there are several titles which would cover this story with equal aptness, and one of them is the siren song of the burlesque lady. another one that would sound well is the corralling of the willie boy. in fact they would do well together—a great deal better than the lady and the boy did. i call him boy in this story, but he is really a man so far as years and stature go, that is all, and he is learning a lot every day, so much so that if he keeps on he will some day be a man in everything.
the burlesque show with which this perfect lady was a spear carrier, as well as a few other things, hit the bowery early in the season, and opened up with a roar that could be heard many blocks. it was the same old thing only a little more so, and the line-up was composed of a bunch of husky dames who ought to have been carrying the hod instead of giving an exhibition of beef on the hoof. the roster is a very familiar one, with the beef-eaters sometimes in the background like scenery, and then again in the foreground to give the boys a good look at the tights, two or three ginger girls, who had a small amount of talent with a great amount of nerve, who did stunts in the olio, and the usual collection of irish and hebrew comedians, of which the least said the better. the names on the roster would look like a collection of heroines from the waverly novels, with
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pearl, pansy and myrtle in the lead by a couple of good lengths. it was put together according to the recipe of a well-known manager, which was this:
they had a hot time in minneapolis when the show hit town
“the people who pay their money for these kind of shows, my boy, don’t want beauty, or brains or talent. they’d go to sleep with sarah bernhardt doing the death scene in ‘camille,’ and they’d call booth in ‘richard the third’ a frost. what they want is legs—good, big husky legs that can take all the wrinkles out of the biggest size of pink tights on the market. they want quantity, not quality. give them that and you’ll get their ten, twenty and thirty every time.”
he wore big diamonds, had a bank roll the size of a hamburger steak, and so he must have been in right. besides he always had a bottle of wine with his meals, and he didn’t care what kind of wine it was, so long as the label was attractive; which goes to show that his money was coming in so fast that his palate couldn’t keep up with it.
on the night the fair maids of gotham opened, the willie boy, very fly up to a certain point, but with a soft sucker part about as big as a derby hat, planted himself in one of the front seats. he had been mixing up with sports all of his life, and as a result the corners on him were as hard as flint. his roll was divided in four parts and stowed away in four separate places for safety’s sake, and when it came to a hurry touch he was prepared to dig down into his change pocket and produce a few pennies with verdigris on them as the extent of his capital. he had a block and a counter for every proposition that came his way and when anything came off he always managed
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to land his percentage and ride, even though everybody else walked.
the orchestra had crushed through its preliminary canter, the lights went down, the buzz of talk let up for a moment, and as he settled himself back in his seat with a big cigar in his mouth the curtain slid up for the opening chorus. the grenadiers in front swung their legs coquettishly, and pranced about like two-legged pachyderms as they delivered the goods in the shape of a song, which stated in very wobbly and uncertain rhyme that they were very jolly, very entertaining, and that they were out for a lark and were willing to take chances. it was all very affecting, and it might have been going on yet if the star of the show, known professionally as the principal boy, hadn’t butted in like a football player when the cue, “here comes the prince,” was given by a perfect lady with a forty-six-inch bust. she was so thoroughly upholstered with rhinestones that she looked like some new kind of an electric light proposition on legs. willie sized her up with the eye of a connoisseur, and he fell to wondering whether or not among all that paving of cut glass there might not be a true gem.
suddenly, as the line in front swayed, then broke and shifted, he caught sight of a tall blonde who had been fastened to it like the tail on a kite. she wasn’t quite as wide as the rest of the bunch, but there was something about her that attracted his immediate attention.
and here you see again the delicate tracery of the italian hand of fate—that invisible, indefinite thing which stands always at our backs ready to move us here and there, like chessmen on a board, whether we
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like it or not. the male human pats himself on his shoulder and congratulates himself that he has a will and a mind of his own, but ever near him is that wraith which directs his movements, making him do this or that and go here and there. there is no force, no threat and no cajoling; it is simpler than a twist of the wrist, and the end of that winding, twisting, intersected road, with its hundreds of sharp turns here and there and its joys and sorrows, is the grave.
so look at the boy with good red blood in his veins, with a gentle, high-bred mother, a beautiful sister, and a home in which there was nothing but refining influences, sitting bolt upright now in that cheap theatre seat and gazing like one bewitched at this girl with the yellow hair, bleached to almost a frazzle, and the pale, watery blue eyes, with no figure at all and absolutely no talent, produced and spit forth from a tenement to grow up in the city’s streets like a weed to finally reach the most ordinary position in a most ordinary theatrical company, where, standing on the lowest possible level, she was satisfied. paint, powder and rouge made her a ghastly sight, but in his eyes she was framed in an aureole and was as beautiful as a madonna.
it was one of the things that no human being will ever be able to account for satisfactorily. personal magnetism undoubtedly plays a part in it, as it does in many other things, but you wouldn’t think a young fellow like this would go so far out of his class unless he had a throwback strain of degeneracy imbedded somewhere in his system.
the tribe trooped off to make a change of costume and the comedians settled down to work. then the
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ginger girls whooped things up a bit, and an acrobat went through the routine of stunts, while a few spasmodic outbursts of applause showed there were some people in the house who appreciated his work. but the pair of eyes owned by the young fellow in the aisle seat, third row, were looking for that blonde and nothing else.
knowing everybody as he did, it wasn’t a difficult matter for him to get someone who knew her to wait after the show and bring them together in a rather formal way, although, in her case, that wouldn’t have been at all necessary. she had as little use for formalities as she had for conventionalities, which is not at all to be wondered at.
