by Willa Cather
Sybil: “See her? Why should I? No indeed! That is your business, sir. You made the mistake and you must rectify it.”
Agent: “But how am I to convince her that I have made any mistake? She has an autograph letter from the Central office and ample identification, while you have shown me none as yet.”
Sybil: (Icily) “Here is my card, sir. You must pardon the oversight as I am not accustomed to having my word questioned.”
Agent: “She said exactly the same thing, and in the same tone. Now don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. Johnston. I believe your claim is all right, but my opinion doesn’t go with the road. I must have tangible proof to start to looking the matter up on. And I am afraid your card won’t do. Have you checks for your baggage?” (She produces them.) “Thank you. Excuse me a moment. (He disappears and Sybil paces the floor distractedly.)
Sybil: “What am I to do? If I telegraph Reginald, he may be in Los Angeles, and besides I couldn’t get an answer before the train goes. What a blockhead this agent is! And at first I thought him rather nice. The idea of giving my passes to the first impostor that comes along, and then coolly proposing that I trot after her. What western men lack in manners they make up in assurance. This would never have happened on an eastern road. Reggie must have this fellow called down.”
(Agent returns and throws checks on window shelf.)
Agent: “These checks claim three trunks, all marked Sybil Ingrahame.”
Sybil: “Certainly, my maiden name. They are my old traveling trunks. O dear, how unfortunate! I suppose you think me the adventuress! Perhaps you contemplate having me arrested!”
Agent: “Madam, I have far more serious matters to contemplate. I have implicit faith in you, but I can’t do much for you on faith; and I certainly can’t accost that imposing personage at the Inter Ocean House without some sort of evidence. I really want to help you if I can, so let’s see what can be done. I will be busy with the eastbound passenger pretty soon. You said you had a letter from your husband, didn’t you?”
Sybil: (Eagerly.) “To be sure! Here it is, he is very definite. (She reads.) “This will land you at Cheyenne, there go to the Union Pacific station where the agent will hand you—look there, read for yourself.” (Agent examines letter and hands it back, shaking his head.)
Agent: “Yes, I understand, but this letter is addressed to sweetheart and is signed ‘Your Boy, Reggie.’ I am afraid no road would honor that signature.”
Sybil: (Indignantly) I didn’t suppose you would feel at liberty to read the whole letter, and your jokes are in very bad taste, sir. My husband will report your conduct to headquarters and have this matter looked into.
Agent: Then I wish he would go about it now, for I don’t know how to. I’ll wire the Omaha office and see if they had orders to issue passes for two Mrs. Johnstons. In the meantime I would advise you to see the other woman, or you might send a note to her.”
Sybil: “Well, if you will kindly call a boy I suppose I can do that.” (Agent puts stationary on the window shelf. He goes to the telegraph instrument and begins to send a message.)
Sybil: “Will you let me see that receipt a moment? I want to see whether the creature claims to have a first name.” (He hands it to her.) “Why this is signed Mrs. S. Johnson, JOHN-S-O-N, without the T. Well, she is stupid! So long as she is appropriating other people’s passes and names she needn’t quibble at a single letter. She might just as well have taken the T along with the rest of it, and I shall not hesitate to tell her so.” (She writes furiously.)
Messenger boy comes in. Sybil gives him the letter.) There, get that over to the Inter Ocean House, and bring me an answer at once.”
Boy: Yes’m.” (He goes out.)
(Agent comes to the window again. He speaks:)
Agent: “And while you are waiting, Mrs. Johnston, can’t I send out and get some lunch for you?”
Sybil: (Stiffly) “Thank you, I don’t care for anything. But my little dog, Bijou, has had nothing since morning. I think I must go out and try and find some milk for him.”
Agent: “Oh you never mind that! One of my boys will get Bijou’s milk for him. At least let me get you a comfortable chair.” (He opens a door and brings out one from his office.)
Sybil: (Seating herself) “Thank you.”
Agent: “I am awfully sorry that this trouble has occurred, Mrs. Johnston, and that it puts me in such an ungracious light.”
