 CHAPTER VI. GURTY. In mid-March the lease of the ground in West 47th Street was brought to Mark's office. He signed it and gave the attorney his check. A wrecking company was busy with the destruction of the cheap hotel that stood where the Walling Theatre would stand, complete in November. The notary and witnesses withdrew. Mark sat drumming his fingers on his desk, trying to rejoice. Irritations worked in him. Carlson would be the only audience of his joy. The ground was bought with money made too largely in moving pictures. He was so close upon the fact, grown from his dream, that it frightened him. The Walling was real at last. He should bubble with pleasure and couldn't. He sighed and strolled over to West 45th Street, where he watched the final act of redemption for the sake of the dive scene, got his usual happy shutter from this masked, intricate shadow, and the faces suddenly projected into the vicious light. He must have such scenes at the Walling. He must find somewhere a play made of scenes, many and diverse, changing from splendor to dark vaults. Why, this was the secret of the abominable movies. They jerked an audience out of one tedious place into a dozen. He walked down Fifth Avenue, thinking, roused because the street seemed more speckled with olive cloth. Some transport had disgored soldiers freshly into the city, tired of gaping at them. Mark enjoyed their tan in the crowded pace of Fifth Avenue, where women showed powder as moist paste on their cheeks, in a warmth like that of May. A motion picture star detained him at a crossing and hotly leaned from her red, low car, demanding the rights of a play for her company. Mark couldn't follow the permutations of these women. She had been a chorus girl one met at Supper's. Now she was superb in her vulgar furs, with a handsome young Jew beside her, and a wolfish dog chained on a flying seat. Mark got himself away and came home to the paneled library, where Carlson was stretched under three quilts on his wheeled chair, gossiping with an old comedian about the merits of Ada Rian. Soon the elderly caller left. Mark took his chair by Carlson, and wondered what he would do if his patron died before Gertie got back. Carlson couldn't last much longer, the doctor said, but his mind was active. He yapped. I've got a hunch, sonny. Go on. You're going to see Gertie pretty damn quick. I had a nap before Ferguson came in, dreamed about the kid. He'd have called if he'd sailed, Mark said. No, he's stuck in the mud at St. Nazare. By God it's enough to make a man vomit, reading about those damned embarkation camps, and he ain't an officer. They say the enlisted men don't get enough to eat. He suddenly fumed. Well, don't cry about it, you big calf, said Carlson. Honest to God. I never saw a feller that can cry like you do. You cried like a horse-pipe when the kid got shot, and from all I hear it wasn't nothing but a scratch on his belly. And I used to spend hours trying to teach you to shed one tear when you was acting. You was the punkest matinee idol ever drew breath of life. Mark chuckled. I suppose I was. Then a hand slid down over his shoulder, and an olive cuff followed it. Mark's heart jumped. He dropped his head back against Gertie's side, and began to weep idiotically as he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't. Old Carlson surveyed the end of the trick delightedly. He privately cursed Gertie for standing still in pale, when it was clearly the right thing to do to make a fuss. The cub was too cool. Son, son, said Mark. Gertie hoped that the man would not repeat that illogical word in his husky, drumming voice. The repetition brought the illusion of joy too close. He chewed his lip and wriggled. Gave in and stooped over Mark. He got out. Here I've not had any lunch, Mark. And that turned Mark into mad action, sent him racing downstairs to find the butler. Why the hell didn't you kiss him? Carlson snarled. I'm twenty. You're a hog. The old man meditated. His eyes twinkled. He sneered. Well wipe your eyes. Here's a handkerchief if you ain't got one. He relished the boy's blush. Watched him blink and went on. Now don't tell Mark about all the women you ruined, neither. He probably thinks you've been a saint. And don't go spilling any of this talk about going to work on your own like some of these whelps do. Mark's got a three thousand dollar car coming for you and he's going to pay you a hundred a week to set in the office and look wise. And don't tell him you didn't win the war, too. He knows you did. Christ, it was bad enough when I'd got to listen how Margo was running the Red Cross in London. After you went off I come pretty near calling up the Express Company and having myself shipped to Stockholm. The big calf. Chewing the pain off the walls every time he heard there'd been fighting. Cineminal lunatic. Your papa and mama have got three times more sense about you. Get out of here. I got to make up sleep. He shut his eyes. Two tears ran and were lost in the sharp wrinkles of his face. Birdie gulped and walked downstairs, abashed by the sheer weight of idolatry. Mark was twisting the cork out of a champagne bottle in the dining room. At once he said, They'll have some eggs up right away, sonny. My God, you're thin, Mark. No exercise. Haven't had time to play golf. Now we'd better get the car and run down to Fayetteville. I talked to mother from Camp Merritt. Be in Camp Dix tomorrow. I'll see them there. Taken motor over, only twelve miles. Heard from Margo lately. His uncle beamed, saying, Says she wants to come home, son. I've got to talk to you about that. What do you think? Gertie said quickly. Let her come, Mark. The fact is I think she's bored. You haven't seen her since last year. She's got a gang of men trailing after her and she is in a flirt. Chelsea's full of bright young painters and things. They all come and camp on the doormat. Lady Ilden's a sort of fairy godmother, of course. He lapsed into a sudden state of mind about Margo, fondling his glass of champagne. Untrimmed discourse on women had amused his first days in the army, but the week's return in the jammed transport had sickened him with the stuffy talk of perspective and retrospective desire. It had been musky, stifling. He wondered how women, if they guessed, would value that broad commentary. And how men lied about women. The precision was annoyed to a snort, and Mark filled his glass again, smiling. Of course, having seen her, the boy wanted Margo home. Mark said, She wrote me you turned out better looking than she thought. Knew she'd think so. And Olive was pleased to death with you, of course. How's your side feel? My god, what are those fools doing to the eggs? He rushed into the pantry, rank pleasure swelled in Gertie. There was no use doing anything with the incurable proud man who drove him back to camp merit at dusk with two bottles of champagne hidden in his motorcoat, invited confessions and beamed constantly. Only don't act like you'd ever kissed a woman in front of your mother's son, country folks, shocker to death. You any taller? I'd call up Sanford about some clothes for you. Good night, sonny. You go straight to the farm when you're discharged. I'll be down Sunday. An illusion of happiness beset Gertie. He stood in the green street of the half-empty camp, staring after the motor. The wine bottles wrapped in paper under his arm. It was astonishing how foolish Mark was, to be sure. But wine or emotion warmed the chill air about Gertie, like the pour of a hot shower. If Mark wanted to be an ass over him, it couldn't be helped. He kept thinking of his foolish worshiper in the transfer to the sandy discomfort of Camp Dix. There the burnamers appeared in a large motor with grandfather walling furred and mittened in the back seat. The illusion of happiness deepened into a sensuous bath, although his mother contracted more fat and his sisters were too brawny for real charm. Gertie struggled for righteous detachment, while his brothers candidly goggled their admiration, and his father examined the purple scar that passed dramatically up Gertie's milky skin. He found himself drinking and got drunk on the second bottle of champagne when his family left. But it seemed wiser to surrender to the flood of affectionate nonsense for a time. It was even convenient that Mark should send a tailor down to Fayetteville with clothes rapidly infected. On Sunday Mark arrived with a small car, letter G.B. in blue on its panel. Just the blue Gertie's eyes are, Mrs. Burnamer drawled. Gertie understood that maternal feeling was a rather shocking symbol on the charts of analysts, and that Mark probably doted on him for some trivial resemblance unconsciously held and engrossed. But it was pleasant being a symbol. He drove Mark down into Trenton and talked of Margot while they drank bad American benedictine in a seedy hotel. I don't know whether she's very clever or simply sensible, he said, achieving detachment by way of benedictine. Anyhow, most cleverness is just common sense perception. His eyes darkened. Mark thought in lush comfort that Gertie would marry the girl. Gertie had friends among the right sort of people. Poor Carlson would die pretty soon. Gertie and Margot would live at the house, which was best adorned freshly. The benedictine gave out. They drove into the twisted lanes behind Trenton, and Gertie talked levelly of France, damned humiliating to get laid out by a hunk of zinc off a bathtub. Margot joshed me about it. Paris was perfectly astonishing. American privates giving parties for British admirals and stealing their women. I ran into a YMCA girl who wanted to have fountain blue made into a reform school. Margot says she found one that wanted George to turn Windsor Castle into a hospital for the AEF. You mustn't mind Margot swearing, all the flappers seem to. Oh, I met Coral Boyle. How she looking? Handsome. Gertie thought for a second, and then inquired. What did you... Margot comprehended the stop. He said, she was the first woman ever took any notice of me. Why, I suppose she was kind of ideal. I mean, I like that kind of looks. Lord knows what she married me for. Wonder, is that ran kid still married to her? I guess she settled down in London for keeps. Well, I want you to look at the plans of the Walling Sun. They've made me a model. Tell me if you see anything wrong. He simmered with joy when Gertie approved the whole plan except the shape of the boxes. The boy ran back and forth between Fayetteville and the city in his car, asked seemingly young men to dine at 55th Street, red plays and wandered with Mark to costumers. People stared at him in the restaurants where Mark took him to lunch. His tranquil height and his ease drew glances. His intolerant comments on the motley of opening nights made Mark choke. Sometimes, though, Mark found the boy's eyes turned on him with surprise. You seem to hang out in Greenwich Village a lot, Mark. I kind of like it. Don't understand some of the talk. The show business is changing, sonny. It's changed a lot since 1914. If you told me five years back that a piece like Redemption could have run, I'd have laughed my head off. Or that you could mount a play like Jones has fixed up this thing at the Plymouth, all low lights and what do you call it, impressionist scenery. The game's changed. Oh, the big money makers are always be hogwash, Gertie. Don't bet any other way. I ain't such a fool as to think that heaven's open because you can put on a piece with a sad ending and some well philosophy to it and have it make a little cash. No such luck. Only it's got so now that when some big fat winch and a lot of dud starts throwing his pearls back at the man that's keeping her in the third act, why, there's a lot of folks out front that say, oh, hell, and go home. Of