O Henry

           Strictly Business
     More Stories of the Four Million


                  I

          Strictly Business


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея



I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people.  You've 
been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper 
criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the 
chorus girls and the long-haired tragedians.  And I suppose that a 
condensed list of your ideas about the mysterious stageland would 
boil down to something like this:

Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no 
better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded.  Chorus 
girls are inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg.  All 
shows walk back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties.  
Irreproachable actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their 
mothers on Broadway and their step-aunts on the road.  Kyrle 
Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley.  The ravings of John 
McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first sale of 
the Ellen Terry memoirs.  Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. Sothern; 
but Henry Miller is getting older than he was.

All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink 
champagne and eat lobsters until noon the next day.  After all, the 
moving pictures have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.

Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people.  If we did, 
the profession might be more overcrowded than it is.  We look 
askance at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority--
and we go home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in 
front of our looking glasses.

Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new 
light.  It seems to have been divulged that instead of being 
motoring bacchanalias and diamond-hungry _loreleis_ they are 
businesslike folk, students and ascetics with childer and homes 
and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private 
affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good 
citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, 
ice, and wardmen.

Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the 
true one is a surmise that has no place here.  I offer you merely this 
little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you 
only the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door 
of Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push 
of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch--
and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into 
her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act.

The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration.  But 
Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits 
for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three 
lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated 
imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of 
approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house--than 
which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of 
good work.

The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful 
performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage.  In 
order to give himself this pleausre he will often forsake the 
sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth 
to attend a matin'ee offering by his less gifted brothers.  Once 
during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and 
remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thespian 
muscles--the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the 
palm of the other.

One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known 
vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and 
got his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.

A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces 
and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into 
gloom.  Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and 
applauded; but Bob Hart, "All the Mustard and a Whole Show in 
Himself," sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as a 
boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball.

But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight.  H 
was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in 
Character Songs and Impersonations.  There were scarcely more 
than two bites to Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied 
with a pink cord and charged to the old man's account.  She first 
showed you a deliciously dewy and ginghamy country girl with a 
basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that 
there were other things to be learned at the old log school-house 
besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When the Teach-er Kept 
Me in."  Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, 
she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a fluffy 
"Parisienne"--so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin 
Rouge.  And then--

But you know the rest.  And so did Bob Hart; but he saw 
somebody else.  he thought he saw that Cherry was the only 
professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed 
exactly to fit the part of "Helen Grimes" in the sketch he had 
written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk.  Of course 
Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper 
man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away 
somewhere.  They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, 
desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults, 
handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call.  
They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.

But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar.  He 
called it "Mice Will Play."  He had kept it quiet and hidden away 
ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his 
conception of "Helen Grimes."  And here was "Helen" herself, 
with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the 
flawless stage art that his critical taste demanded.

After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, 
and got Cherry's address.  At five the next afternoon he called at 
the musty old house in the West Forties and sent up his 
professional card.

By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain _voile_ skirt, with 
her hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry 
might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's 
daughter, in the great (unwritten) New England drama not yet 
entitled anything.

"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his 
card carefully.  "What did you wish to see me about?"

"I saw you work last night," said Hart.  "I've written a sketch that 
I've been saving up.  It's for two; and I think you can do the other 
part.  I thought I'd see you about it."

"Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry.  "I've been wishing for 
something of the sort.  I think I'd like to act instead of doing 
turns."

Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, 
and read it to her.

"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.

And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved 
by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting 
the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with 
the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of 
Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her.  Hart 
yielded to all her strictures without argument.  She had at once put 
her finger on the sketch's weaker points.  That was her woman's 
intuition that he had lacked.  At the end of their talk Hart was 
willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four 
years of vaudeville that "Mice Will Play" would blossom into a 
perennial flower in the garden of the circuits.  Miss Cherry was 
slower to decide.  After many puckerings of her smooth young 
brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead 
pencil she gave out her dictum.

"Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out.  
That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip 
to a handless hand laundry.  I can make it stand out like the 
colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar.  
And I've seen you work.  I know what you can do with the other 
part.  But business is business.  How much do you get a week for 
the stunt you do now?"

"Two hundred," answered Hart.

"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry.  "That's about the 
natural discount for a woman.  But I live on it and put a few 
simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen 
hearth.  The stage is all right.  I love it; but there's something else I 
love better--that's a little country home, some day, with Plymouth 
Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard.

"Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS.  If 
you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it.  
And I believe we can make it go.  And there's something else I 
want to say:  There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm _on the 
level_, and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls 
work in stores and offices.  I'm going to save my money to keep 
me when I'm past doing my stunts.  No Old Ladies' Home or 
Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.

"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all 
nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it.  I know something about 
vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in 
particular.  I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can 
cart away from it every pay-day in a little manila envelope with 
nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap.  It's 
kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenette myself for plenty of 
rainy days in the future.  I want you to know just how I am.  I don't 
know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak 
tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've 
got money in five savings banks."

"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're 
in on your own terms.  I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat 
and stenciled on my make-up box.  When I dream of nights I 
always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long 
Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, 
and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, 
swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanleys 
'Explorations into Africa.'  And nobody else around.  You never 
was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?"

"Not any," said Cherry.  "What I'm going to do with my money is 
to bank it.  You can get four per cent. on deposits.  Even at the 
salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have 
an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone.  
Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business--say, 
trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more."

"Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right, 
anyhow.  There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at 
all who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd 
save their money instead of blowing it.  I'm glad you've got the 
correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry.  I think the same way; and 
I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn 
now when we get it shaped up."

The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all 
successful writings for the stage.  Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, 
remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and 
business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, 
renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a 
dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol--put the sketch through all 
the known processes of condensation and improvement.

They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the 
rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour 
would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of 
the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the 
thrilling climax of the sketch.

Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work.  In the act a 
real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge.  
Helen Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish 
skill and daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the 
private secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her 
father, "Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, 
owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad 
Lands or Amagensett, L. I.  Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob 
Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt riding trousers, and 
gives his address as New York, leaving you to wonder why he 
comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case may be) and at 
the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should want 
puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.

Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind 
of play, whether we admit it or not--something along in between 
"Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.

There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play."  Hart 
and Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part 
always played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a 
Tuxedo coat and a panic to announce that the house was 
surrounded by Indians, and to turn down the gas fire in the grate 
by the manager's orders.

There was another girl in the sketch--a Fifth Avenue society 
swelless--who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack 
Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third 
Avenue before he lost his money.  This girl appeared on the stage 
only in the photographic state--Jack had her Sarony stuck up on 
the mantel of the Amagan--of the Bad Lands droring room.  Helen 
was jealous, of course.

And now for the thriller.  Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina 
pectoris one night--so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat 
whisper over the footlights--while only his secretary was present.  
And that same day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in 
his (ranch) library just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in 
the East (that accounts for the price we pay for steak!).  The cash 
disappears at the same time.  Jack Valentine was the only person 
with the ranchman when he made his (alleged) croak.

"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed--" you sabe, 
don't you?  And then there are some mean things said about the 
Fifth Avenue Girl--who doesn't come on the stage--and can we 
blame her, with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one 
actually must be buttoned in the back by a call boy, maids cost so 
much?

But, wait.  Here's the climax.  Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she 
can be, is goaded beyond imprudence.  She convinces herself that 
Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier.  To lose at 
one fell swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles 
in the sides like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever 
patient is enough to make any perfect lady mad.  So, then!

They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted 
elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), 
and the d'enouement begins.  I know of no more interesting time in 
the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends.

Helen thinks Jack has taken the money.  Who else was there to 
take it?  The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the 
orchestra hadn't left their seats; and no man could get past "Old 
Jimmy," the stage door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier 
or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility.

Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack 
Valentine:  "Robber and thief--and worse yet, stealer of trusting 
hearts, this should be your fate!"

With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.

"But I will be merciful," goes on Helen.  "You shall live--that will 
be your punishment.  I will show you how easily I could have sent 
you to the death that you deserve.  There is _her_ picture on the 
mantel.  I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that 
should have pierced your craven heart."

And she does it.  And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants 
pulling strings.  Helen fires.  The bullet--the actual bullet--goes 
through the face of the photograph--and then strikes the hidden 
spring of the sliding panel in the wall--and lo! the panel slides, and 
there is the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and 
bags of gold.  It's great.  You know how it is.  Cherry practised for 
two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house.  It took 
good shooting.  In the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three 
inches in diameter, covered by wall paper in the panel; and she 
had to stand in exactly the same spot every night, and the photo 
had to be in exactly the same spot, and she had to shoot steady and 
true every time.

Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the 
secret place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his 
salary (which really might have come under the head of "obtaining 
money under"; but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, 
the New York girl was really engaged to a concrete house 
contractor in the Bronx; and, necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in 
a half-Nelson--and there you are.

After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they 
had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates.  The sketch 
was a house wrecker.  It was one of those rare strokes of talent that 
inundates a theatre from the roof down.  The gallery wept; and the 
orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears.

After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and 
pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry.  Five hundred dollars 
a week was what it panned out.

That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry 
good night at her boarding-house door.

"Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes.  
We've got our chance now to make good and make money.  What 
we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all 
we can."

"Right," said Bob.  "It's business with me.  You've got your 
scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that 
bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble.  
Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention."

"Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply 
thoughtful.  "I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce 
our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help 
me work out mine--and all on business principles."


"Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York 
for ten weeks--rather neat for a vaudeville sketch--and then it 
started on the circuits.  Without following it, it may be said that it 
was a solid drawing card for two years without a sign of abated 
popularity.

Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said 
of Hart & Cherry:

"As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the 
circuit.  It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list.  
Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to 
the minute, straight home after their act, and each of 'em as 
gentlemanlike as a lady.  I don't expect to handle any attractions 
that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession."

And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel 
of the story:

At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to 
New York for another run at the roof gardens and summer 
theatres.  There was never any trouble in booking it at the top-
notch price.  Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and 
Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank books that she had 
begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment plan to hold 
them.

I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, 
that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding 
ambitions--just the same as the man who wants to be president, or 
the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is 
anxious to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire.  And I 
hope I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the 
contribution basket, that they often move in a mysterious way their 
wonders to perform.

But, listen.

At the first performance of "Mice Will Play" in New York at the 
Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was 
nervous.  When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty 
on the mantel, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then 
striking the disk, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck.  
Not expecting to get it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry 
fainted in a most artistic manner.

The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a 
tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, 
applauded with great enjoyment.  The Cool Head, who always 
graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of 
scene shifters respectively and more or less respectfully removed 
Hart & Cherry from the stage.  The next turn went on, and all went 
as merry as an alimony bell.

The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who 
was waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses.  The 
doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily.

"No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagnosis.  "If it had 
been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid 
artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back 
Again.  As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a 
flounce torn from any one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home 
and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practitioner on your block, 
and you'll be all right.  Excuse me; I've got a serious case outside 
to look after."

After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better.  And then to where 
he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line.  
Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs 
at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters 
from every town he played.  Vincente had moved on the same 
circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend.

"Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, "I'm glad it's no worse.  
The little lady is wild about you."

"Who?" asked Hart.

"Cherry," said the juggler.  "We didn't know how bad you were 
hurt; and we kept her away.  It's taking the manager and three girls 
to hold her."

"It was an accident, of course," said Hart.  "Cherry's all right.  She 
wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it.  There's no 
hard feelings.  She's strictly business.  The doctor says I'll be on 
the job again in three days.  Don't let her worry."

"Man," said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined 
face, "are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion?  Cherry's 
crying her heart out for you--calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with 
them holding her hands and keeping her from coming to you."

"What's the matter with her?" asked Hart, with wide-open eyes.  
"The sketch'll go on again in three days.  I'm not hurt bad, the 
doctor says.  She won't lose out half a week's salary.  I know it was 
an accident.  What's the matter with her?"

"You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vincente.  "The 
girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt.  What's the 
matter with _you_?  Is she nothing to you?  I wish you could hear 
her call you."

"Loves me?" asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on 
which he lay.  "Cherry loves me?  Why, it's impossible."

"I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs.

"But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, "it's impossible.  It's 
impossible, I tell you.  I never dreamed of such a thing."

"No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, "could mistake it.  
She's wild for love of you.  How have you been so blind?"

"But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, "it's _too late_.  
It's too late, I tell you, Sam; _it's too late_.  It can't be.  You must 
be wrong.  It's _impossible_.  There's some mistake.

"She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler.  "For love of you 
she's fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare 
to raise the curtain.  Wake up, man."

"For love of me?" said Bob Hart with staring eyes.  "Don't I tell 
you it's too late?  It's too late, man.  Why, _Cherry and I have been 
married two years!_"