Cheerful - By Request | Page 8

hands. She saw plays come and go. Dresses came to her whose lining
bore the mark of world-famous modistes. She hung them away, or
refurbished them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness.
Sometimes her caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the
complacency of the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge
of the stage, its artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was
widening and deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening
clothes was more scathingly severe than she. She sewed on satin. She
mended fine lace. She polished stage jewels. And waited. She knew
that one day her patience would be rewarded. And then, at last came the
familiar voice over the phone: "Hello, Fifer! McCabe talking."
"Well?"
"'Splendour' closes Saturday. Haddon says she won't play in this heat.
They're taking it to London in the autumn. The stuff'll be up Monday,

early."
Josie Fifer turned away from the telephone with a face so radiant that
one of her sewing women, looking up, was moved to comment.
"Got some good news, Miss Fifer?"
"'Splendour' closes this week."
"Well, my land! To look at you a person would think you'd been losing
money at the box office every night it ran."
The look was still on her face when Monday morning came. She was
sewing on a dress just discarded by Adelaide French, the tragédienne.
Adelaide's maid was said to be the hardest-worked woman in the
profession. When French finished with a costume it was useless as a
dress; but it was something historic, like a torn and tattered battle
flag--an emblem.
McCabe, box under his arm, stood in the doorway. Josie Fifer stood up
so suddenly that the dress on her lap fell to the floor. She stepped over
it heedlessly, and went toward McCabe, her eyes on the pasteboard box.
Behind McCabe stood two more men, likewise box-laden.
"Put them down here," said Josie. The men thumped the boxes down on
the long table. Josie's fingers were already at the strings. She opened
the first box, emptied its contents, tossed them aside, passed on to the
second. Her hands busied themselves among the silks and broadcloth of
this; then on to the third and last box. McCabe and his men, with
scenery and furniture still to unload and store, turned to go. Their
footsteps echoed hollowly as they clattered down the worn old stairway.
Josie snapped the cord that bound the third box. Her cheeks were
flushed, her eyes bright. She turned it upside down. Then she pawed it
over. Then she went back to the contents of the first two boxes, clawing
about among the limp garments with which the table was strewn. She
was breathing quickly. Suddenly: "It isn't here!" she cried. "It isn't
here!" She turned and flew to the stairway. The voices of the men came
up to her. She leaned far over the railing. "McCabe! McCabe!"

"Yeh? What do you want?"
"The black velvet dress! The black velvet dress! It isn't there."
"Oh, yeh. That's all right. Haddon, she's got a bug about that dress, and
she says she wants to take it to London with her, to use on the opening
night. She says if she wears a new one that first night, the play'll be a
failure. Some temperament, that girl, since she's got to be a star!"
Josie stood clutching the railing of the stairway. Her disappointment
was so bitter that she could not weep. She felt cheated, outraged. She
was frightened at the intensity of her own sensations. "She might have
let me have it," she said aloud in the dim half light of the hallway.
"She's got everything else in the world. She might have let me have
that."
Then she went back into the big, bright sewing room. "Splendour" ran
three years in London.
During those three years she saw Sid Hahn only three or four times. He
spent much of his time abroad. Whenever opportunity presented itself
she would say: "Is 'Splendour' still playing in London?"
"Still playing."
The last time Hahn, intuitive as always, had eyed her curiously. "You
seem to be interested in that play."
"Oh, well," Josie had replied with assumed carelessness, "it being in
Atlantic City just when I had my accident, and then meeting you
through that, and all, why, I always kind of felt a personal interest in
it." ...
At the end of three years Sarah Haddon returned to New York with an
English accent, a slight embonpoint, and a little foreign habit of rushing
up to her men friends with a delighted exclamation (preferably French)
and kissing them on both cheeks. When Josie Fifer, happening back
stage at a rehearsal of the star's new play, first saw her do this a grim

gleam came into her eyes.
"Bernhardt's