CHAPTER I

Of course that was not her name. No one knew just how she had been christened—if at all. To a worshipful public she was known as Jane Goring, which, as names go, answered all purposes and was quite as simple as she was ornate. But “Peacock” was the title of the play in which she had made the season’s hit and a wave of fads in honor of it had typhooned over New York in consequence.

There were perfumes with bottles far more valuable than their contents on which strutted the iridescent bird of beauty. There were soaps and powders and sachets sold in green satin boxes similarly decorated and similarly priced. Peacock feather fans swayed at dances and the opera despite the age-old hoodoo. Beaded bags were worked in the popular design. Dressmakers dictated the spreading train. Blues and greens in every conceivably odd shade were introduced as the new color. The peacock coiffure, originated by Goring, was imitated by dowager and débutante, by movie star and chorus queen, by the girl behind the counter even unto the cash girl—hair drawn flat over the top of the head and puffed out stiffly at the ears, the whole being completed by a comb that jutted at right angles. In Goring’s mahogany swirl, framing as it did a face rather broad at the cheek-bones and tapering heart-shaped to the chin, an impertinent nose and sleepy green-gray eyes that lifted at the corners, the effect was startling. But the variegated types it crowned north, south and east of Broadway would scarcely have inspired an artist to his best work.

At the moment we make our bow to Jane Goring—for Goring bowed to no one—she was on the top rung of the ladder of success. Her head had reached the clouds and was held accordingly. So that when she looked at you, she always looked _down_ at you. Which made those whom she addressed feel infinitely small even when they were tall, always excepting representatives of the press. They found her always gracious, always smiling with corners of eyes and lips lifted and a look of wonder at their great kindness to her. Each time she received them it was in some new and amazing costume in one of the shades she had made popular, with jangling jade or emeralds in her ears and green lights darting from the comb in her hair. She spoke at length of the arts and collected immense royalties from candy boxes, silk advertisements and cold creams bearing her name and endorsement.

Somewhere in the dim and distant past her flaming head and Jap-like eyes had graced the chorus. She had lived in a hall bedroom; had been caught frying chops over an alcohol stove; had been lectured by the landlady; had found the milk frozen to her window sill on winter mornings; had known the exquisite thrill of being raised to a few lines of persiflage with the musical comedy’s comedian. In those days a young newspaper man, Bob McNaughton, had found her out, proclaimed her a genius, and married her—not because of her genius, however, but because he adored her. They had spent their honeymoon one Sunday on the Palisades, and he had kissed her finger tips one by one and told her how he was going to make her.

“There’s Jefferson who has our dramatic column—I’ll get him to give you a boost every now and then. He stands in with a bunch of critics. He’ll drop a word about you and they’re bound to take notice. You’ll see, darling, what I’m going to do for you!”

And she had put her vivid head on his shoulder and gazed down at the shining river and murmured that she didn’t care whether he did anything for her or not. She loved him—she didn’t want anything in the world but him.

The hall bedroom had given place to the third-story back, the frying chops to a French table d’hôte that boasted a bottle of red ink with a sixty-cent dinner, and Jane Goring was happy in the possession of a broad shoulder to weep on when the latest step came hard or the director asked casually if her legs were made of leather.

In the years that followed, the ardent young husband had made good his promises. He had systematically press-agented Goring with a sincerity and enthusiasm born of love. Untiringly he had worked to bring her first to managerial, then to public notice. And his efforts, added to natural talent and a bizarre personality, had hoisted her to the top rung heretofore mentioned. “Peacock” marked the fourth season of her success.

But long before that Bob McNaughton had awakened one morning to find gray hairs threading his brown, and himself still a reporter—by no means a star one. He had been so busy making her career that he had forgotten to make his own.

It was about this time that his wife left him. Not actually left him, of course, for at that particular moment Goring would not have stooped to anything so disturbing as divorce. Waves of popular favor had begun to roll smoothly up the beach of her ambition. But her temperament demanded a home all her own. So they maintained separate apartments—had done so for several years—his a room and bath in a downtown bachelor hotel, hers a nine room and three-bath duplex in an uptown studio building.

In the beginning they had seen each other occasionally. But each time they met, Bob seemed to have grown grayer. Whether this fact was a reminder that her own hair, left to itself, might show the same tendency, or whether it was just the look in his eyes—the same look they had worn that Sunday on the Palisades—seeing him began to tell on her nerves.

