Part 10

“I don’t think----” she began severely, when the lightning broke out again and interrupted her.

“You don’t have to think,” he said. “Jump in and keep out of the wet. People don’t think at Atlantic City; they get on the job quick,” and he motioned the walking delegate with the perambulator to move up.

“All right,” she said, resignedly.

“Of course it’s all right, for you get home dry while I have a chance to meet a good fellow. Now let’s introduce. My name is Ben. There’s another part to it, but it don’t make any difference here. What’s yours?”

“You don’t lose any time, do you?”

“Never was known to so far. Come on, what is it?”

“Bess,” she answered.

“Bess; great; sounds like a sport. Not hard to say and rhymes with ‘bless’ and ‘yes’ and a lot of other words. Now, Bess, you and I are going to have one little drink just to celebrate. You know the old saying--wet out and wet in. The wise gink who’s pushing this van is heading me back to where I came from, I see; Old Vienna. I wonder if he gets a commission? Just because I like you, and because your hair matches my tie I’ll blow you to anything you like from a second-story stein up to a bottle--large or small, according to your capacity. How about it?”

“I suppose you think because you got me in this absurd wicker basket before I could call a policeman and have you arrested for insulting me that any proposition you make from now on will not be objected to. Perhaps, because I made the fatal mistake of being alone on the walk at night, you, too, have made a mistake.”

“I never make mistakes, but this time I overlooked the fact that I am hungry. So we’ll get the large bottle and something to eat on the side and between drinks we’ll tell each other the story of our past lives, and we’ll make a bet on whose is the best.”

Half an hour later they were like a couple of chums who had known each other for years, and she was calling him Ben as if she had been raised with him.

That was not quite a year ago, and it is only introduced in order that the story might be told from the very beginning.

A thousand trifling things happen in life which often turn the tide or change the course of events. A man, because his watch is a few minutes late, misses a train which is wrecked and thus saves his life; again he goes down one street instead of another, for no reason that he knows of, and avoids a catastrophe or misses an opportunity; he goes here instead of there and something occurs which changes the course of his path from that point on to the grave. Call it fate if you like, but whatever it is it is inevitable and inexorable, and no human will has been found that is strong enough to resist it. It is like the call of “Hands up” coming from the desperado with a revolver. There is no alternative. In some cases it is impulse, a seventh sense, or pure luck--good or bad--according to results, or even intuition. The wise man says that what is to be will be and trails along in contentment. Others fight it out and come forth beaten in the end.

The two of this story came back to New York hopelessly in love with each other, and at that time, so far as I know, it wasn’t the commercial love of the twentieth century, ready to switch and change as soon as the sun went under the first cloud. They met two, three and four times a week, first in one place and then in another, and they knocked about town like a pair of happy-go-lucky Bohemians with the rent paid a year in advance.

“Some day,” he said to her once, “when I am quite free to do as I like I’m going to marry you, and then all of this running to cover like a pair of rabbits chased by a brown ferret that you can’t see will stop.”

“How do you know that I would marry you even if you wanted it?” she asked.

“We’ll argue that point when the time comes,” was the answer.

“Now that we’ve known each other for so long a time--at least it seems long to me--I’ve a confession to make to you. I ought to have told you before, but it isn’t too late now.”

“Save your confession as I’m saving mine,” he said. “I never knew these past life stories to do any good, for both men and women make mistakes, and they ought to do with them as the doctors do with their failures--bury them.”

“But we are doing wrong now.”

“The boy up the farmer’s tree filling his pocket with apples is happy until he is caught. My motto is to get as many apples as you can until you hear the farmer coming and then beat it while you have the wind with you. It doesn’t require as much nerve as you think, and any time the game isn’t worth it quit. The beaten man in a fight, if he is game, always gets as much applause as the victor and sometimes a great deal more. I have seen the time when it was better to lose than to win, strange as that may seem. I don’t believe in figuring on what is to be years from now because I may be dead. There is no to-morrow in life--it is all to-day. If battles have been won, cities destroyed, empires established and colossal fortunes swept away in an hour what chance has a man--a mere atom on the earth--to speculate in futures? The typhoid germ upon an oyster, the invisible microbe of consumption eaten or breathed in with a thousand other death-dealing mites, can kill him as surely as a thunderbolt or a drop of cyanide of potassium. Upon your hands and your face at this moment are the bacteria of lockjaw only waiting for a scratch or a wound of some kind to enter your veins. Yet you do not worry about that. You see you have me talking about things I do not like and it will take at least another pint to get the taste out of my mouth. Accept my advice, if the sun is shining for you now don’t fear the coming night.”

