It was the first dress rehearsal of "The Ukelele Girl," to be produced
"under the personal direction of Stanwood Mosely." The piece had been
in rehearsal for eleven weeks.
The curtain had been up on the second act for an hour. Scene designers,
scene painters and scene shifters were standing about with a stage
director, whose raucous voice cut the fuggy atmosphere incessantly in
what was intended to represent the exterior of a hotel at Monte Carlo.
It more nearly resembled the materialization of a dope fiend's dream of
an opium factory. What might have been a bank building in Utopia, an
old Spanish galleon in drydock, or the exterior of a German beer garden
according to the cover of Vogue occupied the center of the scene. The
bricks were violet and old gold, sprayed with tomato juice and marked
by the indeterminate silver tracks of snails. Pillars, modeled on the
sugar-stick posts that advertise barber's shops, ran up and lost
themselves among the flies. A number of wide stairs, all over wine
stains, wandered aimlessly about, coming to a conclusion between
gigantic urns filled with unnatural flowers of all the colors of a
diseased rainbow. Jotted about here and there on the stage were
octopus-limbed trees with magenta leaves growing in flower pots all
covered with bilious blobs. Stan Mosely didn't profess to understand
it, but having been assured by the designer that it was art nouveau,
which also he didn't understand, he was wholly satisfied.
Not so the stage director, whose language in describing the effect it
had upon him would have done credit to a gunman under the influence of
cheap brandy and fright. The rehearsal, which had commenced at eight
o'clock, had been hung up for a time considerable enough to allow him
to give vent to his sentiments. The pause enabled Mosely, squatting
frog-wise in the middle of the orchestra stalls, to surround himself
with several women whose gigantic proportions were horribly exposed to
the eye. The rumble of his voice and the high squeals of their laughter
clashed with the sounds of the vitriolic argument on the stage, and the
noises of a bored band, in which an oboe was giving a remarkable
imitation of a gobbling turkey cock, and a cornet of a man blowing his
nose. The leader of the band was pacing up and down the musicians'
room, saying to himself: "Zis is ze last timer. Zis is ze last timer,"
well knowing that it wasn't. The poor devil had a wife and children to
feed.
Bevies of weary and spirit-broken chorus girls in costume were
sprawling on the chairs in the lower boxes, some sleeping, some too
tired to sleep, and some eating ravenously from paper bags. Chorus men
and costumers, wig makers and lyric writers, authors and friends of the
company, sat about singly and in pairs in the orchestra seats. They
were mostly bored so far beyond mere impatience by all this
super-inefficiency and chaos as to have arrived at a state of
intellectual coma. The various men out of whose brains had originally
come the book and lyrics no longer hated each other and themselves;
they lusted for the blood of the stage director or saw gorgeous mental
pictures of a little fat oozy corpse surrounded by the gleeful faces of
the army of people who had been impotent to protest against the lash of
his whip, the impertinence of his tongue or the gross dishonesty of his
methods.
One other man in addition to the raucous, self-advertising stage
director, Jackrack, commonly called "Jack-in-office," showed distinct
signs of life--a short, overdressed, perky person with piano fingers
and baldish head much too big for his body, who flitted about among the
chorus girls, followed by a pale, drab woman with pins, and touched
their dresses and sniggered and made remarks with a certain touch of
literary excellence in a slightly guttural voice. This was Poppy
Shemalitz, the frock expert, the man milliner of the firm, who was
required to make bricks out of straw, or as he frequently said to the
friends of his "bosom," "make fifteen dollars look like fifty."
Self-preservation and a sense of humor encouraged him through the
abusive days of a dog's life.
Sitting in the last row of the orchestra, wearing the expression of
interest and astonishment of a man who had fallen suddenly into another
world, was Martin. He had been there since eight o'clock. For over six
hours he had watched banality emerge from chaos and had listened to the
blasphemy and insults of Jackrack. He would have continued to watch and
listen until daylight peered upbraidingly through the chinks in the
exit doors but for the sudden appearance of Susie Capper, dressed for
the street.
"Hello, Tootles! But you're not through, are you?"
"Absobloominlootely," she said emphatically.
"I thought you said your best bit was in the second act?"
