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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
The Blue Book Magazine, May 1917, with "Red Apples And Rouge"
THE PINK HEN advertises "a dollar table d'hôte and something different in cabarets," and the advertisement makes a long description of the restaurant unnecessary. The intelligent reader can picture the place. Pleasure limps to rag-time, and a million food-odors battle for supremacy in the cigarette-smoke. Men and women crouch over their drinks as if they were court-martialing the glasses or the liquids the glasses contain, while heavy-jowled bassos and thin-legged, saffron-haired sopranos batter the brains of the solemn drinkers by howling assertions that they, the singers, are going back to Alabama, Michigan, Honolulu or some other old place whose name the song-composer has artfully picked from an atlas.
Dod bust 'em, they never go! They stay and howl about their intentions while the patrons industriously pretend they are having a good time in holding the leg of a wineglass and listening to the howler telling what he will do to the wily corn-tassel and the tricky sweet potato when he gets back to the dear old farm.
The Pink Hen is different to the others in only one particular. That particular is Mamie Conlon. Mamie has been at the Hen since old Martin Halligan opened the place, years before cunning restaurateurs used the loudmouthed imitation Cook tourist to choke the kicks which irate customers made concerning the food. Halligan was the first food-retailer to discover that people listening to a singer have no violent love for a person at a near-by table who is loudly informing the waiter that he has dug a nail and the lid of a tobaeco-tin out of his goulash. Halligan was the originator of "the-other-people-can't-hear-if-you-kick" strangle which the restaurant-keepers have brought to such perfection. Nowadays one never hears a decent old-time argument between a waiter and a guest. They cannot happen, because the listening idiots surrounding the complainant frown at any interruption which prevents them from hearing the maniacal assertions of a singer who avers again and again that he is going to Rio or Callao, although his fare to Flatbush lies lonely in the pocket of his jeans.
MARTIN HALLIGAN discovered Mamie Conlon in a side-street in the Bronx. Martin visited the Bronx to see a sick cousin, and in passing a little cottage he heard Miss Conlon warbling a ballad entitled: "My Mother's Face Grows Dearer Every Day," and there and then Halligan conceived the idea of hiring Mamie to sing', to his patrons while they fought bouts with the fricasseed chicken and portions of the athletic Texas steer. The scheme was a great success. Often the chicken and the steer went to their last resting-place in a shower of tears provoked by Mamie's sentimental ballads; the complaints fell off fifty per cent, and the waiters' tips increased. The Pink Hen's regulars liked the ballads and liked Mamie. The girl was clean and wholesome, a well-built, wide-bosomed creature who believed that the world was a good old world in spite of muck-rakers, reformers and the discomforts produced by a daily ride to and from the Bronx.
When Halligan introduced a regular cabaret, Mamie stayed, and no matter how loudly the midnight choo-choo-catcher howled, it was Mamie who got the grand applause with a ballad about some feature of her mother or some portion of the old lady's clothes or furniture to which a ballad could be affixed.
"It's simple," said Martin Halligan, when explaining Mamie's popularity. "Every one of the bunch has had a mother, but a lot of 'em hate midnight trains an' farms, an' they wouldn't go to Dixie or Honolulu if you paid their fares twicet. She makes me cry, an' me mother died in Ireland over forty years ago."
So Mamie Conlon became a fixture that the Pink Hen could not dispense with. Gentle, lovable and sympathetic, she gave to the place a dash of old-world atmosphere that was immensely pleasing. She had a thousand friends, was welcome at every table because of her smiles and her stories, and was the confidante of every woman connected with the place, from the newest danseuse to the portly Mrs. Halligan.
IT was a warm September night, and the Pink Hen was crowded. Mamie Conlon had just created thunderous applause by telling of a dimple which her mother always wore, and following Mamie's usual custom, she stepped down from the stage to exchange greetings with old friends at the tables.
At the far end of the dining-room she paused to speak to a man who was sitting alone at one of the small side-tables. The man was of a peculiar type.
