kind of eyes that can see things below the surface, so to speak--you
will see that she doesn’t really belong here, and never did. That she
is here because of some unfortunate series of circumstances over which,
perhaps, she had no control. You will see something in her manner that
distinguishes her from the rest of the women, even those who are better
looking and better dressed. It is that intangible, indefinite something
which means blood, or previous environment. It cannot be put on and
taken off like a garment, and when once there it is there to stay.
That makes the wreck all the more pitiable, and with the same eyes
through which you have just looked you will see the finish.
It isn’t pleasant to look at, and now, while the music is playing for
the waltz, and the couples are getting on the floor to go through that
interminable routine of steps called dancing, while the painted women
are laughing, and the men are calling them pet--or other--names, we
will go out of this room to where we can breathe a fresher air and see
the stars.
I’m not sentimental, but there are some things I don’t like to see,
besides, I knew the girl when she was at her best, and I have heard her
sing when she brought the house down with applause.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Once she had been on the stage, but she got a rough deal
and quit]
A GIRL OF THE NIGHT
The band on the platform at the end of the big hall was booming out
the popular melodies of the day for dear life and the piercing notes
produced by the leather-lunged piccolo player were heard as far as the
street.
“That guy up there has me deaf with that flute he’s blowing,” remarked
Big Lizzie, “and while I don’t wish him any harm yet I hope he chokes.”
“That knocks this place,” remarked her pal. “Why, I had a John in here
the other day and he was wanting to buy me a new dress, and I thought
he was wanting to know where I lived, and I was writing my name and
number down on a piece of paper and he got disgusted and went away. It
drives ’em out, if you want to know what I think.”
But it was once a famous old place when Fourteenth street was really
good, and the casual visitor to New York who didn’t drop in for an hour
or so missed something.
It was one of the sights, and the great mechanical organ invented and
built by a straight-laced Methodist is there still, although he has
long ago ceased calling the attention of his friends to the fact. Its
tunes to-day are sandwiched in with those of the band, and in the
interval the trombone player gets a chance to recover his breath.
Morning, noon and night men and women wander in, sit at the little
round tables, drink queer decoctions made of liquor strong enough to
eat into Harveyized steel, and then go forth to tear up the town. The
police pass it by as though it were nothing more serious than an ice
cream parlor or a peanut emporium, while the tide of upholstered and
hand-painted mademoiselles sweep in on the flood and drift out on the
ebb with business written in every line of their faces.
Their paths radiate like the sticks of a fan from this rendezvous
of the social evil, and in their movements they show nearly all the
characteristics of the honey-gathering bee.
The engaging and winsome smile of a girl not yet out of her teens had
caught the eye of the man in this story, and against his will he had
allowed her to lead him into this place where mirth was nothing more
nor less than a mask behind which a skeleton face grinned, and where
neither laughter nor anything else was sincere. Her black eyes had not
yet taken on that hardness which the years to come would surely add
to them, and her ways were to a certain extent ingenuous. Besides,
she was distinctly pretty with her Yiddish style of beauty, which
was unfortunately of the kind which matures at sixteen and is old at
twenty-five. Either teaching or a subtle instinct had caused her to
discard the gorgeous plumes and brilliant colors which had marked her
debut on the street less than a year before, and in consequence she
might have passed for anything but what she was.
She had been on the stage once on a tour, but got a rough deal and
quit.
He outclassed her by a hundred to one, and his source was as high as
hers was low. There was no tinge of peasantry in his veins, but good
successful American stock traceable back for five or six generations
without a blot upon escutcheon--which, by the way, is rather rare in
these days, consequently it’s worth boasting about. Lured into the
maelstrom of music, he found himself at one of the tables with the girl
beside him, still smiling.
Liquor has different effects on different men; it turns the mild man
into a savage and makes a careful one reckless in the extreme. In this
particular case caution went to the four winds and sympathy--which
is apt to be dangerous at times--took its place. But let youth and
inexperience excuse him.
“You haven’t told me your name,” he said. “What is it?”
“Brown,” she answered, “Jennie Brown.”
“I mean your right name.”
“Well, Jennie is my right name--I took the other one after I came out
of the hospital. Some day, maybe, I’ll get married and then I’ll change
it again, but not before.”
