"You bet she's got it!" from Wallie. "She's got more than Renée Paterne
ever had. A year of training and some clothes--"
"You don't need to tell me. I'm in the theatrical business, myself."
"I'm sorry," stiffly.
But Hahn, too, was sorry immediately. "You know how I am, Wallie. I
like to run a thing off by myself. What do you know about her? Find out
anything?"
"Well, a little. She doesn't seem to have any people. And she's decent.
Kind of a fierce kid, I guess, and fights when offended. They say she's
Polish, not Hungarian. Her mother was a peasant. Her father--nobody
knows. I had a dickens of a time finding out anything. The most terrible
language in the world--Hungarian. They'll stick a _b_ next to a _k_ and
follow it up with a _z_ and put an accent mark over the whole business
and call it a word. Last night I followed her home. And guess what!"
"What?" said Hahn, obligingly.
"On her way she had to cross the big square--the one they call Gisela
Tér, with all the shops around it. Well, when she came to Gerbeaud's--"
"What's Gerbeaud's?"
"That's the famous tea room and pastry shop where all the swells go and
guzzle tea with rum in it and eat cakes--and say! It isn't like our
pastry that tastes like sawdust covered with shaving soap. Marvellous
stuff, this is!"
After all, he was barely twenty-four. So Hahn said, good-naturedly, "All
right, all right. We'll go there this afternoon and eat an acre of it.
Go on. When she came to Gerbeaud's...?"
"Well, when she came to Gerbeaud's she stopped and stood there, outside.
There was a strip of red carpet from the door to the street. You
know--the kind they have at home when there's a wedding on Fifth Avenue.
There she stood at the edge of the carpet, waiting, her face, framed in
that funny little black shawl, turned toward the window, and the tail of
the little shawl kind of waggling in the wind. It was cold and nippy. I
waited, too. Finally I sort of strolled over to her--I knew she couldn't
any more than knock me down--and said, kind of casual, 'What's doing?'
She looked up at me, like a kid, in that funny shawl. She knew I was an
Englees, right away. I guess I must have a fine, open countenance. And I
had motioned toward the red carpet, and the crowded windows. Anyway, she
opens up with a regular burst of fireworks Hungarian, in that deep voice
of hers. Not only that, she acted it out. In two seconds she had on an
imaginary coronet and a court train. And haughty! Gosh! I was sort of
stumped, but I said, 'You don't say!' and waited some more. And then
they flung open the door of the tea shop thing. At the same moment up
dashed an equipage--you couldn't possibly call it anything less--with
flunkeys all over the outside, like trained monkeys. The people inside
the shop stood up, with their mouths full of cake, and out came an old
frump with a terrible hat and a fringe. And it was the Archduchess, and
her name is Josefa."
"Your story interests me strangely, boy," Hahn said, grinning, "but I
don't quite make you. Do archduchesses go to tea rooms for tea? And
what's that got to do with our gifted little hod carrier?"
"This duchess does. Believe me, those tarts are good enough for the
Queen of Hearts, let alone a duchess, no matter how arch. But the plot
of the piece is this. The duchess person goes to Gerbeaud's about twice
a week. And they always spread a red carpet for her. And Mizzi always
manages to cut away in time to stand there in front of Gerbeaud's and
see her come out. She's a gorgeous mimic, that little kid. And though I
couldn't understand a word she said I managed to get out of it just
this: That some day they're going to spread a red carpet for Mizzi and
she's going to walk down it in glory. If you'd seen her face when she
said it, S.H., you wouldn't laugh."
"I wouldn't laugh anyway," said Hahn, seriously.
And that's the true story of Mizzi Markis's beginning. Few people know
it.
* * * * *
There they were, the three of them. And of the three, Mizzi's ambition
seemed to be the fiercest, the most implacable. She worked like a horse,
cramming English, French, singing. In some things she was like a woman
of thirty; in others a child of ten. Her gratitude to Hahn was pathetic.
No one ever doubted that he was in love with her almost from the
first--he who had resisted the professional beauties of three decades.
You know she wasn't--and isn't--a beauty, even in that portrait of her
by Sargent, with her two black-haired, stunning-looking boys, one on
either side. But she was one of those gorgeously healthy women whose
very presence energizes those with whom she comes in contact. And then
there was about her a certain bounteousness. There's no other word for
it, really. She reminded you of those gracious figures you see posed for
pictures entitled "Autumn Harvest."
While she was studying she had a little apartment with a middle-aged
woman to look after her, and she must have been a handful. A born cook,
she was, and Hahn and Wallie used to go there to dinner whenever she
would let them. She cooked it herself. Hahn would give up any engagement
for a dinner at Mizzi's. When he entered her little sitting room his
cares seemed to drop from him. She never got over cutting bread as the
peasant women do it--the loaf held firmly against her breast, the knife
cutting toward her. Hahn used to watch her and laugh. Sometimes she
would put on the little black head-shawl of her Budapest days and sing
the street-song about the hundred geese in a row. A delightful, impudent
figure.
With the very first English she learned she told Hahn and Wallie that
some day they were going to spread a fine red carpet for her to tread
upon and that all the world would gaze on her with envy. It was in her
mind a symbol typifying all that there was of earthly glory.
