"Yes."
"Come on."
Terry went around to the other side of the counter, took off her hat
and coat, rubbed her hands together briskly, sat down and began to play.
The crowd edged closer.
It is a curious study, this noonday crowd that gathers to sate its
music-hunger on the scraps vouchsafed it by Bernie Gottschalk's Music
House. Loose-lipped, slope-shouldered young men with bad complexions and
slender hands. Girls whose clothes are an unconscious satire on
present-day fashions. On their faces, as they listen to the music, is a
look of peace and dreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half
smile. It is much the same expression that steals over the face of a
smoker who has lighted his after-dinner cigar, or of a drug victim who
is being lulled by his opiate. The music seems to satisfy a something
within them. Faces dull, eyes lustreless, they listen in a sort of
trance.
Terry played on. She played as Terry Sheehan used to play. She played as
no music hack at Bernie Gottschalk's had ever played before. The crowd
swayed a little to the sound of it. Some kept time with little jerks of
the shoulder--the little hitching movement of the rag-time dancer whose
blood is filled with the fever of syncopation. Even the crowd flowing
down State Street must have caught the rhythm of it, for the room soon
filled.
At two o'clock the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack, now,
until five, when it would again pick up until closing time at six.
The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped his forehead, and
regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had just finished singing "I've
Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother's Knee." (Bernie Gottschalk Inc.
Chicago. New York. You can't get bit with a Gottschalk hit. 15 cents
each.)
"Girlie," he said, emphatically, "You sure--can--play!" He came over to
her at the piano and put a stubby hand on her shoulder. "Yessir! Those
little fingers--"
Terry just turned her head to look down her nose at the moist hand
resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers are going to meet your
face--suddenly--if you don't move on."
"Who gave you your job?" demanded the fat man.
"Nobody. I picked it myself. You can have it if you want it."
"Can't you take a joke?"
"Label yours."
As the crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there was nothing
slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to
proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It
used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs
about wanting to go back to every place from Dixie to Duluth. But now
seems it's all these here flag raisers. Honestly, I'm so sick of 'em I
got a notion to enlist to get away from it."
Terry eyed him with, withering briefness. "A little training wouldn't
ruin your figure."
She had never objected to Orville's _embonpoint_. But then, Orville was
a different sort of fat man; pink-cheeked, springy, immaculate.
At four o'clock, as she was in the chorus of "Isn't There Another Joan
of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the other side of the counter
said, "Pardon me. What's that you're playing?"
Terry told him. She did not look up.
"I wouldn't have known it. Played like that--a second Marseillaise. If
the words--what are the words? Let me see a--"
"Show the gentleman a 'Joan'," Terry commanded briefly, over her
shoulder. The fat man laughed a wheezy laugh. Terry glanced around,
still playing, and encountered the gaze of two melting masculine eyes
that matched the melting masculine voice. The songster waved a hand
uniting Terry and the eyes in informal introduction.
"Mr. Leon Sammett, the gentleman who sings the Gottschalk songs wherever
songs are heard. And Mrs.--that is--and Mrs. Sammett--"
Terry turned. A sleek, swarthy world-old young man with the fashionable
concave torso, and alarmingly convex bone-rimmed glasses. Through them
his darkly luminous gaze glowed upon Terry. To escape their warmth she
sent her own gaze past him to encounter the arctic stare of the large
blonde person who had been included so lamely in the introduction. And
at that the frigidity of that stare softened, melted, dissolved.
"Why Terry Sheehan! What in the world!"
Terry's eyes bored beneath the layers of flabby fat. "It's--why, it's
Ruby Watson, isn't it? Eccentric Song and Dance--"
She glanced at the concave young man and faltered. He was not Jim, of
the Bijou days. From him her eyes leaped back to the fur-bedecked
splendour of the woman. The plump face went so painfully red that the
makeup stood out on it, a distinct layer, like thin ice covering flowing
water. As she surveyed that bulk Terry realised that while Ruby might
still claim eccentricity, her song and dance days were over. "That's
ancient history, m'dear. I haven't been working for three years. What're
you doing in this joint? I'd heard you'd done well for yourself. That
you were married."
"I am. That is I--well, I am. I--"
At that the dark young man leaned over and patted Terry's hand that lay
on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incredibly slender, long,
and tapering.
"That's all right," he assured her, and smiled. "You two girls can have
a reunion later. What I want to know is can you play by ear?"
"Yes, but--"
He leaned far over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heard you play.
You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can get this, and fake the
bass."
He fixed his sombre and hypnotic eyes on Terry. His mouth screwed up
into a whistle. The tune--a tawdry but haunting little melody--came
through his lips. And Terry's quick ear sensed that every note was flat.
She turned back to the piano. "Of course you know you flatted every
note," she said.
This time it was the blonde woman who laughed, and the man who flushed.
Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like a knowing bird,
looked up into space beyond the piano top, and played the lilting little
melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a
wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. His
expression was beatific, enraptured. He hummed a little under his breath
and any one who was music wise would have known that he was just a
half-beat behind her all the way.
