[1] Copyright, 1925, by Doubleday, Page & Company. Copyright, 1921,
by International Publications, Inc.
"Yes, Mr. Leonard," Gershon Danowitz said as he sat in the office of
J.J. Leonard, manager, producer, and personal director of the "Comics
of 1913 to 1919," both inclusive--"yes, Mr. Leonard, your poor father
_olav hasholom_, Sam Lippmann, had me down right. 'Danowitz,' he
used to say, 'the trouble with you is that you are all heart,' he
used to say. 'If some one is in trouble or misfortune,' he used to
say, 'you are right there,' he used to say, and certainly he was
right."
Mr. Leonard nodded perfunctorily.
"The old man was a big jollier," he said.
"And a wonderful judge from character," Danowitz added, "which when
he resigned from the presidency of the Bella Hirschkind Home for
Indignant Females, Mr. Leonard, he says to me, 'Danowitz,' he says to
me, 'you are my successor,' he says to me, 'and I know how it is with
a man like you,' he says. 'You will want to do the whole thing
yourself,' he says. 'You will be giving a thousand dollars _here_, a
thousand dollars _there_, and the first thing you know, you will be
practically supporting that Home out of your own pocket,' he says.
'So don't be afraid to ask my son to get up an annual benefit,' he
says, and I says that while it ain't in my nature to ask favors for
myself, y'understand, if that was his wish and desire, I says, _auch
recht_, I says, which if Sunday evening February eleventh would be
convenient to you, Mr. Leonard, it would be convenient to me."
Mr. Leonard sighed heavily. "This'll be the fifth annual benefit I
give for them rotten females," he declared.
"And you could depend on it, Mr. Leonard," Danowitz said, piously,
"that your poor father, _olav hasholom_, which when he was alive was
a _tzadik_ if ever there was one, knows about these here benefits you
are giving for the Home, and appreciates it."
"Maybe he appreciates that it has cost me on an average, $425.20 for
lights, ushers, orchestra, and advertising," Leonard retorted, "not
to say nothing about cleaning the theater and a full stage crew at
regular union rates. So I am giving you this straight, Mr. Danowitz;
next year you've got to get some one else to get up this here
benefit, because this is positively the last time I am going to get
stung for it."
He lifted the receiver from the telephone. "See if Al Sands of Sands
& McNally is out there, and don't let nobody else in till you find
who they are first. That was what my instructions was the first day
I hired you.... What's that? ... Is _that_ so! I suppose you didn't
let in a party a few minutes ago what I thought was Manowitz the
_costoomer_, and it turns out to be somebody else."
As he banged the receiver back on its hook, he fixed Danowitz with a
venomous glare. It did not, however, noticeably disturb the
expression of benevolence which, as president of the Bella Hirschkind
Home for Indigent Females, Danowitz habitually wore.
"Well, I guess I would be moving on," the philanthropist remarked,
with precisely the same inflection as though he anticipated being
pressed to remain for anyhow twenty minutes; "which if there is
anything you would like to ring me up about, don't hesitate to
trespass on my time."
His manner was graciousness itself as he cuddled Leonard's resisting
hand in a warm clasp of farewell, and when he passed out of the room,
a less adamant person than Leonard might have been left with the
impression that to share in benevolent enterprises of so admirable a
character, even to the extent of $425.20, was a privilege and an
honor. Leonard, however, did not see it that way, and he was still
muttering to himself when Al Sands, the male partner of the
old-established team of Sands & McNally, entered the room.
"You ain't got no objections if I bring a couple of sandwiches along
the next time, J.J.?" Al said, by way of giving himself what he
considered to be a good speech to come on with. "I've been waiting
outside since ten o'clock."
"Always clowning, ain't you, Al?" Leonard retorted. "Why don't you
get some of that comedy into your performance? Because if you don't
get no more laughs in this year's 'Comics' than you did in last
year's, I've got to make some different arrangements, that's all.
And as for McNally----"
"I know, I know," Sands interrupted. "But I ain't got that McNally
no longer. The McNally I've got this year is a wonder."
"That's what you said last year," Leonard declared. "In fact,
this'll be the sixth McNally you've had since you and me has been
doing business together, Al, and they've been going down steadily.
The one you had last year was the worst of the bunch."
"Sure, I know, but _that_ McNally was Irish," Sands explained.
"She's the only Irish McNally I ever had, and that's where I made a
big mistake. The McNally I've got this year is all right, J. J.
She's got a wonderful voice, good dancer, and she's right there in
three dialects."
"And on your say-so, unsight unseen, without letting the cat out of
the bag or nothing, you want me to give you a contract, I suppose,"
Leonard said.
"I ain't trying to keep no cat in a bag," Al said. "When do you want
me to bring her up here?"
"I don't want you to bring her up here never," Leonard replied. "I'm
giving a benefit for a home for females--the one I always give the
benefit for, on account of my father once being the president of it,
on Sunday night February eleventh--and if _they_ like her, _I'll_
like her."
"You couldn't tell nothing by a benefit audience," Al Sands protested.
"Benefit or no benefit," Leonard declared, "if the people out front
pays three dollars apiece for an orchestra seat, y'understand, they
ain't going to laugh unless the laugh is there."
