1
Sally looked contentedly down the long table. She felt happy at last.
Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an
uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The
first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too
well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had
worn off; and the male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.
At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the
sum at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
spaciousness.
“Let me tell you,” said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, “what I'd do, if
I were you.” Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man
in close touch with the great ones of Finance. “I'd sink a couple of
hundred thousand in some good, safe bond-issue--we've just put one out
which you would do well to consider--and play about with the rest. When
I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up.
Multiple Steel's worth looking at. They tell me it'll be up to a hundred
and fifty before next Saturday.”
Elsa Doland, the pretty girl with the big eyes who sat on Mr. Bartlett's
left, had other views.
“Buy a theatre, Sally, and put on good stuff.”
“And lose every bean you've got,” said a mild young man, with a deep
voice across the table. “If I had a few hundred thousand,” said the
mild young man, “I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the
heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke
has been got at and means to lie down in the seventh...”
“Say, listen,” interrupted another voice, “lemme tell you what I'd do
with four hundred thousand...”
“If I had four hundred thousand,” said Elsa Doland, “I know what would
be the first thing I'd do.”
“What's that?” asked Sally.
“Pay my bill for last week, due this morning.”
Sally got up quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her
friend's shoulder and whispered in her ear:
“Elsa darling, are you really broke? If you are, you know, I'll...”
Elsa Doland laughed.
“You're an angel, Sally. There's no one like you. You'd give your last
cent to anyone. Of course I'm not broke. I've just come back from the
road, and I've saved a fortune. I only said that to draw you.”
Sally returned to her seat, relieved, and found that the company had now
divided itself into two schools of thought. The conservative and prudent
element, led by Augustus Bartlett, had definitely decided on three
hundred thousand in Liberty Bonds and the rest in some safe real estate;
while the smaller, more sporting section, impressed by the mild young
man's inside information, had already placed Sally's money on Benny
Whistler, doling it out cautiously in small sums so as not to spoil the
market. And so solid, it seemed, was Mr. Tuke's reputation with those
in the inner circle of knowledge that the mild young man was confident
that, if you went about the matter cannily and without precipitation,
three to one might be obtained. It seemed to Sally that the time had
come to correct certain misapprehensions.
“I don't know where you get your figures,” she said, “but I'm afraid
they're wrong. I've just twenty-five thousand dollars.”
The statement had a chilling effect. To these jugglers with
half-millions the amount mentioned seemed for the moment almost too
small to bother about. It was the sort of sum which they had been
mentally setting aside for the heiress's car fare. Then they managed to
adjust their minds to it. After all, one could do something even with a
pittance like twenty-five thousand.
“If I'd twenty-five thousand,” said Augustus Bartlett, the first to
rally from the shock, “I'd buy Amalgamated...”
“If I had twenty-five thousand...” began Elsa Doland.
“If I'd had twenty-five thousand in the year nineteen hundred,” observed
a gloomy-looking man with spectacles, “I could have started a revolution
in Paraguay.”
He brooded sombrely on what might have been.
“Well, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do,” said Sally. “I'm
going to start with a trip to Europe... France, specially. I've heard
France well spoken of--as soon as I can get my passport; and after I've
loafed there for a few weeks, I'm coming back to look about and find
some nice cosy little business which will let me put money into it and
keep me in luxury. Are there any complaints?”
“Even a couple of thousand on Benny Whistler...” said the mild young
man.
“I don't want your Benny Whistler,” said Sally. “I wouldn't have him if
you gave him to me. If I want to lose money, I'll go to Monte Carlo and
do it properly.”
“Monte Carlo,” said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name.
“I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty
dollars... just fifty... I'd have...”
At the far end of the table there was a stir, a cough, and the grating
of a chair on the floor; and slowly, with that easy grace which actors
of the old school learned in the days when acting was acting, Mr.
Maxwell Faucitt, the boarding-house's oldest inhabitant, rose to his
feet.
