The Song Hit

The Anecdote of a Man Who Created a Tune That Proved to Be Much Too Popular

HENRI DUVERNOIS

MR. BARKER removed his hat, his muffler, his pince-nez. He exposed, to the obsequious eyes of his valet, a completely hairless head—round, red, and offending—a head made still more objectionable by two small, sulky eyes. "Is my wife at home?" he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he started to shout: "Eleanor! Eleanor!"

Mrs. Barker was wearing an expression of resignation when she appeared in the anteroom. Before this phenomenon of a husband— this hairless, beardless man, without a moustache, without eyelashes, without eyebrows even—she was strangely in contrast, with her abundant black hair, her magnificent eyebrows, her scimitar-like eyelashes. Humbly, in the manner of a woman who knows a secret vengeance, she asked: "What's the matter, now, my Kiki?"

"The matter," exclaimed Mr. Barker, "is that the Hudson affair is in the bag, completed, finished. Thank God! It is done at last! Now I can take a vacation and rest.

I tell you, I have dreamed about that affair every night! How could I be sure of anything when the signatures were not in black and white? I had only their promises. I arranged everything perfectly. You know how I do things. The others wanted to delay, to reduce my commission. Oh, if you could have seen me! I was like a lion. I said: 'Stop right there, my good friends. It is no longer a question of the business but of my commission. Let us speak frankly . . . ' But let's not stay in here."

He went into the library rubbing his hands in satisfaction. There he tried several dance steps and, quite suddenly, he started to hum a song, his own song:

"Where is the little girl I cant forget? Where is the little girl I've never met? I've sought her everywhere,

Where can she be?

All day I sit and fret I can't forget the girl I've never met."

"I WROTE it on my way home," he explained. "I walked up from the office. I was terribly excited. And I swear to you that this is the first time I ever wrote a verse! It came to me suddenly; it stuck in my head and now I can't get rid of it. It's becoming an obsession. Just like every other successful hit. 'Where is the little girl I can't forget?' What do you think of it? It's good, eh? In fact I feel this very moment that I could compose great things. My faculties are all working overtime. 'Where is the little girl' . .

Mrs. Barker felt a chill of foreboding, but she managed to smile weakly. When her husband made a joke, he did not forget it quickly. He would try the effect of it the first thing in the morning, before his mirror, and, all day long, he would repeat it to every one he saw, ending always with his interminable laugh. His wife knew that this new song would become a constantly recurring motif in their conjugal life; that she would have to resign herself to it. Nevertheless, she risked a word of warning.

"Be careful, you will have a sore throat, my dear."

He shrugged his shoulders and asked, "Were you going out?"

"Yes—that is to say I have an appointment with Martha to call on a lady you do not know, a Mrs. de Haven. She is the widow of the celebrated geographer. A very serious woman, you know, with serious friends. I was going to wear my old hat, you see—and I have put on my old dress."

"And you have chosen an old perfume. How you lose yourself in the most insignificant details in order to tell the simplest thing! Oh, yes, you are a woman, no mistake about that. But now that I'm on my vacation, I want to devote my first evening of freedom to you. Make yourself beautiful. Here is my programme: dinner at the restaurant, then the theatre and then supper."

MRS. BARKER fled. She shut herself up in her room, where she hastily scribbled a mysterious note. And then she undressed and dressed again in such a fury that even the maid understood and pitied her.

And one could hear from all parts of the apartment, now in one room and now in another, the words of the song, "Where is the little girl I can't forget" sung by Mr. Barker in good humour, and very proud of his inventive genius.

"If he keeps it up," murmured Mrs. Barker, "I will go mad."

He did keep it up. He sang the song in the automobile. He sang it in the restaurant, while consulting the menu. "Filet of sole; salmon with rice; 'I can't forget the girl I've never met . . . '" At the theatre he became irascible. "What terrible music!" he complained. "What lyrics! I don't understand a word of them. As though they were clever! Why, if I wanted to take the trouble I could give them amusing lyrics, lyrics that could be understood, lyrics easy to remember ... 'Where is the little girl'."

The theatre over, Eleanor tried to escape the supper by pretending weariness, but Mr. Barker would not hear of it. None but the gayest of the night clubs would satisfy him. There, in the surrounding atmosphere, he could sing his song to his heart's content.

