Cheerful-By Request

eyes smoulder at 7.30 a.m. the person seated opposite her had better look out. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smouldering i

s a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts of our daily life co

ratory to plunging his spoon therein-he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was a pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a mental sta

rs-to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning hate. That flap

unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he flaps again wh

the second, chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then-u

orning quiet of Wetona, Wisconsin, hurtled the s

d's sake! What

yolk trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and fl

nger at him. She was laughing, now, un

wildered; then up, fright in his

. Sobs shook her. "

e way to anger. "Do you mean to tell me that you scre

es

it. Now he crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to the centre of the table, where it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back, and uncru

and it any longer. Flapping. T

with insulting fidelity

you're crazy, yelling

n't no

herent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac? Like a wild woma

watching it, that's w

ung lady, just let me

ly between two people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows with cruel certainty the sures

ither knew they knew flew between them

s the trouble with half you women. Just lay around the house, rot

suppose the house runs itself! How about my evenings? Sitt

is chair by the back and slammed it down, savagely, "if you don

s narrowed to two sli

ks. I gues

Terry had observed a certain little ceremony (as had the neighbours). She would stand in the doorway watching him down the street, the heavier sample-case banging occasionally at his shin. The depot was only three blocks away. Terry watched him with fond, but unillusioned eyes, which proves that she really loved him. He was a dapper, well-dressed fat man, with a weakness for pronounced pattern

step or two, until Schroeder's house made good its threat. It was a comic scene in the eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends the sense of fitness. The neighbours, lurking behind their parlour curtains, had laughed at first. But after awhile

akfast table, a dreadfully still figure, and sinister; a figure of stone and fire; of ice and flame. Over and over in her mind she was milling the things she might have said to him, and had not. She brewed a hundred vitriolic cruelties that she might have flung in his face. She would concoct one bitin

nger was playing the entire tune, and something in the back of her head was following it accurately, though the separate thinking process was going on just the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide, and hot. Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of her finger. She folded it in with its mates, so that her hand became a fist. She stood up and s

into the sitting room. On the piano was the piece of music (Bennie Gottschalk's great song hit, "Hicky Bloo") which she had been playing the night bef

ough concluding a train of thought.

ng that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so much deeper that if psychology had not become a cant word we mig

was nothing of genius in Terry, but there was something of fire, and much that was Irish. The combination makes for what is known as imagination in playing. Which meant that the Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance Artists, never needed a rehearsal when they played the Bij

cker her pretty brow a moment

t! You've

. I'll tel

pped the floor with your foot, and unconsciously straightened your shoulders. When she played a home-and-mother song that was heavy on

y the ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered entertainment of the cigar-box tramp variety, interspersed with trick bicyclists, soubrettes

t turban would have made Martha Washington look fly. Terry's mother had died when the girl was eight, and Terry's father had been what is known as easy-going. A good-natured, lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any money because he did honest work and

d into her face was creeping the first hint of that look of sophistication which comes from daily contact with the artificial world of the footlights. It is the look of those who must make believe as a busine

ed excitement. There was little chance to satisfy such craving in Wetona, but she managed to find certain means. The travelling men from the Burke House just across the street used to drop in at the Bijou for an evening's entertainment. Th

driving with one of them of a Sunday afternoon. And she rather enjoyed taking Sunday dinner at the Burke Hotel with a favoured friend. She thought those small-town hotel Sunday dinners the last word in elegance. The roast course was always accompanied by an aqueous, semi-frozen conco

presented, first beheld Terry's piquant Irish profile, and heard her deft manipulation of the keys. Orville had

, than if it had not been. He sat looking at Terry, and waggling his head in time to the music. Not that Terry was a beauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types. That look of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear, smooth skin contributed to it, and the natural pencilling of her eyebrows. But the thing that accented it, and gave it a last touch, was the way in wh

the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begun to file out. The

cet, "could you oblige me with the

led, to the drum. "Gentleman wants to know the

ckerjack'," said

oor toward which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he s

m over her shoulder: "Don't tha

ss street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of Main street, and down as far

man in

as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her

ng different. I don't know. You've got so much sen

s so good that to her ear, accustomed to the metallic discords of the Bijou instrument, it sounded out of tune. She played a great deal at first, but unconsciously she missed the sharp spat of applause that used to follow her public performance. She would play

r those bum actors, isn't it, h

-listl

after a week or ten days of hotel fare in small Wisconsin towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup, and honest pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetising meal he would lay down his knife

t it's all a dream. You know this kind of thi

hat flap! That little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her tremble with nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust herself to speak of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or in earnest, before it became an obsession w

hrow her hands above her head and shriek: "I want to live! I want to live! I want to live!" like a lady in a play. She only kn

cagoward. She had left the house as it was-beds unmade, rooms uns

ross her order-loving mind. The spoon on the table-cloth. Orville's pa

What do

old is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with appreciation. Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her

pensive room that night. When she had tidied herself she went out. The things she did were the childish, aimless things that one does who finds herself in possession of sudden liberty. She walked up State Street, and stared in the windows; came ba

ginal intention to dine in state in the rose-and-gold dining room of her hotel. She had even thought daringly of lobster.

