Part 7

She frowned. “Doesn’t matter so much for a chap like that with billions but--the artists. I must have St. Ledger do you. We’ll go there tomorrow. I had Cosmo--Rand have himself done.”

Gurdy made a shot and said, “Rand’s a much prettier subject than I’d be.”

“Don’t get coy, my lad! You’re rather imposing and you know it.--Like to meet Gilbert Chesterton? You used to read his junk. I can have you taken there. Never met him, myself.”

“No thanks.--What’s that bell?”

“Dress for dinner. You can’t. I must.--I say, you’re altogether different from what I thought you’d be.”

“What did you think?”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you but I’m damned glad you’re not. The butler can make cocktails. Dad taught him in nineteen seventeen.”

The butler brought him an evil mixture. Gurdy emptied it into the fireplace and leaned on the pool table wondering what Margot had expected. It didn’t matter, of course. Yet she might recall him as a sixteen year old schoolboy much absorbed in polevaults and stiff with conceit for some acquirements in English letters. How people changed and how foolish it was to be surprised at change! Sophomoric. Mark really knew a pretty woman when he saw one. A man of genuine taste outside the selection of plays.--She must know London expertly. She must have a sense of spectacle. She must meet all conditions with this liberal, successful woman as a guide. If she wanted a pastel made for Mark she should have it. Gurdy dusted chalk from his leggings, evenly taped about the long strength of his calves, strolled into the drawing room and played the languid movement of the Faun’s Afternoon. Illusory or not there was always beauty in the blended exterior of things. A man should turn from the inner crassness to soothe himself with the fair investiture, with the drift of delicate motions that went in colour and music.--Olive thought him like Mark as she came in. She was worried because Gail had written of meeting the boy on Montmartre.

“You’ve been enjoying Paris?”

“More or less. It’s a holy show, just now. I don’t suppose the barkeepers--and other parasites--will ever have such a chance again.”

“I hope you’ve not been in too much mischief. Ian Gail wrote me that he met you in some horrid hole or other.”

“A party at Ariana Joyce’s. I wasn’t doing any more harm there than the rest of the Allied armies. But it was pretty odious.” The memory jarred into the present satisfaction. He halted his long fingers on the keys and Margot came rustling in, her gown of sheer black muslin painted with yellow flowers and gold combs in her hair.

“Were you playing L’Après Midi?--And he’s only twenty, Olive! Most Americans don’t rise to respectable music until they’ve lost all their money and have to come and live over here. Any nails in your shoes, Gurdy? We’re going to a dance.”

“Where?” asked Olive.

“Something for war widows at Mrs. Rossiter-Rossiter-Rossiter’s--that fat woman from Victoria. I promised some one or other I’d come. We’ll go in time for supper.”

The charity dance seemed less fevered than dances in Paris. There were ranks of matrons about the walls of a dull, long room. At midnight Margot rescued him from a girl who was using him as an introduction to American economics and found a single table in the supper hall. Here the batter of ill played ragtime was endurable and the supping folk entertained him.

“The country’s so ghastly with houses shut and no servants that most people have stuck to town,” Margot said, refusing wine. “Lot of eminences here. Who’re you looking at?”

“The dark girl in pink. She’s familiar.”

“She should be. She has a press agent in New York. Lady Selene Tucker. She’s going to marry that man who looks like a Lewis Baumer picture in Punch as soon as every one’s in town again and she can get Westminster Abbey and he can get his mother shipped to New Zealand, or somewhere. His mother will drink too much and then tell lies about Queen Victoria. She’s rather quaint. She sues for libel every time any one writes a novel with a dissolute peeress in it. Frightfully self-conscious. Don’t people who insist on telling you how depraved they are make you rather ill? They always seem to think they’ve made such a good job of it. And I could think of much worse things to do.--How nice your hair is! Like Uncle Eddie’s.”

“Thanks. Who’s the skinny woman with the pearls?”

Margot put aside the palm branch that shadowed her chin and frowned. “It looks like my namesake, Mrs. Asquith, from this angle.--No, it’s Lady Flint. Oh, look at the big brute in mauve. Lovely, isn’t she?”

He looked at the shapely, fair woman without interest. The round of Margot’s forearm took his eyes back.

“Lovely? Why?”

