Biltmore Oswald Part 8

"That's the part the doctor always listened to whenever I had a cold,"

I replied as indifferently as possible. The man pondered over this for a moment.

"Well," he replied at length, "probably the doctor was right, but to the impartial observer it would seem to be, as my friend Tony so accurately observed, the bottom part of your neck."

"It really doesn't matter much after all," I replied, hoping to close the conversation. "You all were not sent here to establish the location of the different parts of my anatomy, anyway."

The man appeared not to have heard me. "I'd swear," he murmured musingly, standing back and regarding me with tilted head, "I'd swear it was his neck if it warn't for his arms." He suddenly discontinued his dreamy observations and became all business.

"Well, sir," he began briskly, "now that we've settled that what do you want me to do to it?"

"Why, shave it, of course," I replied bitterly. "That's what you're here for, isn't it? All us Show Girls have got to have our chests shaved."

"An' after I've shaved your chest, dear," he asked in a soothing voice, "what do you want me to do with it?"

"With what?" I replied, enraged, "with my chest?"

"No," he answered easily, "not your chest, but that one poor little pitiful hair that adorns it. Do you want me to send it home to your ma, all tied around with a pink ribbon?"

I saw no reason to reply to this insult, but stood uneasily and tried to maintain my dignity while he lathered me with undue elaboration.

When it was time for him to produce his razor he faltered.

"I can't do it," he said brokenly, "I haven't the heart to cut it down in its prime. It looks so lonely and helpless there by itself." He swept his razor around several times with a free-handed, blood-curdling swoop of his arm. "Well, here goes," he said, shutting his eyes and approaching me. Tony turned away as if unable to witness the scene. I was unnerved, but I stood my ground. The deed was done and I was at last free to depart. "That's a terrible chest for a Show Girl," I heard him to say to Tony as I did so.

_May 29th._ The world has come clattering down around my ears and I am buried, crushed and bruised beneath the debris. There was a dress rehearsal to-day, and I, from the whole company, was singled out for the wrath of the G.o.ds.

"Who is that chorus girl on the end acting frantic?" cried out one of the directors in the middle of a number. My name was shouted across the stage until it echoed and resounded and came bounding back in my face from every corner of the shadow-plunged theater. I knew I was in for it and drew myself up majestically although I turned pale under my war paint.

"Well, tell him he isn't walking on stilts," continued the director, and although it was perfectly unnecessary, I was told that and several other things with brutal candor. The dance went on but I knew the eyes of the director were on me. My legs seemed to lose all proper coordination. My arms became unmanageable. I lost step and could not pick it up again, yet, as in a nightmare, I struggled on desperately.

Suddenly the director clapped his hands. The music ceased, and I slowed down to an uneasy shuffle.

"Sweetheart," said the director, addressing me personally, "you're not dancing. You're swimming, that's what you're doing. As a Persian girl you would make a first cla.s.s squaw." He halted for a moment and then bawled out in a great voice, "Understudy!" and I was removed from the stage in a fainting condition. This evening I was shipped back to camp a thoroughly discredited Show Girl. I had labored long in vicious, soul-squelching corsets and like Samson been shorn of my locks, and here I am after all my sacrifices relegated back to the sc.r.a.p heap. Why am I always the unfortunate one? I must have a private plot in the sky strewn with unlucky stars. Camp routine after the free life of the stage is unbearably irksome. My particular jimmy legs was so glad to see me back that he almost cried as he thrust a broom and a swab into my hands.

"Bear a hand," he said gleefully, "get to work and stick to it. We're short of men," he added, "and there is no end of things for you to do."

I did them all and he was right. There surely is no end to the things he can devise for me to do. I long for the glamour and footlights of the gay white way, but I have been cast out and rejected as many a Show Girl has been before me.

_June 1st._ The morning papers say all sort of nice things about Biff-Bang but I can hardly believe them sincere after the treatment I received. I know for a fact that the man who took my place was knock-kneed and that the rest of his figure could not hold a candle to mine.

I still feel convinced that Biff-Bang lost one of its most prepossessing and talented artists when I was so unceremoniously removed from the chorus.

_June 10th._ I was standing doing harm to no one in a vague, rather unfortunate way I have, when all of a sudden, without word or warning, a very competent looking sailor seized me by the shoulders and, thrusting his face close to mine, cried out:

"Do you want to make a name for yourself in the service?"

I left the ground two feet below me in my fright and when I alighted there were tears of eagerness in my eyes.

"Yes," I replied breathlessly, "oh, sir, yes."

"Then pick up that," he cried dramatically, pointing to a cigar b.u.t.t on the parade ground. I didn't wait for the laughter. I didn't have to. It was forthcoming immediately. Huge peals of it. Sailors are a very low tribe of vertebrate. They seem to hang around most of the time waiting for something to laugh at--usually me. It is my belief that I have been the subject of more mirth since I came to camp than any other man on the station. Whatever I do I seem to do it too much or too little. There even seems to be something mirth-provoking in my personal appearance, which I have always regarded hitherto not without a certain shade of satisfaction. Only the other day I caught the eyes of the gloomiest sailor in camp studying me with a puzzled expression.