"'Was' is right. Come on outer here. I can't stand the place a minute
longer. It'll give me apoplexy."
Martin followed her into the foyer. The tragic rage on the girl's
little, pretty, usually good-natured face worried him. He knew that she
had looked forward to this production to make her name on Broadway.
"My dear Tootles, what's happened?"
She turned to him and clutched his arm. Tears welled up into her eyes,
and her red lips began to tremble. "What did I look like?" she demanded.
"Splendid!"
"Didn't I get every ounce of comedy out of my two scenes in Act One?"
"Every ounce."
"I know I did. Even the stage hands laughed, and if you can do that
there's no argument. And didn't my number go over fine? Wasn't it the
best thing in the act? I don't care what you say. I know it was. Even
the orchestra wanted it over again."
"But it was," said Martin, "and I heard one of the authors say that it
would be the hit of the piece."
"Oh, Martin, I've been sweating blood for this chance for five years,
and I'm not going to get it. I'm not going to get it. I wish I was
dead." She put her arms against the wall and her face down on her arms
and burst into an agony of tears.
Martin was moved. This plucky, struggling, hardworking atom of a
remorseless world deserved a little luck for a change. Hitherto it had
eluded her eager hands, although she had paid for it in advance with
something more than blood and energy. "Dear old Tootles," he said,
"what's happened? Try and tell me what's happened? I don't understand."
"You don't understand, because you don't know the tricks of this rotten
theater. For eleven weeks I've been rehearsing. For eleven weeks--time
enough to produce a couple of Shakespeare's bally plays in Latin,--I've
put up with the brow-beating of that mad dog Jackrack. For eleven
weeks, without touching one dirty little Mosely cent, I've worked at my
part and numbers, morning, noon and night; and now, on the edge of
production, he cuts me out and puts in a simpering cow with a
fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace and a snapping little Pekinese to
oblige one of his angels, and I'm reduced to the chorus. I wish I was
dead, I tell you--I wish I was dead and buried and at peace. I wish I
could creep home and get into bed and never see another day of this
cruel life. Oh, I'm just whipped and broke and out. Take me away, take
me away, Martin. I'm through."
Martin put his arm round the slight, shaking form, led her to one of
the doors and out into a narrow passage that ran up into the deserted
street. To have gone down into the stalls and hit that oily martinet in
the mouth would have been to lay himself open to a charge of cruelty to
animals. He was so puny and fat and soft. Poor little Tootles, who had
had a tardy and elusive recognition torn from her grasp! It was a
tragedy.
It was not much more than a stone's-throw from the theater to the
rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street, but Martin gave a shout at a
prowling taxi. Not even policemen and newspaper boys and street
cleaners must see this girl as she was then, in a collapse of smashed
hopes, sobbing dreadfully, completely broken down. It wasn't fair. In
all that city of courageous under-dogs and fate-fighters, there was not
one who pretended to careless contentment with a chin so high as
Tootles. He half carried her into the cab, trying with a queer
blundering sympathy to soothe and quiet her. And he had almost
succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters,
bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of
onions, cigarettes and hot cheese. The hysteria of the artistic
temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had
worn itself out for the time being. Rather pathetic little sobs had
taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff from
her eyelashes that Tootles turned quickly to Martin at the foot of the
narrow, dirty staircase.
"Let's go up quiet," she said. "If any of the others are about, I don't
want 'em to know tonight. See?"
"I see," said Martin.
And it was good to watch the way in which she took hold of herself with
a grip of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed it
thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head and
went up two stairs at a time. On the second floor there was a cackle of
laughter, but doors were shut. On the third all was quiet. But on the
fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk again, arguing
thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted sullenly into the
passage through the open door.
With deft fingers Tootles used her latchkey, and they slipped into the
apartment like thieves. And then Martin took the pins out of her little
once-white hat, drew her coat off, picked her up as if she were a child
and put her on the sofa.
"There you are, Tootles," he said, without aggressive cheerfulness, but
still cheerful. "You lie there, young 'un, and I'll get you something
to eat. It's nearly a day since you saw food."
