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Page 74
At the sight of the great Del Delano, the amateur's feet stuttered,
blundered, clicked a few times, and ceased to move. The tongues of one's
shoes become tied in the presence of the Master. Mac's sallow face took
on a slight flush.
From the uncertain cavity between Del Delano's hat brim and the lapels
of his high fur coat collar came a thin puff of cigarette smoke and then
a voice:
"Do that last step over again, kid. And don't hold your arms quite so
stiff. Now, then!"
Once more Mac went through his paces. According to the traditions of the
man dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs.
His gaze and expression became cataleptic; his body, unbending above the
waist, but as light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on the
ripples of a running brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased you
like a snare-drum obligato. The performance ended with an amazing
clatter of leather against wood that culminated in a sudden flat-footed
stamp, leaving the dancer erect and as motionless as a pillar of the
colonial portico of a mansion in a Kentucky prohibition town. Mac felt
that he had done his best and that Del Delano would turn his back upon
him in derisive scorn.
An approximate silence followed, broken only by the mewing of a cafe cat
and the hubbub and uproar of a few million citizens and transportation
facilities outside.
Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he
read disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment,
praise, and contempt.
Thus, in the countenances of those we hate or love we find what we most
desire or fear to see. Which is an assertion equalling in its wisdom and
chiaroscuro the most famous sayings of the most foolish philosophers
that the world has ever known.
Del Delano retired within his overcoat and hat. In two minutes he
emerged and turned his left side to Mac. Then he spoke.
"You've got a foot movement, kid, like a baby hippopotamus trying to
side-step a jab from a humming-bird. And you hold yourself like a truck
driver having his picture taken in a Third Avenue photograph gallery.
And you haven't got any method or style. And your knees are about as
limber as a couple of Yale pass-keys. And you strike the eye as
weighing, let us say, 450 pounds while you work. But, say, would you
mind giving me your name?"
"McGowan," said the humbled amateur--"Mac McGowan."
Delano the Great slowly lighted a cigarette and continued, through its
smoke:
"In other words, you're rotten. You can't dance. But I'll tell you one
thing you've got."
"Throw it all off of your system while you're at it," said Mac. "What've
I got?"
"Genius," said Del Delano. "Except myself, it's up to you to be the best
fancy dancer in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the colonial
possessions of all three."
"Smoke up!" said Mac McGowan.
"Genius," repeated the Master--"you've got a talent for genius. Your
brains are in your feet, where a dancer's ought to be. You've been
self-taught until you're almost ruined, but not quite. What you need is
a trainer. I'll take you in hand and put you at the top of the
profession. There's room there for the two of us. You may beat me," said
the Master, casting upon him a cold, savage look combining so much
rivalry, affection, justice, and human hate that it stamped him at once
as one of the little great ones of the earth--"you may beat me; but I
doubt it. I've got the start and the pull. But at the top is where you
belong. Your name, you say, is Robinson?"
"McGowan," repeated the amateur, "Mac McGowan."
"It don't matter," said Delano. "Suppose you walk up to my hotel with
me. I'd like to talk to you. Your footwork is the worst I ever saw,
Madigan--but--well, I'd like to talk to you. You may not think so, but
I'm not so stuck up. I came off of the West Side myself. That overcoat
cost me eight hundred dollars; but the collar ain't so high but what I
can see over it. I taught myself to dance, and I put in most of nine
years at it before I shook a foot in public. But I had genius. I didn't
go too far wrong in teaching myself as you've done. You've got the
rottenest method and style of anybody I ever saw."
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