Chapter 3
The Singers came from Cincinnati to cashier in the Farmers' State Bank: Mrs. Singer was city bred and city heeled and when she met Mrs. Wert Payley she didn't even blink. She put out her hand a little nor'-nor'east of her chatelaine watch, when Mrs. Payley put out her hand some four inches southwest by south, and waited calmly for Mrs. Payley to correct herself. There was an awful moment of suspense, and when it became evident that the only way to get Mrs. Singer's hand down to the other level would be to excavate beneath her and change her foundations, Mrs. Payley gave in and reached.
War was declared that minute, and I shudder now when I think of the months which followed.
Mrs. Payley, having been on the ground a long time, had fortified it, of course, and was president of all the clubs. But inside of a month Mrs. Singer flanked her position. She declined to join most of the clubs on the plea of being a busy woman, and organized a flower mission. Its object was to distribute flowers to the sick and needy, who generally consisted of Pat Ryan. Pat was nearly smothered in flowers that year, being good-natured, and as the work of collecting said flowers involved a great deal of meeting in the Singer home and dancing in the Singer attic, which was floored with hard maple that winter, Mrs. Singer had the girls of the town organized into a Roman phalanx before spring.
Mrs. Payley was triumphantly reëlected to the presidency of all her clubs that winter, but Mrs. Singer organized a public library association and pulled off a German. Mrs. Payley attended, and when she tried to patronize Mrs. Singer with her compliments, that clever infighter beat her to it by explaining the theory of the German to her. That made Mrs. Payley so mad that the next month she invited the state president of the Federation of Women's Clubs to visit her, and didn't ask Mrs. Singer to the tea. The next week Mrs. Singer organized a Country Club. It only consisted of a two-room pavilion in which picnics could be held and dances could be pulled off, with long intermissions for the extraction of slivers from the feet. But it was just as easy to talk about while you were in town and to refer to in a hushed and exclusive manner as if it cost a million, and when Mrs. Payley realized that she could never hope to become exclusive enough to get into it, though goodness knows she couldn't have been hired to belong to the foolish thing, she quit speaking to Mrs. Singer, the split became a chasm, and we began choosing up sides in earnest.
That winter Mrs. Singer seceded from the church which Mrs. Payley ran, and founded an Episcopal church, taking seven choir members out of the Congregational church, to say nothing of the organist. All this mixed up religion in Homeburg that winter until you could scarcely tell it from a ward caucus.
By spring it was dangerous to show favors to either side, and when the school election came around, it was fought out between the Payley and Singer factions. Sally Singer had been given higher marks than Sarah Payley, and the upshot of it all was that when the Payley side prevailed at election by nine votes, the superintendent lost his job. He was a good superintendent and the cause of education didn't get over the jolt for some years, but justice, of course, had to be done.
The Singers got some satisfaction out of it by electing the school board treasurer, which took a lot of money out of the First National Bank. That, of course, got the banks into the row. You city folks may have your financial flurries, but if you've never been around and between and under a bank scrap in a small town, you don't know what trouble is. There were a couple of failures that needn't have happened, and a lot of partisan financiering, and then the town rose up and sat down on our social leaders with a most pronounced scrunch. We can stand just about so much society in Homeburg, but when it gets to elbowing into business, churches, schools and funerals, we are more sensible than you metropolitans are. It only takes a half-day to pass the word through a small town, and one fine morning the Payleys and Singers discovered that while they were still facing each other like two snorty and inextinguishable generals, their armies had gone off arm in arm.
That ended the feud and put society in Homeburg back in its proper place--in the front parlors in the evening after the dishes had been done up. The Payleys and Singers still continued to compete, but we declined to fight and bleed for them and amused ourselves instead by watching them from the sidelines. Mrs. Payley joined the "When I was in Europe" brigade, and the Singers got the first automobile in town. It kept the Singers so busy supporting and encouraging it, that the Payleys were able to build the first modern house with a sleeping porch and individual bathrooms--and about the time the Singers came back with a two-story bungalow full of chopped wood furniture, Mrs. Payley went abroad again and began to say: "The last time I was in Europe." It was nip and tuck, year in and year out, between the two, and we all enjoyed it a lot.
But it wasn't until the Payley and Singer children came home from college and formed a tight little circle with their backs out, that we began to reap the benefits of really haughty society.
The Payley and Singer children had absorbed all their families had to offer, and then they went off to school in the East and laid in a complete stock of the latest styles in superiority. They were all finished in the same spring and shipped back to Homeburg--magnificent specimens of college art with even their names done over--and when they realized that they had to live forever in the old town, where no one spoke their language or could even understand their clothes, the family feud was forgotten and the four rushed together for mutual protection and formed a real Smart Set.
