DWELLERS IN DREAMS
The last curtain had gone down on the "End of the Rainbow" and Tony
Holiday had made an undeniable hit, caught the popular fancy by her young
charm and vivid personality and fresh talents to such a degree that for
the moment at least even its idol of many seasons, Carol Clay, was
forgotten. The new arriving star filled the whole firmament. Broadway was
ready to worship at a new shrine.
But Broadway did not know that there were two Tony Holidays that night,
the happy Tony who had taken its fickle, composite heart by storm and the
other Tony half distracted by grief and trapped bewilderment. Tony had
willed to exile that second self before she stepped out behind the foot
lights. She knew if she did not she never could play Madge as Madge had
the right to be played. For her own sake, for Max Hempel's sake because
he believed in her, for Carol Clay's sake because Tony loved her, she
meant to forget everything but Madge for those few hours. Later she would
remember that Dick was dying in Mexico, that she had hurt Alan cruelly
that afternoon, that she had a sad and vexed problem to solve to which
there seemed no solution. These things must wait. And they had waited but
they came crowding back upon her the moment the play was over and she saw
Alan waiting for her in the little room off the wings.
He rose to meet her and oblivious of curious eyes about them drew
her into his arms and kissed her. And Tony utterly miserable in a
daze of conflicting emotions nestled in his embrace unresisting for a
second, not caring any more than Alan himself what any one saw or
thought upon seeing.
"You were wonderful, belovedest," he whispered. "I never saw them go
madder over anybody, not even Carol herself."
Tony glowed all over at his praise and begged that they might drive a
little in the park before they went home. She had to think. She couldn't
think in the Hostelry. It stifled her. Nothing loath Alan acquiesced,
hailed a cab and gave the necessary orders. For a moment they rode in
silence Tony relaxing for the first time in many hours in the comfort of
her lover's presence, his arm around her. Things were hard, terribly hard
but you could not feel utterly disconsolate when the man you loved best
in all the world was there right beside you looking at you with eyes that
told you how much you were beloved in return.
"Tony, dear, I am going to surprise you," he said suddenly breaking the
silence. "I have decided to go to Mexico."
"To go to Mexico! Alan! Why?"
Tony drew away from her companion to study his face, with amazement
on her own.
"To find Carson and look after him. Why else?"
"But your exhibition? You can't go away now, Alan, even if I would let
you go to Dick that way."
"Oh, yes I can. The arrangements are all made. Van Slyke can handle the
last stages of the thing far better than I can. I loathe hanging round
and hearing the fools rant about my stuff and wonder what the devil I
meant by this or that or if I didn't mean anything. I am infinitely
better off three thousand miles away."
"But even so--I don't want to hurt you or act as if I didn't appreciate
what you are offering to do--but you hate Dick. I don't see how you could
help him."
"I don't hate him any more, Tony. At least I don't think I do. At any
rate whether I do or don't won't make the slightest bit of difference. I
shall look after him as well as your uncle or your brothers would--better
perhaps because I know Mexico well and how to get things done down there.
I know how to get things done in most places."
"Oh, I know. I have often thought you must have magic at your command the
way people fly to do your bidding. It is startling but it is awfully
convenient."
"Money magic mostly," he retorted grimly.
"Partly, not mostly. You are a born potentate. You must have been a
sultan or a pashaw or something in some previous incarnation. I don't
care what you are if you will find Dick and see that he gets well. Alan,
don't you think--couldn't I--wouldn't it be better--if I went too?"
There was a sudden gleam in Alan's eyes. The hour was his. He could take
advantage of the situation, of the girl's anxiety for his cousin, her
love for himself while it was at high tide as it was at this over
stimulated hour of excitement. He could marry her. And once the rite was
spoken--not John Massey--not all Holiday Hill combined could take her
from him. She would be his and his alone to the end. Tony was ripe for
madness to-night, overwrought, ready to take any wild leap in the dark
with him. He could make her his. He felt the intoxicating truth quiver in
the touch of her hand, read it in her eager, dark eyes lifted to his for
his answer.
Alan Massey was unused to putting away temptation but this, perhaps the
biggest and blackest that had ever assailed him he put by.
"No, dear I'll go alone," he said. "You will just have to trust me, Tony.
I swear I'll do everything in the world that can be done for Carson. Let
us have just one dance though. I should like it to remember--in Mexico."
Tony hesitated. It was very late. The Hostelry would ill approve of her
going anywhere to dance at such an hour. It ill approved of Alan Massey
any way. Still--
"I am going to-morrow. It is our last chance," he pleaded. "Just one
dance, _carissima_. It may have to last--a long, long time."
And Tony yielded. After all they could not treat this night as if it were
like all the other nights in the calendar. They had the right to their
one more hour of happiness before Alan went away. They had the right to
this one last dance.
The one dance turned into many before they were through. It seemed to
both as if they dared not stop lest somehow love and happiness should
stop too with the end of the music. They danced on and on "divinely" as
Alan had once called it. Tony thought the rest of his prophecy was
fulfilled at last, that they also loved each other divinely, as no man or
woman had ever loved since time began.
But at last this too had to come to an end as perfect moments must in
this finite world and Alan and Tony went out of the brilliantly lighted
restaurant into white whirls of snow. For a storm had started while they
had been inside and was now well in progress. All too soon the cab
deposited them at the Hostelry. In the dimly lit hall Alan drew the girl
into his arms and kissed her passionately then suddenly almost flung her
from him, muttered a curt good-by and before Tony hardly realized he was
going, was gone, swallowed up in the night and storm. Alone Tony put her
hands over her hot cheeks. So this was love. It was terrible, but oh--it
was wonderful too.
