Part 10

The car moved diligently through the heat. Olive thought that Gurdy had belied his outer calm by his flight to Chicago. But it was hard to think of anything save the thick air. Mark’s tanned face was damp and he fanned Olive steadily. They swung past a procession of vans where the drivers lolled in torn undershirts. The rancorous sun on the houses of unfamiliar shingle dizzied her. She saw strange trees in the country as the suburbs thinned and the blistered paint of billboards showed strange wares for sale.

“Movie plant over there,” said Mark, “Like to be movied for one of the current event weeklies? Lady Olive Ilden, the celebrated British authoress?”

“Horrors! Drinking tea with a Pom in my lap. Never!--Good heavens, Mark, is it like this summer after summer? Why don’t people simply go naked?”

“Margot does her best. If her grandmother Walling could see her bathsuit she’d rise from the tomb.”

“How long has your mother been dead, old man?”

“Since I was eight--no, nine.”

“Do you look like her?”

“No. Joe--Margot’s dad--looked something like her. His hair was nearly black and he had brown eyes. She was nice. Used to take her hair down and let me play with it. Black.” He smiled, did not speak for minutes and then talked of Gurdy again, “He’s mighty nice to his father and mother. Eddie and Sadie are scared he’ll marry an actress on account of his bein’ in my office. Gurdy was teasin’ them last week--They came up to do some shopping. Said he’d got hold of a yellow headed stomach dancer. Called her some crazy French name.--My lord, haven’t things changed on the stage since we were kids! I remember when Ruth Saint Denis was doing her Hindoo dances first and people were kind of shocked. I dropped in one afternoon and the place was packed full of women. Heard this drawly kind of voice behind me and looked round. It was Mark Twain and Mr. Howells. Ruth did a dance without much on and the women all gabbled like fury. But they all applauded a lot. Mr. Howells was sort of bored. He said, ‘What are they making that fuss for, Sam?’ ‘Oh,’ old Clemens said, ‘they’re hoping the next dance’ll be dirtier so they can feel like Christians.’ My God, he was a wonder to look at!--Ever think how much good looks do help a man along?”

“I can’t think unless you fan me, Mark. My brain’s boiling. How many more miles to a bath?”

“Twenty.”

“I’ve always been fond of you,” said Olive, “but I never realized what a brave man you were! You _work_ in this furnace? Fan me!”

The cottage stood on a slope of presentable lawn that ended in a pebbly shore. The motor rushed through a fir plantation, reached the Georgian portico and Olive gladly smelled salt wind rising from the water fading in sunset.

“There she is,” said Mark and whistled to a shape, black and tan against the sound, poised at the lip of a whitewashed pier. Margot came running and some men in bathsuits stared, deserted. The girl raced in a shimmer that reddened her legs to copper. Olive wondered if anything so alive, so gay existed elsewhere on this barbarous shore crushed by summer. Mark saw them happy, wiped his silly eyes and went down to chat in guarded grammar with the three young men from across the shallow bay. Inevitable that youngsters should come swimming and these were likeable fellows. Gurdy vouched for them. They slid soon like piebald seals into the water and swam off in a flurry of spray and bronze arms. Delicate wakes of fine bubbling spread on the surface. The wet heads grew small in this wide space of beryl. Again he watched irreproducible beauty.... It was right that the best makers of scenes wouldn’t paint the sea on back-drops. Let the people fancy it there below the vacancy of some open window. He must have the Cuban seas suggested thus in ‘Captain Salvador.’ He wished that Margot didn’t dislike the tragedy. Perhaps its stiff denial of lasting love afflicted her. It afflicted Mark. And yet the poet was right. The passion in the play would be a fleet, hot thing, engrossing for a week, a month and then stale for ever. Lust went so. He nodded and picked up Margot’s black and yellow bath wrap, a foolish, lovely cape in which she looked like an Arab. Then she called to him and he walked back to where she sat on the tiled steps reading a letter.

“Olive brought me a note from Doris Arbuthnot. Lives in Devonshire. She’s a dear ... rather like aunt Sadie but not quite so hefty. All the Wacks have come home from France, now, and they won’t work. They sit about and talk to the heroes about France. Doris owns gobs of land and she’s having a poky time.--What are you laughing at?”

“Your hair, sister.”

She passed her hands over the sponge of black down and shrugged, “Sorry I had it bobbed. All the typists do, over here. Olive’s frightfully done up. Gone to bathe.”

“Glad to have her, ain’t you?”

