I am worried to death. I don"t know what to do and my hand don"t seem to get well. I haven"t got a cent to my name, I owe Mrs. Smith six weeks"
board money for Billy, and I have been eating off her for three weeks.
She can"t afford to feed me, and every mouthfull I take chokes me. I know they are hard up, cause I caught her crying the other day. Her husband is awful nice, but he ain"t got much sense and his business in life is teaching not trying to raise vegetables. She says she won"t hear me going back to dancing, but I don"t see what else I can do. My hand don"t affect my feet. I was over town the other day and saw my old dancing partner, Fred Keeney. He said we can get a job at the Cafe Boulevard and I am crazy to try it. Yet if I could work, I would cut the whole thing out, cause Mrs. Smith is right when she says that dancing ain"t bad, just the b.u.m crowd you have got to go with. And I am up against it more than most of the girls, cause nearly all of them have homes, but everybody seems to know or finds out mighty sudden that I am your sister, and it ain"t up to me then to go in for the heavy respectable. Gee, Kate you have got a reputation! You must have had a lot of newspaper advertising. n.o.body ever says I am Nan Lane, they just say I am Kate Lane"s sister. Then they look at me as if I was going to take a bite out of them. That is why it is more comfortable for me to keep with the old crowd, cause they don"t throw a fit every time your name is mentioned.
Oh, I am sure distracted. I"ve walked the floor nights till I wore a path in the carpet. What with my hand aching and me wondering what in the world I ought to do, I can"t sleep. I go out in the afternoon and lie down in the woods and if I knew something to pray to, I would sure get right down on my knees and ask it to tell me which way to turn. I have been in Mrs. Smith"s room twice when they have what they call family worship. It didn"t seem to do me much good but I bowed my head as I saw them do. Why, if they wanted to stand on their heads and meow like cats, I would bark an accompaniment cause I like them so.
Mrs. Smith cries every time I speak of the dancing, but I can"t live on charity for the rest of my life and I am pestered to death for money.
When I was coming out of Kelley"s the other day, I saw father and of course, he give me a touch. He never shows up unless he wants something.
Oh, I hate him, Kate. When I saw his shifty old eyes I just turned sick.
Every time I see him I think of the kicks and the cuffs we kids got whenever he come round, which, thank goodness, wasn"t often. Do you remember how happy we was when we went down to court and heard him get that seven years" stretch? That was the finest present the judge could give us, and when we got back to the room I remember we just hugged each other and danced round and round and made up a song with the chorus, "Pa"s got seven years, we ain"t glad, oh, no." You gave a party that night, and we almost got pulled for being so noisy. I wonder what mother was like. What kind of a woman she could have been to have seen anything in him. You must be something like her, cause you stick to Jim and you know what I think of _him_. I suppose being married to a man does something to a woman because I know a lot of nice women that stick to good-for-nothing b.u.ms because they are married to them. As for me, I don"t suppose I ever will be married cause none of the crowd I know now for _mine_ and I don"t have much chance to meet the Henry Van d.y.k.es or the John T. Wanamakers.
Well this ain"t telling me what to do. What _will_ I do? I am near crazy. Well--I can always go to bed, good night.
_Nan_.
XV
_Dear Kate_:
Well, I am back at the old work and it is all right. I have been dancing in the best restaurants in New York, and what do you think, Kate, I am going to dance at the Winter Garden. The manager there saw my poppy dance the other night, and he is giving me a dance. I can still come back and dance at twelve o"clock in the restaurant. Fred Kelly, my dancing partner, is crazy glad. Will Henderson nearly cried. He said, "You have got your chance, Nan, you have got your chance." I offered to give him part of my salary because if he had not thought out all the pretty dances, him and the artist chap, I never could have piped them out myself. But he won"t take a cent. He is dead square, and not a half bad fellow, and I have been trying to get him to take the cure. I offered to pay all expenses if he would go up to that dope cure joint at White Plains, and sometimes he says he will, then again says he won"t.
