 CHAPTER IV. PINNELTES. Cora Boyle played Redwinter in London for two years. She began her run in May of 1908 with a popular English male star as her hero. He presently retired from the company, and Cosmo Rand replaced him. Olive Ilden wrote an opinion to Mark from her new house in Chelsea. It seems to me that your one-time wife is a competent second-rate actress. She, or someone near her, must have intelligence. She has perfectly applied our musical comedy manner to melodrama. She is languid and rude to the audience, and is enormously successful, naturally. Ambrose Russell is painting her. If you knew London, you would understand that to have Ambrose Russell paint one implies entire success. He alternates gaiety girls and duchesses, and has acquired a trick of wonderful vulgarity. I met Miss Boyle at his studio on Sunday. We talked about you, and she rather gushed. Her infantile husband stood by and said, raw there, at intervals, like an automatic figure on a clock. A pretty thing. Of course, I prefer London to Winchester. Ecclesiastical society is only amusing in Trollop. My husband got our house from a retired admiral, and it has a garden. I have fallen in love with him. My husband, not the admiral. He has written a book of naval tales on the sly, and to my horror, they are quite good. Having scorned him as a mere gentleman all these years, it upsets me to have to consider him as an artist. I hear from Ian Gale that your plays all make quantities of money, because they are utter rubbish in lovely settings, and that your house is an upholsterer's paradise. Very bad for your children, who are probably spoiled beyond hope or help. Mark wrote four pages of denial, and received, nonsense. Of course, you do not have courtesans to lunch, but leading ladies come and swoon on your drawing-room floor, and the children are pointed out in your central park as Mark Walling's brats. Your parasites fawn on them. Their world is made up of expensive motors, sweets, and an adoring idiot as God. The little boy reads theatrical reviews over his porridge, and the little girl probably does not know that she is mammal and liable to death, spanking, or lessons. They live in a treacle well. Your one-time wife has taken a house near me, and her pictures, eating breakfast in bed, with a palm on the pillow adorn the sketch. I danced with her husband last night. Coral Boyle's photographs in the London weeklies made old Carlson sneer. He lounged in Mark's library, and derided. A fine figure and a pair of black eyes, actress, sure, she makes pictures of herself. But what the hell else do folks want, huh? Just that. They want pictures. You say they want fine scenery and new ideas about lights and all? Bosh, son. They want to see a good-looking gal in good clothes, and not much clothes, with all the lights in the house jammed on her. Act. Make them cry a little, and they think it's acting. Margo will be the best actress in the United States when she's 20. Come here, Maggie, and tell me how old you are. Seven and a half, said Margo. And I don't want to be an actress. Huh, why not? Aunt Sadie says actresses aren't nice, Margo informed him. Carlson wrinkled his yellow face and chuckled out. Ask Mark what he thinks of him, sister. She turned her eyes up to Mark gravely and smiled. She was unlike her father, most like her mother. Mark bent and lifted her in the air, kissed her bare knees, and put her hair aside from the little ears, faintly red, delightfully chilled for his mouth from a walk in the park. She said, on his shoulder, ooh, that's a new stickpin, papa. Diamonds get them all, Carlson nodded. It's a sapphire, said Mark. Nice! Margo approved, and Mark felt glorified. Children were certainly a relief after the arid nonchalance of women who took money, jewels, or good rolls, and asked for more donations over the house telephone. Margo played with the sapphire square a moment, and then scrambled down from Mark's shoulder to his knee, where she sat admiring him while he wrote checks. He smiled at her now and then, let her blot signatures, and kissed her hands when she did so. You'd spoil a trick elephant, Carlson muttered. Ain't Gertie old enough to go to school? He started at Dr. Gary's last week. They've got him learning Latin and French, right off. What's Dr. Gary's? It's a school in 60th Street. Said Carlson. Private school? Well, you're right. Public schools teach hogwash. They got to. They teach hogs. But why didn't you send him to one of these schools out of town while you were at it? Get him out of New York. My glory! Mark cried. He's only nine. Margo corrected. Ten, Papa. He was ten in May. Then she told Carlson. Papa'd just die if Gertie went away to school. He told Miss Converse. She slid from his knee and curtsy to Carlson with, I must take my French lesson now, so good afternoon. She was gone out of the room before Mark could kiss her again. She was always within reach of kisses, and her warmth, curled on his lap, was something consolatory when he did send Gertie away to St. Andrew's school in September 1910. Filet, his broker, and his lawyer advised the steppe. All of Ilden wrote to him, I am glad you have done the right thing. God knows I am no crier up of the public school system, but a public school, I forget what you call private kennels for rich cubs in the States, is the only thing for a boy in your situation. Ian Gale tells me that Gertie is rather clever. I can imagine nothing worse than to be the son by adoption of a theatrical manager and a day scholar at a small New York school. But I know how miserable you are. Everyone has sentimental accretions. I dislike seeing old women run down by motors myself. No, I know how badly you feel just now. But these be the fair rewards of them that love, you know. My own son is, of course, as the archangels. I hear through his housemaster at Harrow that he smokes cigarettes and bets on all the races. Mark tried to take Gertie's absence with a fine philosophy. His broker and his lawyer assured him that St. Andrew's was the best school in the country. But the red Georgian buildings spread on the New England Meadow, and the impersonal stateliness of the lean head master seemed a cold nest for Gertie. He missed the boy with a dry and aching pain that wasn't curable by work on five new plays, Margot's plump warmth on his knee, or contrived brief intoxication. All his usual enchantments failed. He wore out the phonograph plates of the Donce macabre, and the purgant sunrise. He worried wretchedly, and the disasters of October and November hardly balanced his interior trouble. Two, the more expensive two of the five Carlson and Walling productions failed. Carlson cheerfully indicated the shrinkage of applicants for jobs, hopeful playwrights and performers, in the office above the 45th Street Theatre. Mark regretted twenty thousand dollars spent for shares in the Terrace pictograph company. Yet young Terrace was a keen fellow, and Carlson thought something might come of motion pictures after a while. His friends sighed about Mark that the show business was a gamble, and on visits to the farm Mark tried to be gay. A military academy had been built in Fayetteville on a stony field owned by Eddie Bernamer, the only heritage from Bernamer's Norwegian father. Gertie's brothers were transferred to this polished school, and Mark was soothed in thinking that he'd made his own people grandees. He wished that he could ape the composure of the Bernamers, and said so on a visit near Christmas time. But great Caesar, Bernamer blinked, kicked bald snow from a boot heel. This St. Andrews is a good school, ain't it, even if it's up by Boston. The buildings are fireproof, ain't they? Gertie can't get out at night and raise Ned. Then what's got into you? Oh, but by God, Eddie, I miss him. You're a fool, said his brother-in-law, staring at Mark. You're doing the right thing by the boy. You always do the right thing, like you done it by us. Sadie and me have got seven kids, and I love them all. They got to grow up. Stop being a fool. You don't look well. Then is a rail. Business bad? We lost about forty-five thousand in two months. That counten in the thousand you gave Sadie for her birthday? No, Lord no. Bernamer looked about the increased wide farm and the tin-roofed garage where Mark's blue motor stood pompous beside the cheap family machine. He