drove with Gurdy to the station after dinner. But she was oppressed.
She could imagine Mark’s bewilderment clearly. He found Rand a somewhat
comic person, a frail young poser towed after the robust beauty of
his wife, perhaps bullied. The car brought Olive back to the white
portico of the cottage and she found Margot distracting a middle aged
sugar broker. It was time for bed when the addled man’s car puffed
away. Margot yawned and mounted the brown stairs in a flutter of
marigold skirts. The living-room fell still. Olive settled at a table
and commenced a letter to Ilden. “I shall not start for Japan for
some time. Margot is behaving rather queerly. Having fancied that I
could follow the eccentric curves of her mind I am much annoyed to
find that I can not. This cottage will be closed next week. Heaven
knows what will become of the furniture unless Mark should use it in
a play. I have a curiosity to see the opening of his new theatre. He
is working frantically over the play for its opening. Gurdy Bernamer
tells me that a New York first night is like nothing else on earth for
bounderishness. He says that awful and obscene creatures come creeping
from nowhere and flap about in free seats and that all the cinema
queens appear covered with rubies. It--”
The telephone on the table clicked but did not ring. Olive glared at
the instrument. She abominated the telephone since it had brought
her news of her son’s death. She finished her letter and climbed the
stairs, aching for bed after a nervous day. Then she heard Margot
talking behind the closed door of her room. The girl hadn’t a maid.
Olive’s own maid was visible in her chamber at the end of the corridor.
Olive passed on. She came back on impulse and heard “All right,
Cossy. Carry on. ’By--ee.” Then the small clatter of Margot’s bedside
telephone set on the glass of a table. Olive opened the door and saw
the girl subsiding into the mass of her pillows.
“I’ve just blown Cosmo Rand up properly, Olive.”
“I wondered why you were talking.”
Margot yawned, “Gurdy asked me to write him. I’d rather talk. His dear
wife’s back from California and his voice sounded as though they’d been
throwing supper dishes at each other. He didn’t seem pleased.”
“My dear, I don’t see why Mr. Rand should be pleased to be lectured on
his art over the telephone at midnight!”
“It’s rather cheeky, isn’t it? But Gurdy made such a point of it. And
all I could say was that he mustn’t be too difficult at rehearsals.
But that’s all I could have said in a note. It seems to me that it’s
distinctly dad’s business. But Gurdy’s such an everlasting old woman
about dad! And I am rather responsible for bringing ‘Todgers’ over.
Dare say I ought to help out, if I can.”
Olive slung a dart carelessly, asking, “What’s Rand’s real name, dear?”
“Rand.”
“I meant the Cosmo. That’s not an American name at all.”
“Don’t know, I’m sure. I don’t like it, anyhow. But it might be his
own. He’s from some town in Iowa and they name children fearful things
like Eliander and Jerusha, out there.” She chuckled, slipping a tawny
shoulder in and out of her robe. Her face rippled, “I really think
Cosmo’s a rather ghastly name. Sounds like a patent soup. Wonder why
they named dad Mark? Gurdy’s real name’s George.” She yawned, “I
suppose all actors get rather opinionated.”
“As they’re mostly rank egotists,” said Olive and closed the door.
Perplexity remained in her strongly wrestling with the desire for
sleep. She lay composing a letter to Cosmo Rand--“As your position
toward Mr. Walling is delicate and you are under obligations to Miss
Walling may I suggest that you maintain a purely formal relation
toward--” It wouldn’t do. Words to a shadow. She knew nothing of the
man. He was a graceful figure at parties in London, considerably
hunted by smart women for Sunday night dinners before the war. If the
comedy failed and Mark dismissed him Rand might make an ill-tempered
use of such a letter. Olive shrugged off the idea lay wondering why a
pleasant voice and a head of curly hair seen across footlights should
convince Margot that here was a great actor. It was disappointing.
