Part 9

Gurdy strove with this fragility in neat prose all the way to Trenton. It had to do with a climber domiciled by mistake in the house of a stodgy young Earl. It was wordy and tedious. The name, “Todgers Intrudes,” made him grunt. He laughed occasionally at the tinkling echoes of Wilde and Maugham. It might be passable in London where the lethal jokes on “Dora” and “Brass Hats” would be understood. He diligently tried to be just to Colonel Dufford’s art which served to keep his pulse down and his mind remote from the approaching discomfort. Margot wasn’t perfect. She had upset the family. It was best to get her quickly away from Fayettesville. He hired a battered car at Trenton. The Fayettesville Military Academy was closing for the summer, by all signs. Lads bustled toward the station towing parents and gaudy sisters in the beginning of sunset. He overtook his three brothers idling home toward the farm and gave them a lift. No one spoke of Margot directly. Edward, his correspondent, smiled sideways at Gurdy and drawled, “Must have been having a damn good time in Chicago, Gurd,” but nothing else was said. The car panted into the stone walled dooryard. His grandfather waved a linen clad arm at Gurdy from the padded chair on the veranda. His sisters accepted the usual candy and hid a motion picture magazine from him, giggling. Mrs. Bernamer was at a funeral in Trenton. Gurdy found Bernamer in the dairy yard studying a calf. It was always easy to be frank with the saturnine, long farmer. His father didn’t suffer from illusions. They sat on the frame of the water tower and lit cigarettes, before speech.

“How’s Margot been behaving, dad?”

“You sweet on her, son?”

“I like her. How’s she been acting?”

Bernamer pulled his belt tight and lifted his hard face toward the sky. Gurdy felt the mute courtesy of his pause. The man had a natural scorn of tumult. He lived silently and, perhaps, thought much. He said, “This is just as much Mark’s place as it is ours. He’s the best feller livin’. We all know that. And she’s Joe’s daughter.” Something boiled up in his blue eyes. He cried, “What in hell! You’re as good as she is, ain’t you? You can come home and act like we wasn’t mud underfoot! Who the hell’s she?” His wrath slid into laughter. He pulled his belt tighter and winked at Gurdy. “It’s kind of funny hearin’ her cuss, though.”

“She over does that, a little. Just what’s the trouble, dad?”

“I can’t tell you, son. She’s sand in the cream. It ain’t her smokin’. I miss my guess if the girls ain’t tried that.--She kind of puts me in mind of that Boyle wench Mark married. She’s got the old man all worried. Your mamma’s scared to death of her. So’s the girls.--She ain’t so damned polite it hurts her any.... Say, I wouldn’t hurt Mark’s feelings for the world--And I notice she don’t carry on so high and mighty when Mark’s here, neither.--Ain’t there some place else she could go?”

Gurdy had a second of futile rage that divided itself between Margot and his family. This wasn’t within remedy. She had absorbed the attitudes, the impatience of worlds exterior to the flat peace of the farm. He grinned at his father.

“Yes. I’m going to take her off. Mark’s got more sense than you think, dad.”

“Sure. Mark’s got plenty of sense when he ain’t dead cracked over a thing. Don’t tell him I’ve been squalling. Mebbe that Englishwoman spoiled her, lettin’ her gallivant too much. Mebbe it’s her father comin’ out in her. Between us, Joe was tougher’n most boys. You’ll likely find her down in the orchard smokin’ her head off. It’s all kind of funny ... and then it ain’t.”

She wasn’t smoking. She sat with a novel spread on her yellow lap and the bole of an apple tree behind her head. There was a shattered plate of ruddy glow about her. The pose had the prettiness of a drowsy child. She was, her lover thought, a bragging child, lonesome for cleverness, annoyed by stolidity. In the vast green of the orchard she seemed small. He whistled. She rose, her hair for a moment floating, then laughed and threw the book away.

“Thank God, that’s you! I thought it was one of--O, any one!”

There was a shrill, unknown jerk in her voice. She came running and took his arm.

“Tell me something about civilization--quick! You don’t want to talk about the fil-lums do you? Or whether Jane Rupp’s going to marry that Coe feller or--”

“Bored?”

“Oh--to death! How do you stand it? How do you stand it?... I knew they’d be common but I didn’t think they’d be such bloody--”

“Look out,” said Gurdy.

