Part 15

“Yes, but it isn’t worth it,” said Hahn, “after you’ve got it.”

“That’s what they all say,”--grimly--“_after_ they’ve got it.”

The thing that had been born in Sid Hahn’s mind thirty years before was now so plainly stamped on this boy’s face that Hahn was startled into earnestness. “But I tell you, it’s true! It’s true!”

“Maybe. Some day, when I’m living in a place like this, I’ll let you know if you’re right.”

In less than a year Wallie Ascher was working with Hahn. No one knew his official title or place. But, “Ask Wallie. He’ll know,” had become a sort of slogan in the office. He did know. At twenty-one his knowledge of the theatre was infallible (this does not include plays unproduced. In this no one is infallible) and his feeling for it amounted to a sixth sense. There was something uncanny about the way he could talk about Lotta, for example, as if he had seen her; or Mrs. Siddons; or Mrs. Fiske, when she was Minnie Maddern, the soubrette. It was as though he had the power to cast himself back in the past. No doubt it was that power which gave later to his group of historical plays (written by him between the ages of thirty and thirty-five) their convincingness and authority.

When Wallie was about twenty-three or four years old Sid Hahn took him abroad with him on one of his annual scouting trips. Yearly, in the spring, Hahn swooped down upon London, Paris, Berlin, seeking that of the foreign stage which might be translated, fumigated, desiccated or otherwise rendered suitable for home use. He sent Wallie on to Vienna, alone, on the trail of a musical comedy which was rumored to be a second _Merry Widow_ in tunefulness, chic and charm. Of course it wasn’t. _Merry Widows_ rarely repeat themselves. Wallie wired back to Hahn, as arranged. The telegram is unimportant, perhaps, but characteristic.

Mr. Sid Hahn, Hotel Savoy, London, England.

It’s a second all right but not a second _Merry Widow_. Heard of a winner in Budapest shall I go. Spent to-day from eleven to five running around the Ringstrasse looking for mythical creature known as the chic Viennese. After careful investigation wish to be quoted as saying the species if any is extinct.

This, remember, was in the year 1913, B. W. Wallie, obeying instructions, went to Budapest, witnessed the alleged winner, found it as advertised, wired Hahn and was joined by that gentleman three days later.

Budapest, at that time, was still Little Paris, only wickeder. A city of magnificent buildings, and unsalted caviar, and beautiful dangerous women, and frumpy men (civilian) and dashing officers in red pants, and Cigány music, and cafés, and paprika, and two-horse droshkies. Buda, low and flat, lay on one side; Pest, high and hilly, perched picturesquely on the other. Between the two rolled the Blue Danube (which is yellow).

It was there that Hahn and Wallie found Mizzi Markis. Wallie found her, really. Mizzi Markis, then a girl of nineteen, was a hod-carrier.

As Hahn stepped from the train, geometrically square in a long ulster that touched his ears and his heels, Wallie met him with a bound.

“Hello, S. H.! Great to see you! Say, listen, I’ve found something. I’ve found something big!”

Hahn had never seen the boy so excited. “Oh, shucks! No play’s as good as that.”

“Play! It isn’t a play.”

“Why, you young idiot, you said it was good! You said it was darn good! You don’t mean to tell me--”

“Oh, that! That’s all right. It’s good--or will be when you get through with it.”

“What you talking about then? Here, let’s take one of these things with two horses. Gee, you ought to smoke a fat black seegar and wear a silk hat when you ride in one of these! I feel like a parade.” He was like a boy on a holiday.

“But let me tell you about this girl, won’t you!”

“Oh, it’s a girl! What’s her name? What’s she do?”

“Her name’s Mizzi.”

“Mizzi what?”

“I don’t know. She’s a hod-carrier. She--”

“That’s all right, Wallie. I’m here now. An ice bag on your head and real quiet for two or three days. You’ll come around fine.”

But Wallie was almost sulking. “Wait till you see her, S. H. She sings.”

“Beautiful, is she?”

“No, not particularly. No.”

“Wonderful voice, h’m?”

“N-n-no. I wouldn’t say it was what you’d call exactly wonderful.”

Sid Hahn stood up in the droshky and waved his short arms in windmill circles. “Well, what the devil does she do then, that’s so good! Carry bricks?”

“She _is_ good at that. When she balances that pail of mortar on her head and walks off with it, her arms hanging straight at her sides--”

But Sid Hahn’s patience was at an end. “You’re a humorist, you are. If I didn’t know you I’d say you were drunk. I’ll bet you are, anyway. You’ve been eating paprika, raw. You make me sick.”

Inelegant, but expressive of his feelings. But Wallie only said, “You wait. You’ll see.”

