A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 30

"Go on," her hostess cried. To her guests she added, in the social curtain-raiser manner peculiar to rambunctious hostesses, "if Mugs tells anything about herself you can be sure it'll be something immense. Go on, Mugs." Mugs is one of the nicknames the prima donna is known by among her friends.

"We went to school together," the prima donna smiled, "John and I. And I don't think I've ever loved anybody as I loved him. He used to frighten me to death. You see, I was ambitious. I wanted to be somebody. And John wanted me to marry him. Somehow marriage wasn't what I wanted then. There were other things. I had started singing and at night I used to lie awake, not wanting to sleep. I was so taken up with my dreams and plans that I hated to lose consciousness. That's a fact.

"Well, John grew more and more insistent. And one evening he came to call on me. I was alone on the porch. John was about twenty-three then. That was about twenty years ago. He was a tall, good-looking, sharp-faced young man with lively eyes. I thought him marvelous at the time. And he stood on the steps of the porch and talked to me. I never forgot a word he said. I have never heard anything so wonderful since."

The barytone shrugged his shoulders politely and said "Hm!"

"Oh, I know," smiled the prima donna, "you're the Great Lover and all that. But you never could talk as John did that evening on the porch--in Iowa. He stood there and said, 'Mugs, you're going to regret this moment for the rest of your life. There'll be nights when you'll wake up s.h.i.+vering and crying and you'll want to kill yourself. Why? Because you didn't marry me. Because you had your chance to marry me and turned it down. Remember. Remember how I'm standing here talking to you--unknown--a country boy. Remember that when you hear of me again.'

"'What are you going to do?' I asked.

"I'm going to be president of the United States,' he said. And he said it so that there was truth in it. As I looked at him standing on the steps I felt frightened to death. There he was, going to be president of the United States, and there was I, throwing the greatest chance in the world away. He knew I believed him and that made it worse. He went on talking in a sort of oracular singsong that drove me mad.

"'I'm not asking you again. You've had your chance, Mugs. And you've thrown it away. All right. It'll not be said afterward that John Marcey made a fool of himself. Good-bye.'"

The prima donna sighed. "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup; "it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body swinging. And I sat there s.h.i.+vering. I had turned down a president of the United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl. And, what was worse, I was in love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake all night, crying and s.h.i.+vering.

"I didn't see John Marcey again. I stayed only a week longer and then I came to Chicago to study music. My folks were able to finance me for a time. But I never forgot him. It was John who had started me for Chicago.

And it was John who kept me practicing eight hours a day, studying and practicing until I thought I'd drop.

"I was going to make good. When he became president I was going to be somebody. I wasn't going to do what he said I would, wake up cursing myself and remembering my lost chance. So I went right on working my head off and finally it was Paris and finally it was a job in London. And I never stopped working.

"But the funny part was that I gradually forgot about John Marcey. When I had arrived as an opera singer he was entirely dead for me. But last month I visited my home town. I was pa.s.sing through and couldn't resist getting off and looking up people I knew as a girl. My folks are dead, you know.

"And when I walked down the street--the same old funny little Main Street--I remembered John Marcey. And, would you believe it, that same feeling of fear came back to me as I'd had that night on the porch when he made his 'remember' speech. I got curious as the devil about John and felt afraid to inquire. But finally I was talking to an old, old man who runs the drug-store on the corner of Main and Sixth streets there. I'd recognized him through the window and gone inside and shaken hands; and I asked him:

"'Do you remember John Marcey?'

"'Marcey--Marcey?' he repeated. 'Oh, yes. Old Ma.r.s.e. Why, yes. Sure.' And he kept nodding his head. Then I asked with my heart in my mouth, 'What's become of him?' And the old druggist who was looking out of his store window adjusted his gla.s.ses and pointed with his finger. 'There he is.

There he is. Wait a minute. I'll call him.'

"And there was John, my president of the United States, hunched over on the seat of a garbage wagon driving a woebegone nag down the street. I grabbed hold of the druggist and said, 'Don't, I'll see him later.'

"Well, I couldn't stay in that town another minute. I hurried to the station and waited for the next train and kept thinking of John driving his garbage wagon, and his battered felt hat and his hangdog face until I thought I'd go mad.

"That's all," laughed the prima donna, "That's my love story." And she stared pensively into the empty teacup as the barytone moved a bit closer and began:

"I'll tell you about a Spanish girl I met in Prague that'll interest you--"

THE EXILE

The newspaper man told the story apropos of nothing at all. There was a pause in the talk among the well-dressed dinner guests. A very satisfied-looking man said:

"Well, thank G.o.d, this radical excitement is over."

Every one agreed it was fortunate and the newspaper man, an insufferably garrulous person, interjected: "That reminds me of Bill Haywood."

"Oh, yes," said the hostess, "he was the leader of all that terrible thing, wasn't he?"

"He was," said the newspaper man. "I knew him fairly well. I covered the I.W.W. trial in Judge Landis' court, where he and a hundred or so others were sent to prison."

"What was the charge against them?" inquired the satisfied one.

"I forget," said the newspaper man, "but I remember Haywood. The trial, of course, had something to do with the war. The war was going on then, you remember."

"Oh, yes, indeed," exclaimed the hostess. "It will take a long time to forget the war." And her eyes brightened.

"You were going to tell us about the I.W.W. trial," pursued the hostess a few minutes later.

"Oh, there's nothing much about that," said the newspaper man. "I was princ.i.p.ally interested in Bill Haywood for a moment. You know they sent him to jail for twenty years or so. Anyway, that was his sentence."

"The scoundrel ran away," said the very satisfied one. "Funny they should let a man as unprincipled and dangerous as Haywood slip through their hands after sending him to jail."

"Yes, they let him escape to Russia, of all places," declared the hostess with indignation. "Where he could do the most harm. Oh, the government is so stupid at times it simply drives one furious. Or makes you laugh.

Doesn't it?"

"Yes, he skipped his bond or something," said the newspaper man, "and became an exile."

The satisfied one snorted.

"Exile!" he derided. "You don't call a man an exile who runs away from a country he has always despised and fought against?"

"The last time I saw him," went on the newspaper man, as if he were unruffled, "was about four or five days before he disappeared. I was surprised to see him. I thought he was serving his time in jail. I hadn't been following the ins and outs and I wasn't aware he had got appeals and things and was still at large."

"Yes," said the satisfied one, "that's the trouble with this country. Too lenient toward these scoundrels. As if they were ent.i.tled to--"

"Justice," murmured the newspaper man. "Quite so. Our enemies are not ent.i.tled to justice. It is one of my oldest notions."

"But tell us about what this Haywood said," pursued the hostess. "It must have been funny meeting him."

"It was," said the newspaper man. "It was at the Columbia theater between acts in the evening. I had gone to see a burlesque show there. And between acts I was on the mezzanine floor. I went out to get a gla.s.s of water.

"As I was coming back whom do I see leaning against the railing but old Bill Haywood. I hadn't seen him for about two years, I guess. But he hadn't changed an iota. The same crooked-lipped smile. And his one eye staring ahead of him with a mildly amused light in it. A rather striking person was Bill. I suppose it was because he always seemed so calm outside.

"He remembered me and when I said h.e.l.lo to him he called me by name and I walked to his side. I started talking and said: 'Well, what are you doing here? I thought you were serving time in six jails.'

"'Not yet,' said Haywood, 'but in a few days. The sentence starts next week.'

"'Twenty years?'

"'Oh, something like that.'