Here's the low down, gentlemen. The Miserere of the manicurist. Peewee, the Titian-haired Aphrodite of the Thousand Nails has been inveigled into submitting her lipstick memoirs to the public eye.
Peewee is the melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of guile as the face of the Blessed Damosel.
There are others, scissor-Salomes and nail-file Dryads. Mr. Flo Ziegfeld has nothing on George, the head barber, when it comes to an eye for color and a sense for curve. But they are busy at the moment. The hair-tonic Dons and the mud-pack Romeos are giving the girls a heavy play. Peewee alone is at leisure. Therefore let us gallop quickly to the memoirs.
* * * * *
"H'm," says Peewee, "I'll tell you about men. Of course what I say doesn't include all men. There may be exceptions to the rule. I say may be. I hope there are. I'd hate to think there weren't. I'd get sad."
Steady, gentlemen. Peewee's doll face has lost guilelessness. Peewee's face has taken on a derisive and ominous air.
"I'll give you the low down," says she with a sniff. "Men? They're all alike. I don't care who they are or what their wives and pastors think of them or what their mothers think of them. I got them pegged regardless. Young and old, and some of them so old they've gone back to the milk diet, they all make the same play when they come in here.
"And they're all cheap. Yes, sir, some are cheaper than others, of course. There's the patent-leather hair lounge-lizard. I hand him the fur-lined medal for cheapness. But I got a lot of other medals and I give them all away, too.
"Well, sir, they come in here and you take hold of their hand and start in doing honest work and, blooey! they're off. They're strangers in town. And lonesome! My God, how lonesome they are! And they don't know no place to go. That's the way they begin. And they give your hand a squeeze and roll a soft-boiled eye at you.
"Say, it gets kind of tiring, you can imagine. Particularly after you've been through what I have and know their middle names, which are all alike, they all answering to the name of cheap sport. Sometimes I give them the baby stare and pretend I don't know what's on their so-called minds. And sometimes when my nerves are a little ragged I freeze them. Then sometimes I take them up. I let them put it over.
"You'd be surprised. Liars! They're all rich. The young ones are all bond salesmen with wealthy fathers and going to inherit soon. The middle-aged ones are great manufacturers. The old ones are retired financiers. You should ought to hear the lads when they're hitting on all six."
* * * * *
Peewee wagged a wise old head and her vermilion mouth registered scorn at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. A very cold light, however, kindled in her beautiful eyes.
"Yes, yes, I've taken them up," she went on. "I've let them stake me to the swell time. Say, ten dollars to one that these manicured millionaires don't mean any more than the Governor's pardon does to Carl Wanderer. Not a bit. I don't want to get personal, but, take it from me, they're all after one thing. And they're a pack of selfish, mushy-headed tin horns with fishhook pockets, the kind you can't pull anything out of.
"Well, to get back. About the first minute you get the big, come-on squeeze. Then next the big talk about being strangers in your town. Then next they open with the big, hearty invitations. Will you be their little guide? And ain't you the most beautiful thing they ever set eyes on! And say, if they'd only met you before they wouldn't be living around hotels now, lonesome bachelors without a friend. I forgot to tell you, they're all single. No, never married. Even some of the most humpbacked married men you ever saw, who come in here dragging leg irons and looking a picture of the Common People, they're single, too. I've seen them slip wedding rings off their fingers to make their racket stand up.
"Then after they've got along and think they've got you biting they begin to get fresh. They tell you you shouldn't ought to work in a barber shop, a girl as beautiful as you. The surroundings ain't what they should be. And they'd like to fix you up. Yes, they begin handing out their castles in Rome or Spain or whatever it is. Cheap! Say, they are so cheap they wouldn't go on the 5- and 10-cent store counter.
"Sometimes you can shame them into making good in a small way. But it's too much work. Oh, yes, they give tips. Fifty cents is the usual tip. Sometimes they make it $2.00. They think they're buying you, though, for that.
* * * * *
"As I was saying, the patent-leather hair boys are the worst. They're the ones who call themselves loop hounds. They know everybody by their first name and sometimes they've got all of $6.50 in their pocket at one time. And if you're out some evening with a friend—a regular fella, they pop in the next day and say, 'Hello, Peewee, who was that street sweeper I see you palling with last night? Oh, he wasn't! Well, I had him pegged either as a street sweeper or a plumber!"
"That's their speed. And they come again and again. They never give up. They've got visions of making a conquest some day—on $1.50. And when a new girl comes into the shop—boy, don't the buzzards buzz! I came here six months ago and they started it on me. But I wasn't born yesterday. I'd been a manicure in Indianapolis. And they're just the same in Indianapolis as they are in Chicago. And they're just the same in Podunk.
"Now, I'm not going to mention any names. But take your city directory and begin with Ab Abner and go right on through to Zeke Zimbo and don't skip any. And you'll get a clear idea about the particular gentlemen I'm talking about."
* * * * *
Peewee sighed and shook her head.
"Are you busy?" inquired the head manicurist.
"Not at all," said Peewee, "not at all."
Peewee's biographer asked a final question. To which she responded as follows:
"Well, I'll get married. Maybe. When I find the exception I was telling you about—the gentleman who isn't a stranger in town and in need of a little guide. There must be one of them somewhere. Unless they was all killed in the war."
The years have made a cartoon out of Sing Lee. A withered yellow face with motionless black eyes. Thin fingers that move with lifeless precision. Slippered feet that shuffle as if Sing Lee were yawning.
A smell of starch, wet linen and steam mingles with an aromatic mustiness. The day's work is done. Sing Lee sits in his chair behind the counter. Three walls look down upon him. Laundry packages—yellow paper, white string—crowd the wall shelves. Chinese letterings dance gayly on the yellow packages.
Sing Lee, from behind the counter, stares out of the window. The Hyde Park police station is across the way. People pass and glance up:
Sing Lee, Hand Laundry,5222 Lake Park Avenue.
Come in. There is something immaculate about Sing Lee. Sing Lee has been ironing out collars and shirts for thirty-five years. And thirty-five years have been ironing Sing Lee out. He is like one of the yellow packages on the shelves. And there is a certain lettering across his face as indecipherable and strange as the dance of the black hieroglyphs on the yellow laundry paper.
Something enthralls Sing Lee. It can be seen plainly now as he sits behind the counter. It can be seen, too, as he works during the day. Sing Lee works like a man in an empty dream. It is the same to Sing Lee whether he works or sits still.
