CHAPTER XIII
How's Woodie and Sadie comin' on? Ah, say! you don't want to take the things she does too serious. It's got to be a real live one that interests Sadie. And, anyway, Woodie's willing to take oath that she put up a job on him. So it's all off.
And I guess I ain't so popular with her as I might be. Anyway, I wouldn't blame her, after the exhibition I made the other night, for classin' me with the phonies. It was trouble I hunted up all by myself.
Say, if I hadn't been havin' a dopey streak I'd a known something was about due. There hadn't a thing happened to me for more'n a week, when Pinckney blows into the Studio one mornin', just casual like, as if he'd only come in 'cause he found the door open. That should have put me leary, but it didn't. I gives him the hail, and tells him, he's lookin' like a pink just off the ice.
"Shorty," says he, "how are you on charity?"
"I'm a cinch," says I. "Every panhandler north of Madison Square knows he can work me for a beer check any time he can run me down."
"Then you'll be glad to exercise your talents in aid of a worthy cause," says he.
"It don't follow," says I. "The deservin' poor I passes up. There's too much done for 'em, as it is. It's the unworthy kind that wins my coin. They enjoys it more and has a harder time gettin' it."
"Your logic is good, Shorty," says he, "and I think I agree with your sentiments. But this is a case where charity is only an excuse. The ladies out at Rockywold are getting up an affair for the benefit of something or other, no one seems to know just what, and they've put you down for a little bag punching and club swinging."
"Then wire 'em to scratch the entry," says I. "I don't make any orchestra circle plays that I can dodge, and when it comes to fightin' the leather before a bunch of peacock millinery I renigs every time. I'll put on Swifty Joe as a sub., if you've got to have some one."
Pinckney shook his head at that. "No," says he, "I'll tell Sadie she must leave you off the program."
"Hold on," says I. "Was it Sadie billed me for this stunt?"
He said it was.
"Then I'm on the job," says I. "Oh, you can grin your ears off, I don't care."
Well, that was what fetched me out to Rockywold on a Friday night, when I had a right to be watchin' the amateur try-outs at the Maryborough Club instead. The show wasn't until Saturday evenin', but Pinckney said I ought to be there for the dress rehearsal.
"There's only about a dozen guests there now, so you needn't get skittish," says he.
And a dozen don't go far towards fillin' up a place like Rockywold. Say, if I had the price, I'd like a shack where I could take care of more or less comp'ny without settin' up cot beds, but I'll be blistered if I can see the fun in runnin' a free hotel like that.
These amateur shows are apt to be pretty punk, but I could see that, barrin' myself, there was a fair aggregation of talent on hand. The star was a googoo-eyed girl who did a barefoot specialty, recitin' pomes to music, and accompanyin' herself with a kind of parlor hoochee-coochee that would have drawn capacity houses at Dreamland. Then there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin' ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly there was me an' Miriam.
She was one of these limp, shingle-chested girls, Miriam was. She didn't have much to say, so I didn't take any particular notice of her. But at the rehearsal I got next to the fact that she could tease music out of a violin in great style. It was all right if you shut your eyes, for Miriam wasn't what you'd call a pastel. She was built a good deal on the lines of an L-road pillar, but that didn't bar her from wearin' one of these short-sleeved square-necked, girly-girly dresses that didn't leave you much in doubt as to her framework.
Yes, Miriam could have stood a few well-placed pads. She'd lived long enough to have found that out, too, but they was missin'. I should guess that Miriam had begun exhibitin' her collar-bones to society about the time poor old John L. fought the battle of New Orleans. Yet when she snuggled the butt end of that violin down under her chin and squinted at you across the bridge, she had all the motions of a high-school girl.
'Course, I didn't dope all this out to myself at the time; for, as I was sayin', I didn't size her up special. But it all came to me afterwards—yes, yes!
The excitement broke loose along about the middle of that first night. I'd turned in about an hour before, and I was poundin' my ear like a circus hand on a Sunday lay-over, when I hears the trouble cry. First off I wasn't goin' to do any more than turn over and get a fresh hold on the mattress, for I ain't much on routin' out for fires unless I feel the head-board gettin' hot. But then I wakes up enough to remember that Rockywold is a long ways outside the metropolitan fire district, and I begins to throw clothes onto myself.
Inside of two minutes I was outdoors lookin' for a chance to win a Carnegie medal. There wasn't any show at all, though. The fire, what there was of it, was in the kitchen, in the basement of the wing where the help stays. Half a dozen stablemen had put it out with the garden hose, and were finishin' the job by soakin' one of the cooks, when I showed up.