“What did you go to the hospital for--were you ill and did you have no
one to take care of you?”
“Ill? You mean sick? No, I wasn’t sick; I was stabbed, and I got it
good, too. I was cut from here to here,” and her right forefinger
described across the front of her dress a line that went from her
shoulder to the center of her breast bone. “At first I thought I was
going to croak because I lost a lot of blood, but I’m pretty strong
and I came out all right. You see, it was this way: A guy I knew got
stuck on me and I couldn’t shake him, and he followed me around like a
shadow. I didn’t like him because he wasn’t in my class, and besides he
had another girl and I never took a girl’s fellow away in my life. If
they split up then that’s different, but as long as they’re together I
keep out of it. Every time I’d talk to anybody or go anywhere he’d be
there. One night he followed me and a fellow I had that wanted to buy
wine into Sharkey’s and when he tried to start a fight with my friend
one of the waiters threw him out. Of course that made him sore, and
he said that he’d get even. He did, all right, for one night as I was
going upstairs he was in the top hall waiting for me, and the first
thing I knew he had the knife into me.
“‘If you won’t have me, take this,’ he said, and then I felt an awful
pain and when I put my hand up the blood was coming through my dress.
“‘You killed me, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘and I never done anything to you.’
But there wasn’t any answer to that, for he was running down the stairs
as fast as he could.
“I was afraid to go up to my room all alone with the blood running out
all over me so I went down to the street to look for my pal, Annie. You
don’t know her but she’s all right. It was two o’clock in the morning
and there was no one around so I thought I’d walk over to Third avenue
and see if I could find any of the girls there and get help. There was
an electric light up on the corner and I hadn’t taken more than a few
steps before it began to move up and down and I got afraid and began to
run. When I got up to the avenue all the lights were going up and down
as if they were crazy and a man on the other side of the street looked
as if he was upside down.
“Then I began to get frightened and I thought to myself that I’d sit
down on a doorstep for a minute till I got over that queer feeling and
that maybe Annie would come along. So I picked the first one I saw and
flopped down. When I looked up it made me dizzy and so I looked down at
the stone, and as I leaned over I watched the little red drops falling,
one after the other, and always hitting the same spot, and then they
began to spread out and the pool almost reached the sole of my shoe. I
was wondering how long it would take before my foot got wet from it,
and where it all came from, anyhow. It all seemed very funny to me;
then I felt tired and shut my eyes.
“The next thing I knew I was in bed and there was a nurse there. A cop
was there, too, and when I looked at him he says, ‘Ha, nurse, she’s out
of it.’
“‘What place is this?’ I asked.
“‘You’re in Bellevue Hospital,’ he said, and he was right. I had been
there two days before I knew it. What do you think of that?”
“You were unconscious,” remarked the young man.
“Sure I was unconscious,” she responded, “and they asked me all kinds
of questions, who did it and all that, and----”
“And did you tell them who it was that stabbed you?”
“Did I tell them? Nix; not on your life. I never rapped on anybody and
I wasn’t going to rap on him, for it wouldn’t do me any good and it
wouldn’t take that stab away, would it? I thought I’d get square myself
some day when I got out of the hospital and was strong again. That’s
the only way. Him going up the river for a couple of years wouldn’t
have done me any good, and maybe he’d have croaked me when he came out.
What’s the good of taking chances? So I hocked all my rings and other
stuff, and got togged up when I came out. I’ll get them all out in a
month, maybe before. I got one now; see,” and she held up a finger on
which was a very big turquoise, surrounded by very small diamonds.
“I’ll get them one at a time, and then if I ever get up against it
again I’ve got them to fall back on. It’s just as good as money, only
the interest is awful. Now if I only had a good friend who would----”
“Want the waiter?” broke in a hoarse voice like the croak of a mammoth
raven.
“Give me a claret lemonade, Harry.”
“And what’ll the gent have?”
“A Martini cocktail.”
“Right you are.”
“As I was saying, if I only had a friend who would be on the level I’d
be square with him, too. I ain’t got no pals, only Annie, and she’s
been pretty good to me. Say, you ain’t married, are you?”
“No, not yet”; he laughed nervously as he said it. “I don’t believe in
fellows getting married until they’re twenty-five, anyhow.”
