Words and Music

Hilda Harper’s lunch hour was from half past twelve to half past one. Unfortunately it coincided with the daytime personal appearance of Roman Starr at the Royal; unfortunately, because Hilda was underweight and ought to have eaten lunch, but would have starved rather than miss one moment of Roman’s seductive crooning.

Regularly every weekday she rushed from the office to the Royal, bought her ticket with the right change (to save time), and sank into a seat breathless but blissful. She hoped that the ushers and the girl at the ticket window did not notice her or guess her secret. They did, but she was just one of a hundred “repeaters” of her age and sex, distinguished only by the fact that she came six days a week instead of four or five.

Through the long, hungry afternoons she took dictation or typed without a conscious thought of what she was doing. Though there was no room in her mind for anything save Roman’s beautiful face, devastating smile, and plaintive gurgling, she was able to accomplish her work with very few errors, none of them glaring enough to be detected by her boss, Mr. Lincke, who had graduated from a Vienna grammar school in his freshman year.

Hilda and an older girl, Margaret Quinlan, lived in the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Reade. The Reades had a radio, and the girls were welcome to listen in as often as they chose, which, in Hilda’s case, was every evening from seven till eight, when Roman Starr and his Starr-Light Orchestra took the air. Hilda had several pictures of Roman, clipped from newspapers and magazines, and always she kept one concealed in her hand to look at surreptitiously while Roman purled or cooed. Margaret pretended not to know this and was too kindhearted to kid her roommate about the one sided romance. And inasmuch as Margaret liked conversation, and Hilda would neither converse nor listen except when Roman was the topic, the older girl feigned more interest in him than she really felt.

Margaret was rather musical in an amateur way. She wondered, to herself, what you would call Roman’s voice. It was not a tenor or a baritone, or even a contralto. Sometimes it was the hum of a mosquito a foot from one’s ear; sometimes the drone of a bee that had taken an anesthetic. She wondered, too, at the enraptured reception, by Hilda and others, of his every new opus. It seemed to her that he turned out at least two a week, but the titles and the words and the music were so much alike that his announcement, “Tonight I am going to sing you a little number that I have just composed,” was quite necessary. Necessary, that is, to Margaret. Hilda thought they were all different and all beautiful, but her favorite was “My Bride-to-Be.”

The words of the refrain were written indelibly on Hilda’s heart, and she whispered them a thousand times a day:

My bride-to-be, my only true love;
There’s none so fair, so sweet as she,
My bride-to-be; I never knew love
Until she came and conquered me.
You ask me to describe her, but I will not even try.
Could one describe the fairest of God’s angels in the sky?
I’ll only say she’s just like you, love,
For you are she, my bride-to-be!

Margaret went with Hilda when Roman’s first sound picture, Amourette, was shown. She guessed why Hilda was not anxious to go a second time. For one thing, Roman’s voice did not screen well. But the scenes between the hero and the lovely Lydia Languish, with whom he did his amouretting, were what ruined the evening. They were simply unbearable, if you felt like Hilda and thousands of her fellow-sufferers.

Nearly every day, in nearly every paper, there was mention of Roman, and the theatrical, moving-picture, and radio publications were full of him. Hilda’s dresser overflowed with clippings. The one she liked best and read most frequently was from Wave Lengths⁠—a half-page story under his own signature, a story in which he bared his soul.

“I feel,” it said in part, “that I shall never attain the artistic heights to which I aspire until I have experienced a great love; perhaps, probably, a love that is unrequited.

“I believe Art thrives on love, that the appealing emotional quality which, kind friends assure me, is now present in my voice would be increased an hundredfold were I suddenly to find myself submerged in a sea of Passion.

“ ’Twere futile to go in search of this inspiring rapture. Nor am I sure the impetus to my art would be worth the pain it might bring me. Yet I will not retreat from love’s advance. When I meet the one girl, the woman I have dreamed of, my arms will be open. If she turns away, so much the worse for me. And, I fancy, so much the better for my career.”

Hilda hoped he was wrong about the advantages of disappointment. Because if she happened to be the woman he had dreamed of, and if his arms happened to be open when they met⁠—well, she certainly would never detour for his Art’s sake.

It was natural that Roman should receive mash notes, hundreds of them a day. The first one Hilda wrote him was so warm that she lacked the nerve to sign it and was therefore not surprised when no answer came. Her name and address went with the second one, which by a great effort she kept comparatively cool. It read:

My dear Mr. Starr:

You will probably be surprised to get a letter from me and will probably think me bold to be writing to a man to whom I have never been introduced, but I can not resist the temptation to tell you how much I admire your singing and your looks and everything about you and how wonderful it must be to be so talented and so good-looking and have everybody admire you the way they do you. I hope you will believe me, Mr. Starr, when I assure you that I am not in the habit of writing to men to whom I have never been introduced, but I feel like I know you, as I never miss one of your personal appearances at the Royal, but attend them every day and also listen to you every evening on the air and clip out all the clippings I can find about you in the newspapers and magazines, and there is hardly any room in my dresser for my things, as I have so many clippings of you, including pictures.

