VI.
Dr. Carpenter picked up the telephone on his desk and grunted into the
receiver.
“Er-hum! Yes, it’s Dr. Carpenter.”
“Where?”
“Can’t you get——”
“But I want to go to bed. What’s that?”
“Er-hum! Very well.”
He grunted again, and rang off.
“Oh, Uncle Dan dear,” said Laura, in a tone of gentle exasperation: “Have
you got to go out again?”
She followed him into the hall and helped him slip into his great-coat.
“You were up all last night, dear,” she said plaintively.
“Yes,” admitted the doctor, and then clearing his throat with his cheery
rough “Er-hum!”:
“But remember, Laura—there were twins last night—twins! It was worth it. It was
worth it!”
“I had hoped you could get to bed early to-night. Dear old dear! They’ll wear
you out between them. Who is the call from this time?”
“Barnato’s Theatre.”
“Little Bonnie Snow in some sort of trouble—conglomeration of sprained ankle and
hysterics, I imply from the message. You remember Bonnie?”
“Of course, though I haven’t seen her since I came to New York. Tell her, wont
you, that I’m here with you now, Uncle Dan.”
“Er-hum! Now trot along to bed with you.”
He raised her face, with his hand under her chin. Then he flicked a forefinger
across the shadows under her eyes.
“To-morrow morning I expect to see these gone,” said he.
She smiled sadly and shook her head a bit.
“I’m out of cold cream,” she said, whimsically, “and really, Uncle Dan,
dear, I don’t want to get the regulation ‘massage face’.”
“Sleep is the best Masseur in the world!” growled the doctor, and closed his
gloves with a snap upon each button. “You get into bed and blow your mind
adrift, and whenever you find it fastening upon things that disturb you, pull
it away with a firm grip, and fasten it at once upon other people’s troubles. I
prescribe Lenox Holt’s for to-night. Think of him—of his tragedy to-night, as
Mrs. Holmes has thought of Mrs. Finnerty, and——”
“Did you know,” she interrupted earnestly, “that she went to see Mrs.
Finnerty, and she is giving her work of a lighter kind than washing,
and——”
“Did she say anything about her own—delusions?”
“No, she didn’t. You see she was fixing her flat all up for the coming of her
mother, and Mrs. Finnerty was helping her. I thought she looked quite well, for
her.”
The doctor chuckled, and pursed out his lips. Then he kissed his niece with a
great deal of tenderness, and hurried
332 out, slamming the door
cheerfully behind him.
There was some confusion behind the scenes of Barnato’s Theatre, but in front a
shrill, triumphant voice was wildly proclaiming:
“I’m the cutest thing on Broadway, so they say!”
The doctor had little difficulty in making his way back of the scenes, for it
seems he had been expected. A young, sad-eyed chorus man, with a dejected
cigarette hanging loosely in his mouth, seized the doctor by the arm and dragged
him along through the wings.
“I tell you what, it’s a sad case if ever there was one,” he volunteered
mournfully.
“No bones broken, I hope,” said the doctor.
“No—o. I guess not. Just a nasty twist, ugly enough to knock her flat for a
time.”
Somewhere close at hand now the doctor could hear sounds of muffled moaning, and
as his guide threw open the door of a diminutive dressing-room, the sole occupant
changed her moaning to loud wailing, much as a child would have done at the advent
of a parent.
“Well, well,” said the doctor, briskly, “and how’s Bonnie?”
Instead of answering the doctor, she bounced up on the couch, and turned a
wrathful face upon the doctor’s guide.
“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you get the doctor a chair. Oh, doctor! Oh-h!
Oh-h-h!”
“In great pain?”
“Agony! Torture! I wish I was dead!”
“Stuff and nonsense. Here, let me see your foot. Er-hum!”
He pursed out his lower lip in his characteristic way. Then he frowned upon the
girl on the couch.
“Why, this is nothing—nothing! A little measly sprain. I’m surprised at you,
Bonnie. To get your good old doctor friend out of his comfortable bed for a
mean little sprain like this!”
Bonnie sat up again with a jerk.
“Mean little sprain!” she shrieked. “D’ye know what that sprain’s going to
mean? The ruin of—my—c-career! The loss of my one ch-chance—my only hope on
earth. I wish I were d-dead and b-buried!”
“Aw, Bonnie!” began her friend, but she threw the slipper the doctor had
removed from her foot at his head.
“You shut up!” she cried. “It’s all your fault!”
The doctor was shaking his head gravely, and was examining the sprained foot from
several angles.
“Where would you care to have the amputation, Bonnie?”
“Now, Doctor Carpenter, if you’re going to make odious remarks you can just go.
I know you’re sore because I got you out when you wanted to stay in, b-but I
didn’t want you because of the ankle. It doesn’t hurt anyhow worth a snuffle.
It’s—it’s—other——”
“You’re hurt somewhere else?” asked the doctor anxiously.
“Ye-es,” she sobbed. “My heart’s broke. It is. Literally broke, and you’ve
got to give me some sort of dope to put me to sleep to-night, or I’ll——Oh, I
could almost kill myself for the f-fool I’ve been—f-for my dam luck!”
The doctor had moved a bit nearer to the girl, and now he took Bonnie’s hand. It
was very hot, and he hastily felt her head, blinked, drew out his thermometer and
put it under her tongue, holding her pulse meanwhile. She tried to talk with the
thermometer still in her mouth, but he stopped her.
“One minute, Bonnie. Now, let’s see!” and he held the glass to the light.
“I think I’ll have to put you to bed, Bonnie, for—say— Can you afford a
week’s rest?”
“Afford it! Why they’ll hand it to me to-morrow in chunks,” she said
bitterly.
