KATIE WINS A HOME
Oh yes, we been back here quite a wile. And we’re liable to be here
quite a wile. This town’s good enough for me and it suits the Mrs.
too, though they didn’t neither one of us appreciate it till we’d
give New York a try. If I was running the South Bend Boosters’ club,
I’d make everybody spend a year on the Gay White Way. They’d be so
tickled when they got to South Bend that you’d never hear them razz
the old burg again. Just yesterday we had a letter from Katie, asking
us would we come and pay her a visit. She’s a regular New Yorker now.
Well, I didn’t have to put up no fight with my Mrs. Before I could
open my pan she says, “I’ll write and tell her we can’t come; that
you’re looking for a job and don’t want to go nowheres just now.”
Well, they’s some truth in that. I don’t want to go nowheres and I’ll
take a job if it’s the right kind. We could get along on the interest
from Ella’s money, but I’m tired of laying round. I didn’t do a tap
of work all the time I was east and I’m out of the habit, but the
days certainly do drag when a man ain’t got nothing to do and if I
can find something where I don’t have to travel, I’ll try it out.
But the Mrs. has still got most of what the old man left her and all
and all, I’m glad we made the trip. I more than broke even by winning
pretty close to $10,000 on the ponies down there. And we got Katie
off our hands, which was one of the objects of us going in the first
place--that and because the two gals wanted to see Life. So I don’t
grudge the time we spent, and we had some funny experiences when
you look back at them. Anybody does that goes on a tour like that
with a cuckoo like Katie. You hear a lot of songs and gags about
mother-in-laws. But I could write a book of them about sister-in-laws
that’s twenty years old and pretty and full of peace and good will
towards Men.
Well, after the blow-off with Daley, Long Island got too slow,
besides costing us more than we could afford. So the gals suggested
moving back in Town, to a hotel called the Graham on Sixty-seventh
Street that somebody had told them was reasonable.
They called it a family hotel, but as far as I could see, Ella and
I was the only ones there that had ever forced two dollars on the
clergy. Outside of the transients, they was two song writers and a
couple of gals that had their hair pruned and wrote for the papers,
and the rest of the lodgers was boys that had got penned into a
sixteen-foot ring with Benny Leonard by mistake. They looked like
they’d spent many an evening hanging onto the ropes during the rush
hour.
When we’d staid there two days, Ella and Katie was ready to pack up
again.
“This is just a joint,” said Ella. “The gals may be all right, but
they’re never in, only to sleep. And the men’s impossible; a bunch of
low prize-fighters.”
I was for sticking, on account of the place being cheap, so I said:
“Second prize ain’t so low. And you’re overlooking the two handsome
tune thiefs. Besides, what’s the difference who else lives here as
long as the rooms is clean and they got a good restaurant? What did
our dude cellmates out on Long Island get us? Just trouble!”
But I’d of lose the argument as usual only for Kate oversleeping
herself. It was our third morning at the Graham and her and Ella had
it planned to go and look for a better place. But Katie didn’t get up
till pretty near noon and Ella went without her. So it broke so’s Sis
had just came downstairs and turned in her key when the two bellhops
reeled in the front door bulging with baggage and escorting Mr. Jimmy
Ralston. Yes, Jimmy Ralston the comedian. Or comic, as he calls it.
Well, he ain’t F. X. Bushman, as you know. But no one that seen him
could make the mistake of thinking he wasn’t somebody. And he looked
good enough to Kate so as she waited till the clerk had him fixed up,
and then ast who he was. The clerk told her and she told us when the
Mrs. come back from her hunt. Ella begin to name a few joints where
we might move, but it seemed like Sis had changed her mind.
“Oh,” she says, “let’s stay here a wile longer, a week anyway.”
“What’s came over you!” ast Ella. “You just said last night that you
was bored to death here.”
“Maybe we won’t be so bored now,” said Kate, smiling. “The Graham’s
looking up. We’re entertaining a celebrity--Jimmy Ralston of the
Follies.”
Well, they hadn’t none of us ever seen him on the stage, but of
course we’d heard of him. He’d only just started with the Follies,
but he’d made a name for himself at the Winter Garden, where he broke
in two or three years ago. And Kate said that a chorus gal she’d
met--Jane Abbott--had told her about Ralston and what a scream he was
on a party.
“He’s terribly funny when he gets just the right number of drinks,”
says Kate.
“Well, let’s stay then,” says Ella. “It’ll be exciting to know a real
actor.”
“I would like to know him,” says Katie, “not just because he’s on
the stage, but I think it’d be fun to set and listen to him talk.
He must say the screamingest things! If we had him round we wouldn’t
have to play cards or nothing for entertainment. Only they say it
makes people fat to laugh.”
“If I was you, I’d want to get fat,” I said. “Looking like an E
string hasn’t started no landslide your way.”
“Is he attractive?” ast the Mrs.
“Well,” said Kate, “he isn’t handsome, but he’s striking looking. You
wouldn’t never think he was a comedian. But then, ain’t it generally
always true that the driest people have sad faces?”