Olive had thought Margot steeled against crazes. The girl had a general
appreciation of the arts as seen about London. Olive faintly sighed.
But the pleasing man might embody some fancy or other, fulfil some
buried wish. We go groping and stumbling among fancies, the woman
thought, and see nothing very clearly. She consoled herself with the
platitude and went to sleep.
IX
Bubble
“Todgers Intrudes” now went smoothly. Mark came to one of the last
rehearsals, approved Russell’s method but, as they walked up Broadway,
told Gurdy that this was a “lousy” play. All plays were just then
nonsense beside “Captain Salvador.” Mark’s absorption seemed to
exclude even Margot of whom the idolator once gently complained. The
dark goddess had returned to town, been a week at the Fifty Fifth
Street house and was sitting with Olive at the rear of the 45th Street
Theatre. Her voice reached Mark clearly where he stood assembling the
picture for a scene, a leg swung over the rail of the orchestra pit.
“She don’t seem so much interested in ‘Salvador,’ Gurd. Why’s that?”
“Rather heavy for her, perhaps.”
Mark rubbed his nose and accepted wisdom. A girl of eighteen mightn’t
care for this tale of shipwrecked ruffians, frantic negroes, moonlit
death. And what innocent girl of eighteen could know or believe that
men got tired of women? Gurdy understood and was helpful, had found
a wailing negro song for the shipboard scene of the first act. Mark
beamed at Gurdy, then turned to the stage and patiently corrected
the six negro actors timid among the white folk of the big company,
pathetic in sapphire and sage green suits.
“You boys in a circle ’round the table, left. Keep looking at Mr.
Leslie.”
He picked spots for the grouping. His brown fingers pointed. He named
attitudes, dropping his lids as he built the picture with glances at
the water colour sketch in his hand. An intricate chatter began on the
stage. Gurdy slipped up the aisle and joined Olive under the balcony.
“How careful he is,” she whispered, “like a ballet master.”
Gurdy nodded, “No one’ll move without being told to. The whole thing’s
planned. He’s going to run the lights himself in Boston, next Monday.”
“You’ll go up there with him? He looks dreadfully thin.” His black
height made a centre against the footlights. His mastery of this
human paint was impressive, admirable. He visibly laboured, silent,
listening. She asked, “Would he work as hard over an ordinary,
commercial play?”
“No. Oh, he’d work hard but not as hard as this.”
Margot glanced across Olive, then at her watch. She said, “Let’s clear
out, Olive. Teatime.”
“I’d much rather stay here. Fascinating.”
“But you told Mrs. Marlett Smith you’d come.”
Olive sighed and gathered her furs. It was important that Margot should
go to this tea at the Marlett Smith house. Mrs. Marlett Smith was a
liberal, amusing woman who had met Mark by way of some playwright and
had called on Olive at the seaside cottage. They left the theatre and
Gurdy came to open the door of the blue car. To him Margot suddenly
spoke, “How will dad open this silly thing in Boston, Monday night and
get to Washington by Tuesday night to open ‘Todgers’?”
“We’ll be there,” he said and closed the door.
Olive looked back at his colourless dress, his shapely head and
vanishing grave face with a frank wistfulness. “I don’t see why you
should make such a point of annoying Gurdy. And why call this play
silly when it’s so plainly good?... I’ve carefully refrained from
asking you why you quarrelled with Gurdy. He behaves charmingly to you
and keeps the peace.”
“Paying him back for being nasty about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’”
“But he’s not been nasty. He’s very sensibly given his opinion that
it’s feeble. As it is.--The man’s taking us down Broadway. Loathsome
sewer!”
The motor slowly passed toward Forty Second Street and across that
jam. Olive saw lean and stolid Englishmen stalking in the harsh, dusty
November wind that blew women along in the whirling similitude of
rotted flowers. Margot got notice, here. There was a jerk of male heads
from the curb. Empty faces turned to the girl’s brilliance in rose
cloth. A tanned sailor flapped his white cap. Yet in the Marlett Smith
library on Park Avenue Margot was prettily discreet for half an hour
below Chinese panels, among gayer frocks where she lost colour, merged
in a fluctuation of dress. On the way home her restraint snapped into a
“Damn!”