The chorus man threw away his cigarette viciously. It was unlighted, and he had
aimed it at an ash-tray, but she shrieked as it touched her hand, and in an
instant the boy—for he was nothing but a boy—was kneeling by her, frantically
kissing the hand, and imploring the doctor to assure him that he had not burned
it.
“Burn!” said the doctor, examining the hand, “Stuff and nonsense!”
333
“Who said it was?” demanded Bonnie. “I screamed because I’m all nerves. Joe
Forrest, if you do tha again—”
The doctor looked at his watch, and clicked it close again. Bonnie threw him a
look of such piercing reproach that he resumed his seat.
“I thought you at least would want to know about my troubles, seeing you’ve
known me all my life—and brought me into the world too, for that matter. And
I’ve played with your niece Laura when we were little kids, and Joe there too,
is from Newtown, though you mayn’t recognize him. He’s followed me now for the
past two years, and the big gump is working in the chorus himself, because he
says he can get nearer to me that way, but I say he’s just trying to spy on me,
and it’s all his fault that my career has—ended—and——”
“Aw, Bonnie!” put in Joe again, and again was squelched wrathfully:
“You know it was. If you hadn’t held me back talking all that love rot, with me
so excited and happy, I let you run on. Oh, Doctor, I felt as if I could love
the whole world—anybody—even him! You see the chance I had been waiting for all
these months—years—had come to me at last.”
“Your chance?”
“Yes, the chance they say comes only once to an actress!” said she,
tragically. “I was understudying Adele Hopper, but she got healthier every day
and there didn’t seem a ghost of a show for me. And Mamie Langhorm was at it
too—both of us. I knew I had it in me to make the high hit if I was only given
the chance. Then Jimmy there got a brilliant idea, and he fixed it up with Miss
Hopper ‘s chauffeur, and to-night she’s stuck somewhere up Westchester way on
some lonely road near her home, and she couldn’t get here even if she could fly
now. And so my chance was come, and everybody was ready to lick my boots. And I
was all dressed up for the part, just crazy for the chance, when that loon
there began to squirt his love-talk at me, and I—feeling grateful, was
listening when my time came, and I lost my wits and went running on, and I
tripped over Annite Sibley’s black cat and twisted my toe in a loose board.
There I sprawled flat on my face, with everybody laughing at me in front, and
everybody cursing me behind. And then that Mamie Langhorne jumped into the
breach—— and—and—Joe carried me here, and indeed I wish I were dead and buried,
f-for my only on earth to do, and—and I’ll be fired to-morrow anyhow
and—.”
“Bonnie,” said the doctor, gravely, “How much do you get a week?”
She stopped her wailing a moment:
“$25.00,” she said.
“That’s not so bad,” said the doctor.
“Why, I’m not a mere chorus girl,” said Bonnie, with dignity. “You see I’m
one of the two ladies that hold the canopy over the queen’s—that’s Miss
Hopper’s—head. We don’t say nothing, but we dance when she sings, and we laugh
and nod our heads at her jokes. Mamie’s—the other one.” She sighed heavily.
“But after to-night I suppose she’ll be doing something more than
kicking.”
“Aw, I don’t know,” said Joe. “I see her do the stunt, Doc. Thought she was
on the blink, after Miss Hopper.”
“What’s your business, Joe?” inquired the doctor.
“Don’t you remember me, Doc?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“I’ve swallowed many of your pills, Doc, when you were practising in Newtown,
and my father—well, he used to have most of your trade.”
334
“You are not Joe Forrest’s boy?”
“That’s me, O.K.”
“Well, you’ve certainly changed. What are you doing with a show like this? Any talent
in that line?”
Bonnie snorted loudly, turned over on her sofa pillow and closed her eyes with
contemptuous weariness.
“We-el,” said Joe, with a touch of bashfulness, “to tell you the truth, Doc, I’m just
toting along with it because of Bonnie, there.”
“Well, you needn’t trouble on my account,” said the lady in question, thumping her
pillow viciously. “And let me tell you, Joe Forrest, if fever get over this, I’m
going to take advantage of Mr. Guns law’s offer.”
“He’s a mutt,” said Joe, savagely.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Bonnie, loftily. “There are others; and besides, next to my
ambition to be a prima-donna, I’ve always longed to be one of a vaudeville team, and
this’d be my chance.”
“Aw, Bonnie, you know you wouldn’t—”
“I appeal to you, Doctor Carpenter. I’m feeling down-in-the-mouth, and it don’t add
to my health to have that gentleman there hanging around me. Won’t you please, as my
doctor, get him out of here?”
“Aw, Bonnie —”
“Suppose you see about getting a taxicab for Bonnie,” suggested the Doctor.
“Aw— aw-right,” and he went out forlornly, shutting the door very gently behind him,
as though he feared a bang might disturb his lady-love.
“Ain’t he the limit?” was her comment, and then returning to her grievance: “I’m all
in, Doc—just heart-broke. Really, kidding aside, my sole chance to make a hit has
slipped through my fingers like dishwater. I’d rather become a famous actress
than—than—well, than become the bride of a Pittsburg millionaire, and that’s a fact.
But look at me, will you? Can you imagine anything worse? Why nothing worse could
happen to an actress.”
“Oh, yes, something could,” said the doctor, gently.
“What-now, I defy you to tell me what?”
“You really want me to tell you of another actress’ misfortune?”
“Yes, I do. Oh, I know there’s lots of hard luck tales of the stage—but you can’t
beat mine as a starter. You see my career is blasted just at the
beginning.”
“Which is better than having it happen at the end,” said the doctor, gently.
“I don’t see that.”
“Well, because you can start over again. The woman I am going to tell you about was
old and hopeless at the time. Now, lie back there comfortably, don’t think
about your own case ever, but give me your attention. Er-hum!”
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