Part 11

A flash of cerise plume, a jangle of chatelaine jewelry, and Ysobel disappeared behind one of the doors, her many-angled silhouette flashing against the far side of the ground glass.

Della breathed in deep and gulped in her dry, hot throat; her fingers, the damp cold born of nervousness, curled in toward her warm palms. She daubed at her lips with a handkerchief.

Simultaneously a door opposite her opened, and a short, bullet-headed figure in a light checked suit, and a diamond horseshoe scarf-pin that caught the points of light stepped out into the pale nimbus cast by the white signal-light of an up-going elevator.

With a gasp that caught in her throat Della darted in her too narrow skirt across the corridor, reached out, and grasped the light-gray coat-sleeve.

"Look," she cried, thrusting herself between him and the trellis-work of the elevator-shaft and throwing back her head so that her bare neck, soft as the breast feathers of a dove, rose and fell with a dove's agitated breathing, "Look--I'm here!"

The short figure turned on his heel and looked up at her, his shoulder-line a full three inches below hers, and his small, predaceous eyes squinting far back into his head.

"Gad--what?"

"I--I'm here--sir--don't you remember--me--I'm here."

He regarded her with the detailed appraisal of the expert, and his glance registered points in her favor.

"Gad!" he repeated.

"Don't--you remember--me--sir--don't--"

"Not bad for a big girl--are you--eh?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Sure--you're the little girl I met out West--didn't I?--two seasons ago with--"

"No--no--no! Don't you remember me now?"

She tore her hat backward from its carefully adjusted tilt, so that it revealed the brassy gold of her hair, and took a step toward him.

"_Now_ don't you remember?"

"Sure--sure--you're the little girl from--sure I'd remember a big little girl like you anywhere."

"You remember now? On the twenty-eight-hour accommodation out of St. Louis. We--I got on at Terre Haute and sat across from you while he--they made up the berth, and you said--"

"Could I forget a big little queen like you! You've grown to a real big girl, ain't you? Come back in my office, sister. That's how much I think of you--with a whole company waitin' for me over at the Gotham Theater--come in!"

"I--just got here--Mr.--Mr.--"

"Myers, if anybody should ask you. That's who you're dealin' with--Hy Myers, if you should happen to forget."

"Ain't it funny, Mr. Myers, my runnin' into you right off. I never thought I'd find you in this town. My little sister I was tellin' you about will be here soon and--"

"This way!"

"I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till--"

"In here, sister, where we can talk business alone."

She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and white-shirt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.

Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell, almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung from caprice and whose papier-mache thrones had long since slumped to pulp.

"Now sit here, sister--here in this chair next to my desk, where I can look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!"

"I'm ready for that job now, Mr.--Mr. Myers."

"Well--well--well!"

Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.

"Big little girl--can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?"

"I've had a hard time of it, Mr.--"

"Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister."

"Quit!"

"Dear child--you mustn't act like that--here--hold out your--"

"Quit!"

"Come now--"

"We want jobs, me and my little sister--when she gets here. I told you about her, you remember. I--I've had experience on Western--"

"Naughty--naughty eyes--devilish eyes! Don't you look at me like that--don't! You big little devil, you!"

"What is it, sir?"

"Good! Sit there with the sun on you--you've got hair like--"

"I've had experience with first-row--"

"Gad!" He swerved suddenly forward in his chair so that his small feet touched the floor. "Gad, stand up there--stand over there in that sunshine by the window!"

"What--"

"Stand up--there, agin that screen there--"

Dark as a nun in her wimple, but golden as a sun-flower, she rose as Trilby rose to the eye of Svengali--

"Gad!" he repeated, bringing his small tight fist down on a littered ash-tray, "by Gad!"

Wine was suddenly in her blood.

"You ought to see me and my little sister when we pose together; we--"

"Take off your hat, girl."

She stood suddenly quiet, as if the wine in her blood had seethed and quieted.

"Aw--no--whatta you think I am--I--"

"Take off your hat, big little girl, and if you're good to me I'll tell you something. If I hadn't taken a fancy to you I wouldn't tell you, neither."

She lifted the heavy brim with both hands and stood in the bar of sunlight.

"Gad!" he cried--"Gad!" and jerked open a drawer and threw the big bulk of a typewritten manuscript on the desk before him. "Read that; read that, sister!" His heavy spatulate finger underlined the caption.

