O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 12

"He says you are the right Shakespearian actress for me," Noyes referred to the letter again. "Do you know Shakespeare?"

"All the way," said Cake. It was not quite the answer _Queen Katherine_ might have made, perhaps, but her manner was perfect.

"Come here"--he pointed to the centre of the rapturous rug--"and do the potion scene for me." Cake stepped forward.

Perhaps you have been so fortunate as to see her. If so you know that to step forward is her only preparation. She was poised, she was gone.

Then suddenly she heard the lodger's voice crying:

"Stop--my G.o.d, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a limit to human endurance, alley-cat?"

She broke off, staring confusedly into s.p.a.ce just the height of his debauched old figure crouching on the dry-goods box. Then with swift realization of her surroundings, her vision cleared. It was the fat man in the checked suit she saw leaning helplessly against the closed door. His jaw sagged, his eyes were frightfully popped, his face wore the same strained, queer look she had come to see so often on the lodger's, and he made weak little flapping gestures with his hands.

Cake looked then at Arthur Noyes. His face was white as the letter in his hand, his dark eyes were dilated with a look of dreadful suffering, the numb, unconscious reaction of one who has received a mortal blow.

"Come here, Crum," he cried as if there was no one else in the room.

And Crum fairly tottered forward.

"What do you make of this?" asked Noyes, while Cake stood and listened.

"I--I--" stammered Crum exhaustedly. "My G.o.d," he groaned, "it's too much for me. And training!"

"Oh, trained," Cake heard Noyes say. "Such training as only he could give. Years of it, that's plain. And then to send her to me. A Shakespearean actress for me! To insult me like that--"

"It's too much for me, Boss," said Crum again. "Still--Oh--oh, my!"

His back was turned, but Cake saw his whole body shake.

"Telephone Meier," exclaimed Noyes suddenly.

"Meier?" Crum became immediately composed, and Cake saw that he was tremendously surprised. "You don't mean that you're going to--After this? Why, she's in the know. Look at her. It's perfect!"

And they both turned and looked at Cake standing unconscious and serene on the other side of the room. You who have seen her know just how perfect the pose was.

"It _is_ perfect," Noyes said. "I'd be a pretty poor sport if I did not acknowledge that." Then his voice dropped and Cake only caught s.n.a.t.c.hes here and there. "... such genius ... once in a century ...

get even with him in a way he least expects ... wipe off the slate entirely ... no comeback to my play ... let him see that for himself.

Call Meier." Then he turned to Cake.

"Sit down, please," he said courteously. "I have sent for a man who may give you an engagement."

She returned his gaze so quietly that he was puzzled. About her was neither nervous antic.i.p.ation nor flighty vivacity. The actions of her audience of two left her in-curious and calm. You see, she was used to the lodger. Also she had worked to be famous so long that all the flowery borders of self were worn down to the keen edge of doing. Of Plain Cake she thought not at all. But then, she never had. Only of the light at the end of the pa.s.sage that now loomed so bright to her watching eyes.

It seemed only a minute before Noyes spoke again: "This is Mr. Meier."

He regarded her shrewdly all the time.

Cake bowed to Mr. Meier, a fat, gaudy gentleman with thick, hairy hands. And Mr. Meier looked at Noyes and shook his head. She realized they had already been talking together.

"Never before," Mr. Meier said.

"If you will repeat the potion scene," Arthur Noyes suggested. "This time, I trust, you will not be interrupted," he added politely.

And Cake stepped once more into that rich orgy of emotion. This time, though dimly aware of noise and a confusion of shouting, she carried the scene through to the end. "Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee." She lay for a moment where she had fallen close to the heavenly colours of the rug.

"Goo-hood Gaw-hud!" gasped Mr. Meier, and Cake sat up.

She saw he was rather collapsed upon a chair near which he had been standing up when she began. His fat face was purple, and tears stood in his eyes. But Arthur Noyes had not changed. White, with that look of mortal hurt, he still stood straight and slim against the table.

"You cannot offer her less than two hundred a week to begin," he said with the same air of being alone with Mr. Meier.

"No, oh, no, no, no, no!" sighed Mr. Meier, wiping his eyes.

He rose and bowed to Cake with the queerest respect, still wiping his eyes with the back of his thick, hairy hands. It was a striking commentary upon her years of training that both of these men, successful from long and hard experience, paid her the compliment of thinking her an old hand at the game.

"Mine is the Imperial Theatre, Miss," said Meier. "You should be there to-night by seven o'clock. It ain't necessary we should rehea.r.s.e. No, oh, no, no, no, no! And now, perhaps"--he looked her up and down, oddly--"perhaps I can take you to your--hotel?"

Cake looked him back, serene in her belief in what the lodger had taught her.

"I'll be there at seven," she said. "No, thank you." She walked out and across into a small park where she sat until the appointed time.

Then she went to the stage entrance of the Imperial Theatre, presented the card Mr. Meier had given her, and entered. Once inside she was taken to a dressing room by a fat, comfortable, middle-aged woman who seemed to be waiting for her. After a very short and, to Cake, tranquil period, Mr. Meier bustled in.

"Of course, Miss, you know this is a Revue," he explained, rubbing his hands with a deference that Cake shed utterly, because she did not know it was there.

She nodded, accepting his statement. "We make 'em laugh here," said Mr. Meier. Again Cake nodded; she knew exactly as much about the show as she did before. "You close the second act; it's the best place for you. Leafy, here, will help you dress."

Cake sat still while Leafy dressed her, very hushed and still. The light blazed so near after all these hard, lean years of pursuit, years in which the little affairs of life, like the business of growing from a child to a woman, had simply pa.s.sed her by. Of that Urge to be famous she was even more burningly aware; herself she did not know at all.

Mr. Meier came and took her by the hand. His fat face was pale and sweating, he seemed almost awestruck by Cake's calm. He drew her out of the dressing room and through a crowd of people, men and women with painted faces, some beautifully, some extravagantly and strangely dressed. They all stared. One woman shook her head. A man said: "Search me! I never saw _her_ before."

Then Mr. Meier thrust her out in the face of a bright light. "Begin,"

he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Walk over there and begin."

Quietly Cake obeyed. She had walked right into the bright light that had drawn her so hard and so long. Of course it was time for her to begin. And with this bright light in her face, which soon became to her the candle in that dark room left so far behind, she fared away to the magic land of beautiful make-believe.

And only when _Juliet_, that precocious child, sank down poisoned did she become aware of the uproar about her. The shouts of the lodger, "Stop--my G.o.d, stop! How do you get that way?" augmented a million times. It was this she heard.

Slowly Cake lifted herself on her hands, dazedly she peered through the heart of the great light that had caused her such suffering and that she had followed faithfully so bitterly long. On the other side she saw faces, rows and rows of them mounting up to the very roof.

Faces laughing; faces convulsed, streaming with tears; faces with eyes fixed and wearing that same queer, strained look she had noticed before; hundreds of faces topping each other in semicircular rows, all different but all alike in that they were all laughing.

She rose to her knees and rested there on all fours--staring.

Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder, dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on,"

a.s.sailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop, stop! I can't bear it!"

The curtain fell before her, blotting out the vision of those faces, making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her to her feet. He moved weakly, exhausted with mirth.

"Even Noyes," he gasped. "He--he can't help it. Oh, my goo-hood Gaw-hud!"

Cake looked away from him to the men and women that thronged about her. The same faces that had turned to her such a short while ago; but now, how different!

"Oh, don't criticise," one woman cried. "Hand it to her! She can't be beat. She's the one that comes once in a century to show the rest of us what really can be done."