The world of collars, cuffs and shirt fronts does not contain Sing Lee. It contains merely an automaton. The laundry is owned by an automaton named Sing Lee, by nobody else. Now that the day's work is done he will sit like this for an hour, two hours, five hours. Time is not a matter of hours to Sing Lee. Or of days. Or even of years.
The many wilted collars that come under the lifeless hands of Sing Lee tell him an old story. The story has not varied for thirty-five years. A solution of water, soap and starch makes the collars clean again and stiff. They go back and they return, always wilted and soiled. Sing Lee needs no further corroboration of the fact that the crowds are at work. Doing what? Soiling their linen. That is as final as anything the crowds do. Sing Lee's curiosity does not venture beyond finalities.
* * * * *
Sing Lee is a resident of America. But this is a formal statistic and refers only to the automaton that owns the hand laundry in Lake Park Avenue. Observe a few more formal facts of Sing Lee's life. He has never been to a movie or a theater play. He has never ridden in an automobile. He has never looked at the lake.
Thus it becomes obvious that Sing Lee lives somewhere else. For a man must go somewhere in thirty-five years. Or do something. There is a story then, in Sing Lee. Not a particularly long story. Life stories are sometimes no longer than a single line—a sentence, even a phrase. So if one could find out where Sing Lee lives one would have a story perhaps a whole sentence long.
"Mukee kai, Sing Lee."
A nod of the thin head.
"Business good?"
Another nod.
"Pretty tired, washing, ironing all day, eh?"
A nod.
"When are you going to put in a laundry machine?"
A shake of the thin head.
"When are you going to quit, Sing Lee?"
Another shake of the thin head.
"You're not very gabby tonight, Sing."
A dignified answer to this: "I thinking."
"What about, Sing Lee?"
A faint smile. The smile seems to set Sing Lee in motion. It comes from behind the automaton. It is perhaps Sing Lee's first gesture of life in weeks.
"You don't mind my sitting here and smoking a pipe, eh?"
* * * * *
The minutes pass. Sing Lee stands up. He turns on a small electric light. This is a concession. This done, he opens a drawer behind the counter and removes a little bronze casket. The casket is placed on the counter. Slowly as if in a deep dream Sing Lee lights a match and holds it inside the casket. A thin spiral of lavender smoke unwinds from its mouth.
Sing Lee watches the spiral of smoke. It wavers and unwinds. A finger writing; an idiot flower. Then it opens up into a large smoke eye. Smoke eyes drift casually away. An odor crawls into the air. Sing Lee's eyes close gently and his thin body moves as he takes a deep breath.
His eyes still closed, Sing Lee speaks.
"You writer?" he murmurs.
"Yes."
"I too," says Sing Lee. "I write poem."
"Yes? When did you do that?"
"Oh, long ago. Mebbe year. Mebbe five years."
Sing Lee reaches into the open drawer and takes out a large sheet of rice paper. It is partly covered with Chinese letters up and down.
"I read you in English," says Sing Lee. His eyes remain almost shut. He reads:
The sky is young blue.Many fields wait.Many people look at young blue sky.Old people look at young blue sky.Many birds fly.At night moon comes and young blue sky is old.Many young people look at old sky.
"Did you write that about Chicago, Sing Lee?"
"No, no," says Sing Lee. His eyes open. The smoke eyes from the incense pot drift like miniature ghost clouds behind him and creep along the rows of yellow laundry packages.
"No, no," says Sing Lee. "I write that about Canton. I born in Canton many years ago. Many, many years ago."
Mrs. Rodjezke scrubbed the corridors of the Otis building after the lawyers, stenographers and financiers had gone home. During the day Mrs. Rodjezke found other means of occupying her time. Keeping the two Rodjezke children in order, keeping the three-room flat, near the corner of Twenty-ninth and Wallace streets, in order and hiring herself for half-day cleaning, washing or minding-the-baby jobs filled this part of her day. As for the rest of the day, no fault could be found with the manner in which Mrs. Rodjezke used that part of her time.
At five-thirty she reported for work in the janitor's quarters of the office building. She was given her pail, her scrub brush, mop and bar of soap and with eight other women who looked curiously like herself started to work in the corridors. The feet of the lawyers, stenographers and financiers had left stains. Crawling inch by inch down the tiled flooring, Mrs. Rodjezke removed the stains one at a time. Eight years at this work had taken away the necessity of her wearing knee pads. Mrs. Rodjezke's knees did not bother her very much as she scrubbed.
* * * * *
In the evening Mrs. Rodjezke usually rode home in the street car. There were several odd items about Mrs. Rodjezke that one could observe as she sat motionless and staring in her seat waiting for the 2900 block to appear. First, there were her clothes. Mrs. Rodjezke was not of the light-minded type of woman that changes styles with the season. Winter and summer she wore the same.
Then there were her hands. Mrs. Rodjezke's fingernails were a contrast to the rest of her. The rest of her was somewhat vigorous and buxom looking. The fingernails, however, were pale—a colorless light blue. And the tips of her fingers looked a trifle swollen. Also the tips of her fingers were different in shade from the rest of her hands.
Another item of note was her coiffure. Mrs. Rodjezke was always indifferently dressed, her clothes looking as if they had been thrown on and pinned together. Yet her coiffure was almost a proud and careful-looking thing. It proclaimed, alas, that the scrubwoman, despite the sensible employment of her time, was not entirely free from the vanities of her sex. The deliberate coiling and arranging of her stringy black hair must have taken a good fifteen minutes regularly out of Mrs. Rodjezke's otherwise industrious day.
These items are given in order that Mrs. Rodjezke may be visualized for a moment as she rode home on a recent evening. It was very hot and the papers carried news on the front page: "Hot Spell to Continue."
Mrs. Rodjezke got off the car at 29th and Halsted streets and walked to her flat. Here the two Rodjezke children, who were 8 and 10 years old respectively, were demanding their supper. After the food was eaten Mrs. Rodjezke said, in Bohemian:
"We are going down to the beach to-night and go in swimming."
Shouts from the younger Rodjezkes.
* * * * *
When the family appeared on the 51st Street beach it was alive with people from everywhere. They stood around cooling off in their bathing suits and trying to forget how hot it was by covering themselves in the chill sand.
Mrs. Rodjezke's bathing suit was of the kind that attracts attention these days. It was voluminous and hand made and it looked as if it might have functioned as a "wrapper" in its palmier days. For a long time nobody noticed Mrs. Rodjezke. She sat on the sand. Her head felt dizzy. Her eyes burned. And there was a burn in the small of her back. Her knees also burned and the tips of her fingers throbbed.
