"I don't know," helplessly. "But it's the word, isn't it?"
Miss Feldman turned back to her typewriter. "You're too smart for your
age, you are."
"I know it," Wallie had agreed, humbly.
There's no telling where or how he learned to play the piano. He
probably never did learn. He played it, though, as he
whistled--brilliantly. No doubt it was as imitative and as unconscious,
too, as his whistling had been. They say he didn't know one note from
another, and doesn't to this day.
At twenty, when he should have been in love with at least three girls,
he had fixed in his mind an image, a dream. And it bore no resemblance
to twenty's accepted dreams. At that time he was living in one room
(rear) of a shabby rooming house in Thirty-ninth Street. And this was
the dream: By the time he was--well, long before he was thirty--he would
have a bachelor apartment with a Jap, Saki. Saki was the perfect
servant, noiseless, unobtrusive, expert. He saw little dinners just for
four--or, at the most, six. And Saki, white-coated, deft, sliding hot
plates when plates should be hot; cold plates when plates should be
cold. Then, other evenings, alone, when he wanted to see no one--when,
in a silken lounging robe (over faultless dinner clothes, of course, and
wearing the kind of collar you see in the back of the magazines) he
would say, "That will do, Saki." Then, all evening, he would play softly
to himself those little, intimate, wistful Schumanny things in the
firelight with just one lamp glowing softly--almost sombrely--at the
side of the piano (grand).
His first real meeting with Sid Hahn had had much to do with the fixing
of this image. Of course he had seen Hahn hundreds of times in the
office and about the theatre. They had spoken, too, many times. Hahn
called him vaguely, "Heh, boy!" but he grew to know him later as Wallie.
From errand-boy, office-boy, call-boy he had become, by that time, a
sort of unofficial assistant stage manager. No one acknowledged that he
was invaluable about the place, but he was. When a new play was in
rehearsal at the Thalia, Wallie knew more about props, business, cues,
lights, and lines than the director himself. For a long time no one but
Wallie and the director were aware of this. The director never did admit
it. But that Hahn should find it out was inevitable.
He was nineteen or thereabouts when he was sent, one rainy November
evening, to deliver a play manuscript to Hahn at his apartment. Wallie
might have refused to perform an errand so menial, but his worship of
Hahn made him glad of any service, however humble. He buttoned his coat
over the manuscript, turned up his collar, and plunged into the cold
drizzle of the November evening.
Hahn's apartment--he lived alone--was in the early fifties, off Fifth
Avenue. For two days he had been ill with one of the heavy colds to
which he was subject. He was unable to leave the house. Hence Wallie's
errand.
It was Saki--or Saki's equivalent--who opened the door. A white-coated,
soft-stepping Jap, world-old looking like the room glimpsed just beyond.
Someone was playing the piano with one finger, horribly.
"You're to give this to Mr. Hahn. He's waiting for it."
"Genelmun come in," said the Jap, softly.
"No, he don't want to see me. Just give it to him, see?"
"Genelmun come in." Evidently orders.
"Oh, all right. But I know he doesn't want--"
Wallie turned down his collar with a quick flip, looked doubtfully at
his shoes, and passed through the glowing little foyer into the room
beyond. He stood in the doorway. He was scarcely twenty then, but
something in him sort of rose, and gathered, and seethed, and swelled,
and then hardened. He didn't know it then but it was his great resolve.
Sid Hahn was seated at the piano, a squat, gnomelike little figure, with
those big ears, and that plump face, and those soft eyes--the kindest
eyes in the world. He did not stop playing as Wallie appeared. He
glanced up at him, ever so briefly, but kindly, too, and went on playing
the thing with one short forefinger, excruciatingly. Wallie waited. He
had heard somewhere that Hahn would sit at the piano thus, for hours,
the tears running down his cheeks because of the beauty of the music he
could remember but not reproduce; and partly because of his own
inability to reproduce it.
The stubby little forefinger faltered, stopped. He looked up at Wallie.
"God, I wish I could play!"
"Helps a lot."
"You play?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Oh, most anything I've heard once. And some things I kind of make up."
"Compose, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Play one of those."
