"Sure I will, if it'll make you feel any better--you cold little queen,
you. Nervous as a unbroke colt, ain't you? Sit down there and watch."
He touched a buzzer, and a uniformed boy sprang through the door to his
elbow.
"Write Al Wilson to meet me here to-morrow at ten."
"Yes, sir." The uniform flashed out.
She moved around him cautiously, not taking her eyes from his face.
"Have I--have I got a job?"
"Sure you have. I'll send you out to Frisco in a chorus that'll limber
you up, all right, but I won't let you stay long. I won't let a little
queen like you run away for long."
"Frisco--me--gee!"
"Gad! maybe I won't neither. How would you like to play right close to
home over in Brooklyn? I've got a chorus over there that'll take the
stiffness out of you. I don't want to let a great, big, beautiful doll
like you too far away."
"Frisco--I like Frisco."
"But hold up your right hand. Don't you tell nobody I'm pushing you for
next season's feature--that's our little secret--between you and me and
Al."
"I was gettin' thirty dollars."
"Don't you worry about that, Doll-Doll. You come back here to-morrow at
ten. I wanna show Al how the Red Widow we've been lookin' for dropped
right into my hands. He can't squeal to me no more about _types_."
"I--I'm going now, Mr. Myers--to-morrow, then, at ten--"
"Where you goin', Doll?"
"Home. I guess I've lost my friend now."
"Wait; I'm going your way."
"You don't even know which way I'm goin'."
"Sure I do. I'll drop you there in my car."
"Oh--I--I want--to walk--I do."
"None of that, sister. I'm treatin' you white, and you gotta do the same
by me. I won't bite you, you little scare-cat! I'm goin' to make things
happen to you that'll make you wake up every day pinchin' yourself."
"My little sister, Mr. Myers, has got me beat on looks."
"But you gotta treat me white, sister. We can talk business in the car,
but you gotta have confidence in me. I won't bite--you big little girl,
you."
"I don't want--to go--that way, Mr. Myers--I gotta go some place first."
"Comin', sister?"
"I--I--"
"Comin'?"
"Yes."
* * * * *
On its hundredth night "The Red Widow," playing capacity houses at the
Gotham Theater, presented each lady in the audience a "handsome
souvenir" of Red Widow perfume attractively nestled in a red-satin box
with a color picture of Della Delaney on the label.
To the pretty whifflings and "ah's!" of every feminine nose present, to
the over-a-million-copies-sold waltz-theme that was puckering the mouth
of every newsboy in New York, to the rustly settling back into chairs,
furs, and standing-room-only attitudes against Corinthian pillars, the
hundredth-night, second-act curtain rose on an audience with an
additional sense unexpectedly gratified and the souvenir-loving soul of
every woman present sniffing its appreciation.
Comedy is a classic prodigal who has wandered far. Comus has discarded
his mantle and donned a red nose, a split-up-the-back waistcoat, and a
pair of clap-sticks.
Harlequin and Cap-and-Bells have doffed the sock and many colors for the
sixty-dollar-a-week role of million-dollar pickle-magnate pursuing a
forty-dollar juvenile, who, in turn, is pursuing the
two-hundred-dollar-a-week Red Widow from Act One--summer hotel at
Manhattan Beach to Act Two--tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.
For the hundredth time the opening act of "The Red Widow"--a ghoul at
the grave of a hundred musical comedies--sang to its background of
white-flannel chorus-men, drop-curtain of too-blue ocean and jungle of
cotton-back palms.
A painted ship idled on a painted ocean. Trees reared their tropical
leaves into a visible drop-net.
It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-e-l--
announced the two front rows, kicking backward three times.
It is the Ba-a-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-el--
agreed the kicked-at, white-flannel background.
A shapely octet in silk-and-lisle regimentals, black-astrakhan capes
flung over one shoulder, and black-astrakhan hats as high as a
majordomo's bent eight silk-and-lisle left knees with rhythmic
regularity. Six ponies in yellow skirts, as effulgent as inverted
chrysanthemums, and led by a black pony with a gold star in her hair,
kicked to the wings and adored the audience. A chain of "Bungel belles"
stretched their thin arms above their heads in a letter O and prinked
about on their toes like bantams in a dust road.
Five trombones, ten violas, twelve violins, a drum and bass-viol
bombardment rose to a high-C climax, with the chorus scrambling loyally
after them like a mountaineer scaling a cliff for an eaglet's nest.
It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-l--
shouted the seventy-five of them, receding with a grape-vine motion
into the wings.
Enter Cyrus Hinkelstein, mayor and pickle-magnate of Brineytown, on the
Suwanee, in a too large white waistcoat, white-duck comedy spats, and a
pink-canvas bald head.