He turned to a desk heaped high with manuscripts of plays whose fate
had long since been sealed by the circumstance that Leonard produced
nothing but his annual revue. He utilized them, nevertheless, in the
reception and dismissal of visitors; and by way of informing Al Sands
that his visit was at an end Leonard immediately became absorbed in
the title page and _dramatis personæ_ of a thick manuscript bound in
blue vellum paper. To any other manager, its inordinate length would
have made it impossible, because, reckoning that one page of
manuscript consumes one minute in its performance, there were eight
hours and twenty-five minutes of solid drama contained within its
covers; but for J.J. Leonard's purposes, this was, if anything, an
advantage.
Thus, at the beginning of the season, when obscure members of the
"Comics" Company would summon up sufficient courage to call on
Leonard with a request for more salary, the impression they received
from discovering their employer in the perusal of so weighty a
manuscript was not at all dispelled by the noise with which Leonard
closed it and threw it back on his desk. It frequently banged twenty
dollars a week off a timid actor's salary, and was therefore
Leonard's favorite manuscript.
"I suppose I get anyhow one orchestra rehearsal," Al Sands said, with
his hand on the door knob.
"Saturday morning at eleven downstairs," J.J. said, without looking
up.
The manuscript was called "Death and Transfiguration" and suggested
in its treatment Tolstoy's "Resurrection" with just a hint of "Twin
Beds," but for anything Leonard had learned of its contents, it might
just as well have been a combination of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Oh,
Boy!" All he knew about it was that his father, Sam Lippmann, had
brought it into the office and asked him to read it when he found the
time; and although as the resolution of the Board of Trustees of the
Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females had so aptly put it, an
all-wise Providence had gathered Sam unto his fathers some three
years before, J.J. had still not found the time. Nevertheless, out
of respect for his father he continued to believe that he was going
to find the time some time or other, and he periodically instructed
his secretary to notify the author that his manuscript was under
consideration by Mr. Leonard and a decision would be rendered upon it
in due course.
These notifications were all sent to Gerald Dane, care of The Fitgood
Shirt Company, 22A Washington Place, New York City; and while it may
seem a piece of pure coincidence that, half an hour after the
incidents above set forth, Gershon Danowitz entered the Washington
Place factory of the Fitgood Shirt Company, it may be readily
explained upon the score that he was the sole proprietor of it and
that Gerald Dane labored there under the shirt-business name of
Gershon Danowitz, Jr.
"Well," Gershon, Jr., demanded impatiently before his father had time
to remove his hat and coat, "did you ask him about it?"
The proprietor of the Fitgood Shirt Company and President of the
Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females immediately lost his
benevolent manner and became livid with rage.
"What do you mean--did I ask him?" he bellowed. "It ain't enough
that I am insulted about the benefit already. I should ask him about
your _verflüchte Schauspiel_ yet!"
He tore off his hat and coat and threw them on to a chair.
"Sam Lippmann, that was a friend!" he cried. "I should ought to of
been shot before I ever met that old crook, _olav hasholom_. Throws
the whole burden of them fakers of females on my shoulders and then
he goes to work and encourages my only son that he should be a play
writer yet!"
"Now look here, pop," Gershon, Jr., protested. "There isn't any need
to get so excited."
"Isn't there?" Gershon, Sr., began. "Well, let me tell you
something, Gershon. Once and for all I want you to get through with
this nonsense. You have been fooling away your time here long
enough. Either you must got to be a play writer _oder_ a shirt
manufacturer, but you couldn't be both, y'understand."
He had been delivering the same ultimatum at intervals of a week or
so for more than three years, and it had always been accepted by
Gershon, Jr., as incidental to the avocation of dramatist and to be
dismissed with some such rejoinder as "Hire a hall!" or even, in less
respectful moments, "Tell it to Sweeney." But on this occasion
Gershon, Jr., maintained what his father ought to have recognized as
an ominous silence; for only the night before, while dining on West
Houston Street, somebody at the next table had audibly informed a
female companion that the feller with the spectacles and that leather
sample case--don't look now--was the one that wrote all them shows
for them now Washington Square actors. And although the female
companion was extremely rustic in her appearance and said, "What!
That homely looking feller with the long hair?" the incident had
fired his imagination, nevertheless.
"Because when a young feller gets to be already twenty-six years old,
he ain't a child no longer," Gershon, Sr., continued, his
philanthropic manner beginning to reassert itself. He intended it to
be a heart-to-heart conversation such as any president of any home
might hold with a thoughtless son in whom there wasn't, so to speak,
a button's worth of harm, and to that end settled himself comfortably
in the revolving chair at his office desk; but Gershon, Jr., refused
to perform in the role assigned to him.
"I know I ain't," he said with a firmness that ought to have warned
Gershon, Sr.
"You bet your life you ain't," Gershon, Sr., went on, just as though
he were not addressing a dramatist who only the night before had been
mistaken for the author of the entire Washington Square Players
repertoire. "And when a feller gets to be twenty-six years old in
any business--particularly the shirt business----"
"To hell with the shirt business!" Gershon, Jr., exclaimed.
If a spectator had arisen in the body of the Supreme Court at
Washington and said the same thing about the Constitution of the
United States the combined bench and bar there present could have
been no more shocked than Gershon, Sr., was. For at least a minute
he sat in his office chair unable to move, unable even to enunciate;
but at last he tottered to his feet.
