friend, Mr. Sternberg, and it was remarkable how quick Maison recovered
her strength, with the result that we spent a quiet little morning and
about fifty dollars of Mr. Sternberg's money on shooting-galleries and
throwing rings and carousels and a Japanese auction and other restful
seaside sports, and ended at a quiet little café simply done in paper
roses and rubber palm trees where the drinks was only seventy-five
cents per each and I had to sit and watch them again, Ma having gone
off to exercise and not appearing to want me along with her.
Well anyways I was sort of relieved over not having to eat lunch with
Captain Raymond looking on back at the hotel, and was just thinking of
it when who would come into that café but the Captain himself, alone
except for another officer, a Lieutenant with his arm in a sling and
caught sight of me the very minute he sat down.
Well of course I didnt look over at him but I couldnt help noticing he
called a waiter and wrote a note on a piece of paper and that the waiter
brought it over to me.
And Maison seen it too, and her gentleman friends the same, and did they
kid me? They did! But I kept the bird which had brought the note over
while I tore it in two without reading it and sent it back again that
way and believe you me that got over, because I could see Captain
Raymond turn red all the way across the noisy room.
Well I thought that had settled it and spent a mournful if busy
afternoon in another café where there was lots of smoke and a Jazz band
and dancing and Maison was real happy because she had finally got Mr.
Freddy to spend a nickle and a half. But I was lower than ever in my
mind thinking how much more often some soldiers seemed able to write
than others.
Well, after we had taken a nice walk in the fresh air nearly three
blocks long, I got back to the hotel to find that Goldringer was giving
a party that night beginning with dinner and of course Ma and me was
booked for it and no escape because of my contract with him. And it was
some party and at twelve o'clock that night I dragged my weary bones
down the corridor after the second day of my rest, feeling that I would
pass out any minute. A person certainly does need their strength to
enjoy a American health resort.
The next morning I didn't even attempt to get up for any wild west
exhibit. I hadn't the pep for one thing and the Captain was another
reason of course. And when I finally come down-stairs and see Ma eat
practically nothing, I let her set off right away after breakfast
without me for exercise was nothing in my life. I strolled around the
lobby waiting for Maison Rosabelle according to her request and there I
seen a big poster which I had noticed before, the one about the
entertainment for the benefit of blind soldiers which the Captain had
been sitting under the first time I--he saw me, and I went over and read
it and the entertainment was to come off that very night. And while I
was reading it the second time the way a person does in a hotel lobby,
up comes Captain Raymond and actually speaks right there where a sceene
would of proved me no lady.
"Please, Miss LaTour!" he says. "It's so _important._"
"Kindly do not force me to call for assistance," I says low and quiet.
"You are a stranger to me."
"But you dont understand!" he says, flushing up red the attractive way
he had for all he was so fresh.
"Indeed I do," I says. "I havent been in the theatrical world since
three generations for nothing," I says. "Kindly go _away!_"
"If you would only listen for five minutes, I'd prove how mistaken you
are!" he says. "Won't you give me a chance?"
"No!" I says.
"By Heavens, I'll make you!" he says, half laughing. "I've never seen
anything so absurd! Why my dear lady...."
Right then up comes Maison in a simple little Xmas tree of a dress in
green and gold and red, and I broke away and took her arm, and hurried
her out through the front door, leaving the Captain staring after us and
rather against Maison's will.
"Why didn't you introduce me, dearie?" she says. "I kind a thought you'd
pick up that bird!"
"I didn't pick him up. I turned him down!" I snapped. But Maison kidded
me the whole three hours while we was in the beauty-parlours getting
waived and manicured.
IV
Then we had a nice wholesome little lunch lasting only three hours and
comparatively quiet and by ourselves, seeing there was only Goldringer
and Ruby Roselle and Maison and Freddy and O'Flarety, our leading
juvenile who had turned up, and Mr. Sternberger and a friend of Ma's
which used to be in the circus with her, and Ma and myself. And all the
way through I watched Ma kind of anxiously, for she only toyed with a
little salad and passed up everything else. I was by this time really
scared she would be haggard or something, but she looked fine, and not
a word of complaint out of her, only toward four o'clock she got kind of
restless, and so did I, so we excused ourselves, and walked to the door
together.
"You needn't come along with me, Mary Gilligan," she says. "I want to
walk real fast."
