THE SPRING SUIT

by P. G. Wodehouse

  "Shall we go to Giuseppe's?" she asked coldly.

  The question was a test. Giuseppe's was where they always went, one of the four hundred and eighty-seven Italian restaurants in the neighborhood of Times Square which provided sixty-cent table-d'hote dinners for the impecunious. The food was plentiful, especially the soup, which was a meal in itself, and they had always enjoyed themselves there; but if George could countenance the humble surroundings of Giuseppe's on his birthday, on the night they had been looking forward to for weeks as a grand occasion, then George must indeed have sunk low. For George to answer "Yes" was equivalent to an admission that he had feet of clay.

  "Yes," answered George; "that's just what I'd like."

  Rosie put her finger in her mouth and bit it hard. It was the only way she could keep from crying.

  Dinner was a miserable affair. The constraint between them was like a wall of fog. It was perhaps fortunate that they had decided to go to Giuseppe's, for there conversation is not essential. What with the clatter of cutlery, the babel of talk, the shrill cries of the Italian waitresses conveying instruction and reproof to an unseen cook, who replied with what sounded like a recitative passage from grand opera, and the deep gurgling of the soup dispatchers, there is plenty of tumult to cover any lack of small talk.

  Rosie, listening to the uproar, with the chair of the diner behind her joggling her back and the elbow of the diner beside her threatening her ribs, remembered with bitterness that George had called the McAstor a noisy crowded place.

  When the ice cream and the demi-tasses appeared Rosie leaned forward.

  "Did you get tickets for a theater?" she asked.

  "No," said George; "I thought I'd wait and see what show you'd like to go to."

  "I don't think I want to go to a show. I've got a headache. I'll go home and rest."

  "Good idea!" said George. It was hopeless for him to try to keep the relief out of his voice. "I'm sorry you've got a headache."

  Rosie said nothing.

  They parted at her door in strained silence. Rosie went wearily up to her room and sat down on the accommodating piece of furniture that was a bed by night and by day retired modestly into the wall and tried to look like a bookshelf. She had deceived George when she told him she had a headache. Her head had never been clearer. Never had she been able to think so coherently and with such judicial intensity. She could see quite plainly now how mistaken she had been in George. She had been deceived by the glamour of the man. She did not blame herself for this. Any girl might have done the same.

  Even now, though her eyes were opened, she freely recognized his attractions. He was good-looking, an entertaining talker, and superficially kind and thoughtful. She was not to be blamed for having fancied herself in love with him; she ought to consider herself very lucky to have found him out before it was too late. She had been granted the chance of catching him off his guard, of scratching the veneer, and she felt thankful. . . . At this point in her meditations Rosie burst into tears—due, no doubt, to relief.

  The drawback to being a girl who seldom cries is that when you do cry you do it clumsily and without restraint. Rosie was subconsciously aware that she was weeping a little noisily; but it was not till a voice spoke at her side that she discovered she was rousing the house.

  "For the love of Pete, honey, whatever is the matter?"

  A stout, comfortably unkempt girl in a pink kimono was standing beside her. There was concern in her pleasant face.

  "It's nothing," said Rosie. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

  "Nothing! It sounded like a coupla families being murdered in cold blood. I'm in the room next to this; and I guess the walls in this joint are made of paper, for it sounded to me as if it was all happening on my own rug. Come along, honey! You can tell me all about it. Maybe it's not true, anyway."

  She sat down beside Rosie on the bookcase bed and patted her shoulder in a comforting manner. Then she drew from the recesses of her kimono a packet of chewing gum, a girl's best friend.

  "Have some?"

  Rosie shook her head.

  "Kind o' soothing, gum is," said the stout girl, inserting a slab into her mouth as if she were posting a letter, and beginning to champ rhythmically, like an amiable cow. "Now what's your little trouble?"

  "There's nothing to tell."

  "Well, go ahead and tell it, then."

  Rosie gave in to the impulse that urged her to confide. There was something undeniably appealing and maternal about this girl. In a few broken sentences she revealed the position of affairs. When she came to the part where George had refused to take her into the McAstor the stout girl was so moved that she swallowed her gum and had to take another slab.

  The stout girl gave it as her opinion that George was a cootie.

  "Of course," said Rosie with a weak impulse to defend her late idol, "he's very particular about clothes."

  The stout girl would hear no defense. She said it was Bolsheviki like George who caused half the trouble in the world. It began to look to her as if George Mellon was one of these here now lounge lizards that you read pieces about in the papers.

  "Not," she said, eying Rosie critically, "but what that certainly is some little suit you've got on. I'll say so! Nobody couldn't look her best in that." She gave a sudden start. "Say, where did you get it?"

  "At Fuller Benjamin's."

