“TODGERS INTRUDES” now went smoothly. Mark came to one of the last rehearsals, approved Russell’s method but, as they walked up Broadway, told Gurdy that this was a “lousy” play. All plays were just then nonsense beside “Captain Salvador.” Mark’s absorption seemed to exclude even Margot of whom the idolator once gently complained. The dark goddess had returned to town, been a week at the Fifty Fifth Street house and was sitting with Olive at the rear of the 45th Street Theatre. Her voice reached Mark clearly where he stood assembling the picture for a scene, a leg swung over the rail of the orchestra pit.
“She don’t seem so much interested in ‘Salvador,’ Gurd. Why’s that?”
“Rather heavy for her, perhaps.”
Mark rubbed his nose and accepted wisdom. A girl of eighteen mightn’t care for this tale of shipwrecked ruffians, frantic negroes, moonlit death. And what innocent girl of eighteen could know or believe that men got tired of women? Gurdy understood and was helpful, had found a[215] wailing negro song for the shipboard scene of the first act. Mark beamed at Gurdy, then turned to the stage and patiently corrected the six negro actors timid among the white folk of the big company, pathetic in sapphire and sage green suits.
“You boys in a circle ’round the table, left. Keep looking at Mr. Leslie.”
He picked spots for the grouping. His brown fingers pointed. He named attitudes, dropping his lids as he built the picture with glances at the water colour sketch in his hand. An intricate chatter began on the stage. Gurdy slipped up the aisle and joined Olive under the balcony.
“How careful he is,” she whispered, “like a ballet master.”
Gurdy nodded, “No one’ll move without being told to. The whole thing’s planned. He’s going to run the lights himself in Boston, next Monday.”
“You’ll go up there with him? He looks dreadfully thin.” His black height made a centre against the footlights. His mastery of this human paint was impressive, admirable. He visibly laboured, silent, listening. She asked, “Would he work as hard over an ordinary, commercial play?”
“No. Oh, he’d work hard but not as hard as this.”
Margot glanced across Olive, then at her watch.[216] She said, “Let’s clear out, Olive. Teatime.”
“I’d much rather stay here. Fascinating.”
“But you told Mrs. Marlett Smith you’d come.”
Olive sighed and gathered her furs. It was important that Margot should go to this tea at the Marlett Smith house. Mrs. Marlett Smith was a liberal, amusing woman who had met Mark by way of some playwright and had called on Olive at the seaside cottage. They left the theatre and Gurdy came to open the door of the blue car. To him Margot suddenly spoke, “How will dad open this silly thing in Boston, Monday night and get to Washington by Tuesday night to open ‘Todgers’?”
“We’ll be there,” he said and closed the door.
Olive looked back at his colourless dress, his shapely head and vanishing grave face with a frank wistfulness. “I don’t see why you should make such a point of annoying Gurdy. And why call this play silly when it’s so plainly good?... I’ve carefully refrained from asking you why you quarrelled with Gurdy. He behaves charmingly to you and keeps the peace.”
“Paying him back for being nasty about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’”
“But he’s not been nasty. He’s very sensibly given his opinion that it’s feeble. As it is.—The[217] man’s taking us down Broadway. Loathsome sewer!”
The motor slowly passed toward Forty Second Street and across that jam. Olive saw lean and stolid Englishmen stalking in the harsh, dusty November wind that blew women along in the whirling similitude of rotted flowers. Margot got notice, here. There was a jerk of male heads from the curb. Empty faces turned to the girl’s brilliance in rose cloth. A tanned sailor flapped his white cap. Yet in the Marlett Smith library on Park Avenue Margot was prettily discreet for half an hour below Chinese panels, among gayer frocks where she lost colour, merged in a fluctuation of dress. On the way home her restraint snapped into a “Damn!”
“Very stiff,” said Olive, “One reads about the American informality. Tea at Sandringham is giddy beside this. But Mrs. Marlett Smith’s clever. Who were those twins in black velvet who so violently kissed you?”
