Irvin Cobb - Ladies and Gentlemen

Its seriousness began to lay hold upon her in the morning on a Monday, which proverbially is a bothersome day for housewives anyhow, when Miss Rena Belle Titworthy, the recording secretary of the Ingleglade Woman’s Club and its only salaried officer, called to break the news to her, it being that in the judgment of a majority of the active workers in the club Mrs. Gridley should have the distinguished pleasure of entertaining Mr. Boyce-Upchurch on the occasion of his impending visit. In a more vulgar circle of life the same thing has been termed passing the buck.

“But,” expostulated Mrs. Gridley, “but – of course I feel flattered and I am sure Henry will, too, when he comes home tonight and hears about it – but I’m afraid we couldn’t make such a prominent man comfortable. Our house is rather small and all that, and besides there’s Olga having packed up and left only last night and all that. Really, don’t you think, Miss Rena Belle, that he would prefer to go to the hotel where he could be – you know – quieter and more to himself? Or to Mrs. Wainwright’s? She’s the president of the club and she’s the madam chairman of the executive committee besides, and naturally the pleasure of having Mr. Boyce-Upchurch should go to her. Her house is a mansion, almost, while we – ”

Miss Titworthy caught her up right there.

“No,” said Miss Titworthy firmly. Miss Titworthy had authority about her and a considerable distinction. She was large and deep-chested and combined in her manner the magisterial and the managerial and, subtly, the maternal. She had all that a motherly woman should have, except children. And, as just stated, she was large, while on the other hand Mrs. Gridley was slight and, upon the whole, plastic by temperament, not to say bordering on the yielding. And bulk, in such cases, counts.

“Pardon me,” said Miss Titworthy still more firmly, “pardon me, my dear, but no. Madam Chairman Wainwright is closing up their place to go to their other place in the Berkshires; you must have known that. Probably you forgot it. And the hotel is quite out of the question. I had a letter only yesterday from Mr. Boyce-Upchurch, written by him personally – it seems he doesn’t carry a secretary with him on his tour – saying he preferred stopping at some private home. He mentioned the inconveniences of American hotels and something about their exceedingly high rates. I’m going to keep it as a souvenir. And so, what with Madam Chairman Wainwright closing up and you being the first vice-president – well, there you are, aren’t you?” concluded Miss Titworthy with a gesture which was meant to be a death blow to further argument.

“And then the water being shut off – I’m thinking of that, too,” said Mrs. Gridley, but in a weakening tone. “Henry had the plumber come and disconnect all three of the bathtubs. He said he wasn’t going to put temptation in the way of his own family or himself, either. I know lots of people are doing it on the sly – using a hose, too – but I can’t even have a little water in a sprinkling can for my poor withered flowers. Look at them out of that window there – just literally drying up. And we’re sending all the wash, even the flat pieces, to the Eagle Laundry. And Henry is going to his club in town for a bath every day, and I’m doing the best I can with the wash-basin and a sponge, and the way Nora – that’s my cook’s name – and Delia, the waitress – now that Olga has gone, Delia’s the only other girl we’ve got left – the way those two carry on and complain you’d think I was personally responsible for the fact that not a drop of rain has fallen in over two months. And the English being such great hands for their tubs and all, and Mr. Boyce-Upchurch being an Englishman and all, why, I’m honestly afraid, Miss Rena Belle, that he’ll be awfully put out.

“I dessay he’ll be able to accommodate himself to a condition over which none of us has any control,” stated Miss Titworthy. “He’ll arrive Wednesday afternoon on the five o’clock boat. He asked that he be met with a car. I dessay you’ll be wanting to give a little dinner to him Wednesday evening. I don’t know what he’ll want to do Thursday morning – be driven around, I imagine. And Thursday afternoon there’s the reception at the Woman’s Club, and his lecture is that night, and Friday he leaves for Trenton where he has his next date on Saturday. He did write something about preferring to be ridden over to Trenton.”

“I could take him over myself,” said Mrs. Gridley, her citadel undermined and she rapidly capitulating, “if he doesn’t mind going in a two-seated runabout.”

“There’ll be no trouble about the car,” stated Miss Titworthy. “I dessay someone will proffer the use of a touring car.”

“Well, that point is settled then,” agreed Mrs. Gridley, now entirely committed to the undertaking. “But I must get somebody in and broken in to take Olga’s place between now and Wednesday. Really that gives me only today and tomorrow, and help is so hard to get, you’ve no idea, Miss Titworthy! I suppose I’d better run into town this afternoon and go to the employment agencies. No, I can’t, – there’s my bridge lesson. And tomorrow is the Fergus’ tea. I can’t go then, either. I promised Mrs. Fergus I’d pour. I suppose I’ll have to get Henry or my brother Oliver to do it. But neither one of them would know how to pick out a girl, provided there’s any choice at the agencies to pick from – oh, dear!”

“Had you thought of a butler?” inquired Miss Titworthy.

“A butler?”

“Yes, instead of a maid. You’ll pardon the suggestion but I was thinking that Mr. Boyce-Upchurch being a foreigner and accustomed, of course, to butlers, and a butler giving a sort of air – a tone, as it were – to a household, that perhaps – well – ”

They had fallen on fertile ground, those seeds. They were sprouting, germinating. Before the massive shoulders of the Ingleglade Woman’s Club’s efficient recording secretary had vanished down the bowery and winding reaches of Edgecliff Avenue they were putting forth small green speculative shoots through Mrs. Gridley’s mind. Always and ever, from the very first days of her married life, Mrs. Gridley had cherished in the back of her mind a picture of an establishment in which the butler, a figure of dignity and poise and gray striped trousers in the daytime but full-dress by night, would be the chief of staff. As what woman has not? And now for the gratifying of that secret ambition she had an excuse and a reason.

Section Two of this narrative brings us to another conversation. At this stage the narrative seems somehow to fall naturally into sections, but one has a premonition that toward the last it will become a thing of cutbacks and close-ups and iris-ins and fade-outs, like a movie. It brings us to this other conversation, which passed over the telephone between Mrs. Gridley and her brother Mr. Oliver Braid.

“Well, Dumplings,” said that gentleman, speaking at noon of Tuesday from his office, “the hellish deed is done!”

“You got one then?” she answered eagerly.

“Got one? Madam, you wrong me and you low-rate him. I got the One and only One – the Original One. The only misleading thing about him is his name. Be prepared for a pleasant shock. It’s Launcelot Ditto. I ask you to let that soak into your tissues and be absorbed by the system. Only Ditto means more of the same and if I’m any judge, there aren’t any more at home like him and there never will be. But the Launcelot part fits like a union suit.

“Oh, girl, I’m telling you he’s got everything, including the adenoids. Not the puny domestic brand of our own faulty and deficient land, mind you, but the large, super-extra-fine export, golden-russet adenoid of that favored island whose boast is that Britons never shall be slaves except to catarrh. And he’s as solemn as a Masonic funeral. And he stepped right out of a book by way of the stage. He ought to be serving strawberries and Devonshire cream on the terrace to the curate of St. Ives and the dear old Dowager Duchess of What-you-may-call-’em, while the haw-haw blooms in the hedgerow. He ought to be coming on at the beginning of Act One to answer the telephone and pat the sofa pillows smooth and fold up ‘The Pink ’Un,’ and sigh deeply because the Young Marster is going to the dogs. He ought to be outlining the plot to a housekeeper in rustling black silk named Meadows.”