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JIMMY MARTIN’S heart persisted in acting like the well-known eyes of the
young lady in the song. He just couldn’t make it behave. Up to the third
week of his summer season as press agent at Jollyland, the big summer
amusement park near New York, it had always been a fairly well-mannered
and dependable organ which performed its physiological functions with
becoming regularity and which was not accustomed to respond to any
external stimuli with anything beyond an occasional slight flutter. To
be sure it had acted up a little three years back in connection with a
certain dark-eyed beauty who presided over the destinies of the cigar
counter up in the Grand Hotel in New Haven, but that had only been a
slight attack and it had resumed the even tenor of its ways after a
brief interval and had been unobtrusively going through with its routine
activities ever since.
A most prepossessing young person whose parents had inflicted upon her
the name of Lolita Murphy was directly responsible for the alarming
symptoms already hinted at. From the precise moment that Lolita came
within his ken Jimmy ceased to be a rational being in full control of
his faculties and his heart, in sympathetic accord with the agitated
condition of its owner, began to put on an antic disposition and
indulged in curious palpitations of a most annoying nature on the
slightest pretext. The usual provocation at first was the sight of
Lolita herself, but after a day or two even the thought of her produced
a cardiac ratiplan that would have done credit to the trap drummer of a
jazz band.
Lolita, it may be mentioned in passing, lived up to all the implications
of the somewhat picturesque cognomen given her by McClintock, the park
manager, when Jimmy first pointed her out to his superior.
“She sure is Miss Lulu Looker,” McClintock had remarked emphatically.
Lolita was all of that and a little more. Jimmy was not a poet and he
was therefore unable to properly voice the feelings he had about her
beauty. Had he been one he might have justly said that her cheeks seemed
to have been kissed by the rosy flush of dawn; that in her sable eyes
there lurked the eternal mystery of night beneath tropic skies; that her
dark hair was as fragrant as the spices of Araby and that her lithe
figure had all the gracile curves of a bounding antelope. As it was he
contented himself with the frequent repetition of the decidedly unpoetic
expression “some gal,” but this represented to him all the ideas noted
above and a liberal assortment of others equally glamorous.
Lolita hailed from Cedar Rapids, Ia., and ever since the memorable
occasion when Maude Adams played “Peter Pan” in that city for “one night
only” she had cherished a great and overwhelming ambition. Her father
ran the drug store next door to the Opera House and was a great crony of
the manager. A number of boys and girls were picked up in each town to
play the children in the Never Never Land scene and Lolita’s fond parent
had persuaded the manager to select her as one of the group. It was a
step that father was to regret vainly for many years, but on the night
of her debut he was blissfully unconscious of the possibility of any
bitter repining in the future and enjoyed the proceedings almost as much
as Lolita did.
From that time on Lolita felt the call of the footlights and became
convinced that, given the proper opportunities for the externalization
of the emotional feelings that lay dormant within her, she was destined
to become an international celebrity and the queen regnant of the
English speaking stage. Chauncey Olcott came to town a few weeks later
and she persuaded father to work her in as one of the youngsters to whom
he sang a lullaby in a high tenor voice down in the “glen” which is
always the setting for the third act of an Irish play. After that there
was no holding her. She became a student of Miss Amanda Holliday’s
School of Dramatic Expression which occupied three rooms on the second
floor of the Turner block on Main Street and she participated in the
semi-annual entertainments given by the budding geniuses who were under
the tutelage of that small town preceptress of the arts. Versatility was
her middle name. At one time she would play Ophelia in the mad scene
from “Hamlet” and appear later on the program in a Spanish dance with
castanets, a lace mantilla and all the other necessary properties. Six
months later she would combine the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet”
with an imitation of an imitation of Eddie Foy she had heard given by a
monologue artist at the Orpheum Theatre. At the age of nineteen she was
the town wonder. The dramatic editor of the Democrat-Chronicle predicted
that within a short time “this talented daughter of our esteemed fellow
townsman Henry P. Murphy seems destined to occupy one of the stellar
places in the front ranks of the worth-while artists of our fair
country.”