More and more she denied herself to him until he became more of a stranger in her beautiful rooms than the flock of tame robins who pecked out of her hand at afternoon tea.

As a matter of fact, few of Goring’s vast throng of admirers even guessed there was a husband in the offing. Women persistently married her off to her handsome leading man, and more than one young millionaire about town ecstatically visualized her presiding at his dinner table.

So far as Jane Goring was concerned, Bob McNaughton belonged to another life. Thus it was rather a shock to come home from the theater one night when “Peacock” was at the height of its run and find her husband waiting for her. It was fully five months since she had seen him; over a year since she had been at home to him after the theater.

He was striding up and down her drawing-room, hands thrust deep into his pockets, head bent. But when one considers that her drawing-room consisted of three thrown into one, it was not surprising that at first she was not conscious of another’s presence. She came in, switched on the sidelights, dropped her furs and sank on the davenport, hand hovering toward the table back of her, when from the other end of the room, her name was spoken.

She sat up, startled, and saw Bob coming into the range of bluish light from a Chinese temple lamp at the side of the piano. Jane Goring looked her amazement. He drew nearer, stopped abruptly and faced her.

“My apologies,” he said with a slight, rather twisted smile, “for calling so late.”

She dropped back, the look of amazement still lighting her long sleepy eyes. “You did rather—startle me.”

For a moment neither spoke. Then he indicated the other corner of the deep-cushioned couch, “May I sit down?”

“Certainly.” It was accompanied by a slight shrug.

His hand dove into his vest pocket and brought out a silver cigarette case. He clicked it open, held it out to her. She may or may not have noticed that his movements were tense and jerky, that the case was held not quite steadily. She gave a faint gesture of dissent, reaching once more to the table at her back, and opened a gold lacquer box.

“I have a new special brand—imported for me from Egypt.”

He took one of his own, pocketing the case, and she waited for some explanation of his visit.

“You’re looking well,” he began after a moment without looking at her.

“Feeling very fit,” she returned, and waited once more.

He did not speak, just sat staring down at his rather tightly clenched hands.

She did notice then that he was looking old—years older than when she had last seen him. Bob was forty-two,—to-night he looked fifty. Jane was,—well, not even “Who’s Who” knew exactly how old Jane Goring was—any woman who will tell her right age will tell anything!—but she looked well under thirty.

The silence seemed to demand something of her.

“And you?” she queried politely.

He wheeled round in his corner. “That’s just what I’ve come to see you about,” he brought out. “Matter of fact, I waited until the last minute—didn’t want to bother you with it.”

“The last minute?”

“Yes. I’m pulling up stakes—beating it for Colorado to-morrow.”

At the back of Jane Goring’s brain, though even to herself she did not acknowledge it, flared a sudden flash of relief. Like a jagged streak of lightning across a summer sky it was there—and gone.

“Where—in Colorado?”

“Denver.”

“With what paper?”

“None, for a time. It’s like this.” He paused, seemed to be searching for words, his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. “I’ve been seeing Frothingham, the specialist, you know. Oh, it’s nothing—contraction in the chest now and then and bit of a cough in bad weather. Beastly uncomfortable, though. He tells me if I go now I can get rid of it in six months or so.”

Goring gazed at the breadth of shoulder on which her head had snuggled so peacefully in the old days. Not that that phase of it occurred to her just then, but she stared at the big frame and could scarcely credit what he told her.

“But how in the world did you get such a thing?”

“It got me, my dear,—before I knew it. Fellow living alone’s apt to grow careless. Anyway, there it is, and it’s up to me to light out.”

Silence again for a moment, then—“I’m sorry, old boy,” she murmured.

“That’s good to know.” He slid nearer to her along the couch. Her face through the pungent smoke from the Egyptian cigarette was an indefinite white blur, vague as a dream, impossible to read. “I was hoping, in a way, that you would be. Makes it easier for me to put up the proposition I have in mind.”

“Yes?” she questioned as he paused again.

“But first I want to outline something of my plans once I knock this bug on the head.”

“Yes?”

“The Graystone has made me an offer. I’ve been interested in the movie game for the past few years; been studying it from the inside. And recently Crosby Stone—he’s vice-president of the Graystone—asked me to go to the Coast and take charge of the editorial department at their Western studio. I told him that for the present I couldn’t consider it—health needed jogging up. He said the job would be there for me whenever I wanted it.”

“Seems to me an excellent idea,” she observed.

