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Title: Sketches of Gotham
Author: Swift, Ike
Language: English
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[Illustration: IKE SWIFT]
SKETCHES
_of_ GOTHAM
BY
IKE SWIFT
A collection of
unusual stories
told in an un-
usual way ....
PUBLISHED BY
RICHARD K. FOX, New York
Copyright 1906
by
Richard K. Fox.
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
“Ike Swift” 2
A spectacular dance which helped her in meeting people 12
Her swell figure made her an attraction on the beach 18
She was once the real thing on physical culture 28
A dose of knockout drops proved the turning point in her life 38
A wonderful but untrue picture of love behind the scenes 50
She has been known to kick the crown of a hat held six feet
from the floor 60
Rackets where pretty girls cut capers to the music of male
voices 68
He often made an honest dollar teaching American women how to
smoke “hop” 78
There was disclosed the figure of a young woman rather scantily
clad 90
She had such a superb figure that she once posed for a sculptor 100
Disguised as a sailor boy she shipped on one of Uncle Sam’s ships 108
For three solid hours he sat there trussed up like a chicken 118
She put herself up at auction and was promptly bid on 128
She went into the smoking car and calmly lighted a cigarette
136
She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always won out 146
She had danced the fandango in a way that made the Mexicans
cheer 156
Atlantic City is the place for sporty girls who play the game
to the limit 164
They had a hot time in Minneapolis when the show hit town 174
“I wasn’t arrested, but I was put out as if I were a common
swindler” 184
There were times when she did things that were unconventional 192
A light flashed out on the landing and revealed the figure of
a beautiful woman 202
Put her in tights and she would have been an Oriental sensation 212
The first pair are in the ring, the talk ceases, and the show
is on 220
The glitter of a circus became too much for them to resist 230
Wild revelry of the masked ball and the perfect ladies with the
hot sports 240
It’s only a dream after the lobster course 250
She figured once at a masked ball that was raided by the police 260
Once she had been on the stage, but she got a rough deal and
quit 268
When the clock struck two she was on the table doing a dance 278
CONTENTS
A LITTLE EASY MONEY 7
CASTING AN OLD SHOE 19
THE LONG WAY ’ROUND 27
THE QUEEN OF CHINATOWN 39
A GIRL OF THE GOLDEN GATE 47
WHEN FISTS WERE TRUMPS 57
KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND 69
AN ORIENTAL NOCTURNE 79
A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION 89
THE END OF THE ROAD 99
THE THROWBACK 109
FROM THE WOODS TO BROADWAY 117
THE WHIMS OF CURVES 127
CHEYENNE NELL; TRIMMER 137
TRAGEDY OF A DANCE 147
THE MONOLOGUE GIRL’S STORY 157
A TWISTED LOVE AFFAIR 163
WEDDING RINGS AND FOOTLIGHTS 173
TOLD BY THE MANICURE GIRL 183
INVESTING IN A HUSBAND 193
TRAINING AN OLD SPORT 201
CONCERNING A SYRIAN BEAUTY 211
THE REJUVENATION OF PATSY 221
A CASE OF KNOCKOUT DROPS 231
DISCOVERING A PRIMA DONNA 241
A THROW OF THE DICE 249
A VOICE IN THE SLUMS 259
A GIRL OF THE NIGHT 269
AFTER THE WEDDING BELLS 279
A LITTLE EASY MONEY
A great many years ago, when Tom Byrnes was the able and efficient
chief of the detective force of New York, a certain class of women,
very much in evidence around the hotels and resorts, were known, from
the peculiar manner of their work, as Badger Molls.
There was one in particular who had added a spectacular dance to her
many other accomplishments and which helped her not a little in meeting
the right kind of people.
To be a Badger Moll a woman had to have nerve, assurance, a fair amount
of good looks, be able to read character and keep her wits about her at
all times. There were occasions when she was up against it so good and
strong that it didn’t seem as if there was one chance in a hundred for
her to do her part of the trick, but in ninety times out of a hundred
she landed the bundle of the victim.
That is to say, of course, with the aid of her confederate.
The old days of the Moll have gone by, but the new days have come and
they are here now. The new representative is of a higher class, of a
superior education, is more adept, and, as a rule, gets more money.
It is worthy of note that during the past ten years only two big jobs
have fallen through--that is, so far as is known--and these things
usually become known when they are brought to the notice of the police.
A handsomely gowned woman, with a bearing that would deceive almost
anyone, comes down the line. She looks like my lady from Fifth avenue,
but if you will notice her eyes you will see in them the look of a
huntress.
She is on the trail of men, and it is a rare thing for her to make a
mistake. Mistakes in her business, you know, sometimes spell Sing Sing,
as a lady by the name of Moore will tell you if you ever meet her and
she should become confidential.
As she passes the hotels you will notice this particular woman
hesitates in her stride, she goes into the low gear and she looks
questioningly at the men who are standing about.
It is the glance of an expert, but it is cleverly veiled.
Even though you and I know her and know what her business is, we are
attracted by her to a certain extent, just as people are attracted by
a magnificent tigress or leopard in the menagerie. They have fangs and
claws, but they are hidden, and being concealed are forgotten for the
time.
This is a human tigress, but she is not on the scent of blood, she’s
trailing bank rolls.
There is, however, nothing unusual in that, when you come to think of
it, because that is what four-fifths of the world is doing, and the
other fifth is being chased and knows it.
The tigress throws in her high speed and passes on until she has
reached the entrance to another hotel, and here the scent of prey comes
strongly to her nostrils.
A fine-looking man of about fifty years is leaning carelessly against
one of the marble columns. He has dined well, anyone can see that, and
he is half way into his after-dinner cigar. He is in the ripe stage;
the time to ask a favor, or to have a courtesy extended. He is at peace
with himself and everybody else, and as the tigress passes by he gets a
flash of those black eyes which tell him a story that while it is not
new, is always interesting, especially under these circumstances, when
he is a thousand miles from home.
There are few men, anyhow, who can stand temptation when they are
strangers in a strange city. Man is a companionable sort of a
proposition and to be at his best must have society.
This one, who is perhaps the father of an interesting family, and who
is above reproach in his native city, and who would become indignant at
the thought of a street flirtation, involuntarily straightens himself
up, and taking a firmer hold of his cigar, glances after the slowly
retreating figure of the lady with the black eyes.
It’s a trim shape, by Jove; and look at that ankle.
A peach.
“Nothing common about her,” he soliloquizes. “Just a nice girl,
perhaps, who is a bit lonely, too.”
And then, at that particular moment, the “nice girl,” who has been
sauntering very slowly, turns around and looking directly at him,
smiles.
A woman’s smile.
Cast off your lines, my boy, and on your way, for the magnetism of that
smile has you lashed to the mast, but you don’t know it yet. What you
have in your mind is that you’ll just take a little walk and have a
little talk, just to fill in a few lonely hours, you know.
So he leaves the mooring of his hotel and trails the trailer.
One short block he walks, and then just as he is about to come abreast
of her she turns about and meets him with the same smile that has been
doing duty for the past five years.
She knew he had reached that particular spot by that woman’s intuition,
keyed up so fine as to be on feather edge all the time.
Her little bow is modest--even coy. It is like the bow of a school girl
who is afraid she is not doing quite the right thing, but who is just a
trifle reckless, and is willing to take a chance or two just for a lark.
“How do you do?” she asks.
“Great; how are you; fine night; where are you going?” he rattles off,
trying to appear at ease, and be the real fellow.
“I was just taking a walk. You see, it was so quiet in the house, and I
sat there all alone until I just thought I would die, so I came out to
get a little fresh air and see if I couldn’t walk myself tired before
bed time.”
That accounts for her being out, of course, and it is very nicely
delivered, too; besides, it gives the man a chance to say something,
and he is prompt to say it.
“All alone? You don’t mean to say that you live all alone?”
Oh, no; she doesn’t live all alone all the time. But Jack--that’s her
husband, you know--he is on the road--commercial man, you see, the best
and dearest fellow in all the world, and it’s such a horrid position
he has, too, always traveling. He went away just a month ago on his
Western trip, to be gone two months, think of it; almost an age. He’s
with the big dry goods house of Wools & Muslins, the biggest in New
York. But next year Jack is going to have an office position and then
everything will be all right.
“After that,” she goes on, “Jack and the baby and I will be quite
happy.”
“The baby? Have you a baby?”
“Why, of course.”
“And you say you are lonely? I should think that the baby would----”
“Yes, of course, so it would, but don’t you see, Jack’s mother, who
lives with us, went to visit some friends in the country--Montclair, do
you know where that is?--and she thought it would do the little fellow
good and she took him along, and now I am so sorry I let him go.”
Isn’t it too beautiful for anything, and isn’t she an artist of whom
Jack ought to be very proud?
“Well, I am a little lonely myself,” says the business man from Dayton,
O., “and I think you and I ought to cheer one another up. What do you
think about that proposition?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s very nice to have you talk to me, but I
feel a little bit frightened about it all. You know I never spoke to
a strange man on the street before like this, and I am sure that Jack
wouldn’t like it if----”
“Yes, but Jack isn’t here now. Who knows what he is doing? You know
these traveling men when they get away from home and home ties have
been known to----”
“Yes, but not my Jack. You don’t know him. He would never do anything
wrong, for he told me so.”
[Illustration: A spectacular dance which helped her in meeting people]
And now they have walked four blocks.
There is a hack driver and his wagon at the corner.
“Cab, sir; have a cab?”
He’s on, and immediately takes the tip offered him.
“Suppose we take a little drive through the Park,” suggests the man.
“I don’t think it would be quite right. I would like to, but----Oh, if
we were only real well acquainted, I would like to, but you see----”
The end of it is that the cab drive is vetoed, and he begins to think
as to how he can best entertain her in some other way. He takes a hasty
sidelong glance at her, and his heart increases about ten beats to the
minute. She’s all right, you bet. Why, he wouldn’t mind staying in New
York another week if----
“Let’s go somewhere and have a nice bottle of wine,” he says.
“I hope you don’t mean to offend me, but you shouldn’t ask me anything
like that. I think I am doing very wrong in even talking to you, but
I can’t help it. There was something about you when I passed by that
seemed to attract me. I have done something to-night that I have never
been guilty of before, and never will be again. I don’t object to wine,
because we have it in the house, but I didn’t think you would ask me
to go to a common saloon with you--a place I have never been in in my
life. But I suppose I deserve it for speaking to you the way I did, and
for walking with you the way I am now.”
He protests, he apologizes, and he feels that he has made a great
mistake. He is humiliated beyond expression. Here is a nice little
woman with a husband and a baby, who has permitted him to accost her
on the street, probably because she felt that she needed some human
companionship, and he has insulted her by asking her to go to a public
place and drink a bottle of wine with him, just as if she were a woman
of the streets. He feels that he cannot do enough to make amends to her.
“I don’t believe,” she says, sweetly, “that you intended to hurt my
feelings for a moment. Let you and I be simply good friends. We are
both a little lonesome; let us spend a pleasant evening together, for
it isn’t likely that we will ever meet again after to-night. We will
act as if we were brother and sister; but if you would really like a
bottle of wine I have a lot home that Jack says is pretty good, and we
can go there and be all by ourselves.”
But a moment later she repents and says it will not do at all, for
suppose any of the neighbors should see them going in, what then?
He clutches at the idea like a drowning man clutches at a straw, for
this is a wonderfully nice girl he has met in this accidental way, and
he would like to become better acquainted.
So he begins to coax, and she laughingly refuses to listen. He pleads,
argues and promises, and then he stops in a shop and blows himself to a
five-pound box of candy for the baby--and her.
When he peels the bill off a roll that would choke an elephant she
sizes it all up out of the tail of her eye, and makes a mental
calculation as to how much is there.
She’s just a trifle more endearing to him after that, and it strikes
him that she is getting a little reckless.
“Come on,” she says, quite gayly, and with an affectation of
sportiness, “I will take you up to the house, but you must promise me
on your word of honor that you won’t remember the street or the number
and that you’ll never try to see me again. Remember, this is just for
one evening, and I don’t want you to think I am anything but what I
seem.”
“I could never think that,” he says, quite soberly.
“What must you think of a girl who will permit a stranger to speak to
her on the street?”
“I should think that in your case she would be very nice.”
She is laughing and chatting just like a girl out of school, and she
has interested him so much that he hasn’t noticed that they were
getting into quieter and darker streets, until she suddenly turns into
a hallway which is just like a thousand other New York hallways, and
announces:
“Here we are at last; now don’t make any noise.”
Up one flight, and she’s fumbling for a key, which she finds in a
moment, and then the door is opened.
The lights are turned low, and for some reason or other she doesn’t
turn them up, which he notes with a certain feeling of pleasure.
“Now take off your hat and coat, and we will have that bottle of wine
I told you about, for I am going to let you stay just one hour, after
which I am going to try and forgive myself for having spoken to you.”
It is all very nice and charming, and the wine is very good--a bit
better, in fact, than he had any idea it would be.
When the bottle and the glasses are empty he finds himself sitting
beside her on a divan. His arm is about her waist and she is
struggling to free herself. He leans over to kiss her, but she deftly
turns her face away.
“You must not try to kiss me,” she whispers, but as she speaks she
throws her arms about his neck.
It seems to the staid old business bulwark from the West as if he had
been sitting there for hours, when suddenly the electric bell rings.
Both jump to their feet.
“What is it?” he asks in a low voice.
“I don’t know; I can’t think,” she answers, holding her hand to her
head. “Perhaps it’s Jack. My God, if it should be Jack. He will kill
you if he finds you here. I could never explain it. Take your hat and
coat quick. Here, this way, the back door, and run, run as fast as you
can. Don’t stop, please, until you get to your hotel. Go, go, at once.”
With hat and coat in hand he finds himself pushed out in a dark
passageway. He gropes his way to the stairs.
A man is coming up, a man with a traveling case.
It’s Jack, as sure as you live.
Guiltily he walks down, steps hurriedly to the street door, passes out,
and starts on a brisk trot up the street. At the first corner he turns,
then he turns another block, then he turns again, with the instinct of
a hunted hare. So he pursued his zig-zag course for many blocks, until
he finally stops to ask directions.
“The Gilt-Edge Hotel? certainly; four blocks over to the avenue then
about twenty down.”
He walks the four blocks while he catches his breath, and then he gets
aboard a car only to find he hasn’t a cent.
Worse; he hasn’t a watch, nor a scarf pin.
He must have lost them while he was running.
He gets off and stands on the corner to think it over.
Eleven hundred dollars in good money gone; a watch worth $350 and a pin
worth at least $150.
The faint odor of violets comes back to him, and then he comes to his
senses.
Stung.
* * * * *
“It took you a long while to ring that bell, Billy, after I gave you
the tip. Don’t wait so long next time. You must be getting old, for
you’re working very slow lately.”
“I didn’t hear the buzzer at first; I don’t think you pressed it hard
enough. I’ll give it a look to-morrow and see. But I would never have
sized that old guy up for eleven hundred.”
“You never can tell what they’ve got until you take it away from them.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Her swell figure made her an attraction on the beach]
CASTING AN OLD SHOE
It may be that you--whoever you are or wherever you are--don’t know
what it means to go “down the line.” But in New York--in order that we
may start right--“The Line” means that part of Broadway where at night
the lights burn brightest, and where the mob--swell and otherwise--move
back and forth like the ebb and flow of the tide--hunting, hunting,
ever on the hunt.
From Twenty-third street to Forty-second, and back again, and you have
gone down The Line. Sometimes it costs you nothing for this innocent
little amusement; this feast of the eyes; and then again it is liable
to cost you a great deal.
It all depends upon who you are, and what you are and how easy you are.
And there you are.
I once knew a man, and this is pat while I am on this subject, who came
to New York from Buffalo. He was only going to remain for a day or so,
and then he was going to hike himself back to his home by the big lake.
He had sold out his business, and when he landed in New York he had a
bank roll of twenty-one thousand dollars.
It was enough to make any ordinary man round shouldered, but he was a
husky guy who was used to the long green, and it didn’t bother him any
more than if it had been beef-and-bean money.
He put up at a big swell hotel, and during the evening, when time hung
a bit heavy on his hands, he got it into his head that he would take a
walk down the line, and then turn in among the feathers.
With a perfecto between his teeth, he got as far as Thirty-eighth
street, where he met his finish.
When he arrived at his hotel at ten o’clock the next morning he asked
the proprietor to loan him twenty dollars to get home.
No explanations go with this, because he was sport enough never to tell
how it happened. It doesn’t even point a moral, for there are no morals
on the line.
Going down the street, like a yacht under full sail, is a woman whom
it cost not a cent less than $750 to put in commission. In the male
vernacular she is what might be termed a peach, and there is no need
to translate that for you, for the simple reason that you are familiar
enough with the different kinds of fruit to know what that means.
Because of her figure and the fact that she was a good fellow she was
an attraction at the beach.
She has a history, of course. They all have, to a certain extent, but
this is somewhat out of the ordinary.
In her day--and her day wasn’t so many years ago--she was a noted
beauty, and she had one of the most charming apartments in New York.
It was frequented by what might be termed the high-class sporting
crowd--lawyers with national reputations, actors whose names were in
big type on the billboards, business men who posed as the bulwarks of
the commercial world, and politicians who waxed sleek and fat at the
public cribs. They played poker there and were entertained royally by
her. She gave the choicest of dinners and served the best of wines,
and she was a perfect hostess. Her rooms were more like a club than
anything else, and she was never annoyed by any love-making on the part
of her guests, for a very good, substantial and simple reason--the man
who paid the shot and who figured as the real one in that charmed and
exclusive circle was none other than a high official of New York.
His hospitality, dispensed through her, was almost boundless, and there
are those who say that there was method in that gathering, and that
many a serious public question was discussed within the confines of
those gorgeously upholstered rooms.
Give a man the proper seat at the right kind of a table, beside a woman
who is beautiful, charming and magnetic, serve him with a perfect
dinner, with good wine selected by a connoisseur, then after the
dessert provide him with a cigar which cannot be bought in the open
market, and it is almost a sure thing that, if you have any proposition
to make, your battle is half won. What an ideal spot for lawyers,
politicians and capitalists to discuss things that it wouldn’t do to
have the public know.
And as the months rolled by this woman came to be known by the majority
of prominent men of New York.
Now you can get a good look at her as she stops to glance in that
window.
Not to have been her guest was to have missed a lot in life, and when
you lost to her in a little poker game you were almost sorry your
losses were not heavier.
She had more diamond rings than she could wear at any one time, and she
had the best wardrobe in town. No matter what she saw and wanted it was
hers. She scarcely needed to ask for it--she just wished, and it came
as though she had been blessed with some fairy godmother who waved a
magic wand, and brought things on the wind.
So there’s the picture, painted in the most ordinary colors, and
there’s the woman, who grew to think the world was made for her to play
with and do with as she liked.
When she was at the height of her career, this lawyer-political friend
of hers--this champion and provider--really and truly fell in love. He
was well past middle age, but that made no difference. After many years
of waiting--years which were punctuated with numerous affairs which he
thought spelled love--he found the girl at last in the daughter of a
man whose position left him nothing to wish for. She was a society girl
and charming enough for any man.
Before he fully realized what he was doing he had proposed marriage to
her and had been accepted without giving that other one a thought.
When he understood that he had to break with her, he knew that he had
the job of his life in front of him, but he was game enough to go at
it without a moment’s hesitancy, and so one night, after the crowd had
gone and the last poker chip cashed in, he told her the story.
“I am going to marry and settle down,” he said. “My position demands
it, and I cannot go on living this way forever. I feel that I have
a political future, and I must protect myself. If I ever came up
again for any prominent office, as I expect to in the near future, my
relations with you would mean the worst kind of defeat for me. I want
to be fair with you, and I am willing to settle any claim you may have
on me for anything within reason.”
His story took a long while in the telling, and through it all she
never moved nor spoke.
When he had quite finished she stretched and yawned.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “that is all, except that I hope we will part
friends, and that if ever I can do anything for you, I----”
“Now whatever you do,” she spoke up sharply, “don’t get tiresome nor
sentimental. You’re a good fellow, and always have been--so you think.
I have come into your life and have answered your purpose. I have
entertained your friends and made it pleasant for you and them. I
suppose you think I did it simply because I was provided for and had
everything I wanted--that I was a sort of a high-class servant who was
satisfied with her wages. If I had been wise I would have anticipated
this and been prepared for it. I would have had enough money in the
bank to have been independent to a certain extent. I am like a poker
chip--you bought me, played with me, and now you are ready to cash me
in because you have finished with me. You are a good fellow--with the
men--but you are very tiresome and that reminds me that I am tired and
wish you would run along. Go home now, and dream of the nice girl you
are going to marry.”
He stood looking at her like a man under the influence of a drug. He
did not know what to say. He had expected a scene of some kind, and he
was disappointed. His vanity was touched. Why, here was a woman for
whom he had done everything in the world, and whom he thought loved
him, and she was parting from him without a tear or even so much as
a word of expostulation. That didn’t suit him at all. He wanted her
to throw her arms about his neck and beg him not to go. Of course, he
would have gone just the same, but he didn’t want to think that she
would let him go so easily.
The pride and vanity of man is a peculiar thing, and there are not ten
men in a thousand who understand women, even though they think they do.
This man, clever, handsome and brilliant, was of the majority who do
not know, and he had nothing to say to the woman who had entertained
him and with whom he had spent many pleasant hours.
He looked at her for a moment and then he went out as though he had
been whipped from the door.
She turned the key in the lock and then gave way to her real feelings
by crying as only a heart-broken woman can.
He had incriminated himself with her to such an extent that he dreaded
her. She had been too calm to suit him, and he feared trouble to come.
He had no definite idea as to what form it might take, but he wanted to
avoid it.
So he went direct to one of his most astute legal friends--the
same one, who, by the way, told me the whole story in a burst of
half-drunken confidence--and they sat up half the night figuring on
how to head her off in case she attempted to do anything that would
reflect on his “spotless” character. How careful the man is of his name
as a rule, and how despicably he can treat a woman when it suits either
his mood or convenience.
That midnight conference finally resolved itself into definite shape by
the counsellor saying:
“I’ll take $10,000 to her and get everything she has of yours and her
signature under a statement that will leave you free and clear.”
And so it was agreed.
Lawyers do not act very quickly unless their own interests are at
stake. Speed was required here and the action was fast enough for
anyone. The next day, at noon, the lawyer, who knew her well enough
to call her by her first name, called upon her, and as he was ushered
into the handsome apartment he involuntarily put his hand to his breast
pocket, which contained ten new, crisp one thousand dollar bills--the
price of her silence, from his standpoint.
It is interesting to be able to note that the interview was short,
sharp, sweet and to the point. He made his eloquent speech of how his
friend, who had always loved her devotedly, was forced by something
which she could not understand to break from her and marry a woman
whose position in society was assured. He was prepared to pay her an
amount of money--quite a liberal one, in fact--so that she should want
for nothing. All he desired was a certain package of letters and a
statement that she had only known his friend in the most casual way.
“How much are you going to pay me?” she asked.
“Ten thousand dollars, and here it is,” he said, producing the bills.
“I will do what he wants,” was all she said, and in ten minutes the job
was done.
Then he laid the money on the table.
“What is your fee?” She spoke very softly.
“My fee?” he repeated, as if he did not quite catch her meaning.
“Yes, your fee. How much are you charging this friend of yours for what
you are doing for him?”
“I am doing it through friendship. There is no such thing as fee in a
case like this.”
“You have earned this money, and I do not want it,” she went on. “I am
not a blackmailer nor can my promise of immunity be bought. I, too,
understand what the word friendship means, and I am not so degraded nor
lost but that I can take advantage of it. It is such men as you and he
that make such women as I am. Good-day.”
He was in the hall with the money in his hand before he quite realized
how it all happened.
Between you and me, my friends, I would sooner have her conscience than
the conscience of the very fine gentleman whose public career has since
been marked by repeated triumphs.
[Illustration]
THE LONG WAY ’ROUND
The Girl from Philadelphia wasn’t a beauty by any means, but she had a
nice fetching way, good teeth, and a cheerful, contagious laugh which
are three things that have beauty left at the post. Beauty, you see, is
only good for a short sprint at the best, and in a long race is liable
to lag a bit toward the finish, but the other propositions are stayers
nine times out of ten and generally manage to come under the wire in
good shape.
Thirty days in the big city, if spent in the right kind of company,
usually mean about a year in Quakertown, and force of circumstances had
thrown The Girl in pretty close contact with high-flyers. You see, it
all came about this way:
She had been playing the soubrette part in some amateur theatricals,
and everybody who saw her--except some girl friends who wanted to be
soubrettes, too--said she was the real thing and that she had Della
Fox in her palmy days beaten the length of Chestnut street, and as for
Millie James, why there was nothing to it.
That started the theatrical bee buzzing in her conning-tower, so she
immediately formed the habit of reading the theatrical papers instead
of the society notes, and she got the matinee habit so bad that she
didn’t miss one show a month. Before that her fad had been gymnastics
and she was the real thing on physical culture.
[Illustration: She was once the real thing on physical culture]
Now when a girl gets that way she needs either a husband and honeymoon
to distract her attention or a hard-faced guardian--female, of
course--to follow her wherever she goes.
So in view of the fact that this girl had neither, she studied the
play bills and did pretty much as she liked. She was just ripe to sign
with a traveling show or listen to the argument of any actor man who
offered her the bait of a chance to do a stunt behind the footlights.
She lived the way a soubrette ought to live--at least, she thought she
did. In a locked drawer in her dressing case she kept a box of make-up,
and when the rest of the family had retired she fixed her face up so
she looked like a comic valentine. She figured upon this as a sort of
preliminary training in case she should ever get a chance to break into
the business; look like a twenty-dollar gold piece to the public, and
feel like a plugged nickel when she was in her dollar-a-day room after
the show. She might have been dreaming yet if a young fellow who once
suped for Mansfield hadn’t made her acquaintance. He called on her at
her home, and they hadn’t been talking twenty minutes when she sprung
the soubrette business, and told him that some day she hoped to get on
the professional stage.
“The only way to get a chance is to go to New York,” he said. “There’s
where all the good shows start from, as well as a good many of the bad
ones, and if a girl has talent, an agent or a manager will grab her
just the same as a hobo will grab a ham sandwich, no matter what his
nationality is. Why, I once knew a girl who went there from Forked
River, New Jersey. She didn’t know anything, but she had ginger, and
she’s been on the road for two seasons with the Bon Ton Burlesquers.
What do you think of that? Philadelphia’s all right in a way, but
I’ll bet if Maude Adams had been born here she’d be behind the ribbon
counter in some big dry goods store instead of the swellest little
actress that ever took a bunch of roses over the footlights.”
That is what started the trouble, and that night when The Girl went up
to her room she packed a dress-suit case, putting in her grease paints
first, of course, and then she penned a neat little note of farewell
forever to her parents, after which she waited until the house was
quiet and then slipped out as quietly as a burglar. She had enough
money to make the breakaway and keep her about thirty days, by the end
of which time she figured she would have a job at about fifty per week,
with traveling expenses and Pullman car paid by the manager.
She had a roseate view of life, and she thought that as soon as she
hit the big burg the managers would be falling over each other trying
to get her to sign a contract. She didn’t know that making a hit in
a little show given by the Golden Rod Society for the Supplying of
Vegetables to the Cannibal Tribes of Africa was quite a different thing
to going on the professional stage, and she imagined if she could do
well in the part of _Betsey, the Romp_, in “Who Killed Cock Robin,” she
could do equally well on the stage of any big theatre.
She had as much hope as a piece of Swiss cheese has holes when she
climbed aboard the sleeping car which was scheduled to leave for New
York at 1 A. M., but when she landed in the cold, gray dawn a good part
of it had gone and had left her a trifle weak in the knees, which, by
the way, is a decided symptom of weakness.
It took her just two hours to find a boarding house, and until the next
day to get her nerve back. It was only because of her youth that it
came back at all. She got a list of the names of managers and started
out to do business, but no one seemed to want any amateur soubrettes
from Philadelphia. By two o’clock there was nothing that looked like a
job, but she had received eleven invitations to go out to lunch from
eleven different genials who didn’t seem to want to talk business; who
were inclined to be affectionate and who called her “My Dear” in every
other sentence.
That night she went to a vaudeville show, and she was so impressed with
the ease with which the turns were pulled off that she concluded she
would do an act of her own. That is how it happened that the day after
she forsook the legitimate for the variety, and knocked at the office
doors of a different species of managers. Very busy fellows these were,
too, and she got her dismissal in almost every case with startling
rapidity.
Here is a sample of the dialogue:
“Where have you worked before?”
“I have never been on the professional stage, but I played the part of
a soubrette in amateur shows in Philadelphia, and all my friends told
me that----”
“But have you an act of your own?”
“No, not yet, but----”
“Well, you frame up some kind of an act, then come around and see me,
and I may be able to get you a trial somewhere.”
And then twenty-three.
Many a good fighter has quit when he found every rush he made was
stopped with a tantalizing jab in the nose, and many a man has thrown
up the sponge when he has walked the streets day in and day out and
discovered that nobody wanted him.
At the end of a week The Girl would have written a letter home or taken
a train back if it had not been for her pride. She didn’t want to
acknowledge defeat, but she was on the verge of it.
She was coming out of a theatre one night when she met The Man.
There must be a man else there would be no story. He was about
forty-five years old, had been through enough campaigns to give him
self-possession, and he had been successful enough to be egotistic.
Two minutes later they were walking down Broadway together, and she
was rather glad that she had found someone who took an interest in
her. One-half hour after that and they were seated at a table in a big
restaurant; the order had been given and she was telling him all about
herself while he was looking her over with an exceedingly critical eye
and making up his mind that she showed up rather good under a strong
light, especially when she smiled.
A broiled lobster, a quart of claret, then a couple of birds and a
quart of wine are enough to change the ideas and opinions of a lot
of people, especially if such a bill of fare is unusual, and so it
happened that when the red began to come to The Girl’s cheeks, the
things The Man were saying to her didn’t seem so much out of the way
after all. Besides, that hall bedroom in the musty old boarding house
was rapidly becoming a nightmare. Between you and me, if she had never
smiled this thing would never have happened.
The Man lighted a cigar, and as he blew the first puff of blue smoke
toward the ceiling he observed:
“My dear, marriage is nothing more nor less than a useless and barbaric
rite, and when it is all summed up it amounts to nothing in the end.
Why should you be legally bound to any man in this world? It would be
all right as long as you loved him, then you wouldn’t care, but suppose
your feelings changed, what then? In order to get a divorce from him
you would have to catch him committing a crime for which the law would
grant you a divorce, or get good evidence, which amounts to the same
thing. You might separate from him if he was cruel to you or didn’t
support you, but suppose he was kind and gave you all the money you
wanted, then you would still have to live with him as his wife. Now,
on the other hand, if you were not married to him, you would have a
perfect right, as soon as your feelings changed, to leave him without
a moment’s notice. You would be under no obligations to him under
any circumstances, and he, knowing that you were free to go and come
as you pleased, would, in order to keep you, treat you with greater
consideration than if you were his wife. You can believe me or not,
just as you wish, but an understanding between a man and a woman is all
that is necessary to happiness in this world. Don’t be old-fashioned,
but let us make an agreement of some kind between ourselves. You will
be perfectly independent, free to go and come as you like, and do as
you wish.”
There was a certain amount of logic in this argument, especially when
the reverse of the picture is a cheap room in a cheap boarding house.
So the end of the first chapter was that the landlady wondered why her
lodger never came back, even to get her case and the few belongings
it contained. It was all mysterious to her, but as she was paid in
advance, she said nothing, and at the end of the week rented the room
to an old fellow with asthma who was living on an allowance.
So far as the stage was concerned, that bright bubble had burst,
and instead of haunting the offices of managers, The Girl took to
breakfasting at 10, lunching at 2 and dining at 8. The theatres to her
were merely places of amusement--good to fill in time which could be
used in no other way, and her ambition to shine as a footlight favorite
went when she found that she could live without being annoyed by any of
the responsibilities of life. She gradually grew to know that the name
of The Man was a very familiar one in the big cities and at times the
newspapers printed his picture. She had assumed that name--it was in
the compact, although there were few who knew it. Several times, when
he called on her, he brought some of his friends to dinner, but these
occasions were not frequent, by any means, and she knew she wasn’t a
part of his intimate life.
Now see how time makes puppets of both men and women, for this story
has one merit in that it is true.
The Man took sick in Chicago, and the first she knew of it was when she
read it in the newspapers. Every stage of his disease was chronicled
until he died, and when she read that the paper dropped from her hands
and she felt again that weakness of the knees which took her on that
first morning in New York. For four days she lived in a dream, vaguely
wondering what was to become of her, and then a brisk, alert, dapper
little man--a lawyer--called. There was nothing sentimental about him.
He was business from the drop of the hat.
“I represent the family of The Man,” he announced, abruptly. “There is
a codicil in his will which bequeaths you $250,000. Of course, we can
break that and not half try, but the widow and children don’t want any
unpleasant notoriety, and they are willing to settle for $50,000, which
I can pay to you at once. You will accept, if you are wise, for $50,000
is a nice little sum and it will leave you free and clear to do as you
please and will dispose of a very unpleasant situation.”
The death of The Man had given her a shock from which she hadn’t yet
recovered, and she asked for time to think.
“Come to-morrow or the day after,” she said, “and I will talk to you. I
can’t think now.”
He wanted to finish it up at once, but every time she gave him the same
answer, so there was nothing for him to do but to go.
And then that night there came another lawyer, one whom she had known
because The Man had brought him on one of his visits. His argument was
different:
“There is $250,000 coming to you; get it. It is a clean-cut, legal will
and they can’t break it, besides there is enough there for everybody
and to spare. Let me manage it for you and don’t worry. If they want to
contest let them go ahead and I’ll beat them.”
And because he said “Don’t worry; leave it all to me,” she consented.
That was the woman of it.
They did fight, and the newspapers printed columns about it, for it was
a great story, but they didn’t print the part I am telling here, for
that they didn’t know. With the articles appeared her portraits, and
she became as well known as The Man had been, in a way.
Before the finish had been reached the heirs concluded there had better
be a settlement, and so, rather than stand the delay of appeals in
case she won, which it was reasonably sure she would do, she accepted
$150,000 in cash.
The next day her maid brought her a card. It read:
“ALFRED D. COHEN,
Theatrical Promoter.”
“I’ll see him,” she said.
She had learned a thing or two since she had left Philadelphia, so she
knew what was coming and was prepared for it when the polite, suave Mr.
Cohen walked into the room.
“I have come,” he said, by way of introduction, “to make you an offer
to go on the stage.”
“Yes?” she queried, calmly.
“All you will have to do is to sing two or three songs twice a
day--once in the afternoon and once in the evening--and I am authorized
to offer you $750 a week.”
“And suppose I can’t sing?” she said, smiling, thinking of the last
time she had talked with a manager.
“That would make no difference; we would have you coached and can give
you ten weeks straight.” He fumbled at his coat nervously, for she
was really an important personage now. “I have the contracts here.”
He produced them and handed them over. She read them over carefully,
debated mentally as to the policy of signing at once or waiting until
another day, finally decided on the side of deliberation, and then said:
“Come and see me to-morrow at 2 and I will let you know then.”
He knew intuitively she would accept, so he bowed himself out without
further argument.
So that is how she at last went on the stage, and if your memory serves
you well enough to take you back a year or so you will know that she
made a hit as the singer of songs of long ago.
P. S.--She told her folks in Philadelphia that she had been studying
voice culture all the time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A dose of knockout drops proved the turning point in her
life]
THE QUEEN OF CHINATOWN
If you don’t think there are any interesting tales in the Tenderloin,
just go there some night and look around. You don’t have to look long
before you will find something that is worth going a distance for.
You’ll find tragedy and pathos as close together as the meat is to
the bread in a ham sandwich, and it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to
discover it, either.
I know a few things about the Bowery and the Tenderloin, and for the
past twenty years I have roamed about New York by night, simply because
I was fascinated by the life after dark. Of course, you know that this
night owl business is a disease, and when once you get it, and get it
good, it is one of the hardest things in the world to cure. In my day
I have seen many a nice, straightforward young fellow go to the bad
simply because he got the night habit.
It isn’t much of a combination that gets you, either, for it’s the
white lights, the music, the women and the drinks, not counting the
good fellowship, or what passes for good fellowship, on the side.
The lid is on in New York to a certain extent, that I’ll admit, but I’m
going to take you under the lid.
It’s all a bluff, anyhow, and things go on the same as they have been
going for years, with very little change.
The same kind of girls are roaming the streets, the same kind of booze
is being served on the little round tables in stuffy back rooms, and
the same class of waiters are making short change whenever the mark
looks easy. There may be a new police captain in the district or the
precinct, but there are some things in this world that can’t be held
down any more than a man can hold down a charge of dynamite after the
cap has been exploded.
Talk about your high pressure life--that’s it. Ten years is the limit
for the careful ones, and I’ve seen them go off in five. Why, only the
other day a hospital ambulance backed up to a downtown tenement, and
when it went away it carried a woman whose lease of life had about
expired.
There was a crowd which gathered, as usual--men, women and children,
all filled with a morbid curiosity, which makes people flock and gaze
with interest at anything which approaches a bit of human wreckage, and
of them all there was not more than one or two who knew that the sick
woman had once been known as the Queen of Chinatown, and had been made
the subject of many an interesting story.
It seems only a few years ago that they called her the Queen, and you
wondered why until you looked at her and heard her talk.
Then you knew.
She was more than good looking, and what was just a bit rarer, she
was educated. There was about her a certain amount of refinement
which forced itself to the surface like a life preserver under water,
every once in a while, but which as the years rolled on gradually
disappeared, just like any other veneer. If the constant dropping of
water will wear away a stone, in just so sure a way will environment
contaminate, and human nature seek the lower level.