Sybil: “O, I perfectly understand, sir, that you must do your duty.” (The agent disappears with a shrug. He returns carrying a soup plate.)
Agent: “Here is Bijou’s lunch. He’s a husky little dog, and by the way, the other Mrs. Johnson, or rather the lady who got your passes, had a dog as like him as two peas. She is a regular high stepper, and pretty trim-looking. She didn’t seem like a fraud.”
Sybil: (Freezing harder) “I don’t question the lady’s charms and I shall have nothing to say about your apparent susceptibility, if it were not responsible for the loss of my passes.”
Agent: (Dodging back into his office) “Here’s the boy now.”
(Boy comes in and hands Sybil a note.)
Sybil: (Reading) “Dear Madam: I think there can be no mistake about my passes. They were sent me by Mr. Reginald Johnston, vice-president of the C.R. & S., my old and tried friend. I have a letter of apology from the forwarding clerk of the Union Pacific office in Omaha, apologizing for his delay in overlooking Mr. Johnston’s request, and keeping me for four days in this disagreeable place. Moreover, I this morning received a telegram from Mr. Johnston stating that he would meet me here and travel west with me. Regarding the spelling of my name, I must say that I feel the need of nothing from Mrs. Johnston alphabetically. My name is spelt without the T, and the passes were made out in the correct form. My acquaintance is of such long standing, that I can scarcely believe he has forgotten how to spell my name. Sincerely, Sally Johnson.” Good heavens! This volapuk. My husband to meet her and travel west with her? Is the woman insane? Why if he could possibly have left California, he would come east for me. What can she mean and who is she? Sally Johnson, without the T, what a name! Just as common as she is, a cake walk sort of a name. Where pray did Reginald ever know such a person? Certainly I have met all his friends. Why this woman must know him well if she takes the liberty to ask him for passes over the western roads. She must have some claim—” (She pauses a moment in deep thought, as a possible solution dawns upon her. She crushes the letter up in her hands.) O! how horrible! how disgusting! She must have been one of them! Have been? She is, and that is why she is hurrying to him. And he is coming to meet her! He could not even wait until she arrived. And that is why he told me that he might be out of town when I got there. He didn’t even know whether he could get away from her to meet me. Her passes were delayed, should have been here four days ago, and she would have reached him four days before I would. O!” (She rushes wildly to the window which is closed again, and raps.)
“Agent, Agent!” (Window opens and the agent appears.)
Agent: “Ah! It is you, Mrs. Johnston?”
Sybil: “I am sorry to trouble you again, but what did you say this person looks like?”
Agent: “The other Mrs. Johnson? O she is a regular fine one. Big, stately woman, good figure and lots of style. Blue eyes, very blue, skin of the sort we never see out here, creamy you know with roses in her cheeks. Blonde hair and lots of it—
Sybil: (Contemptuously) “Alkiline probably, such women always have.”
Agent: “I can’t say as to that, I am not an expert in such matters.”
Sybil: “Did she impress you as a person of breeding, a lady, in short?”
Agent: “A lady, why bless you, yes, a regular high stepper.”