Soberly after a moment she went to change the damning OUT opposite her
name in the hall bulletin just as the clock struck the shocking hour of
three. But lo there was no damning OUT visible, only a meek and proper IN
after her name. For all the bulletin proclaimed Antoinette Holiday might
have been for hours wrapt in innocent slumber instead of speeding away
the wee' sma' hours in a public restaurant in the arms of a lover at whom
Madame Grundy and her allies looked awry. Somebody had tampered with the
thing to save Tony a reprimand or worse. But who? Jean? No, certainly not
Jean. Jean's conscience was as inelastic as a yard stick. Whoever had
committed the charitable act of mendacity it couldn't have been Jean.
But when Tony opened her own door and switched on the light there was
Jean curled up asleep in the big arm chair. The sudden flare of light
roused the sleeper and she sat up blinking.
"Wherever have you been, Tony? I have been worried to death about you.
I've been home from the theater for hours. I couldn't think what had
happened to you."
"I am sorry you worried. You needn't have. I was with Alan, of course."
"Tony, people say dreadful things about Mr. Massey. Aren't you ever
afraid of him yourself?" Jean surveyed the younger girl with
troubled eyes.
Tony flung off her cloak impatiently.
"Of course I am not afraid. People don't know him when they say such
things about him. You needn't ever worry, Jean. I am safer with Alan than
with any one else in the world. I'd know that to-night if I never knew it
before. We were dancing. I knew it was late but I didn't care. I
wouldn't have missed those dances if they had told me I had to pack my
trunk and leave to-morrow." Thus spoke the rebel always ready to fly out
like a Jack-in-the box from under the lid in Tony Holiday.
"They won't," said Jean in a queer, compressed little voice.
"Jean! Was it you that fixed that bulletin?"
"Yes, it was. I know it wasn't a nice thing to do but I didn't want them
to scold you just now when you were so worried about Dick and
everything. I thought you would be in most any minute any way and I
waited up myself to tell you how I loved the play and how proud I was of
you. Then when you didn't come for so long I got really scared and then
I fell asleep and--"
Tony came over and stopped the older girl's words with a kiss.
"You are a sweet peach, Jean Lambert, and I am awfully grateful to you
for straining your conscience like that for my sake and awfully sorry I
worried you. I am afraid I always do worry good, sensible, proper people.
I'm made that way, mad north north west like Hamlet," she added
whimsically. "Maybe we Holidays are all mad that much, excepting Uncle
Phil of course. He's all that keeps the rest of us on the track of sanity
at all. But Alan is madder still. Jean, he is going to Mexico to take
care of Dick."
"Mr. Massey is going to Mexico to take care of Dick!" Jean' stared. "Why,
Tony--I thought--"
"Naturally. So did I. Who wouldn't think him the last person in the world
to do a thing like that? But he is going and it is his idea not mine. I
wanted to go too but he wouldn't let me," she added.
Jean gasped.
"Tony! You would have married him when your uncle--when everybody
doesn't want you to?"
To Jean Lambert's well ordered, carefully fenced in mind such wild mental
leaps as Tony Holiday's were almost too much to contemplate. But worse
was to come.
"Married him! Oh, I don't know. I didn't think about that. I would just
have gone with him. There wouldn't have been time to get a license. Of
course I couldn't though on account of the play."
Jean gasped again. If it hadn't been for the play this astounding young
person before her would have gone gallivanting off with one man to whom
she was not married to the bedside, thousands of miles away, of another
man to whom she was also not married. Such simplicity of mental processes
surpassed any complexity Jean Lambert could possibly conceive.
"Alan wouldn't let me," repeated the astounding Tony. "I suppose it is
better so. By to-morrow I will probably agree with him. When the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw too. But the wind isn't southerly
to-night. It wasn't when I was dancing nor afterward," she added with a
flaming color in her cheeks remembering that moment in the Hostelry hall
when wisdom had mattered very little to her in comparison with love. "Oh,
Jean, what if something dreadful should happen to him down there! I can't
let him go. I can't. But Dick mustn't die alone either. Oh, what shall I
do? What shall I do?"
And suddenly Tony threw herself face down on the bed sobbing great, heart
rending sobs, but whether she was crying for Dick or Alan or herself or
all three Jean was unable to decipher. Perhaps Tony did not know herself.
The next morning when Tony awoke Alan had already left for his long
journey, but a great box full of roses told her she had been his last
thought. One by one she lifted them out of the box--great, gorgeous,
blood red beauties, royal, Tony thought, like the royal lover who had
sent them. The only message with the flowers was a bit of verse, a poem
of Tagore's whom Alan loved and had taught Tony to love too.
You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of
my dreams.
I paint you and fashion you with my love longings.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my endless
dreams!
Your feet are rosy-red with the glow of my heart's
desire, Gleaner of my sunset songs!
Your lips are bitter-sweet with the taste of my wine
of pain.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my lonesome
dreams!
With the shadow of my passion have I darkened
your eyes, Haunter of the depth of my gaze!
I have caught you and wrapt you, my love, in the
net of my music.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my deathless
dreams!
As she read the exquisite lines Antoinette Holiday knew it was all
true. The poet might have written his poem for her and Alan. Her lips
were indeed bitter-sweet with the taste of his wine of pain, her eyes
were darkened by his shadows. He had caught her and wrapt her in the
net of his love, which was a kind of music in itself--a music one
danced to. She was his, dweller in his dreams as he was always to dwell
in hers. It was fate.