"Ah, madame," said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palais Royale, corner
of Seventy-third Street, "as Montesquiaux says, 'Rien de plus bon
tutti frutti' - Youth seems your inheritance. You are to-night the most
beautiful, the wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own
senses, when I remember that thirty-one years ago you - "
"Saw it off!" says the Duchess peremptorily.
The Prince bows low, and drawing a jewelled dagger, stabs himself to the
heart.
"The displeasure of your grace is worse than death," he says, as he
takes his overcoat and hat from a corner of the mantelpiece and leaves
the room.
"Voilà ," says Bèebè Francillon, fanning herself languidly. "That is the
way with men. Flatter them, and they kiss your hand. Loose but a moment
the silken leash that holds them captive through their vanity and
self-opinionativeness, and the son-of-a-gun gets on his ear at once. The
devil go with him, I say."
"Ah, mon Princesse," sighs the Count Pumpernickel, stooping and
whispering with eloquent eyes into her ear. "You are too hard upon us.
Balzac says, 'All women are not to themselves what no one else is to
another.' Do you not agree with him?"
"Cheese it!" says the Princess. "Philosophy palls upon me. I'll shake
you."
"Hosses?" says the Count.
Arm and arm they go out to the salon au Beurre.
Armande de Fleury, the young pianissimo danseuse from the Folies Bergère
is about to sing.
She slightly clears her throat and lays a voluptuous cud of chewing gum
upon the piano as the first notes of the accompaniment ring through the
salon.
As she prepares to sing, the Duchess du Bellairs grasps the arm of her
ottoman in a vice-like grip, and she watches with an expression of
almost anguished suspense.
She scarcely breathes.
Then, as Armande de Fleury, before uttering a note, reels, wavers, turns
white as snow and falls dead upon the floor, the Duchess breathes a sigh
of relief.
The Duchess had poisoned her.
Then the guests crowd about the piano, gazing with bated breath, and
shuddering as they look upon the music rack and observe that the song
that Armande came so near singing is "Sweet Marie."
Twenty minutes later a dark and muffled figure was seen to emerge from
a recess in the mullioned wall of the Arc de Triomphe and pass rapidly
northward.
It was no other than Tictocq, the detective.
The network of evidence was fast being drawn about the murderer of Marie
Cusheau.
* * * * * *
It is midnight on the steeple of the Cathedral of Notadam.
It is also the same time at other given points in the vicinity.
The spire of the Cathedral is 20,000 feet above the pavement, and a
casual observer, by making a rapid mathematical calculation, would have
readily perceived that this Cathedral is, at least, double the height of
others that measure only 10,000 feet.
At the summit of the spire there is a little wooden platform on which
there is room for but one man to stand.
Crouching on this precarious footing, which swayed, dizzily with every
breeze that blew, was a man closely muffled, and disguised as a
wholesale grocer.
Old François Beongfallong, the great astronomer, who is studying the
sidereal spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders
as he turns his telescope upon the solitary figure upon the spire.
"Sacrè Bleu!" he hisses between his new celluloid teeth. "It is Tictocq,
the detective. I wonder whom he is following now?"
While Tictocq is watching with lynx-like eyes the hill of Montmartre, he
suddenly hears a heavy breathing beside him, and turning, gazes into the
ferocious eyes of the Gray Wolf.
Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his W. U. Tel. Co. climbers and climbed
the steeple.
"Parbleu, monsieur," says Tictocq. "To whom am I indebted for the honor
of this visit?"
The Gray Wolf smiled softly and depreciatingly.
"You are Tictocq, the detective?" he said.
"I am."
"Then listen. I am the murderer of Marie Cusheau. She was my wife and
she had cold feet and ate onions. What was I to do? Yet life is sweet
to me. I do not wish to be guillotined. I have heard that you are on my
track. Is it true that the case is in your hands?"
"It is."
"Thank le bon Dieu, then, I am saved."
