THE FAIR
REWARDS
_NEW BORZOI NOVELS_
_SPRING, 1922_
WANDERERS
_Knut Hamsun_
MEN OF AFFAIRS
_Roland Pertwee_
THE FAIR REWARDS
_Thomas Beer_
I WALKED IN ARDEN
_Jack Crawford_
GUEST THE ONE-EYED
_Gunnar Gunnarsson_
THE GARDEN PARTY
_Katherine Mansfield_
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
_E. M. Forster_
THE SOUL OF A CHILD
_Edwin Björkman_
CYTHEREA
_Joseph Hergesheimer_
EXPLORERS OF THE DAWN
_Mazo de la Roche_
THE WHITE KAMI
_Edward Alden Jewell_
THE
FAIR REWARDS
THOMAS BEER
“_Tell arts they have no soundness
But vary by esteeming
Tell schools they want profoundness
And stand too much on seeming_”--
RALEGH
_“Eh, sirs,” says Koshchei, “I contemplate the spectacle
with appropriate emotions.”_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
ALFRED·A·KNOPF
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, February, 1922_
_Set up and electrotyped by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N.Y._
_Paper furnished by S. D. Warren & Co., Boston, Mass._
_Printed and bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass._
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
M. A. A. B.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I MANUFACTURE OF A PERSONAGE, 9
II HE PROGRESSES, 23
III FULL BLOOM, 47
IV PENALTIES, 78
V MARGOT, 104
VI GURDY, 135
VII “TODGERS INTRUDES,” 170
VIII COSMO RAND, 192
IX BUBBLE, 214
X THE IDOLATER, 250
XI THE WALLING, 272
I
Manufacture of a Personage
John Carlson began the rehearsals of “Nicoline” in early August of
1895. For a week he tried to correct the hot labours of the whole,
large company. He was nervous about this production. His digestion
interfered. His temper grew explosive. The leading woman was alarmed
for her gentility. The leading man disliked his part of a cheap rake.
Carlson abandoned the minor folk to his stage manager, Rothenstein,
and nursed these two clumsy celebrities toward a certain ease. But his
stomach suffered. He attended the opening night of “The Prisoner of
Zenda” at the Lyceum, fainted during the second act and was revived
with brandy in Mr. Frohman’s office. The brandy gave him fever; he
spent the six days remaining before “Nicoline” opened, in his bed. Yet
on a warm Monday night he dressed his gaunt body gorgeously, shaved
his yellow face, thrust an orchid into his coat and dined at Martin’s
with young Mr. Fitch who had adapted “Nicoline” from the French.
Carlson swore in Swedish when agony seized his stomach. Mr. Fitch,
sipping white Burgundy, observed that it must be pleasant to swear
incomprehensibly.
“Sure,” said Carlson, shivering, “but what was you sayin’?”
“You’ll feel better by midnight,” Mr. Fitch murmured, “You’ve worried
too much. This’ll be a hit. It’s been a hit in London and Paris. The
critics”--the adapter smiled--“won’t dare say anything worse than that
it’s immoral. And Cora Boyle will make them laugh in the third act, so
that’ll be safe.”
“Boyle? Who’s she? That black headed gal that plays the street walker,
y’mean? She’s no good. Had her last winter in Mountain Dew. Common as
dirt and no more sense than a turnip.”
Mr. Fitch answered in his affable whisper, “Of course she’s common as
dirt. That’s why I asked you to get her. Why waste time training some
one to be common when the town’s full of them?”
“But that ain’t actin’, Clyde!”
“It’s quite as good. And,” Mr. Fitch declared, “she’s what the women
like.”
“You always talk as if women made a show pay!”
“That happens to be just what they do, Mr. Carlson. That’s why Richard
the Third doesn’t make as much money as Camille or East Lynne. Women
come to a play to see other women wear clothes they wouldn’t be seen
in and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing. Please try to eat
something.”
“You’re all wrong,” Carlson said, chewing a pepsin tablet.
Mr. Fitch shrugged, arranged his moustaches and mentioned a dozen
actresses whose success was built on the art of enchanting their own
sex. Carlson had a respect for this playwright’s opinion and while
the two early acts of “Nicoline” played he saw from his box that
Cora Boyle’s swagger carried some message to the female part of the
audience. For her, women laughed loudly. They merely sniffled over the
well bred woes of the heroine. The heroine’s antics were insupportable.
The second curtain fell and Carlson descended to the dressing room of
this unsatisfactory gentlewoman, gave a rasping lecture that scared her
maid away. He had to help hook her gown and yelled over the powder of
her advertised shoulders, “If you want that sassy Boyle gal to be the
hit of the show, go on! You act like you’d lost your last cent on the
races and had sand in your shoes. Now, you!” A feeling of heated blades
in his stomach stopped the speech. He heard the stage manager knock on
the dressing room door. The actress moved weeping past his anguish.
He leaned on the table and saw his sweating face in the tilted mirror.
The thin, remote music of the orchestra began behind the curtain. This
third act was set in the rowdy café of a small French city. If it went
well, the play was safe, would last out the winter, make him richer. He
should go up to his box and show himself unperturbed to rival managers
civilly tranquil in their free seats. But he leaned, looking at his
wet, bald head with a sick weariness. What was the use of this trade?
He wore down his years trying to teach silly women and sillier men to
act. He got nothing from living but stomach trouble and money. The
money would go to his sister in Stockholm when he died. He had never
liked his sister, hadn’t seen her in thirty years. He pitied himself so
extremely that tears wriggled down the spread of seams in his yellow
face. Life was an iniquity contrived for his torture. Carlson deeply
enjoyed his woe for five minutes. Then Mr. Fitch came in to urge that
Cora Boyle be corrected before her present entrance.
“What’s the good, Clyde? She ain’t any sense. She’s a actress, ain’t
she?”
