This particular Jane had all the vices and charms that a young woman who is known to the crowd by her first name ought to have, or might be supposed to have. Men who were introduced to her found themselves calling her Jane inside of the hour, and that was because of her genius, for there are a lot of women in this world whose baptismal name no man would ever dare to use, even though they had been acquainted for years.
There is just as much difference in women as there is in drinks. It isn’t necessary to go into details on that subject, for every good hard drinker knows the
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different sensations of the different brands the morning after.
For three solid hours he sat there trussed up like a chicken
Jane blew into the big-city with a West wind, a dress suit case, on one end of which were the initials of her right name, and the drummer of a wholesale lace house who had caught her eye and won her regard by giving her some of his samples.
Your attention is called to the fact that a drummer’s existence is a cinch, especially if he has samples that he can afford to give away.
This one had a mustache that curled at the ends, a bank roll that looked like a toy balloon into which a kid had stuck a pin—which was Jane’s fault—and a nerve which was a little bit harder than Harveyized steel. He used the nerve in his business, and besides, it came in handy so far as Jane was concerned because he had a wife in Harlem. He planted Jane in a furnished flat, where he paid the rent for two weeks. Then because he had a champagne taste and a beer purse, he went to a pal of his who was a stage manager on Broadway and got the lady a job carrying a spear and wearing pale pink tights in a spectacular show that was about to be produced.
He was sitting in her front room warming his shins at the steam heat when he broke the news to her, and this is the way he did it. You sports can take a tip from this so you can see how it is done, for no man can ever foretell when he will be called on to produce the same line of talk.
“Do you know,” he began, “that you are the best fellow in the world and that the more I see of you the more I like you?”
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“Do you?” asked Jane, simply, for she was nothing more nor less than a country girl. “I am very glad of that, but you know the rent was due yesterday and it hasn’t been paid yet.”
“Now,” he went on, ignoring the touch, “I know you well enough to know that you would like to be independent and make your own way in the world. I want to see you where you will be in a position to support yourself, and so I have arranged with a man who is under obligations to me to give you a chance and put you in the chorus of the ‘Ice King.’ You’ll get $15 a week at the start and then you’ll be jumped to $18. After that it’s up to you whether or not you come to the front and get the real good money with the yellowbacks.”
“But I have never been on the stage,” she said.
“Don’t I know that, and haven’t I fixed it? You’ll be broken in all right and all you have to do is as you are told and you’ll get your money every Monday night.”
So it was that the girl from Peapack, N. J., became independent and self-supporting, and was able before long to send a hundred-dollar note to the folks at home, for whom she still had a deep regard. You see, it is only the girls who save their money who can do that sort of thing.
When the young fellows around town wanted to see a show, some one would suggest that they go up and see Jane, and although she hadn’t a line to speak nor a note to sing, they would line up in the front row as if she was a star. It didn’t take the manager of the show very long to find out that Jane could draw
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like a porous plaster and then he jumped her salary up to $25.
With that she went to a fashionable hair dresser and paid $200 to have her hair turned from chestnut blonde to a hue of a stick of pale molasses taffy, the kind you get for five cents a throw, which sticks in your teeth and plays the deuce with the filling.
Girls of Jane’s kind are like boxers, in that their prosperity is manifested outwardly without delay. The aspiring young knuckle-duster, as soon as he wins a prominent battle, will at once hie himself off and blow in a chunk of the purse on a silk hat, patent leather shoes, a frock coat and a cane. With the balance he will annex a diamond, then he immediately becomes the real thing.
A girl has no use for frock coats and canes, but she goes strong on hair, so her loose coin goes for a gallon of bleach strong enough to change the faith of a Hindoo fakir, and that is the strongest thing in the world, except, perhaps, an African after a hard day’s work in the slaughter house.
She had a flat on Central Park, South—that’s wrong, it was an apartment, because she paid over $1,000 a year for it, whereas flats only cost about $40 a month-and she entertained the bunch with cozy little wine dinners that would make a man leave his happy home in a minute.
She was still getting her $25 a week, you know.
Then she tore the drummer’s name out of her address book, for he was a back number who had shown a decided tendency to cold feet.
She described him to the butler, and said that if he
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ever put in an appearance he was to be dismissed with the single word:
“Skiddoo.”
“I don’t understand,” said the butler, whose previous job had been on Fifth avenue. “What does Skiddoo mean?”
“It doesn’t make any difference whether you understand or not, just you say it to him and he will know, and that’s enough.”
And all that night this cheese sandwich with the side whiskers kept repeating the word to himself so he wouldn’t forget it, and he wrote it down on his cuff. He also traced it out on a card that he stuck in behind the hat rack in the hall. In his heart and soul he thought it was some foreign word which meant that the lady wasn’t at home or didn’t care to be disturbed.
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