“No, Meestaire Jimmy. What I am?”
“I’ll say you’re one regular guy.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Madame Olga Stephano continued to be a “regular guy” for the remainder of the season, but when the summer rolled around Jimmy began to feel that his enthusiasm for the cause in the future would depend entirely upon an utterly sordid matter of dollars and cents. He politely suggested that a more obese emolument every Saturday night would make all the difference in the world. Madame Stephano exploded like a giant firecracker, shrugged her shapely shoulders and walked away.
Jimmy thereupon decided to leave the uplift flat on its back. He gave in his notice and the next day a summons from Chester Bartlett reached him. Bartlett offered him a place as press agent for his newest musical comedy, “Keep Moving” at a salary which exceeded the demand which Madame Stephano had rejected by twenty-five dollars a week. Jimmy went into executive session with himself and considered a motion for a reconsideration of his previously avowed determination to “keep all song and dance shows for life.” It was passed by a unanimous vote.
Jimmy smiled cynically one Saturday night in the early fall as he stood on the Boylston Street curb and watched a great throng of Boston amusement seekers filing through the main entrance of the Colonial Theatre. He was a backslider and an apostate, but he was no longer conscious of any scruples in the premises. His cynical aspect on this particular occasion was the result of his contemplation of the sign which outlined in incandescent brilliance over the portals of the playhouse the name of his new affiliation. It seemed to him to be, for a moment, a symbol of his downfall and disgrace.
His smile lost its hardness a minute later, however, and became something a shade softer and more human. A vagrant memory of a certain young person from Cedar Rapids, Iowa,—a young person whom Jimmy held in the highest regard—had crossed his train of thought. It was pleasant to think that Lolita Murphy was close at hand and that when the performance was over he could walk across the Common with her to her hotel, whisper words of endearment, and bask in the effulgence of the smiles which she so lavishly bestowed upon him.
Lolita, released from the oblivion of her drudgery as a player in the Mt. Vernon Stock Company, still cherished a great and overwhelming ambition to climb the ladder of theatrical fame and carelessly brush off the more or less distinguished celebrities who, she felt, encumbered the topmost rung.
She had reluctantly consented to accept a minor position in the “Keep Moving” company at Jimmy’s behest. The latter, filled with a pardonable desire to be near her, had convinced her that a little musical comedy experience was a necessary part of her theatrical training and had persuaded Bartlett to give her a microscopic part in the piece. In the first act she separated herself from the ranks of the chorus and remarked “Here comes the prince now.” In the second act she was the hat-check girl in the scene depicting the entrance to the dining-room of the Carlton Hotel and was called upon to say “think you’re fresh, don’t you?” to the principal comedian. In the third and final act she was one of the bridesmaids in the ragtime wedding number.