He was about thirty-five years of age, lean-faced and dark-complexioned. His eyes were deep-set, eyes that gave one the impression they were endeavoring to take refuge from some unpleasant sight with which they momentarily expected to be confronted. Their bashfulness made thie nose more prominent. It stood out predatory and hawklike, while the thin lips were not rendered more pleasing by the fact that the slightest downward turn at the corners of the mouth was noticeable when the face was in repose. He was a pure city type, lacking vitality, physically undeveloped, slim-chested and mean-looking.
"Hello, Mamie," he said, looking up quickly from his glass.
"Hello, George," murmured the girl.
"I haven't seen Nell this evening," said the man. "I've been here an hour, and she hasn't done a turn."
"Uh-huh," said Miss Conlon softly; then, after a slight pause, she put the query: "You haven't been in for a couple of days, have you, George?"
"No, Mamie. I've been off color. Went to bed for two days to rest up. Won't you sit down?"
"I think I will," said the girl. "I was lookin' for a quiet place to eat this apple in. Did you ever see a better apple than that, George?"
"It's a beauty, Mamie. Where did you get it?"
"From Sullivan County. Got five dozen of 'em this mornin'."
"Charming the gentle farmers, eh?"
"Nix, George, nix."
"How the fruit, then?"
Mamie Conlon bisected the apple, and the man watched her. She peeled a section, ate it slowly and then spoke:
"It's the best-tastin' apple I ever ate," she said. "It's a glorious apple. You asked me how I got five dozen of 'em," didn't you? Say, George, would you like to hear a story, a real human story about the Pink Hen?"
"Sure," said the man.
"Well, I'll tell you one, George—a real, real, real story. Wait till I eat this apple, an' I'll get to it."
MISS CONLON ate the big apple, wiped her fingers carefully and leaned forward.
"George," she said, "if you think you know the girl I'm goin' to tell you about, just think again an' tell yourself you're thinkin' wrong. Whatever girl you think it's about, it isn't. Do you get me? This girl was the prettiest the Pink Hen ever had in the show, an' that doesn't make it any easier for you, because you think 'em all the prettiest. But this one could stack up points against all the movie-queens you ever saw an' still have enough over to beat the dames on the tooth-powder an' chewin'-gum posters.
"She used to sing songs like 'I'm the Dearest, Cutest Melon in the Patch,' an' 'I Wish I Was a Searchlight, an' You a Big, Big Zep.' They were songs for the Billies an' the Betties who think they can make macadamized matrimonial roads out of goo-goo looks an' moonshine. This little girl was good, too. I know that. I'm thirty-nine the tenth of next month, an' no little broiler can make me believe she's St. Elizabeth if I don't want to believe.
"This little girl was Elsie, an' that makes it harder for you to place her, because it wasn't Elsie. She was delicate, an' in the spring an' summer she'd get a hobo feelin' that'd want to make her ditch her job an' go gallopin' over the New Jersey hills to talk confidential with old Ma Nature.
"'It gets me, Mamie,' she used to say. 'When spring comes, I get so mad to get away that I could kill old Halligan an' everyone in the restaurant.'
"'Don't you think you've got a corner on that breed of feelin's,' I would say back to her. 'I've got your feelin's multiplied by six. Broadway looks like a mess with the lid off, and the Pink Hen gives me mental ptomaines. New York is worse to me than Jericho was after the Hebrews did it up, and if I could unhook myself, I'd float away to Mesopotamia, Macedonia, Judea, or any one of those quiet, sit-under-your-own-palm spots mentioned in the Bible.'
"'I wish I could go to one of 'em,' she'd say. 'I like their names.'
"'Names are nothin' to go by,' I said to her once. 'A rube from the green patches seein' the sign of a pink hen would think we were runnin' an egg-Layin' contest, but we're not.'
"Old Halligan steered 'longside just as I said that, an' he heard my remark. 'What's that, Mamie?' he said. 'Nothing,' I answered. 'I was just tellin' Elsie that a rube seein' a pink hen done in electric lights would think we were sellin' incubators.'
