THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN
Long before Sybil rose next morning Leslie Galt had left at the door a
great bunch of lilacs, the very first spring blossoms from Dorothy's own
garden, and with it a note. Stivers took them into the bedroom with the
breakfast tray, and as Sybil put out her hand to take the letter Jane
gave a cry of dismay. "For God's sake! is that thing real?" she asked,
pointing to the splendid ring. "I--I thought last night it was an extra
fine stage jewel. Do you mean to sit there with that unlucky stone just
calling out for death and destruction, fire or flood or scandal or--or
all of them together to come upon you? Take it off, I say! _take it
off_! and let me carry it back, for, of course, it was Mr. Thrall who
gave it to you! He must be off his head--and I'll tell him so!"
"Oh!" laughed Sybil, "do you mind it so much? No! I could not send it
back, that would hurt the giver's feelings; besides, what possible harm
can a thing so beautiful do to one?"
"H--uh!" snorted Stivers. "I suppose Mary Stuart thought opals
beautiful, too, but they didn't help to keep her head on her shoulders!"
"But," argued Sybil, "the poor, lovely, tormented, blundering queen
would have lost her royal head even if she had never owned an opal."
"You don't know that," answered Stivers; "but you do know that she wore
opals and lost it. My very own cousin had a little, weeny, footy bit of
an opal scarf-pin given him, and wore it, like the fool he always was,
and had his house burned over his head for his pains. Don't talk to me!
I _know_! Wasn't a friend of my husband's given an opal, and while he
was carrying it round in his clothes, making up his silly mind how to
set it, didn't his mother-in-law, a great, bouncing, big, hearty woman,
up and die?"
Sybil nearly strangled over a combination of coffee and laugh. "Oh, Mrs.
Stivers," she exclaimed, "if you make that story public there will
certainly be a boom in the sale of small opals--if one can believe the
statements of the comic papers, at least."
"All right, Miss. You may laugh, but I'll watch my home closer than ever
for fire or burglars. I'd as soon move into a new house on Friday, and
I'd a sight rather break a looking-glass than wear that thing for an
hour!" and she retired pretty thoroughly vexed.
Sybil touched the great, shimmering quiver of color with her lips,
whispering: "Poor heart, that suffers for me!" And then, with the fresh
odor of the lilacs about her, she opened the envelope which contained a
note from Dorothy, enclosing a portion of a letter written by Mrs.
Lawton within the hour of her arrival at the White house.
Dorrie wrote briefly, sending proudest congratulations to "the
successful, admired, newly triumphant actress, who was yet her own dear
Sybbie--sweet sister, all unchanged, in truth and love," and a tender
assurance of her own well-being, of her hopeful, trustful waiting,
knowing that whether she received death or life the gift would come from
God, who never made mistakes. So she waited calmly. "It seems rather
mean," she added, "to enclose a portion of mamma's 'note'--of six
pages--but, Syb, I can't help it, I simply _can't_! I wouldn't let papa
or Leslie know it for the world, but you will understand and not think
it disrespectful. Do write, Sybbie, to your Dorothy!"
"Yes," the fragment of Mrs. Lawton's letter read, "I'm afraid I overdid
it a bit. Shopping, you know, is very fatiguing, even to one who like
myself never loiters or hesitates. Anyway, if my looking-glass did not
so flatly contradict me, I should call myself quite an old woman to-day.
But let me get on to what I wish to say. I hate anyone who
meanders--never meander, Dorothy. Though you are a married woman you
should not be averse to a little advice now and then from one who
watched over your infancy--and a very quiet, well-sleeping babe you
were, too, quite different from Sybil, who was-- Well, as I was saying,
meeting Mr. Thrall--a man tres comme il faut--as I have always said, I
mentioned your hopes--he being a married man these years past, and most
friendly in his inquiries. He, in offering congratulations, expressed
the opinion that a gift of twins would be desirable, as it was easier to
select names for two than for one, and family friction would be lessened
in consequence. I confess I was startled, and 'er, well, not far from
being vexed, and I plainly told him I hoped you would be guilty of no
such vulgarity. You should have seen his eyes--very remarkable eyes, you
must have noticed their amazing blueness--quite like the paler
sapphires. Yes, he looked perfectly amazed. 'Vulgar?' he repeated.
