Harvard Club,
New York, July 30th.
Dear Naomi,—
This letter is going to be harder to write than an income tax
report. When a man has never before been on his knees to a woman,
they’re apt to be creaky and resist bending. But I’m on my knees
to you, my dear,—in tribute, in abject apology, in the tenderest
feeling I’ve ever known in my life.
Last March Bill Dixon went home and I sat back with the sensation
of a good Samaritan. I was blithering ass enough to think I was
the one who had sent him away. To-day, four months later, I’ve
learned the truth. It came with the announcement of his marriage
to Nan Crawford. He told me what happened. He told me what you
had done, Naomi.
I’ve never had much belief in women. I’ve always thought them
rather a poor lot. That’s the penalty of having begun early to
know the wrong side of them—assuming there was no other. But
you’ve given an old stager a faith he’s never known. For that I
can’t repay you. But whatever I have, whatever I can give you of
devotion and friendship is yours, dear girl. Knowing what you
were equal to doing for that boy has suddenly made life worth
living for me.
I haven’t seen you in months. Will you make up for lost time?
Shall we go to supper to-morrow night?
Yours—I mean it—
Marshy.
Naomi’s eyes wandered from the letter to another that lay open on the
desk beside it. It was in a boy’s rugged hand, incoherent,
embarrassed. It told of his approaching marriage and tried to thank
her for making him see that the old love was the true one. She had
read it so many times that she could have told what it told her—with
eyes shut.
She reread Kent’s letter then. After a moment she picked up her pen
and wrote:
Thank you, dear Marshy. I can use your friendship. I need it. But
I’ve quit going out to suppers—for good.
Naomi.
THE BACK DROP
_DRAMA_
Comedy met Tragedy at the crossroads of Life.
“Know,” spake Tragedy, “from Wisdom have I learned that thou and I
emanate from the same source—born of the folly of man and nourished by
his deeds. The tie between us is so strong that we must follow, each
upon the other’s heels, as long as the road of life has its turnings.”
“Then come,” laughed Comedy, “a bargain let us conclude. Let each
forever carry some suggestion of the other!”
So, with a tear in the eye of Comedy and a smile under Tragedy’s
frown, they linked arms and proceeded down the road together.
THE BACK DROP
CHAPTER I
RUDOLPH CLEEBURG
Presents
GLORIA CROMWELL
in
“LADY FAIR”
A Comedy-Drama
by
_Bronson Reed_
A car pulled up sharp at the curb and a woman leaned out to read the
tall lettering. It loomed startling and white against a black ground.
Along a street where theaters crowded each other like chorus girls in
a manager’s office, that inky splash with its tracing of white paled
to oblivion all the others.
The man beside her watched her eagerly, studied the delicate profile
with a kind of hunger. When she turned, his eyes went alight at the
smile in hers.
“It’s stunning, ’Dolph. But then you always do things right.”
“Y’mean that? Do I always manage to suit you, kiddo?”
“You know you do.” There was a low, tender note in the voice that
would always be wistful. It was an odd voice—one that, breaking with
the swift snap of a violin string, brought tears from its audience as
one chokes at a broken chord.
“H’m, that’s all I want.” He grinned sheepishly. “No fool like an old
fool, eh?”
He stepped out as the chauffeur swung open the door, and reached up to
help her. Gloria Cromwell—in private life Mrs. Rudolph Cleeburg—was
not tall and her intense slenderness made her look frail, yet standing
next to her husband she measured a full inch above him. Any passerby
taking in the round face, eyes and figure of the well-known manager,
his bald pate and prominent features, would have smiled at the
information that he was the most artistic producer in America. But
then, no passerby would have noticed the hands, key to character, that
tapered so incongruously. Even the man himself failed to take count of
them. He knew only that he felt beauty like a tangible thing, that he
expressed it through the two mediums he loved—the stage and his wife.
He took her arm and they went down the cool dark alley to the stage
door. It was a Sunday in September, hazy and languid, the first
shadows of twilight creeping into the arms of night.
In almost every building on the block rehearsals were under way.
Behind blank front entrances with high iron gates locked fast,
throbbed the pulsing life of the theater. No effort too great, no work
too intense, to give to the world its most human tonic, amusement.
The dress rehearsal of “Lady Fair” had been called for 8:00 p. m. They
were early, having made good time from their place at Great Neck.
Gloria crossed the stage set for Act I while Cleeburg paused to
suggest to the electrician some experiments with the lights.
“Try a couple of reds, Bill, in the foots for Act II. And cut out
four or five of the ambers on top. They make her look too yellow, sick
around the eyes. Get me? Too much shadow. We want to bring out all the
flash in her hair. Light her up. It’s her big scene. And here—have a
smoke!”
He followed Gloria. She had tossed her hat on a table and stood taking
in the new props he had provided while the company made the customary
short tour that precedes a New York première.
With the shadows of the unlighted stage about her and the dusky quiet
of the empty house stretching at her feet, she seemed to the man who
went toward her deplorably young and tender, with a something yearning
from her that he had tried to reach and never even been able to
define. Not for the first time he asked himself: Was it the almost
childish form under the soft summer dress—or the delicate line of her
long throat—or the intense red curve of lip—or her pallor topped by
the tawny hair whose lights and shades he was so intent on featuring?
No, none of these! It was the look of her eyes. Wide and hungry, with
fright in their depths, they had arrested him six years before as he
hurried through his outer office; arrested him and found her a job.
The fright had gone long since. And the hunger which had been nothing
more than actual physical hunger. But the look that was so much like
the quality of her voice still lurked there, eluding him.
He came up behind her as she stood examining the heavy black velvet
drapes with crests of blue, purple and gold embroidered in the
corners.
“Like ’em?” he asked once more anxiously.
She veered about. “They must have cost a fortune, ’Dolph. Wouldn’t
those blue ones we had on the road have been good enough?”
“Not for you. Only the best for my girl! And look at you against ’em.
Those newspaper guys are right—there sure is something about you
that’s got the rest of the bunch lashed to the mast!”
“It’s what you’ve made me, ’Dolph.” The words came breathless, with
that strange fascinating catch. “You’ve put me over just the way you
did the rest. Goring and Wilbur and Chesterton. Without you I’d have
been just an actress. Now they call me an artist. And you’ve done
that—you’ve done every bit of it.”
With a furtive glance to make sure the electrician was still occupied
he went closer, laid an arm across her slim shoulders and gazed
eagerly through the shadows into her face.
“Say that again. Of course it ain’t true. They were all piking
compared to you. But say it anyhow. It’s music to me—the greatest
symphony and greatest opera rolled into one.”
“It is true.”
“Then if I never do anything else for you, that goes on the right side
of the ledger—what? Sometimes, little girl, I feel like I was a dog,
grabbing you the way I did right after I featured you and you thought
you couldn’t turn me down.”
“Nonsense!” She caught his hand and her clasp was so tight it seemed
to grip.
“I’m a pretty old piece of scenery and not easy to look at, at that.”
He glanced through the drapes at the back drop. It represented a
stretch of blue sky pierced with holes through which presently stars
would glimmer. “Like that old thing,” he added. “Just a piece of
shabby canvas, good enough for background.” And as she started to
protest he laughed, a laugh that wasn’t much more than a sound. “Why,
even Doug Fairbanks won’t be able to kid himself he’s young when he’s
past half a century.”
He turned as several members of the company strolled in and greeted
each with a hearty handshake. With a smile for every one and an ear
ready to listen, the Cleeburg of to-day had the same enthusiasm as the
pudgy newsboy who years before had run fat little legs off to procure
for a patron his favorite daily.
“Hello there, glad to see you! Well, they tell me we’ve got a
knock-out. Let’s have a look.”
He made for the rear of the house with his stage director who had
accompanied the play on tour.
The curtain up, he leaned against the seat in front, a long black
cigar jerking from corner to corner of his mouth like a propeller. Not
a gesture, not an intonation escaped him. His concentration ignored
any world but this. Had the building burned down, that stage before
him would still have been the pivotal point of interest.
When Gloria appeared between the black drapes, eyes luminous under the
untamed hair, and the thrill of her voice came over the footlights, he
sighed and a smile of anticipation spread across his face. It was the
look of one whose senses are about to be lulled by rare music.
The play had all the quality of delicately written French drama, its
big scene at the end of the second act being calculated to bring even
a New York audience straight out of its seat. Gloria and John Brooks
were as finely teamed as a pair of high-stepping thoroughbreds. He had
been her leading man two seasons. Little ’Dolph, with an eye to the
future, had him tied up on a five-year contract.
You would never have taken John Brooks for an actor. There was about
his clothes no suggestion of the extreme that Broadway is tempted to
affect. They were cut by a conservative tailor and he wore them with
the ease of not caring particularly what he had on. Critics called him
distinguished. When he walked into a stage drawing-room one knew
instinctively that more exclusive drawing-rooms had opened to him. He
never talked shop outside and never brought his social activities into
the theater. But it was generally known that his friends numbered
scientists and men of big business.
On the stage he suggested a clean-cut Britisher, tall and well
groomed, easy of manner, clipped of speech, yet with a more intense
vitality and that gleam of humor under the straight black brows that
is peculiarly, blessedly, of, by, and for America.
The manager sat back, eyes half closed, lapping up the charm of it as
a kitten laps cream. When the curtain fell he licked his lips and
purred as he turned to the director, Lewis.
“You’re right, Lewy! Never saw a pair to touch ’em. Gad, that give and
take, that playing into each other’s hands—nothing like it in this old
berg, I tell you!” He sprang up, bounded down the aisle like a rubber
ball. “Immense!” he shouted. “That act runs on greased wheels. It’s
sure fire! They’ll eat it alive.”
He climbed into a box; with amazing ease jumped on to the stage. Bulky
as was his figure, almost pouter pigeon in certain postures, there was
nothing funny about Cleeburg in action. It was the fire of his genius,
the spark that lighted his homely face with inspiration, that
commanded respect. Even with a handkerchief tied round his neck as it
always was in hot weather and the open sleeves of his silk shirt
flopping like awkward wings, no one thought of smiling. One merely
listened.
He gave a few instructions to the property men and slipped back to his
wife’s dressing-room, poking his head in at the door.
She was changing to a tea-gown, a lovely shimmery gold thing that
brought out the reds in her hair like touches of flame.
“Well, how does it go?” she asked. “Any suggestions?”
“Not half a one. Couldn’t be improved. And John—he was made for you!”
She dropped her eyes to examine a tiny rip in the train.
“Better mend this, Suzanne, before I go on. It might catch on
something.”
“Glad we’ve got him sewed up tight. First thing you know, one of the
boys’d be offering to star him and then biffo, we’d lose him!”
“He is—wonderful.” She did not raise her eyes as the maid’s needle
flashed in and out of the soft fabric, then looked up suddenly. “Lewis
thinks we have a big hit.”
“Lewis knows his business. You never had a chance that touched
it—comedy and the big heart stuff combined. Try a little more red,
honey. You look pale. Tired out, eh?”
“No—just a bit nervous, that’s all.” She turned hastily to the mirror,
picked up a rabbit’s foot and dabbed some color across her cheek
bones. As she bent forward, her teeth caught her lower lip and held
it. And Cleeburg, noting the reflection of her eyes, fancied fright in
them. Nerves, of course! Emotional tuning up of the vibrant artist!
He went out front as the curtain rose on the second act. It revealed a
boudoir. Not the sort bestowed upon woman by the average scenic
decorator with its brilliant splashes of color and general air of a
department store exhibit, but a room that suggested four walls
enclosing feminine taste.
Steadily Gloria and Brooks mounted to the big moment when the man’s
passion, like a torrent crashing through ice, carried the woman with
it. They stood facing each other and the voice of John Brooks came
quiet, yet with the threat of doom.
“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No,
not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of
gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now
we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and take what
is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell
you I love you—”
The woman gave a terrified “No—no!” with arms thrust out to ward off
the thing she had desired. The man followed with a quick laugh as he
caught them and her to him.
Cleeburg jumped up and speeding down the aisle made a trumpet of his
hands.
“Hey, John—play that for all it’s worth. Give it to ’em strong. You
fall down a peg or two at the end. Got to keep up the tension. Get me?
Don’t be afraid of too much pep. Can’t be done in this town. Let go!
Give ’em the love stuff till they faint.”
Again and again he put them through it. Up to the crucial point it
went superbly. Then something seemed to snap. It was less in Brooks’
rendering of the speech than the way he caught up Gloria and swept her
to him. Instead of an onrush like a force irresistible, his embrace
was almost measured. One felt that with very little effort she could
have escaped.