“That’s a joke!” I said. “Did you ever see Bryan when he didn’t look
like somebody was tickling his feet?”
“We’ll have to think up some scheme to get introduced to him,” says
Ella.
“It’ll be tough,” I says. “I don’t suppose they’s anybody in the
world harder to meet than a member of the Follies, unless it’s an Elk
in a Pullman washroom.”
“But listen,” says Kate: “We don’t want to meet him till we’ve saw
the show. It’d be awfully embarrassing to have him ask us how we
liked the Follies and we’d have to say we hadn’t been to it.”
“Yes,” said the Mrs., “but still if we tell him we haven’t been to
it, he may give us free passes.”
“Easy!” I said. “And it’d take a big load off his mind. They say it
worries the Follies people half sick wondering what to do with all
their free passes.”
“Suppose we go to-night!” says Kate. “We can drop in a hotel
somewheres and get seats. The longer we don’t go, the longer we won’t
meet him.”
“And the longer we don’t meet him,” I says, “the longer till he gives
you the air.”
“I’m not thinking of Mr. Ralston as a possible suitor,” says Katie,
swelling up. “But I do want to get acquainted with a man that don’t
bore a person to death.”
“Well,” I says, “if this baby’s anything like the rest of your
gentleman friends, he won’t hardly be round long enough for that.”
I didn’t make no kick about going to the show. We hadn’t spent no
money since we’d moved back to Town and I was as tired as the gals
of setting up in the room, playing rummy. They said we’d have to
dress, and I kicked just from habit, but I’d got past minding that
end of it. They was one advantage in dolling up every time you went
anywheres. It meant an hour when they was no chance to do something
even sillier.
We couldn’t stop to put on the nose bag at the Graham because the
women was scared we’d be too late to get tickets. Besides, when
you’re dressed for dinner, you at least want the waiter to be the
same. So we took a taxi down to the Spencer, bought Follies seats in
the ninth row, and went in to eat. It’s been in all the papers that
the price of food has came down, but the hotel man can’t read. They
fined us eleven smackers for a two-course banquet that if the Woman’s
Guild, here, would dast soak you four bits a plate for it, somebody’d
write a nasty letter to the News-Times.
We got in the theater a half hour before the show begin. I put in the
time finding out what the men will wear, and the gals looked up what
scenes Ralston’d be in. He was only on once in each act. They don’t
waste much time on a comedian in the Follies. It don’t take long to
spring the two gags they can think up for him in a year, and besides,
he just interferes with the big gal numbers, where Bunny Granville
or somebody dreams of the different flappers he danced with at the
prom, and the souvenirs they give him; and one by one the different
gals writhes in, dressed like the stage director thinks they dress
at the female colleges--a Wesley gal in pink tights, a Vassar dame
in hula-hula, and a Smith gal with a sombrero and a sailor suit. He
does a couple of steps with them and they each hand him a flower or a
vegetable to remember them by. The song winds up:
_But my most exclusive token
Is a little hangnail broken
Off the gal from Gussie’s School for Manicures._
And his real sweet patootie comes on made up as a scissors.
You’ve saw Ralston? He’s a good comedian; no getting away from that.
The way he fixes up his face, you laugh just to look at him. I yelled
when I first seen him. He was supposed to be an office boy and he got
back late from lunch and the boss ast him what made him late and he
said he stopped to buy the extra. So the boss ast him what extra and
he says the extra about the New York society couple getting married.
So the boss said, “Why, they wouldn’t print an extra about that.
They’s a New York society couple married most every day.” So Ralston
said, “Yes, but this couple is both doing it for the first time.”
I don’t remember what other gags he had, and they’re old anyway by
now. But he was a hit, especially with Ella and Kate. They screamed
so loud I thought we’d get the air. If he didn’t say a word, he’d be
funny with that fool make-up and that voice.
I guess if it wasn’t for me the gals would of insisted on going back
to the stage door after the show and waiting for him to come out.
I’ve saw Katie bad a lot of times, but never as cuckoo as this. It
wasn’t no case of love at first or second sight. You couldn’t be
stuck on this guy from seeing him. But she’d always been kind of
stage-struck and was crazy over the idear of getting acquainted with
a celebrity, maybe going round to places with him, and having people
see her with Jimmy Ralston, the comedian. And then, of course, most
anybody wants to meet a person that can make you laugh.
I managed to persuade them that the best dope would be to go back to
the Graham and wait for him to come home; maybe we could fix it up
with the night clerk to introduce us. I told them that irregardless
of what you read in books, they’s some members of the theatrical
profession that occasionally visits the place where they sleep. So
we went to the hotel and set in the lobby for an hour and a half, me
trying to keep awake wile the gals played Ralston’s part of the show
over again a couple thousand times. They’s nothing goes so big with
me as listening to people repeat gags out of a show that I just seen.
