Part 12

“Sure! Blame, it on Europe!--My God, didn’t the tomtom business go like a breeze?--Oh, this ‘Todgers’ thing’ll be too bad. Tell you, I’ll play it in Washington and Philadelphia. Baltimore, if it don’t just roll on its belly and die. Sorry if Margot gets sore.--She and Olive went to Washington s’afternoon, didn’t they, huh?--Was the ship scene light enough, sonny?”

He sat in their stateroom on the train, his eyes still black with excitement and drank watered brandy. He dreamed of “Captain Salvador’s” first night at the Walling and tremors of applause mounting to the blue vault of that perfected ceiling. He was so tired that he struggled, undressing.

“Mark, you’re thin as a bean! Nothing but some muscles and skin.”

Mark flexed his arms, beamed up at the tall boy’s anxiety and rolled into his berth. The mussed red hair disappeared under a pillow. Gurdy smoked and stared humbly.... This was surely half of an artist, laborious, patient, contriving beauty. The man had this strange perception of the lovely thing. He should do better and better. If his trade was that of the booth, the sale of charming sensualities, he raised it by his passion. He begot fondness. He created. Gurdy tucked the blankets over the blue silk pyjamas and planned a long talk on the purpose of the theatre for the morning, then wondered what that purpose was and put the lecture off. They fled all morning down the land and came to Washington in time for late lunch with Russell at the Shoreham where Mark halted to look at a pretty, dark woman in the suave, grey lounge smelling of flowers, fell behind Gurdy and Russell, found himself suddenly lifting his hat to Cora Boyle. She wore a cloak banded with black fur and a gold hat too young for her paint. Mark smiled, rather sorry for the blown coarseness of her chin, asked how she liked California and heard her flat voice crackle.

“A nightmare! All these girls who were absolutely no one last week in ten thousand dollar cars! No, I’m glad they brought me east. I’m taking three days off to see Cosmo start this. Tells me it plays here the rest of the week, then Philadelphia.--When are you bringing it into New York?”

He shifted a little and said, “Can’t say, Cora. Hard to get a house in New York, right now. This thing I’ve got at the Forty Fifth Street is doin’ big business. Todgers’ll be on the road two weeks, anyhow, before I decide what’ll become of it--”

“What are you opening the Walling with?”

“‘Captain Salvador.’ Opened in Boston last night. Best play I’ve ever touched! Say, remind me to send you seats when it opens the Walling.”

“That’s dear of you.--But couldn’t you get one of the small houses for Cosmo? The Princess or the Punch and Judy? Intimate comedy. Cosmo really does better in a small house. And--” she smiled--“you could take a bigger one after a month or so.”

He had an awed second of wonder. She’d been almost thirty years on the stage and she thought “Todgers Intrudes” a good play! He began to say, “But, do you think this will--” Then two men charged up to shake hands with the actress. Mark scuttled down the stairs toward the grill. If she was quarrelling with Rand her manner didn’t show it. “Cosmo really does better in a small house.” He joined Russell and Gurdy at their table, puzzled and said, “Say, if she’s fighting with Rand it’s funny she’d come down to see him open this flapdoodle.”

“Habit,” Russell shrugged, “They’ve been married twelve years. But are they fighting? I had breakfast with them this morning and she almost crucified herself because his tea wasn’t right.”

Mark wondered why Margot thought that Rand and the woman quarrelled. But he shed the wonder. He liked Washington especially as the pale city showed itself now in a vapour where the abiding leaves seemed glazed in their red and yellow along the streets. Olive knew people here. There was a tea with a British attaché. Margot’s rose cloth suit gleamed about the dancing floor of the restaurant. Gurdy had friends who were produced, fell subject to Margot and came between the acts that night to lean over the girl’s chair in the box of the big theatre. “Todgers Intrudes” went its placid course. Rand gave, Mark fancied, an excellent imitation of an English conservative. The packed house laughed at the right points. Margot’s face rippled so eagerly that Mark wanted to kiss it and covertly held her hand below the rail. Why, this was the pretty, gentle sort of nonsense eighteen years would relish! A pity it had no staying wit. A pity this fragile, polished man she so admired wasn’t a real comedian. Mark looked at Gurdy’s stolid boredom and the fine chest hidden by the dinner jacket beyond Olive’s bare shoulders. It might be as well to let Gurdy tell Margot the play wouldn’t do for New York. Mark shrank from that. Gurdy could put the thing much better in his cool, bred fashion.--Here and there men were leaving the theatre with an air of final retirement. In the opposite box there was a waving of feathers. How well Cora Boyle could use a fan!--A youngster with curly orange hair slipped into his box as the second curtain fell. Gurdy introduced young Theodore Jannan to Olive and Margot, then to Mark. Mr. Jannan had come over from Philadelphia to do something in Washington. This play--the Jannan heir bit off a “rotten”--was advertised as coming to Philadelphia next week.