It's just like your bigger crowd. It doesn't have anything to do with us in particular. And we are just like you are. You open your Sunday papers and read reams about the plumbing and pajamas and pet dogs and love affairs of your first families, and I guess nothing that Sally Singer or Sarah Payley ever did got past the scornful but lynx-eyed Homeburgers. When Sarah was getting letters on expensive stationery from Kansas City, the whole town discussed the probable character of a man who would put blue sealing wax on his envelopes, and when Sally made her pa put an addition on the Singer home, we knew what color she was going to do her boudoir in three months in advance. But we are prouder than your people. You hire down-trodden reporters to go and abase themselves to get the information, while we wouldn't lower ourselves enough to ask even by proxy. We just let the sewing women and hired girls tell us.
Being an exclusive set in a small town is a whole lot harder than it is in New York, and I've always admired our youngsters for the way they've carried it off. Of course, four people can't form a club or give parties or support an exclusive restaurant; they can't even be exclusive all by themselves. They have had to mingle with us, but they are always carefully insulated. They joined our Country Club, but they did it with their fingers crossed, so to speak. They always come out together and protect each other from our rude advances as much as possible. They import college friends whenever they can, and they always have a few bush leaguers, or utility players, to work in on such occasions. Henry Snyder used to say he could tell when there was need of the peasantry at the Singer house by the way Sally Singer would suddenly descend from the third cross-road beyond Mars to the street in front of the post-office and ask him with an accurately hospitable smile if he couldn't bring his sister up to the house that evening to meet a few guests. And once a year all four turn in and give a real dress rehearsal of up-to-date social science, to which Homeburg is liberally invited and at which unknown and unsuspected things are served for refreshments and a new and deadly variation of bridge or dancing or punch or receiving lines or conversational technique is put on for our inspection and bewilderment.
We have a show at our opera-house now and then, and we always go to these affairs largely to see our Smart Set perform. It always comes--even East Lynne is better that West Homeburg--and I'll tell you, by the time they have come rustling in about half way through the first act, H. DeLancey Payley and W. Sam Singer in clawhammers with an acre apiece of white shirt and holding about four bushels of pink fluff over their arms, and the boys have consulted anxiously with the usher, the two girls, beautiful visions of Arctic perfection, standing in well-bred suspense and holding their gowns in the 1915 manner, and all four have hurried down to the best seats and have unharnessed and stowed away their upholsterings, and DeLancey has folded up his explosive hat and Sam has leaned back in a lordly way and beckoned to the usher for another program--by the time all this has transpired, the actors have forgotten their lines, and we have gotten our money's worth out of the evening's entertainment.
The hardships those people inflict on themselves in the sacred cause of correctness are agonizing. It takes something more than nerve to wear a silk hat and Prince Albert down to the Homeburg post-office on Sundays to get the mail--especially with Ad Summers always on hand to spill a large red laugh into his sleeve and say to some friend in a tremendous stage whisper that the darn dude's legs must be bowed or he wouldn't want to hide 'em that way. And as for the carriage proposition, I'm certain that no martyrs have endured more. DeLancey persuaded Hi Nott to buy a real city carriage, and the four have used it faithfully; only the Payleys and Singers live in different edges of town, and by the time Hi has hauled Sam and his sister across town to the Payleys, through Homeburg's April streets, which average a little more depth than width, and has hauled the four down to the theater, there are usually about three breakdowns. I've seen the four of them plodding haughtily home from "Wedded but No Wife", the girls holding their imported dresses out of the mud, and the boys sounding for bottom on the crossings with their canes, while Hi drove the carriage solemnly down the road beside them. The mud was too deep for them to get home in the carriage, but everybody could see it was there and that they had paid for it and had done their darndest, anyway. After all, that's no worse than the way you New Yorkers carry your gloves in your hand in warm weather. You don't need them, but you want the world to know you've got 'em and wouldn't be found dead without 'em.
When our Smart Set gives a party, we all try to live up to it as far as possible, and so we insist on going by carriage. Hi starts hauling us at six o'clock, six to a load in dry weather, and he usually gets the last batch there just in time to begin hauling the first platoon home.
But those are just little troubles for our Smart Set. Your Smart Set has no troubles except the job of spending its money fast enough to keep from being smothered by the month's income. It does what it pleases, and if anybody objects, it raises the price of something or other by way of retort. But our Smart Set has to live in Homeburg, and what is more, it has to live off of Homeburg, which is as hoity-toity a place to live off of as you can find. Sally Singer can't afford to offend any one but the depositors in the Payley Bank, and if DeLancey caused any Homeburger to stalk down to his father's bank and extract a thousand-dollar savings deposit, old man Payley would thrash DeLancey and set him to work on his farm. They have to show their superiority over us so deftly and pleasantly that we don't mind it. They have to keep us good-natured while despising us. With half the genius for contemptuous conciliation that the Payley and Singer children have displayed in the last five years, the French nobility could have kept the peasantry yelling for bread as a privilege long after 1793.