"It'll be a long time before they do any red carpeting for you, my
girl," Sid Hahn had said.
She turned on him fiercely. "I will not rest--I will not eat--I will not
sleep--I will not love--until I have it."
Which was, of course, an exaggerated absurdity.
"Oh, what rot!" Wallie Ascher had said, angrily, and then he had thought
of his own symbol of success, and his own resolve. And his face had
hardened. Sid Hahn looked at the two of them; very young, both of them,
very gifted, very electric. Very much in love with each other, though
neither would admit it even in their own minds. Both their stern young
faces set toward the goal which they thought meant happiness.
Now, Sid Hahn had never dabbled in this new stuff--you know--complexes
and fixed ideas and images. But he was a very wise man, and he did know
to what an extent these two were possessed by ambition for that which
they considered desirable.
He must have thought it over for weeks. He was in love with Mizzi,
remember. And his fondness for Wallie was a thing almost paternal. He
watched these two for a long, long time, a queer, grim little smile on
his gargoyle face. And then his mind was made up. He had always had his
own way. He must have had a certain terrible enjoyment in depriving
himself of the one thing he wanted most in the world--the one thing he
wanted more than he had ever wanted anything.
He decided that Destiny--a ponderous, slow-moving creature at
best--needed a little prodding from him. His plans were simple, as all
effective plans are.
Mizzi had been in America just a year and a half. Her development was
amazing, but she was far from being the finished product that she became
in later years. Hahn decided to chance it. Mizzi had no fear of
audiences. He had tried her out on that. An audience stimulated her. She
took it to her breast. She romped with it.
He found a play at last. A comedy, with music. It was frankly built for
Mizzi. He called Wallie Ascher into his office.
"I wouldn't try her out here for a million. New York's too fly. Some
little thing might be wrong--you know how they are. And all the rest
would go for nothing. The kindest audience in the world--when they like
you. And the cruelest when they don't. We'll go on the road for two
weeks. Then we'll open at the Blackstone in Chicago. I think this girl
has got more real genius than any woman since--since Bernhardt in her
prime. Five years from now she won't be singing. She'll be acting. And
it'll _be_ acting."
"Aren't you forcing things just a little?" asked Wallie, coolly.
"Oh, no. No. Anyway, it's just a try-out. By the way, Wallie, I'll
probably be gone almost a month. If things go pretty well in Chicago
I'll run over to French Lick for eight or ten days and see if I can't
get a little of this stiffness out of my old bones. Will you do
something for me?"
"Sure."
"Pack a few clothes and go up to my place and live there, will you? The
Jap stays on, anyway. The last time I left it alone things went wrong.
You'll be doing me a favour. Take it and play the piano, and have your
friends in, and boss the Jap around. He's stuck on you, anyway. Says he
likes to hear you play."
He stayed away six weeks. And any one who knows him knows what hardship
that was. He loved New York, and his own place, and his comfort, and his
books; and hotel food gave him hideous indigestion.
Mizzi's first appearance was a moderate success. It was nothing like the
sensation of her later efforts. She wasn't ready, and Hahn knew it.
Mizzi and her middle-aged woman companion were installed at the
Blackstone Hotel, which is just next door to the Blackstone Theatre, as
any one is aware who knows Chicago. She was advertised as the Polish
comedienne, Mizzi Markis, and the announcements hinted at her royal
though remote ancestry. And on the night the play opened, as Mizzi
stepped from the entrance of her hotel on her way to the stage door,
just forty or fifty feet away, there she saw stretched on the pavement a
scarlet path of soft-grained carpet for her feet to tread. From the
steps of the hotel to the stage door of the theatre, there it lay, a
rosy line of splendour.
The newspapers played it up as a publicity stunt. Every night, while the
play lasted, the carpet was there. It was rolled up when the stage door
closed upon her. It was unrolled and spread again when she came out
after the performance. Hahn never forgot her face when she first saw it,
and realized its significance. The look was there on the second night,
and on the third, but after that it faded, vanished, and never came
again. Mizzi had tasted of the golden fruit and found it dry and
profitless, without nourishment or sweetness.
The show closed in the midst of a fairly good run. It closed abruptly,
without warning. Together they came back to New York. Just outside New
York Hahn knocked at the door of Mizzi's drawing room and stuck his
round, ugly face in at the opening.
"Let's surprise Wallie," he said.
"Yes," said Mizzi, listlessly.
"He doesn't know the show's closed. We'll take a chance on his being
home for dinner. Unless you're too tired."
"I'm not tired."
The Jap admitted them, and Hahn cut off his staccato exclamations with a
quick and smothering hand. They tiptoed into the big, gracious,
lamp-lighted room.
Wallie was seated at the piano. He had on a silk dressing gown with a
purple cord. One of those dressing gowns you see in the haberdashers'
windows, and wonder who buys them. He looked very tall in it, and rather
distinguished, but not quite happy. He was playing as they came in. They
said, "Boo!" or something idiotic like that. He stood up. And his face!
"Why, hello!" he said, and came forward, swiftly. "Hello! Hello!"
"Hello!" Hahn answered; "Not to say hello-hello."