II“OUT,” “Gone to Chicago,” “Busy,” “At rehearsal,” “Won’t be back till next Thursday,” “Got a card?” “Don’t know.” These melancholy refrains, sing-songed by officious, gum-chewing office-boys in the stuffy theatrical agencies, soon became as familiar to Jean Caspian as “Annie Laurie” or “Home, Sweet Home.”“Mornin’ ’s the best time to catch him,” “He ain’t seein’ any one to-day,” “Ain’t puttin’ on any shows this spring,” “Gone to lunch. No, I couldn’t say.”Sometimes, in desperation, Jean would approach the sleepy, red-headed type-writer with a brave smile. To all inquiries this remote, supercilious personage always replied, “Cast is filled.”—Click-click-clickety, click, click, click.During the first week after Norman’s death, Jean gained a momentary interview with B. B. Littleton’s representative. When she mentioned that she had been leading lady for Guy Norman, he smiled incredulously.“Lord!” he said, “I have a dozen a day in here claiming they were with Norman. It’s a joke, here.”Jean produced a Milwaukee program bearing her name. The representative, after inspecting it, somewhat reluctantly consented to take her name and address.“I’ll bear you in mind,” he said. “You might drop in in a month or so.” But never again did Jean succeed in finding him “in.”Day after day; hot after cold, optimistic mornings and discouraged afternoons; weary, irritable, hungry; now happy, now sad; standing, leaning, gossiping, hoping, always hoping, Jean Caspian, her ambition priming her with bravery to keep up the ordeal, “went the rounds” from managers to agents, from agents to managers. As regularly as the doors opened every morning, she blossomed in a theatrical office, as fresh, lovely, vigorous as a newly opened lily. Yesterday’s weariness was forgotten in to-day’s enthusiasm.Two months went by. No engagement. Two months more went by. No prospect of an engagement. Another month, then the inevitable—clothes!How surely her clothes betrayed her! From boarding-house to Broadway they blabbed the tale of her futile peregrinations. Worn-out clothes, shabby-shiny clothes, spots-that-won’t-come-off clothes. Worse than these, stagy-old “stock” clothes; but, worst of all, out-of-date clothes. The time came when Jean, gazing lugubriously at her last three gowns, now dubbed severally “Wreck,” “Goner,” and “Mess,” saw that further wear was impossible. At last she broke down.But out of despairing tears came inspiration. It was one of the articles of Jean’s esthetic creed that the test of genius is versatility. She should be able to be carpenter, dish-washer, or to model in wax, as necessity dictated. If she were to portray life, all aspects of life, this adaptability alone would justify her calling herself an artist. Now fortune had put her to the test. She must prove herself adequate to the emergency. With a grim smile of determination, Jean jerked the three gowns down from their hooks.Two days later “Pa” Smiley gave her an encouraging smile. “Pretty dress you got on, little one! Noo, ain’t it? That what they call a ‘pannier’?”“Oh, no,” said Jean, “this is newer thanthat. The name of this little frock is the ‘Three-in-one,’ successor to ‘Wreck,’ ‘Goner,’ and ‘Mess.’ Got anything for me to-day, Mr. Smiley?”It was nearly noon when Della Prance and Clara Coolwood collided with her on the corner of Forty-second Street.“Oh, I love your hat, Jean! Where? How much?”Della Prance added:“Turn round. It’s awfully Frenchy, isn’t it?”“Yes,” said Jean; “it’s lucky for me the imported creations are always shy on trimming. Just one wonderful bow or something,—” she chucked Clara under the chin,—“ifyou only know just how to place it.”The girls took another stare. “You don’t mean to say you made ityourself?”At a quarter to five a dapper “juvenile” gentleman lifted his hat airily in the offices of B. B. Littleton. “Beg pardon,” he said, “but haven’t you stepped on something?”Jean crossed her feet hastily, blushing. Through the generous aperture in her left sole she knew he must have read the engraved words, “Mr. and Mrs. U. R. Sweet announce the marriage,” etc. Experience had taught her that, of all cardboards, that used for wedding-invitations is the most durable.Now, any woman who after dire straits has had her wardrobe unexpectedly replenished, is apt in her delight to consider her new-found costume indestructible. So Jean Caspian relied implicitly on good old “Three-in-one.”But, alas! three months later what a change had been wrought! Silk and wool could barely hold together any longer. Her mind, like her costume, had also become frayed, worn, and out of date. “Chasing” for an engagement had by this time become a mere habit; and continual contact with weary, discouraged seekers for work had gradually accomplished its demoralizing effect.As Jean sat one morning in the crowded office of B. B. Littleton, her two-hours’ wait dreamed itself away in the hypnotic fascination of watching person after person, rouged and powdered, with