drawled. Well, you've sunk about twenty-five thousand right here, bud. You let up on us. Save your money and set up that theater of your own you want to. And I'm making some money on the side. How? The farmer grinned. That no-good Healy boy, Margot's mama's cousin, comes soft-soaping around for a loan last summer. He and another feller have got a kind of music hall place in Trenton. A couple of girls that's seeing in one of those moving picture machines. They wanted five hundred to put in more chairs. I fixed it, I'd get a tenth of the profit, and they've been sending me twenty-five and thirty dollars a week ever since, and probably cheating the eye-teeth out of me. Don't know what folks go to a place like that for, but they do. Funny, said Mark. A bugle blew in the gray bulk of the military academy. Boys came threading out across the flat snow between ice-girt tree trunks. A triple rank formed below the quivering height of the flagpole where the wind afflicted the banner. The minute shimmer of brass on the blue uniforms thrilled Mark. The flag rippled down in folds of a momentary beauty. He sighed and turned back to the pink-papered living room where dirty small, fat-legged sisters were clotted around Margot's rosy velvet on a leather lounge. Old Walling smoked a sickening charoute and smiled at all this prettiness. Margot's black hair was curled expansively by the damp air. She sat regally, telling her country cousins of Martin's shop where Mark bought her clothes. She kissed everyone goodbye when Mark's driver steered the car to the door and told Eddie Burnamer how well his furred moleskin jacket suited him. In the limousine she stretched her bright pumps on the foot warmer beside Mark's feet and said, Oh, you've got some color now, Papa. Have I? Cold air. Do you know you say now and cow, daughter, just like you lived on the farm year round? Margot gave her queer chiming chuckle, which was like muffled Chinese bells. Do I? Pure New Jersey, honey. I used to. Mrs. Lemoine used to guide me about it when I was a kid. Miss Converse says Guy is slang, Margot murmured. So it is, sister. We ought to go to England some summer pretty soon and let Miss Converse visit her folks. I'd love to. I've never been abroad, she said, gravely stating it as though Mark might know. And everyone goes abroad, don't they? And what would you do abroad? She considered one pump and fretted the silver buckle with the other heel. I'd see people, Papa. What people, sis? Oh, she said, everyone. It set him thinking that she lived pent in his house with her stiff alien governess. She was infinitely safe so, but she might be bored. He recalled hot and stagnant evenings on the farm when his mind had floated free of the porch-steps and his father's drawl into a paradise of black-haired nymphs and illustrious warriors dressed from the engravings of the centennial Shakespeare. Perhaps she should go to school. He consulted the governess, was surprised by her agreement, began to ask questions about schools for small girls. Miss Thorns, said his broker, Valet. She'll really be taught something there. Miss Thorn was my wife's governess. I'll see if I can manage. Manage what? The broker clicked his cigarette case open, shut it, and laughed. You know what I mean, Walling? No, I don't. It was one thing getting Gertie into St. Andrews, the headmaster's a broad-minded man. My dear boy, you're Walling, Walling of Carlson and Walling, and you used to be a matinee idol. I don't like hurting your feelings. You'll mean you'll have to go down on your knees to this Miss Thorn to get her to take Margo. The broker said, not exactly down on my knees, Walling, it'll have to be managed. The school's a corporation and my wife owns some stock. Mark groaned and was driven uptown thinking sourly of New York. Things like this made socialists, he fancied, and looked with sympathy at an orator on a box in Union Square. But Gertie was arriving by the five o'clock train at the Grand Central Station, and the lush swirl of the crowd on Fifth Avenue cured Mark's spleen. Snow fluttered in planes of brief opal from the depth of assorted cornices above the exciting lights. A scarlet car crossed his at 34th Street, and bore a rigid, revealed woman in emerald velvet, like a figure of pride and a luminous shell. Her machine moved with his up the slope. Mark examined her happily. She chewed gum with the least moment for white and vermilion cheeks. He despised her, and felt strong against the pyramidal society in which Walling, of Carlson and Walling, was disdained. A cocktail in the Manhattan Bar helped. The yellow place was full of undergraduates bustling away from Harvard and Yale. The consciousness of dull, trim boots and the black, perpetual decency of his dress raised Mark high out of this herd. At least he knew better than to smoke cigarettes with gold tips, and the oblique, racy colors of neckties had no meaning for him beyond godliness. He strolled to the clabbards and the icy, labyrinthine bewilderment of the station, found the right gate, and beheld uncountable ladies gathered together with children in leather gators, chauffeurs at attention smoking furtively. Here he knew was good breeding collected to take charge of its sons. The cocktail struggled for a moment with the cold air. Mark retired to the rough wooden wall and watched this crowd. The mingling voices never reached plangency. The small girls and boys stirred like low flowers in a field of dark human stalks. Colors this winter were somber. The women walked with restraint, with tiny gestures that revealed nothing, with smiles to each other that meant nothing. He had a feeling of deft performance, and a young fellow at the wall beside Mark chuckled, lighting a cigarette. A lot of rich dames waiting for their kids from some goddamn school up in Boston Sea. Mark nodded. The young fellow gave the grouped women another stare across the tight knees of his sailor's breeches. The nostrils of his shapely short nose shook a trifle. He tilted his flat cap further over an ear and winked comradely at Mark. Wonder who the kids' fathers are, huh? A lot of rich dames. He spat and added. Well, you can't blame them so much. Their husbands are all keeping those chorus girls. But it's too much money, that's what. If they'd got to work some and cook and all, they wouldn't have time for this society stuff. It's too much money. If they'd got to cook their meals, they wouldn't have time for carrying on with all these actors and artists and things. He broke off to snap at a girl who came hurrying from a telephone booth. Say, what in hell, making another date? Honest, I was just phonein' mama, the girl said. You took a time. Phonein' her what? He scowled, dominating the girl. Huh? The girl argued. I got to tell her something, ain't I, Jimmy? I told her I was goin' to his show with a girlfriend. Some friend, said the sailor, laughed at himself and tramped off with this girl under an arm. The girl's cheap suit of barrel cloth shook out a scent of cinnamon. Mark sighed. She was young and pretty and shouldn't lie to her mother about men. But perhaps her mother was bad-tempered, illiberal. Perhaps the flat was crowded with a preposterous family and exuded this slim thing often, hoping a fragment of pleasure. A man couldn't be critical. Mark went to meet Gertie and immediately forgot all discomforts in seeing that the boy had grown an inch. That the lashes about his dark blue eyes were blackening, in hearing him admit that he was glad to be at home again. Gertie's schoolmates had sisters at Miss Thorn's, it seemed, and Mark waited, fretting, through the Christmas holidays until his broker wrote that Miss Thorn would be pleased to have Margo as a pupil. Miss Converse, the governess, asked Mark Bluntly how he had managed this matter. You Americans are extraordinary, she said. You're so essentially undemocratic, it's shocking, but we must get Margo some decent frocks directly. The bill for Margo's masked Christmas clothes lay on his desk. Mark stated, protesting, but I've been meaning to talk of this for some time, said the governess. Her clothes? Her clothes? My people were quite rich, you know, and I had some things from Paris, but really, oh really, Mr. Walling, you mustn't let her have every pretty frock she sees. I must say you've more taste than most women, quite remarkable. But