[152]CHAPTER IVNaomimade no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come. She merely lay, with blinds drawn to shut out the early morning, trying to see light where she knew there was none. At ten she sprang up, hand to the throat that was full, lids covering the eyes that pained. Ever since Marshy Kent’s visit, those eyes had been straining toward the future, the result, inevitable almost, of his revelation to Bill Dixon. In the endless, wakeful hours of the night she had rehearsed, as women do, everything that had probably transpired.Yet even in her misery she did not overlook the careful mask of make-up, as mechanical a part of her daily toilet as the brushing of her hair, or polishing of her glistening nails. She had grown to avoid facing her mirror without it.She flung on a negligée of orchid chiffon that clung round her with the afterglow of sunset. But like the orchid, she sought the damp darkness of her living-room and sat with head resting against her locked hands for a long time before she made a move to raise the blinds and let in a shaft of sunlight.She had just lifted one of them when the sharp summons of the bell came from downstairs. She pushed the electric button and waited without curiosity for the[153]apartment bell to ring. Then she opened the door and peered into the shadowy hall.A girl stood there. The girl with her hair like a black cloud and eyes young and gray and tense.They traveled hungrily over the other woman as if to get in that moment the viewpoint of another pair of eyes that no longer sought hers.“May I come in, Miss Stokes? You don’t know me but my name is Nan Crawford,” she explained as Naomi said nothing.Naomi nodded. “I know.”The girl looked up quickly.“Has he—has he talked to you—about me?”“I’ve seen you with him,” was the non-committal answer.“It—it’s about Bill I want to see you,” she brought out the words with the same halting pause which had marked her hesitation in the doorway.Naomi motioned her to a chair. The girl’s pale face went a tinge whiter. Her lips quivered. She looked down.“I’ve been wanting to come to see you and hadn’t the courage. Yesterday I followed you here in a cab from the theater. But you were with Mr. Kent. I didn’t come up.” She fidgeted with the slightly frayed silk of her chair.“Miss Stokes, I—I’ve known Bill Dixon all my life. I’ve loved him all my life—and I thought he loved me. He used to tell me so. We—we’ve always loved the same things and done the same things—together—in the same way. We’ve ridden hours on horseback up into[154]the mountains and gone shooting in the woods—and tramped to places other people didn’t know about. When I went away to school and he to college, we used to write each other about our woods and the longing to get back to them—together. We never planned anything—separately. We sort of always—belonged to each other.”She halted once more. It was because she couldn’t go on. The eyes lifted to meet Naomi’s were filmed. It was only too clear that she was putting herself through the ordeal of tearing open new wounds for some purpose. Naomi looked away. To play on her own sympathy, of course! She wouldn’t listen. It would do no good anyway.“I’m trying to tell you, Miss Stokes, how I love Bill Dixon—how much I want his happiness. And now he loves you. Oh, I don’t blame him! You’re very beautiful—more beautiful than I could ever dream of being. You’re like some gorgeous flower in a conservatory. I’ve never seen any one like you. At first I thought I could—perhaps—win him back—but I couldn’t. Not from you. I—I wouldn’t know how. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I—at first I thought I couldn’t live through it. But I’ve got to now. Bill can’t help loving you. I don’t blame him for that.” She got up suddenly and brushed a hand across her eyes. In the poise of her body, head thrown back, lip caught between her teeth, was life’s first big endurance test and her brave attempt to meet it.“But you’ve got to love him, Miss Stokes! You’ve got to make him happy. I’d give my life for him.[155]That’s the way you’ve got to love him, too. If you don’t—if you fail him—ever—I’ll kill you!”Waves of astonishment swept over Naomi. Those eyes that burned behind the film of tears! Surely this was not their message! To demand happiness for the man of whom she was being robbed—surely that was not what the girl had come for.“My dear child—” Naomi began, instinctively speaking as if to one years younger.“I mean it! You think I wouldn’t but I’m not afraid. I have nothing to lose any more.”She stumbled toward the door, one hand reached out gropingly. There she turned and once more her eyes traveled over the other woman. Naomi felt that from their clear gray gaze she could not shield herself. A girl so near her own age—the girl she might have been! And in that moment she knew that Nan Crawford’s words had not been bravado, not foolish threat. She was battling in her own way for the thing she loved.She opened the door as if, now that her message was given, she could not make her escape quickly enough.“Make him happy,” came strangled. “You must! That’s what I came to tell you.”
Naomimade no pretense of trying to sleep. She did not even resort to the bromide she was in the habit of taking when rest refused to come. She merely lay, with blinds drawn to shut out the early morning, trying to see light where she knew there was none. At ten she sprang up, hand to the throat that was full, lids covering the eyes that pained. Ever since Marshy Kent’s visit, those eyes had been straining toward the future, the result, inevitable almost, of his revelation to Bill Dixon. In the endless, wakeful hours of the night she had rehearsed, as women do, everything that had probably transpired.
Yet even in her misery she did not overlook the careful mask of make-up, as mechanical a part of her daily toilet as the brushing of her hair, or polishing of her glistening nails. She had grown to avoid facing her mirror without it.
She flung on a negligée of orchid chiffon that clung round her with the afterglow of sunset. But like the orchid, she sought the damp darkness of her living-room and sat with head resting against her locked hands for a long time before she made a move to raise the blinds and let in a shaft of sunlight.
She had just lifted one of them when the sharp summons of the bell came from downstairs. She pushed the electric button and waited without curiosity for the[153]apartment bell to ring. Then she opened the door and peered into the shadowy hall.
A girl stood there. The girl with her hair like a black cloud and eyes young and gray and tense.
They traveled hungrily over the other woman as if to get in that moment the viewpoint of another pair of eyes that no longer sought hers.
“May I come in, Miss Stokes? You don’t know me but my name is Nan Crawford,” she explained as Naomi said nothing.
Naomi nodded. “I know.”
The girl looked up quickly.
“Has he—has he talked to you—about me?”
“I’ve seen you with him,” was the non-committal answer.
“It—it’s about Bill I want to see you,” she brought out the words with the same halting pause which had marked her hesitation in the doorway.
Naomi motioned her to a chair. The girl’s pale face went a tinge whiter. Her lips quivered. She looked down.
“I’ve been wanting to come to see you and hadn’t the courage. Yesterday I followed you here in a cab from the theater. But you were with Mr. Kent. I didn’t come up.” She fidgeted with the slightly frayed silk of her chair.
“Miss Stokes, I—I’ve known Bill Dixon all my life. I’ve loved him all my life—and I thought he loved me. He used to tell me so. We—we’ve always loved the same things and done the same things—together—in the same way. We’ve ridden hours on horseback up into[154]the mountains and gone shooting in the woods—and tramped to places other people didn’t know about. When I went away to school and he to college, we used to write each other about our woods and the longing to get back to them—together. We never planned anything—separately. We sort of always—belonged to each other.”
She halted once more. It was because she couldn’t go on. The eyes lifted to meet Naomi’s were filmed. It was only too clear that she was putting herself through the ordeal of tearing open new wounds for some purpose. Naomi looked away. To play on her own sympathy, of course! She wouldn’t listen. It would do no good anyway.
“I’m trying to tell you, Miss Stokes, how I love Bill Dixon—how much I want his happiness. And now he loves you. Oh, I don’t blame him! You’re very beautiful—more beautiful than I could ever dream of being. You’re like some gorgeous flower in a conservatory. I’ve never seen any one like you. At first I thought I could—perhaps—win him back—but I couldn’t. Not from you. I—I wouldn’t know how. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I—at first I thought I couldn’t live through it. But I’ve got to now. Bill can’t help loving you. I don’t blame him for that.” She got up suddenly and brushed a hand across her eyes. In the poise of her body, head thrown back, lip caught between her teeth, was life’s first big endurance test and her brave attempt to meet it.
“But you’ve got to love him, Miss Stokes! You’ve got to make him happy. I’d give my life for him.[155]That’s the way you’ve got to love him, too. If you don’t—if you fail him—ever—I’ll kill you!”
Waves of astonishment swept over Naomi. Those eyes that burned behind the film of tears! Surely this was not their message! To demand happiness for the man of whom she was being robbed—surely that was not what the girl had come for.
“My dear child—” Naomi began, instinctively speaking as if to one years younger.
“I mean it! You think I wouldn’t but I’m not afraid. I have nothing to lose any more.”
She stumbled toward the door, one hand reached out gropingly. There she turned and once more her eyes traveled over the other woman. Naomi felt that from their clear gray gaze she could not shield herself. A girl so near her own age—the girl she might have been! And in that moment she knew that Nan Crawford’s words had not been bravado, not foolish threat. She was battling in her own way for the thing she loved.
She opened the door as if, now that her message was given, she could not make her escape quickly enough.
“Make him happy,” came strangled. “You must! That’s what I came to tell you.”