Sitting in the front row now, a puzzled seam between his eyes,
Cleeburg noted that Gloria, too, appeared to hold off. Gloria, who
flung herself into a part as if it were life! What had happened? He
shook his head, began to pace the length of the seats.
“You’ll let down the whole act, children. You’ll lose your curtain.
Why, they’ve been wanting this to happen from the beginning. If you
don’t give it to ’em and give it to ’em big, they’ll can you. Sure
thing! Let’s have another go.”
John Brooks’ thin lips came together. There was something tense about
the way he went into the scene this time—muscles tight, hands
clenched, voice husky. And when finally he swept her into his arms it
was as if he would never let her go. Their lips met as the curtain
fell. Even in the empty house one could feel the thrill of it.
Cleeburg gave a chortle of relief. Just for a moment he had been
afraid they were going to muff it.
But he apologized for his persistence later over a bite of supper.
“It’s the crux, old man. That’s why I kept you at it. You see, the
woman is yours by every law of God. Once you know it, you don’t give a
damn for the laws of man.”
“I get you.”
“Put over the feeling that it had to be. If you don’t the whole show
goes fluey. You and the little girl do such bully team work, we don’t
want one hitch to spoil it. Hope I haven’t played you out.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” The other man smoothed his hair with a gesture
of both long hands and looked across the table. “Afraid my thick head
has tired Gloria, though.”
She was leaning back, limp, face white as the moon that looked in
between the pillars of the roof garden.
“Not a bit.” Her lids lifted quickly and Cleeburg was startled at the
fever under them. She leaned elbows on the table. “I was as stupid as
John. We just couldn’t seem to get it.”
“Well, don’t worry. It’ll go like hot cakes to-morrow night. You won’t
worry, kiddo, will you?” He patted her arm anxiously. “I don’t like to
see you look like this.”
“Why, there isn’t a thing wrong with me—truly.” She turned to watch
the dancers as they swayed past, two moving as one to the lure of
darky music. In the center of the flagged floor a fountain sent up
showering spray colored emerald, ruby and gold by lights from within.
The place was filled with a soft languor. It seemed set very close
beneath the Indian Summer sky.
When she turned back she found Brooks gazing at her.
“Come to think of it,” observed Cleeburg, glance traveling from one to
the other, “you don’t look any too chipper yourself, old man. Didn’t
notice it when you got in this morning but you’re both played out.”
“Gloria had a little smash-up after the performance last night. Been
working at top speed. Nothing wrong with me. We’re both tired, that’s
all. There wasn’t a breath of air in the train, either.” Brooks lifted
his glass of cider and a dry smile played round his lips. “I drink to
thee only with mine eyes,” he said to Gloria.
Cleeburg grinned. “Say, why not come out to the house with us now?
Give you something stronger. Stop off, shoot a few things into a bag
and a night in the country’ll do you good.”
Brooks put down his glass. “Thanks, no. Think I’d better stick to my
own bunk.”
“How about next week then? Run you out after the show Saturday night.
You can try a couple of holes of golf with Gloria Sunday.”
“Sorry, old man, I’m booked.”
“Well, any time you like. Ain’t a place, ours, where you have to wait
for a bid.”
“I know that.”
“What’s the matter with you anyhow? Last summer, you used to run out
every few weeks. This year, have to beg you to come!”
“Not a bit of it,” laughed Brooks. “Wait till we get this opening off
our chests and you won’t be able to get rid of me.”
“Can’t come it too strong to suit us, eh kiddo?”
Gloria’s eyes had drifted out to the swaying throng once more. “Of
course not,” she said quickly, and pushed back her chair. “If you
don’t mind, ’Dolph, I believe I am tired.”
Cleeburg noticed as they went down to the car that her step lagged.
When they had dropped Brooks at his flat and were speeding up Fifth
Avenue, sleepy under the quiet hour when life in New York closes one
eye, she turned swiftly. “’Dolph—you remember what you called yourself
in the theater to-night—before the others came?”
He thought a moment. Then his face went alight, all but the eyes.
“Your old back drop, y’mean?”
She nodded. “Don’t ever do that again—don’t!”
Her vehemence made him shift his position so that he faced her.
“Why, honey—”
The break in her voice had been poignant. Her hand clasping his arm
was feverish. He felt the heat of it through his thin coat. Even in
the dark he could see her eyes, brilliant, with something of the
fright he had read in them earlier in the evening. Only it was
intensified.
“Honey, what is it?”
“I want you to know I love you,” she rushed on breathlessly. “It
wasn’t just gratitude that made me marry you. I’ll always love you.
You’re splendid and fine and generous. They don’t come any better.
Never doubt it, ’Dolph! Never—will you?” She shook his arm, repeating
the question over and over.
“Why—kiddo—”
“And I have made you happy?” she broke in on his amazement. “I have
given you something for all you’ve given me?”
He answered quickly enough then.
“Everything, honey. Why, these past five years’ve been more than most
fellows get in a lifetime. I ask myself often what an old tout like me
ever did to deserve ’em. In the theater and out—hasn’t been a day that
wasn’t heaven. That’s what you’ve given me.”
She sat an instant silent. Then before he could divine her intention
she had carried his hand to her lips. But it was not their moisture he
noticed as he drew it hastily away and slipped an arm round her.
CHAPTER II
Over Long Island, as Cleeburg drove in the following day, hung a mist
that made the low hills look like a mirage melting into the sky. It
was as if the smoke of the city reached its long arm far over green
stretches and cool woodland, cloaking Nature with the garment of
industry.
Little ’Dolph sat forward, hat tossed to the floor, cigar ashes strewn
over it like snow. He had smoked incessantly from the moment the car
shot past the hedge surrounding the Cleeburg place. He had smoked with
brow furrowed and teeth chewing on the butt of his weed, concentrating
so intensely that for the first time in years it failed to circle from
corner to corner of the friendly mouth. He was worried—and about
Gloria. What had got her last night? What had brought the fever to her
eyes and that desperate grip to her fingers? What had made her cry,
with long sobs like a child’s when his arm went round her? Wasn’t like
her. Not a bit. He’d never seen her like that, didn’t know how to
handle it.
Overwork must be the answer. She’d been at it for six years seeing
results. And before that God knew how many without seeing them! He
recalled the poor little starved thing she was when first those eyes
with the strange glow back of them had begged for a chance. Since that
chance had been hers she hadn’t stopped, not for a minute. And how she
had mounted! For a second his look of distress vanished in a broad
grin of pride. Gloria had the divine fire, whatever that might be.
The light of it had always been in her soul but his was the
satisfaction of having kindled it to flame. He had found in her the
instrument to express all the seething love of beauty his unbeautiful
body harbored. He could not have put it into words but the
consciousness was there, a vital thing.
He looked out anxiously at the hazy September landscape. Yes, must be
overwork! If it had been anything else, she’d have told him. Dashed
like hysteria, that breakdown last night! Give her a long vacation
next summer, that’s what he’d do. He’d close her in the spring and
take her abroad when he went to clinch those English contracts.
Having reached the only decision possible in view of present demands
on her, he settled back, applied a light to a final cigar and puffed
peacefully until they pulled up at his office in the same building as
the theater.
Toward four-thirty she telephoned that she was feeling much better and
laughed at the relief in his voice. If he worried about her that way,
she’d give a perfectly rotten performance to-night!
But in spite of her chaffing, Cleeburg, going to her dressing-room at
seven, caught her unawares with head drooping into her hands and a
look of utter dejection about the slim shoulders. She lifted both
quickly as he entered and smiled up at him. He peered at the heavy
blue smudges under her eyes.
“Won’t need much make-up, will I?” she laughed, in quick response to
the look. “You see, I’m trying to put the grease-paint men out of
business.”
“What is it?” He pulled a chair close to the dressing-table. It was
higher than hers and so brought their faces on a level. “Something’s
eating you. What? Tell me—tell your old ’Dolph.”
She leaned over, brushed his cheek with her lips, then turned quickly
to the mirror and dabbed the color on her face with the same nervous
haste he had noticed the night before.
“Nothing’s wrong, dear. Wait till we settle down for a steady run and
you’ll see.”
“It’s sure fire! Only keep an eye on that second act. Don’t be afraid
to let go.”
From the wings he watched the audience stream in—beautifully gowned
women, perfectly groomed men, keen-eyed critics, his own colleagues
with soft collars and clothes not too well pressed, here a familiar
round-the-towner, there a merchant who took his first night
subscription seats as religiously as his pew in church. Truly a motley
such as only the Metropolis can produce. Little ’Dolph’s eyes shone
and his broad mouth broadened. Those women with their feathery fans
and glittering jewels; those men with their sleek heads and smart
clothes; the press; the world theatrical; they constituted his court,
this theater his kingdom.
Only a few times since the throne had been his had he failed to give
them what they expected of him. That was why to-night he saw in every
pair of eyes an eager anticipation that was to him like strong
stimulant. He slipped round to the front of the house as the curtain
rose.
All through the first act he divided attention between the stage and
the audience, watching the latter laugh and chuckle and wink and
furtively wipe its eye, and nodding as each effect came at the right
moment. When the lights went up he dodged backstage, not to Gloria,
but to Brooks.
“Great, old boy! You’ve got ’em. Just keep up that tempo. Feeling
fit?”
“Fine!”
“Look out for the end of this act, won’t you,” he added half
apologetically.
“Thought you were coming to that,” laughed Brooks.
“No offense, you understand.”
But he went back to his seat wishing the big scene finished. He
couldn’t help a twitch of uncertainty. If they handled it as they had
at first last night it would fall flat as a pancake.
Eagerly he followed every line. It was scintillant as sunlit ice and
very thin ice at that. The throng round him skated over it with the
actors and when Gloria’s scene with Brooks arrived they were, as he
had prophesied, keyed to an emotional pitch that only the limit of
acting could satisfy.
Then he held tight to the arms of his chair and literally his breath
stopped.
Brooks came to the climax. His vibrant voice fell across the quiet of
the house.
“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No,
not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of
gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now
we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and take what
is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell
you I love you—”
Cleeburg felt the quick intake of breath, the surge forward, that
pulsing reach of an audience. If only they’d play it now for all it
was worth!
Gloria pulled back and terror was in her voice.
“No—no!”
For a second Brooks seemed to hesitate. What in Sam Hill was the
matter with him? Why the deuce didn’t he let go?
Then suddenly his laugh went high. He strode to her. His arms swept
out.
She stood poised as if in resistance, the light from above playing
over her, her eyes started up to his. One could feel the catch in her
throat, the swaying at the edge of a precipice. And then the eyelids
fell, the man’s embrace closed round her like an enveloping flame. Her
lips went to his.
With a deep sigh little ’Dolph subsided. The audience did likewise. It
had them! An excited buzz, the crash of applause told him that. He
dodged out of his seat and to the lobby. Nothing further was to be
desired. “Lady Fair” had gone over with a bang.
* * * * *
It was over a month later that the manager finally prevailed upon
their leading man to week-end with them. He buttonholed Brooks after
the performance one Saturday night and refused to take “no” for an
answer.
“Say, John, getting upstage? Cut your swell friends this week. You’re
coming out with us, ain’t he kiddo?”
They were standing within the stage door. Cleeburg linked a persuasive
arm in the other man’s.
Gloria smiled without looking directly at Brooks. She drew her
squirrel wrap close about her and stepped out of the light.
“John’s always welcome, of course. But if he has other plans we
mustn’t interfere.”
“You don’t say!” laughed Cleeburg. “Well, he’s going to chuck any
other plans and give us the pleasure of his society.”
Brooks held a light to his cigarette. The flare of it illumined his
set mouth, the line of his jaw.
“Another time, old man. There’s a game on at the club to-morrow
afternoon.”
“Good! That being the case, we’ll save you money.” He started down the
narrow alley to the street.
Brooks looked across at Gloria. She was looking down, struggling with
the clasp of her glove.
“Come on,” urged Cleeburg.
An instant more Brooks hesitated. Then his head went back.
“All right, I’m with you.” And he laughed as if with relief.
They stopped off for his bag. They were still using the open car in
spite of the winds of late October. Gloria liked the slash of air
against her face, liked to get the first salty whiff of the Sound. She
leaned back with lids drooping and hands clasped loosely and was
silent all the way. The men talked of next year’s prospects.
“‘Lady Fair’ is good for next year and a season in London. Think I’ll
let you and Gloria take it over. She’s never had a lick at the other
side,” chuckled Cleeburg. “Bound to knock ’em silly.”
Gloria spoke for the first time.
“I wouldn’t think about London—just yet.”
Cleeburg started at the queer note in her voice. They turned into the
drive where willows drooped their branches to the ground. Beyond shone
the lights of the rambling old house, modernized by the family who had
owned and loved it for generations, but untouched as to line or grace.