“Neither do I.”
He noticed that her teeth were very white and even, and that her
eyebrows and hair were jet black. The color on her cheeks had been put
there with a skilled hand, and so deftly done that it passed for the
real thing--in nature, not in art. Her hands were shapely, her nails
manicured carefully and she had a trim figure. It was all stock in
trade, but he wasn’t figuring it that way. Half a dozen of the kind
of drinks they had given him had torn down the barrier, so far as he
was concerned, that had been raised by society between it and the
Scarlet Woman, and the pathos of her story had set him thinking and had
roused all of his sympathies. She had played her part with all of the
subtleness of the finished actress and had told her story with such
simplicity and naivette that many an older man would have been deceived
by the recital. She was working up to the climax as carefully and
cautiously as the hunter works up into the wind after the unsuspecting
deer, or the soft-footed cat ambushes the bird singing in the hedge.
The emotional breed of her race helped to make her realistic, and
her vivacity was contagious. Put her on the stage and she would be a
success with proper training.
“If,” she laid her hand caressingly on the sleeve of his coat, “if I
could find someone who would get my rings out and give me a chance I
would be willing to do anything for him. I don’t like this life, always
hustling, chased by the police and treated like a thief. But once in
it’s hard to get out, for no one wants to give you a chance.”
He was looking over her head and watching the man with the cornet
rubbing up the brass with his handkerchief.
“You are not listening to me.”
“Yes, I am; I heard every word you said. How much would it cost to get
your jewels out?”
“Only $125. It might not be much for you, but it’s a lot for me.”
Here was the climax, so far as her story was concerned. She could have
repeated those three figures long before, but she wasn’t ready. She was
waiting for the psychological moment and it had arrived. The picture
was made and the hand was ready.
And now your attention is respectfully called to Fate, the intruder;
the upsetter of carefully laid plans; the wrecker; sometimes the
promoter, because it does as many things for good as it does for bad.
In this case, however, it was good and bad, according to the viewpoint.
“If you wouldn’t mind I’ll get them out for you. Let’s go now,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him--a smile of happiness
and success; the smile of a child when it gets its first Christmas
doll; and then she drew a deep breath. Still smiling, her eyes half
closed, she looked at him through the narrow slits and contemplated the
possibilities of the future. There was no hurry and she could afford to
wait, for she had won out.
A woman, coarse of feature and with fright depicted on her face, came
hurrying in. She saw the girl at one end of the room and ran to her.
“Jennie, for God’s sake, come quick; your Billy’s just been pinched on
the corner.”
“Billy pinched; what for?” The jubilation in her black eyes turned to
terror.
“For swiping a bloke’s leather. They got it on him; hurry up.”
The boy stared wide-eyed at them for a moment, then pushing his chair
back he arose unsteadily to his feet.
“Seventy-five cents for the drinks.”
It was the waiter’s voice.
He fumbled in his pocket, brought forth a handful of change, deposited
it in the outstretched palm, and began to weave his way among the
tables toward the door in the wake of the hurrying women.
“He’s a swell kid, all right,” remarked the waiter, as he counted the
$3.25 in change, “and I hope he comes back.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: When the clock struck two she was on the table doing a
dance]
AFTER THE WEDDING BELLS
There was a big crowd on the ferryboat from Jersey when she bumped
her nose into the pier at New York that morning, but when the gates
were thrown open there wasn’t the usual scurry and rush to land that
marked the morning arrival. At the front, hugging the rail on the
woman’s side was a nice little blonde dressed all in white, even down
to her shoes and stockings, and with a complexion of the kind known
as peachy, if you have any idea what that is. Fastened to her with a
strong arm hold was a fellow of about twenty-three--years, not skiddoo,
you understand--and he was togged out like a hot sport after a winning
fight, or one who had picked the 20 to 1 shot at Sheepshead for the
first time in his life. Top hat, frock coat, white vest, patent leather
shoes, pearl tie and gray gloves completed the picture, and it was the
surest case of orange blossoms and wedding cake that ever happened.
That was what held the crowd and made a few of them whistle what
sounded very much like that old familiar tune of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Arm in arm, entirely oblivious of anything in the world except
themselves and their own happiness, the couple marched off the boat,
heads up in the air and trailed by the grinning bunch, and if ever a
case of love’s young dream went around on legs this was surely it.