So here is the picture:
This so-called Queen, coming into Chinatown--by what route only she can
tell--and creating a mild sensation among the Orientals who inhabit the
houses on those narrow, twisting streets. The story was that a dose of
knockout drops had proved the turning point in her life.
John Chinaman, you know, has a keen eye for the beautiful, not only in
decorative art and choice silks, but in women.
There is his one weak point, the defective link in the chain, the one
vulnerable spot in the armor of his stony reserve.
The lobbygows--the errand men of the Chinese--the whites, who execute
commissions for them, and do all sorts of services, both legitimate
and illegitimate, who will work in the dark as well as in the light,
and whose heels can be hurried by extra compensation, saw and noted
this Queen also, and in seeing, they, too, admired, but more or less
hopelessly. The one spot which is quick in a woman’s composition is
adulation. Let her be like ice, as cold and pure and reserved as her
likeness carved out of the whitest Parian marble, or the hardest of
flint-like granite, and admiration will make her as soft and supple as
a Cleopatra.
She comes into her own and knows it.
She smiles and looks about for a likely head upon which to drop the
wreath of her favors, and if she hesitates it is because the right head
has not been bowed, or that her whim bids her hold off that she may
only succumb after a struggle.
I am not putting up any defense for this Chinatown Queen. She was
simply a woman with moods and humors, and pretty ways. Furthermore,
which is essential in most cases, she was good to look at.
So many were the affairs that she had that there is no Solomon wise
enough to tell how or when the first one began. All that is known is
that she dressed in silks that were costly enough for a real queen, and
which smelled of the spices and perfume of the Orient.
When I say costly, I mean from a money standard. They were more costly
than that, so far as she was concerned personally, for in the end they
cost her her life, and if she is not dead yet they certainly cost her
happiness, which really amounts to the same thing.
For a while she lived furiously, with anything she wanted for the
asking. Fine clothes, fine jewels, and money to spend is part of every
woman’s life.
More than that, it is a keystone.
Besides, she was the most prominent woman in all the Quarter. For her
that was fame and glory enough.
Had she been placed, by a fortunate move, somewhere else on the
chess-board of life, her fame might have been more secure, but what
difference does that make, so long as she was satisfied?
It wasn’t long before her real life began, when her steps, instead of
being on the level or upward, traced their gradual way downward.
That was inevitable in that case, just as it is in other cases where
constancy is an unknown virtue.
She passed from hand to hand like the chattel that she was. She didn’t
even consider the proposition of the highest bidder, and start a hoard
in some secret place which would have been a life raft to her in the
turbulent days to come.
She lived on promises, and those are false things which fall to bits
before adverse winds and threatening weather. Her spirits rose and fell
in an inverse ratio to the rising and setting of the sun, and she took
no heed of the days to come. The seed of thrift failed to find lodgment
in her being.
And another thing, she never knew the real meaning of the word
opportunity.
In her early and halcyon days before the opium and the night life had
stamped its mark upon her face, there came, with a party of sight-seers
to Chinatown one night, a man about town whose name stood for
respectability, good family and wealth. She, as Queen, could not well
be overlooked, and the guide took the party to her apartments on the
first floor of a dingy tenement.
“What’s up here?” asked one of the party.
“Here is where de Queen of Chinatown lives,” responded the guide. “Dis
is de gal wots got all de gang on de run, and as fer de Chinkys--why,
dere ain’t one uv dem wot wouldn’t croak a guy fer her.”
They filed into the room and looked at the girl as they looked at the
rest of the odd sights.
Let anybody rise above the human herd, even a short distance, or do
anything that is in the slightest way unusual, and they are bound to
find themselves in the center of the spot light.
“Youse kin buy a drink off her, if yer like, or if yer’ll cough up er
bone apiece, she’ll show yer how to hit der pipe,” announced the guide.
They thought it was worth a dollar each to see a Queen smoking opium,
and all cheerfully handed her the fee, with the exception of this one
particular man, who pressed five times the amount into her hand.
Curious things happen in this world of ours, and here is one of them:
Two hours later, the same man, who had slipped away from his party,
hunted up the same guide, and giving him a good-sized fee requested the
honor of another visit to the Queen.
The moral tone of Chinatown is not so high that when the guide was
dismissed he should feel at all offended. He was perfectly satisfied,
and he said so a few minutes later as he was relating this story to
some of his friends in the saloon on the corner.
From this point the Queen herself takes up the tale. She told it to
her bosom friend, the Rummager, a week later, and the Rummager’s eyes
bulged and her mouth opened as she heard it. More than once she was
inclined to disbelieve it, and said so, but the facts were there and
proven by the presence of certain articles which could be accounted for
in no other way.
“He was one of the real ones,” remarked the Queen, “and I knew it as
soon as I saw him. I have seen fellows stuck good and strong, but he
was the limit. He was clean gone. When he came back the second time
he began as all the others do, by asking me how I came to live in
Chinatown. I told him to cut it out, and cut it quick, and he took my
tip. He didn’t lose a minute telling me he liked me, either, and, say,
he promised me everything you could think of, up and down, if I would
cut the gang and go with him. He said I could have the swellest flat
that money could buy, and a horse and carriage, if I liked. I thought
he was kidding at first, but he soon put me wise that he was the
goods. He chinned to me for about an hour, and then he told me to put
on my glad rags and he would take me uptown to a feed. I was on in a
minute, and nothing but a cab would do for him. We went up on Broadway,
and the layout cost him $25, easy.
“We come down the line and butted into every joint that had a light
out, and every place we hit was a bottle of wine. And every drink we
took it was, ‘Well, will you leave that crowd?’
“On the level, once or twice he had me going, but when I thought of all
the boys down here, and the good times we’re having I couldn’t do it,
and I told him so. When I left him he was ossified for fair, and he
gave me these things to remember him by, he said.”
Whereupon the Queen showed up a roll of bills, a scarf pin, a match
box, and the Rummager believed.
She couldn’t afford to do otherwise very well, for the Queen was, as
usual, doing all the buying of drinks, and the Rummager’s thirst has
been compared to a barrel of sponges.
It was only the other day that I found myself wondering what had become
of that pin and box. Where have they been since then and who has owned
them? That they have fallen into many hands there can be no doubt, and
the first to get them was the pawnbroker.
But after that!
From silks the Queen went to calico. That is a great chasm for any
woman to cross, and from three rooms she came down to one. Notice how
easily the human being can adjust itself to changes.
The nights of dissipation had begun to leave their mark, and her throne
was tottering.
The plumpness of her figure began to disappear, and angles crept in to
take the place of curves. Her eyes were less bright, and her enthusiasm
had lost its edge.
But she didn’t realize this.
She thought she was still Queen and she was living on her past, just as
many other real queens have, and for that she is to be forgiven, for it
is a woman’s right to think herself the same as she was when she was at
her best.
It is the life buoy to which she always clings, and when she dies her
arms are found clasped about it with the grip of death.
And then the day came when this Queen, a wisp and shred of a woman,
whose dreams had gone, and whose calico had turned to rags, went down
the street of the Quarter one night never to return.
She had married a man of her class, and they went into a tenement
together.
Her sun had set--her day was done.
One day the priest was sent for to shrive her. I hope there was
consolation in his visit, because a dethroned queen needs pity
sometimes.
[Illustration]
A GIRL OF THE GOLDEN GATE
When you go to the theatre, sit in a comfortable seat, and look at the
gay, laughing girls who are doing all sorts of stunts in the front row,
you are evidently under the impression that their lives are simply one
unending series of revels and that they live in luxurious ease. In
your fancy you see them going to magnificent apartments to enjoy late
dinners washed down by high-priced wine; you think, perhaps, that they
dress just as you see them on the stage, and that all they have to do
is ask for anything they happen to want and it is theirs.
Your imagination paints you a wonderful picture of love behind the
scenes, but like children’s fairy tales, half is a dream.
You are simply bringing into existence a mental painting in very
attractive colors, and if you could make it real it would be a very
fine thing for the girl who makes up that she may look well from behind
the footlights.
There are few short cuts to the stage and the roads are for the most
part hard and tiresome. The woman who gets there, and by that I mean
the one who finally lands with a reputation, usually has a past that
would make interesting reading--if it could be published, which is out
of the question.
To-day there is a woman in New York who is a star.
So far as real talent is concerned she ought to have been a star years
ago, but there was some hitch and she failed to connect.
She’s all right now, however, and when she pulls down her fat bundle
of bills every week she doesn’t think of the old days on the Pacific
Coast when she was doing one turn an hour in the mining camps, and
well content if she got enough at the end of the show to pay for her
room and give her a balance on the side to keep up her wardrobe--stage
wardrobe, I mean--for she didn’t seem to care much how she dressed when
on the street, and so far as that was concerned, she was on the street
very little, for reasons that are obvious.
She was a nice looking little girl in those days, full of ginger and
all that sort of thing, and she had the kind of magnetism that made
a good many men think they couldn’t live without her. She was bright
and saucy, and happy-go-lucky, taking things as they came, singing her
songs with an abandon and grace that went a long way toward filling up
the house.
But it was when she danced that she was at her best. That half-wild
Spanish Cachuca made those rough men rise to their feet and cheer her
as if she was the most wonderful girl in the world, and when the boys
were flush many a hundred dollars in gold went over the flickering
footlights to her feet, so that she really and truly danced on gold. It
was the Westerners’ way of paying homage to anyone they liked, and it
is done to-day, but not to so great an extent.
You see, there was no limit on those fellows in the blue shirts and
bearded faces, and what was a handful of gold more or less to them
then or at any other time?
They were an open-handed lot, living only for the day, and to the devil
with to-morrow, lavishing all they had upon anyone whom they liked.
As the money rolled in to her so it rolled out, easily and without
apparent effort, and at the end of a year she had just what she started
with--a couple of dresses, the most part of which was tinsel.
And that brings me right back into the heart of this story, the
preliminary having been sufficiently long to give you a thorough
introduction to this little lady--queen of the mining camps.
It isn’t likely you ever heard of a fellow who for some romantic reason
or other called himself Palo Alto Bill. He was a tin horn gambler, good
at short cards, willing to take a chance at any proposition that ever
came over the hills, so long as he could figure in it financially, but
he had no heart. It was all Bill from first to last, and he didn’t have
enough generosity in his entire system to drop a bone to a hungry dog.
You know the breed--they think they are all right, but they are so
eaten up with selfishness, and egotism, and vanity, that they stride
along with their elbows pushed out, as if they were going to shove
everybody else off the earth.
He was handsome all right, with black hair--black as an Indian’s--a
curling mustache, and a wonderfully taking way with a woman.
This was the combination that stacked itself up against the little
singer with the suggestion that they travel in double harness for
mutual benefit.
That was all there was to it.
[Illustration: A wonderful but untrue picture of love behind the
scenes]
He saw her, he liked her; why shouldn’t he have her? And if she had
been married it would have been the same to him. He would in all
probability have suggested an elopement on a pair of fast horses.
“How long have you been in the business, Sis?” was the way he started
it.
He was smoking a cigarette at the time and he didn’t even take the
trouble to look at her, but holding his head back, blew the rings of
smoke, one after the other, toward the low ceiling.
“Oh, about a year, and I’ve been making good ever since I started.”
“That’s what you have. I suppose you’ve got a big bunch of coin by this
time, eh?”
“If I have I wish someone would find it for me. There may be a lot of
fun in the game, but there’s no money, that is, not yet.”
“Well, let me give you just one straight tip. What you want is a
manager--someone to boom you. Suppose you and I double up, and then
I’ll show you how to get the money, and hold it, too. Nothing cheap
about me. You’re a good fellow and I’m a good fellow, and we can do
well together. I’ll put you where you belong, for you ain’t getting
half of what’s coming to you. How about it?”
Just remember that this was in the West, where a girl has a mighty
hard time of it without a protector of some sort, and that there were
a hundred tie-ups by mutual consent for one real swell matrimonial
clinch, with a sky-pilot to sing his little song of “I now pronounce
you man and wife.” Also bear in mind that she had known Bill about
six months and that his style rather appealed to her, because he was
artistic in a crude sort of a way, and besides, he wore his clothes
with a certain amount of grace that was good for the female eye to look
on.
So they tied up together and Bill began his life of ease and
prosperity. The next week was announced as her grand farewell
appearance, and she was the recipient every night of a testimonial of
so substantial a character that, as she herself put it, her salary
seemed like pennies for candy. In these many testimonials might have
been recognized the fine Italian touch of Bill, who had a Hermann-like
knack of waving his hands in the empty air and producing real money.
And while she was busy picking up the nuggets and gold bucks which
the enthusiastic miners flung at her, he was attending to his end of
the contract by arranging a tour. He had a few schemes under his hat
that would have brought him in all kinds of money if he had had a fair
swing, but he was born with the soul of a grafter, and that is very
much like a taint in the blood, in that it can never be effaced. It may
disappear for a while, but it is always liable to turn up at the most
unexpected time.
When the week was done the company started--the company in this case
being a couple of miners, who were in hard luck and who went ahead of
the show; Bill and the girl.
I saw her the other night in a famous eating place on Broadway putting
away a chop and a small bottle, and I wondered then if she remembered
San Bernardino that June morning when everything she had in the world
was held in one small bag which Bill carried.
The plan of procedure was simple. She was to get a date in a town, Bill
was to go around and boom her as the best that ever hit the Coast,
and tell of the hit she made in ’Frisco. Then when she came on the
stage to do her dance the two hobos were to start the cheering. Toward
the finish of the act one of them was to walk down the aisle to the
footlights and toss up a handful of gold coins, and then the other was
to follow suit. That would start the crowd giving up; for after all,
people are like sheep, they will always follow a leader.
It was a good stunt, and there wasn’t any chance for a failure.
It worked out just as Bill figured it would, and it kept him busy
enough looking after the money end of the game.
It was the turn in the tide for her so far as her fortunes and
popularity were concerned, and she simply created a furore wherever she
appeared. In those days she wore a twenty-dollar gold piece around her
neck. It was held by a string which ran through a hole she had bored
herself with a great deal of labor. It was the first piece of money she
had ever received over the footlights and she said it was her mascot,
and declared she would always keep it. It might have been her mascot,
but I’ll bet a hundred to one that she hasn’t it now.
Put a good looking girl on the stage, have her make a hit so that she
is talked about, and she’ll attract more men than a leg show in Paris.
There’s an irresistible fascination about the stage that makes even
bald-headed old papas fall. It’s a hard thing to figure out, but it’s a
fact, nevertheless.
In this particular case they flocked around her like sheep for a
shelter when a storm is in the air, and the girl took to wearing good
clothes, ordered from ’Frisco, and using to their full capacity the
services of a maid.
And then there came upon the scene the other man. He had hit the Coast
from Colorado, and his mine was turning out the yellow stuff so fast
that he had more than he could do to spend it. He was busily engaged
in the exciting pastime of buying everything he saw when he met the
girl that Bill was leading along the golden road to wealth. There was
nothing half-way about his methods, so he promptly went out and bought
the biggest diamond he could find, put it in an envelope upon which he
wrote in lead pencil:
“The best stone for the nicest girl; come and have a bottle of wine
with me after the show.”
He didn’t need to sign his name to it, for the stage hand who received
a ten-dollar gold piece as a tip for taking it to her pointed him out
as he sat at one of the tables well up toward the stage.
“He seemed to be kind of stuck on you,” he remarked casually; “will I
tell him you’ll see him?”
She put the ring on her finger and looked at it critically, holding
it first this way and that so that the light would catch it. The
inspection evidently pleased her, for she said:
“Sure; he’s entitled to it after this.”
That is how it came about that, still in her stage dress, she went
directly from the stage to the table where Croesus sat and smiled on
him, while the diamond flashed like a calcium.
One bottle broke the ice, two put them on a friendly footing, and three
made them lifelong friends. They were on the fourth and their heads
were close together. He was talking in a low tone, while she was
listening intently and nodding her head in affirmation every moment or
so when Bill happened along.
He didn’t like the looks of this and he showed it plainly. He touched
her on the shoulder with an air of proprietorship and remarked curtly:
“Come on.”
“Who’s your friend?” asked the wine opener; “introduce me.”
“I’m the real one,” said Bill.
“Husband?” asked the other, laconically.
“Not yet,” she answered.
“Oh,” and his eyebrows were lifted a trifle. Then he turned to Bill.
“Sit down and have a drink; I want to talk to you.”
Then the fifth bottle was brought on.
He held his brimming glass aloft.
“Wish me luck, old man, for I’m going to take this little girl away
from you,” and his blue eyes looked into Bill’s black ones with a
steady and disconcerting gaze.
“I guess we’ve got something to say about that,” said Bill, putting his
glass down suddenly.
“Not much. You see, I’m going to give you a thousand dollars and that
will be your meal ticket until you find a new prima donna.”
“You made a mistake,” said Bill, “you meant $5,000.”
“I agree with you; I did make a mistake; it’s $2,500, and you’d better
grab it quick, because it’s easy money and it’s the limit, too.”
The girl was playing with the ring, turning it around her finger
aimlessly, never once looking and saying no word. Bill drained his
glass, put it down, and then looked at the stage.
“Do I get it now?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes, now.”
He held out his hand, palm upward, with a suggestive movement, and
in just fifteen seconds it held an order on the Assay Office for the
amount. It was as easy as going into a store and buying a blue flannel
shirt. Thirty days later--a record for speed, by the way--the girl
opened in San Francisco as the star in a farce comedy on which ten
thousand dollars had been spent before the curtain went up. She had
talent, but not enough to make good, and after a week’s losing run the
play was shelved. She gained a lot of experience and had a suite of
rooms at the best hotel in town, which was something for a girl who had
previously been housed in an eight by ten. That was what gave her a
running jump into the profession, so to speak. She landed on both feet
now, but none of her friends would dare bring up the subject of the
glorious West to her.
That were best forgotten.
[Illustration]
WHEN FISTS WERE TRUMPS
There was no reason why they should have called the play “The Casino
Girls” except that it might have sounded attractive to the out-of-town
people, and the word Casino, in the mind of the average manager, is
always good for the money. But it was a good show, nevertheless, with
lots of nice girls in tights and spangles, and you could spend two
hours there about as well as you could anywhere.
But this isn’t to be a story about a show in general, nor is it written
with the object of handing a bouquet to the estimable gentleman who had
the “Casino Girls” under his wing. He had troubles of his own, but he
was paid for that. If some one would sit down beside me for an hour or
so--that is, some one who knew--and tell me nice little stories about
all of the girls--or shall I say ladies?--with that show, I am quite
sure I would have enough material to last me for a good many weeks to
come, and it wouldn’t be scandal, either. I should leave that for the
religious papers and a few of the sanctimonious dailies.
But it happens that just now I have only one good card up my sleeve, so
I’ll play that for all it is worth, and then wait for something else to
leak out and find its way to the mahogany desk where I do stunts like
this one.
You will have noticed if you have seen the show, one of the young
women who is a bit more athletic than the others. She has a fist that
can hand out a scientific punch and an arm to back it up. She wears
tights with the rest of the crowd and doesn’t attract special attention
until the olio is put on, and then she shines forth as a specialist.
She punches the bag in a manner that is truly marvelous, and what she
doesn’t do to that pear-shaped leather pendant couldn’t be done by
anybody--man or woman.
The medals dancing on her chest as she uppercuts and swings would
signify that she is an artiste of more than usual merit, and the
self-assurance and confidence she displays during the brief time she
is on show that she is quite sure of herself and that she knows the
business from the make-up box to the bow at the finish.
Furthermore, in addition to her other accomplishments, she has been
known to kick the crown of a hat held six feet from the floor, which,
by the way, is no mean trick.
Now a few turns of the leaves of the calendar backward, a wiping out
of recent years, and you are at the beginning of the story. Not in New
York, but in Ohio--the finish is in the big city, as all good finishes
are.
A good-looking, rugged girl was there; a normal girl whose only
heritage was health, strength and ambition, which, by the way, in many
cases, is better than money. She took in all the shows that came to
town, and had about as good a time as any other girl could have under
the circumstances. She didn’t get stage struck. She had no ambition to
sing or dance before the public, nor did she give a rap about Romeo and
Juliet. Nothing like that for her.
You see her time hadn’t come and she had not yet struck her gait.
The first intimation she had that she was stung with the theatrical bee
when she saw a bag-punching act in which the man made many misses, but
faked it through so that it looked like the real thing.
That was what she had been waiting for all that time and she never knew
it. The next day she bought a bag, had a platform rigged up and started
in to practice. She worked in a woodshed, I think it was, with no one
to teach her, and she hammered and punched until she was about ready to
drop from exhaustion, but she never gave up. She would travel anywhere
to see a bag-punching act and get a few tips, and although there were
not many in the business at that time, especially out in Ohio, the few
she did land told her all they knew and that wasn’t half enough.
She had reached that stage when she was fairly good, but didn’t know
it, when there blew into the town a 120-pound boxer of about the fourth
class who could pound the leather just enough to get a salary that
would pay his board and buy a few drinks, but the fact that he was
a bag puncher was enough for her, so she made his acquaintance and
hustled him around to her improvised gymnasium to show her what he
knew. To her surprise there was nothing in his routine that she wasn’t
familiar with, and when she went at the bag herself she did a few
stunts that made him open his eyes in amazement.
“Who put you next to that?” he asked.
“No one; I learned it myself.”
[Illustration: She has been known to kick the crown of a hat held six
feet from the floor]
“Ever do an act?” was the next question he shot at her.
He had a quick mind--anybody has who knocks around on the road for a
few seasons--and he was already beginning to figure.
“No, but some day when I get good I am going to ask some kind manager
to give me a chance.”
“You don’t have to wait any longer, Sis; you can come with the show
right away and we’ll do an act together.”
Here was a meal ticket that would be good for many a hard winter when
the other fellows were eating snowballs, and, if he could help it, it
wasn’t going to get away from him.
And that is the beginning of the story.
It didn’t get away from him, for he married her as soon as he could
find the money to pay a minister, and that didn’t take very long.
He fixed up an act which might have been better, but which was good
enough to get work with reasonable regularity. There was only one thing
to it and that was her bag punching, and if it hadn’t been for his
hustling around and getting dates he would have been a rank case of
excess baggage. In the meantime, he was teaching her how to box, and
when the act grew stale they had a boxing finish that never failed to
go big with the crowd.
All this time she was learning. She hunted up every bag puncher of note
in the country and gathered in the tips, and when she wasn’t busy with
anything else she was framing up something new for herself. All this
tended to give her a muscular development that was worth having and
that many an athlete would have been proud of.
Her reputation was on the increase and she began to be known. The first
step had been made, and it became a comparatively easy thing to get
booking in Europe. The skate she was tied to began to swell up a bit,
and during the seven days they were on the ship bound for Liverpool he
got it into his head that he was the real one and that she was a side
issue.
“Don’t ever forget,” he said to her when they reached London, “that I
am the real fellow. I dug you out of a woodshed and put you where you
are now and if you try to get gay with me, I’ll send you back there,
and I’ll get another one just as good as you are.”
He thought he was the real candy boy, and he started in to cut a wide
swath. He chased every petticoat that came along, blew in their joint
salary at the cafes, and the only time she saw him was when they were
doing their act.
In Berlin she happened to walk in the cafe connected with the music
hall at which they were working, and she saw him sitting at one of the
tables trying to fill a 160-pound blonde with Rhine wine.
“Don’t you think it is about time to cut this out?” she asked.
“Didn’t I tell you to keep away from me and not butt in where you’re
not wanted?” he said.
“Yes; but I think I have something to say. I’m not a wooden image, am
I?”
“Who is this woman?” asked the blonde, languidly.
“I’m his wife, if you want to know,” was the retort, “and anyone would
think you had no home by the way you hang around here.”
“Tell her to go away; she annoys me.”
That was enough for the girl. With one swift jerk the blonde was pulled
to her feet, then a vicious right hook found its way to her jaw, and as
she dropped to the floor the “meal ticket” walked away.
It was the first blow she had ever struck except in a friendly contest
with the gloves, and it stirred her blood as nothing else had ever done.
It did another thing--it set her to thinking, and from that time on she
began a course of good, hard training.
Something definite and tangible had become established in her mind
and she was after it like a hound after a rabbit. She paid as little
attention to him as if he had never existed, and he carried on his love
affairs--very numerous ones they were, too--with a free hand. He became
a hot proposition, and he blew like a drunken sailor on every girl
who caught his fancy. She lived like an automaton, doing everything
mechanically except the conditioning work she was engaged in. At every
show they boxed together, and once in a while, when she would get a
chance, she would whip in a hard one in order to lay bare his weak
spots. One night she hit him in the stomach. It was a short, sharp,
snappy punch, and she felt the shock of it up to her elbow.
He turned white under his grease paint and then wobbled back a couple
of paces.
When they came together again he whispered savagely:
“Cut those out or I’ll hand you one the next time.”
“It was a slip,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” he answered, surlily.
From Berlin they went to the Casino, in Paris, and if the trick that
was pulled off there had never happened I wouldn’t be writing this
story.
Paris to him was like a bone to a hungry dog and he was a hot sport
from the night they hit the town, while she was a joke because she
wouldn’t mix with the bunch and play the game of love on her own hook.
But all the time she was getting ready for the stunt that was to give
her revenge and freedom together.
At last it came.
When he stumbled into the dressing room one night he had the beginnings
of a good-sized jag. He had been putting away his share of absinthe and
he began to abuse her.
“You’re a dead one,” he said, “and I don’t know what I ever saw in you.
Here I’ve put you on your feet and give you the chance of your life to
make good, but you don’t connect. Get in with the crowd and be a live
one before it’s too late, for you’re getting to be a shine.”
“What do you expect me to do when you are mixed up with a bunch of
cheap soubrettes, and drunk half the time?”
“Why, do the same as I do, of course. There’s that guy that came in
last night and wanted to meet you. He’s got all kinds of coin, and----”
“Shut up,” she cried, “what do you think I am?”
“Not much.”
She began working at her gloves viciously, pushing the padding away
from the knuckles so as to leave the fist with as little covering as
possible. You know the trick if you’ve ever seen boxers just before
a contest. It isn’t considered the right thing to do, but when done
properly makes a punch well landed about twice as effective. When she
was through there wasn’t much hair in the centre of her gloves, and
then they were ready to go on. They sang their opening song, juggled
the Indian clubs, after which she went at the bag. That concluded, they
were to go three rounds to a quick finish.
They were ready.
He went forward to the footlights to make the usual announcement.
“My partner and myself will now box three exhibition rounds,” etc., etc.
“Time.”
When a man has been sparring exhibition rounds very long he is apt
to grow a trifle careless, and to take chances that he wouldn’t take
under ordinary circumstances. It was so in this case, and at the first
rush he got a stiff, straight left in the mouth that brought the blood
oozing from between his lips.
“What the hell,” he began in amazement, but he didn’t finish, for she
was on him in an instant and a short right went home to his ribs. He
caught a look in her eyes that suddenly sobered him, and he began to
stall and cover up. He retreated a few steps, and she said tauntingly:
“What’s the matter, are you afraid of me, you cur?”
He wavered for a moment and then she went after him again.
He swung his right with all his might and caught her on the ear.
Somewhere from out of the audience there came a sibilant hiss which
was taken up by a hundred at once. She needed that punch just about
that time, and it spurred her on, even though it hurt for a moment. She
bored in, and throwing down her guard drove a right and left to his
stomach--his weak spot. There was the place, but she had forgotten it
in the excitement.
He dropped heavily and awkwardly on his back, rolled over slowly and
pulled himself to his feet. He came up with a realizing sense that
he must protect himself against this woman who was taking an unfair
advantage of him, and in his ears rang the shouts and applause of a
delighted audience. He knew they were not for him, but he would fight,
anyhow, and show them what he could do. They were to see that an
American boxer was no slouch. He saw her standing there waiting, with a
grim smile on her compressed lips and he made up his mind that he would
knock that smile off. He straightened up and went at her like a bull.
She didn’t back off as he thought she would, and when he pulled back
his right he got a jolt on the jaw that turned him half way around. He
went in again and she hit him in the stomach. When his head dropped his
nose met an uppercut that made the blood spurt in a stream. The sight
seemed to madden her and she went at him fiercely and vindictively.
There was revenge behind every blow and she felt that she was evening
up the insults and humiliation of a year. He was groggy and almost
helpless and there was pandemonium in the audience. Some of the women
had gone out, but those who had stayed had risen in their seats and
were cheering on this American girl who was fighting like a man. She
heard nothing and saw only the man she loathed and hated. She noted his
puffed and bleeding face and knew she had him.
“Put up your hands,” she said sharply.
He obeyed mechanically and she walked over to him. He tried to cover
up, but she feinted him into an opening, and then drove a straight
right to his jaw and he flopped over in the wings crying:
“I quit, I quit; I didn’t think you’d do this.”
She didn’t even look at him as she went past to her dressing room.
Ten minutes later he came in with a trace of his former bluster.
“What are you trying to do, anyhow?” he began, but she shut him up.
“I’ll lick you again right here if you don’t keep your mouth closed.
From now on until the end of this engagement _I’m_ running this act,
and I’m going to collect the money for it, too, and any time I catch
you doing anything I don’t like _I’m_ going to beat your head off. Any
time you think I can’t do it start something. In just two weeks more
you can pack your clothes and shift for yourself, for I’m done.”
That’s all.
She has been shifting for herself ever since, and is doing pretty well,
thank you.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Rackets where pretty girls cut capers to the music of
male voices]
KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND
Just another restaurant scene with waiters and guests and steaming
dishes and wine.
It’s the same old thing, repeated many times a day, but it’s like a
stage on which a thousand plays have appeared. The setting is always
the same--it’s only the scene that changes.
I just want to call your attention to that red-cheeked boy at the table
over by the window. I said boy, although from the standpoint of years
he is really a man. But he lacks experience to bring him to a man’s
real estate. Years, you know, don’t always count in this world, that
is, not in all things. In this woman is excepted, because years count
for everything with her.
This particular boy has just had his first experience, and that is
the excuse for this story--if an excuse is needed. He has laid the
foundation stone upon which he is going to build his life, and in the
building he will use many stones of many colors, sizes and shapes.
You see him sitting there disconsolate, miserable and wretched. His
home, as luxurious a one as anybody would want, is not more than a
dozen blocks away, and he will wind up there in the course of the next
forty-eight hours, for he is practically broke.
I call him The Boy With The Ten Thousand Dollar Bill.
Just a few years ago his father died. A few weeks later the family
lawyer was in the drawing room reading the will of the deceased, and
near the end of the document he came to a clause which stipulated:
“On his twenty-first birthday my son shall receive from the balance
of moneys unexpended a bill of the denomination of $10,000 to do with
as he shall see fit, and he shall not be asked to account for the
expenditure of it to anyone in any way whatsoever.”
That was a curious item for even a curious will, but the estate was big
and the founder of that fortune felt evidently that he could afford to
experiment with a mere ten thousand, even after his death, that the
lesson might be of benefit to the heir.
The object is obvious.
The boy became of age, and on that day he received the bank note which
to him seemed like a fortune, so he felt that he owned the world.
A man can do a lot of good in New York with that amount of money, and a
boy can do a lot of harm.
This boy knew in advance the good fortune that was coming to him, and
in looking around he made up his mind that the first thing a man of his
means should buy would be an automobile costing $4,000, so the day he
got the money he bought the car, and he received in exchange a bundle
of crisp five hundred bills.
He must have thought those bills represented the wealth of Croesus,
or that they were magic, and no matter how many he might use, some
mysterious agency would replace them.
At 11.30 o’clock that night the new automobile was backed up against
the stage door of a Broadway playhouse, and half an hour later it was
filled with as many girls as could possibly be crowded in.
In that startling way the boy with the big bill made his debut into the
society of the line. He gave the girls a dinner that they are talking
of yet, and before two hours had gone by they were calling him pet
names and incidentally trying to get a line on the actual size of his
bank roll. They worked individually, and each one could in fancy see
herself installed in a fine house, mistress of unlimited means and the
wife of an especially easy mark, made to order for a chorus girl.
You see he was so liberal that he deceived them, although, as a matter
of fact, young ladies with their wide experience ought to have known
better, and have figured out the limit of his possibilities.
These ten thousand dollars were left by the dead man to be a bait for
the wolves, and he had arranged it so that the hand of his son should
feed it to them bit by bit. There were other thousands behind these
and they were to be protected by the knowledge of the fate of the ones
which had gone before. It was willed that ten thousand dollars of
experience might be bought with it, and the boy was doing his share of
it very well. He left his home and took a nice little apartment so that
he could have more liberty, which he needed just about that time. He
lunched with a soubrette and dined with a singer. If he liked a show
or fancied one of the girls in it, he engaged a box every night for
the week. The crowd dubbed him The Little Millionaire, and he deserved
the title, for he was certainly playing the star part, and he was
always present at what are known as rackets where the chief source of
amusement were girls who cut capers and danced to the music of male
voices.
His automobile, which always carried a bunch of freight from which
ribbons and feathers fluttered, denoting the sex of the wearers, of
course, shot up and down and in and out in a most spectacular manner,
and it, as much as anything else, helped to make him popular.
He must have known a bit about finance, for it looked to those who were
watching his career as if he was spending about ten thousand a week,
and so he got the reputation of doing--as sometimes happens in this
world--that which was impossible.
But through it all he never showed his hand.
He was dining one night with an especially nice little girl of the
stage to whom he had shown a lot of attention--which means in stage
parlance that he had bought her presents worth accepting.
They had come to the third bottle of wine, and to her way of thinking,
the time seemed about ripe for what she had in mind.
“A man who’s been in the business a long time was telling me the other
night that I ought to have a show of my own,” she mused, as she sipped
her wine.
She had made a careful and skilful cast and she waited.
“Why don’t you?” he asked presently.
That was quicker action than she had dared to expect.
“I ought to have done it two years ago when I had a friend that wanted
to start me out on the road. Don’t you think I’m as good as Blanche
Bates?”
“How was it you didn’t go?” he queried, ignoring her question.
“Well, you see, I didn’t like this party, and I wouldn’t accept favors
from no one I didn’t like. It don’t cost much to put a show on if you
know how, and there’s a lot of money in it if it’s a hit.”
“About how much?”
“Twelve or fifteen thousand dollars would do it up in great shape. I
think a nice little comic opera would be good. The kind Lillian Russell
has. All she makes good on is her looks and that’s not so much. I could
take a few music lessons while the play was being fixed up and it
wouldn’t be long before I could make them all sit up and look me over.”
There was a moment’s pause and then she aimed at the bull’s eye:
“What’s the matter with you backing it?”
“That’s what I was just thinking about,” was the answer. “I’ll look
into it and if it’s all right I’ll see my broker and give you a chance
to see what you can do as a star.”
He was talking like an old timer and he had her going in a minute. But
that was only one of his jokes and for two weeks he kept it up. Then he
told her of some enormous investments he had made which had tied him up
temporarily, while she had to go around explaining to her friends that
it was all off about what she had been telling them.
There was one proposition this gay young sport hadn’t figured on, for
all going out and nothing coming in makes a quick and, as a rule, a
spectacular finish. A fellow starts out like a three-time winner and
comes under the wire with nothing but a bundle of junk, without even
knowing his right name.
Two months of the three had gone by and the most remarkable part of the
whole affair was that there was any money left. But toward the latter
part of the game he had been growing wise, or he thought he was, at any
rate. He stopped the five-dollar tips and he was cutting out a night
here and there. He might have retired with honors if he hadn’t met
Blanche.
Good-looking, slick, clever Blanche, the regret of whose life was that
she hadn’t met him first and got it all in one solid chunk. He didn’t
know it, but he was made for Blanche, and what was more to the point,
she knew it. In fact, there were very few things she didn’t know.
His talk about his brokers didn’t switch her in the least. There had
been a time in her life when she might have believed it, but that time
had gone by. She had lived in a fool’s paradise just once and that was
enough for her.
He actually wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t consider it for a
moment, because she didn’t figure him out as a future proposition for
more than a couple of thousand at the most.
“You’re all right, Harry,” she said once, “but we won’t have any
marrying just now. What we will do is go shopping. I want to furnish
a flat so I can really have a home of my own and you will be just as
welcome there as if you owned it yourself, so come along and we’ll pick
the things out. You have very nice taste in such matters, I know, and
we can have a good time buying.”
Good speech that, and very nicely delivered, and he liked her well
enough to find no flaw in it. But when the time really came for the
buying there was something else she had to do, so she said:
“Don’t you bother your head about this; just give me the money; I know
what I want; I have the list all made out. I’ll buy them and fix them
up and when everything is ready I’ll have you come up and look at them
and tell me what you think. I know my taste is not as good as yours,
but I’ll do the best I can.”
Please bear in mind that he was only a boy--just twenty-one years
old--then you will understand perhaps why it was he fell for so old a
story.
At this point you’ve got it all figured out. In your opinion she took
the coin and simply faded away.
Nothing of the kind.
He saw her once every twenty-four hours at least and she reported
progress, and then one day he got a note telling him to come up and see
the new place.
She received him at the door herself and if the little flat had been a
palace she couldn’t have been more delighted. It was so very fine that
when she told him she had gone into debt just a little bit he promptly
asked how much and paid up without even so much as a murmur. It was so
easy that she ought to have given it back to him a little while just to
hold.
When he went away he had a latch key and was about as proud a fellow as
it was possible to be and walk straight.
As in a play so in a story--the finish is everything.
It must be good and it must be quick.
The earlier parts of the story or the scenes may lag, but nothing like
that will do at the end.
Blanche had been on the stage, and consequently she knew the value of
“finis.”