“The Vaneens. Ambrosine and Gretchen. Knew them at school. They come out in December.—But what maddens me is this everlasting jabber about France! Some of those girls know Gurdy. Their brothers were at Saint Andrew’s with him. He seems to have made himself frightfully conspicuous about Paris.—No,[218] I’m bored with Gurdy. If dad tries to make me marry him I’ll take poison and die to slow music. Such tosh! He made a gesture of enlisting—”
“You’re being silly,” Olive said, coldly hurt, “and I’m sick of the word, gesture. Pray, was the gesture of third rate artists and actors who wouldn’t leave their work anything madly glorious? I can understand a man conscious of great talent preferring to stick to his last. And I can understand a complete refusal to mix in the—abominable business. But I’ve no patience with dreary little wasters who shouted for blood and then took acetanilid to cheat the doctors. As for Gurdy’s military career he’s very quiet about it. I dislike this venom against Gurdy.”
Margot chuckled, “Perhaps I’m jealous,” and got down before the house. She opened the door with her latchkey and they entered a flow of minor music from the drawing room. Gurdy was playing. Mark leaned on the curve of the piano and his brown hands were deeply reflected in the black pool of its top.
“Listen to this, Olive. Nigger song Gurdy raked up for ‘Captain Salvador.’ Sing it, sonny. Don’t run off, Margot. Listen.” He caught the girl to him, held her cheek against his chin. A scent of mild sandal and cigarettes ebbed from the black hair into his nostrils. He was tired[219] after the tense rehearsal and chilled from half an hour in the cold of the Walling. This moving warmth and scent was luxury. Mark shut his eyes. Gurdy chanted in plausible barytone.
“Life is like a mountain railway,
From the cradle to the grave.
Keep yoh hand upon the throttle
An’ yoh eyes—upon—the—rail....”
It would sound splendidly in the dim forecastle of the first scene. It would float and die under the blue vault of the Walling. He had just seen the lights turned on a recession of faint silver rims in the dull cloud of that ceiling. He was still drugged by the sight. His theatre was like a desirable body promised to his arms. Gurdy played again the slow air in curious variations, flutters of notes. Mark opened his eyes to watch the slide of the long fingers on the keys. Olive was smiling.
“Delightful. Very moral, too. Sound advice. How well you play, Gurdy!”
“Always did,” said Mark, “He could play like a streak when he was ten. Come along up and have a fight with Mr. Carlson, daughter.”
Olive let Margot’s voice melt into the old man’s cackle above. Gurdy said, “We went to the Walling after rehearsal, Lady Ilden. Honestly, it’s a corker. The ceiling’s nearly finished. Theatres don’t last, worse luck. But there’s[220] nothing like it in the city. Mark’s worked like a pup over it.—How was your tea?”
“Very decent. Varieties of women, there. Almost no men. A débutante told me she admired Walt Whitman more than most English poets and was rather positive that he was English. I can’t understand the American tabu on Whitman.”
“Immoral.”
“But—good heavens!—I fascinated two elderly girls by telling them I knew Swinburne. Swinburne was lewd. Poor Whitman was merely rather frank.”
“But Algie was a foreigner,” Gurdy laughed, “so it was all right. Margot have a good time?”
Olive asked, “What were you and Margot rowing about in the library last night? I could hear her voice getting acid.”
Gurdy commenced a waltz and said, “We weren’t rowing. Mark asked me whether Cosmo Rand was in the British army. He wasn’t and I said so. She seemed to think I was sniffing at Rand and blew me up a little. That was all. We made peace. I rather like Rand, you know, now that he’s stopped making an ass of himself at rehearsals. Russell and I had lunch with him today. He talks well. He knows a lot about painting, for instance. These actors who’ve been all over the landscape and don’t think they’re[221] better than Richard Mansfield—pretty interesting. There’s not much to Rand but he isn’t a—a walking egotism.”
Olive laughed, “Come back to Margot. She’s pointedly offensive to you and rather assertive about it. I hope you’ll go on being patient and try to remember how young she is. You’re very mature for twenty-one. You never bray. I brayed very wildly at Margot’s age. I horribly recall telling Henry Arthur Jones how to improve his plays and one of my saddest memories is of telling a nice Monsieur Thibault what a poor novel Tha?s was. He quite agreed with me. I didn’t know he was Anatole France until he left the room. I’ve all the patience going with youth. You’re almost too mature.”
