He picked up his hat and coat and started for the door.
In five minutes the room was empty. The girl had been pulled back of
the scenes by a cursing manager, but she might as well have been dumb
for all she heard.
“You’re a mutt,” he was saying; “here you’ve had your chance and quit,
and you’ve made a sucker out of me, too. I can’t look any of those
people in the face again.”
Of course, he didn’t consider where she figured.
Then he walked out and left her there with a skirt wrapped around her
as her only covering.
The janitor found her when he came to turn out the lights.
She was partly dressed then, and shivering. He helped her finish
dressing, and then he went out to get her a drink to warm her up a bit.
Later she wandered out and got another drink to make her forget and
still another that her mind might be blank.
At daybreak she was in the hospital in a state of coma from which
nothing could rouse her. She never came back again, and when the
call-boy in the theatre in the next town was calling out: “Fifteen
minutes--first act,” she died.
Yet his friends say the manager is one of the best fellows in the
business.
[Illustration: She had danced the fandango in a way that made the
Mexicans cheer]
THE MONOLOGUE GIRL’S STORY
It was after the show that there were four of us sitting at the round
table in the back room of The Dutchman’s on Third avenue. It’s a pretty
good place, that self-same back room, and the big steins of beer are
pretty good, too, with a heaping plate of pretzels always on the side
and a sandwich to be had by pressing the button.
There was Al Fostell, the German comedian, who ought to have been in
the legitimate long ago; Harry Ferguson, famous for his impersonation
of _Happy Hooligan_; Harry’s wife, Lulu Beeson, the Star of Texas, and
so great a dancer that she has a Richard K. Fox medal about as long as
her arm, which any beskirted performer can get by beating her at the
soft shoe buck; and one other, whom I shall simply designate as The
Girl, because, even though she plays a star part in this, she doesn’t
want to be known to the general public.
The Girl was brilliant, versatile and clever. She took it into her
head to become a dancer once, and among other things she learned the
fandango. She went to Mexico with a troupe and danced that famous
measure in a way that made them cheer her to the echo. She played faro
bank and won enough to keep her in clothes for a year.
The talk had drifted on marriage and Fostell started things.
“I have been married a good many years, more than I care to tell,” he
said, “and I have been trying to induce my daughter to call me uncle so
they won’t get on to me. I claim that a performer’s domestic life can
be just as pure and happy as that of a business man. I agree that there
is a lot of immorality in the profession, but you’ll always find a lot
of outsiders helping things along. There are times when we seem to be
targets for the whole world to shoot at.”
“In my opinion,” put in Ferguson, “the performers who are in the
business to make a living on their merits are for the most part decent
people whose lives are an open book. The women of the chorus of the
big shows on Broadway--the kind who haven’t a line to speak and who
couldn’t speak it if they had--are responsible in the main for all of
these sweeping charges of immorality. Our children are born in the
shadow of the theatre, and a great part of their lives are spent in the
green rooms and dressing rooms. We try to do the best we can by them
and bring them up properly.”
Then The Girl, who can tell stories and sing in a most charming way,
and who for that reason has a salary that is worth considering, broke
in:
“You men with wives sit back and talk of morality and all that sort
of thing and you don’t know what it means. You two are lucky because
you have married good women who look after your interests and bring
your children up as best they can under the circumstances. You only
see things from the viewpoint of the male animal, who is used to being
waited on and catered to. The average man says, ‘I am handsome,’ ‘I
am great,’ ‘I am distinguished,’ or ‘I am the real one,’ as the
case may be. He sees a girl whose appearance catches his fancy and
straightway he must have her. He likes her and that settles it. It
makes no difference whether or not she likes him--her feelings are not
to be considered. He is the one. If his passion is a strong one he
pursues her to the finish and hounds her. If she still holds out he
becomes actuated by a motive of revenge and so he sets out to try to
injure her, to prevent her from making a living that she may feel the
pinch of poverty. He uses all the influence at his command to crush and
humiliate her, and then he taunts her.
“Boys, I’ve been through the mill and I know what I’m talking about.