“So glad you don’t think so. One gets so sick of hearing women gurgled about as wonders. I think it was Salisbury who said she was the most beautiful woman alive. And she goes right on, you know? Once you get fixed here as frightfully beautiful or witty you can die of old age before they stop saying so. Such a fraud! It’s just what dad says about all the managers and stars in New York being myths. All those legends about his being a woman hater and--who’s the man who’s supposed to never hire a chorus girl until he’s seen her au naturel? Such piffle!”

“But they like being myths,” Gurdy laughed.

“Oh, every one does, of course. Some one started a yarn about me--don’t tell dad this--that I was the daughter of some frightfully rich American banker and that my mother was a Spanish dancer. Olive was wild with rage. But it was rather fun.--I say, I’m sick of this, Gurdy. Do make dad order me home.” She lit a cigarette, let her lashes drop and ignored a man who bowed, passing. Gurdy thought this was Cosmo Rand and said so. Margot shrugged. “He rehearses us every day. Decent sort. People like him.--But do make dad have me come home.”

Gurdy pondered. Mark now knew a few gentlewomen, the wives of authors and critics. He had mannerly friends outside the theatre, had drilled smart war theatricals. The girl could move beyond this wedge of certainty wherever she chose. But Gurdy said, “You might not like New York.”

“But I want to see it! It’s hardly pleasant seeing dad about once every year for two weeks or so. I happen to love him. You mean I shan’t be recognized as a human being by the fat ladies in the Social Register? That’ll hardly break my heart, you know? The world is so full of a number--Is that God save the--”

The supping people rose in a vast puff of smoke from abandoned cigarettes. Officers stiffened. The outer orchestra jangled the old tune badly. The sleek gowns showed a ripple of bending knees. The prince went nodding down the room toward an inner door with a tiny clink of bright spurs as his staff followed him.

“They say he’s going to the States. I should like to be there to see the women make fools of themselves. And Grandfather’ll be so furious because every one’ll talk about a damned Britisher.--Finish your coffee. I want to dance again.”

She danced with a smooth, lazy rhythm and Gurdy felt a brusque jealousy of all the men who danced with her, after him. He was angry because he so soon liked her, against reason. It was folly to let himself be netted by a girl who showed no signs of courting him. He watched her spin, her black skirt spreading, with Cosmo Rand. The man danced gracefully, without swagger. He might be amusing, like many actors. Gurdy pulled his philosophy together and talked about Mark’s plan of the Walling Theatre while they drove home.

“Dad’s wanted a shop of his own so long,” she sighed, “And it’ll be quite charming. He does understand colours! Wish he wouldn’t wear black all the time.... I always feel fearfully moral at two in the morning. I’m going to lecture you.”

“What about?”

“You’re so damned chilly. You always were, of course. Don’t you like anything?”

They came to the Ilden house before he could answer and Margot didn’t repeat the question all the week he stayed in London. They were seldom alone. Lady Ilden seemed to want the girl near her. There were incessant callers. Men plainly flocked after the dark girl. Her frankness added something to the wearisome chaff of teatime and theatre parties, to the dazing slang of the young officers. Gurdy speculated from corners, edged in at random dances. But his blood had caught a fresh pulsation. He felt a trail of mockery in the artifice of Lady Ilden’s talk as if the tired woman observed him falling into love and found it humorous. She said once, “I was afraid you’d grown up too fast. And you’ve not,” but he let the chance of an argument slide by his preoccupation with the visible flutter of Margot’s hands pinning a tear in her yellow frock. His resistance weakened although he hunted repugnances, tried to shiver when the girl swore.

“Profanity’s a sign of poor imagination,” he told her.

“The hell you say,” said Margot. “Haven’t turned out on the heavy side, have you, Gurdy? I bar serious souls. War shaken you to the foundations? Cheeryo! You’ll get over it.” And she walked upstairs singing,

“There ayn’t a goin’ to be no wa-ah, Now we’ve got a king like good King Hedward, There ayn’t a goin’ to be no wa-ah. ’E ’ates that sort of fing, Muvvers, don’t worry, Now we’ve got a king like Hedward, Peace wiv ’onor is ’is motter, So, God sive the king!”