"'The--Red--Widow,' 'The Red Widow,' by Al Wilson."

He rose and jerked her by her two wrists so that she flounced toward him, her hair awry and the breath jumping out of her bosom.

"That's _you_, sister--the Red Widow!"

"The Red--Widow?"

"You're goin' out in a road chorus next week and get broke in. At the end of a season I'm goin' to feature you in the biggest show that ever I had up my sleeve."

She regarded him with glazed eyes of one dazed, and backed away from him.

"Me!"

"You--the Red Widow, sister! You know what a Hy Myers production means, don't you? You know what an Al Wilson show is, don't you? Add them two. I'll make you make that show or bust. Stand off there and lemme look at you again--there--so!"

"Quit!"

She sprang back from his touch and raised her hand with the glove dangling in the attitude of a horseman cracking his whip. "You--you quit!" Like Dryope changed into a tree, with the woodiness creeping up her limbs and the glove in her passive hand, she stood with her arm flung upward. "You quit!"

"Dear child, you mustn't--"

"I--I'm goin'--lemme go!"

"Aw, come now, sister; don't get frisky--I didn't mean to make you sore. Gee! Ain't you a touchy little devil?"

"I'm goin'."

"If that's your number, all righty--but you're just kiddin'--you ain't goin' to be too independent in one of the worst seasons in the business."

She moved toward the door with her hand outstretched to the knob.

"You better think twice, sister--but don't lemme keep you--there's other Red Widows as good and better'n you beatin' like an army at my door this minute. But don't lemme keep you."

"Will--will you lemme alone?"

"Sure I will, if it'll make you feel any better--you cold little queen, you. Nervous as a unbroke colt, ain't you? Sit down there and watch."

He touched a buzzer, and a uniformed boy sprang through the door to his elbow.

"Write Al Wilson to meet me here to-morrow at ten."

"Yes, sir." The uniform flashed out.

She moved around him cautiously, not taking her eyes from his face.

"Have I--have I got a job?"

"Sure you have. I'll send you out to Frisco in a chorus that'll limber you up, all right, but I won't let you stay long. I won't let a little queen like you run away for long."

"Frisco--me--gee!"

"Gad! maybe I won't neither. How would you like to play right close to home over in Brooklyn? I've got a chorus over there that'll take the stiffness out of you. I don't want to let a great, big, beautiful doll like you too far away."

"Frisco--I like Frisco."

"But hold up your right hand. Don't you tell nobody I'm pushing you for next season's feature--that's our little secret--between you and me and Al."

"I was gettin' thirty dollars."

"Don't you worry about that, Doll-Doll. You come back here to-morrow at ten. I wanna show Al how the Red Widow we've been lookin' for dropped right into my hands. He can't squeal to me no more about _types_."

"I--I'm going now, Mr. Myers--to-morrow, then, at ten--"

"Where you goin', Doll?"

"Home. I guess I've lost my friend now."

"Wait; I'm going your way."

"You don't even know which way I'm goin'."

"Sure I do. I'll drop you there in my car."

"Oh--I--I want--to walk--I do."

"None of that, sister. I'm treatin' you white, and you gotta do the same by me. I won't bite you, you little scare-cat! I'm goin' to make things happen to you that'll make you wake up every day pinchin' yourself."

"My little sister, Mr. Myers, has got me beat on looks."

"But you gotta treat me white, sister. We can talk business in the car, but you gotta have confidence in me. I won't bite--you big little girl, you."

"I don't want--to go--that way, Mr. Myers--I gotta go some place first."

"Comin', sister?"

"I--I--"

"Comin'?"

"Yes."

* * * * *

On its hundredth night "The Red Widow," playing capacity houses at the Gotham Theater, presented each lady in the audience a "handsome souvenir" of Red Widow perfume attractively nestled in a red-satin box with a color picture of Della Delaney on the label.

To the pretty whifflings and "ah's!" of every feminine nose present, to the over-a-million-copies-sold waltz-theme that was puckering the mouth of every newsboy in New York, to the rustly settling back into chairs, furs, and standing-room-only attitudes against Corinthian pillars, the hundredth-night, second-act curtain rose on an audience with an additional sense unexpectedly gratified and the souvenir-loving soul of every woman present sniffing its appreciation.

Comedy is a classic prodigal who has wandered far. Comus has discarded his mantle and donned a red nose, a split-up-the-back waistcoat, and a pair of clap-sticks.

