Gullible's Travels (1917). Lardner Ring
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playin’ there?” I says.
“Grand op’ra,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“Oh!” says my Missus. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
“What do you say?” says Mrs. Hatch to me.
“I think it’d be grand for you girls,” I says. “I and Jim could leave you there and go down on Madison and see Charley Chaplin, and then come back after you.”
“Nothin’ doin’!” says Mrs. Hatch. “We’ll pick a show that everybody wants to see.”
Well, if I hadn’t of looked at my Missus then we’d of been O. K. But my eyes happened to light on where she was settin’ and she was chewin’ her lips so’s she wouldn’t cry. That finished me. “I was just kiddin’,” I says to Mrs. Hatch. “They ain’t nothin’ I’d like better than grand op’ra.”
“Nothin’ except gettin’ trimmed in a rummy game,” says Hatch, but he didn’t get no rise.
Well, the Missus let loose of her lips so’s she could smile and her and Mrs. Hatch got all excited, and I and Hatch pretended like we was excited too. So Hatch ast what night could we go, and Mrs. Hatch says that depended on what did we want to hear, because they changed the bill every day. So her and the Missus looked at the paper again and found out where Friday night was goin’ to be a big special night and the bill was a musical show called Carmen, and all the stars was goin’ to sing, includin’ Mooratory and Alda and Genevieve Farr’r, that was in the movies a w’ile till they found out she could sing, and some fella they called Daddy, but I don’t know his real name. So the girls both says Friday night was the best, but Hatch says he would have to go to lodge that evenin’.
“Lodge!” says Mrs. Hatch. “What do you care about lodge when you got a chance to see Genevieve Farr’r in Carmen?”
“Chance!” says Hatch. “If that’s what you call a chance, I got a chance to buy a thousand shares o’ Bethlehem Steel. Who’s goin’ to pay for my chance?”
“All right,” says Mrs. Hatch, “go to your old lodge and spoil everything!”
So this time it was her that choked up and made like she was goin’ to blubber. So Hatch changed his mind all of a sudden and decided to disappoint the brother Owls. So all of us was satisfied except fifty per cent., and I and the Missus beat it home, and on the way she says how nice Mrs. Hatch was to give us this treat.
“Yes,” I says, “but if you hadn’t of had a regular epidemic o’ discardin’ deuces and treys Hatch would of treated us to groceries for a week.” I says: “I always thought they was only twelve pitcher cards in the deck till I seen them hands you saved up to-night.”
“You lose as much as I did,” she says.
“Yes,” I says, “and I always will as long as you forget to fetch your purse along.”
So they wasn’t no come-back to that, so we went on home without no more dialogue.
Well, Mrs. Hatch called up the next night and says Jim had the tickets boughten and we was to be sure and be ready at seven o’clock Friday night because the show started at eight. So when I was down-town Friday the Missus sent my evenin’ dress suit over to Katzes’ and had it pressed up and when I come home it was laid out on the bed like a corpse.
“What’s that for?” I says.
“For the op’ra,” she says. “Everybody wears them to the op’ra.”
“Did you ask the Hatches what was they goin’ to wear?” I says.
“No,” says she. “They know what to wear without me tellin’ them. They ain’t goin’ to the Auditorium in their nightgown.”
So I clumb into the soup and fish, and the Missus spent about a hour puttin’ on a dress that she could have left off without nobody knowin’ the difference, and she didn’t have time for no supper at all, and I just managed to surround a piece o’ steak as big as your eye and spill some gravy on my clo’es when the bell rung and there was the Hatches.
Well, Hatch didn’t have no more evenin’ dress suit on than a kewpie. I could see his pants under his overcoat and they was the same old bay pants he’d wore the day he got mad at his kid and christened him Kenneth. And his shoes was a last year’s edition o’ the kind that’s supposed to give your feet a chance, and if his feet had of been the kind that takes chances they was two or three places where they could of got away without much trouble.
I could tell from the expression on Mrs. Hatch’s face when she seen our make-up that we’d crossed her. She looked about as comf’table as a Belgium.
“Oh!” she says. “I didn’t think you’d dress up.”
“We thought you would,” says my Frau.
“We!” I says. “Where do you get that ‘we’?”
“If it ain’t too late we’ll run in and change,” says my Missus.
“Not me,” I says. “I didn’t go to all this trouble and expense for a splash o’ gravy. When this here uniform retires it’ll be to make room for pyjamas.”
“Come on!” says Hatch. “What’s the difference? You can pretend like you ain’t with us.”
“It don’t really make no difference,” says Mrs. Hatch.
And maybe it didn’t. But we all stood within whisperin’ distance of each other on the car goin’ in, and if you had a dollar for every word that was talked among us you couldn’t mail a postcard from Hammond to Gary. When we got off at Congress my Missus tried to thaw out the party.
“The prices is awful high, aren’t they?” she says.
“Outrageous,” says Mrs. Hatch.
Well, even if the prices was awful high, they didn’t have nothin’ on our seats. If I was in trainin’ to be a steeple jack I’d go to grand op’ra every night and leave Hatch buy my ticket. And where he took us I’d of been more at home in overalls and a sport shirt.
“How do you like Denver?” says I to the Missus, but she’d sank for the third time.
“We’re safe here,” I says to Hatch. “Them French guns can’t never reach us. We’d ought to brought more bumbs.”
“What did the seats cost?” I says to Hatch.
“One-fifty,” he says.
“Very reasonable,” says I. “One o’ them aviators wouldn’t take you more than half this height for a five-spot.”
The Hatches had their overcoats off by this time and I got a look at their full costume. Hatch had went without his vest durin’ the hot months and when it was alongside his coat and pants it looked like two different families. He had a pink shirt with prune-colored horizontal bars, and a tie to match his neck, and a collar that would of took care of him and I both, and them shoes I told you about, and burlap hosiery. They wasn’t nothin’ the matter with Mrs. Hatch except she must of thought that, instead o’ dressin’ for the op’ra, she was gettin’ ready for Kenneth’s bath.
And there was my Missus, just within the law, and me all spicked and spanned with my soup and fish and gravy!
Well, we all set there and tried to get the focus till about a half-hour after the show was billed to commence, and finally a Lilliputhian with a match in his hand come out and started up the orchestry and they played a few o’ the hits and then the lights was turned out and up went the curtain.
Well, sir, you’d be surprised at how good we could hear and see after we got used to it. But the hearin’ didn’t do us no good—that is, the words part of it. All the actors had been smuggled in from Europe and they wasn’t none o’ them that could talk English. So all their songs was gave in different languages and I wouldn’t of never knew what was