A Dance of Folly and Pleasure Page 7

  ‘Oh, the chauffeur wasn’t wet,’ breathed Cecilia. ‘And he drove the car away very nicely.’

  ‘I mean you,’ said Hetty. ‘For not giving him your address.’

  ‘I never give my address to chauffeurs,’ said Cecilia, haughtily.

  ‘I wish we had one,’ said Hetty, disconsolately.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For the stew, of course – oh, I mean an onion.’

  Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end of the hall.

  A young man came down the steps from above just as she was opposite the lower step. He was decently dressed, but pale and haggard. His eyes were dull with the stress of some burden of physical or mental woe. In his hand he bore an onion – a pink, smooth, solid, shining onion, as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm clock.

  Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the look and pose of the shop-lady – she had cast off the roles of Job and Little Red Riding Hood. The young man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distractedly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed, pan-handled, browbeaten, though he knew not why. It was the look in Hetty’s eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the masthead and an able seaman with a dirk between his teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried was the thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the water without even a parley.

  ‘Beg your pardon,’ said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid tones permitted, ‘but did you find that onion on the stairs? There was a hole in the paper bag; and I’ve just come out to look for it.’

  The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have given him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched his pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim waylayer.

  ‘No,’ he said huskily, ‘I didn’t find it on the stairs. It was given to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don’t believe it, ask him. I’ll wait until you do.’

  ‘I know about Bevens,’ said Hetty, sourly. ‘He writes books and things up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman guy him all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back. Say – do you live in the Vallambrosa?’

  ‘I do not,’ said the young man. ‘I come to see Bevens sometimes. He’s my friend. I live two blocks west.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the onion? – begging your pardon,’ said Hetty.

  ‘I’m going to eat it.’

  ‘Raw?’

  ‘Yes: as soon as I get home.’

  ‘Haven’t you got anything else to eat with it?’

  The young man considered briefly.

  ‘No,’ he confessed; ‘there’s not another scrap of anything in my diggings to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his shack, too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into parting with it.’

  ‘Man,’ said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, ‘you’ve known trouble, too, haven’t you?’

  ‘Lots,’ said the onion owner, promptly. ‘But this onion is my own property, honestly come by. If you will excuse me, I must be going.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. ‘Raw onion is a mighty poor diet. And so is a beef-steak without one. Now, if you’re Jack Bevens’ friend, I guess you’re nearly right. There’s a little lady – a friend of mine – in my room there at the end of the hall. Both of us are out of luck; and we had just potatoes and meat between us. They’re stewing now. But it ain’t got any soul. There’s something lacking to it. There’s certain things in life that are naturally intended to fit and belong together. One is pink cheesecloth and green roses, and one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish and trouble. And the other one is beef and potatoes with onions. And still another one is people who are up against it and other people in the same fix.’

  The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of coughing. With one hand he hugged his onion to his bosom.

  ‘No doubt; no doubt,’ said he, at length. ‘But, as I said, I must be going because—’

  Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly.

  ‘Don’t be a Dago, Little Brother. Don’t eat raw onions. Chip it in toward the dinner and line yourself inside with the best stew you ever licked a spoon over. Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and drag him inside for the honour of dining with ’em? No harm shall befall you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into line.’

  The young man’s pale face relaxed into a grim.

  ‘Believe I’ll go with you,’ he said, brightening. ‘If my onion is good as a credential, I’ll accept the invitation gladly.’

  ‘It’s good as that, but better as seasoning,’ said Hetty. ‘You come and stand outside the door till I ask my lady friend if she has any objections. And don’t run away with that letter of recommendation before I come out.’

  Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The young man waited outside.

  ‘Cecilia, kid,’ said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw of her voice as well as she could, ‘there’s an onion outside. With a young man attached. I’ve asked him in to dinner. You ain’t going to kick, are you?’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her artistic hair. She cast a mournful glance at the ferry-boat poster on the wall.

  ‘Nit,’ said Hetty. ‘It ain’t him. You’re up against real life now. I believe you said your hero friend had money and automobiles. This is a poor skeezicks that’s got nothing to eat but an onion. But he’s easy spoken and not a freshy. I imagine he’s been a gentleman, he’s so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I bring him in? I’ll guarantee his behaviour.’

  ‘Hetty, dear,’ sighed Cecilia, ‘I’m so hungry. What difference does it make whether he’s a prince or a burglar? I don’t care. Bring him in if he’s got anything to eat with him.’

  Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was gone. Her heart missed a beat, and a gray look settled over her face except her nose and cheekbones. And then the times of life flowed in again, for she saw him leaning out of the front window at the other end of the hall. She hurried there. He was shouting to someone below. The noise of the street overpowered the sound of her footsteps. She looked down over his shoulder, saw whom he was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled himself in from the windowsill and saw her standing over him.