But the girl’s red lips had retracted. She was shivering. She had lost her charm of posture. She cried, “Oh, yes! They’re our people and all the rest of that tosh! I’m not a hypocrite. It’s a stable! A stable!” Her breath choked her. She gasped, “Get me out of here! I’m used to what you call real people!”

She loosed his sleeve and patted her hair. But some inner spring shook her. Scarlet streaks appeared in her face. She babbled, “He must be mad! Of course he’s sentimental about them--about the place--the old place--It’s the way he is about Carlson! My God, why should he think I can stand it!”

Something hummed in Gurdy’s head. His hands heated. He stood shuffling a foot in the grass and looked from her at the green intricate branches. He must keep cool. He whispered, “Can’t you find anything--well, funny in it?”

“It’s all funny rather the way an old dress is!--Why should he think I could stay here? Three weeks! Of course, he hasn’t any breed--”

“Shut up,” said Gurdy, “That’ll be all! We were born here. Mark took us and had us dressed and looked after--trained. I’m not going to laugh at them. I can’t.--I’ll be damned if I’ll hear you laugh at Mark. Yes, he’s sentimental! If he wasn’t, d’you think he’d have bothered about taking care of you--of us? The family’s sacred to him. He loves them. He’s that kind.--Stop laughing!”

He hated her. There was no beauty left. Her face had shrivelled in this fire. She was swiftly and horribly like an angry trull. She said, “Sentimentalist! You’re a damned milk and sugar sentimentalist like--”

“Ah,” said Gurdy, “that’s out of some book!... All right. Mark’s going to take a place on Long Island. We’ll go up in the morning.”

He tramped off. The orchard became a whirl of green flame that seared then left him cold. He was tired. His body felt like stone, heavy and dead. The illusion of desire was gone out of Gurdy.

VII

Todgers Intrudes

Olive Ilden was detained and surrendered her mid July sailing. Her brother died. This did not grieve her; they had been on strained terms. But she was unwilling to offend his daughters. Offence had grown hateful with years. The personal matter flung to and fro among critics wearied her. It wasn’t amusing to hear that an elderly novelist was “a doddering relic of the Victorian era.” She envisaged the man’s pain. Thus, she bore the formalities of her brother’s passing and so missed three liners. About her, London recaptured something of its tireless motion. She wished for Margot and the youth Margot had kept parading through the quiet house. She hoped that the girl’s frankness never shocked Mark and puzzled again over the rise of that frankness. In her first two English years the child had been sedate, almost solemn, reading a great deal and talking primly. Then her conversation had risen to a rattle. It must be rattling mightily in New York which Olive still fancied a place of cheerful freedom. Letters recorded the change from Fayettesville to a cottage on the Long Island shore: “Cottage was frightful but dad behaved quite as if he was mounting a play in a hurry. We drove from shop to shop and all the stuff came roaring along in motor trucks. I went to Southampton and camped with a rather nice woman, Mrs. Corliss Stannard, who picked me up coming across. It was dull as Westminster Abbey as every one kept cursing the Prohibition amendment. But dad had the cottage--(fourteen rooms and four baths)--all decorated by the time I got back. Some decentish friends of Gurdy live near here. The men are all Goths and the women are fearfully stiff but a broker proposed last night at a dance and I felt rather silly, as he has just been divorced two days and I hardly knew his name. But dad has bought an option to ‘Todgers Intrudes.’” Then, “Dad very busy in town. The actors are threatening a strike. Gurdy pretends that he does not like ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ For a man who did a smart school and who knows his way about Gurdy is rather heavy. Rather decent lunch today. Dad brought down one of the other managers who talks through his nose and is a duck. He taught me how to do a soft shoe step.” And later, “Dad very émotionné about a tragedy he is putting on in the autumn. It is rather thrilling. He means to open The Walling with it. Gurdy does not fancy ‘Todgers Intrudes.’ He thinks himself a Bolshevik or something and I dare say the county family business in it annoys him.”

Immediately after this, while the letter was fresh in mind Olive met Ronald Dufford on Regent Street. He took her congratulations on the American sale of his play with a dubious air, swung his stick and said, “Thanks. Fancy Margot made her guv’nor take it on. Between ourselves it hasn’t more than just paid. You’re going to the States, aren’t you?”

“Next week. Yes, I think Margot had her father buy the play, Ronny. It’s my sad duty to warn him that it hasn’t been what the Yankees call a three bagger--whatever that means.”