“Opens there Monday,” said Mark.

“My mother’s giving a baby dance for my sister. Couldn’t you bring Miss Walling, Gurdy? Monday night.”

How smoothly Margot said she’d like to come to a dance at Mrs. Apsley Jannan’s house in Philadelphia! The nonsense of social position! An illusion. A little training, a little charm, good clothes.--A Healy, one of Margot’s cousins, had risen to be a foreman in one of the Jannan steel mills.--Gurdy had played football with this pleasant lad at Saint Andrew’s school. Who on earth would ever know or care that Margot and Gurdy were born on a farm? The last curtain fell. Margot wanted to dance. Russell came to join the party. They went to a restaurant and found a table at the edge of the oval floor. Margot’s yellow frock was swept off into the florid seething on Gurdy’s arm. Russell poured brandy neatly into the coffee pot and shrugged to Mark.

“Bad sign. Fifteen or twenty men left in the second act. We’ll have a vile time in Philadelphia, Lady Ilden. It’s a queer town on plays.--There come the Rands.”

A headwaiter lifted a “Reserved” sign from a table across the floor. Cora Boyle and her husband appeared in the light threaded by cigarette smoke. The actress draped a green and black skirt carelessly, refused to dance with a British officer in a trim pantomime, bowed slowly to Mark who was taken with fright. She’d want to talk about this drivelling play and before her slight, quiet husband. He slipped a bill under the edge of Russell’s plate.

“Bring Olive back to the hotel will you Russell? I’m all in. ’Night, Olive.”

His retreat through the smoky tables was comic. Russell fingered his chin. Olive ended by laughing, “He’s ridiculously timid about her.”

The director patted his bald forehead and drank some coffee. He said, “It happens that he’s got some reason. Miss Boyle’s bad tempered and an inveterate liar. She’s fond of her husband and she seems to think this comedy will have a New York run. Mr. Walling means to let it die on the road, naturally. She won’t like that. She’ll talk. Her voice will be loud all up and down Broadway.”

“But--surely he’s callous to that sort of thing?”

“Do you see anything callous about him? I don’t.” The director nodded to the floating of Margot’s skirt. “This is the first time I’ve ever directed a play put on to please a débutante, Lady Ilden.--No, Mr. Walling seems mighty sensitive to gossip.--And Cora Boyle’s in a strong position. She’s a woman--obviously--and she can make a good yarn. Spite, and so on. She’s quite capable of giving out interviews on the subject. She can’t hurt Mr. Walling but she might cause any quantity of gossip,--which he couldn’t very well answer. She can play the woman wronged, you see?”

“What a nation of woman worshippers you are!”

“Were,” said Russell, “We’re getting over it.”

“I don’t see any signs of it.”

Russell said, “You can’t send two million men into countries where women--well, admit that they’re human, not goddesses, anyhow, without getting a reaction. My wife’s a lawyer. She helped a young fellow--an ex-soldier--out of some trouble the other day and he told her she was almost as nice as a foreigner--Ten years ago if Cora Boyle had wanted to have a fight with Mr. Walling she could have taken the line that he was jealous of Rand and she’d have found newspapers that would print front page columns about it. She’d get about two paragraphs now.--But she probably has better sense. Beastly handsome, isn’t she?”

“Very--brutta bestia bella. Gurdy tells me she’s paid a thousand dollars a day to play Camille for the cinema. Why?”

“Oh ... she’s the kind of thing a lot of respectable middle aged women adore, I think.--Look at them.”

There were many women in the rim of tables. They stared at the flaring green and black gown, at the exhibited bawdry of gold wrought calves, at the feathers of the waving, profuse fan. There was an attitude of furtive adventure in the turn of heads. They stared, disapproved, perhaps envied.

“‘Some men in this, some that, their pleasure take, but every woman is at heart a rake,’” Olive quoted.

The director laughed, “You’re right.--And I often think that the movie queens take the place of an aristocracy in this country. Something very fast and bold for the women to stare at. Now Rand, there, is the ideal aristocrat--in appearance, anyhow, don’t you think? And nobody’s looking at him. I wonder if Miss Walling would dance with me?”