I watched 'em for a while, and then started back to my room. Somehow I got twisted up in the shrubbery, and instead of goin' back the way I came, I gets around on the other corner. Just about then a ground-floor window is shoved up, and a female in white floats out on a little stone balcony. She waves her arms and begins to call for help.
"You're late," says I. "It's all over."
That didn't satisfy her at all, though. Some smoke and steam was still comin' from the far side of the buildin', and it was blowin' in through another window.
"Help, help!" she squeals. "Help, before I jump!"
"I wouldn't," says I, "they've gone home with the life net."
"The smoke, the smoke!" says she. "Oh, I must jump!"
"Well, if you've got the jumpin' fit," says I, "jump ahead; but if you can hold yourself in a minute, I'll bring a step-ladder."
"Then hurry, please hurry!" says she, and starts to climb up on the edge of the balcony.
It wa'n't more'n six feet to the turf anyway, and it wouldn't have been any killing matter if she had jumped, less'n she'd landed on her neck; but she was as looney as if she'd been standin' on top of the Flatiron Buildin'. Bein' as how I'd forgot to bring a step-ladder with me, I chases around after something she could come down on. The moon wasn't shinin' very bright though, and there didn't seem to be any boxes or barrels lyin' around loose, so I wasn't makin' much headway. But after awhile I gets hold of something that was the very ticket. It was one of these wooden stands for flower-pots. I lugs that over and sets it up under the window.
"Now if you'll just slide down onto that easy," says I, "your life is saved."
She looks at it once, and begins to flop her arms and take on again. "I never can do it, I know I can't!" says she. "I'll fall, I'll fall!"
Well, it was a case of Shorty McCabe to the rescue, after all. "Coming up!" says I, and hops on the thing, holdin' out me paws.
She didn't need any more coaxin'. She scrabbled over that balcony rail and got a shoulder clutch on me that you couldn't have loosened with a crowbar. I gathered in the rest of her with my left hand and steadied myself with the other. Lucky she wasn't a heavy-weight, or that pot-holder wouldn't have stood the strain. It creaked some as we went down, but it held together.
"Street floor, all out!" says I, as I hit the grass.
But that didn't even get a wiggle out of her.
"It's all over," says I. "You're rescued."
Talk about your cling-stones! She was it. Never a move. I couldn't tell whether she'd fainted, or was too scared to let go. But it was up to me to do something. I couldn't stand there for the rest of the night holdin' a strange lady draped the way she was, and it didn't seem to be just the right thing to sit down to it. Besides, one of her elbows was tryin' to puncture my right lung.
"If you're over the fire panic, I'll try and hoist you back through the window, miss," says I.
She wasn't ready to do any conversin' then, though. She was just holdin' onto me like I was too good a thing to let slip.
"Well, it looks to me as though we'd got to make a front entrance," says I; "but I hope the audience'll be slim," and with that I starts to finish the lap around the house and make for the double doors.
I've carried weight before, but never that kind, and it seemed like that blamed house was as big around as a city block. Once or twice we butted into the bushes, and another time I near tumbled the two of us into the pool of a fountain; but after awhile I struck the front porch, some out of breath, and with a few wisps of black hair in my eyes, but still in the game. The lady hadn't made a murmur, and she hadn't slacked her clinch.
I was hopin' to slide in quiet, without bein' spotted by anyone, for most of the women had gone back to bed, and I could hear the men down in the billiard room clickin' glasses over an extra dream-soother. Luck was against me, though. Right under the newel-post light stood Pinckney, wearin' a silk pajama coat outside of a pair of black broadcloth trousers. When he sees me and what I was luggin' he looks kind of pleased.
"Hello, Shorty!" says he. "What have you there?"
"It might be a porous-plaster, by the way it sticks," says I, "but it ain't. It's a lady I've been rescuin' while the rest of you guys was standin' around watchin' a wet cook."
"By Jove!" says Pinckney, steppin' up and takin' a close look. "Miriam!"
"Thanks," says I. "We ain't been introduced yet. Do you mind unhookin' her fingers from the back of my neck?"
But all he did was to stand there with his mouth corners workin', and them black eyes of his winkin' like a pair of arc lights.
"It's too pretty a picture to spoil," says he. "So touching! Reminds me of Andromeda and What's-his-name. Just keep that pose a minute, will you, until I bring up the rest of the fellows?"