[156]CHAPTER VThroughthe window Naomi had lifted that morning, the shaft of sunlight receded slowly until it slipped away. Naomi had been sitting in the same position ever since her door had shut on a girl stumbling into the dark hallway. She sat there without moving and with a queer little twist of wonder at the problems we bring upon ourselves. All her life she had drifted with the least resistant current and without thinking much. Now, of a sudden, thought had come smashing upon her with the devastating violence of a hurricane.As daylight grayed she rose a bit stiffly and lighted the few lamps that sent a glow through the room.She went into her bedroom and started to dress. Bill was coming at five to take her to dinner. All afternoon she had waited for his usual phone call, for the big box of variegated flowers so different from those other men sent her. Neither came. But a peculiar lethargy held her, made her conscious only of the numbness of futility.She dressed without haste in a plain dark cloth suit, feeling with a curious finality that Bill was not coming. He had never kept her waiting like this. Yet as the thought swept over her, a loud, long ring came from downstairs. She went to the door, stood with eyes fastened on the dusk. A figure loomed out of it, head bent, feet taking the steps two at a time.[157]He did not look up until they were in the room. Then his head went back and the look of desperation he wore made her go to him swiftly and push him into a chair. He sank down without resistance and covered his face with hands he made no attempt to steady. She lifted hers from his shoulders.“What is it, Bill? What’s happened?”“I—I’m late,” were his first shaky words. “Sorry.”“But what’s happened? Tell me!”“Naomi—I—” he broke off. “I don’t know how to put it. I feel that just telling you is an insult—”Ah, she knew now! She knew what was coming.“That man, Kent!” he stumbled on. “They had me all afternoon, he and Alec McConnell. I had to listen to things he said about you. If I’d been aman, I wouldn’t have given him the chance to say them.”Eyes clinging to hers, he waited for some question, some denial. He was giving her the chance to strike Marshy’s prosecution off the record without one word of cross-examination. He was urging her with his eyes to give Marshy the lie without even hearing what the man had told him.All her anguish of the night before had been, like so much feminine anguish, unnecessary. It was in her hands now. She had only to concoct a story of jealousy or an ancient grudge of Kent’s and this boy who had come to mean everything to her would accept it with the gladness of one who doesn’t want to question. Yet she turned her face from him and said nothing.“I listened until I couldn’t stand it. They made me![158]Then I knocked him down. Swine like that ought to be killed!”“He’s not swine,” she found herself saying in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “He was probably telling you the truth for what he thought was your own good.”“Naomi!”“Oh yes, it was probably all true. You don’t know what I am, boy. You don’t know what I’ve been.”He was on his feet, grasping her arm, straining down to read her veiled eyes.“Naomi, do you know what you’re saying? He accused you of—” he halted.She took him up without waiting.“Of things he can prove to you, boy dear. I’ve known Marshy Kent years and years and he wouldn’t tell you anything about me he didn’t know he could back up.”In her submission to the inevitable, in her complete lack of defense, she was so helpless, so almost child-like that the boy’s fury against Kent flamed back to his eyes, burning out the horror of her dumb confession. His hands were knotted into the hard fists that had sent his informer spinning to the floor. His chin was fighting forward. His eyes fastened on the exotic beauty that was Naomi’s intensified by the fact that she was woman, helpless under the lash of another man. That was all he saw—a beautiful woman who needed his protection! And to every other vision his youth determined to blind itself.“I don’t care what he’s told me! I don’t care what you’ve been. I only know I love you. You’re the most[159]glorious, fascinating woman in the world—and I want you, do you hear! I want you more than anything—more than anyone! I love you! Naomi—will you marry me—now—to-night?”Her eyes closed. All she had planned—all she had longed for! Marshy’s move had only succeeded in thrusting it more swiftly into her grasp. And yet she did not stop to think of that. All that registered were those three words: “I love you.” Their sweetness ran like some warm fluid through her veins.“We’ll get away from here!” he plunged on. “I’ll take you west—home. No Kents there to tell ugly stories. We’ll forget them ourselves. Nobody need ever know. We’ll be happy—and I’ll have you all to myself. Those lips and eyes—they’ll be all mine. Naomi—dearest—let me kiss them now!”Her arms had gone up instinctively but they dropped again without touching him. She held away, not looking at him.“No, Bill,—it can’t be.”“Naomi!”“No.”“You think that what he said makes any difference? I tell you, it doesn’t. I don’t care! I’d marry you—”“It’s not that. It’s just—I couldn’t make you happy, boy.”“Yes, you could. You’re the only woman—”“No—I couldn’t. Why, you don’t love me. You love the thing I represent—the thing that represents me—Broadway. Take me away from it and what would I be? A faded woman, Bill, a woman who would only[160]make you hate her because she’s so different from what you thought. And I’d rather never have you than to see you in a short time—oh, it wouldn’t take long!—disgusted with me.”“You don’t love me—that’s it!” he flamed.“If I didn’t love you I’d marry you. Sounds queer, that, doesn’t it?”“Then we both care! What else matters?”“Only that I want to give you happiness—and I can’t.”“You’re the only woman who can.”“No I’m not, dear. You think so now. But it’s the grease-paint stuff you love! Out on the ranch—with my hair its own color you’d wonder why you did it.”He paid no attention to her last whispered words.“I’m willing to risk it! I’ll risk anything for you.”“You’d find me out, Bill—you’d be bound to. Why, I never go out in the sun without wearing a veil to keep the secret of my complexion to myself. And there, where you belong, I’d be in the sun all day.” She tried to smile. “How would I look going round a ranch like the queen of a harem? No, you’d have to see me as I am. And in a week you’d hate me.”He went close, hearing only the sob in her voice.“Dearest—you think I’m young—that I don’t know my own mind. You think I don’t know my woman when I meet her!”She smiled now, with a little shake of the head.“You don’t. You only think you do. You love the way people look at me in a restaurant. You love the way I wear my clothes. You love my coloring. It’s put on, boy. And so is the sheen of my hair you rave about and[161]the blackness of my lashes. It’s all fake—like me.”“Why are you telling me all this?”“Because—because you mean more to me than anything in the world. Because I’d rather have your happiness than my own.”Even as the words came, they amazed her. All afternoon they had been struggling deep down in her consciousness. A girl with stark young eyes had opened wide those veiled ones.“Then that’s the only thing that counts,” he retaliated, eyes alight, and his arms went out. “If you love me, I don’t care about anything else.”She pulled back. Once his lips touched hers, she knew she could not go through with what she had to do. Recklessly—while the mood held her—as if she were another person playing a trick on Naomi Stokes, she moved round the room, turning off the soft lamplight. A second later the central chandelier flashed its glare and Naomi was at his side again.“Wait, Bill—I want to show you something.”She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back, there was a white rag clenched in her hand.“I’m not really beautiful the way you see me.” And even as she spoke the words her eyes were frightened. “I’m a faker—but for once I’m going to be honest with you—with myself. I’m going to let you see the woman you don’t know, the woman you’d see—out there.”Without pausing to give herself breath she dragged the cloth, weighted with some thick lotion, across her face. It came away covered with color. She threw it aside. The face it left lifted to his was like tragedy, unmasked.[162]“Look—I can scrape it off—the beauty you love so! This is the way I’ll be in broad daylight, Bill. These lines—they’re the years I’ve stolen from you. They’re the real me—the me you don’t know. Do you want me now?”He looked down on the face that in ten seconds had aged ten years. Dazedly he took in the circles under the eyes, the pinched lines from nostrils to mouth, the pallor of the lips. The luminous cream of her skin had given way to a whiteness that looked dead. All the exotic color of her—the color that fascinated him—was gone. It was almost as if some magic had wafted away the Naomi he knew, as if this were another woman.He stood there gazing down on her, confused, silent before the revelation he could not quite compass. Only the eyes of his Naomi remained, infinitely sad, infinitely lovely, even with the heavy black gone from their straight lashes.“You don’t want me now. You don’t want the woman I really am. Don’t stop to think! Don’t hesitate! Just answer me,” she whispered.But he did stop to think. Without quite meeting the eyes raised to his, holding his own away from the face that seemed suddenly a strange one, he lifted her two trembling hands, put them against his lips.“I’ve asked you to marry me, Naomi,” he said huskily. “I’m asking you again.”“Thank you for that, boy dear. You—you’re just everything I thought you were. But I’m not going to take you up. Not now! If you want me six months[163]from now, come back for me. I’ll know then—that you need me. Only, dear—you won’t come.”He looked straight at her then, letting himself see only the eyes which had not changed. And she knew before he spoke that he was bowing, without argument, to her verdict.“I’ll come back for you,” he told her. “I won’t wait six months. You’ll see!”She simply shook her head and no smile of hope touched her pale lips.A few minutes later she stood looking for a long time at the door that had closed after him. Then she put on hat and coat and went down the steps and over to the theater.
Throughthe window Naomi had lifted that morning, the shaft of sunlight receded slowly until it slipped away. Naomi had been sitting in the same position ever since her door had shut on a girl stumbling into the dark hallway. She sat there without moving and with a queer little twist of wonder at the problems we bring upon ourselves. All her life she had drifted with the least resistant current and without thinking much. Now, of a sudden, thought had come smashing upon her with the devastating violence of a hurricane.
As daylight grayed she rose a bit stiffly and lighted the few lamps that sent a glow through the room.
She went into her bedroom and started to dress. Bill was coming at five to take her to dinner. All afternoon she had waited for his usual phone call, for the big box of variegated flowers so different from those other men sent her. Neither came. But a peculiar lethargy held her, made her conscious only of the numbness of futility.
She dressed without haste in a plain dark cloth suit, feeling with a curious finality that Bill was not coming. He had never kept her waiting like this. Yet as the thought swept over her, a loud, long ring came from downstairs. She went to the door, stood with eyes fastened on the dusk. A figure loomed out of it, head bent, feet taking the steps two at a time.
[157]He did not look up until they were in the room. Then his head went back and the look of desperation he wore made her go to him swiftly and push him into a chair. He sank down without resistance and covered his face with hands he made no attempt to steady. She lifted hers from his shoulders.
“What is it, Bill? What’s happened?”
“I—I’m late,” were his first shaky words. “Sorry.”
“But what’s happened? Tell me!”
“Naomi—I—” he broke off. “I don’t know how to put it. I feel that just telling you is an insult—”
Ah, she knew now! She knew what was coming.
“That man, Kent!” he stumbled on. “They had me all afternoon, he and Alec McConnell. I had to listen to things he said about you. If I’d been aman, I wouldn’t have given him the chance to say them.”
Eyes clinging to hers, he waited for some question, some denial. He was giving her the chance to strike Marshy’s prosecution off the record without one word of cross-examination. He was urging her with his eyes to give Marshy the lie without even hearing what the man had told him.
All her anguish of the night before had been, like so much feminine anguish, unnecessary. It was in her hands now. She had only to concoct a story of jealousy or an ancient grudge of Kent’s and this boy who had come to mean everything to her would accept it with the gladness of one who doesn’t want to question. Yet she turned her face from him and said nothing.
“I listened until I couldn’t stand it. They made me![158]Then I knocked him down. Swine like that ought to be killed!”
“He’s not swine,” she found herself saying in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “He was probably telling you the truth for what he thought was your own good.”
“Naomi!”
“Oh yes, it was probably all true. You don’t know what I am, boy. You don’t know what I’ve been.”
He was on his feet, grasping her arm, straining down to read her veiled eyes.
“Naomi, do you know what you’re saying? He accused you of—” he halted.
She took him up without waiting.
“Of things he can prove to you, boy dear. I’ve known Marshy Kent years and years and he wouldn’t tell you anything about me he didn’t know he could back up.”
In her submission to the inevitable, in her complete lack of defense, she was so helpless, so almost child-like that the boy’s fury against Kent flamed back to his eyes, burning out the horror of her dumb confession. His hands were knotted into the hard fists that had sent his informer spinning to the floor. His chin was fighting forward. His eyes fastened on the exotic beauty that was Naomi’s intensified by the fact that she was woman, helpless under the lash of another man. That was all he saw—a beautiful woman who needed his protection! And to every other vision his youth determined to blind itself.
“I don’t care what he’s told me! I don’t care what you’ve been. I only know I love you. You’re the most[159]glorious, fascinating woman in the world—and I want you, do you hear! I want you more than anything—more than anyone! I love you! Naomi—will you marry me—now—to-night?”
Her eyes closed. All she had planned—all she had longed for! Marshy’s move had only succeeded in thrusting it more swiftly into her grasp. And yet she did not stop to think of that. All that registered were those three words: “I love you.” Their sweetness ran like some warm fluid through her veins.
“We’ll get away from here!” he plunged on. “I’ll take you west—home. No Kents there to tell ugly stories. We’ll forget them ourselves. Nobody need ever know. We’ll be happy—and I’ll have you all to myself. Those lips and eyes—they’ll be all mine. Naomi—dearest—let me kiss them now!”
Her arms had gone up instinctively but they dropped again without touching him. She held away, not looking at him.
“No, Bill,—it can’t be.”
“Naomi!”
“No.”
“You think that what he said makes any difference? I tell you, it doesn’t. I don’t care! I’d marry you—”
“It’s not that. It’s just—I couldn’t make you happy, boy.”
“Yes, you could. You’re the only woman—”
“No—I couldn’t. Why, you don’t love me. You love the thing I represent—the thing that represents me—Broadway. Take me away from it and what would I be? A faded woman, Bill, a woman who would only[160]make you hate her because she’s so different from what you thought. And I’d rather never have you than to see you in a short time—oh, it wouldn’t take long!—disgusted with me.”
“You don’t love me—that’s it!” he flamed.
“If I didn’t love you I’d marry you. Sounds queer, that, doesn’t it?”
“Then we both care! What else matters?”
“Only that I want to give you happiness—and I can’t.”
“You’re the only woman who can.”
“No I’m not, dear. You think so now. But it’s the grease-paint stuff you love! Out on the ranch—with my hair its own color you’d wonder why you did it.”
He paid no attention to her last whispered words.
“I’m willing to risk it! I’ll risk anything for you.”
“You’d find me out, Bill—you’d be bound to. Why, I never go out in the sun without wearing a veil to keep the secret of my complexion to myself. And there, where you belong, I’d be in the sun all day.” She tried to smile. “How would I look going round a ranch like the queen of a harem? No, you’d have to see me as I am. And in a week you’d hate me.”
He went close, hearing only the sob in her voice.
“Dearest—you think I’m young—that I don’t know my own mind. You think I don’t know my woman when I meet her!”
She smiled now, with a little shake of the head.
“You don’t. You only think you do. You love the way people look at me in a restaurant. You love the way I wear my clothes. You love my coloring. It’s put on, boy. And so is the sheen of my hair you rave about and[161]the blackness of my lashes. It’s all fake—like me.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because—because you mean more to me than anything in the world. Because I’d rather have your happiness than my own.”
Even as the words came, they amazed her. All afternoon they had been struggling deep down in her consciousness. A girl with stark young eyes had opened wide those veiled ones.
“Then that’s the only thing that counts,” he retaliated, eyes alight, and his arms went out. “If you love me, I don’t care about anything else.”
She pulled back. Once his lips touched hers, she knew she could not go through with what she had to do. Recklessly—while the mood held her—as if she were another person playing a trick on Naomi Stokes, she moved round the room, turning off the soft lamplight. A second later the central chandelier flashed its glare and Naomi was at his side again.
“Wait, Bill—I want to show you something.”
She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back, there was a white rag clenched in her hand.
“I’m not really beautiful the way you see me.” And even as she spoke the words her eyes were frightened. “I’m a faker—but for once I’m going to be honest with you—with myself. I’m going to let you see the woman you don’t know, the woman you’d see—out there.”
Without pausing to give herself breath she dragged the cloth, weighted with some thick lotion, across her face. It came away covered with color. She threw it aside. The face it left lifted to his was like tragedy, unmasked.
[162]“Look—I can scrape it off—the beauty you love so! This is the way I’ll be in broad daylight, Bill. These lines—they’re the years I’ve stolen from you. They’re the real me—the me you don’t know. Do you want me now?”