The clerk had been tipped off and when Ralston finally come in and
went to get his key, I strolled up to the desk like I was after
mine. The clerk introduced us.
“I want you to meet my wife and sister-in-law,” I said.
“Some other time,” says Ralston. “They’s a matinée to-morrow and I got
to run off to bed.”
So off he went and I got bawled out for Ziegfeld having matinées. But
I squared myself two days afterwards when we went in the restaurant
for lunch. He was just having breakfast and the three of us stopped
by his table. I don’t think he remembered ever seeing me before, but
anyway he got up and shook hands with the women. Well, you couldn’t
never accuse Ella of having a faint heart, and she says:
“Can’t we set down with you, Mr. Ralston? We want to tell you how
much we enjoyed the Follies.”
So he says, sure, set down, but I guess we would of anyway.
“We thought it was a dandy show,” says Katie.
“It ain’t a bad troupe,” says Ralston.
“If you’ll pardon me getting personal,” said Ella, “we thought you
was the best thing in it.”
He looked like he’d strain a point and forgive her.
“We all just yelled!” says Katie. “I was afraid they’d put us out,
you made us laugh so hard.”
“Well,” says Ralston, “I guess if they begin putting people out for
that, I’d have to leave the troupe.”
“It wouldn’t be much of a show without you,” says Ella.
“Well, all that keeps me in it is friendship for Ziggy,” says
Ralston. “I said to him last night, I says, ‘Ziggy, I’m going to quit
the troupe. I’m tired and I want to rest a wile.’ So he says, ‘Jim,
don’t quit or I’ll have to close the troupe. I’ll give you fifteen
hundred a week to stay.’ I’m getting a thousand now. But I says to
him, I said, ‘Ziggy, it ain’t a question of money. What I want is a
troupe of my own, where I get a chance to do serious work. I’m sick
of making a monkey of myself in front of a bunch of saps from Nyack
that don’t appreciate no art but what’s wrapped up in a stocking.’ So
he’s promised that if I’ll stick it out this year, he’ll star me next
season in a serious piece.”
“Is he giving you the five hundred raise?” I ast him.
“I wouldn’t take it,” said Ralston. “I don’t need money.”
“At that, a person can live pretty cheap at this hotel,” I says.
“I didn’t move here because it was cheap,” he said. “I moved here to
get away from the pests--women that wants my autograph or my picture.
And all they could say how much they enjoyed my work and how did I
think up all them gags, and so forth. No real artist likes to talk
about himself, especially to people that don’t understand. So that’s
the reason why I left the Ritz, so’s I’d be left alone, not to save
money. And I don’t save no money, neither. I’ve got the best suite in
the house--bedroom, bath and study.”
“What do you study?” ast Kate.
“The parts I want to play,” he says; “Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard.”
“But you’re a comedian,” says Kate.
“It’s just a stepping stone,” said Ralston.
He’d finished his breakfast and got up.
“I must go to my study and work,” he says. “We’ll meet again.”
“Yes, indeed,” says Ella. “Do you always come right back here nights
after the show?”
“When I can get away from the pests,” he says.
“Well,” says Ella, “suppose you come up to our rooms to-night and
we’ll have a bite to eat. And I think the husband can give you a
little liquid refreshments if you ever indulge.”
“Very little,” he says. “What is your room number?”
So the Mrs. told him and he said he’d see us after the show that
night, and walked out.
“Well,” said Ella, “how do you like him?”
“I think he’s wonderful!” says Katie. “I didn’t have no idear he was
so deep, wanting to play Hamlet.”
“Pretty near all comedians has got that bug,” I says.
“Maybe he’s different when you know him better,” said Ella.
“I don’t want him to be different,” says Kate.
“But he was so serious,” said the Mrs. “He didn’t say nothing funny.”
“Sure he did,” I says. “Didn’t he say artists hate to talk about
themselfs?”
Pretty soon the waiter come in with our lunch. He ast us if the other
gentleman was coming back.
“No,” said Ella. “He’s through.”
“He forgot his check,” says the dish smasher.
“Oh, never mind!” says Ella. “We’ll take care of that.”
“Well,” I says, “I guess the bird was telling the truth when he said
he didn’t need no money.”
I and the gals spent the evening at a picture show and stopped at
a delicatessen on the way home to stock up for the banquet. I had
a quart and a pint of yearling rye, and a couple of bottles of
McAllister that they’d fined me fifteen smackers apiece for and I
wanted to save them, so I told Kate that I hoped her friend would get
comical enough on the rye.
“He said he drunk very little,” she reminded me.
“Remember, don’t make him talk about himself,” said the Mrs. “What
we want is to have him feel at home, like he was with old friends,
and then maybe he’ll warm up. I hope we don’t wake the whole hotel,
laughing.”
Well, Ralston showed about midnight. He’d remembered his date and
apologized for not getting there before.
“I like to walk home from the theater,” he says. “I get some of my
funniest idears wile I walk.”
I come to the conclusion later that he spent practically his whole
life riding.