'Could a Merivale-Merivale be guilty of vulgarity? You must surely know
the Merivale-Merivales, Mrs. Lawton?' Imagine my haste to tell him that
Mrs. Merivale-Merivale was the only child and heiress of my friend old
Tom Bligh, who used to say she was so democratic that she would never be
content till she had every Tom, Dick, and Harry in society about her.
And people said she married Dick Merivale-Merivale so that she could
help out her father's saying. And Mr. Thrall said: 'Dear me! and did you
not know that she has twin boys, and that she calls them Tom and Harry?
Quite clever, for society, is it not? Tom, Dick, and Harry, right in her
own family, too!' My dear, I was never more taken aback! And then he
went on to tell me of Lady Somebody-Somebody, of some sort of 'hurst,'
in some shire in England, who has twin daughters, and drives about with
them, and has them always mentioned as 'Lady So-and-So's lovely twins'
in the society journals. I declare, I was quite startled; but fashions
do change so, and I'm sure its no fault of mine that I have fallen so
far behind the times--and been so out of everything. But I have hastened
to write this all out for your comfort, in case you have any anxiety on
that score. I don't suppose you have, but I frankly admit that I should
myself have looked upon the simultaneous arrival of yourself and Sybil
as verging upon an impropriety. But different times--different manners,
and there is no questioning the fact that twins, if not de rigueur, are
at least genuinely fashionable now."
Peal after peal of laughter from Sybil brought Stivers to the door, pale
and with distinctly frightened eyes. "In the name of heaven, what's the
matter with you? Stop it! _stop it!_ You're _fey_--that's what you are!
Ill will come of it--now mind!"
"_Fey?_" repeated Sybil, gurgling still with laughter. "What is _fey_,
Mrs. Stivers? Why, you look quite frightened!"
"You laugh in a room all by yourself! You're _fey_, and that means
you're sort of possessed. It's an evil spirit of mischievous fun that
takes hold of you just before a stroke of bad luck comes upon you. Lord
knows you've naught more to do now than to get up and smash a
looking-glass!"
"Don't be worried!" said Sybil, seeing the woman's distress! "I was not
_fey_, because I had cause for laughter. It was this letter that amused
me."
"But you laughed in a room by yourself," gloomily insisted Stivers, who
would not be comforted, and removed the tray rather sullenly.
And Sybil laughed again and yet again, for she could not know that there
was hurry and confusion at the old White house; that at the little
Riverdale station, crouching at the foot of the hill beside the
swift-running river, the quick tic-tic-tacking, and dot-dot-dot dashing
were spelling out words of sorrow for her. But, later, as she rose from
the piano and went to the window to look out, a messenger boy on the
steps reached far over and stole a flower from her balcony before he
rang the bell; and she laughed again, because he so nearly landed on his
head in his effort to reach the blossom.
She always remembered, with a sick misery, that she was laughing when
she opened the telegram that said: "_Your mother has died in her sleep.
Discovered an hour ago. Dorothy must not know. Come. Father._"
She never remembered how she was made ready for the street. She seemed
to recover her consciousness only as she found herself going into the
theatre by the back way, and she wondered vaguely why she had not gone
in the front. With the telegram crushed in her ungloved hand she had
flown instantly to Stewart--in the first place, from the blind instinct
that sends the stricken into the arms of the loved one for shelter, for
comfort; and now, in the second place, she sought him for business
reasons, so that he might have all the time possible in which to arrange
matters theatrical during her necessary absence.
She made her hurried way to Thrall's private office--that little
red-walled room, where she had first met him, and where her own picture
as Juliet now reigned supreme.
An old cloth had been spread over the open desk, and on it lay a litter
of oily rags, bits of wire, polishing powder, loose cartridges, several
revolvers, a tiny pistol used by stage heroines, and Sybil's beautiful
dagger.