heroically assumed expressions of prosperity and cheerfulness, squeeze into the little room, only to have the dry, suffocating “waiting” atmosphere gradually desiccate them till, benumbed by discouragement, they seemed like mummies, swathed in despairing introspection, the juices of their ambitions long since dried up.A vivid, fresh young miss entered. Her enthusiastic appearance in that chamber of dead hopes woke the inert groups to laughter. Her face was radiant with “dramatic-school” promises, her confidence obviously reinforced with a “personal” letter.Blithely she spoke: “Is Mr. Littleton in? Hisrepresentative! No, Imustsee Mr. Littleton, himself. Oh, no, I can’t wait; I must see him at once. Oh,dear!”Jean smiled at her as at a vision of her own first hopeful credulity. Yet, after all, she thought, wasn’t this ingenuous faith as good a passport as any to carry one across the frontier of that door marked “Private”? What did these stage-worn veterans possess that could compete with this splendid, potent ignorance? Nothing. To-day, at least, that girl was a leader. She was still uncontaminated with discouraged, diseased thoughts. How long before some one would tell her, or she would decide for herself simply to follow the crowd? Jean’s thoughts drifted to herself. Oh, the “Personal” letters she, too, had blithely borne to stolid, unsympathetic readers! What was the matter? She was only a follower. That was it: she was wearily tagging along the beaten path. Had any one ever accomplished anything really great in this world by following others along the same old groove? Oh, to get out of it!The thought disturbed her. She grew restless; and as she pondered, instinct seemed to warn her: “Get out of the rut!” “But how?” she asked herself, with increasing anxiety. An excited hesitancy, shot with fear and doubt, possessed her. It held her like a prisoner who lacks the courage to escape.Suddenly her thoughts were dissipated by the opening of the private door. “There’s no need of any one waiting; I have nothing to say to any one to-day.” The private door closed.To have a three-hours’ wait terminated only by a few casual words from Littleton’s representative usually left a drowning expression on every face. A few of the determined-to-survive actors, however, fighting their way through grumblers, swearers, fighters-for-the-elevator, snatched desperately at the one last straw—the stenographer. “When is the best time to catch Mr. Littleton?” “Did you deliver the letter I left yesterday for Mr. Littleton?” “Will you kindly tell Mr. Littleton that Miss Fuller—”Jean listened to this fusillade of questions being answered with a volley of type-writer clicks that made an occasional interpolated “He’s uncertain,” and“Don’t know,” scarcely audible. She smiled grimly, deciding that she would have to use her full third-balcony voice if she was to impress this cold-blooded, businesslike Annie at the keys. As Jean looked forward to speak, she accidentally caught sight of herself in that young lady’s private mirror. She gave a quick second look, and the sickening revelation held her gaze fixedly. She grew weak, numb.She did not realize that the clicks had stopped. She was oblivious of the stenographer’s hand pressing her own. “What’s the matter, honey? What you crying about? Blue this morning? Want to leave some message for Mr. Littleton?”Jean Caspian’s face showed not the faintest knowledge of the stenographer’s sudden interest in her. But, subconsciously, she had reached for a bejeweled hand and pressed it into pain with her gratitude. Her voice came weakly: “I don’t think—thank you so much, but—well—” She shook her head dully. “I don’t think I’ll have any more messages for Mr. Littleton.” With a quick release of her hand, Jean Caspian escaped from the office, moaning to herself: “SoI’vegot the look at last! It’s come!”How jocosely she had once written to Clara Coolwood about those theatrical-agency faces—those “pathetic, whipped-cur” faces! How she had mimicked them! Guy Norman’s voice came back: “Give us another one of those agency faces, Miss Caspian! Do ‘Agony Jane’!” How Guy Norman’s laughter had delighted her! Now it seemed to slap back at her, torturing her horribly. She was only one of the rabble now. She, too, was a mummy. Agony Jane!The poignancy of the thought sent her wandering on and on till at last she wearily climbed the steps to her boarding-house. Mechanically she took out her key, turned the latch, and entered the dimness of the hallway.As she started up the stairs, a small boy shot past her. “Mama! mama!” he called excitedly, “come quick! Open the door! Mama, look! See what I found in the gutter—five cents! Mama, it was right down there in the gutter!”The boy’s outcry caused several doors to open before his mother had time to appear; but as Jean reached the second flight she heard: “That’s very nice, dear; but don’t make such a noise. Come in, and we’ll put it in your bank.”A chunky, ringleted lady was smiling benevolently upon the scene. “Well, now,” she said, “Owen has been such a nice boy that I’m going to give him something else for his bank. Look, Owen, here’s a nice big quarter for you.”The little boy was too much absorbed to answer. He was rubbing the nickel energetically on his trousers.