what will there be left for the child when she comes out? He wanted to answer that no frock devised of man could make Miss Converse other than a bulky, angular female, but gave his meek consent to authority. He resented the dull surges and linens of Margo's school dress, and Sunday became precious because he saw her in all glory, flounced in rose and sapphire. She was a miracle. She deserved brilliancies of toned silk to set off the pale brown of her skin, the crisp thickness of her hair. But in June, on the Cedric, he heard one woman say to another, positively indecent like a doll, when he walked the decks with Margo and the other women's, but she's quite lovely, didn't assuage him that tart summary of Margo's costume. An elderly actress told him, my dear boy, you mustn't overdo the child's clothes, and a fat lady from Detroit came gurgling to ask where he bought things for Margo. He knew this creature to be the wife of a motor king, and looked down at her thoughtfully. I suppose you have daughters yourself. Yes, three, all of them married, but they still come to me for advice. Mastens, I thought so. Thank you very much. He watched her purple linen frock ruck up in lumps, as her fat knees bent over the brass sill of a door, and pitied her daughters. He was playing poker in the smoke room when Gertie slid into the couch beside him, and sat silently observing the game. The boy was lately thirteen and gaunt. His silence coded an emotion that Mark felt, disturbing as the chill of an audience on an opening night. Gertie was angry. The milky skin below his lips twitched and wrinkled. The luncheon bugle blew. The game stopped, and when the other players rose, Mark could turn to him. Was that fat woman in tortoiseshell glasses talking to you? The boy demanded. Yes. Well, it was a bet. I was reading in the parlor place. It was a bet. One of the women bet you got Margo's things in New York, and the rest of them said Paris, and that fat hog, Gertie's voice broke, said she didn't mind slumming. So she went off and talked to you, and they all said Margo looked like a poster. This was horrible. Mark saw some likeness between Margo's pink splendor, and the new poster's clever people made for him. He must be wrong. He uncertainly fingered the pile of poker chips and asked Gertie, Do you think sisters too dressed up? Gertie loosed a sob that slapped Mark's face with its misery, and dashed his hand into the piled chips. He said, Don't give a damn what they say about her. Hate hearing them talk about you that way. Mark waited until the nervous sob slacked. Then he asked, Do they ever talk about me at your school, Sonny? No. Oh, one of the masters asked me why you didn't put on some play. Is there a play called The Cherry Orchard? Russian, it wouldn't run a week. Mark piled up the chips and said, I may be all wrong, anyhow. Don't you bother, Son, God bless you. Olive Ilden gave him her view, while Margo and Gertie explored the garden that opened from her Chelsea drawing room. She sat painting her lips with a perfumed stick of deep red, and mimicked his draw. No, her things aren't too bright, old man. She isn't too much dressed up. It's merely that this thin face time of hours isn't dressed up to her. It's burgerdom. Prudence, it's the 19th century. It's the tuppany-happany belief that dullness is respectable. Hasn't she some Italian blood? Now Joan, my rich a daughter, simply revels in doubtiness. She's only happy in a jersey or girlguide's rubbish. She's at Cheltenham, mixing with the British flapper. When she's at home she drives me into painting my face and putting dyed attire on my head. If I had to live with Margo I shouldn't wear anything gayer than taupe. He stared out at Margo, whose pink frock revolved above her gleaming silver buckles on the crushed shell of the walk. Olive saw his face light, attaining for the second a holy glow. It was a window in the wall of dark night. He looked and doted. The woman wondered at him. He had all the breathless beauty of a child facing its dearest toy. His gray eyes dilated. In her own eyes she felt the dry thread of tears and said, Old man, I'm sorry for you. Why? Because you're a deer and because you're a pariah. I don't know that all this garden party petting is good for our player folk. But over in your wilderness no one seems to investigate the stage except professors and the police. It must be sickening. What'll become of Margo when she's grown up? It had begun to worry him on the Cedric. He loosely thought that her friends from Miss Thorne School would be kind to her, wouldn't they? He said, she's only ten, Olive. And sat brooding. It wasn't fair. Smart society, the decorous women of small gestures, hadn't any use for him. He looked at Olive, who wrote letters to him and called him old man. She wrote books. She knew all the world. She had been to the king's court and laughed about it. He went to shelter in her strange kindness inside. She ought to have. She ought to go anywhere she wants to. She probably will if there's anything in eyelashes, said Olive. And Gertie will go anywhere he wants to by the shape of his jaw. I've been dissecting American society with horrific interest. It seems to have reached a lower level than British. You haven't even an intelligent bohemia. There ain't many literary people, Mark reflected, and they mostly seem to live in Philadelphia and Indiana anyhow. Or over here. What's a man to do? I can't. You can't do anything. Whistle the children in. There's a one-man show, stage settings, Italian. I haven't seen them, and you should. She threw the stick of paint away and said about cheering him. She liked him, muddled in his trade, laboring after beauty, unaware of his own odd sweetness. She gave up the last weeks of the season, guiding him about London, watching him glow when Margot wanted a scarf of orange silk at Liberties, when Gertie demonstrated his Latin not badly before a tomb in St. Peter's. Margot was the obvious idol, something to be petted and dressed. But the children had a rich attraction of her own, graces of placid curves, a quiet loveliness that missed stupidity. You don't like Margot? Olive told Gertie in a waste of the British Museum. The boy lied. Of course I do. In his cracked voice. But Olive took that as the product of good schooling, like his easy performance of heirs on the piano. He was jealous of Margot, and showed it so often that the woman wondered why Mark didn't see. But this wasn't the usual boy. You let him read anything he likes, she scolded Mark. Sure, what's the harm? I haven't got the contests draw lateaks at the house or any of those things. Aunt Edith used to make me read the Book of Kings when I was a kid. Oh, Gerd knows that babies don't come by express, said Mark. He's lived in the country too much. I thought the American peasantry entirely compounded on the Puritan values, old man. You missed your guess then. You read a lot of American novels, Olive. Some day or other some writer is going to come along and write up the American country town like it is. The police will probably suppress the book. My father and Gertie's mama are sort of scared because I've got the kid at a rich school. You mustn't believe all the stuff you see in the American magazines and papers about the wicked rich, Olive. I've met some of the rich ruets at suppers and so on. But any of them alongside some of the hired men and clerks and things that were in my regiment in Cuba or alongside Tommy Grover that's Blacksmith at Fayetteville and they'd look like Sunday school teachers. I sort of wish the poor folks in the United States had leave off yopping about the wicked rich and look after their own backyards a while. No, I don't take any stock in this country virtue thing. The only girl in Fayetteville that ever run off with a wicked drummer had morals that'd scare a chorus girl stiff. Who's the fellow that hangs around the stage door of a musical show? Nine times out of ten, he's a kid from the country that's won $20 at poker. Who's the fellow that well seduces the poor working girl? One in a hundred, it's a rich welp in a dinner jacket. Rest of the time, it's the boy in the next flat. When I was acting and used to get mashed notes from full women. Were they from women on Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue? Not much. Stenographers and ladies in Harlem that had