"'That's a good idea,' said Halligan. 'I'll put an incubator in the dinin'-room an' put out a sign readin': "Come in an' see the chickens."'
"He did, too. He plunked an incubator right in the middle of the room an' hung out a sign readin': 'Come in an' see the chickens. A full hundred of 'em, an' not a one of 'em has a mother to boss her.' Which was the truth.
"THAT sign about the chickens brought Clem. Clem is his first name, an' you can make his second Brown or White or any old name you like. He came in to see the chicks, an' he stayed because Elsie was singin' her song about bein' the dearest, cutest melon in the patch. He had 'R.F.D.'* stamped all over him, an' he stood obstructing traffic in the main aisle till Loppy Bob, the head waiter, led him to a seat an' told him that it was necessary to introduce himself to Herr Budweiser or J. Barleycorn-cum-Croton to help him hold his trench.*
* Rural Free Delivery
"Clem took the introduction, but the poison didn't make him lose interest in Elsie. He stared at her like Mrs. Winkle stared at old Rip Van when he came back an' pretended that he had been asleep for twenty years. Say, George, do you think any sane woman would believe that old geezer, Winkle? He had beat it with some one an' then he pulled the long-sleep stuff on Mrs. R.V.W. when the other dame pushed him out on the pike. An' with a name like Rip, too!
"Clem was nearly as big as Goliath, the guy that little David put onto the Ostermoor with a pebble, an' he looked like a summer vacation on legs, he was that tanned an' outdoory-like. An' stare! Say, he hung his headlights onto Elsie an' kept the full glow on her till she got mad.
"'Hick!' she snapped, when she was passin' him.
"'Beg pardon!' he said, jumpin' to his feet an' feedin' the Milwaukee to the tablecloth. 'What did you say?'
"'I called you hick,' said Elsie.
"'Why, that isn't my name,' he called out. 'My name's Clem—just plain Clem.'
"Could you beat it? It was that funny that Elsie burst out laughin', an' he started to laugh too. Only his laugh wasn't a laugh; it was a subway explosion. It loosened a plume in a woman's hat an' set a flag wavin' over the orchestra.
"Said Ellsie to him: 'Can you always laugh like that?'"
"'Sure,' he said.
"'Then unloose one of the same kind when I go on again,' said Elsie. 'Wait till I pull the joke about what Miss Parsnip said to Miss Carrot when she found her in the soup; then make that sound hard. Do you get me?'
"'Of course,' he said. 'Why, I'll just love to do it.'
"THEY tell me that the laughin' hyena carries the grin-medal, but the hyena couldn't get a clap if he went up against Clem. He had a laugh that had no brothers or sisters or distant relatives. It could get the goat of a Klaxon horn with the first toot, an' when he shook it loose, it just tore out onto Broadway an' raced up toward Times Square.
"Topaz Tommy Turner was telephonin' to his girl when Clem turned in the fire-alarm, an' Topaz Tommy signaled Loppy Bob to disconnect the buzzer. Bob galloped over to Clem's table an' howled at him.
"'Stop it, you rube!' he yelled. 'Stop it or I'll chuck you out!'
"Clem didn't jam on the brakes so that you'd notice the slowin' up. That laugh of his was a thing you'd have to attack with an iron bar. It just got up an' shook the windows with both hands, an' when it hit the ceilin', it fell back more viciouser than ever.
"'Stop it, you big hick!' yelled Loppy Bob. 'Stop it, or I'll jerk you into the night!'
"'Can't I laugh?' asked Clem.
"'Sure,' said Bob. 'But you're not laughin'! You're firin' a grand salute with your mouth, an' the admiral hasn't come aboard!'
"Just then Elsie unloosed another joke, an' away went Clem again. He owned a laugh that could have won prizes. It just fought for the spotlight an' pushed all the minor noises under the tables.