“Can’t you thank the lady?” exclaimed the embarrassed mother.“Got a pin, anybody? I want to clean these stars and get the dirt out of this face.” He bent over the nickel with delighted concentration.His mother interposed petulantly: “But look at this nice new quarter, Owen.”“Don’t bother me with that old quarter!” Instinctively feeling Jean’s sympathy, he looked up at her and smiled. “Say, won’t the fellows be s’prised, though, when they know I found this nickel right down in the gutter?”Jean, amused, started up the next flight of stairs. At the top she turned and looked back. Then, hardly knowing why, she sat down. Some powerful suggestion was working in her, subconsciously. Her eyes were fixed on the little boy, fascinated.“That old nickel!” she said to herself. “Why in the world does he prefer that to the quarter, I’d like to know!”Then something in his absorption threw her into a reverie of her own. A little later she found herself in her room. She was sitting by the window in a far-away mood of exaltation, floating, her intellect freed in some strange fashion from her environment.If any one had told Jean Caspian that she would end that day in a beatified frame of mind, she would have thought it madness. Had she not given up all hope? But now, suddenly, she found herself asking: “Why am I so happy? Why does everything seem changed?” Strange! In the wretchedest hour of her life a mysterious, inspiring power had risen to support her. It stood beside her now like an invisible husband. What was it? Perhaps it was what people had called the “genius” in her. She was aware only ofa swift, potent reaction, which made her body quiver with a new vitality.“That nickel!” she repeated. Still uncomprehending, she was already sure. Then, wonderfully, the vague radiance within her soul blazed up into an idea, clear, compelling, prophetic. She rose with a serene, confident smile, and pulled down the shade.“Thegutter-nickel!” In her face glowed a secret illumination.On the next Monday morning, when Clara Coolwood, enthusiastic over a stock company vacancy in Lowell, Massachusetts, rang the doorbell of Mrs. Bunting’s boarding-house, she was answered with the curt statement that Miss Caspian was no longer there. She had gone, and had left no address.
II
“OUT,” “Gone to Chicago,” “Busy,” “At rehearsal,” “Won’t be back till next Thursday,” “Got a card?” “Don’t know.” These melancholy refrains, sing-songed by officious, gum-chewing office-boys in the stuffy theatrical agencies, soon became as familiar to Jean Caspian as “Annie Laurie” or “Home, Sweet Home.”
“Mornin’ ’s the best time to catch him,” “He ain’t seein’ any one to-day,” “Ain’t puttin’ on any shows this spring,” “Gone to lunch. No, I couldn’t say.”
Sometimes, in desperation, Jean would approach the sleepy, red-headed type-writer with a brave smile. To all inquiries this remote, supercilious personage always replied, “Cast is filled.”—Click-click-clickety, click, click, click.
During the first week after Norman’s death, Jean gained a momentary interview with B. B. Littleton’s representative. When she mentioned that she had been leading lady for Guy Norman, he smiled incredulously.
“Lord!” he said, “I have a dozen a day in here claiming they were with Norman. It’s a joke, here.”
Jean produced a Milwaukee program bearing her name. The representative, after inspecting it, somewhat reluctantly consented to take her name and address.
“I’ll bear you in mind,” he said. “You might drop in in a month or so.” But never again did Jean succeed in finding him “in.”
Day after day; hot after cold, optimistic mornings and discouraged afternoons; weary, irritable, hungry; now happy, now sad; standing, leaning, gossiping, hoping, always hoping, Jean Caspian, her ambition priming her with bravery to keep up the ordeal, “went the rounds” from managers to agents, from agents to managers. As regularly as the doors opened every morning, she blossomed in a theatrical office, as fresh, lovely, vigorous as a newly opened lily. Yesterday’s weariness was forgotten in to-day’s enthusiasm.
Two months went by. No engagement. Two months more went by. No prospect of an engagement. Another month, then the inevitable—clothes!
How surely her clothes betrayed her! From boarding-house to Broadway they blabbed the tale of her futile peregrinations. Worn-out clothes, shabby-shiny clothes, spots-that-won’t-come-off clothes. Worse than these, stagy-old “stock” clothes; but, worst of all, out-of-date clothes. The time came when Jean, gazing lugubriously at her last three gowns, now dubbed severally “Wreck,” “Goner,” and “Mess,” saw that further wear was impossible. At last she broke down.