“Now what I wanted to ask you is this.” He fumbled for his case once more. Against the light from the table lamp, his features formed a sharp tense silhouette. He bent forward, struck a match. It flared upward, emphasized the lines that were almost ridges in his face. Suddenly he turned, and his next words came thick. “Janey, I want you to do this much. Will you—when you close—take a run out to Colorado and spend part of the summer with me?”

The tapering white hand that held the cigarette to her lips dropped as if stricken. She straightened and her drowsy green eyes looked down on him from the immense height of the top rung.

“My dear boy!” she ejaculated.

“Of course,” he put in quickly, “I wouldn’t expect you to stay in Denver. Must be any number of mountain resorts we could go to—I’ll ask Frothingham.”

“But, my dear boy, I couldn’t possibly. To begin with, I’m taking ‘Peacock’ on the road early in August, playing Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago—all the big cities. Cleeburg wants to keep me out in it until February when we begin work on a new production. That leaves me only a few weeks’ vacation—”

“Spend them with me. Janey—” He leaned over with a swift, impulsive movement, lifted her left hand, the little finger of which was completely covered by a big beetle-green scarab, and kissed the tips one by one. “Janey, there’s just you—no one else! These last years have been hell. I’ve missed you—I’ve wanted you! A few weeks—is that too much to ask?”

She drew her hand away—gently enough. But a little shudder of disgust ran down her spine. “But I can’t, don’t you see?” she began conversationally. “Those few weeks I must have to myself. I need the rest.”

“Can’t we take it together? Can’t we go up into the mountains—away from the muck of the world—and get to know each other all over again? Remember our honeymoon, dear, the afternoon by the river? What a happy pair of kids we were! Let’s have a taste of that, just a taste again.”

A slight flicker of amusement—oh, very slight—raised the corners of her upslanted eyes. “Afraid we’ve passed the honeymoon age, dear boy.”

“It’s your love I want, Janey,” came from him desperately. “Just to feel that you’ll come to me for a time when I need you.”

She got up, crushed the spark from her cigarette, tossed it with a gesture of distaste into the tray and moved toward the piano. In her trailing green gown with its fanlike train—Goring never wore short skirts—and her dangling scarab earrings, she looked very exotic, very tall and altogether unapproachable. She trailed the length of the room and stopped under the Chinese temple lamp. Its blue light shed an aura about her, giving her skin the moon-glow that Henner’s brush has made immortal.

Her husband gazed after her. Mercifully she stopped with her back toward him, and he failed to get the expression that pressed close her lips. His eyes had followed her with dog-like pleading. Without meeting them she knew—felt it. Neither could she escape the urge in his voice. In the old days, that deep tender note had thrilled her, made her yearn for him, given her the assurance that whatever happened, Bob would be there to make things right. To-night it merely annoyed her, rendered her position more difficult. Seeing Bob at all had become trying and the very thought of the thing he now suggested irritated her beyond measure. She had so completely done with him—finished! Taking advantage of this sudden illness was taking advantage of her. With all her being she resented it.

She stood for a moment turned from him, fingering the blue and gold tassel that hung from a bit of Chinese embroidery flung across the piano. Finally she turned back, face as void of light or shade as the old idol enshrined in a corner.

“Suppose we have a snack of supper and talk things over,” she suggested.

He was sitting bent almost double, elbows on knees, head in hands. A wave of contempt for his attitude of dejection swept over her. She was so palpitant with life, vibrating with the thrill—ever new, ever sweet—that the laurel wreath brings.

Without waiting for a reply she rang. A tired-eyed maid appeared. Goring gave her directions and when the girl had gone out, proceeded to chat casually about affairs of the theater—a new firm of managers recently bobbed up on the horizon with a new play by a new author; the outlook for next season; the trend toward satirical comedy.

Bob sat without moving, knuckles pressing white against his forehead, the veins on his hands standing out like blue welts.

Presently he looked up.

“I take it you are _not_ coming out to me.”

Goring in the depths of a chair some distance from him stirred uneasily. “My dear boy, I’ve told you. It’s not only impractical—it’s impossible.”

“Of course! I was an ass to think you might.”

“Can’t you see? I’m not my own mistress. I belong to my public. I’ve got to conserve my strength for them—and my work.”

“Yes,—I see.”

“If I consulted my own desires—but I haven’t the moral right. I must sacrifice what you want—what I want—to what my public expects of me.”