When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean
frame over the counter and, despite his swart colouring, seemed to
glitter upon her--his eyes, his teeth, his very finger-nails.
"Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. But something--"
"You was going to complain," put in his lady, heavily, "about that Teddy
Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songs this week that you
been boosting at the Inn."
He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. "Bah! What does that matter now!
What does anything matter now! Listen Miss--ah--Miss?--"
"Pl--Sheehan. Terry Sheehan."
He gazed off a moment into space. "H'm. 'Leon Sammett in Songs. Miss
Terry Sheehan at the Piano.' That doesn't sound bad. Now listen, Miss
Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song
hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, private. It's
something to your interest. I go on down at the Inn at six. Will you
come and have a little something with Ruby and me? Now?"
"Now?" faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed to be moving
rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to the peaceful routine of
the past four years.
"Get your hat. It's your life chance. Wait till you see your name in
two-foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the
country. You've got music in you. Tie to me and you're made." He turned
to the woman beside him. "Isn't that so, Rube?"
"Sure. Look at _me_!" One would not have thought there could be so much
subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde.
Sammett whipped out a watch. "Just three-quarters of an hour. Come on,
girlie."
His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, with side
glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approached him now.
"I'm leaving now," she said.
"Oh, no you're not. Six o'clock is your quitting time."
In which he touched the Irish in Terry. "Any time I quit is my quitting
time." She went in quest of hat and coat much as the girl had done whose
place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her,
protesting. Terry, pinning on her hat tried to ignore him. But he laid
one plump hand on her arm and kept it there, though she tried to shake
him off.
"Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn't mind putting his heel on your face
if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know'm. Y'see that walking
stick he's carrying? Well, compared to the yellow stripe that's in him,
that cane is a lead pencil. He's a song tout, that's all he is." Then,
more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a
decent girl. I want to--Why, he can't even sing a note without you give
it to him first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashin' that
toothy grin, of his and talkin' every word of it. Don't you--"
But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around the
counter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned
to welcome her. "We've got a half hour. Come on. It's just over to Clark
and up a block or so."
If you know Chicago at all, you know the University Inn, that gloriously
intercollegiate institution which welcomes any graduate of any school
of experience, and guarantees a post-graduate course in less time than
any similar haven of knowledge. Down a flight of stairs and into the
unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between
five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an
obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though
no order had been given. The woman who had been Ruby Watson was so
silent as to be almost wordless. But the man talked rapidly. He talked
well, too. The same quality that enabled him, voiceless though he was,
to boost a song to success, was making his plea sound plausible in
Terry's ears now.
"I've got to go and make up in a few minutes. So get this. I'm not going
to stick down in this basement eating house forever. I've got too much
talent. If I only had a voice--I mean a singing voice. But I haven't.
But then, neither has Georgie Cohan, and I can't see that it's wrecked
his life any. Look at Elsie Janis! But she sings. And they like it! Now
listen. I've got a song. It's my own. That bit you played for me up at
Gottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'll go big.
They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airship stuff. They're
yelling that it's the airyoplanes that're going to win this war. Well,
I'll help 'em. This song is going to put the aviator where he belongs.
It's going to be the big song of the war. It's going to make 'Tipperary'
sound like a Moody and Sankey hymn. It's the--"
Ruby lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and sent him a meaning look. "Get
down to business, Leon. I'll tell her how good you are while you're
making up."
He shot her a malignant glance, but took her advice. "Now what I've been
looking for for years is somebody who has got the music knack to give me
the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump ahead of my voice, see? I can
follow like a lamb, but I've got to have that feeler first. It's more
than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I
want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a
man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me
without a tryout. And when they hear my voice they--Well, if me and you
work together we can fool 'em. The song's great. And my makeup's one of
these av-iation costumes to go with the song, see? Pants tight in the
knee and baggy on the hips. And a coat with one of those full skirt
whaddyoucall'ems--"
"Peplums," put in Ruby, placidly.
"Sure. And the girls'll be wild about it. And the words!" he began to
sing, gratingly off-key:
"Put on your sky clothes,
Put on your fly clothes
And take a trip with me.
We'll sail so high
Up in the sky
We'll drop a bomb from Mercury."
"Why, that's awfully cute!" exclaimed Terry. Until now her opinion of
Mr. Sammett's talents had not been on a level with his.
"Yeh, but wait till you hear the second verse. That's only part of the
chorus. You see, he's supposed to be talking to a French girl. He says:
I'll parlez-vous in Français plain,
You'll answer, '_Cher Américain_,
We'll both. . . . . . . . . . ."
The six o'clock lights blazed up, suddenly. A sad-looking group of men
trailed in and made for a corner where certain bulky, shapeless bundles
were soon revealed as those glittering and tortuous instruments which go
to make a jazz band.
"You better go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, with all those
buyers in town."