One of my favorite clippings is the article you wrote for Wave Lengths, but, dear Mr. Starr, how can you ever think that if you fall in love you will be unrequited? Because I am sure that all the girls who have ever seen you or heard you sing must feel a good deal like myself only perhaps not so strongly, and if I⁠—But I guess I would better not continue on that topic, or you will think I am too bold.

Now, Mr. Starr, I know you must get millions of letters from feminine admirers like myself, and I know you are too busy to answer all of them, but could not you make an exception in my case and answer this letter with a little note, no matter how brief, and tell me some things about yourself which I am dying to know, and one of them is how do you think of so many beautiful songs⁠—do they just come into your head and you write them down? I am sure it must be a natural gift, but still I think it is wonderful that you should be able to write so many beautiful songs which the words and music go right to my heart, and my favorite of all your songs is “My Bride-to-Be.” I would like to ask you many other questions, but you would think they were too personal. I mean things like how do you keep your hair so wavy and your teeth so white and about your complexion and your eyelashes. But I am sure you must be sick and tired of reading this letter, and you have probably torn it up long ago and are wondering what kind of a silly girl could write such a letter. Well, Mr. Starr, I guess I am a silly girl all right, at least on one subject, but will let you guess what that subject is.

And now I will close this silly letter and will not even read it over to myself for fear I would think it too silly and tear it up without sending it, so please excuse all mistakes and also my handwriting as I am use to writing on a typewriter as that is what I am, Mr. Starr, a stenographer and have to work for my own living, but I know you are not the kind of a man who would look down on a girl because they had to earn their own living, so may I hope you will answer this letter with just a little note and please answer it soon as I will be sick with nervousness wondering if you are going to answer it at all.

After five weeks of hell upon earth, Hilda realized that he was not going to answer it at all.

One morning, Miss Claire Richardson’s column in the Bulletin was devoted to Roman, whom she had met and interviewed at the Minuit Club, where he was being featured. Roman, it seemed, had reluctantly consented to come to Miss Richardson’s table and talk about himself. But Miss Richardson had either failed to get much out of him or else was more interested in her own style than in what he had to say. Anyway there was not nearly enough direct quotation from Roman to satisfy his fans; moreover, the writer had evidently covered her assignment in a spirit of levity. Hilda was only one of an army of readers who felt like slapping her face.

Hilda clipped the column and squeezed it into her dresser. She did not like it, but it was about him and therefore must be saved.

On a morning a few days later, she woke up with an idea so daring that it made her tremble. It was an idea which she must immediately put out of her head. It was an impossible idea. But was it?

She said to Margaret at breakfast, “How do you suppose reporters go about it to get interviews with people?”

“What kind of people?” said Margaret.

“Actors and movie stars⁠—people like that.”

“I should think,” said Margaret, “that it would be harder not to get them than to get them. People whose success depends on publicity want all the publicity they can get.”

“Yes, but how do the reporters make engagements with them?”

“If they have to make engagements, I imagine they do it by telephone or telegraph or the good old U.S. mails. I guess, though, that the reporters simply go to where the people are and tell them what they want. Those kind of people won’t put any obstacles in the way of seeing themselves in print, even if it’s in connection with murder.”

Well, of course Roman was not one of “those kind of people.” Yet he was of the class that can not avoid the limelight and, though undoubtedly an exception to all rules, a person whose ambition, as well as his innate courtesy, would conduce to render him “nice” to interviewers, in spite of Miss Richardson’s perfidy.

Hilda wanted very much to go to the Minuit Club and have him come to her table, but there were too many difficulties. Her one evening gown was unstylishly short. Night clubs had terrible cover charges. You required a male escort, and you didn’t know one with enough money. And a dressed-up midnight excursion from your room would be impossible to explain to Margaret. The best bet was the lunch hour at the Royal. They must have a stage door, and a doorkeeper who would be polite to you if you told him you were a newspaper woman.

Flora Campion of the Gazette, alias Hilda Harper of Lincke Brothers, announced herself and her errand at the Royal’s stage entrance. The aged doorman disappeared and returned shortly with the information that Mr. Starr was dressing. He would be with her in a few moments. The doorman sat down and “Miss Campion” stood up on legs that were acting crazy.

Three or four of Roman’s musicians came out, carrying their instruments in cases. They were in a hurry. And then Roman himself came out, and he was in a hurry, too.