He was to go on a hunting trip for a week, and in her opinion the
critical moment had about arrived. She intuitively divined the end of
the string. One night at a little dinner in the flat she talked to
him about money matters, and such was the charm of her manner that
presently he was telling her all about himself, and the romance of the
ten thousand dollar bill.
“And how much have you left of all this?” she asked softly.
“Oh, I don’t know, about seven or eight hundred.”
“Well, I think you’ve been very, very foolish. You’re going away on a
week’s trip and a hundred really ought to do you. Just give the rest
to me and I will take good care of it until you come back, and then
you will have it. You want to be careful of what you have now; you are
altogether too liberal, and you do too much for people.”
That was the reason when he went away on that trip that he was a trifle
shy financially, and so far to the bad that he had to borrow to get
back in good shape.
From the Grand Central station he took a cab to the flat. It seemed as
though he couldn’t get there quick enough. He went up the stairs two at
a time. He came to the door.
There was a light, dim, but still a light, shining feebly over the
transom. He put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door and
went in. He took four steps in the private hall. Then a man’s arm went
around his neck and a voice asked:
“What are you doing here?”
He had nerve and he wasn’t the least bit flustered.
“If you’ll let go that strangle I’ll tell you,” he said. “Where’s
Blanche?”
That was the opening for the story, which he told very well under the
circumstances.
“She never owned this furniture,” spoke up the man, when the tale had
been concluded. “This flat is rented furnished. She left here about a
week ago, and I live here now.”
Now we get the curtain.
He has finished his dinner, and he’s going home. That’s the best place
anyhow. What right has a boy like that to be on Broadway with ten
thousand dollars?
[Illustration]
[Illustration: He often made an honest dollar teaching American women
how to smoke “hop”]
AN ORIENTAL NOCTURNE
It’s just one little step--in New York, anyhow--from the Caucasian to
the Oriental. As a matter of fact it’s only across the street, and that
doesn’t count for any distance at all. The Chinese have settled down on
that little part of the city which is split into wedge-shaped blocks
by Mott, Pell and Doyers streets, very much like a flock of birds
alight on some tree, and with apparently as little reason. They have
brought with them their manners, their customs, their habits and their
traditions. They have imported their own gods, and even the furniture
for the joss houses. They have introduced to American men and women the
choices of their Oriental vices, that of opium smoking, and they have
provided places where their patrons may enjoy the drug. They wash your
shirts and iron your collars; they take your money and smile at you;
they go to your Sunday schools and sing hymns in queer cracked voices
that would be worth big money to a comedian, and they profess to be
converted to your way of thinking, but they are smooth and wise.
They are never weaned from the worship of Confucius or Tao, or Buddha,
as the case may be, but don’t you see when a Chinese wants to learn
the language of the people with whom he lives, it is very nice to have
as a teacher a nice looking girl, and the English of the Bible is no
different than any other English. So, by saying he has foresworn the
gods and the faith of his fathers, he gets his education directly from
the red lips of a daughter of the white devils, and sometimes he puts
on the finishing touches by marrying her.
Can you beat it?
Much he thinks of women, for in that Empire from whence he comes a
woman is a chattel, a bit of merchandise, worth so much in money or
goods, as the case may be, and he buys her as a white man buys a horse.
She is his wife, his mistress, or his servant, and the price fluctuates
accordingly.
When Yen Gow, the slickest Oriental that ever cooked a pill, hit Mott
street for the first time, he noticed that there were very few women of
his race in the colony, and being a man who made money, no matter by
what means, he considered it was an evil that he was in duty bound to
remedy. He had a varied career, and among other things being an expert,
he had taught American women how to smoke “hop.”
Incidentally, it is pat to say here that Yen Gow represents a man and
not a dummy, and that this story is absolutely true in every detail and
is very far removed from fiction.
If you haven’t what you want, get it, is a maxim practiced by a certain
class of people in all countries in the world whose methods, both from
a moral as well as a legal standpoint, are not considered to be exactly
right. So being shy one female of his own blood and color, Yen took a
3,000 mile ride to ’Frisco to remedy the defect. No one knows just how
deep he had to dig for that slant-eyed lady, dressed in the clothes of
a boy, whom he smuggled into the top floor of a Mott street tenement
one night. But it was his investment, and he spent his money like
another man would buy ground or buildings.
He fitted the room up with couches and curtains and furniture, but
first of all he fitted a good, strong lock to the door that couldn’t be
tampered with either from the inside or outside unless one had the key.
There was only one key and he had it. When you buy property that has
feet you are not inclined to take chances.
Having attended to all of the details that he considered necessary, and
frightened the lady by telling her that the people of New York were
cannibals who liked nothing better than Mongolian flesh, he began to do
business.
He first lounged into the fan-tan joint of Hop Lee on Pell street.
“Have you ever heard of Moy Sen?” he asked.
“Moy Sen; who is she?”
“Who is she? Were you born yesterday? There are three hundred and
twenty girls in ’Frisco, and they are as little like Moy Sen as the
earth is like the sun. Why, the viceroy of the Shang-tuan province
heard of her and sent an envoy with nothing to do but look at her and
if she was what they said she was, to bring her back even if it cost
him ten thousand taels.”
“Did he get her?”
“Can a child get a rainbow? She heard he was coming, so she dressed in
the clothes of a working boy and ran away to New York.” He stepped a
little closer and whispered: “She is here now.”
Then he cunningly told his story, and when he had finished he had made
it clearly understood for what purpose she was here, and added further
that being an utter stranger she had placed herself under his care.
“Now, if you care to see her I will take you.”
Nothing could be simpler--nor plainer.
In figuring up his profits--which were large--Yen Gow got into the
habit of multiplying them by two, and then mentally cursing himself
because he had not bought two slaves instead of one. With no conscience
and no morals, he was a thing of stone whose only thought was the easy
acquirement of money. If, by cutting off a finger or an ear from his
chattel he could have increased her value, he would have done it with
as little compunction as lopping off a chicken’s head.
When the money didn’t come in fast enough he took to beating her, and
it wasn’t long before the slim, brown body of the girl began to take
on bluish spots where the knots in the rope had struck and left their
imprint. She had never known there was such a thing in the world as
love, but she began to hate with a fierceness and vindictiveness that
any woman is capable of when she has been wronged, no matter of what
race or nationality she may be.
Revenge follows closely on the heels of a woman’s hate, and it is
always deadly. One woman can hate another woman and still smile on her
as if she was the dearest and best friend in the world, while she is
waiting to let go her poisoned shaft. But she has no smiles for the
man she hates any more than a cat will purr when it has just had an
encounter with a dog.
Many a night when the sightseeing crowds were going through Chinatown’s
streets the girl looked at her captor, and let her tapering hand slip
inside the loose fold of her silk blouse until it caressed the jade
handle of a long, thin and keen-edged blade. If he had known how near
death he was he would have put his back against the wall and pulled
out that big American revolver he always carried in his sash. But not
knowing he went along with his head up in the clouds.
Because her heart was the heart of a woman she stopped feeling for the
knife and set her mind on other things, such as any caged animal would
under the circumstances. It was finally concentrated on the key--that
slim piece of metal which he never let out of his keeping day or night.
It gave her courage to live the life she was leading, and the thought
spurred her on, for at last she had an object.
The long, lean, gray wolf of the prairies will follow its prey for
days. Hungry and thirsty and tired it will trail like a shadow, never
once deviating from the heels of its victim. Through snow, and rain,
and sleet, and wind, surmounting all obstacles it will stay until the
end, and the end to the wolf always means the feast.
Somewhere in the veins of this Chinese girl there must have been one
drop of wolf blood, for once she set her mind upon the possession
of that key she never wavered. It was before her night and day. She
planned a thousand ways to get it, but never one was right. She watched
him with furtive eyes, but for all the good it did, she might just as
well have been looking out of the window of the dreary brick wall of
the other building.
Once when he was sleeping she crept silently to his side and felt for
the inner pocket of his blouse. Slight as was her touch he must have
felt it, for he moved uneasily and she fluttered to the floor like a
leaf from a falling tree. She tried again, but with the same result.
But out of what seems certain failure often comes success.
“I am hungry; get me something to eat quick,” he demanded when he awoke
in the morning.
She started up and set about her work while he walked over to the table
to get his water pipe. As she passed back and forth from cupboard
to stove her glance fell upon the couch where he had slept, and for
one brief moment it seemed as though she was going to fall. A sudden
weakness came into her knees and it was with a great effort that she
kept from crying out, for there in plain view was the key. In an
instant she had it, and she had taken the first and easiest step to
freedom.
He smoked, then ate, then smoked again, but this last time it wasn’t
tobacco that soothed him--it was opium, and when at last his drowsy
eyes closed she was by the door pushing the key into the socket. It
turned the lock. Then she opened the door, passed out and locked it
on the outside. She ran down the steps as if she was pursued; out on
the street, when the thought of those white devils--those eaters of
human flesh--halted her in terror. But no one spoke to her and she was
reassured. Across the way she saw the sign of a temple, and she made
for it as a shipwrecked sailor makes for land. She went up one flight
of very dark and very dirty stairs and then saw a half-opened door. She
peeped in. The room was empty, but at the back were the images of the
gods she knew in China; before them was the shrine, and back of them
was the sacred place where no one dared go.
But nothing is sacred where terror is, and before ten seconds of time
had been ticked off by the clock on the wall she was nestling at the
heels of Kwon Guet, the God of Might, the safest spot in all the
quarter.
If you will notice when you visit a Chinese joss house you will observe
that there is nothing thin nor weak about the keeper. He looks like a
man who loves the good things of life and gets them, too. His life is
one of ease and he feasts like a nabob. When a Chinese wants a favor
from a joss he first sends offerings of food. These are put in fine
dishes and placed on the altar. Then he prays, and begs that this feast
be accepted in the same spirit in which it is sent. He may believe or
he may not believe that that thing of wood eats what he has left, but
the keeper knows and waxes fat. Many a time has he smacked his lips
over a sucking pig, roasted to a turn, and chickens are on his daily
bill of fare.
Two hours after the girl had gone through the open door the keeper
awoke. He yawned and then stretched himself, leisurely. He was in no
hurry, for he knew there was a breakfast awaiting for him on the altar,
and it was such a breakfast as a man of his distinction was entitled
to. He knew to a grain of rice what had been put there the night before
just as he had known it for years.
Presently he was ready and he sauntered out of his little room with no
unseemly haste. The wick in the vessel of olive oil was burning with a
steady glow and the faces of the gods were as placid and emotionless as
the day they left the carver’s shop in Pekin.
“Ai yei.”
He rubbed his eyes and stepped back a pace in alarm.
One of the dishes was empty. It was as bare and clean as the palm of
his hand. He ran back to the room in the rear and roughly woke his
assistant.
“You have eaten before me, you swine,” he shouted.
“Eaten?” queried the other. “I have not eaten since yesterday.”
“Come and look then.” Together they both went, and when they arrived at
the altar another dish had been taken.
The keeper looked up at the stolid countenance of Kwon Guet, saw a
shred of the white meat of a chicken and a grain of rice on his lower
lip, and then dropped face downward on the floor as if he had been shot.
He grovelled in abject terror while the assistant gazed at him with
wondering eyes, until he, too, looked up, saw the same sight, and then
he went down beside his master. There they both lay until combining
their courage, they crept fearfully backward beyond the range of the
vision of those green jade eyes.
“It is a curse,” whispered the keeper, and the other nodded his head,
too frightened to speak.
That was only the beginning, for as fast as the offerings were brought
they disappeared, and nothing was left but empty dishes. For eight days
this continued, and then, on the night of that day, the keeper, grown
bold, found the desire to see a god eat growing in his heart. So when
the lights in the shops had gone out and the noises in the street had
died down to whispers, he went out into the darkened temple and sat in
a corner with his back against the wall. The flickering lamps burned
dimly and cast long shadows across the bare floor and with solitude
came fear. He looked at the heaped-up dishes hungrily and then at the
joss, but the religion of his ancestors held him fast, and what might
have been nothing more nor less than a block of wood to another man of
another race was something to him that was endowed with the power to
pardon and punish or even cause instant death.
Suddenly there came to him a noise like a sigh, long-drawn out and
deep, and as he shrunk back still further in his corner he felt the
blood in his veins run cold. A dish moved and his lower jaw dropped as
though he had been stricken with death. Something seemed to wind itself
about that bit of crockery and drag it slowly in until it disappeared,
but there was no sound. His breath came in gasps and he felt as if he
would choke. Then he saw the dish replaced with the food gone. Those
same unseen hands took another one and still another, but he didn’t
see, for he had sagged down in a lifeless heap and terror had numbed
his senses. As he went over he groaned aloud, and there was a sudden
movement back of the altar which almost caused Kwon Guet to topple over.
At three o’clock in the morning Chuck Connors, with his hands thrust
deep in his trousers pockets, was walking along Mott street, homeward
bound, when a Chinese girl came running out of the joss house door. So
great was her speed that she almost collided with him.
“Ha, there, git onto yerself,” said Chuck, putting up his hands to fend
off an imaginary blow: “wot are yer tryin’ ter do--shoot de shoots?”
“Velly much aflaid,” said the girl, looking behind her.
“Well, wot de yer t’ink uv dat,” said Chuck, “Who’s chasin’ yer,
anyhow?” and he took a step toward the doorway.
But she wouldn’t have it that way, and taking hold of his arm she
almost dragged him away from the place. Chuck knows a little Chinese
and a lot of pidgin-English, and he managed to get some kind of a story
out of the girl, and then he took her home and put her in the care of
Mrs. Chuck until the morning. The next day she was taken to a mission
house in Brooklyn, where she stayed until one night when a sporty
laundryman smuggled her away to Savannah, Ga.
The joss-house keeper buys his grub now, and he’s looking a bit thin.
Incidentally he pays more attention to the temple than ever before.
So, you see, good comes out of everything.
[Illustration]
A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION
The turn of a street corner, the going this way instead of that, the
casual introduction to a certain woman, and a thousand other things
often prove the turning point in life, sometimes for good and sometimes
for bad. To every man opportunity comes once at least. The successful
ones are those who have recognized their chance and taken prompt
advantage of it. But anyone can preach a sermon, and money doesn’t
always follow in the footsteps of education.
That will do for a starter to this story of a woman, a dinner and two
men. You will notice that the woman comes first, the dinner next, and
the men last, which is as it should be. Women should always be in the
lead, which fact will be more fully recognized when their ability and
genius become more generally understood and appreciated.
The dinner in this story changed the current of three lives so abruptly
that it almost became a tragedy, and if you like you can take this as
a moral, and beware of dinners, unless, of course, you are looking for
a change, in which event you can take this as a tip and dine with the
crowd early and often and see what happens.
[Illustration: There was disclosed the figure of a young woman rather
scantily clad]
The son of a wealthy Eastern brewer, born with a gold spoon in his
mouth, and taught to believe that the world was made for his especial
benefit, after blazing his way along the White Light thoroughfare for
a few years, and making a name for himself as a spender of rare
ability, took it suddenly into his head to reform. A good many hard
nights had brought out a crop of fine wrinkles at the corners of his
eyes, and high living had added several inches to his waist line. But
he was still good looking and ruddy cheeked, and there were a number of
charming ladies living on certain side streets who knew him well enough
to call him by his first name, and who were always glad to see him
whether he did the sucker trick of opening bad wine at $5 a throw or
not. In his mind the first step toward reformation meant marriage with
some nice respectable young woman who had been correctly brought up,
and whose family tree would bear investigation, and as his income was
somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 it wasn’t hard to find what he
wanted, for ninety-nine women out of a hundred would cheerfully fasten
themselves to a monstrosity if there was a bank book in the inside
pocket.
He picked out the girl he proposed to turn from a Miss into a Mrs.,
paid attention to her for thirty days without a break, then he proposed
and was accepted, and the date of the marriage was set for two months
later. It was a case of thirty and sixty days, with no discounts off.
It is usual in a case of this kind to give a farewell dinner to the
bunch, to have one last good drunk and then a laborious climb aboard
the water wagon until after the honeymoon. So he hunted up one of his
best friends and told him the glad news.
“Never again for me,” he said, “and all the Dotties and Lotties and
Totties can strike my name off their lists, for I’m going to marry,
old man, and settle down to business. But I’m going to have one big
blaze before I go, and I want you to get it up, for you can lay out a
dinner better than anyone I know, and besides, I’m going to have you
for my best man when I get hitched. Now go as far as you like and damn
the expense. Have a stag with all the good fellows there that we know,
and we’ll set off a few fireworks that will give them something to talk
about.”
The banquet room of a big hotel was engaged, and the French chef got
an order to lay out a spread that would make an old Roman feast look
like a Bowery beef stew. Then the enterprising best man, who was
something of a high roller himself, set his wits to work to devise a
novelty that would top anything in the banquet line ever seen in New
York after the lights were turned on. About fifty invitations went out,
and in response to them on one eventful Saturday night, half a hundred
dyed-in-the-wool sports, of the kind who buy diamond rings for little
ladies who dance well, settled themselves in very comfortable chairs,
and prepared to have the time of their lives and wish good luck to the
man who was going to become respectable. The dinner was only a side
issue, for it was to be nothing more nor less than one great drunk, and
that was understood from the start. So the wine flowed as freely as
water in the spring when the melting snows flood the brooks and swell
the rivers, and for every five men there was one waiter to see that no
one went thirsty. From ten until twelve the black-jacketed servitors
drew corks and filled glasses, and then the best man pulled himself to
his feet, propped himself between the arm of his chair and the table
and commanded order that he might be heard.
“There is a pudding coming,” he began, “and in view of the fact that
I invented it myself I would like to have you fellows sit up and take
notice.”
Then he motioned to the head waiter and sank back in his chair. Five
men, each one holding up his end of a platform about four feet square
on which was a monstrous concoction of pastry, staggered in. A vacant
place had been cleared on the table, and when it was placed in position
a yell went up from the crowd.
“I’ll take a slice off the top,” sang the bridegroom, as he waved a
glass of wine aloft.
“Cut it, Bill,” said the best man, and one of the waiters, grinning,
went at it with a huge carving knife. He slit it from top to bottom in
two places, and as the crust crumbled away half a dozen birds fluttered
out, and when the pastry cook’s creation was demolished there was
disclosed a young woman rather scantily draped and with a figure worth
missing a train for.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, smiling, and then she stepped out.
People who make a study of such things will tell you for every man
in the world there is just one woman who belongs to him. They may be
thousands of miles apart, and it may so happen that they will never
meet, but the fact remains that they were intended for each other just
the same. He may marry and she may marry, but there will be no real,
true happiness until they live their lives together. When this girl,
trim and slim but shapely, stood on the table, the man who was going to
be married looked on her and knew then that there was no other woman
in the world for him--not even the one whom he had promised to marry.
The others stood up and cheered and applauded her, while he sat there
staring almost stupidly. Her bronze hair tumbled down over her bare
shoulders and her laughing eyes took in the scene.
“And who is the one who is going to be married?” she asked smilingly.
“I want to drink with him.”
“Get on your pins, old man, and drink with the lady,” called one, and
he obediently arose and held a glass of wine toward her.
“So you are the one?” she asked, looking him over critically. “Well,
here is that the woman you marry is as good a fellow as you look to be.”
That was at midnight.
When the clock struck two every guest was still in his place, and
seated in the lap of the man at the head of the table--the host, the
man who was to marry, become straightened out, and shake the crowd--was
the girl. He had one arm around her, and they were drinking out of the
same glass. Of course it wasn’t at all proper, but you see everything
goes at a bachelor’s dinner, and in view of the fact that this was
a last wild fling, apparently, it was all right. It was nobody’s
business, anyhow, for a man may do as he likes even if he is on the
verge of his own wedding.
“You will surely call,” she was saying between sips.
“Surely,” was the answer, “if you will allow me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I will call anyhow.”
“Now you’re just the kind of a man I like,” she whispered. “But what
are you going to do after you’re married?”
“I don’t think I will marry,” he said; “at least I’ll not marry the
girl I intended. You and I are going to talk that over, because----”
“Why, I’ve only known you about two hours.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference if you’d only known me two minutes, it
would be just the same.”
“I suppose so, but you see a good many men have talked to me like that,
and promised me everything, but it’s always the same in the end. Men
say things that they mean at the time, but it doesn’t last.”
He was really in earnest, though he was drunk, and the next afternoon,
when he was sober enough to know what he was doing, he wrote a note
to his _fiancee_, telling her that he was sorry, but it was all off.
There were reasons, of course, but he couldn’t explain, and would she
kindly release him from his engagement, which had been entered into too
hastily, etc., etc. You know the old story.
In the end he got his freedom in a tear-stained letter, then he went
and threw a high-ball under his belt and squared away for the pudding
girl.
She was making about $40 a week and living at the rate of about $150,
it didn’t take a wise man to see that, and so he was on the moment he
looked over the ranch. But it cut no figure with him at all, for he was
too well satisfied to be bothered about a trifle like that, especially
at the start of the hunt, so he took things as they came and made the
best of them.
One night he was there, and they had become confidential.
“Who did it all?” he asked, as he waved his hand to take in the
elaborate furnishings of the room.
“So you have reached the curious stage?” she asked. “What do you want
to know for?”
“Because I think so well of you that I want to do all this sort of
thing myself. Who did it?”
She looked thoughtfully out of the window for a moment, and then, as if
she had suddenly made up her mind, she turned and said:
“Would it make any difference to you if you knew?”
“Not a bit.”
“Not even if it was someone whom you knew?”
“Not even then.”
When she told him the name it was that of his best friend, the one who
was going to be his best man at the wedding.
Here was a complication.
Now you can see what an apparently harmless dinner did.
It wasn’t very long ago, so it’s only a step down to the present day.
The Hungarian gypsy band in a big cafe uptown was playing its head off,
and every table was occupied. Over in one of the corners--a choice
position, by the way--at a table on which were half a dozen empty wine
bottles, sat two men and a woman. If you will look at them again you
will notice that their faces are very familiar. Yes, that’s right, it
is the pudding girl, the brewer’s son and the man who was going to be
next to the real one at the big show when two were made one and the
minister was paid double for working overtime. All three are a bit
unsteady, naturally, for the soldiers on the table tell the story,
consequently they are well primed for a scene of this kind.
The brewer’s son is talking to the other man, and the girl is playing a
listening part, and playing it well.
“You only think you love,” he says, “but all you have done is to spend
a few hundred dollars--or thousands, it makes no difference. You’d
spend it anyhow in some other way. I’ve broken off my marriage for her,
and that’s something. You’re a friend of mine and why don’t you let go?”
“That’s all right, and I agree to what you say. I haven’t the money I
once had, and I don’t think I can keep the pace up much longer, but I
don’t want to see Maud go up against it. She’s used to nice things.
Suppose the Governor turns on you and cuts you off, what are you going
to do then? You won’t have any more chance than I have. I know you’re
all right now, but Maud’s got to be taken care of, and if I can do
anything to put her on Easy Street I’ll do it.”
He reached for a half empty bottle and refilled his glass. He drank
slowly and when he had finished he went on.
“Have you got as much as $10,000?” he asked, abruptly.
“Easy that.”
“I mean ready money?”
“Yes, ready money.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You put $10,000 in the bank in Maud’s
name and I’ll quit, but you also got to promise me that you will look
after her and do everything for her that she wants. How about that,
Maudie, all right?”
As he spoke he patted her caressingly on the shoulder while the
brewer’s son, flushed to the roots of his hair with the wine he had
drank, dived into an inside pocket for his check book.
“Will you be the best man, Joe?”
“Best man for what?” the girl spoke for the first time.
“For our wedding, of course.”
“Not so you can pay any particular attention to it. You’ll have to
chloroform me to get me in front of a minister. I’m no Sunday-school
scholar, and no man can own me. I believe every woman should be
independent, and when a woman marries she not only sacrifices her
freedom, but herself. I like you both, and I’m glad to know that I’m
worth $10,000 to you,” and she nodded toward the brewer’s son. “For
that I’ll play fair with you, and if we ever agree to disagree we’ll
do it like two good fellows. Joe, don’t forget to come around and take
dinner with us once in a while, will you?”
P. S.--A story in a daily newspaper published later tells about the son
of a wealthy brewer committing suicide by shooting, in his home in a
town near New York. The cause for the rash act is not known. Strange
that it should be the man who was going to reform, but didn’t, isn’t it?
[Illustration]
THE END OF THE ROAD
They call them _demi mondaines_ and _nymphs du pave_ in Paris, and it
doesn’t sound so bad, but here a spade is called a spade with coarse
brutality and vice doesn’t receive even a very thin coating of veneer.
Take a walk any night along the streets where women congregate--you
know the kind of women I mean--and study the faces. Look for weakness,
and strength, and character. Look for good and evil. You don’t have to
be a mind reader, just a plain, ordinary, everyday sort of a man with
average intelligence.
If you look for the outward signs of degradation in the uptown
districts you’ll be disappointed; you’ll have to turn your face
and your steps Batteryward to find that. Vice has a degrading and
demoralizing influence and its victim, in following that unwritten law
of nature that governs the universe, is ever on the downward path.
In some cases it is a gentle descent, while in others it is simply a
series of steps each one lower than the other, and at the last there is
nothing but pity for the poor devils of women to whom no man lifts his
hat or bows his head, and who cease to live in merely existing.
And for eight out of every ten there are eight men somewhere whose
hands gave the push that sent them on the downhill road.
But once in a while--once in a very great while--justice comes to a
man as it did in this case, and that’s the story.
[Illustration: She had such a superb figure that she once posed for a
sculptor]
Locked up securely in the City Prison like a rat is locked in a trap,
or a dangerous beast is fastened behind iron bars, is a pretty little
black-eyed French girl.
Julie, her name is, and those who see and talk to her find in her
a great charm; a charm, that had she been placed in a different
atmosphere or had the lines of her life been cast in different places,
would have been so far-reaching as to make her a power. She had such a
charming figure that she once posed for a sculptor. Many a woman’s hand
has shaped the course of destiny in this world of ours, and the power
behind the throne usually wears petticoats.
This Julie takes her imprisonment calmly, because she is a philosopher
by force of circumstances. She knows the metal bars can resist her,
consequently she doesn’t throw herself against them and there are no
tears in her eyes because she can never cry again. She doesn’t know
what they will eventually do to her and she doesn’t care. If it is
decreed that she shall go forth free, good; then she will go. If it
is decreed that for the rest of her life she shall be doomed to wear
that narrow blue prison stripe, she will at least be fed and housed
and cared for, and on rainy, stormy days she will be under shelter and
not compelled to walk the streets with dripping skirts until the gray
morning comes over the roof tops.
You see, she has the comforting creed of a fatalist--that what is to be
will be, and that one thought is to her like a narcotic--she sleeps at
nights.
Because of that she doesn’t hear the moans and sobs of the woman in the
next cell, who has the feathery crime of petit larceny hanging over her
head instead of murder. A mere trifle which means nothing more than a
few weeks--or months at the most--in jail. A rest like the going away
from the hot city streets when July comes, as the rich people do, or to
the South when winter winds blow. A place where the thermometer always
registers about the same and the meals come regularly, which is not a
thing to be despised by anyone, much less a woman of the lower half.
If the life of this Julie were to be told year by year it would take
a book of many thousands of pages, and the pathos, comedy and tragedy
would be about evenly divided. You would have the tale of how she once
asked a man if he had change of a $50 bill. Then when he pulled out his
money she grabbed the roll, cried out: “Here comes the police,” and
dashed into a hallway in the twinkling of an eye. It was a good joke
and she spent the proceeds for a new dress, for she was of the kind who
make even jokes profitable.
That she was saved from arrest many times was due to the fact that
she stood in with the police, and she was considered to be one of the
most successful stool pigeons in the business. She was born with the
instinct of the hunter, and hunter she was. In her own inner circle,
however, she was known as The Slasher, and was feared accordingly.
It came about in this way.
She and another woman of the streets were rivals in many ways. When
they first met they took an instinctive dislike to each other. The
other one was a blonde, tall and stately--the kind you read about in
cheap novels. She was an English girl, and when it came to a knockdown
and drag-out argument she was able to deliver the goods in fine shape.
Their first quarrel was over nothing, and before it was finished
the lady with the golden tresses had taken her French sister by the
shoulders and flung her down an area bruising her badly.
The Latin blood in the black-eyed one boiled, and she cried out for
revenge, which she proceeded to work up in a truly Latin manner. She
made friends with her former enemy, said that she was in the wrong and
was sorry for what had happened, and that she wanted to be forgiven.
The blonde fell like a farmer before Hungry Joe, and they both went off
to celebrate. The celebration consisted in tucking away many cocktails
and highballs, and inside of two hours the British lady was a sodden
wreck, and so helpless that she had to be carried to her room on the
second floor rear of a house of no reputation.
Julie stayed with her long enough to pull out a razor and cut three
gashes from the bridge of her nose across one cheek. Then she slipped
out and went on her way as though nothing had ever happened to give her
a moment’s worry.
That little stunt put the blonde out of business, in that section of
the city, at least. It is said she went further downtown, where there
is less of a premium on beauty and style.
Like other women of her caste Julie found it necessary to have a
protector, and when she first appeared in the role of hunter she cast
about for one who would suit--one who would fight her battles and upon
whom she could lavish the affection that was not bought, or that still
remained unsold.
Being a good looking girl, educated up to a certain point, and with
pleasant ways--the kind of ways a man would look for in a girl if he
was selecting a wife--she had no trouble in attaching to herself a
young fellow who was a good mate for her. She let it be understood at
the start that he was to belong to her and that he was to be at her
beck and call. She wanted to revel in the joys of complete ownership.
He was willing enough, and in fact it rather suited him, because he
came into immediate possession of a wife, a home and income.
It is to be supposed there was some affection in the case, for it
wasn’t a cold business proposition. It was bad enough, even from the
best side, but she liked him in a way--you can put the word love in
here if you like--but I am of the opinion that her feeling was that of
a dog-like devotion, and his was one of knowing a good thing when he
saw it.
But she was jealous, too.
“If I see you speaking to any of the other girls,” she said to him
once, “I will leave you right away.”
That was in the early stages, and now notice how a woman’s affection
shifts.
“If you flirt with any of those girls I will kill myself,” she said six
months later.
First she would leave him and then she would kill herself.
That brings the tragedy to the last stage.
“I will kill you.”
There are no peaceful lives cast in such a groove as that.
He began to grow a bit tired of her, even though the money did come
to him regularly. You see, he had no occupation, and he had to do
something with his time, and that something wasn’t good.
Then it was that the quarrels began, a few words at first, but
gradually increasing in bitterness until one night he came in half
drunk and taking her by the throat almost strangled her. She said
afterward that she thought she was gone, because red lights danced
before her eyes.
But she was game and didn’t whimper, not even when he struck her in the
face with his clinched fist and threw her to the floor. She took her
medicine gamely, for she realized intuitively that it was her medicine,
and it was a part of the life she was leading.
The strange part of it all was that she never shed a tear.
Her neck hurt her, and when she looked in the mirror she saw the marks
of his strong fingers and in that instant she was a changed woman. The
flickering flame of her affection turned to a steady glow of hate and
from that moment she began to figure on revenge. She stood still and
white and cold, and every tick of the clock on the mantel was a stroke
of doom for him. There was nothing melodramatic about her at this stage
of the game, for her street training served to make her calm at times.
Woman-like, she at once took up with another champion and this time she
picked out a man who was peculiarly fitted by force of circumstances
to help her. He was to be not so much a companion as stepping-stone,
and in that she simply followed out the natural instinct of the average
woman who purrs and strikes indiscriminately and who makes merchandise
and capital of her favors.
“He beat me,” she told this new one in talking of the one who had been
supplanted, “and I want you to help me get even.”
The promise was made on this tainted honeymoon and for one hour every
night they went out together looking for their prey in all of the
places where he had been known to go.
For two weeks it was a fruitless search, and then the news came to her
in an indirect way that he had been seen in the old haunts.
The good pot-hunter never really hunts--he lures the game to the
decoy--and because she had been years upon the trail she at once
corrected her first mistake and sent a letter as bait--a tender missive
full of regrets and endearing terms; such a letter as only a woman
could write--a letter like a silken bandage to blind the eyes and shut
out the real view of things.
It came to his hand as she had expected it would, and when the time
arrived he hurried to the rendezvous to heal the breach and once more
place himself on friendly terms with his income.
There are enough facts in this story to carry it, but it is not an
absolutely correct recital. There are reasons why it should be changed
and so I have changed it, but not enough to destroy its identity.
On that street at night, with people hurrying to and fro, they came
face to face, but before he could speak to her, the other man stepped
out and seized him.
“Come with me, I want you,” he said roughly, and he wheeled him around
with a deft movement. There was no other word spoken and only for an
instant was there a brief struggle.
All the while the woman had been fumbling at her bosom before she drew
out a pistol.
Her time had arrived.
She levelled it at the retreating back of the held man and pulled the
trigger. A child couldn’t have missed a shot like that, and the bullet
bored into his back, throwing him forward slightly.
It had been her intention to shoot but once and make that one shot do
the work, but when she saw that he was hit the lust of blood came on
her and she pulled the trigger twice more, each bullet finding its
mark, before a policeman ran up and threw one arm around her neck
and with the free hand took hold of the still smoking weapon. It was
the old trick of the force taught to probationers before they are
considered fit to go forth and guard the public interests.
While her victim was slipping slowly downward to the pavement she
screamed, with as clear an intonation as if she wanted to be sure it
would be a matter of record:
“And now he will never beat me again.”
Half a dozen men carried the limp dead body into a store and she was
taken there, too, and such was her ferocity that she tried to kick the
corpse of her quarry.
“He beat me, he beat me,” she shouted, “and now he will never beat me
again. If I had not killed him he would have killed me.”
[Illustration: Disguised as a sailor boy she shipped on one of Uncle
Sam’s ships]
THE THROWBACK
One of the greatest schools in the world is Little Old New York, where
anyone can learn anything and anyone can do anything--or do anybody
if they should happen to have but a modicum of brains and native
shrewdness.
It is the haunt as well as the home of the crook; the respectable
trickster; the lady who works and the lady who doesn’t. The
amalgamation of many races and many creeds has tended to produce
cleverness and wit to a high degree.
One of the greatest of financiers comes from Russian peasant blood on
one side and poverty-stricken French on the other. In the blood of a
Tenderloin queen there is Irish and Spanish, and it is hard to tell
which side has contributed the most beauty. The combination of races is
the chrysalis--the female product is the moth.
In the squalid tenements of the East Side there is beauty in embryo and
the figures of Venus are barely hidden by cheap calico wrappers.
Where the Poles are settled, voluptuous women are wedded to weak,
undersized men, and the result is either very good or very bad,
according to the domination of the sex. Very beautiful flowers often
grow and bloom in loathsome places, and many a handsome woman who rides
in state along the avenue wouldn’t care to have her antecedents known
to the world.
There is such a thing as pre-natal influence, and a throwback, taking
on the good or bad characteristics of a previous generation, is an
accepted fact.
And now we will introduce the lady as she sits in the courtroom,
smiling as though she hadn’t a care or responsibility in the world.
She has the innocent face of a child and the manner of a cherub, if
you know what that is. If an artist were to paint her portrait in one
of her moments of relaxation he might be justified if he called it
“Innocence.”
“She’s a peach, all right,” remarks a court officer, and that means a
lot when it comes from such a source.
She has the blonde hair and the fair complexion of the Teuton, and the
black eyes of the Slav--a rare combination, if you’ll take my word for
it. She’s coy, and winning and demure, but with a brain so active that
nothing to her is impossible.
Two generations ago a dashing, handsome young lieutenant of the German
army fell in love with a sloe-eyed girl who had been born of Slav blood.
He was brilliant but discreditable.
His romances and intrigues were many, and his expenses were about four
times what his income warranted. One day he forged a check, and when
he skipped over the border to escape arrest he left the woman and a
baby girl in a cheap room with not enough money to keep them a week. He
forgot them as utterly as if they had never existed, so in the course
of time she who gave up honor added to that her life.
She died in the hospital of a disease that is not mentioned in
the medical books, and the youngster was shipped to a charitable
institution. At the age of nineteen this waif, orphaned, and stolid of
character, with not even good looks to recommend her, had by dint of
hard work and frugal living, saved up enough money to take a ship for
America, the land of gold, where fortunes were made by simply wishing
for them.
Half way across the sea she came to the notice of an Irish sailor, and
by some strange turn in the inexorable wheel of fate, they fell in
love with each other; he with his brogue, and she with knowledge of no
language except that of the Fatherland.
Their courtship was over a rugged road, but it came to a happy
conclusion, for before the ship sailed on her return voyage they were
married with the aid of an obliging minister assisted by a Castle
Garden interpreter, and Connell--that was the sailor’s name--was
looking for a job alongshore.
Two scantily furnished rooms was the best they ever knew, and in those
two rooms the wife who talked broken English with a Limerick accent
died, but not until she had left a blonde baby girl with the fair
complexion of that dashing lieutenant.
As she grew up, the public school gave her an education, and when she
was old enough she got work in an office. She was the belle of the
ward, and that old longshoreman father was very proud of her. But
before that she had one little adventure that is really worth a story
by itself, and it shows the kind of a girl she is. She had a little
love affair with a sailor on one of Uncle Sam’s warships, and when
he was ordered to Cuba she took it into her head to go along. It was
arranged that she was to take the name and place of a fellow who was
about to desert. She came near getting away with the trick, and as it
was she lasted for ten days before she was found. Then, after a brief
interview with the commanding officer, she was put ashore when harbor
was reached, and enough money was given her to get back to New York.
It was a clean case of throwback to the army ancestor, and the
resemblance was so great that she might have been his sister. She held
her head high, as became that one strain of good blood, good enough to
stiffen her pride, but not good enough to shape her morals, for the
taint was there in its full strength.