“Very stiff,” said Olive, “One reads about the American informality.
Tea at Sandringham is giddy beside this. But Mrs. Marlett Smith’s
clever. Who were those twins in black velvet who so violently kissed
you?”
“The Vaneens. Ambrosine and Gretchen. Knew them at school. They come
out in December.--But what maddens me is this everlasting jabber
about France! Some of those girls know Gurdy. Their brothers were at
Saint Andrew’s with him. He seems to have made himself frightfully
conspicuous about Paris.--No, I’m bored with Gurdy. If dad tries to
make me marry him I’ll take poison and die to slow music. Such tosh! He
made a gesture of enlisting--”
“You’re being silly,” Olive said, coldly hurt, “and I’m sick of the
word, gesture. Pray, was the gesture of third rate artists and actors
who wouldn’t leave their work anything madly glorious? I can understand
a man conscious of great talent preferring to stick to his last. And I
can understand a complete refusal to mix in the--abominable business.
But I’ve no patience with dreary little wasters who shouted for blood
and then took acetanilid to cheat the doctors. As for Gurdy’s military
career he’s very quiet about it. I dislike this venom against Gurdy.”
Margot chuckled, “Perhaps I’m jealous,” and got down before the house.
She opened the door with her latchkey and they entered a flow of minor
music from the drawing room. Gurdy was playing. Mark leaned on the
curve of the piano and his brown hands were deeply reflected in the
black pool of its top.
“Listen to this, Olive. Nigger song Gurdy raked up for ‘Captain
Salvador.’ Sing it, sonny. Don’t run off, Margot. Listen.” He caught
the girl to him, held her cheek against his chin. A scent of mild
sandal and cigarettes ebbed from the black hair into his nostrils. He
was tired after the tense rehearsal and chilled from half an hour in
the cold of the Walling. This moving warmth and scent was luxury. Mark
shut his eyes. Gurdy chanted in plausible barytone.
“Life is like a mountain railway,
From the cradle to the grave.
Keep yoh hand upon the throttle
An’ yoh eyes--upon--the--rail....”
It would sound splendidly in the dim forecastle of the first scene. It
would float and die under the blue vault of the Walling. He had just
seen the lights turned on a recession of faint silver rims in the dull
cloud of that ceiling. He was still drugged by the sight. His theatre
was like a desirable body promised to his arms. Gurdy played again the
slow air in curious variations, flutters of notes. Mark opened his eyes
to watch the slide of the long fingers on the keys. Olive was smiling.
“Delightful. Very moral, too. Sound advice. How well you play, Gurdy!”
“Always did,” said Mark, “He could play like a streak when he was ten.
Come along up and have a fight with Mr. Carlson, daughter.”
Olive let Margot’s voice melt into the old man’s cackle above. Gurdy
said, “We went to the Walling after rehearsal, Lady Ilden. Honestly,
it’s a corker. The ceiling’s nearly finished. Theatres don’t last,
worse luck. But there’s nothing like it in the city. Mark’s worked like
a pup over it.--How was your tea?”
“Very decent. Varieties of women, there. Almost no men. A débutante
told me she admired Walt Whitman more than most English poets and was
rather positive that he was English. I can’t understand the American
tabu on Whitman.”
“Immoral.”
“But--good heavens!--I fascinated two elderly girls by telling them
I knew Swinburne. Swinburne was lewd. Poor Whitman was merely rather
frank.”
“But Algie was a foreigner,” Gurdy laughed, “so it was all right.
Margot have a good time?”
Olive asked, “What were you and Margot rowing about in the library last
night? I could hear her voice getting acid.”