"Go on," he said, "out of here, before I kick you out."
"You wouldn't kick anybody out," Gershon, Jr., retorted. "For three
years now I've sat and listened to you giving advice, and I ain't
going to stand for it any longer."
"And for how many years did he sit and listen to you cutting teeth
and having colic?" inquired a stout, florid gentleman in a fur
overcoat. He had entered the office unnoticed at the very moment of
Gershon, Jr.'s sacrilegious outbreak against the shirt industry, and
although shirts were only one department of the Gembitz-Jones
Mercantile Company's jobbing business in Los Angeles, Marcus Gembitz
was hardly less shocked than Gershon, Sr., himself. "Ain't you
ashamed to talk that way to your father?"
He might just as well have asked Trotzky and Lenin if they weren't
ashamed to speak disrespectfully about such decent, estimable people
as the Russian bourgeoisie, for in the lexicon of a Greenwich Village
dramatist, derived in great measure from the prefaces to the
published plays of Bernard Shaw, there are no such words as respect
for parents. In fact, even in that crucial moment--the turning point
of a career, as it were--when Gershon, Jr., was putting on his hat
and coat preparatory to abandoning the shirt business forever, he
could not help snorting contemptuously at such a hopelessly
old-fashioned remark.
"Here!" Gershon, Sr., demanded. "Where are you going?"
For answer Gershon, Jr., crushed his hat over his forehead. It was a
black, soft hat--essentially a dramatist's hat and not a
shirt-manufacturer's hat. And then looking around the office, much
as the Prisoner of Chillon must have looked around his dungeon at the
moment of liberation--if he ever was liberated--he opened the door,
and the next moment it closed behind him with a bang. Indeed, had it
closed with a clang instead of a bang, the effect could not have been
more dramatic.
"_Nu_, Danowitz," Marcus Gembitz said at last, "don't worry your
head. He'll come back."
"I don't want him to come back," Gershon, Sr., said. "He's made his
bed. Now he could rot in it for all I care."
Gembitz waved his hands in deprecation of such harshness.
"Say!" he said. "You'll get over that feeling." He patted
Danowitz's shoulder consolingly. "After all," he continued, "we all
have trouble with our children and it comes out all right."
"With children maybe, but with an only child, Mr. Gembitz, that's
something else again," Danowitz said. His head nodded slowly as he
began to realize the bereavement he had suffered.
"Mind you," he went on, "I begged his mother she shouldn't send him
to college, because if you have two sons and one of them goes to
college, supposing something happens to you, _Gott soll hüten_,
you've anyhow one left to look after the business, but if you've got
only one son and him a college gradgewate, y'understand, what is it?
Am I right or wrong?"
"Couldn't a college gradgewate also run a business?" Gembitz inquired.
"In some business, _maybe_," Danowitz said. "But in a business where
there is such a competition like the shirt business, Mr. Gembitz,
such business you've got to learn it from the bottom up, whereas a
college gradgewate learns a business from the top down, and while
some college gradgewates reaches the bottom quicker as others,
y'understand, when such a college gradgewate is also a play writer,
before he has learned even the top of the business, understand me,
the bottom has dropped out of it."
"Even so," Gembitz said, "you've got to make allowances for your boy."
"I would never forgive him--never," Danowitz said emphatically.
"Say!" Gembitz protested. "I would make you a bet right now that in
less than two weeks the young feller would be back on the job and you
would never think nothing had happened at all. Forgiving children is
the easiest thing fathers could do. Why, you take me, for instance,
Danowitz, and the troubles which you got with your boy ain't already
a marker to what I got with my daughter, which I told my wife how it
would come out if she lets her take vocal.
"'Learn her first to make a decent cup of coffee,' I says to my wife,
'or that she should cook _chotzig_ a potato,' I says.
"But you know how it is in Los Angeles, Danowitz. Everybody figures
that if their daughter ain't got no other talent, she looks like Mary
Pickford; and my wife has settled in her mind that my Sadie has only
got to take for twelve hundred dollars singing lessons to be a second
Geraldine Patti, y'understand. Right now she is in Chicago staying
with her aunt and taking vocal from an _Italiener_, which he has got
the nerve to charge more for one office call than a first-class
A-number-one stomach specialist."
"Well, that's the way it goes," Gershon, Sr., declared, with a
tremulous sigh. "I've got a good business and nobody to leave it to
but the boy, and nothing would do but that he must be a play writer
_doch_. You have got an only daughter which you are well fixed
enough that she could have a good husband and a good home, and I
suppose the first thing you know, you would be firing her out of the
house for getting a job singing in a moving-picture theayter or
something."
"Say!" Gembitz remarked. "The girl is very far from reaching that
point, y'understand, but if she did, understand me, firing her out of
the house would be the furthest from my thoughts. Hafter all,
Danowitz, children has got their rights as well as parents, and if
your son or my daughter thinks they've got openings above the shirt
business or the home, y'understand, the thing to do is to look at the
matter from philosophy."
Once more he patted Danowitz's shoulder.
"Now come, Danowitz," he said, "this here business about your Gershon
is going to blow over, and in the meantime I would like to see what
you've got in some popular-price percales. My reservations for Los
Angeles is all taken for tomorrow, and I ain't got no time to lose."