The elderly business man who employed her began flirting with her
mildly, and he wound up by falling desperately in love, and so hard was
he hit that at the end of six months she was installed in a handsome
apartment at which he was a constant visitor. He took the one step that
always leads to another, so that by the time twelve months had been
rolled off on the calendar he had made her home his home, much to the
detriment of his own respected domicile.
So great was the fascination of those black eyes that this sedate old
gentleman forgot he ever had a home other than the one she was in; a
wife, or even children. She became so necessary to his existence that
she became a part of his life.
She might have walked this primrose path to the end had he not died. If
he had lived there would have been no need for this story.
When he took that long, last journey her income came to an abrupt end
and she was cast on her own resources with not even her longshoreman
daddy to stand by and encourage her.
All this, you understand, is not a matter of fancy. It is, for the most
part, court and police records.
She took up with a young fellow of about her own age who had about as
little prospects as she had, and with the rent paid for three months in
advance and just enough ready money to keep them going that long, they
cast care to the winds and proceeded to enjoy themselves. One night,
when the funds were getting to a low ebb, she, while ransacking a desk
for a mislaid letter, found a half-used check-book which had belonged
to her elderly protector.
“I could sign his name better than he could himself,” she remarked,
“and I’ve done it, too.”
“Do you think we could swing one of them now?” said the man, sitting up
straight as the inspiration came to him.
“Why, that’s absurd; he’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead all right. But fill one out for $75 and I’ll see what
I can do with it.”
It was an easy trick for her, and in a moment she had handed him the
paper.
“If I lay this, little girl,” he remarked as he went out, “we’re on the
sunny side of Easy street for the rest of our lives.”
That heritage of brain stood her in good stead while he was away, and
before he had returned she evolved a scheme that was worthy of a better
cause.
It was this:
She would send him out to rob a letter box; they would open the mail
thus stolen and search it for checks. She would copy the signature,
make note of the bank, get blank checks of that institution and then
commit the forgery.
It was almost too easy and the keynote of its success lay in its
simplicity.
Of course, the laying of the spurious paper required nerve, but of
what use is a man if he hasn’t nerve? When he came back unsuccessful,
she explained her scheme, and they at once proceeded to put it in
operation. With wire, to which was fastened an adhesive mixture, he
prepared for the robbery of the mail boxes while she awaited results.
It has been told time and again how it worked and they themselves have
admitted that their income rarely fell below $100 a day when they cared
to work.
But at the end of every ready-money proposition of that kind there is a
trap. Sometimes the road is very long and the final tragedy is averted
for a considerable period, but whether long or short it is bound to
come sooner or later.
The girl had grown to be a pastmaster of the art of forging signatures
and success in getting the money had made the man bold. He began to be
less cautious and the finish came so sure and sudden that it almost
stunned him.
He was cleverly harvested by the police, who at once set out to get
more than enough evidence to convict, for they looked upon him as the
most dangerous of criminals. A spotter was sent out with instructions
to ingratiate himself with the girl and, if possible, get a line on
just the kind of work that had been done, and their second interview
was very interesting.
“You take Billy’s place for a while,” she said to him, “and we’ll get
enough money to get him out.”
“How?” asked the man.
“How? Are you stupid? Billy didn’t do anything but lay the paper. I
filled out the checks every time. Didn’t you know that? It’s all my
scheme. Billy only helped me and did as I told him. But he’s too nice
a fellow to go up the river for a thing like this.”
It seems strange that with all her astuteness she should have given her
hand away to a comparative stranger, but you must bear in mind that her
side partner and confederate had been snatched away from her and she
felt the need of some one to whom she could talk and in whom she could
confide.
There is where she made a mistake, but it happened that it wasn’t a
fatal one.
Bear in mind that she gave her hand away and told all she knew, and in
that telling there was enough to convict her half a dozen times over.
But she was game to the last ditch.
“I’m very sorry,” remarked her supposed confederate to her one evening,
“but I’ll have to arrest you. _I’m_ an officer, you know.”
“I always ought to be guided by my first impressions,” she retorted. “I
had an idea you were wrong when I first met you and if I had stuck to
that you would have known nothing.”
“That’s right; but as it is I’ll have to take you down to headquarters.”
He acted as if it was a job he didn’t relish very much, and if the
truth were told he would have let her make a getaway of it if he had
dared.
In the prison she was popular as soon as she stepped inside the gates,
and there was no one who would believe that a girl with a face like
that would be guilty of harming anyone, much less being a confirmed and
expert forger.
So the trial was called.
She treated it as a joke, and was by far the most composed person in
the room. Her partner, to his credit, swore that he was the one who had
done all of the robbing of the mail boxes, and all of the forging of
checks, and he even went so far as to imitate several signatures, but
that was offset by the evidence of the detective.
It was an easy matter to convict him, and he stood facing a term in
prison.
Her trial was merely a bit of comedy in which she played the star part,
and when the last scene had dropped she was bowing her thanks to the
judge, the jury, the lawyers and the spectators, and smiling all the
while like a girl with a new doll on Christmas morning. The red was in
her cheeks and there was a look of roguery in her black eyes, and she
sailed out of the courtroom amid a perfect shower of congratulations.
And it was all for one strain of blood.
Father an Irish stevedore, mother a Slav peasant whom centuries of
oppression had made apathetic, grandmother also a Slav, and grandfather
a German noble. She had gone back one generation to get that criminal
taint, and she may have gone back further than that to get the good
strain that made the whole world smile with her when she smiled and
turn enemies into friends.
[Illustration]
FROM THE WOODS TO BROADWAY
Jane her name was--plain Jane--but she wasn’t plain by any means. She
was far from that. She could smoke a cigarette, drink a bottle of
wine, and wear a Paquin gown with grace, and in these three things
a woman has a chance to show what she is and what she can do. For
my part I would consider them a test, just the same as performing
certain mathematical calculations, and showing a proficiency in
geography are tests in civil service examinations. There is nothing
that gives a woman so much poise and self-confidence as smoking a
cigarette daintily. It gives her a chance to think, you see, and appear
unconcerned, and it is an ambush behind which she may hide in time of
trouble.
This particular Jane had all the vices and charms that a young woman
who is known to the crowd by her first name ought to have, or might
be supposed to have. Men who were introduced to her found themselves
calling her Jane inside of the hour, and that was because of her
genius, for there are a lot of women in this world whose baptismal name
no man would ever dare to use, even though they had been acquainted for
years.
There is just as much difference in women as there is in drinks. It
isn’t necessary to go into details on that subject, for every good hard
drinker knows the different sensations of the different brands the
morning after.
[Illustration: For three solid hours he sat there trussed up like a
chicken]
Jane blew into the big-city with a West wind, a dress suit case, on
one end of which were the initials of her right name, and the drummer
of a wholesale lace house who had caught her eye and won her regard by
giving her some of his samples.
Your attention is called to the fact that a drummer’s existence is a
cinch, especially if he has samples that he can afford to give away.
This one had a mustache that curled at the ends, a bank roll that
looked like a toy balloon into which a kid had stuck a pin--which was
Jane’s fault--and a nerve which was a little bit harder than Harveyized
steel. He used the nerve in his business, and besides, it came in
handy so far as Jane was concerned because he had a wife in Harlem. He
planted Jane in a furnished flat, where he paid the rent for two weeks.
Then because he had a champagne taste and a beer purse, he went to a
pal of his who was a stage manager on Broadway and got the lady a job
carrying a spear and wearing pale pink tights in a spectacular show
that was about to be produced.
He was sitting in her front room warming his shins at the steam heat
when he broke the news to her, and this is the way he did it. You
sports can take a tip from this so you can see how it is done, for no
man can ever foretell when he will be called on to produce the same
line of talk.
“Do you know,” he began, “that you are the best fellow in the world and
that the more I see of you the more I like you?”
“Do you?” asked Jane, simply, for she was nothing more nor less than a
country girl. “I am very glad of that, but you know the rent was due
yesterday and it hasn’t been paid yet.”
“Now,” he went on, ignoring the touch, “I know you well enough to know
that you would like to be independent and make your own way in the
world. I want to see you where you will be in a position to support
yourself, and so I have arranged with a man who is under obligations to
me to give you a chance and put you in the chorus of the ‘Ice King.’
You’ll get $15 a week at the start and then you’ll be jumped to $18.
After that it’s up to you whether or not you come to the front and get
the real good money with the yellowbacks.”
“But I have never been on the stage,” she said.
“Don’t I know that, and haven’t I fixed it? You’ll be broken in all
right and all you have to do is as you are told and you’ll get your
money every Monday night.”
So it was that the girl from Peapack, N. J., became independent and
self-supporting, and was able before long to send a hundred-dollar note
to the folks at home, for whom she still had a deep regard. You see, it
is only the girls who save their money who can do that sort of thing.
When the young fellows around town wanted to see a show, some one would
suggest that they go up and see Jane, and although she hadn’t a line to
speak nor a note to sing, they would line up in the front row as if she
was a star. It didn’t take the manager of the show very long to find
out that Jane could draw like a porous plaster and then he jumped her
salary up to $25.
With that she went to a fashionable hair dresser and paid $200 to
have her hair turned from chestnut blonde to a hue of a stick of pale
molasses taffy, the kind you get for five cents a throw, which sticks
in your teeth and plays the deuce with the filling.
Girls of Jane’s kind are like boxers, in that their prosperity is
manifested outwardly without delay. The aspiring young knuckle-duster,
as soon as he wins a prominent battle, will at once hie himself off and
blow in a chunk of the purse on a silk hat, patent leather shoes, a
frock coat and a cane. With the balance he will annex a diamond, then
he immediately becomes the real thing.
A girl has no use for frock coats and canes, but she goes strong on
hair, so her loose coin goes for a gallon of bleach strong enough to
change the faith of a Hindoo fakir, and that is the strongest thing in
the world, except, perhaps, an African after a hard day’s work in the
slaughter house.
She had a flat on Central Park, South--that’s wrong, it was an
apartment, because she paid over $1,000 a year for it, whereas flats
only cost about $40 a month-and she entertained the bunch with cozy
little wine dinners that would make a man leave his happy home in a
minute.
She was still getting her $25 a week, you know.
Then she tore the drummer’s name out of her address book, for he was a
back number who had shown a decided tendency to cold feet.
She described him to the butler, and said that if he ever put in an
appearance he was to be dismissed with the single word:
“Skiddoo.”
“I don’t understand,” said the butler, whose previous job had been on
Fifth avenue. “What does Skiddoo mean?”
“It doesn’t make any difference whether you understand or not, just you
say it to him and he will know, and that’s enough.”
And all that night this cheese sandwich with the side whiskers kept
repeating the word to himself so he wouldn’t forget it, and he wrote
it down on his cuff. He also traced it out on a card that he stuck
in behind the hat rack in the hall. In his heart and soul he thought
it was some foreign word which meant that the lady wasn’t at home or
didn’t care to be disturbed.
That’s the worst of being a butler instead of Chuck Connors.
The traveling man with the immaculate gall had reached the worrying
stage because the girl was doing so well and he had been pushed off
the track. If she had stuck to her little furnished flat and the cheap
togs he would have gone on his way whistling a merry tune, just as all
men do. But she was on the high wave and sipping the cream off the top,
and he thought there ought to be an armchair waiting for him by the
fireplace of her new ranch, which was very natural, for all men are
cast in the same identical mould. They don’t care for what they have,
and are always hunting for something that’s hard to get.
If you look like the goods you’ll have them all going, but as soon as
you tell your hard luck story you’ll get the sandbag where it will do
the most good.
One night, after the show, Jane and a bunch of the merry-merry with
money to spend, or burn, or throw away, was in the front room playing
dollar limit poker, when the drummer, with a choice collection of high
balls stowed away under his vest, and in a fit condition to either
fight or cry, came up in the elevator. He had overdrawn his salary and
was prepared to buy wine, if necessary, and he was dressed like a man
whose credit is good at the best clothing store in town.
He held his thumb against the electric button for a moment, and because
the butler was busy with a sauterne cup, very choice, being of the
Barton and Guestier vintage of ’84, the kind Smithy always orders when
he wants to be real flossy, the maid turned the knob and came face to
face with him.
He made his little spiel, shoved in and stood in the hall on one foot
waiting for the glad hand and the happy cry that he felt sure was
coming.
“What’s his name? Who is he? Why don’t you get his card?” he heard Jane
say. Then the maid came back.
“Will you please give me your card?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he remarked airily. “Just tell her Harry is
here and she will know.”
He heard the maid telling her little story and then Jane’s silver tones
floated out to him.
“What, that lobster? How did he get in? He must have had a shoe horn,
and I suppose it will take a load of dynamite to get him out.” Then
something else and all the girls laughed.
He pulled himself together and walked to where the voice came from.
The heat of the room was beginning to affect the cargo he was carrying
and he hit both sides of the wall about eight times before he got to
the door. He pulled the curtains aside and looked in on the game.
“Just thought I’d call,” he said, grinning.
“Well, didn’t I always tell you that you had bad thoughts?” she asked.
“Thought you’d be glad to see me,” he went on.
“Still thinking?” she queried. “I’ll see that raise and raise you back
ten more.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a hand if you’ll play fair.” Just then the
butler came in with the drinks.
“Henderson,” remarked Jane without even so much as looking up, “what
was that word I taught you--do you remember it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, what was it?”
“Skid-doo, ma’am.”
“Very good. Now turn around and say it to that man.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He turned slowly and with great dignity to the drummer who was bracing
himself up against the door, and commanded:
“Skid-doo, sir.”
“So _I’m_ to be fired, eh?”
“Say it again, James; it may be some minutes before it takes effect.”
“Skid-doo, sir.”
“Suppose I don’t go?”
There was no answer to that, but Jane hadn’t been in New York a
whole year without being on to her job, and she was able to face any
proposition that ever came over the hills.
“Get me a piece of rope, James.”
“Yes, ma’am,” and away he went, just a bit faster than usual,
wondering, no doubt, what the eccentric and erratic mistress of his
was going to do next. He got the rope all right and returned with
it in short order, because this seemed to be a case where haste was
necessary, even at the expense of dignity. She took it from him and
walking over to the drummer, said, as she deftly passed it around him.
“You had me on a string once, Harry, and now I’m going to get you on a
rope.”
“Stop your kidding and be nice, Jane,” he spoke up, trying to look
upon the whole thing as a joke, but while he was expostulating she
had knotted the rope around both his arms and signalled to the butler
to help her. “I want him tied over there,” she said, pointing to the
piano, and before he knew it he was seated on the floor with his back
up against a slab of mahogany, being held by the servant while Jane was
making knots like a sailor.
When the job was done the game was resumed and nobody in the room paid
the slightest bit of attention to him. He threatened and begged and
finally he swore, and then Jane poured a glass of ice water over his
head to cool him off.
“I always thought you had a mean disposition,” she remarked, “and now I
know it.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for me,” he shouted.
“No, nor you wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for me,” she retorted.
For three solid hours he was kept trussed up like a fowl ready for the
oven, and at the end of that time the game came to an end.
“I’m going to bed now,” said Jane, “and in half an hour the butler will
come in and untie you. He will help you to your feet and when he says
skiddoo to you I hope you will understand what he means. Good night.”
For thirty minutes the clock ticked monotonously and the back of the
man on the floor was beginning to ache horribly. At last the silvery
chime announced the half hour and then Henderson stepped softly in.
One by one he untied the fastenings and it was a tough job in view of
the fact that a woman had made them. After that he helped the visitor
to his feet. He assisted him on with his coat, handed him his hat, and
together they walked, without either saying a word, to the hall door.
The butler swung it solemnly open, slowly waved his hand, bowed deeply
from the hips and said:
“Skid-doo, sir.”
“Go to hell,” came back the answer, as Harry shot down the stairs.
“How did he take it?” asked Jane the next morning.
“He took it all right, ma’am, but he was very uncivil, ma’am.”
THE WHIMS OF CURVES
The fellows who buy wine and eat terrapin at their midnight lunches--I
ought to say dinners--had found a new attraction, and for a brief while
she was the idol of the hour. But the trouble with these idols is that
they don’t last, and the finish as a rule is very disheartening, and in
many cases pathetic.
Of course, every once in a while a wise one will come to the front who
will do a little bookkeeping with herself, and when the smoke of battle
will have cleared away she finds she has enough to tell everybody to go
to blazes if she cares to be rude.
But that is the exception rather than the rule. Quick money, you know,
is like a dream, in that it only lasts while you are asleep. You think
you are in a mansion, and when the knock comes on the door you discover
that you are in the same old hall bedroom, and realize that you have to
get up just as you have been doing all your life, and work ten hours a
day--or eight, as the case may be--in order to get enough money to pay
what you owe.
The girl that all the bloods were buying dinners and flowers for came
from the West not so very long ago, and she didn’t leave any of her
good looks behind her, either. She hit the town with a dress suit case,
a good complexion and a taking way with the boys, and that’s all the
capital any skirt wearer needs in Gotham if she is only introduced to
the right crowd of spenders and keeps away from the pikers who have
their bank rolls lashed to the mast or bottled up so tight that when
they do release a bill it smells like an Egyptian mummy which has been
packed in a vault since the time of Pharaoh.
[Illustration: She put herself up at auction and was promptly bid on]
This lady hit the trail which led to the show houses. She had no idea
that she was an Adelina Patti or a Sarah Bernhardt, but she knew she
could carry a spear as good as any old-timer, and she was prepared to
make good.
“Got a job for me?” she asked the first stage manager she happened to
run across.
He looked her over and then remarked casually:
“I don’t think so, for all the star parts are given out for the
season, but you might go over and see Frohman and ask him if you can’t
understudy Maude Adams.”
“Don’t strain your voice on my account,” she said, by way of a
come-back. “I’m looking for about $18 a week in the line-up, and when
it comes to tights, I guess there ain’t any of them who has anything
on me. You had me flagged for a Sis Hopkins, but you want to throw
some sand on the track because you’re sliding. I don’t sit up at night
reading Romeo and Juliet, and where I come from they think Shakespeare
is a new kind of breakfast food. Can you get busy now?”
“I guess I’ll have to if I want to get rid of you.”
“Well, you’re learning, and that’s a good sign.”
So after he had looked her over again very carefully, he concluded
she’d do for the chorus for a starter anyhow.
A stage manager who is used to hiring ladies whose talents lie in their
legs has a system of his own in picking out good ones that don’t need
padding, and he never makes a mistake any more than a red squirrel will
stow away a bad nut for the winter. Face, neck, hands and arms tell
the story and they never fail, and so he knew she could wear the usual
size, and if anything stretch them a bit.
That was the beginning.
One night four young men about town sat in a theatre box watching the
merry maidens tropping on and telling in song how happy they were that
the Princess was going to be married to the poor but handsome gink
whose father had a cobbler’s shop one block from the palace.
“Get onto the curves of the girl with the black hair,” said one, and
in a minute there were four pairs of eyes looking at one pair of silk
tights.
“Great,” said another, enthusiastically.
“Who is she?” asked a third. “I never saw her before.”
“Well, Ben certainly has an eye for beauty. I wonder where he gets
them? Let’s see him and ask him to put us on, for she’s all right.”
Incidentally, Ben was the first name of the stage manager.
It isn’t necessary to go into details, for general results save a lot
of time, but a couple of hours later four enthusiastic young fellows
and a dimpled brunette sat at a round table in a sporty cafe, and when
any of them wanted to address her they called her Curves.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked, when it was first sprung, “give
me a nickname?”
“No,” was the answer, “simply a trademark.”
And they all understood.
So because of that she began her career with the world by the tail on a
downhill pull.
Not to know Curves and have her call you by your first name when you
met was to be the deadest kind of a dead one, and the witty stories she
could tell over a quart of wine soon began to be circulated around town.
As is often the case, women were her enemies and men were her friends,
and she slid along in a happy-go-lucky way, letting the morrow take
care of itself.
There was no question but that her figure was the making of her, just
as Jennie Joyce’s legs made her famous from one end of the country to
the other when she was a reigning favorite at Koster & Bial’s old place
on Twenty-third street two decades ago.
The photographer who secured some good poses of Curves in tights found
himself busy printing them to supply the demand, and it was as easy to
get her before a camera as it was to get a kid to a candy store. If she
had received a dollar for every time she wrote across the bottom of one
of her photographs “Sincerely yours, Curves,” she would have had a bank
account that would have been broad, wide and deep. But she was simply
a good fellow and she made no attempt to live by her wits. Like many
another poor devil, she probably thought she would always be young,
good-looking and popular. She didn’t know that those whom the public
applauds to-day it kills to-morrow, and that it takes but a week in New
York to make a favorite less than a memory.
But there was one incident in her career that stands out in relief from
anything of the kind that anyone had ever done before, and it is worth
telling. It was characteristic of her to do a thing of this sort, and
she was the one woman in a hundred who could have got away with it.
A soulful-eyed, chocolate-skinned Brahmin priest had come to town to
spread his faith, and because he talked in an exceedingly entertaining
manner and told some curious and interesting stories he came to be
a fad. It wasn’t that the people who went to see and hear him were
interested in his religion, but it was because he was a novelty that he
filled his lecture room every afternoon. Two men and Curves dropped in
one afternoon at a time when this spreader of a new creed was telling
about the money it would cost to do good in the world, and on that
subject he was particularly eloquent.
“You Americans,” he said, “don’t know what it is to make a sacrifice;
you don’t know what it is to deny yourselves any of the good things
of life. Your men would not forego their cigars or wine even if the
spiritual salvation of the world depended upon it, and your women would
not permit themselves one particle of physical discomfort nor cheaper
wearing apparel even though a hundred souls were the price. The whole
world is selfish and wrapped up in itself, and religion is either a fad
or a jest. The man with a million gives a few thousands and thinks he
has done well, but he denies himself nothing. The woman with a check
book doles out dimes and fancies herself a philanthropist, but will she
make any sacrifice for the general good?”
“Here’s one who will.”
Two-thirds of the people in the room turned around and looked at
Curves, and one of the fellows with her took her arm and whispered:
“What is the matter, are you dotty?”
The ox-like eyes of the religious enthusiast seemed to blaze up a bit.
“You will make a sacrifice?” he asked. “What can you give?”
“I’ll give myself,” she answered, and she stood up defiantly.
People who tell this story, as well as a few who were there, say that
Curves had a most elegant tide on at the time and didn’t know what she
was saying, but that doesn’t alter the story, because this is simply a
recital of facts which can be verified by a whole lot of the fellows,
and the sequel can be found on record among the marriages in the Bureau
of Vital Statistics by anyone who is interested enough to look it up.
“It is very praiseworthy,” continued the priest, “but how do you
propose to put your gift to a practical use? You say you will give
yourself. Do you mean by that that you will devote your time to this
work which I am trying to carry on?”
“Not that way so you can notice it, but I have a lot of men friends
here and each one of them has asked me to marry him more than once. I
like them all and as marriage is a lottery anyhow, they can bid for me,
and you get the money.”
As she spoke she was climbing up on the table in the center of the
room. “I am ready for the first offer and I don’t care who makes it,
for I’m taking as many chances as anybody else.”
Now here was a situation that reads like a romance, and here was the
one in a thousand to get away with it. The women were shocked, of
course; the men were interested, and as for the priest he didn’t know
whether to take it seriously or not, until finally what might have been
an awkward situation was relieved by a man who said:
“Well, if she’s game enough to have herself auctioned off, I’m game
enough to make a bid, so I’ll say $500, with the proviso that the cause
of religion, which our revered friend represents, shall get half, the
other half to go to the lady who shows such a praiseworthy spirit.”
Then three gaunt females over forty arose in the majesty of their
outraged womanhood and stalked from the room, while a dozen others
moved uneasily in their seats.
The Brahmin was still figuring.
“Am I worth no more than $500?” put in Curves.
“I’ll make it $750,” said one of the men who had accompanied her.
“You paid twice as much for a horse last week, Billy,” she retorted.
“I didn’t think of that. Let it go at $1,500, for there’s going to be
competition.”
The priest’s hand was nervously fingering a silk handkerchief.
“Two thousand,” the first bidder’s voice came like a bullet from a gun,
and Billy laughed nervously.
“Go ahead, Billy, it’s up to you again,” and Curves nodded at him
encouragingly.
“She’s worth it, Bill,” whispered his friend. “Your Panhard cost you
$11,000 and it takes $100 a week to keep it going. Curves can be very
economical when she tries,” and he laughed at his joke.
“Twenty-five hundred,” bid Billy.
“Sold,” cried Curves, “although _I’m_ worth more.”
“Very extraordinary,” said the priest, wiping his forehead with his
handkerchief. “This could happen in no other country in the world.”
“Write him a check, Billy, for what you owe him,” said Curves, “and
then we’ll go out and get married. And don’t you think it would be nice
to have him to dinner with us?”
“Sure thing, and we’ll have the other fellow who bid along, too. By the
way, who is he? I don’t ever remember to have seen him before. Do you
know him?”
Now what a chance here for a climax, for a real whipping finish, as it
were. It might be arranged so that the girl would say sadly:
“Yes, he holds the mortgage on the farm and has threatened to foreclose
it if I don’t marry him. Oh, Billy, you must save me.”
Then Billy would pull out his check book, pay the villain off to the
penny and the man would go tearing out of the door shouting:
“Foiled again, c-u-u-rses on you, but I’ll have revenge,” with the
accent on revenge.
But no such thing happened, because you see Curves never had an
interest in a farm, and it is very much to be doubted if she knew
anything about a father or mother. The result was that she said:
“Oh, I suppose he’s some guy that’s been to the show and got stuck on
my shape.”
The honeymoon lasted six months, which was enough for Billy, and he
beat it to New Orleans, while his friends told Curves that they thought
he had committed suicide.
[Illustration: She went into the smoking car and calmly lighted a
cigarette]
CHEYENNE NELL; TRIMMER
The gambler in this story came from the West to get a little New York
money. He had been getting it for years from the Sierra Nevadas to El
Paso, and from Seattle as far east as Omaha, which he said was far
enough for anybody who liked fresh air, but he had struck a run of bad
luck and one of his pals told him that the best way to break it was to
trim a New York sucker.
“They’re fly guys there all right,” remarked this same man, casually,
“but the flyer they are the easier it is to trim them. I would sooner
stack up against a stock broker that runs one of those bubble machines
and can speak sixteen different languages than get into a game with a
Kansas farmer any day. The farmer knows he ain’t in it and he’s got his
eye out for a job every time; his coat is buttoned up so tight that
he has contraction of the lungs and his heart doesn’t beat right, but
the gink that knows it all thinks he’s so damned smart that he’s got
everybody in the world in his corral, and those are the fellows you
catch with their vests open.”
All homely philosophy, but as true as gospel and worth looking into.
So Big Ben--that was his name in the country where slouch hats are the
real thing--pulled his freight one night and hit the Overland Flyer
for Gotham. His name was Big Ben no longer, for the cards he carried
in his vest pocket read:
BENJAMIN F. VAN BUREN, MINING ENGINEER.
He bought tickets for two at the station, and there is the heart of the
story, as one of the tickets was for Cheyenne Nellie.
The lady in the case is worth a paragraph at the very least, for she
had the reputation of being the best short-card dealer in Texas, and at
a game of bank, whether playing the cards or handling the box, she was
there with the goods and never asked any odds on account of her sex.
She had the long, slim hands of a card player, and if she hadn’t taken
to the pasteboards she might have been a piano player and getting all
kinds of money for hitting up the ivories at swell concerts. She was
soft of voice and soft in manner, and all you had to do to make a lady
out of her was to wrap her in a silk robe and she’d make the horses in
the street turn around and look after her.
On one memorable occasion she went into the smoking car of a Denver
train and calmly lighting a cigarette, smoked it without deigning to
notice the men around her.
The trip was settled in a minute and in this way.
“It’s a long ride, Nell,” observed Ben, “to the place I’m going, and
I’m afraid I’ll get lost or lonely, so if you’ll come along with me
I’ll tog you out like a queen and give you the time of your life. Will
you carry my brand for the trip?”
“How big is your bank roll?” she asked, with an eye to the practical
side of the proposition.
“Twenty-seven hundred, and two thousand to draw on if I lose out.”
“That’s enough for a starter. What are you going to do--short-card ’em
or bank ’em?”
“Anything and everything including stud, and if I get the big bundle
we’ll hike for that place across the big pond where the real games are.
What’s the name of it--I forget now. I had it written down somewhere,
but I guess I’ve lost it. It begins with an M I think, and there was a
fellow at the show the other night who had it in his song about how he
broke the bank there.”
“Oh, you mean Monte Carlo.”
“Yes, that’s it. We’ll go there and I’ll put you up against the game,
for you always were hell when it came to a no-limit play.”
One night stop-over in Chicago to see a show, and then, twenty-four
hours later, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren, of Portland, Oregon,
registered at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“Kind of like a theatre, ain’t it?” remarked Ben, as they sat in the
palm room after dinner. “Looks like Romeo and Juliet where the gal is
on the gallery and the fellow with the skin-tight pants is asking her
to come down and talk it over.”
Men who are supposed to know say that New York is the loneliest place
in the world, that is, if you don’t know anyone, and that a desert
island is a center of population compared to it if you are not in
right. On the face of it that looks like a good argument, but it is
going to be disproved right here. Go to a big and fashionable hotel and
register, then sit around and be a bit conspicuous, look like ready
money, and above all, easy money, and you’ll draw people like a Jack
rose draws bees. They’ll find you out just as easily as the ferret
gets to the timid rabbit--by going after you--and unless your heart is
covered with callous spots and your pockets are fastened with safety
pins, when you come to count up at night you’ll find you are short a
bit of change. In this world, you know, things are not always what they
seem, and the fellow who looks the wisest and talks the loudest isn’t
the smartest any more than the man with the retreating forehead is the
stupidest. The one with the cranium of a cocoanut may have spent all
of his life developing the instinct of the hunter and the cunning of
the fox, and that queer-shaped thing on top of his shoulders is the
sign which he has hung out and which says as plainly as if the words
were printed on his forehead: “Come on, boys, I’m easy; come and get my
change.” I know all about this and speak from experience, for I used to
sit in a poker game with a Dutchman who looked like a pinhead, and when
the rest of us walked home he used to take a cab, because he had all
the money, and his name was Schneider, too. What do you think of that?
So before a week had gone by, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren were
nodding and saying “How do you do?” and “Good morning” and “Good
evening” to about twenty or thirty men who made the hotel their
headquarters. Incidentally it was given out that Ben was on here to buy
some machinery for one of his mines in Nevada and that he wouldn’t mind
having a little fun with anything that came along so long as the stakes
were not too big for a man of his modest disposition.
The tip went down the line in the usual channels and then one rainy
night a man who said confidentially that he was a banker suggested that
as there was nothing else to do Mr. Van Buren could, if he felt so
disposed, walk around to his hotel where there were two or three other
good fellows, and they might have a little game of draw.
“None of us want to go into big money, you know,” he said,
apologetically, “for it’s simply a game among friends and it’s about
as good a way to pass the time away as I know of. We don’t, as a rule,
play with strangers, but I guess you’re all right, so come along.”
“Look out for a cold deck, Ben,” whispered Nell as he started; “play
light and close to your skin at the go-off, and it won’t hurt to lose a
little at the start.”
Wherever you go or whatever you do in this world, always take a woman’s
tip--not the tip of every woman of course, but when you find one who
delivers the goods at every jump out of the box and calls the turn on
the case card nine times out of every ten, then be wise and attune your
ears to her siren song, even though the notes seem to be a bit cracked
at first and the cadenzas strike you as being skewed and off the key.
There were five in the game, counting Ben, and up against the wall,
like a new kind of decoration, was a Senegambian, whose business it
was to see that the gentlemen had cigars to smoke and wine to drink
without limit. Between deals they talked about business, how stocks
were selling, what chance there was for a flyer in Steel, and if Depew
intended to resign from the Senate or not. The play was light and
reckless and no one there seemed to care whether he won or lost.
“We play two or three times a week,” explained one to Ben, while the
African was getting a fresh pack, “and I consider poker the greatest
thing in the world to take a man’s mind off his business. Is there
any stock in your mine for sale? I wouldn’t mind taking a block if it
looked right. So this is your first visit here? Well, we’ll try and
make it pleasant for you while you stay, but you must reciprocate if we
ever hit your country. Will you show us some shooting?”
It went that way until Ben got to feeling a little easy in his play
himself. But he couldn’t lose. Everything came his way, including
jackpots, and when the silvery chimes of the clock on the mantel
reminded them that it was one o’clock the play came to an end and the
man from the West cashed in a matter of $72.
“It was only a friendly game, Nell,” he said, when he woke her up
from a sound sleep half an hour later. “They are simply a lot of good
fellows and I couldn’t help winning, but they want revenge to-morrow
night and then I’ll get some real money.”
“Three thousand miles is a good long walk, Ben,” she said, “and that’s
a little tune you want to keep humming to yourself all the time. The
easy marks at cards all died during the time of the big wind and only
the fly guys are left. You’re in a strange barn this trip, so don’t
think that everything you see is hay.”
From playing three nights a week they got down to playing every night,
and Ben always came back with a small winning, but he wasn’t getting
the money he was after and it got on his nerves.
“It’s only chicken feed _I’m_ winning,” he complained to her one night,
“and it just about pays expenses.”
“Well, just you keep your shirt on, for I’m in with some nice old dames
who think they are the real ones at bridge, and I’m thinking of getting
a little of that same kind of feed myself--the real killing will come
later. You never want to be in a hurry about those things, you know,
because if you hurry them it’s all off. Get those fellows to play up in
the room some night so I can look them over and see their style.”
“I’m next to their play all right,” he said, “They’ll stand to lose so
much and no more and there ain’t one of them who would bet a thousand
that he was alive.”
“Invite them up, anyway. You’ve been drinking their booze and smoking
their good cigars long enough. You ought to put up for them once in a
while, and if they are all right you will have a few decent friends,
anyhow.”
That’s how it happened that the play came off in No. 723.
It was the smallest kind of a small and inoffensive game, unmarked by
any incident or episode until one of the men, looking his hand over
with unusual care, remarked in the most casual manner possible:
“If I had the nerve I have a hand here that I would like to bet big on.”
“How big?” asked Ben, taking another look at the cards that had been
dealt to him.
“I don’t know much about poker, but I think a thousand would be about
right to start with.”
“Mine looks worth that much to me,” said Ben, with his face like a
mask.
“I’m game; does a check go?”
Over in one corner of the room, with a novel before her, sat Nell. She
was almost directly opposite Ben, and as he looked up he saw the upper
lid of her left eye droop slowly, recover, and then droop again. He
skinned his cards and looked them carefully over. The pips showed four
kings and an ace, pat. It was worth big money in any four-handed game,
and he knew it.
“Does a check go?” came the query again.
“No, I weaken; I thought I had a better hand. You’ve got me beat from
the start.”
It might be made a long story from this point on, but there is not
room here to tell in detail how half an hour later Nell rose from her
comfortable seat in the armchair in the corner, and walking over to
the table manifested a slight interest in the game, and after one or
two more hands had been dealt, thought she would like to play if the
gentlemen didn’t object, which they didn’t. How she played like any
woman would be expected to play, losing angrily and winning sweetly,
until on one of her deals, Ben found himself in possession of a hand
which only needed the ace to make a royal flush. The limit was raised
before the draw, then taken off altogether, and the money began to pile
itself on the mahogany. Then they drew for cards, and when Ben looked
things over he found in his one card draw the ace that made his hand
good.
“Mine is worth $500,” remarked the player opposite him.
“I’ll kiss mine good-bye,” said Nell, as she dropped her pasteboards in
the discard.
“Raise you $500,” put in Ben, looking at the first bettor.
“Five hundred more,” was the third man’s bid.
“It’s too hot for me,” was the comment of the fourth, as he pushed his
cards away from him.
It was raised in jumps of $500 until there was about $11,000 up, and
Ben had been boosting every raise as fast as it came to him.
Then the call was made and the show-down was worth going miles to see,
for the battle at the finish had narrowed down to Ben and one other.
“Take a check for the next bet?” asked the other.
“No,” came the terse answer.
“Then I’ll have to call you. But I’ve got you beaten!”
For answer Ben spread out his invincibles.
For a moment the silence was painful.
“Are they good?” asked Ben.
“You know damned well they are,” came the answer.
Then Mr. Benjamin Van Buren, mining engineer, of Portland, Ore.,
gathered in the oof in the most leisurely manner possible.
“Now you can buy me that new hat you promised me, can’t you, Ben?” said
Nellie.
“I sure can buy you a dozen hats now if you want them.”
Exactly thirty minutes later three men were lined up against the bar
below.
“You can talk from here to the Coast, if you want to,” said one, “but I
tell you the woman did the trick. Didn’t she deal the cards? I tell you
she short-carded us. She’s a gold mine.”
[Illustration: She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always
won out]
TRAGEDY OF A DANCE
It was just a plain unpretentious flat in New York, the kind that is
rented for about $40 a month. You know the style--four or five rooms
and bath and a narrow little space which is dignified by the name of
private hall, and which is supposed to be the real thing in living
apartments. It was furnished in the way in which anyone would expect,
and an auction sale wouldn’t net more than $50 for everything that was
there.
In the front room sat a man who wasn’t as old as he looked, but whose
apparent age was caused by ten hours a day in an attempt to make a
living for himself. For twenty years he had been ground down by fate,
and at the end of it all he had nothing, and he was in debt to the
world for exactly three score of years.
Now at the last mile post he had come face to face with a tragedy.
In one calloused hand he held a telegram. In the other was the
photograph of a girl--good looking in a way, saucy, blue-eyed and
blonde. It had been taken in theatrical costume and that told half of
the story. The other half was in the telegram.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and read again:
“Your daughter died in the hospital here to-day; please advise as to
the disposition of the remains.”
