Part 3 (1/2)
I am worried to death. I don't know what to do and my hand don't seem to get well. I haven't got a cent to my name, I owe Mrs. Smith six weeks'
board money for Billy, and I have been eating off her for three weeks.
She can't afford to feed me, and every mouthfull I take chokes me. I know they are hard up, cause I caught her crying the other day. Her husband is awful nice, but he ain't got much sense and his business in life is teaching not trying to raise vegetables. She says she won't hear me going back to dancing, but I don't see what else I can do. My hand don't affect my feet. I was over town the other day and saw my old dancing partner, Fred Keeney. He said we can get a job at the Cafe Boulevard and I am crazy to try it. Yet if I could work, I would cut the whole thing out, cause Mrs. Smith is right when she says that dancing ain't bad, just the b.u.m crowd you have got to go with. And I am up against it more than most of the girls, cause nearly all of them have homes, but everybody seems to know or finds out mighty sudden that I am your sister, and it ain't up to me then to go in for the heavy respectable. Gee, Kate you have got a reputation! You must have had a lot of newspaper advertising. n.o.body ever says I am Nan Lane, they just say I am Kate Lane's sister. Then they look at me as if I was going to take a bite out of them. That is why it is more comfortable for me to keep with the old crowd, cause they don't throw a fit every time your name is mentioned.
Oh, I am sure distracted. I've walked the floor nights till I wore a path in the carpet. What with my hand aching and me wondering what in the world I ought to do, I can't sleep. I go out in the afternoon and lie down in the woods and if I knew something to pray to, I would sure get right down on my knees and ask it to tell me which way to turn. I have been in Mrs. Smith's room twice when they have what they call family wors.h.i.+p. It didn't seem to do me much good but I bowed my head as I saw them do. Why, if they wanted to stand on their heads and meow like cats, I would bark an accompaniment cause I like them so.
Mrs. Smith cries every time I speak of the dancing, but I can't live on charity for the rest of my life and I am pestered to death for money.
When I was coming out of Kelley's the other day, I saw father and of course, he give me a touch. He never shows up unless he wants something.
Oh, I hate him, Kate. When I saw his s.h.i.+fty old eyes I just turned sick.
Every time I see him I think of the kicks and the cuffs we kids got whenever he come round, which, thank goodness, wasn't often. Do you remember how happy we was when we went down to court and heard him get that seven years' stretch? That was the finest present the judge could give us, and when we got back to the room I remember we just hugged each other and danced round and round and made up a song with the chorus, ”Pa's got seven years, we ain't glad, oh, no.” You gave a party that night, and we almost got pulled for being so noisy. I wonder what mother was like. What kind of a woman she could have been to have seen anything in him. You must be something like her, cause you stick to Jim and you know what I think of _him_. I suppose being married to a man does something to a woman because I know a lot of nice women that stick to good-for-nothing b.u.ms because they are married to them. As for me, I don't suppose I ever will be married cause none of the crowd I know now for _mine_ and I don't have much chance to meet the Henry Van d.y.k.es or the John T. Wanamakers.
Well this ain't telling me what to do. What _will_ I do? I am near crazy. Well--I can always go to bed, good night.
_Nan_.
XV
_Dear Kate_:
Well, I am back at the old work and it is all right. I have been dancing in the best restaurants in New York, and what do you think, Kate, I am going to dance at the Winter Garden. The manager there saw my poppy dance the other night, and he is giving me a dance. I can still come back and dance at twelve o'clock in the restaurant. Fred Kelly, my dancing partner, is crazy glad. Will Henderson nearly cried. He said, ”You have got your chance, Nan, you have got your chance.” I offered to give him part of my salary because if he had not thought out all the pretty dances, him and the artist chap, I never could have piped them out myself. But he won't take a cent. He is dead square, and not a half bad fellow, and I have been trying to get him to take the cure. I offered to pay all expenses if he would go up to that dope cure joint at White Plains, and sometimes he says he will, then again says he won't.
