genuine job paying good money. And getting them nailed was no cinch,
believe you me, except, of course, I being such a prominent person I
didn't have as much trouble as some would of. Especially where a firm
was using my name on something, they could hardly refuse me. I seen
everybody personally myself, and only the bosses and in the end nobody
had turned me down except the one from which I had bought my new
bear-cat roadster for Jim's welcome home present and it was _some_
roadster, being neatly finished in pale lavender with yellow
running-gear and a narrow red trim and tapestry upholstery on the seats
which was so low and easy you involuntarily started to pull up the
blankets after you got settled. You know, the kind of a car you have to
look up from to see which way the cop is waving.
Well, anyways, you would of thought the bird which had sold it to me for
cash money, him being the manager of the luxurious car-corrall himself,
would offer to take on some of the boys. But no, he says there was too
many auto salesmen in the world already, and that they had ought to be
diverted into selling some of the new temperance drinks where their
trained imagination would undoubtedly be of great value.
Well, anyways, he was the only one turned me down and I had the slips
printed and stored away in a couple of cretone hat-boxes and commenced
allotting the victory-note pledges. And then I tripped over the fact
that I was a job short. There was the stuff all printed, and a job too
short and it the night before the big parade! Well, I decided that when
the time come I would make the extra job if I couldn't find it, and
believe you me, I was as wore out looking for them as a Ham with his
hair cut like a Greenwich village masterpiece. Not that I ever saw one
and I have often wondered where the artists which drew them that way,
did.
But in the meantime I had got hold of the Dahlia sisters, and Madame
Broun and La Estelle, and Queenie King and a lot of other easy-lookers
and had it all fixed for them to be on hand below Fourteenth Street at
ten o'clock to give out the slips while the boys was mobilizing or
whatever they call it. And then just as I was getting into the limousine
with Musette and the two cretone hat boxes full and the two fool dogs
and Ma, who would come up to me but Ruby Roselle with a new spring set
of sables which it is remarkable how she does it in burlesque, still far
be it from me to say a word about any person, having been in the
theatrical world too long not to realize that it is seldom as red as it
is painted and that the coating of black is only on the outside.
Well, anyways, up she comes from her new flat which is only two doors
from mine and a awful mean look in those green eyes of hers under a
sixty dollar hat that looked it, while mine cost seventy-five and looked
fifteen, which is far more refined only Ruby would never believe that:
which is one main difference between her and I. And she stopped me with
one of those deadly sweet womanly smiles and says in a voice all milk
and honey and barbed wire, she says:
"How's this, dearie, about the Theatrical Ladies Committee," she says.
"I only just heard of it from Dottie Dahlia," she says. "What was it
made you leave me off?"
Well, seeing that the armistice was not yet broken I felt I might let
her distribute a few leaflets, although I had left her name off the
signatures at the bottom on account of her never having proved she
wasn't a alien enemy to anything besides dramatic art, which hadn't to
be proved. So I handed her a string of talk about this being a small
affair and how I had thought she would of been too busy to do anything
just now, which made her mad because there is some talk on account of
that she wasn't working just then. But she took a few leaflets and read
the signature at the bottom. "Theatrical Ladies' Welcome Committee" and
got real red in the face.
"Why, my friend Mr. Mulvaney spoke to me about this!" she says. "I was
to of been treasurer, or something! Do you mean to say you spent ten
thousand dollars on _them!"_ and she pointed to the leaflets like a
one-act small-time.
"Yep!" I says. "Take 'em home and try 'em on your piano!" I says. "But
you will have please to pardon me now. I got to beat it!"
And with that I climbed in with the rest of the family and we was rushed
down town to N. Y.'s Bohemian Quarter, where the 70th Division was about
to hang around waiting to parade. Which it is certainly remarkable the
places the highly moral U. S. A. Government picks out for her soldiers
to wait about in say from Paris to Washington Square, and I think their
wives and sweethearts have stood for a good deal of this sort of thing,
to say nothing of wives and sisters being kept from going abroad. I
don't know have any homes been broken up this way, but I will say that
Marsailles and Harlem would of listened better to the patiently waiting
homebodies.
Well, anyways, down we went to the amateur white lights, and by the time
we reached Twenty-Third we begun to run into bunches of the boys. Bands
was playing and all, and--oh my Gawd, what's the use trying to tell
about it? There was plenty to tell, but ain't every one _seen_ it? If
not at N. Y. C., why in some town which may be more jay but with its
heart in the right place, and the heart is the thing which counted this
time as per usual. Believe you me, mine was in my throat and so was
everybody elses when they seen them lean brown boys with their grown-up
faces!