I’m a kid no longer, and I wouldn’t marry the best man on earth, nor
tie myself up to him for either a definite or an indefinite length of
time. No double acts for me, but monologues from now on until I get my
23.
“Let me tell you something you never heard before.
“One night I went down to the Battery and sat on the sea wall there
for hours looking at the water smashing away at the rocks. It was
moonlight and almost bright enough to read a paper. I had enough to
think of while I was sitting there and I thought it, too. I know what
it is to have a whirring sound in your brain, for I had it then. I was
trying to get up enough courage to throw myself overboard, for I really
wanted to die. I had seen all of life and of men that I wanted and had
enough. I had been driven by a man from the place where I lived to the
jumping-off spot as coldly, and calmly, and deliberately as a drover
would direct the course of a steer to the abattoir. He had made living
impossible for me.
“Those noises in my head had reached that stage where they were like
the sound of the L road trains going past your windows at night when
you’re trying to sleep, but the stronger they grew the less they
annoyed me, and the idea came to me that if I wished hard enough death
would come very easy.
“You know that old act of mine where I used to imitate a woman who
had gone insane from grief at being abandoned by her lover? You know
what a hit it always made. Well, it’s nothing like the real thing.
Heart-breaking grief in its highest form is quiet. It doesn’t want the
limelight or stage center, but a dark corner and seclusion. It wants to
be left alone.
“The next thing I remember was someone saying to me ‘Come out of here;
what are you trying to do--drown yourself?’
“And there I was in the water up to my waist with a policeman holding
me by the arm. He turned me around so that I faced the wall again and
we walked back to where he helped me up. Then he took me, all dripping
and so cold that I had no feeling at all, to the station house, where I
was charged, under a most absurd law, with attempted suicide. They were
humane enough to send for an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital
and fixed up so I could appear in court the next morning. The man was
there--the man with his sneering smile and his air of well-fed comfort.
He had come down to look me over. He probably wanted to see the girl
who had refused nearly everything that money could get, simply because
she was not for sale and couldn’t be bought like a new scarf or a hat
of the latest mode. He also wanted to parade his prosperity before
my misery, probably that before anything else. Even he must have
pitied me because of my position, and he edged over to where I was and
whispered:
“‘It isn’t too late yet, and I want to help you.’
“‘You mean that you want to get me out of here?’ I asked.
“‘Yes,’ he said eagerly, ‘I want to get you out.’
“‘Well, if I were you,’ I told him, ‘I wouldn’t take any chances
because if I get out of here and you ever speak to me again I will do
the very best I can to kill you.’
“He shrank back as if he had been stung, and so great was his terror
that I almost laughed at him. Then he turned and walked away.
“That is the curtain of my story. I could begin at the beginning and
make it a long one, but what’s the use? I could make a romance of it,
or even a tragedy, and now that I am my sane self I could even make it
a comedy. I could go over the list of things he promised me and what
he promised to do for me, and you would think he had all the wealth
of the Bank of England at his back, but his mind ran in a groove so
narrow and his manner was so offensive that the only thing that kept
him in the human being class was the fact that his nostrils were not
shaped like those of a swine, and that instead of grunting he used
language that was fairly intelligible. But for once he was toppled from
his self-built pedestal and he crashed down in the wreck of his own
self-conceit. Men like that make the world seem immoral and immoral
in fact, and a few such as he would degrade the noblest profession in
the world. Egotists and atheists, believing in nothing save self, they
taint a community like a plague.
“Bring us some more beer, Billy, for I’m going home. I’m tired and dead
to the world.”
“I wouldn’t like to be the man you hated,” said Ferguson.
“My boy, I can neither hate nor love, I am simply numb. I have had
seven proposals of marriage, both in the profession and out of it,
but there was nothing doing. I am absolutely emotionless. I ask no
favors on account of my sex and I owe my allegiance to no man. But I am
watching my tormentor growing gradually old. I see him once in a while,
you know, and I am keeping track of him. It’s my one joy in life. The
gray has come into his hair and it is turning white and the wrinkles
are spreading themselves over his face like avenging fingers. I know
he is not really happy, although he pretends to be, and some day, in
some luxurious apartment, he’ll lie dying. A million dollars will not
give him one more breath nor would a hundred millions add one more day
to his existence, and when he is very close to that gate which always
opens inward and from which there is no retreat and I really know that
he is going, then I will laugh; not the kind of a laugh you know, boys,
but the kind of a laugh that follows a soul across the border line of
death and which keeps echoing for ages.”