You can"t trust a person who takes dope. Sometimes he shows up every night and plays just beautiful, then again we don"t see him for ten days. Fred Kelly is so tickled at this chance to work in the good places, that he has braced up and seems a different fellow. He used to drink a lot and one time when he was tanked up, he had to throw me from one arm to the other in the dance, and he let me fall and hurt my back so bad, I could hardly move for a week. It gave me an awful scare and I had a good heart to heart talk with him. I told him he either had to cut out the booze or cut out working with me, cause you can"t do the two things and do both well. Oh, I am glad that I have left the joints and I am proud of myself. I have worked awful hard and something inside of me has always said I would win out, and it _is_ winning out, because there ain"t no bigger thing in my line than dancing at the Winter Garden.
They are going to advertise me, Kate, and they call me Nancy Lane.
Sounds kinda pretty, doesn"t it? I got some of the nicest clothes you ever saw. My new dancing slippers is made to order, and I got some pretty things for my hair, though I think it looks better without anything in it, as it is hard to match the color.
Mrs. Smith and the children came over the other afternoon to see the toys. I bought the kids some things, then we went to a place and had ice cream sodas and sundaes until I bet two babies went to sleep that night with a stomach-ache.
Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. I got a funny present. Do you remember Jenny who was sick about a year ago, and whose mother come from Iowa or Kansas or somewhere to get her? Well, I got a package the other day about the size of a house and when I opened it there was a bed quilt in it made of little pieces of colored calico set around with white pieces.
Jenny"s mother wrote me a beautiful letter saying she made it herself for me out of pieces of cloth she had saved from her family"s dresses. I put it on the bed, and gee, it was the funniest looking thing you ever saw. It didn"t seem to belong to 28th Street anymore than the old lady did. It was funny to watch the girls when they come into the room. Them who had been born on the sidewalks like me whooped when they saw it, and made a lot of fun of it, but the girls who had come from the country looked at it different and a sort of change come over their faces. One girl who is in the chorus at the Columbia, set down by the bed and run her hand up and down the cover and then put her head on it and cried, and Mary Crosby who comes somewhere from Pennsylvania and has only been in the quarter about three months, looked at it straight for about five minutes without speaking and then turned and left the room. I followed her out into the hall and said, "What is the matter, Mary?" And she said in a queer choked way, "Good-bye, Nan, me for that little room down in old P-a. I"ve got enough." And I"ll be darned if she didn"t go home.
It was nice to see you, Kate, and you are looking real well. You have got the only soft snap there, but I can trust you for getting anything that is laying around easy. I am off to work, going to try a new dance on to-night.
_Nan_.
XVI
_Dear Kate_:
I opened your trunk and got out the clothes you wrote about. I give the grey dress to Mary, and the coat to Mrs. Keenan. There are a lot of things that you won"t be able to use when you come out. Hadn"t I better give them to some one? It seems a shame to have them laying there no use to any body.
I had a dandy day yesterday. Mildred Carter met me in a shop and we spent the whole day together. You know she is married. Married some swell man and lives in a fine place on Riverside Drive. She is just as pretty as ever. No wonder she was in all the Broadway shows. She hasn"t a bit of sense, but her tiny figure has the most perfect curves, and her face and eyes are just like a wondering child. She makes me think of Billy. She has a baby two years old, and if it wasn"t for him, she would go back to the stage. She is awful lonesome up in her fine home, and she misses the lights and the fun and the pretty dresses. She is crazy over the clothes the girls are wearing in the new Field show, and I think she misses the suppers after the shows when a lot of the girls used to go with the Johnnies and sort of joy ride. There wasn"t nothing wrong with the parties, but her mother-in-law thinks it is awful to even mention them. A pretty girl like Mildred could have four suppers a night if she wanted to, because lots of men like to take a show girl out. They wear pretty clothes and attract attention and are funny, have lots of up-to-date slang, know all the new songs, and don"t expect a man to be clever. All that they want of him is to pay the supper. And they are perfectly willing to pay for it if you don"t expect them to talk of art or the uplifting of the drama. Just look pretty and say fool things and whistle popular songs and say things that don"t make their head ache to answer. I tell Mrs. Smith who, like so many women, think it is always wrong to go to supper, that it is done by heaps of girls who are on the level.