Ella’s and my room wasn’t no gymnasium for size and after the third
drink, Ralston tried to get to the dresser to look at himself in
the glass, and knocked a $30 vase for a corpse. This didn’t go very
big with the Mrs., but she forced a smile and would of accepted his
apology if he’d made any. All he done was mumble something about
cramped quarters. They was even more cramped when we set the table
for the big feed, and it was my tough luck to have our guest park
himself in the chair nearest the clothes closet, where my two bottles
of Scotch had been put to bed. The fourth snifter finished the pint
of rye and I said I’d get the other quart, but before I could stop
her, Ella says:
“Let Mr. Ralston get it. It’s right there by him.”
So the next thing you know, James has found the good stuff and he
comes out with both bottles of it.
“McAllister!” he says. “That’s my favorite. If I’d knew you had that,
I wouldn’t of drank up all your rye.”
“You haven’t drank it all up,” I says. “They’s another bottle of it
in there.”
“It can stay there as long as we got this,” he says, and helped
himself to the corkscrew.
Well, amongst the knickknacks the gals had picked up at the
delicatessen was a roast chicken and a bottle of olives, and at the
time I thought Ralston was swallowing bones, stones and all. It
wasn’t till the next day that we found all these keepsakes on the
floor, along with a couple dozen assorted cigarette butts.
Katie’s chorus gal friend had told her how funny the guy was when
he’d had just the right number of shots, but I’d counted eight and
begin to get discouraged before he started talking.
“My mother could certainly cook a chicken,” he says.
“Is your mother living?” Kate ast him.
“No,” he says. “She was killed in a railroad wreck. I’ll never forget
when I had to go and identify her. You wouldn’t believe a person
could get that mangled! No,” he says, “my family’s all gone. I never
seen my father. He was in the pesthouse with smallpox when I was
born and he died there. And my only sister died of jaundice. I can
still----”
But Kate was scared we’d wake up the hotel, laughing, so she says:
“Do you ever give imitations?”
“You mustn’t make Mr. Ralston talk about himself,” says Ella.
“Imitations of who?” said Ralston.
“Oh, other actors,” said Katie.
“No,” he says. “I leave it to the other actors to give imitations of
me.”
“I never seen none of them do it,” says Kate.
“They all do it, but they don’t advertise it,” he says. “Every comic
in New York is using my stuff.”
“Oh!” said Ella. “You mean they steal your idears.”
“Can’t you go after them for it?” ast Katie.
“You could charge them with petit larceny,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be mean,” said Ralston. “But they ain’t a comic on the
stage to-day that I didn’t give him every laugh he’s got.”
“You ain’t only been on the stage three or four years,” I says. “How
did Hitchcock and Ed Wynn and them fellas get by before they seen
you?”
“They wasn’t getting by,” he says. “I’m the baby that put them on
their feet. Take Hitchy. Hitchy come to me last spring and says,
‘Jim, I’ve ran out of stuff. Have you got any notions I could use?’
So I says, ‘Hitchy, you’re welcome to anything I got.’ So I give him
a couple of idears and they’re the only laughs in his troupe. And you
take Wynn. He opened up with a troupe that looked like a flop and one
day I seen him on Broadway, wearing a long pan, and I says, ‘What’s
the matter, Eddie?’ And he brightened up and says, ‘Hello, there,
Jim! You’re just the boy I want to see.’ So I says, ‘Well, Eddie, I’m
only too glad to do anything I can.’ So he says, ‘I got a flop on my
hands unlest I can get a couple of idears, and you’re the baby that
can give them to me.’ So I said, ‘All right, Eddie.’ And I give him
a couple of notions to work on and they made his show. And look at
Stone! And Errol! And Jolson and Tinney! Every one of them come to me
at one time another, hollering for help. ‘Jim, give me a couple of
notions!’ ‘Jim, give me a couple of gags!’ And not a one of them went
away empty-handed.”
“Did they pay you?” ast Ella.
Ralston smiled.
“I wouldn’t take no actor’s money,” he says. “They’re all brothers to
me. They can have anything I got, and I can have anything they got,
only they haven’t got nothing.”
Well, I can’t tell you all he said, as I was asleep part of the time.
But I do remember that he was the one that had give Bert Williams
the notion of playing coon parts, and learnt Sarah Bernhardt to talk
French.
Along about four o’clock, when they was less than a pint left in the
second McAllister bottle, he defied all the theater managers in New
York.
“I ain’t going to monkey with them much longer!” he says. “I’ll let
you folks in on something that’ll cause a sensation on Broadway. I’m
going to quit the Follies!”
We was all speechless.
“That’s the big secret!” he says. “I’m coming out as a star under my
own management and in a troupe wrote and produced by myself!”
“When?” ast Kate.
“Just as soon as I decide who I’m going to let in as part owner,”
said Ralston. “I’ve worked for other guys long enough! Why should I
be satisfied with $800 a week when Ziegfeld’s getting rich off me!”
“When did he cut you $200?” I says. “You was getting $1,000 last time
I seen you.”