“Ra--ther!--Oh, Cosmo Rand called up.”

“What the--deuce did he want?”

“Ronny Dufford gave him a heap of notes about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ I told him he’d best leave them at your office.--Shall you start rehearsing ‘Todgers’ as soon as the strike’s over?”

She sneezed, the efflorescence of her hair flapping. Mark tossed the wrap about her, kissed her ear and sat down on the steps. He said, “Don’t know, daughter. Fact is, this piece of Dufford’s hasn’t played to big business in London. I’ve got a report on it. Gurdy don’t think--”

“Oh, Gurdy! He simply can’t like a play unless it’s about the long suffering proletariat or Russia!--Why didn’t he come down?”

“Got a party with some men.”

“And I wanted the brute to show me putting tomorrow! D’you put well? Of course you do!--Oh, I know ‘Todgers’ isn’t a new Man and Superman, of course. But it’s witty and it isn’t commonplace--don’t laugh.”

Mark marshalled words, lighting a cigarette. “Honey, that’s just the trouble with the thing. It is commonplace. It’s all about nothing. And it’s too blamed English. You and Gurd seem to think it’s the bounden duty of every one to know all the latest English slang off Piccadilly--or wherever they make slang up. It ain’t so. We’ll have to have some of this piece translated as it is. Suppose you were a stenographer going to the play? You wouldn’t have been abroad. You wouldn’t know an Earl beats a Baron. You wouldn’t know that Chelsea’s a big sister to Greenwich village and the slang’d bore you to death. There’s that three speech joke about Gippies and Chokers in the second act. I expect that raised a laugh in London. How many folks in the house here would know it meant cigarettes? I didn’t till you told me. Now in London with Ealy playing the Earl--he did, didn’t he?--Well, with a smart man like that to play the Earl, the thing might go pretty well. If I had some one like that--”

Margot yawned, “Why not try Cosmo Rand? He played the Earl in London while Ealy was having the flu and had very good notices. He was awfully good in the scene where he rows with his wife. The poor devil’s had a good deal of practice, they say. Cora Boyle leads him a dog’s life. Ronny Dufford tells me that she’s horribly jealous. Mr. Rand’s had a success on his own, you know? He’s not her leading man any more.--She doesn’t like his getting ahead of her.--Now what are you laughing at?”

“The leopard don’t change her spots,” said Mark.

“Poor dad!”

“Oh, well,” he said in a luxury of amusement, “She wasn’t raised right. Her folks were circus people. I guess you couldn’t imagine how tough the old style circus people were if you worked all night at it. This Rand’s a nice fellow, is he?”

“Very pleasant. He rehearsed a lot of us in a show and we were all rather rotten and he was very patient.--I do wish Gurdy had come down!--We shan’t have four for bridge. Might have Olive’s maid play. She’s dreadfully grand, you know? She’s the Presidentess of the Chelsea Lady Helpers Association. Used to be in the scullery at Windsor and Queen Alexandra spoke to her once. I’m rather afraid of her.”

“Is there any one you are afraid of, sister?”

She rose, the yellow and black gown moulding in, and gave her muffled, slow chuckle, patting the step with a sole. “Don’t know. Gurdy, when he’s grouchy. I must go dress.--Oh, I had whitewine cup made for dinner. That’s what you like when it’s hot, isn’t it? Do put on a white suit for dinner, dad. Makes your hair so red. God be with you till we meet again.”

She wandered over the white and red tiles of the portico, leaving a trail of damp, iridescent prints in the last glitter of the sun. She hummed some air he did not know and this hung in his ear like the pulse of a muted violin when she herself was gone. The man sat dreaming until the night about him was dull blue and the wind died. He sat in warm felicity, guarding the silent house until the rose spark of the light across the bay began to turn and a silver, mighty star flared high on the darker blue of heaven.

VIII

Cosmo Rand

On Saturday Gurdy brought down three young men who hadn’t met Margot. He busily noted the chemistry of passion as two of his friends became maniacal by Sunday morning. Against the worn composure of Lady Ilden, the girl had the value of a gem on dim velvet. The third young man wanted to talk Irish politics to the Englishwoman who evaded him and retired to write a letter in her bedroom above the lawn.

