Believe You Me! Part 14

Right then up comes Maison in a simple little Xmas tree of a dress in green and gold and red, and I broke away and took her arm, and hurried her out through the front door, leaving the Captain staring after us and rather against Maison's will.

"Why didn't you introduce me, dearie?" she says. "I kind a thought you'd pick up that bird!"

"I didn't pick him up. I turned him down!" I snapped. But Maison kidded me the whole three hours while we was in the beauty-parlours getting waived and manicured.

IV

Then we had a nice wholesome little lunch lasting only three hours and comparatively quiet and by ourselves, seeing there was only Goldringer and Ruby Roselle and Maison and Freddy and O'Flarety, our leading juvenile who had turned up, and Mr. Sternberger and a friend of Ma's which used to be in the circus with her, and Ma and myself. And all the way through I watched Ma kind of anxiously, for she only toyed with a little salad and pa.s.sed up everything else. I was by this time really scared she would be haggard or something, but she looked fine, and not a word of complaint out of her, only toward four o'clock she got kind of restless, and so did I, so we excused ourselves, and walked to the door together.

"You needn't come along with me, Mary Gilligan," she says. "I want to walk real fast."

I looked at her sort of surprised at that, but at the time the queerness didn't really sink in. And I was so wore out I was actually glad to let her go alone and personally, myself, I took one of those overgrown baby-carriages or rolling chairs which I thought a healthy young person like myself would never come to, and sank into it like the poor weary soul I was, and let the c.o.o.n tuck me in like a six-months-old, and off we went as fast as a snail.

Well it was pleasanter than I had thought it would be and I got kind of drowsy and dreamy and somehow I couldnt help but think of Captain Raymond and how refined and nice he was and how my fame and beauty had captured him to the extent that it had almost made him forget to act like a gentleman, and how he persisted like a regular story book hero.

And I wondered if he would shoot himself on my account, and that threw a awful scare into me, for handsome women have a terrible responsibility in the way they treat men. And I wondered was I really doing the right thing, taking such a risk by treating him so sever and not speaking and here he was in the service of his country and all and Gawd knows I might be wrecking his whole life from then on. And furthermore I thought how hard it is to be refined and what a lot a person has to sacrifice to it, and that the roughnecks of this world seem to have most of the fun. And that it was certainly hard to be dignified but that my whole career was built on my refinement no less than my great talent, and I must respect my own position. Ah well, uneasy lies the tooth that wears a crown as the poet says, or something!

And by this time the c.o.o.n had got tired pus.h.i.+ng me and turning my face sea-ward had gone to take a rest and I took one too and actually fell asleep.

When I woke up I was moving again, going slow in the direction of the Inlet, and I felt quite refreshed and happy, and the whole of Atlantic City appeared to feel the same, for everybody I pa.s.sed smiled and seemed to be enjoying theirselves. And they all seemed to smile at me in such a sweet, friendly way it made my heart feel awful good. I was even quite surprised because although of course I am used to being recognized every place I go, but still, more people than ever was doing it this afternoon. I begun to think I must be looking pretty good and that my hat, about which I had had a few doubts, was a big success after all. It really was a sort of triumphal progress as the saying is, and I had half a mind to turn around when we pa.s.sed the last pier; but the ocean looked so beautiful and pink in the sunset and going the other way it would of been in my eyes, so I just let myself be rolled on and on until we was almost to the Inlet and not a soul in sight. Then the chair stopped and was turned against the rail.

"Now I've got you at last!" said a unexpected voice, and around from the back came, not the c.o.o.n, but Captain Raymond.

"Where did you come from?" I asked, hardly able to speak.

"I have had the honor of pus.h.i.+ng you into this secluded corner of--of the ocean!" he said, his blue eyes twinkling.

"But how--how . . ." I sputtered.

"I bought off the colored man while you were sleeping," he said. "And have been your humble servant for almost an hour!"

Can you beat it? You cant!

"Well of all the nerve," I began, remembering how people had smiled, and no wonder!

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.

"Walk home this minute!" I says, struggling with the rugs. But they had a will of their own and it was on his side and I just couldnt seem to get free of them.

"Oh I say, don't be so absurd!" he says smilingly.

"I'm not!" I says.

"Oh but you are!" he insisted. "Just sit still and let me show you something!"

Well, there was nothing for me but to give in or look a utter fool, and he _was_ so attractive! And, well anyways, I waited and he brought out a letter from his overcoat pocket and it was the very one he had wrote me first and I had returned it to the hotel clerk.

"Please just open it!" he begged, and I did and nearly fainted because inside was a letter in Jim's handwriting addressed to me and introducing Captain Charles Raymond who was with him in France, only being ga.s.sed was now home on leave and would I show him every courtesy as he had been good to my ever loving husband, Jim!

