it was after the show that there were four of us sitting at the round table in the back room of the dutchman’s on third avenue. it’s a pretty good place, that self-same back room, and the big steins of beer are pretty good, too, with a heaping plate of pretzels always on the side and a sandwich to be had by pressing the button.
there was al fostell, the german comedian, who ought to have been in the legitimate long ago; harry ferguson, famous for his impersonation of happy hooligan; harry’s wife, lulu beeson, the star of texas, and so great a dancer that she has a richard k. fox medal about as long as her arm, which any beskirted performer can get by beating her at the soft shoe buck; and one other, whom i shall simply designate as the girl, because, even though she plays a star part in this, she doesn’t want to be known to the general public.
the girl was brilliant, versatile and clever. she took it into her head to become a dancer once, and among other things she learned the fandango. she went to mexico with a troupe and danced that famous measure in a way that made them cheer her to the echo. she played faro bank and won enough to keep her in clothes for a year.
the talk had drifted on marriage and fostell started things.
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“i have been married a good many years, more than i care to tell,” he said, “and i have been trying to induce my daughter to call me uncle so they won’t get on to me. i claim that a performer’s domestic life can be just as pure and happy as that of a business man. i agree that there is a lot of immorality in the profession, but you’ll always find a lot of outsiders helping things along. there are times when we seem to be targets for the whole world to shoot at.”
“in my opinion,” put in ferguson, “the performers who are in the business to make a living on their merits are for the most part decent people whose lives are an open book. the women of the chorus of the big shows on broadway—the kind who haven’t a line to speak and who couldn’t speak it if they had—are responsible in the main for all of these sweeping charges of immorality. our children are born in the shadow of the theatre, and a great part of their lives are spent in the green rooms and dressing rooms. we try to do the best we can by them and bring them up properly.”
then the girl, who can tell stories and sing in a most charming way, and who for that reason has a salary that is worth considering, broke in:
“you men with wives sit back and talk of morality and all that sort of thing and you don’t know what it means. you two are lucky because you have married good women who look after your interests and bring your children up as best they can under the circumstances. you only see things from the viewpoint of the male animal, who is used to being waited on and catered to. the average man says, ‘i am handsome,’ ‘i am great,’ ‘i am distinguished,’ or ‘i am the real
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one,’ as the case may be. he sees a girl whose appearance catches his fancy and straightway he must have her. he likes her and that settles it. it makes no difference whether or not she likes him—her feelings are not to be considered. he is the one. if his passion is a strong one he pursues her to the finish and hounds her. if she still holds out he becomes actuated by a motive of revenge and so he sets out to try to injure her, to prevent her from making a living that she may feel the pinch of poverty. he uses all the influence at his command to crush and humiliate her, and then he taunts her.
“boys, i’ve been through the mill and i know what i’m talking about. i’m a kid no longer, and i wouldn’t marry the best man on earth, nor tie myself up to him for either a definite or an indefinite length of time. no double acts for me, but monologues from now on until i get my 23.
“let me tell you something you never heard before.
“one night i went down to the battery and sat on the sea wall there for hours looking at the water smashing away at the rocks. it was moonlight and almost bright enough to read a paper. i had enough to think of while i was sitting there and i thought it, too. i know what it is to have a whirring sound in your brain, for i had it then. i was trying to get up enough courage to throw myself overboard, for i really wanted to die. i had seen all of life and of men that i wanted and had enough. i had been driven by a man from the place where i lived to the jumping-off spot as coldly, and calmly, and deliberately as a drover would direct the course of a steer to the abattoir. he had made living impossible for me.
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“those noises in my head had reached that stage where they were like the sound of the l road trains going past your windows at night when you’re trying to sleep, but the stronger they grew the less they annoyed me, and the idea came to me that if i wished hard enough death would come very easy.
“you know that old act of mine where i used to imitate a woman who had gone insane from grief at being abandoned by her lover? you know what a hit it always made. well, it’s nothing like the real thing. heart-breaking grief in its highest form is quiet. it doesn’t want the limelight or stage center, but a dark corner and seclusion. it wants to be left alone.
“the next thing i remember was someone saying to me ‘come out of here; what are you trying to do—drown yourself?’
“and there i was in the water up to my waist with a policeman holding me by the arm. he turned me around so that i faced the wall again and we walked back to where he helped me up. then he took me, all dripping and so cold that i had no feeling at all, to the station house, where i was charged, under a most absurd law, with attempted suicide. they were humane enough to send for an ambulance and i was taken to the hospital and fixed up so i could appear in court the next morning. the man was there—the man with his sneering smile and his air of well-fed comfort. he had come down to look me over. he probably wanted to see the girl who had refused nearly everything that money could get, simply because she was not for sale and couldn’t be bought like a new scarf or a hat of the latest mode. he also wanted to parade his prosperity before my misery, probably that before anything else.
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even he must have pitied me because of my position, and he edged over to where i was and whispered:
“‘it isn’t too late yet, and i want to help you.’
“‘you mean that you want to get me out of here?’ i asked.
“‘yes,’ he said eagerly, ‘i want to get you out.’
“‘well, if i were you,’ i told him, ‘i wouldn’t take any chances because if i get out of here and you ever speak to me again i will do the very best i can to kill you.’
“he shrank back as if he had been stung, and so great was his terror that i almost laughed at him. then he turned and walked away.
“that is the curtain of my story. i could begin at the beginning and make it a long one, but what’s the use? i could make a romance of it, or even a tragedy, and now that i am my sane self i could even make it a comedy. i could go over the list of things he promised me and what he promised to do for me, and you would think he had all the wealth of the bank of england at his back, but his mind ran in a groove so narrow and his manner was so offensive that the only thing that kept him in the human being class was the fact that his nostrils were not shaped like those of a swine, and that instead of grunting he used language that was fairly intelligible. but for once he was toppled from his self-built pedestal and he crashed down in the wreck of his own self-conceit. men like that make the world seem immoral and immoral in fact, and a few such as he would degrade the noblest profession in the world. egotists and atheists, believing in nothing save self, they taint a community like a plague.
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“bring us some more beer, billy, for i’m going home. i’m tired and dead to the world.”
“i wouldn’t like to be the man you hated,” said ferguson.
“my boy, i can neither hate nor love, i am simply numb. i have had seven proposals of marriage, both in the profession and out of it, but there was nothing doing. i am absolutely emotionless. i ask no favors on account of my sex and i owe my allegiance to no man. but i am watching my tormentor growing gradually old. i see him once in a while, you know, and i am keeping track of him. it’s my one joy in life. the gray has come into his hair and it is turning white and the wrinkles are spreading themselves over his face like avenging fingers. i know he is not really happy, although he pretends to be, and some day, in some luxurious apartment, he’ll lie dying. a million dollars will not give him one more breath nor would a hundred millions add one more day to his existence, and when he is very close to that gate which always opens inward and from which there is no retreat and i really know that he is going, then i will laugh; not the kind of a laugh you know, boys, but the kind of a laugh that follows a soul across the border line of death and which keeps echoing for ages.”
“did you ever play the part of ophelia?” i asked.
“no, but i could.”
and we all believed her.