Emma Madigan weighs two hundred pounds and drives a milk route. She went to high school with Sally Singer, and it is the joy of her life to poke her head into the Singer home when Sally has company and yell: "Sall, here's your milk!" But Sally never tries to refrigerate her with the Spitzbergen glare which she uses on us collectively when she goes to the theater. You couldn't possibly refrigerate Emma, but you might encourage her to say more--like the time when Sarah Payley passed her on the street without speaking, being busy treading the upper altitudes with a young Princeton College visitor, and Em yelled back: "For goodness' sakes, Sarey, if you didn't lace so tight you could get your chin down and see some one!"
But most of us are not so frank. We are too good-natured. As a matter of fact, we'd hate to see the Payleys and Singers common. They help to make Homeburg interesting, and so long as they know their place and don't irritate us, we wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world--that is, not much.
There was a dancing school in Homeburg two winters ago, and to the consternation of every one the Payley and Singer young folks joined it. It took two meetings for us to discover what had clogged up the atmosphere and taken the prance out of things. Then we tumbled. The Payleys and Singers were educating us. They were fitting us to live in the rarified upper altitudes of refinement and to mingle with rank without stepping all over its feet. By the third meeting Henry Snyder had caught on to most of the signals and he explained them to a lot of us beforehand with care. When Sally Singer dropped on to a bench and moved her skirt ever so slightly aside it was a sign that the young man with whom she was speaking might sit down and hold sweet converse. And when Sarah Payley smiled brightly at a gentleman from some distance and just caressed the chair beside her with her eye for the millionth part of a second, that young man, if he had a spark of gentility in him, would hurdle the intervening chairs to arrive. We also discovered how to get away just before the young ladies got bored, by other delicate signs, and how to derive the fact that they were thirsty and needed sustenance, and just how to imprison them in our strong but respectful arms during a waltz, and how to collect fans and gloves and programs and handkerchiefs from the floor without grunting or jolting the conversation. It was hard work, and spoiled the evening to a certain extent, but we did the best we could until Jim Reebe spoiled it all in the fourth lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men during the intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admired properly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in his megaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time you made a hit with me was the day you slid down the banisters at school."
That finished the course; and the Smart Set, being unanimously absent the rest of the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffed our white gloves back into the bureaus and yelled for encores when we couldn't get them any other way.
I'll tell you, a man could be a hero to his valet with half the exertion which it takes to be a Somebody to an old grammar-school mate in a small town.
Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for social progress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married this summer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three look like the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire. Looks to me as if there were going to be some of these mess alliances to wind up with, for Sam Singer is calling on Mabel Andrews in citizen's clothing, she having jeered him out of his Prince Albert; and Henry Snyder has stopped scoffing and infests the Payley house to an alarming extent. So I imagine that our Smart Set will get back to shirtsleeves in two generations less than yours usually requires, and we'll miss it a lot. Next to the ill feeling between the _Argus_ and the _Democrat_, it has been our greatest diversion.
IV
THE SERVANT QUESTION IN HOMEBURG
_How Mrs. Singer Amuses Us All by Insisting on Having It_
No apologies, Jim. If the Declaration of Independence who prepares your meals for you has packed up and gone, I don't need any explanations. I understand already. You can't ask me up to dinner because there isn't going to be any dinner. If you don't go out to a restaurant, you'll get a bite yourself while Mrs. Jim puts the children to bed. And then you'll spend the evening wondering where you can beg, borrow, abduct, hypnotize, or manufacture another cook.
I know all about it. The great sorrow has come upon you, and there's only one comfort--there are others. It falls upon all who try to get out of doing their own housework in New York. And I'll bet you were good enough to the last cook, too--only asked her for one night out a week, came to her meals promptly, didn't demand more than a fair living wage, and let her have the rest. Yes, of course you did. And you're going to let the next one have the best room and ring for her breakfast in the morning, aren't you? What? Draw the line at that? Well, Jim, I admire your nerve. You're one of the grand old rugged patriots who will not be trodden on. Why did your last cook leave, anyway?
Didn't like the kitchen, eh? And being in a flat you couldn't tear it out and rebuild it. Yes, I agree with you. The servant problem in New York is getting to be very serious. To-day you are gay and happy with luxury and comfort all about you, and to-morrow you are picking sardines out of a can with a fork for dinner. I am certainly glad I live in the country, where servant girls do not come on Monday with two trunks and go away early Thursday morning with three trunks and a bundle.
