The big town - Katie Wins A Home - (2)

“Are you working on your play now?” Kate ast him.
    “It’s done,” he says. “I’m just trying to make up my mind who’s the right party to let in on it. Whoever it is, I’ll make him rich.”
    “I’ve got some money to invest,” says Katie. “Suppose you tell us about the play.”
    “I’ll give you the notion, if you’ll keep it to yourself,” says Ralston. “It’s a serious play with a novelty idear that’ll be a sensation. Suppose I go down to my suite and get the script and read it to you.”
    “Oh, if you would!” says Kate.
    “It’ll knock you dead!” he says.
    And just the thought of it was fatal to the author. He got up from his chair, done a nose dive acrost the table and laid there with his head in the chili sauce.
    I called up the clerk and had him send up the night bellhop with our guest’s key. I and the boy acted as pall bearers and got him to his “suite,” where we performed the last sad rites. Before I come away I noticed that the “suite” was a ringer for Ella’s and mine--a dinky little room with a bath. The “study” was prettily furnished with coat hangers.
    When I got back to my room Katie’d ducked and the Mrs. was asleep, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to them till we was in the restaurant at noon. Then I ast Kate if she’d figured out just what number drink it was that had started him being comical.
    “Now listen,” she says: “I don’t think that Abbott girl ever met him in her life. Anyway, she had him all wrong. We expected he’d do stunts, like she said, but he ain’t that kind that shows off or acts smart. He’s too much of a man for that. He’s a bigger man than I thought.”
    “I and the bellhop remarked that same thing,” I says.
    “And you needn’t make fun of him for getting faint,” says Katie. “I called him up a wile ago to find out how he was and he apologized and said they must of been something in that second bottle of Scotch.”
    So I says:
    “You tell him they was, but they ain’t.”
    Well, it couldn’t of been the Scotch or no other brew that ruined me. Or if it was, it worked mighty slow. I didn’t even look at a drink for three days after the party in our room. But the third day I felt rotten, and that night I come down with a fever. Ella got scared and called a doctor and he said it was flu, and if I didn’t watch my step it’d be something worse. He advised taking me to a hospital and I didn’t have pep enough to say no.
    So they took me and I was pretty sick for a couple of weeks--too sick for the Mrs. to give me the news. And it’s a wonder I didn’t have a relapse when she finally did.
    “You’ll probably yelp when you hear this,” she says. “I ain’t crazy about it myself, but it didn’t do me no good to argue at first and it’s too late for argument now. Well, to begin with, Sis is in love with Ralston.”
    “What of it!” I said. “She’s going through the city directory and she’s just got to the R’s.”
    “No, it’s the real thing this time,” said the Mrs. “Wait till you hear the rest of it. She’s going on the stage!”
    “I’ve got nothing against that,” I says. “She’s pretty enough to get by in the Follies chorus, and if she can earn money that way, I’m for it.”
    “She ain’t going into no chorus,” said Ella. “Ralston’s quit the Follies and she’s going in his show.”
    “The one he wrote?” I ast.
    “Yes,” said the Mrs.
    “And who’s going to put it on?” I ast her.
    “That’s it,” she says. “They’re going to put it on themself, Ralston and Sis. With Sis’s money. She sold her bonds, fifty thousand dollars’ worth.”
    “But listen,” I says. “Fifty thousand dollars! What’s the name of the play, Ringling’s Circus?”
    “It won’t cost all that,” said Ella. “They figure it’ll take less than ten thousand to get started. But she insisted on having the whole thing in a checking account, where she can get at it. If the show’s a big success in New York they’re going to have a company in Chicago and another on the road. And Ralston says her half of the profits in New York ought to run round $5,000 a week. But anyway, she’s sure of $200 a week salary for acting in it.”
    “Where did she get the idear she can act?” I says.
