Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
"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