course, there's a lot more that think it's slick. Lord, I'd like to put on measure for measure when we open the walling. You could make that look like something. I've got to find something good to open with. This kid, Steve O'Mara, is sending me up a play about a thug that gets wrecked down in Cuba and steals a plantation. Ten scenes to it, he says. One of them's a lot of niggers having a voodoo party. Sounds fine. I picked him up down in Greenwich Village. I should think all those half-married ladies in near Anarchis would shock you to death. Bosh, brother. I don't like them enough to get shocked at them. What's there to get shocked at? They think so and so and I think the other way. If you took to preaching dynamite, I'd be pretty worried like I would if your mama bobbed her hair and ran off with a tenor. I'm not an old maid just because I'm in the show business. He lit a cigarette and added, 50% of theatrical managers are old maids. Just what do you mean? Why they are, this way. They get used to a run of plots and they can't see outside that. For instance, there's a dramatist, forgotten his name, was trying to sell a piece last year. I couldn't use it but I thought it was pretty good, so I sent him over to Leffler with a note. Next day, Leffler called me up and said I ought to be hung for the sake of public morals. This play knocked around the offices and everyone thought it was awful. Why? The hero's a chauffeur that's tired of working, so he marries a rich old woman. It's something that happens every other day in the papers. There ain't a week that some fifty-year-old actress doesn't marry a kid-step dancer, but they all carried on as if the fellow'd written a play where everyone came on the stage stark naked and danced the Hoochie-coochie. It wasn't a nice idea, but where's it worse than nine-tenths of these bedroom things or as bad? Why wouldn't you use it, Mark? Oh, hell. There wasn't but one scene and that was an interior. Gertie asked, Mark, wouldn't you like it if the playwrights would go back to the Elizabethan idea? I mean, thirty or forty scenes to a play. Certainly, said Mark, and those bucks were right. He sat for a little silent, scrawling his desk-potter with a pencil, then shyly laughed, supposing someone made a play out of my married life. What you'd call the important episodes happened all over God's earth. Cora got me on a farm in Fayettesville, New Jersey, married in Hoboken, started quarreling in Martin's Cafe, caught her kissing a fellow in Long Branch. Never saw him before or since. Owned up she'd lived with three or four men in our flat, twentieth street, New York, big scene. God how sick that made me. I was at T. at Mrs. Lemoines, when Frank Worthing got me off in a corner and told me about her and Jarvis Hope. I was sitting in the bathtub when she chucked her curling irons at me and said she was through. That's the way things go. Shakespeare was right. Crazy? No. Come in. His secretary brought Mark a thick manuscript, lettered, Captain Salvador, Stephen O'Meara, and withdrew. Mark went on. But my married life wouldn't make much of a show. Green kid from the country in a coral boil. Pretty ordinary, he reflected. But I don't know. It's always going to be pretty tragic for a kid to find out he's married to a girl, thinking she was pure as pure as folks are, anyhow, and finds out she hadn't been. Wasn't her fault, of course. Started acting when she was fourteen. Awful jolt, though. She lied about it, too. She was the damnedest liar. I hate liars. Well, run along and play squash or something, sonny. I want to see what O'Meara's handed me. He bought the rights to Captain Salvador two hours later. Gertie was willing to rejoice with him after he read the Cuban tragedy. Carlson yapped. The women all hate it, Mark. Where's your clothes? Bosh, said Mark. There weren't any women's clothes in Irvin's John Ferguson and the women ate it alive. But that fellow Irvins and Englishmen, you big calf, you ain't going to open the walling with a sad piece by an American where there ain't any duds for the women to gop at. You're off your head. Ain't I told you a million times that the New York woman won't swallow a homegrown show that's tragic unless it's all dressed up. Stop him, Gertie. It's a damn good play, sir, said Gertie. He thought at high fortune that Mark should find anything so adroit and moving for the walling's first play. Some of the critics believed in O'Meara's talent. Several artists and scenery were asked to submit designs. The pressmen began a scattering campaign of notes on O'Meara and hints about the play. A procession of comely young women declined the best female part as unsympathetic. That means no clothes to it, Carlson sniffed. But their fools, Gertie insisted, it's a good acting part. My God, the old man screamed. Don't you know that no woman wants a part where she can't show her shape off and wear pearls? And these hens that got looks don't have to act anymore. They go to California and get in the movies. You talk like actresses were human beings. Women don't act unless they ain't good looking or got brains. You'll have to go a long ways if you want a good looking winch for that part. God, you keep talking like acting with some kind of an art. It ain't. It's a game for grown-up kids that they get paid for. An actor that's got any brains never gets to be more in someone's smart than a comedy. A tragedian's nothing but a hunk of mush inside his head. Catch a girl that'll act tragical when she can sit on a sofa in a Paris gown and have some goop make eyes at her. And Mark'll have a fine time at rehearsals making any leading man wear a stubble beard and eat with his knife like in this play, art. And the old man fell asleep snorting. Yet his bedroom behind the paneled library was dotted with photographs of dead actors and actresses. Sometimes his dry voice trailed into a sort of tenderness when he spoke of James Lewis or Augustine Daley. Soft-hearted as an egg, said Mark, hesitated and resumed, he's got fifty thousand a piece for you and Margot and his will, sonny. Rest of it goes to his sister's children in Sweden. What's this you were saying about running out to Chicago? I'd like to. Lacey Martin, remember him? I roomed with him freshman year at college. Lacey lost his leg in France. He's rather blue. His mother wrote me that she'd like me to come out. I thought I would. Well, I thought I'd surprise you with it. Got a cable from Olive Illden Thursday. Margot sailed Friday. Aught to land day after tomorrow. He saw the orange level of Gertie's cocktail flicker. Then the boy set it down and brooded. Mark made his face stolid to watch this. The butler served fish and retired without noise to his pantry. The tapestry of Chinese flowers behind Gertie's chair stirred in the May wind. The boy was immobile, fair and trim, in his chair. He seemed strangely handsome. A long, easy lounging gentleman who hated sharp emotions. Really think I'd better go out to Lake Forest, Mark. I more or less promised I would. I shan't be gone more than a couple of weeks. Triumph dragged a chuckle from Mark. He covered it with, oh sure, if Lacey's got some blues, run ahead and cheer him up. The boy was in full flight from love, of course, and didn't want to admit it. Mark doted on him, drawled, got all the money you'll need? And was pleased by Gertie's confession that he needed a good deal. He gave the boy errands about Chicago to aid the retreat. There's a girl named Marriott staying at the LaSalle. Some of them think she's got distinction, and poke around and see if you can rake up a scenery man. Take the directions for Captain Salvador along. If you find anyone that ain't just copying Bobby Jones or Gordon Craig, make him send me sketches. And there's this poet on a newspaper. He's named something like Sandwich, no Sandbridge. See if he's got a play up his sleeve. O'Mara was talking about him. He saw Gertie off for Chicago the next noon, then sat about making lists of successive luncheons for Margot. This return must be an ample revenge for her waygoing. She wasn't now the small girl whose presence in Miss Thorne School had frightened matrons. She was someone protected by his celebrity and trained by Olive Ilden. He must contrive her content until she married Gertie. She was democratic, Olive had seen to that. Mark had watched her chaff a knot of convalescent soldiers in Hyde Park. She wouldn't care that one of his best friends had ridden toward management from the rank of a burlesque dancer. That another had been an undertaker in Ohio. She wouldn't mind things like that. He marshaled the cleverest of critics and the young women who dealt in publicity. Gertie would bring proper men to call when he came back from his flight. The expanse of her future opened like an unfurling robe of exquisite colors. She strolled in Mark's mind most visibly. He hummed, inspecting the house. Yes, Carlson sneered, she's been footloose amongst a pack of dukes and things and you think she's going to like being mixed up with a lot of... She won't mind, said Mark. She seemed to mind nothing. She landed on the twentieth of that cool May, kissed Mark on the nose, and told him she had three cases of champagne in the hold. The customs inspectors were dazzled, stumbling among her trunks. A file of other voyagers came to shake hands. A great hostess kissed the girl, smiled at Mark, and said gently that she hoped Mr. Walling would bring Marko to lunch in next fall. She's quite nice, Marko assured him in the motor. She probably kept your photograph with a bunch of violets in a jar in front of it when you were a matinee idol. Oh, how I hate that word! How nice your nose is! Where on earth is Gertie? Lake Forest? Oh, that's where all the Chicago pig-kings live, isn't it? They have chateau and moats and exclude. But it's rather rotten he's not here. I have a couple of awful French novels for him. He speaks such rather remarkable French. I can't make the right Jay sounds. He's such a stately animal. I was awfully frightened of him in London. Such a ghastly crossing. Why, honey? She stared at him with wide black eyes and said more slowly. How nicely you say things like that. You're really awfully glad I'm back, aren't you? Mark choked. Here's Times Square. She shrugged and leaned back on the blue cushions. Horrible! But the theatre district in London's worse, really. The walling'll be on a side street, won't it? I'd loathe seeing walling in electric bulbs along here. Be rather as though you were running about naked. Did I write you about Ronnie Dufford's new play? Been a most tremendous success. You should bring it over. That's the aster, isn't it? What color's the walling to be inside? Blue? Rather dark blue? And swear to me you won't have Russian decorations. I swear, daughter. You old saint, said Margo. And you're still the best-looking man in the known world. Her lips had a curious, untented brilliance, as though the blood might burst from them. Mark told himself that she wasn't the most beautiful of women. Her brown face was like his face and her father's face, too flat. Her hands weren't small either, but she wore no rings. Her gown was dark, and her tamashanter of black velvet was inseparable from her hair in the mist of his eyes. Silver buckle swayed and twinkled when her gleaming feet moved about his house, and she smiled in a veil of cigarette smoke. You've got good natural taste, dad. Born, not made. Don't think I'm keen on that Venice glass in the dining room too heavy. Where does Gertie sleep? I snore, you know. I don't believe it. He sleeps on the top floor, where the old playroom was. She threw her head back to laugh and said, where he used to make such sickening noises on the piano when he thought you were petting me too much. He's a dear. It wouldn't be