“Ladies,” said Mr. Faucitt, bowing courteously, “and...” ceasing to bow
and casting from beneath his white and venerable eyebrows a quelling
glance at certain male members of the boarding-house's younger set who
were showing a disposition towards restiveness, “... gentlemen. I feel
that I cannot allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words.”
His audience did not seem surprised. It was possible that life, always
prolific of incident in a great city like New York, might some day
produce an occasion which Mr. Faucitt would feel that he could allow to
pass without saying a few words; but nothing of the sort had happened as
yet, and they had given up hope. Right from the start of the meal they
had felt that it would be optimism run mad to expect the old gentleman
to abstain from speech on the night of Sally Nicholas' farewell
dinner party; and partly because they had braced themselves to it, but
principally because Miss Nicholas' hospitality had left them with a
genial feeling of repletion, they settled themselves to listen
with something resembling equanimity. A movement on the part of the
Marvellous Murphys--new arrivals, who had been playing the Bushwick with
their equilibristic act during the preceding week--to form a party of
the extreme left and heckle the speaker, broke down under a cold look
from their hostess. Brief though their acquaintance had been, both of
these lissom young gentlemen admired Sally immensely.
And it should be set on record that this admiration of theirs was not
misplaced. He would have been hard to please who had not been attracted
by Sally. She was a small, trim, wisp of a girl with the tiniest hands
and feet, the friendliest of smiles, and a dimple that came and went
in the curve of her rounded chin. Her eyes, which disappeared when she
laughed, which was often, were a bright hazel; her hair a soft mass of
brown. She had, moreover, a manner, an air of distinction lacking in the
majority of Mrs. Meecher's guests. And she carried youth like a banner.
In approving of Sally, the Marvellous Murphys had been guilty of no
lapse from their high critical standard.
“I have been asked,” proceeded Mr. Faucitt, “though I am aware that
there are others here far worthier of such a task--Brutuses compared
with whom I, like Marc Antony, am no orator--I have been asked to
propose the health...”
“Who asked you?” It was the smaller of the Marvellous Murphys who spoke.
He was an unpleasant youth, snub-nosed and spotty. Still, he could
balance himself with one hand on an inverted ginger-ale bottle while
revolving a barrel on the soles of his feet. There is good in all of us.
“I have been asked,” repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly
interruption, which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, “to
propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with the
name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas.”
The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker's end of the table,
acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of
condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by
social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And
Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability
of throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her
hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but
she restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive
impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance
of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest
motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that
quarter would be weakened.
She leaned back with a sigh. The temptation had been hard to resist. A
democratic girl, pomposity was a quality which she thoroughly disliked;
and though she loved him, she could not disguise from herself that,
ever since affluence had descended upon him some months ago, her brother
Fillmore had become insufferably pompous. If there are any young men
whom inherited wealth improves, Fillmore Nicholas was not one of them.
He seemed to regard himself nowadays as a sort of Man of Destiny. To
converse with him was for the ordinary human being like being received
in audience by some more than stand-offish monarch. It had taken Sally
over an hour to persuade him to leave his apartment on Riverside Drive
and revisit the boarding-house for this special occasion; and, when he
had come, he had entered wearing such faultless evening dress that he
had made the rest of the party look like a gathering of tramp-cyclists.
His white waistcoat alone was a silent reproach to honest poverty,
and had caused an awkward constraint right through the soup and fish
courses. Most of those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an
impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one
would have believed possible; they had called him “Fill” and helped him
in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had
eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank back abashed.
“Speaking,” said Mr. Faucitt, “as an Englishman--for though I have long
since taken out what are technically known as my 'papers' it was as a
subject of the island kingdom that I first visited this great country--I
may say that the two factors in American life which have always made
the profoundest impression upon me have been the lavishness of American
hospitality and the charm of the American girl. To-night we have been
privileged to witness the American girl in the capacity of hostess, and
I think I am right in saying, in asseverating, in committing myself to
the statement that this has been a night which none of us present here
will ever forget. Miss Nicholas has given us, ladies and gentlemen, a
banquet. I repeat, a banquet. There has been alcoholic refreshment. I
do not know where it came from: I do not ask how it was procured, but we
have had it. Miss Nicholas...”