"Sing it to me, old dear,", shrieked an habituee of the place.

Another begged across several tables, "Write it out for me, baldhead, write it out!"

Warmed by the interest taken in his song, he sang it louder and louder. Turning to his wife, who remained silent through it all, he said:

"Cheer up. Can't you enter into the spirit of the evening? This is my vacation. 'I can't forget the girl . . . ' "

The next day, and evening, he remained in bed with a bad headache. Eleanor left the house at four o'clock in the afternoon. She came back four hours later, happy and very animated, singing in a light-hearted way:

"Where is the little girl I cant forget?

Where is the little girl I've never met?"

Mr. Barker heard her sing the song, and triumphed! "You also!" he called from his room, "I told you so. It is irresistible."

"It's an obsession," she agreed. "I haven't stopped singing it since this morning."

He jumped out of bed greatly pleased, and declared that he was cured. At once he suggested that they spend his eight-day vacation on a short trip to the country. But Mrs. Barker resisted the plan with all her determination. This was the season, she said, when one felt the urge of the home, and, besides, now was the time when the friends who had been away all summer were returning.

"You won't be in my way," she concluded. "While I am attending to my feminine affairs, you can go and visit the museums. Art is really beginning to interest you, my Kiki; haven't you already composed a song!"

But Mr. Barker, idle, was more trying than Mr. Barker occupied. The next day it rained steadily, and he stood by the window drumming on the pane: "Where is the little girl I can't forget" and yawning until it seemed that he would dislocate his jaws.

"What are we going to do today?"

She stammered: "Why, I think I shall go to Mrs. de Haven's. I know it's a bore but I want to cultivate her acquaintance because it will help you. Her friends are really very distinguished, mostly old men ..."

MR. BARKER interrupted suddenly, "I will go with you. Just a minute, while I change my coat."

"You won't find it interesting," she protested, "I warn you, you won't be happy there. These people wouldn't understand your style of humour."

But he was no longer listening to her. He had gone to dress, and in a few minutes he returned, his gloves in his hands, and whistling a light air. On their way to Mrs. de Haven's apartment, he criticized the section in which the widow lived, the street, the house, the stairs. He was on the point of criticizing the apartment itself but Eleanor was already in the drawing room, where the mistress of the house, who was mourning in extraordinarily gay clothes, came eagerly forward to greet her.

"Here you are, you naughty girl. Poor Stephen has been waiting for you for over an hour—"

"I have brought my husband to meet you," Mrs. Barker hastened to interpose.

Mr. Barker bowed. He was introduced to Mr. Stephen Patton, a young painter, gallant, handsome, careless and suave. The conversation protracted itself interminably. Eleanor's eyes avoided those of Stephen, whose glance rested alternately upon the husband and upon the wife. At length a Mrs. Daimler relieved the situation by entering with her three daughters.

"Gentlemen," proposed Mrs. de Haven, "if you wish to smoke, why don't you go into the next room? We women are going to talk about clothes."

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The men went into the library. Mr. Barker opened a box of cigars on a table, took one, lit it and began at once to complain of its quality.

"It burns like straw. The departed de Haven must have bought this box long, long ago. Have you ever noticed how dry cigars can be in a widow's house?"

Stephen smiled. He was trying to think of some friendly answer, but he could not find one. Mr. Barker was looking at a pile of books lying on a shelf. Suddenly he wheeled around, stupefied. The young painter was humming:

"Where is the little girl I can't forget?

Where is the little girl I've never met?

I've sought her everywhere, where can she be?"

Stephen Patton stopped his singing abruptly. The round, hairless, and astounded face of Mr. Barker was staring at him interrogatively. The last of the song: "Where can she be?" expired in the painter's throat.

But the other was calling, "Eleanor! Eleanor!" She came into the room hurriedly, with an expression of fright which deepened when she saw Stephen, deathly pale, and her husband with the look of an asphyxiated man, his breath coming with difficulty. There was an ominous silence.

Then, on the next instant, Mr. Barker found his breath and, full of a great joy, his face red with pride, and his little eyes bulging with the astonishment of one who has just touched glory, he cried:

"My song, Eleanor! My song! Mr. Patton has just sung it! Good God! I have achieved success. I wrote it only three days ago, sir, and now it is being sung everywhere!"