eugenics for me to marry him, would it? See that, Mark? Carlson squealed. She ain't been ten minutes in the country and she's hunting a husband. That's gratitude. Oh, you, said Margo, spinning on a heel. If you were 97 years younger, I'd marry you myself. She teased the old man relentlessly. She teased Mark before his guests at the first luncheon. Her variations appalled the man. She seemed to know all the printable gossip of New York. She spoke to older women with the charming patience, played absurd English songs to amuse Mark's pet critic, and got the smallest of the managers in a loud, good temper by agreeing with his debatable views on stage lighting. Most of these, his friends, had forgotten that she was Mark's niece. Their compliments were made, as on a daughter. She felt the swift spread of a ripple. Editors of fashion monthlies telephoned to ask for photographs. The chief of a Sunday supplement wanted her views on the American Red Cross. A portrait painter came calling. Silly ass, said Margo. I met him in Devonshire. I hate being painted. You've never had a portrait done. Drury, one has to sit and smirk. You used to sit like a kitchen stove in one spot for an hour at a time, Carlson said. Now you're all over the place. One has to move about in England to keep warm. Dad, I wrote Ronnie Dufford to send you a copy of his play. Ronnie's land poor, you know. It's made mountains of money, but I don't think he's half out of debt yet. Such a nice idiot. He liked Gertie such a lot. What the deuce in all is Gertie doing in Chicago? Barge in about with the pig-stickers? She shed her mixture of slangs when his broker's wife came to luncheon. Mark didn't think it affected that she mainly talked of titled folk to the smart, reticent woman. Mrs. Valet invited her to Southampton before leaving. Margo shook her hair free of two silver combs and shrugged as the door shut. I suspect her of being a ferocious snob, sweet enough though. Fancy she doesn't read anything but Benson and the late Mrs. Ward. Oh no, Mrs. Ward isn't late, is she? Simply lamented. Mark laughed. Let's go talk to Mr. Carlson. You always call him Mr., just why, darling? Well, he's forty years older than me, sister. And he made me heep. Tosh, you made yourself. Let's walk over and see how the walling's getting on. He wallowed in this warm enchantment for ten days. Margo dismissed herself to Fayetsville on the first breath of heat. He went down to see her established in the gaping adoration of the family. He thought it hard on the bernamer girls. He had hinted boarding school for these virgins. But the bernamers, trained by moving pictures, were wary. Yet Margo was clearly born to captivate women. He wrote to Gertie at Lake Forest. It was nice to see her tone herself down for your grandfather and your mother. I told her she had better not smoke except with your dad in the cow barn. You kept telling me I must not be shocked. What is there to get shocked at? Young girls are not as prissy as they were when I was a pup. Hell of a row coming on with the actors. We are trying to keep things quiet, but it looks like a strike. But some of the men still think an actor is a cross between a mule and a hog. Letter from Olavilden says she is going to Japan pretty soon, and will come this way. I see in the London news that Coral Boyle has signed up with the celebrities and is coming over to be filmed as Camille or the Queen of Sheba. You are wrong about Heartbreak House. It is a conversation, not a play. I wish Shaw would do something like Caesar and Cleopatra again. They start work on the sets for Captain Salvador next week at the studio. Shall have two sets made for the voodoo scene, and try both on the road before we open the walling. Gertie reflected that it was time to come home. Then he put it off. Lake Forest was pleasant, he was fond of his host. It was prudent to test the pull of his feeling for Margo. The thing augmented now that he couldn't talk of her. A strict detachment from passion was silly, after all. But he was annoyed with himself, as the passage of any tall and black-haired woman across a lawn would interrupt the motion of his blood. He set his brain tasks, meditated the girl at Fayettesville. Hope that she wouldn't singe the acute American skin of his young brothers by comments on the national arms. His sisters had probably made their own experiments with cigarettes. They were sensible lasses, anyhow, if given to endless gush about moving pictures. His young host sisters, amiable, blonde girls, were much the same thing, rarified by trips to Europe, suave frocks, and some weak topics in the cerebral change. They held Dunseny, a fascinating dramatist, and thought there was something to be said for communism. Chicago puzzled him with its summer negligence and the candor of its wealth, with the air of stressed vice in the loop restaurants, and the sudden change from Metropolis to a country town within city limits. It seemed absurd that the listless, polished wife of a hundred million dollars should return from Long Island to give a dance in honor of a traveling English poet, held lowly in Chelsea, described by Olive Ilden as a derivative angle-worm. At this dance he heard of Margo from an unknown woman with whom he waltzed. I saw you in London last winter. I was there, funny I don't remember. You were in uniform with Margo Walling and Lady Ilden at a play. Margo was wearing one of her yellow frocks. I was the other side of the gangway. I wondered about you, rather. Margo always snubs me. I'm a countess of sorts, and it always interests me when American snub me. Let's get something to drink. I don't dance well, and you must be in torments. What's your name? She was a lank, tired creature, in a rowdy gown, sewn with false pearls that hissed theatrically, as she slumped into a chair on the lit terrace. Cousin A, well, Margo amuses me. She's the genuine aristocrat, you know. Take what you want and to hell with the rest. Pity so few Americans catch the idea. Imagine any continental woman coming a thousand miles to give a dance for a cheap jack-pinny poet like this sweep. Afraid he won't mention her in his travel book, I dare say. Run and get me a drink, something mild. A youth at the buffet told him this was the countess of Flint. She sipped wine-cup, refused a cigarette, and asked, Where did you go to school, St. Andrews? My brothers did groten. Beautiful training wasted on the desert air. That's the trouble with the American game. Did you ever think how much good it would have done, the beastly country, to have had about four generations, for hard and fast aristocracy, plenty of money, no morals, quantities of manner? It's simply a waste of time and money to train lads and then turn them loose in a herd of rich women, all afraid of their dressmakers. What a zero the average American woman is. Hush, he said. That's treason. You'll be shot at sunrise. Unsalted porridge, utter vacuum. Not a vacuum, either, because she's a bully, usually, and a prude. Is Margo going to marry Ronnie Dufford? Gertie jumped, inescapably startled. He said, Colonel Dufford? The general staff man who writes plays? I'm sure I don't know. Wouldn't be a bad thing. Ronnie's all right. The gentleman bohemian touch, and I dare say she has money. The link woman coughed, went on. She'll take on an Englishman in any case, though. She's in New York. Well, she'll get fed up with that directly and trot home. The woman locked her gaunt arms behind her careless hair, and yawned at the amber moon above the clipped pines. New York's frightful, stuffed middle westerners squatting in hotels trying to look smart. Places absolutely run by women, getting more respectable every time I go through. Haven't had any patience with New York since the Stanford White murder. Imagine all the bloods running to cover and swearing they'd never even seen white, because he'd been shot in a mess about a woman. Imagine it! I always bought Harding Davis's books after that, because he had the sand to get up and say he liked white, in print. And that's Egyptian history. She began to cough fearfully. The pearls clattered on her gown. You've taken a cold. No, cigarettes. Are you married? Good Lord, no. Only been twenty-one a couple of weeks. How odd that must be. Twenty-one a couple of weeks ago, and you went to France and got shot. Singular child. Why singular? Oh, I've been amusing myself at Sarenok at a house party, with a social register and an army list. A war where eighty percent of the educated men, I mean the smart universities, the bloods under thirty, all went and hid themselves. It's not pretty. Aren't you exaggerating? Not in the least. I had fifty American officers convalescing at my husband's place in Kent, and half of them were freight clerks from Iowa. What can you expect when the American woman brings her son up to be a coward, and his father makes him a thief? And naturally the women despise the men. Who on earth wants an American husband? They seem to find wives somehow. She coughed, rising. Oh, travel's expensive. Then she gestured to the orange oblongs of the ballroom windows. Do you think any one of those women would hesitate a minute between being the next lady of the White House, or the mistress of the Prince of Wales? Of course not. Give Margot my love. Goodbye. Too chilly out here. She rattled away. Gertie dropped into the chair and stared after her. He should tabulate this woman at once with her romantic illusions of aristocracy and patriotism. Margot supervened and seemed to move across the moony stones of the terrace. He thought frantically of Colonel Dufford. He thought solidly of marriage for ten minutes. Beyond doubt he was in love with Margot. He stirred in the chair, repeating maxims. Passion wasn't durable. He might tire of her. He argued against a motion and blinked at the gold lamps on the bastard French face of this house. He was too young to select sensibly, didn't want to be sensible, suddenly. His pulse rose. He marveled at love. In the morning he announced his present departure. At noon he had a special delivery letter from his youngest brother, Edward Burnamer Jr., a placid boy of thirteen, interested in stamp collecting. The scrawl was the worse for that complacency. Dear Gerd, for the love of Mike, come on home and help take care of Margot E. Walling. She has got Mama and the girls all up in the air. Grandfather is getting ready to shoot her. I heard him talking to Dad about writing Uncle Mark to take her away. I sort of like her. Eggs and Jim think she is hell. Gerdie came whirling east to New York and found Mark at the forty-fifth street theater, humming over the model for a scene of Captain Salvador. But plainly Mark knew nothing of any Fisher in the sacred group at Fayetteville. He was busy rehearsing a comedy, had been to the farm only once. In any event, Mark mustn't be hurt. Gerdie took breath and delicately put forth. I want you to do something damned extravagant, Mark. Easy, sunny. Just got the estimate for the mirrors at the Walling. Not more than ten thousand, please. Not as bad as that. Get a cottage on Long Island for July and August. The farm's all right for Margot for a while. The grandfather goes to bed at nine. The kids play rags on the phonograph all afternoon. It gets tiresome after a while. Oh, son, said Mark. I'm not so thick-headed I can't see that sister will get bored down there. He beamed, thinking Gerdie superb in gray tweeds, his white skin overlaid with pale tan. No, I expect I'd get bored with the cows and chickens if I was there enough. And we ought to have some kind of a country place of our own. There's some friend of Arthur Hopkins has a place on Long Island he wants to let. Olive Ilden will be here in July, and we ought to have a cottage somewhere. I don't think your dad and