For more than an hour Gershon, Sr., displayed his spring line of
shirts, and in spite of his broken-hearted condition succeeded in
procuring from Gembitz a most satisfactory order at prices slightly
above the market, since Gembitz could not find it within his
ordinarily businesslike nature to add to Danowitz's troubles by
standing out for bedrock figures. In fact, once or twice Gembitz
suspected that Danowitz was taking advantage of a customer's kindness
of heart by sandwiching rather extravagant quotations between two
outbursts of emotion at his son's ungrateful behavior. But Gembitz's
sympathy for Danowitz, as of one father for another, outweighed the
trade antagonism which as a jobber he would normally have felt toward
a manufacturer, and he allowed Danowitz to get away with a couple of
items which upon mature reflection he considered to be little short
of grand larceny. Nevertheless, after checking up the order and
correcting a few mistakes which Danowitz in his grief had made in his
own favor, the two parents shook hands warmly.
"You will see, Danowitz," Gembitz declared, "that your boy will be
back here in a few days, and you and him will be just as good friends
as ever."
"Him with me, maybe," Danowitz said, "but not me with him."
"_Ach_! That's nonsense!" Gembitz exclaimed. He was about to
enlarge upon the amount of forgiveness which a parent ought to
display to an erring child, when the telephone bell rang.
"Excuse me," Danowitz said, taking the receiver from the hook.
"Hello.... Yes, this is the Fitgood Shirt Company. Hello....
Mister Who? ... Yes, he's right here."
He turned to Gembitz.
"For you, Mr. Gembitz," he said.
"For me?" Gembitz cried. "Why, nobody knows I'm here, excepting I
told the twentieth-floor clerk at the hotel she should ring me up
here in case a package didn't come from my tailor, but the package
came just as I left. I wonder who it would be?"
"Might if you answered the phone, maybe you would find out," Danowitz
suggested.
"Give it to me," Gembitz said. "Hello.... Yes, this is Mr.
Gembitz.... You are the twentieth-floor clerk, yes? ... You got a
what? ... What kind of wire? ... A telegram? ... Sure, go ahead and
open it."
He smiled at Danowitz.
"Ain't it funny, when you get a telegram, you always think sickness
or death and it turns out to be nothing," he said. "Probably my
partner is---- Oh, hello! ... Yes, I'm listening.... It's from
Chicago.... Yes, I understand--Chicago.... Mrs. Clarence Fimpel.
That's my wife's sister.... Yes, go ahead.... What? ... _Shema
Beni_! What do you think of that?"
He hung up the receiver and stared at Danowitz while his florid
complexion grew suddenly purple.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed. "What's the matter? Is somebody
sick or something?"
Gembitz flipped his right hand in a gesture of despair.
"Worser," he said. "My Sadie has run away to be an actress."
"An actress?" Danowitz repeated.
"The telegram says, 'Sadie in New York, threatens go on stage, stop
her,' signed Mrs. Clarence Fimpel," Gembitz said. "And she don't
even give the telephone number in New York where Sadie threatens to
go on the stage."
"Don't it say letter follows?" Danowitz asked. "Most telegrams do,
and usually you couldn't tell nothing about it till the letter
arrives."
"I don't care if fifty letters follows," Gembitz declared, striking
the desk with his clenched fist. "If the girl wants to go on the
stage, she can go."
He rose from the chair on which he was sitting and looked as though
he were about to raise both hands in the classic gesture that used to
accompany all parental curses with or without a snowstorm off stage.
"But if she does," he said, "she'll never see a penny of my
money--not one penny."
He sank back into his chair and covered his eyes with his right hand.
"A shame and a disgrace!" he muttered. "My only daughter to be an
actress!"
Danowitz shrugged his shoulders.
"Say!" he said. "Lots of girls from good families has threatened to
go on the stage and even went. Hafter all, what is so terrible that
your daughter should be an actress, Mr. Gembitz? An actress could
behave herself the same like anybody else and very often does."
"She should never come near my house again," Gembitz said with a
groan.
"Schmooes!" Danowitz exclaimed. "If the girl makes a hit on the
stage, you will be proud of her the same like any other father."
He patted Gembitz's back reassuringly, but Gembitz only shook his
head.
"You don't know me, Danowitz. When I make up my mind, I make up my
mind," he concluded. "And I would never forgive her--never."
The passage of a camel through the eye of a needle or of a rich man
into Heaven is a relatively easy matter compared with the admission
of an aspiring playwright to the presence of a manager, and when
Gershon Danowitz, Jr., called at the office of J.J. Leonard on the
following Saturday morning, it was only because Leonard failed to
notice the Jr. on Gershon's visiting card that he succeeded in
getting an audience.
"Tell that faker to come in here," Leonard said to the office boy who
brought it in. "I want to talk to him."
He almost bit his cigar in two as he framed in sufficiently strong
language just how he was going to break to the president of the Bella
Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females that if one-half of the
increased expenses of running off the benefit were not forthcoming
from the treasury of the Home, there wasn't going to be any benefit
at all.
"Now, looky here, Danowitz," he began, as Gershon, Jr., entered, and
then broke off suddenly when he discovered that his visitor was not
the person he supposed him to be. "Say! Who let you in here?" he
bellowed.
It is hardly necessary to say that the question was embroidered with
profanity selected at random from a particularly rich vocabulary, and
for a moment Gershon, Jr., forgot that he was no longer the manager
of a prosperous shirt business.
