CHAPTER XXIMARION GRAY PLAYS FAIR.
Marion Gray was a very charming young woman. Slight, and rather tiny, she had a piquant face which was fascinating. Taken separately, scarcely one of her features would be found quite perfect, but one never scrutinized Marion Gray’s face that way. The ensemble disarmed criticism.
Some one had once said that had she been positively ugly she would still have remained none the less attractive; for she had that wonderful, illusive quality of magnetism, without which there is no real success on the stage.
And, more than that, she had brains, and knew how to use them. In the comparative short space of three years she had made a place for herself, alone and unaided, in the hearts of the theatre-going public of New York, which is about as difficult as a passage through the eye of a needle by the proverbial camel.
In three years she had acquired a personal following, and a large one, at that. When Buffer and Lane had threatened her with their displeasure if she persisted in going with Austin Demarest, she had laughed at them. She knew, and so did they, that such threats amounted to nothing. The moment she was at leisure—and probably long before—they would be after her on bended knee, begging, beseeching, offering a fabulous salary, to secure the actress for which New York was clamoring.
But she had reasons of her own for wishing to play for the talented young actor-manager. Perhaps the reasons were no longer her own. During the long rehearsals of “Jarvis of Yale,” it had been almost impossible to hide from the penetrating eyes of the other members in the cast the interest she felt in the person of the author and star. They had long ago sized up the situation, and confided to each other that Marion was daffier than ever about “Demmy.” They had all seen it but the one she cared more for than any one else in the world.
This morning, as she sat alone at breakfast in the dining room of the New Haven House, she sighed a little as she thought of it. He was very blind. They had always been good pals. Once she thought that his feeling for her was something more than that, but now she was not sure.
They had been separated all summer. He was writing his play, and she resting in the mountains. Since their return to the city he had been so full of his wonderful new venture that he seemed scarcely to have time to eat and sleep.
All at once she glanced toward the door, and her eyes brightened. He had entered the room, and was striding toward her table. In one hand he held an open telegram. His face was full of perplexity and annoyance.
“I can’t understand it!” he exclaimed, dropping down opposite her. “Hemingway wants me to come to town at once. Has something important to talk over. I don’t dare put him off, for all our chances of getting a New York date depend on him, and yet it’s deucedly inconvenient with so much here to look after.”
Marion Gray hesitated an instant.
“How very provoking,” she agreed presently. “But, of course, you must go. It would never do to offend Hemingway, and you know how erratic he is sometimes. Is there anything here to do except keep an eye on the theatre?”
“Not much,” Demarest returned. “They have a good start there, and know what to do next, but I had expected to run over two or three times to be sure they were getting things straight.”
“Why don’t you ask that nice Mr. Merriwell you were telling me about to look after things for you?” she suggested.
Demarest’s face brightened.
“That’s a good idea,” he returned quickly, “only it seems cheeky. However, I know he’ll do it if he can, and it’s the only way out. I’ll phone him.”
He pushed back his chair, and stood up.
“Well, I’ll be off. Just about time to make the train. Don’t worry if I’m not back to-night. There might be something to detain me, but I’ll make the first train out in the morning at the latest. Dress rehearsal at eleven, you know. Look after that for me, will you? And be sure everybody understands. By-by.”
She nodded gayly to him, but her face sobered as she went on with her breakfast. The success of this venture meant almost as much to her as it did to Demarest, and she was wrapped up in it.
Presently she finished, and arose from the table. She meant to go for a little stroll, and for that reason she wore her hat, and carried a long fur coat on her arm. One of the bell boys held this while she slipped into it, and then she turned toward the door, drawing on her gloves as she made her way slowly toward it.
All at once she gave a quick little gasp, as her eyes fell upon a man standing by the desk, and turned her head swiftly the other way. But she was too late. The next instant Ralph Bryton had spied her, and stepped to her side.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said, with an attempt at geniality. “I saw by the register that you had arrived last night.”
The girl did not glance at him, but went steadily on her way.
“Good morning, Mr. Bryton,” she returned frigidly.
There was a disagreeable note in the man’s laugh.
“How very formal we are,” he said sarcastically. “I can remember the time, not so very long ago, when it was Ralph.”
“You know perfectly well that was on your father’s account,” she retorted. “Brought up as I was in his house, I could scarcely have called you anything else while he was alive. Now I can follow my own inclinations.”
The man’s face darkened. They had reached the door, and, as she was about to pass out, he put out one hand swiftly, and held the knob.
“One moment,” he said shortly. “I must have a few minutes’ talk with you before you go out. Oh, it’s about business,” he went on bitterly, as a repugnance flashed across her face. “I want to talk to you about Demarest and this fool play of his.”
She glanced at him.
“What is it you wish to say?” she inquired briefly.
Bryton indicated with his hand a couple of chairs in a corner near by, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took one of them.
“You’ve got to pull out of this company of his at once,” he said, in a hard voice, as he dropped down beside her.
Marion Gray’s eyes widened, and a little color crept into her face.
“You’re a cool proposition,” she remarked, “to tell me what I must, or must not, do. Do you imagine for an instant that I would break a contract, and desert a man the very day before the opening? I thought you knew that I always played fair.”
“Yah!” snarled Bryton. “You—play fair! A lot you do! Where’s your gratitude? Tell me that! You owe everything you’ve got—the very clothes on your back—to my father. Didn’t he take you in when you were starving, and treat you like a daughter? Didn’t he give you his name, which wasn’t good enough for you when you took to the stage? Didn’t he leave you a pile of money, which kept you till you got a job with Rosenbaum? That was my money! It should have come to me! You practically robbed me of it. And now you stick by Demarest, who doesn’t care a hang about you, and let me go——”
“Stop!”
The girl’s face was pale, but her eyes flashed angrily.
“You’ve said quite enough, Ralph Bryton,” she went on, in a cold, cutting voice, “to show me what sort of a man you really are, even if I hadn’t a pretty good notion of it before. A good deal of what you have said is true, but no one but a contemptible hound would have said it in the way you did. Your father did adopt me, and as long as he lived I loved him. He was more of a man than you’ll ever be. The money he left me wasn’t much, but it enabled me to live until I found something to do. The reason I didn’t take your father’s name was because it was yours, too.”
Bryton winced at the contempt in her voice. She caught her breath, and went on swiftly:
“Now, not content with pestering me to marry you, when you know I loathe the very sight of you, you want me to do a dishonorable thing which would make me hate myself all my life long. But I won’t do it! You knew that long ago, didn’t you? I’d play my part to-morrow night if I was dying, and I mean to play it for all that is in me. If ‘Jarvis of Yale’ isn’t a success, it won’t be because Marion Gray hasn’t done her best to make it so.”
With the last word, she sprang swiftly to her feet, and, before the angry man realized what had happened, she reached the door and disappeared.