    “She’s always had it,” said the Mrs., “and I think she made him promise to put her in the show before she agreed to back it. Though she says it’s a wonderful investment! She won’t be the leading woman, of course. But they’s only two woman’s parts and she’s got one of them.”
    “Well,” I said, “if she’s going to play a sap and just acts normal, she’ll be a sensation.”
    “I don’t know what she’ll be,” says Ella. “All I know is that she’s mad over Ralston and believes everything he says. And even if you hadn’t of been sick we couldn’t of stopped her.”
    So I ast what the play was like, but Ella couldn’t tell me.
    Ralston had read it out loud to she and Kate, but she couldn’t judge from just hearing it that way. But Kate was tickled to death with it. And they’d already been rehearsing a week, but Sis hadn’t let Ella see the rehearsals. She said it made her nervous.
    “Ralston thinks the main trouble will be finding a theater,” said the Mrs. “He says they’s a shortage of them and the men that owns them won’t want to let him have one on account of jealousy.”
    “Has the Follies flopped?” I ast her.
    “No,” she says, “but they’ve left town.”
    “They always do, this time of year,” I said.
    “That’s what I thought,” says the Mrs., “but Ralston says they’d intended to stay here all the year round, but when the news come out that he’d left, they didn’t dast. He’s certainly got faith in himself. He must have, to give up a $600 a week salary. That’s what he says he was really getting.”
    “You say Katie’s in love,” I says. “How about him?”
    “I don’t know and she don’t know,” says Ella. “He calls her dearie and everything and holds her hands, but when they’re alone together, he won’t talk nothing but business. Still, as I say, he calls her dearie.”
    “Actors calls every gal that,” I says. “It’s because they can’t remember names.”
    Well, to make a short story out of it, they had another couple weeks’ rehearsals that we wasn’t allowed to see, and they finally got a theater--the Olney. They had to guarantee a $10,000 business to get it. They didn’t go to Atlantic City or nowheres for a tryout. They opened cold. And Ralston didn’t tell nobody what kind of a show it was.
    Of course he done what they generally always do on a first night. He sent out free passes to everybody that’s got a dress suit, and they’s enough of them in New York to pretty near fill up a theater. These invited guests is supposed to be for the performance wile it’s going on. After it’s through, they can go out and ride it all over the island.
    Well, the rules wasn’t exactly lived up to at “Bridget Sees a Ghost.” On account of Ralston writing the play and starring in it, the gang thought it would be comical and they come prepared to laugh. It was comical all right, and they laughed. They didn’t only laugh; they yelled. But they yelled in the wrong place.
    The programme said it was “a Daring Drama in Three Acts.” The three acts was what made it daring. It took nerve to even have one. In the first place, this was two years after the armistice and the play was about the war, and I don’t know which the public was most interested in by this time--the war or Judge Parker.
    Act 1 was in July, 1917. Ralston played the part of Francis Shaw, a captain in the American army. He’s been married a year, and when the curtain goes up, his wife’s in their New York home, waiting for him to come in from camp on his weekly leave. She sets reading the war news in the evening paper, and she reads it out loud, like people always do when they’re alone, waiting for somebody. Pretty soon in comes Bridget, the Irish maid--our own dear Katie. And I wished you could of heard her brogue. And seen her gestures. What she reminded me most like was a gal in a home talent minstrels giving an imitation of Lew Fields playing the part of the block system on the New York Central. Her first line was, “Ain’t der captain home yed?” But I won’t try and give you her dialect.
    “No,” says Mrs. Shaw. “He’s late.” So Katie says better late than never, and the wife says, yes, but she’s got a feeling that some day it’ll be never; something tells her that if he ever goes to France, he won’t come back. So Bridget says, “You been reading the war news again and it always makes you sad.” “I hate wars!” says Mrs. Shaw, and that line got one of the biggest laughs.