She wrote to her husband at Malta: “I had always thought that Margot’s success in London was due to her exotic quality. But she seems quite as successful on her native heath. This leads me to the general platitude that boys are the same the world over. I am a success here, too. Many callers, mostly female, in huge motor cars. The American woman seems to consider frocks a substitute for manners and conversation. Mark is anxious that Margot should marry Gurdy Bernamer and Gurdy is plainly willing. It would be suitable enough. The boy has smart friends and will inherit £10,000 from old Mr. Carlson. Margot can float herself in local society no doubt. She is now playing tennis with two young brokers and a 22 year old journalist whose father owns half of some State. I have mailed you a strange work, ‘Jurgen’ by some unheard of person. Do not let any of the more moral midshipmen read it.” She stopped, seeing Gurdy saunter across the lawn toward the beach and pursued him to where he curled on the sand. “You frighten me,” she said, taking her eyes from the scar that showed its upper reach above his bathshirt, “you lie about two thirds naked in this sun and then tell me it’s a cool day.--But I want to be documented in American fiction. I’ve read five novels since Wednesday. It seems to be established that all your millionaires are conscious villains and all your poor are martyrs except a select group known as gangsters. That’s thrilling when the reviewers so loudly insist that your authors flatter the rich.”

“Some of them do,” Gurdy said, lifting his legs in the hot air.

In a bathsuit he lost his civilized seeming, was heroic, sprawled on the sand. Olive told him: “You’re one of those victims of modernity, old son. You belong to thirteen forty. Green tights and a dark tunic trimmed with white fur. Legs are legs, aren’t they?”

“Heredity’s funny,” he said, “I look exactly like my father.”

“Margot’s Uncle Eddie? She talks of him a good deal and of your mother. I was rather afraid her metropolitan airs and graces would shock your people but she seems to have had a jolly time down there--New Jersey’s down from here, isn’t it? She enjoyed herself.--Metropolitan airs and graces!--That’s a quotation from something. Sounds like the _Manchester Guardian_.--Should I like your people?”

“You might. Grandfather’s an atheist. Dad’s a good deal of a cynic. They’re awfully nice small town people. My sisters all wish they were movie stars and my kid brothers think that a fighting marine is the greatest work of God.”

“And Margot says they all think you’re the last and best incarnation of Siegfried. I should like to see them.”

Gurdy shuddered. Grandfather Walling and Mrs. Bernamer held Lady Ilden responsible for the ruin of Margot as a relative. He imagined her artifice and her ease faced by the horrified family--a group of frightened colts stumbling off from a strange farmhand. He poured sand over his arm and lied, “You’d scare them. Mark’s always talked about you as though you were the Encyclopædia Brittanica on two legs. You might be interested, though.--I say, Mark’s decided that he will produce ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ Thinks he’ll have Cosmo Rand play the Earl. Can Rand really act?”

“Oh,--well enough for that sort of tosh. He’s handsome and he has a pleasant voice. But it’s rather silly of Mark to force such a poor play on the public because Margot wants Ronny Dufford out of debt. But he’s so intoxicated with Margot just now that he’d do murders for her. Why didn’t he come down for the week-end?”

Gurdy got up and yawned, “Oh, his treasurer’s wife ran off with a man last Wednesday--while he was down here. He’s trying to patch it up.--You know, he isn’t at all cynical, Lady Ilden. He’s very easily upset by things like that.”

“I suppose he likes his treasurer? Then why shouldn’t he be upset? The treasurer can’t be enjoying the affair.--I wonder if you appreciate Mark’s noble strain, Gurdy? I think I must send you a copy of the letter he wrote me after he’d packed you off to school. I showed it to my husband who has all the susceptibility of the Nelson monument and he almost shed tears. It took something more than mere snobbery or a desire for your future gratitude to make Mark send you away. It horribly hurt him. If paternal affection’s a disease the man’s a walking hospital!--There’s the luncheon bell.”

Gurdy ran into the water and furiously swam. Unless Lady Ilden was making amiable phrases Margot had lied to her about the family at Fayettesville. It was natural that she should tell Mark how she’d enjoyed the farm. That was prudent kindness, no worse than his own gratitudes when Mark gave him sapphire scarf-pins and fresh silver cigarette cases that he didn’t need or want. But Margot shouldn’t lie to Lady Ilden. Gurdy avoided the next week-end and went to Fayettesville where his family worried because Mark was losing money through the actors’ strike.

“And he’ll need all he can lay hands on with Margot to look after,” said Mrs. Bernamer, rocking her weight in a chair on the veranda, “It ain’t sensible for him to--to bow down and worship that child like he does. Oh, she’s pretty enough!”