I looked at her sort of surprised at that, but at the time the queerness
didn't really sink in. And I was so wore out I was actually glad to let
her go alone and personally, myself, I took one of those overgrown
baby-carriages or rolling chairs which I thought a healthy young person
like myself would never come to, and sank into it like the poor weary
soul I was, and let the coon tuck me in like a six-months-old, and off
we went as fast as a snail.
Well it was pleasanter than I had thought it would be and I got kind of
drowsy and dreamy and somehow I couldnt help but think of Captain
Raymond and how refined and nice he was and how my fame and beauty had
captured him to the extent that it had almost made him forget to act
like a gentleman, and how he persisted like a regular story book hero.
And I wondered if he would shoot himself on my account, and that threw a
awful scare into me, for handsome women have a terrible responsibility
in the way they treat men. And I wondered was I really doing the right
thing, taking such a risk by treating him so sever and not speaking and
here he was in the service of his country and all and Gawd knows I might
be wrecking his whole life from then on. And furthermore I thought how
hard it is to be refined and what a lot a person has to sacrifice to it,
and that the roughnecks of this world seem to have most of the fun. And
that it was certainly hard to be dignified but that my whole career was
built on my refinement no less than my great talent, and I must respect
my own position. Ah well, uneasy lies the tooth that wears a crown as
the poet says, or something!
And by this time the coon had got tired pushing me and turning my face
sea-ward had gone to take a rest and I took one too and actually fell
asleep.
When I woke up I was moving again, going slow in the direction of the
Inlet, and I felt quite refreshed and happy, and the whole of Atlantic
City appeared to feel the same, for everybody I passed smiled and seemed
to be enjoying theirselves. And they all seemed to smile at me in such a
sweet, friendly way it made my heart feel awful good. I was even quite
surprised because although of course I am used to being recognized every
place I go, but still, more people than ever was doing it this
afternoon. I begun to think I must be looking pretty good and that my
hat, about which I had had a few doubts, was a big success after all. It
really was a sort of triumphal progress as the saying is, and I had half
a mind to turn around when we passed the last pier; but the ocean looked
so beautiful and pink in the sunset and going the other way it would of
been in my eyes, so I just let myself be rolled on and on until we was
almost to the Inlet and not a soul in sight. Then the chair stopped and
was turned against the rail.
"Now I've got you at last!" said a unexpected voice, and around from the
back came, not the coon, but Captain Raymond.
"Where did you come from?" I asked, hardly able to speak.
"I have had the honor of pushing you into this secluded corner of--of
the ocean!" he said, his blue eyes twinkling.
"But how--how . . ." I sputtered.
"I bought off the colored man while you were sleeping," he said. "And
have been your humble servant for almost an hour!"
Can you beat it? You cant!
"Well of all the nerve," I began, remembering how people had smiled, and
no wonder!
"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.
"Walk home this minute!" I says, struggling with the rugs. But they had
a will of their own and it was on his side and I just couldnt seem to
get free of them.
"Oh I say, don't be so absurd!" he says smilingly.
"I'm not!" I says.
"Oh but you are!" he insisted. "Just sit still and let me show you
something!"
Well, there was nothing for me but to give in or look a utter fool, and
he _was_ so attractive! And, well anyways, I waited and he brought out a
letter from his overcoat pocket and it was the very one he had wrote me
first and I had returned it to the hotel clerk.
"Please just open it!" he begged, and I did and nearly fainted because
inside was a letter in Jim's handwriting addressed to me and introducing
Captain Charles Raymond who was with him in France, only being gassed
was now home on leave and would I show him every courtesy as he had
been good to my ever loving husband, Jim!
"And really and truly I wouldn't have been so persistant, Miss LaTour,"
Captain Raymond was saying as I looked up. "I had intended using it when
I got to New York of course. But when they put me in charge of this
entertainment for the benefit of the blind, and I discovered you were
here, I was simply determined to get you to take part in it. Couldn't
you do us just one little dance? It would be such a drawing-card, your
name would. That was all I wanted, really!"