Gurdy commenced a waltz and said, “We weren’t rowing. Mark asked me
whether Cosmo Rand was in the British army. He wasn’t and I said so.
She seemed to think I was sniffing at Rand and blew me up a little.
That was all. We made peace. I rather like Rand, you know, now that
he’s stopped making an ass of himself at rehearsals. Russell and I had
lunch with him today. He talks well. He knows a lot about painting,
for instance. These actors who’ve been all over the landscape and
don’t think they’re better than Richard Mansfield--pretty interesting.
There’s not much to Rand but he isn’t a--a walking egotism.”
Olive laughed, “Come back to Margot. She’s pointedly offensive to you
and rather assertive about it. I hope you’ll go on being patient and
try to remember how young she is. You’re very mature for twenty-one.
You never bray. I brayed very wildly at Margot’s age. I horribly recall
telling Henry Arthur Jones how to improve his plays and one of my
saddest memories is of telling a nice Monsieur Thibault what a poor
novel Thaïs was. He quite agreed with me. I didn’t know he was Anatole
France until he left the room. I’ve all the patience going with youth.
You’re almost too mature.”
“Don’t know about being mature,” said Gurdy, “I’m not, probably. But
every other book you read is all about youth--golden youth--youth
always finds a way--ferment. Get pretty tired of it. Makes me want to
be forty-nine. And some of the poets make me sick. Hammering their
chests and saying, Yow! I’m young!... Not their fault. I’m not proud of
being six foot one. Runs in the family.”
“That’s a very cool bit of conversation, old man. You’ve taken me away
from Margot twice, very tactfully, so I’ll drop it. Play some Debussy.
His music reminds me of a very handsome man with too much scent on his
coat. Can’t approve of it. Rather like it.”
He evaded discussions of Margot until Sunday night when he went with
Mark to Boston for the opening of “Captain Salvador” there. On Monday
night he sat, a spy, in the middle of the large audience. A critic
had come from New York to see this play before it should reach the
metropolitan shoals. Gurdy saw the slender, sharp face intent. The ten
scenes of the Cuban romance passed without a hitch before the placid
Bostonians. Mark was directing the lights that raised peaks of gloom
on the walls, sent shimmerings along the moonlit beach where the hero
squatted in a purple shadow. About him Gurdy heard appropriate murmurs.
A fat woman whimpered her objection to the half naked celebrants of
the Voodoo scene. An old man complained that this was unlike life. Two
smart matrons chatted happily about a Harvard cabal against some friend
while “Captain Salvador” effected his wooing. A thin boy in spectacles
wailed an argument that true art wasn’t possible in a capitalistic
nation. A girl giggled every time the sailors of the story swore and
almost whinnied when the word, “strumpet” rattled over the lights. But
this herd redeemed itself in heavy applause. The thin boy wailed a
blanket assent to the merits of the plot and the setting, “After all,
Walling’s Irish and he studied under Reinhardt in Berlin. The Kelts
have some feeling for values.” Still the fat woman thought, loudly,
that the play didn’t prove anything and Gurdy decided that one of his
future satires must be named, The Kingdom of Swine. He found Mark in
high delight behind the scenes, snapping directions to his manager,
his leading man and the electrician in the New Jersey singsong. “Have
the tomtom some louder for the Voodoo, Ike. Bill, you send all the
notices special delivery to the Willard in Washington. Mr. O’Mara’s in
Hayti if the _Transcript_ wants an interview. Beach scene blue enough,
Gurdy? All right, Ed, I told you it was. Now, Leslie, take your fall
at the end quieter, a little. You’re all right, the rest of it. Come
along, Gurdy. Taxi’s waiting.” In the taxi, he cried, “Damn this lousy
‘Todgers’ thing, son! I want to stay here. People liked it, huh?”
“They did.--Oh, you’re Irish and you learned all your business from
Reinhardt.”