You can't trust a person who takes dope. Sometimes he shows up every night and plays just beautiful, then again we don't see him for ten days. Fred Kelly is so tickled at this chance to work in the good places, that he has braced up and seems a different fellow. He used to drink a lot and one time when he was tanked up, he had to throw me from one arm to the other in the dance, and he let me fall and hurt my back so bad, I could hardly move for a week. It gave me an awful scare and I had a good heart to heart talk with him. I told him he either had to cut out the booze or cut out working with me, cause you can't do the two things and do both well. Oh, I am glad that I have left the joints and I am proud of myself. I have worked awful hard and something inside of me has always said I would win out, and it _is_ winning out, because there ain't no bigger thing in my line than dancing at the Winter Garden.
They are going to advertise me, Kate, and they call me Nancy Lane.
Sounds kinda pretty, doesn't it? I got some of the nicest clothes you ever saw. My new dancing slippers is made to order, and I got some pretty things for my hair, though I think it looks better without anything in it, as it is hard to match the color.
Mrs. Smith and the children came over the other afternoon to see the toys. I bought the kids some things, then we went to a place and had ice cream sodas and sundaes until I bet two babies went to sleep that night with a stomach-ache.
Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. I got a funny present. Do you remember Jenny who was sick about a year ago, and whose mother come from Iowa or Kansas or somewhere to get her? Well, I got a package the other day about the size of a house and when I opened it there was a bed quilt in it made of little pieces of colored calico set around with white pieces.
Jenny's mother wrote me a beautiful letter saying she made it herself for me out of pieces of cloth she had saved from her family's dresses. I put it on the bed, and gee, it was the funniest looking thing you ever saw. It didn't seem to belong to 28th Street anymore than the old lady did. It was funny to watch the girls when they come into the room. Them who had been born on the sidewalks like me whooped when they saw it, and made a lot of fun of it, but the girls who had come from the country looked at it different and a sort of change come over their faces. One girl who is in the chorus at the Columbia, set down by the bed and run her hand up and down the cover and then put her head on it and cried, and Mary Crosby who comes somewhere from Pennsylvania and has only been in the quarter about three months, looked at it straight for about five minutes without speaking and then turned and left the room. I followed her out into the hall and said, ”What is the matter, Mary?” And she said in a queer choked way, ”Good-bye, Nan, me for that little room down in old P-a. I've got enough.” And I'll be darned if she didn't go home.
It was nice to see you, Kate, and you are looking real well. You have got the only soft snap there, but I can trust you for getting anything that is laying around easy. I am off to work, going to try a new dance on to-night.
_Nan_.
XVI
_Dear Kate_:
I opened your trunk and got out the clothes you wrote about. I give the grey dress to Mary, and the coat to Mrs. Keenan. There are a lot of things that you won't be able to use when you come out. Hadn't I better give them to some one? It seems a shame to have them laying there no use to any body.
I had a dandy day yesterday. Mildred Carter met me in a shop and we spent the whole day together. You know she is married. Married some swell man and lives in a fine place on Riverside Drive. She is just as pretty as ever. No wonder she was in all the Broadway shows. She hasn't a bit of sense, but her tiny figure has the most perfect curves, and her face and eyes are just like a wondering child. She makes me think of Billy. She has a baby two years old, and if it wasn't for him, she would go back to the stage. She is awful lonesome up in her fine home, and she misses the lights and the fun and the pretty dresses. She is crazy over the clothes the girls are wearing in the new Field show, and I think she misses the suppers after the shows when a lot of the girls used to go with the Johnnies and sort of joy ride. There wasn't nothing wrong with the parties, but her mother-in-law thinks it is awful to even mention them. A pretty girl like Mildred could have four suppers a night if she wanted to, because lots of men like to take a show girl out. They wear pretty clothes and attract attention and are funny, have lots of up-to-date slang, know all the new songs, and don't expect a man to be clever. All that they want of him is to pay the supper. And they are perfectly willing to pay for it if you don't expect them to talk of art or the uplifting of the drama. Just look pretty and say fool things and whistle popular songs and say things that don't make their head ache to answer. I tell Mrs. Smith who, like so many women, think it is always wrong to go to supper, that it is done by heaps of girls who are on the level.