husbands traveling a good deal. You believe in talking about these kind of things out loud and I expect you're right. Gertie's not handsome, said Olive, but he's attractive, charming eyes, and women are going to like him a goodish bit by and by, and man is fire. What moral precepts are you going to—just what my father told me. I'm going to tell him that he mustn't make love to a married woman and that he mustn't fool after an innocent girl unless he means matrimony. But God knows it's getting pretty hard to tell what an innocent girl is these days. Nine-tenths of them dress like coquettes. Old man, where did you pick up that very decent French accent? Olive saw his blush slide fleetly from his collar to the red hair and added, I hope it was honestly come by. You're a good deal of a puritan for a sensualist. Oh, I am a sensualist, I guess, but I ain't a hog. Olive said, No, that's quite true, my son. There's nothing poor sign about you. My brother has a house this season and he's giving a dance tonight. There might be some pretty frocks. Didn't know you had a brother. Sir Gerald Shellmardine of Shellmardine Cross Hampshire. He's rather dreary. Will you come? She took him to several evening parties and his wooden coldness before a crowd was enchanting. It occurred to her that individuals wearied the man. He eyed pretty women, striking gowns, studied the decoration of ballrooms. He confessed, I'll never see any of them again and shouldn't remember them if I did. My memory for people is no good unless they're interesting to look at. My God, look at that girl in purple, her dressmaker ought to be hung, skirt's crooked all across the front. He gave the girl in purple his rare frown, then asked, Well, where's someplace in France on the seashore where I can take the kids until August? She recommended Roy Anne and had from him a letter describing Margot's success among the ladies of a quiet hotel. His letters of 1912 and 1913 were full of Margot. Snapshots of the child dropped often into the thick blue envelopes. When he sent his thin book, Modern Scenery, in the autumn of 1913, it was dedicated to my daughter. The bald prose was correct. The photographs and plates were well selected. Mark wrote, Gertie went over it with a fine-tooth comb to see if the grammar was okay. Mr. Carlson is not well and we have four plays to bring in by December. Spoke at a lunch of ladies' dramatic society yesterday. Forgot where I was and said, Hell, in the middle of it. They did not mind. Things seem to be changing a lot. I'm pretty worried about one of our plays. Olive saw in the New York Herald some discussion of this play and a furious reference to it on the editorial page, signed by a clergyman. This was at Christmas time when she was entertaining her tiresome brother at Ilden's house in Suffolk. She folded the newspaper away, meaning to explore the business. She forgot the accident and the hurry of her attempt to reach a Scotch country house where her daughter Joan died of pneumonia on New Year's Day. The shock sent Olive into gray seclusion. Her husband was on the china station with his cruiser. She suddenly found herself worrying over the health of her son, then in the fifth form at Harrow. So took a cottage in Harrow Village and there reflected on the nastiness of death while she wrote her next novel. The cottage was singularly dismal and the daughters of the next dwelling were pretty girls of 13 and 14 with fair hair. Sentimental analogy is the bane of life, she wrote to her husband. I went to town yesterday for some gloves and saw the posters of Peter Pan on a hoarding in Baker Street. Joan liked it so. So I went to the theatre and squandered five sovereigns and stalls and gave the tickets to these wretched girls who would infinitely prefer a cinema naturally. However, I managed to laugh on Saturday. The news had just reached Mark Walling by way of Ian Gale who was in the States trying to sell his worst and newest play. Mark cabled me a hundred words, quite incoherent and most inappropriate. Three days later Olive came in from a walk and Mark opened the door of the stupid cottage. When she drew her hands away from his stupid face they were hot and wet. But my dear boy, she said presently, what blessing brought you over in the middle of your season, too. I'm in trouble. See anything in the papers about the mayor stopping a play we put on? I don't blame the mayor for a minute. Mr. Carlson wanted it. Well, it was stopped and some of the newspapers took it up. And then Mr. Carlson had sort of a stroke. His mind's all right but his legs are paralyzed, won't ever walk again. His voice drummed suddenly as if it might break into a sob. He passed his fingers over the red hair and went on. I've got him up at my house. Of course, said Olive. Sure, the doctors say he'll last four or five years maybe. Say, you've always said we're a nation of prudes. Look at this. And he dragged from a black pocket a note on formal paper. Olive read, The Thorn School, Madison Avenue in 66th Street, December 28th, 1913. My dear Mr. Walling, will you be so good as to call upon me when it is possible in order to discuss Margaret's future attendance? It seems kindest to warn you that several parents have suggested that. What is this nonsense? Olive asked. What's the child been doing? Doing? Nothing. It's the damn play. You mean there were women who seriously asked Ms. Thorn to have Margaret withdrawn because you'd produced a risqué farce? But that's— His wrath reached a piteous climax in. Oh, damn women anyhow. Well, I took her out. My stockbroker could have fixed the thing up. What's the use? Well, I brought her over with me. She's at the Ritz. What's the best girl school in England? Olive said, Oh, I'll take her. Saw him smile and began to weep. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Of the Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer Chapter 5 Margo Gertie Bernamer kept his twentieth birthday in a trench. The next week his regiment was withdrawn from the line to a dull village where Gertie was taking a warm bath in a zinc tub behind the marie when a German airplane crossed above and lifted his attention from a red cross copy of the Brooke Carruth which he read while he soaked. He dropped the dialectics of George Moore and watched. Then saw the whitewashed wall of the yard bend in slowly, its cracks blackening. He spent a month in hospital getting the best of a wandering deep wound that began in his right hip and ended in his armpit. He wrote to Mark, I keep trying to remember a quotation from Twain's Tramp Abroad, Not by war's shock or war's shaft, Shot with a rock on a raft. They dug a piece of zinc out of me. I feel fairly well. Mrs. Tilford Arbuthnot has the YMCA cafeteria in Bordeaux. Her brother was with me at St. Andrews. She brings me novels and things. I think she has a secret passion for you. She says you were a great actor. My nurse also thinks you were. Her name is Zippa Coe and she looks it. She says the immorality of French women is too awful for words. She is coming to take my temperature. The temperature displeased the nurse and Gertie passed into a daze. The wet hemlocks beyond the window sometimes turned serice inexcusably. Pneumonia succeeded his influenza. Through all this lapse he meditated and drew toward a belief that life was a series of meaningless illusions, many painful. He expanded all the worlds a stage. Suicide wasn't universal as some of the players acquired a thrilling interest in their parts. Rose to be directors, Wilson's, Northcliffs, Millerans. It was satisfactory to know this at 20. His education was complete in its departments, passion, athletic, and philosophical. St. Andrews School, two and a half years of Yale in Smart Company, the miscellany of his regiment. He must certainly begin maturity as a critic. He lay composing an essay on the illusory value of passion in a loop of paradoxes which vanished as his pulse improved. Then he was conscious that a surgeon took interest in him. Order lease came from the hospital adjutant inquiring. Gertie sat up, read the papers, and accepted 5,000 francs in mauve and blue bills from a bank agent. It seemed that Mark had run him to earth by cabling. Soon he was uniformed again, and given orders that assigned him to duty in a French military bureau. There Gertie found Mark's broker, decorated as a