“Sure! Blame, it on Europe!--My God, didn’t the tomtom business go like
a breeze?--Oh, this ‘Todgers’ thing’ll be too bad. Tell you, I’ll play
it in Washington and Philadelphia. Baltimore, if it don’t just roll on
its belly and die. Sorry if Margot gets sore.--She and Olive went to
Washington s’afternoon, didn’t they, huh?--Was the ship scene light
enough, sonny?”
He sat in their stateroom on the train, his eyes still black with
excitement and drank watered brandy. He dreamed of “Captain Salvador’s”
first night at the Walling and tremors of applause mounting to the blue
vault of that perfected ceiling. He was so tired that he struggled,
undressing.
“Mark, you’re thin as a bean! Nothing but some muscles and skin.”
Mark flexed his arms, beamed up at the tall boy’s anxiety and rolled
into his berth. The mussed red hair disappeared under a pillow. Gurdy
smoked and stared humbly.... This was surely half of an artist,
laborious, patient, contriving beauty. The man had this strange
perception of the lovely thing. He should do better and better. If his
trade was that of the booth, the sale of charming sensualities, he
raised it by his passion. He begot fondness. He created. Gurdy tucked
the blankets over the blue silk pyjamas and planned a long talk on the
purpose of the theatre for the morning, then wondered what that purpose
was and put the lecture off. They fled all morning down the land and
came to Washington in time for late lunch with Russell at the Shoreham
where Mark halted to look at a pretty, dark woman in the suave, grey
lounge smelling of flowers, fell behind Gurdy and Russell, found
himself suddenly lifting his hat to Cora Boyle. She wore a cloak banded
with black fur and a gold hat too young for her paint. Mark smiled,
rather sorry for the blown coarseness of her chin, asked how she liked
California and heard her flat voice crackle.
“A nightmare! All these girls who were absolutely no one last week in
ten thousand dollar cars! No, I’m glad they brought me east. I’m taking
three days off to see Cosmo start this. Tells me it plays here the rest
of the week, then Philadelphia.--When are you bringing it into New
York?”
He shifted a little and said, “Can’t say, Cora. Hard to get a house in
New York, right now. This thing I’ve got at the Forty Fifth Street is
doin’ big business. Todgers’ll be on the road two weeks, anyhow, before
I decide what’ll become of it--”
“What are you opening the Walling with?”
“‘Captain Salvador.’ Opened in Boston last night. Best play I’ve ever
touched! Say, remind me to send you seats when it opens the Walling.”
“That’s dear of you.--But couldn’t you get one of the small houses
for Cosmo? The Princess or the Punch and Judy? Intimate comedy. Cosmo
really does better in a small house. And--” she smiled--“you could take
a bigger one after a month or so.”
He had an awed second of wonder. She’d been almost thirty years on the
stage and she thought “Todgers Intrudes” a good play! He began to say,
“But, do you think this will--” Then two men charged up to shake hands
with the actress. Mark scuttled down the stairs toward the grill. If
she was quarrelling with Rand her manner didn’t show it. “Cosmo really
does better in a small house.” He joined Russell and Gurdy at their
table, puzzled and said, “Say, if she’s fighting with Rand it’s funny
she’d come down to see him open this flapdoodle.”
“Habit,” Russell shrugged, “They’ve been married twelve years. But are
they fighting? I had breakfast with them this morning and she almost
crucified herself because his tea wasn’t right.”
Mark wondered why Margot thought that Rand and the woman quarrelled.