"And really and truly I wouldn't have been so persistant, Miss LaTour,"

Captain Raymond was saying as I looked up. "I had intended using it when I got to New York of course. But when they put me in charge of this entertainment for the benefit of the blind, and I discovered you were here, I was simply determined to get you to take part in it. Couldn't you do us just one little dance? It would be such a drawing-card, your name would. That was all I wanted, really!"

Believe you me I didn't know what to think or how I felt. Did I feel flat? I did! Did I feel relieved? I did!! So it wasnt a mash at all, and for a moment I felt a lonelier war-widow than ever. Then I remembered how Jim said in the note to be nice to this bird, and I could see, now that I looked at him good, that he was the sort which it is perfectly safe to be nice to. Not that he didnt admire me, either, but that he was just as refined as me and more so and was Jim's pal beside. So I says yes, of course I would dance, and we talked and talked and the sun went down, and got to be real friends and was it good to hear about Jim, first hand? IT WAS! And after a while we commenced to walk back toward the hotel, pus.h.i.+ng the chair, and the lights was all lit along the walk like Fairyland, and also in the shops so they was more like show-cases than ever. And then I got the second shock of the afternoon because at ten past six with dinner at seven, there was Ma in the Ocean Lunch eating griddle-cakes, fish-b.a.l.l.s, Salsbury steake and coffee, with a little strained honey and apple-pie on the side! No wonder she could diet so good! And I take it to my credit that, since she did not notice me, I never let on that I seen her, not then nor afterward at dinner when she refused everything but two dill pickles!

But it wasn't until afterward when I was in the star dressing-room at the Apollo Theatre, putting on my make-up for the benefit that the real blow came. I was just about ready to go on when in rushed Goldringer, all breathless with a cablegram in his hand.

"Its all right about Olivette Twist!" he puffed at me. "We'll begin making that fillum Tuesday!" and he threw the message down on my dressing table. It was signed by our London manager and it read:--

"Present location of Charles d.i.c.kens uncertain but material is uncopyrighted, shoot."

And so immediately after the show, myself and Ma went back to New York to get a twenty-four hour rest before commencing work again.

V

NOW IS THE TIME

I

BELIEVE you me, the world to-day is just about as settled as a green pa.s.senger on a trip to Bermuda. There is that same awful feeling of not knowing is something going to happen or not--do you get me? You do! And it can't help but strike even a mere womanly woman and lady like I, that unless the captain and officers keep a firm hand on the crew until we get a little ballast in the hold, we are likely to get in Dutch. Not meaning the Germans necessarily, but the Russians, or something just as bad. And perhaps it may seem strange for me to know about them nautchical terms, but anybody which has once been to Bermuda learns what ballast is on account of their not having hardly any on them boats because of the water not being deep enough, and believe you me, nothing I had to do in the fillum we made after what was left of us arrived there, and it was some fillum at that--$1000. for bathing costumes alone and me as "The Sea King's Conquest" in silver scales, although hardly knowing how to swim--was a patch on the treatment which that unballasted boat handed me on the trip down.

Well anyways, even when sitting in the security of my flat on the Drive, which Gawd knows it aught to be secure what with the salary I get and moving-pictures will be the last thing the common people will give up;--even with this security and the handsomest furniture any installment house could provide, and every other equipment which is necessary to one so prominent in my line as myself, still even in the scarcity of the home, as the poet says, I am conscious that the world is, or could quite easily be, on the blink.

And ain't it the truth? Even the simplest soul, buried in the wilds of Broadway and wholly absorbed in their own small life must feel the unrest. No use kidding ourselves about it. It's time for all good Americans to quit fighting among theirselves and come to the aid of the country. Regardless of race, creed or color, as the free hospital says, and Gawd knows the hospital will be where they'll land if they don't.

Do you get me? Probably not. What I mean is, it's time we quit talking and _did_ something. What? I dunno, quite, but it was this general line of thought, which come to me while listening to the director give me my instructions for the ball-room scene in "The Dove of Peace," where I catch the Russian Amba.s.sador giving the nitro-glycerine or some other patent face-cleanser to the fake Senator, caused me to reform the White Kittens. That and Ma's peculiar behavior, plus the new cook.

You see it come over me all of a sudden that we ladies have now a vote and so forth, which unquestionably makes us more or less citizens the same as the men, and if the country went bluey, why wouldn't it be our fault as well? And I come to this partially through the sense of unrest and having eat something that didn't settle good and Ma's behavior. All coming at once they kind of got together and exploded into my idea.

Well anyways, I had just come to a place in my personal life where I seen a little peace and quiet ahead and nothing to do but go up in an aeroplane for the second reel of "The Dove." The war was over without Jim being killed in it and a new chance offered by a big picture contract the minute his uniform should be off him; I was going strong with nothing but Broadway releases and a salary which made Morgan jealous; my spring clothes hadn't a failure among them and only one of my hats was too tight in the head. The fool dogs was both healthy, the cook had stayed a month; the car had been in order for over three weeks, and I had successfully nursed Ma through the flu. And I thought fat could not harm me, as the poet says, for I had dieted to-day. When all of a sudden Ma, who had hardly got over the Influenza, come down with Bolshevism.