"You'll bring up nothin'," says I, reachin' out with one hand and gettin' a grip on the collar of his silk jacket. "Now get busy, or off comes your kimono."
With that he quits kiddin' and goes to work on Miriam's fingers, and in about a minute she gives a little jump, like she'd just heard the breakfast bell.
"Why!" says she. "Where am I?"
"Right where you landed five minutes ago," says I.
Then she shudders all over and squeals: "Oh! A man! A man!"
"Sure," says I, "you didn't take me for a Morris chair, did you?"
Miriam didn't linger for any more. She lets loose a holler that near splits me ear open, slides down so fast that her bare tootsies hit the floor with a spat, grabs her what-d'ye-call-it up away from her ankles with both hands, and sprints down the hall as if she was makin' for the last car.
"Say," says I, gettin' me neck out of crook, "I wish that thought had come to her sooner. I feel as if I'd been squeezed by a pair of ice-tongs. If she can hug like that in her sleep, what could she do when she was wide awake?"
"Shorty," says Pinckney, with his face as solemn as a preacher's, "I'm pained and astonished at this."
"Me, too," says I.
"Don't jest," says he. "This looks to me like an attempt at kidnapping."
"If you'd had that grip on you, I guess you'd have thought it was the real thing," says I. "But here's a little tip I want to pass on to you: Don't go spreadin' this josh business around the lot, or your show'll be minus a star act. I'll stand for all the private kiddin' you can hand out, but I've got my objections to playin' a public joke-book part. Now, will you quit?"
He was mighty disappointed at havin' to do it, but he gave his word, and I makes tracks up stairs, glad enough to be let off so easy.
"It was a queer kind of a faint, if that's what it was," says I to myself. "I'll bet I fights shy of anything more of the kind that I sees comin' my way. This is what I gets for strayin' so far from Broadway."
But a little thing like that don't interfere with my sleepin', when slumber's on the card, and I proceeds to tear off what was due me on the eight-hour sched., and maybe a little more.
I didn't get a sight of Miriam all day long. Not that I was strainin' my eyes any. There was somethin' better to look at—Sadie, for instance. 'Course Pinckney was bossin' the show, but she was bossin' him, and anyone else that was handy. They were goin' to pull off the racket in the ball-room, and Sadie found a lot to do to it. She's a hummer, Sadie is. Maybe she wa'n't brought up among bow-legged English butlers and a lot of Swedish maids, but she's learned the trick of gettin' 'em to break their necks for her whenever she says the word.
All the forenoon more folks kept comin' on every train, and there was two rows of them big, deep-breathin' tourin' cars in the stables. By dinnertime Rockywold looked like a Saratoga hotel durin' the racin' season. Chappies were playin' lawn tennis, and luggin' golf bags around, and keepin' the ivories rollin', while the front walks and porches might have been Fifth-ave. on a Monday afternoon, from the dry-goods that was bein' sported there.
I stowed myself away in a corner of the billiard-room and didn't mix much, but I was takin' it all in. Not that I was feelin' lonesome, or anything like that. I likes to see any sort of fun, even if it ain't just my kind. And besides, there was more or less in the bunch that I knew first-rate. But I don't care about pushin' to the front until I gets the call.
So everything runs along smooth, and I was figurin' on makin' a late train down to Primrose Park after I'd done my little turn. I didn't care much about seein' the show, so I stuck to the dressin'-room until they sends word that it was my next. We'd had the punchin'-bag apparatus rigged up in the forenoon, and there wasn't anything left to be done but hook on the leather and spread out the mat.
Pinckney was doin' the announcin' and the jolly he gives me before he lugs me out was somethin' fierce. I reckon I was blushin' some when I went on. I took just one squint at the mob and felt a chill down my spine. Say, it's one thing to step up before a gang of sports in a hall, and another to prance out in ring clothes on a platform in front of two or three hundred real ladies and gents wearin' their evenin' togs.
There I was, though, and the crowd doin' the hurrah act for all it was worth. When I gets the bag goin' I feels better, and whatever grouch I has against Pinckney for not lettin' me wear my gym. suit I puts into short-arm punches on the pigskin. The stunt seemed to take. I could tell that by the buzz that came over the footlights. No matter what you're doin', whether it's makin' campaign speeches, or stoppin' a comer in six rounds, it's always a help to know that you've got the crowd with you.
By the time I'd got well warmed up, and was throwin' in all the flourishes that's been invented—double ducks, side-step and swing, shoulder work, and so on—I felt real chipper. I makes a grandstand finish, and then has the nerve to face the audience and do a matinée bend. As I did that I gets my lamps fixed on some one in the front row.