“She’ll spoil the act if she carries on too much,” said Mr. Fitch and
at once Carlson thrilled with an automatic anxiety; the act mustn’t
be spoiled. He hurried up the iron stairs to the platform, wiping
his face. Cora Boyle was standing ten feet back from the canvas arch
that was, for the audience, the street door of the Café Printemps. She
patted the vast sleeves of her gaudy frock and whispered to a fellow in
blue clothes. Carlson had to pull her from these occupations and gave
his orders in a hiss.
“Don’t you laugh too loud when Miss Leslie’s tellin’ about her mother
or talk as loud as you’ve been doin’, neither. This ain’t a camp
meetin’, hear?”
The black haired girl grinned at him, nodding. She spat out a fold of
chewing gum and patted her pink sleeves again. She said, “All right,
boss, but, say, don’t the folks like me, though?”
Fitch chuckled behind the manager. Carlson wouldn’t be bested by an
impudent hussy who was paid thirty-five dollars a week and didn’t
earn it. He stared at Cora Boyle, biting his lips and hunting words
wherewith to blast her. She let him stare unchecked. A false diamond on
its thin chain glittered and slid when she breathed into the cleft of
her breasts. She was excellently made and highly perfumed. Her black
eyes caught a vague point of red from the rim of a jaunty hat that
slanted its flowers on the mass of her hair. She had rouged her chin to
offset a wide mouth. Carlson jeered, “Better get somebody to show you
a good makeup, sister, and quit talkin’ through your nose. You sound
like you’re out of New Jersey!”
Cora Boyle giggled. She glanced at the fellow in blue and said, “I was
boardin’ at Fayettesville, New Jersey, all summer. Wasn’t I, Mark?”
The fellow bobbed his head, shuffling his feet. His feet were bare and
by that sign Carlson knew him for the supposed peasant lad who would
bring the heroine news of her dear mother’s death at the end of the
act. Cora Boyle gave this unimportant creature a long, amorous look,
then told Carlson, “I was boardin’ with Mark’s folks. He--”
“Your cue,” said Mr. Fitch and the girl, with a splendid swagger,
marched into the lit scene beyond this nervous shadow. Her finery
shimmered and directly the women outside the hedge of footlights
laughed. The audience tittered at her first line and Mr. Fitch, a hand
on his moustache, smiled at Carlson.
“She’s got a voice like a saw,” Carlson snapped and walked down the
steps. At the bottom a roar halted him. The audience laughed in a
steady bawl. He grunted but the noise came in repeating volleys every
time the girl’s shrill speech rose grinding and these bursts had an
effect of surging water wonderful to hear, soothing his conceit. But as
he listened a spasm took his stomach. Fitch helped him to a cab and
the cab delivered Carlson trembling to his valet in 18th Street.
The attack lasted all night and did not wane until twilight of next
day when Carlson could drink some drugged milk and roll a cigarette.
He bade his valet bring up the morning papers and was not surprised
when Fitch preceded the man into the room, walking silently on his trim
feet, a flower in his blue coat and his white hands full of scribbled
foolscap.
“I’ve been writing two scenes in the library,” he said, in his usual,
even whisper, “and I’d like to read them, if you feel well enough.”
“Two scenes?”
“One’s for the first act and one’s for the last. I’d like a full
rehearsal in the morning, too.”
Carlson lifted himself and slapped the counterpane. He cried, “Now,
Clyde, listen here! That Boyle gal’s got enough. I expect she hit but
she’s a sassy little hen. I’m not goin’ to spoil her with--”
“Nom de dieu,” said the playwright, “I didn’t say anything about the
Boyle girl. No. These scenes are for young Walling. He can come on with
some flowers for Nicoline in the first act and say something. Then he
can bring the dogs in at the last, instead of the maid. We might dress
him as a gamekeeper in the last act. Green coat, corduroy breeches--”
Carlson screamed, “Cord’roy pants? Who the hell you talkin’ about?
Walling? Who’s Walling?”
Mr. Fitch lit a cigar and selected a paper from the bundle the valet
held. He bent himself over the back of a cherry velvet chair which
turned his suit vile purple in the dusk and began to read genially....
“‘Into the sordid and sensuous atmosphere of this third act there
came a second of relief when the messenger brought Nicoline news of
her mother’s death. We too rarely see such acting as Mr. Walling’s
performance of this petty part. His embarrassed, sympathetic stare at
Nicoline, his boyish, unaffected speech--’” The playwright laughed and
took another paper, “That’s William Winter. Here’s this idiot. ‘This
little episode exactly proves the soundness of Carlson’s method in
rehearsing a company. I am told that Mark Walling, the young actor who
plays the rôle, has been drilled by Mr. Carlson as carefully as though
he were a principal’--I told him that,” Mr. Fitch explained, changing
papers. “‘One of the best performances in the long list of forty was
that of Mark Walling as’--”
Carlson lay back dizzy on his pillows and snarled, “What’s it all
about, for hell’s sake? This feller comes on and gives the gal the
letter and says the funeral’ll be next day. Well?”
“Well,” said his ally, “I’d just put you in your cab. I was out in
front, standing. This boy came on. They were still laughing at Cora
Boyle. The minute Walling spoke, every one shut up. He gave his line
about the funeral and some women commenced snivelling. Wiped his nose
on his sleeve. Some more women cried. I thought they’d applaud for a
minute. He’s in all the papers. Nice voice. It’s his looks mostly.”
“Never noticed him. Where did we get him?”
Mr. Fitch blew some smoke toward the red velvet curtains and chuckled.
“We didn’t get him. He belongs to Cora Boyle. She brought him to
Rothenstein at the first rehearsal and asked for a part for him. She
kidnapped him down in Jersey.”
“She--what?”
