breasts and her languid limbs unfolding.
She shook her hair backward with the changeless gesture of women, held
her hands at arm's-length, and regarded them. They were whiter, and the
broken nails were shaping themselves into ovals. A callous ridge along
her forefinger, souvenir of a cistern which pumped reluctantly, was
disappearing.
She smiled to herself in the mirror, like the legendary people who have
eyes to see the grass grow must smile at the secret of each blade.
Then she slid into a high-necked, long-sleeved wrapper and bound the
whorl of her hair in a loose bun at her neck.
Mrs. Fallows's minimum-priced, minimum-sized hall bedroom speaks for its
nine-by-twelve "neatly furnished" self. The hall bedrooms of
Forty-fourth Street and Forty-fifth Street and Forty-_ad-infinitum_
Street are furnished in that same white-iron bed with the dented brass
knobs, light-oak, easy-payment dresser, wash-stand, and square table
with a too short fourth leg and shelf beneath for dust--and above the
dresser, slightly askew, a heart-rendering, art-rendering version of
"Narcissus at the Pool," or any of the well-worn incidents favorite to
mythology and lithographers.
But life, like love and the high cost of living and a good cigar, is
comparative. To Della, stretching her limbs to the morning, Mrs.
Fallows's carpeted fourth-floor back, painted furniture, and a light
that sprang into brilliancy at a tweak, was a sybarite's retreat,
eighteen hours removed from wash-day, and rising in the dark, black
mud-roads and a dirt-colored shanty that met the wind broadside and
trembled to its innards.
Two flights below her a mezzo-soprano struggled for high C; adjoining,
an early-morning-throated barytone leaned out of a doorway and called
for a fresh towel. Came three staccato raps at Della's portal, and enter
on the wings of the morning and a pair of white-topped, French-heeled
shoes Miss Ysobel Du Prez, late of the third road company of the
Broadway success, "Oh, Oh, Marietta!" and with a history in pony ballets
that entitled her to a pedigree and honorable mention.
"Girl, ain't you dressed yet? What you doin'? Waitin' for your French
maid to get your French lawngerie from the French laundry?"
Miss Du Prez swung herself atop the trunk and crossed her slim limbs.
Chatelaine jewelry jangled; Herculean perfume dominated the air, and
that expressive sobriquet for soubrette, a fourteen-inch willow-plume,
and long as the tail of a male pheasant, brushed her left shoulder.
Miss Ysobel Du Prez--one of the ornamental line of tottering caryatids
who uphold on their narrow, whitewashed shoulders the gold-paper thrones
of musical-comedy principalities, and on those same shoulders carry
every tradition of that section of Broadway which Thespis occupies on a
ninety-nine-year, privilege-of-renewal lease--the fumes of grease-paint
the incense of her temple, the footlights the white flame of her
sacrifice!
"You gotta do a quick change if you're going to the offices with me
to-day, girl. I gotta be up at the Empire in the Putney Building by
eleven and stop in at the Bijou first."
Delia shed her comfortable shroud of repose like Thais dropping her
mantle in an Alexandrian theater.
"I must 'a' overslept, Ysobel. Trying on them duds we bought yesterday
up to so late last night done me up. Three days in New York ain't got me
used to the pace."
"You should worry! If I had your face and figure I'd sleep till the
call-boy rapped twice."
"Ah, Ysobel, you with your cute little face and cute little ways!"
"Soft pedal on the ingenoo stuff, girl. You know you don't hate
yourself. I didn't notice that you exactly despised anything about you
when they called the floor-walker to have a look at you in that black
dress yesterday."
"Honest, Ysobel, I dreamt about it all night."
"Sure you did! But who was it steered you into a 'slightly used,' classy
place where you could buy a gown that Mrs. Asterbilt wore once to a
reception at the Sultan of Sulu's or the Prince of Pilsen's or any of
that crowd; who steered you in a place where you could buy a real gown
for one-tenth the cost of production?"
"You did, Ysobel. I don't know what I'd 'a' done if Mrs. Fallows hadn't
brought you up."
"That little black dream that only let you back twenty-nine-fifty cost
three hundred if it cost a cent, and nothing but a snag in the hem and
the lace in front as good as new. Gee, I could show this cheap bunch
around here how to dress if I had a month's advance in hand!"