He didn’t pay no attention.
“And why should I let some manager produce my play,” he says, “and
pay me maybe $1,200 a week when I ought to be making six or seven
thousand!”
“Are you working on your play now?” Kate ast him.
“It’s done,” he says. “I’m just trying to make up my mind who’s the
right party to let in on it. Whoever it is, I’ll make him rich.”
“I’ve got some money to invest,” says Katie. “Suppose you tell us
about the play.”
“I’ll give you the notion, if you’ll keep it to yourself,” says
Ralston. “It’s a serious play with a novelty idear that’ll be a
sensation. Suppose I go down to my suite and get the script and read
it to you.”
“Oh, if you would!” says Kate.
“It’ll knock you dead!” he says.
And just the thought of it was fatal to the author. He got up from
his chair, done a nose dive acrost the table and laid there with his
head in the chili sauce.
I called up the clerk and had him send up the night bellhop with our
guest’s key. I and the boy acted as pall bearers and got him to his
“suite,” where we performed the last sad rites. Before I come away I
noticed that the “suite” was a ringer for Ella’s and mine--a dinky
little room with a bath. The “study” was prettily furnished with coat
hangers.
When I got back to my room Katie’d ducked and the Mrs. was asleep, so
I didn’t get a chance to talk to them till we was in the restaurant
at noon. Then I ast Kate if she’d figured out just what number drink
it was that had started him being comical.
“Now listen,” she says: “I don’t think that Abbott girl ever met
him in her life. Anyway, she had him all wrong. We expected he’d do
stunts, like she said, but he ain’t that kind that shows off or acts
smart. He’s too much of a man for that. He’s a bigger man than I
thought.”
“I and the bellhop remarked that same thing,” I says.
“And you needn’t make fun of him for getting faint,” says Katie. “I
called him up a wile ago to find out how he was and he apologized and
said they must of been something in that second bottle of Scotch.”
So I says:
“You tell him they was, but they ain’t.”
Well, it couldn’t of been the Scotch or no other brew that ruined me.
Or if it was, it worked mighty slow. I didn’t even look at a drink
for three days after the party in our room. But the third day I felt
rotten, and that night I come down with a fever. Ella got scared and
called a doctor and he said it was flu, and if I didn’t watch my step
it’d be something worse. He advised taking me to a hospital and I
didn’t have pep enough to say no.
So they took me and I was pretty sick for a couple of weeks--too sick
for the Mrs. to give me the news. And it’s a wonder I didn’t have a
relapse when she finally did.
“You’ll probably yelp when you hear this,” she says. “I ain’t crazy
about it myself, but it didn’t do me no good to argue at first and
it’s too late for argument now. Well, to begin with, Sis is in love
with Ralston.”
“What of it!” I said. “She’s going through the city directory and
she’s just got to the R’s.”
“No, it’s the real thing this time,” said the Mrs. “Wait till you
hear the rest of it. She’s going on the stage!”
“I’ve got nothing against that,” I says. “She’s pretty enough to get
by in the Follies chorus, and if she can earn money that way, I’m for
it.”
“She ain’t going into no chorus,” said Ella. “Ralston’s quit the
Follies and she’s going in his show.”
“The one he wrote?” I ast.
“Yes,” said the Mrs.
“And who’s going to put it on?” I ast her.
“That’s it,” she says. “They’re going to put it on themself, Ralston
and Sis. With Sis’s money. She sold her bonds, fifty thousand
dollars’ worth.”
“But listen,” I says. “Fifty thousand dollars! What’s the name of the
play, Ringling’s Circus?”
“It won’t cost all that,” said Ella. “They figure it’ll take less
than ten thousand to get started. But she insisted on having the
whole thing in a checking account, where she can get at it. If the
show’s a big success in New York they’re going to have a company in
Chicago and another on the road. And Ralston says her half of the
profits in New York ought to run round $5,000 a week. But anyway,
she’s sure of $200 a week salary for acting in it.”
“Where did she get the idear she can act?” I says.
“She’s always had it,” said the Mrs., “and I think she made him
promise to put her in the show before she agreed to back it. Though
she says it’s a wonderful investment! She won’t be the leading woman,
of course. But they’s only two woman’s parts and she’s got one of
them.”
“Well,” I said, “if she’s going to play a sap and just acts normal,
she’ll be a sensation.”
“I don’t know what she’ll be,” says Ella. “All I know is that she’s
mad over Ralston and believes everything he says. And even if you
hadn’t of been sick we couldn’t of stopped her.”
So I ast what the play was like, but Ella couldn’t tell me.
Ralston had read it out loud to she and Kate, but she couldn’t judge
from just hearing it that way. But Kate was tickled to death with it.
And they’d already been rehearsing a week, but Sis hadn’t let Ella
see the rehearsals. She said it made her nervous.
“Ralston thinks the main trouble will be finding a theater,” said the
Mrs. “He says they’s a shortage of them and the men that owns them
won’t want to let him have one on account of jealousy.”