It bore date of a Southern city, and was signed by the manager of a
barn-storming company of show people.
If you read the newspapers you must have read part of the story. You
will read the rest of it here--the part that wasn’t told, because an
ordinary chorus girl isn’t of sufficient importance to take up more
than a very little space in the prints, unless, of course, she does
something so violently tragic and sensational that she rises above the
common herd and becomes at once a figure of almost national importance,
like the young woman who once tried to shoot a senator, or the one who
danced nude before a select company of young spendthrifts, or the one
who made $50,000 in stocks with the kind assistance of a “gentleman
friend.”
Just four months before, the old man’s daughter had been working in a
big dry goods store--a mill that grinds pretty fine sometimes--and one
day she attracted the attention of a man who was putting a show out on
the Southern tour. He saw talent in her, or at least he thought he did,
but if the truth were to be told he fell in love with her, and came to
the conclusion that she would make a better traveling companion than
anyone he had seen so far--this season. He had a code of morals that
was iron clad, but wouldn’t stand investigating. In his eyes they were
all cattle, and like cattle he graded them.
But this isn’t going to be a moral story, because it is the truth.
If you want morality nowadays you will have to go to fiction, where the
man always marries the girl and they live happily ever after. It sounds
nice and leaves a sweet taste in the mouth, but it is a long cry from
the truth except in a few rare cases.
So here’s the picture, about as commonplace as it can be made.
A girl with visions of the stage, a dream of a life of ease and luxury,
imagining that some day she will be a performer of merit; a violent
hatred of the unending routine of the store, and ready at a moment’s
notice to turn her back on the old man in the flat.
Isn’t that the way?
Bring them into the world, care for them and nurse them. Worry over
their little troubles, deny yourself that they may have more; sacrifice
everything for their happiness, and then at the critical moment when
they might become a comfort instead of a care, presto! along comes a
man with a line of talk that would make a cat on a back yard fence
take to cover, and away they go, saying good-by if they happen to
think of it, and forgetting that there are such things in the world as
obligation or gratitude.
But this isn’t really what I started to say. You see, I have a brother
who is a minister, and I am under the impression that he is teaching me
bad habits--that is, if it is a bad habit to sit down and preach about
a lot of things that are wrong when you would probably do the same
things you condemn in others. It’s a case of don’t do as I do, but do
as I say.
It’s a cinch to tell other people to do the right thing, but it’s
another thing to be on the level yourself.
After that little digression I’ll show you this girl on the road
singing choruses with the bunch, and just a bit swell-headed because
she was in a position to call the manager by his first name. That
didn’t help her with the rest of the crowd any, and they called her
names when they were where she couldn’t hear them, while at the same
time there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t have changed places with her
in a holy minute.
She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always won out.
The manager found out she had a figure that would have been worth a
place in the front row of the merry-merry of Weber and Fields when that
firm was at its best. Here was a chance that a good, clever, astute
fellow like him couldn’t very well overlook, and he proceeded to have
her taught a few dances of the kind that are not sanctioned in polite
society, or even on the stage, or which make any pretence to being
legitimate. He was working on the principle that all is grist that
comes to the mill, and he was also looking ahead.
There are, as a rule, a pretty gay lot of boys in those Southern
towns, and they are not averse to paying a good bit of money for a
show after the show, especially if it is the kind that is forbidden.
If the sensuous dance of the Nautch girl can be imitated in all of its
windings, twistings and quiverings by a shapely American girl whose
disregard for clothing amounts to almost contempt--that is, on certain
occasions--there is enough money to make it an object not only for the
performer but the manager.
“I am going to put you up against a proposition that will make the hit
of your life,” was the way he started it.
“That’s me,” she said; “what is it?”
“Why, do a stunt in the altogether for the sports.” Then he took a
couple of extra puffs at his cigar to keep his nerve up.
“The altogether--what’s that?”
She had an idea what it was, but she wanted to get it straight.
“Oh, it’s all the rage down here--you dance without much clothes on.
All the girls are wild to get some of the money, but there’s nothing
doing with them, for your figure will make them look like a lot of
kippered herrings that’s been smoked for a week. You see, we’re in this
business for the coin, and we might as well get it and get it quick. If
we don’t there’ll be a thousand others after it. It’s a case of take it
or leave it and it’s up to you. How about it?”
He stiffened her up so she was willing to make good. He told her she
had enough curves to make the Venus de Medici look like a barn door,
and that she was a peach with the original bloom on, all of which she
believed because it was pleasant for her to hear, and was getting a bit
stuck on herself. It was a modern case of showing Eve all over again
where the golden apple grew, and inducing her to reach up and get it.
The first trick was to come off at Memphis, Tenn., where a lot of hot
sports wanted something so full of ginger that they would have put ice
on the backs of their necks to keep the temperature down below the 100
mark. A committee of two called on him at the stage entrance, and after
declaring themselves asked him if he had anybody with the outfit who
could make good. After the preliminary skirmish it settled down to a
question of price, and the matter was soon arranged, and half an hour
later Daddy’s girl got the tip that she was expected to be on the job
when the clock struck twelve, with a carriage to and from the hotel as
a compliment to her superb figure.
No good hardened old pelter would have halted at this hurdle, and would
have gone at it with a keen relish, but you must know that this was
the first season out for this girl, and when it came to the time that
she was to let go all that kept her from appearing in the costume that
Mother Eve is supposed to have worn in the Garden of Eden, she promptly
lost her nerve.
“I don’t think I can do this thing, Jim,” she remarked to the manager
as they were leaving the theatre together. “It didn’t seem so bad at
first, but now I don’t quite like the idea of it. I never did anything
like this before, you know.”
“Of course I know,” he answered quickly, “but you want the money, don’t
you? Do you want to be a piker all your life? Why, you’ll get more for
a stunt like this than you can make in a month doing anything else.
Just think of that.”
He was keen enough to see, however, that she was inclined to quit at
any moment, but there was no proposition an old seasoned campaigner
like him couldn’t handle, and when they went into the hotel cafe
together he had framed things up to his own satisfaction.
“I’m going to blow you to a bottle of wine to-night, and while we’re
waiting for it we’ll have a cocktail.”
He figured on dulling her sense of morality with drinks, and he went at
it in the most businesslike manner possible.
Before the wine a cocktail with a cherry, then another cocktail. Three
pints of extra dry, most of which she lapped up simply because it was
champagne and was expensive, and then she was in a mood that was at
once mellow and reckless.
“Come on,” he said, when the last drop had been drained. “Come on, the
wagon is waiting and if you make a hit you won’t need to bother about
those new dresses you wanted last week, for here is where you get next
to a real gold mine. Why, there ain’t a girl in the show that wouldn’t
go to the deuce to get this chance.”
She assented, but through it all she had a hazy idea that it was wrong
and that she ought to back out. But just think of almost three pints
of wine seething and bubbling inside of her while she is trying to
discriminate between right and wrong. I tell you it’s impossible, for
when the corks pop often enough it’s hell let loose, and a girl has to
protect herself in the breakaway every time, with the odds against her.
And now, a big room, carpeted, with palms on pedestals here and there,
giving it an air of luxury, and a platform at one end. Fifty men, young
and old, seated in chairs that were lined up like a regiment were
waiting expectantly. The smoke from many cigars and cigarettes filled
the air, and the monologue man who was trying to interest them with
funny stories knew he was up against it and that he was only filling in
time until the big show should be ready. He told everything he knew,
but never a smile was cracked, and when he came to a finish he walked
off angrily.
The three musicians began a new tune with mournful cadences, but with
a swing that suggested sinuous movements. The two violins wailed out
the minor chords, and the piano trailed the bass. Somewhere from behind
came the sharp snap of a man’s fingers and the lights went down and the
theme of the music was changed.
“The Dance of the Dawn, gentlemen,” came a voice from out of the
darkness and the fifty straightened up in their seats expectantly.
A shape crept out upon the stage and moved in time to the music.
Then the lights gradually began to go up a little at a time until at
last the face and figure of the dancer were visible. She was clad in
transparent gauze, with Turkish trousers and a bolero to match, and her
swayings were artistic and graceful. But there was no reason in them.
They were mechanical and lifeless. She moved by instinct and intuition
and the impression the dance sought to convey was lost. The manager
himself worked the cymbals which punctuated the finish of each measure,
and at the final crash the stage was once more shrouded in darkness.
Lights up and then the second announcement:
“The Dance of Nature.”
That soothing music was born in the brain of a Calcutta idealist who
knew how to put the tip of his finger on the pulse of the senses. Three
second-rate performers ground it out, but with all their mediocrity
they couldn’t kill its charm, even though they dulled it somewhat.
Here was the real thing at last, and fifty pairs of eyes were
glistening in anticipation.
The moment’s wait seemed like an hour, and then a girl’s voice broke
what seemed to be a spell:
“Oh, I can’t, Jim, I can’t.”
“You’ve got to, it’s too late to back out now.”
“I won’t, I tell you, not for anybody.”
The next instant the nude figure of the girl was catapulted out upon
the platform--a figure which dropped to its knees and then tumbled over
on its face and lay there in a quivering heap sobbing violently.
A tall man with snow-white mustache rose slowly from his seat in the
second row. He turned around to face the rest, and then said, as calmly
as if he were in his own house:
“Gentlemen, I protest; this must not go on. It is disgraceful.”
He picked up his hat and coat and started for the door.
In five minutes the room was empty. The girl had been pulled back of
the scenes by a cursing manager, but she might as well have been dumb
for all she heard.
“You’re a mutt,” he was saying; “here you’ve had your chance and quit,
and you’ve made a sucker out of me, too. I can’t look any of those
people in the face again.”
Of course, he didn’t consider where she figured.
Then he walked out and left her there with a skirt wrapped around her
as her only covering.
The janitor found her when he came to turn out the lights.
She was partly dressed then, and shivering. He helped her finish
dressing, and then he went out to get her a drink to warm her up a bit.
Later she wandered out and got another drink to make her forget and
still another that her mind might be blank.
At daybreak she was in the hospital in a state of coma from which
nothing could rouse her. She never came back again, and when the
call-boy in the theatre in the next town was calling out: “Fifteen
minutes--first act,” she died.
Yet his friends say the manager is one of the best fellows in the
business.
[Illustration: She had danced the fandango in a way that made the
Mexicans cheer]
THE MONOLOGUE GIRL’S STORY
It was after the show that there were four of us sitting at the round
table in the back room of The Dutchman’s on Third avenue. It’s a pretty
good place, that self-same back room, and the big steins of beer are
pretty good, too, with a heaping plate of pretzels always on the side
and a sandwich to be had by pressing the button.
There was Al Fostell, the German comedian, who ought to have been in
the legitimate long ago; Harry Ferguson, famous for his impersonation
of _Happy Hooligan_; Harry’s wife, Lulu Beeson, the Star of Texas, and
so great a dancer that she has a Richard K. Fox medal about as long as
her arm, which any beskirted performer can get by beating her at the
soft shoe buck; and one other, whom I shall simply designate as The
Girl, because, even though she plays a star part in this, she doesn’t
want to be known to the general public.
The Girl was brilliant, versatile and clever. She took it into her
head to become a dancer once, and among other things she learned the
fandango. She went to Mexico with a troupe and danced that famous
measure in a way that made them cheer her to the echo. She played faro
bank and won enough to keep her in clothes for a year.
The talk had drifted on marriage and Fostell started things.
“I have been married a good many years, more than I care to tell,” he
said, “and I have been trying to induce my daughter to call me uncle so
they won’t get on to me. I claim that a performer’s domestic life can
be just as pure and happy as that of a business man. I agree that there
is a lot of immorality in the profession, but you’ll always find a lot
of outsiders helping things along. There are times when we seem to be
targets for the whole world to shoot at.”
“In my opinion,” put in Ferguson, “the performers who are in the
business to make a living on their merits are for the most part decent
people whose lives are an open book. The women of the chorus of the
big shows on Broadway--the kind who haven’t a line to speak and who
couldn’t speak it if they had--are responsible in the main for all of
these sweeping charges of immorality. Our children are born in the
shadow of the theatre, and a great part of their lives are spent in the
green rooms and dressing rooms. We try to do the best we can by them
and bring them up properly.”
Then The Girl, who can tell stories and sing in a most charming way,
and who for that reason has a salary that is worth considering, broke
in:
“You men with wives sit back and talk of morality and all that sort
of thing and you don’t know what it means. You two are lucky because
you have married good women who look after your interests and bring
your children up as best they can under the circumstances. You only
see things from the viewpoint of the male animal, who is used to being
waited on and catered to. The average man says, ‘I am handsome,’ ‘I
am great,’ ‘I am distinguished,’ or ‘I am the real one,’ as the
case may be. He sees a girl whose appearance catches his fancy and
straightway he must have her. He likes her and that settles it. It
makes no difference whether or not she likes him--her feelings are not
to be considered. He is the one. If his passion is a strong one he
pursues her to the finish and hounds her. If she still holds out he
becomes actuated by a motive of revenge and so he sets out to try to
injure her, to prevent her from making a living that she may feel the
pinch of poverty. He uses all the influence at his command to crush and
humiliate her, and then he taunts her.
“Boys, I’ve been through the mill and I know what I’m talking about.
I’m a kid no longer, and I wouldn’t marry the best man on earth, nor
tie myself up to him for either a definite or an indefinite length of
time. No double acts for me, but monologues from now on until I get my
23.
“Let me tell you something you never heard before.
“One night I went down to the Battery and sat on the sea wall there
for hours looking at the water smashing away at the rocks. It was
moonlight and almost bright enough to read a paper. I had enough to
think of while I was sitting there and I thought it, too. I know what
it is to have a whirring sound in your brain, for I had it then. I was
trying to get up enough courage to throw myself overboard, for I really
wanted to die. I had seen all of life and of men that I wanted and had
enough. I had been driven by a man from the place where I lived to the
jumping-off spot as coldly, and calmly, and deliberately as a drover
would direct the course of a steer to the abattoir. He had made living
impossible for me.
“Those noises in my head had reached that stage where they were like
the sound of the L road trains going past your windows at night when
you’re trying to sleep, but the stronger they grew the less they
annoyed me, and the idea came to me that if I wished hard enough death
would come very easy.
“You know that old act of mine where I used to imitate a woman who
had gone insane from grief at being abandoned by her lover? You know
what a hit it always made. Well, it’s nothing like the real thing.
Heart-breaking grief in its highest form is quiet. It doesn’t want the
limelight or stage center, but a dark corner and seclusion. It wants to
be left alone.
“The next thing I remember was someone saying to me ‘Come out of here;
what are you trying to do--drown yourself?’
“And there I was in the water up to my waist with a policeman holding
me by the arm. He turned me around so that I faced the wall again and
we walked back to where he helped me up. Then he took me, all dripping
and so cold that I had no feeling at all, to the station house, where I
was charged, under a most absurd law, with attempted suicide. They were
humane enough to send for an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital
and fixed up so I could appear in court the next morning. The man was
there--the man with his sneering smile and his air of well-fed comfort.
He had come down to look me over. He probably wanted to see the girl
who had refused nearly everything that money could get, simply because
she was not for sale and couldn’t be bought like a new scarf or a hat
of the latest mode. He also wanted to parade his prosperity before
my misery, probably that before anything else. Even he must have
pitied me because of my position, and he edged over to where I was and
whispered:
“‘It isn’t too late yet, and I want to help you.’
“‘You mean that you want to get me out of here?’ I asked.
“‘Yes,’ he said eagerly, ‘I want to get you out.’
“‘Well, if I were you,’ I told him, ‘I wouldn’t take any chances
because if I get out of here and you ever speak to me again I will do
the very best I can to kill you.’
“He shrank back as if he had been stung, and so great was his terror
that I almost laughed at him. Then he turned and walked away.
“That is the curtain of my story. I could begin at the beginning and
make it a long one, but what’s the use? I could make a romance of it,
or even a tragedy, and now that I am my sane self I could even make it
a comedy. I could go over the list of things he promised me and what
he promised to do for me, and you would think he had all the wealth
of the Bank of England at his back, but his mind ran in a groove so
narrow and his manner was so offensive that the only thing that kept
him in the human being class was the fact that his nostrils were not
shaped like those of a swine, and that instead of grunting he used
language that was fairly intelligible. But for once he was toppled from
his self-built pedestal and he crashed down in the wreck of his own
self-conceit. Men like that make the world seem immoral and immoral
in fact, and a few such as he would degrade the noblest profession in
the world. Egotists and atheists, believing in nothing save self, they
taint a community like a plague.
“Bring us some more beer, Billy, for I’m going home. I’m tired and dead
to the world.”
“I wouldn’t like to be the man you hated,” said Ferguson.
“My boy, I can neither hate nor love, I am simply numb. I have had
seven proposals of marriage, both in the profession and out of it,
but there was nothing doing. I am absolutely emotionless. I ask no
favors on account of my sex and I owe my allegiance to no man. But I am
watching my tormentor growing gradually old. I see him once in a while,
you know, and I am keeping track of him. It’s my one joy in life. The
gray has come into his hair and it is turning white and the wrinkles
are spreading themselves over his face like avenging fingers. I know
he is not really happy, although he pretends to be, and some day, in
some luxurious apartment, he’ll lie dying. A million dollars will not
give him one more breath nor would a hundred millions add one more day
to his existence, and when he is very close to that gate which always
opens inward and from which there is no retreat and I really know that
he is going, then I will laugh; not the kind of a laugh you know, boys,
but the kind of a laugh that follows a soul across the border line of
death and which keeps echoing for ages.”
“Did you ever play the part of _Ophelia_?” I asked.
“No, but I could.”
And we all believed her.
A TWISTED LOVE AFFAIR
This is the story of a wooing that went astray.
There are many such stories floating around, and they are all good, if
they could only be told. But there is the trouble, for, like family
skeletons, they are sunk so deep in the cellar or locked up so securely
in the closet that there is no getting to them, even for a minute.
How these two met or where they met is of no material difference, and
here is where a romantic touch might be introduced. The truth is that
they came face to face with each other on the boardwalk at Atlantic
City. He had been up to old Vienna while she had taken in the show on
the Pier. A dozen or more of those high steins of Pilsner had made
him a bit reckless, and that was his only excuse. She was lonely, and
that was hers. It’s a great combination, like guncotton and a match.
All right apart, but let them meet and the result is pyrotechnical.
When they were twenty feet apart there was a sudden flash of lightning
of the vivid brand they have on the Jersey shore, followed by a crash
of thunder heavy enough to make a cigar store Indian step down and
crawl under his pedestal. Then a few drops of rain about the size of a
quarter, and a general scurrying for shelter.
The man whistled for a covered rolling chair, and the girl with eyes
shut and head down ran directly into his arms.
[Illustration: Atlantic City is the place for sporty girls who play the
game to the limit]
She recoiled like a rubber ball that has been thrown up against a brick
wall, while he felt to see if his watch was still fast in the mooring
at his vest.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” and she gathered up her skirts as she prepared
for another flight.
“Don’t mention it,” he answered with admiration, “but I think you could
beat Jeffries if you were trained down a bit.”
“Sir!”
“Now don’t sir me; it’s raining and that blanket of yours won’t stand
water. I’ve an option on the only chair in sight. It’s yours; help
yourself, and if you don’t mind I’ll go as far as my hotel. Are you on
the job?”
“I don’t think----” she began severely, when the lightning broke out
again and interrupted her.
“You don’t have to think,” he said. “Jump in and keep out of the wet.
People don’t think at Atlantic City; they get on the job quick,” and he
motioned the walking delegate with the perambulator to move up.
“All right,” she said, resignedly.
“Of course it’s all right, for you get home dry while I have a chance
to meet a good fellow. Now let’s introduce. My name is Ben. There’s
another part to it, but it don’t make any difference here. What’s
yours?”
“You don’t lose any time, do you?”
“Never was known to so far. Come on, what is it?”
“Bess,” she answered.
“Bess; great; sounds like a sport. Not hard to say and rhymes with
‘bless’ and ‘yes’ and a lot of other words. Now, Bess, you and I are
going to have one little drink just to celebrate. You know the old
saying--wet out and wet in. The wise gink who’s pushing this van is
heading me back to where I came from, I see; Old Vienna. I wonder if
he gets a commission? Just because I like you, and because your hair
matches my tie I’ll blow you to anything you like from a second-story
stein up to a bottle--large or small, according to your capacity. How
about it?”
“I suppose you think because you got me in this absurd wicker basket
before I could call a policeman and have you arrested for insulting
me that any proposition you make from now on will not be objected to.
Perhaps, because I made the fatal mistake of being alone on the walk at
night, you, too, have made a mistake.”
“I never make mistakes, but this time I overlooked the fact that I am
hungry. So we’ll get the large bottle and something to eat on the side
and between drinks we’ll tell each other the story of our past lives,
and we’ll make a bet on whose is the best.”
Half an hour later they were like a couple of chums who had known each
other for years, and she was calling him Ben as if she had been raised
with him.
That was not quite a year ago, and it is only introduced in order that
the story might be told from the very beginning.
A thousand trifling things happen in life which often turn the tide or
change the course of events. A man, because his watch is a few minutes
late, misses a train which is wrecked and thus saves his life; again he
goes down one street instead of another, for no reason that he knows
of, and avoids a catastrophe or misses an opportunity; he goes here
instead of there and something occurs which changes the course of his
path from that point on to the grave. Call it fate if you like, but
whatever it is it is inevitable and inexorable, and no human will has
been found that is strong enough to resist it. It is like the call
of “Hands up” coming from the desperado with a revolver. There is no
alternative. In some cases it is impulse, a seventh sense, or pure
luck--good or bad--according to results, or even intuition. The wise
man says that what is to be will be and trails along in contentment.
Others fight it out and come forth beaten in the end.
The two of this story came back to New York hopelessly in love
with each other, and at that time, so far as I know, it wasn’t the
commercial love of the twentieth century, ready to switch and change
as soon as the sun went under the first cloud. They met two, three and
four times a week, first in one place and then in another, and they
knocked about town like a pair of happy-go-lucky Bohemians with the
rent paid a year in advance.
“Some day,” he said to her once, “when I am quite free to do as I like
I’m going to marry you, and then all of this running to cover like a
pair of rabbits chased by a brown ferret that you can’t see will stop.”
“How do you know that I would marry you even if you wanted it?” she
asked.
“We’ll argue that point when the time comes,” was the answer.
“Now that we’ve known each other for so long a time--at least it seems
long to me--I’ve a confession to make to you. I ought to have told you
before, but it isn’t too late now.”
“Save your confession as I’m saving mine,” he said. “I never knew
these past life stories to do any good, for both men and women make
mistakes, and they ought to do with them as the doctors do with their
failures--bury them.”
“But we are doing wrong now.”
“The boy up the farmer’s tree filling his pocket with apples is happy
until he is caught. My motto is to get as many apples as you can until
you hear the farmer coming and then beat it while you have the wind
with you. It doesn’t require as much nerve as you think, and any time
the game isn’t worth it quit. The beaten man in a fight, if he is game,
always gets as much applause as the victor and sometimes a great deal
more. I have seen the time when it was better to lose than to win,
strange as that may seem. I don’t believe in figuring on what is to be
years from now because I may be dead. There is no to-morrow in life--it
is all to-day. If battles have been won, cities destroyed, empires
established and colossal fortunes swept away in an hour what chance has
a man--a mere atom on the earth--to speculate in futures? The typhoid
germ upon an oyster, the invisible microbe of consumption eaten or
breathed in with a thousand other death-dealing mites, can kill him as
surely as a thunderbolt or a drop of cyanide of potassium. Upon your
hands and your face at this moment are the bacteria of lockjaw only
waiting for a scratch or a wound of some kind to enter your veins. Yet
you do not worry about that. You see you have me talking about things I
do not like and it will take at least another pint to get the taste out
of my mouth. Accept my advice, if the sun is shining for you now don’t
fear the coming night.”
Through all the winter he never knew where she lived or how she lived
and he didn’t care, and that was because he was a philosopher, and
she knew as little about him as he did about her. A future meeting was
always arranged upon the heels of the previous one. Her name was Bess
and his was Ben and that was sufficient.
Very queer, of course, and almost unbelievable, but true nevertheless.
And all the while the match was getting nearer to the guncotton and
neither knew it. Playing with fire had come to be such a habit with
these two that they didn’t fear the flames.
It was at a nice little afternoon luncheon that she became first
serious and then confidential. They had reached the coffee stage--the
proper time to put your elbows on the table and talk--when she said:
“Ben, I want $5,000.”
At that particular moment he was lighting a cigarette and he didn’t
look up for a full minute, which is a very long while if you only know
the real value of time.
“What for?” he asked, finally.
“I am married, you know. I mean you don’t know it, but I’m telling you
now, and I want to get a divorce. I have been collecting evidence and
I have all I want, but I shall have to get a lawyer, and I shall also
have to live until the case is disposed of.”
“Why didn’t you consult me?”
“Why should I until I was ready?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Would you take the case?”
“No, but I could advise you.”
So he did, and being a very smart lawyer instead of giving her a check
for the money she wanted he gave her what in his opinion was $5,000
worth of advice. You see, the substance of his love of the fall had
fallen away to a shadow, and hard-headed business men don’t invest in
shadows or even pay money to build a monument over a sentiment that is
either dead or dying. Hearts are rarely trumps; spades have the call
to-day.
“I’m going ahead anyhow,” she went on, “and I suppose when I am free
that even your memory will suffer from an attack of dry rot, and that
you’ll forget everything you have ever said to me--or deny it, which
amounts to the same thing in the end.”
So the next day she told her story to a lawyer, not the story of Ben
and the dinners, but the tales of the man to whom she was married, and
when she produced certain dates and facts she was told she had the
clearest kind of a clear case and that it would go through with bells
on, with hubby paying the shot.
The complaint was drawn up and the papers served; and here comes the
great part of this recital.
Just one week later a clean-cut, well-built young business man, of
about 35, walked into Ben’s office and asked for a consultation.
“You have been recommended to me,” he began, “by a business friend of
mine. I have been sued for divorce by my wife. My morals are none too
good, but neither are hers. Will you take the case and defend me?”
“Yes,” said Ben, “I’ll take it,” and he called a stenographer. “Dictate
your story to her and then see me to-morrow, when I will have the
papers drawn up. If your counter charges amount to anything at all we
can beat her--that is, if you want to beat her. As I understand it you
don’t want her to get a divorce from you?”
“That’s it exactly. It isn’t that I care a rap, but I don’t care to be
made a scapegoat, and I think when she knows what kind of an answer I
have she’ll drop the whole case and take to the woods, which will suit
me down to the ground.”
At 11 o’clock Ben saw the transcribed notes of the amanuensis and he
hadn’t read more than ten lines when he jumped from his chair as though
it had suddenly become red-hot.
“Miss Bates,” he called sharply, “bring me your note book.”
In she came and handed it to him.
“You’ll say nothing about this?”
“No, sir,” but there was the suggestion of a smile around the corners
of her mouth.
He thrust it in his pocket and in a minute was out of the door.
There was a little luncheon date on with Bess for 12 o’clock, but he
couldn’t wait. He was at the appointed place a full hour before the
time, and he sat at the table glaring at the door. Exactly on the
stroke of the hour she came in smiling.
“Why, Ben, what’s the matter? You look as though you had been struck by
a blizzard.”
“I have. Read that,” and he handed two typewritten sheets to her.
“You’ll have to drop that case of yours, and drop it quick, too. Your
husband had the nerve to retain me to defend him; and in his counter
charges he names me as your co-respondent, and I’m damned if he hasn’t
got every move we ever made pat and to the minute. He’s been on to
everything.”
He looked up suddenly and a look of suspicion came over his face.
“What is this, a job? Have you two been working me?”
“You contemptible thing,” she whispered, “you have the mind of a street
sweeper. How dare you talk to me like that after all our----”
Two tears came into her eyes.
“If I were a man I would fight you and you wouldn’t dare to fight back.
You’d run. Do you hear that--you’d run away, because you are a coward.
I could make you run away now if I wanted, because you are afraid.”
Then she turned and walked out of the place without even so much as
looking behind her, and the man was left with a lot of typewritten
sheets clutched in one hand and a stenographer’s note book in the other.
There was never any suit, but if you happen to New York any day during
the winter months I’ll show you this couple--Bess who made a little
mistake and stepped out to where the daisies grow once or twice--and
her husband, who won because he was willing to wait.
It sounds like a romance, I know, but it’s all true, every word of it,
for the little stenographer told me the most of it.
[Illustration]
WEDDING RINGS AND FOOTLIGHTS
There are several titles which would cover this story with equal
aptness, and one of them is The Siren Song of the Burlesque Lady.
Another one that would sound well is the Corralling of the Willie Boy.
In fact they would do well together--a great deal better than the lady
and the boy did. I call him boy in this story, but he is really a man
so far as years and stature go, that is all, and he is learning a lot
every day, so much so that if he keeps on he will some day be a man in
everything.
The burlesque show with which this perfect lady was a spear carrier,
as well as a few other things, hit the Bowery early in the season, and
opened up with a roar that could be heard many blocks. It was the same
old thing only a little more so, and the line-up was composed of a
bunch of husky dames who ought to have been carrying the hod instead of
giving an exhibition of beef on the hoof. The roster is a very familiar
one, with the beef-eaters sometimes in the background like scenery,
and then again in the foreground to give the boys a good look at the
tights, two or three ginger girls, who had a small amount of talent
with a great amount of nerve, who did stunts in the olio, and the usual
collection of Irish and Hebrew comedians, of which the least said
the better. The names on the roster would look like a collection of
heroines from the Waverly novels, with Pearl, Pansy and Myrtle in the
lead by a couple of good lengths. It was put together according to the
recipe of a well-known manager, which was this:
[Illustration: They had a hot time in Minneapolis when the show hit
town]
“The people who pay their money for these kind of shows, my boy,
don’t want beauty, or brains or talent. They’d go to sleep with Sarah
Bernhardt doing the death scene in ‘Camille,’ and they’d call Booth in
‘Richard the Third’ a frost. What they want is legs--good, big husky
legs that can take all the wrinkles out of the biggest size of pink
tights on the market. They want quantity, not quality. Give them that
and you’ll get their ten, twenty and thirty every time.”
He wore big diamonds, had a bank roll the size of a Hamburger steak,
and so he must have been in right. Besides he always had a bottle of
wine with his meals, and he didn’t care what kind of wine it was, so
long as the label was attractive; which goes to show that his money was
coming in so fast that his palate couldn’t keep up with it.
On the night the Fair Maids of Gotham opened, the Willie Boy, very fly
up to a certain point, but with a soft sucker part about as big as
a Derby hat, planted himself in one of the front seats. He had been
mixing up with sports all of his life, and as a result the corners
on him were as hard as flint. His roll was divided in four parts and
stowed away in four separate places for safety’s sake, and when it came
to a hurry touch he was prepared to dig down into his change pocket
and produce a few pennies with verdigris on them as the extent of his
capital. He had a block and a counter for every proposition that came
his way and when anything came off he always managed to land his
percentage and ride, even though everybody else walked.
The orchestra had crushed through its preliminary canter, the lights
went down, the buzz of talk let up for a moment, and as he settled
himself back in his seat with a big cigar in his mouth the curtain slid
up for the opening chorus. The grenadiers in front swung their legs
coquettishly, and pranced about like two-legged pachyderms as they
delivered the goods in the shape of a song, which stated in very wobbly
and uncertain rhyme that they were very jolly, very entertaining, and
that they were out for a lark and were willing to take chances. It was
all very affecting, and it might have been going on yet if the star of
the show, known professionally as the principal boy, hadn’t butted in
like a football player when the cue, “Here comes the Prince,” was given
by a perfect lady with a forty-six-inch bust. She was so thoroughly
upholstered with rhinestones that she looked like some new kind of an
electric light proposition on legs. Willie sized her up with the eye of
a connoisseur, and he fell to wondering whether or not among all that
paving of cut glass there might not be a true gem.
Suddenly, as the line in front swayed, then broke and shifted, he
caught sight of a tall blonde who had been fastened to it like the tail
on a kite. She wasn’t quite as wide as the rest of the bunch, but there
was something about her that attracted his immediate attention.
And here you see again the delicate tracery of the Italian hand of
fate--that invisible, indefinite thing which stands always at our backs
ready to move us here and there, like chessmen on a board, whether
we like it or not. The male human pats himself on his shoulder and
congratulates himself that he has a will and a mind of his own, but
ever near him is that wraith which directs his movements, making him do
this or that and go here and there. There is no force, no threat and no
cajoling; it is simpler than a twist of the wrist, and the end of that
winding, twisting, intersected road, with its hundreds of sharp turns
here and there and its joys and sorrows, is the grave.
So look at the boy with good red blood in his veins, with a gentle,
high-bred mother, a beautiful sister, and a home in which there was
nothing but refining influences, sitting bolt upright now in that cheap
theatre seat and gazing like one bewitched at this girl with the yellow
hair, bleached to almost a frazzle, and the pale, watery blue eyes,
with no figure at all and absolutely no talent, produced and spit forth
from a tenement to grow up in the city’s streets like a weed to finally
reach the most ordinary position in a most ordinary theatrical company,
where, standing on the lowest possible level, she was satisfied. Paint,
powder and rouge made her a ghastly sight, but in his eyes she was
framed in an aureole and was as beautiful as a Madonna.
It was one of the things that no human being will ever be able to
account for satisfactorily. Personal magnetism undoubtedly plays a
part in it, as it does in many other things, but you wouldn’t think a
young fellow like this would go so far out of his class unless he had a
throwback strain of degeneracy imbedded somewhere in his system.
The tribe trooped off to make a change of costume and the comedians
settled down to work. Then the ginger girls whooped things up a
bit, and an acrobat went through the routine of stunts, while a few
spasmodic outbursts of applause showed there were some people in the
house who appreciated his work. But the pair of eyes owned by the young
fellow in the aisle seat, third row, were looking for that blonde and
nothing else.
Knowing everybody as he did, it wasn’t a difficult matter for him to
get someone who knew her to wait after the show and bring them together
in a rather formal way, although, in her case, that wouldn’t have been
at all necessary. She had as little use for formalities as she had for
conventionalities, which is not at all to be wondered at.
“Meet my friend Willie; now let’s all go out and get a drink,” was all
there was to it, and ten minutes later four--two of each sex--were
planted around a table in a cafe not more than a block or so from the
theatre.
“Like the show?” asked the Genial Giantess, who was keen enough to
smell a little love affair in the air.
“Great,” answered Willie; “it ought to get the money this season. What
are you going to drink?”
“I never take anything but beer after the matinee--it hurts my voice.”
Strangely enough no one laughed, but with another girl and at another
time Willie would have laughed himself almost into convulsions, for he
has a keen sense of humor.
The four ate and drank at that table until it was time for the night
show and then they separated, by which time Willie was so far gone
that he sat throughout the evening performance while she smiled
encouragingly at him from the other side of the footlights.
That is how the courtship really began.
For the rest of the week they were together all the time, and she began
to realize that she had at last reached the apex of her ambition and
found a man who looked like a wedding ring and a board bill proposition.
A fellow like this can have a dozen affairs and no one will question
them, but when it comes to marrying there is a different story. To the
outsiders it bore all the earmarks of a week’s stand at first, and as
he never showed his hand no one was any the wiser, not even his most
intimate friends.
A man’s declaration of love for a woman is a very beautiful thing so
long as he is honest about it and keeps within his own class. The slang
of the slums can be made as sincere as the most polished English.
But in a case of infatuation like this--it might be called temporary
insanity--it doesn’t hardly seem right there should be any ceremony.
The halo of romance existed only in the mind of the boy--for the woman
it was a business transaction with the obligations all on one side,
so it was with a flippant air that she promised to “love, honor and
obey,” and then after the briefest of brief honeymoons she went on the
road with the show, while the young husband at once set about preparing
a home for her when she should get ready to settle down to a life of
domesticity.
At first he figured on taking her to his mother’s home, but when he
told of the hurry-up wedding and showed a picture of the woman to whom
he had given his name, the scene that followed forever settled the
question, and he knew that his soubrette wife and his mother would
never live under the same roof together.
The morals of the members of a burlesque show on the road have come to
be a joke. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are very rare,
though I personally know of some good women who have gone on tour
through force of circumstances and have come through the ordeal morally
and physically clean. I regret to be compelled to record that the
Genial Giantess doesn’t belong in this class, and when the aggregation
had torn thirty weeks off the calendar they came back looking like
refugees from the San Francisco earthquake.
“I ain’t got a cent,” remarked the blonde on the ferryboat coming from
Jersey City, “and I don’t have to have because Willie will stake me as
soon as I get to New York, and besides he’s got a flat fixed up for me.”
That was the truth. He had a nice apartment for the homecoming, and
while he wasn’t as much in love with her as he was when they were first
married, he still felt that he had obligations and he ought to make
good.
You know what I said in the beginning about fate? Well, listen.
While the performers were on the ferryboat, and when Blondie was making
her celebrated remark, her Willie was up against a bar on Broadway with
a couple of men he had met some time before. They were talking about
women, and one, a commercial traveler, remarked:
“I’ll put you up against a warm bunch if you want to get on the job
this week. We didn’t do a thing to them in Minneapolis when I was there
on my last trip. I had a big blonde on my staff, and the first night I
met her I loaded her up so that she had to be carried upstairs to her
room by three waiters. Here’s a letter I got from her last week, and
while she’s no ten thousand dollar beauty yet she’s a good fellow and a
thoroughbred sport. Read it, Willie. When she hits this burg I’ll put
you next and bet 20 to 1 that she’ll drink you to a standstill, for
she’s the biggest tank I ever ran across.”