“Get out,” Bernamer commented, “He’d be foolish about her if she’d got to wear spectacles and was bowlegged. Gimme a cigarette, Gurd. How near’s the Walling finished?”

“Two thirds, Dad.--Grandfather, you’ll have to come up and sit in a box the opening night.”

The beautiful old man blinked and drawled, “I wouldn’t go up to N’York to see Daniel Bandmann play ‘Hamlet’--if he was alive. How’s old Mr. Carlson get on?”

Gurdy often found the contrast between his grandfather and Carlson diverting. The dying manager, a cynic, wanted Heaven in all the decorations of the Apocalypse. The old peasant lazily insisted that death would end him. He got some hidden pleasure from the thought of utter passage. Gurdy found this content stupendous. The farmer had never been two hundred miles from his dull acreage and yet was ready to be done with his known universe while Carlson wanted eternity. He cackled when the striking actors made peace and ordered wreaths sent to the more stubborn managers. His bitter tongue rattled.

“Why don’t more writers write for the theatre, Gurdy? Ever been in Billy Loeffler’s office? Five thousand bootlickers and hussies squatted all over the place. I sent that fellow Moody that wrote the ‘Great Divide’ to see Loeffler. Had to set in the office with a bunch of song carpenters from tin pan alley and a couple of tarts while Loeffler was prob’ly talkin’ to some old souse he’d knew in Salt Lake City. And then Loeffler looks at the play and asks is there a soobrette part in it for some tomtit his brother was keepin’! A writer’s got a thin skin, ain’t he? Here Mark gets mad because this writer Mencken says managers are a bunch of hogs. Well, ain’t they? Four or five ain’t. Sure, they’re hogs. Human beings. Hogs. Same as the rest of mankind. Good thing Christ died to save us.” He contemplated redemption through the cigarette smoke. His Irish nurse crossed herself in a corner. Carlson went on, “Say, that feller Russell Mark’s got drillin’ that English comedy is all right. Was in to see me, yesterday. Good head. Knows his job. Says this Rand pinhead is raisin’ Cain at rehearsals. Better drop in there and see what goes on. Mark’s so busy with that Cuban play he ain’t got time.”

Rehearsals of “Todgers Intrudes” went on at a small theatre below Forty Second Street. Gurdy drifted into the warm place and watched the director, Russell, working. On the bare stage five people progressed from point to point of the tepid comedy. Russell, a stooped, bald man of thirty-five, sat near the orchestra pit. Gurdy had watched the rehearsal ten minutes before Russell spoke. “Don’t cross, there, Miss Marryatt. Stand still.” Then, “still, please, Mr. Rand.” On the stage Cosmo Rand gave the director a stare, shrugged and strolled toward the cockney comedian, the intrusive Todgers of the plot. Russell said nothing until a long speech finished, then, “You’re all rushing about like cooties. Go back to Miss Marryatt’s entrance and take all your lines just as you stand after she’s sat down. Dora isn’t pronounced Durrer, Mr. Hughes.” Gurdy was thinking of the long patience needed in this trade when Russell spoke sharply, “Mr. Rand, will you please stand still!”

“My God,” said Rand, “must I keep telling you that I played this part in--”

“Will you be so good as to stand still?”

Rand continued his lines. Gurdy walked down and slipped into a chair beside the director, aware that the players stiffened as soon as they saw Mark’s nephew. The handsome Miss Marryatt began to act. Cosmo Rand sent out his speeches with a pleasant briskness. Russell murmured, “Glad you happened in, Bernamer. This was getting beyond me. School children,” and the act ended.

“Three o’clock, please,” said the director. The small company trickled out of the theatre. Russell lit his pipe and stretched, grinning. “Rand’s very capable and a nice fellow enough but he’s difficult. Fine looking, isn’t he? Come to lunch with me.”

It was startling to be taken into an engineer’s club for the meal. Russell explained, “I was an engineer. It’s not so different from stage directing. You sometimes get very much the same material. I’ve often wanted some dynamite or a pickax at rehearsals. Nice that you floated in just now. I’ve a curiosity about this piece. Does Mr. Walling see money in it? I don’t.”

“He thinks it may go,” said Gurdy.

“It won’t. It’s sewed up in a crape. If you had a young John Drew and a couple of raving beauties playing it might run six weeks. And Dufford hasn’t any standing among the cerebrals. We might try to brighten the thing with some references to the Nourritures Terrestres or Freud. It’s a moron. Prenatal influence. Mr. Walling tells me we’re to open in Washington, too. My jinx! I went down there to offer up my life for the country and got stuck in the Q.M.C. supervising crates of tomatoes. Did you ever argue with a wholesale grocer about crates? It’s worse than staging a revue.”