Harlequin and Cap-and-Bells have doffed the sock and many colors for the sixty-dollar-a-week role of million-dollar pickle-magnate pursuing a forty-dollar juvenile, who, in turn, is pursuing the two-hundred-dollar-a-week Red Widow from Act One--summer hotel at Manhattan Beach to Act Two--tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.

For the hundredth time the opening act of "The Red Widow"--a ghoul at the grave of a hundred musical comedies--sang to its background of white-flannel chorus-men, drop-curtain of too-blue ocean and jungle of cotton-back palms.

A painted ship idled on a painted ocean. Trees reared their tropical leaves into a visible drop-net.

It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-e-l--

announced the two front rows, kicking backward three times.

It is the Ba-a-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-el--

agreed the kicked-at, white-flannel background.

A shapely octet in silk-and-lisle regimentals, black-astrakhan capes flung over one shoulder, and black-astrakhan hats as high as a majordomo's bent eight silk-and-lisle left knees with rhythmic regularity. Six ponies in yellow skirts, as effulgent as inverted chrysanthemums, and led by a black pony with a gold star in her hair, kicked to the wings and adored the audience. A chain of "Bungel belles" stretched their thin arms above their heads in a letter O and prinked about on their toes like bantams in a dust road.

Five trombones, ten violas, twelve violins, a drum and bass-viol bombardment rose to a high-C climax, with the chorus scrambling loyally after them like a mountaineer scaling a cliff for an eaglet's nest.

It is the Bay--it is the Bay--it is the Ba-a-ay Of Love and Bunge-e-e-l--

shouted the seventy-five of them, receding with a grape-vine motion into the wings.

Enter Cyrus Hinkelstein, mayor and pickle-magnate of Brineytown, on the Suwanee, in a too large white waistcoat, white-duck comedy spats, and a pink-canvas bald head.

He institutes an immediate search behind tropical vines and along the under sides of palm fronds for the forty-dollar juvenile who is pursuing the Red Widow from the summer hotel, Act One to Act Two, tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.

Enter the Red Widow in a black, fish-scale gown that calls out the stealthy pencil of every Middle West dressmaker in the house and rapid calculation from the women with a good memory and some fish-scales on a discarded basque.

The Red Widow, with a poinsettia sprawling like a frantic clutch at her heart, and her burnished gold head rising with the grace of a gold flower out of a vase!

Cyrus assumes a swoon of delight, throws out a cue--"The date-trees are blooming"--the conductor raps his baton twice for their feature duet entitled, "Oh, Let Me Die on Broadway," and the spot-light focuses.

The house clamors for a fourth encore, but the lights flash on. The pursuing son, in the face of prolonged applause, white trousers, and a straw katy, bursts upon the scene with his features in first position for the denouement.

But the audience clamors on. The son postpones his expression and leans against a jungle to a fourth encore of the tuneful Thanatopsis.

On the final curtain of the hundredth night the company bowed two curtain-calls to the capacity house busily struggling into wraps and up aisles.

The Red Widow, linked between the pickle-magnate and the triumphant son, flanked by sextets, octets, and regimentals, bowed four times over three sheaths of American beauties and a high-handled basket of carnations.

Then, almost on the drop of the curtain, the immediate roar of sliding wings, which mingled with the exit strains of the orchestra, like a Debussy right-hand theme defying the left, and the rumble of forests, retreating.

Scene-shifters, to whom every encore is a knell, demolished whole kingdoms at a lunge, half a hundred satin slippers flashed up a spiral staircase to chorus dressing-rooms, the Red Widow flung the trail of the gown she had on--so carelessly dragged across the tarpaulin terra firma of Bungel--across one bare arm and darted through the door with a red star painted on the panel.

Her dressing-room, hung in vivid chintz, with a canopied table replacing the make-up shelf, and a passing show of signed photographs tacked along the wall, was as fantastic as Gnomes' Cave.

A wildness of chiffon and sleazy silk hung from the wall-hooks, a pair of gauze aeroplane wings hovered across a chair, and, atop a trunk, impertinent as a Pierette, the black pony was removing the gold star from her hair.

"Warm house to-night, Del. I sent Sibbie across to the hotel with your flowers."

"Yeh--best house yet."

"But gee! it's a wonder he wouldn't give away kerosene."