He institutes an immediate search behind tropical vines and along the
under sides of palm fronds for the forty-dollar juvenile who is pursuing
the Red Widow from the summer hotel, Act One to Act Two, tropical isle
off the Bay of Bungel.
Enter the Red Widow in a black, fish-scale gown that calls out the
stealthy pencil of every Middle West dressmaker in the house and rapid
calculation from the women with a good memory and some fish-scales on a
discarded basque.
The Red Widow, with a poinsettia sprawling like a frantic clutch at her
heart, and her burnished gold head rising with the grace of a gold
flower out of a vase!
Cyrus assumes a swoon of delight, throws out a cue--"The date-trees are
blooming"--the conductor raps his baton twice for their feature duet
entitled, "Oh, Let Me Die on Broadway," and the spot-light focuses.
The house clamors for a fourth encore, but the lights flash on. The
pursuing son, in the face of prolonged applause, white trousers, and a
straw katy, bursts upon the scene with his features in first position
for the denouement.
But the audience clamors on. The son postpones his expression and leans
against a jungle to a fourth encore of the tuneful Thanatopsis.
On the final curtain of the hundredth night the company bowed two
curtain-calls to the capacity house busily struggling into wraps and up
aisles.
The Red Widow, linked between the pickle-magnate and the triumphant son,
flanked by sextets, octets, and regimentals, bowed four times over three
sheaths of American beauties and a high-handled basket of carnations.
Then, almost on the drop of the curtain, the immediate roar of sliding
wings, which mingled with the exit strains of the orchestra, like a
Debussy right-hand theme defying the left, and the rumble of forests,
retreating.
Scene-shifters, to whom every encore is a knell, demolished whole
kingdoms at a lunge, half a hundred satin slippers flashed up a spiral
staircase to chorus dressing-rooms, the Red Widow flung the trail of the
gown she had on--so carelessly dragged across the tarpaulin terra firma
of Bungel--across one bare arm and darted through the door with a red
star painted on the panel.
Her dressing-room, hung in vivid chintz, with a canopied table replacing
the make-up shelf, and a passing show of signed photographs tacked along
the wall, was as fantastic as Gnomes' Cave.
A wildness of chiffon and sleazy silk hung from the wall-hooks, a pair
of gauze aeroplane wings hovered across a chair, and, atop a trunk,
impertinent as a Pierette, the black pony was removing the gold star
from her hair.
"Warm house to-night, Del. I sent Sibbie across to the hotel with your
flowers."
"Yeh--best house yet."
"But gee! it's a wonder he wouldn't give away kerosene."
"Rotten stuff."
"It made me so dizzy I nearly flopped like a seal in the pony prance. He
must 'a' bought it by the keg."
"I told him it was strong enough to run his new motor-boat. Gawd, ain't
I tired! How'd the aeroplane song go, Ysobel?"
"Swell! But leave it to Billy to hog your act every time. I seen him
grab a laugh when the propellers was workin'."
"Undo me, Ysobel? Why'd you let Sibbie go? Can't you let me get used to
having a maid, hon'?"
"Poor kid, you're dead, ain't you? But you gotta go with him to-night or
he'll howl."
Della lowered her beaded lashes over eyes that smarted, and raised her
arms like Niobe entreating fate.
"Sure, I gotta go. He's been bragging about this hundredth-night
blow-out for a month."
"Quit squirming, Del! Hold still, can't you?"
"Five recalls on 'Let me die,' Ysobel."
"You never went better."
Della slid out of her gown and into a gold-colored kimono embroidered in
black flying swans, and creamed off her make-up in long, even strokes.
"Look, he wants me to wear that silver-fox coat and the cloth-of-silver
gown. Honest, it's so heavy I nearly fainted in it the other night. Lots
he cares!"
"It'll be a swell blow, Del. The hundredth night he gave when Perfecta
was starring was town talk. He don't stop at nothin'."
"No, he don't stop at nothin'."
"He gimme a look to-night when I came off from the prance. He'd gimme
notice in a minute if he didn't need me. He knows that ballet would fall
like a bride's biscuit without me."
"Sure it would! He likes your work, hon'. I never pulled any strings for
you, neither. He just seen your try-out and liked it swell."
"Sure he did, but he's that jealous of you! He was dead sore when you
brought me down here to dress with you. Gee, you're tired, ain't you,
dearie?"
"Dog-tired! That staircase waltz always does me up."
"Lay your head down here a minute. Ain't that just life, though? Here we
are kicking just like a year ago in Fallows's 'Neatly Furnished.'"
"I ain't kickin', Ysobel. I wake up every morning pinchin' myself."
"Gawd, if you gotta long face, what ought the rest of us to have? You're
the luckiest girl any of us knows. Did you see what the new _Yellow
Book_ says about you? 'The Titian-headed Venus de Meelo'--how's
that--huh?"