"Who do you think you're talking to--a shipping clerk?" he asked. "I
sent in my card, and your boy told me to come in."
Leonard picked up the card and looked at it again.
"Oh, you're the old man's son," he said.
"I'm not any man's son," Gershon replied. "I'm here on my own
account."
It was at this juncture that he saw his play on Leonard's desk.
"I called to see you about this," he said. Forthwith the habits of
five years spent in the shirt business began to assert themselves.
What he held in his hand seemed to him not a manuscript but a shirt,
a high-grade shirt--in fact, an entire line of high-grade shirts--and
he addressed himself to the task of selling it to Leonard, much as if
Leonard had been a retailer with a chain of haberdashery stores and
hence a prospective customer of large buying capacity. It was an
entirely novel experience for the theatrical manager. He had met
brash playwrights, shy playwrights, intellectual playwrights, and
playwrights who were acquainted with every device of the theater
since the days of Corneille and Racine, but a playwright who was also
a first-class, cracker jack, A-number-one shirt salesman was
something he had never been called upon to cope with, and he was soon
completely at Gershon's mercy.
For more than an hour his only contributions to the dialogue were,
"But, say!" or "Now, listen here," all of which Gershon treated as
mere punctuation. In disposing of this one manuscript, he was using
enough salesmanship to sell shirts in gross lots, and he talked on
and on to such good purpose that by twelve o'clock, not only had he
caused Leonard to accept in writing "Death and Transfiguration," a
play in three acts and a prologue by Gerald Dane, but they had also
discussed its forthcoming production to the extent of changing its
title to "Early to Bed," merging the prologue into the first act and
cutting between the laughs so as to bring its acting time well within
the conventional period of one hundred and thirty minutes.
"And now," Gershon, Jr., said, shortly before half-past twelve,
"we'll go out and have a bit of lunch."
Leonard looked at his watch and impiously uttered a pious exclamation.
"I've got a rehearsal downstairs," he said.
"All right, I'll go with you," Gershon remarked, and a few minutes
later Leonard vaguely wondered why he was not surprised to find
himself seated side by side with Gershon, Jr., in one of the last
rows on the ground floor of the Cabot Theater. An orchestra of less
than ten musicians--using the term in its occupational and not its
artistic meaning--was playing an accompaniment to a song in which the
word "Dixie" recurred at intervals. So far as it affected Gershon,
however, it might just as well have been Bosnia or Herzegovina, for
he was concerned not with the song but the singer. He clutched
Leonard's arm convulsively.
"Who's the lady?" he asked in a shrill whisper.
"What lady?" Leonard asked in return. "Lady" was a word he reserved
for members of the audience. For performers, whether as principals
or chorus women, he possessed a fund of synonyms which had never been
included in any thesaurus. "Oh, _her_!" he exclaimed, when he
realized that he was sitting next to a layman. "She's one of
them--now--McNallys."
"Yes?" Gershon said. He had, of course, heard of such theatrical
families as the Drews, the Barrymores, and even the Eight Brothers
Byrne, but, even though he was not prepared to admit it, he had never
heard of the McNally family.
"Which one is she?" he asked, as though he knew all the others.
"She's the fifth or the sixth," Leonard said. "I forget which."
"The sixth," a voice said from the seat back of them, "and the best
of the bunch, J.J."
"But she can't sing for nuts, Al," Leonard replied, without looking
around.
"Of course, I'm no judge of singing," Gershon began, by way of
protest, but he immediately became silent at a warning nudge from
Leonard.
"She ain't got no more voice than I have," Leonard said.
"Say!" Al Sands retorted. "She can put over a song without singing a
note. All she's got to do is to stand there, and it's across. Am I
right or wrong?"
Leonard clutched Gershon's knee, but this additional warning was
entirely unnecessary. Six years of buying and selling made him
realize at once that even though Miss McNally combined all the more
attractive features of Maxine Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred
Harris Chaplin, these were commodities just as much subject to
bargain and sale in the theater as merchandise is in the dry-goods
district.
"She's a great performer," Al Sands added, emphatically.
Leonard turned around in his seat.
"What am I--a new beginner?" he asked. "Have I been putting on for
seven years now a show where I got to play to twenty-two thousand to
break even, without being my own judge of what's good and what ain't?"
These figures, representing the gross weekly receipts of the
"Comics," and the profanity with which they were quoted, made such an
impression on Al Sands that he was silent for at least thirty seconds.
"She's a big find," he said at last.
"She's a rank amateur," Leonard retorted. "I bet she ain't left her
home a month already."
"Well, what _of_ it?" Sands asked. That was just what Gershon wanted
to know. Here was a McNally--member, no doubt, of an old theatrical
family--in short, the sixth McNally, and yet she was a rank amateur
and had just left her home.
"What _of_ it?" Leonard said. "Why, there's _this_ of it: I suppose
you expect I should pay you the old figure when all you got to pay
_her_ is fifty a week."
"Say!" Al Sands interrupted. "You don't know her or you wouldn't
talk that way. _You_ may think she's an amateur and _I_ may think
she's an amateur, but _she_ don't think so. She struck me for two
hundred right off the reel, and she made me pay it, too."
"Back up!" Leonard cried. "What are you trying to give me?"
