Part 11

“Oh, yes. I was hunting a tom tom for the Voodoo scene. He doesn’t like the one they’re using. Doesn’t thud loudly enough.--Can I talk to you about ‘Todgers Intrudes’ without having a fight?”

“Of course you can.”

“All right. It’s going very badly. Mr. Russell, the director, has a free for all row with Mr. Rand every day. Rand acts like the last of a ballet. He’s putting everything back. He’s out of the picture all the time. Word of honour, Margot, the play hasn’t nine lives. It’s thin. It’ll take a lot of work to make it go. Russell’s one of the best directors going and he knows what he’s doing. Rand simply runs all over the stage like that clown at the Hippodrome.”

“That’s rather the way it was played in London. Of course, that’s no excuse. Have dad scold Rand.”

“Be pretty awkward for Mark--scolding Cora Boyle’s husband.”

Margot said, “What utter tosh!”

“No, it’s not. Mark’s old fashioned--sensitive about things like that. And Rand might take it as spite. Cora Boyle’s back from California, Russell tells me. She’s a fearful liar. If she hears that Mark jumped on her husband she’ll tell all her friends that Mark’s simply a swine. You don’t know how gossip travels and gets--distorted. Once last May Mark said that he didn’t like a gown that some woman was wearing in a play we’d been to the night before. He said that at lunch in the Claridge. Next day the woman’s husband came into the office and wanted to thrash Mark. By the time the story got to him it had swelled up like a balloon. This fellow had got it that Mark said his wife looked like a streetwalker and acted like one.--It’s all very awkward. Couldn’t you--”

“Oh, look here! Because I suggested Cossy Rand for the Earl I’m not going to drynurse him!--I think you’re frightfully hypersensitive about his being married to Cora Boyle. They’re hardly ever together. It’s taking a theatrical menage as seriously as--”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Gurdy broke in, watching the red streaks mount her face, “I’m sorry! Let’s drop it. You know Rand. I thought you might write him a line and tell him to calm down. That was all. Mark’s working himself sick over ‘Captain Salvador’ and that’s an important production. Every one’s interested in it. Some of the critics have read it and think it’s the best American play in years. After all, you got Mark into this ‘Todgers’ thing. He’s doing it to please you. He’ll worry if he has to--”

Margot laughed, whipped the ball away neatly with one foot and tossed her hair back. She said, “I’ll write Rand, of course. Of course I don’t want ‘Todgers’ to get a black eye. I’ll send him a note and tell him to carry on. Perhaps he’s rather opinionated. Where’s he stopping?”

“The Knickerbocker.”

She yawned, “I’ll write him, then. Staying for dinner?” She turned and roamed off in her swaying fashion. Directly, a motor swung about the house. One of the neighbours had come to take the girl driving. She waved to Gurdy and disappeared. He resented the waving of the brown hand. It was impossible not to resent her kind mentions of his mother and sisters before Lady Ilden and Mark.

He resented, too, the airy changes from tart rage to suavity. Their talks became a tedious, uncertain duet with one performer unwilling. Gurdy strolled into the cottage and Olive Ilden looked up from a novel.

“What have you been quarrelling with Margot about?” she asked.

“Not quarrelling.”

“Nonsense. I could see you through the doors. You were quarrelling and she began it. Tell me.”

She closed the book and regarded him, not smiling, from her wicker chair. There was an odd alarm in her eyes under which hollows showed. The negligent trail of her black gown was dusted with cigarette ash. Gurdy stared, upset.

“We weren’t quarrelling. Cosmo Rand’s making an ass of himself at the rehearsals. She rather planted him on Mark. Mark’s so sensitive about Cora Boyle that Russell--the man who’s rehearsing ‘Todgers’--and I don’t want to worry Mark with the mess. I wanted Margot to write Rand a note and tell him to buck up. He’s holding the rehearsals back. Here it’s almost the first of November. Mark’s got a theatre in Washington for a couple of weeks from now and the play isn’t half ready.”

Olive tapped a cigarette holder on the walnut, Dutch table and looked at the floor. Then she raised her eyes and smiled, spoke without artifice.

“I shan’t let her write to Rand, Gurdy. She’s too much interested in him. I don’t like it. She cabled him to come over here as soon as she’d bullied Mark into buying the rights to ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ The little idiot thinks him a great actor. I’m sure I don’t know why. I don’t at all like this. I only found it out yesterday. Mark wouldn’t like it. The man’s married and if he happens to tell people Margot sent for him--I quite understand theatrical gossip, Gurdy. Mark’s a great person and it would make quite a story. And of course there are rats who don’t like Mark.”