He looked down on the face that in ten seconds had aged ten years. Dazedly he took in the circles under the eyes, the pinched lines from nostrils to mouth, the pallor of the lips. The luminous cream of her skin had given way to a whiteness that looked dead. All the exotic color of her—the color that fascinated him—was gone. It was almost as if some magic had wafted away the Naomi he knew, as if this were another woman.
He stood there gazing down on her, confused, silent before the revelation he could not quite compass. Only the eyes of his Naomi remained, infinitely sad, infinitely lovely, even with the heavy black gone from their straight lashes.
“You don’t want me now. You don’t want the woman I really am. Don’t stop to think! Don’t hesitate! Just answer me,” she whispered.
But he did stop to think. Without quite meeting the eyes raised to his, holding his own away from the face that seemed suddenly a strange one, he lifted her two trembling hands, put them against his lips.
“I’ve asked you to marry me, Naomi,” he said huskily. “I’m asking you again.”
“Thank you for that, boy dear. You—you’re just everything I thought you were. But I’m not going to take you up. Not now! If you want me six months[163]from now, come back for me. I’ll know then—that you need me. Only, dear—you won’t come.”
He looked straight at her then, letting himself see only the eyes which had not changed. And she knew before he spoke that he was bowing, without argument, to her verdict.
“I’ll come back for you,” he told her. “I won’t wait six months. You’ll see!”
She simply shook her head and no smile of hope touched her pale lips.
A few minutes later she stood looking for a long time at the door that had closed after him. Then she put on hat and coat and went down the steps and over to the theater.
[164]CHAPTER VIHarvard Club,New York, July 30th.Dear Naomi,—This letter is going to be harder to write than an income tax report. When a man has never before been on his knees to a woman, they’re apt to be creaky and resist bending. But I’m on my knees to you, my dear,—in tribute, in abject apology, in the tenderest feeling I’ve ever known in my life.Last March Bill Dixon went home and I sat back with the sensation of a good Samaritan. I was blithering ass enough to think I was the one who had sent him away. To-day, four months later, I’ve learned the truth. It came with the announcement of his marriage to Nan Crawford. He told me what happened. He told me what you had done, Naomi.I’ve never had much belief in women. I’ve always thought them rather a poor lot. That’s the penalty of having begun early to know the wrong side of them—assuming there was no other. But you’ve given an old stager a faith he’s never known. For that I can’t repay you. But whatever I have, whatever I can give you of devotion and friendship is yours, dear girl. Knowing what you were equal to doing for that boy has suddenly made life worth living for me.I haven’t seen you in months. Will you make up for lost time? Shall we go to supper to-morrow night?Yours—I mean it—Marshy.[165]Naomi’s eyes wandered from the letter to another that lay open on the desk beside it. It was in a boy’s rugged hand, incoherent, embarrassed. It told of his approaching marriage and tried to thank her for making him see that the old love was the true one. She had read it so many times that she could have told what it told her—with eyes shut.She reread Kent’s letter then. After a moment she picked up her pen and wrote:Thank you, dear Marshy. I can use your friendship. I need it. But I’ve quit going out to suppers—for good.Naomi.
Harvard Club,New York, July 30th.Dear Naomi,—This letter is going to be harder to write than an income tax report. When a man has never before been on his knees to a woman, they’re apt to be creaky and resist bending. But I’m on my knees to you, my dear,—in tribute, in abject apology, in the tenderest feeling I’ve ever known in my life.Last March Bill Dixon went home and I sat back with the sensation of a good Samaritan. I was blithering ass enough to think I was the one who had sent him away. To-day, four months later, I’ve learned the truth. It came with the announcement of his marriage to Nan Crawford. He told me what happened. He told me what you had done, Naomi.I’ve never had much belief in women. I’ve always thought them rather a poor lot. That’s the penalty of having begun early to know the wrong side of them—assuming there was no other. But you’ve given an old stager a faith he’s never known. For that I can’t repay you. But whatever I have, whatever I can give you of devotion and friendship is yours, dear girl. Knowing what you were equal to doing for that boy has suddenly made life worth living for me.I haven’t seen you in months. Will you make up for lost time? Shall we go to supper to-morrow night?Yours—I mean it—Marshy.
Harvard Club,New York, July 30th.
Dear Naomi,—
This letter is going to be harder to write than an income tax report. When a man has never before been on his knees to a woman, they’re apt to be creaky and resist bending. But I’m on my knees to you, my dear,—in tribute, in abject apology, in the tenderest feeling I’ve ever known in my life.
Last March Bill Dixon went home and I sat back with the sensation of a good Samaritan. I was blithering ass enough to think I was the one who had sent him away. To-day, four months later, I’ve learned the truth. It came with the announcement of his marriage to Nan Crawford. He told me what happened. He told me what you had done, Naomi.
I’ve never had much belief in women. I’ve always thought them rather a poor lot. That’s the penalty of having begun early to know the wrong side of them—assuming there was no other. But you’ve given an old stager a faith he’s never known. For that I can’t repay you. But whatever I have, whatever I can give you of devotion and friendship is yours, dear girl. Knowing what you were equal to doing for that boy has suddenly made life worth living for me.
I haven’t seen you in months. Will you make up for lost time? Shall we go to supper to-morrow night?
Yours—I mean it—Marshy.
[165]Naomi’s eyes wandered from the letter to another that lay open on the desk beside it. It was in a boy’s rugged hand, incoherent, embarrassed. It told of his approaching marriage and tried to thank her for making him see that the old love was the true one. She had read it so many times that she could have told what it told her—with eyes shut.
She reread Kent’s letter then. After a moment she picked up her pen and wrote:
Thank you, dear Marshy. I can use your friendship. I need it. But I’ve quit going out to suppers—for good.Naomi.
Thank you, dear Marshy. I can use your friendship. I need it. But I’ve quit going out to suppers—for good.
Naomi.
[167]THE BACK DROPDRAMAComedy met Tragedy at the crossroads of Life.“Know,” spake Tragedy, “from Wisdom have I learned that thou and I emanate from the same source—born of the folly of man and nourished by his deeds. The tie between us is so strong that we must follow, each upon the other’s heels, as long as the road of life has its turnings.”“Then come,” laughed Comedy, “a bargain let us conclude. Let each forever carry some suggestion of the other!”So, with a tear in the eye of Comedy and a smile under Tragedy’s frown, they linked arms and proceeded down the road together.
Comedy met Tragedy at the crossroads of Life.
“Know,” spake Tragedy, “from Wisdom have I learned that thou and I emanate from the same source—born of the folly of man and nourished by his deeds. The tie between us is so strong that we must follow, each upon the other’s heels, as long as the road of life has its turnings.”
“Then come,” laughed Comedy, “a bargain let us conclude. Let each forever carry some suggestion of the other!”
So, with a tear in the eye of Comedy and a smile under Tragedy’s frown, they linked arms and proceeded down the road together.
[169]THE BACK DROPCHAPTER I———RUDOLPH CLEEBURGPresentsGLORIA CROMWELLin“LADY FAIR”A Comedy-DramabyBronson ReedA carpulled up sharp at the curb and a woman leaned out to read the tall lettering. It loomed startling and white against a black ground. Along a street where theaters crowded each other like chorus girls in a manager’s office, that inky splash with its tracing of white paled to oblivion all the others.The man beside her watched her eagerly, studied the delicate profile with a kind of hunger. When she turned, his eyes went alight at the smile in hers.“It’s stunning, ’Dolph. But then you always do things right.”“Y’mean that? Do I always manage to suit you, kiddo?”“You know you do.” There was a low, tender note in the voice that would always be wistful. It was an odd voice—one that, breaking with the swift snap of a violin string, brought tears from its audience as one chokes at a broken chord.[170]“H’m, that’s all I want.” He grinned sheepishly. “No fool like an old fool, eh?”He stepped out as the chauffeur swung open the door, and reached up to help her. Gloria Cromwell—in private life Mrs. Rudolph Cleeburg—was not tall and her intense slenderness made her look frail, yet standing next to her husband she measured a full inch above him. Any passerby taking in the round face, eyes and figure of the well-known manager, his bald pate and prominent features, would have smiled at the information that he was the most artistic producer in America. But then, no passerby would have noticed the hands, key to character, that tapered so incongruously. Even the man himself failed to take count of them. He knew only that he felt beauty like a tangible thing, that he expressed it through the two mediums he loved—the stage and his wife.He took her arm and they went down the cool dark alley to the stage door. It was a Sunday in September, hazy and languid, the first shadows of twilight creeping into the arms of night.In almost every building on the block rehearsals were under way. Behind blank front entrances with high iron gates locked fast, throbbed the pulsing life of the theater. No effort too great, no work too intense, to give to the world its most human tonic, amusement.The dress rehearsal of “Lady Fair” had been called for 8:00P. M.They were early, having made good time from their place at Great Neck. Gloria crossed the stage set for Act I while Cleeburg paused to suggest to the electrician some experiments with the lights.“Try a couple of reds, Bill, in the foots for Act II.[171]And cut out four or five of the ambers on top. They make her look too yellow, sick around the eyes. Get me? Too much shadow. We want to bring out all the flash in her hair. Light her up. It’s her big scene. And here—have a smoke!”He followed Gloria. She had tossed her hat on a table and stood taking in the new props he had provided while the company made the customary short tour that precedes a New York première.With the shadows of the unlighted stage about her and the dusky quiet of the empty house stretching at her feet, she seemed to the man who went toward her deplorably young and tender, with a something yearning from her that he had tried to reach and never even been able to define. Not for the first time he asked himself: Was it the almost childish form under the soft summer dress—or the delicate line of her long throat—or the intense red curve of lip—or her pallor topped by the tawny hair whose lights and shades he was so intent on featuring? No, none of these! It was the look of her eyes. Wide and hungry, with fright in their depths, they had arrested him six years before as he hurried through his outer office; arrested him and found her a job. The fright had gone long since. And the hunger which had been nothing more than actual physical hunger. But the look that was so much like the quality of her voice still lurked there, eluding him.He came up behind her as she stood examining the heavy black velvet drapes with crests of blue, purple and gold embroidered in the corners.“Like ’em?” he asked once more anxiously.[172]She veered about. “They must have cost a fortune, ’Dolph. Wouldn’t those blue ones we had on the road have been good enough?”“Not for you. Only the best for my girl! And look at you against ’em. Those newspaper guys are right—there sure is something about you that’s got the rest of the bunch lashed to the mast!”“It’s what you’ve made me, ’Dolph.” The words came breathless, with that strange fascinating catch. “You’ve put me over just the way you did the rest. Goring and Wilbur and Chesterton. Without you I’d have been just an actress. Now they call me an artist. And you’ve done that—you’ve done every bit of it.”With a furtive glance to make sure the electrician was still occupied he went closer, laid an arm across her slim shoulders and gazed eagerly through the shadows into her face.“Say that again. Of course it ain’t true. They were all piking compared to you. But say it anyhow. It’s music to me—the greatest symphony and greatest opera rolled into one.”“It is true.”“Then if I never do anything else for you, that goes on the right side of the ledger—what? Sometimes, little girl, I feel like I was a dog, grabbing you the way I did right after I featured you and you thought you couldn’t turn me down.”“Nonsense!” She caught his hand and her clasp was so tight it seemed to grip.“I’m a pretty old piece of scenery and not easy to look at, at that.” He glanced through the drapes at the back[173]drop. It represented a stretch of blue sky pierced with holes through which presently stars would glimmer. “Like that old thing,” he added. “Just a piece of shabby canvas, good enough for background.” And as she started to protest he laughed, a laugh that wasn’t much more than a sound. “Why, even Doug Fairbanks won’t be able to kid himself he’s young when he’s past half a century.”He turned as several members of the company strolled in and greeted each with a hearty handshake. With a smile for every one and an ear ready to listen, the Cleeburg of to-day had the same enthusiasm as the pudgy newsboy who years before had run fat little legs off to procure for a patron his favorite daily.