Mr American. George Fraser MacDonald
you want to get to the top of my trade – look at Marie Lloyd, she’s no lady, but she’ll be topping the bill until she drops, no matter how fat she gets. Maybe I’ve got a little of what she’s got – not just the voice, and the figure, and the cheek, but – well, you know, it’s how you put it over. If I’ve got it, then I’ll go on until I drop, too – and if I haven’t, I’ll prob’ly finish up married to some sobersides in Ealing, if I’m lucky, with six kids and a couple of maids.” She chuckled happily. “Sing ’em ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’” at the church social, too. Meantime, I’m enjoying myself, so who cares? Anyway,” and she stretched a hand across and patted Mr Franklin on the arm, “I’m fed up talking about me, and you must be, too. What about you, Mr American? You’ve just sat all evening, very polite and quiet, listening to me gassing on and on and on, and you haven’t said a word about little ole New York, or Redskins, or anything.” She pushed her plate aside, put her elbows on the table, cupped her chin in her hands, and smiled eagerly. “I’m listening.”
It took him by surprise – but what was even more surprising was that he found himself responding. Later, he was to reflect that in all his life he had hardly ever talked about himself – certainly not to a stranger, and that stranger a woman. Perhaps it was the novelty or, he was prepared to admit, that he was under the spell of that lively beauty hanging on his every word. It did not occur to him that Miss Pip Delys, the professional performer, could be as skilled a listener as she was a prattler. In any event, he found himself talking – about half-remembered Nebraska, and about the time of wandering, with his itinerant schoolmaster father, from one small settlement to another – “I don’t even remember their names, just the wall-paper in the rooming-houses where we stayed; one or two of them didn’t have wallpaper” – and later, the brief years as ranch-hand, railroad ganger, timber-jack, miner, and transient on the dwindling frontier; it was a fairly bald recital, and far from satisfying Pip’s curiosity, which was evidently well-grounded in comic papers and Colonel Cody’s Wild West Show.
“Weren’t you ever a cowboy, with them hearth-rug things on your legs? Didn’t you have to fight Indians, or rustlers? You must have had a six-gun, surely …?”
“Yes, I was a cowboy,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, I worked with cattle – it isn’t all that fun. No, I didn’t fight Indians, or rustlers – there aren’t really many of them about, nowadays. A six-shooter? Yes – mostly for scaring prairie dogs.” There was no point in telling her of that night of waiting at the Bella Union for the Kid and his cronies. But it was in his mind when she asked her next question.
“Outlaws? Now, why on earth should I know any such people? D’you think America’s peopled by bandits and pistoleers? You’ve been reading dime novels.”
“Well, you can’t say there aren’t any!” said Pip indignantly. “I mean, it didn’t get called the Wild West for nothing, did it? Why, I don’t suppose we’ve had an outlaw in England since … oh, since Robin Hood. I just thought – if you’d been a cowboy –”
“That I might have been a road agent myself, on the side? Texas Tommy, with pistols stuck in a crimson sash and a big sombrero?”
This sent her into peals of delight. “Course not! Though you could look the part, you know – you really could! Specially when you come all over grim and thoughtful – like when you were thinking, faraway, down on the balcony. Made me all goose-pimply.” She shuddered deliciously. “You might have been planning to rob the stage to Cactus Gulch, or –”
“You’ve got a real theatrical imagination, I’ll say that for you.” He shook his head. “If you must know, I’ve seen outlaws, one or two – and they look pretty much like anyone else, only a bit more in need of a bath. Matter of fact, my old mining partner, Pop Davis – he’d been outside the law in his time, I guess. But you wouldn’t have thought much of him – looked just like any old tramp. He was all right, though. Good partner.”
“But the other ones,” she insisted. “You said one or two – what were they like?”
“Oh, just ordinary fellows; nothing very romantic, I’m afraid. And yet – I don’t know. You’d have liked Big Ben Kilpatrick, I guess – very tall, good-looking; and Cassidy, too – he must have been the politest brigand that ever was, and quite presentable when shaved. Ever hear of them?” She shook her head, wistfully. “Well, they’re the best I can do for you – and I couldn’t claim more than nodding acquaintance. Old Davis and I stayed with them once for a spell, at a place called Hole-in-the – Wall; he’d once been teamed up with one of Kilpatrick’s gang –”
“Hole-in-the-Wall! You’re making it up!”
“That’s what it was called. And they called themselves the Wild Bunch, if you like. Not so wild, either; they’d robbed a train or two, I guess, but didn’t make much of it. Pretty harmless outlaws, I reckon.” He picked up the menu. “Most of them. Anyway, what are you going to eat for dessert?”
“Oh, never mind that! I want to hear about the Bad Bunch – and the ones who weren’t pretty harmless!”
“Well, you’re not going to – or you’ll wind up with the idea that I’m some sort of crook myself. And I’m not.”
“No, you’re not,” said Pip, dutifully consulting her menu. “You’re a very respectable cowboy, visiting England, wearing silver and diamond cuff-links and studs, and dining in a swish restaurant, as visiting cowboys always do.” She stole a glance at him over the top of the menu. “I’m real cheeky, aren’t I? And it’s none of my business, is it? All right, I’ll keep quiet.”
“I doubt it,” said Mr Franklin drily. “I’d just like you to understand that this dinner is not going to be paid for out of the loot from the … the Cactus Gulch stage-coach. You’re eating the result of a lot of hard, dirty, very ordinary digging in the earth, and an old man’s crazy hunch, and a great deal of luck. Now, what –”
“Ooh!” Her eyes were wide. “You mean you struck it rich!”
“Crepes Suzette,” read Mr Franklin. “Bombe Caligula, whatever that is; Poire Belle Hélène; Macedoine à la duchesse –”
“Mean thing! I just wondered … right-ho, then, I’ll have trifle and a double helping of whipped cream. But you might tell a fellow …”
But Mr Franklin felt he had said enough for one evening, and when Pip had worked her way through a mountainous trifle, and coffee was served, their talk returned to normal channels – in other words, the theatre, and the possibility that she might play Dandini in the forthcoming Gaiety pantomime, but then she might find herself replaced at the Folies, and it was a good billet, with excellent prospects, but Dandini would pay at least an extra pound a week … Mr Franklin smoked a cigar, and nodded attentively, and presently, when the waiter presented the bill, Pip rose and stretched and sauntered in behind the crimson curtain which screened off a small alcove at the back of the supper-room. Mr Franklin paid, and added a handsome tip, and smoked for a few moments more before he began to wonder idly what she was doing. At that moment there came a soft whistle from behind the curtain; he rose, slightly startled, and going across, pulled the curtain aside. There he stopped, stock-still.
The third principal of the Folies Satire had piled her clothing neatly on a chair, all except her stockings, and was reclining on a large couch which filled most of the alcove, observing herself with approval in a large overhead mirror, and humming softly. She glanced at Mr Franklin, smiled brightly, and asked:
“Did you bolt the door?”
“My God,” said Mr Franklin, and then paused. He turned away, put his cigar in an ash-tray, and returned to the alcove, looking down at her.
“Pip,” he said, “you don’t have to, you know.”
Pip stopped in the act of smoothing her stockings. “Course I don’t,” she said, and winked at him. “But I’d rather. Here,” and she patted the couch beside her, “come and sit down. You make me feel all girlish, standing there.”
Mr