“Oh, about that time I changed my living quarters to a two-room-and-bath arrangement up on West 111th. They were furnished, and a bum piano thrown in. I didn’t care how bum it was, as it took all I could do to pick out notes with one finger. This was a blurb or so more than I’d been paying, which with my lessons meant that I was putting by a half of one percent, of my regular speed, even with a raise I got along in there.
“Then Fanchon came to me confidentially one day and offered to sell some of her stock in the firm—war times were getting stiff. I can tell you I stood still and shivered in my silk socks. Charlette’s stock was closed-corporation stuff and it had been one of my largest ideas to get some of it salted down. Only the old guard had their mitts on it, and I didn’t know when I was going to be trusted with a block. I made her out a cheque in quick order. A stockholder! They couldn’t kick me out now, I doped it.”
She was silent for a moment of reflection, seeming to choose between the thoughts that were crowding about her, while Joy held her breath in hope that she would plunge ahead without choosing.
“I wanted to get some percentage on my lessons, and some of the professional experience they talked about, so pretty soon I looked around for a cabaret job and got one—through the girl at Rector’s, who knew the manager at Hanley’s. It wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t have done anything else with my evenings but sleep—and six hours’ sleep always did me, from habit I guess. I came on at seven-thirty and eleven-five, two songs each time.
“That was some life—practice early in the A.M., get to Charlette’s at nine, work all day, Hanley’s in the evening, Pa Graham Sundays. That man has got a soul in him for every art in music, and he showed me how to succeed in my line while he was trying to make me into a diseuse. He made me go and hear Yvette Guilbert, and told me that’s what I should aim for—to be the American Yvette. But I had my own little idea of what I wanted to do, and to try diseusing in war times wasn’t it.
“And all this time I steered clear of men. It wasn’t so easy now that I was at Hanley’s, but being at work most of the time helped me, that and the thought of Phil Lancaster—it was funny the way he and the things he said stuck in my mind. ‘Honour and truth and a sure intent’—I had all of that now, the way I looked at it. You remember war times, Joy—everybody wanting to do something for somebody—air just reeking with idealism—all I wanted was to get over there and be some good. And after the war, Phil Lancaster, if he was still alive. Things would be different after the war, I thought. And I figured it that the experience of being over there would purify me as you read of its purifying people’s souls. For by that time I saw what the first years of my life had done to me. I don’t blame myself yet for being born an alley cat and living with and in scum for the first fifteen years of my life. I wasn’t taught any differently, and in spite of everything I taught myself and pulled myself out of the scum. No, I didn’t blame myself—I only wanted to better myself—and I thought that this Y stuff, overseas, would do a lot towards wiping away the scum that seeps in under the skin, when you’re buried in it, and sticks afterwards when you wash off the outside part.
“It was in October of 1917 that the top of everything was knocked off for me. I was at Hanley’s singing some fool song about ‘My Little Service Flag Having Seven Stars,’ and it was about eleven-fifteen—when suddenly I saw him—Phil Lancaster. Sitting alone at a table by the wall. He was looking at me, he was looking at me! He was in the uniform of a Captain of Infantry, and if I hadn’t been remembering him every day ever since he had come into Charlette’s, I wouldn’t have known him, he was so changed and tired. But he was looking at me! I faded up and closed out—all my wind gone. Shut down on encores. Couldn’t pipe another note. He had looked at me—well, as if he was noticing me hot.
“While I was still standing in the reception hallway, one of the waiters blew in with a note for me. I never saved it—just like me to lose it—but he asked if I couldn’t come out and have something to eat with him, describing his location. Now, we’re not allowed to go out and sit at the tables at Hanley’s. People could come back in the reception hall, and talk to us there, but that was all. My first idea was to reel a note back to him telling him that, and trust he would take the hint. But no! I didn’t dare let that go. Supposing he didn’t come across—after all those months—no, I couldn’t trust to it that he would tumble, or even want to. I gave the waiter a note saying I would join him presently, and scrubbed off most of my make-up, just leaving what I thought was a good veneer for close-range work. I had worn a big hat that flopped all around my face, and with my coat on and the lid flopping and the make-up toned down, I didn’t look much like myself. I took a sneak out the side and then breezed in front, told a waiter who didn’t know me I was joining a friend, and fox-trotted up to his table with all the starch in the world.
“And all the way I had been saying to myself: Jerry, you’ve had to fight for everything you’ve got so far—and you’ve got to fight for this, but you’ve been given the chance to fight!
“I sat down opposite him and grinned. He came out of a trance and looked at me. ‘Oh, hello!’ he said. ‘Are you sure you’re the same one who has seven stars on her service flag?’ ‘Seven is my limit,’ I said. ‘Is that a fixed resolve? Because I was seriously considering asking you if you would break over and add an eighth.’