“Don’t know about being mature,” said Gurdy, “I’m not, probably. But every other book you read is all about youth—golden youth—youth always finds a way—ferment. Get pretty tired of it. Makes me want to be forty-nine. And some of the poets make me sick. Hammering their chests and saying, Yow! I’m young!... Not their fault. I’m not proud of being six foot one. Runs in the family.”
“That’s a very cool bit of conversation, old man. You’ve taken me away from Margot twice, very tactfully, so I’ll drop it. Play some Debussy. His music reminds me of a very handsome[222] man with too much scent on his coat. Can’t approve of it. Rather like it.”
He evaded discussions of Margot until Sunday night when he went with Mark to Boston for the opening of “Captain Salvador” there. On Monday night he sat, a spy, in the middle of the large audience. A critic had come from New York to see this play before it should reach the metropolitan shoals. Gurdy saw the slender, sharp face intent. The ten scenes of the Cuban romance passed without a hitch before the placid Bostonians. Mark was directing the lights that raised peaks of gloom on the walls, sent shimmerings along the moonlit beach where the hero squatted in a purple shadow. About him Gurdy heard appropriate murmurs. A fat woman whimpered her objection to the half naked celebrants of the Voodoo scene. An old man complained that this was unlike life. Two smart matrons chatted happily about a Harvard cabal against some friend while “Captain Salvador” effected his wooing. A thin boy in spectacles wailed an argument that true art wasn’t possible in a capitalistic nation. A girl giggled every time the sailors of the story swore and almost whinnied when the word, “strumpet” rattled over the lights. But this herd redeemed itself in heavy applause. The thin boy wailed a blanket assent to the merits[223] of the plot and the setting, “After all, Walling’s Irish and he studied under Reinhardt in Berlin. The Kelts have some feeling for values.” Still the fat woman thought, loudly, that the play didn’t prove anything and Gurdy decided that one of his future satires must be named, The Kingdom of Swine. He found Mark in high delight behind the scenes, snapping directions to his manager, his leading man and the electrician in the New Jersey singsong. “Have the tomtom some louder for the Voodoo, Ike. Bill, you send all the notices special delivery to the Willard in Washington. Mr. O’Mara’s in Hayti if the Transcript wants an interview. Beach scene blue enough, Gurdy? All right, Ed, I told you it was. Now, Leslie, take your fall at the end quieter, a little. You’re all right, the rest of it. Come along, Gurdy. Taxi’s waiting.” In the taxi, he cried, “Damn this lousy ‘Todgers’ thing, son! I want to stay here. People liked it, huh?”
“They did.—Oh, you’re Irish and you learned all your business from Reinhardt.”
“Sure! Blame, it on Europe!—My God, didn’t the tomtom business go like a breeze?—Oh, this ‘Todgers’ thing’ll be too bad. Tell you, I’ll play it in Washington and Philadelphia. Baltimore, if it don’t just roll on its belly and die.[224] Sorry if Margot gets sore.—She and Olive went to Washington s’afternoon, didn’t they, huh?—Was the ship scene light enough, sonny?”
He sat in their stateroom on the train, his eyes still black with excitement and drank watered brandy. He dreamed of “Captain Salvador’s” first night at the Walling and tremors of applause mounting to the blue vault of that perfected ceiling. He was so tired that he struggled, undressing.
“Mark, you’re thin as a bean! Nothing but some muscles and skin.”
Mark flexed his arms, beamed up at the tall boy’s anxiety and rolled into his berth. The mussed red hair disappeared under a pillow. Gurdy smoked and stared humbly.... This was surely half of an artist, laborious, patient, contriving beauty. The man had this strange perception of the lovely thing. He should do better and better. If his trade was that of the booth, the sale of charming sensualities, he raised it by his passion. He begot fondness. He created. Gurdy tucked the blankets over the blue silk pyjamas and planned a long talk on the purpose of the theatre for the morning, then wondered what that purpose was and put the lecture off. They fled all morning down the land and came to Washington in time for late lunch with Russell at the Shoreham where Mark halted to[225] look at a pretty, dark woman in the suave, grey lounge smelling of flowers, fell behind Gurdy and Russell, found himself suddenly lifting his hat to Cora Boyle. She wore a cloak banded with black fur and a gold hat too young for her paint. Mark smiled, rather sorry for the blown coarseness of her chin, asked how she liked California and heard her flat voice crackle.