Lolita moved on to New York armed with a letter of commendation from
Miss Amanda Holliday setting forth that she was “worthy of any role no
matter what its importance” and urging theatrical managers “not to
neglect this opportunity of obtaining the services of one who is a
mistress of the mimetic art in all its manifold manifestations.” She
also carried a full set of clippings from the Democrat-Chronicle, one
half of her male parent’s attenuated account in the First National Bank
and an over-abundant supply of cheery optimism.
The metropolitan managers’ office boys were decidedly cold to the
advances of this gifted daughter of the Middle West. They treated her
with that air of careless indifference so characteristic of their
profession. With one accord all the big and little producers decided to
take a big chance and neglect the opportunity which fate was offering
them. They were unmoved by the clippings from the Democrat-Chronicle
with which Lolita bombarded them through the mails and they were callous
to the eulogistic outpourings of Miss Amanda Holliday, copies of which
accompanied each written request for an interview. Lolita’s cash reserve
grew perilously low and disaster threatened. Then, on a morning when
disillusionment and despair moved in and took lodgings in her soul, she
saw an advertisement in a newspaper which was like a life buoy tossed to
a drowning man.
“Ambitious Young Women Wanted for Stage Work,” it read. “Opportunity
Afforded Ambitious Amateurs to Perfect Themselves in Dramatic
Technique—Apply Immediately at Manager’s Office, ‘Jollyland.’”
Lolita, filled with high hopes, took a trolley to the great playground
by the sea. There destiny handed her one of those cold douches that are
sometimes held in reserve for those whose ambitions o’erleap themselves.
The dramatic opportunity promised in the advertisement proved to be what
might be vulgarly termed a “job.”
A great free open-air spectacle was in process of preparation at
Jollyland under the supervision of a famous moving picture director who
specialized in that form of animated art technically known as “serials.”
He had personally conducted a gazelle-eyed cinema celebrity known as
June Delight through four fifteen reel affairs of this sort in which she
had been threatened with mayhem, aggravated assault and battery,
felonious wounding, and total and complete annihilation at the hands of
numerous bands of cut-throats, bandits, thieves and white slavers. In
the course of these proceedings she had performed every breath-catching
feat that the festive imagination of the director had been capable of
conjuring up and had succeeded, by a miracle, in keeping out of both the
hospital and the obituary columns of the daily press.
Now it was proposed to let the public have a close-up view of this
death-defying marvel in the flesh in the act of performing one of her
most famous exploits “before your very eyes and for your attention,” as
the circus announcer would put it. To permit of this the director had
evolved something which he called a “dramatic spectacle” and had
persuaded the management of Jollyland to arrange for its production in a
huge, specially constructed open-air auditorium as a “special added
attraction” intended to put a final quietus on the presumptuous efforts
of a rival group of showmen who were endeavoring to arouse interest in a
new park just opened that summer.
Lolita found herself in a long line of applicants, many of whom were
pathetically peaked and undernourished looking, and when her turn came
to meet the director she made up her mind to pocket her pride and accept
whatever fate offered rather than run the risk of finding herself in
like straits. Ambition still fired her soul and she was determined not
to return to the little old home town until she could enter it in
something at least closely akin to a spirit of triumph. To be sure the
opportunity offered her was not particularly roseate. It did not hold
forth much promise of either pecuniary reward or even of passing fame,
but it meant that Lolita would not have to telegraph home for funds and
there was a faint glimmer of hope in a remark made by the director.
“You can mingle in the front ranks of the crowd,” he said. “We’ll pay
you eighteen a week. There’ll only be two shows a day.” Then he had
looked at her critically. “You’re almost a ringer for Miss Delight,” he
continued. “Maybe, if you’re a good little girl I might take a notion to
try you out as understudy.”
So Lolita Murphy, the pride of Cedar Rapids, became a small and almost
infinitesimal part of the great out-door spectacle entitled “Secret
Service Sallie” which was the big sensation of the Jollyland season.
In the role of an agent of the United States secret service the charming
and fascinating June Delight was swept through a series of thrilling
adventures set against spectacular backgrounds depicting scenes in
Berlin, Tokio, Rio de Janeiro and other world capitals and as a
culminating feature she was pursued to the roof of a building in London
by a howling mob which suspected her of being a spy in the employ of the
Central Powers. She was saved from its hands, in the proverbial nick of
time, by her fiancé, dashing Lieutenant Thurston Turner, Commander of
the U.S. Dirigible N-24, who happened to be cruising about the
neighborhood at the moment and who effected a rescue by circling his
ship around the roof and deftly lifting the young woman into the shelter
of the gondola which hung from the great gas balloon just as she was
about to be beaten to death by the infuriated crowd.
