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.