“You’ll probably yelp when you hear this,” she says. “I ain’t crazy about it myself, but it didn’t do me no good to argue at first and it’s too late for argument now. Well, to begin with, Sis is in love with Ralston.”
“What of it!” I said. “She’s going through the city directory and she’s just got to the R’s.”
“No, it’s the real thing this time,” said the Mrs. “Wait till you hear the rest of it. She’s going on the stage!”
“I’ve got nothing against that,” I says. “She’s pretty enough to get by in the Follies chorus, and if she can earn money that way, I’m for it.”
“She ain’t going into no chorus,” said Ella. “Ralston’s quit the Follies and she’s going in his show.”
“The one he wrote?” I ast.
“Yes,” said the Mrs.
“And who’s going to put it on?” I ast her.
“That’s it,” she says. “They’re going to put it on themself, Ralston and Sis. With Sis’s money. She sold her bonds, fifty thousand dollars’ worth.”
“But listen,” I says. “Fifty thousand dollars! What’s the name of the play, Ringling’s Circus?”
“It won’t cost all that,” said Ella. “They figure it’ll take less than ten thousand to get started. But she insisted on having the whole thing in a checking account, where she can get at it. If the show’s a big success in New York they’re going to have a company in Chicago and another on the road. And Ralston says her half of the profits in New York ought to run round $5,000 a week. But anyway, she’s sure of $200 a week salary for acting in it.”
“Where did she get the idear she can act?” I says.
“She’s always had it,” said the Mrs., “and I think she made him promise to put her in the show before she agreed to back it. Though she says it’s a wonderful investment! She won’t be the leading woman, of course. But they’s only two woman’s parts and she’s got one of them.”
“Well,” I said, “if she’s going to play a sap and just acts normal, she’ll be a sensation.”
“I don’t know what she’ll be,” says Ella. “All I know is that she’s mad over Ralston and believes everything he says. And even if you hadn’t of been sick we couldn’t of stopped her.”
So I ast what the play was like, but Ella couldn’t tell me.
Ralston had read it out loud to she and Kate, but she couldn’t judge from just hearing it that way. But Kate was tickled to death with it. And they’d already been rehearsing a week, but Sis hadn’t let Ella see the rehearsals. She said it made her nervous.
“Ralston thinks the main trouble will be finding a theater,” said the Mrs. “He says they’s a shortage of them and the men that owns them won’t want to let him have one on account of jealousy.”
“Has the Follies flopped?” I ast her.
“No,” she says, “but they’ve left town.”
“They always do, this time of year,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” says the Mrs., “but Ralston says they’d intended to stay here all the year round, but when the news come out that he’d left, they didn’t dast. He’s certainly got faith in himself. He must have, to give up a $600 a week salary. That’s what he says he was really getting.”
“You say Katie’s in love,” I says. “How about him?”
“I don’t know and she don’t know,” says Ella. “He calls her dearie and everything and holds her hands, but when they’re alone together, he won’t talk nothing but business. Still, as I say, he calls her dearie.”
“Actors calls every gal that,” I says. “It’s because they can’t remember names.”
Well, to make a short story out of it, they had another couple weeks’ rehearsals that we wasn’t allowed to see, and they finally got a theater—the Olney. They had to guarantee a $10,000 business to get it. They didn’t go to Atlantic City or nowheres for a tryout. They opened cold. And Ralston didn’t tell nobody what kind of a show it was.
Of course he done what they generally always do on a first night. He sent out free passes to everybody that’s got a dress suit, and they’s enough of them in New York to pretty near fill up a theater. These invited guests is supposed to be for the performance wile it’s going on. After it’s through, they can go out and ride it all over the island.
Well, the rules wasn’t exactly lived up to at Bridget Sees a Ghost. On account of Ralston writing the play and starring in it, the gang thought it would be comical and they come prepared to laugh. It was comical all right, and they laughed. They didn’t only laugh; they yelled. But they yelled in the wrong place.
The programme said it was “a Daring Drama in Three Acts.” The three acts was what made it daring. It took nerve to even have one. In the first place, this was two years after the armistice and the play was about the war, and I don’t know which the public was most interested in by this time—the war or Judge Parker.
Act 1 was in July, 1917. Ralston played the part of Francis Shaw, a captain in the American army. He’s been married a year, and when the curtain goes up, his wife’s in their New York home, waiting for him to come in from camp on his weekly leave. She sets reading the war news in the evening paper, and she reads it out loud, like people always do when they’re alone, waiting for somebody. Pretty soon in comes Bridget, the Irish maid—our own dear Katie. And I wished you could of heard her brogue. And seen her gestures. What she reminded me most like was a gal in a home talent minstrels giving an imitation of Lew Fields playing the part of the block system on the New