Olive had too much to talk over. Mark grinned. Gerdie laughed, curling on a corner of the desk, approving the man's common shrewdness. Mark padded his palms together. Look, you pike on down to the farm. Margot's got your car there. You fetch her up in the morning and you two go look at this cottage. I'll phone Hopkins and find out where it is. Oh, here's this piece Margot's friend Dufford sent over. I hear it's doing a fair business in London, but nothing to brag of. Read it and see what you think. Get along, son. You can catch the three o'clock for Trenton. Gerdie strove with this fragility in neat pros all the way to Trenton. It had to do with the climber domiciled by mistake in the house of a stodgy young Earl. It was wordy and tedious. The name, Todgers Intrudes, made him grunt. He laughed occasionally at the tinkling echoes of wild and mom. It might be passable in London where the lethal jokes on Dora and brass hats would be understood. He diligently tried to be just to Colonel Dufford's art, which served to keep his pulse down and his mind remote from the approaching discomfort. Margot wasn't perfect. She had upset the family. It was best to get her quickly away from Fayette'sville. He hired a battered car at Trenton. The Fayette'sville Military Academy was closing for the summer by all signs. Ladds bustled toward the station, towing parents and Gaudi sisters in the beginning of sunset. He overtook his three brothers idling home toward the farm and gave them a lift. No one spoke of Margot directly. Edward, his correspondent, smiled mildly at Gaudi and drawled. Must have been having a damn good time in Chicago, Gaudi. But nothing else was said. The car panted into the stone-walled door-yard. His grandfather waved a linen-cloud arm at Gaudi from the padded chair on the veranda. His sisters accepted the usual candy and hid a motion-picture magazine from him, giggling. Mrs. Brnemer was at a funeral in Trenton. Gaudi found Brnemer in the dairy-yard, studying a calf. It was always easy to be frank with this saturnine, long farmer. His father didn't suffer from illusions. They sat on the frame of the water-tower and lit cigarettes before speech. How's Margot been behaving, Dad? You sweet on her son? I like her how she been acting. Brnemer pulled his belt tight and lifted his hard face toward the sky. Gaudi felt the mute courtesy of his paws. The man had a natural scorn of tumult. He lived silently and perhaps thought much. He said, This is just as much Mark's place as it is ours. He's the best fellow livin', we all know that, and she's Joe's daughter. Something boiled up in his blue eyes. He cried. What in hell? You're as good as she is, ain't you? You can come home and act like we wasn't mud underfoot. Who the hell's she? His wrath slid into laughter. He pulled his belt tighter and winked at Gaudi. It's kind of funny here in her cuss, though. She does that a little. Just watch the trouble, Dad. I can't tell you, son. She's sand in the cream. It ain't her smokin'. I miss my guess if the girls ain't tried that. She kind of puts me in mind of that boil winch, Mark married. She's got the old man all worried. Your mama's scared to death of her, so's the girls. She ain't so damn polite it hurts her any. Say, I wouldn't hurt Mark's feelings for all the world, and I notice she don't carry on so high and mighty when Mark's here neither. Ain't there someplace else she could go? Gaudi had a second of feudal rage that divided itself between Margot and his family. This wasn't within remedy. She had absorbed the attitudes, the impatience, of world's exterior to the flat piece of the farm. He grinned at his father. Yes, I'm going to take her off. Mark's got more sense than you think, Dad. Sure, Mark's got plenty of sense when he ain't dead-cracked over a thing. Don't tell him I've been squalling. Maybe that English woman spoiled her, letting her gallivant too much. Maybe it's her father comin' out in her. Between us, Joe was tougher in most boys. You'll likely find her down at the orchard smokin' her head off. It's all kind of funny. And then it ain't. She wasn't smoking. She sat with a novel spread on her yellow lap and the bowl of an apple-tree behind her head. There was a shattered plate of ready glow about her. The pose had the prettiness of a drowsy child. She was, her lover thought, a bragging child, lonesome for cleverness, annoyed by stilidity. In the vast green of the orchard, she seemed small. He whistled. She rose, her hair for a moment floating. Then laughed and threw the book away. Thank God that's you. I thought it was one of—oh, any one. There was a shrill, unknown jerk in her voice. She came running and took his arm. Tell me something about civilization quick. You don't want to talk about the films, do you? Or whether Jane Rupp's going to marry that co-feller or— Bored? Oh, to death! How do you stand it? How do you stand it? I knew they'd be common, but I didn't think they'd be such bloody. Look out! said Gertie. But the girl's red lips had retracted. She was shivering. She had lost her charm of posture. She cried, oh yes, there are people in all the rest of that tautch. I'm not a hypocrite. It's a stable, a stable! Her breath choked her. She gasped, get me out of here. I'm used to what you call real people. She loosed his sleeve and patted her hair. But some inner spring shook her. Scarlet streaks appeared in her face. She babbled. He must be mad. Of course he's sentimental about them. About the place, the old place. It's the way he is about Carlson. My God! Why should he think I can stand it? Something hummed in Gertie's head. His hands heated. He stood shuffling a foot in the grass, and looked from her at the green intricate branches. He must keep cool. He whispered. Can't you find anything, well, funny in it? It's all funny, rather, the way an old dress is. Why should he think I should stay here? Three weeks! Of course he hasn't any breed. Shut up! said Gertie. That'll be all. We were born here. Mark took us and had us dressed and looked after and trained. I'm not going to laugh at them. I can't. I'll be damned if I'll hear you laugh at Mark. Yes, he's sentimental. If he wasn't, do you think he'd have bothered about taking care of you or us? The family's sacred to him. He loves them. He's that kind. Stop laughing. He hated her. There was no beauty left. Her face had shriveled in this fire. She was swiftly and horribly, like an angry trawl. She said, Sentimentalist, you're a damned milk and sugar sentimentalist like, Ah! said Gertie. That's out of some book. All right. Mark's going to take a place on Long Island. We'll go up in the morning. He tramped off. The orchard became a whirl of green flame that seared and then left him cold. He was tired. His body felt like stone, heavy and dead. The illusion of desire was gone out of Gertie. Did not grieve her. They had been on strained terms. But she was unwilling to offend his daughters. Offence had grown hateful with years. The personal matter flung to and fro among critics wearied her. It wasn't amusing to hear that an elderly novelist was a doddering relic of the Victorian era. She envisaged the man's pain. Thus she bore the formalities of her brother's passing, and so missed three liners. About her, London recaptured something of its tireless motion. She wished for Margo and the youth Margo had kept parading through the quiet house. She hoped that the girl's frankness never shocked Mark and puzzled again over the rise of that frankness. In her first two English years, the girl had been sedate, almost solemn, reading a great deal and talking primly. Then her conversation had risen to a rattle. It must be rattling mightily in New York, which all have still fancied a place of cheerful freedom. Letters recorded the change from Fayette'sville to a cottage on the Long Island shore. Cottage was frightful, but dad behaved quite as if he was mounting a play in a hurry. We drove from shop to shop, and all the stuff came roaring along in motor-trucks. I went to Southampton and camped with a rather nice woman, Mrs. Corliss Stannard, who picked me up coming across. It was dull as Westminster Abbey, as everyone kept cursing the Prohibition Amendment. But dad had the cottage, fourteen rooms and four baths, all decorated by the time I got back. Some decentish friends of Gertie live near here. The men are all goths, and the women are fearfully stiff. But a broker proposed last night at a dance, and I felt rather silly, as he had just been divorced two days, and I hardly knew his name. But dad has bought an option to Todger's intrudes. Then, dad very busy in town, the actors are threatening a strike. Gertie pretends that he does not like Todger's intrudes. For a man who did a smart school and who knows his way about, Gertie is rather heavy. Rather decent lunch today, dad brought down one of the other managers who talks through his nose and is a duck. He taught me how to do a soft shoe step. And later, dad very emotional about of tragedy he is putting on in the autumn. It is rather thrilling. He means to open the walling with it. Gertie does not fancy Todger's intrudes. He thinks himself a Bolshevik or something, and I daresay the county family business in it annoys him. Immediately after this, while the letter was fresh in mind, all have met Ronald Dufford on Regent Street. He took her congratulations on the American sale of his play, with the dubious air, swung his stick, and said, Thanks, fancy Margo made her governor take it on. Between ourselves it hasn't more than just paid. You're going to the States, aren't you? Next week, yes, I think Margo had her father by the play, Ronnie. It's my sad duty to warn him that it hasn't been what the Yankees call a three-bagger, whatever that means. The playwright grinned, amiably, saying, Rather wish you would. My things haven't done well in the States. I'm not so keen on being known as a blight out there. Wallings paid me two hundred pounds, no less, for American rights. Charitable lad, he must be. I say. I hear that Cosy Wren's gone over to play for him. Who's Cosy Wren? Coral Boyle's little husband. Nice thing. You've met him. He rehearsed us for that thing of mine at Christmas, a thin-beggar with... Of course. I danced with him, but he passed out of the other eye. But isn't it rather odd Walling to take on his ex-wife's present husband? Bit unusual. You've always told me that Walling's a conservative sort. Why shouldn't Walling take him on, Ronnie? The man's rather good, isn't he? Farish, frightfully stiff. He played the Earl in Tadgers while Ely was fluing. What I meant was that it seems odd Walling would cable him to come over. But I'll be awfully bucked if old Tadgers gets along in the States. Tisn't Shaw, you know. Olive was lightly vexed with Margot. The girl was irresponsible when she wanted something for a friend. But the trait was commendable. Olive still ranked personal loyalty higher than most static virtues. But Tadgers and Trude was a dreary business. She spoke of it to Mark when he met her at the New York Pier. The idolater chuckled. The actors have struck. I hope Margot'll forget about the thing before the strike's over. She likes Dufford? Well, that's all the excuse she needed. She isn't. Are you letting her stamp on your face, old man? It don't hurt. She don't weigh a heap. She says Dufford's poor. His eyes were dancing. He wore a yellow flower in his coat and patted Olive's arms as he steered her to the lustrous blue car. We'll go up to my house for lunch. Mr. Carlson's crazy to see you. Mustn't mind if he curses at you. We'll go on down to the shore after lunch. Where's Sir John, my lady? Malta. Shall I see Gertie, the nicest child? Ain't he. I've got him reading some plays. Mark soared into eulogies, came down to state. This is Broadway, as