“Kidnapped him.” The playwright assumed a high drawl and recited,
“Cora, she was boardin’ with Mark’s folks down to Fayettesville. Mark,
he used to speak pieces after supper. Cora, she thought he spoke real
nice--So she kidnapped him. She mesmerized him--like Trilby--and
brought him along. She’s got him cooped up at her boarding house. She’s
married him. He says he thinks acting’s awful easy”--Mr. Fitch again
drawled, “cause all you gotta do is walk out, an’ speak your piece.
He’s got a brother name of Joe and his mamma she’s dead and sister
Sadie she’s married to Eddie something or other. I heard his whole
family tree. I went to see him this morning. Some one else is likely to
grab him, you know? He told me his sad story in a pair of blue drawers
and one sock. He’s scared to death of Cora Boyle.”
“But--can he act?”
The playwright shook his head. “No. He hasn’t any brains. Are you well
enough to get dressed?”
At half past ten an usher came into the box office where Carlson was
sitting and summoned the manager to the rear of the house. Fitch stood
at the throat of an aisle, his pallor made orange by the glow from the
stage on which Cora Boyle was chaffing the sinful heroine. Amusement
sped up this lustrous, stirring slope of heads. It was the year of
Violette Amère among perfumes and the scent rolled back to Carlson with
the laughter of these ninnies who took Cora Boyle for a good comedian.
Carlson chafed, but when the lad in blue walked into the light of the
untinted globes, this laughter flickered down. Fitch whispered, “Hear?”
and promptly the boy spoke in a husky, middling voice that somehow
reached Carlson clearly. Close by a woman gurgled, “Sweet!” and Carlson
felt the warm attention of the crowd, half understood it as the few
lines drawled on. The boy stood square on his brown, painted feet. His
flat face was comely. He had dull red, curling hair. As he tramped out
there was a faint and scattered rumour like the birth of applause, cut
by the heroine’s shriek.
“You see?” Fitch smiled.
Carlson said, “I ain’t a fool. Tell Rothenstein to call a rehearsal for
ten in the mornin’, will you.” He then went briskly to hunt down this
asset. It took some minutes to locate the dressing room Mark Walling
shared with five other small parts. He found Mark peeled to faded,
azure cotton underclothes and talking happily to a tall, fair rustic
who slouched on the wall beside the sink where Mark scrubbed paint from
his feet with a sponge. Their drawls mixed and shut from them the noise
of Carlson’s step, so the manager regarded his prize stealthily. Mark
was a long lad, limber and burly, harmlessly good looking. His nose was
short. His insteps and arms were thick with muscle. He smiled up at his
rural friend who said, “But it ain’t a long trip, Bud. So I’ll get your
papa to come up nex’ week.”
Mark shifted the sponge to his other hand and sighed. The sound touched
Carlson who hated actors not old enough to court him cleverly. But this
was a homesick peasant. He listened to Mark’s answer of, “Wish you
would, Eddie. I ain’t sure papa likes my bein’ here. Even if I do--”
The rustic saw Carlson and mumbled. Mark Walling hopped about on one
foot and gave a solemn, frightened gulp. Carlson nodded, inquiring,
“That your brother, sonny?”
“No, sir. Joe’s home. This is Eddie Bernamer. Well, he’s my
brother-in-law. He’s married with Sadie.”
Eddie Bernamer gave out attenuated sounds, accepting the introduction.
The manager asked lightly, “How many sisters have you, son?”
“Just Sadie. She’s out lookin’ at the play.”
“And you’ve married Cora Boyle?”
“Well,” said Mark, “that’s so.”
He seemed rather puzzled by the fact, suspended the sponge and said to
Eddie Bernamer, “She ain’t but two years older’n me, Eddie.”
“I guess Mr. Carlson wants to talk to you, Bud,” his relative muttered,
“So I’ll go on back and see some more.”
“But you’ll come round an’ wait after the show?” Mark wailed.
“We’ll have to catch the cars, Bud. Well, goo’ bye.”
Mark stood clutching the sponge and sighed a monstrous, woeful
exhalation after Eddie Bernamer. His grey eyes filled. He was
hideously homesick, certain that Fayettesville was a better place than
this cellar that stunk of sweated cloth and greasy paint. And Cora
hadn’t been strikingly pleased by the news of him in this morning’s
papers. She was odd. He wiped his nose on a wrist and looked hopelessly
at Carlson.
“Rather be back on the farm, wouldn’t you?” the gaunt man asked.
Mark sat down on the floor and thought. His thoughts went slowly across
the track of six weeks. He plodded. For all its demerits this red and
gold theatre was thrilling. People were jolly, kind enough. The lewd
stagehands had let him help set a scene tonight. The man who handled
the lights had shown him how they were turned on and off to make stormy
waverings. Cora was exciting. Winter at home was plagued by Aunt Edith
who came out from Trenton to spend the cold months at the farm and who
lectured Mark’s father on Methodism. And here was this easy, good job.
If he worked hard it might be that Mr. Carlson--who wasn’t now the
screaming beast of rehearsals--would let him run the lights instead of
acting. Mark said, “Well, no. Just as soon stay here, I guess.”
“How old are you, sonny?”
“Goin’ on seventeen, sir.”
“I’ll give you forty a week to stay here,” said Carlson, “Fitch tells
me you think acting’s pretty easy.”
“I don’t see any trick to acting,” Mark mused, absorbing the offer
of forty dollars a week, “There ain’t nothin’ to it but speakin’ out
loud.... Yes, I’d like to stay here.” He wanted to show himself useful
and got up, pointing to the bulbs clustered on the ceiling in a bed of
tin, “I should think you’d ought to save money if you had them down
here by the lookin’ glasses instead of this gas, y’see? The fellers
don’t get any good of the electric light while they’re puttin’ paint
on, and--”
“Rehearsal at ten in the morning,” said Carlson, “Good-night.”
Marked gaped at the black and empty door. Then his homesickness swelled
up and he sighed, squeezing the sponge. His body trembled drearily. He
lowered his head as does a lonesome calf turned into strange pastures.
II
He Progresses
“Nicoline” lasted until April, 1896. Mark played the country boy in
“Mr. Bell” all the next season and, duly coached by Sarah Cowell
LeMoyne, figured as the young duke in “The Princess of Croy” when
Carlson imported that disaster in the autumn of 1897. Its failure
afflicted Mark less than his private griefs. He played for four months
in Carlson’s Boston stock company. This was penible. He had never been
so far from his adored family. True, freed of Cora, he could send
ten or twenty dollars a week to his father but he missed Sundays in
Fayettesville and the Boston wind gave him chilblains. The friendly
women of the Stock Company found him shy and here began the legend of
Mark’s misogyny. He read novels and tramped about Boston, surveyed the
theatrical setting of Louisburg Square and sidelong admired the ladies
walking rigidly in sober hats on Commonwealth Avenue. Such persons,
he mused, would never fling hot curling irons in a husband’s face and
it wasn’t possible to imagine them smoking cigarettes in bed. But he
hated Boston and the war was welcome as it honourably pulled him back
to a New Jersey Infantry regiment.
In June, 1898, he sat on a palmetto trunk in the filthy camp of Tampa
watching Eddie Bernamer pitch a ball to Joe Walling. Mark had every
satisfaction in the sight and liked his piebald uniform much more
than any costume hitherto. The camp pleased him as a problem. There
would be plays made on the war, of course, and it wouldn’t be easy to
mount them. These bright trees and the muddle of railroad ties could
be effected but the theatre lacked lights to send down this parching
glitter on black mud and strolling men. He sighed for realism. He had
spent hours in Davidge’s workshop while the grass of “The Princess
of Croy” was being made. It hadn’t the right sheen. The sunset had
turned it blue and the sunset was all wrong even though the critics
had praised it. Mark swung his gaiters and pondered irreproducible
nature. But it would be nice to counterfeit all this--the glister of
remote tin roofing, the harsh palms, the listless soldiery. The police
would object to exactness of course. Brother Joe was pitching the ball
with great flexures of his bronze, naked chest. Eddie Bernamer swore
astoundingly when he ripped his undershirt. One couldn’t be so honest
on the stage or echo the sharp, unreal note of mail call sounding.
Mark ran off to see if the wayward postal service had brought him a
letter. There was a roll of newspapers addressed to his brother-in-law
and Bernamer, a bad reader, turned them over to Mark and Joe. It was
Joe who found the pencilled paragraph Mark rather expected. He slapped
Mark’s back and grunted, “Well, so there y’are, Bud.”
Mark read, “The suit for divorce begun by Mark Walling, the well
known young actor against his wife, Cora Boyle Walling, was concluded
yesterday. Neither party to the action was present in court. Miss Boyle
is touring the West with the Jarvis Hope Stock Company. Jarvis Hope is
named as co-respondent in the case. The action was not defended. Mr.
Walling is now with the --th N.J. Infantry. The divorced couple were
married in August, 1895. They have no children.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Eddie Bernamer, “and don’t you let
the next woman looks at you haul you off to a preacher, neither.”
Mark felt dubious. There had never been a divorce in the family. He
said, “I guess if we’d had a baby, she wouldn’t of--Dunno.... It’s kind
of too bad.”
His relatives denied it. They had never liked Cora Boyle. She wasn’t
a lady and her clothes had shocked Sadie’s conservative mind. They
pointed out that a stable and meritorious woman wouldn’t have seduced
Mark before marriage. They were glad to see the boy free and were
puzzled by his mournfulness. He agreed with their judgments. But his
eyes moistened for all their affectionate pawing. He muttered, “She was
awful good lookin’,” and sat moody while they indicated advantages.
He could save his pay, now, and wear respectable, black neckties, as
a Walling should. He wouldn’t be bullied or have hot curling irons
flung in his face. He could come home on the Saturday midnight train
and stay until Monday afternoon. And Joe reasonably assured him that
women were plentiful. But Mark mourned, in his tangled fashion, the
collapse of beauty. Cora, he choked, didn’t match her outside. She was
ruthless, disturbing. She cared nothing for Mark’s pet plan of an ideal
lighting system for theatres. She had spilled coffee on his smudged,
laborious chart of a stage to be made in hinged parts. She called his
sacred family a parcel of mossbacks and left the flat when Sadie and
Bernamer brought their baby to town for a day. Still, Mark was mournful
and often missed her for several years. He shuddered from marriage as a
game more complicated than golf.
He was playing golf in May, 1902, with Ian Gail when the English
playwright checked his grammar. Mark flushed. The Englishman fooled
with a putter for a second, considering this colour. He said, “I say,
old son, d’you mind my giving you some advice?”
“Go ahead.”
“Carlson’s closing the play next week, he tells me. What will you do
with yourself, all summer?”
“Go home.”
“Where’s that and what’s it like?”
Mark sat down on the green and chattered of the farm, and his family
with particular mention of his nephew George Dewey Bernamer (born May
15, 1898) who called himself Gurdy. About Joe Walling’s baby daughter
Mark wasn’t as yet enthusiastic. He talked with broad lapses into New
Jersey singsong. His grey eyes dilated. He babbled like an upset pail.
The lean Englishman didn’t seem bored. Other people--Mrs. LeMoyne, old
Mrs. Gilbert--had scolded Mark about these explosions. Gail let him
talk for twenty minutes of warm noon and then said, “Quite right, old
son. Stick to your people.... You’re a sentimental ass, of course. I
dare say that’s why you can put up with dinner at Carlson’s in that
seething mass of red plush.”
“But I like Mr. Carlson. Been mighty good--”
“Of course he’s good to you. And it was good of you to make him mount
my last act so decently.... For some reason or other you’ve an eye
for decoration. That’s by the way.--Now, I’ve a female cousin in
Winchester, a Mrs. Ilden. She writes bad novels that no one reads and
her husband’s in the Navy. I’m going to write her about you. You run
across after the play stops. She’ll put you up for a month and you’ll
pay her--I suggest a hundred pounds.”
“Pay her for what?”
“Her conversation, my boy. She’s quite clever and fearfully learned.
Shaw likes her. She’s an anarchist and a determinist and all that and
much older than you. She makes a business of tutoring youngsters who
need--doing over a bit. You seem to have been reared on Henty and
Shakespeare. Even Carlson says you need pruning. There’s no use being
antediluvian even if you are a rising young leading man.... God, how I
hate the breed! I shouldn’t waste these words on you if you didn’t show
vagrom gleams of common sense now and then. So I most seriously beg of
you to go and let Olive--Mrs. Ilden, tutor you for a fortnight.”
Mark was always docile before authority. He asked, “What’ll she do to
me?”
“She can tell you anything you want to know and explain Winchester. The
history of Winchester is the history of England,” Gail said, “and, of
course, that’s the history of the world.”
Thus, in early June, Mark was driven through Winchester and landed at
the door of a brick house painted plum colour. A grey wall continued
on either side of the ruddy front and nameless vines waved on the
coping. Mark’s head ached from a supper at Romano’s the night previous
but he admired the house and the obvious romance of the curving lane
stippled with sunshine in plaques of honey. He rang the bell, gave a
fat parlour-maid his card and waited for Mrs. Ilden in stolid terror.
The hall had white panels of an approved stage pattern and was dotted
with photographs. Mark was looking at the face of a bearded man whose
eyebrows had a diabolic slant when Olive Ilden came in from her garden.
She came in a bad temper, deserting the discussion of Chamberlain’s
Imperial policy about her tea table. She was prepared for a repetition
of her last paying pupil, the one son of a Rand millionaire, a cub who
wore five rubies on one hand and who talked racing at four meals a day.
Mark unsettled her by his wooden stare and the black decency of his
dress. His clothes were English. He was always tanned. The scar of Cora
Boyle’s curling irons lay in a thread along his left jaw. Olive revised
a theory that Americans were short and looked up at him.
“I’ve some friends at tea,” she said, “Of course, I don’t wish to
impose tea on a Yankee.”
“I think I’d like some,” Mark said miserably and followed her trailing,
white skirts down an endless garden. He thought her gown distinctly bad
and sloppy. She must be older than she looked or she wouldn’t be so
careless. The girdle was crooked and the gauze across her shoulders was
too tight. But it was a fine body, tall and proportionate. Her hair was
a lustreless black. Meanwhile he had to think about this scene of an
English garden. It phrased itself simply. Wall, rear. Tower of church,
right background. Two small children playing with a kitten. Tea-table.
Three ladies. Young man in tweeds. One clergyman.--It was like the
garden set for the “Princess of Croy.” Mark braced himself, bowed and
murmured in the manner of Mrs. LeMoyne, leaned on one of the limes in
the manner of Herbert Kelcey, and drank his tea in the manner of Mr.
Drew. The minor canon gave him a cigarette and Mark said, “Thanks so
much.” The youth in tweeds asserted that it was beastly hot for June
and Mark admitted, “Rather.” He stood sombre against the lime and the
group was chilled by his chill. Two of the ladies fancied him a poet by
the red curling of his hair. The guests withdrew. Olive Ilden fiddled
with a teaspoon and frowned.
“I rather expected you on Tuesday.”
“Had to stay in London. Mr. Carlson wanted me to look at a couple of
plays he’s thinkin’ of bringing over.”
“Really, I don’t see why you Yankees always import our nonsense. One
hears of the Pinero rubbish playing for thousands of nights in the
States. Why?”
“The women like it,” he wildly said, quoting Carlson. “Are those your
kids?”
“Mine and my husband’s,” Olive laughed and called Joan and Robert
Ilden from their game with the kitten. Mark played with them in all
content for half an hour, didn’t glance at Olive, and told her blond
children about his best nephew, Gurdy Bernamer. The bored infants
broke his watch chain and their puzzled mother took Mark to walk. She
led him down through the college and wondered why he paused to stare
at the cathedral walls where the sunshine was pallid on the weathered
stone.--He was thinking that bulbs tinted straw colour might get this
glow against properly painted canvas.--His eyes opened and his drowsy
gaze pleased the woman. She said, “Do you like it? The cathedral?”
“The tower’s too small,” he said.
“Clever of you. Yes, architects think so. Glad you noticed.”
“Anybody could see that. Is that the Bishop?” he asked, seeing black
gaiters in motion on a lawn.
“A mere dean. And the birds are rooks. All the best cathedrals have
rooks about. Shall we go in?”
“I’d just as soon,” he nodded, regretting that the queer shade of the
elms wasn’t possible on a backdrop.
The interior charmed him. He forgot his headache. His thoughts hopped.
Church scenes never went well. No way to capture this slow echo for the
stage. The upper brightness made him raise his eyes. This range of high
windows where the lights melted together was called a “clerestory.”
The mingled glory almost frightened him. He saw a white butterfly that
jigged and wheeled, irreverent, solitary on the far shadows of the
vault. Mark smiled. Small Gurdy Bernamer named butterflies “bruffles”
and was probably chasing one, now, across the hot perfume of the
Fayettesville garden. The fancy made him homesick. He blinked. The
woman watching him saw crystal wetness point his lashes and hastily
stated, “This is William de Wykeham’s tomb.”
Mark examined the painted tomb, wished he could sketch the canopy and
the pygmy monks who pray at the Bishop’s feet. Gurdy Bernamer would
like the monks and would break them. He rubbed his nose and chuckled.
“I suppose,” Olive said, “that all this seems rather silly to you.
You’re a practical people.”
“It’s good lookin’. I don’t see how a good lookin’ thing can be silly,
exactly. I was thinkin’ my kid nephew’d like those monks to play with.
But he’d bust them.--Isn’t King William Rufus buried here?”
“You’ve been reading a guide book!”
“Oh, no. That’s in history. They lugged him here on a wagon or
something and buried him. Where’s he plant--buried?”
Mark wished that the dark lady would stop frowning as she steered him
to the glum, polished tomb in the choir. He must be offensive to her.
She said, “This is supposed to be the tomb. They’re not sure,” and Mark
stared at the raised slab of ugly stone with awe. The organ began to
growl softly in a transept. It was solemn to stand, reflecting on the
Red King while the organ moaned a marching air. William Rufus had been
dead so long. History was amazing.... When he had a theatre of his own
Mark meant to open it with Richard III or with Henry V. Carlson told
him that no one would ever play Richard III again as Booth had gone
too high in the part. But the Walling Theatre would be opened with a
romantic play full of radiant clothes and scenes that would match the
playhouse itself. The Walling would have a ceiling of dull blue and
boxes curtained in silk, black as a woman’s hair. The lamps should
wane in the new manner when the acts began and there would be mirrors
rimmed in faint silver to gleam in far nooks of the balcony--something
to shimmer in corners and shadows of his dream.... Mark stared down the
nave and built his theatre against the grey age of this place until
Olive sat in a heap of muslin on the tomb of William Rufus.
“One doesn’t have to bother about such an indifferent king. There are
some more in those tins--I mean caskets--on top of the choir screen.
Edmund and so on.”
“More kings? But won’t a--a sacristan or something come an’ chase you
off of here?”
“What do you know about sacristans?”
“Cathedrals always have sacristans in books.”
“I dare say you read quantities of bad novels,” she observed.
“Well, I like Monsieur Beaucaire and Kim better’n anything I’ve
read lately,” said her bewildering pupil, “Say, who was Pico della
Mirandola?”
“I don’t think I can talk about the Renascence in Winchester choir,”
Olive choked and took him away.
Save for the studied clarity of voice he showed no theatrical traits.
He resented the sign of The Plume of Feathers beside the West Gate
because “it spoiled the wall.” He asked if the Butter Cross was a well
and bought several postcards at a shop where the squared panes arrested
him. Olive made conjectures. She was twenty-six. She had known actors
in some bulk. This wasn’t an actor, observably. She guided him back
toward the college and through a swarm of lads in flannels. At these
Mark looked and sighed.
“Why that sob?”
“Dunno. I s’pose because kids are havin’ such an awful good time and
don’t know it. I mean--they’ll get married and all that.”
“Are you married?”
Mark said cheerfully, “Divorced.”
“Tell me about it.”
“D--don’t think I’d better, Mrs. Ilden.”
“Is that American?”
“Is--is what?”
“That delicate respect for my sensibilities.”
“Don’t know what you mean exactly. I had to divorce Cor--my wife and
I’d rather not talk about it.”
Olive felt alarmed. She said, “I’m supposed to tutor you in art and
ethics and I’m merely trying to get your point of view, you know? Don’t
look so shocked.”
“I don’t see what my gettin’ divorced has to do with art and ethics....
Oh, was this man Leighton a better painter’n Whistler?”
His questions ranged from the salary of canons to professional cricket.
He wore a small and single pearl in his shirt at dinner, sat eating
chastely and stared at Olive between the candles that made his grey
eyes black in the brown of his face. The parlour-maid brought him the
silver bowl of chutney three unnecessary times. He timidly corrected
Olive’s views on farm labour in the United States with, “I’m afraid
you’re wrong. I was brought up on a farm.”
“Really? I was wondering.”
“Fayettesville. It’s up in the woods behind Trenton. Say, what’s the
Primrose League?”
For a week Olive tried to outline this mentality. He plunged from
subject to subject. Economics wearied him. “What’s it matter what kind
of a gover’ment you have so long as folks get enough to eat and the
kids ain’t--don’t have to work?” Religion, he said, was all poppycock.
His “papa” admired Robert Ingersoll and “What’s it matter whether folks
have souls or not?”
“You’re a materialist,” she laughed.
“Well, what of it?”
“I’m trying to find out what your ethical standards are. Why don’t you
cheat at poker?”
“Because it ain’t fair. It’s like stealin’ a man’s wife.”
“Some one stole your wife, didn’t he?”
Mark finally chuckled. “You’d hardly call it stealing. She just walked
off when she knew I’d--heard about it.”
He blushed, hoping he hadn’t transgressed and hurriedly asked whether
Bernard Shaw was really a vegetarian. He had no opinion of Shaw’s
plays but thought “The Devil’s Disciple” a better play than “Magda.”
“The Sunken Bell” was “pretty near up to Shakespeare.” He was
worried because “Treasure Island” couldn’t be dramatized and recited
“Thanatopsis” to the horror of Olive’s children. Olive interrupted the
recital.
“That’ll be quite enough, thanks! Wherever did you pick up that
sentimental rot?”
“Just what is bein’ sentimental?” Mark demanded.
“Writing such stuff and liking it when it’s written! I suspect you of
Tennyson.”
“Never read any. Tried to. Couldn’t, except that Ulysses thing. Let’s
go take a walk.”
“Too warm, thanks,” said Olive, wanting to see whether this would hold
him in his basket chair under the limes.
“I’ll be back about tea time,” Mark promised, paused on his way up the
garden to kiss Bobby Ilden’s fair head as the little boy reminded him
of Gurdy Bernamer and vanished whistling “The Banks of the Wabash.”
“All his clothes are black,” said young Joan Ilden, “but I was helping
Edith dust in his room this morning and he has the nicest blue pyjamas.”
“Do go pull Bobby out of the raspberries,” Olive said and fell into a
sulk which she didn’t define. She lounged in her chair watching the
light play on the straight bole of a tree behind the emptied place
where Mark had been sitting.... Rage succeeded the sulk. This was a
stupid augmentation of her income. Olive disapproved landholding but
it would be easier every way when Ilden’s uncle died and he came into
the Suffolk property. Then she would be able to live in London instead
of flitting there for a breath of diversion. She hoped Mark would go
to London soon.... He had the mind of a badly schooled stock-broker!
Olive lifted her portfolio from the table and penciled a note to her
husband. “I do wish you could slaughter your dear uncle, Jack. Ian
Gail has sent me a silly Yankee to educate. I hope I have no insular
prejudice against the harmless, necessary Colonial but this cad--” Then
she thought. “What am I saying here? I don’t mean it. I’m lying,” and
tore up the paper.
Mark went swimming in the Itchen and did not come home until seven.
He dressed in six minutes and found Olive clad in black lace by the
drawing room mantel of white stone. He said, “Say, I ran into a flock
of sheep an’ an old feller with a crook. Do they still do that?”
“Do?”
“Crooks. And he had on a blue--what d’you call it?--smock?”
Olive laughed and lifted her arms behind her head.
“Did you think some one was staging a pastoral for your benefit? But
you didn’t come home to tea and there were some quite amusing people
here. I kept them as long as I could.”
“Too bad,” said Mark, “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t lie so. You’re not at all sorry. You’re bored when
people come and you have to play the British gentleman. And there are
so many other things better worth doing.”
“That’s in Shaw,” Mark guessed, “Clyde Fitch was talkin’ about it. But
what’s wrong with actin’ like a gentleman?”
“What’s the use? Your manners are quite all right. If you’d talk to
people and collect ideas.... It’s so much more important to straighten
out your ideas than to stand and hold a teacup properly. A butler can
do that. I could train a navvy to do that. And--”
“That’s an awful good looking dress,” he broke in, “Nicest you’ve had
on since I’ve been here.”
Olive let an arm trail on the mantel where the stone cooled it. “I’m
talking about your intellect and you talk about my frock.”
“I know something about dresses and I don’t know a thing about
intellect. You ought to wear dark things because you’ve got such a nice
sk--complexion.”
“I don’t bother about clothes except when Jack’s at home and I want to
keep his attention.... You were in Cuba, you said? Did you kill any
one?”
“Don’t know. Tried to. Why?”
“I was wondering whether you’d mind killing an old duffer in Suffolk.
He keeps my husband out of twelve hundred a year and a decentish house.
Would you mind?”
Mark saw this was meant as a joke and laughed, studying her arm which
gleamed white on the white stone.
“My husband’s uncle. He’s easily eighty and he’s very Tory.”
“Haven’t got any uncles. Got an aunt that’s pretty awful. She’s a
Methodist.”
He wouldn’t look at her. He still stared at the arm sprawled on the
mantel and smiled like a child. Olive wanted to hurt him suddenly, to
rouse him. The glowing stare was too childish. She drawled, “I went
into your bedroom to see that they’d swept it decently. Are those the
family portraits on the desk? Who’s the fat girl with the baby?”
“Sadie. My sister. She’s puttin’ on weight. Papa keeps two hired
girls now and she don’t have to cook. The yellow-headed fellow’s her
husband--Eddie Bernamer. Awful fine man.”
He beamed at Olive now, doting on Eddie Bernamer’s perfections. Olive
tried, “And the lad with the very huge pearl in his scarf is your
brother? And they all live on your father’s farm? And you go down there
and bore yourself to death over weekends?”
“Don’t bore myself at all. I get all the New York I want weekdays. Fine
to get out and ride a horse round. Nice house. We built a wing on when
Joe got married last year.”
The parlour-maid announced dinner. Mark gave Olive his arm and wanted
to stroke her arm white across the black of his sleeve. He talked of
his family through the meal and after it, leaning on the piano while
Olive played. He tortured her with anecdotes of his and Joe’s infancy
and with the deeds of Gurdy Bernamer. He sighed, reporting that Sadie’s
oldest girl had died.
“You mean you’re wearing mourning for a six year old child!”
“Of course,” said Mark.
“And then you ask me what a sentimentalist is!” Olive struck a discord
into the Good Friday Spell and sneered, “I dare say you think life’s so
full of unpleasantness that it shouldn’t be brought into the theatre!”
“No. I don’t think that, exactly. But I don’t think there’s any
sense in doin’ a play where you can’t--can’t--well, make it good
lookin’. These plays where there’s nothin’ but a perfec’ly ordinary
family havin’ a fight and all that--A show ought to be something
more.--You get the music in an opera. Carmen’d be a fine hunk of bosh
if you didn’t have the music and the Spanish clothes. Just a dirty
yarn!... There’d ought to be somethin’ good lookin’ in a play....
Nobody believes a play but girls out of High School.... If you can’t
have poetry like Shakespeare you ought to have something--something
pretty--I don’t mean pretty--I mean--” Olive stopped the music. Mark
descended rapidly and went on, “I don’t care about these two cent
comedies, either.”
“You don’t like comedy?”
“Not much. Truth is, I don’t catch a joke easy. I’ve tried readin’
Molière but it sounds pretty dry to me. Haven’t tried--Aristophanes?--I
guess that’s deeper’n I could swim--”
“Rot! You mustn’t let yourself--what is it?--be blinded by the glory of
great names. Any one who can see the point in Patience can understand
Aristophanes.... But you haven’t much humour. But you’ve played in
comedy?”
“Some. I’d just as soon.”
Olive began “Anitra’s Dance” knowing that he liked melodrama and
watched his eyes brighten, dilating. She said amiably, “A fine
comedian’s the greatest boon in the world. Women especially. Is it true
that women who’re good in comedy are usually rather serious off the
stage?”
“Can’t say--Well, my wife was pretty damn serious!”
His huge sigh made Olive laugh. She asked, “You’ve no children?”
“No. Guess that was the trouble.--Play that Peer Gynt Mornin’ thing.”
“I’ve played enough,” said Olive. “You say Mr. Carlson sent you over to
look at some plays for him? He must trust your judgment.”
Mark answered happily, “Sure. He says that if I take to a play so’ll
every one else. He says I’ve got lots of judgment about plays.”
Olive shut the piano and rose. Her face wrinkled off into laughter. She
said, “You dear thing! I dare say he’s quite right about that. Good
night.”
She strolled out of the drawing room and Mark could see her passing up
the long stairs. She moved splendidly against the white panels. One
wrist caressed the rail. The black gown dragged gently up the rosy
treads. She vanished slowly into the dark and Mark said, “Golly,” as he
went to get his hat. He wandered over to the bar of the Black Swan and
drank cold ale while he meditated.
He mustn’t fall in love. Eddie Bernamer and Joe disapproved of
affairs with married women. They were right, of course. And nothing
must interfere with his tutelage. And Ilden was at sea. But this was
vexatious! He wished she did not stroll so lazily up stairs, across
gardens. He wished that her hair wasn’t black.--He found himself
blushing at breakfast when she came in with a yellow garden hat on the
black of her hair. Now that he’d begun to think of it she looked rather
like Cora Boyle.
He thought of Cora Boyle again in the garden after luncheon. The
children had left a green rubber ball on the turf. Mark rolled it about
with one sole and watched Olive trim a patch of dull blue flowers. His
place and the ball underfoot recalled something cloudy. He worked to
evolve a real memory and laughed. Olive quickly glanced up.
“You keep asking about my wife. She was boardin’ with us at the farm.
First time she ever spoke to me I was kicking a ball around, in the
garden. This way. I was barefoot. Cora said, ‘Ain’t you too old to go
barefooted?’ I forget what I said.”
“But with the ball that day you played no more?”
“That sounds like a piece of a play,” said Mark.
“It’s from a comedy,” Olive snapped, “Do get your hat and take a walk.
I’ll be busy for an hour. Look at the Deanery garden. The Dean’s gone
to Scotland.”
“Got to write a letter first. Boat from Liverpool tomorrow.”
He mailed a letter to Joe’s wife, born Margaret Healy, tramped down to
the Close and examined the Dean’s garden. It would make a neat setting,
the mass of the Cathedral to the left, the foliate house to the right.
A maid in black and white passed over the grass and reminded him of
Joe’s wife again by a certain dragging gait. He went into the cathedral
and studied the Wykeham tomb from all angles. Some tourists hummed in
the nave; a guide in a frock coat ambled after them descanting thinly
of dead kings. Mark fell into a genial peace, leaned on a column,
smiling at the far roof. The feet of the tourists made a small melody
among the tombs and this seemed to increase. He heard a rapid breath
and saw Olive with his coat over her arm. She panted, “I’ve packed your
things. They’re in the cab. At the gates. Hurry. You’ve hardly time to
get to the station. Do hurry! I’ll telegraph to Liverpool and ask them
to hold a cabin--stateroom--whatever they call them.--Oh, do hurry!”
“What’s happened?”
“Oh, this!--I didn’t look at the cover--thought it was from Jack--”
Mark snatched the telegram and read, “Joe and Margaret killed wreck
Trenton come if--” then rolled the paper into his palm. Olive saw his
eyes swell and gasped, “Who’s Margaret?”
“Joe’s wife. Where’s cab?”
“At the gates. Run.”
He dashed into the sun beyond the open doors then the red hair gleamed
as he came wheeling back to gulp, “Send you a check from--”
Olive spread her hands out crying, “No! I shan’t take it!” and saw
him rush off again. The cab made no noise that she could hear. She
shivered as if a warming fire died suddenly in winter and left her
cold. Presently she struck a palm on the stone beside her and said,
“Sentimentalist! Sentimentalist!” while she wept. She made use of Mark,
though, in her next novel, The Barbarian, which began her success. Mark
was rather flattered by the picture and glad that he hadn’t insulted
this clever, wise woman by making love to her. He thought of Olive as
exalted from the ranks of passionate, clutching females and often wrote
long, artless letters to her.
III
Full Bloom
The family council prudently allowed Mark to adopt his brother’s
orphan, Margaret. He sometimes borrowed Gurdy Bernamer to keep the dark
child company in his New York flat. By 1905 the borrowing settled into
a habit. Gurdy provided activity for a French nurse and then for an
English governess despatched by Olive Ilden. He was a silent, restless
creature. He disliked motorcars for his own unrevealed reason that
they resembled the hearses of his uncle’s funeral. He had a prejudice
against small Margaret because she looked like her dead mother, an
objectionable person smelling of orange water, and because Mark made
a fuss over the child. He learned to read newspapers, copying Mark’s
breakfast occupation, and in September, 1907, noted that Carlson and
Walling would tonight inaugurate their partnership by the presentation
of “Red Winter” at their new 45th Street Theatre. “Inaugurate” charmed
Gurdy. It conveyed an image of Mark and the bony Mr. Carlson doing
something with a monstrous auger. Mark had for ever stopped acting in
May, would henceforth “manage.” Curiosity pulled Gurdy from the window
seat of his playroom in Mark’s new house on 55th Street. He waited for
a moment when the governess, Miss Converse, was scolding young Margaret
and wouldn’t see him slide down the hall stairs. He scuttled west,
then south and navigated Broadway until he reached the mad corner of
45th Street where a gentleman took him by the collar of his blouse and
halted him.
“Where are you going?”
Gurdy recognized a quiet character who came to luncheons now and then.
He said, “H’lo, Mr. Frohman,” dutifully and looked about for the
theatre. The stooping man detained him gravely.
“I thought you weren’t old enough for shows.”