And when Willie read the letter which bore his wife’s signature and
which put him wise to a few things he had never before dreamed of, he
did what many another man would do under the same circumstances--that
is, many another wise man. He ordered a round of drinks, and then he
kept on ordering and saying nothing, letting the other fellows tell all
they knew, and the first chance he got he blew out and went home, not
to the place he had fixed up for Mrs. Willie, but to the home presided
over by his mother. He simply abandoned the flat and all of his day
dreams. They vanished like mist in the morning’s sun.
A few days later he got a letter from his wife and in it she reproached
him for not meeting her, and furthermore she inquired what had become
of the flat he had fixed up for her.
“I am broke, you know,” she wrote, “and I think the least you could do
is to help me out.”
She signed it “Your loving (_sic_) and affectionate wife,” and it
almost gagged him to read it.
He took a sheet of paper and wrote the answer. It contained but one
line, but it told a whole chapter. In due course of time it was
delivered to her. She opened the envelope and read the enclosure. What
she said was unfit for publication, for what she saw was only two words
and they were:
“Forget it.”
[Illustration]
TOLD BY THE MANICURE GIRL
“How long have you been here?” asked the man with the black mustache;
“I never noticed you before.”
“Just a week to-day,” said the manicure, as she soused one of his fat,
pudgy paws in the scented water. She didn’t even take the trouble to
look up at him as she talked, but applied herself at once to the almost
impossible task of making his nails even presentable. It’s a hard job,
you know, trying to improve on one of nature’s bum pieces of work.
The man leaned back in his chair contentedly, and with that air of
assurance which money begets, and he looked her over as he would have
looked over a new style of shirt in a haberdasher’s window. He noted
that her hair was dark chestnut in color and luxuriant, also that it
was undoubtedly all her own. The contour of her face was such as would
have attracted any man with red blood in his veins and a heart to pump
it. She had, besides, nice hands that were well kept, and a dainty
manner that was rather charming.
“Don’t you ever get tired of doing this kind of work?” he asked, when
he had finished his inspection and had sized her up to his apparent
satisfaction.
“I am always tired of it,” she answered, briefly.
“How would you like to travel?” was his next question.
[Illustration: “I wasn’t arrested, but I was put out as if I were a
common swindler”]
Then she paused a moment and glanced up. She was smiling, and the two
dimples that came in her cheeks rather enhanced her beauty.
Then he saw that she also had teeth that were white and regular, that
her lips were red and her eyelashes long.
You know a bargaining man takes in all these things, just the same as a
buyer of beef on the hoof feels and prods the cattle in the search for
blemishes.
“There is nothing in the world I would like better than to travel.”
She looked him squarely in the eyes, and her smile was accentuated.
Then she resumed her work. As for him he leaned still farther back in
the comfortable chair and sucked complacently on his big Havana.
“I knew you was a nice little girl as soon as I saw you.”
“Did you?”
The rapid, supple fingers never paused for a moment in their work,
and were trimming, rubbing and polishing those awful nails into some
kind of decent shape. The thick, heavy, hairy hand, with its spatulate
extremities, showed physical strength and nothing else. It was made
for work, and it had worked, too, in its day. It had been used to the
most ordinary and menial kind of labor, as the hands of its ancestors
had. It had lifted beams and handled picks and shovels. It had pulled
at ropes and tugged at heavy burdens. It had had little to do with
the gentler side of life, and even the big diamond ring on the fourth
finger could not hide its early career.
But an accident happened--a money-making accident which some might call
opportunity--and the hands had been withdrawn from their labors, and
the callous spots had a chance to disappear--gradually, but none the
less surely. The movement of the slim white fingers caused him to look
down, and he was conscious of the fact that his heart was beating a bit
faster than usual. The blue smoke from his cigar curled up through his
mustache, it crept into his eyes and made them sting. Through the haze
he noticed that the girl had a bow of black ribbon fastened to her hair.
“I’ll bet you’d be a good sport if you had the chance.”
“That depends upon what you mean by the chance,” she said.
He couldn’t quite analyze that, and so he blurted out:
“Go down the line with me and I’ll show you.”
She paid no attention to that.
“How about it?” he persisted.
“How about what?”
“I’d just like to take you out to a little lunch for two. What time do
you break away from here? What time do you knock off?”
“To-night, do you mean?”
“Sure, yes, to-night.”
“Just time enough to go home, and I never go out at night.”
“Tush, tush, now. Be a good fellow, and if I like you I’ll take you on
a long trip. You know you said you liked to travel, didn’t you? Well,
I’m going to give you a chance, if you behave yourself and stick to me.
I’ve been looking for a girl like you for a long while, and you just
hit me right, so you’re on the job. I can make good, all right, you
needn’t be afraid of that, for I’ve got all kinds of money, and when I
meet anybody I like I spend it like a drunken sailor, see?”
“Yes, I see; I knew you had money all the time.”
“You did, did you; well, how?”
“Because it is only men with plenty of money who would talk to a girl
the way you have been talking to me. It is only the men with money
who think they can buy everything in sight, especially if that which
they think they fancy happens to be the wearer of a skirt, and it’s
the men with money who think their money is better than anybody else’s
money, and their dollars are of more value than the dollars owned or
controlled by some one who has less than they have. Are you married?”
“No,” he answered. He would have said more if he had known what to say.
“Then why don’t you go and pick out some woman whom you like and who
likes you, and marry her and have it over with. Your time for being a
gay sport has passed; leave that to the young fellows.”
Daintily she reddened his nails with rouge, doing them as carefully as
if they were works of art, and tapping each one gently in order to get
just the right amount of color.
“I don’t think,” she went on, “that you quite know what you’ve been
up against. You may have heard the old saying, ‘a burnt child dreads
the fire;’ well, I’m the child in this case, although I’m no child in
years. As I told you before, I’ve been here a week, and it’s a great
relief to me to be working, for I’ve been on one of those little trips
you were just talking about, and there is nothing to it. You see,”
then she glanced up quickly, “perhaps you don’t want to hear this.”
“That’s all right; go ahead, you can’t hurt my feelings.”
“I was told that I was a good fellow and a nice girl, and I was led to
believe that I could have anything in the world that I wanted, and I
want to tell you right here that it is a beautiful thing to believe and
have faith in anyone. Some of the stories that men tell to women would
make great reading if it was only written right, but they would be all
fiction, because I don’t believe a man ever told a woman the truth in
his life. I’m talking from personal experience, of course. This one
man, who was really old enough to be my father, talked to me about my
future, and said, among other things, he would always look after me,
and I was serious enough about it to believe that he would, too. Then
one day he asked me if I wanted to take a little trip, and his words
were so much like yours when you spoke that you startled me. Isn’t it
strange that the nails of your left hand take on so much higher polish
than those of the right hand? I wonder why it is? There, _I’m_ through
now. Fifty cents, please.”
“But how about the finish of that story? Did you take the trip?”
“Of course I took it.”
“Make the job a dollar and tell me the rest.”
“I never would have believed that I would be sitting here telling that
story to a man whom I had only met once. You’re not offended at the way
I criticised you, are you?”
“Not at all,” he answered, “go ahead and criticise me all you like. I
rather like it, it’s so seldom that I am criticised.”
“You mean nowadays?” she asked, noting his hands.
“Yes, since I got money. Go on with the story.”
“The trip was to be to Europe--first London, then Paris, and after that
Berlin. He was a banker and so prominent that you would know his name
at once if I were to mention it, but there is where I draw the line.
I’ll save him that much, anyhow. When we left he had a large bag in
which he seemed to take an especial interest, for he would allow no one
to touch it but himself, and it wasn’t until we were half way across
that I found out that it was all full of money.”
“Money?” queried the man with the black mustache, sitting bolt upright
in his chair.
“Yes, money. That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” she asked, petulantly.
“Brand new greenbacks, pound notes, hundred and thousand-franc notes.
Oh, they were beautiful to look at, and I counted over the packages
because they were so pretty. You see, he said he was going over to put
through a big banking deal, and he cautioned me to say nothing about
all the money he had with him, for fear he would be robbed. When we
arrived in London we went direct to the Cecil, where he registered
under an assumed name, but I was down on the book as his wife, just
the same, and he told me to go out and get some clothes and anything
I wanted. He said he wanted to have some of the big bills changed and
that was the easiest way in the world to have it done, but he asked me
to bring all the change to him, and to pay for every separate article
with one of the new bills. I thought it was rather queer at the time,
but I did as he told me and I never in my life had such a good time
buying things. I brought back to the hotel a dreadful amount of change,
so much that it was a nuisance.
“Every day it was the same thing over again until I honestly grew tired
of spending money. Think of that--tired spending. Before we left for
Paris he put over $15,000 of the change in a safe deposit vault that
only he and I knew about, because something had happened and he had to
get to Paris quickly. When we got there we went to the Grand Hotel,
where he registered under still another name. Again I went shopping,
and the only hard part of it was that I had a new bill to change every
time I bought anything, think of that, even if it was a little lunch in
a cafe, and many a time I have had to wait while they sent out for the
change of a thousand-franc note. We were there just four days when one
afternoon two men came to our rooms with the proprietor or manager of
the hotel, and the first thing I knew he was arrested on the charge of
making or having counterfeit money or something like that. Before they
got him out of the room he whispered to me that he had put $15,000 more
in a safe deposit vault in Paris, and he told me the name of the place.
He said it was in my name, too.
“I wasn’t arrested, but I was put out of the hotel as if I had been a
swindler. I had enough money to get home, and so I came. I don’t want
any more excitement in mine, and I’m content to get along the best way
I can, without any fireworks or trips of any kind, unless, of course,
_I’m_ sure that everything is absolutely correct and all right. Suppose
I had been broke, what would I have done alone in Paris?”
“What happened to the man?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“He was tried and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, and if he
had only married me, and I had my marriage certificate, I could go over
there and get $30,000 as easy as nothing. I don’t care so very much for
it, but still it would come in very handy and I wouldn’t mind dividing
it up with anyone who could help me out.”
The man fidgeted in his chair, glanced out of the window, and then took
a long pull at his cigar.
“Bored you, didn’t it?” asked the girl. “I knew it would, but you
insisted on my telling it, and you’re the only one that knows it. I’m
really getting garrulous.”
“Do you think $5,000 would be enough to get the papers fixed up?”
“Oh, yes, that would be quite enough, for I inquired about it. It would
take me there and back again and pay all expenses.”
“And you’d give me half?”
“Why, of course I would. Who wouldn’t?”
You know the old saying about a sucker being born every minute. I could
go on and make the usual hot finish to this story, but what’s the use
when two lines will suffice. She got the money, of course, and he got
what is known in the language of The Line as the lemon. Very sour it
was for this hard, wise fellow, and they say that now every time he
passes a manicure parlor he turns his head the other way and says
things which wouldn’t look well in print.
[Illustration: There were times when she did things that were
unconventional]
INVESTING IN A HUSBAND
Money makes the mare go.
Sure.
That is, sometimes, if it’s the right kind of a mare and there is
enough money.
Take out all the “ifs” and “buts” and it will be all right.
The world began with a man, Adam, and the woman came later, but the
finish will be different, for there will be a woman in the last ditch
giving or ready to give the avenging angel the stiffest kind of an
argument.
This story differs from the Creation in that it begins with a woman,
as all stories of to-day should. And why not? for take the lady out of
the case and there’s no story and never will be. The slim finger of a
woman, you know, is in every pie. Sometimes it improves the flavor and
sometimes it spoils it--that’s a matter of luck--and there are men who
have tried pies or many fingers, whichever simile you prefer, and the
result in their cases is always the same.
The girl in this story had birth, and blood, and breeding behind her.
She also had good looks and a little money, and that is about all
that anyone wants. Add to that a fairly nice disposition and you have
reached the limit.
Of course, she wasn’t perfect by any means. She was a bit whimsical and
peculiar, and her moods were as apparent as the moving pictures thrown
on a sheet in the theatre. She was unusual in that her moods were
reflected in her face with all the truthfulness of a mirror. That was
the reason that some said she was good-looking, while others contended
that she was most ordinary. Take her as I’ve often seen her, when she
was cheerful and happy-go-lucky, and while there was nothing about her
features that was regular she was attractive enough for anyone, and she
could make a good many young fellows turn their heads to look after her
as she passed down the street.
Then again something would happen, and she would seem to age ten years
in as many hours, and a crop of deep lines and wrinkles would spring
out like magic. But she had magnetism, and she was forever standing at
the fork of two roads, one of which led to good and the other to bad.
To her it was the toss of a coin which one she would take.
It was while she was in a thoughtful mood, debating with herself, that
the man came along. There’s an apology goes with that, for he hadn’t a
vote yet, and he was very youthful in his ways and of that age where a
youngster is apt to tell more than is good for him, and to stray from
the field of fact. Of course, it’s not a crime--it’s only a period.
With his red cheeks and baby complexion he looked like a cross between
a stick of peppermint candy and one of Raphael’s cherubs. He was as
pretty a piece of embroidery as ever asked his mother for spending
money, and when the girl saw him she immediately threw out a line and
took him in tow. Inside of twenty-four hours she had her monogram
indelibly stamped on him, and he was hers. Hand in hand they went out
to see the world and become real sports, and it wasn’t long before
wine was the limit and it wasn’t half good enough at that. They left
a lurid streak up and down the line, but it soon faded out, for they
weren’t financially strong enough to make a splash that would attract
any more attention than a pair of tiny gold fish in a two-dollar
aquarium.
After all, it amounts to nothing more or less than a question of
capacity--stomach as well as purse, and it is rarely that the two
harmonize. The man with the yard-wide thirst is often handicapped by a
purse with complete or partial paralysis.
And then these two fell in with other company in the shape of a man
and woman whose nuptials had been attended by incidents of a more
or less exciting character, the star part of which was an elopement
which savored more of desire than genius in its arrangements. They
had succeeded so well in their new venture that they owned the entire
contents of a flat across the river in Jersey, and being still in
the throes of love themselves--or thinking they were--they were
headquarters for everything that seemed like an affair of the heart.
Some who were not their friends were unkind enough to say that it was
nothing more nor less than a case of misery loving company, and that
being on the coals themselves this couple enjoyed leading others to the
broiler. But that’s unkind and really ought not to be believed.
However, many a racket came off in the flat, and they all went as hot
a pace as wind and weather permitted, until even a rank outsider would
have said it was time for a minister to get on the job and do what he
could to make things legal.
The cork popped from a bottle of wine and the juice of the grape
sizzled out.
“What do you say, Kid, let’s get married?”
“All right, I’m game if you are; you can’t phaze me,” she said.
“Well, how about to-night?”
“The sooner the better.”
Talk about quick action, it was here with a vengeance.
Four people on a ferryboat, then an elevated railroad and the ringing
of a minister’s door bell.
It’s all very simple.
The dinner afterward in a cafe, very informal, you know, to harmonize
with the ceremony, with a couple of quarts for luck sandwiched in by
cocktails and highballs; then a few brief telegrams:
“Married to-night; wish us luck;” you know the rest.
It was all right, after all, apparently, and everybody did wish them
luck, even if there were a few bad spots in the job. But, you see,
they suited themselves and there was no one else to be taken into
consideration, not even the relatives. This going around and holding
consultations in advance is no good, and people who are in love or who
think they are in love don’t want advice of any kind, except the kind
that rings the door bell of a minister’s hut or buys a wedding ring and
sends it with the words:
“Get busy before it is too late.”
I’m no critic, and I don’t pretend to criticise here. I’m simply
telling a story which may or may not be true, but I’m not going to be
responsible for it any more than the man who rents a place and plants
flowers in the garden is responsible for the architecture of the house
on the premises.
It is said that the bride in this case was kind enough to supply
the funds for the honeymoon, while the nice boy supplied the beauty
and called it even. In the eyes of the lady it seems a fair enough
proposition, but harsh things are liable to be said of such a
combination, even though it is no one’s business.
When they returned from the fields of fruits and flowers the boy had
made up his mind, like the Count Boni de Castellane, that being a
husband was much better than holding down a job in an office, and so
they settled in New York like a pair of pigeons after a long flight.
He had no more idea of the responsibilities of married life than a
six-months’-old infant has of playing the races. With a place to sleep
and a feed bag always ready for his face he was satisfied, but that was
because of his youth. You see, marrying from the cradle has both its
advantages and its drawbacks, according to the way you look at it.
For him every morning was Christmas, and the tree was always fixed up
with something nice with his name on it. Do you blame him for looking
pleasant? Press the button for a dollar, press it twice and you get
five. Just as easy as drawing money out of the bank when you have a
check book.
But with all going out and nothing coming in it doesn’t last long, and
when he had swept up all the spare change in sight he began to cast his
covetous eye upon the big bundle that was tied up with a woolen string.
He knew something about the racing game--just enough to get stung when
the time came--and he knew a man who was good enough to offer him a
half interest in a racing mare that had been kept under cover for a
year or so, but who could, if she was let out, beat anything that ever
wore pigskin. To that infantile mind of his this was the one great
chance of a lifetime and the thousand-dollar bill was the key which
would unlock the door to wealth.
Money without working for it.
Why it was a pipe. Besides, it made a beautiful and alluring tale for
the bride, who had reached that stage where she didn’t want her boy
away from her, not even for a minute. With the thousand he would make
the initial investment, and with the rest of the bank roll he would
bet. With paper and pencils they sat at the table one night and rolled
up two thousand to the fortune of a Rockefeller.
How easy it is to make money that way. All you have to do is to begin
with any amount, even a penny, and if your pencil holds out you’ll
have a million in less than no time, but you can’t buy anything with
it--there’s the trouble. The man in the insane asylum who imagined
that every stone in the construction of the building was of pure gold
and that it belonged to him was just as rich in his own mind as the
wealthiest human being in the world--and happier, too, I’ll bet you.
They planned it all out, even to the trip to Europe on the winnings of
the first big race, for she would carry odds of not less than 20 to 1,
because she was unknown.
A little trip down to the bank and out came the money in brand new
bills that were very good to look at.
So the first step was taken, and the boy made up his mind that he had
turned his back forever upon such things as ten-dollar-a-week jobs.
It doesn’t require any ingenuity or brains for a man to separate
himself from such things as thousand-dollar bills--in fact it’s quite
easy. Consequently it didn’t require any brain work on the part of
the boy to deplete the account by just that amount within a very
short time. For his new bill he received in return a slip of paper
which stated that he was the half owner of the racing mare known as
Blue Monday, and that in consideration of his paying one-half of the
training expenses of the said mare he was to be entitled to one-half of
the winnings, less jockey fees and other incidentals.
To him it sounded beautiful and it took not less than one quart to
celebrate this new business venture--paid for by the lady, of course,
but still, in view of the fact that they were one, it was all right.
Then there began to come to him via the U. S. Mail, certain sundry
statements concerning the expenses of putting this fine bit of horse
flesh into the proper condition to bring home the money, and the
request for immediate remittance. There was variety enough about these
statements, too, to satisfy the most fastidious, and the amounts ranged
all the way from six dollars and fifty cents to an even hundred. The
clever mind of the bride took in the situation at a glance, but the
faith of the optimistic kid held as fast as a ship’s anchor to a rock
ledge, and he could see nothing but success in the near future.
You know there is never a day so far away that it doesn’t come at last.
So it was that the day of the long expected race arrived and down deep
in the trousers pockets of the Pink Cheeked One was $150, the last shot
in the locker.
“It’s all right, Kid,” he said to her. “It’s just as I thought, she’s
a twenty-five to one shot, and I’m going to plank every cent down. At
those odds we’ll take home with us $3,750, and I guess that’ll hold us
for awhile. How about it?”
“But suppose she doesn’t win?”
“Doesn’t win? What’s the matter with you--are you getting cold feet?
How can she lose? Didn’t we clock her this morning on the try-out and
didn’t she beat the track time? Wait till you know more about this game
and you’ll see where _I’m_ right.”
I don’t know much more about it than that, but the files of papers of
that date show me that Blue Monday, mare, 3-year-old, was entered for
the Seaside stakes of $1,500, at odds of 25 to 1; there was a good
start, with her in the lead. At the quarter she had fallen back to
fourth, at the half she had crept up until she lapped the second horse.
She finished seventh.
I should say that blue-eyed boy was looking for a job the next day, but
I’m not fortune teller enough to know whether he connected or not.
[Illustration]
TRAINING AN OLD SPORT
Come and listen to the siren song of the New York girl, and perhaps it
may interest you for awhile. There is no question about it unless you
are a bronze statue standing on a gray stone pedestal in some park, or
a cigar store Indian with an Hebraic nose and a wooden tomahawk. In
the first place the New York girl has been conceded to be a wonder and
about the best in the world in looks as well as in figure. She has a
fine complexion when she gives it a chance to show itself, and, like
the little girl in the story book, when she’s good she’s very, very
good, and when she’s bad she’s a peach. The thing is to pick out the
right one, and your chances for that are just as good as drawing to a
pair in poker. Some say it’s luck, while others favor the science idea.
With that for an overture, let’s ring the bell for the curtain to go
up on the charming little two-act play, entitled “The Redemption of a
Sport.”
The Old Sport has been up against every proposition the sun ever shone
on, and there was nothing he wasn’t fly to. He had paid board for
blondes and brunettes as well as a few Leslie Carters, to say nothing
of an Albino he once took a fancy to. He was an early and late bird,
and he was known up and down the line by his first name, which is a
distinction that it usually takes a lot of money or a number of years,
and sometimes both, to acquire, and even then it’s not a lead pipe
cinch that you’ll land it right.
[Illustration: A light flashed out on the landing and revealed the
figure of a beautiful woman]
This fellow was good to the girls, and could be relied on for a
five-case note on a hurry touch at any time, for he had no buttons on
his pockets, and he knew that safe deposit vaults in heaven are only
used for the storing of golden crowns in hot weather.
“If I can’t take my money with me,” he said once, “then I’ll spend it
here, for if there’s anything in the world that I hate it is to think
that there’s going to be a lot of hungry relatives picking over the
bones of my estate before I get comfortably settled in the six feet of
real estate that no one can beat me out of. The money’s got to be spent
some time, and I’m going to be the one to get the credit for it because
it’s mine.”
But there came a time in his life when he felt that he wanted to get
away from the mob. He had been stung by the bee of domesticity and
didn’t know it. What he did know was that he wanted a place with a real
woman in it, where he could hang his hat and that he could call his
own. If he had wanted to put his brains at work he would have known
that it was nothing more nor less than the law of nature which had him
fast--that same law which makes a bird build a nest in a tree, or a
wild animal pre-empt a bed of moss under the roots of a certain tree.
It was the home instinct.
So he began to cast his eye around for a side partner whom he could
have and hold, even if he had to coax her up to the altar with a
marriage license printed in red and gold and lasso her with a wedding
ring. From that time on he was always on the alert for the right one
to come along, and every time he heard a sound like a skirt he made
an investigation. In about ten days he turned down all the Dollies and
Mauds of the Line, for he couldn’t see where they would have a look-in
if the cook happened to leave in a hurry and he arrived home with a
backwoods appetite. You see he wanted a gas-stove performer who could
in an emergency tell the difference between a roast and a ragout in the
raw state, and who could juggle with a lot of cold grub in the ice box,
and turn out a square meal that was not only hot but nourishing. He was
tired of restaurant hash, anyhow, and he was longing for the kind of
biscuits that mother used to make.
He figured for awhile on a girl named Elsie, who could make a cocktail
to beat the band, and who could also drink more and get away with
it than any of the rest. She was a good looker, too, and she had
trotted in double harness before, but he found out that she was a bit
promiscuous in her tastes, and he didn’t care to feel that he had to
stay at home all the time in order to keep her from entertaining any
stranger in a pair of trousers who happened along. So he put a red
cross, which means “Danger, Keep Off,” opposite her name, and began
looking in another direction.
He changed his tactics completely.
“I’m on now,” he said to himself. “I’ll hunt up some nice little
innocent girl who doesn’t know anything of the world, and who has taken
a course in a cooking school. I want the kind whose ambition in life is
to be boss of a nice three-story house, and who doesn’t care any more
for Broadway than a hobo does for a hot bath. I’ll just hunt up some
mother’s girl who has her hair hanging down her back in a big, thick
braid, and I’ll sing her a song that’ll make her think I’m the real
thing on wheels.”
So with that very laudable and commendable idea he started out. He
didn’t figure that a tough old nut like he was had any right to go up
against a game like that, and that his play was to mix with people of
his own class. But you’ll find in nine cases out of ten that the worse
a man is or has been the more innocence and purity he wants when he is
figuring on giving a sky pilot a chance to make a dollar or two.
But having made up his mind the kind of a field he was going to hunt,
the next question was how to break in. All the girls he knew were,
without exception, of the brand which are at their best when the lights
are turned on, who rent flats for business purposes, and who change
quarters when an intimation is made by the captain of a police precinct
that the change will do them good. To save his life he couldn’t figure
out this new proposition, and he was like the man who bought a new
double-barreled shotgun and then found out he couldn’t get a permit to
hunt the birds the old farmer owned.
And now right here, at the critical moment, in steps fate, luck, or
destiny, it doesn’t matter which, for they are all the same, and
shuffles the cards for a new deal.
An automobile on Broadway bumped hard enough into the rear end of a
hansom cab to almost throw the driver from his seat and to make him
swear a blue streak of profane eloquence. The usual crowd collected,
and in the bunch caught there by the sudden rush of curious and morbid
humanity was the Old Sport. He pushed with both elbows to free himself
and then stepped back testily. A girl behind him cried out with pain,
and he turned suddenly around to find himself face to face with as
choice a little blonde as ever carried books home from school, and,
furthermore, she had a braid down her back.
“I beg your pardon, did I hurt you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid you did; you stepped on my foot.”
“Well, just take my arm and let me help you out of this crowd.”
Easy if you only know how and the chance comes your way.
The Old Sport wasn’t really old--not over forty--and he was there with
the looks, and the little lady rather liked the way he framed up, as
anyone could see by the way she cuddled up to him as she limped along.
His heart was beating it like a yeggman coming East on a brake beam,
and already he was figuring on how to handle this new proposition.
If it had been one of those other girls he would have said:
“You just send your trunk up to my place, and we’ll go around and have
a talk to a minister; how about it?”
But he couldn’t say that to this girl with the pink in her cheeks and
the fluffy hair that had never been up against the peroxide.
“Foot pretty bad, Kid?” was the way he broke the ice.
“Oh, no, thank you, it’s all right now, but it hurt me a lot at first.”
“Live far from here?” he came back again.
“No, not very far; only Fifty-third street.”
There was only ten blocks to go, and when they got to the last one he
knew all about her. He knew that she was living with her aunt, and
that she was taking music lessons because some day she hoped to be able
to teach. As they paused for a moment on the corner, he said:
“If you should happen along on Forty-second street to-morrow about 2,
I’ll be glad to see you.”
It was a bit crude, but it went all right and the date was made. When
she walked away he stood looking after her, and he noticed that she had
a nice trim figure, a dainty little foot and that she stepped out like
a thoroughbred.
“You for me,” he remarked, and then he hustled back to find some one he
could treat, so great was his joy.
So there’s the picture, to use a theatrical term, and the curtain goes
down on it for the end of the first act.
Now, you and I and some of the rest of the thirsty crowd will go out
and have a drink between acts, but it’s a warm night and instead of one
drink there’s half a dozen. Time flies when you’re in good company and
the Old Sport was taking no chances. Ten interviews with the girl--ten
good, square, honest talks at the rate of a talk a day--and she
consented to take a chance with him and tell the folks afterward. He
was on the level, though, and when she went home a couple of days later
she had the little certificate with her, and after a few tears Auntie
was invited around to visit her new nephew and look over the new house.
As for the Sport, he settled down as comfortably as an old buff
Cochin-China hen on a dozen eggs, and he made up his mind that he had
been missing a good many years of real dyed-in-the-wool happiness
while he was traveling The Line with the bunch and throwing all kinds
of booze under his belt.
But when the weeks began to add themselves into months he grew a bit
restless of nights and it came pretty hard when any of the boys asked
him to come along and help them crack a bottle. He took the Mrs. to the
show once in a while, but it was always a case of hurry home as soon
as the orchestra began to play “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” He didn’t
want to take a chance of being caught by any of the Merry-Merrys who
were out for the rent and guyed for “marrying decent.” Once or twice
he thought he had made a mistake and that the change was too great or
too sudden for him, but an hour later when he had his slippers on and
was planted in the big armchair in the corner, he knew he wouldn’t make
any kind of a change for the world, and he felt that he had lost a good
many years out of his life in not getting into this kind of a game
sooner. Like an old fire horse, he was all right as long as he didn’t
smell fire. But the time was coming, and it was as sure as rent, taxes
or death.
It came when he went out one night to be gone not more than a half
hour, and when he tried his key in the lock it was 2 A. M., and the
girl, her eyes red from crying with the desertion and the loneliness
of it all, had fallen asleep, fully dressed, across the foot of the
bed. He was very sorry and penitent, but for all that he went out the
next night just the same, and after that he was never in. He was back
on the old trail, mixing once more, to the great delight of the crowd.
The novelty of home had worn off, and when his wife waited up for him
she usually found him too drunk to understand what she was saying to
him. From one step it is easy to take another, or, as the Chinese say,
the creeper always walks in the end. He took to bringing friends home
with him at all hours, especially between three and six in the morning,
and their arrival was always made apparent by the wild time they had
scrambling up the stairs.
Now, in this story--as in real life--always keep your eye on the lady.
It doesn’t make any difference where she comes from, whether it’s New
York City or Lower Squankum, New Jersey, she is either one of two
things, very clever or very dull. There is no medium, for what may seem
to you like a medium is only a counterfeit and not the real article.
For every ninety-nine dull women there is one clever woman; for every
ninety-nine clever women there is one ace who tops the rest as easily
as Mont Blanc tops an ant hill. The wife in this case was not one of
the dullards, that’s a cinch. If she had been she would have made an
idiot of herself and acted the way the rest of them do--which is a
great nuisance and annoying to any man. She was a genius, and I ask you
to take off your hat to her--as I do.
“I notice,” she remarked to Old Sport one morning, “that you never
bring more than one friend home with you when you arrive. Why don’t
you bring half a dozen, or three, anyhow? It would be much more
companionable.”
He was a bit on his guard at first, but she convinced him that she was
serious about it, and then he began to congratulate himself that he had
his wife well in hand.
Two nights later he arrived with half a dozen of the hottest hooters
that ever held an all-night session in a furnished flat. He let them in
with his key, and as they paused at the foot of the stairs, a clock
from somewhere chimed out a silvery “three.”
“Come on, boys; open house here; everything goes,” said Old Sport. “My
wife says my friends are good enough for her if they’re good enough for
me. Come on.”
He, with another, made the start up the stairs, but they hadn’t gone
more than a few steps when a brilliant light from the landing somewhere
fairly dazzled them.
Directly in front of them, apparently in the act of stepping out of a
huge picture frame, was the symmetrical figure of an almost nude woman.
The light struck her just right and brought out every detail.
“Great,” shouted someone from the foot of the stairs.
“Shut up, you fool, it’s my wife,” answered the Sport. “Put out that
light up there, do you hear? Put it out.”
But it blazed away as steadily as ever, and there was no movement on
the part of the figure, except that the full bosom rose and fell with
the regularity of her breathing.
The Sport turned around on the stairs.
“Come out of here, you fellows; this is going too far. Come on,
skiddoo, all of you.”
And when the last one had gone out he slammed the door behind them.
What happened inside is none of your business, nor mine, either,
because I don’t believe in scandal, but any evening the Old Sport is
wanted he will be found at his home address with his wife and a kid who
looks like him.
As for the lady; she has a genius that she is just beginning to
appreciate.
CONCERNING A SYRIAN BEAUTY
Transplant the Oriental to the Occident, or in plain words bring a
nice-looking girl from the East to New York, for instance, and nine
times out of ten there is sure to be something doing. Most of the
doings, to be sure, are under the rose, but every once in a while some
hint bobs to the surface and the news is wafted about by every breeze
of a whisper.
In his very handsomely appointed suite of apartments on the upper
West Side is a young fellow who has good enough blood in his veins
to be game and take his medicine, and with sense enough to keep his
mouth shut. Across the bridge of his nose are three knife cuts made
by a blade that was very keen, which was held by a hand that knew its
business. His doctor tells him that it is not at all serious, even
though inconvenient--you know how doctors talk when there is a good fat
fee at the other end of the line. He also says that there is nothing
in the world that will prevent and eradicate those three disfiguring
scars, even after the wound has been thoroughly healed and every
possible surgical precaution taken.
And there’s the rub.
Through all the rest of his life this man, upon whom the world has been
smiling since his birth, will be marked with the signs of his folly.
So much for the present.
Now for the recent past.
[Illustration: Put her in tights and she would have been an Oriental
sensation]
The woman was a Syrian beauty with sloe eyes and an olive skin that was
like a piece of copper-hued satin, so soft and smooth and free from
blemish was it. There was a faint flush of red in her cheeks, too, as
if the hot blood was trying to break through the tender skin. Her lips
were red and full, and because of all that riot of color her teeth
showed whiter than they really were. She had, besides, small feet and
slim, trim ankles.
Any wise man will appreciate that and understand why they are brought
into this story. Up to the age of twenty-five the male animal looks at
the female face and is satisfied. After that no such casual scrutiny
satisfies him. First face, hair and general contour, then ankles, and
often it is the last view which does the work or turns the trick, which
is the same thing, only it is expressed differently. This is with
the assumption, of course, that the man has enough discrimination to
want quality, not quantity. Quantity is unwieldy and unsatisfactory
from every viewpoint except from that of the gentleman who is in the
butcher business, and who wants a standing advertisement for his shop.
_Embonpoint_ is all right in sausages but not in women, excepting--and
that is understood--those on dime museum platforms.
The first name of the lady was Dekka, the rest was unpronounceable and
we’ll let it go at that. She was a seller of Oriental goods, not from
a Tenderloin standpoint, but real merchandise such as is recognized
by the law--laces, draperies, bits of cunningly embroidered silks,
and even rugs, which she called carpets, with the accent on the first
syllable. Her stock was carried in a dress suit case which was handled
by her “brother,” who was also a Syrian, and he only resembled her
because he, too, had black eyes, an olive skin and dark crispy hair, to
say nothing of his small feet.
Day after day they went in and out of houses, flats and apartments,
visiting none but the best, and calling an express wagon into service
when a rug display was necessary. She was the brains of the combination
and did all the selling. His job was done when he put the satchel down
by her side. Then he effaced himself and was invisible until she was
ready to exit, when he made a mysterious reappearance from somewhere.
And that’s the soup of the story; the roast follows.
The Jap valet to the young man of means and leisure announced to him
one afternoon that a dark lady--makes you think of the queen of spades,
doesn’t it?--wanted to see him and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Bring her in,” said Jimmy, who was feeling in just the right kind of a
humor to see anyone, even a man to whom he owed money, and in a moment
she had slipped into the room as lightly as a cat walking on wet grass.
There was the sound of her French heels hitting the bare spots on the
polished floor that was music to him, and he wondered what there was in
the meeting of leather and wood that was so attractive and just a bit
different from anything he had ever heard before.
She courtesied in a friendly, intimate sort of a way, and then spoke:
“Good day; the lady? Can I show her some laces? Very fine.”
There was just the faintest touch of an accent in her voice, but it was
rather pleasant than otherwise, and it seemed to have a very soothing
effect on him.
“There is no lady here,” he laughed, “that is, not yet.”
“Ah, too bad, and such a nice place, too. It is so beautiful.”
She half turned as if to go, and he stepped toward her.
“What have you got to sell? I might buy something.”
“You are so kind; I have them here,” and she motioned to the next room.
“My brother bring them, then he go ’way. It is very heavy to carry all
the time.”
“Yama,” called he, “bring it in, whatever it is,” and in a moment the
Jap came lugging the leather case.
Jimmy noted how deftly the shapely brown fingers unfastened the brass
catches, and as she leaned over he found himself studying her with the
eye of a man who has seen and known a great many women of all kinds and
all nationalities with one or two exceptions, and one of the exceptions
was Syrian. A faint perfume, the odor of which he failed to recognize,
seemed to fill the room, and he knew it came from her, and he became
suddenly aware that he was taking more interest in the saleswoman than
he was in the goods she was about to offer him.
When the bag had been opened and the contents tumbled out
promiscuously, without any attempt at order or display, she sat down
on the rug beside them. She picked out a lace scarf and carefully
smoothing out its folds held it before him.
“Very fine,” she said; “all made by hand, see?” and she pointed to the
heavy embroidery.
“It’s all right,” he answered, but he wasn’t looking at the silk, he
was looking straight in her eyes and wondering why it was he had never
met a woman with eyes as black as those before.
“You are not looking,” she said.
“I am,” he replied.
“At the scarf, I mean.”
“No, there is something better.”
“But I am only selling the scarf to you,” and she began to fold it up
while her cheeks became more red.
“What’s the price?” asked Jimmy.
“Only $6, and very cheap.”
“All right, I’ll take it; let me see what else you’ve got there.”
And presently they were both sitting on the rug, he on one side of
the bag and she on the other. In a half hour he had spent one hundred
dollars, but to save his life he couldn’t have told what it was he had
bought and, what was more, he didn’t care.
He laid the crisp new bill on her knee, and as she began to fold up the
remnant of her stock he asked questions.
“You said your brother went around with you. Is he really your brother
or something else?”
“My own brother; why should I tell you a lie?”
“I don’t know except that there are a great many brothers and cousins
in this world who are not brothers or cousins at all, except as a
matter of convenience. You know, I think you are a nice little girl and
I fancy I’m getting just a bit gone on you. I don’t mind buying things
from you, but I should like it if you and I could be friends.”
By this time they were standing up; the suit case had been closed and
it was still between them, as if it was a sort of a guardian.