Both hands on the table he half rose, reluctantly, still talking. "I've
got three other songs. They make Gottschalk's stuff look sick. All I
want's a chance. What I want you to do is accompaniment. On the stage,
see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to
it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as
Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knock-out. If only we can get away
with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years never had a--"
The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal, and thump of drum.
"Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he fled. Terry followed
his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of
the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little
sigh. "Well! If he talks that way to the managers I don't see--"
Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get it over with
the managers, honey. You've got to deliver."
"Well, but he's--that song _is_ a good one. I don't say it's as good as
he thinks it is, but it's good."
"Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good."
"Well, then?"
The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, and reappeared with
a glass that was twin to the one she had just emptied. "Does he look
like he knew French? Or could make a rhyme?"
"But didn't he? Doesn't he?"
"The words were written by a little French girl who used to skate down
here last winter, when the craze was on. She was stuck on a Chicago kid
who went over to fly for the French."
"But the music?"
"There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she--"
Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don't believe
it!"
"Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so different
from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so
nimbly in the Old Bijou days. "What'd you and your husband quarrel
about, Terry?"
Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He
just--I--it was--Say, how did you know we'd quarrelled?"
And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like a garment
and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face. She
pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so that
her face was close to Terry's.
"Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarrelled, and I know just what it was
about. Oh, I don't mean the very thing it was about; but the kind of
thing. I'm going to do something for you, Terry, that I wouldn't take
the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain't had all the
softness knocked out of me yet, though it's a wonder. And I guess I
remember too plain the decent kid you was in the old days. What was the
name of that little small-time house me and Jim used to play? Bijou,
that's it; Bijou."
The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett--slim, sleek, lithe in his
evening clothes--appeared with a little fair girl in pink chiffon. The
woman reached across the table and put one pudgy, jewelled hand on
Terry's arm. "He'll be through in ten minutes. Now listen to me. I left
Jim four years ago, and there hasn't been a minute since then, day or
night, when I wouldn't have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if
I could. But I couldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I
know you've quarrelled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just the
way mine have felt for four years, that's how. I met up with this boy,
and there wasn't anybody to do the turn for me that I'm trying to do for
you. Now get this. I left Jim because when he ate corn on the cob he
always closed his eyes and it drove me wild. Don't laugh."
"I'm not laughing," said Terry.
"Women are like that. One night--we was playing Fond du Lac; I remember
just as plain--we was eating supper and Jim reached for one of those big
yellow ears, and buttered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to
the edge of the table with my nails. Seemed to me if he shut his eyes
when he put his teeth into that ear of corn I'd scream. And he did. And
I screamed. And that's all."
Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like a sleep walker.
Then she wet her lips, slowly. "But that's almost the very--"
"Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late or not, but go
anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't any more than you deserve,
but I hope to God you don't get your desserts this time. He's almost
through. If he sees you going he can't quit in the middle of his song to
stop you. He'll know I put you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for
it. But it's worth it. You get."
And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisy aisle, up
the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house. Out again, with
her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not
another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote corner of
the waiting room and there she huddled until midnight watching the
entrances like a child who is fearful of ghosts in the night.
The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. The hour
between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on the train. It was
almost morning. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home! She had
the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned
Schroeder's corner. Suppose he had come home! Suppose he had jumped a
town and come home ahead of his schedule. They had quarrelled once
before, and he had done that.
Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a
moment in the early morning half-light. She peered into the dining room.
The table, with its breakfast débris, was as she had left it. In the
kitchen the coffee pot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was
safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp
gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Down-stairs
once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove,
floor, rugs. She washed, scoured, flapped, swabbed, polished. By eight
o'clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until
noon. The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds.
During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her
sub-conscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to name
definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting.
And then, at eight o'clock, it came. The rattle of a key in the lock.
The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps.
He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. They came
together and were in each other's arms. She was weeping.
"Now, now, old girl. What's there to cry about? Don't, honey; don't.
It's all right."
She raised her head then, to look at him. How fresh, and rosy, and big
he seemed, after that little sallow, yellow restaurant rat.
"How did you get here? How did you happen--?"
"Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn't get a sleeper, so I sat up
all night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind
just wasn't on my work. I kept thinking how I'd talked--how I'd
talked--"
"Oh, Orville, don't! I can't bear--Have you had your breakfast?"
"Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashland train."
But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and
clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in fifteen minutes. You
poor boy. No breakfast!"
She made good her promise. It could not have been more than twenty
minutes later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden brown
biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened, and
again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason. He broke open
his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he
remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again,
carefully. And at that she gave a little tremulous cry, and rushed
around the table to him.
"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent
and kissed the rough coat sleeve.
"Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!"
"Oh, Orville, listen--"
"Yes."
"Listen, Orville--"
"I'm listening, Terry."
"I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got to know."
"Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon, if I just
waited."
She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him.
"But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?"
He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you have
something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and look at
it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble
it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get me
nervous when we were first married watching you. But now I know it just
means you're worried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon--"
"Oh, Orville!" she cried, then. "Oh, Orville!"
"Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to daddy. And you'll feel
better."