Inasmuch as the spectacle was given in the open air, it was possible to
use for the purposes of this scene a real dirigible which was manned by
a crew commanded by one Bobby Wilkins, a personable young gentleman from
Chicago who had come back from France with a major’s commission, a
reputation for dare-deviltry as an aviator surpassed by no other ace in
the American service and a collection of a half dozen assorted war
medals bestowed by three grateful nations. Bobby had left a snug berth
as “assistant to the president” of a big varnish company to go into the
army, the said president being a somewhat indulgent parent who had
sanguine expectations concerning his son’s commercial and industrial
future and who was even now sending him daily wires to the Ritz urging
him to “cut the carabets and get down to a solid rock foundation.”
Father labored under the delusion that Bobby was simply vacationing in
New York. Had he had an inkling of just what his son was doing he would
have (to use the young major’s own expression) “tried for a new altitude
record himself.” He could hardly be expected to know that dictating fool
business letters and checking up the new efficiency expert’s monthly
report of economies effected at the Dayton plant wouldn’t exactly appeal
any more to an adventuresome young man who had been skyhooting through
the upper reaches of the atmosphere for nearly two years and dodging
German machine gun bullets.
Bobby had overheard the general who commanded the aviation camp at which
he was demobilized remarking about a request made by the moving picture
director that he recommend some aviator for the task of piloting the
dirigible which was to play such an important role in the spectacle and
he had offered himself for the sacrifice just as a lark. He found the
experience rare sport and until something giving greater promise of
adventure appeared in the offing he was determined to go on with it.
Twice a day he reached down and plucked up the beautiful Miss Delight as
lightly as if she were a fragile doll while the assembled thousands, on
the qui vive with excitement, burst into rapturous applause. In order to
insure the peace of mind of Robert Wilkins, Sr., Jimmy Martin had
consented, rather reluctantly it must be admitted, to respect the wishes
of the impersonator of Lieut. Thurston Turner, U.S.N., who had expressed
a desire to remain incognito. Otherwise the consequences might have been
lurid.
Jimmy itched to give out a story concerning the social and business
connections of the young soldier, but he had given his word, and being
an ex-newspaper man, that was sacred. He temporarily forgot about Bobby
and devoted his spare moments to figuring out ways and means for the
sensational exploitation of Lolita Murphy to whose charms he had become
a shackled slave from the moment he first glimpsed her at rehearsal.
Lolita, it may be mentioned in passing, was a trifle discouraged at the
comparatively slight opportunities for uplifting and otherwise ennobling
the American stage offered by her participation in “Secret Service
Sallie.” Her name wasn’t even mentioned on the program. She figured
under an impersonal heading at the bottom, together with a couple of
hundred other young women who were listed as “Berlin citizens, Japanese
geisha girls, South Americans, Londoners, etc., etc.”
It needed all the soaring optimism of Jimmy to keep her from slipping
into a nervous decline. The press agent had obtained an introduction
through the stage director and his sympathetic interest in her
temporarily side-tracked ambitions had won him her esteem and high
regard from the beginning. Jimmy was a rapid worker and within three
days from the time of their first meeting he had vowed his ardent and
palpitating devotion, and while Lolita had not completely committed
herself to a reciprocal affirmation she had succeeded, nevertheless, by
devious and subtle devices not unknown to her sex, in conveying the
distinct impression that the star of hope was visible in the eastern
sky.
It might be parenthetically recorded that Jimmy was accustomed to
arriving at his destination when once he embarked on a journey. He had
been kidnapped from an assistant sporting editor’s desk on a middle
western paper by a small circus, while still young, and for seven years
he had been touring these United States ahead of an infinite variety of
attractions ranging all the way from Curran’s Colossal Carnival company
(playing state fairs) to the more or less splendiferous “revues” which
have their origin and their brief span of popularity along the middle
reaches of Broadway.