He relieved Gurdy close to the Rand table. When the boy joined Olive she asked, “Mr. Russell isn’t a typical stage director, is he?... I thought not. One of the new school in your theatre? A well educated man?... Rather entertaining.”

“He writes a little. Been an engineer. Stage directors are weird. One of them used to be an Egyptologist.--I say, help me keep Mark here the rest of the week, will you? He’s dead tired. Did he run when he saw Cora Boyle coming?”

“Yes. He seems positively afraid of her!”

Gurdy said, “He is afraid of her. Great Scott, he was only sixteen when he married her and dad says he was--pretty blooming innocent. Mark’s all full of moral conventions, Lady Ilden. Ever noticed that?”

“When you were in pinafores, my child! I always thought he’d shed some of his Puritan fancies. He doesn’t.”

“Grandfather’s awfully strict, even if he is an atheist. And mother ... isn’t what you’d call reckless. They brought him up. And he still thinks their ... well, moral standards are just about right.--I’m the same way. Got it pounded into me at school that bad grammar and loud clothes were immoral. Don’t suppose I’ll get over that.--Mark says he’s never flirted with a married woman in his life.”

Olive yawned, “I don’t suppose that he has, consciously. Oh, to be sure, I can understand why Mark would think of Miss Boyle as the Scarlet Woman. The Puritan upbringing.--We never quite get over early influences, Gurdy. I always find myself bristling a bit over dropped H’s even when a famous novelist does the dropping.--Mark prophesies bad reviews for the play, in the morning. Do leave word to have the papers sent up to me. I’m so sleepy I shall forget about it.--Thank heaven, Margot’s stopped dancing.”

In their double bedroom at the New Willard Margot talked jauntily of “Todgers Intrudes,” until Olive fell asleep wondering why the girl should interpret amiable laughter as the shout of success. In the morning two newspapers arrived with breakfast. The critics praised the acting and both sniffed at the play. Olive read the columns over her tea. Both critics dealt kindly with Rand. One thought his manner resembled that of Cyril Maude, the other said that he imitated George Arliss. Margot came trailing a green robe from the bathtub and stood pressed against the brass bedfoot reading the comments. The sun redoubled on her silver girdle and the numerous polychrome tassels of the foolish, charming drapery inside which her body stirred before she cried, “How American! Thin! It’s no thinner than that rot dad has running at the Forty Fifth Street!”

“My darling Margot, that’s thin American comedy. It’s something national, comprehensible. As for ‘Todgers,’ why--why should you expect a pack of American war office clerks and provincials to care whether a Baron precedes an Earl or no? I can’t help being surprised that so many of them seemed to know what it was all about! The play is thin--horribly thin. I’m sure it did well at home on account of Maurice Ealy’s following. The critics say rather nice things about Rand, all things considered.... Well, were you impressed with him last night? Do you still think he’s a fine actor?”

Margot tilted her face toward the ceiling and the sun made a visard across her narrowed eyes. She twisted the silver girdle between her hands and stood silent. Olive felt the final barrier between creatures, suddenly and keenly. She had lived in intimacy with the girl for five years. Here was a strange mind revolving under the black, carven hair and the mask of sun.

“No, I didn’t think him very good, last night. Nervous.--And perhaps the play did seem rather thin.... But it’ll do better in New York. More civilized people, there.”

Olive lifted her breakfast tray to the bedside table and thought. Then her patience snapped, before the girl’s sunny and motionless certitude. She said, “New York! Do you think Mark will risk bringing this poor ghost of a thing to New York? Hardly! He told me last night it will be played in Philadelphia and Baltimore, then he’ll discard it.--You’re silly, dearest! The play’s wretched and Rand’s no better than a hundred other young leading men I’ve seen. He appeals to you for some reason or other. He seems very, very feeble to me. He has no virility, no--”

The silver girdle broke between the tawny hands. Margot’s face rippled. She said loudly, “This is all Gurdy! He doesn’t like the play! He’s made dad dislike it. He--”

Olive cut in, “I shan’t listen to that! That’s mere ill temper and untrue. The play is a waste of Mark’s time and of his money.--Between your very exaggerated loyalty to Ronny Dufford and your liking for this doll of an actor you’ve probably cost Mark three or four thousand pounds. He produced this play entirely to please you. Don’t tease him any farther. Don’t try to make him bring this nonsense to New York. You’ve a dreadful power over Mark. Don’t trade on it! You’re behaving like a spoiled child. You disappoint me!”

