Part 7

Well, we all felt real sore and disappointed but took it like a man for of course a red cross nurse would get it for the wounded and we had our health.

So papa give us all another round and we took the big molasses jugs and started off. It was getting toward twilight and pretty cold and I will say it give me sort of sore feeling towards the folks at home and blamed them for letting me be without a cigarette and you know how it is about two drinks makes me a little sore at things and I began to cheer up after the third and this was early in the evening.

Not so Mac. He has a talent for drink. Well, we had just about left the motion-picture village behind us when he commenced to sing and while I dont know what it was about, I will put it down this time because you wont know neither.

"Fortune if thou'll but gie me still Hale Breeks, a scone, an' whisky gill, An' rowth o' ryme to rave at will, Tak' a' the rest,

"An' deal 't about as they blind skill Directss thee best."

Well, naturally we applauded which is always safe when you don't understand a thing, and it certainly was comical for Mac is generally a quiet cuss and a tightwad as well. Then I spoke up.

"These jugs is too heavy!" I says. "Let's lighten 'em up a bit."

Well they thought so and we done it and felt better and then I sang them:

"Give me your love The sunshine of your eyes!"

And both Ceasare and Mac commenced to cry. Mac set down his jugs and we done the same and then Mac done the most generous thing I ever seen a Scotchman do even in liquor. He reached inside his bonnett and took out three cigarettes, shook the bonnett to show they was actually the last, and give us each one and one to himself.

Well, we all sat down on a old motor chassis or what was left of it, and burned them smokes like insense, not speaking a word! But putting that red cross lady which had been ahead of us out of our minds and thinking only of how we was going to give Mac our next packages from home when they come, and he mebbe thinking of how he was going to get them. And then we all made our jugs a little lighter and by this time it was pretty dark and we commenced to hurry back. Before we had went very far we had to hesitate about which way. Because sweetie, take it or leave it, what you write about getting lost in the new subway has nothing on finding your way about after dark by yourself in this part of the world.

Well, Mac was sure we come one way and I was sure we come another and Ceasare he had a different hunch from either of us. So we all took another little drink as it was getting mighty cold by now, and in the end we started off Ceasare's way because why wouldnt he know best which way was right and him born and raised right there on the farm? We trusted to his judgment just like him and Mac would of trusted me to tell the taxi-driver where to go from Keens.

So we went like he said, but somehow we didn't seem to get no place in particular although we kept on going for a long time: I couldn't say how long, but it seemed like a Battery to Harlem job to me only by now I loved everybody but Fritz and a sort of fog had come up or so I thought, and we was all singing, each our own sweet songs but at the same time.

"Lets throw away a few of these jugs," I remember saying--and really there was so little in some of them it wasn't worth carrying back so we just finished them off and threw them away and then we come upon a little path--or it felt like it.

"Allou!" shouted Ceasare, "we are almost there!" and with that we sure got the surprise of our lifes, for rat-tat-tat-tat-tat come a sputter of machine gun fire right at us.

III

AT first we was very much jolted by this though unhurt, and then we commenced to think it was a joke. Here we was going in behind our own lines and being fired upon.

"Shut up, ye dam fools!" Mac hollered. "Can ye no recognize yer own people?"

Then Ceasare yelled in French, but they paid no attention to us. _Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!_ it come again, and this time it made me real mad. I figured that if they didn't quit their nonsense somebody was liable to get hurt. So I saved what was left in my last jug, threw the thing away, and told Ceasare and Mac to come on and leave us beat up the poor boobs with the nasty sense of humor and show them where they got off. Well, Mac and him thought this was a good idea so they done like I done and we ran up the little hill which we could see our way pretty good in spite of the dark because they never let up on us but kept right on spitting fire. Well, we got very mad by this time and to tell the truth I can't very well recall just what did happen only when we got to the gun the boys was German!

Well, take it or leave it, I aint had a jolt like that since the night Goldringer raised our salary of his own accord after we put on the La Tour Trot. And I only wisht I could remember more about what happened. But for quite a few minutes I was terrible busy; and I guess I better admit I was tight--awful tight. Of course there was five of them and only three of us, and equally of course we licked them badly and took only one prisoner but not being anything for a lady to read I will not give particulars and anyways I dont remember any. Of course it was one of them few remaining nest of hornets which we had joked about, but really hadn't believed was there.

Well, when it was all over but the cheering and we was sure these birds had been all by their lonesome, we was pretty well sobered and hot and everything. And the first thing we done was take a look around in a few places for tobacco. And take it or leave it--we didn't find any! Not a smoke among the lot! Watter you know about that?

But one good thing we got out of the scrap was our senses back and it was easy enough to spot about where our own lines would be. So after we figured it out, and taking Fritz, the one prisoner, along, we commenced to start off that way and you can bet the poor boob was glad to go with us. You would of thought he had wanted to be with us all the time. Just like after a election at home. Cant find anybody who didnt vote the winning ticket. Which joke you may not understand, sweetie, being a lady, and I will not now stop to explain.