"'Out you go, you big giraffe!' yelled Loppy Bob, an' he grabbed Clem by the arm. Bob didn't know Clem was so big, because Clem had a whole lot of himself tucked under the chair, but Loppy soon found out. Say, that Clem was old man Trouble with the collar off. He was General Joffre, Kitchener an' Von Hindenburg travelin' under a false label. He knew more about hurtin' people than a nail in a shoe, George. He just poked Loppy with two fingers, an' Loppy went backward up the room, capsizin' tables an' regular customers an' waiters as if he was bein' paid for rough-housin' the show.
"You've read of Samson, George?, Well, Samson pulled down the pillars of a Mormon temple, an' Clem was the same kind of a feller as Mr. Samson. Seven or eight of the waiters rushed to help Loppy when they saw him back-pedalin', an' Clem became a mail-order house for distributin' different kinds of wallops. An' there was no delay, George. The cabaray just stopped cabarayin' an' became an interested spectator, an' the guests liked the intermezzo a lot.
"Clem picked up a chair an' used its four legs to prod that bunch of shortchange artists when they did a Balaclava. One of those legs got in the mouth of a Lithuanian, an' another nearly pushed an ear off a Greek whose sound-snarers stuck out like fifth-story fire-escapes. Some one threw a vegetable dish at Clem, but Clem got out of the way of the dish so it went on a little farther till it committed harry-karry against Loppy Bob's face. Loppy gave a soft grunt an' went down to look at the pattern of the oilcloth, an' just then Elsie managed to catch Clem's eye an' waved him to the door.
"'Beat it!' she yelled. 'Beat it!'
"Clem took Elsie's advice. He trod on Loppy Bob's fingers in his retreat, tore the Greek's coaat off, upset the incubator an' all the chicks an' bounced into the middle of a Broadway theater-crowd that opened up for him to get through an' then closed up to curse him. We were huntin' chickens for an hour after he left the landscape.
"NEXT night Elsie came down here an' found an express-package squattin' over two-thirds of the dressin'-room. It hadn't any name on it. It just said: 'To the girl in the green-velvet dress who sings the song, "I'm the Dearest, Cutest Melon in the Patch."'
"'A rube must have sent that,' said May Murray. 'A wise guy would have asked a waiter for your label.'
"'Mebbe,' said Elsie. 'Mebbe. But a real gentleman wouldn't ask a sausage-wagon for a lady's name.'
"'Oh,' says May. 'Well, unpeel the priceless treasure an' let us feast our eyes upon the silks an' spices an' precious things.'
"Elsie was that mad that she tore the paper off the packet right in front of May an' then regretted it ninety times a minute for the rest of the night. Do you know what was in that package, George? Of course you don't. There was apples in it—apples! Four dozen of the biggest, reddest let-Adam-take-a-bite kind of fruit that was ever in captivity, an' they were snugglin' up to each other on a bed of parsley!
"An' there was a note sittin' on the Mrs. Eve's trouble produce. The note said:
"'Dear Miss—I'm sorry I couldn't stay to finish the laugh. I'll come back again an' laugh some more if you want me to.'
"Elsie wasn't a little bit mad. Not a little bit, George. She looked so mad that I bet if Clem had come along just then, she would have bit him instead of one of his apples. She was unneutral in eleven different ways, an' the doorkeeper was the only one that got anything from talkin' to her. He got the apples, the whole four dozen.
"George, do you know that feller Clem walked in that evenin' lookin' as if he was the real dove of peace. Loppy Bob started to converge on him, but Elsie got in the way. She was madder than a fly on a tanglefoot oasis, an' Bob let her fire the first torpedo, although that vegetable dish had made Loppy look as if he'd been kicked in the face with the screw of a hurryin' submarine.
"'Mr. Clem Hick,' said Elsie, 'what d'ye mean by makin' me the guy of this outfit?'
"'Guy?' said he. 'Why, you told me to laugh!'
"'I'm not talkin' about laughs,' said Elsie. 'I'm talkin' about the bunch of truck from a dago's warehouse that you dropped on my wigwam.'
