Down went the curtain again and the first act was over, and some jokesmith in the audience yelled “Author! Author!”
“He’s sunk!” said the egg in the gallery.
Well, Maizie was the only one in the whole theater that thought Shaw was dead. The rest of us just wished it. Still you couldn’t blame her much for getting a wrong idear, as it was Nov. 11, 1918—over a year later—when the second act begins, and she hadn’t heard from him in all that time. It wasn’t never brought out why. Maybe he’d forgot her name or maybe it was Burleson’s fault, like everything else.
The scene was the same old living room and Maizie was setting on the same old couch, but she was all dressed up like Elsie Ferguson. It comes out that she’s expecting a gentleman friend, a Mr. Thornton, to dinner. She asks Bridget if she thinks it would be wrong of her to accept the guy the next time he proposed. He’s ast her every evening for the last six months and she can’t stall him much longer. So Bridget says it’s all right if she loves him, but Maizie don’t know if she loves him or not, but he looks so much like her late relic that she can’t hardly tell the difference and besides, she has got to either marry or go to work, or her and the little one will starve. They’s a knock at the door and Thornton comes in. Him and the absent captain looks as much alike as two brothers, yours and mine. Bridget ducks and Thornton proposes. Maizie says, “Before I answer, I must tell you a secret. Captain Shaw didn’t leave me all alone. I have a little one, a boy.” “Oh, I love kiddies,” says Thornton. “Can I see him?” So she says it’s seven o’clock and the little one’s supposed to of been put to bed, but she has Bridget go get him.
The little one’s entrance was the sensation of this act. In Act 1 he was just three or four towels, but now Bridget can’t even carry him acrost the stage, and when she put him on his feet, he comes up pretty near to her shoulder. And when Thornton ast him would he like to have a new papa, he says, “Yes, because my other papa’s never coming back.”
Well, they say a woman can’t keep a secret, but if Thornton had been nosing round for six months and didn’t know till now that they was a spanker like Bobbie in the family circle, I wouldn’t hardly call Maizie the town gossip.
After the baby’d went back to read himself to sleep and Mrs. Shaw had yessed her new admirer, Bridget dashed in yelling that the armistice was signed and held up the evening paper for Maizie and Thornton to see. The great news was announced in code. It said: “Phillies Hit Grimes Hard.” And it seemed kind of silly to not come right out and say “Armistice Signed!” Because as I recall, even we saps out here in South Bend had knew it since three o’clock that morning.
The last act was in the same place, on Christmas Eve, 1918.
Maizie and her second husband had just finished doing up presents for the little one. We couldn’t see the presents, but I suppose they was giving him a cocktail shaker and a shaving set. Though when he come on the stage you could see he hadn’t aged much since Act 2. He hadn’t even begin to get bald.
Thornton and the Mrs. went off somewheres and left the kid alone, but all of a sudden the front door opened and in come old Cap Shaw, on crutches. He seen the kid and called to him. “Who are you?” says the little one. “I’m Santa Claus,” says the Cap, “and I’ve broughten you a papa for Christmas.” “I don’t want no papa,” says Bobbie. “I’ve just got a new one.” Then Bridget popped in and seen “the master” and hollered, “A ghost!” So he got her calmed down and she tells him what’s came off. “It was in the paper that Capt. F. Shaw of New York was lost,” she says. “It must of been another Capt. F. Shaw!” he says.
“It’s an odd name,” hollered the guy in the gallery.
The Captain thinks it all over and decides it’s his move. He makes Bridget promise to never tell that she seen him and he says goodbye to she and the kid and goes out into the night.
Maizie comes in, saying she heard a noise and what was it? Was somebody here? “Just the boy with the evening paper,” says Bridget. And the cat’s got Bobbie’s tongue. And Maizie don’t even ask for the paper. She probably figured to herself it was the old story; that Grimes was still getting his bumps.
Well, I wished you could of read what the papers wrote up about the show. One of them said that Bridget seen a ghost at the Olney theater last night and if anybody else wanted to see it, they better go quick because it wouldn’t be walking after this week. Not even on crutches. The mildest thing they said about Ralston was that he was even funnier than when he was in the Follies and tried to be. And they said the part of Bridget was played by a young actress that they hoped would make a name for herself, because Ralston had probably called her all he could think of.
We waited at the stage door that night and when Kate come out, she was crying. Ralston had canned her from the show.
“That’s nothing to cry about,” I says. “You’re lucky! It’s just like as if a conductor had put you off a train a couple of minutes before a big smash-up.”
The programme had been to all go somewheres for supper and celebrate the play’s success. But all Katie wanted now was to get in a taxi and