Mr. Faucitt paused to puff at his cigar. Sally's brother Fillmore
suppressed a yawn and glanced at his watch. Sally continued to lean
forward raptly. She knew how happy it made the old gentleman to deliver
a formal speech; and though she wished the subject had been different,
she was prepared to listen indefinitely.
“Miss Nicholas,” resumed Mr. Faucitt, lowering his cigar, “... But why,”
he demanded abruptly, “do I call her Miss Nicholas?”
“Because it's her name,” hazarded the taller Murphy.
Mr. Faucitt eyed him with disfavour. He disapproved of the marvellous
brethren on general grounds because, himself a resident of years
standing, he considered that these transients from the vaudeville stage
lowered the tone of the boarding-house; but particularly because the one
who had just spoken had, on his first evening in the place, addressed
him as “grandpa.”
“Yes, sir,” he said severely, “it is her name. But she has another name,
sweeter to those who love her, those who worship her, those who have
watched her with the eye of sedulous affection through the three years
she has spent beneath this roof, though that name,” said Mr. Faucitt,
lowering the tone of his address and descending to what might almost be
termed personalities, “may not be familiar to a couple of dud acrobats
who have only been in the place a week-end, thank heaven, and are off
to-morrow to infest some other city. That name,” said Mr. Faucitt,
soaring once more to a loftier plane, “is Sally. Our Sally. For three
years our Sally has flitted about this establishment like--I choose the
simile advisedly--like a ray of sunshine. For three years she has
made life for us a brighter, sweeter thing. And now a sudden access of
worldly wealth, happily synchronizing with her twenty-first birthday, is
to remove her from our midst. From our midst, ladies and gentlemen,
but not from our hearts. And I think I may venture to hope, to
prognosticate, that, whatever lofty sphere she may adorn in the future,
to whatever heights in the social world she may soar, she will still
continue to hold a corner in her own golden heart for the comrades of
her Bohemian days. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our hostess, Miss
Sally Nicholas, coupled with the name of our old friend, her brother
Fillmore.”
Sally, watching her brother heave himself to his feet as the cheers died
away, felt her heart beat a little faster with anticipation. Fillmore
was a fluent young man, once a power in his college debating society,
and it was for that reason that she had insisted on his coming here
tonight.
She had guessed that Mr. Faucitt, the old dear, would say all sorts of
delightful things about her, and she had mistrusted her ability to
make a fitting reply. And it was imperative that a fitting reply should
proceed from someone. She knew Mr. Faucitt so well. He looked on these
occasions rather in the light of scenes from some play; and, sustaining
his own part in them with such polished grace, was certain to be pained
by anything in the nature of an anti-climax after he should have ceased
to take the stage. Eloquent himself, he must be answered with eloquence,
or his whole evening would be spoiled.
Fillmore Nicholas smoothed a wrinkle out of his white waistcoat; and
having rested one podgy hand on the table-cloth and the thumb of the
other in his pocket, glanced down the table with eyes so haughtily
drooping that Sally's fingers closed automatically about her orange, as
she wondered whether even now it might not be a good thing...
It seems to be one of Nature's laws that the most attractive girls
should have the least attractive brothers. Fillmore Nicholas had not
worn well. At the age of seven he had been an extraordinarily beautiful
child, but after that he had gone all to pieces; and now, at the age of
twenty-five, it would be idle to deny that he was something of a mess.
For the three years preceding his twenty-fifth birthday, restricted
means and hard work had kept his figure in check; but with money there
had come an ever-increasing sleekness. He looked as if he fed too often
and too well.
All this, however, Sally was prepared to forgive him, if he would only
make a good speech. She could see Mr. Faucitt leaning back in his chair,
all courteous attention. Rolling periods were meat and drink to the old
gentleman.
Fillmore spoke.