"'The apples?' he said, lookin' as worried as a live lobster in a restaurant window. 'Why, they're not from a dago's stand! They're from my farm!'
"'From your farm?' said Elsie.
"'Yes,' said Clem, 'they're from my own place up in Sullivan County, an'— an' I thought you would like 'em because I growed 'em.'
"Elsie was tryin' to lasso words that would carry her into the open just then. She was a kind-hearted little girl, an' she saw that she had jabbed that big rural-free-delivery guy on the spot where he was cultivatin' an attachment for her.
"'Why,' said she, 'they were nice an' big an' red.'
"'Not as red as your cheeks.' said Mr. Samson, playfully.
"'Why, that's rouge,' said Elsie.
"'Is it?' chirps the apple-manufacturer. 'Well, it looks nice, whatever it is.'
"ELSIE was pleased with him for sayin' that, because most hicks hate rouge worse'n the Hittites hated the Jebusites, an' when Loppy Bob said that Clem couldn't be served, she went up in the air quicker than Glenn Curtiss could. Old Martin Halligan came up to them, an' he talked with Clem, an' Clem went an' bought the incubator an' all the baby fowls that weren't lost the night before. After that the feud came to an end, with Clem an' Loppy Bob an' Halligan tellin' lies to each other about overgrown turnips an' watermelons that were as big as canoes.
"Clem came in the next night an' six nights that came after. He talked to Elsie a lot, an' he told her all about the farm where the red apples had grown up from childhood. The yarns the Hebrew scouts brought back from the Promised Land were nothing to the stories Clem told about his Sullivan County reservation. George, they were wonderful stories, an' they sounded mighty good to a tired little girl who had to sing while a bunch of Broadway shoe-clerks an' stenog's grappled with their provender. Clem told her about nine little pigs that were just born an' did nothin' but squeak, an' he told her about a horse that ate sugar an' crackers, an' a dog called Bill an' another dog called Lassie that had three puppies. An' there was a cow that had a curly horn, an' there were peach-trees an' pear-trees an' twenty apple-trees that the red apples came off.
"Say, George, do you know that stuff was better'n any fairy story that girl ever heard of? It was. She just sat an' listened to him tellin' her about the puppies an' the dog called Bill an' the horse. She just ate it up like as if it was sparrowgrass out of season.
"'That's the place where you ought to be, Miss Elsie,' Clem would say to her. 'You want fresh air an' eggs an' milk.'
"'You're right,' Elsie would say; 'that's just what I do want. An' honey?'
"'An' honey, girlie,' Clem would say back to her. 'Honey! Tons of it!'
"Do you know, George, nobody ever spoke to that kid about her health till Clem pulled the build-up-your-system oratory upon her. Yaps would sit opposite her an' offer her everything from Milwaukee's worst to the liqueur stuff that the monks brew over in the St. Bernard Mountains, but no one had ever unloosed about the produce of the busy bee an' the succulent and newborn egg. It took a hick who wasn't ashamed of himself to get that stuff off his mental ticker.
"That was all he said to her, George, an' let me tell you right now that the guy who worries about a girl's health never gets the line-busy answer when he talks to her. Clem, with a new egg an' a bees' nest in his vocabulary, put it all over the yaps who had Pol Roget an' old man Pommery on the bases. That kid dreamed of cows an' hens an' bees, an' Sullivan County was the place where she thought all the fleshpots were in cold storage waitin' for her.
"'I'll marry you,' she said to Clem one evenin' when he asked her, an' that big R.F.D. got up an' kissed her so loud he frightened himself.
"GEORGE, you were never on a farm; so you know nothin' about 'em. You can't read about 'em in books, because no one was ever brave enough to write the truth about 'em. They're an acquired taste, like garlic an' caviar, an' Elsie had a job to acquire it quick enough to hand the Broadway longin' the sleep-punch.
