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YOUTH’S buoyant faith in itself is sometimes justified, so it proved in Edith Gilbert’s case. Good natural voices are common, but hers proved to be exceptional and, what is more, it had been pretty well trained—a rarity indeed in that unexacting amusement field to which Pearl Gates introduced her. A try-out sufficed to get her an engagement.

Downing’s, so-called, was one of those West Side eating-places that widely advertised the quality of its entertainment but maintained a discreet silence regarding the quality of the food it served, and its program was under the direction of the orchestra leader, one Rosen, a real musician. Both he and Downing, the proprietor, were quite enthusiastic over the new applicant when they heard her sing, but they agreed that in her repertory there were few songs they could afford to have her use.

“Too high class,” Downing declared. “Haven’t you got any new stuff?”

Edith admitted that she had none, whereupon Rosen selected some of the latest offerings from Tin Pan Alley and had her run them over. For the most part they were commonplace songs; the music was tuneful and jingly, but the lyrics were either vapid or vulgar. It was cheap stuff. The words of one song in particular were quite suggestive, nevertheless Downing seemed to like it best of all.

“I wouldn’t care to do that number,” Edith told him.

Rosen, who had been playing her accompaniments, swung about upon the piano stool and inquired: “Why not? It’s pretty good.”

The girl flushed, smiled. “I never have sung anything like that and—”

“Oh, I see!” In a tone that was kindly Rosen said: “I don’t blame you, Miss Gilbert; but this isn’t Carnegie Hall and we have to give the customers what they want. Pearl has told me something about you and that’s why I’m going to all this trouble. You’ve got to get a start and this is a pretty good place to begin.”

Miss Gates, who had been a pleased and interested listener up to this point, added her voice. “He’s right, dearie. The sword-swallowers who come here carry a pretty good brand of entertainment on their hips and you’ve got to give ’em up-to-date clamor or they’ll walk out on you. I’m a decent, home-loving body, myself, but I dance barelegged and wind up my act with a row of back hand-springs. If Rosen tells you to round off the ‘Maiden’s Prayer’ with a split, you go home, rip your nightie up the side, and practice it. This isn’t an engagement; it’s a job.”

Downing chuckled and nodded. “Pearl said something. If you get over here you’re always sure of work.”

“What’s more”—Rosen was speaking again—“I think you have the personality to put across this very kind of song without giving offense, and if you have you’ve got something—you’ll be something different. That’s what goes in New York; something new.”

Edith yielded gracefully enough, although with some inner reluctance, and so it came about that she went on the bill at Downing’s in her own rendition of the latest White Light hits.

She was nervous at first and somewhat amateurish, but by the end of a week she had her numbers pretty well “broken in” and had gained considerable confidence in herself. The easier she became, the better her songs got over. By the end of the third or fourth week she began to feel that she was acquiring a poise and a technique that were quite professional. She acknowledged, too, that Rosen had been right in the type of song he picked for her, and she allowed him to use his own judgment in selecting others.

This was, to be sure, a long way removed from the “career” which she and her mother had mapped out, but it was a beginning, and, although her pay was small, she was at least self-supporting. It thrilled her agreeably to realize that by some happy chance she had been spared the hardships, the discouragement, the heartbreaks common to so many beginners. She considered herself very lucky.

For the present, of course, she could not afford those high-priced lessons that she so badly needed, but this work was developing her voice in a way that ordinary practice would never do, and on the whole she experienced a feeling of triumph. She was free; she was the captain of her soul; she often had the comfortable feeling that her mother was at her side and that they walked hand in hand.

The time came when she felt justified in asking her employer for a raise. Mr. Downing, however, was anything but sympathetic to her request.

“What kick have you got?” he inquired. “You’re making enough to dress well.”

“To be sure, but I don’t intend to remain a cabaret performer the rest of my life. I’m one of those horrid, tiresome persons with an ambition. Mine is grand opera.”

“Fair enough. But I can’t boost your salary without boosting everybody’s. I’m running an old-fashioned cabaret and cabarets are about played out. Use your head, sister.”

“I’ve been trying to use it,” Edith cheerfully confessed, “but it refuses to show me how I can subtract sixty-five from seventy and have more than five left. I have to buy my own costumes, you know. Perhaps you can tell me how to do it.”

The proprietor grinned. “Why ask me to do your sums when there’s a thousand chorus girls who can do harder ones? It’s a problem in figures. You’ve got a good one. Make the most of it.”

The girl shook her head; she was still smiling. “You’re a terribly wicked man, aren’t you?”

Downing nodded. “You’d be surprised!”

“At least you’re frank: I detest the sneaky kind.”