“I'm sure,” said Fillmore, “you don't want a speech... Very good of you
to drink our health. Thank you.”
He sat down.
The effect of these few simple words on the company was marked, but not
in every case identical. To the majority the emotion which they brought
was one of unmixed relief. There had been something so menacing, so easy
and practised, in Fillmore's attitude as he had stood there that the
gloomier-minded had given him at least twenty minutes, and even the
optimists had reckoned that they would be lucky if they got off with
ten. As far as the bulk of the guests were concerned, there was
no grumbling. Fillmore's, to their thinking, had been the ideal
after-dinner speech.
Far different was it with Mr. Maxwell Faucitt. The poor old man was
wearing such an expression of surprise and dismay as he might have
worn had somebody unexpectedly pulled the chair from under him. He was
feeling the sick shock which comes to those who tread on a non-existent
last stair. And Sally, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp
wordless exclamation as if she had seen a child fall down and hurt
itself in the street. The next moment she had run round the table and
was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke across
him with a sob in her voice.
“My brother,” she stammered, directing a malevolent look at the
immaculate Fillmore, who, avoiding her gaze, glanced down his nose
and smoothed another wrinkle out of his waistcoat, “has not said
quite--quite all I hoped he was going to say. I can't make a speech,
but...” Sally gulped, “... but, I love you all and of course I shall
never forget you, and... and...”
Here Sally kissed Mr. Faucitt and burst into tears.
“There, there,” said Mr. Faucitt, soothingly. The kindest critic could
not have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell
Faucitt was conscious of no sense of anti-climax.
2
Sally had just finished telling her brother Fillmore what a pig he was.
The lecture had taken place in the street outside the boarding-house
immediately on the conclusion of the festivities, when Fillmore, who
had furtively collected his hat and overcoat, had stolen forth into the
night, had been overtaken and brought to bay by his justly indignant
sister. Her remarks, punctuated at intervals by bleating sounds from the
accused, had lasted some ten minutes.
As she paused for breath, Fillmore seemed to expand, like an indiarubber
ball which has been sat on. Dignified as he was to the world, he had
never been able to prevent himself being intimidated by Sally when
in one of these moods of hers. He regretted this, for it hurt his
self-esteem, but he did not see how the fact could be altered. Sally
had always been like that. Even the uncle, who after the deaths of their
parents had become their guardian, had never, though a grim man, been
able to cope successfully with Sally. In that last hectic scene three
years ago, which had ended in their going out into the world, together
like a second Adam and Eve, the verbal victory had been hers. And it
had been Sally who had achieved triumph in the one battle which Mrs.
Meecher, apparently as a matter of duty, always brought about with each
of her patrons in the first week of their stay. A sweet-tempered
girl, Sally, like most women of a generous spirit, had cyclonic
potentialities.
As she seemed to have said her say, Fillmore kept on expanding till he
had reached the normal, when he ventured upon a speech for the defence.
“What have I done?” demanded Fillmore plaintively.
“Do you want to hear all over again?”
“No, no,” said Fillmore hastily. “But, listen, Sally, you don't
understand my position. You don't seem to realize that all that sort of
thing, all that boarding-house stuff, is a thing of the past. One's got
beyond it. One wants to drop it. One wants to forget it, darn it! Be
fair. Look at it from my viewpoint. I'm going to be a big man...”
“You're going to be a fat man,” said Sally, coldly.
Fillmore refrained from discussing the point. He was sensitive.
“I'm going to do big things,” he substituted. “I've got a deal on at
this very moment which... well, I can't tell you about it, but it's
going to be big. Well, what I'm driving at, is about all this sort of
thing”--he indicated the lighted front of Mrs. Meecher's home-from-home
with a wide gesture--“is that it's over. Finished and done with. These
people were all very well when...”
“... when you'd lost your week's salary at poker and wanted to borrow a
few dollars for the rent.”
“I always paid them back,” protested Fillmore, defensively.
“I did.”