These symptoms failed to startle Mrs. Rodjezke. Their absence would have been more of a surprise. She sat staring at the lake and trying to keep track of her children. But their dark heads lost themselves in the noisy crowds in front of her and she gave that up. They would return in due time. Mrs. Rodjezke must not be criticized for a maternal indifference. The children of scrubwomen always return in due time.
* * * * *
Mrs. Rodjezke had come to the lake to cool off. The idea of going for a swim had been in her head for at least three years. She had always been able to overcome it, but this time somehow it had got the better of her and she had moved almost blindly toward the water front.
"I will get a rest in the water," she thought.
But now on the beach Mrs. Rodjezke found it difficult to rest. The dishes weren't washed in the kitchen home. The clothes needed changing on the beds. And other things. Lots of other things.
Mrs. Rodjezke sighed as the shouts of the bathers floated by her ears. The sun had almost gone down and the lake looked dull. Faintly colored clouds were beginning to hide the water. It was no use. Mrs. Rodjezke couldn't rest. She sat and stared harder at the lake. Yes, there was something to do. Before it got too dark. Something very important to do. And it wasn't right not to do it. The scrubwoman sighed again and put her hand against her side. The burn had dropped to there. It had also gone into her head. But that was a thing which must be forgotten. Mrs. Rodjezke had learned how to forget it during the eight years.
* * * * *
A girl saw it first. She was laughing in a group of young men from the hotel. Then she exclaimed, suddenly:
"Heavens! Look at that woman!"
The group looked. They saw a middle-aged woman in a humorous bathing costume crawling patiently down the beach on her hands and knees. Soon other people were looking. Nobody interfered at first. Perhaps this was a curious exercise. Some of them laughed.
But the woman's actions grew stranger. She would stop as she crawled and lift up handfuls of water from the edge of the lake. Then she would start scratching in the sand. A crowd collected and the beach policeman arrived. The beach policeman looked down at the woman on her hands and knees.
She had stopped and her face had grown sad.
"What's the matter here?" the policeman asked of her.
The woman began to cry. Her tears flooded her round worn face.
"I can't finish it to-night," she sobbed, "not now anyway. I'm too tired. I can't finish it to-night. And the soap has floated away. The soap is gone."
* * * * *
Mrs. Rodjezke was taken up by the policeman with the two Rodjezke children, who had, of course, returned in due time. They cried and cried and the group went to the police station.
"I don't know what's wrong with the poor woman," said the beach policeman to the Hyde Park police sergeant. "But she was moving up and down like she was trying to scrub the beach."
"I guess," said the sergeant, "we'll have to turn her over to the psychopathic hospital."
There's a lot more to the story, but it has nothing to do with Mrs.Rodjezke's last job.
Elizabeth Winslow, who was a short, fat woman with an amazing gift of profanity and "known to the police" as "Queen Bess," is dead. According to the coroner's report Queen Bess died suddenly in a Wabash Avenue rooming house at the age of seventy.
Twenty-five years ago Queen Bess rented rooms and sold drinks according to the easy-going ideas of that day. But there was something untouched by the sordidness of her calling about this ample Rabelaisian woman. There was a noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.
"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money, Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Washington Park—a lot of good that would do her in her old age!
But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing—a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the worst—Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.
Nevertheless, in memory of the set of Oscar Wilde's works presented to my roommate twelve years ago one Christmas morning by Queen Bess, and in memory of the six world-famous oaths this great lady invented—here goes. Let Bess roar in her grave. There's one thing she can't do and that's call me a liar.
* * * * *
It was Thanksgiving day and years ago and my roommate Ned and I were staring glumly over the roofs of the town.
"I've got an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for both of us," said Ned."But I feel kind of doubtful about going."
I inquired what kind of invitation.
"An engraved invitation," grinned Ned. "Here it is. I'll read it to you."He read from a white card: "You are cordially invited to attend aThanksgiving dinner at the home of Queen Bess, —— Street and WabashAvenue, at 3 o'clock. You may bring one gentleman friend."
"Why not go?" I asked.
"I'm a New Englander at heart," smiled Ned, "and Thanksgiving is a sort of meaningful holiday. Particularly when you're alone in the great and wicked city. I've inquired of some of the fellows about Queen Bess's dinner. It seems that she gives one every Thanksgiving and that they're quite a tradition or institution. I can't find out what sort they are, though. I suspect some sort of an orgy on the order of the Black Mass."
At 2 o'clock we left our room and headed for the house of Queen Bess.
* * * * *
A huge and ornamental chamber known as the ballroom, or the parlor, had been converted into a dining-room. Ned and I were early. Six or seven men had arrived. They stood around ill at ease, looking at the flamboyant paintings on the wall as if they were inspecting the Titian room of some museum. Ned, who knew the town, pointed out two of the six as men of means. One was manager of a store. One was a billiard champion in a Michigan Avenue club.
Gradually the room filled up. A dozen more men arrived. Each was admitted by invitation as we had been. Sally, the colored mammy of the house, took charge and bade us be seated. Some twenty men took their places about the long rectangular table. And then a pianist entered. I think it was Prof. Schultz. He played the piano in the ballrooms of the district. He came in in a brand-new frock coat and patent leather shoes and sat down at the ivories. There was a pause and then the professor struck up, doloroso pianissimo, the tune of "Home, Sweet Home."
As the first notes carrying the almost audible words, "Mid pleasures and palaces" arose from the piano the folding doors at the end of the ballroom parted and there appeared Queen Bess, followed by fifteen of the girls who sold drinks for her. Queen Bess was dressed in black, her white hair coiffured like a hospital superintendent's. Her girls were dressed in simple afternoon frocks. Neither rouge nor beads were to be seen on them. And as the professor played "Home, Sweet Home" Queen Bess marched her companions solemnly down the length of the ballroom and seated them at the table.
I remember that before the numerous servitors started functioning Queen Bess made a speech. She stood up at the head of the table, her red face beaming under her white hair and her black eyes commanding the attention of the men and women before her.
"All of you know who I am, blankety blank," said Queen Bess, "and, blankety blank, what a reputation I got. All of you know. But I've invited you to this blankety blank dinner, hoping you will humor me for the afternoon and pretend you forget. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves at the banquet board, eat and drink what wine there is and laugh and be thankful, but without pulling any blankety blank rough stuff. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves as if you were in—in your own homes. Which I take it none of you gentlemen have got, seeing you are sitting here at the board of Queen Bess.