“Did you ever play the part of _Ophelia_?” I asked.
“No, but I could.”
And we all believed her.
A TWISTED LOVE AFFAIR
This is the story of a wooing that went astray.
There are many such stories floating around, and they are all good, if
they could only be told. But there is the trouble, for, like family
skeletons, they are sunk so deep in the cellar or locked up so securely
in the closet that there is no getting to them, even for a minute.
How these two met or where they met is of no material difference, and
here is where a romantic touch might be introduced. The truth is that
they came face to face with each other on the boardwalk at Atlantic
City. He had been up to old Vienna while she had taken in the show on
the Pier. A dozen or more of those high steins of Pilsner had made
him a bit reckless, and that was his only excuse. She was lonely, and
that was hers. It’s a great combination, like guncotton and a match.
All right apart, but let them meet and the result is pyrotechnical.
When they were twenty feet apart there was a sudden flash of lightning
of the vivid brand they have on the Jersey shore, followed by a crash
of thunder heavy enough to make a cigar store Indian step down and
crawl under his pedestal. Then a few drops of rain about the size of a
quarter, and a general scurrying for shelter.
The man whistled for a covered rolling chair, and the girl with eyes
shut and head down ran directly into his arms.
[Illustration: Atlantic City is the place for sporty girls who play the
game to the limit]
She recoiled like a rubber ball that has been thrown up against a brick
wall, while he felt to see if his watch was still fast in the mooring
at his vest.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” and she gathered up her skirts as she prepared
for another flight.
“Don’t mention it,” he answered with admiration, “but I think you could
beat Jeffries if you were trained down a bit.”
“Sir!”
“Now don’t sir me; it’s raining and that blanket of yours won’t stand
water. I’ve an option on the only chair in sight. It’s yours; help
yourself, and if you don’t mind I’ll go as far as my hotel. Are you on
the job?”
“I don’t think----” she began severely, when the lightning broke out
again and interrupted her.
“You don’t have to think,” he said. “Jump in and keep out of the wet.
People don’t think at Atlantic City; they get on the job quick,” and he
motioned the walking delegate with the perambulator to move up.
“All right,” she said, resignedly.
“Of course it’s all right, for you get home dry while I have a chance
to meet a good fellow. Now let’s introduce. My name is Ben. There’s
another part to it, but it don’t make any difference here. What’s
yours?”
“You don’t lose any time, do you?”
“Never was known to so far. Come on, what is it?”
“Bess,” she answered.
“Bess; great; sounds like a sport. Not hard to say and rhymes with
‘bless’ and ‘yes’ and a lot of other words. Now, Bess, you and I are
going to have one little drink just to celebrate. You know the old
saying--wet out and wet in. The wise gink who’s pushing this van is
heading me back to where I came from, I see; Old Vienna. I wonder if
he gets a commission? Just because I like you, and because your hair
matches my tie I’ll blow you to anything you like from a second-story
stein up to a bottle--large or small, according to your capacity. How
about it?”
“I suppose you think because you got me in this absurd wicker basket
before I could call a policeman and have you arrested for insulting
me that any proposition you make from now on will not be objected to.
Perhaps, because I made the fatal mistake of being alone on the walk at
night, you, too, have made a mistake.”
“I never make mistakes, but this time I overlooked the fact that I am
hungry. So we’ll get the large bottle and something to eat on the side
and between drinks we’ll tell each other the story of our past lives,
and we’ll make a bet on whose is the best.”
Half an hour later they were like a couple of chums who had known each
other for years, and she was calling him Ben as if she had been raised
with him.
That was not quite a year ago, and it is only introduced in order that
the story might be told from the very beginning.