“Hello there, glad to see you! Well, they tell me we’ve got a knock-out. Let’s have a look.”He made for the rear of the house with his stage director who had accompanied the play on tour.The curtain up, he leaned against the seat in front, a long black cigar jerking from corner to corner of his mouth like a propeller. Not a gesture, not an intonation escaped him. His concentration ignored any world but this. Had the building burned down, that stage before him would still have been the pivotal point of interest.When Gloria appeared between the black drapes, eyes luminous under the untamed hair, and the thrill of her voice came over the footlights, he sighed and a smile of anticipation spread across his face. It was the look of one whose senses are about to be lulled by rare music.The play had all the quality of delicately written French drama, its big scene at the end of the second act[174]being calculated to bring even a New York audience straight out of its seat. Gloria and John Brooks were as finely teamed as a pair of high-stepping thoroughbreds. He had been her leading man two seasons. Little ’Dolph, with an eye to the future, had him tied up on a five-year contract.You would never have taken John Brooks for an actor. There was about his clothes no suggestion of the extreme that Broadway is tempted to affect. They were cut by a conservative tailor and he wore them with the ease of not caring particularly what he had on. Critics called him distinguished. When he walked into a stage drawing-room one knew instinctively that more exclusive drawing-rooms had opened to him. He never talked shop outside and never brought his social activities into the theater. But it was generally known that his friends numbered scientists and men of big business.On the stage he suggested a clean-cut Britisher, tall and well groomed, easy of manner, clipped of speech, yet with a more intense vitality and that gleam of humor under the straight black brows that is peculiarly, blessedly, of, by, and for America.The manager sat back, eyes half closed, lapping up the charm of it as a kitten laps cream. When the curtain fell he licked his lips and purred as he turned to the director, Lewis.“You’re right, Lewy! Never saw a pair to touch ’em. Gad, that give and take, that playing into each other’s hands—nothing like it in this old berg, I tell you!” He sprang up, bounded down the aisle like a rubber ball. “Immense!” he shouted. “That act runs on[175]greased wheels. It’s sure fire! They’ll eat it alive.”He climbed into a box; with amazing ease jumped on to the stage. Bulky as was his figure, almost pouter pigeon in certain postures, there was nothing funny about Cleeburg in action. It was the fire of his genius, the spark that lighted his homely face with inspiration, that commanded respect. Even with a handkerchief tied round his neck as it always was in hot weather and the open sleeves of his silk shirt flopping like awkward wings, no one thought of smiling. One merely listened.He gave a few instructions to the property men and slipped back to his wife’s dressing-room, poking his head in at the door.She was changing to a tea-gown, a lovely shimmery gold thing that brought out the reds in her hair like touches of flame.“Well, how does it go?” she asked. “Any suggestions?”“Not half a one. Couldn’t be improved. And John—he was made for you!”She dropped her eyes to examine a tiny rip in the train.“Better mend this, Suzanne, before I go on. It might catch on something.”“Glad we’ve got him sewed up tight. First thing you know, one of the boys’d be offering to star him and then biffo, we’d lose him!”“He is—wonderful.” She did not raise her eyes as the maid’s needle flashed in and out of the soft fabric, then looked up suddenly. “Lewis thinks we have a big hit.”[176]“Lewis knows his business. You never had a chance that touched it—comedy and the big heart stuff combined. Try a little more red, honey. You look pale. Tired out, eh?”“No—just a bit nervous, that’s all.” She turned hastily to the mirror, picked up a rabbit’s foot and dabbed some color across her cheek bones. As she bent forward, her teeth caught her lower lip and held it. And Cleeburg, noting the reflection of her eyes, fancied fright in them. Nerves, of course! Emotional tuning up of the vibrant artist!He went out front as the curtain rose on the second act. It revealed a boudoir. Not the sort bestowed upon woman by the average scenic decorator with its brilliant splashes of color and general air of a department store exhibit, but a room that suggested four walls enclosing feminine taste.Steadily Gloria and Brooks mounted to the big moment when the man’s passion, like a torrent crashing through ice, carried the woman with it. They stood facing each other and the voice of John Brooks came quiet, yet with the threat of doom.“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No, not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and take what is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell you I love you—”The woman gave a terrified “No—no!” with arms thrust out to ward off the thing she had desired. The[177]man followed with a quick laugh as he caught them and her to him.Cleeburg jumped up and speeding down the aisle made a trumpet of his hands.“Hey, John—play that for all it’s worth. Give it to ’em strong. You fall down a peg or two at the end. Got to keep up the tension. Get me? Don’t be afraid of too much pep. Can’t be done in this town. Let go! Give ’em the love stuff till they faint.”Again and again he put them through it. Up to the crucial point it went superbly. Then something seemed to snap. It was less in Brooks’ rendering of the speech than the way he caught up Gloria and swept her to him. Instead of an onrush like a force irresistible, his embrace was almost measured. One felt that with very little effort she could have escaped.Sitting in the front row now, a puzzled seam between his eyes, Cleeburg noted that Gloria, too, appeared to hold off. Gloria, who flung herself into a part as if it were life! What had happened? He shook his head, began to pace the length of the seats.“You’ll let down the whole act, children. You’ll lose your curtain. Why, they’ve been wanting this to happen from the beginning. If you don’t give it to ’em and give it to ’em big, they’ll can you. Sure thing! Let’s have another go.”John Brooks’ thin lips came together. There was something tense about the way he went into the scene this time—muscles tight, hands clenched, voice husky. And when finally he swept her into his arms it was as if he would never let her go. Their lips met as the[178]curtain fell. Even in the empty house one could feel the thrill of it.Cleeburg gave a chortle of relief. Just for a moment he had been afraid they were going to muff it.But he apologized for his persistence later over a bite of supper.“It’s the crux, old man. That’s why I kept you at it. You see, the woman is yours by every law of God. Once you know it, you don’t give a damn for the laws of man.”“I get you.”“Put over the feeling that it had to be. If you don’t the whole show goes fluey. You and the little girl do such bully team work, we don’t want one hitch to spoil it. Hope I haven’t played you out.”“Oh, that’s all right.” The other man smoothed his hair with a gesture of both long hands and looked across the table. “Afraid my thick head has tired Gloria, though.”She was leaning back, limp, face white as the moon that looked in between the pillars of the roof garden.“Not a bit.” Her lids lifted quickly and Cleeburg was startled at the fever under them. She leaned elbows on the table. “I was as stupid as John. We just couldn’t seem to get it.”“Well, don’t worry. It’ll go like hot cakes to-morrow night. You won’t worry, kiddo, will you?” He patted her arm anxiously. “I don’t like to see you look like this.”“Why, there isn’t a thing wrong with me—truly.” She turned to watch the dancers as they swayed past, two moving as one to the lure of darky music. In the[179]center of the flagged floor a fountain sent up showering spray colored emerald, ruby and gold by lights from within. The place was filled with a soft languor. It seemed set very close beneath the Indian Summer sky.When she turned back she found Brooks gazing at her.“Come to think of it,” observed Cleeburg, glance traveling from one to the other, “you don’t look any too chipper yourself, old man. Didn’t notice it when you got in this morning but you’re both played out.”“Gloria had a little smash-up after the performance last night. Been working at top speed. Nothing wrong with me. We’re both tired, that’s all. There wasn’t a breath of air in the train, either.” Brooks lifted his glass of cider and a dry smile played round his lips. “I drink to thee only with mine eyes,” he said to Gloria.Cleeburg grinned. “Say, why not come out to the house with us now? Give you something stronger. Stop off, shoot a few things into a bag and a night in the country’ll do you good.”Brooks put down his glass. “Thanks, no. Think I’d better stick to my own bunk.”“How about next week then? Run you out after the show Saturday night. You can try a couple of holes of golf with Gloria Sunday.”“Sorry, old man, I’m booked.”“Well, any time you like. Ain’t a place, ours, where you have to wait for a bid.”“I know that.”“What’s the matter with you anyhow? Last summer, you used to run out every few weeks. This year, have to beg you to come!”[180]“Not a bit of it,” laughed Brooks. “Wait till we get this opening off our chests and you won’t be able to get rid of me.”“Can’t come it too strong to suit us, eh kiddo?”Gloria’s eyes had drifted out to the swaying throng once more. “Of course not,” she said quickly, and pushed back her chair. “If you don’t mind, ’Dolph, I believe I am tired.”Cleeburg noticed as they went down to the car that her step lagged. When they had dropped Brooks at his flat and were speeding up Fifth Avenue, sleepy under the quiet hour when life in New York closes one eye, she turned swiftly. “’Dolph—you remember what you called yourself in the theater to-night—before the others came?”He thought a moment. Then his face went alight, all but the eyes. “Your old back drop, y’mean?”She nodded. “Don’t ever do that again—don’t!”Her vehemence made him shift his position so that he faced her.“Why, honey—”The break in her voice had been poignant. Her hand clasping his arm was feverish. He felt the heat of it through his thin coat. Even in the dark he could see her eyes, brilliant, with something of the fright he had read in them earlier in the evening. Only it was intensified.“Honey, what is it?”“I want you to know I love you,” she rushed on breathlessly. “It wasn’t just gratitude that made me marry you. I’ll always love you. You’re splendid and fine[181]and generous. They don’t come any better. Never doubt it, ’Dolph! Never—will you?” She shook his arm, repeating the question over and over.“Why—kiddo—”“And I have made you happy?” she broke in on his amazement. “I have given you something for all you’ve given me?”He answered quickly enough then.“Everything, honey. Why, these past five years’ve been more than most fellows get in a lifetime. I ask myself often what an old tout like me ever did to deserve ’em. In the theater and out—hasn’t been a day that wasn’t heaven. That’s what you’ve given me.”She sat an instant silent. Then before he could divine her intention she had carried his hand to her lips. But it was not their moisture he noticed as he drew it hastily away and slipped an arm round her.
———RUDOLPH CLEEBURGPresentsGLORIA CROMWELLin“LADY FAIR”A Comedy-DramabyBronson Reed
A carpulled up sharp at the curb and a woman leaned out to read the tall lettering. It loomed startling and white against a black ground. Along a street where theaters crowded each other like chorus girls in a manager’s office, that inky splash with its tracing of white paled to oblivion all the others.
The man beside her watched her eagerly, studied the delicate profile with a kind of hunger. When she turned, his eyes went alight at the smile in hers.
“It’s stunning, ’Dolph. But then you always do things right.”
“Y’mean that? Do I always manage to suit you, kiddo?”
“You know you do.” There was a low, tender note in the voice that would always be wistful. It was an odd voice—one that, breaking with the swift snap of a violin string, brought tears from its audience as one chokes at a broken chord.
[170]“H’m, that’s all I want.” He grinned sheepishly. “No fool like an old fool, eh?”
He stepped out as the chauffeur swung open the door, and reached up to help her. Gloria Cromwell—in private life Mrs. Rudolph Cleeburg—was not tall and her intense slenderness made her look frail, yet standing next to her husband she measured a full inch above him. Any passerby taking in the round face, eyes and figure of the well-known manager, his bald pate and prominent features, would have smiled at the information that he was the most artistic producer in America. But then, no passerby would have noticed the hands, key to character, that tapered so incongruously. Even the man himself failed to take count of them. He knew only that he felt beauty like a tangible thing, that he expressed it through the two mediums he loved—the stage and his wife.
He took her arm and they went down the cool dark alley to the stage door. It was a Sunday in September, hazy and languid, the first shadows of twilight creeping into the arms of night.
In almost every building on the block rehearsals were under way. Behind blank front entrances with high iron gates locked fast, throbbed the pulsing life of the theater. No effort too great, no work too intense, to give to the world its most human tonic, amusement.
The dress rehearsal of “Lady Fair” had been called for 8:00P. M.They were early, having made good time from their place at Great Neck. Gloria crossed the stage set for Act I while Cleeburg paused to suggest to the electrician some experiments with the lights.
“Try a couple of reds, Bill, in the foots for Act II.[171]And cut out four or five of the ambers on top. They make her look too yellow, sick around the eyes. Get me? Too much shadow. We want to bring out all the flash in her hair. Light her up. It’s her big scene. And here—have a smoke!”
He followed Gloria. She had tossed her hat on a table and stood taking in the new props he had provided while the company made the customary short tour that precedes a New York première.
With the shadows of the unlighted stage about her and the dusky quiet of the empty house stretching at her feet, she seemed to the man who went toward her deplorably young and tender, with a something yearning from her that he had tried to reach and never even been able to define. Not for the first time he asked himself: Was it the almost childish form under the soft summer dress—or the delicate line of her long throat—or the intense red curve of lip—or her pallor topped by the tawny hair whose lights and shades he was so intent on featuring? No, none of these! It was the look of her eyes. Wide and hungry, with fright in their depths, they had arrested him six years before as he hurried through his outer office; arrested him and found her a job. The fright had gone long since. And the hunger which had been nothing more than actual physical hunger. But the look that was so much like the quality of her voice still lurked there, eluding him.