  "No!" cried the stout girl. "But it is! I thought all along it looked kind o' familiar. Why, honey, that's the suit we girls call the Crown Prince, because it oughtn't to be at large! Why, it's a regular joke with us! I've tried to sell it a dozen times myself. What? Sure I work at Fuller Benjamin's. And—say, I remember you now. You came in just on closing time and Sadie Lewis waited on you. For the love o' Pete, why ever did you go and be so foolish as to let Sadie wish a quince like that on you?"

  "She looked so tired," said Rosie miserably, "I just hated to bother her to show me a lot of suits; so I took the first. It seemed such a shame. She looked all worn out."

  For the first time in her career as a chewer, a career that had covered two decades, the stout girl swallowed her gum twice in a single evening. Only the supremest emotion could have made her do this, for she was a girl who was careful of her chewing gum, even to the extent of parking it under the counter or behind doors for future use when it was not in active service.

  When she bought gum she bought the serial rights. But now, in the face of this extraordinary revelation, swallowing it seemed the only thing to do. She was stunned. A miracle had happened. With her own eyes she had seen a shopper who had consideration for shopgirls. Diogenes could not have been more surprised if he had found his honest man.

  "Well, if that don't beat everything!" she gasped. "Wherever did you get those funny ideas of yours about us salesladies being human? Didn't you know we was just machines? Now you listen here, honey: There's certainly something coming to you for that, and here's where you're going to get it. I've the cutest suit all tucked away down at the store, just ready and waiting for you. Honest, it's a bird! What's your size? Eighteen misses', I should judge. Why, it'll fit you just like mother made. I sold it this morning to a dame who went dippy over it."

  "It's sold!"

  "Don't you worry about that. It hasn't been sent off yet. And I know the dame that got her hooks onto it. She's one of the Boomerang Sisters, the kind you send goods to and have 'em come whizzing back to you. She's a C. O. D. lizard. She ain't worthy of that suit, honey, and she ain't going to get it. She'll get the Crown Prince instead and be told that's what she ordered."

  "But won't you get into trouble?"

  "There you go again, worrying yourself about the poor working girl! Say, that habit's going to grow on you if you don't watch out! I won't get into no trouble. She'll let out a squawk you'll be able to hear as far as White Plains, I've no doubt; but I should manifest concern! I'm quitting on the seventeenth. Going to be married!"

  The stout girl sighed dreamily.

  "Say, there's a fellow t
hat really is a fellow! Runs a dry-goods-and- notions store back home where I come from; been crazy about me since we were kids; has a car, coupla help, half-acre lot back of the house, twenty-eight chickens, and a bulldog that he's been offered fifty dollars for, and grows his own vegetables. I'm the lucky girl, all right. Not a thing to it!

  "Well, you look in at the store bright and early to-morrow morning, ask for me—Miss Merridew's my name—and I'll have that suit waiting for you. I'll say good night now. Got to write to my boy before I hit the hay. See you later!"

  The stout girl withdrew. Presently Rosie heard her through the wall singing Poor Butterfly. A little later there came an imperious banging on the floor above, from the room where the long-haired young man lived who was supposed to be writing a play. The singing stopped. Silence reigned.

  George was dealing with a poetess in his suave manner when Rosie reached the office of the Ladies' Sphere at noon next day. In a few moments the poetess had receded like a brightly colored wave that rolls down the beach. The elevator engulfed her and she was no more. George came over to Rosie.

  "Hello, kiddie! Where did you spring from?"

  This was quite a different George. His eyes shone with pleasure at the sight of her. His animation had returned—a very different George from the dull-eyed disapproving critic of last night.

  Rosie looked at him steadily, without an answering smile. She was a very different Rosie, also, from the stricken creature who had parted from him yesterday. The new suit was all and more than Miss Merridew had claimed for it. Navy blue, with short shoulders, tight sleeves and wonderful lines, it was precisely the suit of which Rosie had dreamed.

  She felt decently clad at last. From the smart little straw hat, with its flowers and fruit, to the black silk stockings, with their white clocks, and the jaunty patent-leather pumps, she was precisely all that a girl would wish to be. She could hold up her head again.

  And she did hold up her head, with a militant tilt of the chin. She was feeling strong and resolute. Before she left, the engagement would be broken. On that point she was as rigid as steel. If her outward appearance was all that George valued, she had done with him.

  "I came to say something to you, George," she said quietly.

  George did not appear to have heard her. He looked about him. From behind doors came the click of typewriters and the sound of voices, but nobody was visible. They had the anteroom to themselves.

  "Say! I got it!"

  "Got it?"

  "The raise! Another fifteen per."

  "Yes?"

  He seemed not to notice the coolness of her voice. This man was full of his own petty triumph.

  "I'll tell you one thing, though," he went on; "I don't know who Elmer Otis Banks is, but he's a prune! That dope of his may be all right with some people, but when it comes to slipping one over on Mr. Hebblethwaite it's about as much good as a cold in the head.