A thousand trifling things happen in life which often turn the tide or
change the course of events. A man, because his watch is a few minutes
late, misses a train which is wrecked and thus saves his life; again he
goes down one street instead of another, for no reason that he knows
of, and avoids a catastrophe or misses an opportunity; he goes here
instead of there and something occurs which changes the course of his
path from that point on to the grave. Call it fate if you like, but
whatever it is it is inevitable and inexorable, and no human will has
been found that is strong enough to resist it. It is like the call
of “Hands up” coming from the desperado with a revolver. There is no
alternative. In some cases it is impulse, a seventh sense, or pure
luck--good or bad--according to results, or even intuition. The wise
man says that what is to be will be and trails along in contentment.
Others fight it out and come forth beaten in the end.
The two of this story came back to New York hopelessly in love
with each other, and at that time, so far as I know, it wasn’t the
commercial love of the twentieth century, ready to switch and change
as soon as the sun went under the first cloud. They met two, three and
four times a week, first in one place and then in another, and they
knocked about town like a pair of happy-go-lucky Bohemians with the
rent paid a year in advance.
“Some day,” he said to her once, “when I am quite free to do as I like
I’m going to marry you, and then all of this running to cover like a
pair of rabbits chased by a brown ferret that you can’t see will stop.”
“How do you know that I would marry you even if you wanted it?” she
asked.
“We’ll argue that point when the time comes,” was the answer.
“Now that we’ve known each other for so long a time--at least it seems
long to me--I’ve a confession to make to you. I ought to have told you
before, but it isn’t too late now.”
“Save your confession as I’m saving mine,” he said. “I never knew
these past life stories to do any good, for both men and women make
mistakes, and they ought to do with them as the doctors do with their
failures--bury them.”
“But we are doing wrong now.”
“The boy up the farmer’s tree filling his pocket with apples is happy
until he is caught. My motto is to get as many apples as you can until
you hear the farmer coming and then beat it while you have the wind
with you. It doesn’t require as much nerve as you think, and any time
the game isn’t worth it quit. The beaten man in a fight, if he is game,
always gets as much applause as the victor and sometimes a great deal
more. I have seen the time when it was better to lose than to win,
strange as that may seem. I don’t believe in figuring on what is to be
years from now because I may be dead. There is no to-morrow in life--it
is all to-day. If battles have been won, cities destroyed, empires
established and colossal fortunes swept away in an hour what chance has
a man--a mere atom on the earth--to speculate in futures? The typhoid
germ upon an oyster, the invisible microbe of consumption eaten or
breathed in with a thousand other death-dealing mites, can kill him as
surely as a thunderbolt or a drop of cyanide of potassium. Upon your
hands and your face at this moment are the bacteria of lockjaw only
waiting for a scratch or a wound of some kind to enter your veins. Yet
you do not worry about that. You see you have me talking about things I
do not like and it will take at least another pint to get the taste out
of my mouth. Accept my advice, if the sun is shining for you now don’t
fear the coming night.”
Through all the winter he never knew where she lived or how she lived
and he didn’t care, and that was because he was a philosopher, and
she knew as little about him as he did about her. A future meeting was
always arranged upon the heels of the previous one. Her name was Bess
and his was Ben and that was sufficient.
Very queer, of course, and almost unbelievable, but true nevertheless.
And all the while the match was getting nearer to the guncotton and
neither knew it. Playing with fire had come to be such a habit with
these two that they didn’t fear the flames.
It was at a nice little afternoon luncheon that she became first
serious and then confidential. They had reached the coffee stage--the
proper time to put your elbows on the table and talk--when she said:
“Ben, I want $5,000.”
At that particular moment he was lighting a cigarette and he didn’t
look up for a full minute, which is a very long while if you only know
the real value of time.
“What for?” he asked, finally.
“I am married, you know. I mean you don’t know it, but I’m telling you
now, and I want to get a divorce. I have been collecting evidence and
I have all I want, but I shall have to get a lawyer, and I shall also
have to live until the case is disposed of.”
“Why didn’t you consult me?”
“Why should I until I was ready?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Would you take the case?”
“No, but I could advise you.”