    After this they was a couple of minutes when neither of them could think of nothing to add, and then the phone rung and Bridget answered it. It was Capt. Shaw, saying he’d be there pretty soon; so Bridget goes right back to the kitchen to finish getting dinner, but she ain’t no sooner than left the stage when Capt. Shaw struts in. He must of called up from the public booth on his front porch.
    The audience had a tough time recognizing him without his comic make-up, but when they did they give him a good hand. Mrs. Shaw got up to greet him, but he brushed by her and come down to the footlights to bow. Then he turned and went back to his Mrs., saying “Maizie!” like this was the last place he expected to run acrost her. They kissed and then he ast her “Where is Bobbie, our dear little one?”--for fear she wouldn’t know whose little one he meant. So she rung a bell and back come Bridget, and he says “Well, Bridget!” and Bridget says, “Well, it’s the master!” This line was another riot. “Bring the little one, Bridget,” says Mrs. Shaw, and the audience hollered again.
    Wile Bridget was after the little one, the captain celebrated the reunion by walking round the room, looking at the pictures. Bridget brings the baby in and the captain uncovers its face and says, “Well, Bobbie!” Then he turns to his wife and says, “Let’s see, Maizie. How old is he?” “Two weeks,” says Maizie. “Two weeks!” says Captain Shaw, surprised. “Well,” he says, “I hope by the time he’s old enough to fight for the Stars and Stripes, they won’t be no such a thing as war.” So Mrs. Shaw says, “And I hope his father won’t be called on to make the supreme sacrifice for him and we others that must stay home and wait. I sometimes think that in wartime, it’s the women and children that suffers most. Take him back to his cozy cradle, Bridget. We mothers must be careful of our little ones. Who knows when the kiddies will be our only comfort!” So Bridget beat it out with the little one and I bet he hated to leave all the gayety.
    “Well,” says Shaw to his wife, “and what’s the little woman been doing?”
    “Just reading,” she says, “reading the news of this horrible war. I don’t never pick up the paper but what I think that some day I’ll see your name amongst the dead.”
    “Well,” says the captain bravely, “they’s no danger wile I stay on U. S. soil. But only for you and the little one, I would welcome the call to go Over There and take my place in the battle line. The call will come soon, I believe, for they say France needs men.” This rumor pretty near caused a riot in the audience and Ralston turned and give us all a dirty look.
    Then Bridget come in again and said dinner was ready, and Shaw says, “It’ll seem funny to set down wile I eat.” Which was the first time I ever knew that army captains took their meals off the mantelpiece.
    Wile the Shaws was out eating, their maid stayed in the living room, where she’d be out of their way. It seems that Ralston had wrote a swell speech for her to make in this spot, about what a tough thing war is, to come along and separate a happy young couple like the Shaws that hadn’t only been married a year. But the speech started “This is terrible!” and when Bridget got that much of it out, some egg in the gallery hollered “You said a mouthful, kid!” and stopped the show.
    The house finally quieted down, but Katie was dumb for the first time in her life. She couldn’t say the line that was the cue for the phone to ring, and she had to go over and answer a silent call. It was for the captain, and him and his wife both come back on the stage.
    “Maizie,” he says, after he’d hung up, “it’s came! That was my general! We sail for France in half an hour!”
    “O husband!” says Maizie. “This is the end!”
    “Nonsense!” says Shaw with a brave smile. “This war means death for only a small per cent. of our men.”
    “And almost no captains,” yells the guy in the gallery.
    Shaw gets ready to go, but she tells him to wait till she puts on her wraps; she’ll go down to the dock and see him off.
    “No, darling,” he says. “Our orders is secret. I can’t give you the name of our ship or where we’re sailing from.”
    So he goes and she flops on the couch w’ining because he wouldn’t tell her whether his ship left from Times Square or Grand Central.
    They rung the curtain down here to make you think six days has passed. When it goes up again, Maizie’s setting on the couch, holding the little one. Pretty soon Bridget comes in with the evening paper.
    “They’s a big headline, mum,” she says. “A troopship has been torpedoed.”
