Sabrina in this chapter attends a beefsteak party and becomes involved in an argument with a certain party who was formerly her roommate but whom she left quietly and by night.
CHAPTER TEN
"Don't I look like a tea store chromo?" inquired Sabrina as Estelle, her maid, opened the door. "Oh, such a time I had! Never again will I go to see that Alla McSweeney. Pipe my dial! Get onto the scratch! There are some wounds that even powder cannot hide. It all started this way. The girls down at Wilbur's show decided to give a beefsteak in honor of the prima donna getting the can. Believe me, if they had let a hanging piece fall on her she would have got but half what was coming to her. Cat! Well, I should say so, dear. She spoiled the whole effect of that 'I'd Rather Be a Lemon Than a Quince' number just because she wouldn't let the pony girls share the spot in the picture. Honest, she caused more troubles than Louis Nethersole's English actors ever imagined they had.
"I met her socially several times, and she certainly was perfectly lovely to me. But when she got back on the stage, why, she even had the stagehands stepping sideways, and you know them. And the manager couldn't call his soul his own until he had loaded her into a cab and on her way. Wilbur told me that while on the road that between watching the panners in the box offices and keeping her from throwing a fit on the stage he got gray-headed. As for her maid, I can only say, 'Help that poor creature.' One time the maid pinched her foot while buttoning her shoe and what does the prima donna do but bounce her whole makeup box on the top of the maid's defenseless nob. And the way she looks on the street compared to what she does on the stage, that makeup box must certainly have been of some size. Of course I am not roasting the poor creature, for it may be temperament instead of temper, but I am merely stating what I have heard.
"But to get back to the big eat. The prima donna got too gay and when they struck New York the home office got wise and she wouldn't stand a cut in her salary, so they just naturally decorated her with the festive bug and told her to take a whirl at vaudeville or something else real mean. Say, when the news got out that she was to leave everybody was so happy that even the chorus men went out and bought each other a beer. What do you think of that? Well, anyway the mob got together after the performance and decided to celebrate the event in fitting and proper style by getting soused, and Alla kindly donated her new flat. Yes, the Judge caught a sleeper on Wall Street and she was in strong with the cop on the beat and the people on the floor below her had moved on account of the noise. Selfish people. They didn't want to do anything all night but sleep, and Alla complained that they were wearing out the steam pipe by pounding on it.
"After the show the whole outfit cleaned all the makeup off except behind the ears and took it on the lope for Alla's domicile. Me being the guest of honor, I naturally kicked in late. Gee! everybody of any importance was there, even some of the principals, and every other show in town sent at least one representative. Say, the drum was so crowded that some of the couples had to turn the fire escape into a conservatory. They would crawl out there and bombard the neighborhood with empty bottles, until the cop on the corner would rap and then for some two or three minutes the block would be as silent as a tomb.
"Wilbur of course was there in his official capacity as press agent, to not only add tone to the gathering, but to make sure that it reached the night desk of all the papers, for if these society guys get a column and a half they ought to be willing to slip us poor chorus dolls a couple of sticks and keep it from under police news.
"I was there to see that Wilbur did not, under the influence of the charming company, make any remarks that might be misconstrued by any of the assembled gathering as a declaration of love. For them dolls are always on the job and the only time they don't catch a live one is when their hands are tied. Jealous? What! Me? Not so you can notice it, but I ain't going to have anybody have anything on me, and while I caused no scenes, I left the impression that I had Wilbur trained so that he would roll over and play dead at the word of command. While these 'keep off the grass' signs don't do much good, still they run a horrible bluff. Did Wilbur get wise to this move on my part? Not on your life! If he found out that I was, figuratively speaking, riding herd on him, he would get chesty and all swelled up until it would be my painful duty to lance him. I don't know yet whether Wilbur is a rhinestone Billie or a Whisky amber Billie with a dash of bitters Billie, but I am On the Job Betty, all right, all right.
"Well, to get back to the beefsteak. After all the guests had assembled, which was maybe some 2 a.m., they started in. It was merely the ordinary stunt of beer and beefsteak and beefsteak and beer, but the hours were enlivened by the vaudeville performances of the guests. This was before the precinct sergeant knocked on the door. One old frump that must have been tramming a mace in the Roman Hanging Gardens got a yen that was doing imitations she had Elsie Janis and Gertrude Hoffman looking like a couple of false starts. Another took the hooks out of her marsel wave and did that time-worn stunt of 'Laska.' Then one of the chorus men gave an imitation of George Cohan, as usual. But that don't explain the scratches; does it?
"To go back sometime, there was a certain skirt that I used to room with in Chicago when we were both broke, but one night she went out with a bunch of siss-boom-ah! boys and came home with a large and juicy snoot full and spent the early morning hours in leaning out of the window of the apartment and whistling through her fingers to the milkmen, as well as staging a disrobing number in the middle of the room with the curtains up to such an extent that the inhabitants of the outlying districts had to wait sometime for their morning milk.