VI

Gurdy

In mid March the lease of the ground in West 47th Street was brought to Mark’s office. He signed it and gave the attorney his check. A wrecking company was busy with the destruction of the cheap hotel that stood where the Walling Theatre would stand complete in November. The notary and witnesses withdrew. Mark sat drumming his fingers on his desk, trying to rejoice. Irritations worked in him; Carlson would be the only audience of his joy; the ground was bought with money made too largely in moving pictures. He was so close upon the fact grown from his dream that it frightened him. The Walling was real, at last. He should bubble with pleasure and couldn’t. He sighed and strolled over to West 45th Street where he watched the final act of “Redemption” for the sake of the dive scene, got his usual happy shudder from this massed, intricate shadow and the faces suddenly projected into the vicious light. He must have such scenes at the Walling. He must find somewhere a play made of scenes, many and diverse, changing from splendour to dark vaults. Why, this was the secret of the abominable movies! They jerked an audience out of one tedious place into a dozen. He walked toward Fifth Avenue, thinking, roused because the streets seemed more speckled with olive cloth. Some transport had disgorged soldiers freshly into the city tired of gaping at them. Mark enjoyed their tan in the crowded pace of Fifth Avenue where women showed powder as moist paste on their cheeks in a warmth like that of May. A motion picture star detained him at a crossing and haughtily leaned from her red, low car demanding the rights of a play for her company. Mark couldn’t follow the permutations of these women. She had been a chorus girl one met at suppers. Now she was superb in her vulgar furs with a handsome young Jew beside her and a wolfish dog chained on the flying seat. Mark got himself away and came home to the panelled library where Carlson was stretched under three quilts on his wheeled chair gossiping with an old comedian about the merits of Ada Rehan. Soon the elderly caller left. Mark took his chair by Carlson and wondered what he would do if his patron died before Gurdy got back. Carlson couldn’t last much longer, the doctors said, but his mind was active. He yapped, “I’ve got a hunch, sonny.”

“Go on.”

“You’re goin’ to see Gurdy pretty dam’ quick. I had a nap before Ferguson came in. Dreamed about the kid.”

“He’d have cabled if he’d sailed,” Mark said, “No, he’s still stuck in the mud at Saint Nazaire. By God, it’s enough to make a man vomit, reading about those damned embarkation camps! And he ain’t an officer. They say the enlisted men don’t even get enough to eat!” He suddenly fumed.

“Well, don’t cry about it, you big calf,” said Carlson, “Honest to God, I never saw a feller that can cry like you do! You cried like a hose-pipe when the kid got shot--and from all I hear it wasn’t nothin’ but a scratch on his belly. And I used to spend hours trying to teach you to shed one tear when you was actin’! You was the punkest matiny idol ever drew breath of life!”

Mark chuckled, “I suppose I was,” then a hand slid down over his shoulder and an olive cuff followed it. Mark’s heart jumped. He dropped his head back against Gurdy’s side and began to weep idiotically as he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t. Old Carlson surveyed the end of the trick delightedly. He privately cursed Gurdy for standing still and pale when it was clearly the right thing to make a fuss. The cub was too cool.

“Son, son,” said Mark.

Gurdy hoped that the man would not repeat that illogical word in his husky, drumming voice. The repetition brought the illusion of joy too close. He chewed his lip and wriggled, gave in and stooped over Mark. He got out, “Here, I’ve not had any lunch, Mark,” and that turned Mark into mad action, sent him racing downstairs to find the butler.

“Why the hell didn’t you kiss him?” Carlson snarled.

“I’m twenty--”

“You’re a hog,” the old man meditated. His eyes twinkled. He sneered, “Well, wipe your eyes. Here’s a handkerchief if you ain’t got one.” He relished the boy’s blush, watched him blink and went on, “Now, don’t tell Mark about all the women you ruined, neither. He prob’ly thinks you been a saint. And don’t go spillin’ any of this talk about goin’ to work on your own like some of these whelps do. Mark’s got a three thousand dollar car comin’ for you and he’s goin’ to pay you a hundred a week to set in the office and look wise. And don’t tell him you didn’t win the war, too. He knows you did. Christ, it was bad enough when I’d got to listen to how Margot was runnin’ the Red Cross in London! After you went off I come pretty near callin’ up the express company and havin’ myself shipped to Stockholm! The big calf! Chewin’ the paint off the walls every time he heard there’d been fightin’! Sentymental lunatic! Your papa and mamma’ve got three times more sense about you. Get out of here. I got to make up sleep.” He shut his eyes. Two tears ran and were lost in the sharp wrinkles of his face. Gurdy gulped and walked downstairs, abashed by the sheer weight of idolatry.

