Lifted Masks Part 1

Lifted Masks.

by Susan Glaspell.

I

"ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS"

"N'avez-vous pas--" she was bravely demanding of the clerk when she saw that the bulky American who was standing there helplessly dangling two flaming red silk stockings which a copiously coiffured young woman a.s.sured him were _bien chic_ was edging nearer her.

She was never so conscious of the truly American quality of her French as when a countryman was at hand. The French themselves had an air of "How marvellously you speak!" but fellow Americans listened superciliously in an "I can do better than that myself"

manner which quite untied the Gallic twist in one's tongue. And so, feeling her French was being compared, not with mere French itself, but with an arrogant new American brand thereof, she moved a little around the corner of the counter and began again in lower voice: "_Mais, n'avez_--"

"Say, Young Lady," a voice which adequately represented the figure broke in, "_you_, aren't French, are you?"

She looked up with what was designed for a haughty stare. But what is a haughty stare to do in the face of a broad grin? And because it was such a long time since a grin like that had been grinned at her it happened that the stare gave way to a dimple, and the dimple to a laughing: "Is it so bad as that?"

"Oh, not your French," he a.s.sured her. "You talk it just like the rest of them. In fact, I should say, if anything--a little more so.

But do you know,"--confidentially--"I can just spot an American girl every time!"

"How?" she could not resist asking, and the modest black hose she was thinking of purchasing dangled against his gorgeous red ones in friendliest fas.h.i.+on.

"Well, Sir--I don't know. I don't think it can be the clothes,"--judicially surveying her.

"The clothes," murmured Virginia, "were bought in Paris."

"Well, you've got _me_. Maybe it's the way you wear 'em. Maybe it's 'cause you look as if you used to play tag with your brother.

Something--anyhow--gives a fellow that 'By jove there's an American girl!' feeling when he sees you coming round the corner."

"But why--?"

"Lord--don't begin on _why_. You can say _why_ to anything. Why don't the French talk English? Why didn't they lay Paris out at right angles? Now look here, Young Lady, for that matter--_why_ can't you help me buy some presents for my wife?

There'd be nothing wrong about it," he hastened to a.s.sure her, "because my wife's a mighty fine woman."

The very small American looked at the very large one. Now Virginia was a well brought up young woman. Her conversations with strange men had been confined to such things as, "Will you please tell me the nearest way to--?" but preposterously enough--she could not for the life of her have told why--frowning upon this huge American--fat was the literal word--who stood there with puckered-up face swinging the flaming hose would seem in the same shameful cla.s.s with snubbing the little boy who confidently asked her what kind of ribbon to buy for his mother.

"Was it for your wife you were thinking of buying these red stockings?" she ventured.

"Sure. What do you think of 'em? Look as if they came from Paris all right, don't they?"

"Oh, they look as though they came from Paris, all right," Virginia repeated, a bit grimly. "But do you know"--this quite as to that little boy who might be buying the ribbon--"American women don't always care for all the things that look as if they came from Paris.

Is your wife--does she care especially for red stockings?"

"Don't believe she ever had a pair in her life. That's why I thought it might please her."

Virginia looked down and away. There were times when dimples made things hard for one.

Then she said, with gentle gravity: "There are quite a number of women in America who don't care much for red stockings. It would seem too bad, wouldn't it, if after you got these clear home your wife should turn out to be one of those people? Now, I think these grey stockings are lovely. I'm sure any woman would love them. She could wear them with grey suede slippers and they would be so soft and pretty."

"Um--not very lively looking, are they? You see I want something to cheer her up. She--well she's not been very well lately and I thought something--oh something with a lot of _dash_ in it, you know, would just fill the bill. But look here. We'll take both.

Sure--that's the way out of it. If she don't like the red, she'll like the grey, and if she don't like the--You like the grey ones, don't you? Then here"--picking up two pairs of the handsomely embroidered grey stockings and handing them to the clerk--"One,"

holding up his thumb to denote one--"me,"--a vigorous pounding of the chest signifying me. "One"--holding up his forefinger and pointing to the girl--"mademoiselle."

