U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [419]
During the winter Agnes got a job too, running an
artistic tearoom just off Broadway on Seventysecond Street, with a Miss Franklyn, a redhaired lady who was a theoso-phist and was putting in the capital. They al worked so hard they only met in the evenings when Frank and
Florida and Mannie would be eating a bite in a hurry before going off to their theater. The Musical Mandevil es were playing Newark the
night Margie first went on. She was to come out in the middle of an Everybody's Doing It number rol ing a hoop, in a blue muslin dress she didn't like because it made her look about six and she thought she ought to look grownup to go on the stage, and do a few steps of a ragtime dance and then curtsy like they had taught her at the convent and run off with her hoop. Frank had made her rehearse it again and again. She'd often burst out crying in the rehearsals on account of the mean remarks Mannie made.
She was dreadful y scared and her heart pounded wait-ing for the cue, but it was over before she knew what had happened. She had run on from the grimy wings into the warm glittery glare of the stage. They'd told her not to look out into the audience. Just once she peeped out into the blurry lightpowdered cave of ranked white faces. She forgot part of her song and skimped her business and cried in the dressingroom after the act was over, but Agnes came round back saying she'd been lovely, and Frank was smil-ing, and even Mannie couldn't seem to think of anything mean to say; so the next time she went on her heart wasn't pounding so hard. Every littlest thing she did got an
-178-answer from the vague cave of faces. By the end of the week she was getting such a hand that Frank decided to run the Everybody's Doing It number just before the finale. Florida Schwartz had said that Margery was too vulgar a given name for the stage, so she was bil ed as Little Margo.
Al winter and the next summer they toured on the
Keith circuit, sleeping in pul mans and in al kinds of hotels and going to Chicago and Milwaukee and Kansas City and so many towns that Margie couldn't remember their names. Agnes came along as wardrobemistress and attended to the transportation and fetched and carried for everybody. She was always washing and ironing and heating up canned soup on an alcohol stove. Margie got to be ashamed of how shabby Agnes looked on the street beside Florida Schwartz. Whenever she met other stagechildren and they asked her who she thought the best matinee idol was, she'd answer Frank Mandevil e.
When the war broke out The Musical Mandevil es were back in New York looking for new bookings. One evening Frank was explaining his plan to make the act a real head-liner by turning it into a vestpocket operetta, when he and the Schwartzes got to quarreling about the war. Frank said the Mandevil es were descended from a long line of French nobility and that the Germans were barbarian swine and had no idea of art. The Schwartzes blew up and said that the French were degenerates and not to be trusted in money matters and that Frank was holding out receipts on them. They made such a racket that the other boarders banged on the wal and a camelfaced lady came up from the basement wearing a dressinggown spattered with red and blue poppies and with her hair in curlpapers to tel them to keep quiet. Agnes cried and Frank in a ringing voice ordered the Schwartzes to leave the room and not to darken his door again, and Margie got an awful fit of
-179-giggling. The more Agnes scolded at her the more she giggled. It wasn't until Frank took her in the arms of his rakishlytailored checked suit and stroked her hair and her forehead that she was able to quiet down. She went to bed that night stil feeling funny and breathless inside with the whiff of bayrum and energine and Egyptian cigarettes that had teased her nose when she leaned against his chest. That