"Get off the trunk, Ysobel, and sit here, will you? I want to get it
out. Say, if Cottie could see me with the black hat to match! My little
sister I was telling you about could--"
"Who you got to thank? Who gave you the right steer? Take it from me, if
I hadn't gone along with you, every store on Sixth Avenue would have
X-rayed the corner of your handkerchief for the thirty-eight dollars
tied up in it and body-snatched you for your own funeral. Even with me
along you had a lean like a bent pin for that made-on-Canal-Street,
thirty-two-fifty, red silk they hauled out of the morgue to show you. I
seen you edgin' for that Kokome model."
"Me and Cottie was always great ones for red. I ought to had the red
serge you made so much fun of dyed for mourning, but Cottie--"
"Red! When you, in a tight-lookin' black that hugs you like it was wet,
and a black hat with a tilt that Anna Held would buy right off your
head, can walk into any office in the row this morning and land in the
show-girl row of any chorus on the bills. If you think that's an easy
stunt, ask any girl in this house."
"I--I ain't scared a bit now, since I'm going around with you, Ysobel:
but gee, if I had to go alone!"
"Fallows does the same thing for all of them. When I was in last spring
from first pony in a Middle West company of the 'Merry Whirl'--remind
me, and I'll show you my notices--when I was in last spring Fallows
dumped a little doll-eyed soubrette on me that didn't do a thing, after
I dragged her around to the offices, but grab a part away from me in a
Snooky Ookums quartet that Jim Simmons was puttin' out."
"Honest?"
"Sure! A production I'd been holding off for all season. Me that's made
the boards of more stages creak than she's ever seen!"
"Mrs. Fallows says you're just the one to show me around, that you are
one swell little pony, and an old one in the offices."
"An old one in the offices! I don't see Fallows herself suffering from
no growing-pains. They don't come any farther gone to seed than her. She
tried to stick to her soft-shoe act till the office boys of the
Consolidated Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Managers got
up a subscription and bought her this four-flights' rooming-house to
keep her feet busy with. Fallows better lay low with me or I can do some
fancy tongue-work."
"She didn't mean--"
"Easy there, girl! Didn't I learn you for two hours last night to get
the cold-cream on smooth, first? Smooth--now the powder--more white on
the nose--more!"
"Like that?"
"Say, I met Vyette D'Orsay up in a office yesterday, and she thought I
was tryin' out a comedy line on her when I told her I found one I had to
learn how to make up."
"Lily, a girl from our town, used to powder and--"
"Little more red over the cheek-bones--see, honey?--like mine--say, if
you wanna see swell work you ought to see me made up for spot--didn't I
tell you to work back toward the ears? There--more--good! Don't give
yourself a mouth like a low-comedy gash. Use the cheese-cloth, honey."
"Look how it smears!"
"There, a Cupid bow in the middle is all you need. You got a mouth just
the size of a kiss, anyway."
"John--John used to say about it that--"
"Good! Say, you're some little learner--you are! Easy there--always line
an eyebrow downward--there--more--so!"
"So?"
"Say, you got Zaza, Perfecta, Lillie Russell, and the whole hothouse
bunch of them knocked through the glass ceiling."
Delia leaned to her radiant reflection in the mirror and smiled through
teeth faintly pink from the ruby richness of her lips.
"You ought to see my little sister Cottie, Ysobel. When she comes you'll
sit up and take real notice. I ain't even in her class. She can sit on
her hair--it's so long--and it's so gold it's hot-lookin'."
"Before I had typhoid mine was the same way--you can't put them dresses
on over your head, girl. You gotta climb in--there ain't no room for a
overhead act. There! Say, look at that side-drape, will you! I bet that
lace set some dame back ten a yard. Some class! Don't forget to strike
for thirty right off the bat--they'll think more of you. Say, girl, it's
worth the time I'm wasting on you to see Casey's face when I steer you
into there this morning."
"Ain't it--a beauty, Ysobel! But it's a little tight, kinda--"
"Now begin that again, will you? Honest, if Vyette could hear that
line!"
"Around the knees I mean, Ysobel. It's hard for me to walk."
"If it was any looser I'd get a fit of the laughs like I did over that
red serge. If it was any looser--for Gawd's sake, leave that neck open!
No, no; down like that! A strip of real, lily-white, garden-variety
neck, and she wants to pin it shut!"
"I--I feel ashamed--I--I--kinda hate to leave it open."
"Shades of Vyette! Leave that neck alone, can't you? After all my
preachin' yesterday, look where I landed you. Nowheres!"
"Like that, Ysobel?"
"Take the pin out, there; center left like that. Say, girl, I wish you
knew about this game what I've forgot."
"Me, too, Ysobel."