The Gray Wolf carefully adjusts the climbers on his feet and descends
the spire.
Tictocq takes out his notebook and writes in it.
"At last," he says, "I have a clue."
* * * * * *
Monsieur le Compte Carnaignole Cusheau, once known as the Gray Wolf,
stands in the magnificent drawing-room of his palace on East 47th
Street.
Three days after his confession to Tictocq, he happened to look in the
pockets of a discarded pair of pants and found twenty million francs in
gold.
Suddenly the door opens and Tictocq, the detective, with a dozen
gensd'arme, enters the room.
"You are my prisoner," says the detective.
"On what charge?"
"The murder of Marie Cusheau on the night of August 17th."
"Your proofs?"
"I saw you do it, and your own confession on the spire of Notadam."
The Count laughed and took a paper from his pocket. "Read this," he
said, "here is proof that Marie Cusheau died of heart failure."
Tictocq looked at the paper.
It was a check for 100,000 francs.
Tictocq dismissed the gensd'arme with a wave of his hand.
"We have made a mistake, monsieurs," he said, but as he turns to leave
the room, Count Carnaignole stops him.
"One moment, monsieur."
The Count Carnaignole tears from his own face a false beard and reveals
the flashing eyes and well-known features of Tictocq, the detective.
Then, springing forward, he snatches a wig and false eyebrows from his
visitor, and the Gray Wolf, grinding his teeth in rage, stands before
him.
The murderer of Marie Cusheau was never discovered.
[Illustration: _The Rolling Stone_, January 26, 1895]
A SNAPSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT
[This is the kind of waggish editorial O. Henry was writing
in 1894 for the readers of _The Rolling Stone_. The reader
will do well to remember that the paper was for local
consumption and that the allusions are to a very special
place and time.]
(It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special
rates offered to the public for a round trip to the City of
Washington. The price of the ticket being exceedingly low, we
secured a loan of twenty dollars from a public-spirited citizen
of Austin, by mortgaging our press and cow, with the additional
security of our brother's name and a slight draught on Major
Hutchinson for $4,000.
We purchased a round trip ticket, two loaves of Vienna bread,
and quite a large piece of cheese, which we handed to a member
of our reportorial staff, with instructions to go to Washington,
interview President Cleveland, and get a scoop, if possible, on
all other Texas papers.
Our reporter came in yesterday morning, via the Manor dirt road,
with a large piece of folded cotton bagging tied under each foot.
It seems that he lost his ticket in Washington, and having
divided the Vienna bread and cheese with some disappointed office
seekers who were coming home by the same route, he arrived home
hungry, desiring food, and with quite an appetite.
Although somewhat late, we give his description of his interview
with President Cleveland.)
I am chief reporter on the staff of _The Rolling Stone_.
About a month ago the managing editor came into the room where we were
both sitting engaged in conversation and said:
"Oh, by the way, go to Washington and interview President Cleveland."
"All right," said I. "Take care of yourself."
Five minutes later I was seated in a palatial drawing-room car bounding
up and down quite a good deal on the elastic plush-covered seat.
I shall not linger upon the incidents of the journey. I was given carte
blanche to provide myself with every comfort, and to spare no expense
that I could meet. For the regalement of my inside the preparations had
been lavish. Both Vienna and Germany had been called upon to furnish
dainty viands suitable to my palate.
I changed cars and shirts once only on the journey. A stranger wanted
me to also change a two-dollar bill, but I haughtily declined.
The scenery along the entire road to Washington is diversified. You
find a portion of it on one hand by looking out of the window, and upon
turning the gaze upon the other side the eye is surprised and delighted
by discovering some more of it.
There were a great many Knights of Pythias on the train. One of them
insisted upon my giving him the grip I had with me, but he was
unsuccessful.
On arriving in Washington, which city I instantly recognized from
reading the history of George, I left the car so hastily that I forgot
to fee Mr. Pullman's representative.
I went immediately to the Capitol.