“Has the Follies flopped?” I ast her.
“No,” she says, “but they’ve left town.”
“They always do, this time of year,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” says the Mrs., “but Ralston says they’d
intended to stay here all the year round, but when the news come
out that he’d left, they didn’t dast. He’s certainly got faith in
himself. He must have, to give up a $600 a week salary. That’s what
he says he was really getting.”
“You say Katie’s in love,” I says. “How about him?”
“I don’t know and she don’t know,” says Ella. “He calls her dearie
and everything and holds her hands, but when they’re alone together,
he won’t talk nothing but business. Still, as I say, he calls her
dearie.”
“Actors calls every gal that,” I says. “It’s because they can’t
remember names.”
Well, to make a short story out of it, they had another couple weeks’
rehearsals that we wasn’t allowed to see, and they finally got a
theater--the Olney. They had to guarantee a $10,000 business to get
it. They didn’t go to Atlantic City or nowheres for a tryout. They
opened cold. And Ralston didn’t tell nobody what kind of a show it
was.
Of course he done what they generally always do on a first night. He
sent out free passes to everybody that’s got a dress suit, and they’s
enough of them in New York to pretty near fill up a theater. These
invited guests is supposed to be for the performance wile it’s going
on. After it’s through, they can go out and ride it all over the
island.
Well, the rules wasn’t exactly lived up to at “Bridget Sees a Ghost.”
On account of Ralston writing the play and starring in it, the gang
thought it would be comical and they come prepared to laugh. It was
comical all right, and they laughed. They didn’t only laugh; they
yelled. But they yelled in the wrong place.
The programme said it was “a Daring Drama in Three Acts.” The three
acts was what made it daring. It took nerve to even have one. In the
first place, this was two years after the armistice and the play was
about the war, and I don’t know which the public was most interested
in by this time--the war or Judge Parker.
Act 1 was in July, 1917. Ralston played the part of Francis Shaw, a
captain in the American army. He’s been married a year, and when the
curtain goes up, his wife’s in their New York home, waiting for him
to come in from camp on his weekly leave. She sets reading the war
news in the evening paper, and she reads it out loud, like people
always do when they’re alone, waiting for somebody. Pretty soon in
comes Bridget, the Irish maid--our own dear Katie. And I wished you
could of heard her brogue. And seen her gestures. What she reminded
me most like was a gal in a home talent minstrels giving an imitation
of Lew Fields playing the part of the block system on the New York
Central. Her first line was, “Ain’t der captain home yed?” But I
won’t try and give you her dialect.
“No,” says Mrs. Shaw. “He’s late.” So Katie says better late than
never, and the wife says, yes, but she’s got a feeling that some day
it’ll be never; something tells her that if he ever goes to France,
he won’t come back. So Bridget says, “You been reading the war news
again and it always makes you sad.” “I hate wars!” says Mrs. Shaw,
and that line got one of the biggest laughs.
After this they was a couple of minutes when neither of them could
think of nothing to add, and then the phone rung and Bridget answered
it. It was Capt. Shaw, saying he’d be there pretty soon; so Bridget
goes right back to the kitchen to finish getting dinner, but she
ain’t no sooner than left the stage when Capt. Shaw struts in. He
must of called up from the public booth on his front porch.
The audience had a tough time recognizing him without his comic
make-up, but when they did they give him a good hand. Mrs. Shaw
got up to greet him, but he brushed by her and come down to the
footlights to bow. Then he turned and went back to his Mrs., saying
“Maizie!” like this was the last place he expected to run acrost her.
They kissed and then he ast her “Where is Bobbie, our dear little
one?”--for fear she wouldn’t know whose little one he meant. So she
rung a bell and back come Bridget, and he says “Well, Bridget!” and
Bridget says, “Well, it’s the master!” This line was another riot.
“Bring the little one, Bridget,” says Mrs. Shaw, and the audience
hollered again.
Wile Bridget was after the little one, the captain celebrated the
reunion by walking round the room, looking at the pictures. Bridget
brings the baby in and the captain uncovers its face and says, “Well,
Bobbie!” Then he turns to his wife and says, “Let’s see, Maizie. How
old is he?” “Two weeks,” says Maizie. “Two weeks!” says Captain Shaw,
surprised. “Well,” he says, “I hope by the time he’s old enough to
fight for the Stars and Stripes, they won’t be no such a thing as
war.” So Mrs. Shaw says, “And I hope his father won’t be called on
to make the supreme sacrifice for him and we others that must stay
home and wait. I sometimes think that in wartime, it’s the women
and children that suffers most. Take him back to his cozy cradle,
Bridget. We mothers must be careful of our little ones. Who knows
when the kiddies will be our only comfort!” So Bridget beat it out
with the little one and I bet he hated to leave all the gayety.
“Well,” says Shaw to his wife, “and what’s the little woman been
doing?”