He came up behind her as she stood examining the heavy black velvet drapes with crests of blue, purple and gold embroidered in the corners.
“Like ’em?” he asked once more anxiously.
[172]She veered about. “They must have cost a fortune, ’Dolph. Wouldn’t those blue ones we had on the road have been good enough?”
“Not for you. Only the best for my girl! And look at you against ’em. Those newspaper guys are right—there sure is something about you that’s got the rest of the bunch lashed to the mast!”
“It’s what you’ve made me, ’Dolph.” The words came breathless, with that strange fascinating catch. “You’ve put me over just the way you did the rest. Goring and Wilbur and Chesterton. Without you I’d have been just an actress. Now they call me an artist. And you’ve done that—you’ve done every bit of it.”
With a furtive glance to make sure the electrician was still occupied he went closer, laid an arm across her slim shoulders and gazed eagerly through the shadows into her face.
“Say that again. Of course it ain’t true. They were all piking compared to you. But say it anyhow. It’s music to me—the greatest symphony and greatest opera rolled into one.”
“It is true.”
“Then if I never do anything else for you, that goes on the right side of the ledger—what? Sometimes, little girl, I feel like I was a dog, grabbing you the way I did right after I featured you and you thought you couldn’t turn me down.”
“Nonsense!” She caught his hand and her clasp was so tight it seemed to grip.
“I’m a pretty old piece of scenery and not easy to look at, at that.” He glanced through the drapes at the back[173]drop. It represented a stretch of blue sky pierced with holes through which presently stars would glimmer. “Like that old thing,” he added. “Just a piece of shabby canvas, good enough for background.” And as she started to protest he laughed, a laugh that wasn’t much more than a sound. “Why, even Doug Fairbanks won’t be able to kid himself he’s young when he’s past half a century.”
He turned as several members of the company strolled in and greeted each with a hearty handshake. With a smile for every one and an ear ready to listen, the Cleeburg of to-day had the same enthusiasm as the pudgy newsboy who years before had run fat little legs off to procure for a patron his favorite daily.
“Hello there, glad to see you! Well, they tell me we’ve got a knock-out. Let’s have a look.”
He made for the rear of the house with his stage director who had accompanied the play on tour.
The curtain up, he leaned against the seat in front, a long black cigar jerking from corner to corner of his mouth like a propeller. Not a gesture, not an intonation escaped him. His concentration ignored any world but this. Had the building burned down, that stage before him would still have been the pivotal point of interest.
When Gloria appeared between the black drapes, eyes luminous under the untamed hair, and the thrill of her voice came over the footlights, he sighed and a smile of anticipation spread across his face. It was the look of one whose senses are about to be lulled by rare music.
The play had all the quality of delicately written French drama, its big scene at the end of the second act[174]being calculated to bring even a New York audience straight out of its seat. Gloria and John Brooks were as finely teamed as a pair of high-stepping thoroughbreds. He had been her leading man two seasons. Little ’Dolph, with an eye to the future, had him tied up on a five-year contract.
You would never have taken John Brooks for an actor. There was about his clothes no suggestion of the extreme that Broadway is tempted to affect. They were cut by a conservative tailor and he wore them with the ease of not caring particularly what he had on. Critics called him distinguished. When he walked into a stage drawing-room one knew instinctively that more exclusive drawing-rooms had opened to him. He never talked shop outside and never brought his social activities into the theater. But it was generally known that his friends numbered scientists and men of big business.
On the stage he suggested a clean-cut Britisher, tall and well groomed, easy of manner, clipped of speech, yet with a more intense vitality and that gleam of humor under the straight black brows that is peculiarly, blessedly, of, by, and for America.
The manager sat back, eyes half closed, lapping up the charm of it as a kitten laps cream. When the curtain fell he licked his lips and purred as he turned to the director, Lewis.
“You’re right, Lewy! Never saw a pair to touch ’em. Gad, that give and take, that playing into each other’s hands—nothing like it in this old berg, I tell you!” He sprang up, bounded down the aisle like a rubber ball. “Immense!” he shouted. “That act runs on[175]greased wheels. It’s sure fire! They’ll eat it alive.”
He climbed into a box; with amazing ease jumped on to the stage. Bulky as was his figure, almost pouter pigeon in certain postures, there was nothing funny about Cleeburg in action. It was the fire of his genius, the spark that lighted his homely face with inspiration, that commanded respect. Even with a handkerchief tied round his neck as it always was in hot weather and the open sleeves of his silk shirt flopping like awkward wings, no one thought of smiling. One merely listened.
He gave a few instructions to the property men and slipped back to his wife’s dressing-room, poking his head in at the door.
She was changing to a tea-gown, a lovely shimmery gold thing that brought out the reds in her hair like touches of flame.
“Well, how does it go?” she asked. “Any suggestions?”
“Not half a one. Couldn’t be improved. And John—he was made for you!”
She dropped her eyes to examine a tiny rip in the train.
“Better mend this, Suzanne, before I go on. It might catch on something.”
“Glad we’ve got him sewed up tight. First thing you know, one of the boys’d be offering to star him and then biffo, we’d lose him!”
“He is—wonderful.” She did not raise her eyes as the maid’s needle flashed in and out of the soft fabric, then looked up suddenly. “Lewis thinks we have a big hit.”
[176]“Lewis knows his business. You never had a chance that touched it—comedy and the big heart stuff combined. Try a little more red, honey. You look pale. Tired out, eh?”
“No—just a bit nervous, that’s all.” She turned hastily to the mirror, picked up a rabbit’s foot and dabbed some color across her cheek bones. As she bent forward, her teeth caught her lower lip and held it. And Cleeburg, noting the reflection of her eyes, fancied fright in them. Nerves, of course! Emotional tuning up of the vibrant artist!
He went out front as the curtain rose on the second act. It revealed a boudoir. Not the sort bestowed upon woman by the average scenic decorator with its brilliant splashes of color and general air of a department store exhibit, but a room that suggested four walls enclosing feminine taste.
Steadily Gloria and Brooks mounted to the big moment when the man’s passion, like a torrent crashing through ice, carried the woman with it. They stood facing each other and the voice of John Brooks came quiet, yet with the threat of doom.
“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No, not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and take what is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell you I love you—”
The woman gave a terrified “No—no!” with arms thrust out to ward off the thing she had desired. The[177]man followed with a quick laugh as he caught them and her to him.
Cleeburg jumped up and speeding down the aisle made a trumpet of his hands.
“Hey, John—play that for all it’s worth. Give it to ’em strong. You fall down a peg or two at the end. Got to keep up the tension. Get me? Don’t be afraid of too much pep. Can’t be done in this town. Let go! Give ’em the love stuff till they faint.”
Again and again he put them through it. Up to the crucial point it went superbly. Then something seemed to snap. It was less in Brooks’ rendering of the speech than the way he caught up Gloria and swept her to him. Instead of an onrush like a force irresistible, his embrace was almost measured. One felt that with very little effort she could have escaped.
Sitting in the front row now, a puzzled seam between his eyes, Cleeburg noted that Gloria, too, appeared to hold off. Gloria, who flung herself into a part as if it were life! What had happened? He shook his head, began to pace the length of the seats.
“You’ll let down the whole act, children. You’ll lose your curtain. Why, they’ve been wanting this to happen from the beginning. If you don’t give it to ’em and give it to ’em big, they’ll can you. Sure thing! Let’s have another go.”
John Brooks’ thin lips came together. There was something tense about the way he went into the scene this time—muscles tight, hands clenched, voice husky. And when finally he swept her into his arms it was as if he would never let her go. Their lips met as the[178]curtain fell. Even in the empty house one could feel the thrill of it.
Cleeburg gave a chortle of relief. Just for a moment he had been afraid they were going to muff it.
But he apologized for his persistence later over a bite of supper.
“It’s the crux, old man. That’s why I kept you at it. You see, the woman is yours by every law of God. Once you know it, you don’t give a damn for the laws of man.”
“I get you.”
“Put over the feeling that it had to be. If you don’t the whole show goes fluey. You and the little girl do such bully team work, we don’t want one hitch to spoil it. Hope I haven’t played you out.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” The other man smoothed his hair with a gesture of both long hands and looked across the table. “Afraid my thick head has tired Gloria, though.”
She was leaning back, limp, face white as the moon that looked in between the pillars of the roof garden.
“Not a bit.” Her lids lifted quickly and Cleeburg was startled at the fever under them. She leaned elbows on the table. “I was as stupid as John. We just couldn’t seem to get it.”
“Well, don’t worry. It’ll go like hot cakes to-morrow night. You won’t worry, kiddo, will you?” He patted her arm anxiously. “I don’t like to see you look like this.”
“Why, there isn’t a thing wrong with me—truly.” She turned to watch the dancers as they swayed past, two moving as one to the lure of darky music. In the[179]center of the flagged floor a fountain sent up showering spray colored emerald, ruby and gold by lights from within. The place was filled with a soft languor. It seemed set very close beneath the Indian Summer sky.
When she turned back she found Brooks gazing at her.
“Come to think of it,” observed Cleeburg, glance traveling from one to the other, “you don’t look any too chipper yourself, old man. Didn’t notice it when you got in this morning but you’re both played out.”
“Gloria had a little smash-up after the performance last night. Been working at top speed. Nothing wrong with me. We’re both tired, that’s all. There wasn’t a breath of air in the train, either.” Brooks lifted his glass of cider and a dry smile played round his lips. “I drink to thee only with mine eyes,” he said to Gloria.
Cleeburg grinned. “Say, why not come out to the house with us now? Give you something stronger. Stop off, shoot a few things into a bag and a night in the country’ll do you good.”
Brooks put down his glass. “Thanks, no. Think I’d better stick to my own bunk.”
“How about next week then? Run you out after the show Saturday night. You can try a couple of holes of golf with Gloria Sunday.”
“Sorry, old man, I’m booked.”
“Well, any time you like. Ain’t a place, ours, where you have to wait for a bid.”
“I know that.”
“What’s the matter with you anyhow? Last summer, you used to run out every few weeks. This year, have to beg you to come!”
[180]“Not a bit of it,” laughed Brooks. “Wait till we get this opening off our chests and you won’t be able to get rid of me.”
“Can’t come it too strong to suit us, eh kiddo?”
Gloria’s eyes had drifted out to the swaying throng once more. “Of course not,” she said quickly, and pushed back her chair. “If you don’t mind, ’Dolph, I believe I am tired.”
Cleeburg noticed as they went down to the car that her step lagged. When they had dropped Brooks at his flat and were speeding up Fifth Avenue, sleepy under the quiet hour when life in New York closes one eye, she turned swiftly. “’Dolph—you remember what you called yourself in the theater to-night—before the others came?”
He thought a moment. Then his face went alight, all but the eyes. “Your old back drop, y’mean?”
She nodded. “Don’t ever do that again—don’t!”
Her vehemence made him shift his position so that he faced her.
“Why, honey—”
The break in her voice had been poignant. Her hand clasping his arm was feverish. He felt the heat of it through his thin coat. Even in the dark he could see her eyes, brilliant, with something of the fright he had read in them earlier in the evening. Only it was intensified.
“Honey, what is it?”
“I want you to know I love you,” she rushed on breathlessly. “It wasn’t just gratitude that made me marry you. I’ll always love you. You’re splendid and fine[181]and generous. They don’t come any better. Never doubt it, ’Dolph! Never—will you?” She shook his arm, repeating the question over and over.
“Why—kiddo—”
“And I have made you happy?” she broke in on his amazement. “I have given you something for all you’ve given me?”
He answered quickly enough then.
“Everything, honey. Why, these past five years’ve been more than most fellows get in a lifetime. I ask myself often what an old tout like me ever did to deserve ’em. In the theater and out—hasn’t been a day that wasn’t heaven. That’s what you’ve given me.”
She sat an instant silent. Then before he could divine her intention she had carried his hand to her lips. But it was not their moisture he noticed as he drew it hastily away and slipped an arm round her.