High ceilings, French windows, arched doorways, tall fireplaces—these
constituted the charm of the estate little ’Dolph had presented to the
woman who had given him happiness.
Supper for two was spread before the flaming logs at one end of the
entrance hall. In the center of the table stood a bowl of autumn
leaves, the wild red of Gloria’s hair. Cleeburg pulled up another
chair as the chauffeur brought in their guest’s bag and helped him out
of his overcoat.
The latter stood gazing round the place with a look of real affection.
“It’s good to be back,” he said with a deep breath.
“Well, the house has been here. Your fault that you haven’t!” Cleeburg
cocked his ear to the comforting pop of a champagne cork.
“Gloria has enough of my company eight consecutive times a week,”
smiled Brooks.
“We missed you anyhow. Didn’t we, kiddo?”
“Of course. Seeing you in the theater isn’t a bit like having you here
under our own roof.” She took off her hat, pushing back the weight of
hair as she sat down beside him. “They’re distinct and separate
lives.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” Brooks put in quickly. “Do you really think
the life of the stage can be cut off completely from a man’s everyday
existence?”
“Why not?” There was almost an urge in her question, a plea in her
eyes.
“I’m inclined to believe,” he answered slowly, “that once the theater
is in a man’s blood, it colors everything he thinks and feels and
does. He’s got to put so much of himself into it that it becomes an
essential part of him.”
“But why is that more true of the stage than of any other profession?”
“Because success on the stage depends less on executive ability than
on sincerity. It’s swaying that crowd out there that counts.” He made
a sweeping gesture of his long, thin hand. “And they know counterfeit
when it’s handed them.”
“You said it,” agreed Cleeburg. “Make a business of acting and you
make a failure.”
“Lord,” laughed Brooks, “here I am telling Gloria something she knows
instinctively. Never saw a woman so charged with the power to make
people feel.” He stopped abruptly.
Gloria had been gazing into her glass as if into a crystal. She set it
down and the next words came as though she did not want to say them.
“If that’s so—I guess you’re right. I do live every thought and
emotion of every part I play. I suppose that’s why they call us
temperamental.” Her full sensitive lips curved in a half-smile. “You
don’t need temperament to sell stocks and bonds or argue a case in
court.”
“I beg your pardon,” corrected Brooks. “A lawyer often has to be a
darned fine actor. I know, because I started out to be one.”
“What’s that?” grinned his host.
“Fact! I haven’t made it generally known. It’s too funny even to make
a good press story. But I was admitted to the bar before the stage got
me.”
“Well, I’ll be—!” Little ’Dolph’s fork halted in its hurried trip
upward.
Gloria pushed her plate aside and leaned farther over the table, eager
interest warming her eyes. Brooks brought his round to meet them.
Sitting there with the flames flickering over tawny hair and smoky
gray dress, she seemed somehow part of them.
“Tell us how it happened, John.”
“Oh, there’s no story strung to it. I’d done stuff each year in
college theatricals and the last year we took our show on tour. I got
the bug and when an honest-to-God manager offered me a real job I fell
for it.”
“Have you ever wanted to go back to law?”
“If I did,” his thin lips twisted, “they’d think it too much of a joke
to take me seriously.”
He said it with rather a grim smile and looking at Gloria. She twisted
round in her chair, away from him. For a moment silence fell, broken
only by little ’Dolph’s apparent enjoyment of his supper.
A gale banged against the windows trying to break its way in. Gloria
got up, went over and drew aside the curtain. Brooks followed.
“I’d love to be out in it!” Her voice throbbed. Night shadows,
beckoning, fell across her face.
“It would never let you come back.”
“What a wonderful fight, though, trying to conquer it!”
“Do you think you could?”
“Yes. I think determination can conquer anything—even oneself.”
“If one could be sure of that.” He looked down at the full lips that
trembled a little, at the eyes with flames back of them, and walked
back to Cleeburg. “Think I’ll turn in, old man.”
Half an hour later Cleeburg stopped at the door of his wife’s room on
the way to his own. She was letting down her hair. It fell like a
loosened mane over neck and shoulders. He took a deep breath, more of
wonder than any other emotion. She turned, saw him and got suddenly to
her feet.
“Have you seen what a night it is, ’Dolph?”
She opened the French windows. A gale of dead leaves flung itself into
the room. She lifted her face, pulled her purple silk kimono closer
and stepped on the balcony. He tried to halt her with a warning
against catching cold. She laughed and beckoned to him.
Black clouds raced across the moon. Trees dashed against the house
with all the impotence of human effort against the walls of Destiny.
There was no rain. The wind leaped up and drove Nature before it, a
mocking god bent on destruction.
“By godfrey, if you could only get that on the stage!” whistled
Cleeburg.
Gloria said nothing. Her face was still lifted, lips apart. Her arms
darted out so that the long kimono sleeves spread like wings. Her
whole body was poised as if for flight.
Cleeburg stepped back and looked at her.
She was part of the storm-torn night. Something about the abandon of
the scene frightened him.
“Come in, honey, won’t you? Catch your death if you stay out like
this.”
Her arms dropped. She turned and followed him indoors. But opening his
own window a while later he saw her slim silhouette outlined against
hers, upright with the dusky light of a lamp behind her.
The next day at their noon breakfast he asked what time she had gone
to bed.
“I don’t know. The night was so fascinating, I stayed up with it until
day came.” She looked as if she had not slept.
Cleeburg lit a prodigiously long cigar, twirled it between his lips
and settled back benignly in an armchair by the fire.
“Well, children, I’m here for the afternoon. Drive over to the club or
do whatever you like. Little ’Dolph’s going to get busy doing
nothing.”
He reached over without altering his position of solid comfort and
picked at random one of the Sunday papers piled on the table beside
him. His broad face was suffused with a look of utter peace and
relaxation. Even the ever-active cigar suspended activities.
Gloria’s lips touched his forehead.
“We’ll go for a walk—back at four-thirty for tea.”
His eyes went after her the length of the foyer to a side door opening
on the gravel walk—Gloria in dull green sport coat and tam, a fur
piece swung carelessly from one shoulder; and the tall well-knit man
in knickerbockers whose elastic step so easily fell in with hers. Had
they followed farther they would have seen two people tramping in
silence along a country road strewn with leaves that faded from green
to mottled dead brown under a sullen sky. They would have marveled at
the set look of the man’s mouth, the quivering of the woman’s. Those
sympathetic prominent eyes of his, always seeking the most beautiful
way to simulate human emotion, would have clouded with question had
they read the pain in both pairs that stared straight along the road
without meeting.
Half a mile or so the two walked and then abruptly the man turned.
“I tried to avoid it, Gloria.”
“I know.”
“But he took the matter out of my hands. You saw that.”
“Yes.”
“I could see he was hurt because I hadn’t been out this year. And
little ’Dolph isn’t the sort of man you can hurt.”
“No.”
“We both know that, don’t we?”
She looked up at him without answer. Tears stood in her eyes.
He turned his from them and his lips went tighter.
“He’s the finest that walks in shoe leather,” he added.
“I told him that the night we came in from the road. But I was telling
it more to myself than to him. John, I felt just knowing that you—that
you cared, was disloyal to him.”
“I wouldn’t have let you know it, Gloria. I was determined never to
suggest it by so much as a word. Then when you went smash at the
theater the day before we came in, I—somehow I didn’t have to tell
you, did I?”
“No.” It was a whisper.
“I want you to believe I couldn’t be anything but square with little
’Dolph. You do, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why, even on the stage, I feel I haven’t the right to take you in my
arms. And I must have shown it in some way or other. He noticed the
difference at the dress rehearsal.”
She walked on silently at his side.
“But I’m glad you know. Don’t blame me for that. It’s the biggest,
finest thing in my life, a thing I can’t help. I wouldn’t be human—”
“We must never mention it again, John,” she broke in and her voice
came throbbing as it had the night before. “We can’t help it, just as
you say. But we must keep it locked up tight, so that it will harm no
one—not even ourselves. We owe that to him.”
“Yes. I’d made up my mind to that.”
“You mustn’t see me away from the theater. You mustn’t come out here
any more.”
“I dare say it’s better that way.”
Her eyes traveled along the leaf-strewn road, then up to the sulky
sky. And because they were not seeing quite clearly she stumbled and
almost fell across a fallen trunk.
The man’s arm went round her, holding the slim body a moment. Then
with a conscious tightening of muscles he drew it away and plunged on
without a glance at her.
Presently he turned and in the look he gave her was a sort of
desperate pleading.
“Is there any harm in telling you just once, Gloria, what you mean to
me? I’ve been telling it to myself so long.”
“I—I don’t think you’d better. I—I don’t believe I could listen.”
He looked down. Her eyes, struck with terror, went up to his.
“Please—don’t.”
“It’s all right. I won’t.”
They came to a trail through the woods.
“Shall we take this back?” She turned into it.
He reached up and broke a last branch of red leaves that trickled like
blood from a dying tree, and handed it to her.
“Have you noticed how intensely bright this live stuff looks when
everything around it is dead or dying?”
Little ’Dolph a mile or so distant, dozed by the fire with cigar still
sidling from the corner of his mouth. His dreams were hazy and
disjointed. But Gloria as he had seen her on the balcony the night
before drifted through them. The howling night swept by, tearing at
silken robe and wild hair. She seemed to sway with it. The clouds
descended. He had a vague sense of effort to reach out, to hold her,
that breathless catch at the heart of nightmare. Then suddenly he lost
sight of her. A distant crash and he saw the clouds sweep her up
and—while he stood rooted—carry her away.
He sat up with a gasp. The cigar fell from his lips. His heart thumped
madly.
“What a shame! The banging of the screen door wakened him!” It was
Gloria’s voice and she was coming toward him.
He gave a great sigh of relief.
“By godfrey, I’m glad to be awake! Come here, kiddo. Want to make sure
I’ve still got you!”
She whisked the branch of scarlet leaves across his face.
“Just had a dream that took you right out of my young life and I
couldn’t catch up!”
She pulled off tam and coat, swung to the arm of his chair.
“Can’t lose me, Dolphy dear!”
“By-the-way,” remarked Brooks, as Gloria served tea, “please don’t
mind if I beat it back to town to-night. I’ve got to see my lawyer at
ten a. m., and you won’t be going in until to-morrow noon, will you?”
“Yes, I do mind, by George!” came from ’Dolph. “We get you out here
once in a blue moon and you can’t even stand it for one day. What do
you want with a lawyer anyhow? Hold on to your pocket and attend to
your own legal affairs.”
“But if John has to go in, dear, we mustn’t keep him.”
Brooks was looking down at the cap twirling between his hands.
“See, old man! Your wife understands.”
“All right!” Cleeburg got up, peeved, and went to the bell. “What time
do you want the car? I’ll drive you to the station. But hanged if I
don’t think you pay us a mighty poor compliment!”
He still showed annoyance when Brooks went up to pack his bag.
“What’s got him, anyhow?” he put to Gloria. “Damned if I ask him
again!”
All the way to the station he chewed on his cigar, responding
laconically when his guest tried to make conversation. The little
manager had a peculiar racial pride that John Brooks unwittingly had
speared.
“Good enough to hand out his weekly stipend; good enough to give him
his living!” kept spinning round the active brain. “But not good
enough any more to sit with at the table! Prefers his Fifth Avenue
cronies for that.”
As the car stopped, Brooks swung down, reached out a hand.
“Thanks, old man. Had a great time!”
“The hell you had!” said Cleeburg.
He drove back still turning over his guest’s desertion and madder
every minute. When the car pulled up he sprang out, intent upon
talking the whole thing over with Gloria. He crossed the veranda,
opened the front door.
She was sitting in the chair he had occupied before the fire. Her body
was bent forward, head lowered. He went nearer. She was stripping the
branch she had brought in of its blood-red leaves. One by one she
broke them off and dropped them into the fire. And her eyes never left
them as they curled up and shriveled to a crisp.
CHAPTER III
We who sit in the orchestra of life are inclined to smile, to lend
willing ear to whispers of scandal from behind the footlights. Perhaps
the standards are a bit less rigid on the surface. But so are
emotions. They cannot be hidden as the rest of the world has learned
to hide them but must be brought forth on the stage nightly that we at
play may know the joy of laughter and tears for which our own lives do
not exact payment.
Those twin giants, Opportunity and Propinquity, stand guard at the
stage door, ushering in with a flourish each newcomer. Human frailty
is their stock in trade, the theater their most satisfactory market.