The black eyes widened. Margot pushed herself back from the bed with both hands, staring. She said, “I--I dare say.... Sorry.”

“You should be!... He’s done everything he can to keep you amused. He isn’t a millionaire. You’ve been treated like a mistress of extravagant tastes, not like a daughter! There is such a thing as gratitude. He’s humoured you in regard to this silly play and in regard to Rand. Gurdy and Mr. Russell tell me that Cora Boyle can make herself a disgusting nuisance now that the play’s a failure. You’ve pushed Mark into this very bad bargain. Don’t make it worse by whimpering, now, and don’t--”

“Oh, please!”

“Then please bite on the bullet and let’s hear no more of this. When Mark tells you he’ll drop the play, don’t tease him.”

Margot said, “Poor Ronny Dufford! I thought--”

“I’m sorry Ronny’s broke. It’s the destiny of younger sons whose fathers had a taste for baccarat. I shall start for Japan as soon as I’ve seen the Walling opened. I shan’t go in a very easy frame of mind if I feel that you’ve constituted yourself a charitable committee of one with Mark as treasurer.”

Olive laughed. Margot said, “Yes, m’lady,” and made a curtsey, then fluttered off to telephone for breakfast, began to chuckle and the delicate chime of that mirth was soothing, after the rasp of Olive’s tirade. The girl seemed unresentful. Olive had never so seriously scolded her. Now she thought that she should talk to Mark about his folly. This idolatry was delightful to watch but unhealthy, a temptation to Margot. The girl had other pets in London. There was an amateur actress constantly wobbling on the edge of professional engagements. Two or three of the young painters experimented in stage setting. She deliberated and listed these artists to Mark while they were driving about the broad city in a hired victoria.

“All nice children and hopeless dabblers, old man. Beware of them or you’ll have the house filled with immigrants. Rand’s a giant beside any of them.”

“The little man ain’t so bad. Guess I’ll put him in as leading man for a woman in a Scotch play I’m going to work on after Christmas. That’ll shut Cora Boyle up. He’ll do, all right. I’ll offer him the part when I tell him ‘Todgers’ goes to Cain’s.”

“To--where?”

“It’s a warehouse in New York where dead plays go--the scenery, I mean.” Mark pointed to a full wreath of steam floating above the Pan American building, “Watch it go. No wind. Ought to last a minute.--Busted,” he sighed, as the lovely cream melted. “But I ain’t sorry this happened, Olive. Teach her she don’t know so much about the show business. ‘Todgers’ll’ make a little money here because the town’s packed full. But I’m afraid Philadelphia’ll be its Waterloo. Well, the Boston _Transcript_ had three columns on ‘Captain Salvador.’ It’s in the biggest theatre in Boston and they had standing room only last night. Gurdy got a wire from a kid he knows in Harvard that a couple of professors came out of the woods and told their classes to go see the thing.”

His talk came turning back to “Captain Salvador” for the rest of the week. He was bodily listless after the strain of the Boston production. Gurdy forced him to play golf and tramp the spread city when Olive and Margot were at teas in the British colony. Russell often walked and every night dined with them, examining Margot with his sharp hazel eyes so that Gurdy fancied the man exhaling her essence with his cigarette smoke. He sat with Gurdy on Monday afternoon in the smoking car on the road to Philadelphia and observed, “Miss Walling’s very much interested in ‘Todgers.’ How will she take the blow when it fails, here? It’ll be a flat failure, tonight, Gurdy. See if it isn’t.”

“Margot and I are going to a dance. We shan’t see it flop.”

“It’ll flop very flat and hard. I’m a Philadelphian. You should warn Miss Walling.”

Mark startled Gurdy by warning Margot during tea in the small suite of the Philadelphia hotel while she stood at the tin voiced piano rattling tunes with one hand. Mark said nervously, “Now, sister, if ‘Todgers’ is a fluke here--why, I can’t waste time and cash fooling with it any longer.” He coughed and finished, “I’ll send your friend Dufford a check and--amen.”

“You’re an old duck,” said Margot, “and I’ll be good. Shan’t ever try to choose another play for you--never, never, never.” She tinkled the negro song from “Captain Salvador” tapping one foot so that the silver buckle sparkled. “Wish I could sing.... Life is like a--what’s good old life like, Gurdy?”

“Like a mountain railway.”

“That a simile or a metaphor?--I say, I must get scrubbed. Six o’clock.”