“Well, we did,” said Fillmore, accepting the amendment with the air of
a man who has no time for chopping straws. “Anyway, what I mean is, I
don't see why, just because one has known people at a certain period in
one's life when one was practically down and out, one should have
them round one's neck for ever. One can't prevent people forming an
I-knew-him-when club, but, darn it, one needn't attend the meetings.”
“One's friends...”
“Oh, friends,” said Fillmore. “That's just where all this makes me so
tired. One's in a position where all these people are entitled to call
themselves one's friends, simply because father put it in his will that
I wasn't to get the money till I was twenty-five, instead of letting me
have it at twenty-one like anybody else. I wonder where I should have
been by now if I could have got that money when I was twenty-one.”
“In the poor-house, probably,” said Sally.
Fillmore was wounded.
“Ah! you don't believe in me,” he sighed.
“Oh, you would be all right if you had one thing,” said Sally.
Fillmore passed his qualities in swift review before his mental eye.
Brains? Dash? Spaciousness? Initiative? All present and correct. He
wondered where Sally imagined the hiatus to exist.
“One thing?” he said. “What's that?”
“A nurse.”
Fillmore's sense of injury deepened. He supposed that this was always
the way, that those nearest to a man never believed in his ability
till he had proved it so masterfully that it no longer required the
assistance of faith. Still, it was trying; and there was not much
consolation to be derived from the thought that Napoleon had had to go
through this sort of thing in his day. “I shall find my place in the
world,” he said sulkily.
“Oh, you'll find your place all right,” said Sally. “And I'll come
round and bring you jelly and read to you on the days when visitors are
allowed... Oh, hullo.”
The last remark was addressed to a young man who had been swinging
briskly along the sidewalk from the direction of Broadway and who now,
coming abreast of them, stopped.
“Good evening, Mr. Foster.”
“Good evening. Miss Nicholas.”
“You don't know my brother, do you?”
“I don't believe I do.”
“He left the underworld before you came to it,” said Sally. “You
wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was once a prune-eater among
the proletariat, even as you and I. Mrs. Meecher looks on him as a son.”
The two men shook hands. Fillmore was not short, but Gerald Foster
with his lean, well-built figure seemed to tower over him. He was an
Englishman, a man in the middle twenties, clean-shaven, keen-eyed, and
very good to look at. Fillmore, who had recently been going in for one
of those sum-up-your-fellow-man-at-a-glance courses, the better to fit
himself for his career of greatness, was rather impressed. It seemed to
him that this Mr. Foster, like himself, was one of those who Get There.
If you are that kind yourself, you get into the knack of recognizing the
others. It is a sort of gift.
There was a few moments of desultory conversation, of the kind that
usually follows an introduction, and then Fillmore, by no means sorry
to get the chance, took advantage of the coming of this new arrival to
remove himself. He had not enjoyed his chat with Sally, and it seemed
probable that he would enjoy a continuation of it even less. He was glad
that Mr. Foster had happened along at this particular juncture. Excusing
himself briefly, he hurried off down the street.
Sally stood for a minute, watching him till he had disappeared round the
corner. She had a slightly regretful feeling that, now it was too late,
she would think of a whole lot more good things which it would have been
agreeable to say to him. And it had become obvious to her that Fillmore
was not getting nearly enough of that kind of thing said to him
nowadays. Then she dismissed him from her mind and turning to Gerald
Foster, slipped her arm through his.
“Well, Jerry, darling,” she said. “What a shame you couldn't come to the
party. Tell me all about everything.”
3
It was exactly two months since Sally had become engaged to Gerald
Foster; but so rigorously had they kept the secret that nobody at Mrs.