Now the trouble with these new diseases is that the doctors don't seem to know anything about them nor what makes them catching. At least that is the line of talk they pull, but I got a hunch myself, that if the flu had been quarantined right in the first place it could of been stopped.

Do you get me? You do! And I will say one more word in favor of Influenza. You was obliged to report it, if only to the Board of Health.

But Bolshevism seems to be like a cold in the head. If you catch it, that evidently is n.o.body's business but your own; if you spread it--the same. Then again folks are kind of proud of having had the flu. It makes conversation and everything, and one which has escaped feels a little mortified like admitting they had never seen Charlie Chaplin. Indeed, people certainly do get a lot of pleasure out of illness and etc. And so long as it is under control, all right, leave them enjoy theirselves.

They had to suffer first and mabe a little talk is coming to them.

But with this Bolshevism it's the other way around. The talk comes first, but believe you me, the suffering will come afterwards. And if they could only be made to realise this ere too late, a whole lot of patients would be cured before they got it. A ounce of Americanism is worth a pound of red propaganda, as the poet says, or would of had he written to-day.

Things started with Ma as per usual upsetting the cook which has come to be a habit with her, for cooking is to Ma what his art is to Caruso--naught but death could tear her from it permanent. And while I give her credit for trying in every way to be an idle rich, the kitchen might as well be furnished with magnets and she a nail for all she can keep out of it with the natural result that keeping out of it is the best thing the cooks we hire do. And I can't say with any truth that I have made as much effort to break her of that as of some other lack of refinements, such as remembering that toothpicks ain't a public utility and never to say "excuse my back," or keep her knife and fork for the next course at the Ritz. Because believe you me, Ma is some cook and a real authograph dinner by her is something to bring tears of sweet memory to the eyes of the older generation and leave us young things in sympathetic wonder about them dear dead days when first cla.s.s home-cooking was a custom, not a curiosity. And so while the material side of life don't interest me much, what with my work and etc. to take my mind off it, still even a artist must eat or Gawd knows where the strength to act in the "Dove of Peace" or any other six-reeler would come from if I didn't, and Ma's is that simple nouris.h.i.+ng kind, but with quality, the same as the sort of dresses I wear--made out of two dollars worth of material and a thousand dollar idea.

Well anyways, our latest cook which had a husband in the service and had took up her work again so's to release him for the front at Camp Mills, for he got no further, heard he was coming back home, having got his discharge and it upset her so but whether from joy or rage, I don't know which, that there was nothing to eat in the kitchen but a little liquor she had left at seven-thirty, when we went in to see what was the cause of delay, and me with Maison Rosabelle and a friend to dinner. So Ma woke her up out of her emotions which she claimed had overcome her, and give her a honorable discharge of her own and then turned up the ends of her sleeves, and only a little hampered by the narrow skirt to the green satin evening gown she had on her, give us a meal as per above described. And no one would of cared how long it was before the intelligence office--I mean domestic, not U.S. Army--sent us a cook but that in trying to save her dress Ma got hot grease on her right hand and that changed the situation because we had to call up next day and take anything they had--and they sent us up a German woman.

Well, believe you me, that was a shock because I had an idea that all the Germans in the country was either interned or incognito, but this one wasn't even disguised, which isn't so remarkable on account of her being pretty near as big as Ma and a voice on her like a fog-horn with a strong accent on the fog. I never in my life see so many bags and bundles and ecteras as that female had with her, for she was undoubtedly one, although she had a sort of moustache beside the voice. But what she had in voice she certainly lacked in words. When Ma set out to ask her the usual questions which everybody does, although their heart is trembling with fear, she won't take the job, this lady Hun didn't divulge no more information about herself than we asked. She was as stingy with her language as if it had been hard liquor. Ma asked her to come in, and she did, and sat without being asked upon one of the gold chairs in the parlor which I certainly never expected it would survive the test, they being made for parlor rather than sitting room.

Well anyways, it's a fact she certainly was a mountain and if she were a fair specimen, all this about the Germans starving to death is the bunk.

Only her being over here may of made a difference. Well, after she had set down a bundle done up in black oil-cloth, a cute little hand-bag about a yard long made out of somebody's old stair-carpet, a shoe-box with a heel of bread sticking out at one end, an umbrella which looked like a sea-side one, a pot of white hyacinths in full bloom and a net-bag full of little odds and ends, she still had an old black pocket-book and a big bulky bundle done up in a shawl lying idly in her lap. After I had taken all this in, I gave her personally the once-over and was surprised to see she wasn't so old as her figure, or anything like it. For by the size of her she might of been the Pyramids, but her face was quite young and if she had been a boy I would of said the moustache was the first cherished down.