The playwright grinned amiably, saying, “Rather wish you would. My things haven’t done well in the States. I’m not so keen on being known as a blight, out there. Walling’s paid me two hundred pounds, no less, for American rights. Charitable lad he must be!--I say, I hear that Cossy Rand’s gone over to play for him.”

“Who’s Cossy Rand?”

“Cora Boyle’s little husband. Nice thing. You’ve met him? He rehearsed us for that thing of mine at Christmas. A thin beggar with--”

“Of course. I’ve even danced with him but he passed out of the other eye.”

“But isn’t it rather odd for Walling to take on his ex-wife’s present husband? Bit unusual? You’ve always told me that Walling’s a conservative sort.”

“Why shouldn’t Walling take him on, Ronny? The man’s rather good, isn’t he?”

“Fairish. Frightfully stiff. He played the Earl in ‘Todgers’ while Ealy was fluing.--What I meant was that it seems odd Walling should cable him to come over. But I’ll be awfully bucked if old ‘Todgers’ gets along in the States. ’Tisn’t Shaw, you know?”

Olive was lightly vexed with Margot. The girl was irresponsible when she wanted something for a friend. But the trait was commendable; Olive still ranked personal loyalty higher than most static virtues. But “Todgers Intrudes” was a dreary business. She spoke of it to Mark when he met her at the New York pier. The idolator chuckled.

“The actors have struck. I hope Margot’ll forget about the thing before the strike’s over. She likes Dufford? Well, that’s all the excuse she needed. She isn’t--”

“Are you letting her stamp on your face, old man?”

“It don’t hurt. She don’t weigh a heap. She says Dufford’s poor.”

His eyes were dancing. He wore a yellow flower in his coat and patted Olive’s arm as he steered her to the lustrous blue car. “We’ll go up to my house for lunch. Mr. Carlson’s crazy to see you. Mustn’t mind if he curses at you. We’ll go on down to the shore after lunch. Where’s Sir John, m’lady?”

“Malta. Shall I see Gurdy? The nicest child!”

“Ain’t he? I’ve got him reading plays.” Mark soared into eulogies, came down to state, “This is Broadway,” as the car plunged over the tracks between two drays.

“If that’s Broadway,” Olive considered, “I quite understand why half of New York lives in Paris. I do want to see Fifth Avenue. The sky-scrapers disappointed me but Arnold Bennett says Fifth Avenue’s really dynamic.” A moment after when the car faced the greasy slope of asphalt she said, “Bennett’s mad.”

Mark sighed, “It’s an ugly town. But this street’s nice at sunset, in winter. It turns a kind of purple.... It was bully when the women wore violets. They don’t wear real flowers any more.--You used to smell violets everywhere. Violets and furs and cigar smoke. I used to like it.” His eyes sparkled on the revocation. He smiled at the foul asphalt and the drooping flags of shops where the windows gave out a torturing gleam.

“You great boy,” said Olive.

“Boy? Be forty-one the second of November.--Oh, awful sorry about your brother, Olive.”

“I’m not. Gerald was null and void. I never even discovered where he found the energy to marry and beget daughters. Margot’s lived more at the age of eighteen than Gerald had at fifty. I don’t suppose that you can understand how I can slang my own family.”

“Oh, sure. Because my folks are all nice it don’t follow I think every one ought to be crazy about theirs. Did he have a son?”

“No. The land goes to our cousin--Shelmardine of Potterhanworth--that idiot his wife pushed into Peerage. She was one of the managing Colthursts. Loathsome woman. Her son’s a V.C. though.--Oh, this improves!” The car passed Forty Fifth Street. Olive gazed ahead, cheered by the statelier tone of the white avenue. Mark wondered how a woman who had lost both children could yet smile at the dignity of Saint Patrick’s and again at the homesick bewilderment of her maid getting down before his house.

Old Carlson bobbed his head to this lady, abandoning his ancient fancy that she had been Mark’s mistress. He studied her grey hair and the worn, sharp line of her face. Then he cackled that she was to blame for turning Margot into a “sassy turnip.”

“My dealings with turnips have always been conducted through a cook. Has she been shocking you?”

“Ma’am,” said Carlson, “You can’t shock me. I was in the show business from eighteen sixty-nine to nineteen fourteen. I lugged a spear in the ‘Black Crook’ and I was a gladyator when the Police arrested McCullough for playin’ Spartacus in his bare legs. No, Margot can’t shock me any more’n a kitten.” He rolled a cigarette shakily, spilling tobacco on his cerise quilt. Olive held a match for him. He coughed, “But you’d ought of seen her ballyrag Mark into buyin’ this English piece--What the hell do you call it, Mark?”