Sid Hahn did see. He saw next day. Wallie woke him out of a sound sleep so that he might see. It was ten-thirty a. m. so that his peevishness was unwarranted. They had seen the play the night before and Hahn had decided that translated and with interpolations (it was a comic opera) it would captivate New York. Then and there he completed the negotiations which Wallie had begun. Hahn was all for taking the first train out, but Wallie was firm. “You’ve got to see her, I tell you. You’ve got to see her.”

Their hotel faced the Corso. The Corso is a wide promenade that runs along the Buda bank of the Danube. Across the river, on the hill, the royal palace looks down upon the little common people. In the day the monde and the demi-monde of Budapest walked on the Corso between twelve and one. Up and down. Up and down. The women, tall, dark, flashing-eyed, daringly dressed. The men sallow, meager, and wearing those trousers which, cut very wide and flappy at the ankles, make them the dowdiest men in the world. Hahn’s room and Wallie’s were on the second floor of the hotel, and at a corner. One set of windows faced the Corso, the river, and Pest on the hill. The other set looked down upon a new building being erected across the way. It was on this building that Mizzi Markis worked as hod-carrier.

The War accustomed us to a million women in overalls doing the work of a million men. We saw them ploughing, juggling steel bars, making shells, running engines, stoking furnaces, handling freight. But to these two American men, at that time, the thing at which these laboring women were employed was dreadful and incredible.

Said Wallie: “By the time we’ve dressed, and had breakfast, and walked a little and everything it’ll be almost noon. And noon’s the time. After they’ve eaten their lunch. But I want you to see her before.”

By now his earnestness had impressed Hahn who still feigned an indifference he did not feel. It was about 11:30 when Wallie propelled him by the arm to the unfinished building across the way. And there he met Mizzi.

They were just completing the foundation. The place was a busy hive. Back and forth with pails. Back and forth with loads of bricks.

“What’s the matter with the men?” was Hahn’s first question.

Wallie explained. “They do the dainty work. They put one brick on top of the other, with a dab of mortar between. But none of the back-breaking stuff for them. The women do that.”

And it was so. They were down in the pits mixing the mortar, were the women. They were carrying great pails of it. They were hauling bricks, up one ladder and down. They wore short full skirts with a musical comedy chorus effect. Some of them looked seventy and some seventeen. It was fearful work for a woman. A keen wind was blowing across the river. Their hands were purple.

“Pick Mizzi,” said Wallie. “If you can pick her I’ll know I’m right. But I know it, anyway.”

Five minutes passed. The two men stood silent. “The one with the walk and the face,” said Hahn, then. Which wasn’t very bright of him, because they all walked and they all had faces. “Going up the pit-ladder now. With the pail on her head.” Wallie gave a little laugh of triumph. But then, Hahn wouldn’t have been Hahn had he not been able to pick a personality when he saw it.

Years afterward the reviewers always talked of Mizzi’s walk. They called it her superb carriage. They didn’t know that you have to walk very straight, on the balls of your feet, with your hips firm, your stomach held in flat, your shoulders back, your chest out, your chin out and a little down, if you are going to be at all successful in balancing a pail of mortar on your head. After a while that walk becomes a habit.

“Watch her with that pail,” said Wallie.

Mizzi filled the pail almost to the top with the heavy white mixture. She filled it quickly, expertly. The pail, filled, weighed between seventeen and twenty kilos. One kilo is equal to about two and one-fifth pounds. The girl threw down her scoop, stooped, grasped the pail by its two handles and with one superb unbroken motion raised the pail high in her two strong arms and placed it on her head. Then she breathed deeply, once, set her whole figure, turned stiffly, and was off with it. Sid Hahn took a long breath as though he himself had just accomplished the gymnastic feat.

“Well, so far it’s pretty good. But I don’t know that the American stage is clamoring for any hod-carriers and mortar mixers, exactly.”

A whistle blew. Twelve o’clock. Bricks, mortar, scoops, shovels were abandoned. The women in their great clod-hopping shoes flew chattering to the tiny hut where their lunch boxes were stored. The men followed more slowly, a mere handful of them. Not one of them wore overalls or apron. Out again with their bundles and boxes of food--very small bundles. Very tiny boxes. They ate ravenously the bread and sausage and drank their beer in great gulps. Fifteen minutes after the whistle had blown the last crumb had vanished.

“Now, then,” said Wallie. And guided Hahn nearer. He looked toward Mizzi. Everyone looked toward her. Mizzi stood up, brushing crumbs from her lap. She had a little four-cornered black shawl, folded cross-wise, over her head and tied under her chin. Her face was round and her cheeks red. The shawl, framing this, made her look young and cherubic.

She did not put her hands on her hips, or do any of those story-book things. She grinned, broadly, showing strong white teeth, made strong and white through much munching of coarse black bread; not yet showing the neglect common to her class. She asked a question in a loud clear voice.

“What’s that?” asked Hahn.

“She’s talking a kind of hunky Hungarian, I guess. The people here won’t speak German, did you know that? They hate it.”