So Wallie Ascher played one of those. Of course you know "Good
Night--Pleasant Dreams." He hadn't named it then. It wasn't even
published until almost two years later, but that was what he played for
Sid Hahn. Since "After The Ball" no popular song has achieved the
success of that one. No doubt it was cheap, and no doubt it was
sentimental, but so, too, are "The Suwanee River" and "My Old Kentucky
Home," and they'll be singing those when more classical songs have long
been forgotten. As Wallie played it his dark, thin face seemed to gleam
and glow in the lamplight.
When he had finished Sid Hahn was silent for a moment. Then, "What're
you going to do with it?"
"With what?"
"With what you've got. You know."
Wallie knew that he did not mean the song he had just played. "I'm going
to--I'm going to do a lot with it."
"Yeh, but how?"
Wallie was looking down at his two lean brown hands on the keys. For a
long minute he did not answer. Then: "By thinking about it all the time.
And working like hell.... And you've got to be selfish ... You've got to
be selfish ..."
As Sid Hahn stared at him, as though hypnotized, the Jap appeared in the
doorway. Sid Hahn said, "Stay and have dinner with me," instead of what
he had meant to say.
"Oh, I can't! Thanks. I--" He wanted to terribly, but the thought was
too much.
"Better."
They had dinner together. Even under the influence of Hahn's
encouragement and two glasses of mellow wine whose name he did not know,
Wallie did not become fatuous. They talked about music--neither of them
knew anything about it, really. Wallie confessed that he used it as an
intoxicant and a stimulant.
"That's it!" cried Hahn, excitedly. "If I could play I'd have done more.
More."
"Why don't you get one of those piano-players, What-you-call'ems?" Then,
immediately, "No, of course not."
"Nah, that doesn't do it," said Hahn, quickly. "That's like adopting a
baby when you can't have one of your own. It isn't the same. It isn't
the same. It looks like a baby, and acts like a baby, and sounds like a
baby--but it isn't yours. It isn't you. That's it! It isn't you!"
"Yeh," agreed Wallie, nodding. So perfectly did they understand each
other, this ill-assorted pair.
It was midnight before Wallie left. They had both forgotten about the
play manuscript whose delivery had been considered so important. The big
room was gracious, quiet, soothing. A fire flickered in the grate. One
lamp glowed softly--almost sombrely.
As Wallie rose at last to go he shook himself slightly like one coming
out of a trance. He looked slowly about the golden, mellow room. "Gee!"
"Yes, but it isn't worth it," said Hahn, "after you've got it."
"That's what they all say"--grimly--"_after_ they've got it."
The thing that had been born in Sid Hahn's mind thirty years before was
now so plainly stamped on this boy's face that Hahn was startled into
earnestness. "But I tell you, it's true! It's true!"
"Maybe. Some day, when I'm living in a place like this, I'll let you
know if you're right."
In less than a year Wallie Ascher was working with Hahn. No one knew his
official title or place. But "Ask Wallie. He'll know," had become a sort
of slogan in the office. He did know. At twenty-one his knowledge of the
theatre was infallible (this does not include plays unproduced; in this
no one is infallible) and his feeling for it amounted to a sixth sense.
There was something uncanny about the way he could talk about Lottie,
for example, as if he had seen her; or Mrs. Siddons; or Mrs. Fiske when
she was Minnie Maddern, the soubrette. It was as though he had the power
to cast himself back into the past. No doubt it was that power which
gave later to his group of historical plays (written by him between the
ages of thirty and thirty-five) their convincingness and authority.
When Wallie was about twenty-three or -four Sid Hahn took him abroad on
one of his annual scouting trips. Yearly, in the spring, Hahn swooped
down upon London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, seeking that of the foreign
stage which might be translated, fumigated, desiccated, or otherwise
rendered suitable for home use. He sent Wallie on to Vienna, alone, on
the trail of a musical comedy rumoured to be a second Merry Widow in
tunefulness, chic, and charm. Of course it wasn't. Merry Widows rarely
repeat. Wallie wired Hahn, as arranged. The telegram is unimportant,
perhaps, but characteristic.
MR. SID. HAHN,
Hotel Savoy,
London,
England.
It's a second all right but not a second Merry Widow. Heard of
a winner in Budapest. Shall I go. Spent to-day from eleven to
five running around the Ringstrasse looking for mythical
creature known as the chic Viennese. After careful
investigation wish to be quoted as saying the species if any
is extinct.