THE SONG IN THE NIGHT
Tony Holiday sat in the dressing room waiting her cue to go on the stage.
It was only a rehearsal however. Miss Clay was back now and Tony was once
more the humble understudy though with a heart full of happy knowledge of
what it is like to be a real actress with a doting public at her feet.
While she waited she picked up a newspaper and carelessly scanned its
pages. Suddenly to the amazement and consternation of the other girl who
was dressing in the same room she uttered a sharp little cry and for the
first time in her healthy young life slid to the floor in a merciful
faint. Her frightened companion called for help instantly and it was only
a moment before Tony's brown eyes opened and she pulled herself up from
the couch where they had laid her. But she would not speak or tell them
what had happened and it was only when they had gotten her off in a cab
with a motherly, big hearted woman who played shrew's and villainess'
parts always on the stage but was the one person of the whole cast to
whom every one turned in time of trouble that the rest searched the paper
for the clew to the thing which had made Tony look like death itself. It
was not far to seek. Tony looked like death because Alan Massey was dead.
They all knew Alan Massey and knew that he and Tony Holiday were intimate
friends, perhaps even betrothed. More than one of them had seen and
remembered how he had kissed her before them all on the night of Tony's
first Broadway triumph and some of them had wondered why he had not been
seen since with her. So he had been in Mexico and now he was dead, his
heart pierced by a Mexican dagger. And Tony--Tony of the gay tongue and
the quick laughter--had the dagger gone into her heart too? It looked so.
The "End of the Rainbow" cast felt very sad and sober that day. They
loved Tony and just now she was not an actress to them but a girl who had
loved a man, a man who was dead.
Jean Lambert telegraphed at once for Doctor Holiday to come to Tony who
was in a bad way. She wouldn't talk. She wouldn't eat. She did not sleep.
She did not cry. Jean thought if she cried her grief would not have been
so pitiful to behold. It was the stony, white silence of her that was
intolerable to witness.
In her uncle's arms Tony's terrible calm gave way and she sobbed herself
to utter weariness and finally to sleep. But even to him she would not
talk much about Alan. He had not known Alan. He had never
understood--never would understand now how wonderful, how lovable, how
splendid her lover had been. For several days she was kept in bed and the
doctor hardly left her. It was a hard time for him as well as his
stricken niece. Even their love for each other did not serve to lighten
the pain to any great extent. It was not the same sorrow they had. Doctor
Holiday was suffering because his little girl suffered. Tony was
suffering because she loved Alan Massey who would never come to her
again. Neither could entirely share the grief of the other. Alan Massey
was between them still.
Finally Dick came and was able to give what Doctor Philip could not. He
could sing Alan's praises, tell her how wonderful he had been, how
generous and kind. He could share her grief as no one else could because
he had learned to love Alan Massey almost as well as she did herself.
Dick talked freely of Alan, told her of the strange discovery which they
had made that he and Alan were cousins and that he himself was John
Massey, the kidnapped baby whom he had been so sorry for when he had
looked up the Massey story at the time of the old man's death. Dick was
not an apt liar but he lied gallantly now for Alan's sake and for Tony's.
He told her that it was only since Alan had been in Mexico that he had
known who his cousin was and had immediately possessed the other of the
facts and turned over to him the proofs of his identity as John Massey.
It was a good lie, well conceived and well delivered but the liar had not
reckoned on that fatal Holiday gift of intuition. Tony listened to the
story, shut her eyes and thought hard for a moment. Then she opened her
eyes again and looked straight at Dick.
"That is not the truth," she said. "Alan knew before he went to Mexico.
He knew long before. That was the other ghost--the one he could not lay.
Don't lie to me. I know."
And then yielding to her command Dick began again and told her the truth,
serving Alan's memory well by the relation. One thing only he kept back.
After all he had no proof that the young engineer had been right in his
conjecture that Alan had wanted the dagger to find him. There was no need
of hurting Tony with that.
"Dick--I can't call you John yet. I can't even think about you to-night
though I am so thankful to have you back safe and well. I can't be glad
yet for you. I can't remember any one but Alan. You will forgive me, I
know. But tell me. It was a terrible thing he did to you. Do you forgive
him really?" The girl's deep shadowed eyes searched the young man's face,
challenging him to speak the truth and only that.
He met the challenge willingly. He had nothing to conceal here. Tony
might read him through and through and she would find in him neither hate
nor rancor, nor condemnation.
"Of course I forgive him, Tony. He did a terrible thing to me you say.
He did a much more terrible thing to himself. And he made up for
everything over and over by what he did for me in Mexico. He might have
let me die. I should have died if he had not come. There is no doubt in
the world of that. He could not have done more if he had been my own
brother. He meant me to like him. He did more. He made me love him. He
was my friend. We parted as friends with a handshake which was his
good-by though I didn't know it."
It was a fatal speech. Too late Dick realized it as he saw Tony's face.
"Dick, he meant to let himself get killed. I've thought so all along and
now I know you think so too."
"I didn't mean to let that out. Maybe I am mistaken. We shall never know.
But I believe he was not sorry to let the dagger get him. He had given up
everything else. It wasn't so hard for him to give up the one thing
more--the thing he didn't want anyway--life. Life wasn't much to him
after he gave you up, Tony. His love was the biggest thing about him. I
love you myself but I am not ashamed to say that his love was a bigger
thing than mine every way, finer, more magnificent, the love of a genius
whereas mine is just the love of an every day man. It was love that
saved him."
"Dick, do you believe that the real Alan is dust--nothing but dust down
in a grave?" demanded Tony suddenly.
"No, Tony, I don't. I can't. The essence of what was best in him is alive
somewhere. I know it. It must be. His love for you--for all beauty--they
couldn't die, dear. They were big enough to be immortal."