For a year they had stalked the steps of Gloria Cromwell and John
Brooks. For a year they had appeared at unexpected moments, working in
absolute harmony, waiting with tongue in cheek for the unguarded
second when the set line of the man’s mouth would relax; when his lips
would tell her what his arms had not yet made known; when the woman’s
voice with its strange thrilling note would meet his and confess.
And they had been cheated. The unguarded second had come on the dingy
stage of a small town theater during the tour of “Lady Fair”—with
Gloria crumpling at his feet and his arms going round her in a sudden
desperate clasp. Alone in her dressing-room, her opening eyes had met
the look in his like a shaft of light struck through blindness. His
whispered “Gloria,” the straining of her close as if to hold her
always; the swift loosening of that hold; the step backward; the
breaking of their locked gaze.
If love could be classified—and of course it cannot—I wonder how we
would label love that goes quietly on its way without hysteria,
without big scenes, with no effort to grasp that to which it has no
right; knowing that it must endure, even while it can never find
fulfillment.
’Dolph Cleeburg, with round eyes constantly in search of new angles on
old conflicts, did not dream that daily in his own home, in his own
theater, those eyes were looking upon drama more vibrant than any he
could see in a mimic world—the quiet tragedy of passion which in daily
contact with its object, yet soldierwise faces its own death knell.
He took note of nothing but the crowds that jammed the theater. He
planned gaily for next season’s tour, to be topped by triumphal entry
into London.
“You and John will be a knock-out over there,” he told Gloria, eyes
popping. “Even if I am sore at him, I’ve got to admit he knows his
job.”
Gloria looked out at the hills, shorn of all but bare-limbed trees and
covered with a fine frost, the gray beard of coming winter. It was
their final week-end in the country, later than they usually remained.
But she had wanted it so.
“Have you spoken to John about going?” she asked.
“Not since he was here. Haven’t spoken to him at all.”
“Big baby!” she laughed.
“Well, he hurt my feelings. I can’t forget the way he gave us the
go-by.”
“Then—then why send him abroad?” It came with a sharp intensity. “We
can look the ground over when we cross this summer and engage an
Englishman.”
“Not on your life! You and John pull too well together. The pair of
you will give ’em a taste of real American pep.”
She hesitated, eyes riveted to the vista of cold hills. Suddenly she
wheeled round, one hand grasping the drape that bordered the French
window. The next words came like a catapult.
“’Dolph, don’t book me for London! I’m not going! I don’t want to play
there.”
“You don’t—” Cleeburg’s jaw dropped in sheer amazement.
“No,” she raced on. “I’ve been thinking about it—a lot. I don’t want
to go.”
“But why?”
“I’ve never been over. I don’t know any one—”
“That won’t take long. Why, they’ll be giving you a rush the day after
you land. And there’s John for company if you get homesick.”
“Yes, I know. But”—she turned once more to the stripped hills, then
back with something like terror in her eyes—“but it’s you I need,
’Dolph. I don’t want to be so far away from you.”
He got out of the chair that hugged his merry fire, went to her, laid
a hand that trembled over hers.
“Y’mean that, kiddo? After six years of me, do I honest-to-God matter
as much as that?”
Her hand curled up and over his, holding it tight.
“Oh, ’Dolph, if you knew how much I need you! More now than ever
before! Don’t send me away—don’t!”
Cleeburg’s eyes went up to hers. Hers went down before them.
“By godfrey!” he said finally, brushing a hand across his eyes. “Think
I’m crying. Ain’t ashamed of it, either.”
She did not answer.
“You, too!” He peered under her lowered lids. “Fine pair of slushes,
eh? Well, I want to tell you right now, honey—ain’t a knock-out I ever
had that made a hit with me like this does.”
She brought a smile to her silent lips.
“All I’m looking for is the best thing for you,” he went on. “You’re
the main guy in this combination. I’m just the old back drop like I
told you. If you ain’t going to be happy in London, you don’t
go—that’s all. But think it over! I’d like to see my little girl make
the Britishers sit up. We’ll give them the once-over this summer. Then
you can decide.”
* * * * *
The memory of that afternoon with Gloria against the sunless winter
twilight begging not to be sent away from him, was to little ’Dolph
like some treasure one keeps in a vault—to be taken out, gazed upon
and locked away again. Sometimes in the rear office that was his
sanctum, when things had gone wrong or a lull came in the day’s
activities, he would sink back in his chair, a smile slowly radiating
his plain features, and before him would come a woman with arms
outstretched toward him as if for protection against all the world.
The wonder of it made him glow, sent the worries of business scurrying
into the background.
He was seated so one Saturday afternoon between the matinée and
evening performances, after having rounded up the tour for next
season. The immortal cigar circled contentedly and he lolled back,
contemplating a sweep of intense blue sky—but seeing rather the Long
Island hills against a somber one—when his secretary brought word that
John Brooks was outside and wanted to see him.
Cleeburg nodded.
“Lo, stranger,” he said a bit sheepishly as the latter came in. “Time
you showed up.”
“I’ve been trying to see you for the past month,” Brooks informed him,
throwing hat and coat on a chair and pulling another close to
Cleeburg’s desk, “but you passed me up every time we met. Never mind,
old man,” he added with a short smile as the other started to lay down
his cigar, “I know why. You were sore at me—and with reason. We’ll let
it go at that. I’m sorry.”
“So’m I,” grinned little ’Dolph and sat back again. “When I like a
fellow, I like him. Enemies can’t hurt my feelings. Now what’s on your
mind?”
Brooks got up as suddenly as he had sat down, took a turn the length
of the room, and came back.
“’Dolph”—he began somewhat awkwardly and stopped. “’Dolph,—when this
season closes I’m going to ask you to get some one else for the road.
I can’t go out next year.”
For the space of a breath the manager said nothing. He sat blinking
uncertainly as if not sure of his ears. Then he jerked forward.
“What’s that?”
“I know it seems a rotten trick to pull. But I want you to take my
word, ’Dolph, that I wouldn’t do it if I hadn’t justifiable reasons.”
“Am I to understand that you’re handing me your notice?”
“Yes, old man.”
“You’re notifying me that you quit?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When we close. If you can let me off before then—”
Cleeburg’s laugh cut the sentence like an ax. It held—sharp,
contemptuous. Then his teeth shut on his cigar until the end broke off
in his mouth.
“Who’s offering to star you?” came tersely.
A flash from the other’s eye answered the arraignment. But his reply
was low and quiet.
“Nobody.”
“Since when did you take me for an easy mark?”
“’Dolph,” Brooks began, “you and I have been on the level with each
other always. I’ve played fair and I’m going to keep on playing fair.
I’m quitting for reasons I can’t make clear to you now. You’ll have to
take my word for it.”
“The hell I will!” Cleeburg shot out. “This has been coming a long
time. I saw it when you were in the country. Swelled head—that’s the
answer! Didn’t think they could do it to you. But those society snobs
have got you thinking you’re Edwin Booth.”
The other man’s thin lips opened. His eyes narrowed with a look almost
of menace. Then in silence he picked up a flexible paper cutter and
bent it slowly in two. There was a snap. He chucked the pieces on the
desk.
“That’s a damned injustice, Cleeburg. Wish you hadn’t said it. But it
won’t change matters any. I’m quitting.”
“Look here, sorry if I was hasty. You hit me hard—that’s all! Sit
down. Let’s talk it over—cards on the table. What’s the big idea?”
“I told you.”
“No, you didn’t. Somebody’s after you. Somebody’s going long on the
golden promise stuff. I ain’t a fool. That’s plain as the nose on your
face. Now who is it? Kane? Coghlan? Surprised they didn’t try to get
you long ago.”
“They did. I turned them down.”
Beads of perspiration had gathered on Cleeburg’s head. He pulled a
handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped mechanically.
“Anything wrong downstairs?”
“N-no.”
The manager looked up sharply. “If there’s trouble, just spill it and
I’ll settle things to your satisfaction.”
“Nothing wrong, old man.”
“Then look here, let’s get down to cases. If it’s business, we’ll talk
business. You’ve got to stay. Gloria can’t get along without you.”
Brooks’ eyes shifted to the window.
“I don’t want any trouble for her,” little ’Dolph pursued. “I’ve got
you billed together next season. Her public looks for you both. I’ll
meet any offer you got. Yes—and top it.”
Brooks turned back slowly, shook his head.
Cleeburg sprang up.
“Well, get me straight—will you? You’re tied up tight. And I won’t let
you off. Now I’ll just about show you where you stand.” His thumb went
down on the press-button in his desk as if it were going through the
top. “Bring me Mr. Brooks’ contract,” he told his secretary.
Brooks walked over to the window. His hands were shaking. His face was
dead white. He stood staring out with jaws set and the look of a man
going into battle.
But Cleeburg saw nothing of that. His own hands opened and shut
spasmodically. He tramped steadily back and forth the space of his
desk, muttering to himself like the rumble of storm. Under the puzzled
question that brought brows together was a frown of fury.
When the contract was handed him, he rustled quickly through the
pages, scanning the closely typed sheets, studying it clause for
clause.
“No, sir! I’ve got you!” he ended triumphantly.
“’Dolph, I’ve never asked favors—not from you nor any other man. But I
ask you now to let me off without any kick. You know me well enough to
realize I wouldn’t, without some good reason.”
“Then I’ve got to know what that reason is.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Not the ghost of an excuse, yet you want me to let you quit without a
murmur! What d’you think I am?”
“I think you’re man enough not to try to hold me, contract or no
contract.”
“That won’t work! Here it is, black on white.” He banged down the
contract. “No loophole for three years! It’s ironclad.”
“Then I’ll have to break it,” the man at the window said quietly.
Cleeburg went close to him. For some unaccountable reason this man
calmly breaking all rules of the game, made him feel apologetic. An
outraged sense of justice added to his fury.
“Oh, you will—will you? Well, we’ll just look after that. Whatever
you’ve got up your sleeve, Brooks, it’s a skunk trick. And I won’t
stand for it, d’you hear? I’ll stop you from tying up with anybody
else. S’help me, I will!”
“I’m not tying up with anybody else. I’m quitting—for good.”
“What?”
“That’s why I want you to release me.”
Cleeburg gave the same hard contemptuous laugh as before.
“What’re you trying to put over?”
“Nothing.”
“You mean to tell me you’re chucking a profession when you’re right on
top?”
“I’m going back to the law—if the world hasn’t too keen a sense of
humor to accept a one-time actor as a lawyer.”
The manager gave him one long uncomprehending look, then flung back
his head and roared. It was laughter not pleasant to listen to. Brooks
stood it silently for a stretch while his hands twitched. Then his
eyes flared as if fire were behind them. Still he did not turn from
the window.
“Let’s end this, will you? We’re not getting anywhere. And I’ve given
you my ultimatum.”
“Well, I’ll give you mine.” Cleeburg had lost all count of words. The
bruise of bucking against a stone wall had made him see red. “You
stick to Gloria or I’ll make it so hot for you that they’ll hoot you
out of this town! That’s the only way to handle—swine!” He broke off,
turned on his heel, went back to the desk. Suddenly he leaned across
it. “What the hell do you want, anyhow?”
Brooks came round like a pivot. The other man’s breath held at the
look on his face. “I want your wife! Now for God’s sake throw me out,
will you!”
It was quite still in the room. Even the words were spoken in
something less than a whisper. When they had come there was no outward
intimation that a man had pulled down a mountain crashing about his
head.
Cleeburg’s hands clenched where they lay on the desk. He stared across
it without changing position. The blood mounted to his wet forehead,
then receded, leaving it gray white. His face was that of a man ready
to kill. Then he shook his head a little vaguely, felt for the chair
behind him, pulled it up to the desk. But he did not sink into it. He
caught hold of the arm and stood so, steadying himself.
“Nothing on God’s earth would have made me tell you, ’Dolph,” Brooks
went on hoarsely. “I thought I could make you let me off without a
word. But you can see for yourself—” He paused—then abruptly: “Do you
know what it means to take her in my arms, loving her? Do you know
what it means to want another man’s wife and feel her lips on yours
every night?”
Cleeburg moistened his own. They opened and closed. His nails dug into
the varnish of the chair. His eyes, so long unseeing, visualized in a
flash the scene they had gazed upon so often—Gloria in the arms of the
man facing him, himself urging them to more intense expression, more
abandon of love. Like a raging animal the fighting male leaped up in
him—then subsided, knowing it had to fight only itself. He met the
straight look. In turn it met his. And he knew that set mouth had
spoken truth, clean, uncompromising; could not have spoken at all if
it had been otherwise. He groped uncertainly,—spoke at last half in
fear, the first thought that had seized him.
“Does—does she—know?”
John Brooks looked into the tortured face and lied without hesitation.
“No.”
“You mean—she hasn’t even guessed?”
“No. And I don’t want her to.”