But he shed the wonder. He liked Washington especially as the pale city
showed itself now in a vapour where the abiding leaves seemed glazed in
their red and yellow along the streets. Olive knew people here. There
was a tea with a British attaché. Margot’s rose cloth suit gleamed
about the dancing floor of the restaurant. Gurdy had friends who were
produced, fell subject to Margot and came between the acts that night
to lean over the girl’s chair in the box of the big theatre. “Todgers
Intrudes” went its placid course. Rand gave, Mark fancied, an excellent
imitation of an English conservative. The packed house laughed at the
right points. Margot’s face rippled so eagerly that Mark wanted to kiss
it and covertly held her hand below the rail. Why, this was the pretty,
gentle sort of nonsense eighteen years would relish! A pity it had no
staying wit. A pity this fragile, polished man she so admired wasn’t a
real comedian. Mark looked at Gurdy’s stolid boredom and the fine chest
hidden by the dinner jacket beyond Olive’s bare shoulders. It might be
as well to let Gurdy tell Margot the play wouldn’t do for New York.
Mark shrank from that. Gurdy could put the thing much better in his
cool, bred fashion.--Here and there men were leaving the theatre with
an air of final retirement. In the opposite box there was a waving of
feathers. How well Cora Boyle could use a fan!--A youngster with curly
orange hair slipped into his box as the second curtain fell. Gurdy
introduced young Theodore Jannan to Olive and Margot, then to Mark. Mr.
Jannan had come over from Philadelphia to do something in Washington.
This play--the Jannan heir bit off a “rotten”--was advertised as coming
to Philadelphia next week.
“Opens there Monday,” said Mark.
“My mother’s giving a baby dance for my sister. Couldn’t you bring Miss
Walling, Gurdy? Monday night.”
How smoothly Margot said she’d like to come to a dance at Mrs. Apsley
Jannan’s house in Philadelphia! The nonsense of social position! An
illusion. A little training, a little charm, good clothes.--A Healy,
one of Margot’s cousins, had risen to be a foreman in one of the Jannan
steel mills.--Gurdy had played football with this pleasant lad at Saint
Andrew’s school. Who on earth would ever know or care that Margot and
Gurdy were born on a farm? The last curtain fell. Margot wanted to
dance. Russell came to join the party. They went to a restaurant and
found a table at the edge of the oval floor. Margot’s yellow frock
was swept off into the florid seething on Gurdy’s arm. Russell poured
brandy neatly into the coffee pot and shrugged to Mark.
“Bad sign. Fifteen or twenty men left in the second act. We’ll
have a vile time in Philadelphia, Lady Ilden. It’s a queer town on
plays.--There come the Rands.”
A headwaiter lifted a “Reserved” sign from a table across the floor.
Cora Boyle and her husband appeared in the light threaded by cigarette
smoke. The actress draped a green and black skirt carelessly, refused
to dance with a British officer in a trim pantomime, bowed slowly
to Mark who was taken with fright. She’d want to talk about this
drivelling play and before her slight, quiet husband. He slipped a bill
under the edge of Russell’s plate.
“Bring Olive back to the hotel will you Russell? I’m all in. ’Night,
Olive.”
His retreat through the smoky tables was comic. Russell fingered his
chin. Olive ended by laughing, “He’s ridiculously timid about her.”
The director patted his bald forehead and drank some coffee. He said,
“It happens that he’s got some reason. Miss Boyle’s bad tempered and an
inveterate liar. She’s fond of her husband and she seems to think this
comedy will have a New York run. Mr. Walling means to let it die on the
road, naturally. She won’t like that. She’ll talk. Her voice will be
loud all up and down Broadway.”
“But--surely he’s callous to that sort of thing?”
“Do you see anything callous about him? I don’t.” The director nodded
to the floating of Margot’s skirt. “This is the first time I’ve ever
directed a play put on to please a débutante, Lady Ilden.--No, Mr.
Walling seems mighty sensitive to gossip.--And Cora Boyle’s in a strong
position. She’s a woman--obviously--and she can make a good yarn.
Spite, and so on. She’s quite capable of giving out interviews on the
subject. She can’t hurt Mr. Walling but she might cause any quantity
of gossip,--which he couldn’t very well answer. She can play the woman
wronged, you see?”
“What a nation of woman worshippers you are!”
“Were,” said Russell, “We’re getting over it.”
“I don’t see any signs of it.”