the car plunged over the tracks between two drays. If that's Broadway, Olive considered, I quite understand why half of New York lives in Paris. I do want to see Fifth Avenue. The skyscrapers disappointed me, but Arnold Bennett says Fifth Avenue's really dynamic. A moment after the car had faced the greasy slope of asphalt, she said, Bennett's mad. Mark sighed. It's an ugly town. But this street's nice at sunset, in winter. It turns a kind of purple. It was bully when the women wore violets. They don't wear real flowers anymore. You used to smell violets everywhere. Violets and furs and cigar smoke. I used to like it. His eyes sparkled on the revocation. He smiled at the foul asphalt, and the drooping flags of shops, where the windows gave out a torturing gleam. You great boy, said Olive. Boy, B-41, the 2nd of November. Oh, awful sorry about your brother, Olive. I'm not. Gerald was null and void. I never even discovered where he found the energy to marry and beget daughters. Margot's lived more at the age of 18 than Gerald had at 50. I don't suppose that you can understand how I can slang my own family. Oh, sure, because my folks are all nice. It doesn't follow. I think everyone ought to be crazy about theirs. Did he have a son? No. The land goes to our cousin, Shell Merdine, of Potter Hanworth. That idiot his wife pushed into peerage. She was one of the managing co-tourists. Lothsome woman. Her son's a VC, though. Oh, this improves. The car passed 45th Street. Olive gazed ahead, cheered by the statelyer tone of the White Avenue. Mark wondered how a woman who had lost both children could yet smile at the dignity of St. Patrick's and again at the homesick bewilderment of her maid getting down before his house. Old Carlson bobbed his head to this lady, abandoning his ancient fancy that she had been Mark's mistress. He studied her gray hair and the worn, sharp line of her face. Then he cackled that she was to blame for turning Margo into a sassy turnip. My dealings with turnips have always been conducted through a cook. Has she been shocking you? Ma'am, said Carlson, you can't shock me. I was in the show business from 1869 to 1914. I lugged a spear in the Black Crook, and I was a gladiator when the police arrested McCullough for playing Spartacus in his bare legs. No, Margo can't shock me any more in a kitten. He rolled a cigarette shakily, spilling tobacco on his cerise quilt. Olive held a match for him. He coughed. But you ought to see her ballerag Mark and to buy in this English piece. What the hell do you call it, Mark? Todgers intrudes. That's a name for you. Gertie don't like it. I say it's hogwash. Maggie, she sat on a table smoking her churrut and just made the big calf buy it. She did, Mark, so don't stand there looking like Charlie Thorn in Camille. Mark was stirring with laughter at the old man's venom. He said, I told Olive Margo made me buy it. Oh, Olive said, if you let Margo run affairs, you'll have strange creatures from darkest Chelsea mounting all your plays and flappers who have acted twice in a charity show playing Manavana. She made my poor husband buy a Cubist portrait of Winston Churchill some pal of hers had painted. When he found it was meant to be Churchill, he took to his bed. Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Williams, said the butler against Mark Swift. Ask him to the drawing room. Excuse me, Olive. Got to talk strike a minute. She looked about the Sunless Library with its severe panels and blue rug, thin at Mark's patron, an exhumed pharaoh, his yellow hawk face and bloodless hands motionless, the cigarette smoking in a corner of his mouth. He had just the pathos of oncoming death. He squeaked, Mark's busy as a pup with fleas, actors striking, the lazy hounds. It's enough to make Gus daily turn in his grave. You've no sympathy for them? Not a speck. The show business is war and war's hell. Here's this boil onion Mark was married to. Bill Leffler sends for her to come back from England and get a thousand a week to play in a French piece, pays her passage, then what? Minutes she sets foot on land, she grabs a movie contract and pikes off to California. She's a hot baby she is. Actors. I hear that Mark's engaged her husband. That slim Jim Sissy from Low Way, not much. Is Rand an American? Hell yes! He's old Quincy Rand's son that used to run the opera house in Des Moines. He run off with a stock company that played Montreal and got to talk in English. I told Margot that and she was mad enough to bust. Say, you British are cracked. Letting a pack of actors loosen your houses like they was human. He fell asleep. The nurse came to take the cigarette from his lips. Olive strolled off to examine the shelves packed tightly with books. Here was the medley of Mark's brain volumes of white Melville, mingled with unknown American novels, folio was on decoration, collected prints from the European galleries. A copy of capital surprised her, but she found Gertie's signature dated Yale College November 1916 on the first page. Gertie came up from the white stairway and saw the black gown with relief. Lady Ilden could be a buffer between Margot and himself. There would be less need of visits to the seashore house. He led the Englishwoman into the broad hall. Something odd has just happened, Gertie. Mr. Carlson swear at you? Before, not at. But he tells me that Mark did not sin for Cosmo Rand to act in something over here, whereas Ronnie Dufford most distinctly told me that Mark did. It interested me because Mark's so coy about his old wife and it seemed queer that he'd cable for her husband. I expect Rand's lying a little for advertisement. No, Mark didn't sin for him. He never engages people to come from England. Has Rand come over? According to Margot, he's such an idol in London that it'd take an active parliament to get him away. Miss Boyle's here. We saw her at lunch at the Algonquin and she patronized Mark for a minute. Didn't Rand play some part in this Todgers and Trudes Piffle in London? Which reminds me, said Olive. Margot made Mark take that? Is she making him cover her with emeralds and give masked balls? Gertie said honestly. No, not at all. We've had some house parties, some friends of mine, and some of the reviewers and so on. She seems to be amusing herself. And she hasn't shocked Mark. Why should she? Gertie laughed, leaning on the white handrail. She doesn't do any of the things he dislikes seeing women do. She doesn't drink anything, for instance, and she doesn't paint. When did she go in for pacifism? Not that I have any objection to it. That was a way of helping me out when my boy fell, I think. She raged about the war as a kind of outlet for me. Really, she enjoyed the war tremendously, as most girls did. She's still raving about the slaughter of the artist. The slaughter of actors. Some Englishman, an actor, said that too many actors slacked and she lit on him. He mentioned half a dozen, can't remember them. You told me in London that she wanted to act. Yes, has she been teasing Mark? No, but I think she could. My dear boy, I've seen her in amateur things twice and she was appalling. Vivacity isn't ability. Of course she has a full equipment in the way of looks. You mustn't get dazzled over Margot, Gertie. Her face was blank, all of chance to probe. I forbid you to fall in love with her, either. Your cousins, and it's not healthy. I'm not thinking of it, said Gertie, read, and so convinced Olive that he was deep in love. But the dying blush left him grave. He stood listening to the slow drawl of Mark's voice below them, and wondering what tone would overtake its husky music if Margot should turn on the worshipper, screaming and hateful. He wondered at himself, too. His passion had blown out. It had no ash, no regret. He was free of anger even, and he had done the girl mental justice. He didn't want her back. You look rather done up, old man. War nerves, we've all got them, and I'm reading plays and some of them make me howl. Such awful junk. Don't, don't look at me like that. I'm a good woman, and you have taken from me the only thing I had to love in the whole world. That sort of stuff. And the plays for the reform are as bad as the ones against it. I don't know why people lose their sense of humor when they start talking economics. Old man, when you've lived to be forty, you'll find out that only one person in a thousand can resist to sentimentalism on their side of the question. And it's almost always a sentimentalist who writes plays on economics. But you do look seedy. Are you coming to the country with us after luncheon? No. But he drove with Mark and Olive to the half-finished front of the walling on West 47th Street. Mark pointed out the design of dork columns and bare tablets. Olive guested a simple richness, and stared after Mark when he walked through the groups of hot, noisy workmen into the shadow of his own creation. His black height disappeared among the girders and the dust of lime. Did it all himself, said Gertie. The architects just followed what he wanted done. You called him a kid with a box of paints. You should see him fuss over a stage setting. Do you know my father's an awfully observant man? He was talking about Mark the other day. Dad says that when Mark was a kid he used to draw all the time. And they've got some pictures he drew in old school books and things. They're not bad. Dad says that before Mark married Cora Boyle and came to New York they all thought he was going to turn out an artist. Is it true that his whole success is because he decorates plays so well? No. The truth is he's an awfully good businessman, and I've seen enough of the theater to know that some of the managers and producers aren't any good at business. They mess about and talk, and he's coming back. She saw Gertie's eyes center on Mark with a queer, tense look. The boy stood on the filthy pavement studying the theater as the car drove east. Crazy about the place, said Mark, brushing his sleeve. I do think people will like it, Olive. Won't be so dark that they can't read a program or so light the women will have to wear extra paint. My God, I'm glad Margo don't dob herself up. Well, she don't have to, and I'm glad she don't want to act. Why? Olive asked. You were an actor, and you live entirely surrounded by actors. It's an ancient and honorable calling, much more so than the law or the army. Mark rubbed his short nose and grinned. I'm just prejudiced. I suppose it's because I used to hear how tough actresses were when I was a kid, and because Cora Boyle made a doormat of me. Ain't it true we never get over the way we're brought up? That's what Gertie calls a platitude, I guess. Gertie's horribly mature for twenty-one, Mark. Thunder, said Mark. He was always grown up, and he's knocked around a lot for his age. Enough to make anybody mature. And he's in love with sister up to his neck. You should have seen him take a run-and-jump and start for Chicago the minute he heard she was landing. Simply hopped the next train flew, stayed out there a month, pretty nearly, brings his friends down over Sundays, and then sits and watches them wobble round Margo, like a cat watching a fat mouse, loves awful hard on these dignified kids, Olive. You want them married, she murmured. Of course. I know I'm silly about the kids, but I don't see where Margo'll get anyone much better. Don't start lecturing me and say that there's ten million eight hundred thousand and twenty-two better boys loose. You'd be talking at a stone wall, waste of breath. And he's sensible about her, too. A kid in love ordinarily wouldn't argue about anything the way he did about the play of Colonel Duffords. They had a regular cat fight, and Gertie's right. It's a pretty poor show. This is the East River. The car moved diligently through