[182]CHAPTER IIOverLong Island, as Cleeburg drove in the following day, hung a mist that made the low hills look like a mirage melting into the sky. It was as if the smoke of the city reached its long arm far over green stretches and cool woodland, cloaking Nature with the garment of industry.Little ’Dolph sat forward, hat tossed to the floor, cigar ashes strewn over it like snow. He had smoked incessantly from the moment the car shot past the hedge surrounding the Cleeburg place. He had smoked with brow furrowed and teeth chewing on the butt of his weed, concentrating so intensely that for the first time in years it failed to circle from corner to corner of the friendly mouth. He was worried—and about Gloria. What had got her last night? What had brought the fever to her eyes and that desperate grip to her fingers? What had made her cry, with long sobs like a child’s when his arm went round her? Wasn’t like her. Not a bit. He’d never seen her like that, didn’t know how to handle it.Overwork must be the answer. She’d been at it for six years seeing results. And before that God knew how many without seeing them! He recalled the poor little starved thing she was when first those eyes with the strange glow back of them had begged for a chance. Since that chance had been hers she hadn’t stopped, not for a minute. And how she had mounted! For a second his look of distress vanished in a broad grin of pride.[183]Gloria had the divine fire, whatever that might be. The light of it had always been in her soul but his was the satisfaction of having kindled it to flame. He had found in her the instrument to express all the seething love of beauty his unbeautiful body harbored. He could not have put it into words but the consciousness was there, a vital thing.He looked out anxiously at the hazy September landscape. Yes, must be overwork! If it had been anything else, she’d have told him. Dashed like hysteria, that breakdown last night! Give her a long vacation next summer, that’s what he’d do. He’d close her in the spring and take her abroad when he went to clinch those English contracts.Having reached the only decision possible in view of present demands on her, he settled back, applied a light to a final cigar and puffed peacefully until they pulled up at his office in the same building as the theater.Toward four-thirty she telephoned that she was feeling much better and laughed at the relief in his voice. If he worried about her that way, she’d give a perfectly rotten performance to-night!But in spite of her chaffing, Cleeburg, going to her dressing-room at seven, caught her unawares with head drooping into her hands and a look of utter dejection about the slim shoulders. She lifted both quickly as he entered and smiled up at him. He peered at the heavy blue smudges under her eyes.“Won’t need much make-up, will I?” she laughed, in quick response to the look. “You see, I’m trying to put the grease-paint men out of business.”[184]“What is it?” He pulled a chair close to the dressing-table. It was higher than hers and so brought their faces on a level. “Something’s eating you. What? Tell me—tell your old ’Dolph.”She leaned over, brushed his cheek with her lips, then turned quickly to the mirror and dabbed the color on her face with the same nervous haste he had noticed the night before.“Nothing’s wrong, dear. Wait till we settle down for a steady run and you’ll see.”“It’s sure fire! Only keep an eye on that second act. Don’t be afraid to let go.”From the wings he watched the audience stream in—beautifully gowned women, perfectly groomed men, keen-eyed critics, his own colleagues with soft collars and clothes not too well pressed, here a familiar round-the-towner, there a merchant who took his first night subscription seats as religiously as his pew in church. Truly a motley such as only the Metropolis can produce. Little ’Dolph’s eyes shone and his broad mouth broadened. Those women with their feathery fans and glittering jewels; those men with their sleek heads and smart clothes; the press; the world theatrical; they constituted his court, this theater his kingdom.Only a few times since the throne had been his had he failed to give them what they expected of him. That was why to-night he saw in every pair of eyes an eager anticipation that was to him like strong stimulant. He slipped round to the front of the house as the curtain rose.All through the first act he divided attention between[185]the stage and the audience, watching the latter laugh and chuckle and wink and furtively wipe its eye, and nodding as each effect came at the right moment. When the lights went up he dodged backstage, not to Gloria, but to Brooks.“Great, old boy! You’ve got ’em. Just keep up that tempo. Feeling fit?”“Fine!”“Look out for the end of this act, won’t you,” he added half apologetically.“Thought you were coming to that,” laughed Brooks.“No offense, you understand.”But he went back to his seat wishing the big scene finished. He couldn’t help a twitch of uncertainty. If they handled it as they had at first last night it would fall flat as a pancake.Eagerly he followed every line. It was scintillant as sunlit ice and very thin ice at that. The throng round him skated over it with the actors and when Gloria’s scene with Brooks arrived they were, as he had prophesied, keyed to an emotional pitch that only the limit of acting could satisfy.Then he held tight to the arms of his chair and literally his breath stopped.Brooks came to the climax. His vibrant voice fell across the quiet of the house.“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No, not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and[186]take what is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell you I love you—”Cleeburg felt the quick intake of breath, the surge forward, that pulsing reach of an audience. If only they’d play it now for all it was worth!Gloria pulled back and terror was in her voice.“No—no!”For a second Brooks seemed to hesitate. What in Sam Hill was the matter with him? Why the deuce didn’t he let go?Then suddenly his laugh went high. He strode to her. His arms swept out.She stood poised as if in resistance, the light from above playing over her, her eyes started up to his. One could feel the catch in her throat, the swaying at the edge of a precipice. And then the eyelids fell, the man’s embrace closed round her like an enveloping flame. Her lips went to his.With a deep sigh little ’Dolph subsided. The audience did likewise. It had them! An excited buzz, the crash of applause told him that. He dodged out of his seat and to the lobby. Nothing further was to be desired. “Lady Fair” had gone over with a bang.It was over a month later that the manager finally prevailed upon their leading man to week-end with them. He buttonholed Brooks after the performance one Saturday night and refused to take “no” for an answer.“Say, John, getting upstage? Cut your swell friends this week. You’re coming out with us, ain’t he kiddo?”[187]They were standing within the stage door. Cleeburg linked a persuasive arm in the other man’s.Gloria smiled without looking directly at Brooks. She drew her squirrel wrap close about her and stepped out of the light.“John’s always welcome, of course. But if he has other plans we mustn’t interfere.”“You don’t say!” laughed Cleeburg. “Well, he’s going to chuck any other plans and give us the pleasure of his society.”Brooks held a light to his cigarette. The flare of it illumined his set mouth, the line of his jaw.“Another time, old man. There’s a game on at the club to-morrow afternoon.”“Good! That being the case, we’ll save you money.” He started down the narrow alley to the street.Brooks looked across at Gloria. She was looking down, struggling with the clasp of her glove.“Come on,” urged Cleeburg.An instant more Brooks hesitated. Then his head went back.“All right, I’m with you.” And he laughed as if with relief.They stopped off for his bag. They were still using the open car in spite of the winds of late October. Gloria liked the slash of air against her face, liked to get the first salty whiff of the Sound. She leaned back with lids drooping and hands clasped loosely and was silent all the way. The men talked of next year’s prospects.“‘Lady Fair’ is good for next year and a season in London. Think I’ll let you and Gloria take it over.[188]She’s never had a lick at the other side,” chuckled Cleeburg. “Bound to knock ’em silly.”Gloria spoke for the first time.“I wouldn’t think about London—just yet.”Cleeburg started at the queer note in her voice. They turned into the drive where willows drooped their branches to the ground. Beyond shone the lights of the rambling old house, modernized by the family who had owned and loved it for generations, but untouched as to line or grace. High ceilings, French windows, arched doorways, tall fireplaces—these constituted the charm of the estate little ’Dolph had presented to the woman who had given him happiness.Supper for two was spread before the flaming logs at one end of the entrance hall. In the center of the table stood a bowl of autumn leaves, the wild red of Gloria’s hair. Cleeburg pulled up another chair as the chauffeur brought in their guest’s bag and helped him out of his overcoat.The latter stood gazing round the place with a look of real affection.“It’s good to be back,” he said with a deep breath.“Well, the house has been here. Your fault that you haven’t!” Cleeburg cocked his ear to the comforting pop of a champagne cork.“Gloria has enough of my company eight consecutive times a week,” smiled Brooks.“We missed you anyhow. Didn’t we, kiddo?”“Of course. Seeing you in the theater isn’t a bit like having you here under our own roof.” She took off her hat, pushing back the weight of hair as she sat[189]down beside him. “They’re distinct and separate lives.”“I wonder if that’s true,” Brooks put in quickly. “Do you really think the life of the stage can be cut off completely from a man’s everyday existence?”“Why not?” There was almost an urge in her question, a plea in her eyes.“I’m inclined to believe,” he answered slowly, “that once the theater is in a man’s blood, it colors everything he thinks and feels and does. He’s got to put so much of himself into it that it becomes an essential part of him.”“But why is that more true of the stage than of any other profession?”“Because success on the stage depends less on executive ability than on sincerity. It’s swaying that crowd out there that counts.” He made a sweeping gesture of his long, thin hand. “And they know counterfeit when it’s handed them.”“You said it,” agreed Cleeburg. “Make a business of acting and you make a failure.”“Lord,” laughed Brooks, “here I am telling Gloria something she knows instinctively. Never saw a woman so charged with the power to make people feel.” He stopped abruptly.Gloria had been gazing into her glass as if into a crystal. She set it down and the next words came as though she did not want to say them.“If that’s so—I guess you’re right. I do live every thought and emotion of every part I play. I suppose that’s why they call us temperamental.” Her full sensitive lips curved in a half-smile. “You don’t need[190]temperament to sell stocks and bonds or argue a case in court.”“I beg your pardon,” corrected Brooks. “A lawyer often has to be a darned fine actor. I know, because I started out to be one.”“What’s that?” grinned his host.“Fact! I haven’t made it generally known. It’s too funny even to make a good press story. But I was admitted to the bar before the stage got me.”“Well, I’ll be—!” Little ’Dolph’s fork halted in its hurried trip upward.Gloria pushed her plate aside and leaned farther over the table, eager interest warming her eyes. Brooks brought his round to meet them. Sitting there with the flames flickering over tawny hair and smoky gray dress, she seemed somehow part of them.“Tell us how it happened, John.”“Oh, there’s no story strung to it. I’d done stuff each year in college theatricals and the last year we took our show on tour. I got the bug and when an honest-to-God manager offered me a real job I fell for it.”“Have you ever wanted to go back to law?”“If I did,” his thin lips twisted, “they’d think it too much of a joke to take me seriously.”He said it with rather a grim smile and looking at Gloria. She twisted round in her chair, away from him. For a moment silence fell, broken only by little ’Dolph’s apparent enjoyment of his supper.A gale banged against the windows trying to break its way in. Gloria got up, went over and drew aside the curtain. Brooks followed.[191]“I’d love to be out in it!” Her voice throbbed. Night shadows, beckoning, fell across her face.“It would never let you come back.”“What a wonderful fight, though, trying to conquer it!”“Do you think you could?”“Yes. I think determination can conquer anything—even oneself.”“If one could be sure of that.” He looked down at the full lips that trembled a little, at the eyes with flames back of them, and walked back to Cleeburg. “Think I’ll turn in, old man.”Half an hour later Cleeburg stopped at the door of his wife’s room on the way to his own. She was letting down her hair. It fell like a loosened mane over neck and shoulders. He took a deep breath, more of wonder than any other emotion. She turned, saw him and got suddenly to her feet.“Have you seen what a night it is, ’Dolph?”She opened the French windows. A gale of dead leaves flung itself into the room. She lifted her face, pulled her purple silk kimono closer and stepped on the balcony. He tried to halt her with a warning against catching cold. She laughed and beckoned to him.Black clouds raced across the moon. Trees dashed against the house with all the impotence of human effort against the walls of Destiny. There was no rain. The wind leaped up and drove Nature before it, a mocking god bent on destruction.“By godfrey, if you could only get that on the stage!” whistled Cleeburg.[192]Gloria said nothing. Her face was still lifted, lips apart. Her arms darted out so that the long kimonosleeves spread like wings. Her whole body was poised as if for flight.Cleeburg stepped back and looked at her.She was part of the storm-torn night. Something about the abandon of the scene frightened him.“Come in, honey, won’t you? Catch your death if you stay out like this.”Her arms dropped. She turned and followed him indoors. But opening his own window a while later he saw her slim silhouette outlined against hers, upright with the dusky light of a lamp behind her.The next day at their noon breakfast he asked what time she had gone to bed.“I don’t know. The night was so fascinating, I stayed up with it until day came.” She looked as if she had not slept.Cleeburg lit a prodigiously long cigar, twirled it between his lips and settled back benignly in an armchair by the fire.