"Now, gentlemen," she concluded, "if it's asking too much of you to forget, the fault is mine and not yours. And nobody will be penalized or bawled out, blankety blank him, for being unable to forget. But if you can forget, and if you can let us enjoy ourselves for an afternoon in a blankety blank decent and God-fearing way—God love you."
And Queen Bess sat down. We ate and drank and laughed till seven o'clock that evening. And I remember that not one of the twenty men present used a profane word during this time; not one of them did or said anything that wouldn't have passed muster in his own home, if he had one. And that no one got drunk except Queen Bess. Yes, Queen Bess in her black dress got very drunk and swore like a trooper and laughed like a crazy child. And when the party was over Queen Bess stood at the door and we passed out, shaking hands with her and giving her our thanks. She stood, steadying herself against the door beam, and saying to each of us as she shook our hands:
"God love you. God love you for bringing happiness to a blankety blank blank like old Queen Bess."
The great Gabriel Salvini, whose genius has electrified the populace of a thousand vaudeville centers, sat in his suite at the Astor Hotel and listened glumly to the strains from a phonograph.
"What is the use?" growled the great Salvini. "It is no use. You listen to her."
"New music for your act, signor?"
"No, no, no. My wife. You hear her? She lie on the floor. The phonograph music play. The man call from the phonograph, 'one, two; one, two; one, higher; one, two.' And my wife, she lie on the floor and she kick up. She kick down. She roll over. She bend back. She bend forward. But it is no use."
"Madam is reducing, then, signor?"
"Bah! She kick. She roll. She jump. I say 'Lucia, what good for you to kick and jump when tonight you sit down and you eat; name of God, how you eat! Potatoes and more potatoes. Bread with butter on it. Meat, pie, cream, candy—ten thousand devils! She eat and eat until the eyes stick out. There is no more place to put. And I say, 'Lucia, you eat enough for six weeks every time you set down to the table.' I say, 'Lucia, look how the MacSwiney of Ireland go for thirty weeks without eating one bite.' Bah!"
"It is difficult to make a woman stop eating, signor."
"Difficult! Aha, but she must stop, or what become of me, the great Salvini, who have 200 medals? Look! I will show you from my book what they say of me. They say, 'Salvini is the greatest in his line.' They say, 'Here is genius; here is a man whose skill transcends the imagination.' So what I do if madam keep on growing fatter? Ah, you hear that music? It drive me crazy. I sit every day and listen. You hear her kick. Bang, bang! That's how she kick up she lie on the back. Ah, it is tragedy, tragedy!"
I nodded in silence as the great Salvini arose and moved across the room, a dapper figure in a scarlet dressing gown and green silk slippers. He returned with a fresh load of cigarettes. I noticed his hands—thin, gentle-looking fingers, like a woman's. They quivered perceptibly as he lighted his smoke, and I marveled at this—that the wizard fingers of the great Gabriel Salvini should shake!
"I tell you my story," he resumed. "I tell no one else. But you shall hear it. It is a story of—of this." And he clapped his hand despairingly over his heart. "I suffer. Name of God, I suffer every day, every night. And why? because! You listen to her. She still kick and kick and kick. And I sit here and think 'Where will it all end?' Another five pounds and I am ruined.
"It is ten years ago I meet her. Ah, so beautiful, so sweet, so light—like this." And the great Salvini traced the wavering elfin proportions of the Lucia of his youth in the air with his hands.
"And I say to her, 'My beloved, my queen, you and I will be married and we will work together and grow famous and rich.' And she say, 'Yes.' So we marry and begin work at once. I am in Milan, in Italy. And all through the honeymoon I study my Lucia. For my work is hard. All through the honeymoon I use only little stickers I throw at her. I begin that way. Five, six, seven hours a day we practice. Ah, so sweet and beautiful she is as she stand against the board and I throw the little stickers at her. She smile at me, 'Have courage, Salvini.' And I see the love in her eyes and am happy and my arm and wrist are sure.
"Then I buy the knives to throw at her. I buy the best. Beautiful knives. I have them made for her special. For not a hair of my beloved's head must be touched. And we practice with the knives. I am then already famous. Everybody in Italy knows Salvini, the great knife thrower. They say, 'Never has there been a young man of such genius with the knives.' But I am only begin.
* * * * *
"Our début is a success. What do I say, 'Success!' Bah! It is like wildfire. They stand up and cheer. 'Salvini, Salvini!' they cry. And she, my beloved, stand against the board framed by the beautiful knives that fit exactly around her—to an inch, to a quarter inch, to a hair from her ears and neck. And she stand, and as they cheer for Salvini, the great Salvini, I see her smile at me. Ah, how sweet she is! How happy I am!
"And so we go on. I train all the time. Soon I know the outline of my Lucia so well I can close my eyes and throw knives at her, and always they come with the point only a hair away from her body. I pin her dress against the board. Her arms she stretch out and I give her two sleeves of knives. And for five years, no for eight years, everything go well. Never once I touch her. Always I watch her eyes when I throw and her eyes give me courage.
"But then what happen? Ah, ten thousand devils, she begin. She grow fat. One night I send a knife through the skin of her arm. I cannot go on with the act. I must stop. I break down and weep. For I love her so much the blood that comes from her arm drive me crazy. But I say, 'How did the great Salvini make such a mistake? It is incredible.' Then I look at her and I see something. She is getting fat. Name of God, I shudder. I say, 'Lucia, we are ruined. You get fat. I can only throw knives at you like you were, like we have studied together. You get fat. I must change my throw. I cannot!"
* * * * *
The great Salvini raised his shoulders in a despairing shrug.
"Two years ago that was," he whispered. "She weigh one hundred fifty pounds when we marry. So pretty, so light she is. But now she weigh already two hundred pounds, and she is going up. She will not listen to me.
"It is the eat, the eat, the terrible eat which do this. And every night when we perform I shiver, I grow cold. I stand looking at her as she take her place on the board. And I see she have grow bigger. Perhaps it is nothing to you, a woman grown bigger. But to Salvini it is ruin.
"I throw the knife. Zip it goes and I close my eyes each time. I no longer dare give her the beautiful frame as before. But I must throw away. Because for eight years I have thrown at a target of 150 pounds. And my art cannot change.