“That’s why you kept away from us?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you went back to town last time you were with us.”
“Yes.”
“And I thought you were a damned snob!” A hand that trembled came
across the desk top. “Sorry I said what I did. Pardon!”
The other made an attempt to treat it lightly. Two shaking hands
clasped.
“No trouble about getting off now, eh?”
“I—I’d like to eat dirt for the way I talked to you,” said Cleeburg.
“Forget it! Your assumption was the only logical one. Another man
would be after me with a gun for what I’ve told you.”
“Look here,” little ’Dolph stumbled on, “I—I’ll star you myself.”
“No,” Brooks smiled a bit grimly. “I’m quitting—for good.”
’Dolph Cleeburg’s eyes, comprehending now, took in the drawn face and
tired look of the man who had fought a losing battle—and won. And some
strange click of memory brought simultaneously the same look of
desperation in another face. Where had he seen it? When? Why did it
haunt him? He sat down, picked up the halves of the paper cutter and
tried to piece them together. Suddenly they rattled to the desk.
Gloria! Gloria’s white face that night after he had put them through
their paces, the night she had clung to him, the night of her strange
outburst of hysteria. Gloria’s face when he suggested sending them
abroad! Gloria’s face a dozen times since!
His gaze moved slowly toward the door, straining as a man stares
through the dark. His thumb pressed the button on his desk, not as
before, but mechanically. He waited without moving. Yet his secretary
stood in the doorway fully half a minute before he spoke.
“Find out if Miss Cromwell is in her dressing-room. Say I’d like to
see her here.”
Brooks took a quick step toward him.
“What do you want her for.”
“To tell her you’re quitting.”
“That’s not necessary. See here, ’Dolph, let’s drop it. You and I
understand each other.”
“No harm telling her, is there?”
The other man stepped back and sat down with a gesture that told the
futility of argument. He, too, sat with eyes on the door.
Neither spoke. Little ’Dolph’s face seemed to sag. The skin fell
heavily round the jaws. The eyes had a vague, helpless look. He took
out his handkerchief, folded it carefully and put it back in his
pocket. He got up, changed the position of a chair, came back to the
desk.
“’Dolph, what are you going to do?” Brooks brought out at last.
“Just tell her,” he repeated.
The door opened and Gloria came in, dressed for the street.
“I’ve been waiting for you to take me to dinner,” she told Cleeburg.
“What’s kept you, dear?”
He got up, pushed his chair in her direction.
“News,” came uncertainly after a second’s pause. “Rotten news. John’s
leaving us.”
The bomb was flung. He stood peering into her face, waiting for its
answer rather than that of her lips.
There would be surprise—there must be that! And after the first start
of amazement, a protest. And indignation! The outburst of the actress
about to lose the support on which she depends. His hands clenched.
That she might not see, he clasped them behind him. God, let her know
the anxiety natural under the circumstances! Let her rise up
determined to hold this man to his business contract! Let her threaten
with all the impersonal fury he himself had shown! Let her prove that
to her John Brooks was merely part of her professional life! That as
such she would not let him go!
He waited while his silent lips moved in prayer.
Gloria’s first swift glance was to Brooks. His linked with hers. Her
fingers locked and unlocked. Twice she opened her lips without speech,
then turned back to Cleeburg.
“Has anything happened? There—there’s been no trouble between you, has
there?” was all she said.
“Of course not,” Brooks put in quickly. “I’ve told ’Dolph I’m quitting
for good. That’s all there is to it.”
Little ’Dolph did not take his eyes from her. Now it would
come—surely. She had been too amazed, too taken back before. He waited
for the throbbing voice to answer.
“You—you’re leaving the stage?” it asked too quietly.
“Yes,” Cleeburg plunged in. “He’s quitting us—cold. Get that? He’s
leaving us in the lurch. What do you make of it?”
With a look of sudden fear, Brooks sprang up. “See here, ’Dolph—”
“John must have some good reason—”
“Do you know what it is?”
She glanced quickly from one to the other. Something in both faces
brought her, too, to her feet. “Why should I?”
“You didn’t seem surprised when I told you.”
“I am surprised, of course.”
“Then why in God’s name don’t you make him give you some explanation?”
“Hasn’t he given you one?” she asked very low.
“Yes! Do you want to hear it?”
“’Dolph!” the other man fairly leaped at him.
“Wait a minute!” Cleeburg stretched out a hand. His throat was so
parched, he could scarcely bring out the words. “Wait a minute! I’ve
got to go through with this. I’ve got to know.” He turned to Gloria.
“You asked if anything happened. The biggest thing has happened since
you came into the room. I sent for you to tell you John was going.
That means you lose the best support you ever had or will have. It
knocked me out completely. And you take it without a murmur. You’ve
got him under contract, yet you don’t make the ghost of an effort to
hold him.”
Gloria’s voice shook as she answered.
“Why should I try to hold him against his will?”
“Why wouldn’t you put up the fight of your life to hold him—unless
you’re afraid to?”
“Afraid to?”
“Let’s drop this!” came swift and sharp from Brooks.
“I can’t—I’ve got to know,” Cleeburg broke in pitifully. Then to
Gloria like a man pleading for life: “You didn’t want me to book you
and John for London. You preferred not to go. That’s a fact, ain’t
it?”
“Yes.”
“Was it—was it because you didn’t want to be over there with
him—alone?”
She stared as he put the question—stared into the eyes that were like
a bleeding animal’s.
“I didn’t want to go without you. You know that.”
He saw her mouth quiver at the corners and her teeth hold the lower
lip. And all her nervousness that night of the dress rehearsal swept
before him in torturing detail. He shook his head helplessly. He
grasped the arm of a chair as he had once before and steadied himself.
Haltingly the words he had known he must speak came at last.
“Why wouldn’t you go without me? Was that—was it because you knew what
I know now—that he loves you?”
She gave a start. He saw her eyes fly to the other man’s. There was
nothing of indignation in that look, nothing of anger. Terror—yes—and
question! But back of both a glow—the instinctive look of the one
woman to the one man that will live as long as the world. Because
unconscious, it was all the revelation the man who watched her needed.
A sort of groping wonder at his blindness seized him. Then little
’Dolph sank into the chair and, like a candle snuffed, hope went out
of his eyes.
What she said as she turned back to him was merely a veil drawn across
thought to hide its nakedness.
She went over, laid a hand on his shoulder and looked into the poor
haggard face that had not learned, as have women, to conceal its
suffering. Her own was as white.
“’Dolph, dear—whatever John has told you, I want you to believe that
he’s never, by so much as a word, been disloyal to you.”
He patted her hand and tried to smile.
“I know that, kiddo. It’s all right. Honest it is.”
“Don’t blame him. We’ve been together so much. The theater is so
different from any other kind of life. It’s so—so intimate.”
“’Dolph has been one hundred per cent there.” Brooks squared his
shoulders as he spoke and went toward the door. “Another man would
have put a bullet through my head.”
“You—you’ll go on being his friend, ’Dolph?”
“Don’t worry, kiddo.”
“You and I will have each other.” Her voice broke.
His empty eyes came round to her.
“You’re going to stay on with me?”
“Of course I am.”
“Y’mean it?”
“Of course I do.” She looked to Brooks and held out her hand.
“Good-by, John.”
He came over and took it and held it for a moment—tight.
“Good-by, Gloria. I’ll be leaving town next week, if ’Dolph’s willing
to have an understudy take my place from to-night on. I’m not likely
to see you again.”
Their eyes met and managed to smile. Then Gloria looked away.
Something in her throat was fluttering like a wild thing.
When she looked back the door had closed.
“You’re all right, honey,” Cleeburg murmured huskily.
Three hours later he let himself into the quiet office, switched on
the light and went to the desk. A broken paper knife lay near the
inkstand. He picked up the pieces, held them together with half a
smile, then let them drop from his hand into the waste basket.
The chair he had pushed forward for Gloria stood as she had left it.
He drew it over, sat down, and with broad mouth firm but hands that
shook a little, pulled a sheet of foolscap toward him and took up a
pen.
The pen moved across the sheet, sometimes hesitating, sometimes swift
as a comet. But the determined line of little ’Dolph’s mouth never
relaxed.
_My dearest little girl_:
I’ve been thinking a lot since dinner, and when a fellow has sort
of lost the habit of thinking about anything but his next show it
comes hard. But don’t you jump at the conclusion that what I’m
going to say is hasty or that it ain’t final. For years there was
a funny old feeling inside of me that I had something to tell the
world and no way to tell it. I wanted to put over something on
the stage that would sound like music or look like a beautiful
painting. Scenery wouldn’t do it. The women I had trained
couldn’t do it. I didn’t even know, myself, just what it was. I
used to tell myself often I was a poor nut. Then you came along
with that voice of yours and those eyes and the fire that hasn’t
any name, and did it all for me. If there hadn’t ever been
anything more for me than seeing those hopes come true, it would
have been enough. But I’ve had you for almost six years. You made
me happier than you know, kiddo. And what has a poor old dub like
me ever done to expect more than the happiness life has already
handed me through you? Why, that’s a fortune that makes the
Rockefeller millions look like thirty cents. If I try to hog
more, if I keep you from the thing you’ve got a right to, the
thing you gave me for six years, shooting’s too good for me.
You don’t think I could let you stay on with me, knowing that you
and John belong together, do you? And you do belong together. You
know I always said you made a fine team. Why, kiddo, it would
finish me. I want you to be happy, that’s all. And I saw to-day
where that happiness is for you.
I fixed it so that John couldn’t get off to-night. And I’m going
to fix it now so that you’ll play together the rest of your
lives. I’m sailing Monday to fix up those English contracts. When
I come back in the fall you’re going to be free. No, not free,
I’m wrong. I want to take you and John by the hands and say—Bless
you, my children!
You remember, I called myself once your old back drop. Well,
being that is about the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And I’ll keep on being that if you’ll let me, until you quit the
game. Let me go on putting you over just like always and I’ll be
O. K. Don’t you worry.
God bless you, kiddo.
’Dolph.
He folded the sheets without reading them, put them into an envelope,
sealed it carefully, went downstairs and looked up the head usher.
“Take this to Miss Cromwell and give it into her hands yourself,” he
said. “And here, kid.” And he slipped the boy a dollar.
TWO MASTERS
_ROMANCE_
Love is a fantasy, a dream that only sacrifice can make come true. The
tragedy of it is not in dying, but in living without it.
TWO MASTERS
CHAPTER I
Across Bryant Park, chilled and damp under a gray sky emptied of
stars, a man hurried. His overcoat collar was turned up. His soft hat
was pulled down. His eyes between the two were dark-circled and
deep-sunk. His feet covered the wet paths with the stumbling haste of
one pursued.
To the east the faint gold streaks of an autumn dawn cut the clouds.
They reached up above the irregular skyline that is New York,
heralding the day some minutes after it was born.
The man sped across Fortieth Street and mounted the steps of one of
the few brownstone houses, relic of an old aristocracy, that refused
to be crowded out by the bourgeoisie of business. He fumbled in his
coat pocket, brought out a key, dropped it in his anxiety, finally got
the inner door open and made his way, still stumbling, up the stairs.
At an apartment on the second floor—for the house maintained its aloof
air of aristocracy only on the outside—he paused and squared his
shoulders. His whole body seemed to steel itself and then, very
softly, he inserted the key and entered.
A gentle rustle came from the room beyond and a trained nurse with
finger against her lips met him on the threshold.
“She—she’s all right?” he whispered, lips twitching.
“Sleeping.”
“I tried to get back earlier. We rehearsed until a few minutes ago.”
He threw hat and overcoat on a chair and sank into another. His head
went down into his hands. “God, those hours, when every minute I
thought—Miss Anderson,” he broke off, looking up to catch her
expression, “she hasn’t taken a turn for the worse! She’ll pull
through, won’t she?”
She smiled, a little sadly, at the desperate, so familiar query.
“She’s holding her own,” she answered with the formula equally
familiar.
“Can’t you tell me she’ll get well? Can’t you give me the assurance?”
“No one can do that, Mr. Moore. We can only wait and hope.”
She took a hesitant step toward him, hand outstretched to comfort.
Then evidently realizing how futile such effort would be, she turned
and went back to her place at the foot of the bed that was a misty
blur in the darkened room beyond.
He followed, precipitately yet with scarcely the sound of a footfall.
The room was full of shadows. A thread of sunlight, forcing its way
between blind and window, crept across the floor and gradually toward
the bed. But Frank Moore did not need its delicate finger-touch to
illumine the face that lay so still upon the pillow. He knew every
precious line of it, every contour, all the shades of modeling that
made it exquisite even though disease had in a few short weeks pressed
into a gaunt mask the curves of beauty. He stood looking down at its
stillness until a sudden broken cry came from him and he went quickly
into the other room.
