Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 94: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Q2 } don’t inhabit none o’ them brown fronts that lines de Avenoo. That’s ol’-time stuff. Them houses look like business joints too swell to have a sign out. ““An’ Sister Helena ain’t got, a sou ex- cept w’at she can touch Frank for. Y’see the firs’ ol’ man Holder starts the habit o’ leavin’ it all to the kid that gets born first— _ pervidin’ it’s a boy. You men al’us gets the bes’ o’ ever’t’ing. It ain’t right. But P’m glad to list’en to them Loudens howl. ‘““An’ his ot’er sister—the De Broom, she’s wailin’ an’ gashin’ her teeth too. Say, Billy, you’d tink Frank ’d kilt off t’ree ’r four good frien’s 0’ de fam’ly. An’ all over a little weddin’. That jus’it! He married her! ‘““An’ say, Billy, that Louden bunch is scart stiff. Y’see, they’re ’fraid the firs’ thing she’ll do is up an’ have a baby. An’ all us fr’m Jeff down—Jeff he’s the butler— is prayin’ for a boy. [ll say so! Then 0’ course, Frank’ll leave ever’t’ing to the kid, Gee—oh, but I hopes it zs a boy!’ ”’ Billy was a good narrator, of quick and vehement sympathy, full of feeling. Society, as Mame knew—there is nothing that goes on in the home that is not known to the servants, and related fully to their families and friends—society was amused and pleased; not because of the romantic marriage, but because of the scandal. : “Why, my deah, bless, you,” as the lan- tern-jawed Mrs. Delacroix expressed it, “nobody can find out what the creature looks like. She must be dreadful. And poor old Frank, of all people! A deah boy, Frank; but a good deal of an ‘ass. Always was. It runs in the family.” As Mame had put it, “there was weepin’ an’ gashin’ o’ teeth—believe me they was!” According to the same spirited witness, ’ Frank and his bride had been enticed to a massacre given by Sister Helena. Even the De Broom, as Mame called her, showed up with her skeleton—‘‘de one Frank buys ‘er for a hushan’.” All the family were there in war-paint. They had their knives out, and every time they caught the bride alone they started digging in. Mame said that the young woman only smiled with eyes half-closed and remained gentle and quiet, like a lady that had four aces up her sleeve. The creature had a gipsy-like look about her. She did not wear corsets, which con- firmed the family opinion that she was immoral. Her eyebrows were not plucked Adventure or shaven; her lips did not look like raw wounds; her hair was a dark brown, bushy, bebbed, and her face was molded with delicacy and almost perfection of feature. She couldn’t speak English in a civilized way. She wouldn’t give a picture to the papers. De Broom eyed her with burning, apprais- ing eyes, and coughed, coughed, coughed. He knew her as the Cabronette, but it wasn’t his way to tell all he knew or to make a scene. The flapper friends of the family said that she was ashamed of her looks and that they didn’t blame her for not having a picture for the papers. The older dames tried to get Frank to make her go to a photographer. They said that she was so lovely each of them wanted a picture; but according to Mame: “Frank he don’t fall for ’em. He don’t even stump his toe. He says she’s got a leary feelin’ about cameras an’ things an’ don’t like the idea. ‘The same as me,’ he tells ’em. ‘I don’t like ’em either, so I knows how Aliza feels.’ “Oh, boy, an’ you oughta hear ’em pan ‘er f’r that name. ‘Aliza!’ Huh. Sounds like a nigger name. Bet she is part coon. She looks it. Ow-er-r-r-ruR-Rr!’ That’s the way they talked, them dames.”’ Aliza was subjected to all manner of quizzing about herself, her. family, her his- tory. They were inquisitors putting on the thumb-screws, and she was a little nervous tod. . _. What she told about herself had to under- go a cross-examination. They tore her story to pieces, they got her a little flustered; then the sisters, full of repressed triumph, as people are when they bear bad news, marched off to corner Frank. They caught him behind one of his big black cigars alone in an alcove. They had found out something that he ought to know. Their manner was a good deal like that of an undertaker at the bedside of his mother- in-law; and with sharp, encouraging glances from each to the other, and a sniffle here and there to show how badly they felt, they began by saying that of course they had intended to take her into the family and love her like a sister. They would have taught her manners and otherwise over- come her low breeding. She had no taste— look where he had found her—but they knew how to use polish. COnmicloool< (C@