“How did you find this out, Lady--”

“In the silliest way. I was talking about Ronny Dufford and Margot began to argue that this wretched play is really good. She rather lost her temper. She told me you’d tried to persuade Mark not to produce the thing to spite her. I--” Olive laughed unhappily, “I hadn’t the faintest idea that you’d quarrelled. You’re rather too cool, old man. I’ve been teasing you all this time fancying that you were wildly in love with the child and it seems that you’re at odds.--Oh, It’s all utter nonsense, of course! But I don’t like it. It’s a pose. She rather prides herself on being unconventional. And the silliest part of it is that she feels she’s done Mark a favour.”

“She’s probably cost him about fifteen thousand dollars,” said Gurdy.

This was antique, this tale of a handsome, dapper actor and a girl gone moonstruck over his pink face. Gurdy grunted, “We can’t tell Mark this. He’d be upset. It’s idiotic.”

Olive laughed, “Oh, you mustn’t get excited over it, Gurdy. The play will fail and she’ll drop Rand. It’s a gesture, you see? The clever girl doing the unconventional thing.” She became comfortable, then artificial. “You mustn’t take Margot at her own valuation, dear. She’s the moment--the melodramatic moment. What’s that American slang? She’s no--no ball of fire! She admires people easily and drops them easily. She’s eighteen. She was quite lost in adoration of the Countess of Flint two years ago and then the poor woman did something the child didn’t like--wore the wrong frock, probably--and that was all over. The poor lady died in Colorado yesterday.--That means consumption, doesn’t it? I read the notice to Margot at breakfast and she said, ‘Really.’ Rand flattered her about her acting, I fancy, and she thinks he’s remarkable in return for the compliment. Every normal female gets mushy--I’m quite Americanized--over an actor at eighteen. When I was eighteen I wrote a five act tragedy and sent it to--Merciful Heaven--I’ve forgotten who he was! Beerbohm Tree, probably. But I must congratulate you on your attitude. You had a frightful row at Fayettesville. She said, herself, that she was to blame. She hurt you. And you’ve not shown it in the least.”

“It didn’t amount to much.--But, Mark wouldn’t like this business. And of course some people don’t like him. They’d be ready to talk if they thought she was flirting with--”

“But she isn’t! If she was I’d drag her off to Japan with me. She’s hardly spoken to the man except at those rehearsals last winter. It’ll die a swift death when the play fails, old man. We’ve no use for failures at eighteen.”

Olive laughed, repeated the prophecy in a dozen turning phrases and drove with Gurdy to the station after dinner. But she was oppressed. She could imagine Mark’s bewilderment clearly. He found Rand a somewhat comic person, a frail young poser towed after the robust beauty of his wife, perhaps bullied. The car brought Olive back to the white portico of the cottage and she found Margot distracting a middle aged sugar broker. It was time for bed when the addled man’s car puffed away. Margot yawned and mounted the brown stairs in a flutter of marigold skirts. The living-room fell still. Olive settled at a table and commenced a letter to Ilden. “I shall not start for Japan for some time. Margot is behaving rather queerly. Having fancied that I could follow the eccentric curves of her mind I am much annoyed to find that I can not. This cottage will be closed next week. Heaven knows what will become of the furniture unless Mark should use it in a play. I have a curiosity to see the opening of his new theatre. He is working frantically over the play for its opening. Gurdy Bernamer tells me that a New York first night is like nothing else on earth for bounderishness. He says that awful and obscene creatures come creeping from nowhere and flap about in free seats and that all the cinema queens appear covered with rubies. It--”

The telephone on the table clicked but did not ring. Olive glared at the instrument. She abominated the telephone since it had brought her news of her son’s death. She finished her letter and climbed the stairs, aching for bed after a nervous day. Then she heard Margot talking behind the closed door of her room. The girl hadn’t a maid. Olive’s own maid was visible in her chamber at the end of the corridor. Olive passed on. She came back on impulse and heard “All right, Cossy. Carry on. ’By--ee.” Then the small clatter of Margot’s bedside telephone set on the glass of a table. Olive opened the door and saw the girl subsiding into the mass of her pillows.

“I’ve just blown Cosmo Rand up properly, Olive.”

“I wondered why you were talking.”