“Well, children, I’m here for the afternoon. Drive over to the club or do whatever you like. Little ’Dolph’s going to get busy doing nothing.”He reached over without altering his position of solid comfort and picked at random one of the Sunday papers piled on the table beside him. His broad face was suffused with a look of utter peace and relaxation. Even the ever-active cigar suspended activities.Gloria’s lips touched his forehead.“We’ll go for a walk—back at four-thirty for tea.”[193]His eyes went after her the length of the foyer to a side door opening on the gravel walk—Gloria in dull green sport coat and tam, a fur piece swung carelessly from one shoulder; and the tall well-knit man in knickerbockers whose elastic step so easily fell in with hers. Had they followed farther they would have seen two people tramping in silence along a country road strewn with leaves that faded from green to mottled dead brown under a sullen sky. They would have marveled at the set look of the man’s mouth, the quivering of the woman’s. Those sympathetic prominent eyes of his, always seeking the most beautiful way to simulate human emotion, would have clouded with question had they read the pain in both pairs that stared straight along the road without meeting.Half a mile or so the two walked and then abruptly the man turned.“I tried to avoid it, Gloria.”“I know.”“But he took the matter out of my hands. You saw that.”“Yes.”“I could see he was hurt because I hadn’t been out this year. And little ’Dolph isn’t the sort of man you can hurt.”“No.”“We both know that, don’t we?”She looked up at him without answer. Tears stood in her eyes.He turned his from them and his lips went tighter.“He’s the finest that walks in shoe leather,” he added.[194]“I told him that the night we came in from the road. But I was telling it more to myself than to him. John, I felt just knowing that you—that you cared, was disloyal to him.”“I wouldn’t have let you know it, Gloria. I was determined never to suggest it by so much as a word. Then when you went smash at the theater the day before we came in, I—somehow I didn’t have to tell you, did I?”“No.” It was a whisper.“I want you to believe I couldn’t be anything but square with little ’Dolph. You do, don’t you?”“Yes.”“Why, even on the stage, I feel I haven’t the right to take you in my arms. And I must have shown it in some way or other. He noticed the difference at the dress rehearsal.”She walked on silently at his side.“But I’m glad you know. Don’t blame me for that. It’s the biggest, finest thing in my life, a thing I can’t help. I wouldn’t be human—”“We must never mention it again, John,” she broke in and her voice came throbbing as it had the night before. “We can’t help it, just as you say. But we must keep it locked up tight, so that it will harm no one—not even ourselves. We owe that to him.”“Yes. I’d made up my mind to that.”“You mustn’t see me away from the theater. You mustn’tcome out here any more.”“I dare say it’s better that way.”Her eyes traveled along the leaf-strewn road, then[195]up to the sulky sky. And because they were not seeing quite clearly she stumbled and almost fell across a fallen trunk.The man’s arm went round her, holding the slim body a moment. Then with a conscious tightening of muscles he drew it away and plunged on without a glance at her.Presently he turned and in the look he gave her was a sort of desperate pleading.“Is there any harm in telling you just once, Gloria, what you mean to me? I’ve been telling it to myself so long.”“I—I don’t think you’d better. I—I don’t believe I could listen.”He looked down. Her eyes, struck with terror, went up to his.“Please—don’t.”“It’s all right. I won’t.”They came to a trail through the woods.“Shall we take this back?” She turned into it.He reached up and broke a last branch of red leaves that trickled like blood from a dying tree, and handed it to her.“Have you noticed how intensely bright this live stuff looks when everything around it is dead or dying?”Little ’Dolph a mile or so distant, dozed by the fire with cigar still sidling from the corner of his mouth. His dreams were hazy and disjointed. But Gloria as he had seen her on the balcony the night before drifted through them. The howling night swept by, tearing at silken robe and wild hair. She seemed to sway with it. The[196]clouds descended. He had a vague sense of effort to reach out, to hold her, that breathless catch at the heart of nightmare. Then suddenly he lost sight of her. A distant crash and he saw the clouds sweep her up and—while he stood rooted—carry her away.He sat up with a gasp. The cigar fell from his lips. His heart thumped madly.“What a shame! The banging of the screen door wakened him!” It was Gloria’s voice and she was coming toward him.He gave a great sigh of relief.“By godfrey, I’m glad to be awake! Come here, kiddo. Want to make sure I’ve still got you!”She whisked the branch of scarlet leaves across his face.“Just had a dream that took you right out of my young life and I couldn’t catch up!”She pulled off tam and coat, swung to the arm of his chair.“Can’t lose me, Dolphy dear!”“By-the-way,” remarked Brooks, as Gloria served tea, “please don’t mind if I beat it back to town to-night. I’ve got to see my lawyer at tenA. M., and you won’t be going in until to-morrow noon, will you?”“Yes, I do mind, by George!” came from ’Dolph. “We get you out here once in a blue moon and you can’t even stand it for one day. What do you want with a lawyer anyhow? Hold on to your pocket and attend to your own legal affairs.”“But if John has to go in, dear, we mustn’t keep him.”Brooks was looking down at the cap twirling between his hands.[197]“See, old man! Your wife understands.”“All right!” Cleeburg got up, peeved, and went to the bell. “What time do you want the car? I’ll drive you to the station. But hanged if I don’t think you pay us a mighty poor compliment!”He still showed annoyance when Brooks went up to pack his bag.“What’s got him, anyhow?” he put to Gloria. “Damned if I ask him again!”All the way to the station he chewed on his cigar, responding laconically when his guest tried to make conversation. The little manager had a peculiar racial pride that John Brooks unwittingly had speared.“Good enough to hand out his weekly stipend; good enough to give him his living!” kept spinning round the active brain. “But not good enough any more to sit with at the table! Prefers his Fifth Avenue cronies for that.”As the car stopped, Brooks swung down, reached out a hand.“Thanks, old man. Had a great time!”“The hell you had!” said Cleeburg.He drove back still turning over his guest’s desertion and madder every minute. When the car pulled up he sprang out, intent upon talking the whole thing over with Gloria. He crossed the veranda, opened the front door.She was sitting in the chair he had occupied before the fire. Her body was bent forward, head lowered. He went nearer. She was stripping the branch she had brought in of its blood-red leaves. One by one she broke them off and dropped them into the fire. And her eyes never left them as they curled up and shriveled to a crisp.
OverLong Island, as Cleeburg drove in the following day, hung a mist that made the low hills look like a mirage melting into the sky. It was as if the smoke of the city reached its long arm far over green stretches and cool woodland, cloaking Nature with the garment of industry.
Little ’Dolph sat forward, hat tossed to the floor, cigar ashes strewn over it like snow. He had smoked incessantly from the moment the car shot past the hedge surrounding the Cleeburg place. He had smoked with brow furrowed and teeth chewing on the butt of his weed, concentrating so intensely that for the first time in years it failed to circle from corner to corner of the friendly mouth. He was worried—and about Gloria. What had got her last night? What had brought the fever to her eyes and that desperate grip to her fingers? What had made her cry, with long sobs like a child’s when his arm went round her? Wasn’t like her. Not a bit. He’d never seen her like that, didn’t know how to handle it.
Overwork must be the answer. She’d been at it for six years seeing results. And before that God knew how many without seeing them! He recalled the poor little starved thing she was when first those eyes with the strange glow back of them had begged for a chance. Since that chance had been hers she hadn’t stopped, not for a minute. And how she had mounted! For a second his look of distress vanished in a broad grin of pride.[183]Gloria had the divine fire, whatever that might be. The light of it had always been in her soul but his was the satisfaction of having kindled it to flame. He had found in her the instrument to express all the seething love of beauty his unbeautiful body harbored. He could not have put it into words but the consciousness was there, a vital thing.
He looked out anxiously at the hazy September landscape. Yes, must be overwork! If it had been anything else, she’d have told him. Dashed like hysteria, that breakdown last night! Give her a long vacation next summer, that’s what he’d do. He’d close her in the spring and take her abroad when he went to clinch those English contracts.
Having reached the only decision possible in view of present demands on her, he settled back, applied a light to a final cigar and puffed peacefully until they pulled up at his office in the same building as the theater.
Toward four-thirty she telephoned that she was feeling much better and laughed at the relief in his voice. If he worried about her that way, she’d give a perfectly rotten performance to-night!
But in spite of her chaffing, Cleeburg, going to her dressing-room at seven, caught her unawares with head drooping into her hands and a look of utter dejection about the slim shoulders. She lifted both quickly as he entered and smiled up at him. He peered at the heavy blue smudges under her eyes.
“Won’t need much make-up, will I?” she laughed, in quick response to the look. “You see, I’m trying to put the grease-paint men out of business.”
[184]“What is it?” He pulled a chair close to the dressing-table. It was higher than hers and so brought their faces on a level. “Something’s eating you. What? Tell me—tell your old ’Dolph.”
She leaned over, brushed his cheek with her lips, then turned quickly to the mirror and dabbed the color on her face with the same nervous haste he had noticed the night before.
“Nothing’s wrong, dear. Wait till we settle down for a steady run and you’ll see.”
“It’s sure fire! Only keep an eye on that second act. Don’t be afraid to let go.”
From the wings he watched the audience stream in—beautifully gowned women, perfectly groomed men, keen-eyed critics, his own colleagues with soft collars and clothes not too well pressed, here a familiar round-the-towner, there a merchant who took his first night subscription seats as religiously as his pew in church. Truly a motley such as only the Metropolis can produce. Little ’Dolph’s eyes shone and his broad mouth broadened. Those women with their feathery fans and glittering jewels; those men with their sleek heads and smart clothes; the press; the world theatrical; they constituted his court, this theater his kingdom.
Only a few times since the throne had been his had he failed to give them what they expected of him. That was why to-night he saw in every pair of eyes an eager anticipation that was to him like strong stimulant. He slipped round to the front of the house as the curtain rose.
All through the first act he divided attention between[185]the stage and the audience, watching the latter laugh and chuckle and wink and furtively wipe its eye, and nodding as each effect came at the right moment. When the lights went up he dodged backstage, not to Gloria, but to Brooks.
“Great, old boy! You’ve got ’em. Just keep up that tempo. Feeling fit?”
“Fine!”
“Look out for the end of this act, won’t you,” he added half apologetically.
“Thought you were coming to that,” laughed Brooks.
“No offense, you understand.”
But he went back to his seat wishing the big scene finished. He couldn’t help a twitch of uncertainty. If they handled it as they had at first last night it would fall flat as a pancake.
Eagerly he followed every line. It was scintillant as sunlit ice and very thin ice at that. The throng round him skated over it with the actors and when Gloria’s scene with Brooks arrived they were, as he had prophesied, keyed to an emotional pitch that only the limit of acting could satisfy.
Then he held tight to the arms of his chair and literally his breath stopped.
Brooks came to the climax. His vibrant voice fell across the quiet of the house.
“We’ve played the game, you and I,—to the finish. And we’ve lost. No, not lost, because this is the end we wanted. We’ve been a pair of gamblers, banking on defeat, waiting to have the game get us. Now we’re going to lay down our cards, admit we’re beaten, and[186]take what is greater than victory. You know what that is. I don’t have to tell you I love you—”
Cleeburg felt the quick intake of breath, the surge forward, that pulsing reach of an audience. If only they’d play it now for all it was worth!
Gloria pulled back and terror was in her voice.
“No—no!”
For a second Brooks seemed to hesitate. What in Sam Hill was the matter with him? Why the deuce didn’t he let go?
Then suddenly his laugh went high. He strode to her. His arms swept out.
She stood poised as if in resistance, the light from above playing over her, her eyes started up to his. One could feel the catch in her throat, the swaying at the edge of a precipice. And then the eyelids fell, the man’s embrace closed round her like an enveloping flame. Her lips went to his.
With a deep sigh little ’Dolph subsided. The audience did likewise. It had them! An excited buzz, the crash of applause told him that. He dodged out of his seat and to the lobby. Nothing further was to be desired. “Lady Fair” had gone over with a bang.
It was over a month later that the manager finally prevailed upon their leading man to week-end with them. He buttonholed Brooks after the performance one Saturday night and refused to take “no” for an answer.
“Say, John, getting upstage? Cut your swell friends this week. You’re coming out with us, ain’t he kiddo?”
[187]They were standing within the stage door. Cleeburg linked a persuasive arm in the other man’s.
Gloria smiled without looking directly at Brooks. She drew her squirrel wrap close about her and stepped out of the light.
“John’s always welcome, of course. But if he has other plans we mustn’t interfere.”
“You don’t say!” laughed Cleeburg. “Well, he’s going to chuck any other plans and give us the pleasure of his society.”
Brooks held a light to his cigarette. The flare of it illumined his set mouth, the line of his jaw.
“Another time, old man. There’s a game on at the club to-morrow afternoon.”
“Good! That being the case, we’ll save you money.” He started down the narrow alley to the street.
Brooks looked across at Gloria. She was looking down, struggling with the clasp of her glove.
“Come on,” urged Cleeburg.