"Say, listen to her warblin' down there, will you? What's she practisin'
for, I wonder--a chaser act on a four-a-day circuit? Breathe in, girl,
you may be a perfect thirty-six, but you'll never make a tape-measure
see it your way."
"Shall I--shall I tell 'em I got a voice, Ysobel? Me and my little
sister used to sing in--"
Miss Du Prez glanced up over Della's shoulder and, by proxy of the
mirror, their eyes met. The red of exertion was high in her face, and
one corner of her mouth compressed over pins, so that her words leaked
out as through the lips of a faun.
"Voice! You remind me of the fellow that went down to Bowling Green to
bowl. They got as much room for voices in musical comedy as a magazine's
got for anything besides the advertisin' pages."
"My little sister's got--"
"Can you beat it? 'Voice,' she says. You put your voice in your ankles
and waist-line, girl, and it'll get you further. And as for scales like
our friend down-stairs, learn to keep the runners out of your silk
stockings first. There, give it the Anna Held tilt--there--more--so!"
"Oh-h-h, Ysobel--oh-h-h!"
"Swell, and then some. Who you got to thank? Who steered you right?"
Like a pale-gold aura of moonlight spreading out from behind a black
cloud sprang Della's hair against the drooping brim of her hat. She was
like a tight-draped, firm-stayed Venus, lyric in every line, her limbs
wrapped in an ephod of grace and a skirt that restricted her steps like
anklets joined by a too short chain.
"Here, put them white gloves in your bag and save 'em for outside the
office doors. Ready?"
"Oh, Ysobel, if my little sister Cottie could only see me now!"
"Don't forget the lines I learnt you last night--two years' experience
on Western short circuit--spot-light work, and silent principal--thirty
dollars."
"Western short circuit--Western short circuit!"
"Dancing and first-row promenade specialty."
"Dancing and first--"
"Say, you ain't unlearnt it already, have you?"
"No--no."
Down four flights of narrow, unlit stairs with their gauzy laughter,
lingering in black hall corners, and then out into a sunlit morning.
At the end of the tall-walled block, lined on both sides with
brownstone, straight-front phalanxes of rooming-houses, a segment of
Broadway, flashing with automobiles, darting pedestrians, white-facaded
buildings, and sun-reflecting windows, flowed like a mountain stream in
spring.
"Gee--Ysobel, look at that jam, will you!"
"Well, whatta you know! There goes Vance Dudley! If you want to know
what kind of work I do, ask Vance. Me and him did a duet solo in a
two-a-day musical sketch that would have landed us on Broadway sure if
the lead hadn't put in his lady friend when she came in off the road,
flat. I'll show you my notices sometime. That act was good enough for a
Hy Myers house if it had been worked right."
"I bet you're grand, Ysobel--your cute little feet and all."
"Ask any of 'em around the offices about me. I could soft-shoe Clarice
off the 'Winter Revue' this minute if--if I wasn't what they call in the
profesh a--a tin saint. I kinda got my ideas about things--"
"About what, Ysobel?"
"None of them ingenoo lines again, girl. Leave it to you merry widows to
take care of yourselves every time. There's nothin' I can learn a merry
widow. A merry widow can make Methuselah, herself, feel like a squab
when it comes to bein' wise."
"Honest--"
"That baby stare ain't the kind of a cue to throw me, girl. I can steer
you up as far as the offices, but I'm done after you once get past the
office boy."
"I--I don't--"
"After she gets past the ground-glass door every girl in the business
has got to decide for herself. I decided myself, and look where I got
to! Nine years in the business and never creaked a Broadway board yet. I
ain't got the looks to get there on my own stuff--and what happens? I
wake up dead some day doin' short circuit in a Kansas tank-town. I'll be
doin' thirty-a-week, West-of-the-Mississippi stuff to the bitter end
because--because I decided _my_ way and selected the rocky lane."
"The rocky lane?"
"Sure! The first job I ever went out for I could 'a' had. Five sides to
the part--two songs and a specialty solo, but, instead, I hit him flop
across the cheek with my glove and walked out, leavin' him staggerin'
and my engagement layin' on the floor. I--I ain't preachin' to you,
honey--I'm just tellin'! Every girl in this business has got to decide
for herself--I ain't sayin' one thing or the other."
"Ysobel--hit who across the cheek--hit who?"
"Take it from me, honey, and remember I ain't tryin' to sing you the
'Saint's Serenade,' but take it from me, if I was startin' all over
again--way back where you are--I--I'd do the glove act over again. I
would, honey, I would, and I ain't preachin', neither."