"Some day she will be sorry. Yes, some day she will understand what she is doing to me. She will eat, eat until she grow so fat that it is all my target that I mastered on the honeymoon. And I will throw the knife over. She will no longer be Lucia, and it will hit. Name of God, it will hit her and sink in."
"Well, she will have learned a lesson then, signor."
"She will have learned. But me, I will be ruined. They will laugh. They will say, 'Salvini, the great Salvini, is done. He cannot throw the knives any more. Look, last night he hit his wife. Twice, three, times he threw the knives into her.'Sapristi!It is the stubbornness of womankind.
"I will tell you. Why does she eat, eat, eat? Why does she grow fat?Because she no longer loves me. No, she do it on purpose to ruin me."
And the great Salvini covered his ears with his hands as the phonograph continued relentlessly, "one, two, one, two, higher, two."
One of the drawers in my desk is full of letters that people have sent in. Some of them are knocks or boosts, but most of them are tips. There are several hundred tips on stories in the drawer.
Today, while looking them over I thought that these tips were a story in themselves. To begin with, the different kinds of stationery and the different kinds of handwriting. You would think that stationery and handwriting so varied would contain varied suggestions and varied points of view.
But from the top of the pile to the bottom—through 360 letters written on 360 different kinds of paper—there runs only one tip. And in the 360 different kinds of handwriting there runs only one story.
* * * * *
"There is a man I see almost every day on my way home from work," writes one, "and I think he would make a good story. There is something queer about him. He keeps mumbling to himself all the time." This tip is on plain stationery.
"—and I see the old woman frequently," writes another. "Nobody knows who she is or what she does. She is sure a woman of mystery. You ought to be able to get a good story out of her." This tip is on pink stationery.
"I think you can find him around midnight walking through the city hall. He walks through the hall every midnight and whistles queer tunes. Nobody has ever talked to him and they don't know what he does there. There is certainly a queer story in that man." This tip is written on a business letterhead.
"She lives in a back room and so far as anybody knows has no occupation. There's something awfully queer about her and I've often wondered what the mystery about her really was. Won't you look her up and write it out? Her address is—" This tip is on monogrammed paper.
"I've been waiting for you to write about the queer old man who hangs out on the Dearborn Street bridge. I've passed him frequently and he's always at the same place. I've wondered time and again what his history was and why he always stood in the same place." This tip is on a broker's stationery.
"He sells hot beans in the loop and he's an old-timer. He's always laughing and whenever I see him I think, 'There's a story in that old man. There's sure something odd about him.'" This tip is on scratch paper.
"I saw her first several years ago. She was dressed all in black and was running. As it was past midnight I thought it strange. But I've seen her since and always late at night and she's always running. She must be about forty years old and from what I could see of her face a very curious kind of woman. In fact, we call her the woman of mystery in our neighborhood. Come out to Oakley Avenue some night and see for yourself. There's a wonderful story in that running woman, I'm certain." This tip is signed "A Stenographer."
They continue—tips on strange, weird, curious, odd, old, chuckling, mysterious men and women. Solitaries. Enigmatic figures moving silently through the streets. Nameless ones; exiles from the free and easy conformity of the town.
If you should read these letters all through at one sitting you would get a very strange impression of the city. You would see a procession of mysterious figures flitting through the streets, an unending swarm of dim ones, queer ones. And then as you kept on reading this procession would gradually focus into a single figure. This is because all the letters are so nearly alike and because the mysterious ones offered as tips are described in almost identical terms.
So the dim ones, the queer ones, would become a composite, and you would have in your thought the image of a single one. A huge, nebulous caricature—hooded, its head lowered, its eyes peering furtively from under shaggy brows, its thin fingers fumbling under a great black cloak, its feet moving in a soundless shuffle over the pavement.
Sometimes I have gone out and found the "woman of mystery" given in a letter. Usually an embittered creature living in the memory of wrongs that life has done her. Or a psychopathic case suffering from hallucinations or at war with its own impulses. And each of them has said, "I hate people. I don't like this neighborhood. And I keep to myself."
The letters all ask, "Who is this one?"
But that doesn't begin to answer the question the letters ask, "Who is it?"
* * * * *
The story of the odd ones is perhaps no more interesting than the story that might be written of the letters that "tip them off." A story here, of the harried, buried little figures that make up the swarm of the city and of the way they glimpse mystery out of the corners of their eyes. Of the way they pause for a moment on their treadmill to wonder about the silent, shuffling caricature with its hooded face and its thin fingers groping under its heavy black cloak.
In another drawer I have stored away letters of another kind. Letters that the caricature sends me. Queer, marvelous scrawls that remind one of spiders and bats swinging against white backgrounds. These letters are seldom signed. They are written almost invariably on cheap blue lined pad paper.
There are at least two hundred of them. And if you should read them all through at one sitting you would get a strange sense that this caricature of the hooded face was talking to you. That the Queer One who shuffles through the streets was sitting beside you and whispering marvelous things into your ear.
He writes of the stars, of inventions that will revolutionize man, of discoveries he has made, of new continents to be visited, of trips to the moon and of buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have curtains on your eyes."
Now that you have read all the letters the city becomes a picture. An office in which sits a well-dressed business man dictating to a pretty stenographer. They are hard at work, but as they work their eyes glance furtively out of a tall, thin window. Some one is passing outside the window. A strange figure, hooded, head down, with his hands moving queerly under his great black cloak.
She sat on one of the benches in the Morals Court. The years had made a coarse mask of her face. There was nothing to see in her eyes. Her hands were red and leathery, like a man's. They had done a man's work.
A year-old child slept in her arms. It was bundled up, although the courtroom itself was suffocating. She was waiting for Blanche's case to come up. Blanche had been arrested by a policeman for—well, for what? Something about a man. So she would lose $2.00 by not being at work at the store today. Why did they arrest Blanche? She was in that room with the door closed. But the lawyer said not to worry. Yes, maybe it was a mistake. Blanche never did nothing. Blanche worked at the store all day.
At night Blanche went out. But she was a young girl. And she had lots of friends. Fine men. Sometimes they brought Blanche home late at night. Blanche was her daughter.
* * * * *
The woman with the sleeping child in her arms looked around. The room was nice. A big room with a good ceiling. But the people looked bad. Maybe they had done something and had been arrested. There was one man with a bad face. She watched him. He came quickly to where she was sitting. What was he saying? A lawyer.
"No, I don't want no lawyer," the woman with the child mumbled. "No, no."