Margot yawned, “Gurdy asked me to write him. I’d rather talk. His dear wife’s back from California and his voice sounded as though they’d been throwing supper dishes at each other. He didn’t seem pleased.”

“My dear, I don’t see why Mr. Rand should be pleased to be lectured on his art over the telephone at midnight!”

“It’s rather cheeky, isn’t it? But Gurdy made such a point of it. And all I could say was that he mustn’t be too difficult at rehearsals. But that’s all I could have said in a note. It seems to me that it’s distinctly dad’s business. But Gurdy’s such an everlasting old woman about dad! And I am rather responsible for bringing ‘Todgers’ over. Dare say I ought to help out, if I can.”

Olive slung a dart carelessly, asking, “What’s Rand’s real name, dear?”

“Rand.”

“I meant the Cosmo. That’s not an American name at all.”

“Don’t know, I’m sure. I don’t like it, anyhow. But it might be his own. He’s from some town in Iowa and they name children fearful things like Eliander and Jerusha, out there.” She chuckled, slipping a tawny shoulder in and out of her robe. Her face rippled, “I really think Cosmo’s a rather ghastly name. Sounds like a patent soup. Wonder why they named dad Mark? Gurdy’s real name’s George.” She yawned, “I suppose all actors get rather opinionated.”

“As they’re mostly rank egotists,” said Olive and closed the door.

Perplexity remained in her strongly wrestling with the desire for sleep. She lay composing a letter to Cosmo Rand--“As your position toward Mr. Walling is delicate and you are under obligations to Miss Walling may I suggest that you maintain a purely formal relation toward--” It wouldn’t do. Words to a shadow. She knew nothing of the man. He was a graceful figure at parties in London, considerably hunted by smart women for Sunday night dinners before the war. If the comedy failed and Mark dismissed him Rand might make an ill-tempered use of such a letter. Olive shrugged off the idea lay wondering why a pleasant voice and a head of curly hair seen across footlights should convince Margot that here was a great actor. It was disappointing. Olive had thought Margot steeled against crazes. The girl had a general appreciation of the arts as seen about London. Olive faintly sighed. But the pleasing man might embody some fancy or other, fulfil some buried wish. We go groping and stumbling among fancies, the woman thought, and see nothing very clearly. She consoled herself with the platitude and went to sleep.

IX

Bubble

“Todgers Intrudes” now went smoothly. Mark came to one of the last rehearsals, approved Russell’s method but, as they walked up Broadway, told Gurdy that this was a “lousy” play. All plays were just then nonsense beside “Captain Salvador.” Mark’s absorption seemed to exclude even Margot of whom the idolator once gently complained. The dark goddess had returned to town, been a week at the Fifty Fifth Street house and was sitting with Olive at the rear of the 45th Street Theatre. Her voice reached Mark clearly where he stood assembling the picture for a scene, a leg swung over the rail of the orchestra pit.

“She don’t seem so much interested in ‘Salvador,’ Gurd. Why’s that?”

“Rather heavy for her, perhaps.”

Mark rubbed his nose and accepted wisdom. A girl of eighteen mightn’t care for this tale of shipwrecked ruffians, frantic negroes, moonlit death. And what innocent girl of eighteen could know or believe that men got tired of women? Gurdy understood and was helpful, had found a wailing negro song for the shipboard scene of the first act. Mark beamed at Gurdy, then turned to the stage and patiently corrected the six negro actors timid among the white folk of the big company, pathetic in sapphire and sage green suits.

“You boys in a circle ’round the table, left. Keep looking at Mr. Leslie.”

He picked spots for the grouping. His brown fingers pointed. He named attitudes, dropping his lids as he built the picture with glances at the water colour sketch in his hand. An intricate chatter began on the stage. Gurdy slipped up the aisle and joined Olive under the balcony.

“How careful he is,” she whispered, “like a ballet master.”

Gurdy nodded, “No one’ll move without being told to. The whole thing’s planned. He’s going to run the lights himself in Boston, next Monday.”

“You’ll go up there with him? He looks dreadfully thin.” His black height made a centre against the footlights. His mastery of this human paint was impressive, admirable. He visibly laboured, silent, listening. She asked, “Would he work as hard over an ordinary, commercial play?”

“No. Oh, he’d work hard but not as hard as this.”

Margot glanced across Olive, then at her watch. She said, “Let’s clear out, Olive. Teatime.”

“I’d much rather stay here. Fascinating.”