major. Of course I got you up here, said Major Ville, why not? But, with recovery, Gertie had shed some sense of illusions. He stood thinking of his regiment rather sourly, rather sadly. The broker-major grunted, rot Gertie, you're all Mark's got son, and all that. Dare say Margot will marry some Englishman, anyhow, it's all over. Bulgaria's on the skids. Mark thinks too much of you. Gertie was subtly pleased. He stood thinking of Mark fondly, with annotations in contempt. Mark was nothing but a big blunderer among the arts. A man who couldn't see the strength of Russian drama or disillusioned comedy, who didn't admire Granville Barker's plays. But if Margot stayed in England, Gertie could steer his uncle toward proper productions. Mark meant well, very well. He had done some fine things, had a feeling for vesture, anyhow. I see the celebrities people have bought the terrorist pictograph, said Major Ville. Exchange of stock, funny. Mark hates the movies, so he makes twenty thousand a year off them. And the movie people give him fifteen thousand for that rotten gale play. Here, take this stuff and translate it. I can probably get you a pass over to London, if you want to see Margot. Gertie didn't want to see her. His last view of Margot had been in the stress of her removal from Miss Thorne's school. Mark had gone five times to England on visits of a month. Reported her beautiful, witty, petted by Mrs. Olden, by Mrs. Olden's friends. But he wrote her a note dutifully and got an answer in three lines. Glad you were out of the silly mess, try to run over. Frightfully rushed, catching a train for Devon. More later. He was not offended. He thought that Margot disliked him, as he disliked her. He threw the note into the wastebasket and went on translating French political comments into English. The armistice broke out on the third week of his employment. The bureau became a negation of labour. Gertie roamed contentedly about the feverish, foolish city with various friends, young officers, sergeant majors on agreeable posts. He was tall, still pallid from sunless convalescence. His uniform happened to fit a long, loosely moving body, and he liked dancing. He equally observed male diversion, with his dark blue eyes, and was often diverted. This might be the collapse of known society. The beginning of a hygienic and hard-worked future. This churning of illusions might bring something fresh. Men might turn to new programs of stupidity, exhausting the old. He danced and was courted. He wrote to Mark, choosing words. There will be plays about this, I suppose. I do not think anyone will believe it fifty years from now. It is an upheaval of cheap pleasure. I keep thinking how Carlson calls people hogs. He hesitated, continued. I do not know that there is an excuse for all of it. Some of the Americans make bigger hogs of themselves than is necessary. Then he destroyed the letter. After all, Mark was your typical patriot. He took America seriously. The American soldiers seriously. The American Red Cross had profited by his sentiment. There was no point in hurting Mark. Gertie wrote a gay tale of driving through Paris in a vegetable cart with a drunken Australian colonel and went to dine at Lucas. From Lucas, his party retired to the Opera Comique, stopped to drink champagne in the bar, and stayed there until it wasn't worthwhile to hear the last act. And, said a youth from San Francisco, we can go to Ariana Joyce's, she's giving a party. But she's dead, Gertie objected. Damn healthy corpse, come ahead and see if she's dead. They floated in a taxi cab along Paris. The machine slipped from the lavender rush of some broad street, up a slope, and Gertie stumbled into a brilliance of laughing people, where his guide pushed him toward a green dais and hissed. She won't know you from Adam, tell her you're from Chicago. Her rounded beauty had come to death under much fat. She lulled in a red chair waving a peacock fan. Gertie's friend kissed the arm she thrust out and told her, you look awfully well, Miss Joyce. The dancer nodded, beaming down at her painted feet in their sandals of blue leather. Through her nose, she said, feeling fine. Then, in throaty refinement, do get choked erect to dance. She's so difficult now she's had a success, so very difficult Rodin used to say. Her empty and tired stare centered on Gertie. With a vague dignity, she asked, do I know you? Corporal Bernamers from Chicago, the guide said. Miss Joyce planted a thumb under her chin and drawled. De mom pays. Then her eyes rolled away. She reached for a silver cup on a table and forgot her guests. Looking back, Gertie saw her famous head thrown back and, for a moment, comely as she drank. Baxed, said his friend, jerking a hand about to show the walls of gray paint where strange beasts cavorted among spiked trees, above the mixed and colored motion of the crowd. An American was playing ragtime at the gold piano in a clot of women. Choutaurec was teaching a British aviator some new dance. Beyond, a mass of women and officers surrounded a lean shape on a divan. They gazed, gaped, craned at the young man. His decorations twinkled in the glow. His blue chest stirred when he spoke and his teeth flashed. Gertie's companion murmured. They say he's got ten times more sense than most prize fighters. I think that thin man's Bernstein, the one in the dinner jacket. You get drinks in the next room. Oh, there's a lixie. He ran off. Gertie slid through the mingling harlots and warriors into the next cooler room, fringed with men drinking champagne. An American colonel glared at him over a glass, shifted the glare back to a handsome ensign who had pinned a blonde girl in a corner. Gertie found a tray covered with sandwiches and ate one, pondering. He wondered whether the ensign would go on trying to kiss the girl if he knew that she had been, last month, on trial for the technical murder of an octogenarian general. Well, morals were a losery, too. Someone slapped his shoulder. He saw Ian Gale. The playwright was dressed as a British captain. Intelligence, he said. I'm too old and adipose for anything else. And we shouldn't be here, should we? A poisonous place. Funny mixture. Pride, said Gale. That poor woman can't stand being neglected, so she gives these atrocious parties. But it's nice running into you, old son. I had a letter from Mark yesterday. He told me you were here, and I was coming to look you up tomorrow in any case. I'm just from London. Oliver Vilden and Margot are hoping you'll get leave to come over for Christmas. Can't you? I don't see how I can, sir. But do try. I think you cheer Oliver up. Margot's a jolly little thing, but frightfully busy, celebrating the peace. How decent of Mark to let her stay with Oliver. I fancied he'd take her back to the States directly the war began. Submarines, Gertie said. But why does Mrs. Olden need cheering up, sir? She used to be an awfully cheerful sort of person. Oh, said Gale. Her boy, Bobby. I hadn't heard he... Fella year ago. Do try to run over. How pretty Margot is. Gertie ate another sandwich, correcting champagne. There would be long allusions after this war. Grudges idealized memories of trivial folk. But he was sorry for Oliver Vilden. He said, I'll try to get over. I'll shoot a wreck, had run through the doorway, yelped, Ariane va danser, messieurs, dames, and darted out again. What did that incontinent little brute say? Gale asked. I think Miss Joyce is going to dance, said Gertie. It's disgusting, the Englishman snorted. Some cat always flatters her into dancing, and the poor woman falls on her face. Don't go. The doorway filled with watchers. Women giggled. Someone played slowly the first bars of the Volga Barge song. There was an applause of murmur, then a thud. She's fallen, said Gale. And suddenly Gertie remembered that this was an American, that he had seen her dance to the jammed ecstasy of the metropolitan. The women in the doorway squealed their amusement. The crowd parted, and he saw the green gauze wrapping her limp body, as two Frenchmen carried her back to her throne. The crowd applauded, now, swine, said Gale. Gertie summoned up his philosophy and shrugged. The young prize-fighter came through the press and snapped to a civilian. Je me sois vétiennes. Maïs. C'est nos yeux bons. Elle était artiste. Voit-t-où? Allien j'ai fil. The boy's