"All right," Sands said. "_Meet_ her once."
"All right, I will," Leonard said, jumping up from his seat. He made
his way down the side aisle to the door leading from the auditorium
to the stage, followed by Al Sands. Gershon stumbled after them
through the darkness, quite forgotten by Leonard, but when they all
three arrived on the stage, such was the effect of Gershon's late
salesmanship that Leonard accepted his presence there as a matter of
course.
"Miss McNally," Al said, "I want you to meet Mr. Leonard, and this
other gentleman here, I don't know his name."
"He ain't interested," Leonard said, shaking Miss McNally's ungloved
hand, and not releasing it after the handshake had concluded. "I
think I seen you somewheres before, didn't I?"
"I don't think so," Miss McNally replied.
"Good speaking voice," Sands commented. "Great carrying quality."
"Now, listen," Leonard broke in. "Let her do the talking, will you?"
Miss McNally withdrew her hand from Leonard's clasp.
"Mr. Sands does the talking _for_ me," she said. She looked at
Gershon and thereby caused him to undergo all the cardiac symptoms
associated with too much smoking and coffee-drinking. Nevertheless,
he seemed to detect a slight flicker of Miss McNally's left eyelid.
"I suppose," Leonard said, "Al told you to tell me that."
"What's the difference who told who?" Sands asked. "As a matter of
fact, she suggested it."
"Miss McNally," Leonard broke in angrily, "I want you to come
upstairs to my office. I'm starting to cast my 'Comics' and I want
to talk business to you."
"The act is Sands and McNally, Mr. Leonard," Sands said. "I own and
manage it, and if you want to talk business, talk it to me."
For at least half a minute Leonard hesitated.
Miss McNally's physical charms were no less evident to him than they
were to Gershon, but unlike Gershon, his heart functioned quite
normally. So did his brain. He was, in fact, considering her
attractiveness in terms of box-office receipts, and at the end of
thirty seconds he had made up his mind.
"Come upstairs, Al," he said, and a minute later Gershon was alone on
the stage with Miss McNally.
"Well," Miss McNally declared, "if he lands that job in the 'Comics,'
I guess I'll have burned my boats behind me and not a cent of
insurance."
Her lips parted in a melancholy smile and Gershon smiled in return.
He had only half heard what she had said, but Al Sands was right.
All she had to do was to stand there, and she was a hit with any
audience. For instance, she had not intended to create in Gershon
the feeling that without a home presided over by Miss McNally, play
writing and shirt manufacturing were as one. Nevertheless, merely by
standing there and looking at him, she had done more than that. Her
melancholy smile had automatically caused him to contrast the
hazardous compensation of a playwright with the relatively certain
income of the shirt-manufacturing business. In short, he was
considering her attractiveness, not by Leonard's standard of
box-office receipts, but in terms of a honeymoon, a small apartment
in a good neighborhood, and just one or two children, and by the time
she spoke again he was rapidly getting back into a shirt-business
frame of mind.
"You look like you didn't understand what I mean," she said, "so I
may as well tell you that I left a good home to go into this."
Gershon held out his right hand.
"Shake!" he said. "I've just burned a couple of fleets myself."
They shook hands solemnly.
"And one or two bridges," Gershon added.
"You don't mean to say that _you_ left a good home to be an actor?"
she asked, after they were seated side by side on a tool box against
the back wall.
"Not an actor," Gershon said; "a playwright, and I left more than a
good home. I left a good shirt business."
"A good shirt business!" she exclaimed. "Oh, dear! Wasn't that
foolish of you!"
She laid her left hand on his right sleeve and let it stay there for
just a moment.
"Why couldn't you write plays on the side and still stay in the shirt
business?" she said.
"Ask my father," Gershon replied. "He owns the business, and he told
me that I had to choose between being a shirt manufacturer and a
playwright, so I chose."
Miss McNally nodded her head comprehendingly.
"Aren't families just like that?" she said. "They don't understand
you one bit, do they?"
She moved up just a trifle closer to him.
"Tell me," she said. "What kind of plays do you write?"
"Suppose I tell you at lunch," Gershon said. "It'll be half an hour
or longer before Leonard gets through with your--your friend."
"He isn't my friend," Miss McNally assured him. "He pays me a salary
and I board with him and Mrs. Sands up in Tremont."
"Even at that, we could leave word with the doorman that we would be
back in half an hour," Gershon said. "How about it?"
Miss McNally considered the proposition for at least a minute.
"How many plays have you produced?" she asked.
"As yet, none," Gershon said, "but I've had one accepted."
"Then I'll go to lunch with you on one condition," Miss McNally
declared. "There's an awfully nice place right across the street
where they have the best Danish pastry."
And a moment later they were seated at a rear table in one of those
lunch rooms that seek to divert their patrons' attention from the
poor quality of the food by an elaborate scheme of decoration in the
style of an 1895 model Pullman Palace Car.
There over a plate of Danish pastry and two cups of coffee they
exchanged the preliminary confidences of what was rapidly to ripen
into an ardent friendship. In fact, so rapid was the ripening and so
ardent the friendship that, by the following Thursday, not only had
they lunched together five times and dined together six times, but in
the course of the last dinner Miss McNally had occasion to say, "No."
To be sure she didn't say it too emphatically. Her precise words
were: "No, Gerald dear, I couldn't. Not this season, anyway."