"Rotten stuff."

"It made me so dizzy I nearly flopped like a seal in the pony prance. He must 'a' bought it by the keg."

"I told him it was strong enough to run his new motor-boat. Gawd, ain't I tired! How'd the aeroplane song go, Ysobel?"

"Swell! But leave it to Billy to hog your act every time. I seen him grab a laugh when the propellers was workin'."

"Undo me, Ysobel? Why'd you let Sibbie go? Can't you let me get used to having a maid, hon'?"

"Poor kid, you're dead, ain't you? But you gotta go with him to-night or he'll howl."

Della lowered her beaded lashes over eyes that smarted, and raised her arms like Niobe entreating fate.

"Sure, I gotta go. He's been bragging about this hundredth-night blow-out for a month."

"Quit squirming, Del! Hold still, can't you?"

"Five recalls on 'Let me die,' Ysobel."

"You never went better."

Della slid out of her gown and into a gold-colored kimono embroidered in black flying swans, and creamed off her make-up in long, even strokes.

"Look, he wants me to wear that silver-fox coat and the cloth-of-silver gown. Honest, it's so heavy I nearly fainted in it the other night. Lots he cares!"

"It'll be a swell blow, Del. The hundredth night he gave when Perfecta was starring was town talk. He don't stop at nothin'."

"No, he don't stop at nothin'."

"He gimme a look to-night when I came off from the prance. He'd gimme notice in a minute if he didn't need me. He knows that ballet would fall like a bride's biscuit without me."

"Sure it would! He likes your work, hon'. I never pulled any strings for you, neither. He just seen your try-out and liked it swell."

"Sure he did, but he's that jealous of you! He was dead sore when you brought me down here to dress with you. Gee, you're tired, ain't you, dearie?"

"Dog-tired! That staircase waltz always does me up."

"Lay your head down here a minute. Ain't that just life, though? Here we are kicking just like a year ago in Fallows's 'Neatly Furnished.'"

"I ain't kickin', Ysobel. I wake up every morning pinchin' myself."

"Gawd, if you gotta long face, what ought the rest of us to have? You're the luckiest girl any of us knows. Did you see what the new _Yellow Book_ says about you? 'The Titian-headed Venus de Meelo'--how's that--huh?"

"Just the same, you wouldn't change places with me, Ysobel! Don't wriggle out of answering me! Now, would you?"

"Watch out, you're mussing up your beauty curls. Here, lemme pin that diamond heart on the left shoulder of your dress. Hurry up, honey, Myers will be here any minute, and you know how sore he gets if you keep him waitin'."

"Do I?"

"Say, but that silver's swell on you!"

"Say, Ysobel, wait till they see my little sister. We could do a twin act that would take 'em off their feet. That new 'Heavenly Twin' show that Al read us the first act of, with Cottie and me featured, and you doin' the Columbine--gee--"

"'Sh-h-h-h! There--he--is--knockin'."

"It can't be Hy already. I--I ain't dressed yet, Hy--just a minute! Oh, it's a telegram, Ysobel; take it, like a good girl."

"Say, it ain't another from Third Row Bobbie, is it? You ought to tip him off that he's wastin' his pin-money on you, hon'."

Della ripped the flap, read, and very suddenly sat down on the silver-fox coat. The color drained out of her face, and her breath came irregularly as if her heart had missed a beat.

"Della--Del--darlin'--what's the matter?"

"Oh, Gawd!"

"What, darlin'--what?"

"Read!"

Ysobel peered across the bare shoulder, her slim silk legs tiptoed and her neck arched.

Maw buried yesterday. Money you sent for her birthday paid funeral. Am ready. Wire directions. COTTIE.

"Aw--aw, Del darlin'--honest, I--I don't know what to say, only it--only--it ain't like she was your _real_ mother, Del darlin'. You can't be hard hit over a blind old dame that used to make it hot as sixty for you."

"Poor old soul--she lived like a rat and--died like one, I guess."

"With you sending her money all the time--nixy!"

"Like a rat! Poor old maw."

Della's voice was far removed, like one who speaks through the film of a trance.

"When my old dame died I felt bad, too, but Gawd knows she wasn't peaches and cream to have around the house. And look, darlin'--Cottie's comin' now--look--Cottie's comin'!"

"Cottie--Cottie--comin'?"

"Sure she is--see, read, honey--'Am ready.'"

