“He never showed up. I never have seen him since. I waited that evening—God, Joy, I hope you don’t know what it is to wait like that for a man who doesn’t come—when you’ve been waiting for days for that evening—and then he doesn’t come—even when it gets too late, hoping——And then the waiting afterwards—to hear some explanation—some reason—watching the mail, jumping at the phone—oh, I can’t go over it all again!”
“Perhaps he sailed for France,” Joy said.
“I thought of that, of course. But he had told me that another thing that made him so sick was being stuck permanently on this side as far as he could see. I thought too, he might have been transferred to another camp. But whatever happened, to go off without a word—without a word, for two years——When I thought it over long enough, though, I understood. I was nothing but an incident in his life—and with soldiers in war times, incidents flared up and then passed off in double quick order. Something had happened so that it wasn’t convenient for him to come around any more—probably he got a new interest—and why should he bother to let me know? First place, there probably wasn’t any excuse—just a bare statement of fact——Second place, I was nothing but a cabaret singer—why should he go out of his way to observe any of the fine hairs of convention for me? And so on!” Jerry’s teeth clicked.
“Oh, Jerry, I know there’s something more to this. I know there must be some awfully good excuse.”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders almost out of the purple kimono. “I thought so at first. It took me quite a while to see that after all, it was a pretty simple case. When I finally came to my senses, the first thing I did was to knock the ‘Idylls of the King’ about the room a bit. Then the very next day in at Charlette’s I keeled over while shooting my mouth off at a cutter, and though I didn’t actually go out, a lot of little black specks swam around and everything looked worse than it might have if I’d fainted in a clean break. I didn’t need any pill-fiend to tell me it was overwork—the effect of years—I knew it myself, had known it for aforesaid years. I had to quit Charlette’s, but I kept the stock. The dividends from that make my only steady income, now, and as you’ve noticed, I can’t keep to it.
“Somehow, that day when I came to and kicked the ‘Idylls of the King’ about, something had snapped. I guess you can call it my sure intent. I didn’t want to go on at Charlette’s. I didn’t want to work anywhere. I’d worked all my life, I’d never had a speaking acquaintance with much of anything but work and filth, and I felt it was time to give a farewell bow to each. My sure intent beat it then and there—and the only thing it left me was just as sure an intent to get as good a time as possible out of the rest of my life before I got so old that I’d have to put the snaffle on everything.
“Still, it was war times, and if you can go back into the Dark Ages of a year ago, you can remember everybody wanted to do something for somebody else then. I signed up with the Y—but not to go across. My physical examination wouldn’t admit of that; so I signed up for duty over here.
‘I went and said good-bye to Pa, and he gave me a few tips I didn’t need about not singing DeBussy to the doughboys. Then I went on my little See-America-First expedition. It was more fun than I’d ever had, and the Y people I was thrown with taught me a lot. Some of them were wonders, others were such frosts that you wondered how even the hall could stand it, let alone the audience in the hall. I put it over, as my songs were snappy and my work had cabaret pep; by the same token I let myself in for a lot of criticism, but since the criticism never came from the soldiers, I didn’t care and I wouldn’t change my methods.
“You’ve probably heard me cartooned as an international character; anyway, that’s what I’m called. This touring of the camps was what started me. I had more freedom with the men than I would have if I’d been in France, and the college-boy type was what looked good to me. The reason I liked them both then and now—it’s truer now than it ever was—is that they had just as sure an intent as I for having as good a time as possible while they lasted, and I liked their ways of going about it. They liked me, too, because I was easy to be with and they could feel just as free as if they were among themselves.
“I suppose that’s the keynote of my relations with men; they can act just as if they were among themselves. I smoke with them, drink more than they do and hold it better; I tell ’em stories and sing ’em songs; they can be as free as possible, and yet with the added pep in the thought that after all, I am a girl.