"Honest to Gawd, Ysobel; I don't know what--"
"Ain't I told you to cut out that ingenoo with me--honest, it gets on my
nerves! Watch out, there!"
"Gee; that scart me!"
"Them are pay-as-you-exit taxi-cabs we're dodging. The chorus-girls'
sun-parlors, if you listen to the Sunday supplements and funny papers."
"The time we--came--John--was a great one for watchin' them."
"Take it from me that about all nine out of ten of us gay la-la girls
you read about, get out of 'em, is watchin'. All we know about them is
dodgin' them after the show to get home in a hurry, stick our feet in
hot water to get some of the ache out, and fall into bed too tired to
smear the cold-cream off."
"Watch out, there, Ysobel!"
"The truth about the chorus-girl would cripple the box-office and put
the feature supplements and press-agents out of business. Here we are,
Della--I got to stop off at nine just a minute, and you wait outside for
me; remember when we get up to eleven--Western circuit, silent principal
and--"
"Western circuit--Western circuit!"
The Putney Building reared nineteen white-tile, marble-facaded stories
straight up from the most expensive heart-acreage of Broadway and
stemmed the Thespian tide that rushed in from every side and surged
against its booking-offices.
A bronze elevator the size of a Harlem bedroom and crowded to its
capacity shot them upward with the breath-taking flight of a frightened
bird.
Ysobel crowded into a corner and nudged a youthful-looking old man in a
blue-and-white striped collar and too much bay-rum.
"Hello, Eddie!"
"Hello yourself, Ysobel."
"How are yuh?"
"Ain't braggin'."
"What you doin', Eddie?"
"Rehearsin' with a act."
"Musical?"
"No."
"Specialty?"
"No--er--high-class burlesque--two a day."
"Oh!"
"You workin', Ysobel?"
"Got three things danglin'--ain't signed yet. Just came in last week."
"S'long."
"S'long. Come on, Della. Watch out there, Eddie--a fellow burnt a hole
in my friend lookin' at her like that once."
A titter ran around the elevator, and the old young man writhed in his
blue-striped collar.
"'Sh-h-h, Ysobel; everybody heard you." A rosily opalescent hue swam
high into Della's face as she stepped out of the elevator, and dyed her
neck.
"I should worry! I was never out with him in a show in my life that he
didn't ogle a hole in every queen he seen. Out in Spokane onct he--"
"Western circuit--Western circuit--"
They hurried down a curving, white-tile corridor, rows of doors with
eye-like glass panes were lined up on each side, and the tick-tack of
typewriters penetrating. Della's breath came heavier and faster, and a
layer of vivid pink showed through the artificial red.
"You wait out here a minute, Della. I wanna step in here, at the Bijou,
and see if Louis Rafalsky is doin' anything this morning. Then we'll
shoot up to the Empire--"
"Sure--I--I'll wait, Ysobel."
She leaned against the wall and placed her hand over the region of her
lace yoke and heart, as if she would regulate their heaving.
A flash of cerise plume, a jangle of chatelaine jewelry, and Ysobel
disappeared behind one of the doors, her many-angled silhouette flashing
against the far side of the ground glass.
Della breathed in deep and gulped in her dry, hot throat; her fingers,
the damp cold born of nervousness, curled in toward her warm palms. She
daubed at her lips with a handkerchief.
Simultaneously a door opposite her opened, and a short, bullet-headed
figure in a light checked suit, and a diamond horseshoe scarf-pin that
caught the points of light stepped out into the pale nimbus cast by the
white signal-light of an up-going elevator.
With a gasp that caught in her throat Della darted in her too narrow
skirt across the corridor, reached out, and grasped the light-gray
coat-sleeve.
"Look," she cried, thrusting herself between him and the trellis-work of
the elevator-shaft and throwing back her head so that her bare neck,
soft as the breast feathers of a dove, rose and fell with a dove's
agitated breathing, "Look--I'm here!"
The short figure turned on his heel and looked up at her, his
shoulder-line a full three inches below hers, and his small, predaceous
eyes squinting far back into his head.
"Gad--what?"
"I--I'm here--sir--don't you remember--me--I'm here."
He regarded her with the detailed appraisal of the expert, and his
glance registered points in her favor.
"Gad!" he repeated.
"Don't--you remember--me--sir--don't--"
"Not bad for a big girl--are you--eh?"
"Don't you remember?"
"Sure--you're the little girl I met out West--didn't I?--two seasons ago
with--"
"No--no--no! Don't you remember me now?"
