THE STORY OF THE MINOR CELEBRITY
I can’t really remember when I wasn’t acting, and I have no idea who my parents were, or where I was born, or when, or anything. I think, though, I must be about nineteen years old, though I don’t look it, and I have decided on the first of July for my birthday, because that’s just the middle of the year and it can’t possibly be more than six months wrong. I used to go on in child’s parts in London when I couldn’t have been more than four.
Then, the next thing I remember, I was with a company of Swiss bell-ringers, and we travelled all through the English provinces. I used to sing and dance in between their turns, and I tell you it was hard work, practising all day and dancing all night, almost. We were all fearfully poor, for we weren’t very much of an attraction. I had only one frock beside my stage costume, and that one was so patched I was ashamed to go to the pork shop, even, with it on. I was a regular little slave to old Max, who ran the company, and had to help cook and wash the dishes in the lodgings we took in the little towns. Bah! I hate the smell of brown Windsor soap to this day. I was just a little wild animal, for I never went to school a day in my life, and I was never allowed to go out on errands alone, unless they kept account of the exact time it would take to go and come, and they held me to account for every minute. I hardly think I ever talked to a child till I was grown up.
Well, the business fell off in England, so we took passage in a sailing ship for California, around the Horn. That voyage was the happiest time of my life, for I had nothing to do but practise my steps one or two hours a day, when the sea was calm enough. There was a very nice old lady aboard who taught me how to sew, and gave me some flannel to make myself some underwear, for I had never worn anything but what showed before, and I didn’t even know that anyone else ever did. She taught me to read, too, and tried to help me with arithmetic, but mercy! I never could get figures into my head.
Well, we got to San Francisco finally—that was about ten years ago. Bell-ringing didn’t seem to take very well; it was out of date, or other people did it better, because you know specialty people have to keep improving their act, and play on their heads, or while they’re tumbling through the air, or some novelty, nowadays, or it doesn’t go and it’s hard to get booked. But my act drew well, and it always saved our turn. I made up new steps all the time and invented pretty costumes, and so, of course, old Max watched me like grim death to see that I didn’t get away from him. We travelled all over the West, and all the time I was a drudge, did most of the work and got none of the money. They used to lock me into the house when they went out, and old Max’s wife would give me so much work to do that she’d know whether I’d been idle a moment. You wouldn’t think a girl in a fix like that had much chance to get married, would you?
Well, I am married, or rather I was. I don’t know just how I stand now. Let me tell you about it.
There was a man used to hang about the Star Variety Theatre in Los Angeles, who did small parts sometimes, when they wanted a policeman in a sketch, or things like that, but he mostly helped with the scene-shifters. I never had more than a few words with him, but he kind of took a fancy to me, and he used to bring me candy and leave it behind the flats where the others wouldn’t see it. I don’t believe, now, he ever cared so very much for me, but I was silly and had never had any attention, and I thought he was in love with me, and I imagined I was with him. He tried to make up to Max, but the old man wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
One day, when all my people were out and had locked me in the house, with a lot of dishes to wash, Harry—his name was Harry Maidslow—came down the street and saw me at the kitchen window. I raised the sash when he came into the yard, and without waiting for much talk first, for we were both afraid the old man would be coming back and would catch us, Harry asked me if I didn’t want to leave the show, and if I wouldn’t run away with him.
I believe I told him I’d run away with an orangoutang if I got the chance. Remember, I was only seventeen, and I had never been alone with a man in my life before. In my life—if you call such slavery as that, living! So he told me not to appear to notice him, but to be all ready for him and to watch out, and when I heard a certain whistle he taught me, wherever I was, to jump and run for him, and he’d do the rest.
You can imagine if I wasn’t excited for the next few days! I would have jumped off the roof to get to him, if necessary, and I just waited from hour to hour, expecting to hear his call every minute. I didn’t hardly dare to go to sleep at night for fear I’d miss him, and I was listening everywhere I went, meals and all. I think I trembled for three days. It seemed impossible that he’d be able to get me away; it was too good to come true. But I had nothing else in the world to look forward to, and I hoped and prayed for that whistle with all my might.
One night at the theatre, after my company had done the first part of their bell-ringing, I went on for my song. I remember it was that purple silk frock I wore, the one with the gold fringe, and red stockings with bows at the knees. Well, the orchestra had just struck up my air—
“Ain’t I the cheese? Ain’t I the cheese?