In a spirit of jeu d'esprit I had had made a globular representation of
a "rolling stone." It was of wood, painted a dark color, and about the
size of a small cannon ball. I had attached to it a twisted pendant
about three inches long to indicate moss. I had resolved to use this in
place of a card, thinking people would readily recognize it as an emblem
of my paper.
I had studied the arrangement of the Capitol, and walked directly to Mr.
Cleveland's private office.
I met a servant in the hall, and held up my card to him smilingly.
I saw his hair rise on his head, and he ran like a deer to the door,
and, lying down, rolled down the long flight of steps into the yard.
"Ah," said I to myself, "he is one of our delinquent subscribers."
A little farther along I met the President's private secretary, who had
been writing a tariff letter and cleaning a duck gun for Mr. Cleveland.
When I showed him the emblem of my paper he sprang out of a high window
into a hothouse filled with rare flowers.
This somewhat surprised me.
I examined myself. My hat was on straight, and there was nothing at all
alarming about my appearance.
I went into the President's private office.
He was alone. He was conversing with Tom Ochiltree. Mr. Ochiltree saw my
little sphere, and with a loud scream rushed out of the room.
President Cleveland slowly turned his eyes upon me.
He also saw what I had in my hand, and said in a husky voice:
"Wait a moment, please."
He searched his coat pocket, and presently found a piece of paper on
which some words were written.
He laid this on his desk and rose to his feet, raised one hand above
him, and said in deep tones:
"I die for Free Trade, my country, and - and - all that sort of thing."
I saw him jerk a string, and a camera snapped on another table, taking
our picture as we stood.
"Don't die in the House, Mr. President," I said. "Go over into the
Senate Chamber."
"Peace, murderer!" he said. "Let your bomb do its deadly work."
"I'm no bum," I said, with spirit. "I represent _The Rolling Stone_, of
Austin, Texas, and this I hold in my hand does the same thing, but, it
seems, unsuccessfully."
The President sank back in his chair greatly relieved.
"I thought you were a dynamiter," he said. "Let me see; Texas! Texas!"
He walked to a large wall map of the United States, and placing his
finger thereon at about the location of Idaho, ran it down in a zigzag,
doubtful way until he reached Texas.
"Oh, yes, here it is. I have so many things on my mind, I sometimes
forget what I should know well.
"Let's see; Texas? Oh, yes, that's the State where Ida Wells and a lot
of colored people lynched a socialist named Hogg for raising a riot at a
camp-meeting. So you are from Texas. I know a man from Texas named Dave
Culberson. How is Dave and his family? Has Dave got any children?"
"He has a boy in Austin," I said, "working around the Capitol."
"Who is President of Texas now?"
"I don't exactly - "
"Oh, excuse me. I forgot again. I thought I heard some talk of its
having been made a Republic again."
"Now, Mr. Cleveland," I said, "you answer some of my questions."
A curious film came over the President's eyes. He sat stiffly in his
chair like an automaton.
"Proceed," he said.
"What do you think of the political future of this country?"
"I will state that political exigencies demand emergentistical
promptitude, and while the United States is indissoluble in conception
and invisible in intent, treason and internecine disagreement have
ruptured the consanguinity of patriotism, and - "
"One moment, Mr. President," I interrupted; "would you mind changing
that cylinder? I could have gotten all that from the American Press
Association if I had wanted plate matter. Do you wear flannels? What
is your favorite poet, brand of catsup, bird, flower, and what are you
going to do when you are out of a job?"
"Young man," said Mr. Cleveland, sternly, "you are going a little too
far. My private affairs do not concern the public."
I begged his pardon, and he recovered his good humor in a moment.
"You Texans have a great representative in Senator Mills," he said. "I
think the greatest two speeches I ever heard were his address before the
Senate advocating the removal of the tariff on salt and increasing it on
chloride of sodium."
"Tom Ochiltree is also from our State," I said.