“meet my friend willie; now let’s all go out and get a drink,” was all there was to it, and ten minutes later four—two of each sex—were planted around a table in a cafe not more than a block or so from the theatre.
“like the show?” asked the genial giantess, who was keen enough to smell a little love affair in the air.
“great,” answered willie; “it ought to get the money this season. what are you going to drink?”
“i never take anything but beer after the matinee—it hurts my voice.”
strangely enough no one laughed, but with another girl and at another time willie would have laughed himself almost into convulsions, for he has a keen sense of humor.
the four ate and drank at that table until it was time for the night show and then they separated, by which time willie was so far gone that he sat throughout
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the evening performance while she smiled encouragingly at him from the other side of the footlights.
that is how the courtship really began.
for the rest of the week they were together all the time, and she began to realize that she had at last reached the apex of her ambition and found a man who looked like a wedding ring and a board bill proposition.
a fellow like this can have a dozen affairs and no one will question them, but when it comes to marrying there is a different story. to the outsiders it bore all the earmarks of a week’s stand at first, and as he never showed his hand no one was any the wiser, not even his most intimate friends.
a man’s declaration of love for a woman is a very beautiful thing so long as he is honest about it and keeps within his own class. the slang of the slums can be made as sincere as the most polished english. but in a case of infatuation like this—it might be called temporary insanity—it doesn’t hardly seem right there should be any ceremony. the halo of romance existed only in the mind of the boy—for the woman it was a business transaction with the obligations all on one side, so it was with a flippant air that she promised to “love, honor and obey,” and then after the briefest of brief honeymoons she went on the road with the show, while the young husband at once set about preparing a home for her when she should get ready to settle down to a life of domesticity.
at first he figured on taking her to his mother’s home, but when he told of the hurry-up wedding and showed a picture of the woman to whom he had given his name, the scene that followed forever settled the
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question, and he knew that his soubrette wife and his mother would never live under the same roof together.
the morals of the members of a burlesque show on the road have come to be a joke. of course, there are exceptions, but they are very rare, though i personally know of some good women who have gone on tour through force of circumstances and have come through the ordeal morally and physically clean. i regret to be compelled to record that the genial giantess doesn’t belong in this class, and when the aggregation had torn thirty weeks off the calendar they came back looking like refugees from the san francisco earthquake.
“i ain’t got a cent,” remarked the blonde on the ferryboat coming from jersey city, “and i don’t have to have because willie will stake me as soon as i get to new york, and besides he’s got a flat fixed up for me.”
that was the truth. he had a nice apartment for the homecoming, and while he wasn’t as much in love with her as he was when they were first married, he still felt that he had obligations and he ought to make good.
you know what i said in the beginning about fate? well, listen.
while the performers were on the ferryboat, and when blondie was making her celebrated remark, her willie was up against a bar on broadway with a couple of men he had met some time before. they were talking about women, and one, a commercial traveler, remarked:
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“i’ll put you up against a warm bunch if you want to get on the job this week. we didn’t do a thing to them in minneapolis when i was there on my last trip. i had a big blonde on my staff, and the first night i met her i loaded her up so that she had to be carried upstairs to her room by three waiters. here’s a letter i got from her last week, and while she’s no ten thousand dollar beauty yet she’s a good fellow and a thoroughbred sport. read it, willie. when she hits this burg i’ll put you next and bet 20 to 1 that she’ll drink you to a standstill, for she’s the biggest tank i ever ran across.”
and when willie read the letter which bore his wife’s signature and which put him wise to a few things he had never before dreamed of, he did what many another man would do under the same circumstances—that is, many another wise man. he ordered a round of drinks, and then he kept on ordering and saying nothing, letting the other fellows tell all they knew, and the first chance he got he blew out and went home, not to the place he had fixed up for mrs. willie, but to the home presided over by his mother. he simply abandoned the flat and all of his day dreams. they vanished like mist in the morning’s sun.
a few days later he got a letter from his wife and in it she reproached him for not meeting her, and furthermore she inquired what had become of the flat he had fixed up for her.
“i am broke, you know,” she wrote, “and i think the least you could do is to help me out.”
she signed it “your loving (sic) and affectionate wife,” and it almost gagged him to read it.
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he took a sheet of paper and wrote the answer. it contained but one line, but it told a whole chapter. in due course of time it was delivered to her. she opened the envelope and read the enclosure. what she said was unfit for publication, for what she saw was only two words and they were:
“forget it.”