Mark was twisting the cork out of a champagne bottle in the dining room. At once he said, “They’ll have some eggs up right away, sonny.”

“My God but you’re thin, Mark!”

“No exercise. Haven’t had time to play golf. Now, we’d better get the car and run down to Fayettes--”

“I talked to mother from Camp Merritt. Be in Camp Dix tomorrow. I’ll see them there. They can motor over. Only twelve miles. Heard from Margot lately?”

His uncle beamed saying, “Says she wants to come home, son. I’ve got to talk to you about that. What d’you think?”

Gurdy said quickly, “Let her come, Mark. The fact is, I think she’s bored. You haven’t seen her since last year? She’s got a gang of men trailing after her and she isn’t a flirt. Chelsea’s full of bright young painters and things. They all come and camp on the doormat. Lady Ilden’s a sort of fairy godmother, of course.” He lapsed into a sudden state of mind about Margot, fondling his glass of champagne. Untrimmed discourse on women had amused his first days in the army. But the week’s return in the jammed transport had sickened him with the stuffy talk of prospective and retrospective desire. It had been musky, stifling. He wondered how women, if they guessed, would value that broad commentary. And how men lied about women! The precisian was annoyed to a snort and Mark filled his glass again, smiling.

Of course, having seen her, the boy wanted Margot home. Mark said, “She wrote me you’d turned out better looking than she thought. Knew she’d think so. And Olive was pleased to death with you, of course. How’s your side feel?--My God, what are those fools doing to the eggs!”

He rushed into the pantry. Rank pleasure swelled in Gurdy. There was no use doing anything with the incurable, proud man who drove him back to Camp Merritt at dusk with two bottles of champagne hidden in his motor coat, invited confessions and beamed constantly.

“Only don’t act like you’d ever kissed a woman in front of your mother, son. Country folks. Shock her to death. You any taller? I’ll call up Sanford about some clothes for you. Good night, sonny. You go straight to the farm when you’re discharged. I’ll be down Sunday.”

An illusion of happiness beset Gurdy. He stood in the green street of the half empty camp staring after the motor, the wine bottles wrapped in paper under his arm. It was astonishing how foolish Mark was, to be sure. But wine or emotion warmed the chill air about Gurdy like the pour of a hot shower. If Mark wanted to be an ass over him, it couldn’t be helped. He kept thinking of his foolish worshipper in the transfer to the sandy discomfort of Camp Dix. There the Bernamers appeared in a large motor with grandfather Walling furred and mittened in the back seat. The illusion of happiness deepened into a sensuous bath, although his mother had contracted more fat and his sisters were too brawny for real charm. Gurdy struggled for righteous detachment while his brothers candidly goggled their admiration and his father examined the purple scar that passed dramatically up Gurdy’s milky skin. He found himself blinking and got drunk on the second bottle of champagne when his family left. But it seemed wiser to surrender to the flood of affectionate nonsense for a time. It was even convenient that Mark should send a tailor down to Fayettesville with clothes rapidly confected. On Sunday Mark arrived with a small car lettered G.B. in blue on its panel.

“Just the blue Gurdy’s eyes are,” Mrs. Bernamer drawled.

Gurdy understood that maternal feeling was a rather shocking symbol on the charts of analysts and that Mark probably doted on him for some trivial resemblance unconsciously held and engrossed. But it was pleasant, being a symbol. He drove Mark down into Trenton and talked of Margot while they drank bad American Benedictine in a seedy hotel.

