He never, by any chance, quite kept
his word, though there was a moment in every case
when he seemed to imagine doing what he said, and
he took with mute patience the rakings which the ladies
gave him when he disappointed them.
Disappointed is not just the word,
for the ladies did not really expect him to do what
he said. They pretended to believe him when he
promised, but at the bottom of their hearts they never
did or could. He was gentle-mannered and soft-spoken,
and when he set his head on one side, and said that
a coat would be ready on Wednesday, or a dress on
Saturday, and repeated his promise upon the same lady’s
expressed doubt, she would catch her breath and say
that now she absolutely must have it on the day named,
for otherwise she would not have a thing to put on.
Then he would become very grave, and his soft tenor
would deepen to a bass of unimpeachable veracity,
and he would say, “Sure, lady, you have it.”
The lady would depart still doubting
and slightly sighing, and he would turn to the customer
who was waiting to have a button sewed on, or something
like that, and ask him softly what it was he could
do for him. If the customer offered him his appreciation
of the case in hand, he would let his head droop lower,
and in a yet deeper bass deplore the doubt of the
ladies as an idiosyncrasy of their sex. He would
make the customer feel that he was a favorite customer
whose rights to a perfect fidelity of word and deed
must by no means be tampered with, and he would have
the button sewed on or the rip sewed up at once, and
refuse to charge anything, while the customer waited
in his shirt-sleeves in the small, stuffy shop opening
directly from the street. When he tolerantly
discussed the peculiarities of ladies as a sex, he
would endure to be laughed at, “for sufferance
was the badge of all his tribe,” and possibly
he rather liked it.
The favorite customer enjoyed being
there when some lady came back on the appointed Wednesday
or Saturday, and the tailor came soothingly forward
and showed her into the curtained alcove where she
was to try on the garments, and then called into the
inner shop for them. The shirt-sleeved journeyman,
with his unbuttoned waistcoat-front all pins and threaded
needles, would appear in his slippers with the things
barely basted together, and the tailor would take them,
with an airy courage, as if they were perfectly finished,
and go in behind the curtain where the lady was waiting
in a dishabille which the favorite customer, out of
reverence for the sex, forbore to picture to himself.
Then sounds of volcanic fury would issue from the alcove.
“Now, Mr. Morrison, you have lied to me again,
deliberately lied. Didn’t I tell
you I must have the things perfectly ready to-day?
You see yourself that it will be another week before
I can have my things.”
“A week? Oh, madam! But I assure you
“Don’t talk to me any
more! It’s the last time I shall ever come
to you, but I suppose I can’t take the work
away from you as it is. When shall I have it?”
“To-morrow. Yes, to-morrow noon. Sure!”
“Now you know you are always
out at noon. I should think you would be ashamed.”
“If it hadn’t been for
sickness in the family I would have finished your
dress with my own hands. Sure I would. If
you come here to-morrow noon you find your dress all
ready for you.”
“I know I won’t, but I
will come, and you’d better have it ready.”
“Oh, sure.”
The lady then added some generalities
of opprobrium with some particular criticisms of the
garments. Her voice sank into dispassionate murmurs
in these, but it rose again in her renewed sense of
the wrong done her, and when she came from the alcove
she went out of the street door purple. She reopened
it to say, “Now, remember!” before she
definitely disappeared.
“Rather a stormy session, Mr.
Morrison,” the customer said.
“Something fierce,” Mr.
Morrison sighed. But he did not seem much troubled,
and he had one way with all his victims, no matter
what mood they came or went in.
One day the customer was by when a
kind creature timidly upbraided him. “This
is the third time you’ve disappointed me, Mr.
Morrison. I really wish you wouldn’t promise
me unless you mean to do it. I don’t think
it’s right for you.”
“Oh, but sure, madam! The
things will be done, sure. We had a strike on
us.”
“Well, I will trust you once
more,” the kind creature said.
“You can depend on me, madam, sure.”
When she was gone the customer said:
“I wonder you do that sort of thing, Mr. Morrison.
You can’t be surprised at their behaving rustily
with you if you never keep your word.”
“Why, I assure you there are
times when I don’t know where to look, the way
they go on. It is something awful. You ought
to hear them once. And now they want the wote.”
He rearranged some pieces of tumbled goods at the
table where the customer sat, and put together the
disheveled leaves of the fashion-papers which looked
as if the ladies had scattered them in their rage.
One day the customer heard two ladies
waiting for their disappointments in the outer room
while the tailor in the alcove was trying to persuade
a third lady that positively her things would be sent
home the next day before dark. The customer had
now formed the habit of having his own clothes made
by the tailor, and his system in avoiding disappointment
was very simple. In the early fall he ordered
a spring suit, and in the late spring it was ready.