And after a little while, humanized by the honest kindness of this
obvious man, she sat up and leaned on an elbow and watched him through
the gap in the curtains that hid her domestic arrangements. He was
scrambling some eggs. He had made a pile of chicken sandwiches and laid
the table. He had put some flowers that he had brought for her earlier
in the evening in the middle of it, stuck into an empty milk bottle. In
her excitement and joy about the play, she had forgotten to put them in
water. They were distinctly sad.
"Me word!" she said to herself, through the aftermath of her emotion.
"That's some boy. Gee, that's some good boy." Even her thoughts were
conducted in a mixture of Brixton and Broadway.
"Now, then," he said, "all ready, marm," and put his handiwork in what
he hoped was an appetizing manner on the table. The hot eggs were on a
cold plate, but did that really matter?
Not to Tootles, who was glad to get anything, anyhow. That room was the
Ritz Hotel in comparison with the slatterly tenement in which she had
won through the first unsoaped years of a sordid life. And
Martin--well, Martin was something out of a fairy tale.
Between them they made a clean sweep of everything, falling back
finally on a huge round box of candies contributed the previous day by
Martin.
They made short work of several bottles of beer, also contributed by
Martin. He knew that Tootles was not paid a penny during rehearsals.
She laughed several times and cracked one or two feeble jokes--poor
little soul with the swollen eyes and powder-dabbed face! Her bobbed
hair glistened under the light like the dome of the Palace of Cooch
Behar under the Indian sun.
"Boy," she said presently, putting her hand on his knees and closing
her tired eyes, "where's that magic carpet? If I could sit on it with
you and be taken to where the air's clean and the trees are whisperin'
and all the young things hoppin' about--I'd give twenty-five years of
me life, s'elp me Bob, I would."
"Would you, Tootles?" A sudden thought struck Martin. Make use of that
house in the country, make use of it, lying idle and neglected!
"Oh," she said, "to get away from all this for a bit--to shake Broadway
and grease paint and slang and electric light, if only for a week. I'm
fed up, boy. I'm all out, like an empty gasoline tin. I want to see
something clean and sweet."
Martin had made up his mind. Look at that poor little bruised soul, as
much in need of water as those sad flowers in the milk bottle.
"Tootles," he said, "pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, and be
ready for me in the morning."
"What d'yer mean, boy?"
"What I say. At eleven o'clock to-morrow--to-day, I'll have a car here
and drive you away to woods and birds and all clean things. I'll give
you a holiday in a big cathedral, and you shall lie and listen to God's
own choir."
"Go on--ye're pullin' me leg!"
She waved her hand to stop him. It was all too good to joke about.
"No, I'm not. I've got a house away in the country. It was my father's.
We shall both be proud to welcome you there, Tootles."
She sprang up, put her hands on his face and tilted it back and looked
into his eyes. It was true! It was true! She saw it there. And she
kissed him and gave a great sobbing sigh and went into her bedroom and
began to undress. Was there anything like life, after all?
Martin cleared the table and drew the curtains over the domestic
arrangements. He didn't like domestic arrangements. Then he sat down
and lighted a cigarette. His head was all blurred with sleep.
And presently a tired voice, called "Boy!" and he went in. The
all-too-golden head was deep into the pillow and long lashes made fans
on that powdered face.
"Where did you pinch the magic carpet?" she asked, and smiled, and fell
into sleep as a stone disappears into water.
As Martin drew the clothes over her thinly clad shoulder, something
touched him. It was like a tap on the heart. Before he knew what he was
doing, he had turned out the light, gone into the sitting room, the
passage, down the stairs and into the silent street. At top speed he
ran into Sixth Avenue, yelled to a cab that was slipping along the
trolley lines and told the driver to go to East Sixty-seventh Street
for all that he was worth.
Joan wanted him.
Joan!
Joan heard the cab drive up and stop, heard Martin sing out "That's all
right," open and shut the front door and mount the stairs; heard him go
quickly to her room and knock.
She went out and called "Marty, Marty," and stood on the threshold of
his dressing room, smiling a welcome. She was glad, beyond words glad,
and surprised. There had seemed to be no chance of seeing him that
morning.
Martin came along the passage with his characteristic light tread and
drew up short. He looked anxious.
"You wanted me?" he said.