The man went back. He kept pretty busy, talking to lots of people in the room. So he was a lawyer. Blanche had a lawyer. She had paid him $10. A lot of money.
"Shh, Paula!" the woman whispered. Paula was the name of the sleeping child. It had stirred in the bundle.
"Shh! Mus'n't. Da-ah-ah-ah—"
She rocked sideways with the bundle and crooned over it. Her heavy coarsened face seemed to grow surprised as she stared into the bundle. The child grew quiet.
The judge took his place. Business started. From where she sat the woman with the child couldn't hear anything. She watched little groups of men and women form in front of the judge. Then they went away and other groups came.
The lawyer had said not to worry. Just wait for Blanche's name and then come right up. Not to worry.
"Shh, Paula, shh! Da-ah-ah-ah—"
There was Blanche coming out of the door. She looked bad. Her face. Oh, yes, poor girl, she worked too hard. But what could she do? Only work. And now they arrested her. They arrested Blanche when the streets were full of bums and loafers, they arrested Blanche who worked hard.
Go up in front like the lawyer said. Sure. There was Blanche going now. And the lawyer, too. He had a better face than the other one who came and asked.
"And is this the woman?"
The lawyer laughed because the judge asked this.
"Oh, no," he said; "no, your honor, that's her mother. Step up, Blanche."
What did the policeman say?
"Shh! Paula, shh! Da-ah—" She couldn't hear on account of Paula moving so much and crying. Paula was hungry. She'd have to stay hungry a little while. What man? That one!
But the policeman was talking about the man, not about Blanche.
"He said, your honor, that she'd been following him down Madison Street for a block, talking to him and finally he stopped and she asked him—"
"Shh! Paula, don't! Bad girl! Shh!"
That man with the black mustache. Who was he?
"Yes, your honor, I never saw her before. I walk in the street and she come up and talk to me and say, 'You wanna come home with me?'"
"Blanche, how long has this been going on?"
Look, Blanche was crying. Shh, Paula, shh! The judge was speaking. ButBlanche didn't listen. The woman with the child was going to say,"Blanche, the judge," but her tongue grew frightened.
"Speak up, Blanche." The judge said this.
* * * * *
She could hardly hear Blanche. It was funny to see her cry. Long ago she used to cry when she was a baby like Paula. But since she went to work she never cried. Never cried.
"Oh, judge! Oh, judge! Please—"
"Shh, Paula! Da-ah-ah-ah—" Why was this? What would the judge do?
"Have you ever been arrested before, Blanche?"
No, no, no! She must tell the judge that. The woman with the child raised her face.
"Please, judge," she said, "No! No! She never arrested before. She's a good girl."
"I see," said the judge. "Does she bring her money home?"
"Yes, yes, judge! Please, she brings all her money home. She's a good girl."
"Ever seen her before, officer?"
"Well, your honor, I don't know. I've seen her in the street once or twice, and from the way she was behavin', your honor, I thought she needed watchin'."
"Never caught her, though, officer?"
No, your honor, this is the first time."
"Hm," said his honor.
Now the lawyer was talking. What was he saying? What was the matter?Blanche was a good girl. Why they arrest her?
"Shh, Paula, shh! Mus'n't." She held the child closer to her heavy bosom.Hungry. But it must wait. Pretty soon.
He was a nice judge. "All right," he said, "you can go, Blanche. But if they bring you in again it'll be the House of the Good Shepherd. Remember that. I'll let you go on account of her."
A nice judge. "Thank you, thank you, judge. Shh, Paula! Goo-by."
Now she would find out. She would ask Blanche. They could talk aloud in the hallway.
"Blanche, come here." A note of authority came into the woman's voice. A girl of eighteen walking at her side turned a rouged, tear-stained face.
"Aw, don't bother me, ma. I got enough trouble."
"What was the matter with the policeman?"
"Aw, he's a boob. That's all."
"But what they arrest you for, Blanche? I knew it was a mistake. But what they arrest you for, Blanche? I gave him $10."
"Aw, shut up! Don't bother me."
The woman shrugged her shoulders and turned to the child in her arms.
"Da-ah-ah, Paula. Mamma feed you right away. Soon we find place to sit down. Shh, Paula! Mus'n't. Da-ah-ah—"
When she looked up Blanche had vanished. She stood still for a while and then, holding the year-old child closer to her, walked toward the elevator. There was nothing to see in her eyes.
As they say in the melodramas, the city sleeps. Windows have said good-night to one another. Rooftops have tucked themselves away. The pavements are still. People have vanished. The darkness sweeping like a great broom through the streets has emptied them.
The clock in the window of a real estate office says "Two." A few windows down another clock says "Ten minutes after two."
The newspaper man waiting for a Sheffield Avenue owl car walks along to the next corner, listening for the sound of car wheels and looking at the clocks. The clocks all disagree. They all hang ticking with seemingly identical and indisputable precision. Their white faces and their black numbers speak in the dark of the empty stores. "Tick-tock, Time never sleeps. Time keeps moving the hands of the city's clocks around and around."
Alas, when clocks disagree what hope is there for less methodical mechanisms, particularly such humpty-dumpty mechanisms as tick away inside the owners of clocks? The newspaper man must sigh. These clocks in the windows of the empty stores along Sheffield Avenue seem to be arguing. They present their arguments calmly, like meticulous professors. They say: "Eight minutes of two. Three minutes of two. Two. Four minutes after two. Ten minutes after two."
Thus the confusions of the day persist even after the darkness has swept the streets clean of people. There being nobody else to dispute, the clocks take it up and dispute the hour among themselves.
The newspaper man pauses in front of one half-hidden clock. It says "Six." Obviously here is a clock not running. Its hands have stopped and it no longer ticks. But, thinks the newspaper man, it is not to be despised for that. At least it is the only clock in the neighborhood that achieves perfect accuracy. Twice a day while all the other clocks in the street are disputing and arguing, this particular clock says "Six" and of all the clocks it alone is precisely accurate.
In the distance a yellow light swings like an idle lantern over the car tracks. So the newspaper man stops at the corner and waits. This is the owl car. It may not stop. Sometimes cars have a habit of roaring by with an insulting indifference to the people waiting for them to stop at the corner. At such moments one feels a fine rage, as if life itself had insulted one. There have been instances of men throwing bricks through the windows of cars that wouldn't stop and cheerfully going to jail for the crime.