Sybil: “Ah, thank you.” (She turns away from the window.) How horrible, how horrible and how disgusting. Just
the usual sordid, mercenary wrecker of homes; common woman who has to beat her way in the world, and wants to do it easy.” (She sinks wearily into the chair.) “Somehow, whenever I have thought of his past life, I have never thought of it as being cheap and common. I thought he had more imagination. I suppose, though, there is only one way to be bad, and that is the common way. Ah! common enough, God knows. But to think of his sending for her now, when I was hurrying to him with a heart so full of love,—Ah, Reggie, you will never know how full! No, you will never know that now. This feature of it is something that no woman could bear without debasing her womanhood. How all those dreadful things the girls used to tell me about him come back to me now. And I used to think it was all envy, because they wanted him and couldn’t get him. Why, I used to pity them! They’ll be pitying me now. No, I can’t endure that. I will not be pitied! Margaret Villers used to tell me about his horrid scrapes at college, and about his keeping an uptown flat with a sky terrier and things for some person, and a coupe with dark blue upholstering to set off the creature’s blonde loveliness. Why this creature is a blonde!” (She rises and begins pacing the floor.) She may be the same; of course she is. No man, not even the most rapacious, ever wanted two alkaline blondes in succession. Perhaps he has never dropped her at all; perhaps it was on her account that he cut our wedding trip short and hurried back to New York. O horrible! My life is all going to pieces under me, there is nothing left. She even has a terrier like mine, the agent said so. I suppose he has even given her the same jewels, bought duplicates probably. And that is why he works so hard; the expense of two establishments, and so forth. Perhaps she knows all about me, and they discuss our household affairs together, as people do in Balzac’s novels. She may even have read all the letters I wrote him—no, I can’t believe that of him, he couldn’t be so base. I shall have to get used to thinking of him in this way, I can’t do it all at once. Why only yesterday—ah, how happy I was yesterday! I used to tell myself that I was too happy and that I would have to pay for it some day. I even told him so once, and he said, ‘Of course you will, by seeing your husband more bewitched with you every minute. That is your everlasting punishment.’ What nice manful things he did say! He was never maudlin or patronizing; somehow he always seemed to respect one’s intelligence. Ah! I know he did love me, for a little while any way. Why I even used to wish that I could suffer a little for him in some way, and I used to be so selfish before I loved him. Ah Reginald it is not only yourself that you take away from me; you take my conscience and my better self, and the brightness out of the sun, and the blueness out of the sky! O Reggie, Reggie!” (She weeps.)
Agent: (From the window) “I’ve got an answer to my inquiry, Mrs. Johnston. The Central Office wires that they had instructions from Mr. Reginald Johnston to issue but one pass to San Francisco, and they know nothing about any transportation for a second Mrs. Johnston.”
Sybil: (Absently) “Thank you, but it doesn’t matter now. How soon does the eastbound passenger leave?”
Agent: “In fifteen minutes. And now I want to go out and get some lunch. If you want anything just call the boy.”
Sybil: “Thank you. You have been very kind.”
(Agent closes the window.) “Now I must begin to think. What am I to do? Going west is out of the question now. He is coming for her and he can have her. I will not be one of a menage a trois. There is nothing left for me but to go home, back to that big, dark, gloomy house on Fifth Avenue, where his ghost will walk forever to keep me company.” (Opens her pocketbook) “I have money enough with me to get to Chicago, and there I will telegraph father. I’ll never touch Reginald’s money again. Possibly he thinks I married him because he owns a railroad. Men who buy love never believe in any other kind. Yes, I will go home. And then what? That’s the question. I shall not even have the consolation of telling my woes to my friends, and receiving calls of condolence, as Alberta Frick did, since I am not that kind of a person. She made a regular vocation of it. And I shall never marry again. Dear me, how long life is, after all. How many days and nights there are to be lived through somehow. And yesterday it seemed so short. How does that song go:
When the land was white with winter
And dead love was laid away,
I was so glad life could not last
Forever and a day.
It all simmers down to that in the end. There, I might sing Cicely Fanshawe went on the stage and made a name for herself, and sang her husband back to her feet and left him to grovel there until he literally went to the bad for the love of a woman he had neglected shamefully when he had her. And why cannot I, Sybil Ingrahame Johnston, have my voice trained by Marchesi and do the same. I used to think of the stage in the old empty days before I met Reggie. Well, the days to come will be emptier. At school they always said that my voice had great dramatic possibilities. Yes, I will go to Marchesi. That is what they all do. There was a time when disappointed, heartbroken women crept into convents and had their hair cut off; now they blondine it and go to Marchesi. O I can be that sort of a blonde, since he prefers them!” (She looks at clock.) “That train will soon be here. Why I have not been in this place an hour, and it seems years. I am sure the wrinkles are beginning to come, I can feel them. Well, an hour has been long enough to bring my life down about my ears.” (She hears train whistle and an engine bell ringing.) That must be my train now. Boy, boy! O where is that boy!” (Picks up the dog and heavy satchel and staggers to the door, rushing into the arms of Mr. Reginald Johnston, who has just arrived on the eastbound train.) “Reginald!”