  Hetty’s eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ she said, calmly. ‘What were you going to do with that onion?’

  The young man suppressed a cough and faced her resolutely. His manner was that of one who had been bearded sufficiently.

  ‘I was going to eat it,’ said he, with emphatic slowness; ‘just as I told you before.’

  ‘And you have nothing else to eat at home?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘What kind of work do you do?’

  ‘I am not working at anything just now.’

  ‘Then why,’ said Hetty, with her voice set on its sharpest edge, ‘do you lean out of windows and give orders to chauffeurs in green automobiles in the street below?’

  The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to sparkle.

  ‘Because, madam,’ said he, in accelerando tones, ‘I pay the chauffeur’s wages and I own the automobile – and also this onion – this onion, madam.’

  He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty’s nose. The shop-lady did not retreat a hair’s-breadth.

  ‘Then why do you eat onions,’ she said, with biting contempt, ‘and nothing else?’

  ‘I never said I did,’ retorted the young man, heatedly. ‘I said I had nothing else to eat where I live. I am not a delicatessen storekeeper.’

  ‘Then why,’ pursued Hetty, inflexibly, ‘were you going to eat a raw onion?

  ‘My mother,’ said the young man, ‘always made me eat
one for a cold. Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you have noticed that I have a very, very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion and go to bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologising to you for it.’

  ‘How did you catch this cold?’ went on Hetty, suspiciously.

  The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of feeling. There were two modes of descent open to him – a burst of rage or a surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall echoed his hoarse laughter.

  ‘You’re a dandy,’ said he. ‘And I don’t blame you for being careful. I don’t mind telling you. I got wet. I was on a North River ferry a few days ago when a girl jumped overboard. Of course, I—’

  Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story.

  ‘Give me the onion,’ she said.

  The young man set his jaw a trifle harder.

  ‘Give me the onion,’ she repeated.

  He grinned and laid it in her hand.

  Then Hetty’s infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself. She took the young man’s arm and pointed with her other hand to the door of her room.

  ‘Little Brother,’ she said, ‘go in there. The little fool you fished out of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. I’ll give you three minutes before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in, Onions.’

  After he had tapped at the door and entered Hetty began to peel and wash the onion at the sink. She gave a grey look at the grey roofs outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and twitches.

  ‘But it’s us,’ she said, grimly, to herself, ‘it’s us that furnished the beef.’

  The Memento

  Miss Lynnette D’Armande turned her back on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, because Broadway had often done the same thing to Miss D’Armande. Still, the ‘tats’ seemed to have it, for the ex-leading lady of the ‘Reaping the Whirlwind’ Company had everything to ask of Broadway, while there was no vice versa.

  So Miss Lynnette D’Armande turned the back of her chair to her window that overlooked Broadway, and sat down to stitch in time the lisle-thread heel of a black silk stocking. The tumult and glitter of the roaring Broadway beneath her window had no charm for her; what she greatly desired was the stifling air of a dressing room on that fairyland street and the roar of an audience gathered in that capricious quarter. In the meantime, those stockings must not be neglected. Silk does wear out so, but – after all, isn’t it just the only goods there is?

  The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two great thoroughfares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-palaces to which those thorny paths lead.

  Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dim and fusty Thalia, you seem to have found yourself in some great ark or caravan about to sail, or fly, or roll away on wheels. About the house lingers a sense of unrest, of expectation, of transientness, even of anxiety and apprehension. The halls are a labyrinth. Without a guide you wander like a lost soul in a Sam Loyd puzzle.

  Turning any corner, a dressing-sack or a cul-de-sac may bring you up short. You meet alarming tragedians stalking in bathrobes in search of rumoured bathrooms. From hundreds of rooms come the buzz of talk, scraps of new and old songs, and the ready laughter of the convened players.

  Summer has come; their companies have disbanded, and they take their rest in their favourite caravansary, while they besiege the managers for engagements for the coming season.

  At this hour of the afternoon the day’s work of tramping the rounds of the agents’ offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things, and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odour of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam’s apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage, and the crash of dishes on the American plan.

  The indeterminate hum of life in the Thalia is enlivened by the discreet popping – at reasonable and salubrious intervals – of beer-bottle corks. Thus punctuated, life in the genial hostel scans easily – the comma being the favourite mark, semicolons frowned upon, and periods barred.

  Miss D’Armande’s room was a small one. There was room for her rocker between the dresser and the washstand if it were placed longitudinally. On the dresser were its usual accoutrements, plus the ex-leading lady’s collected souvenirs of road engagements and photographs of her dearest and best professional friends.

  At one of these photographs she looked twice or thrice as she darned, and smiled friendlily.