Dancing the serpentine under the trees!”
and I was just ready to catch the first note when I heard that whistle so loud and clear I couldn’t mistake it. Heavens! I can almost hear it now. I was half frightened to death, but I just shut my eyes and jumped clean over the footlights and landed in the flageolet’s lap and then pelted right up the middle aisle. Harry had a lot of his friends ready by the main entrance, and they rushed down to meet me and while half of them held the ushers and the crowd back, for everyone was getting up to see what was the matter, like a panic, the rest of the boys took me by the elbows and ran me out the front door. The house was simply packed that night, and when they all saw me jump they set up a yell like the place was afire. But I didn’t hear it at all till I got out in the corridor with my skirt half torn off and my dancing clogs gone—and then the noise sounded like a lion roaring in a menagerie.
Harry was all ready waiting for me, and he took me right up in his arms, as if I was a doll, ran down the stairs, put me in a carriage waiting at the door, and we drove off, lickety-split.
I’ve often thought since then that I took a big risk in trusting a man I didn’t really know at all, but Harry was square, and took me right down to a justice of the peace. We were married just as I stood, with no slippers and the holes in the heels of my stockings showing. What old Max did, I don’t know, but he must have been a picture for the audience when he saw me fly away like a bird out of a cage. By the time he found out what had happened it was too late to do anything about it, for I was Mrs. Maidslow.
Well, I lived with Harry for a few months, and then he began to drink and wanted me to go on the stage again to support him. The first time he struck me I ran away and came up to San Francisco, and went into specialty work for myself. Harry was kind enough when he was sober; in fact, he was too good-natured to refuse even a drink; that was just what was the matter. He had no backbone, and although he had a sort of romantic way with him that women like he didn’t have the nerve to stay with anything very long.
Now the funny part of the whole thing is this. You’d think that old Max would have been furious, and so he was at first, but afterward he had a terrible falling out with the others in his company—his wife had died—and I guess he wanted to spite them more than he did me. At any rate, just before he died, a year ago, he inherited some money from an uncle in Germany, and what did he do but leave a kind of a legacy to Harry. That is, the old man had a funny idea that wills didn’t hold very well in this country, and he had a great respect for the honor of the army officers. So he left $15,000 in cash with a Colonel Knowlton in trust for Harry Maidslow when he could be found. Harry had a way of changing his name when he felt like it, and old Max didn’t know him very well, anyway, so the only way he could be sure of Colonel Knowlton identifying him was by—well, by a certain mark he had on his body that Max happened to know about. The colonel has been invalided home from the Philippines, and every time he sees me he asks me if I’ve found Harry.
So, that’s all. I don’t really know whether I’m a wife or a widow, but I do know that I ought to have a share of that money coming to me, and perhaps if you put the story into the paper, some of his friends will see it and give me news of him.
Admeh Drake put his pencil into his pocket feeling a sense of shame at his duplicity with this little waif. He would have been glad to help her, but it seemed useless to disappoint her credulity by confessing that his relations with the press were entirely fictitious. “Well, I hope you get the money,” he said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help you, I will. But don’t you want me to see you home, Maxie?”
“Sure!” said the girl, frankly, and after pulling on a rather soiled automobile coat and adjusting a top-heavy plumed black hat, she descended the stairs of the theatre with Admeh and they found themselves on Market Street.
“It’s a little late to get anything to eat,” Admeh suggested, tentatively, trusting to his luck. He was not disappointed.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied the girl. “I always have supper after I get home, anyway.”
Half the worry was off his mind, but without a cent in his pocket, the question of transportation troubled him. If worst came to worst, Admeh decided that he would take Maxie home in a carriage, see her safely indoors, and then return and have it out with the driver. But first he ventured another insinuation. “It’s a beautiful night!” he remarked. At that moment the fog enveloped the upper half of the Spreckels Building, and the tall and narrow column was visible only as an irregular pattern of soft, blurred yellow lights.
“Fine!” said Maxie. “Let’s walk.”
She took his arm blithely, happy at her release from work, and they crossed over, went up Grant Avenue to Post Street and there turned toward Union Square. A short distance ahead of them a tall man in a gray mackintosh was walking with somewhat painful carefulness up the street. His deviations seemed to testify to a rather jovial evening’s indulgence. The two rapidly approached him, and Admeh had scarcely time to notice his yellow beard and hair when the stranger turned into a doorway. The house he entered was gaudily painted in red and yellow with stars and crescents, and so fiercely lighted with electric lamps that no wayfarer, however dazed, could fail to notice the sign: “Hammam Baths—Gentlemen’s Entrance.” When Admeh turned to Maxie she was as pale as if she had seen a ghost. She looked up at him with a glitter in her eyes.
“Here!” she exclaimed, opening her purse and thrusting a dollar into his hand. “Go in there and see if that man who just went in has the word ’Dotty’ tattooed on his right arm! Find out who he is, and come to the theatre and tell me.”
With that she pushed him into the doorway and was gone.