“That boy writes a good letter,” said Gant appreciatively. “I’m damned if he’s not the smartest one of the lot when he wants to be.”
“Yes,” said Luke angrily, “he’s so smart that you’ll b-b-believe any fairy tale he wants to tell you. B-b-b-but the one who’s stuck by you through thick and thin gets no c-c-credit at all.” He glanced meaningly at Helen. “It’s a d-d-damn shame.”
“Forget about it,” she said wearily.
“Well,” said Eliza thoughtfully, holding the letter in her folded hands and gazing away, “perhaps he’s going to turn over a new leaf now. You never know.” Lost in pleased revery she looked into vacancy, pursing her lips.
“I hope so!” said Helen wearily. “You’ve got to show me.”
Privately: “You see how it is, don’t you?” she said to Luke, mounting to hysteria. “Do I get any credit? Do I? I can work my fingers to the bone for them, but do I get so much as Go to Hell for my trouble? Do I?”
In these years Helen went off into the South with Pearl Hines, the saddlemaker’s daughter. They sang together at moving-picture theatres in country towns. They were booked from a theatrical office in Atlanta.
Pearl Hines was a heavily built girl with a meaty face and negroid lips. She was jolly and vital. She sang ragtime and nigger songs with a natural passion, swinging her hips and shaking her breasts erotically.
“Here comes my da-dad-dy now
O pop, O pop, O-o pop.”
They earned as much as $100 a week sometimes. They played in towns like Waycross, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
They brought with them the great armor of innocency. They were eager and decent girls. Occasionally the village men made cautious explorative insults, relying on the superstition that lives in small towns concerning “show girls.” But generally they were well treated.
For them, these ventures into new lands were eager with promise. The vacant idiot laughter, the ribald enthusiasm with which South Carolina or Georgia countrymen, filling a theatre with the strong smell of clay and sweat, greeted Pearl’s songs, left them unwounded, pleased, eager. They were excited to know that they were members of the profession; they bought Variety regularly, they saw themselves finally a celebrated high-salaried team on “big time” in great cities. Pearl was to “put over” the popular songs, to introduce the rag melodies with the vital rhythm of her dynamic meatiness, Helen was to give operatic dignity to the programme. In a respectful hush, bathed in a pink spot, she sang ditties of higher quality—Tosti’s “Goodbye,” “The End of a Perfect Day,” and “The Rosary.” She had a big, full, somewhat metallic voice: she had received training from her Aunt Louise, the splendid blonde who had lived in Altamont for several years after her separation from Elmer Pentland. Louise gave music lessons and enjoyed her waning youth with handsome young men. She was one of the ripe, rich, dangerous women that Helen liked. She had a little girl and went away to New York with the child when tongues grew fanged.
But she said: “Helen, that voice ought to be trained for grand opera.”
Helen had not forgotten. She fantasied of France and Italy: the big crude glare of what she called “a career in opera,” the florid music, the tiered galleries winking with gems, the torrential applause directed toward the full-blooded, dominant all-shadowing songsters struck up great anthems in her. It was a scene, she thought, in which she was meant to shine. And as the team of Gant and Hines (The Dixie Melody Twins) moved on their jagged circuit through the South, this desire, bright, fierce, and formless, seemed, in some way, to be nearer realization.
She wrote home frequently, usually to Gant. Her letters beat like great pulses; they were filled with the excitement of new cities, presentiments of abundant life. In every town they met “lovely people”—everywhere, in fact, good wives and mothers, and nice young men, were attracted hospitably to these two decent, happy, exciting girls. There was a vast decency, an enormous clean vitality about Helen that subjugated good people and defeated bad ones. She held under her dominion a score of young men—masculine, red-faced, hard-drinking and shy. Her relation to them was maternal and magistral, they came to listen and to be ruled; they adored her, but few of them tried to kiss her.
Eugene was puzzled and frightened by these lamblike lions. Among men, they were fierce, bold, and combative; with her, awkward and timorous. One of them, a city surveyor, lean, high-boned, alcoholic, was constantly involved in police-court brawls; another, a railroad detective, a large