Believe you me I didn't know what to think or how I felt. Did I feel
flat? I did! Did I feel relieved? I did!! So it wasnt a mash at all, and
for a moment I felt a lonelier war-widow than ever. Then I remembered
how Jim said in the note to be nice to this bird, and I could see, now
that I looked at him good, that he was the sort which it is perfectly
safe to be nice to. Not that he didnt admire me, either, but that he was
just as refined as me and more so and was Jim's pal beside. So I says
yes, of course I would dance, and we talked and talked and the sun went
down, and got to be real friends and was it good to hear about Jim,
first hand? <b>IT WAS</b>! And after a while we commenced to walk back toward
the hotel, pushing the chair, and the lights was all lit along the walk
like Fairyland, and also in the shops so they was more like show-cases
than ever. And then I got the second shock of the afternoon because at
ten past six with dinner at seven, there was Ma in the Ocean Lunch
eating griddle-cakes, fish-balls, Salsbury steake and coffee, with a
little strained honey and apple-pie on the side! No wonder she could
diet so good! And I take it to my credit that, since she did not notice
me, I never let on that I seen her, not then nor afterward at dinner
when she refused everything but two dill pickles!
But it wasn't until afterward when I was in the star dressing-room at
the Apollo Theatre, putting on my make-up for the benefit that the real
blow came. I was just about ready to go on when in rushed Goldringer,
all breathless with a cablegram in his hand.
"Its all right about Olivette Twist!" he puffed at me. "We'll begin
making that fillum Tuesday!" and he threw the message down on my
dressing table. It was signed by our London manager and it read:--
"Present location of Charles Dickens uncertain but material is
uncopyrighted, shoot."
And so immediately after the show, myself and Ma went back to New York
to get a twenty-four hour rest before commencing work again.
V
NOW IS THE TIME
I
BELIEVE you me, the world to-day is just about as settled as a green
passenger on a trip to Bermuda. There is that same awful feeling of not
knowing is something going to happen or not--do you get me? You do! And
it can't help but strike even a mere womanly woman and lady like I, that
unless the captain and officers keep a firm hand on the crew until we
get a little ballast in the hold, we are likely to get in Dutch. Not
meaning the Germans necessarily, but the Russians, or something just as
bad. And perhaps it may seem strange for me to know about them
nautchical terms, but anybody which has once been to Bermuda learns what
ballast is on account of their not having hardly any on them boats
because of the water not being deep enough, and believe you me, nothing
I had to do in the fillum we made after what was left of us arrived
there, and it was some fillum at that--$1000. for bathing costumes alone
and me as "The Sea King's Conquest" in silver scales, although hardly
knowing how to swim--was a patch on the treatment which that unballasted
boat handed me on the trip down.
Well anyways, even when sitting in the security of my flat on the Drive,
which Gawd knows it aught to be secure what with the salary I get and
moving-pictures will be the last thing the common people will give
up;--even with this security and the handsomest furniture any
installment house could provide, and every other equipment which is
necessary to one so prominent in my line as myself, still even in the
scarcity of the home, as the poet says, I am conscious that the world
is, or could quite easily be, on the blink.
And ain't it the truth? Even the simplest soul, buried in the wilds of
Broadway and wholly absorbed in their own small life must feel the
unrest. No use kidding ourselves about it. It's time for all good
Americans to quit fighting among theirselves and come to the aid of the
country. Regardless of race, creed or color, as the free hospital says,
and Gawd knows the hospital will be where they'll land if they don't.
Do you get me? Probably not. What I mean is, it's time we quit talking
and _did_ something. What? I dunno, quite, but it was this general line
of thought, which come to me while listening to the director give me my
instructions for the ball-room scene in "The Dove of Peace," where I
catch the Russian Ambassador giving the nitro-glycerine or some other
patent face-cleanser to the fake Senator, caused me to reform the White
Kittens. That and Ma's peculiar behavior, plus the new cook.
You see it come over me all of a sudden that we ladies have now a vote
and so forth, which unquestionably makes us more or less citizens the
same as the men, and if the country went bluey, why wouldn't it be our
fault as well? And I come to this partially through the sense of unrest
and having eat something that didn't settle good and Ma's behavior. All
coming at once they kind of got together and exploded into my idea.