I am kind of sorry for Mildred. She is pretty but nothing but a little b.u.t.terfly, and Tom"s folks don"t like her, and make little dabs at her about being in the chorus, and they are trying to educate her. Read to her from a man named Emerson and Tennyson and a lot of high brows that put a kink in her brain that lasts for days. And they think the theatre is all wrong except things by Ibsen and Shakespeare and a man named Shaw, and of course Mildred thinks, and so do I, that a funny show where the comedian makes a monkey of himself and the girls change their dresses twenty times, and do stunts under the spot light is a lot decenter than those nasty shows where people turn their feelings inside out, especially their private feelings that ought not be talked about in public. She is bound to go back and I had a long talk with her. I told her that his folks might take the baby away from her, and she nearly went crazy. She turned on me like a cat, and said, "What do you mean?" I said that they would like her and Tom to separate and they would take the baby. She could not speak for a minute then she blazed at me:
"Take my baby, take Tommy? But he is mine. He is my baby. No one can take him away from me. I couldn"t live without him." I saw that was the only way to get her switched off from going back, cause she met some stage manager the other day who offered her a job, so I rubbed it in; I don"t know whether I am right, but it worked with her all right. After a while she sat down and talked sense, and I am sorry for her. She said sort of pitiful, "Tom is in newspaper work, and I am alone nights and I lay there alone a longing for something to be going on. I hate the dark and the being alone. Why I never used to be alone. His people don"t look at my side of the question at all. They are not fair to me. I had no idea when I married Tom that his people would not like me. Every one always liked me. I had my picture in all the shop windows and people always jollying and making me laugh.
"His people make me old. All the sun goes out of the room as soon as one of them come into it. To have dinner with them is awful. I am afraid to move at the table or ask for more bread. Every one is so polite and so quiet. You can"t laugh and if you should happen to put your elbow on the table, it would be a tragedy. And I have lived that life two years, and Tom blames me and looks hurt cause sometimes I want the old life. And, Nan, I see you are with him and think I am wrong. But remember I am only calling for my own. I can"t help longing for it. I think it is my right to laugh and to be gay _my_ way. I have tried to make myself over in Tom"s way, but I can"t. G.o.d did not make me a New England woman. All I want is the lights and the music and the laughter. I want to snuggle down in a big chair and have somebody make me laugh, laugh, laugh, and never be told it is bad form to laugh too loud. Everything I do is bad form, and oh, Nan, I don"t want to do anything wrong, I just want to live."
Poor little devil, I am sorry for her, but she must stay where she is. I am going to get hold of Tom some day and tell him to side step so much family and take Mildred out more and give her a good time _her_ way.
But we had had an awful good time until we got to talking about the baby, when she got scared and hurried home to see if anything had happened to him. We had lunch together at Bustan.o.by"s, and went to that swell Castle Garden for tea. She treated cause it cost $2.50 per and that was too rich for my blood. I danced with her and she looked awful cunning, and I learnt her some new steps, altho" I never dance with women, as I don"t think it looks nice. One of the dancers who runs the place came over and asked me to dance with him, and everybody stopped to watch us. Gee, I wish I could get a place in one of them swell places, but I will, you just watch me do it. I had on a pretty new dress and a hat that is a dream, and silk stockings and new patent Colonials and I felt _some_. Ain"t it funny how everybody is dancing, I wonder how long it will last. I must get in before everyone gets over the bug. It sure can"t last forever. Seems awful funny to see a lot of old men and grannies fluffing around a room, when they ought to be home rubbing their backs with Omega Oil. One old lady, sure she was sixty, danced with the professional at Bustan.o.by"s, and he told me she had a table there every day, and about three nights a week, and dances till closing time. I heard her tell some friends, "I told John that if he didn"t want to learn he could stay home and go to bed, _I_ am going to dance," and she is sure a dame of her word.