“Todgers Intrudes.”

“That’s a name for you! Gurdy don’t like it. I say it’s hogwash. Maggie, she set on a table smokin’ her cheroot and just made the big calf buy it.... She did, Mark. So don’t stand there lookin’ like Charlie Thorne in ‘Camille’!”

Mark was stirring with laughter at the old man’s venom. He said, “I told Olive Margot made me buy it.”

“Oh,” Olive said, “if you let Margot run your affairs you’ll have strange creatures from darkest Chelsea mounting all your plays and flappers who’ve acted twice in a charity show playing Monna Vanna. She made my poor husband buy a cubist portrait of Winston Churchill some pal of hers painted. When he found it was meant to be Churchill he took to his bed.”

“Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Williams,” said the butler against Mark’s swift, “Ask ’em to go to the drawing room. ’Xcuse me, Olive. Got to go talk strike a minute.”

She looked about the sinless library with its severe panels and blue rug then at Mark’s patron--an exhumed Pharaoh, his yellow hawk face and bloodless hands motionless, the cigarette smoking in a corner of his mouth. He had just the pathos of oncoming death. He squeaked, “Mark’s busy as a pup with fleas. Actors strikin’! The lazy hounds! It’s enough to make Gus Daly turn in his grave!”

“You’ve no sympathy with them?”

“Not a speck! The show business is war and war’s hell. Here’s this Boyle onion Mark was married to, Bill Loeffler sends for her to come back from England and get a thousand a week to play in a French piece. Pays her passage. Then what? Minute she sets foot on land she grabs a movie contract and pikes off to California. She’s a hot baby, she is! Actors!”

“I hear that Mark’s engaged her husband.”

“That slimjim sissy from Ioway? Not much!”

“Is Rand an American?”

“He-ell, yes! He’s old Quincy Rand’s Son that used to run the Opera House in Des Moines. He run off with a stock comp’ny that played Montreal and got to talkin’ English. I told Margot that and she was mad enough to bust.--Say, you British are cracked, lettin’ a pack of actors loose in your houses like they was human--” He fell asleep. The nurse came to take the cigarette from his lips. Olive strolled off to examine the shelves packed tightly with books. Here was the medley of Mark’s brain--volumes of Whyte Melville mingled with unknown American novels, folios on decoration, collected prints from the European galleries. A copy of “Capital” surprised her but she found Gurdy’s signature dated, “Yale College, November, 1916,” on the first page. Gurdy came up the white stairway and saw the black gown with relief. Lady Ilden could be a buffer between Margot and himself. There would be less need of visits to the seashore house. He led the Englishwoman into the broad hall.

“Something odd has just happened, Gurdy.”

“Mr. Carlson swear at you?”

“Before, not at. But he tells me that Mark did not send for Cosmo Rand to act in something over here whereas Ronny Dufford most distinctly told me that Mark did. It interested me because Mark’s so coy about his old wife and it seemed queer that he’d cable for her husband.”

“I expect Rand’s lying a little, for advertisement. No, Mark didn’t send for him. He never engages people to come from England. Has Rand come over? According to Margot he’s such an idol in London that it’d take an act of Parliament to get him away. Miss Boyle’s here. We saw her at lunch in the Algonquin and she patronized Mark for a minute. Didn’t Rand play some part in this ‘Todgers Intrudes’ piffle in London?”

“Which reminds me,” said Olive, “Margot made Mark take that? Is she making him cover her with emeralds and give masked balls?”

Gurdy said honestly, “No, not at all. We’ve had some house parties--some friends of mine and some of the reviewers and so on. She seems to be amusing herself.”

“And she hasn’t shocked Mark?”

“Why should she?” Gurdy laughed, leaning on the white handrail, “she doesn’t do any of the things he dislikes seeing women do. She doesn’t drink anything, for instance, and she doesn’t paint. When did she go in for pacifism--not that I’ve any objection to it.”

“That was a way of helping me out when my boy fell, I think. She raged about the war as a sort of outlet for me. Really, she enjoyed the war tremendously. As most girls did. Is she still raving about the slaughter of the artist?”

“The slaughter of actors. Some Englishman--an actor--said that too many actors slacked and she lit on him. He mentioned half a dozen--can’t remember them.--You told me in London that she wanted to act?”

