Believe You Me! Part 11

She had quit crying but not a word out of her!

"You try!" I says to Ceasare. "The poor thing mebbe understands French."

So Ceasare, who was as much shot to pieces at the sight as I was, come forward.

"Madame!" says he, bowing with his cap in his hand. Then he shoots a lot of French about restes, au succuoor, and stuff I know meant "cut the worry." But she didnt get it any better than she had my line of talk, and only kept on looking scared.

Well by this time Mac come out of his stupor; but there was no use trying Scotch on her, that was plain. So there was nothing to it except forward march. For one thing my torch wouldnt of lasted much longer and for another it sure was getting late.

"Does your cousin's uncle which owns the barn have a house anywheres near, where we could leave her?" I asked Ceasare.

"All dead in this town!" he says cheerfully. "And this is the only building left I think it!"

"Then there's nothing to do but take her along to headquarters," I says, and off we started, she not saying a word.

That was some trip! I want to tell you sweetie it was the worst part of the whole war to me. You know I got a heart and I felt just fierce for that poor little German mother. All the way in, while we was helping her along I kept wis.h.i.+ng I knew how on earth she come to get in that place.

She seemed real feeble at times and we lifted her across the worst places. I tried to get her to let me carry the baby, but she held on to it like grim death and wouldnt leave any of us touch it--and it was so quiet I commenced to get scared.

"More than likely its dead!" I whispered to Ceasare and he thought so too.

Before we got in, we had carried her almost a mile, taking turns with her on our crossed hands, and the odd feller guarding our Hun. And then we came to the end of about the very worst and longest hike I ever took including the time the Queen of the Island Company got stranded in New Roch.e.l.le. The sentry across that mud hole of a slushy road was the welcomest sight in the world.

"Wot the 'ell yer got?" he says when he recognized us.

"One Gentleman Hun prisoner and one lady ditto in very bad shape!" I says.

"Wot the 'ell!" he says again. And then he pa.s.sed us and we reported.

Say sweetie, take it or leave it, but I had honest clean forgot all about that wine which we had been sent for in the first place. I tell you I was so worried about that poor woman! And it was not until the five of us was standing in Capt. Haskell's quarters with the light from his ceiling glaring at us and him also glaring from behind his mustache, that I even commenced to remember it. But I had to report so I reported for the bunch of us and in strict detail as good as I could remember.

All this while the woman sat in a chair, her face like a stone, and my heart just aching for her.

Well, when I got through taking the most nervous curtin-call of my life--and take it or leave it, if the German army would ever of been as nervous as I was then, the war would of ended that minute. Capt. Haskell beckoned to the lady.

"Come here, please!" he says very kind. "And let me see the baby!"

She got up and went over very softly. Then she stood in front of him and commenced to laugh and laugh.

"Pigs of Americans!" she said. "Fools to carry me! That's not a baby--its twenty cartons of cigarettes!"

Then she threw back her cloak and under it there she was dressed in Red Cross uniform.

"I disguised myself and went to the village!" she went on in perfectly good English. "And I bought all the tobacco there.

"On my way back to my own lines I was fool enough to lose my way and to cry over it! That is all!"

And its enough, aint it dear? For you do get me, dont you? Them twenty cartons of cigarettes was a miricle to us and the one we needed the most of any right at that moment. Eh, what? as the English say. And her taking such a chance to get them for Fritz shows how bad off the German army must be, don't it? And so tell this to your Ma and get her to quit that foolish anti-smoke society she's forming--because its the bunk--and I am ever your loving life and dancing partner, JIM.

P. S. Just got your letter. That certainly is a good one on Ma. Smoking a pipe! And if you hadnt opened the door so sudden you'd never in this world of caught her. And if she does claim her grandmother did it too, all you got to say is so did many a soldier's grandmother.

P. S. No. 2. I forgot to say that a French General has given us a kiss on both cheeks and a medel for that job. And its the first time I ever got anything but a headache by going on a party.

IV

ANYTHING ONCE

I

AINT it funny the things that comes into a person's head when they are rubbing cold cream onto their nose? All sorts of stuff, some of it good sense and some of it the bunk. But most of it pretty near O.K. If some one was to take down the ideas I get at such a sacred hour, I'd be out of the dancing game and into the highbrow cla.s.s just as quick as the printer got through his job.

It sure is a time when a woman's true thoughts come to the surface along with the dust and last night's make-up, and many a big resolve has been made owing to that cleanly habit. Wasn't there some wise bird made up a quotation about cleanliness being next to G.o.d knows what? Well, believe you me, its the truth, for once a woman starts in with the cold cream all alone,--and she sure does it at no other time--there is no telling what will come of it beside a clean pink face.

