The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he
had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little
cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now,
on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were
gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes
was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an
observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough,
he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied
the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen
sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her
sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street.
There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather
than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the
wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an
impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of
a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with
head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and
moulded and made her to be a doer of things.
But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. “I can guess what you
would tell me,” the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy
preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. “And you
have told me enough,” he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as
she went over the conversation in its freshness). “You have done no
newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape.
You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off
with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your
friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully,
and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you
want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If
you knew how crowded—”
“But if there are no openings,” she had interrupted, in turn, “how did
those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get
in?”
“They made themselves indispensable,” was the terse response. “Make
yourself indispensable.”
“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?”
“Make your chance.”
“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a
most unreasonable man.
“How? That is your business, not mine,” he said conclusively, rising
in token that the interview was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear
young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young
ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and
every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly
that of instructor in a school of journalism.”
She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had
conned the conversation over and over again. “But how?” she repeated to
herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where
she and her sister “bach’ed.” “But how?” And so she continued to put the
interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed
from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was
need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up
from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John
Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his
acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for
themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand
and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for
the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but
successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and
typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer.
Edna’s secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a
clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which
to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But
the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or
her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent
remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity.
And it was a slim little hoard by now.
“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. “He’s a journalist
with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he
should be able to tell you how.”
“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected.
“No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day.”
“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s different.”
“Not a bit different from the strange men and women you’ll interview
when you’ve learned how,” Letty encouraged.
“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna conceded. “After all,
where’s the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some
paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be practice,
too. I’ll go and look him up in the directory.”
“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” she announced
decisively a moment later. “I just FEEL that I have the feel of it, if
you know what I mean.”
And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what he is like?” she asked softly.
“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Edna assured her; “and I’ll let
you know inside forty-eight hours.”
Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the newspaper spirit! Make it
twenty-four hours and you are perfect!”
* * *
“—and I am very sorry to trouble you,” she concluded the statement of
her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran journalist.
“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “If you
don’t do your own talking, who’s to do it for you? Now I understand your
predicament precisely. You want to get on the Intelligencer, you want
to get in at once, and you have had no previous experience. In the first
place, then, have you any pull? There are a dozen men in the city, a
line from whom would be an open-sesame. After that you would stand or
fall by your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for instance,
and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney—” He
paused, with voice suspended.
“I am sure I know none of them,” she answered despondently.
“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one
that knows any one else that knows them?”
Edna shook her head.
“Then we must think of something else,” he went on, cheerfully. “You’ll
have to do something yourself. Let me see.”
He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled
forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue
eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened.
“I have it! But no, wait a minute.”
And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did,
till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze.
“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be seen,” he said
enigmatically. “It will show the stuff that’s in you, besides, and it
will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines
from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to
do Amateur Night at the Loops.”
“I—I hardly understand,” Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no
meaning to her. “What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur Night’?”
“I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the better,
if you’ve only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first impression,
and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, fresh, vivid.
The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the Park,—a place of
diversion. There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a concert
band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pictures, and so forth and so
forth. The common people go there to look at the animals and enjoy
themselves, and the other people go there to enjoy themselves
by watching the common people enjoy themselves. A democratic,
fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the Loops are.
“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s vaudeville. One turn follows
another—jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers,
coon-song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, sentimental
soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional
vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently
paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an
opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and
so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the
country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to
attract many aspirants.
“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity, instituted
what is called ‘Amateur Night’; that is to say, twice a week, after
the professionals have done their turns, the stage is given over to
the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to criticise. The populace
becomes the arbiter of art—or it thinks it does, which is the same
thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased with itself, and
Amateur Night is a paying proposition to the management.
“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that
these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing their
turn. At the best, they may be termed ‘professional amateurs.’ It stands
to reason that the management could not get people to face a rampant
audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience certainly goes
mad. It’s great fun—for the audience. But the thing for you to do, and
it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrangements for two
turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights, I believe), do your two turns,
and write it up for the Sunday Intelligencer.”
“But—but,” she quavered, “I—I—” and there was a suggestion of
disappointment and tears in her voice.
“I see,” he said kindly. “You were expecting something else, something
different, something better. We all do at first. But remember the
admiral of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and polished up
the handle of the big front door. You must face the drudgery of
apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?”
The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As she
faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken
his face.
“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added encouragingly. “A
severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?”
“I’ll try,” she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the
directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she was
coming in contact.
“Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest details
imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the police and
divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did me good. You
are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It’s not particularly
great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and you’ll get
a call for better work—better class and better pay. Now you go out this
afternoon to the Loops, and engage to do two turns.”
“But what kind of turns can I do?” Edna asked dubiously.
“Do? That’s easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don’t need to sing. Screech,
do anything—that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, to give
bad art for the populace to howl down. And when you do your turn, take
some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. Move about
among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph
them in your brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of
it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit,
the significance. What does it mean? Find out what it means. That’s what
you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer
want to know.