Through all the winter he never knew where she lived or how she lived and he didn’t care, and that was because he was a philosopher, and she knew as little about him as he did about her. A future meeting was always arranged upon the heels of the previous one. Her name was Bess and his was Ben and that was sufficient.

Very queer, of course, and almost unbelievable, but true nevertheless.

And all the while the match was getting nearer to the guncotton and neither knew it. Playing with fire had come to be such a habit with these two that they didn’t fear the flames.

It was at a nice little afternoon luncheon that she became first serious and then confidential. They had reached the coffee stage--the proper time to put your elbows on the table and talk--when she said:

“Ben, I want $5,000.”

At that particular moment he was lighting a cigarette and he didn’t look up for a full minute, which is a very long while if you only know the real value of time.

“What for?” he asked, finally.

“I am married, you know. I mean you don’t know it, but I’m telling you now, and I want to get a divorce. I have been collecting evidence and I have all I want, but I shall have to get a lawyer, and I shall also have to live until the case is disposed of.”

“Why didn’t you consult me?”

“Why should I until I was ready?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Would you take the case?”

“No, but I could advise you.”

So he did, and being a very smart lawyer instead of giving her a check for the money she wanted he gave her what in his opinion was $5,000 worth of advice. You see, the substance of his love of the fall had fallen away to a shadow, and hard-headed business men don’t invest in shadows or even pay money to build a monument over a sentiment that is either dead or dying. Hearts are rarely trumps; spades have the call to-day.

“I’m going ahead anyhow,” she went on, “and I suppose when I am free that even your memory will suffer from an attack of dry rot, and that you’ll forget everything you have ever said to me--or deny it, which amounts to the same thing in the end.”

So the next day she told her story to a lawyer, not the story of Ben and the dinners, but the tales of the man to whom she was married, and when she produced certain dates and facts she was told she had the clearest kind of a clear case and that it would go through with bells on, with hubby paying the shot.

The complaint was drawn up and the papers served; and here comes the great part of this recital.

Just one week later a clean-cut, well-built young business man, of about 35, walked into Ben’s office and asked for a consultation.

“You have been recommended to me,” he began, “by a business friend of mine. I have been sued for divorce by my wife. My morals are none too good, but neither are hers. Will you take the case and defend me?”

“Yes,” said Ben, “I’ll take it,” and he called a stenographer. “Dictate your story to her and then see me to-morrow, when I will have the papers drawn up. If your counter charges amount to anything at all we can beat her--that is, if you want to beat her. As I understand it you don’t want her to get a divorce from you?”

“That’s it exactly. It isn’t that I care a rap, but I don’t care to be made a scapegoat, and I think when she knows what kind of an answer I have she’ll drop the whole case and take to the woods, which will suit me down to the ground.”

At 11 o’clock Ben saw the transcribed notes of the amanuensis and he hadn’t read more than ten lines when he jumped from his chair as though it had suddenly become red-hot.

“Miss Bates,” he called sharply, “bring me your note book.”

In she came and handed it to him.

“You’ll say nothing about this?”

“No, sir,” but there was the suggestion of a smile around the corners of her mouth.

He thrust it in his pocket and in a minute was out of the door.

There was a little luncheon date on with Bess for 12 o’clock, but he couldn’t wait. He was at the appointed place a full hour before the time, and he sat at the table glaring at the door. Exactly on the stroke of the hour she came in smiling.

“Why, Ben, what’s the matter? You look as though you had been struck by a blizzard.”

“I have. Read that,” and he handed two typewritten sheets to her. “You’ll have to drop that case of yours, and drop it quick, too. Your husband had the nerve to retain me to defend him; and in his counter charges he names me as your co-respondent, and I’m damned if he hasn’t got every move we ever made pat and to the minute. He’s been on to everything.”

He looked up suddenly and a look of suspicion came over his face.

“What is this, a job? Have you two been working me?”

“You contemptible thing,” she whispered, “you have the mind of a street sweeper. How dare you talk to me like that after all our----”

Two tears came into her eyes.

“If I were a man I would fight you and you wouldn’t dare to fight back. You’d run. Do you hear that--you’d run away, because you are a coward. I could make you run away now if I wanted, because you are afraid.”

Then she turned and walked out of the place without even so much as looking behind her, and the man was left with a lot of typewritten sheets clutched in one hand and a stenographer’s note book in the other.

There was never any suit, but if you happen to New York any day during the winter months I’ll show you this couple--Bess who made a little mistake and stepped out to where the daisies grow once or twice--and her husband, who won because he was willing to wait.

It sounds like a romance, I know, but it’s all true, every word of it, for the little stenographer told me the most of it.

WEDDING RINGS AND FOOTLIGHTS

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 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:

“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 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 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 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 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 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:

“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.