Meecher's so much as suspected it. To Sally, who all her life had hated
concealing things, secrecy of any kind was objectionable: but in this
matter Gerald had shown an odd streak almost of furtiveness in his
character. An announced engagement complicated life. People fussed about
you and bothered you. People either watched you or avoided you. Such
were his arguments, and Sally, who would have glossed over and found
excuses for a disposition on his part towards homicide or arson, put
them down to artistic sensitiveness. There is nobody so sensitive as
your artist, particularly if he be unsuccessful: and when an artist has
so little success that he cannot afford to make a home for the woman
he loves, his sensitiveness presumably becomes great indeed. Putting
herself in his place, Sally could see that a protracted engagement,
known by everybody, would be a standing advertisement of Gerald's
failure to make good: and she acquiesced in the policy of secrecy,
hoping that it would not last long. It seemed absurd to think of Gerald
as an unsuccessful man. He had in him, as the recent Fillmore had
perceived, something dynamic. He was one of those men of whom one could
predict that they would succeed very suddenly and rapidly--overnight, as
it were.
“The party,” said Sally, “went off splendidly.” They had passed the
boarding-house door, and were walking slowly down the street. “Everybody
enjoyed themselves, I think, even though Fillmore did his best to spoil
things by coming looking like an advertisement of What The Smart Men
Will Wear This Season. You didn't see his waistcoat just now. He
had covered it up. Conscience, I suppose. It was white and bulgy and
gleaming and full up of pearl buttons and everything. I saw Augustus
Bartlett curl up like a burnt feather when he caught sight of it. Still,
time seemed to heal the wound, and everybody relaxed after a bit. Mr.
Faucitt made a speech and I made a speech and cried, and...oh, it was
all very festive. It only needed you.”
“I wish I could have come. I had to go to that dinner, though. Sally...”
Gerald paused, and Sally saw that he was electric with suppressed
excitement. “Sally, the play's going to be put on!”
Sally gave a little gasp. She had lived this moment in anticipation for
weeks. She had always known that sooner or later this would happen. She
had read his plays over and over again, and was convinced that they were
wonderful. Of course, hers was a biased view, but then Elsa Doland also
admired them; and Elsa's opinion was one that carried weight. Elsa was
another of those people who were bound to succeed suddenly. Even old Mr.
Faucitt, who was a stern judge of acting and rather inclined to consider
that nowadays there was no such thing, believed that she was a girl with
a future who would do something big directly she got her chance.
“Jerry!” She gave his arm a hug. “How simply terrific! Then Goble and
Kohn have changed their minds after all and want it? I knew they would.”
A slight cloud seemed to dim the sunniness of the author's mood.
“No, not that one,” he said reluctantly. “No hope there, I'm afraid. I
saw Goble this morning about that, and he said it didn't add up right.
The one that's going to be put on is 'The Primrose Way.' You remember?
It's got a big part for a girl in it.”
“Of course! The one Elsa liked so much. Well, that's just as good. Who's
going to do it? I thought you hadn't sent it out again.”
“Well, it happens...” Gerald hesitated once more. “It seems that this
man I was dining with to-night--a man named Cracknell...”
“Cracknell? Not the Cracknell?”
“The Cracknell?”
“The one people are always talking about. The man they call the
Millionaire Kid.”
“Yes. Why, do you know him?”
“He was at Harvard with Fillmore. I never saw him, but he must be rather
a painful person.”
“Oh, he's all right. Not much brains, of course, but--well, he's all
right. And, anyway, he wants to put the play on.”
“Well, that's splendid,” said Sally: but she could not get the right
ring of enthusiasm into her voice. She had had ideals for Gerald. She
had dreamed of him invading Broadway triumphantly under the banner of
one of the big managers whose name carried a prestige, and there seemed
something unworthy in this association with a man whose chief claim to
eminence lay in the fact that he was credited by metropolitan gossip
with possessing the largest private stock of alcohol in existence.
“I thought you would be pleased,” said Gerald.
“Oh, I am,” said Sally.
With the buoyant optimism which never deserted her for long, she had
already begun to cast off her momentary depression. After all, did
it matter who financed a play so long as it obtained a production? A
manager was simply a piece of machinery for paying the bills; and if
he had money for that purpose, why demand asceticism and the finer
sensibilities from him? The real thing that mattered was the question
of who was going to play the leading part, that deftly drawn character
which had so excited the admiration of Elsa Doland. She sought
information on this point.