The crowd shouted back with one voice. They settled themselves comfortably, sitting or standing. Their faces held the broad smile of anticipation.

“She asked them what they want her to sing. They told her. It’s the same every day.”

Mizzi Markis stood there before them in the mud, and clay, and straw of the building débris. And she sang for them a Hungarian popular song of the day which, translated, sounds idiotic and which runs something like this:

“A hundred geese in a row At the head of the procession Going into a coop A stick over his shoulder--”

No, you can’t do it. It means less than nothing that way, and certainly would not warrant the shrieks of mirth that came from the audience gathered round the girl. Still, when you recall the words of “A Hot Time”:

“When you hear them bells go ting-ling-ling, All join round and sweetly you must sing And when the words am through in the chorus all join in There’ll be a _hot time_ In the _old town_ Tonight My Ba- By.”

And yet it swept a continent, and Europe, and in Japan they still think it’s our national anthem.

When she had finished the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted. She had no unusual beauty. Her voice was untrained, though possessed of strength and flexibility. It wasn’t what she had sung, surely. You heard the song in a hundred cafés. Every street boy whistled it. It wasn’t that expressive pair of shoulders, exactly. It wasn’t a certain soothing tonal quality that made you forget all the things you’d been trying not to remember.

There is something so futile and unconvincing about an attempted description of an intangible thing. Some call it personality; some call it magnetism; some a rhythm sense; and some, genius. It’s all these things, and none of them. Whatever it is, she had it. And whatever it is, Sid Hahn has never failed to recognize it.

So now he said, quietly, “She’s got it.”

“You bet she’s got it!” from Wallie.

“She’s got more than Renée Paterne ever had. A year of training and some clothes--”

“You don’t need to tell me. I’m in the theatrical business, myself.”

“I’m sorry,” stiffly.

But Hahn, too, was sorry immediately. “You know how I am, Wallie. I like to run a thing off by myself. What do you know about her? Find out anything?”

“Well, a little. She doesn’t seem to have any people. And she’s decent. Kind of a fierce kid, I guess, and fights when offended. They say she’s Polish, not Hungarian. Her mother was a peasant. Her father--nobody knows. I had a dickens of a time finding out anything. The most terrible language in the world--Hungarian. They’ll stick a ‘b’ next to a ‘k’ and follow it up with a ‘z’ and put an accent mark over the whole business and call it a word. Last night I followed her home. And guess what!”

“What?” said Hahn, obligingly.

“On her way she had to cross the big square--the one they call Gisela Tér, with all the shops around it. Well, when she came to Gerbeaud’s--”

“What’s Gerbeaud’s?”

“That’s the famous tea room and pastry shop where all the swells go and guzzle tea with rum in it and eat cakes--and say! It isn’t like our pastry that tastes like sawdust covered with shaving soap. Marvelous stuff, this is!”

After all, he was barely twenty-four. So Hahn said, good-naturedly, “All right, all right. We’ll go there this afternoon and eat an acre of it. Go on. When she came to Gerbeaud’s--”

“Well, when she came to Gerbeaud’s she stopped and stood there, outside. There was a strip of red carpet from the door to the street. You know--the kind they have at home when there’s a wedding on Fifth Avenue. There she stood at the edge of the carpet, waiting, her face, framed in that funny little black shawl, turned toward the window, and the tail of the little shawl kind of waggling in the wind. It was cold and nippy. I waited, too. Finally I sort of strolled over to her--I knew she couldn’t any more than knock me down--and said, kind of casual, ‘What’s doing?’ She looked up at me, like a kid, in that funny shawl. She knew I was an Englees’ right away. I guess I must have a fine open countenance. And I had motioned toward the red carpet, and the crowded windows. Anyway, she opens up with a regular burst of fireworks Hungarian, in that deep voice of hers. Not only that, she acted it out. In two seconds she had on an imaginary coronet and a court train. And haughty! Gosh! I was sort of stumped, but I said, ‘You don’t say!’ and waited some more. And then they flung open the door of the tea shop thing. At the same moment up dashed an equipage--you couldn’t possibly call it anything less--with flunkeys all over the outside, like trained monkeys. The people inside the shop stood up, with their mouths full of cake, and out came an old frump with a terrible hat and a fringe. And it was the Arch-Duchess, and her name is Josefa.”

“Your story interests me strangely, boy,” Hahn said, grinning, “but I don’t quite make you. Do Arch-Duchesses go to tea rooms for tea? And what’s that got to do with our gifted little hod-carrier?”

