The little Frenchman stared. He was new to these parts; he had never heard of Angela, or the Carmody tradition. But here Peter caught up with her. "Angela!" he cried. "Don't you let her -you! If you do you'll regr" 'Oh, shut up! Don't pay any attention to him. A hand, boys!" she urged, shedding her cloak, and laughing up at the five men on the platform. A hand for the stringed baby!... Now, let's go! What is it-The Sheik? I'm on!" The rest of that short evening was run through like a musical smear, like the rip of a jazz record speeded too fast. There on the platform, the centre of a web of paper streamers, the object of fuddled compliments, the chief cause of ever louder and ever noisier blasts upon tin horns, Angela let herself go. She played, with fingers and toes-with all of her body, she jazzed upon the Carmody heirloom. The harp is a slow, rather inflexible instrument, and the skill which she demonstrated that evening must have represented hours and hours of stolen practice behind closed doors in the old front parlor. But now, at last, her execution was public. Openly she desecrated the Carmody harp, and the desecration was joy to her. For she was master now. She controlled and insulted the thing which had tyrannized over her . . . used it as a mere implement to release all the twanging and rippling madness of life which had been confined in her. song. Peter, at the table below her, drank and frowned and Angela broke into high Everybody took up the chorus. Glides and slides of feet and saxaphones. . . . Voices shouting, arms sawing, bodies swaying all the mechanism of joy going at once! Angela was the centre of it, on familiar terms with orchestra and dancers. The blacker Peter scowled at her, the higher flamed her zest. He cut in upon her a dozen times, tried to tear her away. Because it made Peter more unhappy, Angela smiled openly upon the drummer, who had a misshapen cranium and a weak chin. Peter's face suffered, his eyes were wild. Several things he could do besides glower, she reflected: he could tip off the raid to the proprietor; he could 'phone her grandmother. The latter was the thing which Peter probably did, in that short interval when he was absent from the room. But at that point, some one passed Angela a cocktail which tasted like varnish, and she stopped reflecting. . . . Midnight! The lights were off, horns were blaring, and Angela was somehow being swung from shoulder to shoulder. Hot breaths. . . trespassing hands . . . a kiss from which she struggled free. Now a grasp she knew . . . a clean, hard grip upon her shoulder. Peter, shaking her! "For the love of God, Angie !" But lights flashed on, and Angela dodged from him, laughing. She was back at the harp again, her spread hand plucking up the rhythm. The long, loose, downward smear of the music, like the slipping of a drunken man . . . the halt, and the sudden upward recovery, like a hiccup . . . now the pat, pat, with head and shoulders going-Angela and the drummer executing a pantomime duet of fox-trotting partners separated. So absorbed she was, that she missed the entrance at the far end of the room. She glanced up, saw the commotion, and welcomed it as the raid. But this was not the raid. It was Angela's grandmother, supported by ladies of the League, who stood and gathered in the whole scene! Angela stopped dead in the middle of a crescendo. . . . The orchestra caught her shock, and stopped subsequently. In the complete hush that ensued, Mrs. Carmody advanced, her cane tapping ominously. She was a stern figure in her hereditary sealskin cape, with a black Chantilly scarf tied over her head. Those who had been unable to sit but a moment before, now managed an upright position; expectancy seemed to stiffen their spines. Peter sprang to her side, but she motioned him back. "Well?" she said, in her tremendous bass voice, with her black eyes upon Angela. Angela was suddenly conscious of the fact that her dress was torn half off her shoulder, and that the wreath of artificial flowers was over one eye. "A private room," Peter entreated; "this way, Mrs. Carmody, please!” "I have nothing to say to my granddaughter," boomed that lady, "which I cannot say in public. If Peter Harned will have you, you will marry him at once. Otherwise, you are disinherited. Well?" Angela stared back at her grandmother turned to seek out Peter. . . . His blue eyes burned into hers with a sudden intense hope, a breathless pleading. . . Angela's knees seemed to melt away. I. But a little smile touched the muscles of her cheek; she said, still watching Peter like an experiment- "I'll clear out, gram!" Mrs. Carmody turned. Syracuse. Whereupon, the fellow's attentions to her became so fervid that she was terrified, and appealed to another. She chose a middle-aged gentleman as her protector. This fatherly man understood perfectly-too perfectly? . . . He settled the drummer, and paid her fare on to New York. . . . He hoped, significantly, that Angela would allow him to help her. . . Angela escaped. She bribed the porter, with the cameo ring on her little finger, to smuggle her harp off at the That was Rochester. A "Angie!" burst from Peter. "Oh, next station. Mrs. Carmody, wait!" "Don't talk to me-talk to her. Just one thing more, Angela! On one condition only, will I ever see you again. If the