  "Yesterday afternoon I breezed into the boss' office, looked him in the eye as per schedule, and said I could do with a raise. According to the dope he ought to have come across like a lamb. But all he did was to tell me to get out. I got out. The way I figured it was that if I didn't get out then I'd be getting out a little later for keeps."

  A caller intruded, desirous of seeing the editor. George disposed of her. He returned to Rosie.

  "Well, back I go to my chair out here, feeling good and sore, and presently a dame blows in and wants to see the boss. I tell her nothing doing.

  " 'You evidently don't know who I am,' she says, looking at me as if I was just one of the common people. 'I am Mrs. Hebblethwaite.'

  "She had a book under her arm and it looked to me like a sample. I wasn't taking any chances.

  " 'Sorry, ma'am,' I says, 'but the last Mrs. Hebblethwaite that made a play round the end and scored a touchdown in the boss' private office was a book agent. So unless you have an appointment, it's no go. I value my job and I want to hold it.'

  " 'I shall speak to my husband about your impertinence,' she said, and beat it.

  "I thought no more about it. And that night, while I was waiting for you in the McAstor lobby, I'm darned if the boss didn't come in with this same woman; and I heard her ask him if he'd remembered to put the cover over the canary's cage before they left home.

  "Gee! By the time you arrived I'd made up my mind it would be the gate for me first thing this morning. I don't suppose you noticed anything, but I was feeling so sick I just wanted to creep away and die."

  Rosie leaned bonelessly against the rail. The reaction from her militant mood had left her limp. The thought of how she had wronged her golden-hearted George filled her with self-loathing. She had no right to be engaged to the most perfect of his sex.

  "Oh, George!" she gasped.

  George misinterpreted her emotion. He patted her hand encouragingly.

  "It's all right, kiddie! I told you there was a happy ending. This morning the boss sent for me.

  " 'What's all this I hear about your refusing Mrs. Hebblethwaite admittance yesterday?' he said. I was feeling that all was over now except the tearful farewells. 'She told you who she was,' he said. 'What did you keep her out for?'

  " 'I thought you were busy, Mr. Hebblethwaite,' I said. 'And it's always been my idea that if callers hadn't appointments you weren't to be disturbed on any account.'

  "He didn't say anything for a bit; then he kind of glared at me.

  " 'How many were there after the job when you got it?'

  "I told him twenty-seven, counting me.

  " 'Then let me tell you, young man,' he said, worrying his cigar, 'that I don't consider you one of twenty-seven. You're one in a million! You've a head! Weren't you boring me yesterday with some silly story about wanting a raise? What do you want a raise for?'

  " 'Want to get married, sir.' He looked at me in a pitying sort of way.

  " 'You don't know when you're well off,' he said. 'Oh, well! Give this to the cashier.'

  "And he scribbled something on a bit of paper. And—"

  George broke off and slid nimbly to intercept a fair creature in mauve who was trying to buck center.

  "Have you an appointment, madam? Then I fear—— Mr. Hebblethwaite is extremely busy. . . . The magazine goes to press to-day. If you will leave a message——"

  He came back.

  "What was I saying? Oh, yes. He gave me a note to the cashier for another fifteen a week. So there we are! Say, I happened to be passing a shop a few days ago and I saw in the window some parlor furniture—"

  Rosie gulped.

  "But, George, why didn't you tell me?"

  "Tell you? I have told you!"

  "Last night, I mean."

  George laughed a little sheepishly.

  "Well, after the way I'd been blowing to you about what a marvel I was and what I was going to do to the boss when I got him alone, I kind of felt you'd think me such a darned fool. Besides, I didn't want to worry you."

  "But you did worry me. I nearly died."

  George stared.

  "Eh? How? Why?"

  "Why. I naturally thought, when you suddenly didn't want to go into the McAstor, that you were ashamed to be seen with me."

  "Ashamed to be seen with you! Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "I thought you thought my dress was too awful."

  "What's the matter with your dress?" asked George, puzzled. "It looks all right to me."

  "Not this one, the one I wore last night."

  "Isn't that the one you wore last night?" said George.

  "I never notice what you've got on, kiddie. You could wear overalls and make a hit with me. It's you I'm in love with, not the scenery."

  Rosie blinked.

  "You're the most wonderful man on earth!"

  "Sure! But don't tell anybody."

  "But all the same, you're pretty awful not to see that this is the cutest spring suit ever made."

  George looked into her eyes. Elmer Otis Banks himself never directed into anybody's eyes s
uch a steady whole-hearted gaze. Looking over his shoulder again to make sure that their privacy was still undisturbed, he kissed Rosie.

  "Anything you wear looks that way to me," he said. "Well, as I was saying, I was passing this shop, and there in the window was the swellest set of parlor furniture——"

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  P. G. Wodehouse

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