And Joan held out her hand. "I did and do, Marty. But how did you
guess?"
"I didn't guess; I knew." And he held her hand nervously.
She looked younger and sweeter than ever in her blue silk dressing gown
and shorter in her heelless slippers. What a kid she was, after all, he
thought.
"How amazing!" she said. "I wonder how?"
He shook his head. "I dunno--just as I did the first time, when I tore
through the woods and found you on the hill."
"Isn't that wonderful! Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you
when I want you very much?"
"Yes, always."
"Why?"
She had gone back into the dressing room. The light was on her face.
Her usual expression of elfish impertinence was not there. She was the
girl of the stolen meetings once more, the girl whose eyes reflected
the open beauty of what Martin had called the big cathedral. For all
that, she was the girl who had hurt him to the soul, shown him her
door, played that trick upon him at the Ritz and sent him adrift full
of the spirit of "Who cares?" which was her fetish. It was in his heart
to say: "Because I adore you! Because I am so much yours that you have
only to think my name for me to hear it across the world as if you had
shouted it through a giant megaphone! Because whatever I do and
whatever you do, I shall love you!" But she had hurt him twice. She had
cut him to the very core. He couldn't forget. He was too proud to lay
himself open to yet another of her laughing snubs.
So he shook his head again. "I dunno," he said. "It's like that. It's
something that can't be explained."
She sat on the arm of the chair with her hands round a knee. A little
of her pink ankle showed. The pipe that she had dropped when his voice
had come up from the street lay on the floor.
His answer had disappointed her; she didn't quite know why. The old
Marty would have been franker and more spontaneous. The old Marty might
have made her laugh with his boyish ingenuousness, but he would have
warmed her and made her feel delightfully vain. Could it be that she
was responsible for this new Marty? Was Alice too terribly right when
she had talked about armor turning into broadcloth because of her
selfish desire to remain a kid a little longer? She was afraid to ask
him where he was when he had felt that she wanted him, and she hated
herself for that.
There was a short silence.
These two young things had lost the complete confidence that had been
theirs before they had come to that great town. What a pity!
"Well," he asked, standing straight like a man ready to take orders,
"why did you call?"
And then an overwhelming shyness seized her. It had seemed easy enough
in thought to tell Martin that she was ready to cross the bridge and
be, as Alice had called it, honest, and as Gilbert had said, to play
the game. But it was far from easy when he stood in the middle of the
room in the glare of the light, with something all about him that froze
her words and made her self-conscious and timid. And yet a clear,
unmistakable voice urged her to have courage and make her confession,
say that she was sorry for having been a feather-brained little fool
and ask him to forgive--to win him back, if--if she hadn't already lost
him.
But she blundered into an answer and spoke flippantly from nervousness.
"Because it's rather soon to become a grass widow, and I want you to be
seen with me somewhere to-morrow."
That was all, then. She was only amusing herself. It was a case of
"Horse, horse, play with me!"--the other horses being otherwise
occupied. She wasn't serious. He needn't have come. "I can't," he said.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going out of town."
She saw him look at the clock on the mantelshelf and crinkle up his
forehead. Day must be stretching itself somewhere. She got up, quickly.
How could she say it? She was losing him.
"Are you angry with me, Marty?" she asked, trying to fumble her way to
honesty.
"No, Joan. But it's very late. You ought to be in bed."
"Didn't you think that I should miss you while you've been away?"
"No, Joan. Look. It's half-past two. A kid like you ought to have been
asleep hours ago." He went over to the door.
"I'm not a kid--I'm not" she burst out.
He was too tired to be surprised. He had not forgotten how she had
hidden behind her youth. He couldn't understand her mood. "I must get
to bed," he said, "if you don't mind. I must be up pretty early. Run
along, Joany."
He couldn't have hurt her more awfully whatever he had said. To be
treated like a naughty girl! But it served her right, and she knew it.
Her plea had come back like a boomerang.
"Well, have a good time," she said, with her chin high. "I shall see
you again some day, I suppose," and she went out.
It was no use. She had lost him--she had lost him, just as she had
discovered that she wanted him. There was a girl with a white face and
red lips and hair that came out of a bottle. Martin watched her go and
shut the door, and stood with his hands over his face.