“Just reading,” she says, “reading the news of this horrible war. I
don’t never pick up the paper but what I think that some day I’ll see
your name amongst the dead.”
“Well,” says the captain bravely, “they’s no danger wile I stay on
U. S. soil. But only for you and the little one, I would welcome the
call to go Over There and take my place in the battle line. The call
will come soon, I believe, for they say France needs men.” This rumor
pretty near caused a riot in the audience and Ralston turned and give
us all a dirty look.
Then Bridget come in again and said dinner was ready, and Shaw says,
“It’ll seem funny to set down wile I eat.” Which was the first time I
ever knew that army captains took their meals off the mantelpiece.
Wile the Shaws was out eating, their maid stayed in the living room,
where she’d be out of their way. It seems that Ralston had wrote a
swell speech for her to make in this spot, about what a tough thing
war is, to come along and separate a happy young couple like the
Shaws that hadn’t only been married a year. But the speech started
“This is terrible!” and when Bridget got that much of it out, some
egg in the gallery hollered “You said a mouthful, kid!” and stopped
the show.
The house finally quieted down, but Katie was dumb for the first time
in her life. She couldn’t say the line that was the cue for the phone
to ring, and she had to go over and answer a silent call. It was for
the captain, and him and his wife both come back on the stage.
“Maizie,” he says, after he’d hung up, “it’s came! That was my
general! We sail for France in half an hour!”
“O husband!” says Maizie. “This is the end!”
“Nonsense!” says Shaw with a brave smile. “This war means death for
only a small per cent. of our men.”
“And almost no captains,” yells the guy in the gallery.
Shaw gets ready to go, but she tells him to wait till she puts on her
wraps; she’ll go down to the dock and see him off.
“No, darling,” he says. “Our orders is secret. I can’t give you the
name of our ship or where we’re sailing from.”
So he goes and she flops on the couch w’ining because he wouldn’t
tell her whether his ship left from Times Square or Grand Central.
They rung the curtain down here to make you think six days has
passed. When it goes up again, Maizie’s setting on the couch, holding
the little one. Pretty soon Bridget comes in with the evening paper.
“They’s a big headline, mum,” she says. “A troopship has been
torpedoed.”
Well, when she handed her the paper, I could see the big headline.
It said, “Phillies Hit Grimes Hard.” But Maizie may of had a bet on
Brooklyn. Anyway, she begin trembling and finally fell over stiff. So
Bridget picked up the paper and read it out loud:
“Amongst the men lost was Capt. F. Shaw of New York.”
Down went the curtain again and the first act was over, and some
jokesmith in the audience yelled “Author! Author!”
“He’s sunk!” said the egg in the gallery.
Well, Maizie was the only one in the whole theater that thought Shaw
was dead. The rest of us just wished it. Still you couldn’t blame her
much for getting a wrong idear, as it was Nov. 11, 1918--over a year
later--when the second act begins, and she hadn’t heard from him in
all that time. It wasn’t never brought out why. Maybe he’d forgot
her name or maybe it was Burleson’s fault, like everything else.
The scene was the same old living room and Maizie was setting on the
same old couch, but she was all dressed up like Elsie Ferguson. It
comes out that she’s expecting a gentleman friend, a Mr. Thornton, to
dinner. She asks Bridget if she thinks it would be wrong of her to
accept the guy the next time he proposed. He’s ast her every evening
for the last six months and she can’t stall him much longer. So
Bridget says it’s all right if she loves him, but Maizie don’t know
if she loves him or not, but he looks so much like her late relic
that she can’t hardly tell the difference and besides, she has got to
either marry or go to work, or her and the little one will starve.
They’s a knock at the door and Thornton comes in. Him and the absent
captain looks as much alike as two brothers, yours and mine. Bridget
ducks and Thornton proposes. Maizie says, “Before I answer, I must
tell you a secret. Captain Shaw didn’t leave me all alone. I have a
little one, a boy.” “Oh, I love kiddies,” says Thornton. “Can I see
him?” So she says it’s seven o’clock and the little one’s supposed to
of been put to bed, but she has Bridget go get him.
The little one’s entrance was the sensation of this act. In Act 1
he was just three or four towels, but now Bridget can’t even carry
him acrost the stage, and when she put him on his feet, he comes up
pretty near to her shoulder. And when Thornton ast him would he like
to have a new papa, he says, “Yes, because my other papa’s never
coming back.”
Well, they say a woman can’t keep a secret, but if Thornton had been
nosing round for six months and didn’t know till now that they was
a spanker like Bobbie in the family circle, I wouldn’t hardly call
Maizie the town gossip.
After the baby’d went back to read himself to sleep and Mrs. Shaw had
yessed her new admirer, Bridget dashed in yelling that the armistice
was signed and held up the evening paper for Maizie and Thornton to
see. The great news was announced in code. It said: “Phillies Hit
Grimes Hard.” And it seemed kind of silly to not come right out and
say “Armistice Signed!” Because as I recall, even we saps out here in
South Bend had knew it since three o’clock that morning.