“This Duchess does. Believe me, those tarts are good enough for the Queen of Hearts, let alone a duchess, no matter how arch. But the plot of the piece is this. The duchess person goes to Gerbeaud’s about twice a week. And they always spread a red carpet for her. And Mizzi always manages to cut away in time to stand there in front of Gerbeaud’s and see her come out. She’s a gorgeous mimic, that little kid. And though I couldn’t understand a word she said I managed to get out of it just this: That some day they’re going to spread a red carpet for Mizzi and she’s going to walk down it in glory. If you’d seen her face when she said it, S. H., you wouldn’t laugh.”

“I wouldn’t laugh anyway,” said Hahn, seriously.

And that’s the true story of Mizzi Markis’s beginning. Few people know it.

There they were, the three of them. And of the three, Mizzi’s ambition seemed to be the fiercest, the most implacable. She worked like a horse, cramming English, French, singing. In some things she was like a woman of thirty; in others a child of ten. Her gratitude to Hahn was pathetic. No one ever doubted that he was in love with her almost from the first--he who had resisted the professional beauties of three decades.

You know she wasn’t--and isn’t--a beauty, even in that portrait of her by Sargent, with her two black-haired, stunning-looking boys, one on each side. But she was one of those gorgeously healthy women whose very presence energizes those with whom she comes in contact. And then there was about her a certain bounteousness. There’s no other word for it, really. She reminded you of those gracious figures you see posed for pictures entitled “Autumn Harvest.”

While she was studying she had a little apartment with a middle-aged woman to look after her, and she must have been a handful. A born cook, she was, and Hahn and Wallie used to go there to dinner whenever she would let them. She cooked it herself. Hahn would give up any engagement for a dinner at Mizzi’s. When he entered her little sitting-room his cares seemed to drop from him. She never got over cutting bread as the peasant women do it--the loaf held firmly against her breast, the knife cutting toward her. Hahn used to watch her and laugh. Sometimes she would put on the little black head-shawl of her Budapest days and sing the street-song about the hundred geese in a row. A delightful, impudent figure.

With the very first English she learned she told Hahn and Wallie that some day they were going to spread a fine red carpet for her to tread upon and that all the world would gaze on her with envy. It was in her mind a symbol typifying all that there was of earthly glory.

“It’ll be a long time before they do any red carpeting for you, my girl,” Sid Hahn had said.

She turned on him fiercely. “I will not rest--I will not eat--I will not sleep--I will not love--until I have it.”

Which was, of course, an exaggerated absurdity.

“Oh, what rot!” Wallie Ascher had said, angrily. And then he had thought of his own symbol of success, and his own resolve. And his face had hardened. Sid Hahn looked at the two of them; very young, both of them, very gifted, very electric. Very much in love with each other, though neither would admit it even in their own minds. Both their stern young faces set toward the goal which they thought meant happiness.

Now, Sid Hahn had never dabbled in this new stuff--you know--complexes and fixed ideas and images. But he was a very wise man, and he did know to what an extent these two were possessed by ambition for that which they considered desirable.

He must have thought it over for weeks. He was in love with Mizzi, remember. And his fondness for Wallie was a thing almost paternal. He watched these two for a long, long time, a queer grim little smile on his gargoyle face. And then his mind was made up. He had always had his own way. He must have had a certain terrible enjoyment in depriving himself of the one thing he wanted most in the world--the one thing he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything.

He decided that Destiny--a ponderous, slow-moving creature at best--needed a little prodding from him. His plans were simple, as all effective plans are.

Mizzi had been in America just a year and a half. Her development was amazing, but she was far from being the finished product that she became in later years. Hahn decided to chance it. Mizzi had no fear of audiences. He had tried her out on that. An audience stimulated her. She took it to her breast. She romped with it.

He found a play at last. A comedy, with music. It was frankly built for Mizzi. He called Wallie Ascher into his office.

“I wouldn’t try her out here for a million. New York’s too fly. Some little thing might be wrong--you know how they are. And all the rest would go for nothing. The kindest audience in the world--when they like you. And the cruelest in the world when they don’t. We’ll go on the road for two weeks. Then we’ll open at the Blackstone in Chicago. I think this girl has got more real genius than any woman since--since Bernhardt in her prime. Five years from now she won’t be singing. She’ll be acting. And it’ll _be_ acting.”

“Aren’t you forcing things just a little?” asked Wallie, coolly.

“Oh, no. No. Anyway, it’s just a try-out. By the way, Wallie, I’ll probably be gone almost a month. If things go pretty well in Chicago I’ll run over to French Lick for eight or ten days and see if I can’t get a little of this stiffness out of my old bones. Will you do something for me?”

“Sure.”

“Pack a few clothes, and go up to my place and live there, will you? The Jap stays on, anyway. The last time I left it alone things went wrong. You’ll be doing me a favor. Take it and play the piano, and have your friends in, and boss the Jap around. He’s stuck on you, anyway. Says he likes to hear you play.”

He stayed away six weeks. And any one who knows him knows what hardship that was. He loved New York, and his own place, and his comfort, and his books; and hotel food gave him hideous indigestion.