"Oh, no, he isn't. You must be mistaken," replied Mr. Cleveland, "for he
says he is. I really must go down to Texas some time, and see the State.
I want to go up into the Panhandle and see if it is really shaped like
it is on the map."
"Well, I must be going," said I.
"When you get back to Texas," said the President, rising, "you must
write to me. Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your
State which I fear I have not given the attention it deserves. There are
many historical and otherwise interesting places that you have revived
in my recollection - the Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam
Houston's surrender to Montezuma, the petrified boom found near Austin,
five-cent cotton and the Siamese Democratic platform born in Dallas. I
should so much like to see the gals in Galveston, and go to the wake in
Waco. I am glad I met you. Turn to the left as you enter the hall and
keep straight on out." I made a low bow to signify that the interview
was at an end, and withdrew immediately. I had no difficulty in leaving
the building as soon as I was outside.
I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place where
viands had been placed upon the free list.
I shall not describe my journey back to Austin. I lost my return ticket
somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a manner
not especially beneficial to my shoes. Everybody was well in Washington
when I left, and all send their love.
[Illustration: A page from "The Plunkville Patriot"]
AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY
[Probably begun several years before his death. Published,
as it here appears, in _Short Stories_, January, 1911.]
Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the
ingenious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers
that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they
could invent to disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has this new
practice been carried that nowadays when you read a story in a holiday
magazine the only way you can tell it is a Christmas story is to look at
the footnote which reads: ["The incidents in the above story happened on
December 25th. - ED."]
There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just as
many real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig 'em up. Me,
I am for the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and
Willie's prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke
of twelve to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talking
dolls and popcorn balls and - Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the
cottage go flying off it into the deep snow.
So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this
story - and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum
puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and
handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.
Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep on
losing sight of the story). It was the front door of a furnished room
house in West 'Teenth Street. I was looking for a young illustrator
named Paley originally and irrevocably from Terre Haute. Paley doesn't
enter even into the first serial rights of this Christmas story; I
mention him simply in explaining why I came to knock at the door - some
people have so much curiosity.
The door was opened by the landlady. I had seen hundreds like her. And
I had smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air that
hurried by her to escape immurement in the furnished house.
She was stout, and her face and lands were as white as though she had
been drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at her
throat a buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut
by no tape or butterick known to mortal woman. Beneath this a too-long,
flowered, black sateen skirt was draped about her, reaching the floor in
stiff wrinkles and folds.
The rest of her was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had been
dipped in the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymph
Hydrogen; but now, except at the roots, it had returned to its natural
grim and grizzled white.
Her eyes and teeth and finger nails were yellow. Her chops hung low and
shook when she moved. The look on her face was exactly that smileless
look of fatal melancholy that you may have seen on the countenance of a
hound left sitting on the doorstep of a deserted cabin.
I inquired for Paley. After a long look of cold suspicion the landlady
spoke, and her voice matched the dingy roughness of her flannel sacque.
Paley? Was I sure that was the name? And wasn't it, likely, Mr.
Sanderson I meant, in the third floor rear? No; it was Paley I wanted.
Again that frozen, shrewd, steady study of my soul from her pale-yellow,
unwinking eyes, trying to penetrate my mask of deception and rout out my
true motives from my lying lips. There was a Mr. Tompkins in the front
hall bedroom two flights up. Perhaps it was he I was seeking. He worked
of nights; he never came in till seven in the morning. Or if it was
really Mr. Tucker (thinly disguised as Paley) that I was hunting I would
have to call between five and -
But no; I held firmly to Paley. There was no such name among her
lodgers. Click! the door closed swiftly in my face; and I heard through
the panels the clanking of chains and bolts.
I went down the steps and stopped to consider. The number of this house
was 43. I was sure Paley had said 43 - or perhaps it was 45 or 47 - I
decided to try 47, the second house farther along.