“Yes. Has she been teasing Mark--”

“No. But I think she could.”

“My dear boy, I’ve seen her in amateur things twice and she was appalling! Vivacity isn’t ability. Of course she has a full equipment in the way of looks.--You mustn’t get dazzled over Margot, Gurdy.” His face was blank. Olive chanced a probe. “I forbid you to fall in love with her, either. You’re cousins and it’s not healthy.”

“I’m not thinking of it,” said Gurdy, red, and so convinced Olive that he was deep in love. But the dying blush left him grave. He stood listening to the slow drawl of Mark’s voice below them and wondering what tone would overtake its husky music if Margot should turn on the worshipper, screaming and hateful. He wondered at himself, too. His passion had blown out. It had no ash, no regret. He was free of anger, even, and he had done the girl mental justice. He didn’t want her back.

“You look rather done up, old man.”

“War nerves. We’ve all got them. And I’m reading plays and some of them make me howl. Such awful junk! ‘Don’t, don’t look at me like that. I’m a good woman, and you have taken from me the only thing I had to love in the whole world.’ That sort of stuff. And the plays for reform are as bad as the ones against it. I don’t know why people always lose their sense of humour when they start talking economics!”

“Old man, when you’ve lived to be forty you’ll find out that only one person in a thousand can resist a sentimentalism on their side of the question. And it’s almost always a sentimentalist who writes plays on economics. But you do look seedy. Are you coming to the country with us after luncheon?”

“No.”

But he drove with Mark and Olive to the half finished front of The Walling in West 47th Street. Mark pointed out the design of Doric columns and bare tablets. Olive guessed at a simple richness and stared after Mark when he walked through groups of hot, noisy workmen into the shadow of his own creation. His black height disappeared among the girders and the dust of lime.

“Did it all himself,” said Gurdy. “The architects just followed what he wanted done.--You called him a kid with a box of paints. You should see him fuss over a stage setting!--D’you know--my father’s an awfully observant man. He was talking about Mark the other day. Dad says that when Mark was a kid he used to draw all the time. And they’ve got some pictures he drew in old school books and things. They’re not bad. Dad says that before Mark married Cora Boyle and came to New York they all thought he was going to turn out an artist.”

“Is it true that his whole success is because he decorates plays so well?”

“No. The truth is, he’s an awfully good business man. And I’ve seen enough of the theatre to see that some of the managers and producers aren’t any good at business. They mess about and talk and--He’s coming back.”

She saw Gurdy’s eyes centre on Mark with a queer, tense look. The boy stood on the filthy pavement studying the theatre as the car drove east.

“Crazy about the place,” said Mark, brushing his sleeve, “I do think people will like it, Olive. Won’t be so dark that they can’t read a program or so light the women’ll have to wear extra paint.--My God, I’m glad Margot don’t daub herself up! Well, she don’t have to. And I’m glad she don’t want to act.”

“Why?” Olive asked, “You were an actor. You live entirely surrounded by actors. It’s an ancient and honourable calling--much more so than the law or the army.”

Mark rubbed his short nose and grinned.

“I’m just prejudiced. I suppose it’s because I used to hear how tough actresses were when I was a kid. And because Cora Boyle made a doormat of me. Ain’t it true we never get over the way we’re brought up?--That’s what Gurdy calls a platitude, I guess.”

“Gurdy’s horridly mature for twenty-one, Mark.”

“Thunder,” said Mark, “He was always grown up and he’s knocked around a lot for his age. Enough to make anybody mature!--And he’s in love with sister up to his neck. You should have seen him take a runnin’ jump and start for Chicago the minute he heard she was landing! Simply hopped the next train and flew! Stayed out there a month, pretty nearly. Brings his friends down over Sundays and then sits and watches them wobble round Margot like a cat watching a fat mouse. Love’s awful hard on these dignified kids, Olive.”

“You want them married?” she murmured.

“Of course.--I know I’m silly about the kids but I don’t see where Margot’ll get any one much better. Don’t start lecturin’ me and say that there’s ten million eight hundred thousand and twenty-two better boys loose around than Gurdy. You’d be talking at a stone wall. Waste of breath. And he’s sensible about her too. A kid in love ordinarily wouldn’t argue about anything the way he did about this play of Colonel Duffords. They had a regular cat fight and Gurdy’s right. It’s a pretty poor show.--This is the East river.”