right, said the playwright, sickening. Come along. They passed through the beginning of a dance, in the great chamber, and down the stairs into an alley, where motors were lined. In a taxi cab, Gale concluded, end of an artist. Gertie thought this sententious, but a queer oppression filled him. It was hideous that anyone should finish as a butt with a prize-fighter for apologist. Of course, life was nothing but a meaningless spectacle. Money, something to drink, a dancing floor drew this crowd together. The fat dancer was rather funny, if one looked at all over. Maïs could contrive the whole effect on a stage if he wanted. Maïs writes he's almost decided to build his theater in West 47th. I wish he'd hurry, said Gertie. He's been planning the walling for years. Funny, he told Mr. Froman all about it just before the Lusitania. Poor Froman, the Englishman murmured, awfully decent to me. There should be a certain decency, a cool restraint in life, the philosopher mused. He thought of this next morning when Chote-Rec telephoned hopefully for a loan of a thousand francs. By noon he had discovered that he was flatly homesick for Marc, and thought of Margot in London as the nearest familiar creature. The bureau permitted his departure. He crossed a still channel and made his way to London in the company of an earnest Red Cross girl from Omaha who wanted Fontainebleau turned into a reform school for rescued Parisian street walkers. She had a general for Uncle, and Gertie feared that she would be able to forward her plan to the French government. Do you really feel we've any business telling the French what to do with their own homes? But Fontainebleau could be made into a real home, corporal. So could Mount Vernon. It's too small, Fontainebleau's so huge, all those rooms. You don't really think it's any use just letting it stay beautiful? But it isn't really beautiful, the young woman retorted. It's so much of it renaissance, you know? He was still hating this vacuity when the taxicab left him and misses Ilden's house in Chelsea. The butler told him that Lady Ilden was not at home and guided him through the gray halls to a bedroom. Gertie washed, tried to recall Ilden's rank in the British Navy, and the name of Olive's last novel. He strolled downstairs and met Margot in the lower hall without knowing it. He saw a slim person in stark yellow, reading a letter, and was startled when the girl said, Good God! They didn't tell me you'd got here. Come and help me stick this holly about in the library. She thrust a bowl filled with small sprays of holly into his hands, and frowned between the wings of her black bobbed hair. He remembered her plump. She was slender. She still wore glittering pumps with silver buckles. When she chuckled, it was in the former chime. She exclaimed. Of course, Uncle Eddie was born in Norway, wasn't he? I think Dad was born in the steerage, coming over, Gertie said. You're not all American anyhow, she announced, and that's a relief. I'm quite mad about Scandinavians, only sensible people in Europe. Come along, there's a rehearsal in half a minute and rehearsal, charity show, barge along this way. He grinned and followed her into the long library, where she tossed bits of holly to and fro on the shelves. She said, Cosmo ran's rehearsing us, better not tell that to Dad, he mightn't like it. Who's Cosmo? Cora Boyle's husband. They're playing here. Don't get shocked about it. Don't see anything to get shocked about, so Cora Boyle's over here again. What's she playing? A silly melodrama. She's at the Diana. Saw her the other night, she's getting fat. Off to be a log against fat women wearing old rows. You've lost some weight? Gertie said. Work, old thing, work. Sewing shirts for snipers. Dancing with convalescence. It's beastly that you've got so tall. I hate looking up at men. Gertie laughed down at her and asked. When did Mrs. Ilden get to be Lady Ilden? Jutland is just the bath, not a baronetsey. All of's at church. I thought she was an agnostic. Margot said gently. It takes them that way, rather often. She's been to church a goodish bit since Bobby. Oh yes, young Ilden was killed. What sort of person was he? One of the strong, silent empire builders. But nice about it. All of's aged, rather. She planted the last holly spray on the lap of a gilt Buddha, then smiled at Gertie across a yellow shoulder. I'd forgotten how blue your eyes are, almost violet, goes with your hair, very effective. Your chin's still too big. Oh, a letter from Dad this morning. He was thinking of running over, but Carlson's worse. Do you know, it'd be a noble deed to poison Carlson. There he is, stuck in the house. Why don't useless people like that dry up and blow away? I don't think he's useless, Gertie argued. He makes Mark put on a comedy now and then. He swears better than anyone I know. And you ought to be grateful to him. If Mark hadn't had him for company, you'd probably have been hauled home a long time ago. Margot opened a Russian-led box on a table and lit a cigarette. She said, Don't think so. Dad's never made the slightest sign of hauling me home, especially after Mr. Froman. Ugg! I almost had nervous prostration, when I heard Dad had sailed after the Lysitania. Her lids fell back and shook the astonishing lashes against the pale brown of her cheeks. Then she chuckled, The joke is, I'd as soon have gone home a long time ago. I'm mad about Olive, of course, and have had all sorts of a good time, but I'd rather be home. How's your mother? He was answering when the butler barked names from the doorway. Margot whispered, Run, the rehearsal, go hide in the drawing-room. These are all bores. He passed out through a group of men and girls, encountered a colonel of the British General's staff in the hall, and was cordially halted. He stood discussing military shoes with this dignitary, as Olive Ilden led herself into the hall. Gertie recalled her slim and tall. Now that he looked down she seemed stout, no longer handsome, but the deep voice remained charming as it rose from her black veils. She led him off into the drawing-room and said at once, Margot's pretty, isn't she? Yes, Mark's been raving about her, but I thought, you thought he was idealizing after his customary manner. He sent me a picture of you, so I'm not surprised. Don't sit in that chair. It's for pygmies. I want to talk about Margot, and it's likely we won't have another chance. You two don't write each other letters. Had you heard from Mark that she wants to play? Play? Be an actress. I thought I'd better warn you. Olive laughed. I don't know when it started. I know Mark wouldn't like it. Otherwise the child's the delight of my life. She sank into a couch and asked, Now what are these diplomatic idiots doing in Paris? I don't like the look of things. Arranging for another war, I do hope they'll arrange it for twenty years from date. I'll be past sixty then, and I won't care. I'll be able to sit and grin at the women who are going through what only, of course, I shouldn't grin. I'm a true blue Britain of the old breed when it comes to an emotion. I simply can't enjoy an emotion when it's my emotion. Had you ever thought that that's why bad plays and cinema rubbish are so popular? It's the unreality of the passions. I daresay that's why I've just been to church. Perhaps that's why Margot wants to go on the stage. She's never had an emotion worth shedding a tear for. Well, how's Mark? Putting on three plays after Christmas and thinks they're all winners. She drew her hands over her eyes and murmured, Mark's extraordinary, endless enthusiasm, like a kitty with a box of watercolors. I suppose it's belief. He really believes in his job. I once thought he needed education. If he'd been educated, he couldn't have believed so hard. There has to be something childish to get along in the theatre. If he were worldly wise, he would have known half these plays were rubbish, and the rest not very good. But I'm not sure what a good play is, Gertie. Tell me. You're young, so you should know. He flushed, then laughed and asked what play Margot and her friends rehearsed. The loud, spaced voices came across the hall. He felt an unruly curiosity stir. It's a one-act thing of Ronnie Dufford's, Colonel the Honourable Ronald Dufford. Quite a pal of Margot's. That was he talking to you in the hall just now, the brass