I rang the bell. The door opened; and there stood the same woman. I
wasn't confronted by just a resemblance - it was the SAME woman holding
together the same old sacque at her throat and looking at me with the
same yellow eyes as if she had never seen me before on earth. I saw
on the knuckle of her second finger the same red-and-black spot made,
probably, by a recent burn against a hot stove.
I stood speechless and gaping while one with moderate haste might have
told fifty. I couldn't have spoken Paley's name even if I had remembered
it. I did the only thing that a brave man who believes there are
mysterious forces in nature that we do not yet fully comprehend could
have done in the circumstances. I backed down the steps to the sidewalk
and then hurried away frontward, fully understanding how incidents like
that must bother the psychical research people and the census takers.
Of course I heard an explanation of it afterward, as we always do about
inexplicable things.
The landlady was Mrs. Kannon; and she leased three adjoining houses,
which she made into one by cutting arched doorways through the walls.
She sat in the middle house and answered the three bells.
I wonder why I have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it!
it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife through
the Middle West: "Shake hands with Mrs. Kannon."
For, it was in her triple house that the Christmas story happened; and
it was there where I picked up the incontrovertible facts from the
gossip of many roomers and met Stickney - and saw the necktie.
Christmas came that year on Thursday, and snow came with it.
Stickney (Harry Clarence Fowler Stickney to whomsoever his full
baptismal cognominal burdens may be of interest) reached his address
at six-thirty Wednesday afternoon. "Address" is New Yorkese for "home."
Stickney roomed at 45 West 'Teenth Street, third floor rear hall
room. He was twenty years and four months old, and he worked in a
cameras-of-all-kinds, photographic supplies and films-developed store. I
don't know what kind of work he did in the store; but you must have seen
him. He is the young man who always comes behind the counter to wait on
you and lets you talk for five minutes, telling him what you want. When
you are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of his voice to wait on
you, and walks away whistling between his teeth.
I don't want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but, if
you are a man reader, I will say that Stickncy looked precisely like
the young chap that you always find sitting in your chair smoking a
cigarette after you have missed a shot while playing pool - not billiards
but pool - when you want to sit down yourself.
There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy essence. Of
course, prosperous people and comfortable people who have homes or
flats or rooms with meals, and even people who live in apartment houses
with hotel service get something of the Christmas flavor. They give one
another presents with the cost mark scratched off with a penknife; and
they hang holly wreaths in the front windows and when they are asked
whether they prefer light or dark meat from the turkey they say: "Both,
please," and giggle and have lots of fun. And the very poorest people
have the best time of it. The Army gives 'em a dinner, and the 10 A. M.
issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the largest
circulation in the city leaves a basket at their door full of an apple,
a Lake Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant and a bunch of Kalamazoo
bleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.
But, I'll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be only
the day before the twenty-sixth day of December. It's the chap in
the big city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few
acquaintances, who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket
on Christmas eve. He can't accept charity; he can't borrow; he knows
no one who would invite him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the
shepherds left their flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was
a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning the sheep
business. So they said to him, "Bobby, we're going to investigate this
star route and see what's in it. If it should turn out to be the first
Christmas day we don't want to miss it. And, as you are not a wise man,
and as you couldn't possibly purchase a present to take along, suppose
you stay behind and mind the sheep."
So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant of the shepherd
who was left behind to take care of the flocks.
Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45. He had a habit
of forgetting his latchkey.
Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching her
sacque together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque,
yellow eyes.
(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story. Once a roomer
in 47 who had the Scotch habit - not kilts, but a habit of drinking
Scotch - began to figure to himself what might happen if two persons
should ring the doorbells of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of two
halves of Mrs. Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at the
two entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, flapping sacque that
could never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue got him.)
"Evening," said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles of
muddy slush along the hall matting. "Think we'll have snow?"
"You left your key," said -
[Here the manuscript ends.]
[Illustration: A front page of _The Rolling Stone_.]
THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT
[Left unfinished, and published as it here appears in
_Everybody's Magazine_, December, 1911.]