“Couldn’t you stay here and have a little lunch with me? We’ll have it
right away and you’ll be away in an hour. Where’s your brother?”
“Oh, he always waits somewhere--outside, maybe.”
“In the other room?”
“Oh, no; sometimes in the hall and sometimes in the street; sometimes
he goes away and comes back again.”
“Well, this time he can wait a little longer. Yama,” calling to the
Jap, “get some lunch and hurry up.”
He picked up the barrier of a dress suit case and put it one side, then
he walked over to her and putting his arm around her waist, pulled her
toward him and kissed her squarely on the mouth.
“Oh,” she cried, “what are you doing?”
“Kissing you. I’ve bought your silks and now I’m ready to invest in
kisses, and I find,” he remarked, as he kissed her again, “that your
kisses are the best.”
The blood leaped to his brain, and he held her so tightly that it
seemed as if he would crush her.
“You’ve made me fall in love with you,” he said, and that strange
Oriental perfume which came to him from her seemed to make him mad. “I
want you to go away with me; will you? We’ll go wherever you like, and
you will not have to sell those things any more. You can have all the
money to spend that you want and you will be a lady.”
Here was a picture strong enough to turn the head of any woman, much
less a Syrian straight from peasant stock, brought into the world by
accident, with a face like a Madonna and with a supple, pliant figure
that made men turn around and look after her. A girl who had known
what privation and hardship was, and who came of a race where women
were born to be servants and made to wait on men, the masters. Her
beauty had brought her nothing and now it had suddenly become an asset,
a stock in trade of so great value that for the rest of her life she
would know neither work, nor care, nor trouble. The blood rushing
through her veins made her dizzy and her head fell forward as her eyes
half closed. One brown arm crept up and around the neck of this strong,
broad-shouldered American, and it kept her from falling to the floor
in the excess of her emotion. He felt her going, and picking her up,
carried her to the big armchair over in the corner, where she cuddled
up like a rabbit. She was clasping and unclasping her fingers nervously
as he stood looking at her and her half-closed eyes never once met his.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, bending over. “Can I do anything for
you?”
“No,” she whispered; “I was only thinking of my brother.”
“You don’t want to mind him; he’s all right wherever he is.”
“Not that, but he might not want--he might not like you to--to love
me,” and she looked up at him.
“We’ll take care of your brother all right. Because he is your brother
I will do what I can for him. Why, I will----”
The voice of the Jap came from the other room just as Jimmy was
settling himself on the edge of the big chair, and had his arm around
the Syrian’s neck.
“No,” it said, “you wait; I see.”
There was an angry voice raised in expostulation, and then before the
man could move the brother came bounding through the parted curtains.
He paused for just one brief moment and then shrieked:
“Dekka.” He said something else, too, but it was in his own language
and only the woman understood, but whatever it was it made her shrink
still lower in her seat and cover her face with her hands. He was on
Jimmy like a cat, and three times, even though the frightened Jap was
trying to pull him off, he cut, and each cut was across the bridge of
the nose, and the knife blade went as true and sure to the mark as
though it was in the hands of a surgeon on a patient who was under
ether. Then with one firm grip on the wrist of the girl he dragged
her to the door and out, while the faithful Yama was using the silk
scarfs--the ones which had just been bought--trying to staunch the flow
of blood.
And that’s the story.
And the moral of it is that every man should stick to his own race and
his own blood, Caucasian to Caucasian and Oriental to Oriental, for
there are some things in this world that don’t mix any more than oil
and water.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The first pair are in the ring, the talk ceases, and the
show is on]
THE REJUVENATION OF PATSY
We’ll just take in a fight to-night for a change. I’ve had you Down the
Line, over on the East Side, in the wine joints, behind the scenes,
and in half a dozen of the so-called swell restaurants, and all the
time there have been all kinds of punching matches going on in a dozen
different halls, “Clubs,” they are called, just to sidestep the stern
arm of the law, but what difference does it make to a good sport so
long as the men are well matched and they are willing to mix it at all
times?
Three rounds are the limit, but there is a lot doing between bell and
bell--enough to make even the most seasoned ringster sit up and look
around as if to say:
“Now here is some punching that does a man’s heart good--it seems like
old times, when----.” You know the rest about the days of long ago, and
if you listen to him he will hand you a line of talk that will put you
away for the count.
You may talk as you like about all the sports you know, but after all
there is nothing like a good go with the gloves between a pair who know
their business, and there are few men who have any red blood in their
veins who will not go a long ways to see a slugfest. Of course you’ll
always find up against some bar a bunch of dead ones who will stretch
their arms and say:
“Not for mine; I’ve seen all I want to see, and I wouldn’t go around
the corner to get a ringside seat at a go between Roosevelt and Kaiser
Wilhelm.”
There’s a screw loose somewhere in these fellows, or else they are
drying of dry rot and don’t know it. Nine out of ten of them are bigger
around the waist than they are around the chest, and they invariably
talk loud.
There’s a little club that I know of where you can get a great run for
your money, and we will go there.
It’s a case of come early and avoid the rush, for when the gong rings
for the first bout there is only standing room left and that is at a
premium because the prices are low. The manager doesn’t have to bother
his head about making matches because the “talent” comes to him, and
it often happens that the men who furnish the preliminaries are picked
from out of the audience. These three-round affairs have done a lot to
bring out a bunch of new ones; any young fellow who knows any part of
the game can go on and get a try-out. He earns a few dollars and if he
proves to be good, he is boosted along the line.
There is a mixed crowd on hand to-night, and you can expect a good
card. In one of the ringside seats is the district attorney, a man who
loves a fair fight in or out of the ring. Further up are a few brokers
who have thought it worth while to come down here for one night,
anyhow. It is safe to say that every class in life is represented, the
man who is worth a million rubs elbows with the ten-dollar-a-week clerk
and they fraternize as freely as though they were chums.
“This Abe Attell is a clever boy, but they say he hasn’t the punch,”
ventures the clerk.
“Yes, I saw him recently and he made that big fellow look like a cart
horse,” returns the man of money.
The fellow who paid one-tenth of his weekly stipend to join the club
for that one night, which, by the way, is the system employed to evade
the law on the subject, pulls out a cigarette, and asks:
“Can I trouble you for a light?”
“No trouble at all,” comes the cheerful answer, and a glowing perfecto,
which cost not less than thirty-five cents, is handed over.
That miscellaneous crowd is welded into one solid mass by the masonry
of sport, even though individual opinions are retained, and the opinion
of a seasoned ring-goer is set hard and deep as the rock of Gibraltar.
The smoke is wafted back and forth like the tidal currents of the sea
and the exertions of a hundred devotees of nicotine are adding to it
every moment. An interminable buzz of voices fills the big room, and
there is fight in the very air.
“I tell you the old man could lick O’Brien any day he wanted to; he’s
got the punch and he can stand the gaff, ain’t that enough?” This in a
strident voice from the cheaper seats, and it was answered at once by
an argument that was apparently deemed irrefutable:
“Why didn’t he do it?”
Near the door is a fight bug whom no one ever heard of, and who is
interesting simply because he is a freak. He is voluble, emphatic and
vainglorious.
“I kin beat Britt an’ he knows it, an’ dat’s the reason he won’t give
me a chanst. He’d be a pipe fer me, ‘cos I’d infight him, an’ he
couldn’t stand my body punchin’. Dere’s where I’m great--on dose body
blows. I challenged him three times an’ he never paid no attention to
me. He’s afraid uv me, dat’s what he is. I kin beat ’em all if dey’ll
only cum to me.”
“You couldn’t beat a carpet,” shouts a wit, and the bug is temporarily
squelched.
The noise of the voices is suddenly emphasized--the first pair are
coming and the show is on. Into the ring they climb from opposite
corners, principals and seconds, and then, more leisurely, as befits
the dignity of his exalted position, comes the announcer. They all have
the same speech, which has been doing duty for generations, and this
one is no different from the rest:
“A little order, please, gentlemen, and stop smoking while the bouts
are on.” But no one ever pays any attention to that last. “These two
boys,” he calls them by name, “both members of this club,” another neat
little scheme to evade the law, “will box three rounds for scientific
points only. Keep a little order, please, because if you make a noise
the bouts will be stopped. The men will box straight Marquis of
Queensberry rules. All ready, boys.”
He waves his hands toward the corners, and then backs through the ropes
conscious of a duty well performed. The gloves, a bit too big for the
majority of the onlookers, have in the meantime been adjusted, the
referee calls “Time,” they step to the center, shake hands and get down
to work. Sparring doesn’t go in bouts of such short duration, so it’s a
case of mix it from the start. Here is a sturdy little Italian against
a good, fast and clever Irish lad. The good-natured grin of the former
is never relaxed for a moment as he wades in, taking a punch to give
one. This fellow is fighting his way out of debt, and he’s well on the
road to financial freedom now. Last year he figured in more than one
star fight and he looked like a money-maker. He took care of his end of
the purse every time, but on one of his Southern trips he fell in with
a girl that he grew to think pretty well of, and it wasn’t long before
she became the custodian of his coin. When the bank roll was big enough
to suit her, she blew with another boy and left this one broke. That’s
the reason he’s putting the gloves on and going three hard rounds for
a ten spot now. The Irish boy is punching him at will and counting up
the points every time they come together, but there is steam behind
those blows of the Italian, and it isn’t hard to predict the result if
they were to go ten rounds instead of three. At the finish they are
furiously mixing it in a corner, and the gong rings its notification
more than once before they break away, shake hands, the Italian still
smiling, and climb out to make way for the next pair.
The boys are put on as fast as they can bring them in the ring, and the
bouts are all good ones. Finally there is only one more to come, and it
is that for which the crowd has been waiting.
Before the announcer can do his next stunt half a hundred hands--gloved
and ungloved--are coming together in applause. The cue came when a trim
built, muscular little fellow, whose condition is not too good, slips
through the ropes. He smiles cordially at the crowd and nods his head
jerkily in response to the reception.
“I take pleasure in introducing Patsy Haley,” begins the announcer, but
he is stopped by the applause which breaks out again, and he fails to
get in that saving clause about the “club member” business. As if Patsy
needed any introduction to that crowd of sports, young or old, who have
seen him fight when he was at his best. How can they ever forget the
wonderful cleverness he used to show? Don’t you remember when he fought
Terry McGovern before the Lenox Athletic Club in 1899? It was all Patsy
up to the eighteenth round, and even the wonderful Terry couldn’t find
him until then, when he landed the crashing punch that gave him the big
end of the purse. Is it any wonder that they applaud him? He’s too wise
for the best of them for three rounds even to-day, for he can stall and
get away with as little effort as a kid makes when he goes up against
a nursing bottle. He hits when and where he likes and how he likes,
but he has no punch, as the youngster who is up against him soon finds
out, and so he wades in to do a little execution with a wild, swinging
right, but the glove never gets within three inches of Patsy’s smiling
face. It is jab, jab, jab with the old-timer, and the crowd roars its
approval, while the Kid’s seconds keep calling to him in stage whispers
which can be heard all over the house, to--
“Mix it there, Kid, one punch will do him.”
Their advice is good, but the bewildered, dazed kid, not hurt a bit,
but simply made dizzy by those lightning-like feints, followed by taps
that push his head back and throw him off his balance, can’t make good.
He rushes, swinging as he comes in, but he finds himself breasting the
ropes, and he turns only to get a straight left square on the point of
the nose.
It’s very discouraging work for a novice. You see, he’s evidently
been figuring on going into the ring and putting this old-timer away
and then getting his name and picture in the sporting papers. It’s a
hundred to one that he’s been in training, and he’s had it all framed
up with his trainer just how he was going to do the trick. It seemed
very easy in that stable, or loft, or wherever it was that he had his
punching bag and skipping rope, and he was told there was no harm in
a dozen of Patsy’s punches rolled into one. He knows that now, but
that merciless, pitiless jab is enough to worry anyone, and besides,
his arms are beginning to ache with the effort of swinging and hitting
nothing.
“Close in, Kid; close in.”
They are calling to him again and he makes another rush. He is going to
try to knock the smile off that face this time. He puts all his effort
in the blow and lets go. He misses, and the force of it brings him to
his knees as the bell rings for the end of the first round.
He takes his seat and he knows that those yells are not for him.
His seconds and counsellors are there as quickly as he is, and while
he is being fanned, and rubbed and sprayed, he is also being advised
how to do it next time. Over in the other corner Patsy is talking
laughingly with some ringside friends.
“You’re as fast as ever, son,” says one. “How are you feeling?”
That is always the proper thing to ask a man who is in the ring--that
is, when you’ve nothing else to say. I’ll bet no man ever went in the
ring who wasn’t asked that question at least a dozen times. It seems to
be sort of a stock query, just as every rube considers it his bounden
duty to ask an actor who plays his town:
“Where do you go from here?” As if it made any difference to him where
the actor went, but he feels he has to say something, so he says that.
The gong rings, and they’re at it again. The Kid has a new set of
tactics now, and he proceeds to put them into execution, so as soon as
he leaves his chair he starts on a run for his opponent. He’s going
after him this time, sure enough. Out goes the left and around goes the
right. The right gets Patsy just behind the ear and shakes him up a bit.
“Go after him; you’ve got him,” call out the seconds. He thinks so,
too, and he draws back when the versatile Patsy slips into a clinch.
“Break there; break now,” calls the referee. The Kid is pushed away
and his antagonist dances back out of reach, not showing the slightest
evidence of distress. Truly this is no cinch. Again and again an
attempt is made to land that finishing punch, but each time it fails
to connect, and when it does land it doesn’t seem to land in the right
place. In a mixup his chance comes again, and he rips up a right to
the stomach so hard that the old-timer grunts. That gives him a little
courage and after the break he rushes again, but the jaw that he aimed
for is not there. His nose is beginning to get a bit sore when the bell
rings with rather a welcome sound.
Lacking the punch this “vet” seems to be all right for three rounds.
He’s a bit winded, to be sure, but who wouldn’t be under the
circumstances? It’s good, anyhow, to see him with the mitts on once
more. It makes a fellow think of old times. I am just about to become
reminiscent when the gong rings again.
“Shake hands and windup,” says the referee.
The padded fists meet for an instant, the Kid steps back one pace and
then lunges forward. He comes in with a jab, and he catches Haley
squarely on the mouth with his left. Aha, he has landed. He pulls
his right back to follow it up, but in that fraction of a second his
chance has gone, for he’s up against a ring general. Two more futile
rushes and then he tried again. This time he misses with the left, but
starting his right without pulling back, he catches his man on the jaw
just in front of the ear. He feels the blow land and then he starts in
with rights and lefts, but shifty Patsy steps inside of them and they
go around his neck. In a frenzy the Kid pushes him away, but for his
trouble he gets another jab on that sore nose that brings the moisture
to his eyes.
“Make him fight, Kid,” bawls the trainer; “go after him.”
He might as well go after a dancing sunbeam as to go after the elusive,
shifty, smiling Patsy, who is stalling and jabbing the third round
away, and when the final gong rings he is still going after him with
nothing doing. There is bitterness in his heart, but it doesn’t last,
for when they shake hands, the little fellow who made many a good one
in his day look like a draught horse, remarks:
“You’re all right, Kid, and you’ll beat a lot of them some day.”
[Illustration: The glitter of a circus became too much for them to
resist]
A CASE OF KNOCKOUT DROPS
In a back room of a place just off Broadway sat a good-looking
brunette--you will notice all these girls of mine are good looking--and
three young fellows of the kind known to the police as “cadets.” There
was nothing unusual about this room except that it was better furnished
than you would have expected, and it had expensive oil paintings on
the walls. Besides, it was carpeted. All this would mean higher-priced
drinks if not a better service.
It was a drinking place where women might come with their escorts and
feel reasonably safe from intrusion, and midnight was its busiest
hour. Just now was the calm which precedes the storm, and there were
not enough guests to induce the waiters to cease their gossiping and
loafing in the big room outside.
The woman who sat there at the little round table was a common type;
you can see her like wherever you go, especially at night. When the
sun has gone down and the lights are bright, she flutters out of some
cave-like dwelling like a new kind of butterfly, with the instincts of
the moth, in that she flutters only at night, and in her veins runs the
blood of a hunter, for she is ever on the trail.
This one is pretty in a negative sort of way. Her features are regular,
her teeth are white and strong, and her eyes are bright and have
expression, but if you will look close you will notice a hard glance
there. It is neither merciful nor kind.
She has emotions, but they are hardly worth considering, for they are
of the baser sort.
She has nerve, daring, courage and calmness, and because her life has
been a constant warfare she fears nothing. She may dread the touch of a
policeman’s hand and the command to “Come on,” but she doesn’t fear it.
There is a difference, you know, between the words of fear and dread.
It is unfortunate that she was born to be what she is.
Her first adventure in life was when she became infatuated with the
glitter of the arena, and with a girl companion of her own age took up
with a couple of clowns attached to a circus. But she soon found the
difference between the dressing tents and reserved seats and headed for
the nearest big city.
“There ain’t a case note among the four of us,” remarks one of the men.
“I think we’re a bunch of shines. The first thing you know we’ll have
to go out and look for jobs.”
The girl was drumming idly on the table with her fingers.
“You’re the strongest one of the lot, what’s the matter with you making
a start?” said another to the one who had just spoken.
“I’d look nice getting up with the milk wagons, wouldn’t I?”
The girl stopped her drumming and glanced up.
“You can leave me out of all this argument,” she remarked, “for I don’t
figure. No more Broadway for mine after ten o’clock to-night, and it’s
a case of good-by for you, too, Jack.”
“I suppose that’s another one of your funny jokes,” said Jack, “but I
don’t like those kind of stories, so you can cut it out.”
“No funny story about it at all,” she went on, in that even, monotonous
way which is particularly aggravating. “I’m tired of this way of
living, and I’m tired of being a coaling station, and I know when I got
enough.”
“Where are you going?”
She had resumed her drumming and paid no attention.
“Who are you going with?”
“That’s none of your damned business.”
He leaned forward and taking her by the wrist gave her a vicious pull
toward him.
“I suppose it’s that guy from the country?”
“Well, what if it is?” she said defiantly, and then, as if she had
suddenly made up her mind, she went on, talking rapidly, as a woman
will do when she is under a nervous strain:
“He’s going to do what you never thought of doing--he’s going to marry
me and make me decent--if it ain’t too late. He’s going to meet me
here at ten o’clock and we’re going to jump to the Coast. He’s got the
coin, for he’s sold out his farm. He’s going to take me out there, and
he says we are going to begin all over again; that I’ll have a good
chance, for nobody will know where I came from. What do I get here?
Nothing. If I’m sick I can go to the hospital or die in my room like a
rat in a garret. I haven’t a friend in the world who would do anything
for me on the level and for pure friendship’s sake. If I was to grow
old to-morrow, I couldn’t get enough to buy a cup of coffee, and of
all the good fellows I know there is only one who would walk across the
street to do anything for me just because he liked me. You’re broke
now, and you are wondering how you are going to get money, but you know
down in your heart that you’re expecting me to get it for you. You’ve
got a long wait, for I’ll not get it. I’m through, and that settles it.”
“So you’ve been meeting this fellow on the quiet, have you?” asked the
one who was called Jack.
“No, I haven’t seen him for five years.”
“Don’t think you can kid me; how have you been framing things up then
if you haven’t been meeting him?”
She gazed at him steadily for a moment as if she were shaping her
course, and then she said:
“Well, I’ll just put you right for once. I suppose you’ve heard of the
mail. Well, I’ve been getting letters from him, and here,” pulling one
from a little handbag she carried, “is the last one.”
With a quick, deft movement he snatched it from her hand and opened it.
At the first line he laughed loudly.
“He’s nutty, all right--he must have it bad. Listen to him:”
He began to read.
MY DEAR LITTLE GIRL:--I have just received your letter, and the world
looks different to me already. I don’t want you to tell me any more
about yourself, for I don’t want to know any more. We have nothing to
do with the past now, it is only the future which concerns us and that
will be what we make it. I have sold the old farm, so we have $12,000
to start with, and I shall be in New York at the place you suggest and
on time to the minute, so you can look for me. Don’t bother about
baggage or any of your personal belongings, for all we will want is a
minister. After that we can talk things over. I hate to leave the old
place, but it makes no difference now that I’m going to have you.
Yours always, JOE.
He handed the letter back to her.
“Little girl, you’re all right after all, ain’t she, fellows? Landed a
guy with $12,000 in cold coin, and he’ll have the goods on him, too, I
suppose. We won’t do a thing but take that bank roll away and send him
back to the farm again.”
Then he turned to the girl.
“How’s the best way to do it? Give him the peter? Maybe it will be best
to take him up to the room and wait till he gets asleep. It’s your job,
Maude, so we’ll do as you say. It’s only nine o’clock, and we’ve got an
hour yet to frame it up.”
She was looking at him with horror in her face.
“You’re wrong,” she cried, “he’s not to be trimmed. He’s going to marry
me and we are going away. There’s no job about this, and I want you to
leave him alone.”
“We’ll leave him alone all right, and when you see the new front on me
to-morrow you’ll think I own Broadway. Twelve thousand dollars, why,
the four of us can go to Europe on that.”
Then she stood up.
“If you touch him or try to turn him off I’ll call in a cop and have
you all pinched,” and she swept her hand at them with an inclusive
movement.
“Don’t go off your nut like that, everything will be all right,” said
Jack. “You’ll get your bit, no matter what happens, but you’re talking
like a crazy woman. You never used to be like this. You’ve been in
tougher jobs before. You just think you’re stuck on this Joe because he
writes you a nice letter, but there’s nothing to it. You stick to me
and I’ll stick to you, and this bundle will put us on Easy Street. Why
don’t you be nice?”
She had partly turned her back on them and was looking at one of the
pictures on the wall.
It is when a woman is silent that she is most dangerous, because
then she is thinking. Give a woman time to think and you are simply
supplying her with ammunition. But the stupid man who had dominated
by brute force knew nothing of this. To him her silence meant
acquiescence, and he scented an easy victory.
With a quick, alert nod of his head he motioned the other two from the
room, and they left silently and like automatons, their feet on the
carpet giving forth no sound, but her senses were keen and she knew
when they had gone. As the door closed behind them she turned around
with a smile on her face.
“I think,” she said, “that you will be a fool as long as you live. Here
I find a man with a big roll, and arrange to have him bring it to us
on a gold plate and you turn around, make me give my hand away, and
declare those two dead ones in on the play. You’ll never have sense if
you live to be a hundred years old.”
He looked at her admiringly.
“You’re better than I thought,” he said at last. “We’ll jump to Europe
on this. Wait ’till I get a paper and see if there is a ship sailing
to-morrow morning. We’ll make a quick getaway from the whole crowd.”
He almost ran through the door in his eagerness.
He was back in a few moments with a newspaper in his hand. Eagerly he
scanned the columns devoted to shipping news.
“Good,” he ejaculated, “there’s one goes to France. Sails at nine
o’clock. We’ll head for Paris--there’s the place to buy your clothes;
swell, too, and cheap; and we won’t take anything with us, we’ll buy it
all there.”
“Get down to cases,” she said sharply. “How are you going to do this?”
“I’ve got the peter drops,” he said, putting his hand to his pocket.
“That’ll be the easiest way. We’ll just dope him a bit, grab the money,
get out quick, and lay low somewhere until to-morrow.”
“You know best,” she said, but her voice had a strained tone in it that
escaped him. “But whatever you do, whenever I give you any kind of a
tip take it quick, see.”
Even as she spoke the door was pushed open and a well-built,
brown-faced young fellow strode in, looked around, paused irresolutely,
and then went toward her with a smile on his face and his hand
outstretched.
“You see, I’m on time, Maude,” he said.
“Yes, Joe, and I’ve been waiting for you a long while. This is a friend
of mine who has been very good to me, and I want you to know him. His
name is Jack. That’s been enough for me and I guess it will be enough
for you.”
“Let’s have one drink, and then I’ll have to be getting along,” said
Jack, briskly.
The other didn’t drink, but the coaxing of the girl made him almost
forget his name, and three glasses of whiskey were ordered from the
man who came at the summons of the bell.
They were about to drink when she suddenly exclaimed:
“Oh, Joe, here’s a picture that always makes me think of the old days;
see, that one with the lake,” and as Joe looked the other man deftly
poured the dose into the waiting glass. She saw it done and nodded her
approval, and then, while they were still talking about the picture,
she asked Jack to get her a pencil so she could write a note. In
little affairs of this kind strict obedience to an order is absolutely
necessary, so he did not question her, but went at once.
When he returned they were sitting at the table again.
“Now for our last drink together,” she remarked gayly, “and here’s that
we may all be happy,” and she looked at Jack.
And so they drank, and then Jack set himself to watching furtively out
of the corner of his eye this man with the money. He fell to wondering
just where it was, and turned cold at the thought that it might have
been left at some place for safe keeping. Once his eyes closed and he
opened them with an effort. The girl said something, and it took him
some little time before his brain could figure out what he ought to
say in reply, and longer still for his lips to form the words. She was
talking rapidly, but her voice seemed a great distance away.
“Come on, Joe,” he heard that all right. “Come on, it’s time we were
going. We must hurry.”
It didn’t seem at all strange to him that they should want to hurry; in
fact, it seemed quite natural.
“If he’s a friend of yours we ought not to leave him here like that.”
That was the man’s voice, he could swear to that.
“Come on,” she said again, and for hours afterward it was as if the
world was filled with women shouting “come on, come on,” to tall,
athletic young fellows with blue eyes and brown faces, and the
incessant murmur of it all made his head ache.
Then he was being violently handled by someone who appeared to be
intent upon annoying him and causing his head to hurt still worse.
He was slapped and walked, and a strange, queer liquid was being forced
between his teeth.
Then he opened his eyes.
“You’re all right now, I guess,” said a man’s unfamiliar voice.
“What’s the matter?” he asked thickly.
“Nothing much, only you’ve been drugged and your heart came near
quitting. Lie down now and rest up a bit and you’ll be all right after
a while.”
“Where the devil am I?” he asked, after the manner of the abducted girl
in the society drama.
“You’re in the hospital--you ought to be glad you’re alive.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Wild revelry of the masked ball and the perfect ladies
with the hot sports]
DISCOVERING A PRIMA DONNA
The great see-saw of life is as interesting as a poker game if you
only have a mind to watch it, but, like the poker game, it must be
thoroughly understood and closely studied to appreciate the fine
points. In the beginning we all take cards, we all draw to fill; the
winning hands slip easily through life, while the four flushes try to
bluff it out, and there’s many a four flush in New York to-day who is
getting away with it.
Many a girl who wears a sailor hat never saw a yacht, and many a man
who wears a diamond pin couldn’t pay fifty cents on the dollar if it
came to a show down.
But that isn’t the story by any means.
I call this little recital of facts the beginning and the end; you’ll
see why later as the plot thickens.
New York with the lid on is New York just the same, no matter what the
police say. It’s all there, only it is covered up a bit.
The shades are pulled closer, but the lights and everything else are
behind them.
The wild revelry of the masked ball is toned down not one jot, and the
perfect ladies in tights who help to make life endurable for the sports
on these occasions do not add, so far as can be seen, even so much as
one piece of jewelry to their scant costumes.
You may never have seen the kind of room I’m going to introduce to you,
but if you haven’t it’s your fault, for they are common enough, not
only in New York, but in many other cities.
There’s space enough for dancing here, and the floor is polished like
glass. Around the sides are round tables for the drinkers, and they are
the most important feature, for if you don’t drink, or at least order
drinks, you had better skiddoo, for you’ll not have a very pleasant
time.
At one end of the room is an orchestra, consisting of a piano and a
violin. I don’t need to call your attention to the fact that the fellow
who is playing the violin knows his business. You can tell that by the
way he handles his instrument. He never learned that touch out of a
book, nor did he acquire that technique at the rate of ten lessons for
a dollar, cash in advance. A few years before he was playing nocturnes
and sonatas before fashionable audiences for big money, but he hit
the slide and now he’s at the bottom--a dollar a night and drinks for
ragtime.
The hands on the clock which mark the flight of time show exactly
midnight, and business is at high tide. It’s a case of get the money
between now and three o’clock and then slow down, and every aggressive
waiter in the place is hustling as if his life depended on it.
A girl is standing at the piano as the orchestra strikes the
introduction of a song. Not a bad-looking girl if you observe her
closely. Rather a strong face, good, honest blue eyes, set well
apart, and a chin in which there is some hint of determination and
self-reliance. She has a trim little figure, not voluptuous, but good
to look at--the kind of a figure that seems to belong in an evening
gown, and which men turn around to look at.
The only thing that stamps her as an habitue of the place is her
dress. Its gaudiness was made for the night. It is a street beacon
which proclaims at every step, “follow me.” The picture hat, with the
sweeping red feather, heightens the effect. It is all very stagey, and
would look as garish as spangles in the honest light of day.
But this is not a daylight scene, so we’ll let that pass.
“Ha, there, you noisy guys, cut out that chinnin’; Little Melba’s goin’
ter sing. Cheese it.”
It is the strident voice of a waiter that admonishes a noisy party at
one of the tables, and it has an immediate effect.
It’s just as well, you know, to pay a little attention to the advice of
a waiter in a place like this.
And so she sings her song.
It is a refrain with a swing to it, and it tells the story of a man and
a woman in a rather affecting way, and for her loyalty to him, the man
calls the woman his pal.
But the words don’t count here; it’s the voice, and you’ll see why they
call her Little Melba. Every note is true and clear, and there is never
a falter at the high ones.
It doesn’t need a waiter to command order now; the first line of that
song, as sung by her, did more than all the waiters in the world could
do.
It commanded the respectful attention of that mixed mob.
At the finish of the first chorus, a sailor in the exuberance of his
admiration, and feeling that he must give voice to his sentiments in
some tangible manner, roared out:
“You’re all right, old pal; you’re all right.”
She smiled at the compliment, nodded at him in a friendly way, and then
she continued.
Every night she sang there--ten songs--and she was paid exactly the
same as the waiters--one dollar, but she received in addition certain
privileges, the details of which need not be entered into here, because
they have nothing to do with the story.
One of the waiters--the one who had called out for order--was her man.
She called him another name, and he was known to the world by still
another. As a matter of fact, although he didn’t know it, he belonged
to her--although he thought she belonged to him--for the clothes that
he wore were bought with her money, the food that he ate she paid for,
and it was she who rented the place which he called home. She was the
bread winner, she bore the burden of life, and she took the blows. The
police kept their eyes on her, but paid no attention to the man--the
real criminal.
As the last notes of her song forced their way through the clouds of
tobacco smoke, three men in evening dress came in. They were of the
usual kind of visitors from which the waiters always expect a wine
order. They wore evening clothes like men who had been used to them all
their lives, and it didn’t need the sharp eyes of a waiter in a tough
resort like this to detect that air of prosperity which invariably
forms an invisible halo about money.
The square-jawed, square-shouldered young fellow who took the order
was not disappointed. It was wine, and as he uncorked the bottle, full
of a sense of his own importance, one of them asked, casually:
“Who is the lady who was singing as we came in?”
“Little Melba; she’s there with de goods, all right, ain’t she?”
“Tell her to come over here and have a drink.”
“Sure. Ha, Melba, you’re wanted over here,” he bawled, and smilingly
she came.
“Will you have a drink?” asked the man who had sent for her.
“Wine?” she queried, “I’d rather have a glass of beer, if it’s all the
same to you, for I’m thirsty enough to drink a keg. Then me for the
wine afterward.”
After her drink had been ordered and she had tossed it off with the air
of one who is well used to it, she remarked:
“Now I’ll hit a little of that fizz, if you don’t mind.”
“How long have you been singing here?”
“Oh, about six months. It’s a bum job, though. The smoke gets in my
throat.”
“What songs do you sing?”
She ran over a list that took in all the popular melodies of the day.
“Here’s a dollar, get up and sing another one--anyone will do, and do
your best.”
Dollars for singing one song were rare for her, so she obeyed with
alacrity, and she sang as best she knew.
When she had finished she came back to where they were sitting just as
one of the men was saying:
“Why don’t you give her a chance, Jim? You can never tell how these
kind will turn out. Remember Elinore was dug up out of just such a
joint as this.”
“Do you want to go on the stage?” asked Jim, abruptly.
“Do I?” and she unconsciously straightened up. “Why, I’d go on for
nothing, just to show them I could make good. Say, I’d work for my
board. Can you put me on?”
“I think I can,” and smiled as he said it.
He pulled a card case out of his vest pocket, took a card from it,
which he handed to her.
“Come see me to-morrow afternoon at three o’clock.”
She looked at the name on the card and gasped in astonishment, for it
was that of one of the best-known of metropolitan theatrical managers,
whose chief claim to fame lay in the many successful productions of
comic opera.
“Are you on the level with this?” she asked, incredulously.
“Come around to-morrow and see,” he answered.
“Put it there,” she said, excitedly, as she held out her hand, and
then she called out to the waiter to whom she believed she owed her
allegiance:
“Billy, Billy, come over here.”
With a roll and a swagger, and not too hurriedly, lest he lose one
tithe of that dignity which he believed went with the position of
beer slinger in one of the toughest joints in New York, Billy came,
scowling, as if he already scented in the air coming interference with
his plans of life.
“See, Billy,” she said, laughing like a little girl with the joy of it
all. “See, this is the great theatre manager, and he’s going to give
me a show to see what I can do. I’m going on the stage, Billy, in a
regular theatre, and sing before the people. Ain’t it great?”
She was like a child in her enthusiasm.
“Come on, let me blow the crowd: what are you going to have, boys?”
this last with a comprehensive sweep of the hands. “I’m buying now.”
Billy stood looking down on her with a scowl.
“What’s all dis?” he asked. “What’s comin’ off here, and me not in on
de play?”
Then he turned to the manager.
“What are yer doing--givin’ me gal a jolly, ha? Well, cut it out, it
don’t go here, see? Don’t let ’em string yer, Melba. I guess de’re a
bunch of pretty flip guys wid all dere glad rags; what?”
“This ain’t no string, Billy, this is all right, ain’t it, Mister?” and
she appealed to the man who had been talking to her.
“It’s all right as far as I am concerned,” was the answer. “You do as I
say, and if you have any ambition, I guess you’ll get along all right.”
“Do as you say?” queried the waiter, scornfully. “You ain’t no Pierpont
Morgan. What’s de matter wid her doin’ as I say once in er while. Do
yer t’ink I’m a dummy wot ain’t got no voice? I guess nit. Just cut all
dis funny business out and leave my gal alone.”
“Take it easy, Billy, and don’t get excited. This is a chance for me,
don’t you see? What’s the good of staying here and losing my voice for
a dollar a night when I might be getting big money in the theatre?”
“Big money nothin’,” he protested. “Ain’t yer on dat it’s only a stall?
Dis guy is stuck on yer, dat’s it. He wants to win yer away from me.”
The three wise men who had been drinking wine rose to their feet just
as any other three wise men would have done under the circumstances. It
doesn’t pay to get mixed up with a waiter in a tough joint, because
the waiter always gets the best of it--that’s why he is a waiter. He
has a lot to do besides serving drinks, and if he wasn’t handy with his
fists, and feet, too, for that matter, he couldn’t hold his place for
more than a night.
As they started for the door the girl stood up.
“I’ll be there to-morrow, all right,” she called out.
“Over my dead body you will,” came Billy’s voice.
They were out of the door by this time, too late to hear the sound of a
blow and too late to see the girl drop to the floor.
They don’t interfere in those kind of family rows in the Tenderloin, or
in the Bowery, either.
It isn’t healthy.
It’s etiquette to mind your own business and keep out of the way. And
so nobody paid any attention to the weeping girl and the swearing
blackguard. But that night in a dingy room a girl cried herself to
sleep, and between her tears made up her mind what she would do on the
morrow.
She did what she had planned to do, and twenty-four hours later the
tough waiter was looking for another girl to take her place.
Between you and me, that happened a long while ago, as we count time
in New York. Since then she has been abroad, to the Pacific Coast and
in all of the large American cities. Her name is in big type on the
posters, and she is referred to as a prima donna.
I wonder if her memory ever takes her back to the little back room
where she used to sing songs for a dollar a night?
A THROW OF THE DICE
There is probably no street in the world that has the same number and
style of restaurants as Broadway, New York, especially the kind that
are within the bounds of the Tenderloin. Chuck Conners would call them
feed joints; the irreverent might refer to them as hash houses, and the
slangy man or woman who wanted to designate them might be pardoned for
dubbing them lobster palaces. But there would be a lot of sense and
reason in the last if you were only on, or took the time to think it
over.
There is nothing to them in the daytime, and the heavily carpeted
floors and snowy-clad tables burdened with silver and glass are
practically out of commission. There are a few waiters on duty, but
no one ever heard of them being overworked, even with the rush of the
merry-merry after a matinee.
These money-makers begin to rouse up a bit about the time the average
man of business affairs is finishing his quiet dinner at home, but the
time to go there if you want to see things, and by things I mean the
sights and celebrities, is after the theatres have let out the evening
performance. Then, if you amount to anything, you will have a table
where you can see and be seen, and you will feast upon a bite that will
cost you nothing less than a ten-dollar bill, not including wine.
[Illustration: It’s only a dream after the lobster course]
The shining lights of this world are in a class by themselves, and
include the bookmaker with a loud voice--a trifle heavier than his bank
roll; the gambler, soft of hand and manner; the sport who has done
something or other at some time or other to entitle him to a passing
recognition; the detective sergeant, who is a necessary evil, and who
mixes in for business purposes of his own, and not for the purpose of
doing the work for which he is paid by the city; then, last of all, the
actor--star or semi-star.
They order as if the cooks in all the world were working for them
alone, and the waiters were employed for their exclusive benefit.
They are epicures and gourmets by force of circumstances, and the
circumstances are a roll of bank bills about the size of a man’s wrist.