They knew as much about New York as a Shrewsbury River clam knows about
cigarettes, and it didn’t require the services of a head-grabber or a
hand-holder to know that they were hunting a honeymoon hostelry.
They had come from the fertile fields of Freehold to the land where
there are real bathtubs with hot and cold water, and where a chunk of
plain calf is soused with gravy, called fricandeau of veal, and charged
for at the rate of a dollar a portion.
What was money made for except to spend, especially on occasions of
this kind? You’re young but once, and then a little makes you feel like
a millionaire and you get value received and five times over for every
dollar you peel off the roll. But when Time, who is the most wonderful
artist in the world, does a few stunts, makes brown hair turn gray
and deftly paints in the wrinkles, then the joy of spending goes and
pleasure becomes as soggy as a wet sponge. Years are the frosts which
kill the flowers of hope and ambition, and there are thousands of men
who would give millions of dollars if they could but stand off, if only
for a brief while, the gray-haired patriarch with the scythe.
Just think of the sight of a young bride and groom holding in leash, as
it were, a couple of hundred business men who were as anxious to get
on the job of making money as a dog is to get a bone, and all of these
hard-headed fellows smiling as if each one of them were in the same
position as the young fellow who was fast to her arm.
Up the street to Broadway, where they turned north, and then they were
lost to all but two men, and these two were trailing.
Begins to sound like one of Old Sleuth’s detective stories, doesn’t it?
Where the villains are always on the job and always being foiled. Where
it is either a case of murder the child and get the papers or kidnap
the girl and marry her so as to get the old man’s fortune. Doesn’t that
take you back a few years when you used to have those yellow-covered
books in your inside pocket and believe every word you read, or are you
so unfortunate as to have never lived the life of a real boy, with all
its castle building and romancing? You know there are men in this world
who still dream of those days, and it doesn’t do them any harm, either.
The two men who were brought into this story a moment ago are still in
the game, but they are neither burglars nor kidnappers. They are simply
a pair of good fellows with enough money on the side to get anything
within reason, and a belief that there are happy days and good people
in this world if you only take the trouble to look for them.
“I’ll bet,” said one, “that that kid hasn’t more than a hundred in his
clothes, and that he feels as if the world was his to do with as he
likes.”
“The world is his if he has as much as a hundred,” returned the other.
“That will give him the time of his life for three weeks, and he
wouldn’t go back broke, either, unless his home is in London, which it
isn’t.”
“She’s a nice-looking girl all right, and from the way they’re heading
I should say it would be Niagara for theirs.”
“Niagara nothing,” retorted his friend, “that is a spot that belongs to
the past. Our mothers and fathers made it fashionable, but the present
generation takes to big cities as naturally as a duck takes to water,
for they want the busy life and the theatres. The billing and cooing
of the newly wed is all done under cover now and they mix with the
crowd. You’ll find them taking in the big cafes along The Line getting
a good look at things they never expect to see again, and these are the
things they will be talking about twenty or thirty years from now. Make
a picture of that couple ahead there in 1926, for instance. He’ll be
telling his friends about this day, and the night they went to see Joe
Weber, and he’ll tell how the buildings first impressed him, and then
she’ll butt in with:
“‘Say, Henry, what was the name of the restaurant in New York we went
to after we saw that funny show--you know, the place where we had that
lobster a la Newburg?’
“As long as she lives she’ll talk about lobster a la Newburg because it
sounds different, you see, and that’s the woman of it.
“Then Henry will stroke his whiskers and take his corncob pipe out of
his mouth and say, as if he had known the place all his life, ‘Why,
that was Shanley’s.’”
“Cut it out, for you’re talking like one of Denman Thompson’s home-made
rural drammers,” put in his friend, as he pulled out his cigar case.
“You’re always looking for the unusual and the sentimental, so I’ll
make you a proposition. Let’s get next to this pair of turtle doves and
give them the send-off of their lives. We’ll start off with a lunch,
then a matinee, after that dinner, from there to a show and then a
windup in a blaze of glory with wine and all the trimmings of a wedding
feast. You’ve nothing to do, neither have I, and maybe if we do the
thing up right she’ll name it--if it is a boy--after one of us or both
of us, just think of that. There’s fame for you.”