the accustomed orchestra, a pipe-organ that panted and throbbed and rumbled over lugub

he would have her breakfast in bed! She telephoned for it, languidly. But when it came she got up and ate it from the table, after all. Terry was the kind of woman to whom a

caught her up, and buffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this way and that. The corner of Broadway and Forty-second streets has been exploited in song and story as the world's most hazardous human whirlpool. I've negotiated that corner. I've braved the square in front of the Ameri

ed her hat awry, and dug her with unhe

ime for Terrys from Wetona. It goes its way, pellmell. If it saw Terry at all it saw her only as a

th the roar and crash, with the shrill scream of the crossing policemen's whistle, with the hiss of feet shuffling on cement, it was a celestial strain. She looked up, toward t

TSCHALK'S

BERNIE GOTTS

THROB SONG THAT

T MADE THE K

PARIS, ILLI

RIS, F

WEAR BLUE

KHAKI

IN! C

acce

ose familiarity with the piano had bred contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She pla

imatedly to a girl friend who had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to reprimand her for her slac

y?" (Over he

he la

, did

utya think I

a took a

man re

hat are you paid for? T

ore her friend, lifted her uninspired hands from

the megaphone man argued.

azed at the abandoned piano, as though it must go on of its own accor

to lu

of the counter and leaned over.

oked at he

es

me

k off her hat and coat, rubbed her hands together brisk

ose clothes are an unconscious satire on present-day fashions. On their faces, as they listen to the music, is a look of peace and dreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half smile. It is much the same expression that steals o

wayed a little to the sound of it. Some kept time with little jerks of the shoulder-the little hitching movement of the rag-time dancer whose blo

ess would be slack, now, until five, when it

lue eye. He had just finished singing "I've Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother's Knee." (Berni

" He came over to her at the piano and put a stubby

oist hand resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers

our job?" deman

myself. You can hav

ou take

el y

lanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs about wanting to go back to

g briefness. "A little traini

nt. But then, Orville was a different sort o

her Joan of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the other sid

im. She did

that-a second Marseillaise. If the wo

gh. Terry glanced around, still playing, and encountered the gaze of two melting masculine eyes that matche

s the Gottschalk songs wherever songs are

hem his darkly luminous gaze glowed upon Terry. To escape their warmth she sent her own gaze past him to encounter the arctic stare of the

eehan! What i

f flabby fat. "It's-why, it's Ruby Wats

red that the makeup stood out on it, a distinct layer, like thin ice covering flowing water. As she surveyed that bulk Terry realised that while Ruby might still claim eccentricity, her song an

t is I-wel

erry's hand that lay on the counter. He smiled. His

ed. "You two girls can have a reunion later.

s,

ute I heard you play. You've got the touch. Now li

awdry but haunting little melody-came through his lips. And Terry's quick ear sensed that every n

iano top, and played the lilting little melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. Hi

lean frame over the counter and, despite his swart colouring, seem

. I never come up on T

about that Teddy Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the

h! What does that matter now! What does a

an. Terry

iss Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, pri

med to be moving rather swiftly for her, accustomed as

ics over the front of every big-time house in the country. You've got music in you.

ve thought there could be so much su

h. "Just three-quarters of

nt undertone, with side glances at the fat man

ing now,"

. Six o'clock is y

s the girl had done whose place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her, protesting. Terry, pinning on

yellow stripe that's in him, that cane is a lead pencil. He's a song tout, that's all he is." Then, more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a decent girl. I w

two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned to welcome her. "

stairs and into the unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though no order had been given. The

wrecked his life any. Look at Elsie Janis! But she sings. And they like it! Now listen. I've got a song. It's my own. That bit you played for me up at Gottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'll go big. They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airship s

meaning look. "Get down to business, Leon. I'll t

eeler first. It's more than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me without a tryout. And when they

put in Ruby

about it. And the words!" he b

your sky

your fl

a trip

sail s

n th

a bomb fr

ry. Until now her opinion of Mr. Sammett'

That's only part of the chorus. You see, he's s

-vous in Fr

wer, 'Cher

. . . . .

in and made for a corner where certain bulky, shapeless bundles were soon rev

d comes in awful early now, w

I want you to do is accompaniment. On the stage, see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? An

he fled. Terry followed his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of the woman seated op

"Talk doesn't get it over with the ma

od one. I don't say it's as good

he woman, grudgin

l, t

eared with a glass that was twin to the one she had just empti

't he? Do

skate down here last winter, when the craze was on. She was

the m

irl who used to dance

a characteristic little

om the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so nimbly

hing. "Oh, nothing. He just-I-it was-S

of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face. She pushed her glass a

hing for you, Terry, that I wouldn't take the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain't had all the softness knocked out of me yet, though it's a wonder. And I

Jim four years ago, and there hasn't been a minute since then, day or night, when I wouldn't have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if I could. But I couldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I know you've quarrelled? I can see it in your eyes. They look

aughing,"

ne of those big yellow ears, and buttered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to the edge of the table with my nails. Seem

tare, like a sleep walker. Then she wet her

an you deserve, but I hope to God you don't get your desserts this time. He's almost through. If he sees you going he can't quit i

th her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote

ing. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home! She had the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned Schroeder's corner.

ot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Down-stairs once more she plunged into an orgy of clea

sub-conscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to n

The rattle of a key in the lock. The

t go to meet him. They came together and

there to cry about? Don't, h

ow fresh, and rosy, and big he seemed, afte

et here? How d

ll night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind

I can't bear-Have you

s an hour late. You kn

. "You go and clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and eve

hing. She watched him, and listened, and again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason. He broke open his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch.

ing elbow in her two arms, and ben

! Don't, ho

ville,

es

n, Orv

stening

tell you. There's somet

new you'd out with it, pret

er then, and stared at him. "But how coul

t it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get

she cried, then

hon. Just spill it to dadd