Most of them have risen to a mushroom-like affluence.
The money came quickly, and they are spending it just as quickly.
They know the difference in wines simply because of the price, and
they order that which sounds the best, so for that reason a stream of
the juice of the grape floods a bunch of uneducated palates and floats
high-priced food that would kill a man with an ordinary digestive
apparatus.
Not one in a hundred of these men were to the manor born; their lives
were cast in stony places and what they are they made themselves
by sheer force of will, or else they accepted the golden wreath of
opportunity and knew which road to take when they came to the forks.
At a table near the wall is a man who twenty years ago was a bootblack
of the city’s streets.
From river to river there was no spot on which he could put his finger
and say:
“This is my home.”
He grew up like a blade of grass sprouting between stones, and he
fought tooth and nail for his life. He knew what kicks and cuffs were,
and if his memory isn’t bad he knows yet.
He blacked the boots of a man with florid face, a heavy gold chain
across his vest, and a mammoth stone blazing like a headlight in his
scarf, and because this boy was bright of eye and keen of wit his
customer, whose business was politics, took a fancy to him. Had this
little nomad been born with a gold spoon in his mouth he could not have
fared better, nor could his prospects have been more alluring, for a
politician, you know, is a man who, when he goes to bed at night, hangs
his trousers on the bedpost, and when he wakes up in the morning the
pockets are full of money. At least, that is my idea, and if I am wrong
just let some of the leading politicians of to-day contradict me, and
tell me truly how they got theirs.
While this man is eating his lobster a la Newburg, and sipping the wine
that cost him $5 a bottle, I’ll go on with the story.
For about two weeks he blacked his patron’s shoes, and then one fateful
morning the man with the bull neck said sharply:
“Chuck that box away, son, and come along with me.”
He didn’t wait for the boy to take the cue and act on it, but he gave
the box a kick with his square-toed boot that sent it to the middle of
the street, and then he led the boy to a clothing shop where he had
him fitted out with everything a fellow that size ought to have.
He saw possibilities in this youngster, and he figured that it would
be a wise move to have some one as close to him as his shirt, and upon
whom, in time of trouble, he could depend with absolute certainty.
A good bed, good food three times a day and money in the pocket serves
often to make a marvelous transformation, and it was so in this case,
and the erstwhile bootblack forgot in a moment that he had ever shined
shoes or performed any menial services for any human being. He was
swept along on the tide of prosperity with his patron and he scoffed
at poor things and poor people, as might have been expected. He was
aggressive to everyone except his source of income, whom he followed
and fawned upon like a hound.
The work he did was criminal, but he did it cheerfully, even though a
hundred could have sent him up the river with a word. His morals were
as flat as a desert, and he grew into a selfish, egotistical, arrogant,
blatant man whose friends were friends by force of circumstances, and
not by reasons of any virtues that he possessed, or of any real liking
they had for him.
In the course of time the big man with the neck of a gladiator died,
and was buried in a manner fitting his life. A ton of flowers followed
him to the six-foot hole which had been provided for him; a few bottles
of wine were drunk by his cronies to drown their grief and to toast his
successful debut into that new and unknown world to which he had gone,
and that was all.
The bootblack, who had taken himself seriously, and was fond of calling
himself a gentleman on all possible occasions, for no other reason
apparently than that he wore the best clothes that money could buy,
took possession of his patron’s effects, rifled his safe, his desk, and
appropriated to himself everything that was of the slightest value, and
then developed into a short card man.
So he sits there to-night, eating lobster and talking to a woman who,
between you and me, is worth looking at more than once.
By an old and familiar, as well as extremely simple, process she had
taken his name. It was a trifling matter, settled in a moment over
a small bottle, and her only speculation was as to whether he could
suitably provide for her.
It was a very good investment for him, for she has proven to be a very
useful little lady in more ways than one. She knows a lot of real nice
boys, and when they get very sporty she tells them about a good game
where good fellows may be found. She is the kind of a woman who would
make a sport out of a church deacon, consequently she fits very snugly
into the life and trade of our friend the shoe-shiner.
When you get to know her passing well she will tell you how she was
educated in a convent, which she left to visit a wealthy aunt in
Pittsburg. While there she became engaged to marry a rich broker, and
so on, and so on, you know, the same old story. The stage figures in
it, too, because there is always a fascinating glamor about the other
side of the footlights.
She has been in comic opera and she has a lot of expensive photographs
of herself in theatrical poses, but no matter how well posted you may
be you fail to recall her name, even though she was an understudy for
Lillian Russell, “when Lillian was good.”
If you let your glance rove across the room to a table close by one of
the central pillars, you will see another type of woman, and this one
is worth studying.
She will never see her fortieth birthday again, although she looks
about thirty-two. That may be art, or it may be an inherited physical
characteristic, but the fact remains that she is still young enough and
good looking enough to attract a man.
She is a veritable star and her singing and acting are flawless.
The fine old gentleman she is chatting with is the head of a very
ancient and very distinguished family of New York, and she is under his
protecting wing.
That is a remarkable feature of her career; she always selects with
painstaking care, nice old men, with families.
And for that there may be a good and sufficient reason.
While you are watching her and noting her rather dainty ways, which are
perhaps a bit too dainty for one of her age, listen to the little story
I am going to tell you about her.
Not so many years ago, but just about the time when she was in the
zenith of her career, she met just the same kind of a man she is
talking with now. She had had a great deal of experience with old men
and she took advantage of all she knew to make him like her.
She succeeded--hence this story.
The old fellow was all right, and he knew what was necessary under the
circumstances, and he made good with characteristic rapidity. The first
thing he did was to buy her a handsome brownstone house on a quiet side
street, fill it full of handsome furniture, and then he blew himself
in for a neat little brougham and pair for theatre use.
So far, so good, and the play went merrily on.
And now comes a spectacle, or a melodrama, or even a farce, if you like.
He wasn’t her constant companion, because he was clever enough
to realize that if she saw too much of him it might be fatal to
his chances, so he timed his visits with careful exactitude, and
incidentally showered her with gifts--which, after all, is one of the
direct roads to a woman’s heart.
But he made the fatal mistake one day of introducing to her one of his
old friends, and from that moment there began a fierce rivalry between
them for the smiles of the auburn-haired actress; it was a duel with
a lock of hair as a reward; a combat with a smile for the victor, and
they both went to work with a will and to the exclusion of every other
object in life.
When one bought her a magnificent solitaire, she showed it to the other
and he promptly laid a tiara at her feet, and it was unquestionably the
greatest battle of senile old idiots that ever raged.
Separately they took to waylaying her on the street from her house
to the theatre, and back again, and one even went so far as to buy a
magnificent yacht, equip it for a long cruise, and attempt to kidnap
her. But that plan failed, and it was just as well that it did, because
the man who does eccentric stunts of that character is apt to find
himself in hot water sooner or later, and in any event reap a whirlwind
of scorn from the lady in the case.
Finally, the climax came, as it was bound to come, when they met at her
house one Sunday afternoon.
All this may be new to you, but you must remember it was as common in
club circles as the Spanish war, and the results of the affair were
watched for by thousands of men whose names figure conspicuously in the
public prints.
They met and they quarreled, and when my lady appeared on the scene
these two beaux were on the verge of punching each other in good old
Queensbury fashion.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, I beg that you will not quarrel in _my_ house.”
You will notice that she put the accent on the word “my.”
At once there were criminations and recriminations, but with that
charm of manner which made her famous, not only on the stage, but in
the drawing room, to say nothing of the cafe, she poured oil on the
troubled waters.
“I do not really know what your differences are about, but if you will
allow me, I would like to suggest that you settle them in some amicable
way. Here are dice and a cup, why not play for it?”
They looked at each other for a moment, and then one said:
“Yes, we will do it, madame, just the thing. Here, I will make the
first throw,” and out upon the shining surface of the golden table
rolled the three ivory cubes.
They fought it out while she looked on languidly, and at last when it
had been decided, the winner arose exultingly and shouted:
“I have won.”
“Won what?” she queried, curiously.
“Won what? Why, won you.”
“Won me?” and she placed her taper finger on her breast. “Why, how very
charming that is. I ought to congratulate you, I suppose, and I shall
certainly let you know when I come back--if you are still alive.”
“You’re not going away?” he faltered. “When?”
“I sail to-morrow morning at eight o’clock; I go aboard this afternoon.
I am going to Europe for a good long rest; mother says I need it, and
so we are going together. Good afternoon. Let me congratulate you on
being so lucky, and to win me, too. Why, it’s like a romance. How
splendidly that would stage.”
Down the street the two old fellows walked, one slightly in advance of
the other. At the corner the one who was ahead, hesitated a moment,
then turned and waited for the other to come up.
“Tom,” he said. “I don’t know what you think, but I am of the opinion
that we are a pair of damned old fools who ought to know better. Let’s
go and have a drink.”
The old gentleman who is pouring out that wine for her now would
perhaps like to hear that story in all its wealth of detail, but even
if he knew it might make no difference.
Of all the thousands of people who go to restaurants there are only a
few who do not go for the sole purpose of eating. We have been here an
hour and have looked over but two tables, and the story is not half
told.
[Illustration]
A VOICE IN THE SLUMS
This is one of the “places” of New York.
It is not worth looking at in the daylight, because there is nothing to
see.
It is gray, dull, dreary and desolate--too dismal to be considered for
even a moment.
About it all there is not one thing that is attractive.
It is downtown and on the East Side, and that is enough to tell the
story.
If you have never been downtown on the East Side of this big city, go
and take a look some time, it is worth it, and you may see some things
there--as I have--that will interest you.
At night you wouldn’t recognize this place because of the softening and
concealing effect of the electric lights.
Besides the lights there is music, and in addition to that there are
women--what kind of women you can guess, but the fact remains that they
are still women, and even their presence helps to brighten up this spot
of the slums.
Toughs of the street straggle in singly and by twos, glancing warily
about for prey, or in search of girls to whom they are attached. The
type is familiar enough in every city. Square-jawed, low-browed, with
shifting eyes and an aggressive manner; dressing well when the money
comes easy, and not so well when hard times arrive; living by their
wits, which at the best is precarious, relying for the necessities of
life upon a girl; spending a certain portion of time in jail, unless,
as it often happens, they are too cowardly to rob a man, but not too
cowardly to take from a woman.
[Illustration: She figured once at a masked ball that was raided by the
police]
Sightseers drift in, too, from everywhere, look curiously about, as if
expecting some remarkable and extraordinary occurrence at any moment,
and failing in that, they take chairs at the nearest table, and give
meek orders to the aggressive waiter for liquors which they seem afraid
to drink.
At stated intervals someone sings a song, and between times the music
plays a waltz for those who care to dance on the bit of polished floor
reserved for that purpose.
The very dregs of high life.
It is the lees of the wine.
Just a few years ago--so short a time that it seems almost like
yesterday--a young woman was singing in light operas and doing
occasional turns in vaudeville. If I were to tell you her name now it
would have as familiar a sound to you as the name of any other popular
performer.
One of her distinguishing characteristics was her voice, which had a
remarkable and extraordinary range.
And how she could use it.
She was absolute master of it, and there was no doubt about her
success, nor her future, either, barring accidents, of course.
Besides that she was good to look at. She was of a distinctive style of
beauty, and she had a fetching way with her which spelled magnetism.
Magnetism, between you and me, means success on the stage--or anywhere
else, for that matter. Take the best actor or actress in the world, one
who is perfect in lines, diction and stage business; who is absolute
master of the art of stage craft, and rob them of magnetism, and I will
show you a failure.
So, you see, this young woman was well equipped for the business she
was in, and there is the picture.
Nicely gowned, looking and acting like a thoroughbred, she had a big
following of admirers, and there didn’t seem to be anything on earth
within reason that she wanted she couldn’t have.
The limit of her vices was a few mild drinking bouts with the boys
and the occasional smoking of a cigarette, even though there was a
possibility that in the years to come the tobacco would destroy the
finer tones of her voice.
The moral end of the business was her own affair, and consequently will
not be touched on.
Now look.
See that pallid woman?
The one who has just come in. She is talking to a waiter now. Her thin
face is seamed with lines, and the light of youth, of life and of
enthusiasm has gone out of her eyes.
You wouldn’t think she was once a beautiful girl with a wonderful
voice, would you?
“I had the yin-yin so bad,” she is saying, “that I had to go in and hit
two pills before I came out. Now I’m good till the lights go out.”
One night, after the show, she went with a party on a slumming tour
through Chinatown. They were out to have a good time and nothing more.
In one of the resorts in which they stopped was a good-looking young
bartender who caught her fancy. He was all right in a way, but she
outclassed him about twenty to one, but there is no telling what a
woman is going to do, or upon whom she is going to bestow her favors,
any more than one can tell what the state of the weather will be a
month or two months from now.
She thought she was in love with him--but she wasn’t. She had only
taken a fancy to him, which was a different sort of a proposition, but
she didn’t know it at that time.
She went on singing just the same, but the time she was out of the
theatre she spent with him, and the more money she earned the better he
dressed.
She dipped a little deeper into the different vices, until at last she
went up against the king of them all--opium.
With all of her drinking and cigarette smoking she was still able to
hold her own and keep her voice in some kind of shape, and many a rare
old song has she trilled in some cheap dive, and made the old-timers
straighten up in their seats and tell her she was all right. Previous
to that she had figured in only one escapade and that was when she was
caught in a raid at a masked ball which was so off-color and made up
of many desperate characters--men and women--that it took a platoon of
police with drawn clubs to bring the affair to a sudden end.
They will never forget the night when she went down to the “Drum” in
James street, and after setting up the drinks for the crowd, stood in
the centre of the grimy floor and without a note of accompanying music
sang Annie Laurie.
At the end of the first verse, a drunk crept on his hands and knees
from a dark corner where he had been lying, and staggering to his
feet, looked at her dully with bloodshot eyes, and then cursed her so
violently that she instinctively shrank back for a moment.
But she had been drinking, too, and was equal to the emergency.
“Shut up,” she retorted. “I’m going to sing the whole damned song or
break a rib trying,” and with that she started on the second verse.
Sitting on a chair, holding his head in his hands, the man began to
sob and cry as only a man whose heart is aching can, and then, as if
he could stand it no longer, he rushed madly from the place while she
laughed.
“I can make them all quit if they will stay long enough.”
Almost a year later that same man, but dressed and washed and
respectable, came downtown one night, and went through all the places
upon whose floors he had fallen and slept many a night, looking for the
girl who had sung that song.
He found her at three o’clock in the morning on the Bowery.
She was sitting at a table in McGurk’s with two men with whom she had
been drinking cheap whiskey for hours.
“I beg your pardon,” said the man, “but are you the young woman who
sang a song in a place on James street about a year ago--Annie Laurie
it was?”
“I may have, old pal, I’ve sung a lot of songs in my day.”
“Well, you will probably be glad to know that that song was the turning
point in my life, and I am now a reformed man. I feel that I owe it to
you, and I want to give you some little memento that you can keep.”
As he spoke he pulled a package out of his pocket and handed it to her.
With unsteady fingers she unwrapped it and when she had opened the case
she saw a gold watch upon which was engraved:
_To the singer who saved my life._
“You’re a good old sport, all right, let’s have a drink on it.”
“No, thank you,” he said, hurriedly. “I must be going now, but I want
to tell you that you have a great gift which you are throwing away.”
“So long, old pal, live while you can, for you’ll be a long time dead,”
she said, and he was gone.
She looked at the watch curiously for a moment, and then called one of
the waiters.
“Ha, Jimmy, here’s a swell watch. Ask the old man how much he will give
me for it--it looks to be worth about fifty.”
The waiter returned in a few minutes and said:
“He says he’ll give you ten.”
“All right, he’s on, get the coin.”
She stayed until she had spent the money, and then she went reeling
home.
True? Of course it’s true, every word of it.
But she’s not drinking so hard now, opium is her god, and she spends
most of her time with her pipe and her lamp. Her downward course has
been a very rapid one, and her name has almost been forgotten.
The man at the next table is whispering to his friends:
“She was the greatest singer I ever heard, and many a time I’ve gone
to the same show three times in one week just to hear her, and when a
woman’s voice gets me like that you can bet it’s got to be good.”
“Get her to sing now; I’d like to hear her.”
“Sing now? Why, she couldn’t sound a note if her life depended on it.
She’s got all she can do to talk plain. She looks like a piece of
leather, doesn’t she? Yet she made the prettiest picture on the stage I
ever saw.”
Her voice interrupted here.
It was harsh and strident in tone--there was little of the woman in it.
“Well, if you won’t buy me a drink I’ll buy one for myself; give me a
whiskey, Jack, and don’t be all night about it, either.”
“Why don’t you get that Chinky of yours to buy you a drink?” remarks
some one from the other side of the room.
“Why don’t you mind your own business? He’d buy me all the drinks
I wanted if I would ask him, and that’s more than you would do. If
anybody asks you just tell them that the Chinks are all right, see, and
don’t be so new.”
“Cut that out, you fresh guy over there, cut it out.”
Here’s a champion for her; there are a few left who are still under her
spell, or who, remembering what she once was and knowing her in her
palmy days, stick for old time’s sake.
“Have a drink on me, old pal, and go as far as you like.”
She comes back with a laugh; and if you look closely--if you have those
kind of eyes that can see things below the surface, so to speak--you
will see that she doesn’t really belong here, and never did. That she
is here because of some unfortunate series of circumstances over which,
perhaps, she had no control. You will see something in her manner that
distinguishes her from the rest of the women, even those who are better
looking and better dressed. It is that intangible, indefinite something
which means blood, or previous environment. It cannot be put on and
taken off like a garment, and when once there it is there to stay.
That makes the wreck all the more pitiable, and with the same eyes
through which you have just looked you will see the finish.
It isn’t pleasant to look at, and now, while the music is playing for
the waltz, and the couples are getting on the floor to go through that
interminable routine of steps called dancing, while the painted women
are laughing, and the men are calling them pet--or other--names, we
will go out of this room to where we can breathe a fresher air and see
the stars.
I’m not sentimental, but there are some things I don’t like to see,
besides, I knew the girl when she was at her best, and I have heard her
sing when she brought the house down with applause.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Once she had been on the stage, but she got a rough deal
and quit]
A GIRL OF THE NIGHT
The band on the platform at the end of the big hall was booming out
the popular melodies of the day for dear life and the piercing notes
produced by the leather-lunged piccolo player were heard as far as the
street.
“That guy up there has me deaf with that flute he’s blowing,” remarked
Big Lizzie, “and while I don’t wish him any harm yet I hope he chokes.”
“That knocks this place,” remarked her pal. “Why, I had a John in here
the other day and he was wanting to buy me a new dress, and I thought
he was wanting to know where I lived, and I was writing my name and
number down on a piece of paper and he got disgusted and went away. It
drives ’em out, if you want to know what I think.”
But it was once a famous old place when Fourteenth street was really
good, and the casual visitor to New York who didn’t drop in for an hour
or so missed something.
It was one of the sights, and the great mechanical organ invented and
built by a straight-laced Methodist is there still, although he has
long ago ceased calling the attention of his friends to the fact. Its
tunes to-day are sandwiched in with those of the band, and in the
interval the trombone player gets a chance to recover his breath.
Morning, noon and night men and women wander in, sit at the little
round tables, drink queer decoctions made of liquor strong enough to
eat into Harveyized steel, and then go forth to tear up the town. The
police pass it by as though it were nothing more serious than an ice
cream parlor or a peanut emporium, while the tide of upholstered and
hand-painted mademoiselles sweep in on the flood and drift out on the
ebb with business written in every line of their faces.
Their paths radiate like the sticks of a fan from this rendezvous
of the social evil, and in their movements they show nearly all the
characteristics of the honey-gathering bee.
The engaging and winsome smile of a girl not yet out of her teens had
caught the eye of the man in this story, and against his will he had
allowed her to lead him into this place where mirth was nothing more
nor less than a mask behind which a skeleton face grinned, and where
neither laughter nor anything else was sincere. Her black eyes had not
yet taken on that hardness which the years to come would surely add
to them, and her ways were to a certain extent ingenuous. Besides,
she was distinctly pretty with her Yiddish style of beauty, which
was unfortunately of the kind which matures at sixteen and is old at
twenty-five. Either teaching or a subtle instinct had caused her to
discard the gorgeous plumes and brilliant colors which had marked her
debut on the street less than a year before, and in consequence she
might have passed for anything but what she was.
She had been on the stage once on a tour, but got a rough deal and
quit.
He outclassed her by a hundred to one, and his source was as high as
hers was low. There was no tinge of peasantry in his veins, but good
successful American stock traceable back for five or six generations
without a blot upon escutcheon--which, by the way, is rather rare in
these days, consequently it’s worth boasting about. Lured into the
maelstrom of music, he found himself at one of the tables with the girl
beside him, still smiling.
Liquor has different effects on different men; it turns the mild man
into a savage and makes a careful one reckless in the extreme. In this
particular case caution went to the four winds and sympathy--which
is apt to be dangerous at times--took its place. But let youth and
inexperience excuse him.
“You haven’t told me your name,” he said. “What is it?”
“Brown,” she answered, “Jennie Brown.”
“I mean your right name.”
“Well, Jennie is my right name--I took the other one after I came out
of the hospital. Some day, maybe, I’ll get married and then I’ll change
it again, but not before.”
“What did you go to the hospital for--were you ill and did you have no
one to take care of you?”
“Ill? You mean sick? No, I wasn’t sick; I was stabbed, and I got it
good, too. I was cut from here to here,” and her right forefinger
described across the front of her dress a line that went from her
shoulder to the center of her breast bone. “At first I thought I was
going to croak because I lost a lot of blood, but I’m pretty strong
and I came out all right. You see, it was this way: A guy I knew got
stuck on me and I couldn’t shake him, and he followed me around like a
shadow. I didn’t like him because he wasn’t in my class, and besides he
had another girl and I never took a girl’s fellow away in my life. If
they split up then that’s different, but as long as they’re together I
keep out of it. Every time I’d talk to anybody or go anywhere he’d be
there. One night he followed me and a fellow I had that wanted to buy
wine into Sharkey’s and when he tried to start a fight with my friend
one of the waiters threw him out. Of course that made him sore, and
he said that he’d get even. He did, all right, for one night as I was
going upstairs he was in the top hall waiting for me, and the first
thing I knew he had the knife into me.
“‘If you won’t have me, take this,’ he said, and then I felt an awful
pain and when I put my hand up the blood was coming through my dress.
“‘You killed me, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘and I never done anything to you.’
But there wasn’t any answer to that, for he was running down the stairs
as fast as he could.
“I was afraid to go up to my room all alone with the blood running out
all over me so I went down to the street to look for my pal, Annie. You
don’t know her but she’s all right. It was two o’clock in the morning
and there was no one around so I thought I’d walk over to Third avenue
and see if I could find any of the girls there and get help. There was
an electric light up on the corner and I hadn’t taken more than a few
steps before it began to move up and down and I got afraid and began to
run. When I got up to the avenue all the lights were going up and down
as if they were crazy and a man on the other side of the street looked
as if he was upside down.
“Then I began to get frightened and I thought to myself that I’d sit
down on a doorstep for a minute till I got over that queer feeling and
that maybe Annie would come along. So I picked the first one I saw and
flopped down. When I looked up it made me dizzy and so I looked down at
the stone, and as I leaned over I watched the little red drops falling,
one after the other, and always hitting the same spot, and then they
began to spread out and the pool almost reached the sole of my shoe. I
was wondering how long it would take before my foot got wet from it,
and where it all came from, anyhow. It all seemed very funny to me;
then I felt tired and shut my eyes.
“The next thing I knew I was in bed and there was a nurse there. A cop
was there, too, and when I looked at him he says, ‘Ha, nurse, she’s out
of it.’
“‘What place is this?’ I asked.
“‘You’re in Bellevue Hospital,’ he said, and he was right. I had been
there two days before I knew it. What do you think of that?”
“You were unconscious,” remarked the young man.
“Sure I was unconscious,” she responded, “and they asked me all kinds
of questions, who did it and all that, and----”
“And did you tell them who it was that stabbed you?”
“Did I tell them? Nix; not on your life. I never rapped on anybody and
I wasn’t going to rap on him, for it wouldn’t do me any good and it
wouldn’t take that stab away, would it? I thought I’d get square myself
some day when I got out of the hospital and was strong again. That’s
the only way. Him going up the river for a couple of years wouldn’t
have done me any good, and maybe he’d have croaked me when he came out.
What’s the good of taking chances? So I hocked all my rings and other
stuff, and got togged up when I came out. I’ll get them all out in a
month, maybe before. I got one now; see,” and she held up a finger on
which was a very big turquoise, surrounded by very small diamonds.
“I’ll get them one at a time, and then if I ever get up against it
again I’ve got them to fall back on. It’s just as good as money, only
the interest is awful. Now if I only had a good friend who would----”
“Want the waiter?” broke in a hoarse voice like the croak of a mammoth
raven.
“Give me a claret lemonade, Harry.”
“And what’ll the gent have?”
“A Martini cocktail.”
“Right you are.”
“As I was saying, if I only had a friend who would be on the level I’d
be square with him, too. I ain’t got no pals, only Annie, and she’s
been pretty good to me. Say, you ain’t married, are you?”
“No, not yet”; he laughed nervously as he said it. “I don’t believe in
fellows getting married until they’re twenty-five, anyhow.”
“Neither do I.”
He noticed that her teeth were very white and even, and that her
eyebrows and hair were jet black. The color on her cheeks had been put
there with a skilled hand, and so deftly done that it passed for the
real thing--in nature, not in art. Her hands were shapely, her nails
manicured carefully and she had a trim figure. It was all stock in
trade, but he wasn’t figuring it that way. Half a dozen of the kind
of drinks they had given him had torn down the barrier, so far as he
was concerned, that had been raised by society between it and the
Scarlet Woman, and the pathos of her story had set him thinking and had
roused all of his sympathies. She had played her part with all of the
subtleness of the finished actress and had told her story with such
simplicity and naivette that many an older man would have been deceived
by the recital. She was working up to the climax as carefully and
cautiously as the hunter works up into the wind after the unsuspecting
deer, or the soft-footed cat ambushes the bird singing in the hedge.
The emotional breed of her race helped to make her realistic, and
her vivacity was contagious. Put her on the stage and she would be a
success with proper training.
“If,” she laid her hand caressingly on the sleeve of his coat, “if I
could find someone who would get my rings out and give me a chance I
would be willing to do anything for him. I don’t like this life, always
hustling, chased by the police and treated like a thief. But once in
it’s hard to get out, for no one wants to give you a chance.”
He was looking over her head and watching the man with the cornet
rubbing up the brass with his handkerchief.
“You are not listening to me.”
“Yes, I am; I heard every word you said. How much would it cost to get
your jewels out?”
“Only $125. It might not be much for you, but it’s a lot for me.”
Here was the climax, so far as her story was concerned. She could have
repeated those three figures long before, but she wasn’t ready. She was
waiting for the psychological moment and it had arrived. The picture
was made and the hand was ready.
And now your attention is respectfully called to Fate, the intruder;
the upsetter of carefully laid plans; the wrecker; sometimes the
promoter, because it does as many things for good as it does for bad.
In this case, however, it was good and bad, according to the viewpoint.
“If you wouldn’t mind I’ll get them out for you. Let’s go now,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him--a smile of happiness
and success; the smile of a child when it gets its first Christmas
doll; and then she drew a deep breath. Still smiling, her eyes half
closed, she looked at him through the narrow slits and contemplated the
possibilities of the future. There was no hurry and she could afford to
wait, for she had won out.
A woman, coarse of feature and with fright depicted on her face, came
hurrying in. She saw the girl at one end of the room and ran to her.
“Jennie, for God’s sake, come quick; your Billy’s just been pinched on
the corner.”
“Billy pinched; what for?” The jubilation in her black eyes turned to
terror.
“For swiping a bloke’s leather. They got it on him; hurry up.”
The boy stared wide-eyed at them for a moment, then pushing his chair
back he arose unsteadily to his feet.
“Seventy-five cents for the drinks.”
It was the waiter’s voice.
He fumbled in his pocket, brought forth a handful of change, deposited
it in the outstretched palm, and began to weave his way among the
tables toward the door in the wake of the hurrying women.
“He’s a swell kid, all right,” remarked the waiter, as he counted the
$3.25 in change, “and I hope he comes back.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: When the clock struck two she was on the table doing a
dance]
AFTER THE WEDDING BELLS
There was a big crowd on the ferryboat from Jersey when she bumped
her nose into the pier at New York that morning, but when the gates
were thrown open there wasn’t the usual scurry and rush to land that
marked the morning arrival. At the front, hugging the rail on the
woman’s side was a nice little blonde dressed all in white, even down
to her shoes and stockings, and with a complexion of the kind known
as peachy, if you have any idea what that is. Fastened to her with a
strong arm hold was a fellow of about twenty-three--years, not skiddoo,
you understand--and he was togged out like a hot sport after a winning
fight, or one who had picked the 20 to 1 shot at Sheepshead for the
first time in his life. Top hat, frock coat, white vest, patent leather
shoes, pearl tie and gray gloves completed the picture, and it was the
surest case of orange blossoms and wedding cake that ever happened.
That was what held the crowd and made a few of them whistle what
sounded very much like that old familiar tune of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Arm in arm, entirely oblivious of anything in the world except
themselves and their own happiness, the couple marched off the boat,
heads up in the air and trailed by the grinning bunch, and if ever a
case of love’s young dream went around on legs this was surely it.
They knew as much about New York as a Shrewsbury River clam knows about
cigarettes, and it didn’t require the services of a head-grabber or a
hand-holder to know that they were hunting a honeymoon hostelry.
They had come from the fertile fields of Freehold to the land where
there are real bathtubs with hot and cold water, and where a chunk of
plain calf is soused with gravy, called fricandeau of veal, and charged
for at the rate of a dollar a portion.
What was money made for except to spend, especially on occasions of
this kind? You’re young but once, and then a little makes you feel like
a millionaire and you get value received and five times over for every
dollar you peel off the roll. But when Time, who is the most wonderful
artist in the world, does a few stunts, makes brown hair turn gray
and deftly paints in the wrinkles, then the joy of spending goes and
pleasure becomes as soggy as a wet sponge. Years are the frosts which
kill the flowers of hope and ambition, and there are thousands of men
who would give millions of dollars if they could but stand off, if only
for a brief while, the gray-haired patriarch with the scythe.
Just think of the sight of a young bride and groom holding in leash, as
it were, a couple of hundred business men who were as anxious to get
on the job of making money as a dog is to get a bone, and all of these
hard-headed fellows smiling as if each one of them were in the same
position as the young fellow who was fast to her arm.
Up the street to Broadway, where they turned north, and then they were
lost to all but two men, and these two were trailing.
Begins to sound like one of Old Sleuth’s detective stories, doesn’t it?
Where the villains are always on the job and always being foiled. Where
it is either a case of murder the child and get the papers or kidnap
the girl and marry her so as to get the old man’s fortune. Doesn’t that
take you back a few years when you used to have those yellow-covered
books in your inside pocket and believe every word you read, or are you
so unfortunate as to have never lived the life of a real boy, with all
its castle building and romancing? You know there are men in this world
who still dream of those days, and it doesn’t do them any harm, either.
The two men who were brought into this story a moment ago are still in
the game, but they are neither burglars nor kidnappers. They are simply
a pair of good fellows with enough money on the side to get anything
within reason, and a belief that there are happy days and good people
in this world if you only take the trouble to look for them.
“I’ll bet,” said one, “that that kid hasn’t more than a hundred in his
clothes, and that he feels as if the world was his to do with as he
likes.”
“The world is his if he has as much as a hundred,” returned the other.
“That will give him the time of his life for three weeks, and he
wouldn’t go back broke, either, unless his home is in London, which it
isn’t.”
“She’s a nice-looking girl all right, and from the way they’re heading
I should say it would be Niagara for theirs.”
“Niagara nothing,” retorted his friend, “that is a spot that belongs to
the past. Our mothers and fathers made it fashionable, but the present
generation takes to big cities as naturally as a duck takes to water,
for they want the busy life and the theatres. The billing and cooing
of the newly wed is all done under cover now and they mix with the
crowd. You’ll find them taking in the big cafes along The Line getting
a good look at things they never expect to see again, and these are the
things they will be talking about twenty or thirty years from now. Make
a picture of that couple ahead there in 1926, for instance. He’ll be
telling his friends about this day, and the night they went to see Joe
Weber, and he’ll tell how the buildings first impressed him, and then
she’ll butt in with:
“‘Say, Henry, what was the name of the restaurant in New York we went
to after we saw that funny show--you know, the place where we had that
lobster a la Newburg?’
“As long as she lives she’ll talk about lobster a la Newburg because it
sounds different, you see, and that’s the woman of it.
“Then Henry will stroke his whiskers and take his corncob pipe out of
his mouth and say, as if he had known the place all his life, ‘Why,
that was Shanley’s.’”
“Cut it out, for you’re talking like one of Denman Thompson’s home-made
rural drammers,” put in his friend, as he pulled out his cigar case.
“You’re always looking for the unusual and the sentimental, so I’ll
make you a proposition. Let’s get next to this pair of turtle doves and
give them the send-off of their lives. We’ll start off with a lunch,
then a matinee, after that dinner, from there to a show and then a
windup in a blaze of glory with wine and all the trimmings of a wedding
feast. You’ve nothing to do, neither have I, and maybe if we do the
thing up right she’ll name it--if it is a boy--after one of us or both
of us, just think of that. There’s fame for you.”
That is how it happened that an hour later a newly-married young
couple, under the escort of two young men who were pretty well known
around town, were lunching at the Waldorf just as if they had known
each other for years.
“You see,” one of the hosts was explaining, “we had an invitation to a
wedding out of town to-day and we missed the train. We felt as if we
wanted to entertain some one in honor of the event and we thought we
would ask you. We want you to be our guests from now until 1 o’clock
to-morrow morning----”
The young husband glanced uneasily at his wife and she smiled back
reassuringly.
The woman, with that unerring female instinct which is born with all
females of the human tribe, understood the situation at a glance and
was ready for the lark. Besides, both hosts were good looking and well
dressed and her vanity was touched. She was young enough to be natural
and old enough to be appreciative. Besides, there were a few healthy
drops of sporting blood in her veins, and that tells a good part of the
story.
There are cases where details are uninteresting, and while the time
from luncheon to near the hour of midnight seemed to the honeymooners
one wild carouse yet it was really nothing to those who are familiar
with the ways of the world. They had sampled everything within reason
from soda to hock, and the happy Freehold boy with the silk lid was
willing to walk on his hands if anyone had dared him. He had told
everyone he met all he knew and all he ever expected to know. As
for the little lady who had been toasted many times as the “blushing
bride,” she had suddenly developed sporting proclivities of a rare
character, and she squeezed the hands of both of her hosts with equal
impartiality.
Confidentially it was rather a dangerous situation, for if the
bridegroom had been helped to a few more drinks he wouldn’t have cared
whether the place where he was laid away was a bridal couch or the soft
side of a board. That was the state of affairs when, calling each other
by their first names, so friendly had they become, that they all went
up to the apartment of one of the hosts for the wind-up banquet.
“How are you feeling, little sport, getting a head yet?”
“I’m just right, and I’d like to have you for a brother,” she retorted.
“Only a brother?”
“Perhaps I should have said father.”
Which showed that she had a pretty wit, too, as well as a head.
At the table the hosts had multiplied by two and so there were six. The
first flash of cocktails set the groom’s head to buzzing a bit and his
speech began to be a trifle thick. At the sauterne he had a job to keep
his head up straight, and he had no sooner finished his first glass of
wine than he excused himself to get a handkerchief. He dropped on a
friendly couch in the next room and promptly forgot that he was alive.
His wife was no such miserable failure, for she clinked glasses with
the rest of them and was entertained so well that it seemed as if she
forgot she had ever been married.
As the clock on the mantel struck two she was dancing a hornpipe
on that end of the table which had been cleared by the soft-footed
Japanese butler, and what was more she was dancing it well, too. The
four hosts were applauding and drinking her health as the best little
thoroughbred they had ever met, and in each brain there was a wish that
she was anything but a bride, for each of these men, from the oldest to
the youngest, was in love.
It was a most curious and remarkable state of affairs, and there was
a chance here for a break that might spell ruin to someone. Then the
patter of the little feet on the tablecloth ceased and she stepped
daintily down to chair and floor. The man nearest helped her, and
as she alighted he leaned over and kissed her squarely on the lips.
The color in her cheeks was accentuated just a trifle as he glanced
suddenly around.
“Where’s my husband?” she asked.
“With his toes turned up on the couch in the next room and dead to the
world. If he was half the sport and good fellow you are he’d be an ace.
You ought to have been born in New York, Chappie, for you belong there.”
“I think I will go and see him, if you will excuse me,” she said very
demurely, and then she went out.
The four hosts drank and talked and smoked and all the talk was of the
bride, and it was all complimentary, too. When an hour had passed the
butler was sent to see if she would return.
She came back all right, smiling, but there was a change.
“I think we ought to go now, but I can’t get him up. He’s not used to
this sort of thing, you see, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Why, stay right here, of course. We’re all going now and Jim, the
gorilla who owns the place, is going, too. The shack is yours until you
get ready to leave, for you’re all right. How about that, Jim?”
“Just as you say--she owns it and us, too. Give your orders to Saki
there, and we’ll call and take dinner with you every evening. We hope
the boy will be all right in the morning. Good-night.”
That’s all.
It seems as if there ought to be more, but there really isn’t.
With one large high absinthe I could make a hair-raising finish, but I
have made up my mind to tell only the truth for a change and give my
imagination a much needed rest, and this is a truthful story and it
happened just as it is put down here.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
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