He gazed at me for such a long time that I became quite disconcerted.

Slowly a smile spread over his face, then a strange, rusty laugh forced itself through his lips.

"Doggone if I can solve it," he chuckled, turning away and shaking his head; "it's just simply too much for me."

He looked back once, clapped his hands over his mouth and proceeded merrily on his way. I am glad of course to be able to bring joy into the lives of sailors, but I did not enlist for that sole purpose.

Returning to the cigar b.u.t.t, however, I was really quite disappointed.

I do so want to make a name for myself in the service that I would eagerly jump at the chance of sailing up the Kiel ca.n.a.l in a Barnegat Sneak Box were it not for the fact that sailing always makes me deathly sick. I don't know why it is, but the more I have to do with water the more reasons I find for shunning it. The cigar b.u.t.t episode broke my heart though. I was all keyed up for some heroic deed--what an anti-climax! I left the spot in a bitter, humiliated mood. There is only one comforting part about the whole affair--I did not pick up that cigar b.u.t.t. He did, I'll bet, though when n.o.body was looking. I don't know as I blame him--there were still several healthy drags left in it.

_June 11th._ This war is going to put a lot of Chinamen out of business if it keeps up much longer. The first thing a sailor will do after he has been paid off will be to establish a laundry, and he won't be a slouch at the business at that. I feel sure that I am qualified right now to take in family laundry and before the end of summer I guess I'll be able to do fancy work. At present I am what you might call a first cla.s.s laundryman, but I'm not a fancy laundryman yet. Since they've put us in whites I go around with the washer-woman's complaint most of the time. Terrible shooting pains in my back! My sympathy for the downtrodden is increasing by leaps and bounds. I can picture myself without any effort of the imagination bending over a tub after the war doing the family washing while my wife is out running for alderman or pulling the wires to be appointed Commissioner of the Docks. The white clothes situation, however, is serious. It seems that every spare moment I have I am either washing or thinking of washing or just after having washed, and to one who possesses as I do the uncanny faculty of being able to get dirtier in more places in the shortest s.p.a.ce of time than any ten street children picked at random could ever equal, life presents one long vista of soap and suds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THIS WAR IS GOING TO PUT A LOT OF CHINAMEN OUT OF BUSINESS"]

"You boys look so cute in your funny white uniforms," a girl said to me the other day. "It must be so jolly wearing them."

I didn't strike her, for she was easily ten pounds heavier than I was, but I made it easily apparent that our relations would never progress further than the weather vane. I used to affect white pajamas, the same seeming to harmonize with the natural purity of my nature, but after the war I fear I shall be forced to discontinue the practise in favor of more lurid attire. However, I still believe that a bachelor should never wear anything other than white pajamas or at the most lavender, but this of course is merely a personal opinion.

_June 14th._ I have been hard put to-day. The Lord only knows what trials and tribulations will be visited upon me next. At present I am quite unnerved. To-day I was initiated into all the horrifying secrets and possibilities of the bayonet, European style. Never do I remember spending a more unpleasant half an hour. The instructor was a resourceful man possessed of a most vivid imagination. Before he had finished with us potential delicatessen dealers were lying around as thick as flies. We were brushing them off.

After several hair-raising exhibitions he formed us into two lines facing each other and told us to begin.

"Now lunge," he said, "and look as if you meant business."

I glanced ingratiatingly across at my adversary. He was simply glaring at me. Never have I seen an expression of greater ferocity. It was too much. I knew for certain that if he ever lunged at me I'd never live to draw another yellow slip.

"Mister Officer," I gasped, pointing across at this blood-thirsty man, "don't you think that he's just a little too close? I'm afraid I might hurt him by accident."

The officer surveyed the situation with a swift, practical eye.

"Oh, I guess he can take care of himself all right," he replied. That was just what I feared.

The man smiled grimly.

"But does he know that this is only practise?" I continued. "He certainly doesn't look as if he did."

"That's the way you should look," said the officer, "work your own face up a bit. This isn't a vampire scene. Don't look as if you were going to lure him. Y'know you're supposed to be angry with your opponent when you meet him in battle, quite put out in fact. And furthermore you're supposed to look it."

I regarded my opponent, but only terror was written on my face. Then suddenly we lunged and either through fear or mismanagement I succeeded only in running my bayonet deep into the ground. In some strange manner the b.u.t.t of the gun jabbed me in the stomach and I was completely winded. My opponent was dancing and darting around me like a local but thorough-going lightning storm. I abandoned my gun and stood sideways, thus decreasing the possible area of danger. Had the exercises continued much longer I would have had a spell of something, probably the blind staggers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I STOOD SIDE-WAYS, THUS DECREASING THE POSSIBLE AREA OF DANGER"]

"You're not pole vaulting," said the instructor to me, as he returned the gun. "In a real show you'd have looked like a pin cushion by this time." I felt like one.

Then it all started over again and this time I thought I was doing a little better, when quite unexpectedly the instructor shouted at me.