With no shame for his man’s tears, he flung himself full length on the
couch and gave way to the misery he must hide when the wistful gaze of
the eyes he loved was on him. Long days of rehearsal, long nights of
anxiety, had weakened his resistance. He lay shaking with all the
pitiable helplessness of the strong man gone under.
On side streets and flashing under the reflectors on the big
twenty-four sheets along Sixth Avenue was his name in prominent black
letters.
Kane Theatre
45th Street
beginning
_November 5th_
OSWALD KANE
Presents
the New Drama
“THE LAUREL WREATH”
by
_Gaston Grisac_
Featuring
FRANKLYN MOORE
How often they had dreamed of the day when he and she could look up
and see that name as it stood out now, heralded, the featured one of
the season’s big production! How often had she pictured herself
stopping to read it each time it loomed before them, scanning it over
and over on her theater program, leaning beyond the rail of the stage
box to spur him to the success that must be his!
And to-night—the night that was to have been the greatest in their
life, she would be lying there, while he— He sprang up, with quick
stride covered the floor, back and forth, back and forth, like a
prisoner in a cell.
The day nurse arriving at seven, found him dazed and blank-eyed from
sheer weakness. As one feeds a child, she made him swallow some
steaming coffee, then led him without difficulty back to the couch.
“You must rest, Mr. Moore, or you won’t be equal to the performance
to-night.”
“I—can’t.”
“But if I promise to call you when Mrs. Moore wakes up, won’t you try
to sleep a bit?”
“I can’t, I tell you!”
“Please—”
She plumped up the pillows and he fell back among them, exhausted. He
did not sleep but a sort of numbness gripped him as if the blood had
been drained from his veins. And while his body lay still, his mind
moved with wonder. Ambition—hope—of what use? To-day for him, this day
that was to make all the days to come, there was just one reality.
That face in there with its lines of suffering, that frail body, that
soul that must live on for him. Nothing else was worth a
thought—nothing! All night long as he had rehearsed, perfecting under
the subtle guidance of Oswald Kane, the minutest detail of
characterization, the most delicate shading of the difficult rôle he
had mastered, he had been standing in reality at her bedside. Like a
well-ordered mechanism he had gone through the part. But the
indeterminate something that was Franklyn Moore had been in that
shadowy room—with her. Kane had noticed the lack. An anxious frown had
drawn his expressive brows momentarily together. But he had said
nothing until the dress rehearsal was over and the company had gone
home to sleep in preparation for the night’s performance. Then he had
linked his arm through Moore’s and drawn him into the darkness of the
wings.
“Frank, I know this is an ordeal for you. If there were any way of
postponing the opening, I would do it. You know that. But it can’t be
managed. We’re all set. They could only conclude that something was
wrong with the play.”
“Of course—I know. That’s all right.”
“And, my boy, we can’t afford to let it fail because of this—this
misfortune that has come to you. It’s on your shoulders. We must come
through, Frank. We can’t stand a failure.” His anxiety was all too
evident.
“I was rotten—I know. But don’t worry—”
“I won’t. I depend upon you, my boy, that’s all. And so does
to-night’s success. Let me run you home.”
“Thanks—no. I’d rather walk it. Want to be alone—you understand—pardon!”
And he had stumbled out of the stage door into the new gray day.
Now as he paced up and down, he wondered whether it would be humanly
possible to keep faith with the man who was giving him the opportunity
to blazon his name to the world. Could he go through with it? Could he
be depended upon?
The nurse appeared in the doorway and beckoned to him. From the pillow
a pair of eyes, so large and dark that there seemed no other feature
in the small face, fastened on the door as he entered. He dropped on
his knees, laid his head beside hers. One hand strayed up and stroked
his thick brown hair.
“How did it go, darling?”
He answered with another question of greater moment.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Much. They gave me something to make me sleep. I must have slept a
long time. Is it morning?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Really? What time did you get in?”
“About half-past five.”
“How did the rehearsal go?” she repeated.
“Fine. Kane thinks it will be a knock-out.”
“I’m sure it will.”
He turned his face from hers for an instant of silence.
The nurse moved about the room, lifting the blinds to the sunlight,
preparing it for the day. Then she came over to the bed.
“As soon as I have Mrs. Moore fixed up, I’ll let you come back,” she
said.
“You’ll let him tell me all about it, won’t you?” pleaded the voice
from the pillow. “I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t.”
“Yes—he can stay in here until—”
“Until he’s ready to go to the theater. Please—please!”
“If you don’t wear yourself out.”
“I won’t—I promise.”
The big dark eyes followed him out of the room.
He stripped off his clothes, took a cold shower and in clean linens
tried to persuade himself that he felt relaxed. He telephoned the
doctor for a report on last night’s visit and was told Mrs. Moore was
about the same. If she had gained some sleep that was decidedly in her
favor. The doctor would be over at five and as Mr. Moore had
requested, would make arrangements to stay until his return from the
theater.
The small face on the pillow was lifted eagerly as he reappeared. Two
long braids of pale gold fell over the shoulders and onto the white
spread. He had always adored that pale gold hair. It intensified the
dark of her eyes, making them almost black. It made her mediæval, an
Elaine of poetry. He called her “Elaine” which after all was not so
very far from her own name, “Helen.”
“No, I want you here.” She pointed to the foot of the bed. “Where I
won’t miss a word or an expression. Now tell me—about everything.”
In a low voice, without stress or excitement, he related the incidents
that always occur at a dress rehearsal. Props that had to be replaced
at the last minute. The leading woman’s gowns gone wrong. The house
cat sauntering across the stage during the big scene and its portent,
good luck! Kane’s decision to light him with white instead of amber in
the final act. All the little shadings, the quaint superstitions, the
unimportant incidents that make the stage the fascinating realm it is,
even to the initiated.
She listened with lips parted and an occasional faint nod of the head.
It was her world, too, though the world in which she had failed.
“I hope you weren’t too good, dear.”
“I was rotten.”
Her smile said she knew he couldn’t be that, but the lips told him:—
“That’s good. A bad dress rehearsal is sure to mean a great opening.”
A sudden longing, uncontrolled, held her eyes. “How I’d love to see
it!”
He bent down, lifted one of the white hands on the coverlet, pressing
it against his lips.
“I don’t know how I can go through without you,” came in spite of him.
Her eyes clouded.
“You must, dear! You mustn’t even think of me.”
“It’s too much to ask,” the broken voice plunged on. “To go out and
face that crowd with you—here! I can’t do it—I can’t!”
“You must do it, my love.” The spirit so much stronger than the body
shone from her eyes. “I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you.
I’ll be with you all through the performance. I’ll follow each
line—every tiny bit of business. But you must put me out of your mind.
Only your part must count—only your success.”
He was silent, pressing the little hand between his warm palms as if
to send the vitality from his veins into hers. But the only vitalized
part of her was the feverishly bright look of eyes that drew his.
“Frank—”
“Yes, darling—”
“You know how I always loved the stage—how I always wanted to be a
great actress.”
“I know, my Elaine.”
The big burning eyes traveled into the past. Haltingly, with breath
uneven and the words only faintly spoken, she drifted on the tide of
memory back toward that horizon of hope so many see but never reach.
“Frank—do you remember in the old stock days when we first met—how
jealous I was of you?”
“Nonsense! You were just ambitious.”
“No—jealous! Don’t you remember the time I wouldn’t speak to you for a
week—because you walked off with the big scene?”
“Mine was the better part.”
Two tears she pretended not to be conscious of gathered in the dark
eyes.
“No, dear—it wasn’t in me. You tried to give it back to me—that
scene—at every performance.” Her voice trailed away a little wearily
and it was a full minute before the slow words came to her lips again.
“But I couldn’t take it away from you, no matter how hard I tried.”
She had carried him with her back to the days of struggle and hope,
when success was a star at the top of the world and effort the ladder
from which so many rungs fell away as climbing feet sought a firmer
hold. The days when disappointments were shared with after-theater
sandwiches and the monument of ambition took the form of a dingy stock
theater on the Main Street of a small town.
“And I felt like such a dog,” he reminisced. “That was when I began
loving you—when I was trying to heal the hurt of your disappointment.
That night when you walked out of the stage door in the pouring rain
and your umbrella turned inside out and I tried to make you take my
raincoat but you poked up that little head of yours and looked neither
to right nor left like a real Mrs. Siddons. And then an old cab came
jogging along and I scooped you up bodily and carried you into it,
broken umbrella and all. Do you recall how I held you in my arms all
the way to your boarding-house and kept telling you you had to marry
me?”
“Take me in your arms now, dear. Let’s live those days over again.”
He looked, anxiously yet with an eager plea in his eyes, toward the
nurse. She hesitated.
“Frank,” came the voice from the pillow, “won’t you put your arms
around me?”
The nurse nodded, coming quickly to the bed. She slipped her own arm
under the wasted body, lifted it. Then the man’s went in its place and
silently he cradled the precious burden against him, bending down so
that her position might not be changed. She gave a little sigh as his
lips touched the silk of her hair.
“I feel better now,” she said.
They were quiet a few moments while the man’s eyes fastened blindly on
a cornice of the ceiling.
Her slim fingers curled round his.
“We both love the theater so, don’t we?”
“Yes—” But he was not thinking of her words.
“Only I never had it, dear,—the spark. It is a spark—”
“You have the greatest spark in the world, darling,—the love that you
give and inspire—that will live on when the theater has forgotten me.”
“It must never forget you.” She stopped, then softly went on, “I—I
wanted so much for myself—at first. I could learn lines and be letter
perfect in a few days—and look pretty.”
“You were always beautiful. You always will be.”
She gave a little tired movement of dissent.
“It doesn’t matter much—because—because—anyway—”
“I love you so,” he said in a shaking voice.
“I used to tell myself the other thing—the spark—would come. It took
New York to teach me that if you have the other thing—looking pretty
and being letter perfect in a few days aren’t important. But Frank—”
“Yes, sweetheart—”
“I didn’t marry you because I was a failure. I married you because I
loved you.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
“But I want to. Do you want me to tell you just when I knew I loved
you?”
“Yes.”
She had told it to him dozens of times but he waited with the eager
attention of one who had never before heard it.
“Well, it was the time we both opened in ‘The Jungle-Beast.’ I had
just come to New York. You’d been here six months. But I was too proud
to let you know because I couldn’t get a job and was half starved. And
then we met one day—in Cleeburg’s office—and you made him give me a
part.”
“He’d have given it to you without me.”
“He would not. It was you who managed me. The best manager in the
world,” she murmured.
He had an insane impulse to clutch her tighter, hold her so that no
power on earth or in heaven could drag her from him. But the muscles
of his arms merely tightened without movement. She lay within them, a
weight too pitifully light.
“When we opened,” came at last, whispered so that the words were a
breath, “I tried so hard—I put every bit of me into the part.”
“And you were great in it, too.”
“No, the papers told the truth. I just—wasn’t. They didn’t even
mention my name—I was just an also-ran. But Frank—I was so happy—so
proud. My own failure didn’t count. That was when I knew I loved you,
dear,—belonged to you—for always.”
“For always,” he repeated like an amen.
“No matter what happens?”
“No matter—” he could not go on.
She lay there with eyes closed and a smile on her lips. A faint pink
like the touch of sunset spread its delicate color on her cheeks. But
only for the moment that had carried her into the past. When the eyes
opened and looked up to his, they were troubled.
“What is it, my Elaine?”
“Frank—since then I’ve poured all my ambition into you. All these
seven years—each step of yours up the ladder has been mine. And we
have been happy—every minute of them, haven’t we?”
He put his inarticulate lips against her forehead.
“Nothing can take that away. It’s ours—forever. It’s more than life
gives most people. And I’m not a real failure, because my longing has
been satisfied—in you.” The clouded eyes struggled to his. “Come
closer, dear. That’s why you mustn’t fail to-night. Tell me you
won’t.”
“But the thought of leaving you—it—it’s too much. I can’t stand it!”
“You must, Frank! Everything depends on it.”
“Do you think anything that matters there—will count?”
“But if I want you there instead of here—if it means everything to
me?”
Her fingers twined feverishly through his. Her eyes were frightened.
Her voice gathered sudden strength.
“I want to spur you to triumph, darling, not defeat. I want you to
ring the bell, so that—always—I can know I was a help not a
hindrance.”
“Elaine—you mustn’t talk any more. You’re tired.”
