“Right away,” replied the manager civilly, but with an odd expression. “I'm just sending some men down.” His surprise was so great that it had to find some expression. He seemed to be thinking it over as he left his desk to go to the wharf. Finally, with an effort at an off-hand manner, he added, “You're prompt on time.”
“Sure,” replied Halloran. “Why not?”
CHAPTER V—A Venture in Matrimony
It was Saturday night on the North Side, and shortly after six o'clock. That part of the world that centres in North Clark Street between Lincoln Park and the Bridge was already beginning to stir and stretch and shake off the dust of the day; was swarming in from scores of cross streets, to parade before the show-windows and pour into the beer-gardens and restaurants, to crowd at the corners—a motley company of washed and unwashed; of labourers and shopgirls hurrying home, and of more fortunate ones, old and young, sauntering from home, to get out of life what North Clark Street had to offer.
Strains of dance music floated out over board fences that were gaudy with posters, out over evergreen hedges that thrived in green tubs. All the world was gay to-night; all the world was in the mood to sit at white tables under the trees and dine on the best of German fare, to tip back and listen to German music from German orchestras, to toss the waiter half a dollar; life was gay, life was jolly; all was well with the world. No half-lights here, no miserly crouching in shadows, no gloomy ones to spoil it all; nothing but froth on the glass, a laugh on the lip, and here's looking at you!
But think again. Of all these houses of amusement was there not one standing empty—was there not one where gloom reigned? Glance along the street, pass the policeman on the corner—the fat policeman, for whose sake we will hope all thieves are slow of foot—down past other corners and other fat policemen, down almost to the river, so near that the smell of the water poisons the air. Was there not a dingy little playhouse, overwhelmed by the soot and grime of the city, by the noise of the trains that seemed to be rushing into the building with bells ringing and every steam-valve open—overwhelmed, too, by the rattle and struggle of the street, and the large buildings that crowded so close on each side that they threatened to come together with a snap and leave no trace of the dingy little structure with its porte cochere front. If there was, anywhere in this big city, a building that spoke of failure, of pitiful inadequacy for any metropolitan purpose, of aimlessness and inevitable wreckage, here it stood, bearing the hesitating announcement that within might be found Somebody's Original Oriental Burlesquers and Refined Vaudeville.
Not long after six o'clock was it, and the lingering remnants of a very thin audience were rapidly escaping before the onslaught of the “chasers.” The particular chaser that held the stage at the moment was a tall, thin young man, rather nimble as to the legs, who was exercising a sound pair of lungs on a song, a tender memory of a certain Bridget O'Grady, who, he vowed, was a perfect lady. The fiddles squeaked and rasped, the piano tinkled, the bass viol rumbled in loudest of all; and the audience grew thinner and thinner—narrowed down, in fact, to a few questionable individuals who had, one feared, no better place to go. After the song there was a dance in which the nimble legs appeared to some advantage. And if we had been tucked away in a corner of that dirty stage, behind the wings that were slit and frayed from years of service—if we had watched the Irish vocalist when he came off and readjusted his carroty wig, we could not have failed to recognize in the possessor of the nimble legs and the sound lungs our old friend Apples.
Somewhere in the course of his career Apples had dropped a stitch; for the goal of all true Thespians, the myriad-minded Shakespeare, was still only a waking dream for Apples, was still no more than a twinkling constellation that shone and shone in the far heavens, serenely unconscious that one Appleton Le Duc was striving upward. But was it not an encouragement to recall the inspiriting words of the professor of elocution, that Shakespeare himself had been a country boy; that he, too, had gone to the city to seek his fortune; that he, too, had stumbled and struggled, and climbed and climbed until he had reached the highest pinnacle of fame?