But this car stops. It comes to a squealing halt that must contribute grotesquely to the dreams of the sleepers in Sheffield Avenue. The night is cool. As the car stands silent for a moment it becomes, with its lighted windows and its gay paint, like some modernized version of the barque in which Jason journeyed on his quest.
* * * * *
The seats are half filled. The newspaper man stands on the platform with the conductor and stares at the passengers. The conductor is an elderly man with an unusually mild face.
The people in the car try to sleep. Their heads try to make use of the window panes for pillows. Or they prop their chins up in their palms or they are content to nod. There are several young men whose eyes are reddened. A young woman in a cheap but fancy dress. And several middle-aged men. All of them look bored and tired. And all of them present a bit of mystery.
Who are these passengers through the night? And what has kept them up? And where are they going or coming from? The newspaper man has half a mind to inquire. Instead he picks on the conductor, and as the car bounces gayly through the dark, cavernous streets the mild-faced conductor lends himself to a conversation.
"I been on this line for six years. Always on the owl car," he says. "I like it better than the day shift. I was married, but my wife died and I don't find much to do with my evenings, anyway.
"No, I don't know any of these people, except there's a couple of workingmen who I take home on the next trip. Mostly they're always strangers. They've been out having a good time, I suppose. It's funny about them. I always feel sorry for 'em. Yes, sir, you can't help it.
"There's some that's been out drinking or hanging around with women and when they get on the car they sort of slide down in their seats and you feel like there was nothing much to what they'd been doing. Pessimistic? No, I ain't pessimistic. If you was ridin' this car like I you'd see what I mean.
"It's like watchin' people afterwards. I mean after they've done things. They always seem worse off then. I suppose it's because they're all sleepy. But standin' here of nights I feel that it's more than that. They're tired sure enough but they're also feeling that things ain't what they're cracked up to be.
"I seldom put anybody off. The drunks are pretty sad and I feel sorry for them. They just flop over and I wake them up when it comes their time. Sometimes there's girls and they look pretty sad. And sometimes something really interestin' comes off. Once there was a lady who was cryin' and holdin' a baby. On the third run it was. I could see she'd up and left her house all of a sudden on account of a quarrel with her husband, because she was only half buttoned together.
"And once there was a man whose pictures I see in the papers the next day as having committed suicide. I remembered him in a minute. Well, no, he didn't look like he was going to commit suicide. He looked just about like all the other passengers—tired and sleepy and sort of down."
The mild-faced conductor helped one of his passengers off.
"Don't you ever wonder what keeps these people out or where they're going at this time of night?" the newspaper man pursued as the car started up again.
"Well," said the conductor, "not exactly. I've got it figured out there's nothing much to that and that they're all kind of alike. They've been to parties or callin' on their girls or just got restless or somethin'. What's the difference? All I can say about 'em is that you get so after years you feel sorry for 'em all. And they're all alike—people as ride on the night run cars are just more tired than the people I remember used to ride on the day run cars I was on before my wife died."
The clock in a candy store window says "Three-twelve." A few windows down, another clock says "Three-five." The newspaper man walks to his home studying the clocks. They all disagree as before. And yet their faces are all identical—as identical as the faces of the owl car passengers seem to the conductor. And here is a clock that has stopped. It says "Twenty after four." And the newspaper man thinks of the picture the conductor identified in the papers the next morning. The picture said something like "Twenty after four" at the wrong time. It's all a bit mixed up.
The rain mutters in the night and the pavements like dark mirrors are alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city. The little, silent street with its darkened store windows and rain-veiled arc lamps is as lonely as a far-away train whistle.
Over the darkened stores are stone and wooden flat buildings. Here, too, the lights have gone out. People sleep. The rain falls. The gleaming pavements amuse themselves with reflections.
I have an hour to wait. From the musty smelling hallway where I stand the scene is like an old print—an old London print—that I have always meant to buy and put in a frame but have never found.
* * * * *
Writing about people when one is alone under an electric lamp, and thinking about people when one stands watching the rain in the dark streets, are two different diversions. When one writes under an electric lamp one pompously marshals ideas; one remembers the things people say and do and believe in, and slowly these things replace people in one's mind. One thinks (in the calm of one's study): "So-and-so is a Puritan … he is viciously afraid of anything which will disturb the idealized version of himself in which he believes—and wants other people to believe…." Yes, one thinks So-and-so is this and So-and-so is that. And it all seems very simple. People focus into clearly outlined ideas—definitions. And one can sit back and belabor them, hamstring them, pull their noses, expose their absurdities and derive a deal of satisfaction from the process. Iconoclasm is easy and warming under an electric light in one's study.
But in the rain at night, in the dark street staring at darkened windows, watching the curious reflections in the pavements—it is different in the rain. The night mutters and whispers.
"People," one thinks, "tired, silent people sleeping in the dark."
Ideas do not come so easily or so clearly. The ennobling angers which are the emotion of superiority in the iconoclast do not rise so spontaneously. And one does not say "People are this and people are that…." No, one pauses and stares at the dark chatter of the rain and a curious silence saddens one's mind.
Life is apart from ideas. And the things that people say and believe in and for which they die and in behalf of which they invent laws and codes—these have nothing to do with the insides of people. Puritan, hypocrite, criminal, dolt—these are paper-thin masks. It is diverting to rip them in the calm of one's study.
Life that warms the trees into green in the summer, that sends birds circling through the air, that spreads a tender, passionate glow over even the most barren wastes—people are but one of its almost too many children. The dark, the rain, the lights, people asleep in bed, the wind, the snow that will fall tomorrow, the ice, flowers, sunlight, country roads, pavements and stars—all these are the same. Through all of them life sends its intimate and sacred breath.
One becomes aware of such curious facts in the rain at night and one's iconoclasm, like a broken umbrella, hangs useless from one's hand. Tomorrow these people who are now asleep will be stirring, giving vent to outrageous ideas, championing incredulous banalities, prostrating themselves before imbecile superstitions. Tomorrow they will rise and begin forthwith to lie, quibble, cheat, steal, fourflush and kill, each and all inspired by the solacing monomania that every one of their words and gestures is a credible variant of perfection. Yes, tomorrow they will be as they were yesterday.
But in this rain at night they rest from their perfections, they lay aside for a few hours their paper masks. And one can contemplate them with a curious absence of indignation or criticism. There is something warm and intimate about the vision of many people sleeping in the beds above the darkened store fronts of this little street. Their bodies have been in the world so long—almost as long as the stones out of which their houses are made. So many things have happened to them, so many debacles and monsters and horrors have swept them off their feet … and always they have kept on—persisting through floods, volcanic eruptions, plagues and wars.