“No—I’m not. Let me tell you the thing I want to say. You can’t serve
two masters, dear, the theater and me. You love us both—but to-night
the theater must come first. It is your master—mine, too. You must let
it take you away from me when you want to stay. You must let it
absorb you—mind and body. You must forget that I’m ill—forget me while
I’m remembering you. No matter what happens! Frank—promise me—”
“I can only—try.”
Her two hands clung to his.
“That’s not enough! Frank—I’d die now if I thought I was going to
cause you to fail. You must appear—you must make good. You must do the
best work of your career. After all, that will be serving me too,
darling. You’ll be giving me the thing I want—your name the greatest
on the American stage. No matter what happens, Frank—no matter what—”
The nurse moved quickly to the bedside.
“I can’t let Mr. Moore stay if you excite yourself. Take this—and
please lie quiet for awhile.”
“You won’t make him go?”
“Not if you do as I say.”
She took the powder and, closing her hands round his to reassure
herself, settled back on the pillow. He remained in his cramped
position, half kneeling, half lying beside her, filling his eyes with
her, listening for every faint even breath that told him sleep had
once more laid relaxing fingers upon her. Like a miser counting gold,
he counted the minutes that gave them to each other, the minutes
before the master she said he must obey claimed him. He heard those
minutes being ticked away by the clock in the adjoining room with a
terror that laid cold hands on his heart. The day must not go! It must
not escape them so quickly!
Once more he put his head down beside the pale gold one. For a long
time neither moved. Then the faint grip of her fingers loosened,
dropped away. But his arms stayed about her, numbed and tense.
She awoke and lay smiling into his eyes, but neither made attempt to
speak. Sometimes he whispered her name. Sometimes she murmured his.
All the words that could have been spoken—all that he wanted to pour
out—all that he felt—choked him. But the futility of trying to express
it and the fear of weakening her held him silent. Theirs was a
communion deeper than speech.
It was late afternoon when she lifted her head, a sudden light
illumining her spent eyes.
“Frank—have they got your name on that billboard we can see from the
front window?”
“Yes, beloved.”
“Big?”
“Yes.”
“Almost as big as Kane’s?”
“Yes, little lady of mine.”
“Frank—I want to see it.”
He started up with protest on his lips, but—
“Impossible!” formed on the nurse’s before he could speak.
“Please, Frank!”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do, dear.”
“If you’d wrap me in a blanket and carry me in. Just for a second—just
to see it—once.”
“Mrs. Moore,” the nurse put it, “it doesn’t seem much and I’d like to
say ‘yes.’ But it would weaken you too much.”
“No—no! It wouldn’t—it couldn’t! Why—it’s the thing I’ve been waiting
for! It would give me new life. I want to see his name all lighted
up. Please—please! Don’t deny me just this little thing.”
Frank Moore’s gaze went desperately to the nurse’s. She stood locking
and unlocking her hands, nervous uncertainty battling with
professional caution.
“We’ll wait until Dr. Griffith gets here. If he permits it—”
With gaze fastened on her, Frank Moore knew that she was certain the
doctor would not permit it. Yet when he came at five and the dark eyes
went quickly to his with their anxious plea, he stood looking down at
them for a moment, prolonged by silence—then bowed his head in quiet
assent.
The man who had been watching did not stop to question or consider
why. He saw only the light that like white fire came again to the eyes
he loved. Gathering her close, with head bent to hers, he carried her
to the window that faced the park.
Dusk with its faint blue haze of beauty had settled and through it
glimmered the first sparkle of the evening star. A building off toward
Broadway, mysteriously illuminated from below, glowed moonwhite and
dreamlike. The city itself, at this weird hour between day and night,
seemed scarcely real. But it was not on the unreality of material
things that the dark eyes centered. Over the park they wandered and
above the long black trellis of the elevated.
There it was, shining beyond its reflectors, the big twenty-four
sheet:—
Kane Theatre
45th Street
beginning
_November 5th_
OSWALD KANE
Presents
the New Drama
“THE LAUREL WREATH”
by
_Gaston Grisac_
Featuring
FRANKLYN MOORE
She gave a little joyful sigh.
“Frank dear—it’s real—it’s real!”
Her arms held closer round his neck.
“I’ve asked Kane to keep your place vacant in the stage box,” came
from him finally. “I couldn’t bear to have anyone else in it.”
“I’ll be with you—rooting for you—don’t forget! I’ll be with
you—always.”
He put his face against hers. He could not speak. Through the dusk he
saw only those great dark eyes with their strange glowing light. He
stood with her so, while she read and re-read the name that spelled to
her love, ambition, life. Suddenly—
“I can’t leave you—I can’t!” he broke down.
“’Sh! You must go on and on, darling. Remember,—don’t try to serve
two masters. You will remember—won’t you? For me?”
Their eyes held.
“Yes,” came from him.
“And Frank—”
“Yes, my Elaine—”
“Kiss me.”
CHAPTER II
A Kane opening is not an ordinary first night. It happens, at the
outside, twice a season at the two most artistic theaters in New York.
It is an event as important socially as theatrically. Weeks before,
the hum of it is in the air. The public palpitates with anticipation.
When Oswald Kane imports a play from Paris, it is the most chic,
effervescent and gay the winking eye of Paris has gazed upon. When he
produces a period play, he trusts neither to his own imagination nor
the costumer’s but enlists the advice of experts and dresses his
product with the care of a modiste turning out a woman of fashion.
Every member of his casts, down to the most minute part, is selected
with an eye to ensemble effect. Sometimes the effect is overdone, a
surface glazed too smooth to be startling. But it is never underdone,
and the New York first night audience is often hypnotized under the
hand of the magician into believing a mediocre piece of work an
outstanding masterpiece.
Through the audience that flowed into the Kane Theater on the night of
November 5th, like an undulating stream of scented sparkling color,
drifted that murmur of eagerness which was breath of life to the
famous producer. In it he found all the satisfaction of a woman in her
beauty or a painter in the eyes lifted to his canvas. Glitter, the
incandescence of anticipation, they were the arclights along the path
of his greatness. He stood in the wings, a gentle, artistic hand
straying through the wavy black hair that fell across his forehead,
giving his attention to the final details of to-night’s opening. As
the actors assembled he gave each an encouraging word, the last moment
stimulus of a faith not always felt.
The mirror in a dressing-room just a few yards beyond Kane’s point of
vantage reflected a face mask-like in its immobility. The man before
it sat staring at the reflection as if it belonged to another. A shirt
open at the neck showed muscles hard and tense. Even make-up could not
widen the tight red line of the mouth. The eyes were dulled as if
viewed through a curtain. Frank Moore went through his final
preparations like a machine correctly set in motion. When the last
touch had been given, he walked to the door and listened to the surge
of the incoming throng like the song of the sea on a smooth beach.
Suddenly rebellion shook him. What right had they? Pleasure! That was
all they cared about. To make of him a puppet, a thing for their
amusement! God, what a joke! Those lights, the chatter, the
laughter—himself about to stalk on the stage!
A few minutes later, as he made his entrance to an anticipatory round
of applause, he had an insane desire to step down to the footlights
and shout his thoughts to the upturned faces that came vague and white
out of the dark. Those gay seekers who were using him for an hour’s
diversion, why should they not know what that hour meant of anguish to
him? Why should the curtain that lifted to them lift only on illusion?
Why should their pleasure be permitted to surmount his pain?
But those in front saw only a man going through his part with leaden
apathy. Frank Moore, the spontaneous, the man who with the lift of an
eyebrow or the flick of a little finger against a cigarette ash could
carry an audience into his mood, what had happened to him? A stir,
that faint but agonizing presage of dissatisfaction, sent its warning
up and over the footlights. Moore felt it with the rest but it
quickened neither fear nor blood in his veins. Only grim resentment
and dull indifference. He could not shake them off. He didn’t care.
Backstage the sensitive fingers of Oswald Kane on the pulse of his
public trembled for the sum, always enormous, that would sink with the
swaying ship of the production. As the act drew to its close his
restless feet paced the boards, his black brows drew together. Yet
when the curtain fell and Moore came off, the manager showed no
anxiety. He approached the actor, gently taking his arm. Moore looked
up a trifle dazedly as if not quite sure where he was.
“Wish I could do something for you, old man!” was all the other man
said.
“Rotten, wasn’t I?” Moore answered with a tight smile.
Kane said nothing.
“Do my best this act,” Moore supplemented.
“Shall I telephone and find out how things are? You might like to
know.”
“No—don’t—don’t! I couldn’t—stand it!” His strained eyes closed. He
went quickly into his dressing-room and banged the door.
Kane stood for a second, hesitant, then hurried out to the elevator
that mounted to his studio at the top of the building.
In the lobby critics exchanged a few cryptic remarks, conservatively
trying to withhold snap judgment. But frankly puzzled, they asked each
other what was the matter with Kane. He was permitting an actor like
Franklyn Moore to walk through his part like an automaton.
The auditorium darkened. The curtain lifted on Act II. Moore made his
entrance. He played a statesman, ruthlessly trampling under iron hoof
friends, family, wife, to reach the pinnacle of his ambition. But up
to that moment he had not been iron. He had been wooden. Not ruthless
force but numbed suffering marked his gestures, the intonation of his
deep voice. More than once his hand strayed with desperate weariness
to his thick brown hair. He managed to catch the gesture in time. But
even halted midway, it marked itself as strangely out of character.
As he came off at his first exit Kane was in his path, pacing up and
down. Once more he took the actor’s arm, but this time his voice
shook.
“Do you want to go home, old man? Shall I step out now and explain? We
can ring down the curtain.”
“You mean I’ve flivved the whole thing, anyway. You mean there’s no
use going on.”
“No!” Kane pulled down the hands that tremblingly covered the staring,
empty eyes. “No—don’t say that. But it was too much to ask of you. I
had no right.”
“You—you weren’t the only one who asked it of me. I’m going through
with it, I tell you! I—I’ll get them yet.”
A shout of laughter came from the auditorium. Kane could not control a
sigh. It was relief after the murmuring quiet that had marked the
play’s reception from the first. Moore looked up with a quick,
comprehending glance. He _had_ flivved the production. Failure was
upon his shoulders—his alone! He squared them determinedly. He waited
attentively for his cue.
When he walked on the stage again, he looked out upon the vague faces
in that crowded cavern at his feet and then his gaze traveled to an
empty chair in the stage box. It rested there an instant and gradually
something was woven into the mauve velvet. Filmy and gauze-like as a
cloud across the sun, it took at first no form. Only white and gentle
and indefinite. But even before it floated into the folds of a woman’s
gown, he knew that above it two dark eyes were sending the flame of
inspiration into his, a silky blond head was bent forward with the
light of love gleaming from it. The lips were slightly parted as if to
call to him. Against the rail of the box rested transparent hands,
ready to lift in applause. She was so eager, so intent, so full of
faith and urge and hope that he did not realize his imagination had
put her there. Those other men and women must see her, too. They must
know now that the one he needed to help him onward had come because of
that need.
His head went up. A light lifted the curtain of his eyes. A live look
loosened the tension of his mouth. He turned toward the leading woman
and again his glance swept the audience. Something electric passed
over them. Franklyn Moore had come to life. He was acting now. No, not
acting! For as his deep voice responded to the unvoiced call which
had come to him, it swept that waiting throng across the footlights.
Not illusion but reality made them move forward with the drama. To
them he was no longer an actor playing a part. He was a man living in
anguish because in tearing the laurel wreath from another’s brow, he
had torn down his own happiness. The wife he loved had turned to the
man from whom he had snatched it.
“Of what use is the applause of the multitude,” he pleaded, “if I must
lose you?”
And as he spoke the words only a few in that vast audience saw his
eyes fasten on an empty chair in the stage box.
The dark eyes that met his shone. The shadowy hands came together in
applause. The white throat pulsed. She was so alive in all her
vagueness. She was sending out to him what he had always known she
would give him when the moment came, the spark she had said she
lacked, the power of love to leap the chasm of uncertainty, to know
the heights of achievement.
His lips formed “Elaine!” He waited for the applause to die down. Then
with the man’s eyes still on that box, the actor crossed the stage to
the woman he had lost.
“I ask you only not to leave me! Not now! Give me the chance to share
with you the success that has robbed me of—everything. One chance!
Just one!”
And as she told him it was too late to ask anything of her and the
door shut behind her, he lifted his two arms and his voice broke with
the tragedy of the immortal tenor’s in “Il Pagliacci” as he cried
out:—
“I am at the top—and I am alone.”
Even before the curtain fell the bravos rang out. The force of them
was deafening. That drawing aside of the curtain of his soul, that
sudden springing to life of the fire of genius had an effect more
dynamic than would have been an easy success from the very beginning.