"She told me all this, George. She said that the place was mighty nice at first. She was introduced to the horse that liked sugar, an' to the two dogs, an' the orphan calf; but there were drawbacks. Clem had a mother who was one of these mothers you read about in books, an' he had two sisters that could give Madam Polaire eleven points an' beat her for the man-frightenin' belt. An' there was the silence. Elsie told me the silence used to crawl across Sullivan County about sunset, an' it would put a strangle-hold an' a scissors-grip on that farm so that it was only Bill, the deaf dog, that was game to bark. Bill didn't hear himself, or he wouldn't have been crazy enough to slam his voice into the stillness.
"But she loved Clem, an' she held the trench. She just waded in on the silence by haulin' out the harmonium with its vox humaner an' nux vomica stops, an' she poured melody over the neighborhood so that the dogs got their nerve back an' joined in the choruses.
"An' she tried to keep Clem's ma from gettin' her rattled.
"'You can't cook?' the old lady would say to her.
"'Only chafin'-dish cookin',' Elsie said.
"'What's that?* inquired Mamma.
"'Welsh rarebits an' lobster an' that,' chirruped Elsie.
"'Huh,' snorts the old lady; an' she led Elsie out to the kitchen an' introduced her to eleven hundred fryin'-pans an' boilers an' preservin'-pots that the antique knew by their first names. .
Those pots climbed into Elsie's dreams. They used to march around her bed like a Hippodrome chorus, grinnin' at her an' tellin' her over an' over again what she could cook in 'em an' what she couldn't cook in 'em. 'I'm for huckleberries,' says one: an' 'I'm for peaches,' says another; 'an I'm for stewin' cranberries,' snorts another, 'an' if you use me for anythin' else there'll be trouble.' George, what that girl suffered through misrememberin' the first names of those buckets would torpedo any ordinary brain. But she loved Clem, an' she tried her hardest to keep the surnames an' professions of those boilers in her head. The old dame knew the features of every one of those kettles so that she could recognize 'em with her eyes shut, but Elsie would stare at 'em for hours without rememberin' their initials or their private occupations.
"AN' then there were the Polaire twins, Clem's sisters. They just made a business of annoyin' Elsie like the Egyptians annoyed the Jews before Moses did the General Coxey stunt for the cactus-patches. They were human porcupines with a habit of rubbin' against people they didn't like. They didn't declare war on Elsie; they just treated her as a neutral so as to block any kicks she could make to Clem. An' you know what you can do to a neutral if you're clever, George.
"Those two females cut the Pink Hen into nine hundred verbal grenades an' torpedoes, an' Elsie spent most of her spare time duckin' an' dodgin'. They thought the Hen was a joint where Vice did the Lady Godiva act at every fifteen minutes past the hour, an' they believed that Elsie was personally acquainted with every high-roller that ever blew up his heritage with a corkscrew. They asked her questions about all the guys that Billy Sunday thinks are shootin' to the basement of the other world on a racin'-car, an' when that poor little kid said she didn't even know their names, they got mad.
"A lot of the dames in the big green patches have that delusion. You couldn't make 'em believe that a singin'-girl at a Broadway restaurant was virtuous if you got Doc Parkhurst an' the Society for the Suppression of Vice to indorse your affidavit. Elsie was a private in the Lost Legion, as far as they were concerned, an' they, let her know that they thought Clem was the original hickory-nut for importin' her into Sullivan County.
"She tried to keep her troubles from Clem, but some of 'em peeped out of the little silences between her words.
"'Does Betsy an' Lil annoy you?' he asked Elsie.
"'No,' said Elsie, 'they're very kind to me.'
"'An' does Mother upset you?' he inquired.
'"Not a bit,' said Elsie; an' all the pots in the kitchen laughed when they heard her answer. Those pots knew!
"Elsie an' the harmonium had chased the silence into the wilderness, but Clem's mommer an' Clem's two sisters could make small annoyances like the seven plagues of Egypt look like a cent that a steam engine has gone an' trod on. When the old woman wasn't teachin' her cookin', the two girls were cookin' her. They wanted to know things about Broadway that Elsie didn't know. They asked her about people she never saw—Eva Tanguay, Diamond Jim Brady, Kid McCoy, George Cohan, Flo Ziegfeld an' folks like that, an' when she said that the family habits of the bunch were as foreign to her as the menu-card of the King of Zululand, they got mad.
