way when I was

sober. So I hope, Miss Tildy, you'll accept my 'pology, and believe

that I wouldn't of done it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't

of been drunk."

With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed,

feeling that reparation had been made.

But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon

a table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing

her heart out--out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel

they with blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had

torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she

despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and

prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to

running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the

court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain

the Sleeping Beauty.

Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red

hand groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of

her friend's.

"Don't you fret, Til," said Aileen, who did not understand entirely.

"That turnip-faced little clothespin of a Seeders ain't worth it. He

centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 818