“But you told Mrs. Marlett Smith you’d come.”

Olive sighed and gathered her furs. It was important that Margot should go to this tea at the Marlett Smith house. Mrs. Marlett Smith was a liberal, amusing woman who had met Mark by way of some playwright and had called on Olive at the seaside cottage. They left the theatre and Gurdy came to open the door of the blue car. To him Margot suddenly spoke, “How will dad open this silly thing in Boston, Monday night and get to Washington by Tuesday night to open ‘Todgers’?”

“We’ll be there,” he said and closed the door.

Olive looked back at his colourless dress, his shapely head and vanishing grave face with a frank wistfulness. “I don’t see why you should make such a point of annoying Gurdy. And why call this play silly when it’s so plainly good?... I’ve carefully refrained from asking you why you quarrelled with Gurdy. He behaves charmingly to you and keeps the peace.”

“Paying him back for being nasty about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’”

“But he’s not been nasty. He’s very sensibly given his opinion that it’s feeble. As it is.--The man’s taking us down Broadway. Loathsome sewer!”

The motor slowly passed toward Forty Second Street and across that jam. Olive saw lean and stolid Englishmen stalking in the harsh, dusty November wind that blew women along in the whirling similitude of rotted flowers. Margot got notice, here. There was a jerk of male heads from the curb. Empty faces turned to the girl’s brilliance in rose cloth. A tanned sailor flapped his white cap. Yet in the Marlett Smith library on Park Avenue Margot was prettily discreet for half an hour below Chinese panels, among gayer frocks where she lost colour, merged in a fluctuation of dress. On the way home her restraint snapped into a “Damn!”

“Very stiff,” said Olive, “One reads about the American informality. Tea at Sandringham is giddy beside this. But Mrs. Marlett Smith’s clever. Who were those twins in black velvet who so violently kissed you?”

“The Vaneens. Ambrosine and Gretchen. Knew them at school. They come out in December.--But what maddens me is this everlasting jabber about France! Some of those girls know Gurdy. Their brothers were at Saint Andrew’s with him. He seems to have made himself frightfully conspicuous about Paris.--No, I’m bored with Gurdy. If dad tries to make me marry him I’ll take poison and die to slow music. Such tosh! He made a gesture of enlisting--”

“You’re being silly,” Olive said, coldly hurt, “and I’m sick of the word, gesture. Pray, was the gesture of third rate artists and actors who wouldn’t leave their work anything madly glorious? I can understand a man conscious of great talent preferring to stick to his last. And I can understand a complete refusal to mix in the--abominable business. But I’ve no patience with dreary little wasters who shouted for blood and then took acetanilid to cheat the doctors. As for Gurdy’s military career he’s very quiet about it. I dislike this venom against Gurdy.”

Margot chuckled, “Perhaps I’m jealous,” and got down before the house. She opened the door with her latchkey and they entered a flow of minor music from the drawing room. Gurdy was playing. Mark leaned on the curve of the piano and his brown hands were deeply reflected in the black pool of its top.

“Listen to this, Olive. Nigger song Gurdy raked up for ‘Captain Salvador.’ Sing it, sonny. Don’t run off, Margot. Listen.” He caught the girl to him, held her cheek against his chin. A scent of mild sandal and cigarettes ebbed from the black hair into his nostrils. He was tired after the tense rehearsal and chilled from half an hour in the cold of the Walling. This moving warmth and scent was luxury. Mark shut his eyes. Gurdy chanted in plausible barytone.

“Life is like a mountain railway, From the cradle to the grave. Keep yoh hand upon the throttle An’ yoh eyes--upon--the--rail....”

It would sound splendidly in the dim forecastle of the first scene. It would float and die under the blue vault of the Walling. He had just seen the lights turned on a recession of faint silver rims in the dull cloud of that ceiling. He was still drugged by the sight. His theatre was like a desirable body promised to his arms. Gurdy played again the slow air in curious variations, flutters of notes. Mark opened his eyes to watch the slide of the long fingers on the keys. Olive was smiling.

“Delightful. Very moral, too. Sound advice. How well you play, Gurdy!”

“Always did,” said Mark, “He could play like a streak when he was ten. Come along up and have a fight with Mr. Carlson, daughter.”

Olive let Margot’s voice melt into the old man’s cackle above. Gurdy said, “We went to the Walling after rehearsal, Lady Ilden. Honestly, it’s a corker. The ceiling’s nearly finished. Theatres don’t last, worse luck. But there’s nothing like it in the city. Mark’s worked like a pup over it.--How was your tea?”