"Just the same, you wouldn't change places with me, Ysobel! Don't
wriggle out of answering me! Now, would you?"
"Watch out, you're mussing up your beauty curls. Here, lemme pin that
diamond heart on the left shoulder of your dress. Hurry up, honey, Myers
will be here any minute, and you know how sore he gets if you keep him
waitin'."
"Do I?"
"Say, but that silver's swell on you!"
"Say, Ysobel, wait till they see my little sister. We could do a twin
act that would take 'em off their feet. That new 'Heavenly Twin' show
that Al read us the first act of, with Cottie and me featured, and you
doin' the Columbine--gee--"
"'Sh-h-h-h! There--he--is--knockin'."
"It can't be Hy already. I--I ain't dressed yet, Hy--just a minute! Oh,
it's a telegram, Ysobel; take it, like a good girl."
"Say, it ain't another from Third Row Bobbie, is it? You ought to tip
him off that he's wastin' his pin-money on you, hon'."
Della ripped the flap, read, and very suddenly sat down on the
silver-fox coat. The color drained out of her face, and her breath came
irregularly as if her heart had missed a beat.
"Della--Del--darlin'--what's the matter?"
"Oh, Gawd!"
"What, darlin'--what?"
"Read!"
Ysobel peered across the bare shoulder, her slim silk legs tiptoed and
her neck arched.
Maw buried yesterday. Money you sent for her birthday
paid funeral. Am ready. Wire directions.
COTTIE.
"Aw--aw, Del darlin'--honest, I--I don't know what to say, only
it--only--it ain't like she was your _real_ mother, Del darlin'. You
can't be hard hit over a blind old dame that used to make it hot as
sixty for you."
"Poor old soul--she lived like a rat and--died like one, I guess."
"With you sending her money all the time--nixy!"
"Like a rat! Poor old maw."
Della's voice was far removed, like one who speaks through the film of a
trance.
"When my old dame died I felt bad, too, but Gawd knows she wasn't
peaches and cream to have around the house. And look, darlin'--Cottie's
comin' now--look--Cottie's comin'!"
"Cottie--Cottie--comin'?"
"Sure she is--see, read, honey--'Am ready.'"
"Oh, Gawd, Ysobel, now that it's come I--I'm scared--she--she's such a
kid--she--Ysobel--I--I'm scared--I--"
"'Sh-h-h. There he is knockin', Del. Try and smile, hon'. You know how
sore a long face makes him. Maybe you won't have to go to-night,
now--smile, darlin'--smile! Come in!"
The door opened with a fling, and enter Mr. Hy Myers, an unlighted cigar
at a sharp oblique in one corner of his mouth, hat slightly askew, and a
full-length overcoat flung open to reveal a mink lining and studded
shirt-front.
"Gad," he said, dallying backward on his heels, his thumbs in the
arm-circles of his waistcoat, and regarding the shining silver
figure--"Gad, girl, you're all right."
Della drew back against the dressing-table and twirled the rings on her
fingers.
"I--I got bad news, Hy. I can't go to-night. Here, read for yourself."
He reached for the paper, passing Ysobel as if she belonged to the
trappings of the room.
"I--I can't--go to-night, Hy."
He read with the sharp eyes of a gray hawk of the world, and drew his
coat together in a gesture of buttoning up.
"Don't pull any of that stuff on me, Beauty. Just because the old devil
you've been tellin' me about--"
"Oh--you--you--"
"Them ain't real tears--you'd be laughin' in your sleeve if you had any
on. Come on; step lively, Beauty. I ain't givin' this blow-out to be
made a fool out of. Give her a daub of color there, Du Prez."
"Hy! She was my stepmother, and--"
"Come, Beauty, what you actin' up for? Ain't that doll you've been
piping about all these months comin' now that the old woman is out of
the way? Bring her on and lemme have a look at her. If she's in your
class, lemme look her over."
"Gimme--a minute, Hy. I--I just wanna send--a wire."
"Sure; tell her to come on. I'll send it for you. I'll look her over,
and--"
"No--no! Let Ysobel send it. You do it, Ysobel. Here, gimme your pen,
Hy."
She wrote with her breath half a moan in her throat, and her bosom
heaving and flashing the diamond heart.
"Send it right off, Ysobel darlin'--read it and send it off, darlin'."
She daubed a rabbit's foot under each eye and slid into the silver-fox
coat.
"Read it, darlin', and send it."
Ysobel read slowly like a child spelling out its task.
Breakers--ahead. Stay at home, dearie.
DELLA.
Through eyes that were magnified through the glaze of tears Ysobel
burrowed her head in the silver-fox collar.