"Oh no--no--no!" cried Virginia, her face instantly the colour of the condemned stockings. Then, standing straight: "Certainly _not_."

"No? Just as you say," he replied good humouredly. "Like to have you have 'em. Seems as if strangers in a strange land oughtn't to stand on ceremony."

The clerk was bending forward holding up the stockings alluringly.

"_Pour mademoiselle, n'est-ce-pas_?"

"_Mais--non!_" p.r.o.nounced Virginia, with emphasis.

There followed an untranslatable gesture. "How droll!" shoulder and outstretched hands were saying. "If the kind gentleman _wishes_ to give mademoiselle the _joli bas_--!"

His face had puckered up again. Then suddenly it unpuckered. "Tell you what you might do," he solved it. "Just take 'em along and send them to your mother. Now your mother might be real glad to have 'em."

Virginia stared. And then an awful thing happened. What she was thinking about was the letter she could send with the stockings.

"Mother dear," she would write, "as I stood at the counter buying myself some stockings to-day along came a nice man--a stranger to me, but very kind and jolly--and gave me--"

There it was that the awful thing happened. Her dimple was showing--and at thought of its showing she could not keep it from showing! And how could she explain why it was showing without its going on showing? And how--?

But at that moment her gaze fell upon the clerk, who had taken the dimple as signal to begin putting the stockings in a box. The Frenchwoman's eyebrows soon put that dimple in its proper place.

"And so the _pet.i.te Americaine_ was not too--oh, not _too_--" those French eyebrows were saying.

All in an instant Virginia was something quite different from a little girl with a dimple. "You are very kind," she was saying, and her mother herself could have done it no better, "but I am sure our little joke had gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning". And with that she walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red and grey and black hosiery to their own destinies.

"I loathe them when their eyebrows go up," she fumed. "Now _his_ weren't going up--not even in his mind."

She could not keep from worrying about him. "They'll just 'do' him,"

she was sure. "And then laugh at him in the bargain. A man like that has no _business_ to be let loose in a store all by himself."

And sure enough, a half hour later she came upon him up in the dress department. Three of them had gathered round to "do" him. They were making rapid headway, their smiling deference scantily concealing their amused contempt. The spectacle infuriated Virginia. "They just think they can _work_ us!" she stormed. "They think we're _easy_. I suppose they think he's a _fool_. I just wish they could get him in a business deal! I just wish--!"

"I can a.s.sure you, sir," the English-speaking manager of the department was saying, "that this garment is a wonderful value. We are able to let you have it at so absurdly low a figure because--"

Virginia did not catch why it was they were able to let him have it at so absurdly low a figure, but she did see him wipe his brow and look helplessly around. "Poor _thing_," she murmured, almost tenderly, "he doesn't know what to do. He just _does_ need somebody to look after him." She stood there looking at his back. He had a back a good deal like the back of her chum's father at home.

Indeed there were various things about him suggested "home." Did one want one's own jeered at? One might see crudities one's self, but was one going to have supercilious outsiders coughing those sham coughs behind their hypocritical hands?

"For seven hundred francs," she heard the suave voice saying.

_Seven hundred francs_! Virginia's national pride, or, more accurately, her national rage, was lashed into action. It was with very red cheeks that the small American stepped stormily to the rescue of her countryman.

"Seven hundred francs for _that_?" she jeered, right in the face of the enraged manager and stiffening clerks. "Seven hundred francs--indeed! Last year's model--a hideous colour, and "--picking it up, running it through her fingers and tossing it contemptuously aside--"abominable stuff!"

"Gee, but I'm grateful to you!" he breathed, again wiping his brow.

"You know, I was a little leery of it myself."

The manager, quivering with rage and glaring uglily, stepped up to Virginia. "May I ask--?"