“Now see here, sister. You’re sitting pretty. You’ve got ability; you can sing like the very devil; whether you’ve got it in you to be a big-time song-bird I don’t know—never having been to a grand opera in my life. But I understand that it takes coin to put on the finishing touches. If you’re not smart enough to get that coin I can’t help you. Remember, though, that a lot of girls with half your looks and no part of your voice are wearing bracelets to the elbow and running big garage bills. Figure it out for yourself.”

Edith applied to several booking agencies, but with no better success. She was advised that she could doubtless secure an engagement in musical comedy when the autumn season opened, but at the time there was little going on.

Her work at Downing’s, meanwhile, kept her busy and she met almost nobody outside of the other performers on the program. These were a strange group, by the way. In addition to Pearl Gates, whose specialty was acrobatic and eccentric dancing, there was a Spanish dancer with beautiful legs in whom—or in which— the patrons were always profoundly interested. She went by the name of La Madrid. Then there was Amy Dupont, a blond contralto who sang “Mammy” ballads and, of course, the universal dancing chorus made up of eight shapely girls. In addition there was a cowboy rope-spinner and a team of acrobats, the Tumbling Turners, so-called.

These made up the steady acts; others came and went; such as Japanese equilibrists, marimba players, roller skaters, and the like. With Rosen’s orchestra, which was featured outside in electric lights, this constituted a pretty heavy program. One evening each week Rosen and his jazz kings broadcast their after-theater dance program by radio—very good advertising for the place.

In time Edith conceived the idea of using this same medium to increase her income but she received little encouragement. At the broadcasting studios where she applied for an engagement she was told that practically all the artists used in the radio programs donated their services and were glad to get the publicity. The few outstanding favorites were employed by commercial concerns which had something to sell. If she cared to sing for nothing for a while and if the fans liked her, it might be possible, later, to make some arrangement about money. That would all depend on how she took to the air.

It was a chance; she accepted. But those suggestive songs she sang at Downing’s were taboo; it was explained to her that the audience which tuned in on Station WKL was not the same as that which turned into Downing’s eating station. It was also suggested that she sing under a different name than the one she used at the uptown palace of joy. This, likewise, she readily agreed to and on the occasion of her first appearance before the microphone she was amused to hear herself introduced as “Miss Lark Larkin, the famous lyric soprano.”

Before she had sung many times she began to receive letters addressed in care of the station, and these letters increased rapidly in number. The announcers ceased calling her Lark Larkin and began referring to her as “Our favorite song-bird, ‘The Lark.’” It was gratifying, but thus far it was not in the least profitable.

Edith rather fancied her new name, for life was beginning to be something of a lark, indeed, and she had the agreeable assurance that she was an undoubted favorite both at the sound-proof studios and at the clamorous cabaret. She enjoyed, likewise, the contradictory roles she played. At Downing’s she appeared in daring costumes and rendered songs that would have made her blush a few months before—songs that would scandalize the good people of Hopewell—but to the vast, invisible audience that she reached through the mysterious ether she was an artist as pure and as brilliant as a diamond. Her fan letters proved it. And to those people she sang only good music—the kind of music she loved. It seemed that she had a radio “personality,” whatever that might be, and a great many women wrote to her. Her children’s songs, too, evoked scores of misspelled letters in immature handwriting. This dual personality that had been thrust upon her gave her an odd Jekyll-and-Hyde feeling.

Sometimes she wondered, wistfully, if the people at home could hear her and more than once she caught herself singing to her father. If ever he happened to “listen in” she felt certain he would recognize in the voice of “The Lark” the tones of his daughter’s voice. But, of course, he was too serious and too busy to bother with such playthings as radio. There was nothing about it, as yet, which needed “reforming.”

Not all her letters came from women and children: men wrote her also. One wrote in a manner that was entertaining; his first letter ran as follows:

Dear Lark:

Who are you?

Were you ever stirred by a voice? Ever hear a stranger speak and say to yourself, “I know that fellow. I’ve always known him”? Ever hear the echo of something that never was? Well, I have. You awoke just such an echo in me, although of course you didn’t speak; you sang.

I was tired. I had fished four miles of the best water and the salmon had scorned me. So I was in bad humor. Drank too much, as usual. (We get good stuff up here.) But the market reports justified that. Isn’t it queer how reception is always good when there’s bad news on the air? And vice viscera. Today everything was as clear as a bell and I picked up WKL just as you were announced.

I’ve heard better singers, but you left me with a queer ache. I’m aching now—to know you. No, not that; to know who you are.

Maybe it’s because there are no women up here. “Man cannot live by fish alone.”