An instant more Brooks hesitated. Then his head went back.
“All right, I’m with you.” And he laughed as if with relief.
They stopped off for his bag. They were still using the open car in spite of the winds of late October. Gloria liked the slash of air against her face, liked to get the first salty whiff of the Sound. She leaned back with lids drooping and hands clasped loosely and was silent all the way. The men talked of next year’s prospects.
“‘Lady Fair’ is good for next year and a season in London. Think I’ll let you and Gloria take it over.[188]She’s never had a lick at the other side,” chuckled Cleeburg. “Bound to knock ’em silly.”
Gloria spoke for the first time.
“I wouldn’t think about London—just yet.”
Cleeburg started at the queer note in her voice. They turned into the drive where willows drooped their branches to the ground. Beyond shone the lights of the rambling old house, modernized by the family who had owned and loved it for generations, but untouched as to line or grace. High ceilings, French windows, arched doorways, tall fireplaces—these constituted the charm of the estate little ’Dolph had presented to the woman who had given him happiness.
Supper for two was spread before the flaming logs at one end of the entrance hall. In the center of the table stood a bowl of autumn leaves, the wild red of Gloria’s hair. Cleeburg pulled up another chair as the chauffeur brought in their guest’s bag and helped him out of his overcoat.
The latter stood gazing round the place with a look of real affection.
“It’s good to be back,” he said with a deep breath.
“Well, the house has been here. Your fault that you haven’t!” Cleeburg cocked his ear to the comforting pop of a champagne cork.
“Gloria has enough of my company eight consecutive times a week,” smiled Brooks.
“We missed you anyhow. Didn’t we, kiddo?”
“Of course. Seeing you in the theater isn’t a bit like having you here under our own roof.” She took off her hat, pushing back the weight of hair as she sat[189]down beside him. “They’re distinct and separate lives.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” Brooks put in quickly. “Do you really think the life of the stage can be cut off completely from a man’s everyday existence?”
“Why not?” There was almost an urge in her question, a plea in her eyes.
“I’m inclined to believe,” he answered slowly, “that once the theater is in a man’s blood, it colors everything he thinks and feels and does. He’s got to put so much of himself into it that it becomes an essential part of him.”
“But why is that more true of the stage than of any other profession?”
“Because success on the stage depends less on executive ability than on sincerity. It’s swaying that crowd out there that counts.” He made a sweeping gesture of his long, thin hand. “And they know counterfeit when it’s handed them.”
“You said it,” agreed Cleeburg. “Make a business of acting and you make a failure.”
“Lord,” laughed Brooks, “here I am telling Gloria something she knows instinctively. Never saw a woman so charged with the power to make people feel.” He stopped abruptly.
Gloria had been gazing into her glass as if into a crystal. She set it down and the next words came as though she did not want to say them.
“If that’s so—I guess you’re right. I do live every thought and emotion of every part I play. I suppose that’s why they call us temperamental.” Her full sensitive lips curved in a half-smile. “You don’t need[190]temperament to sell stocks and bonds or argue a case in court.”
“I beg your pardon,” corrected Brooks. “A lawyer often has to be a darned fine actor. I know, because I started out to be one.”
“What’s that?” grinned his host.
“Fact! I haven’t made it generally known. It’s too funny even to make a good press story. But I was admitted to the bar before the stage got me.”
“Well, I’ll be—!” Little ’Dolph’s fork halted in its hurried trip upward.
Gloria pushed her plate aside and leaned farther over the table, eager interest warming her eyes. Brooks brought his round to meet them. Sitting there with the flames flickering over tawny hair and smoky gray dress, she seemed somehow part of them.
“Tell us how it happened, John.”
“Oh, there’s no story strung to it. I’d done stuff each year in college theatricals and the last year we took our show on tour. I got the bug and when an honest-to-God manager offered me a real job I fell for it.”
“Have you ever wanted to go back to law?”
“If I did,” his thin lips twisted, “they’d think it too much of a joke to take me seriously.”
He said it with rather a grim smile and looking at Gloria. She twisted round in her chair, away from him. For a moment silence fell, broken only by little ’Dolph’s apparent enjoyment of his supper.
A gale banged against the windows trying to break its way in. Gloria got up, went over and drew aside the curtain. Brooks followed.
[191]“I’d love to be out in it!” Her voice throbbed. Night shadows, beckoning, fell across her face.
“It would never let you come back.”
“What a wonderful fight, though, trying to conquer it!”
“Do you think you could?”
“Yes. I think determination can conquer anything—even oneself.”
“If one could be sure of that.” He looked down at the full lips that trembled a little, at the eyes with flames back of them, and walked back to Cleeburg. “Think I’ll turn in, old man.”
Half an hour later Cleeburg stopped at the door of his wife’s room on the way to his own. She was letting down her hair. It fell like a loosened mane over neck and shoulders. He took a deep breath, more of wonder than any other emotion. She turned, saw him and got suddenly to her feet.
“Have you seen what a night it is, ’Dolph?”
She opened the French windows. A gale of dead leaves flung itself into the room. She lifted her face, pulled her purple silk kimono closer and stepped on the balcony. He tried to halt her with a warning against catching cold. She laughed and beckoned to him.
Black clouds raced across the moon. Trees dashed against the house with all the impotence of human effort against the walls of Destiny. There was no rain. The wind leaped up and drove Nature before it, a mocking god bent on destruction.
“By godfrey, if you could only get that on the stage!” whistled Cleeburg.
[192]Gloria said nothing. Her face was still lifted, lips apart. Her arms darted out so that the long kimonosleeves spread like wings. Her whole body was poised as if for flight.
Cleeburg stepped back and looked at her.
She was part of the storm-torn night. Something about the abandon of the scene frightened him.
“Come in, honey, won’t you? Catch your death if you stay out like this.”
Her arms dropped. She turned and followed him indoors. But opening his own window a while later he saw her slim silhouette outlined against hers, upright with the dusky light of a lamp behind her.
The next day at their noon breakfast he asked what time she had gone to bed.
“I don’t know. The night was so fascinating, I stayed up with it until day came.” She looked as if she had not slept.
Cleeburg lit a prodigiously long cigar, twirled it between his lips and settled back benignly in an armchair by the fire.
“Well, children, I’m here for the afternoon. Drive over to the club or do whatever you like. Little ’Dolph’s going to get busy doing nothing.”
He reached over without altering his position of solid comfort and picked at random one of the Sunday papers piled on the table beside him. His broad face was suffused with a look of utter peace and relaxation. Even the ever-active cigar suspended activities.
Gloria’s lips touched his forehead.
“We’ll go for a walk—back at four-thirty for tea.”
[193]His eyes went after her the length of the foyer to a side door opening on the gravel walk—Gloria in dull green sport coat and tam, a fur piece swung carelessly from one shoulder; and the tall well-knit man in knickerbockers whose elastic step so easily fell in with hers. Had they followed farther they would have seen two people tramping in silence along a country road strewn with leaves that faded from green to mottled dead brown under a sullen sky. They would have marveled at the set look of the man’s mouth, the quivering of the woman’s. Those sympathetic prominent eyes of his, always seeking the most beautiful way to simulate human emotion, would have clouded with question had they read the pain in both pairs that stared straight along the road without meeting.
Half a mile or so the two walked and then abruptly the man turned.
“I tried to avoid it, Gloria.”
“I know.”
“But he took the matter out of my hands. You saw that.”
“Yes.”
“I could see he was hurt because I hadn’t been out this year. And little ’Dolph isn’t the sort of man you can hurt.”
“No.”
“We both know that, don’t we?”
She looked up at him without answer. Tears stood in her eyes.
He turned his from them and his lips went tighter.
“He’s the finest that walks in shoe leather,” he added.
[194]“I told him that the night we came in from the road. But I was telling it more to myself than to him. John, I felt just knowing that you—that you cared, was disloyal to him.”
“I wouldn’t have let you know it, Gloria. I was determined never to suggest it by so much as a word. Then when you went smash at the theater the day before we came in, I—somehow I didn’t have to tell you, did I?”
“No.” It was a whisper.
“I want you to believe I couldn’t be anything but square with little ’Dolph. You do, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why, even on the stage, I feel I haven’t the right to take you in my arms. And I must have shown it in some way or other. He noticed the difference at the dress rehearsal.”
She walked on silently at his side.
“But I’m glad you know. Don’t blame me for that. It’s the biggest, finest thing in my life, a thing I can’t help. I wouldn’t be human—”
“We must never mention it again, John,” she broke in and her voice came throbbing as it had the night before. “We can’t help it, just as you say. But we must keep it locked up tight, so that it will harm no one—not even ourselves. We owe that to him.”
“Yes. I’d made up my mind to that.”
“You mustn’t see me away from the theater. You mustn’tcome out here any more.”
“I dare say it’s better that way.”
Her eyes traveled along the leaf-strewn road, then[195]up to the sulky sky. And because they were not seeing quite clearly she stumbled and almost fell across a fallen trunk.
The man’s arm went round her, holding the slim body a moment. Then with a conscious tightening of muscles he drew it away and plunged on without a glance at her.
Presently he turned and in the look he gave her was a sort of desperate pleading.
“Is there any harm in telling you just once, Gloria, what you mean to me? I’ve been telling it to myself so long.”
“I—I don’t think you’d better. I—I don’t believe I could listen.”
He looked down. Her eyes, struck with terror, went up to his.
“Please—don’t.”
“It’s all right. I won’t.”
They came to a trail through the woods.
“Shall we take this back?” She turned into it.
He reached up and broke a last branch of red leaves that trickled like blood from a dying tree, and handed it to her.
“Have you noticed how intensely bright this live stuff looks when everything around it is dead or dying?”
Little ’Dolph a mile or so distant, dozed by the fire with cigar still sidling from the corner of his mouth. His dreams were hazy and disjointed. But Gloria as he had seen her on the balcony the night before drifted through them. The howling night swept by, tearing at silken robe and wild hair. She seemed to sway with it. The[196]clouds descended. He had a vague sense of effort to reach out, to hold her, that breathless catch at the heart of nightmare. Then suddenly he lost sight of her. A distant crash and he saw the clouds sweep her up and—while he stood rooted—carry her away.
He sat up with a gasp. The cigar fell from his lips. His heart thumped madly.
“What a shame! The banging of the screen door wakened him!” It was Gloria’s voice and she was coming toward him.
He gave a great sigh of relief.
“By godfrey, I’m glad to be awake! Come here, kiddo. Want to make sure I’ve still got you!”
She whisked the branch of scarlet leaves across his face.
“Just had a dream that took you right out of my young life and I couldn’t catch up!”
She pulled off tam and coat, swung to the arm of his chair.
“Can’t lose me, Dolphy dear!”
“By-the-way,” remarked Brooks, as Gloria served tea, “please don’t mind if I beat it back to town to-night. I’ve got to see my lawyer at tenA. M., and you won’t be going in until to-morrow noon, will you?”
“Yes, I do mind, by George!” came from ’Dolph. “We get you out here once in a blue moon and you can’t even stand it for one day. What do you want with a lawyer anyhow? Hold on to your pocket and attend to your own legal affairs.”
“But if John has to go in, dear, we mustn’t keep him.”
Brooks was looking down at the cap twirling between his hands.
[197]“See, old man! Your wife understands.”
“All right!” Cleeburg got up, peeved, and went to the bell. “What time do you want the car? I’ll drive you to the station. But hanged if I don’t think you pay us a mighty poor compliment!”
He still showed annoyance when Brooks went up to pack his bag.
“What’s got him, anyhow?” he put to Gloria. “Damned if I ask him again!”
All the way to the station he chewed on his cigar, responding laconically when his guest tried to make conversation. The little manager had a peculiar racial pride that John Brooks unwittingly had speared.
“Good enough to hand out his weekly stipend; good enough to give him his living!” kept spinning round the active brain. “But not good enough any more to sit with at the table! Prefers his Fifth Avenue cronies for that.”
As the car stopped, Brooks swung down, reached out a hand.
“Thanks, old man. Had a great time!”
“The hell you had!” said Cleeburg.
He drove back still turning over his guest’s desertion and madder every minute. When the car pulled up he sprang out, intent upon talking the whole thing over with Gloria. He crossed the veranda, opened the front door.
She was sitting in the chair he had occupied before the fire. Her body was bent forward, head lowered. He went nearer. She was stripping the branch she had brought in of its blood-red leaves. One by one she broke them off and dropped them into the fire. And her eyes never left them as they curled up and shriveled to a crisp.