Well anyways, I had just come to a place in my personal life where I
seen a little peace and quiet ahead and nothing to do but go up in an
aeroplane for the second reel of "The Dove." The war was over without
Jim being killed in it and a new chance offered by a big picture
contract the minute his uniform should be off him; I was going strong
with nothing but Broadway releases and a salary which made Morgan
jealous; my spring clothes hadn't a failure among them and only one of
my hats was too tight in the head. The fool dogs was both healthy, the
cook had stayed a month; the car had been in order for over three weeks,
and I had successfully nursed Ma through the flu. And I thought fat
could not harm me, as the poet says, for I had dieted to-day. When all
of a sudden Ma, who had hardly got over the Influenza, come down with
Bolshevism.
Now the trouble with these new diseases is that the doctors don't seem
to know anything about them nor what makes them catching. At least that
is the line of talk they pull, but I got a hunch myself, that if the flu
had been quarantined right in the first place it could of been stopped.
Do you get me? You do! And I will say one more word in favor of
Influenza. You was obliged to report it, if only to the Board of Health.
But Bolshevism seems to be like a cold in the head. If you catch it,
that evidently is nobody's business but your own; if you spread it--the
same. Then again folks are kind of proud of having had the flu. It makes
conversation and everything, and one which has escaped feels a little
mortified like admitting they had never seen Charlie Chaplin. Indeed,
people certainly do get a lot of pleasure out of illness and etc. And so
long as it is under control, all right, leave them enjoy theirselves.
They had to suffer first and mabe a little talk is coming to them.
But with this Bolshevism it's the other way around. The talk comes
first, but believe you me, the suffering will come afterwards. And if
they could only be made to realise this ere too late, a whole lot of
patients would be cured before they got it. A ounce of Americanism is
worth a pound of red propaganda, as the poet says, or would of had he
written to-day.
Things started with Ma as per usual upsetting the cook which has come to
be a habit with her, for cooking is to Ma what his art is to
Caruso--naught but death could tear her from it permanent. And while I
give her credit for trying in every way to be an idle rich, the kitchen
might as well be furnished with magnets and she a nail for all she can
keep out of it with the natural result that keeping out of it is the
best thing the cooks we hire do. And I can't say with any truth that I
have made as much effort to break her of that as of some other lack of
refinements, such as remembering that toothpicks ain't a public utility
and never to say "excuse my back," or keep her knife and fork for the
next course at the Ritz. Because believe you me, Ma is some cook and a
real authograph dinner by her is something to bring tears of sweet
memory to the eyes of the older generation and leave us young things in
sympathetic wonder about them dear dead days when first class
home-cooking was a custom, not a curiosity. And so while the material
side of life don't interest me much, what with my work and etc. to take
my mind off it, still even a artist must eat or Gawd knows where the
strength to act in the "Dove of Peace" or any other six-reeler would
come from if I didn't, and Ma's is that simple nourishing kind, but with
quality, the same as the sort of dresses I wear--made out of two dollars
worth of material and a thousand dollar idea.
Well anyways, our latest cook which had a husband in the service and had
took up her work again so's to release him for the front at Camp Mills,
for he got no further, heard he was coming back home, having got his
discharge and it upset her so but whether from joy or rage, I don't know
which, that there was nothing to eat in the kitchen but a little liquor
she had left at seven-thirty, when we went in to see what was the cause
of delay, and me with Maison Rosabelle and a friend to dinner. So Ma
woke her up out of her emotions which she claimed had overcome her, and
give her a honorable discharge of her own and then turned up the ends of
her sleeves, and only a little hampered by the narrow skirt to the green
satin evening gown she had on her, give us a meal as per above
described. And no one would of cared how long it was before the
intelligence office--I mean domestic, not U.S. Army--sent us a cook but
that in trying to save her dress Ma got hot grease on her right hand and
that changed the situation because we had to call up next day and take
anything they had--and they sent us up a German woman.
Well, believe you me, that was a shock because I had an idea that all
the Germans in the country was either interned or incognito, but this
one wasn't even disguised, which isn't so remarkable on account of her
being pretty near as big as Ma and a voice on her like a fog-horn with
a strong accent on the fog. I never in my life see so many bags and
bundles and ecteras as that female had with her, for she was undoubtedly
one, although she had a sort of moustache beside the voice. But what she
had in voice she certainly lacked in words. When Ma set out to ask her
the usual questions which everybody does, although their heart is
trembling with fear, she won't take the job, this lady Hun didn't
divulge no more information about herself than we asked. She was as
stingy with her language as if it had been hard liquor. Ma asked her to
come in, and she did, and sat without being asked upon one of the gold
chairs in the parlor which I certainly never expected it would survive
the test, they being made for parlor rather than sitting room.