He never had any difficulty, but he was curious to
learn how the ladies managed, and he listened with
all his might while these two talked.
“I always wonder we keep coming,” one
of them said.
“I’ll tell you why,”
the other said. “Because he’s cheap,
and we get things from a fourth to a third less than
we can get them anywhere else. The quality is
first rate, and he’s absolutely honest.
And, besides, he’s a genius. The wretch
has touch. The things have a style, a
look, a hang! Really it’s something wonderful.
Sure it iss,” she ended in the tailor’s
accent, and then they both laughed and joined in a
common sigh.
“Well, I don’t believe he means to deceive
any one.”
“Oh, neither do I. I believe
he expects to do everything he says. And one
can’t help liking him even when he doesn’t.”
“He’s a good while getting
through with her,” the first lady said, meaning
the unseen lady in the alcove.
“She’ll be a good while
longer getting through with him, if he hasn’t
them ready the next time,” the second lady said.
But the lady in the alcove issued
from it with an impredicable smile, and the tailor
came up to the others, and deferred to their wishes
with a sort of voiceless respect.
He gave the customer a glance of good-fellowship,
and said to him, radiantly: “Your things
all ready for you, this morning. As soon as I
“Oh, no hurry,” the customer responded.
“I won’t be a minute,”
the tailor said, pulling the curtain of the alcove
aside, and then there began those sounds of objurgation
and expostulation, although the ladies had seemed
so amiable before.
The customer wondered if they did
not all enjoy it; the ladies in their patience under
long trial, and the tailor in the pleasure of practising
upon it. But perhaps he did believe in the things
he promised. He might be so much a genius as
to have no grasp of facts; he might have thought that
he could actually do what he said.
The customer’s question on these
points found answer when one day the tailor remarked,
as it were out of a clear sky, that he had sold his
business; sold it to the slippered journeyman who used
to come in his shirt-sleeves, with his vest-front
full of pins and needles, bringing the basted garments
to be tried on the ladies who had been promised them
perfectly finished.
“He will do your clothes all
right,” he explained to the customer. “He
is a first-rate cutter and fitter; he knows the whole
business.”
“But why why ” the
customer began.
“I couldn’t stand it.
The way them ladies would talk to a person, when you
done your best to please them; it’s something
fierce.”
“Yes, I know. But I thought
you liked it, from the way you always promised them
and never kept your word.”
“And if I hadn’t promised
them?” the tailor returned with some show of
feeling. “They wanted me to promise
them they made me they wouldn’t
have gone away without it. Sure. Every one
wanted her things before every one. You had got
to think of that.”
“But you had to think of what they would say.”
“Say? Sometimes I thought
they would hit me. One lady said she had
a notion to slap me once. It’s no way to
talk.”
“But you didn’t seem to mind it.”
“I didn’t mind it for
a good while. Then I couldn’t stand it.
So I sold.”
He shook his head sadly; but the customer
had no comfort to offer him. He asked when his
clothes would be done, and the tailor told him when,
and then they were not. The new proprietor tried
them on, but he would not say just when they would
be finished.
“We have a good deal of work
already for some ladies that been disappointed.
Now we try a new way. We tell people exactly what
we do.”
“Well, that’s right,”
the customer said, but in his heart he was not sure
he liked the new way.
The day before his clothes were promised
he dropped in. From the curtained alcove he heard
low murmurs, the voice of the new proprietor and the
voice of some lady trying on, and being severely bidden
not to expect her things at a time she suggested.
“No, madam. We got too much work on hand
already. These things, they will not be done before
next week.”
“I told you to-morrow,”
the same voice said to another lady, and the new proprietor
came out with an unfinished coat in his hand.
“I know you did, but I thought
you would be better than your word, and so I came
to-day. Well, then, to-morrow.”
“Yes, to-morrow,” the
new proprietor said, but he did not seem to have liked
the lady’s joke. He did not look happy.
A few weeks after that the customer
came for some little alterations in his new suit.
In the curtained alcove he heard the
murmurs of trying on, much cheerfuller murmurs than
before; the voice of a lady lifted in gladness, in
gaiety, and an incredible voice replying, “Oh,
sure, madam.”
Then the old proprietor came out in
his shirt-sleeves and slippers, with his waistcoat-front
full of pins and needles, just like the new proprietor
in former days.
“Why!” the customer exclaimed. “Have
you bought back?”
“No. I’m just here
like a journeyman already. The new man he want
me to come. He don’t get along very well
with his way. He’s all right; he’s
a good man and a first-class tailor. But,”
and the former proprietor looked down at the basted
garment hanging over his arm, and picked off an irrelevant
thread from it, “he thinks I get along better
with the ladies.”