    Well, when she handed her the paper, I could see the big headline. It said, “Phillies Hit Grimes Hard.” But Maizie may of had a bet on Brooklyn. Anyway, she begin trembling and finally fell over stiff. So Bridget picked up the paper and read it out loud:
    “Amongst the men lost was Capt. F. Shaw of New York.”
    Down went the curtain again and the first act was over, and some jokesmith in the audience yelled “Author! Author!”
    “He’s sunk!” said the egg in the gallery.
    Well, Maizie was the only one in the whole theater that thought Shaw was dead. The rest of us just wished it. Still you couldn’t blame her much for getting a wrong idear, as it was Nov. 11, 1918--over a year later--when the second act begins, and she hadn’t heard from him in all that time. It wasn’t never brought out why. Maybe he’d forgot her name or maybe it was Burleson’s fault, like everything else.
    The scene was the same old living room and Maizie was setting on the same old couch, but she was all dressed up like Elsie Ferguson. It comes out that she’s expecting a gentleman friend, a Mr. Thornton, to dinner. She asks Bridget if she thinks it would be wrong of her to accept the guy the next time he proposed. He’s ast her every evening for the last six months and she can’t stall him much longer. So Bridget says it’s all right if she loves him, but Maizie don’t know if she loves him or not, but he looks so much like her late relic that she can’t hardly tell the difference and besides, she has got to either marry or go to work, or her and the little one will starve. They’s a knock at the door and Thornton comes in. Him and the absent captain looks as much alike as two brothers, yours and mine. Bridget ducks and Thornton proposes. Maizie says, “Before I answer, I must tell you a secret. Captain Shaw didn’t leave me all alone. I have a little one, a boy.” “Oh, I love kiddies,” says Thornton. “Can I see him?” So she says it’s seven o’clock and the little one’s supposed to of been put to bed, but she has Bridget go get him.
    The little one’s entrance was the sensation of this act. In Act 1 he was just three or four towels, but now Bridget can’t even carry him acrost the stage, and when she put him on his feet, he comes up pretty near to her shoulder. And when Thornton ast him would he like to have a new papa, he says, “Yes, because my other papa’s never coming back.”
    Well, they say a woman can’t keep a secret, but if Thornton had been nosing round for six months and didn’t know till now that they was a spanker like Bobbie in the family circle, I wouldn’t hardly call Maizie the town gossip.
    After the baby’d went back to read himself to sleep and Mrs. Shaw had yessed her new admirer, Bridget dashed in yelling that the armistice was signed and held up the evening paper for Maizie and Thornton to see. The great news was announced in code. It said: “Phillies Hit Grimes Hard.” And it seemed kind of silly to not come right out and say “Armistice Signed!” Because as I recall, even we saps out here in South Bend had knew it since three o’clock that morning.
    The last act was in the same place, on Christmas Eve, 1918.
    Maizie and her second husband had just finished doing up presents for the little one. We couldn’t see the presents, but I suppose they was giving him a cocktail shaker and a shaving set. Though when he come on the stage you could see he hadn’t aged much since Act 2. He hadn’t even begin to get bald.
    Thornton and the Mrs. went off somewheres and left the kid alone, but all of a sudden the front door opened and in come old Cap Shaw, on crutches. He seen the kid and called to him. “Who are you?” says the little one. “I’m Santa Claus,” says the Cap, “and I’ve broughten you a papa for Christmas.” “I don’t want no papa,” says Bobbie. “I’ve just got a new one.” Then Bridget popped in and seen “the master” and hollered, “A ghost!” So he got her calmed down and she tells him what’s came off. “It was in the paper that Capt. F. Shaw of New York was lost,” she says. “It must of been another Capt. F. Shaw!” he says.
    “It’s an odd name,” hollered the guy in the gallery.
    The Captain thinks it all over and decides it’s his move. He makes Bridget promise to never tell that she seen him and he says good-by to she and the kid and goes out into the night.