The last act was in the same place, on Christmas Eve, 1918.
Maizie and her second husband had just finished doing up presents
for the little one. We couldn’t see the presents, but I suppose they
was giving him a cocktail shaker and a shaving set. Though when he
come on the stage you could see he hadn’t aged much since Act 2. He
hadn’t even begin to get bald.
Thornton and the Mrs. went off somewheres and left the kid alone,
but all of a sudden the front door opened and in come old Cap Shaw,
on crutches. He seen the kid and called to him. “Who are you?” says
the little one. “I’m Santa Claus,” says the Cap, “and I’ve broughten
you a papa for Christmas.” “I don’t want no papa,” says Bobbie. “I’ve
just got a new one.” Then Bridget popped in and seen “the master”
and hollered, “A ghost!” So he got her calmed down and she tells him
what’s came off. “It was in the paper that Capt. F. Shaw of New York
was lost,” she says. “It must of been another Capt. F. Shaw!” he says.
“It’s an odd name,” hollered the guy in the gallery.
The Captain thinks it all over and decides it’s his move. He makes
Bridget promise to never tell that she seen him and he says good-by
to she and the kid and goes out into the night.
Maizie comes in, saying she heard a noise and what was it? Was
somebody here? “Just the boy with the evening paper,” says Bridget.
And the cat’s got Bobbie’s tongue. And Maizie don’t even ask for the
paper. She probably figured to herself it was the old story; that
Grimes was still getting his bumps.
Well, I wished you could of read what the papers wrote up about
the show. One of them said that Bridget seen a ghost at the Olney
theater last night and if anybody else wanted to see it, they better
go quick because it wouldn’t be walking after this week. Not even on
crutches. The mildest thing they said about Ralston was that he was
even funnier than when he was in the Follies and tried to be. And
they said the part of Bridget was played by a young actress that they
hoped would make a name for herself, because Ralston had probably
called her all he could think of.
We waited at the stage door that night and when Kate come out, she
was crying. Ralston had canned her from the show.
“That’s nothing to cry about,” I says. “You’re lucky! It’s just like
as if a conductor had put you off a train a couple of minutes before
a big smash-up.”
The programme had been to all go somewheres for supper and celebrate
the play’s success. But all Katie wanted now was to get in a taxi and
go home and hide.
On the way, I ast her how much she was in so far.
“Just ten thousand,” she says.
“Ten thousand!” I said. “Why, they was only one piece of scenery and
that looked like they’d bought it secondhand from the choir boys’
minstrels. They couldn’t of spent one thousand, let alone ten.”
“We had to pay the theater a week’s rent in advance,” she says. “And
Jimmy give five thousand to a man for the idear.”
“The idear for what?” I ast.
“The idear for the play,” she said.
“That stops me!” I says. “This baby furnishes idears for all the good
actors in the world, but when he wants one for himself, he goes out
and pays $5,000 for it. And if he got a bargain, you’re Mrs. Fiske.”
“Who sold him the idear?” ast Ella.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” says Kate.
“Ponzi,” I said.
Ralston called Kate up the next noon and made a date with her at the
theater. He said that he was sorry he’d been rough. Before she went I
ast her to give me a check for the forty thousand she had left so’s I
could buy back some of her bonds.
“I haven’t got only $25,000,” she says. “I advanced Jimmy fifteen
thousand for his own account, so’s he wouldn’t have to bother me
every time they was bills to meet.”
So I said: “Listen: I’ll go see him with you and if he don’t come
clean with that money, I’ll knock him deader’n his play.”
“Thank you!” she says. “I’ll tend to my own affairs alone.”
She come back late in the afternoon, all smiles.
“Everything’s all right,” she said. “I give him his choice of letting
me be in the play or giving me my money.”
“And which did he choose?” I ast her.
“Neither one,” she says. “We’re going to get married.”
“Bridget” went into the ashcan Saturday night and the wedding come
off Monday. Monday night they left for Boston, where the Follies was
playing. Kate told us they’d took Ralston back at the same salary he
was getting before.
“How much is that?” I ast her.
“Four hundred a week,” she says.
Well, two or three days after they’d left, I got up my nerve and says
to the Mrs.:
“Do you remember what we moved to the Big Town for? We done it to see
Life and get Katie a husband. Well, we got her a kind of a husband
and I’ll tell the world we seen Life. How about moseying back to
South Bend?”
“But we haven’t no home there now.”
“Nor we ain’t had none since we left there,” I says. “I’m going down
and see what’s the first day we can get a couple of lowers.”
“Get uppers if it’s quicker,” says the Mrs.
So here we are, really enjoying ourselfs for the first time in pretty
near two years. And Katie’s in New York, enjoying herself, too, I
suppose. She ought to be, married to a comedian. It must be such fun
to just set and listen to him talk.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Misspellings in the text, colloquial and archaic usage, and
hyphenation have been retained except on Page 225, where “Ralson
thinks the” has been replaced by “Ralston thinks the”.
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.