"And his dancing," sighed Tony. "His dancing couldn't die. It had a
soul."
If she had not been sure already that Alan had meant to go out of her
life even if he had not meant to go to his death when he left New York
she would have been convinced a little later. Alan's Japanese servant
brought two gifts to her from his honorable master according to his
honorable master's orders should he not return from his journey. His
honorable master being unfortunately dead his unworthy servant laid the
gifts at Mees Holiday's honorable feet. Whereupon the bearer had departed
as quietly as death itself might come.
One of the gifts was a picture, a painting which Tony had seen, and which
was she thought the most beautiful of all his beautiful creations. Its
sheer loveliness would have hurt her even if it had had no other
significance and it did have a very real message.
At first sight the whole scene seemed enveloped in translucent, silver
mist. As one looked more closely however there was revealed the figure of
a man, black clad in pilgrim guise, kneeling on the verge of a
precipitous cliff which rose out of a seemingly bottomless abyss of
terrific blackness. Though in posture of prayer the pilgrim's head was
lifted and his face wore an expression of rapt adoration. Above a film
of fog in the heavens stretched a clear space of deep blue black sky in
which hung a single luminous star. From the star a line of golden light
of unearthly radiance descended and finding its way to the uplifted
transfigured face of the kneeling pilgrim ended there.
Tony Holiday understood, got the message as clearly as if Alan himself
stood beside her to interpret it. She knew that he was telling her
through the picture that she had saved his soul, kept him out of the
abyss, that to the end she was what he had so often called her--his star.
With tear blinded eyes she turned from the canvas to the little silver
box which the servant had placed in her hands together with a sealed
envelope. In the box was a gorgeous, unset ruby, the gem of Alan's
collection as Tony well knew having worshiped often at its shrine. It lay
there now against the austere purity of its white satin background--the
symbol of imperishable passion.
Reverently Tony closed the little box and opened the sealed envelope
dreading yet longing to know its contents. Alan had sent her no word of
farewell, had not written to her that night before he went out into the
storm to meet his death, had made no response to the letter she herself
had written offering herself and her love and faith for his taking. At
first these things had hurt her. But these gifts of his were beginning to
make her understand his silence. Selfish and spectacular all his life at
his death Alan Massey had been surpassingly generous and simple. He had
chosen to bequeath his love to her not as an obsession and a bondage but
as an elemental thing like light and air.
The message in the envelope was in its way as impersonal as the ruby had
been but Tony found it more hauntingly personal than she had ever found
his most impassioned love letter. Once more the words were couched in the
symbol tongue of the poet in India--in only two sentences, but sentences
so poignant that they stamped themselves forever on Tony Holiday's mind
as they stood out from the paper in Alan's beautiful, striking
handwriting.
"When the lighted lamp is brought into the room
I shall go.
And then perhaps you will listen to the night, and
hear my song when I am silent."
The lines were dated on that unforgettable night when Tony had played
Broadway and danced her last dance with her royal lover. So he had known
even then that he was giving her up. Realizing this Tony realized as she
never had before the high quality of his love. She could guess a little
of what that night had meant to him, how passionately he must have
desired to win through to the full fruition of his love before he gave
her up for all the rest of time. And she herself had been mad that night
Tony remembered. Ah well! He had been strong for them both. And now their
love would always stay upon the high levels, never descend to the ways of
earth. There would never be anything to regret, though Tony loving her
lover's memory as she did that moment was not so sure but she regretted
that most of all.
Yet tragic as Alan's death was and bitterly and sincerely as she mourned
his loss Tony could see that he had after all chosen the happiest way
out for himself as well as for her and his cousin. It was not hard to
forgive a dead lover with a generous act of renunciation his last deed.
It would have been far less easy to forgive a living lover with such a
stain upon his life. Even though he tried to wash it away by his
surrender and she by her forgiveness the stain would have remained
ineradicable. There would always have been a barrier between them for
all his effort and her own.
And his love would ill have borne denial or frustration. Without her he
would have gone down into dark pits if he had gone on living. Perhaps he
had known and feared this himself, willing to prevent it at any cost.
Perhaps he had known that so long as he lived she, Tony, would never have
been entirely her own again. His bondage would have been upon her even if
he never saw her again. Perhaps he had elected death most of all for this
reason, had loved her well enough to set her free. He had told her once
that love was twofold, a force of destruction and damnation but also a
force of purification and salvation. Alan had loved her greatly, perhaps
in the end his love had taken him in his own words "to the gate of
Heaven." Tony did not know but she thought if there really was a God he
would understand and forgive the soul of Alan Massey for that last
splendid sacrifice of his in the name of love.
And whatever happened Tony Holiday knew that she would bear forever the
mark of Alan Massey's stormy, strange, and in the end all-beautiful love.
Perhaps some day the lighted lamp might be brought in. She did not know,
would not attempt to prophesy about that. She did not know that she would
always listen to the night for Alan Massey's sake and hear his song
though he was silent forever.
The next day Richard Carson officially disappeared from the world and
John Massey appeared in his place. The papers made rather a striking
story of his romantic history and its startling denouement which had
come they said through the death bed confessions of the man Roberts which
had only just reached the older Massey's hands, strangely enough on the
eve of his own tragic death, which was again related to make the tale a
little more of a thriller. That was all the world knew, was ever to know
for the Holidays and John Massey kept the dead man's secret well.
And the grass grew green on Alan Massey's grave. The sun and dew and rain
laid tender fingers upon it and great crimson and gold hearted roses
strewed their fragrant petals upon it year by year. The stars he had
loved so well shone down upon the lonely spot where his body slept quiet
at last after the torment of his brief and stormy life. But otherwise, as
John Massey and Tony Holiday believed, his undefeated spirit fared on
splendidly in its divine quest of beauty.