Well anyways, it's a fact she certainly was a mountain and if she were a
fair specimen, all this about the Germans starving to death is the bunk.
Only her being over here may of made a difference. Well, after she had
set down a bundle done up in black oil-cloth, a cute little hand-bag
about a yard long made out of somebody's old stair-carpet, a shoe-box
with a heel of bread sticking out at one end, an umbrella which looked
like a sea-side one, a pot of white hyacinths in full bloom and a
net-bag full of little odds and ends, she still had an old black
pocket-book and a big bulky bundle done up in a shawl lying idly in her
lap. After I had taken all this in, I gave her personally the once-over
and was surprised to see she wasn't so old as her figure, or anything
like it. For by the size of her she might of been the Pyramids, but her
face was quite young and if she had been a boy I would of said the
moustache was the first cherished down.
"What's your name, dearie?" says Ma, which I simply can't learn her not
to be familiar with servants.
"Anna," says the lump.
"And where do you come from?" says Ma, giving a poor imitation of a
detective.
"Old Country," says Anna. Well, Ma and me at once exchanged glances,
putting name and place together.
"German?" says Ma. "Of course!"
"Swedish," says Anna, more lumpishly than ever.
And just at that moment the air was filled with a big laugh that none of
us there had give voice to. It was _some_ shock, that laugh, and Ma and
me looked around expecting to see who had come into the room, but it
was nobody. Anna was the only one who didn't seem disturbed. She just
went on sitting.
"Who was that?" says Ma.
"It must of been outside," I says, for it was warm and we had the
windows open so's to let in the gasoline and railroad smoke and a little
fresh air.
"I guess so," says Ma. Then she went back to her third-degree.
"So you're Swedish!" says Ma. "Can you cook?"
"Good!" says Anna. "Svell cook!"
"Well, dearie!" says Ma, "why was it you left your last place?"
"Too hot!" says Anna. And again me and Ma exchanged glances.
"Are you a good American?" says Ma.
"Good American-Swedish," says Anna. And immediately that awful laugh was
repeated. This time it was in the room, no doubt about it. And yet no
one was there outside ourselfs.
"My Gawd!" says Ma. "What was it?"
"Somebody is hid some place!" I says. "And I'd like to know who is it
with the cheap sense of humor?"
"It bane Frits," says Anna. "Na, na, Frits!"
"But where on earth . . ." I was commencing, when I noticed Anna was
unwinding the shawl off the package in her lap. And then in another
moment we seen Frits for our own selves, for there he was, a big
moth-eaten parrot, interned in a cage, making wicked eyes at us and
giving us the ha-ha like the true Hun he was!
"Frits and me, we stay!" announced Anna comfortably. "We stay!"
"But look here," says I, "we didn't start out to hire any parrots."
"Why Mary Gilligan!" says Ma, and I could see she was scared that if
Frits went Anna would certainly go, too. "Why Mary Gilligan, I thought
you was fond of dumb animals!" she says.
"And so I am," I says. "The dumber the better. But this one is evidently
far from it! How am I going to figure out my income tax with this bird
hanging around?"
"Hang in den Kitchen!" says Anna firmly, and at that we gave in, because
cooks is cooks, and what's a bird more or less after all? Still I didn't
like him on account of suspecting he wasn't a neutral any more than
Anna was for all she claimed to be a Swede. I had read a piece in the
paper about where the Germans was pretending to be Swede or Spanish or
anything they could get away with so's to remain free to spread
Bolshevism and influenza and bombs and send up the price of dry and
fancy goods and put through the Prohibition amendment and all them other
gentle little activities for which they are so well and justly known.
But I thought knowledge is power as the guy which wrote the copy-book
says, and I had the drop on Anna through being on to her disguise and
beside which I could see Ma was going to be miserable if she had to eat
out while her hand was in the sling, and so we took the viper to our
bosom, or in other words, we hired her, and anyways, she had already
accepted the job and it would of been a lot of trouble to get her out by
force. Which, believe you me, a person seldom has to do with servants
now-a-days, and confirmed me about her being German because naturally
people don't hire them, if acknowledging to themselves that they _are_
Germans any more than they would now deliberately import sauerkraut or
any other German industry. Do you get me? You'd better!