“Were you waiting for me, little girl?”

Hilda managed a shaky “Yes.”

“Is it an interview? Because we’re going to do some recording this afternoon, and I’m late already. Is it something that can wait?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Hilda shakily. “Not very long.”

“Well, drop up to the Minuit tonight, or if you can’t do that, how about tomorrow morning? Come to my apartment at ten thirty or a quarter to eleven. Just tell my secretary who you are, and I’ll see you. Oke?”

“I don’t know where your apartment is.”

“Eight-ten Park. And now I’ve got to rush!”

Hilda watched him push his way through the crowd, mostly girls, that was waiting for a closeup. Then she staggered back to the office of the Lincke Brothers, who had granted her an extra half-hour off to go to the dentist, and took a score of letters that meant absolutely nothing to anybody.

“Mr. Lincke,” she said to one of the Mr. Linckes, “I hate to ask you, but the dentist wants me to come back tomorrow forenoon. He can finish up with me then, and I could be here by half past eleven or twelve, and I wouldn’t go out to lunch.”

“All right, all right,” said Mr. Lincke, trying to be gruff, but secretly pleased because it promised him a few hours’ freedom from dictating letters.

Hilda could not sleep a wink that night. Several times she wished she were rooming alone so she could switch on a light and read her clippings and memorize the few which she did not already know by heart. It might make quite a difference to Roman Starr to learn that she had memorized all his clippings.

From where Hilda lived to Eight-ten Park Avenue was about a mile and a half. If she walked, she would have a red nose, for it was cold. If she took a taxi, her clothes would get rumpled. Perhaps if she sat up perfectly straight in the taxi, she could keep her clothes smooth. Anyway it was harder to conceal a nose than a couple of wrinkles. She took a taxi.

The taxi covered the mile and a half in under four minutes. When she got out, it was only ten minutes after ten. This would never do. She walked a few blocks away and back again, and she had a red nose as well as a couple of wrinkles, and still it was only twenty minutes after. What was the matter with time today?

A tall man in uniform asked whether she had an appointment. She told him “Yes.”

“What name?” he said.

“Flora. I mean I’m Flora Campion from the Gazette. Mr. Starr said I was just to let his secretary know I was here.”

“Mr. Starr’s secretary isn’t up there. I seen him go out five, ten minutes ago. But if you got an appointment, I guess it’s all right.”

The elevator boy discharged his passenger at the proper floor. It was unnecessary for him to point out Mr. Starr’s apartment. The secretary had left the door open, and Mr. Starr was doing his daily dozen arpeggios.

For a moment Hilda stood outside the door, listening. Then she yielded to temptation and went in.

She found herself in a small reception hall. The living-room with its grand piano was in plain sight. But the arpeggios came from another room beyond. Hilda ventured a few feet farther and sat down on the piano bench.

“O‑o‑o‑O‑o‑o‑O.”

How beautiful his voice was, just singing O’s!

Then, from still another room, came the sound of another voice not so beautiful, a voice that was rough, raucous, and unmistakably female. “Hey! Hey, Gus!” it bawled.

The arpeggios ceased.

“Did you finally wake up?” said Roman Starr.

“Well, I wouldn’t be awake if there was a chance to sleep. If you’ve got to yodel at this time in the morning, why don’t you go in the living-room and shut the door?”

“Why don’t you sleep nights?”

“I slept all right till you burst in, but it wasn’t long enough. I know one thing⁠—the next artist I marry will be a fella that can doze off without making me homesick for the Ninth Avenue Elevated. They call you a tenor, but if you could stay asleep all the while, Gatti-Cazoozis would have you doubling for Chaliapin’s grandfather. Aren’t you through breakfast yet?”

“Pretty near. She’s bringing me more toast.”

“Wasn’t there enough to soak up all the coffee? Where is Bennett?”

“I had to send him for Newman’s lyric, for the canoe number. I forgot it last night.”

“I thought you were going to break it in to day.”

“I am. I won’t have any trouble. It’s practically the same as ‘Pacific Moon,’ and Ketter’s rewritten his bride melody.”

There was a brief pause and then, “Say, you big bum, didn’t I tell you not to use my stockings for a shoe cloth?”

“I thought they were soiled.”

“They are now!”

Hilda, having got noiselessly out of the apartment and reached the street, knew she would have to do something desperate. She had no idea how to go about it to buy poison, or where to buy a drink.

She had never smoked a cigarette in her life. She went over to Madison Avenue and found a cigarette store. She bought a package of cigarettes and walked around the corner, out of the wind, to light one.

But she had made her purchase in the kind of store that does not give you matches unless you ask for them. So she threw her cigarettes away.