I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly,
they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers.
But now and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the same
printworthy incident of the passing earthly panorama and will send in
reportorial constructions thereof to their respective journals. It is
then that, for me, it is to laugh. For it seems that to each of them,
trained and skilled as he may be, the same occurrence presents a
different facet of the cut diamond, life.
One will have it (let us say) that Mme. André Macarté's apartment was
looted by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore away
a ruby tiara valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollar
prize Spitz dog, which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance)
was making free with the halls of the Wuttapesituckquesunoowetunquah
Apartments.
My second "chiel" will take notes to the effect that while a friendly
game of pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. Andy
McCarty, a lady guest named Ruby O'Hara threw a burglar down six flights
of stairs, where he was pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dollar
English bulldog amid a crowd of five hundred excited spectators.
My third chronicler and friend will gather the news threads of the
happening in his own happy way; setting forth on the page for you to
read that the house of Antonio Macartini was blown up at 6 A. M., by the
Black Hand Society, on his refusing to leave two thousand dollars at
a certain street corner, killing a pet five-hundred-dollar Pomeranian
belonging to Alderman Rubitara's little daughter (see photo and diagram
opposite).
Number four of my history-makers will simply construe from the premises
the story that while an audience of two thousand enthusiasts was
listening to a Rubinstein concert on Sixth Street, a woman who said she
was Mrs. Andrew M. Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass window
valued at five hundred dollars. The Carter woman claimed that some one
in the building had stolen her dog.
Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day's doings need
do no one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough for any man to prop
against his morning water-bottle to fend off the smiling hatred of his
wife's glance. If he be foolish enough to read four he is no wiser than
a Higher Critic.
I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the parable of the
talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, first
hands over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents;
to another two; to another one - to every man according to his several
ability, as the text has it. There are two versions of this parable, as
you well know. There may be more - I do not know.
When the p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put
their talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good. The
unprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and hands
it out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks,
surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin and
laid it away. But the commentator informs us that the talent mentioned
was composed of 750 ounces of silver - about $900 worth. So the
chronicler who mentioned the napkin, had either to reduce the amount of
the deposit or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery used
in those davs. Therefore in his version we note that he uses the word
"pound" instead of "talent."
A pound of silver may very well be laid away - and carried away - in a
napkin, as any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.
But let us get away from our mutton.
When the returned nobleman finds that the one-talented servant has
nothing to hand over except the original fund entrusted to him, he is as
angry as a multi-millionaire would be if some one should hide under his
bed and make a noise like an assessment. He orders the unprofitable
servant cast into outer darkness, after first taking away his talent and
giving it to the one-hundred-per cent. financier, and breathing strange
saws, saying: "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath." Which is the same as to say: "Nothing from nothing
leaves nothing."
And now closer draw the threads of parable, precept allegory, and
narrative, leading nowhere if you will, or else weaving themselves into
the little fiction story about Cliff McGowan and his one talent. There
is but a definition to follow; and then the homely actors trip on.
Talent: A gift, endowment or faculty; some peculiar ability, power,
or accomplishment, natural or acquired. (A metaphor borrowed from the
parable in Matt. XXV. 14-30.)
In New York City to-day there are (estimated) 125,000 living creatures
training for the stage. This does not include seals, pigs, dogs,
elephants, prize-fighters, Carmens, mind-readers, or Japanese wrestlers.
The bulk of them are in the ranks of the Four Million. Out of this
number will survive a thousand.
Nine hundred of these will have attained their fulness of fame when they
shall dubiously indicate with the point of a hatpin a blurred figure
in a flashlight photograph of a stage tout ensemble with the proud
commentary: "That's me."
Eighty, in the pinkest of (male) Louis XIV court costumes, shall welcome
the Queen of the (mythical) Pawpaw Isles in a few well-memorized words,
turning a tip-tilted nose upon the nine hundred.
Ten, in tiny lace caps, shall dust Ibsen furniture for six minutes after
the rising of the curtain.