With me personally myself, thats where most of my ideas about life come from--right out of the cold cream tube! And while indulging in this well known womanly occupation the other evening I commenced thinking about rest and how important it is for us Americans--and of the way we go after it--like it was something we had to catch and catch quick or it would get away from us. Do you get me? If not, leave me tell you what a friend of mine, which has just been mustard out of the service says to me, when I was checking up his experiences abroad while he was checking up what the waiter had put down.

"My idea of rest?" he says. "Why taking Belleau Woods after three restless weeks in the trenches," he says.

Which sort of puts the nut in the sh.e.l.l, as the saying is. And also at the same time reminds me of the rest I just recently took.

Not that I generally need one any more than any other thoroughly successful star, for heavens knows the best known parlor dancing act in the world and Broadway, which mine undoubtedly is, dont need to rest because the managers theirselves always come after me and resting I leave to the booking-agency hounds. But this time it was bonea fido, and come about in a sort of odd way.

To commence at the start it begun with me falling for the movies, which Gawd knows I only done it for the money, their being no art in it, and they having hounded me into them for a special fillum. And of course many well known girls like Mary Garden and n.a.z.imova go into pictures and even myself, but its simply because of being hounded, as I say. But once in you earn your money, believe you me, and I have stood around waiting for the sun like Moses, or whoever it was, until my feet nearly froze to the pallasades before jumping off, only of course it was a dummy they threw after I had made the original motions of the leap to death. And the worst part is once you are signed up on one of these "payment to be made wheather the party of the first part (thats me) is working or not"

you got to do like they say, and a whole lot of the "not working" means plain standing around waiting for the director or the camera-man or the rain to quit, and what us public favorites suffers when on the job is enough to make the photographor's Favorite of Grainger, Wyo., abandon the career she might of had in favour of domestic service or something like that where she'd get a little time to herself.

Well anyways my judgment having slipped to the extent of having signed my sense of humor away for six months at twenty-two hundred a week, I was in the very middle of a fillum called the Bridge to Berlin when one day, just as a big brute of a German officer by the name of O'Flarety had me by the throat in a French chateau, the studio manager comes in and says the armistice is signed and the war is over, and we was to quit as who would release a war fillum now and we was to start on something entirely different, only he didn't know what the h.e.l.l it was to be and here was eight thousand feet wasted--and believe you me I was sore myself for we had shot that strangling sceene six times by then and my marcelle wave was completely ruined by it, and I would of liked to of had something to show for it.

But anyways, orders was to quit and so me and Ma and the two fool dogs and Musette left the wilds of Jersey and after a stormy voyage across the Hudson come safely home to our modest little apartment on the drive, there to not work at 22 hundred a week until Goldringer got the studio manager to get the scenario editor to get me a new story, which at the price was not of long duration for while Gawd knows they dont care how long a person stands around waiting to be shot, they just naturally hate to pay you for doing the same thing at home in comfort.

Well anyways the bunk that scenario editor picked out was something fierce. I wouldn't of been screened dead in it. But it just happened I had a idea for a scenario myself, which come about through somebody having give me a book for Christmas and one night, the boy having forgot to bring the papers, I read it. And was it a cute book? It was! I had a real good cry over it, and while it wasn't exactly a book for a dancer, I could see that there was good stuff in it. So finally me and Ma stopped into Goldringer's office after he had twice telephoned for me and handed him a little surprise along with the volume.

"I got a idea for a picture, Al," I says, "and here's the book of it."

"Well Miss La Tour, what's the name of it and idea?" says he, chewing on his cigar strong and not even looking at the book but throwing it to the stenographer, which is a general rule always in the picture game and one reason we don't see such a crowd of swell fillums.

"The name is Oliver Twist," I says. "It's a juvinile lead the way it stands, but I want it fixed up a little, with me as Olivette Twist--the editor can fix it so's that will be all right. It's really a swell part.

I could wear boy's clothes some of the time."

"Huh! Olivette Twist," says Goldringer, taking back the book and looking at the cover of it. "Always thought it was a breakfast food! But if you say its O.K. we'd better get it. Where is this feller d.i.c.kens? We'll wire him for the rights. Friend of yours?"

You see, if anybody brings scenarios personally, a star in particular, it's generally a friends.

"No," I says. "It was sent me by Jim along with a letter which shows the bird is well known," I says. "And is in Westminister Abby, London, England, which Jim says proves his cla.s.s.

"Must be a swell apartment," says Goldringer. "All right we'll send a cable to him and see if the picture rights is gone or not. If the boy is so well known he may stick out for a big price. This is Thursday. We may hear from him by Monday or Tuesday, and we'll get a scenario ready anyways so's we can begin to shoot not later than a week from to-day.

Until then," he says, "run along and amuse yourself and dont do anything I wouldnt."