Well, we stopped down to Eleventh and Sixth and got out and commenced
walking around handing out the leaflets, and at first they weren't
taking 'em very seriously, but pretty soon they began to get on to who I
was and of course that caught them and a good many tucked the slips
inside their tin hats and all of them pretty near had seen me in "The
Kaiser's Killing" and I got pretty near as big a ovation as I had tried
to offer them. And as for the parade they was very good-natured, but it
seemed to me that as usual the stay-at-homes in the grandstands was
getting the best of it and the boys doing all the work, for parading, no
more than a first-class dancing act, ain't quite the pleasure to the
ones that does it, that it is to them that only stands and waits, as the
saying is.
V
The crowds on the Avenue was something fierce, and the only ones which
had the right of way, outside of officers and cops, was the
motion-picture men. I seen Ted Bearson, my own camera man from the
Goldringer Studios, and Rosco, my publicity man, and they was talking
together. I stepped back in among the boys, because I wasn't looking for
any personal publicity myself on this particular day, wishing to leave
all that to the division and I knew that if Ted was to see me he would
shoot me.
But ain't it the truth that the modester a public person like me is, the
more attention they attract? My sweet, quiet voice, silent though snappy
clothes, and retiring manner have been in Sunday spreads and
motion-picture magazine articles practically all over the world and
America, and my refinement is my best-known characteristic. Publicity is
like men. Leave 'em alone and they simply chase you. Pretend you don't
want them, and you can't lose them. And the more reluctant I am about
being noticed, the wilder the papers get! Only, of course, without a
good publicity man this wouldn't, perhaps, be a perfectly safe bet.
So this day, having got rid of all my leaflets, I was slowly working my
way toward the Avenue, when publicity was thrust upon me.
You know this Bohemian part of New York is made up of old houses which
is so picturesque through not having much plumbing and so forth and heat
being furnished principally by the talk of the tenants on Bolshevism and
etc. These inconveniences makes a atmosphere of freedom and all that and
furnishes a district where the shoe-clerk can go and be his true self
among the many wild, free spirits from Chicago and all points west.
Well, this neighborhood could stand a lot of repairs, not alone in the
personal sense, but in a good many of the buildings, but these are
seldom made until interfered with by the police or building departments.
And on the corner of the street which I was now at there was a big old
house full of people who _did_ something, I suppose, and these were
mostly bursting out through the open windows or sitting on the little
balconies which looked like they couldn't hold a flower pot and a pint
of milk with any safety much less a human. But there they was, sitting,
with all the indifference to fate, for which they are so well known. I
couldn't but notice the risk they ran, but I should worry how many
radicals are killed, and so I paid but little heed until I noticed that
there was three little kids--all ragged children of the dear
proletariat--which some of the Bohemians had hauled up on a balcony
which was too frail for adults. The minute I see that balcony I was
scared to death, although the short-haired girl and the long-haired man
which was letting the kids out on it was laughing and care-free as you
please. The kids got out all right, and then something awful happened.
Right below was a open space at the head of this particular column,
where the officers and color-bearers and etc was. Rosco and Ted was
getting a picture of them. But while I generally watch a camera, this
time I didn't on account of watching the kids. And as I looked that
rotten old balcony broke and one them, a little girl, fell through and
hung there, caught by her skirt, and it a ragged one at that. Everybody
screamed and yelled and sort of drew back, which is the first way people
act at a horror before they begin to think. I yelled myself, but I
started toward her, because the radicals couldn't reach her from above
and from below the ground was fully twenty feet away and nothing but a
fence with spikes and a dummy window-ledge way to one side. But I had a
idea I might make it for what with two generations on the center trapeze
and never a drop of liquor and not to mention what I done in pictures, I
think quicker than some and act the same. But my new skirt prevented,
and ahead of me dashed a soldier.
In a minute he had scaled the wall and worked his way along the spikes
to that ledge, and then while the crowd watched breathlessly he had
that kid under one arm and was back on the wall again. He held her
close, turned around, crouched down and then jumped. And as he jumped I
screamed and run forward, for Oh My Gawd, it was Jim!
I don't know how I got there, but when I come to I and that scared kid
was all mixed up in his arms and the three of us crying to beat the band
which had struck up and the crowd yelling like mad. And it was a peach
of a stunt, believe you me.