"But, I tell you, I'll go back into the shirt business. I'll do
anything," he protested.
"Don't I know you would?" Miss McNally said. "But I have a contract
with Mr. Sands not to get married for the run of the 'Comics,'
anyway."
"And it may run two years," he said, hopelessly.
"Well, that can't be helped," she said. "My contract with him says I
shouldn't get married and I can't break it."
That she was firm in this resolution, however, may be doubted by the
events of the following morning, when Gershon Danowitz, Sr., was
interrupted in the task of checking up his monthly statements by a
visitor whose clothes could not have been called conservative even
for a man half his age.
"Say, looky here!" the visitor said to Gershon, Sr. "This thing has
gone far enough. Is that plain?"
Gershon, Sr., was startled into a pious expectoration.
"T'phooee!" he said. "What do you mean, busting in here like this?"
"I mean what I say," Al Sands declared. "It's got to stop. I know
what my rights are, and this wouldn't be the first time I made
trouble for a guy like that."
"Say, what's the matter?" Gershon asked. "Are you _meshugga_ or
something?"
"I ain't no more crazy than you are," Al said. "I've got a contract
for the run of the 'Comics'--me and my partner--and if your son busts
it up on me, my lawyers tell me I can put him in jail for malicious
interfering in a contract."
For a brief interval Danowitz nodded his head while a pulse beat in
his cheek.
"So that's what it is, is it?" he said. "Already he gets into
trouble."
"And he'll get into worser trouble if he fools with me," Sands
commented.
"That I couldn't help," Danowitz rejoined. "I ain't seen the boy in
a week and what he is up to, I don't know."
"Well, I can tell you what he is up to," Sands told him. "He's
threatening to marry my partner."
"Your partner!" Danowitz repeated. "What for a business are you in
that you get a lady partner? The millinery business?"
"I ain't in _no_ business," Sands replied. "My name is Sands, of
Sands and McNally, my own act now for ten years, and your son is
going to marry my partner Miss McNally."
The pulse in Danowitz's cheek beat a trifle more quickly and he grew
slightly red in the face, but his voice was firm enough when he
spoke, even though his lips did quiver.
"Well," he said, "I didn't expect no better. Anyone what starts out
writing plays when he's got a good home and a good business, is
liable to end up marrying a Miss McNally, even."
"And how about me?" Sands asked.
"You?" Danowitz said. "What have I got to do with you?"
"You've got plenty to do with me," Sands retorted. "Either you stop
this thing or I put your son in jail."
Danowitz rose from his chair.
"You mean you are going to put into jail the young feller that is
going to marry this Miss McNally?" he said.
Al Sands nodded.
"Well, that young feller ain't my son," Danowitz declared. "I ain't
got no more a son."
For more than half an hour after Sands left, Danowitz remained seated
in his revolving chair, his head sunk on his breast, and it was in
this attitude that Marcus Gembitz found him when he entered the
office at eleven o'clock.
"Nu, Mr. Gembitz," he asked, rousing himself with an effort, "have
you heard from your daughter?"
"No, I ain't," Gembitz said, "and from the looks of you, you ain't
heard from your son, either."
Danowitz smiled a rather wan smile.
"You ain't no judge of looks, Mr. Gembitz," he said. "The reason why
I am looking this way is that I have heard from him--indirectly."
"And how is he getting on?" Gembitz asked.
"He's getting on fine," Danowitz replied. "He's going to marry a
Miss McNally."
Gembitz sat down heavily in the revolving chair at Gershon, Jr.'s
vacant desk. "_Um Gottes Willen_, you don't tell me!" he said.
He tried to think of something to say that might be of some
consolation.
"Well," he said, after a long silence, "the chances is that you don't
feel no worse over your son marrying Miss McNally than Miss McNally's
father does about her marrying your son."
"Did I say any different?" Danowitz asked. "And the chances is she
is a very nice girl, too," Gembitz added.
"Yaw, a nice girl!" Danowitz exclaimed. "She's an actress."
Gembitz grew red in the face.
"What are you trying to do--insult me?" he roared. "My own daughter
is an actress."
"Say, say!" Danowitz retorted. "Your daughter ain't no more an
actress than my son is a play writer."
"Is that so!" Gembitz cried. "Well, let me tell you something: If my
daughter wouldn't be a better actress than your son is a play writer,
I wouldn't mention the matter at all."
Danowitz waved both hands frantically.
"Don't get excited, Mr. Gembitz," he said. "For my part she could be
a regular Clara Bernhardt; but, just the same, if your daughter was
going to marry an actor by the name McNally, that wouldn't be exactly
nothing for you and Mrs. Gembitz to give a sigh of relief over,
neither."
"Well, of course, when it comes time for my daughter to get married,"
Gembitz said, after he had cooled down, "I should like for her to
marry a young man of her own people, but on the other hand if she
_should_ want to marry outside her own people--I suppose me and my
wife would got to forgive her."
Once more Danowitz's chin rested on his shirt-front and his eyes were
fixed on vacancy. Indeed, he presented so pitiable a spectacle that
Gembitz was moved to offer him a cigar. To be sure, it was the same
cigar that Gembitz had accepted from Danowitz only the week before,
but that he should have offered a man from whom he bought goods a
cigar at all, since it is a rigid convention that customers should
receive cigars and not give cigars away, indicated how deeply he felt
for the unfortunate Danowitz.