It was like a clarion blast across a silent world. It galvanized the
sullen crowd to action. It carried them out of their seats. Through
the din and the repeated rise and fall of the curtain Moore did not
move. They clamored for a speech. He shook his head. But like
insistent children they shouted his name, and as the curtain remained
lifted, he stepped downstage.
“There’s nothing I can say—the credit for this is not mine— It belongs
to one—” his voice halted. It broke. He stepped back.
Construing his few words as a tribute to his illustrious manager, they
called for Kane—called and waited. He did not come.
From the wings members of the cast scurried in search of him. It was
not like Oswald Kane on a first night to be far from the footlights at
the curtain of the big act. He was always close at hand, after eight
or ten calls, for a gracious speech of thanks.
But to-night he could not be found. They sent a callboy to his studio.
He was not there. He had evidently left the theater. Discouraged by
Moore’s early failure, he had apparently given up all possible hope of
the ultimate overwhelming triumph that was his.
The curtain descended finally after announcement had been made that
the manager could not be located.
Keyed to his topmost effort, Moore changed for the last act. He had
come through! He had scored—nothing could alter that. And _she_ had
made him do it. It was her success! His Elaine’s! He had not failed
her. Two masters! She had said he must serve only one. Had he? And if
so was it not she, his beloved, whom he had served?
He was on the stage, with that swift glance toward her place, that
prayer to a filmy figure of his imagination. And yet not quite. More
than his imagination—his spirit! They two were one, would be one for
all time. He knew that now.
With the same fire of inspiration he went through the final scenes.
For her he played his part—to her he spoke his lines. “You’ve come
back to me!” he cried as the door opened and the wife of the play
entered. “You’ve come back. I haven’t lost you, dear.” And a vast
throng of seasoned New Yorkers responded, unashamed of their emotion.
The play was done. As the last clatter of hot hands died away Frank
Moore covered with quick, precipitate steps the short space to his
dressing-room. His eyes were still lifted and alight. He caught hold
of the door knob and as he did so, another hand covered his.
“Frank—”
Oswald Kane was standing beside him.
“I put it over!” came swiftly from the actor and with a breath of
triumphant relief.
“I know!”
“But I wasn’t the one who did it. She did!”
“I know that, too!”
“You—?”
“I was there with her.”
“You—?” Frank Moore repeated.
“When I saw you were winning out, I felt she ought to know. I went
over to tell her.”
“You saw her? You talked to her?”
“Yes. She knew all about it. Frank—if you could have seen her joy! It
was like a light from heaven.”
Moore pushed past him.
“I’ll go to her—I’ll see it now!”
“Frank—wait!”
The actor paused under the shaky, detaining hand.
“Frank—not yet!”
Frank Moore looked up dumbly.
“You will see a smile on her lips,” Kane went on. “It will be
there—always.”
The man who heard him stood silent. One would have said no change had
occurred. Then very low, he brought out:—
“Are you telling me—?”
“Yes, my boy.”
Quietly the hand dropped away from the door. He stood looking up into
the sympathetic face of the great manager. Then with slow, shuffling
steps, he went back to the dismantled boards that faced the dark
auditorium. With shoulders sagging and head bent he stood for a
moment. And then a stagehand, moving the last piece of scenery, saw
him lift his arms and stretch them out to an empty chair in the stage
box.
UPSTAGE
_COMEDY_
Like beauty, color is in the eye of the beholder. To one who looks
through shadows, white is—well, gray. To the uninitiated, a chorus is
like a game of roulette—rouge et noir. Yet even to play that game,
some of the chips must be white.
UPSTAGE
CHAPTER I
“And I said to him: ‘My deah boy, don’t talk to me as if I were your
wife! And don’t imagine you’re the only twin six in town.’ And we
settled it right then and there.” The full pouting lips broadened into
a reminiscent smile. The pink and white cheeks dimpled. Miss Mariette
Mallard, accent on the last syllable, laid her trump card on the table
for the benefit of her listener whose black eyes sparkled with
gratifying interest. “And then he went out and bought me a big—”
Just what the “big” was remained a question, for Miss Mariette halted
as a girl slid into the chair next to hers and stretched out a hand to
dust a film of powder from the face of her mirror. They formed a queer
assortment, those mirrors, all shapes and sizes, propped against both
sides of the rack that ran down the center of the long make-up table.
Above them, on a wire stretching from one dusty white washed wall to
the other, was suspended a row of electric lights in a tin reflector.
Before them, dumped hodge-podge, were boxes of rouge and mascaro,
rabbits’ feet, puffs and eyebrow brushes. Into them gazed as many
types as there are flowers of the field, with just two traits in
common,—all were slender as birch trees, all young as Eve before the
serpent appeared. Except that to most the apple was no longer
forbidden fruit.
At the moment there were some sixteen in various stages of preparing
for the costume, largely imagination, which the prettiest chorus on
Broadway wore in Scene I of “Good Night Cap.” It was one of those
musical mélanges commonly known as girlie shows, and advertised in red
splashes of poster as “A Bevy of Beauties All under Twenty.” Its
prescription is filled each season with merely a change of lights and
trappings to distinguish it from its predecessor.
The bloods of New York patronize the Summer Garden with a loyalty that
brings them back at least once a week. The one theater in town it is
in which the chorus fraternizes with the audience, tripping down a
runway into the aisles to trill their syncopated love ditties into the
ears of selected members, or swinging overhead on ropes of roses, bare
knees perilously near bald heads. Buyers, politicians, traveling
salesmen, miners and perfectly proper tired business men with their
smiling better halves all enter the place with a twinkle of
anticipation and come out humming a medley of haunting tunes.
On the night in question, one of early March, Miss Mariette Mallard’s
voluminous moleskin wrap was draped over the back of her chair and she
pulled it round her with a pretty baby shiver as she scanned the girl
who had just come in. Then she winked at the black-eyed one.
“Well,” she observed, forgetting to go on with her story, “how is
mamma’s sparkler to-night?”
The girl bit her lip, then turned with a grin that was not in her eyes
and flashed under Miss Mariette’s little nose the hand that had dusted
the mirror. On its third finger blinked a diamond, the size and
brilliance of which was breath taking.
Miss Mallard promptly turned her attention to the black-eyed one.
“Gracie deah, suppose you had a block of ice like that—wouldn’t you try
to make your clothes live up to it?”
The black-eyed one giggled: “And I wouldn’t be so upstage about it
until I did.”
The object of their amusement set her teeth and turned back to the
mirror, addressing the reflection: “I pay cash for my clothes. That’s
more than some people can say.”
The black-eyed one giggled again. “They look it,” she murmured
sweetly.
Miss Mariette indulged in a smile still more saccharine. “They look as
if you paid nothing for them, my deah. Take my advice and pay cash to
get rid of them.” She gave a dismissing flourish of her small hand and
patted her pale blonde ringlets.
The chorus girl of to-day buys her hats on Fifth Avenue and borrows
her manner from the same thoroughfare. She never forgets that a lead
awaits her if she’s clever enough to look and act the part. Not that
Miss Mallard had any ambitions in that direction. She was content to
be cute and cuddly and first on the left in the front row. But she did
try to live up to the moleskin cloak and the car that called for her
every night. Only at unguarded moments did Second Avenue scratch
through Fifth. “You don’t know how to manage him, my deah,” she
concluded, baby blue eyes fastened on the radiant stone.
The girl’s lips opened, then shut tight. She had told them where the
ring came from—and they didn’t believe her. Besides, if she tried to
answer them she’d cry, and she’d die rather than let them see her do
that! It was the same struggle she went through every night and two
matinées a week—sometimes with bravado, more often in choking silence.
Somehow they made her ashamed, those two, that for her the apple still
hung high on the tree. If they wanted to think some man had given her
the diamond, so much the better! It would make her seem popular—less a
little fool!
She downed the tears by vigorous motion.... She sprang up—a kick of
her heel sent her chair spinning—and ripping open her one-piece serge
dress, she tossed it on the hook in the wall where hung a plain brown
ulster and imitation seal turban—alley cat caught in the rain, Miss
Mariette had christened it. Then she gritted her teeth, pulled the
chair back into place and slashed on make-up.
Sallie MacMahon, listed in chorus annals as Zara May, was one of those
who merited the splashing announcement of the red posters. Perhaps it
was her long mermaid hair with its glisten of sunset on the sea;
perhaps the fact that the lashes shading her deep blue eyes were the
same gold; perhaps the transparent quality of her skin with the swift
play of young blood under the surface; but whatever it was, Sallie’s
beauty held a luminous quality Sallie herself did not possess. Sallie
was just a girl, with a facility for doing what she was told. The
daughter of a Scotch father with somber eyes and an Irish mother with
laughing ones, both of whom had sailed the misty river into unknown
lands after a stormy sojourn together in this one, she had been left
at fifteen to take care of herself, with a love of the beautiful on
one hand warring against a sense of economy on the other.
Sallie loved soft furs and clinging silks such as swept into the
chorus dressing-room nightly. But she had no desire to follow the
tortuous path by which such luxuries are achieved. However, the fact
that the Mallard girl and Grace assumed she had done so, did not at
all disturb her. It was their ridicule she feared, their jibes at her
clothes. Speeding across the stone floor under the Summer Garden stage
she tried to bring a smile to her lips. They merely trembled.
There came the march of a military air and the girls filed up the
wobbly wooden steps and through a trap door. Sallie fluffed up her
abbreviated skirt, brought the smile to her lips, fixed it as if it
had been glued there. Her young, elastic body rippled through the
number under the changing lights. She loved the jazz, loved the stir
of rhythm, and had it not been for the ache in her heart whenever she
set foot in the theater, she would have loved the work. She was
nineteen. Music was in her blood.
She danced through the varying scenes with swift changes of costume,
hurried dabs of powder, and little time to nurse her woes. A number
toward the end of Act II was her favorite. It was the one in which the
girls trooped down the runway and trilled to some not always
embarrassed male occupant of an aisle seat:—
“Oh-oh-oh-oh-h-h-h-h—
Won’t you—smile at me?”
Often as she swayed through it, it never failed to give her a thrill.
Likewise she never failed to get what she demanded.
To-night, as she syncopated down the aisle, a light like blue fire
darted from her deep eyes. Kindled by the smouldering defiance of
earlier evening it was utterly unconscious of seeking an object. But
the gentleman in the particular seat that was her territory could
scarcely have been expected to know that. To him it constituted
challenge.
“Oh-oh-oh-oh-h-h-h-h—
Won’t you—smile at me?”
urged Sallie.
The man’s lips parted. “You just bet I will!” came in a flash of white
teeth.
Sallie’s mind was not photographic. It registered no definite
impression of the individuals occupying her particular aisle seat.
They came and went, vague as shadows. But this man’s response and his
quick flashing smile with its personal note, made her suddenly realize
that she had been singing to the same pleasant grin every night that
week.
She was still wondering about him as Miss Mariette, at the close of
the performance, stepped into a short-waisted chiffon dress and,
pulling it over slender hips, slipped her arms through the spangled
shoulder straps. She and Grace were booked for a party, and the
latter emerged like a full-blown rose, black eyes dancing above a
gown of American beauty satin. Then both sat down and took some of the
make-up off their faces.
Sallie was in the act of pinning on the alley cat.
“Do show him to us, my deah!” persiflaged Miss Mallard. “Don’t be
so-er-close, even if he is.”
Sallie jabbed the pin into her head, winced in pain and, with chin
trembling and eyes hot with starting tears, hurried into the corridor
followed by the familiar titter. Blindly she made her way up the
stairs to the stage entrance.
Outside, a blaze of changing lights proclaimed that Broadway was
rubbing the sleep from her eyes and preparing to dance. A gold haze
lined the sky, veiling the night even to the silver-white buildings
that reared their heads high into the heavens. Lined up at the curb
was a row of taxis. The modern stage door Johnny no longer stands,
bouquet in hand. He remains discreetly in his cab or car and only when
the lady of his choice emerges does he do likewise.
As Sallie started to cross the street someone called “Good-evening.”
But that being a familiar method of address, she passed on without a
glance.
“I say,” pleaded the voice, “won’t you smile at me again?”
Sallie turned then. Descending from a big yellow car which, had she
known more of auto aristocracy, would have stamped itself as of
prohibitive peerage, was the man of the aisle seat.
He came nearer.
Sallie turned flutteringly on her heel.
“Wait, please,” he begged and his teeth gleamed as they had in the
theater. They were nice teeth in a boyish mouth, and upon Sallie they
had a disarming effect. In spite of an instinctive impulse to run, she
hesitated. The talon scratches inflicted in the chorus dressing-room
were still bleeding and the smile of the man who had ceased to be a
shadow was balm.
He reached her, lifted his hat.
Sallie shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other.