  ‘I’d like to know where Lee is just this minute,’ she said, half-aloud.

  If you had been privileged to view the photograph thus flattered, you would have thought at the first glance that you saw the picture of a many-petalled, white flower, blown through the air by a storm. But the floral kingdom was not responsible for that swirl of petalous whiteness.

  You saw the filmy, brief skirt of Miss Rosalie Ray as she made a complete heels-over-head turn in her wistaria-entwined swing, far out from the stage, high above the heads of the audience. You saw the camera’s inadequate representation of the graceful, strong kick, with which she, at this exciting moment, sent flying, high and far, the yellow silk garter that each evening spun from her agile limb and descended upon the delighted audience below.

  You saw, too, amid the black-clothed, mainly masculine patrons of select vaudeville a hundred hands raised with the hope of staying the flight of the brilliant aerial token.

  Forty weeks of the best circuits this act had brought Miss Rosalie Ray for each of two years. She did other things during her twelve minutes – a song and dance, imitations of two or three actors who are but imitations of themselves, and a balancing feat with a stepladder and feather duster; but when the blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies, and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, with the golden circlet conspicuous in the place whence it was soon to slide and become a soaring and coveted guerdon – then it was that the audience rose in its seat as a single man – or presumably so – and endorsed the speciality that made Miss Ray’s name a favourite in the booking-offices.

  At the end of the two years Miss Ray suddenly announced to her dear friend, Miss D’Armande, that she was going to spend the summer at an antediluvian village on the north shore of Long Island, and that the stage would see her no more. Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D’Armande had expressed her wish to know the whereabouts of her old chum, there were sharp raps at her door.

  Doubt not that it was Rosalie Ray. At the shrill command to enter she did so, with something of a tired flutter, and dropped a heavy handbag on the floor. Upon my word, it was Rosalie, in a loose, travel-stained automobileless coat, closely tied brown veil with yard-long flying ends, gray walking-suit and tan Oxfords with lavender over-gaiters.

  When she threw off her veil and hat, you saw a pretty enough face, now flushed and disturbed by some unusual emotion, and restless, large eyes with discontent marring their brightness. A heavy pile of dull auburn hair, hastily put up, was escaping in crinkly waving strands and curling small locks from the confining combs and pins.

  The meeting of the two was not marked by the effusion vocal, gymnastical, osculatory and catechetical that distinguishes the greetings of their unprofessional sisters in society. There was a brief clinch, two simultaneous labial dabs, and they stood on the same footing of the old days. Very much like the short salutations of soldiers or of travellers in foreign wilds are the welcomes between the strollers at the corners of their criss-cross roads.

  ‘I’ve got the hall-room two flights up above yours,’ said Rosalie, ‘but I came straight to see you before going up. I didn’t know
you were here till they told me.’

  ‘I’ve been in since the last of April,’ said Lynnette. ‘And I’m going on the road with a “Fatal Inheritance” Company. We open next week in Elizabath. I thought you’d quit the stage, Lee. Tell me about yourself.’

  Rosalie settled herself with a skilful wriggle on the top of Miss D’Armande’s wardrobe trunk, and leaned her head against the papered wall. From long habit, thus can peripatetic leading ladies and their sisters make themselves as comfortable as though the deepest armchairs embraced them.

  ‘I’m going to tell you, Lynn,’ she said, with a strangely sardonic and yet carelessly resigned look on her youthful face. ‘And then tomorrow I’ll strike the old Broadway trail again, and wear some more paint off the chairs in the agents’ offices. If anybody had told me any time in the last three months up to four o’clock this afternoon that I’d ever listen to that “Leave-your-name-and-address” rot of the booking bunch again, I’d have given ’em the real Mrs Fiske laugh. Loan me a handkerchief, Lynn. Gee! but those Long Island trains are fierce. I’ve got enough soft coal cinders on my face to go on and play Topsy without using the cork. And, speaking of corks – got anything to drink, Lynn?’

  Miss D’Armande opened a door of the washstand and took out a bottle.

  ‘There’s nearly a pint of Manhattan. There’s a cluster of carnations in the drinking-glass, but—’

  ‘Oh, pass the bottle. Save the glass for company. Thanks! That hits the spot. The same to you. My first drink in three months!’

  ‘Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of last season. I quit it because I was sick of the life. And especially because my heart and soul were sick of men – of the kind of men we stage people have to be up against. You know what the game is to us – it’s a fight against ’em all the way down the line, from the manager who wants us to try his new motor car to the bill-posters who want to call us by our front names.

  ‘And the men we have to meet after the show are the worst of all. The stage-door kind, and the manager’s friends who take us to supper, and show their diamonds, and talk about seeing “Dan” and “Dave” and “Charlie” for us. They’re beasts, and I hate ’em.