the heat. Olive thought that Gertie had belied his outer calm by his flight to Chicago. But it was hard to think of anything save the thick air. Mark's tan face was damp, and he fanned Olive steadily. They swung past a procession of vans where the drivers lulled in torn undershirts. The rankerous son on the houses of unfamiliar shingles dizzyed her. She saw strange trees in the country as the suburbs thinned and the blistered paint of billboards showed strange wares for sale. Movie plant over there, said Mark, like to be moved for one of the current event weeklies? Lady Olive Ilden, the celebrated British authoris. Horrors! Drinking tea with a palm in my lap. Never! Good heavens, Mark! Is it like this summer after summer? Why don't people simply go naked? Margot does her best. If her grandmother Wallin could see her bathing suit, she'd rise from the tomb. How long has your mother been dead, old man? Since I was eight? No, nine. Do you look like her? No. Joe, Margot's dad, looked something like her. His hair was nearly black, and he had brown eyes. She was nice, used to take her hair down and let me play with it, black. He smiled, did not speak for minutes, and then talked of Gertie again. He's mighty nice to his father and mother. Eddie and Sadie are scared he'll marry an actress on account of his being in my office. Gertie was teasing him last week. They came up to do some shopping. Said he'd got hold of a yellow-headed stomach dancer. Called her some crazy French name, my Lord, haven't things changed on the stage since we were kids. I remember when Ruth St. Dennis was doing her Hindu dances first, and people were kind of shocked. I dropped in one afternoon, and the place was packed full of women. Heard this drawly kind of voice behind me and looked around. It was Mark Twain and Mr. Howells. Ruth did a dance, without much on, and the women all gabbled like fury. But they applauded a lot. Mr. Howells was sort of bored. He said, What are they making this fuss for, Sam? Oh, old Clement said. Their hope in the next dance will be dirtier so they can feel like Christians. My God, he was a wonder to look at. Ever think how much good looks do help a man along? I can't think unless you found me, Mark. My brain's boiling. How many more miles to a bath? Twenty. I've always been fond of you, said Olive. But I never realized what a brave man you were. You work in this furnace. Fan me. The cottage stood on a slope of presentable lawn that ended in a pebbly shore. The motor rushed through a fir plantation, reached the Georgian portico, and Olive gladly smelled salt wind, rising from the water, fading in sunset. There she is. Said Mark, and whistled to a shape, black and tan against the sound, poised at the lip of a white washed pier. Margot came running, and some men in bath suits stared, deserted. The girl raced in a shimmer that reddened her legs to copper. Olive wondered if anything so alive, so gay, existed elsewhere on this barbarous shore crushed by summer. Mark saw them happy, wiped his silly eyes, and went down to chat in guarded grammar with the three young men from across the shallow bay. Inevitable that youngsters should come swimming, and these were likable fellows. Girdy vouched for them. They slid soon, like piebald seals, into the water, and swam off in a flurry of spray. Delicate wakes of fine bubbling spread on the surface. The wet heads grew small in this wide space of barrel. Again he watched irreproducible beauty. It was right that the best makers of scenes wouldn't paint the sea on backdrops. Let the people fancy it there, below the vacancy of some open window. He must have the Cuban seas suggested thus in Captain Salvador. He wished that Margot didn't dislike the tragedy. Perhaps its stiff denial of lasting love afflicted her. It afflicted Mark. And yet the poet was right. The passion in the play would be a fleet hot thing, and grossing for a week, a month, and then stale forever. Lust went so. He nodded and picked up Margot's black and yellow bath-wrap, a foolish, lovely cape in which he looked like an Arab. Then she called to him, and he walked back to where she sat on the tiled steps reading a letter. Olive brought me a note from Doris Arbuthnott, lives in Devonshire. She's a dear. Rather like Aunt Sadie, but not quite so hefty. All the wax have come home from France now, and they won't work. They sit around and talk to the heroes about France. Doris owns gobs of land, and she's having a pokey time. What are you laughing at? Your hair, sister. She passed her hands over the sponge of black down and shrugged. Sorry, I had it bobbed. All the typists do over here. Olive's frightfully done up, gone to bathe. Glad to have her, ain't ya. Rather, oh, Cosmo Rand called up. What the deuce did he want? Ronnie Dufford gave him a heap of notes about Todgers and Trudes. I told him he'd best leave them at your office. Shall you start rehearsing Todgers as soon as the strike's over? She sneezed, the efflorescence of her hair flapping. Mark tossed the wrap about her, kissed her ear, and sat down on the steps. He said, Don't know, daughter. Fact is, this piece of Duffords hasn't played to big business in London. I've got a report on it. Gertie don't think. Oh, Gertie, he simply can't like a play unless it's about the long-suffering proletariat, or Russia. Why didn't he come down? Got a party with some men. Oh, I wanted the brute to show me something tomorrow. Do you putt well? Of course you do. Oh, I think Todgers isn't a new man and superman, of course. But it's witty and it isn't commonplace. Don't laugh. Mark marshaled words, lighting a cigarette. Honey, that's just the trouble with the thing. It is commonplace. It's all about nothing, and it's too blamed English. You and Gert think it's the bounden duty of everyone to know all the latest slang off Piccadilly, or wherever they make slang up. It ain't so. We'll have to have some of this piece translated as it is. Suppose you were a stenographer going to the play. You wouldn't have been abroad. You wouldn't know when Earl beats a Baron. You wouldn't know that Chelsea's a big sister to Greenwich Village, and the slang had bore you to death. There's that three-speech joke about jippies and chokers in the second act. I expect that raised a laugh in London. How many folks in the house here would know it meant cigarettes? I didn't till you told me. Now in London, with Ely playing the Earl, he did, didn't he? Well, with a smart man like that to play the Earl, the thing might go pretty well. If I had someone like that. Margot yawned. Why not Cosmo Rand? He played the Earl in London while Ely was having the flu and had very good notices. He was awfully good in the scene where he rose with his wife. The poor devils had a good deal of practice, they say. Coral Boyle leads him a dog's life. Ronnie Dufford tells me that she's horribly jealous. Mr. Rand's had a success on his own, you know. He's not her leading man anymore. She doesn't like his getting ahead of her. Now what are you laughing at? The leper don't change her spots, said Mark. Poor Dad. Oh well, he said, in a luxury of amusement. She wasn't raised right. Her folks were circus people. I guess you couldn't imagine how tough the old-style circus people were, if you worked all night at it. This Rand's a nice fellow, is he? Very pleasant. He rehearsed a lot of us in a show and we were all rather rotten, and he was very patient. I do wish Gertie had come down. We shan't have four for Bridge. Might have Olive's maid play. She's dreadfully grand, you know. She's the Presidentess of the Chelsea Lady Helpers Association. Used to be in the scullery at Windsor, and Queen Alexandra spoke to her once. I'm rather afraid of her. Is there anyone you were afraid of, sister? She rose, the yellow and black gown, molding in, and gave her muffled, slow chuckle, patting the step with a soul. Don't know, Gertie, when he's grouchy. I must go dress. Oh, I had a white wine-cup made for dinner. That's what you like when it's hot, isn't it? Do put on a white suit for dinner, Dad. Make your hair so red. God be with you till we meet again. She wandered over the white and red tiles of the portico, leaving a trail of damp, iridescent prints and the last glitter of the sun. She hummed some old air he did not know, and this hung in his ear like the pulse of a muted violin when she herself was gone. The man sat dreaming until the night about him was dull blue and the wind died. He sat in warm felicity, guarding the silent house until the rose spark of the light across the bay began to turn, and a silver, mighty star flared high on the darker blue of heaven. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of the Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer. Chapter 8 Cosmo Rand. On Saturday Gertie brought down three young men who hadn't met Margo. He busily noted the chemistry of passion as two of his friends became maniacal by Sunday morning. Against the worn composure of Lady Ilden, the girl had the value of a gem on dim velvet. The third young man wanted to talk Irish politics to the English woman who evaded him and retired to write a letter in her bedroom above the lawn. She wrote to her husband at Malta. I had always thought that Margo's success in London was due to her exotic quality, but she seems quite as successful on her native heath. This leads me to the general platitude the boys are the same the world over. I am a success here, too. Many collars, mostly female, in huge motor cars. The American woman seems to consider frocks a substitute for manners and conversation. Mark is anxious that Margo should marry Gertie Brnemer, and Gertie is plainly willing. It would be suitable enough. The boy has smart friends and will inherit ten thousand from old Mr. Carlson. Margo can float herself in local society, no doubt. She is now playing tennis with two young brokers and a twenty-two-year-old journalist whose father owns half of some state. I have mailed you a strange work, jergen, by some unheard of person. Do not let any of the more moral midshipmen read it. She stopped, seeing Gertie saunter across the lawn toward the beach and pursued him to where he curled on the sand. You frightened me, she said, taking her eyes from the scar that showed its upper reach above his bath-shirt. You lie about two-thirds naked in this sun and tell me it's a cool day. But I want to be documented in American fiction. I've read five novels since Wednesday. It seems to be established that all your millionaires are conscious villains and all your poor are martyrs, except a select group known as gangsters. That's thrilling when the reviewers so loudly insist that your authors flatter the rich. Some of them do, Gertie said, lifting his legs in the hot air. In a bath-suit, he lost his civilized seeming, was heroic, sprawled on the sand. Olive told him, you're one of those victims of modernity, old son. You belong to 1340, green tights and a dark tunic trimmed with white fur. Legs are legs, aren't they? Heredity's funny, he said. I look exactly like my father. Margot's Uncle Eddie, she talks of him a good deal, and of your mother. I was rather afraid her metropolitan heirs and graces would shock your people. But she seems to have had a jolly time down there. New Jersey's down from here, isn't it? She enjoyed herself. Metropolitan heirs and graces. That's a quotation from something. Sounds like the Manchester Guardian. Should I like your people? You might. Grandfather's an atheist. Dad's a good deal of a cynic. They're awfully nice, small-town people. My sisters all wish they were movie stars, and my kid brothers think that a fighting marine is the greatest work of God. And Margot says they all think you're the last and best incarnation of Siegfried. I should like to see them. Gertie