time comes when you do make up your mind to take Peter Harned, I'll . . . talk to you. That is, if Peter is still fool enough to have you." "The harp, gram! Is that disinherited, too?" "It's yours," said old Mrs. Carmody grimly. In the buzz that followed their departure, and in the two-minute interval when Peter was in pursuit of them, probably in an attempt at arbitration, Angela grabbed the proprietor: "I want you to get me and my harp to the station-at once, by a back way! Wait-Oh, damn, I've no money. But the raid-I can tip you to the raid-" Flash a close-up of the little Carmody girl alone on the platform, under winter stars; she wears a priceless coat, but she is bareheaded, and her sole possessions in this world are two dollars in the pocket of the brocaded coat-lining-as yet undiscovered and the baize-covered harp which stands taller than she does. That figure in the background is the drummer, who is acting-first-cavalier to the harp. The tension which Angela is registering is the outward expression of an inward prayer that the east-bound 12:45 will reach this platform ahead of Peter Harned. But when the train does come thundering in, she lingers strangely . . . delaying until the last member of Fagan's Jazz Band is aboard, and the train is actually moving. . . . Angela, in a quandary, was driven to accept the drummer's offer of a fare to good manœuvre to elude Peter, she assured herself! In Rochester, she played for three nights in a German restaurant, where she made a modest hit and made, also, her own fare to New York. That was the beginning of Angela's career. New Year's Eve of 1926-just five years later to the day. The scene was the Pullman car of an east-bound train, which was temporarily stalled in the blizzard somewhere west of Rochester. The passengers included "The Queen of Jazz" and the members of her nine-piece ladies' band, which was returning from a vaudeville tour of the West, and was due in Rochester for an engagement that evening. Angela herself lay back in the plush seat with her eyes closed. In the five years she had changed. Her flaxen hair was off; one and only one of the tiny waxen ears swung a tremendously long silver filigree earring. Except when she was rock-still, the earring jazzed. At this moment she was motionless; Angela had learned to conserve her energy. Her face was unlined and as fine-featured as ever, but it had thinned and sharpened a little, and-yes-hardened, as though it had learned resistance. Only the dark eyes, when she opened them, were the samethe same young vitality, the same dancing glints of gold. Her dress was nun's gray, with a touch of devil's red, and the very extreme little gray kid slippers she wore had heels and triangular toe inserts of red. About her was the stir of the eight bored and grumbling members of her company: Fritzie Ryan, trombone; Tot Taylor, piano; Bubbles Gordon, sax and clarinet; and Lola La Mont, also sax and clarinet, playing a listless and argumentative game of poker. . . . Irene and Gwen, banjo and drums respectively, quarrelling over the merits of marcel and water wave. . . . Dolores, trumpet, blowing upon a fresh coating of rosy-pink liquid nail-polish. . . . Babe, violin and comédienne, suffering the attentions of a travelling salesman. The conductor passed through, and they hailed him, one and all, for the tenth time. "When do we move?"... "Here for the night?" "My Gawd, we got a show waiting for us." . . . "You hear him, Angie, he says he don't know!" .. "No diner, and I've had nothing but a gin rickey since breakfast." The conductor was patient, but noncommittal. He mentioned, for the tenth time, that smoking was not allowed in the car. He moved on. Angela looked out upon the gray, snowblurred landscape. Did some glimmering of its familiarity reach her? Holly . . . and memories of the five years between. . . . She had played in cabarets and picture palaces, where orchestra leaders and managers had pursued her. She had made eight round trips on a third-rate ocean-liner, where the French captain had paid her marked attention. She had been discovered by a modernist poet. She had had a sensational success on the Loew Circuit. In all that time, she had heard nothing from Holly-or from Peter! At first she had sent him occasional small notes-without any address, and just often enough to keep him stirred. The flippant substance of these notes had been enough to drive a good man in love with her crazy-from that very first one, which had hinted at a continued close friendship with the drummer! Yes, Angela had gone that far out of her way to torture Peter. . . But now the reflection of a lantern in the darkening pane through which she stared caught Angela's attention. It was carried by a man moving in the dim gray world beyond. This lantern was fate's first signal to Angela. Now voices in the passageway . . . the man with the lantern and the conductor entering their car. The fellow's rough overcoat and his cap with the earmufflers were plastered with snow; his "Zeppo," murmured Angela. "Is it Zeppo, the violinist, you're looking for?" His gaze jumped to her. "The same, ma'am ! Do you know——?” "Know of him. What is it-a special programme?" "Special-you've said it! This here bird's due to play in the Holly Grand Opera House at eight-thirty sharp tonight. The house is