Say, if you've ever done much on the platform, you know how sometimes you'll get a squint at a pair of eyes down front and can't get yourself away from 'em after that. Well, that was the way with me then. There was rows and rows of faces that all looked alike, but this one phiz seemed to stand right out; and to save me, all I could do was to stare back.
It belonged to Miriam. She had her chin tucked down, and her head canted to one side, and her mouth puckered into the mushiest kind of a grin you ever saw. Her eyes were rolled up real kittenish, too. Oh, it was a combination to make a man strike his grandmother, that look she was sendin' up to me. I wanted to dodge it and pick up another, but there was no more gettin' away from it than as if I was bein' followed by a search-light. Worst of it was, I could feel myself grinnin' back at her just as mushy. I was gettin' sillier every breath, and I might have got as far as blowin' kisses at her if I hadn't pulled myself together and begun to juggle the Indian clubs, for the second half of my act.
All the ginger had faded out of me, though, and I cut the rest of it mighty short. As I comes off, Sadie grabs me and begins to tell me what a hit I'd made, and how tickled she was, but I shakes her off.
"What's your great rush, Shorty?" says she.
"I've got a date to fill down the road," says I, and I makes a quick break for the dressin'-room. Honest, I was gettin' rattled for fear if Miriam should get another look at me she'd mesmerize me so I'd never wake up. I skins into my sack-suit, leaves word to have my bag expressed to town, and was just about to make a sudden exit when I bumps into some one at the front door.
"Oh, Mr. McCabe! How did you know where to find me?" says she.
Say, I'll give you one guess. Sure, it was Miriam again. She was got up expensive, all real lace and first-water sparks, and just as handsome as a towel rack. But the minute she turns on that gushy look I'm nailed to the spot, same as the rabbits they feed to the boa-constrictors up at the Zoo.
"You didn't think you could lose me so easy, did you?" says I.
"What a persistent fellow you are!" says she. "But, after you behaved so heroically last night, I suppose I must forgive you. Wasn't it silly of me to be so frightened?"
"Oh, well," says I, "the best of us is apt to go off our nut sometimes."
"How sweet of you to put it that way!" says she, and then she uncorks a giggle. "You did carry me so nicely, too."
That was a sample. I wouldn't go on and give you the whole book of the opera for money. It's somethin' I'm tryin' to forget. But we swapped that kind of slush for near half an hour, and when the show broke up and the crowd began to swarm towards the buffet lunch, we was sittin' out on the porch in the moonlight, still at it. Pinckney says we was holdin' hands and gazin' at each other like a couple of spoons in the park. Maybe we was; I wouldn't swear different.
All I know is that after a while I looks up and sees Sadie standin' there pipin' us off, with her nose in the air and the heat lightnin' kind of glimmerin' in them blue eyes of hers. The spell was broke quicker'n when the curtain goes down and the ushers open the lobby doors. 'Course, Sadie's nothin' more'n an old friend of mine, and I'm no more to her, but you see it hadn't been so long ago that I'd been tellin' her what a sweat I was in to get away. She never said a word, only just sticks her chin up and laughs, and then goes on.
Next minute there shows up in front of us a fat old lady, with three chins and a waist like a clothes hamper.
"Miriam!" says she, and there was wire nails and broken glass in the way she said it, "Miriam, I think it was high time you retired."
"Bully for you, old girl!" I sings out. "And say, I'll give you a dollar if you'll lock her in until I can get away."
Perhaps that was a low-down thing to say, but I couldn't help lettin' it come. I didn't wait for any more remarks from either of 'em, but I grabs my hat and makes a dash across lots. I never stopped runnin' until I fetched the station, and it wasn't until after the train pulled out that I breathed real easy.
Bein' safe here in the Studio, with Swifty on guard, I might grin at the whole thing, if it wasn't for that laugh of Sadie's. That cut in deep. Two or three days later I hears from Pinckney.
"Shorty," says he, "you're a wonder. I fancy you don't know what you did in getting so chummy with Miriam under the very nose of that old watch-dog aunt of hers. Why, I know of fellows who've waited years for that chance."
"Back up!" says I. "She's a freak."
"But Miriam's worth three or four millions," says he.
"I don't care if she owns a bond factory," says I. "I'm no bone connoisseur, nor I don't make a specialty of collectin' autumn leaves. Do you know what I'd do if I was her aunt?"
"What?" says he.
"Well," says I, "I'd hang a red lantern on her."