Jim Roberts, pallid, puffy-eyed, and trembling visibly, sat there at
work, and Thrall, seeing the great trickling drops of perspiration
which the slightest effort brought out upon his pasty skin, said: "Jim,
either you must give that job up for to-day or you must take a nip to
steady your nerves. You can't break short off after being on the rampage
as you were yesterday."
But Jim lifted miserable eyes, and said, doggedly: "No! She--the
Princess--might come in, and notice--" (He had not forgotten that remark
about his fondness for cloves.)
"She's not at all likely to come in to-day, and if she did, she would
only feel sorry for your recklessness." He turned, and, taking a
handsome travelling-flask from a shelf, shook it, and smilingly
announced: "Half full yet." He poured a pretty stiff drink into a glass,
brought it to Jim, and, pointing to water standing on top of the desk,
said: "There you are, old man--racer--chaser--everything to your hand,
and, for heaven's sake, wipe your dripping face!"
Jim swallowed his liquor and resumed his work, asking, querulously:
"Where is that chamois skin? I've hunted that infernal thing till my
head is all a-buzz."
"Go to the box-office and get a new one," said Thrall. "There's a bundle
of them in the drawer. Barney will give you one."
"No! no!" irritably replied Jim. "I want the one I've been using! I hate
a new chamois; besides, how the devil could the thing disappear! I used
it on that 'bulldog' of yours a while ago. You're a nice man to own a
fine revolver like that, and let it get spotted and ate into with rust.
You ought to carry a bargain-counter ninety-nine-and-a-half-cent sort
of shooting-iron."
Thrall laughed good-temperedly, and, picking up the revolver, said:
"Well, you have cleaned and polished and oiled the old thing up in great
shape." He stood looking down at the weapon, whose white ivory handle
and heavily nickled barrel and trimmings took nothing from its
threatening look. Short, thick, heavy, the three-inch double barrel and
the wide ugly muzzle were so suggestive that Thrall exclaimed: "By
Jove! it's well named, for the bulldog is just what it reminds one of."
"Yes," answered Jim, still searching for the mislaid chamois; "that's a
dog whose bark is not worse than his bite. Be a little careful, will
you! That's a mighty easy trigger, and something less than ten-horse
power will cock the thing full. Oh, damn! damn! where is that chamois?"
How cruel is the despotism of trifling circumstance! It is humiliating
to think that a life's career--nay, even more than that--hung upon the
finding or the losing of a dirty bit of leather!
Thrall "broke" the revolver to look at the cartridges, somehow expecting
to see new ones, and remarked: "Oh, you've returned the old cartridges,
I see?"
"Yes," replied Jim, fretfully; "but what of it? I haven't get any new
32s on hand, but the old ones will bore holes in a man that will serve
every purpose. I wish I had an old silk handkerchief to polish this
inlaid work with." And just then they heard the rustling of skirts, the
tap of heels, and Sybil was in the room.
Jim Roberts looked up, and, at sight of her white face and frightened
eyes, his own expression changed so swiftly that Thrall was startled.
The latter turned, and, in the instant of recognition, the thought
flashed through him that, as Sybil had come without appointment, Barney,
unwarned, might send anyone here that asked for him; and he said,
surprisedly, even a little sharply: "Good heaven, child, what are you
doing here?" and the girl moaned:
"Oh, Stewart! Stewart! the message! the awful message!" and crept to him
and hid her face on his arm.
Roberts, weak and trembling, and with glaring eyes, made his way out,
muttering something about "going to the office." Outside he held his
head hard between his hands and leaned against the wall for support.
"It's come," he said, "at last! Oh, damn him! It's so awfully sudden,
too, but that's him all over--his love flaming sky-high one moment and
black out the next!"
He groaned, and rolled his head miserably about. He had understood
Sybil's words to be: "Your message--your awful message!" and that was
enough to arouse the suspicions of the poor half-crazed creature. "'What
are you doing here?' Curse him! I can remember how hard it was for you
to get her here in the first place! It was coax and plead and promise
then! Now, it's 'what are you doing here!' She is not like little Bess.
She will be more likely to kill _him_ than herself!"
He started, and stood upright. "That must not be!" he said. "That would
utterly ruin her young life! No, my beautiful! so pale--so frightened!
Oh, I--" He broke off, and went shambling over to the box-office and
asked for the chamois.
"In the drawer, there," said Barney, briefly.
"Hand one out," said Jim; "my hands are all oily and grimy from cleaning
that arsenal in there. I can't touch anything without leaving a mark."
Barney handed out the article, and Jim deliberately returned to the
private office. As he entered he drew the heavy portiere over the closed
door and passed to the desk in the corner and sat down.
Stewart had been much shocked at the blow that had fallen so suddenly
upon Sybil, and had shown her such tender sympathy and love that at last
the tears had rushed to her hot eyes, and now, within the circle of his
arm, her head against his shoulder, she stood and sobbed piteously.
Neither of them noticed Jim, and then suddenly, for the first time, she
put into words something of her longing for his open protection and
love. "Oh," she cried, "must I go there alone? Must I face this terrible
thing without you?"
Jim heard, and his face was dreadful. A pale fire shone in his watery
eyes, his nostrils dilated and quivered rapidly, his upper lip drew
tremblingly upward at one corner, he had all the look of a helpless cur
about to pass into a convulsion.
Sybil had but spoken Thrall's own thought. He, too, was thinking how
hard it was that he could not take a husband's place by the side of this
stricken creature of his love, and he groaned but made no answer. And
then, poor child, the thought came to her of some other woman acting
with him. A jealous pain was in her voice as she cried: "And you will
put another woman in my place, Stewart? Oh, Stewart, how can I bear it
all?"
There came from the corner a strange sort of snarl. Jim Roberts was on
his feet, a dull red had spread over his face, his very eyeballs were
suffused. Thrall turned his head, saw, and, with all his strength, flung
Sybil from him, and simultaneously with Jim's "No, damn you, you'll put
no other woman in her place!" the "bulldog" barked, and the bullet
crashed into the breast where her head had rested.
For an instant there was utter silence; a smoke, an evil odor, and three
white faces--that was all! Thrall, who had clapped his hand over the
wound, stood tall and erect a moment, then he began to settle together,
as it were, and slowly he sank backward upon the couch behind him, his
head against the wall, his right hand partly supporting him. He was
perfectly ghastly, but entirely conscious, and calm and self-controlled
to an astounding degree. He tried to draw a long breath, and then a new
horror was in the room--the horror of that agonized breathing. He spoke,
painfully, word by word, and his thought was all for the woman he loved,
who lay against the wall opposite, her arms outstretched on either side
just as she had staggered there when Stewart flung her to safety.
"Jim--the--private--door--get--Princess--away--quick!
Save--her--from--scandal!"
And Jim, falling back instantly into the old subserviency and obedience,
sprang to the curtained door, that in opening outward took with it the
pedestal and statuette of the little "Love," which were securely
fastened to it, so that when the door was closed again the room looked
utterly undisturbed. Pushing the door open he flew to Sybil, who had
never moved, and, catching her about the waist, dragged her toward it.
As she was passing Thrall he took his hand from his breast and caught at
her fingers. She shuddered at the touch, so cold, so clammy, so--so wet!
"Beloved!" his eyes looked enormous in his pallid face.
"Beloved!--I--sinned--against--you--but--it--was--from--love!
Forgive--can--you?"
A sort of surprise came upon her face, and she said, simply, as if that
answered completely his question: "I love you, dear heart!"
One flash of the old triumphant light came to his eyes; then, though
Death's grim face looked at him, over her shoulder, the tormenting
jealousy of the passionate lover flared up in him, and he gasped,
painfully: "For--all--time--beloved?"
She bent and kissed his eyes, kissed his gasping clay-cold lips, and
answered: "I love you for time and for eternity!"
And Roberts, whispering: "Quick! Someone will come!" lifted her in his
arms and carried her to the passage and set her down. As the door was
closing on her she thought she heard Stewart say: "The word--the ruby--"
and then she was hurrying up to her dressing-room, passing through it
and down to the stage entrance, where there was no doorman at that
hour, and so out into the street.
At the corner she glanced down toward the theatre, and saw a hatless man
tearing madly out of the front door. It was Barney. He said something as
he ran. Two people stopped, turned, and stared at the building, and so
formed the nucleus of the swiftly gathering, traffic-impeding
crowd--that mushroom growth, so common to excitable Broadway.
Her knees trembled threateningly beneath her, faintness seemed stealing
over her senses. She dimly saw a cab, working its way up the street. The
man lifted his whip inquiringly; she raised her bare hand to summon him,
and then, there in the open street, she gave a cry of horror,
fortunately drowned by other sounds, for that was the hand Thrall had
clutched, and his chill, blood-wet fingers had left three close lines of
red, that, circling her fingers, led straight across the great opal. She
gasped out her street and number, and, stumbling into the cab, she heard
an excited passer-by remark: "That's Sybil Lawton! I'll bet a dollar she
was on her way to the theatre!" And as the cab passed on he continued:
"Well, she couldn't get through that crowd! I 'spose a policeman has
told her what's happened down there. We had seats for to-night, too--I
guess they'll redeem the tickets."
And ten minutes later the rumor was running like fire in dry grass:
"That Sybil Lawton had been shopping and a policeman stopped her, and,
without warning or preparation of any kind, had informed her of the
shooting of her manager, and she collapsed, and was driven home in a
cab."
Murder became suicide--suicide became accident, before the clang of the
ambulance-gong sent the depressing shivers through nerves that would
thrill with pleasurable excitement at the sound of the fire-gong. Then a
group of men came out of the front door, and hats came quickly off when
those nearest caught a glimpse of a marble-white face, with long, inky
lashes clinging close to ghastly cheeks.
For, between those dreadful whistling breaths, Thrall had warned Jim,
word by word, that it was "an accident," and explained that Jim, having
supposed the old cartridges were withdrawn, snapped the revolver,
standing at close range, adding: "Keep--steady--stick--to--story--Jim--
for--her--sake! Now--call--make--big--row! I'm--gone!"
And Jim, conscious of an awful blunder, obeying to the letter, as Thrall
fainted, tore away the heavy portiere that had helped so much to deaden
the sound of the shot, dashed open the door, and, like a madman,
shouted: "A doctor! a doctor! for God's sake, Barney! I've shot Thrall!
I have! I have! Oh, run! run! I'll call a policeman myself!"
He was obeying orders--he was making "a big row," but suddenly he
thought of Sybil. "Oh, my beautiful!" he cried; "I meant to serve you,
and I've robbed you instead!" And, as the policeman advanced toward him,
he fell forward in the fit that had threatened him all the day. Yes, Jim
was obedient to the last--he made "a big row"!
The next day, almost at the same hour, the pale woman who had watched at
Thrall's side almost unwinkingly left the room for a moment to confer
with her maid. "English crepe," she whispered, "of course. The heaviest
and best is always the cheapest in the long run."
It was only a moment's absence, but the long lashes on the stricken
man's ghastly face lifted, the hand went to the wounded breast. With the
instinct of the actor, who always considers effect, he thought
gratefully that the hemorrhage had been internal, and that he had not
been an offensive-looking object. He turned his eyes to the side where
Lettice had sat and watched. She was not there. His eyes widened with
pleasure. He rose suddenly--the effort was a mistaken one. He realized
it in a moment. There was a red spot creeping out on his shirt, and--and
a salty taste in his mouth. Yet he smiled, almost maliciously, as he
thought: "I am escaping her, after all!"
Then he knew. He shivered. "Sybil!" he said; "beloved!"
The door opened--the clock was striking down-stairs--from a near room
came the whir of a sewing-machine--Stewart Thrall was dead.