So he did, and being a very smart lawyer instead of giving her a check
for the money she wanted he gave her what in his opinion was $5,000
worth of advice. You see, the substance of his love of the fall had
fallen away to a shadow, and hard-headed business men don’t invest in
shadows or even pay money to build a monument over a sentiment that is
either dead or dying. Hearts are rarely trumps; spades have the call
to-day.
“I’m going ahead anyhow,” she went on, “and I suppose when I am free
that even your memory will suffer from an attack of dry rot, and that
you’ll forget everything you have ever said to me--or deny it, which
amounts to the same thing in the end.”
So the next day she told her story to a lawyer, not the story of Ben
and the dinners, but the tales of the man to whom she was married, and
when she produced certain dates and facts she was told she had the
clearest kind of a clear case and that it would go through with bells
on, with hubby paying the shot.
The complaint was drawn up and the papers served; and here comes the
great part of this recital.
Just one week later a clean-cut, well-built young business man, of
about 35, walked into Ben’s office and asked for a consultation.
“You have been recommended to me,” he began, “by a business friend of
mine. I have been sued for divorce by my wife. My morals are none too
good, but neither are hers. Will you take the case and defend me?”
“Yes,” said Ben, “I’ll take it,” and he called a stenographer. “Dictate
your story to her and then see me to-morrow, when I will have the
papers drawn up. If your counter charges amount to anything at all we
can beat her--that is, if you want to beat her. As I understand it you
don’t want her to get a divorce from you?”
“That’s it exactly. It isn’t that I care a rap, but I don’t care to be
made a scapegoat, and I think when she knows what kind of an answer I
have she’ll drop the whole case and take to the woods, which will suit
me down to the ground.”
At 11 o’clock Ben saw the transcribed notes of the amanuensis and he
hadn’t read more than ten lines when he jumped from his chair as though
it had suddenly become red-hot.
“Miss Bates,” he called sharply, “bring me your note book.”
In she came and handed it to him.
“You’ll say nothing about this?”
“No, sir,” but there was the suggestion of a smile around the corners
of her mouth.
He thrust it in his pocket and in a minute was out of the door.
There was a little luncheon date on with Bess for 12 o’clock, but he
couldn’t wait. He was at the appointed place a full hour before the
time, and he sat at the table glaring at the door. Exactly on the
stroke of the hour she came in smiling.
“Why, Ben, what’s the matter? You look as though you had been struck by
a blizzard.”
“I have. Read that,” and he handed two typewritten sheets to her.
“You’ll have to drop that case of yours, and drop it quick, too. Your
husband had the nerve to retain me to defend him; and in his counter
charges he names me as your co-respondent, and I’m damned if he hasn’t
got every move we ever made pat and to the minute. He’s been on to
everything.”
He looked up suddenly and a look of suspicion came over his face.
“What is this, a job? Have you two been working me?”
“You contemptible thing,” she whispered, “you have the mind of a street
sweeper. How dare you talk to me like that after all our----”
Two tears came into her eyes.
“If I were a man I would fight you and you wouldn’t dare to fight back.
You’d run. Do you hear that--you’d run away, because you are a coward.
I could make you run away now if I wanted, because you are afraid.”
Then she turned and walked out of the place without even so much as
looking behind her, and the man was left with a lot of typewritten
sheets clutched in one hand and a stenographer’s note book in the other.
There was never any suit, but if you happen to New York any day during
the winter months I’ll show you this couple--Bess who made a little
mistake and stepped out to where the daisies grow once or twice--and
her husband, who won because he was willing to wait.
It sounds like a romance, I know, but it’s all true, every word of it,
for the little stenographer told me the most of it.
[Illustration]
WEDDING RINGS AND FOOTLIGHTS
There are several titles which would cover this story with equal
aptness, and one of them is The Siren Song of the Burlesque Lady.
Another one that would sound well is the Corralling of the Willie Boy.
In fact they would do well together--a great deal better than the lady
and the boy did. I call him boy in this story, but he is really a man
so far as years and stature go, that is all, and he is learning a lot
every day, so much so that if he keeps on he will some day be a man in
everything.