第36章

Martin was moved.This plucky, struggling, hardworking atom of a remorseless world deserved a little luck for a change.Hitherto it had eluded her eager hands, although she had paid for it in advance with something more than blood and energy."Dear old Tootles," he said, "what's happened? Try and tell me what's happened? I don't understand.""You don't understand, because you don't know the tricks of this rotten theater.For eleven weeks I've been rehearsing.For eleven weeks--time enough to produce a couple of Shakespeare's bally plays in Latin,--I've put up with the brow-beating of that mad dog Jackrack.For eleven weeks, without touching one dirty little Mosely cent, I've worked at my part and numbers, morning, noon and night;and now, on the edge of production, he cuts me out and puts in a simpering cow with a fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace and a snapping little Pekinese to oblige one of his angels, and I'm reduced to the chorus.I wish I was dead, I tell you--I wish I was dead and buried and at peace.I wish I could creep home and get into bed and never see another day of this cruel life.Oh, I'm just whipped and broke and out.Take me away, take me away, Martin.I'm through."Martin put his arm round the slight, shaking form, led her to one of the doors and out into a narrow passage that ran up into the deserted street.To have gone down into the stalls and hit that oily martinet in the mouth would have been to lay himself open to a charge of cruelty to animals.He was so puny and fat and soft.Poor little Tootles, who had had a tardy and elusive recognition torn from her grasp! It was a tragedy.

It was not much more than a stone's-throw from the theater to the rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street, but Martin gave a shout at a prowling taxi.Not even policemen and newspaper boys and street cleaners must see this girl as she was then, in a collapse of smashed hopes, sobbing dreadfully, completely broken down.It wasn't fair.In all that city of courageous under-dogs and fate-fighters, there was not one who pretended to careless contentment with a chin so high as Tootles.He half carried her into the cab, trying with a queer blundering sympathy to soothe and quiet her.And he had almost succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters, bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of onions, cigarettes and hot cheese.The hysteria of the artistic temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had worn itself out for the time being.Rather pathetic little sobs had taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff from her eyelashes that Tootles turned quickly to Martin at the foot of the narrow, dirty staircase.

"Let's go up quiet," she said."If any of the others are about, Idon't want 'em to know tonight.See?"

"I see," said Martin.

And it was good to watch the way in which she took hold of herself with a grip of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed it thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head and went up two stairs at a time.On the second floor there was a cackle of laughter, but doors were shut.On the third all was quiet.

But on the fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk again, arguing thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted sullenly into the passage through the open door.

With deft fingers Tootles used her latchkey, and they slipped into the apartment like thieves.And then Martin took the pins out of her little once-white hat, drew her coat off, picked her up as if she were a child and put her on the sofa.

"There you are, Tootles," he said, without aggressive cheerfulness, but still cheerful."You lie there, young 'un, and I'll get you something to eat.It's nearly a day since you saw food."And after a little while, humanized by the honest kindness of this obvious man, she sat up and leaned on an elbow and watched him through the gap in the curtains that hid her domestic arrangements.

He was scrambling some eggs.He had made a pile of chicken sandwiches and laid the table.He had put some flowers that he had brought for her earlier in the evening in the middle of it, stuck into an empty milk bottle.In her excitement and joy about the play, she had forgotten to put them in water.They were distinctly sad.

"Me word!" she said to herself, through the aftermath of her emotion."That's some boy.Gee, that's some good boy." Even her thoughts were conducted in a mixture of Brixton and Broadway.

"Now, then," he said, "all ready, marm," and put his handiwork in what he hoped was an appetizing manner on the table.The hot eggs were on a cold plate, but did that really matter?

Not to Tootles, who was glad to get anything, anyhow.That room was the Ritz Hotel in comparison with the slatterly tenement in which she had won through the first unsoaped years of a sordid life.And Martin--well, Martin was something out of a fairy tale.

Between them they made a clean sweep of everything, falling back finally on a huge round box of candies contributed the previous day by Martin.

They made short work of several bottles of beer, also contributed by Martin.He knew that Tootles was not paid a penny during rehearsals.

She laughed several times and cracked one or two feeble jokes--poor little soul with the swollen eyes and powder-dabbed face! Her bobbed hair glistened under the light like the dome of the Palace of Cooch Behar under the Indian sun.

"Boy," she said presently, putting her hand on his knees and closing her tired eyes, "where's that magic carpet? If I could sit on it with you and be taken to where the air's clean and the trees are whisperin' and all the young things hoppin' about--I'd give twenty-five years of me life, s'elp me Bob, I would.""Would you, Tootles?" A sudden thought struck Martin.Make use of that house in the country, make use of it, lying idle and neglected!