“That’s a dreadful thing to say!”

Russell broke a roll in his pointed fingers and shook his head. “No.... The revue’s a very high form of comedy when it’s handled right. It gets clean away with common sense, for one thing. And it hasn’t a plot. I hate plots unless they’re good plots. That’s why this miserable ‘Todgers’ thing affects me so badly. I hoped Mr. Walling would let me help him with ‘Captain Salvador.’ But it’s his baby.”

“Is Rand giving you as much trouble as that every day?”

“Trouble? My dear man, you’ve never rehearsed a woman star who had ideas about her art! Rand’s merely rather annoying, not troublesome. He’s got no brains so his idea is to imitate the man who played the part in London. And he’s never learned how to show all his looks, either. But very few Americans know how.”

Gurdy liked the director and spent several afternoons at the rehearsals. Cosmo Rand fretted him. The slight man was obdurate. He raced about the stage until Russell checked him. His legs, sheathed always in grey tweed, seemed fluid. The leading woman had an attack of tonsilitis and halted proceedings. It was during this lapse that Gurdy encountered Cosmo Rand in a hotel lounge and nodded. The actor stopped him, deferentially, “I say, I’m afraid poor Russell’s sick to death of me. I’m giving him a bit of trouble.” Gurdy found no answer. The actor fooled with his grey hat, rubbed his vivid nails on a cuff, corrected his moustache and said, “The fact is--I do most sincerely think that Russell’s wrong to drop all the English stage directions. Couldn’t you--suggest that Mr. Walling drop in to watch sometime when Miss Marryatt’s better and we’re rehearsing again?”

His soft, round bronze eyes were anxious. He spoke timidly, the rosy fingernails in a row on his lower lip. He was something frail and graceful, a figure from a journal of fashions. Gurdy wondered whether Cora Boyle ever assaulted her poor mate and smiled.

“Mr. Walling has a good deal of confidence in Russell’s judgment, Mr. Rand. But I’ll speak to him if you like.”

“I’d be most awf’ly grateful if you would, Mr. Bernamer. The play’s such a jolly thing and one would like to see it do well. Ronny Dufford’s rather a dear friend and--so very broke, you know?”

The rosy, trim creature seemed truly worried. Meeting Russell at the 45th Street office the next day, Gurdy told him that Rand’s heart was breaking. The director grimaced, patting his bald forehead.

“The little tyke’s worrying for fear he won’t get good notices. And if this rubbish should fluke into a success he’ll be made into a star. Have you ever observed the passion of the American public for second rate acting? Especially if it happens to have a slight foreign accent? Modjeska, Bandmann, Nazimova?--Well, Miss Marryatt’s all right again. We’ll rehearse some more tomorrow. Come and look on.”

Mark had gone to Fayettesville for a few days. Gurdy attended the morning rehearsal of “Todgers Intrudes.” Cosmo Rand trotted about the stage determinedly and Russell turned on Gurdy with a groan of, “This is beyond me. I’m getting ready to do murder. He’s throwing the whole thing out of key. I shall have to get your uncle to squash him.”

“I’m beginning to see why Mr. Carlson loathes actors so,” Gurdy whispered.

“Oh, Holy Moses,” the director mourned, “look at him!--Slower, please, Mr. Rand!--It’ll be awkward if I get Mr. Walling to squash him, Bernamer. You never can tell how these walking egoisms will break out. He may run about town saying that Mr. Walling’s oppressing him cruelly.--My God, he’ll be crawling up the scene in a minute!”

On the stage, Rand had excited himself to a circular movement about a large divan in the centre. He had somehow the look of a single racer coming home ahead of the other runners. The men and women standing still suggested a sparse audience for this athletic feat. It was ludicrous. Worse, Mark would never scold Cora Boyle’s husband. Gurdy took a resolve. Margot had made Mark waste time with this silly play. She had proposed Rand for the part. She should help. He hurried to the station and reached the cottage in mid afternoon. A warm October wind made the fir trees whistle. He found Margot in a silk sweater of dull rose putting a tennis ball about the dry lawn. She smiled, tilting the golfstick across a shoulder, and swayed her slim body back to look up at Gurdy.

“Dad just telephoned from the farm, old son. Wanted to know if you were here. It was something about ‘Captain Salvador’.”