She passed Gurdy, leaving the room. He saw her teeth white against the red translucency of her lower lip and carmine streaks rising in her face, but her door shut slowly.

“Took it like a Trojan,” Mark proudly said, “Guess the Washington papers opened her eyes some. Well, let’s go see if Russell’s downstairs, Gurd. He’s got a room on this floor. Gad, Olive, I wish we were goin’ to a dance tonight instead of this--junk.”

“Margot should wear something very smart for this dance, shouldn’t she?” Olive asked. “The Jannans are the mighty of earth, aren’t they?”

“Old family. Steel mills,” Gurdy explained.

“I’ve met some of them in Scotland. Wasn’t there a Miss Jannan who did something extraordinary? I remember a row in the New York papers. Didn’t she--”

Mark laughed, “Ran off with a married man. They’ve got a couple of kids, too.”

“Doesn’t that domestic touch redeem the performance, Mark?”

Mark chuckled and drawled, “Now, here! You make out you’re a wild eyed radical and so on. Suppose some girl that ought to know better came and lived next you in Chelsea with a married man. Ask her to dinner?”

“I cheerfully would if I thought her worth knowing, gentle Puritan! If I thought she was simply a sloppy, uncontrolled sentimentalist I should no more bother myself than I would to meet a society preacher or some hero of the Russian ballet who’s paid a hundred guineas a night to exhibit his abdominal surface in the name of art.... Six o’clock. I should tub, myself. I’ve several cinders on my spine. Run along, both of you.”

Mark said on the way to the elevators, “Olive’s a wonder, ain’t she, bud? Don’t know why but she always puts me in mind of your dad. Calm and cool.--Oh, say, tomorrow’s your mamma’s birthday!”

“It is. And I’m going up to the farm, after lunch. ‘Todgers Intrudes’ has got me--”

“Shut up,” said Mark, seeing Cosmo Rand ringing the button for the elevator. He beamed at the actor and asked in the car, “Mrs. Rand went back to New York?”

“Yes. Just been talking to her by ’phone. They started the film of ‘Camille’ today. Very trying, she said. They’ve some promoted cowboy playing Armand.--I say, I’ve some quite decent gin in my flask. We might have a cocktail.”

Gurdy thought how clever the man was to wear grey, increasing his height and embellishing his rosy skin. He understood dress expertly. At the Jannan dance, toward midnight, a girl told him that she’d just come from a “simply idiotic play” but praised Rand’s appearance. “Englishmen do turn themselves out so well.”

The dance was supported by sparkling Moselle and Gurdy didn’t have to perform with Margot. She found friends. He was summoned to be introduced to a young Mrs. Calder who at once invited him to dine the next evening. Gurdy excused himself on the score of his mother’s birthday. As they drove away from the emptying house Margot explained, “Peggy Calder’s nice. She was in the Red Cross in London. You’re really going up to the farm?”

“Certainly.”

She said nothing, restless in her dark cloak for a time then chattered about the Jannan grandeur. She enjoyed spectacles. The great suburban house and the green ballroom pleased her. “But you people drink too much, you know? Mrs. Jannan’s a second wife, isn’t she? Rather pretty. Heavens, what a long way back to the hotel!”

“You’re tired.”

“Frightfully. And blue.... Can’t you make dad try ‘Todgers’ in New York, Gurdy?” Directly and with a sharp motion she added, “No. That’s utterly silly. I’ve no business asking it.... But I do feel--And yet I don’t know the New York taste--You really think it wouldn’t do?”

“I really don’t, Margot. And you can’t get a theatre for love, blood or money. They’re even trying to buy theatres to bring plays into. Mark would have to run the play on the road for weeks--months, perhaps, before he could get a theatre.”

She dropped the matter, spoke of the dance again and at the hotel hurried up the corridor to her rooms. Mark sat up as Gurdy slid into the other bed of his chamber and passed a hand across his throat, “Oh, son, what an evening! ‘Todgers’ to the boneyard! Crape on the door!”

“Fizzled? People were knocking it at the Jannan’s.”

“Awful! Every one coughed. I will say Rand worked hard. No, it’s dead. I’ll let it run tomorrow night and then close it.--Stick with me tomorrow. I’ll have to break the bad news to Rand.”

He broke the news to Rand just as Gurdy was leaving to take the train for Trenton, after lunch. The actor strolled up to them beside the door, a grey furred coat over his arm and his bronze eyes patently anxious.

“Going away, Bernamer?”

“The country.”