“A nightmare! All these girls who were absolutely no one last week in ten thousand dollar cars! No, I’m glad they brought me east. I’m taking three days off to see Cosmo start this. Tells me it plays here the rest of the week, then Philadelphia.—When are you bringing it into New York?”
He shifted a little and said, “Can’t say, Cora. Hard to get a house in New York, right now. This thing I’ve got at the Forty Fifth Street is doin’ big business. Todgers’ll be on the road two weeks, anyhow, before I decide what’ll become of it—”
“What are you opening the Walling with?”
“‘Captain Salvador.’ Opened in Boston last night. Best play I’ve ever touched! Say, remind me to send you seats when it opens the Walling.”
“That’s dear of you.—But couldn’t you get one of the small houses for Cosmo? The Princess or the Punch and Judy? Intimate comedy. Cosmo[226] really does better in a small house. And—” she smiled—“you could take a bigger one after a month or so.”
He had an awed second of wonder. She’d been almost thirty years on the stage and she thought “Todgers Intrudes” a good play! He began to say, “But, do you think this will—” Then two men charged up to shake hands with the actress. Mark scuttled down the stairs toward the grill. If she was quarrelling with Rand her manner didn’t show it. “Cosmo really does better in a small house.” He joined Russell and Gurdy at their table, puzzled and said, “Say, if she’s fighting with Rand it’s funny she’d come down to see him open this flapdoodle.”
“Habit,” Russell shrugged, “They’ve been married twelve years. But are they fighting? I had breakfast with them this morning and she almost crucified herself because his tea wasn’t right.”
Mark wondered why Margot thought that Rand and the woman quarrelled. But he shed the wonder. He liked Washington especially as the pale city showed itself now in a vapour where the abiding leaves seemed glazed in their red and yellow along the streets. Olive knew people here. There was a tea with a British attaché. Margot’s rose cloth suit gleamed about[227] the dancing floor of the restaurant. Gurdy had friends who were produced, fell subject to Margot and came between the acts that night to lean over the girl’s chair in the box of the big theatre. “Todgers Intrudes” went its placid course. Rand gave, Mark fancied, an excellent imitation of an English conservative. The packed house laughed at the right points. Margot’s face rippled so eagerly that Mark wanted to kiss it and covertly held her hand below the rail. Why, this was the pretty, gentle sort of nonsense eighteen years would relish! A pity it had no staying wit. A pity this fragile, polished man she so admired wasn’t a real comedian. Mark looked at Gurdy’s stolid boredom and the fine chest hidden by the dinner jacket beyond Olive’s bare shoulders. It might be as well to let Gurdy tell Margot the play wouldn’t do for New York. Mark shrank from that. Gurdy could put the thing much better in his cool, bred fashion.—Here and there men were leaving the theatre with an air of final retirement. In the opposite box there was a waving of feathers. How well Cora Boyle could use a fan!—A youngster with curly orange hair slipped into his box as the second curtain fell. Gurdy introduced young Theodore Jannan to Olive and Margot, then to Mark. Mr. Jannan had come over from Philadelphia to do something[228] in Washington. This play—the Jannan heir bit off a “rotten”—was advertised as coming to Philadelphia next week.
“Opens there Monday,” said Mark.
“My mother’s giving a baby dance for my sister. Couldn’t you bring Miss Walling, Gurdy? Monday night.”