Reginald: “O my sweetheart, but this is good! I couldn’t wait, you see what a mollycoddle you have made of me! Couldn’t let you cross the Sierras for the first time without me to save my life! Come, put down all that lumber and kiss me, there is nobody here. Why, I’ll even kiss Bijou, I am so happy.” (She struggles from his embrace and attempts to get out of the door) “Where are you going? That’s the eastbound train that I came in on, ours goes an hour later and we’ll have plenty of time. What’s the matter, aren’t you glad to see me?”
Sybil: (Hysterically) “O I have no doubt that the other will be gladder! I’m surprised that you didn’t go to her first—or perhaps you didn’t know that she was here. Well, she is, the other Mrs. Johnson, without the T; she is waiting across the street for you, and you can take her back with you. I am going home to New York.” (She weeps.)
Reginald: “Other Mrs. Johnston? Waiting for me with tea, across the street? What in the name of the state lunatic asylum are you talking about? Here, put down that grip, and tell me what’s the matter?’
Sybil: “O, you might have got her passes on time, since you must have her. You need not have brought us together and given her a chance to insult me. She is here, I tell you, in this very town, and has written me a most shameful letter, the other woman without the T.”
Reginald: Where? What do you mean? Who wants tea? Sybil, dear, do calm yourself, and tell me what you mean. I don’t understand one word you are saying. It is all tuttihash.”
Sybil: “I tell you that other woman has my passes.”
Reginald: “Well, let her have ’em, who ever she is. I can take care of you. I pass, so do you, until hearts are trumps again, see?”
(He embraces her. Sybil drawing away from him.)
Sybil: “Don’t touch me until you have explained to whom you gave my passes, and why I found none here.”
Reginald: “Why, because I never ordered any. After I wrote you, I decided to come on here and meet you, and give you an all round surprise, and it wasn’t until this morning that I discovered that the Burlington passenger had changed time Sunday and that your train would get into Cheyenne before mine did. Then I wired at once, didn’t you get my telegram?”
Sybil: “No, I did not. I think you are getting mixed and would better stop right there. Your telegram went to the other Mrs. Johnson, witho
ut the T.”
Reginald: (Exasperated) “Am I never to be done hearing about this woman and her tea? Who in heaven’s name is she, and what has she got to do with me?”
Sybil: (Pointedly) “That’s just exactly what I wish to know. I arrived here to find this person had taken my passes and expected you to travel west with her.”
Reginald: “Travel west with this tea toper, or is she a tea agent? Not if I know myself! Have you encountered a lunatic? Sybil, dear, you have been ill; what doctor did you have? Where’s the agent? O somebody’s been drinking!”
Sybil: “He has gone off to dinner, and I will thank you not to make me any more ridiculous in his eyes than you have done already. He came very near arresting me for an impostor.”
Reginald: “Arresting you?” (Sinks into a chair.) “O my God, this is a mixup! Will somebody explain!”
Sybil: “It is from you that explanations are due, if you can think of any you are not ashamed of. Who is this other woman?”
Reginald: (Dejectedly) “I wish to God I knew. Can’t you be a little plainer, Sybil? What are the facts?
Sybil: “The facts are plain enough to me. I arrived here this morning and asked whether passes had been sent the agent for Mrs. S. Johnston. I was told that such passes had been sent, but that they had been claimed a few hours previous by a blonde creature who had credentials from the Central office and who wrote me a most insulting letter, saying that you were to meet her and accompany her west, and that you were her old and tried friend, and signed Sally Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N, without the T. Now who and what is Sally Johnson?’
Reginald: O Sally Johnson, Sally Johnson! That explains the matter.
Sybil: “I fail to see it. I am still waiting.”