“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in
similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize
upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint
those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold
of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story.
Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and
in the contents tell it all over again. Then put a snapper at the end,
so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere,
reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form. There,
that’s enough. Study the rest out for yourself.”
They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm
and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to
know.
“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of
journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is a
trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. But master it you must;
for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do
anything better. In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside
of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me. And now good luck to
you.”
They had reached the door and were shaking hands.
“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your
copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here and
there.”
Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled
man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an
absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst
thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes.
“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left
her lips.
“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering
Irwin’s advice to talk up.
“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her.
She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that
she had not considered the question of a name at all.
“Any name? Stage name?” he bellowed impatiently.
“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the moment.
“B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that’s it.”
He scribbled it into a notebook. “All right. Take your turn Wednesday
and Saturday.”
“How much do I get?” Edna demanded.
“Two-an’-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher pay first Monday after
second turn.”
And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” he turned his back on her
and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she entered.
Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope
basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the
washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a
gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed
the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing
broken-heartedly after her wandering boy.
Though they had come early, she found everything in uproar. The main
performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the audience
intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the
working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing
rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into everybody else’s way.
This was particularly distasteful to the professionals, who carried
themselves as befitted those of a higher caste, and whose behavior
toward the pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even brutality. And
Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved about, clinging desperately to her
basket and seeking a dressing room, took note of it all.
A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur
“ladies,” who were “making up” with much noise, high-pitched voices, and
squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple that it was
quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies holding an armed
truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was close at her
shoulder, and with patience and persistence they managed to get a nook
in one of the wings which commanded a view of the stage.
A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and top-hatted,
was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin
little voice singing something or other about somebody or something
evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a
large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely
past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to
the side. “Bloomin’ hamateur!” she hissed as she went past, and the next
instant she was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while
the small, dark man twirled extravagantly about on his tiptoes.
“Hello, girls!”
This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every
syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump.
A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly.
His “make-up” was plainly that of the stock tramp of the stage, though
the inevitable whiskers were lacking.
“Oh, it don’t take a minute to slap’m on,” he explained, divining the
search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in question.
“They make a feller sweat,” he explained further. And then, “What’s yer
turn?”
“Soprano—sentimental,” she answered, trying to be offhand and at ease.
“Whata you doin’ it for?” he demanded directly.
“For fun; what else?” she countered.
“I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes on you. You ain’t
graftin’ for a paper, are you?”
“I never met but one editor in my life,” she replied evasively, “and I,
he—well, we didn’t get on very well together.”
“Hittin’ ‘m for a job?”
Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious and cudgelling her
brains for something to turn the conversation.
“What’d he say?”
“That eighteen other girls had already been there that week.”
“Gave you the icy mit, eh?” The moon-faced young man laughed and slapped
his thighs. “You see, we’re kind of suspicious. The Sunday papers ‘d
like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice little package, and
the manager don’t see it that way. Gets wild-eyed at the thought of it.”
“And what’s your turn?” she asked.
“Who? me? Oh, I’m doin’ the tramp act to-night. I’m Charley Welsh, you
know.”
She felt that by the mention of his name he intended to convey to her
complete enlightenment, but the best she could do was to say politely,
“Oh, is that so?”
She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment which came into his face,
but concealed her amusement.
“Come, now,” he said brusquely, “you can’t stand there and tell me
you’ve never heard of Charley Welsh? Well, you must be young. Why, I’m
an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you must have seen me. I’m
everywhere. I could be a professional, but I get more dough out of it by
doin’ the amateur.”
“But what’s an ‘Only’?” she queried. “I want to learn.”
“Sure,” Charley Welsh said gallantly. “I’ll put you wise. An ‘Only’ is
a nonpareil, the feller that does one kind of a turn better’n any other
feller. He’s the Only, see?”
And Edna saw.
“To get a line on the biz,” he continued, “throw yer lamps on me. I’m
the Only all-round amateur. To-night I make a bluff at the tramp act.
It’s harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it’s acting, it’s
amateur, it’s art. See? I do everything, from Sheeny monologue to team
song and dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I’m Charley Welsh, the Only
Charley Welsh.”
And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and the large, blond woman
warbled dulcetly out on the stage and the other professionals followed
in their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, giving her much
miscellaneous and superfluous information and much that she stored away
for the Sunday Intelligencer.
“Well, tra la loo,” he said suddenly. “There’s his highness chasin’
you up. Yer first on the bill. Never mind the row when you go on. Just
finish yer turn like a lady.”
It was at that moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition departing
from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be somewhere else.
But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. She could hear
the opening bars of her song going up from the orchestra and the noises
of the house dying away to the silence of anticipation.
“Go ahead,” Letty whispered, pressing her hand; and from the other side
came the peremptory “Don’t flunk!” of Charley Welsh.
But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she leaned weakly against
a shift scene. The orchestra was beginning over again, and a lone voice
from the house piped with startling distinctness:
“Puzzle picture! Find Nannie!”