That is how it happened that an hour later a newly-married young
couple, under the escort of two young men who were pretty well known
around town, were lunching at the Waldorf just as if they had known
each other for years.
“You see,” one of the hosts was explaining, “we had an invitation to a
wedding out of town to-day and we missed the train. We felt as if we
wanted to entertain some one in honor of the event and we thought we
would ask you. We want you to be our guests from now until 1 o’clock
to-morrow morning----”
The young husband glanced uneasily at his wife and she smiled back
reassuringly.
The woman, with that unerring female instinct which is born with all
females of the human tribe, understood the situation at a glance and
was ready for the lark. Besides, both hosts were good looking and well
dressed and her vanity was touched. She was young enough to be natural
and old enough to be appreciative. Besides, there were a few healthy
drops of sporting blood in her veins, and that tells a good part of the
story.
There are cases where details are uninteresting, and while the time
from luncheon to near the hour of midnight seemed to the honeymooners
one wild carouse yet it was really nothing to those who are familiar
with the ways of the world. They had sampled everything within reason
from soda to hock, and the happy Freehold boy with the silk lid was
willing to walk on his hands if anyone had dared him. He had told
everyone he met all he knew and all he ever expected to know. As
for the little lady who had been toasted many times as the “blushing
bride,” she had suddenly developed sporting proclivities of a rare
character, and she squeezed the hands of both of her hosts with equal
impartiality.
Confidentially it was rather a dangerous situation, for if the
bridegroom had been helped to a few more drinks he wouldn’t have cared
whether the place where he was laid away was a bridal couch or the soft
side of a board. That was the state of affairs when, calling each other
by their first names, so friendly had they become, that they all went
up to the apartment of one of the hosts for the wind-up banquet.
“How are you feeling, little sport, getting a head yet?”
“I’m just right, and I’d like to have you for a brother,” she retorted.
“Only a brother?”
“Perhaps I should have said father.”
Which showed that she had a pretty wit, too, as well as a head.
At the table the hosts had multiplied by two and so there were six. The
first flash of cocktails set the groom’s head to buzzing a bit and his
speech began to be a trifle thick. At the sauterne he had a job to keep
his head up straight, and he had no sooner finished his first glass of
wine than he excused himself to get a handkerchief. He dropped on a
friendly couch in the next room and promptly forgot that he was alive.
His wife was no such miserable failure, for she clinked glasses with
the rest of them and was entertained so well that it seemed as if she
forgot she had ever been married.
As the clock on the mantel struck two she was dancing a hornpipe
on that end of the table which had been cleared by the soft-footed
Japanese butler, and what was more she was dancing it well, too. The
four hosts were applauding and drinking her health as the best little
thoroughbred they had ever met, and in each brain there was a wish that
she was anything but a bride, for each of these men, from the oldest to
the youngest, was in love.
It was a most curious and remarkable state of affairs, and there was
a chance here for a break that might spell ruin to someone. Then the
patter of the little feet on the tablecloth ceased and she stepped
daintily down to chair and floor. The man nearest helped her, and
as she alighted he leaned over and kissed her squarely on the lips.
The color in her cheeks was accentuated just a trifle as he glanced
suddenly around.
“Where’s my husband?” she asked.
“With his toes turned up on the couch in the next room and dead to the
world. If he was half the sport and good fellow you are he’d be an ace.
You ought to have been born in New York, Chappie, for you belong there.”
“I think I will go and see him, if you will excuse me,” she said very
demurely, and then she went out.
The four hosts drank and talked and smoked and all the talk was of the
bride, and it was all complimentary, too. When an hour had passed the
butler was sent to see if she would return.
She came back all right, smiling, but there was a change.
“I think we ought to go now, but I can’t get him up. He’s not used to
this sort of thing, you see, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Why, stay right here, of course. We’re all going now and Jim, the
gorilla who owns the place, is going, too. The shack is yours until you
get ready to leave, for you’re all right. How about that, Jim?”
“Just as you say--she owns it and us, too. Give your orders to Saki
there, and we’ll call and take dinner with you every evening. We hope
the boy will be all right in the morning. Good-night.”
That’s all.
It seems as if there ought to be more, but there really isn’t.