"Didn't you get my cable?" Jim says. And I says no, and we clinched
again. And then we heard a funny, purring sound right behind and broke
loose and turned around and there was that devil of a Ted taking a
close-up!
"Hold it! Damn you, hold it another ten feet!" yells Rosco, who was
dancing around like a regulation director, just back of Ted. "Fine,
Fine! Oh, boy, what a pair of smiles! Say, folks, we shot the whole
scene--_some_ News Weekly Feature. Oh say, can you see me, Rosco, _the_
publicity man!"
Honest to Gawd you would of thought he had gone crazy! And that
bone-headed crowd couldn't make out was the whole thing staged or real.
Believe you me, I had to pinch myself to know was it real or not, but
thank Gawd it was, it was! And after nearly two years! Do you know how
that feels? Give a guess! And then, just as I thought now this cruel war
and everything is over, why that roughneck of a officer give the order
to fall in and of course Jim had to and left me there with that kid in
my arms for Ted to make a couple of stills for the papers.
Believe you me, I couldn't tell how many he took, or when, because
seeing Jim so sudden and unexpected had pretty near killed me, and I
couldn't say anything much about the parade either, because something
kept me from seeing it and I guess it was my own glad tears. Anyways, I
had three wet handkerchiefs in my bag when I got home and one of them a
perfect stranger's.
Well, of course, I expected the parade would break up when it struck
Harlem and the boys would hurry right home. And did they? They _did_
not! I hurried right home, all right, all right, but not so Jim. And for
a long while I was sitting there in one of my trousseau dresses and a
fearful state of mind over what had he done to get killed since I last
seen him. But hours went by and still he didn't come. And I didn't know
his 'phone or where he was or anything. The only clue I had that the
whole business was a fact and no dream was the cable, which had come
after he did, saying he would be home as arranged after all.
Believe you me, I hope never to live through another twenty-four hours
like them that followed, because I couldn't eat or sleep, not knowing
where he was.
Next morning I wouldn't even look at the papers which was Sunday and
full of our and the division's pictures. And Monday was worse, because
even although Jim might be alive none of the hospitals nor yet the
morgue had him, and so I commenced to think he had gone back on me. A
telegram come from the coast saying "Great Sunday story bring Rosco
contract follows," but what did I care for that stuff without Jim? Ma
was very silent all this time, and kept in her room a lot, with the door
shut. And then late Monday afternoon the door-bell rung, and my heart
leaped to my feet like it had done at every tinkle for 48 hours, and I
went myself, but it was only Ruby Roselle and Mr. Mulvaney of the
Welcome Home Committee with her! The men that girl knows! Well, she
sees them in another light than I and it's a good thing all tastes don't
run the same. But this was such a surprise I asked them in before I
thought and pretty near forgot my own troubles for a minute.
Ruby cuddled down into her kolinsky wrap and give me the fish-eye, as
she addressed me in her own sweet way as a woman to her best enemy.
"Dearie," she says, tucking in a imaginary curl. "Dear, Johnnie here was
over to my flat and we got speaking of you by accident, and he's anxious
to know where's the money he gave you, and why no decorations as was
intended?"
"Yes, Miss La Tour," says the old bird, which it was plain she had made
a even more perfect fool of him than he had been before. "Yes, Miss La
Tour, it's a serious thing," he says. "I understand you didn't really
call even one meeting and as for decorations--!! Well, what can you tell
us?"
Well, I told him how I come to think of what I thought of, and the jobs
which I had 319 of and the notes and all, and while I talked I could
see plain enough that I was getting in worse every minute, because they
had come determined to find me guilty, and no matter what I said, it
would of listened queer with them two pairs of glassy eyes on me.
"I had a hunch," I wound up, "that maybe something a little substantial
would be welcome," I says, "because after all a person can't live on
plaster arches and paper flowers, and three hundred and nineteen jobs
ought to take care of a considerable percent of the ones that need it,"
I says. "And so while your arches are all right," I says, "you must
admit they are principally for show."
When I got through Mr. Mulvaney cleared his throat and didn't seem to
know just how to go on; but Ruby give him an eye, and so he cleared his
throat again and changed back to her side.
"This is all _most_ irregular," he says very dignified. "Most irregular.
You will certainly have to appear before the general committee and give
them an accounting. What you have done amounts to a misuse of
public-funds!"