"Oh, Gawd, Ysobel, now that it's come I--I'm scared--she--she's such a kid--she--Ysobel--I--I'm scared--I--"

"'Sh-h-h. There he is knockin', Del. Try and smile, hon'. You know how sore a long face makes him. Maybe you won't have to go to-night, now--smile, darlin'--smile! Come in!"

The door opened with a fling, and enter Mr. Hy Myers, an unlighted cigar at a sharp oblique in one corner of his mouth, hat slightly askew, and a full-length overcoat flung open to reveal a mink lining and studded shirt-front.

"Gad," he said, dallying backward on his heels, his thumbs in the arm-circles of his waistcoat, and regarding the shining silver figure--"Gad, girl, you're all right."

Della drew back against the dressing-table and twirled the rings on her fingers.

"I--I got bad news, Hy. I can't go to-night. Here, read for yourself."

He reached for the paper, passing Ysobel as if she belonged to the trappings of the room.

"I--I can't--go to-night, Hy."

He read with the sharp eyes of a gray hawk of the world, and drew his coat together in a gesture of buttoning up.

"Don't pull any of that stuff on me, Beauty. Just because the old devil you've been tellin' me about--"

"Oh--you--you--"

"Them ain't real tears--you'd be laughin' in your sleeve if you had any on. Come on; step lively, Beauty. I ain't givin' this blow-out to be made a fool out of. Give her a daub of color there, Du Prez."

"Hy! She was my stepmother, and--"

"Come, Beauty, what you actin' up for? Ain't that doll you've been piping about all these months comin' now that the old woman is out of the way? Bring her on and lemme have a look at her. If she's in your class, lemme look her over."

"Gimme--a minute, Hy. I--I just wanna send--a wire."

"Sure; tell her to come on. I'll send it for you. I'll look her over, and--"

"No--no! Let Ysobel send it. You do it, Ysobel. Here, gimme your pen, Hy."

She wrote with her breath half a moan in her throat, and her bosom heaving and flashing the diamond heart.

"Send it right off, Ysobel darlin'--read it and send it off, darlin'."

She daubed a rabbit's foot under each eye and slid into the silver-fox coat.

"Read it, darlin', and send it."

Ysobel read slowly like a child spelling out its task.

Breakers--ahead. Stay at home, dearie. DELLA.

Through eyes that were magnified through the glaze of tears Ysobel burrowed her head in the silver-fox collar.

"Oh, Del--Del darlin'--I'm wise--but, oh, my darlin'."

"Come on. Whatta you think this is, a soul-kiss scene--you two?"

"Comin', Hy--comin'."

"Della darlin'."

"Good night, Ysobel; lemme go, dearie--lemme go."

Then out through a labyrinth of stacked scenery, with her elbow in the cup of his hand, and the silver shimmering in the gloom.

"Gad, you will have that scrawny little hanger-on around and gettin' on my nerves! If I weren't always humorin' the daylights out of you she wouldn't spoil a ballet of mine for fifteen minutes, she--"

"It's darn little I ask out of you, but you gotta lemme have her--you gotta lemme have that much, or the whole blame show can--"

"Keep cool, there, Tragedy Queen, and watch your step! I don't want you limpin' in there to-night with a busted ankle on top of your long face."

They high-stepped through a dirty passageway stacked with stage bric-a-brac, out into a whiff of night air, across a pavement, and into a wine-colored limousine.

He climbed in after her, throwing open the great fur collar of his coat and lighting his cigar.

They plunged forward into the white flare of Broadway, and within her plate-glass inclosure she was like a doomed queen riding to her destiny.

"Light up there, Dolly! No long face to-night! The crowd's going to be there waitin' for you. Look at me, you little devil--you little devil!"

"Gawd, what are you made of? Ain't you got _no_ feelings?"

"Tush! You ain't real on that talk. I know you better'n you know yourself. Ain't I told you that you can bring the little sister on and lemme look her over? There's nothin' I wouldn't do for you, Beauty. You got me crazy to-night over you. Eh! Pretty soft for a little hayseed like you!"

She smiled suddenly, flashed her teeth, cooed in her throat, and reared her white throat out of its fur like a swan rears its head out of its snowy neck.

"I--I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second, Hy. I--I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune up--before--we get there. Just a minute, Hy."

"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"

"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."

"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do you, Beauty?"