"'But you were singin' in a Broadway restaurant,' Betsy would splutter, 'an' you try to act as if you never saw anythin' bad in your life.'
"'I didn't,' Elsie would say back to them. 'The Pink Hen is a perfectly proper place.'
"'Oh, my!' Lil would squeak, an' they'd keep on baitin' her till she'd run off into the woods an' cry her eyes out.
THE local church up there promoted a concert, an' Clem's two sisters asked Elsie to sing at it. That kid was so innocent that she didn't know the game of that brace. She was from Broadway, but you take it from me, George, that there are dames in the back pastures who could short-change the first wife that old King Solomon married. An' I bet she knew, a little after she had acted as a reception-committee to the six hundred an' ninety-nine that the old man brought into his outfit afterwards.
"'What did you sing at the Pink Hen?' Betsy said.
"'I sang "I'm the Dearest, Cutest Melon in the Patch," an' another song about "I Wish I Was a Searchlight an' You a Big, Big Zep,"' said Elsie.
"'Let's hear 'em,' said Lil. 'Sing 'em to us, an' then we'll tell you if they're suitable.'
"That little kid sung both songs to those two human shoehorns, an' they wriggled on their chairs like two pine-snakes that had been eatin' pins. They were thinkin' how they'd get her in bad, an' it was so easy to do it that they wanted to pat each other on the back.
"'Oh,' says Betsy, 'I think the song about the searchlight an' the Zeppelin is a peach. Don't you, Lil?'
"Yon can guess how Lil supported that remark. Those two antiques had hearts made out of pure Carrara, an' a little innocent kid from Broadway had as much chance with them as the Angel Gabriel would have with a pair of poker-sharps.
"You don't know anythin' about villages, George, because you've never been farther from New York than the Polo Grounds, but that Sullivan County hamlet was a place where the wanderings of the Israelites was the main course in the educational swarrees in the old red schoolhouse. Every house had a wall-map of Palestine an' the adjacent territory. They named places with biblical names, an' half the kids had handles like Elijah, Jeremiah, Job, Daniel an' Potiphar. I don't know if I'm right about Potiphar, but it's last-century stuff, anyhow.
"ELSIE came third on the bill the night of the concert, an' that poor little innocent kid from Broadway climbed onto the stage an' started to warble about the searchlight an' the Zep. George, that song on the White Way wouldn't disturb the feelin's of a delegation from the W.C.T.U., but up there it created a bigger sensation than the sinkin' of the Lusitania. It did! When Elsie flung the first verse at 'em, they pushed their faces forward an' swallowed like ostriches in a nail-factory. It was that silent you could hear the spiders weavin' in the rafters an' the little frogs takin' their bath in the pond in the churchyard.
"Elsie cut the second verse adrift, an' they just ate it up without any dressin'. Do you know how it goes? It's somethin' like this:
"I'd follow you through space, dear love,
I'd hug you as you fled,
My beams would kiss your supple form,
Your smilin' face an' head.
I'd touch your dainty ankles, love,
Your ankles full of jpep,
If I was but a searchlight, love,
An' you a big, big Zep.
"When she finished the second verse, the head deacon shot himself out of his seat an' advanced in open order on the stage. He had his right hand hoisted like a traffic-cop, an' his mouth was shut as tight as a gamblin'-joint when a raidin'-party is across the street.
"'Stop!' he screamed. 'Stop!'
"Elsie stopped quick, but that deacon wasn't satisfied with that. He started to hustle her toward the wings, an' that was somethin' that stirred Clem. He hoisted himself out of his seat an' rushed the stage to help Elsie, an' all the hicks jumped to their feet to see Ma Trouble flap the atmosphere with her wings.