"Oh, Del--Del darlin'--I'm wise--but, oh, my darlin'."
"Come on. Whatta you think this is, a soul-kiss scene--you two?"
"Comin', Hy--comin'."
"Della darlin'."
"Good night, Ysobel; lemme go, dearie--lemme go."
Then out through a labyrinth of stacked scenery, with her elbow in the
cup of his hand, and the silver shimmering in the gloom.
"Gad, you will have that scrawny little hanger-on around and gettin' on
my nerves! If I weren't always humorin' the daylights out of you she
wouldn't spoil a ballet of mine for fifteen minutes, she--"
"It's darn little I ask out of you, but you gotta lemme have her--you
gotta lemme have that much, or the whole blame show can--"
"Keep cool, there, Tragedy Queen, and watch your step! I don't want you
limpin' in there to-night with a busted ankle on top of your long face."
They high-stepped through a dirty passageway stacked with stage
bric-a-brac, out into a whiff of night air, across a pavement, and into
a wine-colored limousine.
He climbed in after her, throwing open the great fur collar of his coat
and lighting his cigar.
They plunged forward into the white flare of Broadway, and within her
plate-glass inclosure she was like a doomed queen riding to her destiny.
"Light up there, Dolly! No long face to-night! The crowd's going to be
there waitin' for you. Look at me, you little devil--you little devil!"
"Gawd, what are you made of? Ain't you got _no_ feelings?"
"Tush! You ain't real on that talk. I know you better'n you know
yourself. Ain't I told you that you can bring the little sister on and
lemme look her over? There's nothin' I wouldn't do for you, Beauty. You
got me crazy to-night over you. Eh! Pretty soft for a little hayseed
like you!"
She smiled suddenly, flashed her teeth, cooed in her throat, and reared
her white throat out of its fur like a swan rears its head out of its
snowy neck.
"I--I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second,
Hy. I--I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune
up--before--we get there. Just a minute, Hy."
"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"
"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."
"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do
you, Beauty?"
She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery,
and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each
other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.
"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann,
answer like a good girl. Love me?"
"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."
"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to
answer--love me?"
"Aw, now--"
"One--two--three--four--five--"
"Yes."
THE GOOD PROVIDER
Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton
nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the
arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and
motor-cars.
Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and
Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown
the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the
five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.
The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that
slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the
five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.
Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom
of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed.
Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts
bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring.
Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious
underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men
pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the
flower-seed catalogue.
The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his
thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down
plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.
For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of
Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until one year the
interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the
city.
Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and
one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large,
light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The
new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars
and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign
across the sidewalk and instituted a trading-stamp system. But in spite
of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising space in the
Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binswanger felt the suction of the city
drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took
invoice and frowned at what he saw.
The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binswanger
observed it across the family table one Saturday, and paused in the epic
rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large,
soft-fleshed face.
"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I
get the blues."
Mr. Binswanger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the
bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room
through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design
like coarse lace across his inquiring features.
"Right away you get what, Becky?"
"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't
remember."
"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she
puts on me yet, children."
"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the
padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed
backward the mane of his black pompadour.
"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."
Mr. Binswanger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.
"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in
stock ain't--"
"See, ma, you started something."
"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy
comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to
be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now
your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something
what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"
Miss Pearl Binswanger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and
showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin.
The same scarf of sunshine fell like a Spanish shawl across her
shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which
was small and dark as Giaconda's.
"I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa
about--about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the
store was on fire."
"Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses."
"No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head
dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything
what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pass your papa the dumplings, Poil.
Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?"
"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a
false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at
me no more."
"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on
your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more
_Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?"
"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet,
that's the latest."
"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel
right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him
since he's in the new store I don't know."
"_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to
do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"
"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long
face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."
"A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!"
"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the
house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."
"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."
"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the
city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this
hole."
"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what
her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--"
"For a young girl can you blame her? She feels like if she lived in the
city she would meet people and Izzy's friends. Talk for yourself,
Poil."
"I--"
"Boys like Ignatz Landauer and Max Teitlebaum, what he meets at the
Young Men's Association. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I--"
"Poil's got a tenant for the house, Julius. I ain't afraid to tell you."
"I don't listen to such nonsense."
"From the real-estate offices they sent 'em, Julius, and Poil took 'em
through. Furnished off our hands they take it for three months, till
their bungalow is done for 'em. Forty dollars for a house like ours on
the wrong side of town away from the improvements ain't so bad. A grand
young couple, no children. Izzy thinks it's a grand idea, too, Julius.
He says if we move to the city he don't have to live in such a dark
little hall-room no more. To the hotel he can come with us on family
rates just so cheap. Ain't it, Izzy?"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a
skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver
spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously.