vastly genial. He maundered, “A fool Cora was to let go of you, bhoy.
They’re tellin’ me you’ve made money in the stockmarket, too.”
“A little,” Mark admitted.
“I’ve had no luck that way. Well, a fool Cora was.--And how’s it feel
bein’ a manager, lad?”
“Fine.”
The Irishman looked at Mark sidelong over his glass, then up at the
gold stars of the ceiling.
“Ho!--Yes, it’s a fine feelin’.--Well, wait until you’ve put on a
couple of frosts, bhoy! And have to go hat in your hand huntin’ a
backer. You lend money, easy.--You’ll see all the barflies that’ve had
their ten and their twenty off you time and again--You’ll see ’em run
when they see you comin’. Well, here tonight and hell tomorrow.--So
Cora’s quit Billy Loeffler, has she? The dhear man! May his children
all be acrobats! ’Twas Gus Daly taught the scut every trick he knows.
The Napoleon of Broadway! I mind Loeffler runnin’ err’nds for Daly in
eighty five.--Well, you wanted to be a manager and here you are and
here’s luck.--It’s a fine game--the finest there is--and, mind you,
I’ve been a practicin’ bhurglar and a plumber. Drink up.”
They drank and returned to the green theatre, resonant with the prelude
of the next act. Mark was struggling in the half lit thresh of men
strolling toward their seats when Cosmo Rand halted him.
“You’d not mind coming to supper in our rooms at the Knickbocker?”
Mark accepted. The scene of the Maxim revel was lost to him while he
wondered what Cora wanted. He wouldn’t engage her. Carlson’s prejudice
was probably valid. The old man swore that she was worthless outside
light comedy. Yet she had good notices in all her parts. She was
famous for clothes. She signed recommendations for silks and unguents.
She had made a dressmaker popular among actresses. She had played in a
failure in London whence came legends of a passionate Duke. The Duke’s
passion might be invented, like other legends. He mused. The flowing
waltz music made him melancholy. What sort of woman was Cora, nowadays?
Every one changed. He, himself, had changed. He was getting callous to
ready amities, explosions of mean jealousy. He knew nothing of Cora,
really. She might be a different person, better tempered, less frank.
Women were incomprehensible, anyhow. He would never understand them,
doubted that anyone did and sighed. He walked to Cora’s hotel with a
feeling of great dignity. She had mauled him badly, abused him, lied to
him and now she was seeking peace. Then, rising in the lift, he knew
that this dignity had a hollow heart; he was afraid of Cora Boyle.
“This is awfully good of you,” she said, shaking hands. Then she
rested one arm on the shelf filled with flowers and smiled slowly,
theatrically, kicking her rosy train into the right swath about her
feet. Mark felt the display as a boast of her body. She resumed,
“There’s really no sense in our looking at each other over a fence, is
there?”
His face, seen in a mirror among the flowers, cheered Mark to a grin.
He looked impassive and bland. He drawled, “No sense at all,” and
stepped back. But she confused him. He had to speak. He said, “That’s a
stunning frock.”
“You always did notice clothes, didn’t you? Cosmo, do give Mr. Walling
a drink.”
Her voice had rounded and came crisply with an English hint. But it was
not music. It jangled badly against Rand’s level, “What’ll you have,
sir?” from the table where there were bottles and plates of sandwiches.
Mark considered this boy as they talked of “The Merry Widow.” He saw
man’s beauty inexpertly enough. Young Rand was handsome in the fragile,
groomed manner of an English illustration. His chin was pointed. His
eyes seemed brown. His curls lay in even bands. He had neither length
nor strength. But he talked sensibly, rather shrewdly.
“There’ll be a deal of money lost bringing over Viennese pieces, of
course. This thing’s one in a thousand. Quite charming.”
Mark asked, “You’ve not been over here long?”
“I?” Rand laughed, “Lord, yes. I’m a Canadian. Born in Iowa, as a
matter of fact. I’ve been a good deal in England, of course.--Oh, I was
at your new piece the other night. Red Winter, I mean. How very nicely
you’ve mounted it. I really felt beastly cold in that second act. The
snow’s so good.”
Mark bowed, selecting a sandwich. The critics had praised the snow
scene. Rand might truly admire it. If the snow hadn’t satisfied Mark it
had pleased every one else. He lost himself in thoughts of snow. Cora
trailed her rose gown to the table and poured water into a glass of
pale wine. A broad bracelet on her wrist clicked against the glass. She
said, “You and Carlson own all the rights to Red Winter, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to send it to London?”
He laughed and put down his glass. “London? What for? It’d last just
about one week!”
Cora smiled over a shoulder, retiring to the shelf of flowers.
“It would do better than that, Mark. I’ve played in London.”
“I’ve never played there but I’ve been there enough to know better.
California Gold Rush! They don’t know there was such a thing!”
“Oh, I say,” said Rand.
Cora sipped some watered wine. The light shot through the glass and
made a pear of glow on her throat. She was motionless, drinking. She
became a shape set separate from the world in a momentary gleam. He
knew that she was acting. Then she said sharply, “I’ll buy the English
rights if you and Carlson’ll make me a decent figure.”
“Oh, look here! You’d lose. I was talking to Ian Gail about it, last
night. It wouldn’t make a cent in England. They wouldn’t know what it’s
all about. And--it’s such a rotten play! There’s nothing in it!”
She asked, looking at him, “Can I have it?” and her flat voice took
fire in the question, achieved music. She must want the poor play
badly. Rand’s pink nails were lined along his moustache, hiding its
silk. The room fell silent.
“Oh, sure,” Mark said, “You can have it, Cora. I’ll see Mr. Carlson in
the morning.... But damned if I can make out what there is in the play.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you like, I know. But I’m sick of comedy
and that’s all I’m ever offered, here. And I’m sick of New York. Well,
make me an offer of the English rights--Only--I’m no bank, Mark.” She
swaggered to the piano and tamely played a few bars of the Merry Widow
waltz. She hadn’t Olive Ilden’s grace, so seated, and the rose gown
seemed sallow against the black of the piano. She had finished her
scene. Mark saw the familiar stir of her throat as she hid a yawn. He
promised to hurry the business of the English rights to the melodrama
and took his leave.
What had he feared? He tried to think, in the corridor. Recapture,
perhaps, by this woman who wasn’t, after all, half as wicked as others.
Her new elegance hadn’t moved him. The stage did refine people! Cora
had the full air of celebrity. She was now controlled, vainer. She
might still be a shrew. He saddened, ringing for the lift, and thought
of Cosmo Rand’s future if “Red Winter” failed in London. The elevator
deposited a page with a silver bucket and this went clinking to Cora’s
door. Rand and she would drink champagne. Mark sank pondering to the
lounge and stopped to buy a cigar, there. It was almost one o’clock.
Many of the lights had been turned out. The threaded marble lost sheen
in the smoky gloom. Parties ebbed from the supper room and a wedge
of dressed men waved to Mark. A candy merchant in the lead bawled
to him and Mark went to be introduced to an English actress on the
millionaire’s arm. She swayed, gracious and tipsy, involved in a cloak
of jet velvet, her voice murmurous as brushed harp strings emerging
from the pallor of her face above the browning gardenias on the cloak.
She asked, “Like this wrap? Makes me feel like a very big black
cigar--I should have a very broad red and gold band.” The men pressed
about her fame sniggered, respecting this lovely myth. She was assigned
in legend to the desire of princes. The candy merchant grinned,
cuddling her hand on his waistcoat. She tapped the brass edge of the
turning door with a gardenia stem and smiled at Mark’s silk hat, then
at the millionaire. “Am I talking too loud, cherished one?”
“Shout your head off,” the candy merchant said, “It’s a free country.”
“Oh, only the bond are free,” she proclaimed. She told Mark, “Bond
Street’s getting frightfully shabby. Max Beerbohm says--I do look
rather like a very big black cigar, don’t I?--Do stop pulling my arm,
you dear, fat thing!”
“The car’s here, honey.”
“How dear of the car! We’re going to sup somewhere, aren’t we? Oh, no,
to bed.--Like a very big, black cigar--”
She was drawn through the brazen doors away from Mark. The men pushed
after her avidly. She went tottering to the great motor, was engulfed.
Mark blinked in the waning smell of gardenias, waited for the motor to
be gone and walked into the street. He saw rain falling. There was no
taxicab in sight along the street. From the west an orange palpitation
flooded this darker way. Steam from a clamorous drill blew north about
the white tower of the Times building. Wet cabs jerked north and south
along the gleam of rails. The higher lights were gone. The rain dropped
from an upper purple and rapped the crown of his hat as Mark strolled
to the corner. Some one began to talk to him before he reached
Broadway. Mark glanced at this beggar carelessly and paused to dig in a
pocket for change. The shivering voice continued.
“... ain’t like I’d come bothering you before. I ain’t that kind. But
you’ve got comp’nies on the road and honest, Walling, I’m as good as
ever I was. You’ve mebbe heard that I’m taking dope. Not so. Some
of that bunch at Bill Loeffler’s office have been puttin’ that out.
Honest--”
Three white capped young sailors blundered past, all laughing, and
jarred the shadowy body away from Mark. The man came shuffling back and
clung to Mark’s sleeve, his face lavender in the rainy light above a
shapeless overcoat. He whispered on, “Honest, some of the things that
bunch at Loeffler’s place say about you and Carlson! But I ain’t takin’
nothing, Walling. Had a run of bad luck. I’m on the rocks. But you’ve
seen me run a show. You know I can handle a comp’ny--”
“The light’s so bad,” said Mark, “and your collar--I’m not just sure
who--”
The man gave a whimpering laugh. “Oh, I thought you was actin’ kind
of chilly to an old pal. I’m Jim Rothenstein. You know? I was stage
manager for Carlson back when you was playin’ the kid in Nicoline. You
know. I gave you your job. Cora Boyle she brought you in to me and
asked if there wasn’t a little part--Honest, I ain’t takin’ dope. That
bunch--”
Mark gulped, “Of course you’re not.” Some harsh drug escaped from the
man’s rags. This was nightmare. Mark found a bill and held it out,
backing from the shadow. “Come round to my office some day and I’ll see
what--”
A hansom rolled to the curb and the driver raised his whip. Mark ran to
shelter, crying his address. The grey horse moved toward Broadway. Mark
shoved up the trap and shouted to the driver, “No! Go up Fifth Avenue!”
IV
Penalties
Cora Boyle played “Red Winter” in London for two years. She began her
run in May of 1908 with a popular English male star as her hero. He
presently retired from the company and Cosmo Rand replaced him. Olive
Ilden wrote an opinion to Mark from her new house in Chelsea: “It
seems to me that your one time wife is a competent second rate actress.
She--or someone near her--must have intelligence. She has perfectly
applied our musical comedy manner to melodrama. She is languid and
rude to the audience and is enormously, successful, naturally. Ambrose
Russell is painting her. If you knew London you would understand that
to have Ambrose Russell paint one implies entire success. He alternates
Gaiety girls and Duchesses and has acquired a trick of wonderful
vulgarity. I met Miss Boyle at his studio on Sunday. We talked about
you and she rather gushed. Her infantile husband stood by and said
Rawther at intervals like an automatic figure on a clock. A pretty
thing.... Of course I prefer London to Winchester. Ecclesiastical
society is only amusing in Trollope. My husband got our house from a
retired Admiral and it has a garden. I have fallen in love with him--my
husband, not the Admiral. He has written a book of Naval tales on the
sly and to my horror they are quite good. Having scorned him as a mere
gentleman all these years it upsets me to have to consider him as an
artist. I hear from Ian Gail that your plays all make quantities of
money because they are utter rubbish in lovely settings and that your
house is an upholsterer’s paradise. Very bad for the children who are
probably spoiled beyond hope or help.”
Mark wrote four pages of denial and received: “Nonsense! Of course
you do not have courtesans to lunch but leading ladies come and swoon
on your drawing room floor and the children are pointed out in your
Central Park as Mark Walling’s brats. Your parasites fawn on them.
Their world is made up of expensive motors, sweets and an adoring idiot
as God. The little boy reads theatrical reviews over his porridge and
the little girl probably does not know that she is a mammal and liable
to death, spanking or lessons. They live in a treacle well.... Your one
time wife has taken a house near me and her pictures, eating breakfast
in bed with a Pom on the pillow, adorn the Sketch. I danced with her
husband last night.”
Cora Boyle’s photographs in the London Weeklies made old Carlson sneer.
He lounged in Mark’s library and derided: “A fine figger and a pair
of black eyes. Actress? Sure. She makes pictures of herself. And what
the hell else do folks want, huh? Just that. They want pictures. You
say they want fine scenery and new ideas about lights and all? Bosh,
son! They want to see a good lookin’ gal in good clothes--and not much
clothes--with all the lights in the house jammed on her. Act? Make ’em
cry a little and they think it’s actin’. Margot’ll be the boss actress
of the United States when she’s twenty--Come here, Maggie, and tell me
how old you are.”
“Seven and a half,” said Margot, “and I don’t want to be an actress.”
“Huh. Why not?”
“Aunt Sadie says actresses aren’t nice,” Margot informed him.
Carlson wrinkled his yellow face and chuckled out, “Ask Mark what he
thinks of ’em, sister.”
She turned her eyes up to Mark gravely and smiled. She was unlike her
father, most like her mother. Mark bent and lifted her in the air,
kissed her bare knees and put her hair aside from the little ears,
faintly red, delightfully chilled for his mouth from a walk in the
Park. She said, on his shoulder, “Oo, that’s a new stickpin, papa!”
“Diamonds get ’em all,” Carlson nodded.
“It’s a sapphire,” said Mark.
“Nice,” Margot approved and Mark felt glorified. Children were
certainly a relief after the arid nonchalance of women who took money,
jewels or good rôles and asked for more donations over the house
telephone. Margot played with the sapphire square a moment and then
scrambled down from Mark’s shoulder to his knee where she sat admiring
him while he wrote checks. He smiled at her now and then, let her blot
signatures and kissed her hands when she did so.
“You’d spoil a trick elephant,” Carlson muttered, “Ain’t Gurdy old
enough to go to school?”
“He started in at Doctor Cary’s last week. They’ve got him learning
Latin and French, right off.”
“What’s Doctor Cary’s?”
“It’s a school in Sixtieth Street.”
“Hump,” said Carlson, “Private School? Well, you’re right. Public
schools teach hogwash. They got to. They teach hogs. But why didn’t you
send him to one these schools out of town while you were at it? Get him
out of New York.”
“My G--glory,” Mark cried, “He’s only nine!”
Margot corrected, “Ten, papa. He was ten in May.” Then she told
Carlson, “Papa’d just die if Gurdy went away to school. He told Miss
Converse.” She slid from his knee and curtsied to Carlson with, “I must
take my French lesson, now. So, good afternoon.” She was gone out of
the room before Mark could kiss her again. She was always within reach
of kisses and her warmth, curled on his lap was something consolatory
when he did send Gurdy away to Saint Andrew’s School in September 1910.
Villay, his broker, and his lawyer advised the step. Olive Ilden wrote
to him: “I am glad you have done the right thing. God knows I am no
cryer up of the Public School System. But a Public School (I forget
what you call private kennels for rich cubs in the States) is the only
thing for the boy, in your situation. Ian Gail tells me that Gurdy
is rather clever. I can imagine nothing worse than to be the son by
adoption of a theatrical manager and a day scholar at a small New York
school. But I know how miserable you are. Every one has sentimental
accretions. I dislike seeing old women run down by motors, myself. No,
I know how badly you feel, just now. But these be the fair rewards of
them that love, you know? My own son is, of course, as the archangels.
I hear through his Housemaster at Harrow that he smokes cigarettes and
bets on all the races.”
Mark tried to take Gurdy’s absence with a fine philosophy. His broker
and his lawyer assured him that Saint Andrew’s was the best school in
the country. But the red, Georgian buildings spread on the New England
meadow and the impersonal stateliness of the lean Headmaster seemed a
cold nest for Gurdy. He missed the boy with a dry and aching pain that
wasn’t curable by work on five new plays, Margot’s plump warmth on
his knee or contrived, brief intoxication. All his usual enchantments
failed. He wore out the phonograph plates of the Danse Macabre and
the Peer Gynt “Sunrise.” He worried wretchedly and the disasters of
October and November hardly balanced his interior trouble. Two, the
more expensive two of the five Carlson and Walling productions failed.
Carlson cheerfully indicated the shrinkage of applicants for jobs,
hopeful playwrights and performers in the office above the 45th Street
Theatre. Mark regretted twenty thousand dollars spent for shares in the
Terriss Pictograph Company. Yet young Terriss was a keen fellow and
Carlson thought something might come of motion pictures after a while.
His friends sighed about Mark that the “show business was a gamble” and
on visits to the farm Mark tried to be gay. A Military Academy had been
built in Fayettesville on a stony field owned by Eddie Bernamer, the
only heritage from Bernamer’s Norwegian father. Gurdy’s brothers were
transferred to this polished school and Mark was soothed, in thinking
that he’d made his own people grandees. He wished that he could ape the
composure of the Bernamers and said so on a visit near Christmas time.
“But, great Cæsar,” Bernamer blinked, kicking balled snow from a
boot-heel, “this Saint Andrew’s is a good school ain’t it, even if it
is up by Boston? The buildin’s are fire proof, ain’t they? Gurdy can’t
git out at night and raise Ned? Then what’s got into you?”
“Oh, but--my God, Eddie!... I miss him.”
“You’re a fool,” said his brother-in-law, staring at Mark, “You’re
doin’ the right thing by the boy. You always do the right thing--like
you done it by us. Sadie and me’ve got seven kids and I love ’em
all.... They got to grow up. Stop bein’ a fool.... You don’t look well.
Thin’s a rail. Business bad?”
“We lost about forty-five thousand in two months.”
“That countin’ in the thousand you gave Sadie for her birthday?”
“No--Lord, no!”
Bernamer looked about the increased, wide farm and the tin roofed
garage where Mark’s blue motor stood pompous beside the cheap family
machine. He drawled, “Well, you’ve sunk about twenty-five thousand
right here, bud. You let up on us. Save your money and set up that
theatre of your own you want so. And I’m makin’ some money on the side.”
“How?”
The farmer grinned.
“That no good Healy boy--Margot’s mamma’s cousin, come soft soapin’
round for a loan last summer. He and another feller have a kind of
music hall place in Trenton. A couple of girls that sing and one of
those movin’ picsher machines. They wanted five hundred to put in more
chairs. I fixed it I’d get a tenth the profit and they’ve been sendin’
me twenty-five and thirty dollars a week ever since--and prob’ly
cheatin’ the eye teeth out of me. Dunno what folks go to the place
for--but they do.”
“Funny,” said Mark.
A bugle blew in the grey bulk of the Military Academy. Boys came
threading out across the flat snow between ice girt tree trunks. A
triple rank formed below the quivering height of the flagpole where
the wind afflicted the banner. The minute shimmer of brass on the blue
uniforms thrilled Mark. The flag rippled down in folds of a momentary
beauty. He sighed and turned back to the pink papered living room where
Gurdy’s small, fat legged sisters were clotted around Margot’s rosy
velvet on a leather lounge. Old Walling smoked a sickening cheroot
and smiled at all this prettiness. Margot’s black hair was curled
expansively by the damp air. She sat regally, telling her country
cousins of Mastin’s shop where Mark bought her clothes. She kissed
every one good-bye when Mark’s driver steered the car to the door and
told Eddie Bernamer how well his furred moleskin jacket suited him. In
the limousine she stretched her bright pumps on the footwarmer beside
Mark’s feet and said, “Oh, you’ve some colour, now, papa!”
“Have I? Cold air. D’you know you say na-ow and ca-ow, daughter, just
like you lived on the farm the year ’round?”
Margot gave her queer, chiming chuckle which was like muffled Chinese
bells. “Do I?”
“Pure New Jersey, honey. I used to. Mrs. Le Moyne used to guy me about
it when I was a kid.”
“Miss Converse says ‘guy’ is slang,” Margot murmured.
“So it is, sister. We ought to go to England some summer pretty soon
and let Miss Converse visit her folks.”
“I’d love to.... I’ve never been abroad,” she said, gravely stating it
as though Mark mightn’t know, “And every one goes abroad, don’t they?”
“And what would you do abroad?”
She considered one pump and fretted the silver buckle with the other
heel. “I’d see people, papa.”
“What people, sis?”
“Oh,” she said, “every one!”
It set him thinking that she lived pent in his house with her stiff,
alien governess. She was infinitely safe, so, but she might be bored;
he recalled hot and stagnant evenings on the farm when his mind had
floated free of the porch steps and his father’s drawl into a paradise
of black haired nymphs and illustrious warriors dressed from the
engravings of the Centennial Shakespeare. Perhaps she should go to
school? He consulted the governess, was surprised by her agreement,
began to ask questions about schools for small girls.
“Miss Thorne’s,” said his broker, Villay, “She’ll really be taught
something there.... Miss Thorne was my wife’s governess. I’ll see if I
can manage....”
“Manage what?”
The broker clicked his cigarette case open, shut it and laughed, “You
know what I mean, Walling.”
“No, I don’t.”
“It was one thing getting Gurdy into Saint Andrew’s. The Headmaster’s a
broad minded man.... My dear boy, you’re Walling--Walling, of Carlson
and Walling and you used to be a matinée idol.... I don’t like hurting
your feelings.”
“You mean you’ll have to go down on your knees to this Miss Thorne to
get her to take Margot?”