We have no servant problem in Homeburg. However, I exclude Mrs. Singer from this "we." There are only two servants in the whole town. Mrs. Singer has them. That is, she tries to have them. Mrs. Singer's attempt to have servants in a town which is full of hired girls is one of the things which make life worth living and talking about in Homeburg.
How do I know about it? Bless you, we all know about it. It's a public tragedy. Can't help ourselves. We've had four of Mrs. Singer's ex-servants in our house in six years, and they have all told their troubles. Mrs. Singer trains girls for the entire town. She's twice as good as a domestic science school, and she doesn't charge any tuition. She is devoting her life to the training up of perfect hired girls, and we revel in the results. It is ungrateful of us to blame her for taking away our hired girls, because, as a matter of fact, she is our greatest blessing. Right at this minute in Homeburg I know that two eager families are sitting around waiting for the latest Singer class in domestic science to graduate and come back to them for jobs. It ought to come most any time. The course rarely lasts over three months.
You see, Mrs. Singer isn't one of us. She came to Homeburg from a large city, and she brought her ideas with her. She's not the kind of a woman, either, who is going to cut those ideas down to fit Homeburg. Her plan is to change Homeburg over to fit her ideas. She's been working at it for fifteen years now, and I must say she's won out in several cases. Dress suits are now worn quite unblushingly, we have a country club half a mile from the post-office--that's the advantage of a small town, you can get away from the rush and bustle of the city into the sweet cool country in about four jumps--and no one thinks of serving a party dinner without salad any more. But she's fallen down on one thing. She can't keep servants. That problem has been too much for her. Mrs. Payley, her rival, has had the same hired girl for sixteen years or more; but Mrs. Singer scorns a hired girl. She must have servants, two of them, and while she has a remarkable constitution and has stood up for years under the fight, I don't see how she can keep it up much longer.
A hired girl in Homeburg is a very reasonable creature. We never have any trouble with them, and they have very little with us. We usually catch them green and wild, just off the steamer, and they come to us equipped with a thorough working knowledge of the Swedish language, and nothing else to speak of. Our wives take them in and teach them how to boil water, make beds, handle a broom, use clothespins, and all the simpler tricks of housework, to say nothing of an elementary knowledge of English, which they usually acquire in a month; and we pay this kind a couple of dollars a week, and they wash the clothes, take care of the furnace, and mow the lawn with great pleasure. They usually stay a year or so and then they go to Mrs. Singer's finishing school. They do not go because they are discontented, but because she offers them five dollars a week, which is a pretty fair-sized chunk of the earth to a young Swedish girl just learning to do a few loops and spirals in English and saving up the steamer fare to bring her sister over.
Mrs. Singer takes our nice, green, young hired girls, who are willing to do anything up to the capacity of a stout back, and she tries to make servants out of them. She gives them embroidered aprons and caps and makes them keep house her way. And after they have spent a couple of months making coffee to suit Mrs. Singer, and going over the mahogany to suit Mrs. Singer, and arranging the magazines on the table to suit Mrs. Singer, and taking up the breakfast to Miss Sally to suit Mrs. Singer, and going over the back hall again to suit Mrs. Singer, and keeping their mouths closed tightly all day to suit Mrs. Singer, and only going out on Thursday afternoons to suit Mrs. Singer, they sort of get tired of the job, and one after another they stop Mrs. Singer at a favorable moment and say these fatal words:
"Aye gass aye ent stay eny longer."
Then some Homeburg family joyfully seizes on the deserter, and Mrs. Singer starts out all over again on the job of making a servant out of a hired girl.
I have to admire the woman for her eternal grit. She won't give up for a minute. She is going to run her house just so if she has to train up a million girls and lose them all. Half the time she has to do her own work, but I'll bet that when she has the luncheon ready she puts her little white lace napkin on her hair and comes in and announces it to herself in the proper style; and I'll bet, too, that she doesn't talk to herself while she is working in the kitchen, either. She says the way Homeburg women talk to their servants is disgraceful; that it lowers a servant's respect for her mistress. I'd give a lot to see Mrs. Singer looking at herself coldly in the glass after breakfast and giving herself orders for the day in a tone that would brook no familiarity whatever.
Our women-folks, who are familiar with the Singer residence, say that it is a beautiful thing full of monogrammed linen and embroidered towels and curtains that have to be washed as often as a white shirt, and that whenever they call they are pretty sure to find Mrs. Singer trying to teach some new and slightly dizzy second girl how to take care of the house without breaking off the edges.