“Very decent. Varieties of women, there. Almost no men. A débutante told me she admired Walt Whitman more than most English poets and was rather positive that he was English. I can’t understand the American tabu on Whitman.”

“Immoral.”

“But--good heavens!--I fascinated two elderly girls by telling them I knew Swinburne. Swinburne was lewd. Poor Whitman was merely rather frank.”

“But Algie was a foreigner,” Gurdy laughed, “so it was all right. Margot have a good time?”

Olive asked, “What were you and Margot rowing about in the library last night? I could hear her voice getting acid.”

Gurdy commenced a waltz and said, “We weren’t rowing. Mark asked me whether Cosmo Rand was in the British army. He wasn’t and I said so. She seemed to think I was sniffing at Rand and blew me up a little. That was all. We made peace. I rather like Rand, you know, now that he’s stopped making an ass of himself at rehearsals. Russell and I had lunch with him today. He talks well. He knows a lot about painting, for instance. These actors who’ve been all over the landscape and don’t think they’re better than Richard Mansfield--pretty interesting. There’s not much to Rand but he isn’t a--a walking egotism.”

Olive laughed, “Come back to Margot. She’s pointedly offensive to you and rather assertive about it. I hope you’ll go on being patient and try to remember how young she is. You’re very mature for twenty-one. You never bray. I brayed very wildly at Margot’s age. I horribly recall telling Henry Arthur Jones how to improve his plays and one of my saddest memories is of telling a nice Monsieur Thibault what a poor novel Thaïs was. He quite agreed with me. I didn’t know he was Anatole France until he left the room. I’ve all the patience going with youth. You’re almost too mature.”

“Don’t know about being mature,” said Gurdy, “I’m not, probably. But every other book you read is all about youth--golden youth--youth always finds a way--ferment. Get pretty tired of it. Makes me want to be forty-nine. And some of the poets make me sick. Hammering their chests and saying, Yow! I’m young!... Not their fault. I’m not proud of being six foot one. Runs in the family.”

“That’s a very cool bit of conversation, old man. You’ve taken me away from Margot twice, very tactfully, so I’ll drop it. Play some Debussy. His music reminds me of a very handsome man with too much scent on his coat. Can’t approve of it. Rather like it.”

He evaded discussions of Margot until Sunday night when he went with Mark to Boston for the opening of “Captain Salvador” there. On Monday night he sat, a spy, in the middle of the large audience. A critic had come from New York to see this play before it should reach the metropolitan shoals. Gurdy saw the slender, sharp face intent. The ten scenes of the Cuban romance passed without a hitch before the placid Bostonians. Mark was directing the lights that raised peaks of gloom on the walls, sent shimmerings along the moonlit beach where the hero squatted in a purple shadow. About him Gurdy heard appropriate murmurs. A fat woman whimpered her objection to the half naked celebrants of the Voodoo scene. An old man complained that this was unlike life. Two smart matrons chatted happily about a Harvard cabal against some friend while “Captain Salvador” effected his wooing. A thin boy in spectacles wailed an argument that true art wasn’t possible in a capitalistic nation. A girl giggled every time the sailors of the story swore and almost whinnied when the word, “strumpet” rattled over the lights. But this herd redeemed itself in heavy applause. The thin boy wailed a blanket assent to the merits of the plot and the setting, “After all, Walling’s Irish and he studied under Reinhardt in Berlin. The Kelts have some feeling for values.” Still the fat woman thought, loudly, that the play didn’t prove anything and Gurdy decided that one of his future satires must be named, The Kingdom of Swine. He found Mark in high delight behind the scenes, snapping directions to his manager, his leading man and the electrician in the New Jersey singsong. “Have the tomtom some louder for the Voodoo, Ike. Bill, you send all the notices special delivery to the Willard in Washington. Mr. O’Mara’s in Hayti if the _Transcript_ wants an interview. Beach scene blue enough, Gurdy? All right, Ed, I told you it was. Now, Leslie, take your fall at the end quieter, a little. You’re all right, the rest of it. Come along, Gurdy. Taxi’s waiting.” In the taxi, he cried, “Damn this lousy ‘Todgers’ thing, son! I want to stay here. People liked it, huh?”

“They did.--Oh, you’re Irish and you learned all your business from Reinhardt.”