My Gawd, I nearly fainted at that! But before I could say a word a
voice spoke up from the doorway.
"Like hell it does!" says Jim, which that dear kid had left himself in
with his key and listened to the whole business. "Like hell it's a
misuse!" he says, coming into the room and putting his arm around me.
"You just let the public and the soldiers take their choice! Give all
the facts to all the newspapers and we will furnish the photographs
free! Go to it! Get busy! And--get out!"
Well, they got, and what happened then I will not go into because there
are things even a self-centered woman won't put on paper! Poor Jim, and
him back in camp to get deloused and demobilized and his tooth-brush,
and a few parting words of appreciation and etc, these past 48 hours
which it seems is the rule for all soldiers, and I suppose they did need
the rest after that parade before taking up domestic life once more.
Well, anyways, that afternoon late, while him and me was thoroughly
enjoying our joint contract and the Sunday spreads with our pictures and
all, in walks Ma with her hat and dolman on and a suit-case in one hand,
and 'Frisco, the he-snake in his box, in the other hand.
"For the love of Mike, Ma Gilligan, where are you going to?" I says,
looking at her idly.
"I'm leaving you forever!" says Ma, in a deep voice.
"Leaving us? Whatter you mean, leaving us?" I says, taking notice and my
head off Jim's shoulder.
"I'm going back to work," says Ma. "I'm not going to be dependent on you
no longer," she says, "nor a burden in my old age," she says. "And now
that you got Jim back I shall only be in the way, so good-by, Gawd bless
you!"
"Why, Ma Gilligan!" I yells, jumping to my feet. "How you talk! Besides
what on earth do you think you could do?"
"Oh, I got a job," she flashes, proudly. "I'm going back to the circus!"
Believe you me, that pretty near had me floored.
"The circus!" I says. "What nonsense! Why a trapezer has to be half your
age to say nothing of weight!"
"I'm not going on no trapeze at my years!" says Ma. "I'm going back as
Fat Lady. One hundred a week and expenses!"
All of a sudden I realized the full meaning of them doughnuts and cocoa
and etc she had eat these past months. She had been deliberately
training and as usual was successful. I sprung to my feet and hung
around Ma's neck like a ten-year-old.
"Oh Ma!" I says. "Don't! Please don't go back! Whatever would we do
without you?" I says. And Jim added his entreaties.
"Why, Ma Gilligan, what bally rot!" he says, which it's quite noticeable
the amount of English he's picked up over there. "What a silly ass you
are, old dear!" he says. "Here we are going to California and who would
cook for us if not you?" he says, "with the cook-question like it is out
there?"
Well, that weakened Ma considerable, for cooking is her middle name. So
she set down the suit-case.
"Ma!" I begged her. "We _couldn't_ have too much of you, and you would
never be in the way or a burden no matter what the scales say. For
heaven's sake take off that hat, it's too young for you, and burden us
with the first home cooking Jim has had in two years!"
Well, she give in at that, and sat down the snake and her dolman and
pocket-book.
"Well, all right then!" she says. "I'll stay!" Which is about all the
emotion Ma ever shows. "Whew, but it's hot in here!" she says and turns
to open the window and we left her do it, because we seen she didn't
want us to notice her tears. And as she opened it she gives a shriek and
leans way over, grabbing at something. And hardly had she yelled than
from below come a holler and a flow of language the like of which I had
never heard, no, not even at the studio when something went wrong! Then
Ma commenced to laugh something hysterical and pulled herself back in
through the window and leaned against the side of it, hollering her head
off.
"What is it?" I says.
"It's Maude!" gasps Ma. "She was shut under the winder and when I opened
it she fell out and lit on Rudie's head which was sitting right
underneath."
Well, we could hardly hear her for the noise in the kitchen. The
dumb-waiter was buzzing like all possessed. I and Jim rushed out and
there, lickety-split, come the dumb-waiter only it was more inarticulate
than dumb by then, and on it the case of Old Home lacking only three
quarts.
"I find your whiskey, Miss La Tour!" says Rudie's voice, very weak and
shagy from below. "I chust find him and send him right away, quick!"
"Thanks old dear!" chortled Jim. "Come up and have a drink on me!"
"No tanks!" yelled Rudie. "I'm leaving this blace right now foreffer!"
Well, we should worry! I turned to Jim, a big load off my mind.
"Jim," I says solemnly. "There is the three hundred and twentieth job!"
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Varied spelling, hyphenation and dialect is as in the original.