hat. What are you laughing at? Wondering what would happen to an American general staff man if he wrote plays? Dufford? Mark put on a thing of his in 1916. It failed. His things are rather thin. He's been nice to Margot, though. He took her about when I was in mourning. He's a good sort, forty-eight or so. I daresay he lectured Margot on the greatness of empire and the sacredness of the house of lords. It didn't hurt her. She hears enough about the sacredness of the plain people in the studios. I thought you were an anti-imperialist or an anarchist. The tired woman laughed. So I am. It was tremendous fun being all the right things when I was young, and anarchists were rather few. I expect you're a cubist and a communist and agnostic, and don't believe in marriage. So many of them don't. Then they get married to prove the soundness of their theory and get hurt. Then they're annoyed because they're hurt and get interested in being married. Most amusing to watch. The world got past me, and I'm frightened by it. We had such a good time railing at the Victorians in repression. And now all the clever young things tell their emotions to cab drivers, and invent emotions if they haven't any. All the gestures have changed, and I feel you look rather like Mark. You know he was stopping at Winchester, when he heard Margot's father had been killed. I tried to shock him. He—oh, do go and watch them rehearse, Gertie. I've just come from church. The music's made me silly. I don't know what I'm saying. The artifice smashed into a sob. Gertie swung and hurried across the hall. Certainly the woman's illusion of pain was notably real. He sat smoking on a window seat of the library, and tried to follow the rehearsal at the other end of the wide room. The men and girls strode about talking loudly. A slender man in gray broke the chatter from time to time, and gave directions in a level, pleasing voice. This must be Cosmo Rand, the husband of Coral Boyle. Gertie looked at him with interested scorn, but the amateurs took his orders in docile peace, and only Margot answered him from a deep green chair. Rot, Cosy, I'm supposed to be lost in thought, aren't I? Then I shan't look interested when Stella giggles. Go on, Stella. Gertie became intent on her posture in the dark chair. She was smoking, and her hair appeared through the vapor, like solid, carved substance. She seemed fixed, a black and yellow figure on the green. A vaporous halo rose in the lamplight above her head. He stirred when she spoke again, shifting, and a silver buckle sent a spark of light flitting across the rug. He remembered that she had Italian blood from her grandmother. She looked Italian, Mark was right. She was beautiful in no common fashion. The other girls vibrating against the shelves were mere bodies, gurgling voices. The butler stole down the room, and spoke to Cosmo Rand, who, in turn, spoke aloud. I say, Margot, Cora's brought the motor round. Might I have her in? Chilly, and she's been feeling rather seedy. A tall woman in black velvet entered, as if this were a stage, and reposed herself in a chair. Gertie had never seen Cora Boyle perform. She was familiar from pictures, when she drew up a veil across an obvious beauty of profile and wide eyes. Presently she commenced a cigarette, and the motion of lighting it was admirably affected. An expanding heavy scent of maltreated tobacco welled from the burning roll between her fingers. The line of her brows was prolonged downward with paint. The whole mask was tinted to a false and gleaming pallor. Gray furs were arranged about the robustness of her upper body. She was older than Mark, Gertie's father said. She must be passing forty. She should be weary of tight slippers. A glance stopped Gertie's meditation. He looked away at Margot's effortless stroll along the imagined footlights. Cora Boyle spoke to him in a flat and pinched whisper. Isn't your name Bernammer? He bowed. She came to sit with him on the window seat, and dusted ash from her cigarette into the Chinese bowl. Her eyes explored his face with a civil amusement. You look awfully like your father. You startled me, let me see. You and Miss Walling live with Mark, don't you? Sweet, isn't she? And how is Mark? I've played over here so long that I've rather lost touch. Mr. Carlson still alive? Oh yes, he's bedridden, you know, lives with Mark. She inhaled smoke, nodding. That's so characteristic of Mark, isn't it? But of course Carlson was kind to him. The dear old man's bark was much worse than his bite. Good heavens how frightened I was of him! I see Mark acted in a couple of Red Cross shows. I expect that all his old matinee girls turned up and cried for joy. But I do think Mark was something more than a flapper's dream of heaven. Still he must like management better. He never thought more of acting than that it was a job, did he? She sighed. One has to think more of it than that to get on. Gertie wished that this woman didn't embarrass him. Resenting her perfumed cigarette and the real frail loveliness of her hands, the embarrassment ended. Ran told the amateurs that they weren't half bad and departed with his wife, a trim boyish figure behind her velvet bulk. Colonel Dufford implored the grouped players to learn their lines. Margo was much kissed by the other girls, dismissed them, and came in a sort of dance step to ask Gertie what he thought of her acting. Couldn't hear you. I had to talk to Miss Boyle. Ugly voice she has. Are people really crazy about her here? Margo frowned and pursed her lips, tapping a cigarette on a nail. Oh, she has a following. They don't dither about her as they do over Elsie Whatser name and some of the other Americans. Dull, isn't she? Very. She made a point of talking about Mark. Lady Ilden's all broken up, isn't she? She's too repressed, Margo explained. Tried not to show it when Bobby fell, and so she's been showing it ever since, and Sir John's been at sea constantly and that's a strain. He's in Paris now. You don't show your feelings at all, do you? I was watching you talk to the Boyle and you beamed very nicely, and you must have been bored. One of those rather sticky women. Come and play pool, there's an American table. He played pool and stolidly listened to her ripple of comments. She had a natural disrespect for the American army that flashed up. The men did all they could, I daresay, but, my God, Gertie, what thugs the officers were. Some of them turned up at a garden party where the king dropped in and he went to speak to one. The thing was cleaning its nails in a corner, and it shook hands with its pocket knife in the other hand. I fainted and Ronnie Dufford lugged me home in a taxi. I say, do let me have St. Ledger Grant to a pastel of you. Dad would love it. And St. Ledger needs ten pounds as badly as anyone in Chain Walk. Who's St. Ledger? Artist. Poor bloke who got patriotic and lost a leg in the Dardanelles mess. Serve him right, and so on, but he's ghastly poor. You're a pathosist? Rather! That's why you like the Scandinavians, because they stayed out? Right. I forgive you, though, because you're young and simple, and your legs are rather jolly in those things. She twisted her head to stare at his leggings, and the black hair rose, settled back into its carved composure below the strong shaded lamp. The clear red of her lips parted as she laughed. Not a blush. Made the world safe for democracy and aren't proud of it. How did your friends get through? That rather sweet lad who used to come to lunch when you were at school, Lacey. Lacey Martin lost a leg. She frowned. Doesn't matter so much for a chap like that with billions, but the artists. I must have St. Ledger, do you? We'll go there tomorrow. I had Cosmo Rand have himself done. Gertie made a shot and said, Rand's a much prettier subject than I'd be. Don't get coy, my lad. You're rather imposing, and you know it. Like to meet Gilbert Chesterton? You used to read his junk. I can have you taken there. Never met him myself. No thanks. What's that bell? Dress for dinner. You can't. I must. I say you're altogether different from what I thought you'd be. What did you think? I couldn't possibly tell you, but I'm damn glad you're not. The butler can make cocktails. Dad taught him in 1917. The butler brought him an evil mixture. Gertie emptied it into the fireplace and leaned on the pool table, wondering what Margot had expected. It didn't matter, of course. Yet she might recall him as a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, much absorbed in pole vaults and stiff with conceit for some requirements in English letters. How people changed and how foolish it was to be surprised at the changed sophomoreic. Mark really knew a pretty woman when he saw one. A man of genuine taste outside the selection of plays. She must know London expertly. She must have a sense of spectacle. She must meet all conditions with this liberal, successful woman as guide. If she wanted a pastel made for Mark, she should have it. Gertie dusted chalk from his leggings, evenly taped about the long strength of his calves, strolled into the drawing-room, and played the languid movement of the fawn's afternoon. Illusory or not, there was always beauty in the blended exterior of things. A man should turn from the inner crassness to soothe himself with the fair investiture, with the drift of delicate motions that went in color and music. All have thought him like Mark as she came in. She was worried because Gale had written of meeting the boy on Montmartre. You've been enjoying Paris? More or less, it's a holy show just now. I don't suppose the barkeepers and other parasites will ever have such a chance again. I hope you've not been in too much mischief. Ian Gale wrote me that he met you in some horrid hole or other. A party at Ariana Joyce's. I wasn't doing any more harm there than the rest of the Allied armies, but it was pretty odious. The memory jarred into the present satisfaction. He halted his long fingers on the keys, and Margot came rustling in. Her gown of sheer black muslin painted with yellow flowers and gold combs in her hair. Were you playing Le Prémédie? And he's only twenty, Olive. Most Americans don't rise to respectable music until they've lost all their money and have to come live over here. Any nails in your shoes, Gertie? We're going to a dance. Where? asked Olive. Something for war widows at Mrs. Rossiter-Rossiter. Rossiter's that fat woman from Victoria. I promised someone or other I'd come. We'll go in time for supper. The charity dance seemed less fevered than dances in Paris. There were ranks of matrons about the walls of a dull, long room. At midnight Margot rescued him from a girl who was using him as an introduction to American economics and found a single table in the supper hall. Here the batter of ill-played ragtime was endureable and the supping folk entertained him. The country so ghastly with houses shut and no servants that most people have stuck to town. Margot said, refusing wine. Lot of eminence is here. Who are you looking at? The dark girl in pink. She's familiar. She should be. She has a press agent in New York. Lady Celine Tucker. She's going to marry that man who looks like a Lewis bomber picture in punch. As soon as everyone's in town again, and she can get Westminster Abbey, and he can get his mother shipped to New Zealand or somewhere. His mother will drink too much and then tell lies about Queen Victoria. She's rather quaint. She soothes for libel every time anyone writes a novel with a disillute pierce in it. Frightfully self-conscious. Don't people who insist on telling you how depraved they are make you rather ill? They always seem to think they've made such a good job of it. And I could think of much worse things to do. How nice your hair is, like Uncle Eddie's. Thanks. Who's the skinny woman with the pearls? Margot put aside the palm branch that shadowed her chin and frowned. It looks like my namesake, Mrs. Asquith, from this angle. No, it's Lady Flint. Oh, look at the big brood and mauve. Lovely, isn't she? He looked at the shapely, fair woman, without interest. The round of Margot's forearm took his eyes back. Lovely, why? So glad you don't think so. One gets so sick of hearing women gurgled about as wonders. I think it was Salisbury who said she was the most beautiful woman alive, and she goes right on, you know. Once you get fixed here as frightfully beautiful or witty, you can die of old age before they stop saying so. Such a fraud. It's just what Dad says about all the managers and stars in New York being myths. All those legends about his being a woman-hater, and who's the man who's supposed to never hire a chorus girl until he's seen her on natural. Such piffle. But they like being myths, Gertie laughed. Oh, everyone does, of course. Someone started a yarn about me, don't tell Dad this, that I was the daughter of some frightfully rich American banker, and that my mother was a Spanish dancer. Olive was wild with rage, but it was rather fun. I say I'm sick of this, Gertie. Do make Dad order me home. She lit a cigarette, let the lashes drop, and ignored a man who bowed, passing. Gertie thought this was Cosmo Rand, and said so. Margot shrugged. He rehearses us every day, decent sort, people like him, but do make Dad have me come home. Gertie pondered. Mark now knew a few gentle women, the wives of authors and critics. He had mannerly friends outside the theatre, had drilled smart war theatricals. The girl could move beyond this wedge of certainty, wherever she chose. But Gertie said, you might not like New York. But I want to see it. It's hardly pleasant seeing Dad about once every year for two weeks or so. I happen to love him. You mean I shan't be recognized as a human being by the fat ladies in the social register? That'll hardly break my heart, you know. The world is so full of a number. Is that God save the... The supping people rose in a vast puff of smoke from abandoned cigarettes. Officers stiffened. The outer orchestra jangled the old tune badly. The sleek gown showed a ripple of bending knees. The prince went nodding down the room toward an inner door with a tiny clink of bright spurs as his staff followed him. They say he's going to the States. I should like to be there when the women make fools of themselves, and Grandfather will be so furious because everyone will talk about a damned Britisher. Finish your coffee. I want to dance again. She danced with a smooth, lazy rhythm, and Gertie felt a brusque jealousy of all the men who danced with her after him. He was angry because he so liked her, against reason. It was folly to let himself be netted by a girl who showed no signs of courting him. He watched her spin, her black skirt spreading with Cosmo Rand. The man danced gracefully without swagger. He might be amusing, like many actors. Gertie pulled his philosophy together and talked about Mark's plan of the walling theater while they drove home. Dad's wanted a shop of his own so long, she sighed, and it'll be quite charming. He does understand colors. Wish he wouldn't wear black all the time. I always feel fearfully moral at two in the morning. I'm going to lecture you. What about? You're so damned chilly. You always were, of course. Don't you like anything? They came to the Olden House before he could answer, and Margot didn't repeat the question all the week he stayed in London. They were seldom alone. Lady Ilden seemed to want the girl near her. There were incessant collars. Men plainly flocked after the dark girl. Her frankness added something to the wearisome chaff of tea-time and theater parties, to the dazzling slaying of the young officers. Gertie speculated from corners, edged in at random dances. But his blood had caught a fresh pulsation. He felt a trail of mockery in the artifice of Lady Ilden's talk, as if the tired woman observed him falling into love and found it humorous. She said once, I was afraid you'd grown up too fast, and you've not. But he let the chance of an argument slide by his preoccupation, with the visible flutter of Margot's hands pinning a tear in her yellow frock. His resistance weakened, although he hunted repugnancies, tried to shiver when the girl swore. Profanities a sign of a poor imagination, he told her. The hell you say, said Margot. Haven't turned out on the heavy side, have you, Gertie? I bar serious souls. War shaken you to the foundations? Cheerio, you'll get over it! And she walked upstairs, singing. There ain't going to be no war. Now we've got a king like good King Edward. There ain't going to be no war. He hates that sort of thing. Mothers, don't worry. Now we've got a king like Edward. Peace with honour is his modder, so God save the king.