“Who will play Ruth?” she asked. “You must have somebody wonderful. It
needs a tremendously clever woman. Did Mr. Cracknell say anything about
that?”
“Oh, yes, we discussed that, of course.”
“Well?”
“Well, it seems...” Again Sally noticed that odd, almost stealthy
embarrassment. Gerald appeared unable to begin a sentence to-night
without feeling his way into it like a man creeping cautiously down a
dark alley. She noticed it the more because it was so different from
his usual direct method. Gerald, as a rule, was not one of those who
apologize for themselves. He was forthright and masterful and inclined
to talk to her from a height. To-night he seemed different.
He broke off, was silent for a moment, and began again with a question.
“Do you know Mabel Hobson?”
“Mabel Hobson? I've seen her in the 'Follies,' of course.”
Sally started. A suspicion had stung her, so monstrous that its
absurdity became manifest the moment it had formed. And yet was
it absurd? Most Broadway gossip filtered eventually into the
boarding-house, chiefly through the medium of that seasoned sport, the
mild young man who thought so highly of the redoubtable Benny Whistler,
and she was aware that the name of Reginald Cracknell, which was always
getting itself linked with somebody, had been coupled with that of Miss
Hobson. It seemed likely that in this instance rumour spoke truth,
for the lady was of that compellingly blonde beauty which attracts the
Cracknells of this world. But even so...
“It seems that Cracknell...” said Gerald. “Apparently this man
Cracknell...” He was finding Sally's bright, horrified gaze somewhat
trying. “Well, the fact is Cracknell believes in Mabel Hobson...and...
well, he thinks this part would suit her.”
“Oh, Jerry!”
Could infatuation go to such a length? Could even the spacious heart of
a Reginald Cracknell so dominate that gentleman's small size in heads as
to make him entrust a part like Ruth in “The Primrose Way” to one who,
when desired by the producer of her last revue to carry a bowl of roses
across the stage and place it on a table, had rebelled on the plea that
she had not been engaged as a dancer? Surely even lovelorn Reginald
could perceive that this was not the stuff of which great emotional
actresses are made.
“Oh, Jerry!” she said again.
There was an uncomfortable silence. They turned and walked back in the
direction of the boarding-house. Somehow Gerald's arm had managed to get
itself detached from Sally's. She was conscious of a curious dull ache
that was almost like a physical pain.
“Jerry! Is it worth it?” she burst out vehemently.
The question seemed to sting the young man into something like his usual
decisive speech.
“Worth it? Of course it's worth it. It's a Broadway production. That's
all that matters. Good heavens! I've been trying long enough to get a
play on Broadway, and it isn't likely that I'm going to chuck away my
chance when it comes along just because one might do better in the way
of casting.”
“But, Jerry! Mabel Hobson! It's... it's murder! Murder in the first
degree.”
“Nonsense. She'll be all right. The part will play itself. Besides,
she has a personality and a following, and Cracknell will spend all the
money in the world to make the thing a success. And it will be a start,
whatever happens. Of course, it's worth it.”
Fillmore would have been impressed by this speech. He would have
recognized and respected in it the unmistakable ring which characterizes
even the lightest utterances of those who get there. On Sally it had not
immediately that effect. Nevertheless, her habit of making the best of
things, working together with that primary article of her creed that
the man she loved could do no wrong, succeeded finally in raising her
spirits. Of course Jerry was right. It would have been foolish to refuse
a contract because all its clauses were not ideal.
“You old darling,” she said affectionately attaching herself to the
vacant arm once more and giving it a penitent squeeze, “you're quite
right. Of course you are. I can see it now. I was only a little startled
at first. Everything's going to be wonderful. Let's get all our chickens
out and count 'em. How are you going to spend the money?”
“I know how I'm going to spend a dollar of it,” said Gerald completely
restored.
“I mean the big money. What's a dollar?”
“It pays for a marriage-licence.”
Sally gave his arm another squeeze.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Look at this man. Observe him. My
partner!”