Nine shall attain the circuits, besieging with muscle, skill, eye, hand,
voice, wit, brain, heel and toe the ultimate high walls of stardom.
One shall inherit Broadway. Sic venit gloria mundi.
Cliff McGowan and Mac McGowan were cousins. They lived on the West Side
and were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle riding,
boxing, German and Irish dialect comedy, and a little sleight-of-hand
and balancing of wheat straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of their
chins came as easy to them as it is for you to fix your rat so it won't
show or to dodge a creditor through the swinging-doors of a well-lighted
café - according as you may belong to the one or the other division
of the greatest prestidigitators - the people. They were slim, pale,
consummately self-possessed youths, whose fingernails were always
irreproachably (and clothes seams reproachfully) shiny. Their
conversation was in sentences so short that they made Kipling's seem as
long as court citations.
Having the temperament, they did no work. Any afternoon you could find
them on Eighth Avenue either in front of Spinelli's barber shop, Mike
Dugan's place, or the Limerick Hotel, rubbing their forefinger nails
with dingy silk handkerchiefs. At any time, if you had happened to
be standing, undecisive, near a pool-table, and Cliff and Mac had,
casually, as it were, drawn near, mentioning something disinterestedly,
about a game, well, indeed, would it have been for you had you gone your
way, unresponsive. Which assertion, carefully considered, is a study in
tense, punctuation, and advice to strangers.
Of all kinships it is likely that the closest is that of cousin. Between
cousins there exist the ties of race, name, and favor - ties thicker
than water, and yet not coagulated with the jealous precipitations of
brotherhood or the enjoining obligations of the matrimonial yoke. You
can bestow upon a cousin almost the interest and affection that you
would give to a stranger; you need not feel toward him the contempt and
embarrassment that you have for one of your father's sons - it is the
closer clan-feeling that sometimes makes the branch of a tree stronger
than its trunk.
Thus were the two McGowans bonded. They enjoyed a quiet celebrity in
their district, which was a strip west of Eighth Avenue with the Pump
for its pivot. Their talents were praised in a hundred "joints"; their
friendship was famed even in a neighborhood where men had been known to
fight off the wives of their friends - when domestic onslaught was being
made upon their friends by the wives of their friends. (Thus do the
limitations of English force us to repetends.)
So, side by side, grim, sallow, lowering, inseparable, undefeated, the
cousins fought their way into the temple of Art - art with a big A, which
causes to intervene a lesson in geometry.
One night at about eleven o'clock Del Delano dropped into Mike's place
on Eighth Avenue. From that moment, instead of remaining a Place, the
café became a Resort. It was as though King Edward had condescended to
mingle with ten-spots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casually
strolled in to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England,
had accepted an invitation to read selections from "Rena, the Snow-bird"
at an unveiling of the proposed monument to James Owen O'Connor at
Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi. In spite of these comparisons, you will
have to be told why the patronizing of a third-rate saloon on the West
Side by the said Del Delano conferred such a specific honor upon the
place.
Del Delano could not make his feet behave; and so the world paid him
$300 a week to see them misconduct themselves on the vaudeville stage.
To make the matter plain to you (and to swell the number of words), he
was the best fancy dancer on any of the circuits between Ottawa and
Corpus Christi. With his eyes fixed on vacancy and his feet apparently
fixed on nothing, he "nightly charmed thousands," as his press-agent
incorrectly stated. Even taking night performance and matinée together,
he scarcely could have charmed more than eighteen hundred, including
those who left after Zora, the Nautch girl, had squeezed herself through
a hoop twelve inches in diameter, and those who were waiting for the
moving pictures.