pretty nigh sold out, and it's important-a benefit affair. I swore to Miss Trask of the Ladies' Better ment League that I'd tunnel over here and fetch him back, if it was my last————” Ladies' Betterment League! "Hollyare we close to Holly?" "Two miles, ma'am." But of course— this was Sam Jones of the coal and feed store! Angela's dark eyes opened wide . . . and wider upon him. Suddenly they showed dancing points of gold; the muscles of her cheek nagged to smile. His hawk eyes were blank of any slightest recognition of her. This was rich-Oh, rich! "Wait!" said Angela. She rose, slid into a moleskin jaquette and a little scarlet felt hat. "Wha's the idea?" gasped Lola. "Girls, gather up your compacts—and collect the pipes and cymbals!" ordered Angela. "Better button yourselves against the weather. We've got one carload of instruments, sir.. Isn't there a farmhouse or two along the way where we could collect a couple of flivvers to rattle the human baggage into town? There's nine of us girls. "But "Listen," said Angela, "we nine will take the place of Mr. Zeppo. A whole brass band instead of one dinky violinist." "But I dunno what Miss Trask "The price," said Angela, "will be the same. Man, it's a bargain I'm offering you!" "Seems like Holly would get its money's worth. . . ." "It will," Angela stated. "But Angie, what about our Palace date?" "The Palace," she said, "will have to worry along without us this one night. The train would never make Rochester in time, anyhow. Buck up, girls! There's a rare evening and a hot dinner!-just ahead of you. Well?" Piled three-deep in an open flivver, they scored Angela all the way into town. "This joint, Holly, is it mentioned on the road maps?" "Not that unit of bedtime lights off there?-Aw, Angie, quit your funnin'!" . . . "But honest, kid, what's the idea-that's all I'm asking." ... "Steady, bo, on them washouts! The springs on this bus don't seem to cope them, and I got me one bad ribOh, my Gawd, I'm a broken blossom!" "Rib?-My knees are both frostbit, and I got no more basis for a complexion leftleft" Angela leaned forward and instructed the farmer boy to drop them at the Mapletree Hotel. "You been in this burg before? Say, I got you, I'll bet this place Holly's your home-town! And I'll bet gosh, girls, I'll bet Angie's got a rube sweetie here she's aiming to make sit up and take notice. I always did suspicion her of an anchor somewhere in her past, 'count of her pulling so straight. Golly, I begin to get the spirit of this detour! But say, I'll bet nothing as fast as us has ever previously hit this village." Angela giggled. "Girls, I'm counting on you for speed!" Speed, girls, you hear her? Angie, kid, we're your women!" And indeed, the performance which "The Queen of Jazz and Her Band" (it was so that Angela had instructed them to introduce her, keeping well out of sight herself) put on in unsuspecting little Holly that night was the fastest of fast-stepping metropolitan shows. Through a hole in the curtain, she watched them gathering-took a keen zest in recalling each half-forgotten face. Miss Julia Bly, the pet aversion of her childhood . Miss Sarah Trask . . . Peter! Could it be Peter "filled out," that great figure of a man? And the girl in white lace with him—the large, placid beauty? Surely that was Daisy Medford, no other! Was it possible that Peter-Angela's Peter-had married her? And gram-gram herself, in all her panoply of sealskin, black brocade, and family diamonds! . . . Bowing right and left, and receiving on all sides respectful homage. . . . Seated upright now, in the place of honor-front row middle, directly under Angela. Mrs. Alvah Hutchins, rather doubtfully announcing the change: "The Queen of Jazz and Her Band, who have very kindly offered to substitute for Mr. Zeppo, the violinist. . . . The curtain rolled up, and for the only silent moment of the entire evening, Angela was discovered seated at her harp, and surrounded by her bevy of girls, trombone, saxaphones, trumpet upraised, each instrument ready for instant attack. In that first second, there was, on the collective face of Holly, no recognition for Angela. Girl at harp. . . harp . . . what did that suggest? But Angela gave one jerk of her shorn head, and the assault was on. "The Lunatic's Dream," with every known variation. . . . Angela herself, occupied as she was, knew just when the suspicion of her identity penetrated; she got it in the tightening of her grandmother's face, in the sudden flare-up of Peter Harned's color, in the general whisper increasing to a loud buzz. "Hot Lips!" cried Angela, exchanging harp for flute, and they were off afresh, drowning comment in blatant and contagious sound. Angela, a little figure in animate dress of gold metallic cloth, was, in the course of the next half-hour, everything at once. She was thunder, lightning, and a cuckoo call. She doubled, trebled, and quadrupled on harp, flute, cymbals, and oboe. She was the saucy female in the comedy argument between the masculine bass sax and the feminine clarinet. She was the singing soloist in "Will You Love Me When My Flivver's on the Bum?" and the dancing soloist in "Some Little Somebody to Love." But why multiply the instances of Angela's outrageous versatility? With a man's derby over one eye, and with her gilt-slippered feet doing a hot |