He might have reminded her of the years he had given to creating that public for her. He might have dwelt at length on his Machiavellian boosting of a red-haired show girl through the columns of his own paper and gradually with insertions here and there in periodicals of the theater, until managers began to ask who this Jane Goring was. He might have made mention of the evenings he had spent round the Lambs and the Friars adding to his list of acquaintances, as men can only at men’s clubs, those who would eventually be of service to her.

He merely smiled with his lips, lighted another cigarette and tried to cover the fact that the flame flickered.

“You must understand how I’m placed,” she persisted.

“I understand.”

His laconic reply, followed by flat silence, instead of alleviating, somehow increased her discomfort.

After a moment he spoke. “Ever read ‘Frankenstein,’ Janey?”

“No.”

“Queer tale of a chap who tried to create a superman.”

“Well?” Her brows contracted, puzzled.

“Well—his superman rose up and destroyed him.”

“I fail to see—” The frown deepened.

“Oh, just a flight of fancy. Don’t mind me.” Again his hand struck a flickering match.

“Ought you to smoke so much?” she asked, to fill in the gap. “I shouldn’t think it would be good for—for—”

“My lungs? Oh, nothing wrong with them—actually. Dare say they’ll pull up O.K. once I pull out of this town. Y’know what Paul Bourget said about New York. Fellow asked him how he liked our climate, and he answered, ‘But my dear man,—you do not have climate. You have samples of weather!’”

She laughed and the weight of the air lifted somewhat. The maid brought in a steaming chafing dish, set it on a nest of tables and drew out the smaller two, placing them in front of the couch.

Goring moved over, once more took the corner opposite her husband. His eyes traveled the length of her.

“You grow more beautiful every time I see you, Janey. Success is a first rate old alchemist, isn’t it?”

She smiled down, her whole face softening.

The maid laid an embroidered doily of finest linen on each of the two small tables and brought silver platters of creamed mushrooms with a faint aroma of sherry. From a dusty bottle marked Amontillado she poured into slim-necked glasses the same wine, glistening and amber.

When she had finished serving them, she asked tentatively if madame wished her to wait up.

Goring wondered why the question brought from Bob a look of curiosity, why he turned and watched her, waiting; why he smiled—with his eyes this time—when she told the girl to go to bed.

She moved nearer—the tables were placed side by side—and sipped the sherry. A few moments passed during which she noticed uncomfortably that he had not touched the dainty, tempting dish before him.

“You’re not eating?”

“Not particularly hungry.” He lifted his glass, twirling it between thumb and forefinger, his gaze never leaving her. “I want to fill my eyes with you, Janey. May be a long time before I see you again.”

Her eyes warmed to the tense adulation in his. After all, he did look beastly ill, and the least she could do would be to give him the memory of a little kindness to carry away.

“And I want you to know, Bob, that I’ll be thinking of you, hoping and praying that before long you’ll be quite fit again.” She leaned over, touching his hand lightly with hers. Instantly his closed over it—feverishly, as a man clings to hope when his ship of life has been broken into wreckage.

“Will you, Janey?”

“Of course.”

“That will help—some.” He put down the glass and caught her other hand, drawing her nearer. “I’d like to feel there’s still a corner for me. No other fellow taking my place, I mean.”

“How absurd! You know I haven’t time even to think of men.”

“They have plenty of time to think of you.” Again that quizzical smile. “I’ve got that much over them, haven’t I? You’re _my_ wife.”

She smiled back and tried to draw away but he held her with the grip of hot iron.

“That’s what I’ve got over them, Janey—all of them. You may belong to your public now but you’ve been mine. We’ve had our youth together, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve had the best of life together.”

“Yes.”

“Nobody can take that from me.” He spoke breathlessly.

Suddenly his arm went round her, crushed her to him and his lips were against hers. “My love!” he whispered.

Jane Goring’s body went rigid. She drew herself erect and the warmth died out of her eyes as swiftly as a flame extinguished. Sharply her slim white hands thrust out in defense. She pulled backward. Their gaze met—locked. In his was hurt question. In hers a flash of fury. He sat staring at her a moment and he did not look _up_. It was a look direct, straight, boring to the heart of her.

And then he got to his feet. “I beg your pardon,” he began. “I—I thought—” He paused, jaws coming together as though clamped. Without another look at her he walked the length of the room.

At the door he turned. “Damn me for my humility!” he said.