But Del Delano was the West Side's favorite; and nowhere is there a more
loyal Side. Five years before our story was submitted to the editors,
Del had crawled from some Tenth Avenue basement like a lean rat and had
bitten his way into the Big Cheese. Patched, half-starved, cuffless,
and as scornful of the Hook as an interpreter of Ibsen, he had danced
his way into health (as you and I view it) and fame in sixteen minutes
on Amateur Night at Creary's (Variety) Theatre in Eighth Avenue. A
bookmaker (one of the kind that talent wins with instead of losing) sat
in the audience, asleep, dreaming of an impossible pick-up among the
amateurs. After a snore, a glass of beer from the handsome waiter, and
a temporary blindness caused by the diamonds of a transmontane blonde
in Box E, the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano for a
three-weeks' trial engagement fused with a trained-dog short-circuit
covering the three Washingtons - Heights, Statue, and Square.
By the time this story was read and accepted, Del Delano was drawing
his three-hundred dollars a week, which, divided by seven (Sunday acts
not in costume being permissible), dispels the delusion entertained by
most of us that we have seen better days. You can easily imagine the
worshipful agitation of Eighth Avenue whenever Del Delano honored it
with a visit after his terpsichorean act in a historically great and
vilely ventilated Broadway theatre. If the West Side could claim
forty-two minutes out of his forty-two weeks' bookings every year, it
was an occasion for bonfires and repainting of the Pump. And now you
know why Mike's saloon is a Resort, and no longer a simple Place.
Del Delano entered Mike's alone. So nearly concealed in a fur-lined
overcoat and a derby two sizes too large for him was Prince Lightfoot
that you saw of his face only his pale, hatchet-edged features and a
pair of unwinking, cold, light blue eyes. Nearly every man lounging at
Mike's bar recognized the renowned product of the West Side. To those
who did not, wisdom was conveyed by prodding elbows and growls of
one-sided introduction.
Upon Charley, one of the bartenders, both fame and fortune descended
simultaneously. He had once been honored by shaking hands with the great
Delano at a Seventh Avenue boxing bout. So with lungs of brass he now
cried: "Hallo, Del, old man; what'll it be?"
Mike, the proprietor, who was cranking the cash register, heard. On the
next day he raised Charley's wages five a week.
Del Delano drank a pony beer, paying for it carelessly out of his
nightly earnings of $42.85-5/7. He nodded amiably but coldly at the long
line of Mike's patrons and strolled past them into the rear room of the
café. For he heard in there sounds pertaining to his own art - the light,
stirring staccato of a buck-and-wing dance.
In the back room Mac McGowan was giving a private exhibition of the
genius of his feet. A few young men sat at tables looking on critically
while they amused themselves seriously with beer. They nodded approval
at some new fancy steps of Mac's own invention.
At the sight of the great Del Delano, the amateur's feet stuttered,
blundered, clicked a few times, and ceased to move. The tongues of one's
shoes become tied in the presence of the Master. Mac's sallow face took
on a slight flush.
From the uncertain cavity between Del Delano's hat brim and the lapels
of his high fur coat collar came a thin puff of cigarette smoke and then
a voice:
"Do that last step over again, kid. And don't hold your arms quite so
stiff. Now, then!"
Once more Mac went through his paces. According to the traditions of the
man dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs.
His gaze and expression became cataleptic; his body, unbending above
the waist, but as light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on
the ripples of a running brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased
you like a snare-drum obligato. The performance ended with an amazing
clatter of leather against wood that culminated in a sudden flat-footed
stamp, leaving the dancer erect and as motionless as a pillar of the
colonial portico of a mansion in a Kentucky prohibition town. Mac felt
that he had done his best and that Del Delano would turn his back upon
him in derisive scorn.
An approximate silence followed, broken only by the mewing of a café cat
and the hubbub and uproar of a few million citizens and transportation
facilities outside.
Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he
read disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment,
praise, and contempt.
Thus, in the countenances of those we hate or love we find what we most
desire or fear to see. Which is an assertion equalling in its wisdom and
chiaroscuro the most famous sayings of the most foolish philosophers
that the world has ever known.
Del Delano retired within his overcoat and hat. In two minutes he