Being more familiar with the batting averages of the best ten players in
the American League than with George Henry Lewes’, “The Art of Acting,”
and being utterly incapable of writing a didactic essay on “The
Psychology of Laughter”, Jimmy had never been cast for one of the
so-called “kid-glove jobs” in the realm of theatrical publicity, that
being the name given to the positions held by the literati who seek and
occasionally obtain publicity for the highbrow drama. He was not of the
chosen company of the sleek and self-satisfied elect. Elegantly written
stories and gracefully worded little pieces, supposedly composed by
charming feminine stars, meant nothing in his young and energetic life.
“Stunts” were what he specialized in, the creation of news that was so
unusual, so bizarre, so full of human interest that the newspapers not
only felt obliged to print it, but usually assigned their own reporters
to write it up. He wasn’t dignified; his conversation reeked with slang
and his methods sometimes offended against all the established canons of
good taste, but he sometimes landed with one foot and not infrequently
with both.
His summer engagement at Jollyland was a “fill-in” between seasons and
when he entered upon it he had no notion that it would shortly become
pregnant with possibilities of a most disturbing sort. He had no idea
that he would presently be directing all of his energies to assuaging
the anxieties and soothing the troubled spirit of a somewhat forlorn
maiden from what he was in the habit of scornfully referring to as a
“hick town.”
There came a night when Lolita’s disappointment was past all bearing and
when she sobbed out on Jimmy’s shoulders a bitter protest against the
fate that had driven her into believing that she was destined to be a
great actress. They were sitting on the beach in the moonlight after the
show and off in the murky distance the great Sandy Hook light was
blinking like some monster fire-fly.
“Jimmy,” she said, half-chokingly. “I just don’t belong. I wish I was
back in Cedar Rapids.”
“Gosh, that’s an awful wish, girlie,” responded the press agent with a
foolish attempt at a pleasantry which he instantly regretted.
Lolita drew away from him quickly.
“Cedar Rapids is all right,” she retorted. “It’s better than this
lonesome place.” She lapsed almost immediately into a wistful mood.
“It’s just ten o’clock there now and the movies are letting out, and
there’s a crowd in dad’s store and the fellows are treating the girls to
sundaes or just plain ice cream and dad is fussing around and maybe
helping out himself. I want to go back, Jimmy, I want to go back.”
Jimmy squeezed her hand softly.
“Listen, girlie,” he said comfortingly. “I know just how you feel—the
cards ain’t runnin’ right and you want to quit the game, but I’m going
to cut in with a clean deck and start a new deal. I’m goin’ to fix
things so that when you do go back for a visit to the little old home
town and dear old dad, the Peerless Silver Cornet band is goin’ to be
down at the station and his honor the mayor is goin’ to speak a few well
chosen words of welcome in the presence of a cheering crowd of friends
and well-wishers. Leave it to me.”
Lolita laughed a little in spite of her mood.
“You’re a great little jollier, Jimmy,” she, said, “and I’d like to
believe you, but somehow I can’t. I’m a nobody, a Cedar Rapids’ nobody.”
“But you’re goin’ to be little Miss Lolita Somebody of the well known
world,” he responded cheerily, “before I get through with you. I’m goin’
to drop you right into the direct center of the front page of every
paper in the U.S.A. from the New York Gazette to the Wyalusing, Pa.,
Rocket. You’re goin’ to make those two chaps with the whiskers on the
cough drop boxes and that fat old colored dame in the pancake flour ads
look like shrinkin’ violets on a foggy afternoon when I finish up with
you. You just wait and see.”
“How long have I got to wait, Jimmy,” ventured Lolita who was adrift in
the realms of fancy, carried thence by the soothing cadences of Jimmy’s
voice.
“Only until some afternoon when this June Delight person fails to show
up,—I hear she’s talkin’ of layin’ off for a few days. If you’ll promise
not to even talk about it in your sleep I’ll hand you a little advance
information.”
Only the silent stars and the discreet moon shared Jimmy’s confidence
with Lolita. Its general tone and tenor lifted that despairing daughter
of the plains out of the rut of hopeless striving into which she felt
she had fallen and filled her with such anticipatory delight that when
she said good-bye at the door of her boarding house she impulsively
reached forward and kissed him full on the mouth.
“You’re a darling,” she murmured.
“I’ll take an encore on that, girlie,” he replied.
And he did.
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