"That deacon was a fool. He struck at Clem, an' Clem got annoyed. He picked the deacon up in his arms an' banged his bump of reverence against a hot lamp that was hangin' over the stage, then he slung him hard into the orchestra, smashin' a big drum that belonged to the band.
"Elsie didn't wait to see any more. The whole audience was chargin' Clem at the double, an' so she fled. She rushed back to the farmhouse an' wrote him a note, just a little foolish note tellin' him that she loved him but she thought it was best for her an' for him if she cleared out an' left him alone. She was just a simple kid, George, an' the only way she saw of helpin' Clem was by leavin' him.
"She told him in that letter that she loved him better than anythin' else on earth, but she couldn't stand for his mother an' his two sisters. An' she knew he couldn't leave his mother an' the farm. Clem had promised his father that he would stay with the old lady an' run the farm, an' that young kid loved Clem too much to want him to break his promise over her. Do you understand, George? She was class with a great big C to it, an' although that old dame an' the two girls had made her as miserable as an oyster on the half-shell, she didn't want to hand them out anythin' as hard as a brick or an empty bottle. She was a sweet, kind kid, was Elsie.
"WELL, George, she came to my place one mornin' an' told me everything. Told me how she loved Clem so much that she had to clear out from him.
"'What shall I do, Mamie?' she said. 'I've got to work an' keep myself.'
"'Elsie,' I said back to her, 'you just sit quiet; things always straighten themselves in their own way.'
"'But he musn't know where I am,' she said. 'You wont tell him, Mamie?'
"'No, child,' I said, 'I wont tell him. If you want to, you can come back to the Pink Hen an' sing, an' that won't hurt your love for Clem a bit—not a bit'
"That's what I said to her, George. I went an' told Martin Halligan, an' Elsie came back that night. An' that night I got three wires from Clem, an' one of the wires, filled two pages. He wanted to know if I knew where she was, an' I wired back that I didn't. It cost Clem somethin' for those wires; telegrams are expensive amusements.
"Elsie came back here an' sang her little songs about melons an' searchlights an' things like that, an' everybody liked her an' wanted to buy her drinks. Sometimes she'd drink somethin' soft like lemonade, but most often she wouldn't. An' she loved Clem all the time, loved him harder than a feller like you could understand, George.
"She was here four months when I got a telegram, a telegram from Clem.
I read it, an' then I took it over to Elsie. She had just sung a song, an' the crowd were hollerin' for another.
"'Don't go out, Elsie,' I said. 'Just sit down an' read that.'
"She sat down an' read the wire, an' then she burst out cryin'. Do you know what was in that wire, George? You couldn't guess. It said: 'If you ever meet Elsie, tell her that Mother was buried yesterday an' that Lil and Betsy are goin' to live with my brother. Ask her if she wont come back, now that I'm alone.'"
MAMIE CONLON paused and eyed the man sitting opposite. Her gaze traveled over his lined face, noting the hungry eyes, the twitching mouth with its turned-down corners, the expression of ratlike cunning. She rose slowly, and the man moistened his lips and put a question.
"And she went?" he inquired, his voice tense. "She went back to him?"
"By the first train," answered the girl. "An' do you know what she did the moment she got there? She sent me five dozen of the biggest, reddest apples—"
The man sprang to his feet and gripped the wrist of Mamie Conlon.
"You devil!" he cried. "You devil, to tell me of it like that. I loved her too! I did! I did! I didn't know anything about her, but I came here tonight to ask her to chuck the Pink Hen and clear out—"
"George," interrupted the ballad-singer, "that little girl was no more made for you than Aaron's rod was made for John Philip Sousa to conduct his band with! She's got a real man, George, an' she's happy. Happy! She didn't want Broadway! She wanted milk an' eggs an' honey, an' if Sullivan County isn't the Promised Land, I'll bet little Nell thinks there's no difference between it an' the real spot shown on the maps of Palestine. Well, I've got to warble some more about Mother's dimples; then I'll take the submarine route to the Bronx with the red apples. Some apples, aint they, George?"
But George didn't answer.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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