How smoothly Margot said she’d like to come to a dance at Mrs. Apsley Jannan’s house in Philadelphia! The nonsense of social position! An illusion. A little training, a little charm, good clothes.—A Healy, one of Margot’s cousins, had risen to be a foreman in one of the Jannan steel mills.—Gurdy had played football with this pleasant lad at Saint Andrew’s school. Who on earth would ever know or care that Margot and Gurdy were born on a farm? The last curtain fell. Margot wanted to dance. Russell came to join the party. They went to a restaurant and found a table at the edge of the oval floor. Margot’s yellow frock was swept off into the florid seething on Gurdy’s arm. Russell poured brandy neatly into the coffee pot and shrugged to Mark.
“Bad sign. Fifteen or twenty men left in the second act. We’ll have a vile time in Philadelphia, Lady Ilden. It’s a queer town on plays.—There come the Rands.”
A headwaiter lifted a “Reserved” sign from a table across the floor. Cora Boyle and her husband[229] appeared in the light threaded by cigarette smoke. The actress draped a green and black skirt carelessly, refused to dance with a British officer in a trim pantomime, bowed slowly to Mark who was taken with fright. She’d want to talk about this drivelling play and before her slight, quiet husband. He slipped a bill under the edge of Russell’s plate.
“Bring Olive back to the hotel will you Russell? I’m all in. ’Night, Olive.”
His retreat through the smoky tables was comic. Russell fingered his chin. Olive ended by laughing, “He’s ridiculously timid about her.”
The director patted his bald forehead and drank some coffee. He said, “It happens that he’s got some reason. Miss Boyle’s bad tempered and an inveterate liar. She’s fond of her husband and she seems to think this comedy will have a New York run. Mr. Walling means to let it die on the road, naturally. She won’t like that. She’ll talk. Her voice will be loud all up and down Broadway.”
“But—surely he’s callous to that sort of thing?”
“Do you see anything callous about him? I don’t.” The director nodded to the floating of Margot’s skirt. “This is the first time I’ve ever directed a play put on to please a débutante, Lady Ilden.—No, Mr. Walling seems mighty sensitive[230] to gossip.—And Cora Boyle’s in a strong position. She’s a woman—obviously—and she can make a good yarn. Spite, and so on. She’s quite capable of giving out interviews on the subject. She can’t hurt Mr. Walling but she might cause any quantity of gossip,—which he couldn’t very well answer. She can play the woman wronged, you see?”
“What a nation of woman worshippers you are!”
“Were,” said Russell, “We’re getting over it.”
“I don’t see any signs of it.”
Russell said, “You can’t send two million men into countries where women—well, admit that they’re human, not goddesses, anyhow, without getting a reaction. My wife’s a lawyer. She helped a young fellow—an ex-soldier—out of some trouble the other day and he told her she was almost as nice as a foreigner—Ten years ago if Cora Boyle had wanted to have a fight with Mr. Walling she could have taken the line that he was jealous of Rand and she’d have found newspapers that would print front page columns about it. She’d get about two paragraphs now.—But she probably has better sense. Beastly handsome, isn’t she?”
“Very—brutta bestia bella. Gurdy tells me she’s paid a thousand dollars a day to play Camille for the cinema. Why?”
[231]“Oh ... she’s the kind of thing a lot of respectable middle aged women adore, I think.—Look at them.”
There were many women in the rim of tables. They stared at the flaring green and black gown, at the exhibited bawdry of gold wrought calves, at the feathers of the waving, profuse fan. There was an attitude of furtive adventure in the turn of heads. They stared, disapproved, perhaps envied.
“‘Some men in this, some that, their pleasure take, but every woman is at heart a rake,’” Olive quoted.
The director laughed, “You’re right.—And I often think that the movie queens take the place of an aristocracy in this country. Something very fast and bold for the women to stare at. Now Rand, there, is the ideal aristocrat—in appearance, anyhow, don’t you think? And nobody’s looking at him. I wonder if Miss Walling would dance with me?”
He relieved Gurdy close to the Rand table. When the boy joined Olive she asked, “Mr. Russell isn’t a typical stage director, is he?... I thought not. One of the new school in your theatre? A well educated man?... Rather entertaining.”
“He writes a little. Been an engineer. Stage directors are weird. One of them used to be an[232] Egyptologist.—I say, help me keep Mark here the rest of the week, will you? He’s dead tired. Did he run when he saw Cora Boyle coming?&rd............