She tore her hat backward from its carefully adjusted tilt, so that it
revealed the brassy gold of her hair, and took a step toward him.
"_Now_ don't you remember?"
"Sure--sure--you're the little girl from--sure I'd remember a big little
girl like you anywhere."
"You remember now? On the twenty-eight-hour accommodation out of St.
Louis. We--I got on at Terre Haute and sat across from you while
he--they made up the berth, and you said--"
"Could I forget a big little queen like you! You've grown to a real big
girl, ain't you? Come back in my office, sister. That's how much I think
of you--with a whole company waitin' for me over at the Gotham
Theater--come in!"
"I--just got here--Mr.--Mr.--"
"Myers, if anybody should ask you. That's who you're dealin' with--Hy
Myers, if you should happen to forget."
"Ain't it funny, Mr. Myers, my runnin' into you right off. I never
thought I'd find you in this town. My little sister I was tellin' you
about will be here soon and--"
"This way!"
"I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till--"
"In here, sister, where we can talk business alone."
She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office
arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and
white-shirt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent
double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which
are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.
Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the
quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell,
almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored
lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung
from caprice and whose papier-mache thrones had long since slumped to
pulp.
"Now sit here, sister--here in this chair next to my desk, where I can
look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!"
"I'm ready for that job now, Mr.--Mr. Myers."
"Well--well--well!"
Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into
his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.
"Big little girl--can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?"
"I've had a hard time of it, Mr.--"
"Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister."
"Quit!"
"Dear child--you mustn't act like that--here--hold out your--"
"Quit!"
"Come now--"
"We want jobs, me and my little sister--when she gets here. I told you
about her, you remember. I--I've had experience on Western--"
"Naughty--naughty eyes--devilish eyes! Don't you look at me like
that--don't! You big little devil, you!"
"What is it, sir?"
"Good! Sit there with the sun on you--you've got hair like--"
"I've had experience with first-row--"
"Gad!" He swerved suddenly forward in his chair so that his small feet
touched the floor. "Gad, stand up there--stand over there in that
sunshine by the window!"
"What--"
"Stand up--there, agin that screen there--"
Dark as a nun in her wimple, but golden as a sun-flower, she rose as
Trilby rose to the eye of Svengali--
"Gad!" he repeated, bringing his small tight fist down on a littered
ash-tray, "by Gad!"
Wine was suddenly in her blood.
"You ought to see me and my little sister when we pose together; we--"
"Take off your hat, girl."
She stood suddenly quiet, as if the wine in her blood had seethed and
quieted.
"Aw--no--whatta you think I am--I--"
"Take off your hat, big little girl, and if you're good to me I'll tell
you something. If I hadn't taken a fancy to you I wouldn't tell you,
neither."
She lifted the heavy brim with both hands and stood in the bar of
sunlight.
"Gad!" he cried--"Gad!" and jerked open a drawer and threw the big bulk
of a typewritten manuscript on the desk before him. "Read that; read
that, sister!" His heavy spatulate finger underlined the caption.
"'The--Red--Widow,' 'The Red Widow,' by Al Wilson."
He rose and jerked her by her two wrists so that she flounced toward
him, her hair awry and the breath jumping out of her bosom.
"That's _you_, sister--the Red Widow!"
"The Red--Widow?"
"You're goin' out in a road chorus next week and get broke in. At the
end of a season I'm goin' to feature you in the biggest show that ever I
had up my sleeve."
She regarded him with glazed eyes of one dazed, and backed away from
him.
"Me!"
"You--the Red Widow, sister! You know what a Hy Myers production means,
don't you? You know what an Al Wilson show is, don't you? Add them two.
I'll make you make that show or bust. Stand off there and lemme look at
you again--there--so!"
"Quit!"
She sprang back from his touch and raised her hand with the glove
dangling in the attitude of a horseman cracking his whip. "You--you
quit!" Like Dryope changed into a tree, with the woodiness creeping up
her limbs and the glove in her passive hand, she stood with her arm
flung upward. "You quit!"
"Dear child, you mustn't--"
"I--I'm goin'--lemme go!"
"Aw, come now, sister; don't get frisky--I didn't mean to make you sore.
Gee! Ain't you a touchy little devil?"
"I'm goin'."
"If that's your number, all righty--but you're just kiddin'--you ain't
goin' to be too independent in one of the worst seasons in the
business."
She moved toward the door with her hand outstretched to the knob.
"You better think twice, sister--but don't lemme keep you--there's other
Red Widows as good and better'n you beatin' like an army at my door this
minute. But don't lemme keep you."