Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million(完全商务)

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Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

Strictly Business More

Stories of the Four Million

by O Henry

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

STRICTLY BUSINESS

I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've

been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms

and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and

the long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your

ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something like

this:

Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no

better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are

inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk

back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable

actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on Broadway

and their step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is Boyle

O'Kelley. The ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph were

stolen from the first sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is

funnier than E. H. Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he

was.

All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne

and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures

have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.

Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did,

the profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance

at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority-- and we go home

and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking

glasses.

Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light.

It seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring

bacchanalias and diamond-hungry _loreleis_ they are businesslike folk,

students and ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real

estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and

unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the

chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the

true one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this

little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only

the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of Keetor's

old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands

too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch-- and where I last saw

Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the

minute, as usual, to dress for her act.

The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. But Hart

had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four

years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning

changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a

buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-

viol player in more than one house--than which no performer ever

received more satisfactory evidence of good work.

The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful

performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to

give himself this pleausre he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway

corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matin'ee

offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a

minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that

most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles--the audible contact of the

palm of one hand against the palm of the other.

One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known

vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got

his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.

A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces

and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom.

Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but

Bob Hart, "All the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his

face as long and his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn

for his grandmother to wind into a ball.

But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight. H

was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

Character Songs and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than

two bites to Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink

cord and charged to the old man's account. She first showed you a

deliciously dewy and ginghamy country girl with a basket of property

daisies who informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be

learned at the old log school-house besides cipherin' and nouns,

especially "When the Teach-er Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick

flirt of gingham apron-strings, she reappeared in considerably less than a

"trice" as a fluffy "Parisienne"--so near does Art bring the old red mill to

the Moulin Rouge. And then--

But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody

else. he thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the

short order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of

"Helen Grimes" in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the

tray of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal

actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a

play tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks

of trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit

vaults, handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call.

They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.

But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He

called it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever

since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of

"Helen Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent

abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his

critical taste demanded.

After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and

got Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty

old house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card.

By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain _voile_ skirt, with her

hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have

been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the

great (unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything.

"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

card carefully. "What did you wish to see me about?"

"I saw you work last night," said Hart. "I've written a sketch that

I've been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the other part.

I thought I'd see you about it."

"Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry. "I've been wishing for

something of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns."

Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and

read it to her.

"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.

And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by

introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the

dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the

pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen

Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to

all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on

the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had

lacked. At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment,

experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that "Mice Will

Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits.

Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckerings of her

smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end

of a lead pencil she gave out her dictum.

"Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out.

That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a

handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the

Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And I've seen you

work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is

business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?"

"Two hundred," answered Hart.

"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry. "That's about the natural

discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every

week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all

right. I love it; but there's something else I love better--that's a little

country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

wandering around the yard.

"Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS. If

you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it. And I

believe we can make it go. And there's something else I want to say:

There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm _on the level_, and I'm on the

stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices.

I'm going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts.

No Old Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.

"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all

nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville

teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want

you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every

pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the

cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to

cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to

know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks

like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in

my life, and I've got money in five savings banks."

"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're in

on your own terms. I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and

stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a

five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap

cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title

deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on

the side porch, reading Stanleys 'Explorations into Africa.' And nobody

else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss

Cherry?"

"Not any," said Cherry. "What I'm going to do with my money is to

bank it. You can get four per cent. on deposits. Even at the salary I've

been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of

about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest

some of the principal in a little business--say, trimming hats or a beauty

parlor, and make more."

"Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right,

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all

who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save their

money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business

idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch

will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped

up."

The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all

successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it,

remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and

business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out,

renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger

for the pistol, restored the pistol--put the sketch through all the known

processes of condensation and improvement.

They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the

rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour

would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the

unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling

climax of the sketch.

Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a

real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen

Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and

daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private

secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father,

"Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch

that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagensett, L.

I. Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow

Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving

you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the

case may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman

should want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.

Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of

play, whether we admit it or not--something along in between

"Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.

There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play." Hart and

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part always

played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and a

panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn

down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders.

There was another girl in the sketch--a Fifth Avenue society

swelless--who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack

Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue

before he lost his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the

photographic state--Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the

Amagan--of the Bad Lands droring room. Helen was jealous, of

course.

And now for the thriller. Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina

pectoris one night--so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper

over the footlights--while only his secretary was present. And that same

day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library

just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts

for the price we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time.

Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made his

(alleged) croak.

"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed--" you sabe,

don't you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth

Avenue Girl--who doesn't come on the stage--and can we blame her,

with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be

buttoned in the back by a call boy, maids cost so much?

But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she

can be, is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack

Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell

swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides

like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to

make any perfect lady mad. So, then!

They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted

elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the

d'enouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a

play unless it be when the prologue ends.

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take

it? The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra

hadn't left their seats; and no man could get past "Old Jimmy," the stage

door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a

guarantee of eligibility.

Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack

Valentine: "Robber and thief--and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts,

this should be your fate!"

With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.

"But I will be merciful," goes on Helen. "You shall live--that will

be your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you

to the death that you deserve. There is _her_ picture on the mantel. I

will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have

pierced your craven heart."

And she does it. And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants

pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet--the actual bullet--goes

through the face of the photograph--and then strikes the hidden spring of

the sliding panel in the wall--and lo! the panel slides, and there is the

missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold.

It's great. You know how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a

target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In

the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter,

covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the

same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot,

and she had to shoot steady and true every time.

Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the

secret place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary

(which really might have come under the head of "obtaining money

under"; but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, the New York

girl was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx; and,

necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-Nelson--and there you are.

After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they

had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was

a house wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that

Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million

inundates a theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the

orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears.

After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed

fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was

what it panned out.

That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good

night at her boarding-house door.

"Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes.

We've got our chance now to make good and make money. What we

want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can."

"Right," said Bob. "It's business with me. You've got your

scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow

with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to

enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention."

"Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply

thoughtful. "I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our

expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help me work

out mine--and all on business principles."

"Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York

for ten weeks--rather neat for a vaudeville sketch--and then it started on

the circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid

drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity.

Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said of

Hart & Cherry:

"As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit.

It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard

workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute,

straight home after their act, and each of 'em as gentlemanlike as a lady.

I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble or more

respect for the profession."

And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of

the story:

At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to New

York for another run at the roof gardens and summer theatres. There

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StrictlyBusinessMoreStoriesoftheFourMillion1StrictlyBusinessMoreStoriesoftheFourMillionbyOHenryStrictlyBusinessMoreStoriesoftheFourMillion2ISTRICTLYBUSINESSIsupposeyouknowallaboutthestageandstagepeople.You'vebeentouchedwithandbyactors,andyoureadthenewspapercriticismsandthejokesintheweekliesabouttheR...

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