Cheerful - By Request | Page 9

the only woman who can spring that and get away with it,"
she said to her assistant. "Haddon's got herself sized up wrong. I'll
gamble her next play will be a failure."
And it was.
The scenery, props, and costumes of the London production of
"Splendour" were slow in coming back. But finally they did come.
Josie received them with the calmness that comes of hope deferred. It
had been three years since she last saw the play. She told herself,
chidingly, that she had been sort of foolish over that play and this
costume. Her recent glimpse of Haddon had been somewhat
disillusioning. But now, when she finally held the gown itself in her
hand--the original "Splendour" second-act gown, a limp, soft black
mass: just a few yards of worn and shabby velvet--she found her hands
shaking. Here was where she had hugged the toy dog to her breast.
Here where she had fallen on her knees to pray before the little shrine
in her hotel room. Every worn spot had a meaning for her. Every mark
told a story. Her fingers smoothed it tenderly.
"Not much left of that," said one of the sewing girls, glancing up. "I
guess Sarah would have a hard time making the hooks and eyes meet
now. They say she's come home from London looking a little too
prosperous."
Josie did not answer. She folded the dress over her arm and carried it to
the wardrobe room. There she hung it away in an empty closet, quite
apart from the other historic treasures. And there it hung, untouched,
until the following Sunday.
On Sunday morning East Forty-third Street bears no more resemblance
to the week-day Forty-third than does a stiffly starched and subdued
Sabbath-school scholar to his Monday morning self. Strangely quiet it
is, and unfrequented. Josie Fifer, scurrying along in the unwonted
stillness, was prompted to throw a furtive glance over her shoulder now
and then, as though afraid of being caught at some criminal act. She ran

up the little flight of steps with a rush, unlocked the door with
trembling fingers, and let herself into the cool, dank gloom of the
storehouse hall. The metal door of the elevator stared inquiringly after
her. She fled past it to the stairway. Every step of that ancient structure
squeaked and groaned. First floor, second, third, fourth. The everyday
hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be
holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the
worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to
see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense,
wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room,
listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little
laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by
table and disappeared into the wardrobe room beyond.
Minutes passed--an hour. She did not come back. From the room
beyond came strange sounds--a woman's voice; the thrill of a song;
cries; the anguish of tears; laughter, harsh and high, as a desperate and
deceived woman laughs--all this following in such rapid succession
that Sid Hahn, puffing laboriously up the four flights of stairs leading
to the wardrobe floor, entered the main room unheard. Unknown to any
one, he was indulging in one of his unsuspected visits to the old
wareroom that housed the evidence of past and gone
successes--successes that had brought him fortune and fame, but little
real happiness, perhaps. No one knew that he loved to browse among
these pathetic rags of a forgotten triumph. No one would have dreamed
that this chubby little man could glow and weep over the cast-off
garment of a famous Cyrano, or the faded finery of a Zaza.
At the doorway he paused now, startled. He was listening with every
nerve of his taut body. What? Who? He tiptoed across the room with a
step incredibly light for one so stout, peered cautiously around the side
of the doorway, and leaned up against it weakly. Josie Fifer, in the
black velvet and mock pearls of "Splendour," with her grey-streaked
blonde hair hidden under the romantic scallops of a black wig, was
giving the big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a
burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than
ever as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the

black wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with
bunchy awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of
mirth in Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He shrank back now.
She was coming to the big speech at the close of the act--the big
renunciation speech that was the curtain.