But out of despairing tears came inspiration. It was one of the articles of Jean’s esthetic creed that the test of genius is versatility. She should be able to be carpenter, dish-washer, or to model in wax, as necessity dictated. If she were to portray life, all aspects of life, this adaptability alone would justify her calling herself an artist. Now fortune had put her to the test. She must prove herself adequate to the emergency. With a grim smile of determination, Jean jerked the three gowns down from their hooks.
Two days later “Pa” Smiley gave her an encouraging smile. “Pretty dress you got on, little one! Noo, ain’t it? That what they call a ‘pannier’?”
“Oh, no,” said Jean, “this is newer thanthat. The name of this little frock is the ‘Three-in-one,’ successor to ‘Wreck,’ ‘Goner,’ and ‘Mess.’ Got anything for me to-day, Mr. Smiley?”
It was nearly noon when Della Prance and Clara Coolwood collided with her on the corner of Forty-second Street.
“Oh, I love your hat, Jean! Where? How much?”
Della Prance added:
“Turn round. It’s awfully Frenchy, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Jean; “it’s lucky for me the imported creations are always shy on trimming. Just one wonderful bow or something,—” she chucked Clara under the chin,—“ifyou only know just how to place it.”
The girls took another stare. “You don’t mean to say you made ityourself?”
At a quarter to five a dapper “juvenile” gentleman lifted his hat airily in the offices of B. B. Littleton. “Beg pardon,” he said, “but haven’t you stepped on something?”
Jean crossed her feet hastily, blushing. Through the generous aperture in her left sole she knew he must have read the engraved words, “Mr. and Mrs. U. R. Sweet announce the marriage,” etc. Experience had taught her that, of all cardboards, that used for wedding-invitations is the most durable.
Now, any woman who after dire straits has had her wardrobe unexpectedly replenished, is apt in her delight to consider her new-found costume indestructible. So Jean Caspian relied implicitly on good old “Three-in-one.”
But, alas! three months later what a change had been wrought! Silk and wool could barely hold together any longer. Her mind, like her costume, had also become frayed, worn, and out of date. “Chasing” for an engagement had by this time become a mere habit; and continual contact with weary, discouraged seekers for work had gradually accomplished its demoralizing effect.
As Jean sat one morning in the crowded office of B. B. Littleton, her two-hours’ wait dreamed itself away in the hypnotic fascination of watching person after person, rouged and powdered, with heroically assumed expressions of prosperity and cheerfulness, squeeze into the little room, only to have the dry, suffocating “waiting” atmosphere gradually desiccate them till, benumbed by discouragement, they seemed like mummies, swathed in despairing introspection, the juices of their ambitions long since dried up.
A vivid, fresh young miss entered. Her enthusiastic appearance in that chamber of dead hopes woke the inert groups to laughter. Her face was radiant with “dramatic-school” promises, her confidence obviously reinforced with a “personal” letter.
Blithely she spoke: “Is Mr. Littleton in? Hisrepresentative! No, Imustsee Mr. Littleton, himself. Oh, no, I can’t wait; I must see him at once. Oh,dear!”
Jean smiled at her as at a vision of her own first hopeful credulity. Yet, after all, she thought, wasn’t this ingenuous faith as good a passport as any to carry one across the frontier of that door marked “Private”? What did these stage-worn veterans possess that could compete with this splendid, potent ignorance? Nothing. To-day, at least, that girl was a leader. She was still uncontaminated with discouraged, diseased thoughts. How long before some one would tell her, or she would decide for herself simply to follow the crowd? Jean’s thoughts drifted to herself. Oh, the “Personal” letters she, too, had blithely borne to stolid, unsympathetic readers! What was the matter? She was only a follower. That was it: she was wearily tagging along the beaten path. Had any one ever accomplished anything really great in this world by following others along the same old groove? Oh, to get out of it!
The thought disturbed her. She grew restless; and as she pondered, instinct seemed to warn her: “Get out of the rut!” “But how?” she asked herself, with increasing anxiety. An excited hesitancy, shot with fear and doubt, possessed her. It held her like a prisoner who lacks the courage to escape.
Suddenly her thoughts were dissipated by the opening of the private door. “There’s no need of any one waiting; I have nothing to say to any one to-day.” The private door closed.