What do you think? Fred Kelly, my dancing partner, is engaged to an awful nice girl. She is crazy over him, but she is making an awful mistake. His legs are all right, but his head was just put on his neck to finish it off. There is nothing in it, and if this dancing craze goes out, he will have to run a sizzor"s grinding machine to earn a living, as he couldn"t even play a thinkin" part.
I went out to see Billy last Sunday and we went to church. I felt awful jay as I didn"t know what to do, but I watched Mrs. Smith and done everything she done and got through all right. The kids looked so nice in their little Sunday clothes, and Billy was so good. I didn"t think much of the sermon, as it didn"t seem to hit anything, but I am glad the Smiths take Billy every Sunday. It may do him good, and it can"t hurt him, yet it seems to me that if the preacher talked a little more about how to get help and how to peg along every day, that it would do people more good than to talk about some old guy--he called him Isaih--who has been dead a long time. When Billy gets a little bigger, I would like him to sing in church. He would look lovely in a long white night dress, and his eyes and hair would show up wonderful. I asked the Smiths about it, and they said that they would get both Paul and Billy in the choir if I wanted them to. I would like it, but still I am kinda scared that it might put ideas of the stage in his head and no theatre for our Billy. I want him to be a working man of some kind. A man that builds things, or invents, or writes. I want him to do something and _be_ something, not just amuse a lot of fool people who can"t amuse themselves. When you come home we will pipe up something great for that son of yours, and we will stick to it and _make_ him be something. There is a chance for every one in this nice big fat world of ours, and Billy will come out on top some way, or his aunt Nan will know the reason why.
Lots of love, _Nan_.
XVII
_Dear Kate_:
I am having the best time of any girl in the whole world. Oh, Kate, I do love to dance, cause dancing is just a saying the nice-thoughts inside of you with your body instead of your lips. And I think when you get better thoughts you do better work. I know mine is different somehow, cause even old, fat Casey who never throws you a decent word if he can help it, said I"d do. When I used to dance in the joints around 14th Street and over on Eighth Avenue I danced just the things I knew then, which was cafes filled with cigarette smoke, booze on the tables and puffy, bad faced men staring at me. My dancing was not good, just making my feet go, but now I think about other things and I dance the buds coming out on the p.u.s.s.ey willows, the dog wood blossoms and the ripples of the lake when the moon shines on it. I hear the crickets and the katey-dids and the little peepers from the pond, and instead of hard-faced girls puffing cigarette smoke into men"s faces, I see Billy with his curls hanging round his laughing face as he runs up the long road to meet me when I come from the station. My body seems to have grown softer with my feelings and it bends more easy and I believe I have even changed my face. I don"t feel that all the world is against me and that I have to fight my way through it, cause I know I am loved and trusted and there is always some one waiting for me at the gate. Why, Kate, it changes your whole life to know there is some one caring for you who won"t try to do you the first chance they get, and if it makes such a difference in your feelings, it is bound to make a difference in your actions, and that is the reason when I dance, I sway and bend and turn as light as if I was a fairy one reads about in story books. It ain"t dancing, it ain"t work. It is just a telling all the world I"m happy.
Dancing in these better places is not bad for a girl cause the management don"t make you talk to no one and won"t let the men get fresh. Of course I get a lot of notes and bids to dinner, but I don"t mind them cause I have had them all my life. The only difference now, the spelling is good in these and they are supposed to come from gentlemen. Yet I tear them up just as easy as I did the other kind. Mrs.
Smith is always scared about me. I showed her a mash note once and she sure threw a fit, but I tell her she don"t need to worry about me, I know how to take care of myself all right, as I have been doing it all my life. I seen too much crookedness and I have seen that it don"t pay.
I never knew a girl yet that went the limit but landed hard some day on the pavement. Even you was straight, Kate, your only trouble is that your hands are too small, and when you married Jim and he showed you how easy they went in other people"s pockets, you kinda took to it natural.