Heroic and incredible people. Endlessly belaboring themselves with ideas, gods, taboos, and philosophies. Yet here they are, still in this silent little street. The world has grown old. Trees have decayed and races died out. But here above the darkened store fronts lies the perpetual miracle…. People in whom life streams as naïve and intimate as ever.
* * * * *
Yes, it is to life and not people one makes one's obeisance. Toward life no iconoclasm is possible, for even that which is in opposition to its beauty and horror must of necessity be a part of them.
It rains. The arc lamps gleam through the monotonous downpour. One can only stand and dream … how charming people are since they are alive … how charming the rain is and the night…. And how foolish arguments are … how banal are these cerebral monsters who pose as iconoclasts and devote themselves grandiloquently and inanely to disturbing the paper masks….
* * * * *
I walk away from the musty smelling hallway. A dog steps tranquilly out of the shadows nearby. He surveys the street and the rain with a proprietary calm.
It would be amusing to walk in the rain with a strange dog. I whistle softly and reassuringly to him. He pauses and turns his head toward me, surveying me with an air of vague discomfort. What do I want of him? … he thinks … who am I? … have I any authority? … what will happen to him if he doesn't obey the whistle?
Thus he stands hestitating. Perhaps, too, I will give him shelter, a kindness never to be despised. A moment ago, before I whistled, this dog was tranquil and happy in the rain. Now he has changed. He turns fully around and approaches me, a slight cringe in his walk. The tranquillity has left him. At the sound of my whistle he has grown suddenly tired and lonely and the night and rain no longer lure him. He has found another companionship.
And so together we walk for a distance, this dog and I, wondering about each other….
In a room at the Auditorium Hotel a group of men and women connected with the opera were having tea. As they drank out of the fragile cups and nibbled at the little cakes they boasted to each other of their love affairs.
"And I had the devil of a time getting rid of her," was the motif of the men's conversation. The women said, "And I just couldn't shake him. It was awful."
There was one—an American prima donna—who grew pensive as the amorous boasting increased. An opulent woman past 35, dark-haired, great-eyed; a robust enchantress with a sweep to her manner. Her beauty was an exaggeration. Exaggerated contours, colors, features that needed perspective to set them off. Diluted by distance and bathed by the footlights she focused prettily into a Manon, a Thaïs, an Isolde. But in the room drinking tea she had the effect of a too startling close-up—a rococo siren cramped for space.
The barytone leaned unctuously across the small table and said to her with a preposterous archness of manner:
"And how does it happen, my dear, that you have nothing to tell us?"
"Because she has too much," said one of the orchestra men, laughingly.
The prima donna smiled.
"Oh, I can tell a story as well as anybody," she said. "In fact, I was just thinking of one. You know I was in Iowa last month. And I visited the town where I was born and lived as a girl—until I was nineteen. It's funny."
Again the pensive stare out of the window at the chill-looking autumn sky and the sharp outlines of the city roofs.
"Go on," her hostess cried. To her guests she added, in the social curtain-raiser manner peculiar to rambunctious hostesses, "if Mugs tells anything about herself you can be sure it'll be something immense. Go on, Mugs." Mugs is one of the nicknames the prima donna is known by among her friends.
"We went to school together," the prima donna smiled, "John and I. And I don't think I've ever loved anybody as I loved him. He used to frighten me to death. You see, I was ambitious. I wanted to be somebody. And John wanted me to marry him. Somehow marriage wasn't what I wanted then. There were other things. I had started singing and at night I used to lie awake, not wanting to sleep. I was so taken up with my dreams and plans that I hated to lose consciousness. That's a fact.
"Well, John grew more and more insistent. And one evening he came to call on me. I was alone on the porch. John was about twenty-three then. That was about twenty years ago. He was a tall, good-looking, sharp-faced young man with lively eyes. I thought him marvelous at the time. And he stood on the steps of the porch and talked to me. I never forgot a word he said. I have never heard anything so wonderful since."
The barytone shrugged his shoulders politely and said "Hm!"
"Oh, I know," smiled the prima donna, "you're the Great Lover and all that. But you never could talk as John did that evening on the porch—in Iowa. He stood there and said, 'Mugs, you're going to regret this moment for the rest of your life. There'll be nights when you'll wake up shivering and crying and you'll want to kill yourself. Why? Because you didn't marry me. Because you had your chance to marry me and turned it down. Remember. Remember how I'm standing here talking to you—unknown—a country boy. Remember that when you hear of me again.'
"'What are you going to do?' I asked.
"I'm going to be president of the United States,' he said. And he said it so that there was truth in it. As I looked at him standing on the steps I felt frightened to death. There he was, going to be president of the United States, and there was I, throwing the greatest chance in the world away. He knew I believed him and that made it worse. He went on talking in a sort of oracular singsong that drove me mad.
"'I'm not asking you again. You've had your chance, Mugs. And you've thrown it away. All right. It'll not be said afterward that John Marcey made a fool of himself. Good-bye.'"
* * * * *
The prima donna sighed. "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup; "it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body swinging. And I sat there shivering. I had turned down a president of the United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl. And, what was worse, I was in love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake all night, crying and shivering.
"I didn't see John Marcey again. I stayed only a week longer and then I came to Chicago to study music. My folks were able to finance me for a time. But I never forgot him. It was John who had started me for Chicago. And it was John who kept me practicing eight hours a day, studying and practicing until I thought I'd drop.
"I was going to make good. When he became president I was going to be somebody. I wasn't going to do what he said I would, wake up cursing myself and remembering my lost chance. So I went right on working my head off and finally it was Paris and finally it was a job in London. And I never stopped working.
"But the funny part was that I gradually forgot about John Marcey. When I had arrived as an opera singer he was entirely dead for me. But last month I visited my home town. I was passing through and couldn't resist getting off and looking up people I knew as a girl. My folks are dead, you know.
"And when I walked down the street—the same old funny little Main Street—I remembered John Marcey. And, would you believe it, that same feeling of fear came back to me as I'd had that night on the porch when he made his 'remember' speech. I got curious as the devil about John and felt afraid to inquire. But finally I was talking to an old, old man who runs the drug-store on the corner of Main and Sixth streets there. I'd recognized him through the window and gone inside and shaken hands; and I asked him: