The Memento
Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned herback on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, be-cause Broadway had often done the same thing toMiss D'Armande. Still, the "tats" seemed to haveit, for the ex-leading lady of the "Reaping theWhirlwind" company had everything to ask ofBroadway, while there was no vice-versa.
So Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned the back ofher chair to her window that overlooked Broadway,and sat down to stitch in time the lisle-thread heelof a black silk stocking. The tumult and glitter ofthe roaring Broadway beneath her window had nocharm for her; what she greatly desired was thestifling air of a dressing-room on that fairylandstreet and the roar of an audience gathered in thatcapricious quarter. In the meantime, those stock-ings must not be neglected. Silk does wear out so,but -- after all, isn't it just the only goods there is?
The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathonlooks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff abovethe whirlpool where the tides of two great thorough-fares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the endof their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust thesock. Thick in the streets around it are booking-offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-pal-aces to which those thorny paths lead.Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dimand fusty Thalia, you seem to have found yourselfin some great ark or caravan about to sail, or fly, orroll away on wheels. About the house lingers a senseof unrest, of expectation, of transientness, even ofanxiety and apprehension. The halls are a labyrinth.Without a guide, you wander like a lost soul in aSam Loyd puzzle.
Turning any corner, a dressing-sack or a cul-de-sacmay bring you up short. You meet alarmingtragedians stalking in bath-robes in search of ru-mored bathrooms. From hundreds of rooms come thebuzz of talk, scraps of new and old songs, and theready laughter of the convened players.
Summer has come; their companies have disbanded,and they take their rest in their favorite caravansary,while they besiege the managers for engagements forthe coming season.
At this hour of the afternoon the day's work oftramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over.Past you, as you ramble distractedly through themossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled,starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish ofsilk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor ofgaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious youngcomedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather indoorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching fromsomewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage,and the crash of dishes on the American plan.
The indeterminate hum of life in the Thalia isenlivened by the discreet popping -- at reasonableand salubrious intervals -- of beer-bottle corks.Thus punctuated, life in the genial hostel scans easily-- the comma being the favorite mark, semicolonsfrowned upon, and periods barred.
Miss D'Armannde's room was a small one. Therewas room for her rocker between the dresser and thewash-stand if it were placed longitudinally. On thedresser were its usual accoutrements, plus the ex-lead-ing lady's collected souvenirs of road engagementsand photographs of her dearest and best professionalfriends.
At one of these photographs she looked twice orthrice as she darned, and smiled friendlily.
"I'd like to know where Lee is just this minute,"she said, half-aloud.
If you had been privileged to view the photographthus flattered, you would have thought at the firstglance that you saw the picture of a many-petalledwhite flower, blown through the air by a storm. Butthe floral kingdom was not responsible for that swirlof petalous whiteness.
You saw the filmy, brief skirt of Miss Rosalie Rayas she made a complete heels-over-head turn in herwistaria-entwined swing, far out from the stage, highabove the heads of the audience. You saw the cam-era's inadequate representation of the graceful,strong kick, with which she, at this exciting moment,sent flying, high and far, the yellow silk garter thateach evening spun from her agile limb and descendedupon the delighted audience below.
You saw, too, amid the black-clothed, mainly mas-culine patrons of select vaudeville a hundred handsraised with the hope of staying the flight of the bril-liant aerial token.
Forty weeks of the best circuits this act hadbrought Miss Rosalie Ray, for each of two years.She did other things during her twelve minutes -- asong and dance, imitations of two or three actors whoare but imitations of themselves, and a balancingfeat with a step-ladder and feather-duster; but whenthe blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies,and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, withthe golden circlet conspicuous in the place whence itwas soon to slide and become a soaring and covetedguerdon -- then it was that the audience rose in itsseat as a single man -- or presumably so -- and in-dorsed the specialty that made Miss Ray's name afavorite in the booking-offices.
At the end of the two years Miss Ray suddenly an-nounced to her dear friend, Miss D'Armande, thatshe was going to spend the summer at an antediluvianvillage on the north shore of Long Island, and thatthe stage would see her no more.
Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D'Armandehad expressed her wish to know the whereabouts ofher old chum, there were sharp raps at her door.
Doubt not that it was Rosalie Ray. At the shrillcommand to enter she did so, with something of atired flutter, and dropped a heavy hand-bag on thefloor. Upon my word, it was Rosalie, in a loose,travel-stained automobileless coat, closely tied brownveil with yard-long, flying ends, gray walking-suit andtan oxfords with lavender overgaiters.
When she threw off her veil and hat, you saw apretty enough face, now flushed and disturbed bysome unusual emotion, and restless, large eyes withdiscontent marring their brightness. A heavy pileof dull auburn hair, hastily put up, was escaping incrinkly, waving strands and curling, small locks fromthe confining combs and pins.
The meeting of the two was not marked by theeffusion vocal, gymnastical, osculatory and catecheti-cal that distinguishes the greetings of their unpro-fessional sisters in society. There was a brief clinch,two simultaneous labial dabs and they stood on thesame footing of the old days. Very much like theshort salutations of soldiers or of travellers in for-eign wilds are the welcomes between the strollers atthe corners of their crisscross roads.
"I've got the hall-room two flights up aboveyours," said Rosalie, "but I came straight to see youbefore going up. I didn't know you were here tillthey told me."
"I've been in since the last of April," said Lyn-nette. "And I'm going on the road with a 'FatalInheritance' company. We open next week in Eliz-abeth. I thought you'd quit the stage, Lee. Tellme about yourself."
Rosalie settled herself with a skilful wriggle onthe top of Miss D'Armande's wardrobe trunk, andleaned her head against the papered wall. Fromlong habit, thus can peripatetic leading ladiesand their sisters make themselves as comfort.able as though the deepest armchairs embraced them.
"I'm going to tell you, Lynn," she said, with astrangely sardonic and yet carelessly resigned lookon her youthful face. "And then to-morrow I'llstrike the old Broadway trail again, and wear somemore paint off the chairs in the agents' offices. Ifanybody had told me any time in the last three monthsup to four o'clock this afternoon that I'd ever listento that 'Leave-your-name-and-address' rot of thebooking bunch again, I'd have given 'em the real Mrs.Fiske laugh. Loan me a handkerchief, Lynn. Gee!but those Long Island trains are fierce. I've gotenough soft-coal cinders on my face to go on and playTopsy without using the cork. And, speaking ofcorks -- got anything to drink, Lynn?"
Miss D'Armande opened a door of the wash-standand took out a bottle.
"There's nearly a pint of Manhattan. There's acluster of carnations in the drinking glass, but -- "
"Oh, pass the bottle. Save the glass for com-pany. Thanks! That hits the spot. The same toyou. My first drink in three months!"
"Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of lastseason. I quit it because I was sick of the life. Andespecially because my heart and soul were sick of menof the kind of men we stage people have to be upagainst. You know what the game is to us -- it's afight against 'em all the way down the line from themanager who wants us to try his new motor-car to thebill-posters who want to call us by our front names.
"And the men we have to meet after the show arethe worst of all. The stage-door kind, and the man-ager's friends who take us to supper and show theirdiamonds and talk about seeing 'Dan' and 'Dave'and 'Charlie' for us. They're beasts, and I hate 'em.
"I tell you, Lynn, it's the girls like us on the stagethat ought to be pitied. It's girls from good homesthat are honestly ambitious and work hard to rise inthe profession, but never do get there. You bear alot of sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls andtheir fifteen dollars a week. Piffle! There ain't asorrow in the chorus that a lobster cannot heal.
"If there's any tears to shed, let 'em fall for theactress that gets a salary of from thirty to forty-fivedollars a week for taking a leading part in a bumshow. She knows she'll never do any better; but shehangs on for years, hoping for the 'chance I thatnever comes.
"And the fool plays we have to work in! Havinganother girl roll you around the stage by the hind legsin a 'Wheelbarrow Chorus' in a musical comedy isdignified drama compared with the idiotic things I'vehad to do in the thirty-centers.
"But what I hated most was the men -- the menleering and blathering at you across tables, tryingto buy you with Wurzburger or Extra Dry, accord-ing to their estimate of your price. And the men inthe audiences, clapping, yelling, snarling, crowding,writhing, gloating -- like a lot of wild beasts, withtheir eyes fixed on you, ready to eat you up if youcome in reach of their claws. Oh, how I hate 'em!
"Well, I'm not telling you much about myself, amI, Lynn ?
"I had two hundred dollars saved up, and I cutthe stage the first of the summer. I went over onLong Island and found the sweetest little village thatever was, called Soundport, right on the water. I wasgoing to spend the summer there, and study up onelocution, and try to get a class in the fall. Therewas an old widow lady with a cottage near the beachwho sometimes rented a room or two just for com-pany, and she took me in. She had another boarder,too -- the Reverend Arthur Lyle.
"Yes, he was the head-liner. You're on, Lynn.I'll tell you all of it in a minute. It's only a one-actplay.
"The first time he walked on, Lynn, I felt myselfgoing; the first lines he spoke, he had me. He wasdifferent from the men in audiences. He was tall andslim, and you never heard him come in the room, butyou felt him. He had a face like a picture of a knight-- like one of that Round Table bunch -- and a voicelike a 'cello solo. And his manners!
"Lynn, if you'd take John Drew in his best draw-ing-room scene and compare the two, you'd have Johnarrested for disturbing the peace.
"I'll spare you the particulars; but in less than amonth Arthur and I were engaged. He preached at alittle one-night stand of a Methodist church. Therewas to be a parsonage the size of a lunch-wagon, andhens and honeysuckles when we were married. Ar-thur used to preach to me a good deal about Heaven,but be never could get my mind quite off those honey-suckles and hens.
"No; I didn't tell him I'd been on the stage. Ihated the business and all that went with it; I'dcut it out forever, and I didn't see any use of stirringthings up. I was a good girl, and I didn't have any-thing to confess, except being an elocutionist, andthat was about all the strain my conscience wouldstand.
"Oh, I tell you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang inthe choir and attended the sewing society, and re-cited that 'Annie Laurie' thing with the whistlingstunt in it, 'in a manner bordering upon the profes-sional,' as the weekly village paper reported it. AndArthur and I went rowing, and walking in the woods,and clamming, and that poky little village seemed tome the best place in the world. I'd have been happyto live there always, too, if --
"But one morning old Mrs. Gurley, the widowlady, got gossipy while I was helping her string beanson the back porch, and began to gush information, asfolks who rent out their rooms usually do. Mr. Lylewas her idea of a saint on earth -- as he was mine,too. She went over all his virtues and graces, andwound up by telling me that Arthur had had an ex-tremely romantic love-affair, not long before, that hadended unhappily. She didn't seem to be on to the de-tails, but she knew that he had been hit pretty hard.He was paler and thinner, she said, and he had somekind of a remembrance or keepsake of the lady in alittle rosewood box that he kept locked in his deskdrawer in his study.
"'Several times," says she, "I've seen himgloomerin' over that box of evenings, and he alwayslocks it up right away if anybody comes into theroom.'
"Well, you can imagine how long it was before Igot Arthur by the wrist and led him down stage andhissed in his ear.
"That same afternoon we were lazying around in aboat among the water-lilies at the edge of the bay.
"'Arthur,' says I, 'you never told me you'd hadanother love-affair. But Mrs. Gurley did,' I went on,to let him know I knew. I hate to bear a man lie.
"' Before you came,' says he, looking me franklyin the eye, 'there was a previous affection - a strongone. Since you know of it, I will be perfectly candidwith you.'
"'I am waiting,' says I.
"'My dear Ida,' says Arthur -- of course I wentby my real name, while I was in Soundport -- 'thisformer affection was a spiritual one, in fact. Al-though the lady aroused my deepest sentiments, andwas, as I thought, my ideal woman, I never met her,and never spoke to her. It was an ideal love. Mylove for you, while no less ideal, is different. Youwouldn't let that come between us.'
"'Was she pretty?' i asked.
"' She was very beautiful,' said Arthur.
"'Did you see her often?' I asked.
"' Something like a dozen times,' says he.
"'Always from a distance?' says I.
"'Always from quite a distance,' says he.
"'And you loved her?' I asked.
"'She seemed my ideal of beauty and grace -- andsoul," says Arthur.
"'And this keepsake that you keep under lock andkey, and moon over at times, is that a remembrancefrom her?'
"'A memento,' says Arthur, 'that I havetreasured.'
"'Did she send it to you?'
"'It came to me from her' says be.
"'In a roundabout way?' I asked.
"'Somewhat roundabout,' says he, 'and yet ratherdirect.'
"'Why didn't you ever meet her?' I asked.'Were your positions in life so different?'
"She was far above me,' says Arthur. 'Now,Ida,' he goes on, 'this is all of the past. You're notgoing to be jealous, are you?'
'Jealous!' says I. 'Why, man, what are youtalking about? It makes me think ten times as muchof you as I did before I knew about it.'
"And it did, Lynn - if you can understand it.That ideal love was a new one on me, but it struck meas being the most beautiful and glorious thing I'dever heard of. Think of a man loving a woman he'dnever even spoken to, and being faithful just to whathis mind and heart pictured her! Oh, it soundedgreat to me. The men I'd always known come atyou with either diamonds, knock-out-drops or a raiseof salary, -- and their ideals! -- well, we'll say nomore."
"Yes, it made me think more of Arthur than I didbefore. I couldn't be jealous of that far-away divin-ity that he used to worship, for I was going to havehim myself. And I began to look upon him as a sainton earth, just as old lady Gurley did.
"About four o'clock this afternoon a man came tothe house for Arthur to go and see somebody that wassick among his church bunch. Old lady Gurley wastaking her afternoon snore on a couch, so that left mepretty much alone.
"In passing by Arthur's study I looked in, andsaw his bunch of keys hanging in the drawer of hisdesk, where he'd forgotten 'em. Well, I guess we'reall to the Mrs. Bluebeard now and then, ain't we,Lynn? I made up my mind I'd have a look at thatmemento he kept so secret. Not that I cared what itwas -- it was just curiosity.
"While I was opening the drawer I imagined oneor two things it might be. I thought it might be adried rosebud she'd dropped down to him froma balcony, or maybe a picture of her he'd cutout of a magazine, she being so high up in theworld.
"I opened the drawer, and there was the rosewoodcasket about the size of a gent's collar box. I foundthe little key in the bunch that fitted it, and unlockedit and raised the lid.
"I took one look at that memento, and then I wentto my room and packed my trunk. I threw a fewthings into my grip, gave my hair a flirt or two witha side-comb, put on my hat, and went in and gave theold lady's foot a kick. I'd tried awfully hard to useproper and correct language while I was there forArthur's sake, and I had the habit down pat, but itleft me then.
"Stop sawing gourds," says I, "and sit up andtake notice. The ghost's about to walk. I'm goingaway from here, and I owe you eight dollars. Theexpressman will call for my trunk.'
"I handed her the money.
"'Dear me, Miss Crosby!' says she. 'Is any-thing wrong? I thought you were pleased here.Dear me, young women are so hard to understand,and so different from what you expect 'emto be.'
"'You're damn right,' says I. 'Some of 'em are.But you can't say that about men. When you knowone man you know 'em all! That settles the human-race question.'
"And then I caught the four-thirty-eight, soft-coal unlimited; and here I am."
"You didn't tell me what was in the box, Lee," saidMiss D'armande, anxiously.
"One of those yellow silk garters that I used tokick off my leg into the audience during that oldvaudeville swing act of mine. Is there any of thecocktail left, Lynn?"
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