A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna shrank back. But the
strong hand of the manager descended on her shoulder, and with a quick,
powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. His hand and arm
had flashed into full view, and the audience, grasping the situation,
thundered its appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out by the
terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scraping away across the
violins, apparently without sound. It was impossible for her to begin
in time, and as she patiently waited, arms akimbo and ears straining for
the music, the house let loose again (a favorite trick, she afterward
learned, of confusing the amateur by preventing him or her from hearing
the orchestra).
But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. She became aware, pit to
dome, of a vast sea of smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast roars of
laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch blood went cold and
angry. The hard-working but silent orchestra gave her the cue, and,
without making a sound, she began to move her lips, stretch forth her
arms, and sway her body, as though she were really singing. The noise in
the house redoubled in the attempt to drown her voice, but she serenely
went on with her pantomime. This seemed to continue an interminable
time, when the audience, tiring of its prank and in order to hear,
suddenly stilled its clamor, and discovered the dumb show she had been
making. For a moment all was silent, save for the orchestra, her lips
moving on without a sound, and then the audience realized that it had
been sold, and broke out afresh, this time with genuine applause in
acknowledgment of her victory. She chose this as the happy moment for
her exit, and with a bow and a backward retreat, she was off the stage
in Letty’s arms.
The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening she moved about
among the amateurs and professionals, talking, listening, observing,
finding out what it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley
Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guardian angel, and so well
did he perform the self-allotted task that when it was all over she felt
fully prepared to write her article. But the proposition had been to do
two turns, and her native pluck forced her to live up to it. Also, in
the course of the intervening days, she discovered fleeting impressions
that required verification; so, on Saturday, she was back again, with
her telescope basket and Letty.
The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of
relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her,
and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his previous
ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders she saw
Charley Welsh deliberately wink.
But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced
to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and strove
greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as to give
Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of the three
other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was nonplussed,
and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage that light was
thrown on the mystery.
“Hello!” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin’ your
way.”
She smiled brightly.
“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw’m layin’
himself out sweet an’ pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is
it?”
“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried. “And honest now,
it was honest, too.”
But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. “Not that I care
a rap,” he declared. “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of
notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all
right anyway. Yer not our class, that’s straight.”
After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old
campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice
things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point.
“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly. “Do the right
thing by us, and all that?”
“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another
turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I
really, really can’t.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing
manner.
“No, I really won’t,” she persisted. “Vaudeville’s too—too wearing on
the nerves, my nerves, at any rate.”
Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the point
further.
But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay for
the two turns, it was he who puzzled her.
“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied glibly. “I remember saying
something about paying your car fare. We always do this, you know, but
we never, never pay amateurs. That would take the life and sparkle out
of the whole thing. No, Charley Welsh was stringing you. He gets paid
nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. The idea is ridiculous.
However, here’s fifty cents. It will pay your sister’s car fare also.
And,”—very suavely,—“speaking for the Loops, permit me to thank you
for the kind and successful contribution of your services.”
That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed her
typewritten copy into his hands. And while he ran over it, he nodded his
head from time to time, and maintained a running fire of commendatory
remarks: “Good!—that’s it!—that’s the stuff!—psychology’s all
right!—the very idea!—you’ve caught it!—excellent!—missed it a
bit here, but it’ll go—that’s vigorous!—strong!—vivid!—pictures!
pictures!—excellent!—most excellent!”
And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out
his hand: “My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you have
exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large. You are
a journalist, a natural journalist. You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure
to get on. The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, and take you
too. They’ll have to take you. If they don’t, some of the other papers
will get you.”
“But what’s this?” he queried, the next instant, his face going serious.
“You’ve said nothing about receiving the pay for your turns, and that’s
one of the points of the feature. I expressly mentioned it, if you’ll
remember.”
“It will never do,” he said, shaking his head ominously, when she had
explained. “You simply must collect that money somehow. Let me see. Let
me think a moment.”
“Never mind, Mr. Irwin,” she said. “I’ve bothered you enough. Let me use
your ‘phone, please, and I’ll try Mr. Ernst Symes again.”
He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took down the receiver.
“Charley Welsh is sick,” she began, when the connection had been made.
“What? No I’m not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and his sister
wants to know if she can come out this afternoon and draw his pay for
him?”
“Tell Charley Welsh’s sister that Charley Welsh was out this morning,
and drew his own pay,” came back the manager’s familiar tones, crisp
with asperity.
“All right,” Edna went on. “And now Nan Bellayne wants to know if she
and her sister can come out this afternoon and draw Nan Bellayne’s pay?”
“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Max Irwin cried excitedly, as she hung
up.
“That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and that she and her sister
could come out and get her pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot.”
“One thing, more,” he interrupted her thanks at the door, as on her
previous visit. “Now that you’ve shown the stuff you’re made of, I
should esteem it, ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the
Intelligencer people.”