You needn’t tell me who you are; I’ll find that out when I get back, so there’s no use of signing this except as,

One Who Loves Your Voice.

The envelope bore a Nova Scotian postmark and when Edith read its contents to Pearl the latter exclaimed:

“If it isn’t a mash note, I’ll eat it! I call that singing, to put your high C’s clear across the border. Why, you’ve knocked him dead, kid. He’s some Wall Street bird, off on his vacation, and he’ll meet you when he gets back.”

“No chance of that. I’ve asked them at WKL not to give out my name. But listen to his second one:

“Dear Lark:

I’ve been listening for you every day for a week. We had no published program, so of course I had to take all that WKL sent out. Most of it was terrible and the boys hate me.

I’m crazy about your singing; it haunts me. There’s some witchery about it, really. Why it didn’t affect the others that way, I don’t know. Anyhow you have the power to weave spells over me.

This afternoon you sang a kid song and told a story that went with it. I liked your talking voice too even though you used that syrupy tone that is supposed to tickle children. I talk to kids as if they were my age and they love it. I’d like to hear you talk naturally.

Better still I’d like to hear you laugh. Laughter shows a person’s soul; it lets you look in. Next time won’t you please, please, laugh, just once for,

Man-In-Love-With-Your-Voice.”

“Are you going to give him a titter?” Pearl inquired.

“I’ve done it,” Edith confessed.

“Snappy work I say, wouldn’t it be queer if you got to know this John, and he fell for you and you married right into the middle of some big bond house? Lord! I wish I could meet some millionaire who was mad about jig dancers and wanted a wife who could kick the back of her head! But I never have any luck. I’ve been wondering, lately, what becomes of all the old broken-down dancers. Only a few of them marry and none of them die. It’s something for us girls with fallen arches to think about.”

It was perhaps two weeks later that Pearl thought to ask, “Say, kid, have you heard anything more from your butter-and-egg man? That fellow who couldn’t live until he heard you laugh?”

“Yes. He doesn’t want to meet me now. He thanked me, but he says imaginary people are much nicer than real people and he’d rather hear me than know me.”

“Looks as if you’d laughed yourself out of a boy friend, doesn’t it? You don’t know who he is or what business he’s in?”

“Nothing, except that he’s now sword-fishing off Gloucester. He says he killed three on the way down from Nova Scotia.”

“He’s kidding you, dearie. He’s false to the core. People don’t use a sword to catch fish. He’ll be telling you next that he’s been lion shooting with a hatchet. Too bad you didn’t just sing; he sounded rich.”

“Today I got a letter from another man,” Edith said, in a tone that caused her friend to regard her curiously. “My father. He has heard the incredible rumor that I am appearing as an entertainer in a public eating-place, but he can’t believe it. He asks me to assure him that it isn’t so.”

“That ought to be easy. It never hurts to promise a man.”

“I want him to know.”

“Say! You never told me anything about that famous quarrel with your dad, since the morning I met you. You surely didn’t mean what you said then.”

“I meant every word,” Edith declared. She had no intention of telling her friend the story of her mother’s death, but before she realized it she had gone too far to stop. She made the recital as brief as possible and concluded by saying, “I went to her door twice while they were talking that night, and I couldn’t help hearing something—enough to make me realize, afterward, that he was to blame for the terrible thing that happened. Whatever love I had for him died there and then, but—I doubt if I’d ever have had the courage to actually mention it to him or to accuse him to his face, only for something he did, later, after—it was all over. He brought a woman to the house to see me—one of his detestable reform women in whom he has been interested for a long while. She is the most objectionable person I ever met and I’m satisfied she’d marry father in a minute if he’d ask her. He actually proposed to have her come to our house to live and to— to look after my moral welfare. To take mother’s place!

“That was too much. I told him then what I knew and what I suspected. I got the truth out of him finally, then I told him what I thought of him. I called him a—murderer. And he is!”

“Hm—m! That’s some story,” Pearl admitted. “And you’ve been brooding over it a lot, haven’t you?”

“Every day, every hour, almost.”

“It’s time you forgot it. You’ve cut your old man off without a nickel, so try to quit thinking about him. If he comes to New York you can get even. Let him see the show at Downing’s. If your songs and Madrid’s legs don’t horrify him to death, I’ll put on the old duck blind and do my hula dance in front of his table. That ought to chase him back to the timber.”

“I wish I could forget, but—I wish, even more, that I could make him suffer. Isn’t it odd, by the way, that he should have forced me to do the very things he was afraid I’d do? I wonder if it isn’t usually like that when we cease living our own lives and begin to lead other people’s lives for them.”