I suppose that is because of father who is a born dip and it had to come out again in some of the family. I wonder if lots of people ain"t crooked cause they don"t know no better. I have been thinking a lot lately about education. Mr. Smith was a teacher in a boy"s school in England, and he talks sometimes about the right kind of learning, and I sit by and listen trying to hear all I can that will help Billy. Mr.
Smith says that if a boy has got the right kind of education, he will just naturally choose the right things in life. He don"t believe because Billy"s father and his grandfather are dips that that is any reason that Billy should be one. He says, give him the right kind of schooling and teachers that will understand him or show him what kind of books to read and tell him the great things that have been done by other men, and that he can do it if he tries, that it will make him ambitious and he will naturally choose the right kind of a life instead of the wrong kind. He will go with the right kind of people, instead of the wrong kind.
He wants to make Paul an electrical engineer, but first he wants him to go to college and get a lot of book-learning, so when he is by himself he will be willing to sit by the fire and read some book he loves instead of chasing down the Great White Way to find amus.e.m.e.nt. He says a man must know something besides his business or when he ain"t working he won"t know what to do with himself. Them is the men, he says, that fill the night restaurants and sets in the front row at the Burlesques. He believes that if men were educated in the way they orter be, there would not be no crookedness. That the upper story men and the dips and the safe blowers most always ain"t got no education, and they are crooked because they don"t know nothing different. He says ignorance makes a man not able to tell right from wrong. I told him I knew lots of dips who were clever, and he said, "Yes, that is so, but if they had been able to train that cleverness in the right way when they was young, they would not be dips now. They would use their brains in building up some business that was on the square. They ain"t never had the right chance, so they can"t be blamed." That is so, part of it, Kate. Lots of people I know, feel it in their bones that crookedness don"t pay, but they don"t know nothing else, cause they got in wrong at the start. Now if it is all true that he says and education will make a man on the level, then me for education. Billy is going to have it if I have to pour it down him with a spoon. Billy is going to have just as good a chance as Paul.
I am getting to be such a tight wad that I am losing all my friends. I won"t buy a drink for no one, and I even shove the girls sweet Caporals instead of Melachrino"s when they come up to my room. Why, I squeeze a nickle till it hollers, and I wear out three dollars of shoe leather chasing up the street to find an eating joint where they will fill me up for a quarter. Any way, Kate, your son is going to have a lot of letters writ after his name, if his aunt Nan don"t get the cholly hoss in her legs, and lose her thirty bucks per week that she is making now.
Good-bye, Kate, I am coming to see you soon, and I will bring you some pictures of the kid that we took when he went in swimming. He can float on his back and Mr. Smith nearly scares a lung out of me learning him to dive. I am thinking of you always.
_Nan_.
XVIII
_Dear Kate_:
I went down to Miner"s the other night and saw Mable Lee. I was in her dressing room with her most two hours. She is a near star now, and don"t she put on airs! She has a dressing room of her own, and any mere chorus girl that puts her nose in her door gets a lady-like call-down that you can hear to 42nd Street. She forgot that she ever worked at Coney with us, and rustled beer between acts, and that ain"t the only thing that has happened to her memory. She says she is only twenty one, and she was twenty one when we were playing together at the Casino and I was doing a kid act. That was ten years ago. I must say it for her, she gets it over because she has got new red hair and when she gets her face fixed up and her long ear rings on, which is about all she wears in this new act, she looks about sixteen.
I danced the other night at a party. There was a lot of swell folks there, women with low neck dresses and real diamonds. Gee, if Anthony Comstock had come in he"d a got busy when he piped off some of the clothes. They acted as if they were trying to be tough, set around and smoked and acted like street girls dressed up. Funny, ain"t it, street girls try to act like real ladies, and real ladies try to act like street girls. I suppose everybody wishes sometimes they could be what they ain"t, and so they play at the other thing. I wondered as I looked at them if they had homes or babies, and if they ever set in front of the fire and talked of things like Mr. and Mrs. Smith does.