To have a three-hours’ wait terminated only by a few casual words from Littleton’s representative usually left a drowning expression on every face. A few of the determined-to-survive actors, however, fighting their way through grumblers, swearers, fighters-for-the-elevator, snatched desperately at the one last straw—the stenographer. “When is the best time to catch Mr. Littleton?” “Did you deliver the letter I left yesterday for Mr. Littleton?” “Will you kindly tell Mr. Littleton that Miss Fuller—”
Jean listened to this fusillade of questions being answered with a volley of type-writer clicks that made an occasional interpolated “He’s uncertain,” and“Don’t know,” scarcely audible. She smiled grimly, deciding that she would have to use her full third-balcony voice if she was to impress this cold-blooded, businesslike Annie at the keys. As Jean looked forward to speak, she accidentally caught sight of herself in that young lady’s private mirror. She gave a quick second look, and the sickening revelation held her gaze fixedly. She grew weak, numb.
She did not realize that the clicks had stopped. She was oblivious of the stenographer’s hand pressing her own. “What’s the matter, honey? What you crying about? Blue this morning? Want to leave some message for Mr. Littleton?”
Jean Caspian’s face showed not the faintest knowledge of the stenographer’s sudden interest in her. But, subconsciously, she had reached for a bejeweled hand and pressed it into pain with her gratitude. Her voice came weakly: “I don’t think—thank you so much, but—well—” She shook her head dully. “I don’t think I’ll have any more messages for Mr. Littleton.” With a quick release of her hand, Jean Caspian escaped from the office, moaning to herself: “SoI’vegot the look at last! It’s come!”
How jocosely she had once written to Clara Coolwood about those theatrical-agency faces—those “pathetic, whipped-cur” faces! How she had mimicked them! Guy Norman’s voice came back: “Give us another one of those agency faces, Miss Caspian! Do ‘Agony Jane’!” How Guy Norman’s laughter had delighted her! Now it seemed to slap back at her, torturing her horribly. She was only one of the rabble now. She, too, was a mummy. Agony Jane!
The poignancy of the thought sent her wandering on and on till at last she wearily climbed the steps to her boarding-house. Mechanically she took out her key, turned the latch, and entered the dimness of the hallway.
As she started up the stairs, a small boy shot past her. “Mama! mama!” he called excitedly, “come quick! Open the door! Mama, look! See what I found in the gutter—five cents! Mama, it was right down there in the gutter!”
The boy’s outcry caused several doors to open before his mother had time to appear; but as Jean reached the second flight she heard: “That’s very nice, dear; but don’t make such a noise. Come in, and we’ll put it in your bank.”
A chunky, ringleted lady was smiling benevolently upon the scene. “Well, now,” she said, “Owen has been such a nice boy that I’m going to give him something else for his bank. Look, Owen, here’s a nice big quarter for you.”
The little boy was too much absorbed to answer. He was rubbing the nickel energetically on his trousers.
“Can’t you thank the lady?” exclaimed the embarrassed mother.
“Got a pin, anybody? I want to clean these stars and get the dirt out of this face.” He bent over the nickel with delighted concentration.
His mother interposed petulantly: “But look at this nice new quarter, Owen.”
“Don’t bother me with that old quarter!” Instinctively feeling Jean’s sympathy, he looked up at her and smiled. “Say, won’t the fellows be s’prised, though, when they know I found this nickel right down in the gutter?”
Jean, amused, started up the next flight of stairs. At the top she turned and looked back. Then, hardly knowing why, she sat down. Some powerful suggestion was working in her, subconsciously. Her eyes were fixed on the little boy, fascinated.
“That old nickel!” she said to herself. “Why in the world does he prefer that to the quarter, I’d like to know!”
Then something in his absorption threw her into a reverie of her own. A little later she found herself in her room. She was sitting by the window in a far-away mood of exaltation, floating, her intellect freed in some strange fashion from her environment.
If any one had told Jean Caspian that she would end that day in a beatified frame of mind, she would have thought it madness. Had she not given up all hope? But now, suddenly, she found herself asking: “Why am I so happy? Why does everything seem changed?” Strange! In the wretchedest hour of her life a mysterious, inspiring power had risen to support her. It stood beside her now like an invisible husband. What was it? Perhaps it was what people had called the “genius” in her. She was aware only ofa swift, potent reaction, which made her body quiver with a new vitality.
“That nickel!” she repeated. Still uncomprehending, she was already sure. Then, wonderfully, the vague radiance within her soul blazed up into an idea, clear, compelling, prophetic. She rose with a serene, confident smile, and pulled down the shade.
“Thegutter-nickel!” In her face glowed a secret illumination.
On the next Monday morning, when Clara Coolwood, enthusiastic over a stock company vacancy in Lowell, Massachusetts, rang the doorbell of Mrs. Bunting’s boarding-house, she was answered with the curt statement that Miss Caspian was no longer there. She had gone, and had left no address.