shuddered. Grandfather Walling and Mrs. Burnamer held Lady Ilden responsible for the ruin of Margot as a relative. He imagined her artifice and her ease, faced by the horrified family, a group of frightened colts stumbling off from a strange farm-hand. He poured sand over his arm and lied. You'd scare them. Mark's always talked about you as though you were the Encyclopedia Britannica on two legs. You might be interested, though. I say, Mark's decided that he will produce Todgers and Trudes. Thinks he'll have Cosmo Rand play the Earl. Can Rand really act? Oh, well enough for that sort of Tosh. He's handsome, and he has a pleasant voice. But it's rather silly of Mark to force such a poor play on the public because Margot wants Ronnie Dufford out of debt. But he's so intoxicated with Margot just now that he'd do murders for her. Why didn't he come down for the weekend? Gertie got up and yawned. Oh, his treasurer's wife ran off with a man last Wednesday while he was down here. He's trying to patch it up. You know, he isn't at all cynical, Lady Ilden. He's very easily upset by things like that. I suppose he likes his treasurer. Then why shouldn't he be upset? The treasurer can't be enjoying the affair. I wonder if you appreciate Mark's noble strain, Gertie. I think I must send you a copy of the letter he wrote me after he'd packed you off to school. I showed it to my husband, who has all the susceptibility of the Nelson Monument, and he almost shed tears. It took something more than mere snobbery or a desire for your future gratitude to make Mark send you away. It horribly hurt him. If paternal affection's a disease, the man's a walking hospital. There's the luncheon bell. Gertie ran into the water and furiously swam. Unless Lady Ilden was making amiable phrases, Margo had lied to her about the family at Fayettesville. It was natural that she should tell Mark how she'd enjoyed the farm. That was prudent kindness. No worse than his own gratitudes, when Mark gave him sapphire scarf pens or fresh silver cigarette cases that he didn't need or want. But Margo shouldn't lie to Lady Ilden. Gertie avoided the next weekend and went to Fayettesville, where his family worried because Mark was losing money through the actor's strike. And he'll need all he can lay hands on with Margo to look after, said Mrs. Burnamer, rocking her weight in a chair on the veranda. It ain't sensible for him to bow down and worship that child like he does. Oh, she's pretty enough. Get out, Burnamer commented. He'd be foolish about her if she'd got to wear spectacles and was bow-legged. Give me a cigarette, Gerd. How near's the walling finished? Two-thirds, Dad. Grandfather, you'll have to come up and sit in a box on the opening night. The beautiful old man blinked and drawled. I wouldn't go to New York to see Daniel Banman play Hamlet if he was alive. How's old Mr. Carlson get on? Gertie often found the contrast between his grandfather and Carlson diverting. The dying manager, a cynic, wanted heaven and all the decorations of the apocalypse. The old peasant lazily insisted that death would end him. He got some hidden pleasure from the thought of utter passage. Gertie found this contents stupendous. The farmer had never been two hundred miles from his dull acreage and yet was ready to be done with his known universe while Carlson wanted eternity. He cackled when the striking actors made peace and ordered wreaths sent to the more stubborn managers. His bitter tongue rattled. Why don't more writers write for the theatre, Gertie? Ever been in Lefler's office? Five thousand bootlickers and hussies squatted all over the place. I sent that fellow moody that wrote the great divide to see Lefler. Had to set in the office with a bunch of song carpenters from Tin Pan Alley and a couple of tarts while Lefler was probably talking to some old souse he knew in Salt Lake City. Then Lefler looks at the play and asks is there a soubret part in it for some little tom-tit his brother was a keepin'. A writer's got a thin skin, ain't he? Here Mark gets mad because this writer minkin says managers are a bunch of hogs. Well, ain't they? Four or five ain't sure. They're hogs. Human beings. Hogs. Same as the rest of mankind. Good thing Christ died to save us. He contemplated redemption through the cigarette smoke. His Irish nurse crossed herself in a corner. Carlson went on. Say, that fellow Russell Mark's got drillin' that English comedy is all right. Was in to see me yesterday. Good head. Knows his job. Says this ran-pin had his raisin cane at rehearsals. Better drop in there and see what goes on. Mark's so busy with that Cuban play he ain't got time. Rehearsals of Todgers and Trudes went on at a small theater below 42nd Street. Gertie drifted into the warm place and watched the director, Russell, working. On the bare stage five people progressed from point to point of the tepid comedy. Russell, a stooped bald man of 35, sat near the orchestra pit. Gertie had watched the rehearsal 10 minutes before Russell spoke. Don't cross there, Miss Marriott. Stand still. Then, still please, Mr. Rand. On the stage, Cosmo Rand gave the director a stare, shrugged, and strolled toward the cockney comedian, the intrusive Todgers of the plot. Russell said nothing until a long speech finished. Then, you're all rushing about like cooties. Go back to Miss Marriott's entrance and take all your lines just as you stand after she sat down. Dora isn't produced durr, Mr. Hughes. Gertie was thinking of the long patience needed in this trade when Russell spoke sharply. Mr. Rand, will you please stand still? My God! said Rand. Must I keep telling you that I played this part in? Will you be so good as to stand still? Rand continued his lines. Gertie walked down and slipped into a chair beside the director, aware that the player stiffened as soon as they saw Mark's nephew. The handsome Miss Marriott began to act. Cosmo Rand sent out his speeches with a pleasant briskness. Russell murmured, Glad you happened in, Burnamer. This was getting beyond me. School children! And the act ended. Three o'clock, please, said the director. The small company trickled out of the theater. Russell lit his pipe and stretched, grinning. Rand's very capable and a nice fellow enough, but he's difficult. Fine looking, isn't he? Come to lunch with me. It was startling to be taken into an engineer's club for the meal. Russell explained, I was an engineer. It's not so different from stage directing. You sometimes get very much the same material. I've often wanted some dynamite or a pickaxe at rehearsals. Nice that you floated in just now. I've a curiosity about this piece. Does Mr. Walling see money in it? I don't. He thinks it may go, said Gertie. It won't. It's sewed up in a crepe. If you had a young John Drew, maybe a couple of raving beauties playing, it might run six weeks. And Dufford hasn't any standing among the cerebrals. We might try to brighten the thing with some references to Freud. It's a moron, prenatal influence. Mr. Walling tells me where to open in Washington, too, my jinx. I went down there to offer up my life for the country and got stuck in the QMC, supervising crates of tomatoes. Did you ever argue with a wholesale grocer about crates? It's worse than staging a review. That's a dreadful thing to say. Russell broke a roll into his pointed fingers and shook his head. No, the review's a very high form of comedy when it's handled right. It gets cleaned away with common sense, for one thing, and it has on a plot. I hate plots unless they're good plots. That's why this miserable Todger's thing affects me so badly. I hoped Mr. Walling would let me help him with Captain Salvador, but it's his baby. Is Rand giving you as much trouble as that every day? Trouble, my dear man. You've never rehearsed a woman star who has ideas about her art. Rand's merely rather annoying, not troublesome. He's got no brains, so his idea is to imitate the man who played the part in London, and he's never learned how to show off his looks, either, but very few Americans know how. Gertie liked the director and spent several afternoons at the rehearsals. Cosmo Rand fretted him. The slight man was obdurate. He raced about the stage until Russell checked him. His legs, sheathed always in gray tweed, seemed fluid. The leading woman had an attack of tonsillitis, and halted proceedings. It was during the slaps that Gertie encountered Cosmo Rand in a hotel lounge and knotted. The actor stopped him, deferentially. I say. I'm afraid poor Russell's sick to death of me. I'm giving him a bit of trouble. Gertie found no answer. The actor fooled with his gray hat, rubbed his vivid nails on a cuff, corrected his mustache, and said, The fact is, I do most sincerely think that Russell's wrong to drop all the English stage directions. Couldn't you suggest that Mr. Walling drop in to watch some time, when Miss Marriott's better and we're rehearsing again? His soft, round, bronze eyes were anxious. He spoke timidly, the rosy fingernails in a row on his lower lip. He was something frail and graceful, a figure from a journal of fashions. Gertie wondered whether Cora Boyle ever assaulted her poor mate, and smiled. Mr. Walling has a good deal of confidence in Russell's judgment, Mr. Rand, but I'll speak to him if you like. I'd be most awfully grateful if you would, Mr. Burnamer, that plays such a jolly thing and one would like to see it do well. Ronnie Dufford's rather a dear friend of mine, and so very broke, you know. The rosy, trim creature seemed truly worried. Meeting Russell at the 45th Street office the next day, Gertie told him that Rand's heart was breaking. The director grimaced, patting his bald forehead. The little tykes worrying for fear he won't get good notices. And if this rubbish should fluke into a success, he'll be made into a star. Have you ever observed the passion of the American public for second-rate acting, especially if it happens to have a slight foreign accent? Majesca, Banneman, Nazimova? Well, Miss Marriott's all right again. We'll rehearse some more tomorrow. Come and look on. Mark had gone to Fayettesville for a few days. Gertie attended the morning rehearsal of Todgers and Trudes. Cosmo Rand trodded about the stage terminally, and Russell turned on Gertie with a groan of, this is beyond me. I'm getting ready to do murder. He's throwing the whole thing out of key. I shall have to get your uncle to squash him. I'm beginning to see why Mr. Carlson loathes actors so, Gertie whispered. Oh, holy Moses, the director mourned. Look at him. Slower please, Mr. Rand. It'll be awkward if I get Mr. Walling to squash him, Burnemer. You can never tell how these walking egoisms will break out. He may run about town saying that Mr. Walling's oppressed him cruelly. My God, he'll be crawling up the scene in a minute. On the stage, Rand had excited himself to a circular movement about a large divan in the center. He had somehow the look of a single racer coming home ahead of the other runners. The men and women standing still suggested a sparse audience for this athletic feat. It was ludicrous. Worse, Mark could never scold Cora Boyle's husband. Gertie took a resolve. Margo had made Mark waste time with this silly play. She had proposed Rand for the part. She should help. He hurried to the station and reached the cottage in mid-afternoon. A warm October wind made the fir trees whistle. He found Margo in a silk sweater of dull rose, putting a tennis ball about the dry lawn. She smiled, tilting the golf stick across a shoulder, and swayed her swim body back to look up at Gertie. Dad just telephoned from the farm, old son. Wanted to know if you were here. It was something about Captain Salvador. Oh, yes. I was hunting a tom-tom for the voodoo scene. He doesn't like the one they're using. Doesn't