“I don’t know whether she’s very clever or simply sensible,” he said, achieving detachment by way of Benedictine. “Anyhow, most cleverness is just common sense--perception.” His eyes darkened. Mark thought in lush comfort that Gurdy would marry the girl. Gurdy had friends among the right sort of people. Poor Carlson would die pretty soon. Gurdy and Margot would live at the house, which were best adorned freshly. The Benedictine gave out. They drove into the twisted lanes behind Trenton and Gurdy talked levelly of France. “Damned humiliating to get laid out by a hunk of zinc off a bathtub. Margot joshed me about it.... Paris was perfectly astonishing! American privates giving parties for British admirals and stealing their women.--I ran into a Y. M. C. A. girl who wanted to have Fontainebleau made into a reform school. Margot says she found one that wanted to have George turn Windsor Castle into a hospital for the A. E. F.... You mustn’t mind Margot swearing. All the flappers seem to.--Oh, I met Cora Boyle.”

“How’s she looking?”

“Handsome.” Gurdy thought for a second and then inquired. “What did you--”

Mark comprehended the stop. He said, “She was the first woman ever took any notice of me.--Why, I suppose she was a kind of ideal. I mean, I liked that kind of looks. Lord knows what she married me for. Wonder, is that Rand kid still married to her? Is? I guess she’s settled down in London for keeps. Well, I want you to look at the plans of the Walling, son. They’ve made me a model. Tell me if you see anything wrong.”

He simmered with joy when Gurdy approved the whole plan except the shape of the boxes. The boy ran back and forth between Fayettesville and the city in his car, asked seemly young men to dine in Fifty Fifth Street, read plays and wandered with Mark to costumers. People stared at him in the restaurants where Mark took him to lunch. His tranquil height and his ease drew glances. His intolerant comments on the motley of opening nights made Mark choke. Sometimes, though, Mark found the boy’s eyes turned on him with surprise.

“You seem to hang out in Greenwich village a lot, Mark.”

“I kind of like it. Don’t understand some of the talk. The show business is changing, sonny. It’s changed a lot since nineteen fourteen. If you’d told me five years back that a piece like Redemption could have a run I’d have laughed my head off. Or that you could mount a play like Jones has fixed up this thing at the Plymouth--all low lights and--what d’you call it?--impressionist scenery.... The game’s changed.--Oh, the big money makers’ll always be hogwash, Gurdy! Don’t bet any other way. I ain’t such a fool as to think that Heaven’s opened because you can put on a piece with a sad ending and some--well, philosophy to it and have it make a little cash. No such luck. Only it’s got so now that when some big, fat wench in a lot of duds starts throwin’ his pearls back at the man that’s keepin’ her in the third act--why, there’s a lot of folks out front that say, Oh, hell, and go home. Of course, there’s a lot more that think it’s slick.--Lord, I’d like to put on ‘Measure for Measure’ when we open the Walling!--You could make that look like something.--I’ve got to find something _good_ to open with. This kid Steve O’Mara’s sending me up a play about a thug that gets wrecked down in Cuba and steals a plantation. Ten scenes to it, he says. One of ’em’s a lot of niggers havin’ a Voodoo party. Sounds fine. I picked _him_ up down in Greenwich village.”

“I should think all those half married ladies and near anarchists would shock you to death.”

“Bosh, brother. I don’t like ’em enough to get shocked at ’em. What’s there to get shocked at? They think so and so and I think the other way. If you took to preaching dynamite I’d be pretty worried--like I would if your mamma bobbed her hair and ran off with a tenor. I’m not an old maid just because I’m in the show business.” He lit a cigarette and added. “Fifty per cent of theatrical managers are old maids.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“Why, they are. This way. They get used to a run of plots and they can’t see outside that. For instance, here’s a dramatist--forgotten his name--was trying to sell a piece last year. I couldn’t use it but I thought it was pretty good so I sent him over to Loeffler with a note. Next day, Loeffler called me up and said I ought to be hung for the sake of public morals. This play knocked round the offices and every one thought it was awful. Why? The hero’s a chauffeur that’s tired of working, so he marries a rich old woman. It’s something that happens every other day in the papers. There ain’t a week that some fifty year old actress doesn’t marry a kid step dancer but they all carried on as if this fellow’d written a play where every one came on the stage stark naked and danced the hoochy coochee. It wasn’t a nice idea but where’s it worse than nine tenths these bedroom things or as bad?”

“Why wouldn’t you use it, Mark?”

“Oh, hell, there wasn’t but one scene and that was an interior!”

Gurdy asked, “Mark, wouldn’t you like it if the playwrights would go back to the Elizabethan idea--I mean thirty or forty scenes to a play?”