    Maizie comes in, saying she heard a noise and what was it? Was somebody here? “Just the boy with the evening paper,” says Bridget. And the cat’s got Bobbie’s tongue. And Maizie don’t even ask for the paper. She probably figured to herself it was the old story; that Grimes was still getting his bumps.
    Well, I wished you could of read what the papers wrote up about the show. One of them said that Bridget seen a ghost at the Olney theater last night and if anybody else wanted to see it, they better go quick because it wouldn’t be walking after this week. Not even on crutches. The mildest thing they said about Ralston was that he was even funnier than when he was in the Follies and tried to be. And they said the part of Bridget was played by a young actress that they hoped would make a name for herself, because Ralston had probably called her all he could think of.
    We waited at the stage door that night and when Kate come out, she was crying. Ralston had canned her from the show.
    “That’s nothing to cry about,” I says. “You’re lucky! It’s just like as if a conductor had put you off a train a couple of minutes before a big smash-up.”
    The programme had been to all go somewheres for supper and celebrate the play’s success. But all Katie wanted now was to get in a taxi and go home and hide.
    On the way, I ast her how much she was in so far.
    “Just ten thousand,” she says.
    “Ten thousand!” I said. “Why, they was only one piece of scenery and that looked like they’d bought it secondhand from the choir boys’ minstrels. They couldn’t of spent one thousand, let alone ten.”
    “We had to pay the theater a week’s rent in advance,” she says. “And Jimmy give five thousand to a man for the idear.”
    “The idear for what?” I ast.
    “The idear for the play,” she said.
    “That stops me!” I says. “This baby furnishes idears for all the good actors in the world, but when he wants one for himself, he goes out and pays $5,000 for it. And if he got a bargain, you’re Mrs. Fiske.”
    “Who sold him the idear?” ast Ella.
    “He wouldn’t tell me,” says Kate.
    “Ponzi,” I said.
    Ralston called Kate up the next noon and made a date with her at the theater. He said that he was sorry he’d been rough. Before she went I ast her to give me a check for the forty thousand she had left so’s I could buy back some of her bonds.
    “I haven’t got only $25,000,” she says. “I advanced Jimmy fifteen thousand for his own account, so’s he wouldn’t have to bother me every time they was bills to meet.”
    So I said: “Listen: I’ll go see him with you and if he don’t come clean with that money, I’ll knock him deader’n his play.”
    “Thank you!” she says. “I’ll tend to my own affairs alone.”
    She come back late in the afternoon, all smiles.
    “Everything’s all right,” she said. “I give him his choice of letting me be in the play or giving me my money.”
    “And which did he choose?” I ast her.
    “Neither one,” she says. “We’re going to get married.”
    “Bridget” went into the ashcan Saturday night and the wedding come off Monday. Monday night they left for Boston, where the Follies was playing. Kate told us they’d took Ralston back at the same salary he was getting before.
    “How much is that?” I ast her.
    “Four hundred a week,” she says.
    Well, two or three days after they’d left, I got up my nerve and says to the Mrs.:
    “Do you remember what we moved to the Big Town for? We done it to see Life and get Katie a husband. Well, we got her a kind of a husband and I’ll tell the world we seen Life. How about moseying back to South Bend?”
    “But we haven’t no home there now.”
    “Nor we ain’t had none since we left there,” I says. “I’m going down and see what’s the first day we can get a couple of lowers.”
    “Get uppers if it’s quicker,” says the Mrs.
    So here we are, really enjoying ourselfs for the first time in pretty near two years. And Katie’s in New York, enjoying herself, too, I suppose. She ought to be, married to a comedian. It must be such fun to just set and listen to him talk.
    THE END
    Transcriber’s Notes
    Misspellings in the text, colloquial and archaic usage, and hyphenation have been retained except on Page 225, where “Ralson thinks the” has been replaced by “Ralston thinks the”.
    Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: italics.
    New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.