thud loudly enough? Can I talk to you about Todgers and Trudes without having a fight? Of course you can. All right. It's going very badly. Mr. Russell, the director, has a free-for-all row with Mr. Rand every day. Rand acts like the last of a ballet. He's putting everything back. He's out of the picture all the time. Word of honor, Margo. The play hasn't nine lives. It's thin. It'll take a lot of work to make it go. Russell's one of the best directors going, and he knows what he's doing. Rand simply runs all over the stage like the clown at the hippodrome. That's rather the way it was played in London. Of course, that's no excuse. Have Dad scold Rand. Be pretty awkward for Mark scolding Cora Boyle's husband. Margo said, What utter tosh. No, it's not. Mark's old-fashioned, sensitive about things like that. And Rand might take it as spite. Cora Boyle's back from California, Russell tells me. She's a fearful liar. If she hears that Mark jumped on her husband, she'll tell all her friends that Mark's simply a swine. You don't know how gossip travels and gets distorted. Once, last May, Mark said that he didn't like a gown that some woman was wearing in a play we'd been to the night before. He said that at lunch in the Claridge. Next day, the woman's husband came into the office and wanted to thrash Mark. By the time the story got to him, it had swelled up like a balloon. This fellow had got it that Mark said his wife looked like a street walker and acted like one. It's all very awkward, couldn't you? Oh, look here. Because I suggested Cosy Rand for the Earl, I'm not going to dry nurse him. I think you're frightfully hypersensitive about his being married to Cora Boyle. They're hardly ever together. It's taking a theatrical manage as seriously as, oh, for heaven's sake, Gertie broke in. Watching the red streaks mount her face. I'm sorry, let's drop it. You know Rand. I thought you might write him a line and tell him to calm down. That was all. Mark's working himself sick over Captain Salvador, and that's an important production. Everyone's interested in it. Some of the critics have read it and think it's the best American play in years. After all, you got Mark into this Todgers thing. He's doing it to please you. He'll worry if he has to. Margo laughed, whipped the ball away neatly with one foot and tossed her hair back. She said, I'll write Rand, of course. Of course I don't want Todgers to get a black eye. I'll send him a note and tell him to carry on. Perhaps he's rather opinionated. Where's he stopping? The knickerbocker. She yawned. I'll write him then. Staying for dinner? She turned and roamed off in her swaying fashion. Directly, a motor swung about the house. One of the neighbors had come to take the girl driving. She waved to Gertie and disappeared. He resented the waving of the brown hand. It was impossible not to resent her kind mentions of his mother and sisters before Lady Ilden and Mark. He resented, too, the airy changes from tart rage to suavity. Their talks became a tedious, uncertain duet with one performer unwilling. Gertie strolled into the cottage and Olive Ilden looked up from a novel. What have you been quarreling with Margo about? She asked. Not quarreling, nonsense. I could see you through the doors. You were quarreling and she began it. Tell me. She closed the book and regarded him not smiling from her wicker chair. There was an odd alarm in her eyes, under which hollows showed the negligent trail of her black gown was dusted with cigarette ash. Gertie stared, upset. We weren't quarreling. Cosmo ran's making an ass of himself at the rehearsals. She rather planted him on Mark. Mark's so sensitive about Cora Boyle that Russell, the man who's rehearsing todgers, and I don't want to worry you, Mark, with the mess. I wanted Margo to write Rand a note and tell him to buck up. He's holding the rehearsals back. Here it's almost the first of November. Mark's got a theatre in Washington for a couple of weeks from now, and the play isn't half ready. Olive tapped a cigarette holder on the Walnut Dutch table and looked at the floor. Then she raised her eyes and smiled, spoke without artifice. I shan't let her write to Rand, Gertie. Mark's too much interested in him. I don't like it. She cabled him to come over here as soon as she'd bullied Mark into buying the rights to todgers and trudes. The little idiot thinks him a great actor. I'm sure I don't know why. I don't at all like this. I only found it out yesterday. Mark wouldn't like it. The man's married, and if he happens to tell people Margo sent for him, I quite understand theatrical gossip, Gertie. Mark's a great person, and it would make quite a story. And of course there are rats who don't like Mark. How did you find this out, lady? In the silliest way, I was talking about Ronnie Dufford, and Margo began to argue that this wretched play is really good. She rather lost her temper. She told me you tried to persuade Mark not to produce the thing to spite her. Olive laughed unhappily. I hadn't faintest idea that you'd quarreled. You're rather too cool, old man. I've been teasing you all this time, fancing that you were wildly in love with the child, and it seems that you're at odds. Oh, it's all utter nonsense, of course. But I don't like it. It's a pose. She rather prides herself on being unconventional, and the silliest part of it is that she feels she's done Mark a favor. She's probably cost him about fifteen thousand dollars, said Gertie. This was antique. This tale of a handsome dapper actor and a girl gone moon-struck over his pink face. Gertie grunted. We can't tell Mark this. He'd be upset. It's idiotic. Olive laughed. Oh, you mustn't get excited over it, Gertie. The play will fail, and she'll drop Rand. It's a gesture, you see. The clever girl doing the unconventional thing. She became uncomfortable. Then artificial. You mustn't take Margot at her own valuation, dear. She's the moment. The melodramatic moment. What's the American slang? She's no ball of fire. She admires people easily, and drops them easily. She's eighteen. She was quite lost in adoration of the Countess of Flint two years ago, and then the poor woman did something the child didn't like, wore the wrong frock probably, and that was all over. The poor lady died in Colorado yesterday. That means consumption, doesn't it? I read the notice to Margot at breakfast and she said, Really? Rand flattered her about her acting, I fancy, and she thinks he's remarkable in return for the compliment. Every normal female gets mushy. I'm quite Americanized. Over an actor at eighteen. When I was eighteen I wrote a five-act tragedy and sent it to Merciful Heaven. I've forgotten who he was. Beer-bomb tree, probably. But I must congratulate you on your attitude. You had a frightful row at Fatesville. She said herself that she was to blame, she hurt you, and you've not shown it in the least. It didn't amount to much. But Mark wouldn't like this business. And of course some people don't like him. They'd be ready to talk if they thought she was flirting with. But she isn't. If she was I'd drag her off to Japan with me. She's hardly spoken to the man except at those rehearsals last winter. It'll die a swift death when the play fails, old man. We've no use for failures at eighteen. Olive laughed, repeated the prophecy in a dozen turning phrases, and drove with Gertie to the station after dinner. But she was oppressed. She could image Mark's bewilderment clearly. He found Rand, a somewhat comic person, a frail young poser, toad after the robust beauty of his wife, perhaps bullied. The car brought Olive back to the white portico of the cottage, and she found Margot distracting a middle-aged sugarbroker. It was time for bed when the adult man's car puffed away. Margot yawned and mounted the brown stairs in a flutter of marigold skirts. The living room fell still. Olive settled at a table and commenced a letter to Ilden. I shall not start for Japan for some time. Margot was behaving rather queerly. Having fancied that I could follow the eccentric curves of her mind, I am much annoyed to find that I cannot. This cottage will be closed next week. Heaven knows what will become of the furniture, unless Mark should use it in a play. I have a curiosity to see the opening of his new theatre. He is working frantically over the play for its opening. Gertie Bernamer tells me that a New York first night is like nothing else on earth for a bounderishness. He says that awful and obscene creatures come creeping from nowhere and flap about in free seats, and that all the cinema queens appear covered with rubies, it. The telephone on the table clicked but did not ring. Olive glared at the instrument. She abominated the telephone since it had brought news of her son's death. She finished her letter and climbed the stairs, aching for bed after a nervous day. Then she heard Margot talking behind the closed door of her room. The girl hadn't amade. Olive's own maid was visible in her chamber at the end of the corridor. Olive passed on. She came back on impulse and heard. All right, Cosy, carry on. Bye. Then the small clatter of Margot's bedside telephone set on the glass of a table. Olive opened the door and saw the girl subsiding into the mass of her pillows. I've just blown Cosmo Rand up properly, Olive. I wondered why you were talking. Margot yawned. Gertie asked me to write him. I'd rather talk. His dear wife's back from California and his voice sounded as though they'd been throwing supper-dishes at each other. He didn't seem pleased. My dear, I don't see why Mr. Rand should be pleased to be lectured on his art over the telephone at midnight. It's rather cheeky, isn't it? But Gertie made such a point of it. And all I could say was that he mustn't be too difficult at rehearsals. But that's all I could have said in a note. It seems to me that it's distinctly dad's business. But Gertie's such an ever-lasting old woman about dad. And I am rather responsible for bigging todgers over. Dare say I ought to help out if I can. Olive slung a dart carelessly, asking, What's Rand's real name, dear? Rand? I meant the Cosmo. That's not an American name at all. Don't know, I'm sure. I don't like it anyhow. But it might be his own. He's from some town in Iowa, and they named children fearful things like Iliander and Jerusha out there. She chuckled, slipping a tawny shoulder in and out of her robe, her face rippled. I really think Cosmo's rather a ghastly name. Sounds like a patent soap. Wonder why they named dad Mark. Gertie's real name's George. She yawned. I suppose all actors get rather opinionated. As their mostly rank egotists said Olive and closed the door. Perplexity remained in her strongly, wrestling with the desire for sleep. She lay composing a letter to Cosmo, Rand. As your position toward Mr. Walling is delicate, and you are under obligations to Miss Walling, may I suggest that you maintain a purely formal relation toward? It wouldn't do. Words to a shadow. She knew nothing of the man. He was a graceful figure at parties in London, considerably hunted by smart women for Sunday night dinners before the war. If the comedy failed and Mark dismissed him, Rand might make an ill-tempered use of such a letter. Olive shrugged off the idea, lay wondering why a pleasant voice and a head of curly hair, seen across footlights, should convince Margot that here was a great actor. It was disappointing. Olive had thought Margot steeled against crazes. The girl had a general appreciation of the arts as seen about London. Olive faintly sighed. But the pleasing man might embody some fancy or other, fulfill some buried wish. We go groping and stumbling among fancies, the woman thought, and seen nothing very clearly. She consoled herself with the platitude and went to sleep.