"Now, come, Danowitz," he said, patting him on the shoulder, "if I
would be in your situation, I wouldn't take it so much to heart. My
daughter is just so much my daughter as your son is your son, but if
she would marry some one outside her people, I would say, 'Sadie,' I
would say, 'you have done something which is wrong,' I would say,
'_but_,' I would say----"
However, the hypothetical duologue thus begun proceeded no further,
for when it had reached this critical stage of its development, the
door opened to admit a youth clothed in the uniform of a naval
lieutenant except for the words _Belsize Hotel_ which were
embroidered in gold thread on the collar and sleeves.
"Is there a party here by the name Gembitz?" he inquired.
"That's me," Gembitz said.
"The floor clerk on the twentieth floor says you left word that if
any letters or telegrams comes to bring 'em over here."
"Give it to me," Gembitz cried, and snatched a letter from the
messenger's hand. He tore it open, and after reading its contents he
sank back into his chair with a groan.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed. "What's the matter?"
"I would never speak to her again so long as I live. Why, I would
never even look at her," he said, hoarsely.
"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz said. "What _is_ it?"
"I am like you, Danowitz," he groaned. "I ain't got no more a
daughter. She's dead."
"Dead!" Danowitz exclaimed.
"Worse than dead," Gemhitz replied. "She has gone to work and got
married. And by the name, he ain't one of our people."
The messenger from the hotel took off his cap reverently.
"That'll be fifty cents," he said, "and ten cents carfare."
Danowitz offered no consolation. He felt instinctively there could
be none. He did not even inquire the name of Gembitz's son-in-law,
but what he did do was to produce from the middle compartment of his
safe in violation of the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution of
the United States and the acts to enforce the same, a quart bottle of
rye whisky and two miniature glasses. He filled them both to the
brim and handed one to Gembitz.
"_L'chayim_," he said piously.
"_L'chayim tovim!_" Gembitz replied.
As they tossed it down, the office door opened again, and this time,
J.J. Leonard, the theatrical manager, literally flung himself into
the room.
"Huh!" he snorted. "Celebrating, ain't you!"
"I couldn't talk to you about the benefit now," Danowitz said,
hastily replacing the bottle in the safe.
"Benefit!" Leonard cried. "There ain't going to be no benefit."
"Why not?" Danowitz demanded.
Leonard threw his hat on the desk and jutted out his chin at Danowitz.
"Don't throw me no bluffs, you charity faker, you!" he cried.
"_Chutzpah_! Does me out of an act that would have made the
show--absolutely made it--and then expects me I should go on with his
rotten benefit yet."
"I don't know what you're talking about at all," Danowitz said.
"You don't, hey?" Leonard said. "I suppose you ain't drinking that
hootch because your son gets married this morning."
"And suppose he is," Gembitz said. "What _of_ it?"
"I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, but I'll tell you
what _of_ it," Leonard said. "His son busts up my 'Comics' by
marrying this here McNally, and he made up the match."
"_I_ made up the match!" Danowitz cried. "Do you think I'm crazy?"
"Like a fox," Leonard said. "I suppose you don't know that girl's
father is a millionaire."
Danowitz grabbed Leonard's hat from the desk and handed it to the
manager.
"You get right out of here," he shouted. "An idea! Just because the
girl's father is a millionaire or a multimillionaire or a
billionaire, he thinks that I should go to work and make up a match
between my only son and a lady which ain't one of our people."
"Yes, she ain't!" Leonard jeered.
"But her name is McNally," Gembitz said.
"And mine is Leonard," Leonard retorted. "She ain't no McNally.
She's only in the show business with Al Sands under the team name of
Sands and McNally."
"Maybe he's right, Danowitz," Gembitz said. "When a feller does
business under the firm name of the Eagle Pants Company he don't
necessarily got to be an eagle."
"Well, if her name ain't McNally," Danowitz asked, "what _is_ it?"
Before Leonard could answer, Gershon Danowitz, Jr., opened the door.
He was wearing a new hat--a brown derby--in place of the old soft
black hat. It was essentially a shirt manufacturer's hat and not a
dramatist's hat.
"Pop," he said, "I want you to meet my wife."
He stood aside and disclosed in the doorway behind him a young lady
who combined all the more attractive physical features of Maxine
Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred Harris Chaplin.
"Sadie!" Gembitz cried, and immediately enfolded her in his arms.
"It looks like a curtain and a good one," Leonard said, "but it
ain't. I am going to see a lawyer about this."
"Save your money," Gershon, Jr., said. "All you can do under your
contract is to get an injunction against her acting in any other show
except yours, and if you want a written guarantee that she won't,
I'll give it to you."
"And I'll give you a written guarantee that I wouldn't put on your
show, neither," Leonard said.
"Your word is sufficient," Gershon, Jr., assured him, "because I am
out of the play-writing business for good."
"Well," Gershon Danowitz, Sr., remarked after Leonard had left, "it's
an old saying and a true one that all's well what ends well, but
where the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indignant Females gets off, I
don't know."
"Say," Gembitz said, "figure out what them indignant females would of
got out of this here benefit and send me a bill for it. After all,
an only daughter only gets married once, so why shouldn't it cost me
something? Am I right or wrong?"