Well, we started back alright and as we come, I got the story which I want to tell you which commenced really when we come to that old barn. Only I had to explain how we come to be there or you wouldnt get the idea of what I am driving at for you to make your Ma understand.

Ever since I fell out of my airplane and was in the hospital and reenlisted the only place they'd take me back was in the infantry, I done a lot of thinking--and some of it stuff which might mebbe sound awful queer coming from me, especially after some of the language I have been known to use in my day, and while I hope I aint become mushy, I certainly do believe there is more to religion and such things than we have thought. Take it or leave it, mighty few fellows have lived through this war, far less fought through it, without getting religion of some kind out of it. I wonder can you get me? And make Ma get it too. So I'll tell what happened and you see if miricles is over yet or not for this is a true fact and not a story somebody told me.

Well, after we cleaned up that machine gun nest and had a cute little live German prisoner of our very own, we took him down the hill with us the best way we could in the dark and it full of holes and what not. There wasn't a bit of light--no moon nor stars nor nothing, and a wet sort of smell that made us wish for a smoke the way hardly nothing else is ever wished for, except mebbe a motion-picture salary or a drink of water after a big night--not on the desert.

Well we got on pretty good because we was nearly sober now and Ceasare he knew where we was going, and this time he really did, and so we kept up pretty good. It commenced to rain a little and the big drops felt awful nice against my cheeks which was burning hot. Made me think of when I was a kid back in Topeka and digging out to school and a pair of red mittens I had which my mother had made them--good knitting and well made like the sweater I had on that very minute which she also knit. And I thought of me and you and our snow-scene when we done that dance on the Small Time with the sleighbells on our heels--remember dear? Before we had really made good except with each other? And I thought about love too and a lot of fool stuff like that. And then I heard a funny sound for thereabouts. It was a woman moaning and crying.

Well, at first I thought mebbe I was crazy or imagined it, but Mac who was walking in front with our own little Fritz stopped short and so did Fritz and listened. It come again--the most dismal thing you ever want to hear. I turned to Ceasare and he had heard it.

"Say drool," he says, which means "Its funny" only it wasnt and he didnt mean it that way, but the other way. You know.

"It sure is!" I says. "There she goes again!"

"I think theers a wee bit housie over theere!" says Mac.

"It is the barn of my cousin's uncle," says Ceasare. "We better go look."

So with that we started across the road to where sure enough was a funny little barn--stone with a grass roof--peculiar to these parts, I guess. The nearer we got the louder the noise was, but no words to it, only sobbing very low and despairing and sort of sick--and a female--no doubt of it. There wasn't any light nor anybody moving about as far as we could tell.

"Gee! What'll we do?" I says in a whisper. "We can't pass it up!"

"Naw--we mun tak' a look inside!" whispers Mac.

"Certinmount," says Ceasare; "Mais--be careful! We put the Boch in first and see if some trick is up!"

It being Ceasare's cousin's uncle's barn he knew where the door was, and the three of us shoved Fritz up to it and made him understand he was to open it and go in ahead of the crew. We finally got it over with signs and shoves, because the bird didnt speak nothing but German and we hadnt a word of it among us. But still we made him do it and he did, and we pulled our guns and stood close behind and I stood closest and pulled not alone my gun but the little electric flashlight you sent me which I flashed in as quick as the door was opened.

IV

AND take it or leave it--there was a woman with a baby in her arms! She was rather a young round-faced woman and that kid was awfully little and held close under a big dark cloak the woman wore. The poor soul looked tired out and she had no hat and her hair was all down. The inside of the barn was a wreck and the rain was coming in through a big shellhole in the roof. She was all alone, we at once got that, and at sight of the German uniform which was all she seen at first, she give a shriek of joy and got up onto her feet.

"Got si danke!" she cried. "Ich habe----"

Then she seen the rest of us and shrunk back, covering the kid with her cloak. Fritz said something to her--quite a lot in a hurry, and evidently told her he was a prisoner, and now that she had spilled the beans, so was she. And of course even under the circumstances, she was. But take it or leave it, I certainly did feel queer when I went up to that lady with the little baby in that barn. For German or no German the situation was--well--it certainly got my goat. I took off my hat and made a bow.

"Lady," I commenced, "have no fear. Don't let us throw no scare into you. We ain't Huns--that is, I beg your pardon, but what I mean is you are perfectly safe and we will take care of you."

Well, the way she looked at me would of wrung a heart of stone. Her eyes was blue and she just stared at me as if I had hurt her--which of course was far from any mind there.

"Don't be scared," I says again. "You and the baby will get good care. Just come with us if you are able!"

When I spoke of the kid she give the poor little smothered thing a quick look and drew her cloak around it closer. Gee! but she looked fierce! 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 wishing 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 Rochelle. 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 passed 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 class 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 God 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 shell, 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 Nazimova 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 hell 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 Dickens? 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 class.

"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."