 CHAPTER 1. MANUFACTURE OF A PERSONAGE John Carlson began the rehearsals of Nicolene in early August of 1895. For a week he tried to correct the hot labors of the whole large company. He was nervous about this production. His digestion interfered. His temper grew explosive. The leading woman was alarmed for her gentility. The leading man disliked his part of a cheap rake. Carlson abandoned the minor folk to a stage manager, Rothenstein, and nursed these two clumsy celebrities toward a certain ease. But his stomach suffered. He attended the opening night of the Prisoner of Zinda at the Lyceum, fainted during the second act, and was revived with Brandy in Mr. Froman's office. The Brandy gave him fever. He spent the six days remaining before Nicolene opened in his bed. Yet on a warm Monday night he dressed his gaunt body gorgeously, shaved his yellow face, thrust an orchid into his coat, and dined at Martens with young Mr. Fitch who had adapted Nicolene from the French. Carlson swore in Swedish when agony seized his stomach. Mr. Fitch, sipping white burgundy, observed that it must be pleasant to swear incomprehensibly. Sure, said Carlson, shivering. But what was you saying? You'll feel better by midnight, Mr. Fitch murmured. You've worried too much. This'll be a hit. It's been a hit in London and Paris. The critics, the adapter smiled, won't dare say anything worse than it's immoral. And Cora Boyle will make them laugh in the third act, so that'll be safe. Boyle, who's she? That black-headed gal that plays the street-walker, you mean? She's no good. Had her last winter in Mountain Dew. Common is dirt no more since than a turnip. Mr. Fitch answered in his affable whisper. Of course she's common is dirt. That's why I asked you to get her. Why waste time training someone to be common when the town's full of them? But that ain't Acton, Clyde. It's quite as good. And, Mr. Fitch declared, she's what the women like. You always talk as if women made a show pay. That happens to be just what they do, Mr. Carlson. That's why Richard the Third doesn't make as much money as Camille or East Lynn. Women come to a play to see other women wear clothes they wouldn't be seen in and do things they wouldn't dream of doing. Please try to eat something. You're all wrong, Carlson said, chewing a pepsin tablet. Mr. Fitch shrugged, arranged his mustaches, and mentioned a dozen actresses whose success was built on the art of enchanting their own sex. Carlson had a respect for this playwright's opinion, and while the two early acts of Nicolene played, he saw from his box that Coraboyle's swagger carried some message to the female part of the audience. For her, women laughed loudly. They merely sniffled over the well-bred woes of the heroine. The heroine's antics were insupportable. The second curtain fell, and Carlson descended to the dressing-room of this unsatisfactory gentlewoman, gave a rasping lecture that scared her maid away. He had to help her hook her gown and yelled over the powder of her advertised shoulders. If you want that sassy boil-gowl to be the hit of the show, go on. You act like you'd lost your last sin on the races and had sand in your shoes, now you. A feeling of heated blades in his stomach stopped the speech. He heard the stage manager knock on the dressing-room door. The actress moved weeping past his anguish. He leaned on the table and saw his sweating face in the tilted mirror. The thin, remote music of the orchestra began behind the curtain. This third act was set in the rowdy café of a small French city. If it went well, the play was safe, would last out the winter, make him richer. He should go up to his box and show himself unperturbed to rival managers civilly tranquil in their free seats. But he leaned, looking at his wet bald head with a sick weariness. What was the use of this trade? He wore down his ears, trying to teach silly women and sillier men to act. He got nothing from living but stomach trouble and money. The money would go to his sister in Stockholm when he died. He had never liked his sister, hadn't seen her in thirty years. He pitied himself so extremely that tears wriggled down the spread of seams in his yellow face. Life was an iniquity contrived for his torture. Carlson deeply enjoyed his woe for five minutes. Then Mr. Fitch came in to urge the core boil be corrected before her present entrance. What's the good, Clyde? She ain't any sense. She's an actress, ain't she? She'll spoil the act if she carries on too much, said Mr. Fitch, and at once Carlson thrilled with an automatic anxiety. The act mustn't be spoiled. He hurried up the iron stairs to the platform, wiping his face. The core boil was standing ten feet back from the canvas arch that was, for the audience, the street door of the Café Printemps. She padded the vast sleeves of her gaudy frock and whispered to a fellow in blue clothes. Carlson had to pull her from these occupations and gave his orders in a hiss. Don't you laugh too loud when Ms. Leslie's telling about her mother or talk as loud as you've been doing, neither? This ain't a camp meeting here. The black-haired girl grinned at him, nodding. She spat out a fold of chewing gum and padded her pink sleeves again. She said, all right, boss, but say, don't the folks like me, though? Fitch chuckled behind the manager. Carlson wouldn't be bested by an impudent hussy who was paid thirty-five dollars a week and didn't earn it. He stared at core boil, biting his lips and hunting words wherewith to blast her. She let him stare unchecked. A false diamond on its thin chain clittered and slid when she breathed into the cleft of her breasts. She was excellently made and highly perfumed. Her black eyes caught a vague point of red from the rim of a jaunty hat that slanted its flowers on the mass of her hair. She had rubed her chin to offset a wide mouth. Carlson jeered, better get somebody to show you a good makeup, sister, and quit talking through your nose. You sound like you're out of New Jersey. Cora Boyle giggled. She glanced at the fellow in blue and said, I was boredon at Fayette'sville, New Jersey all summer. Wasn't I, Mark? The fellow bobbed his head, shuffling his feet. His feet were bare, and by that sign Carlson knew him for the supposed peasant lad who would bring the heroine news of her dear mother's death at the end of the act. Cora Boyle gave this unimportant creature a long, amorous look, then told Carlson, I was boredon with Mark's folks, heat, your cue, said Mr. Fitch, and the girl with a splendid swagger marched into the lit scene beyond the nervous shadow. Her finery shimmered, and directly the women outside the hedge of footlights laughed. The audience tittered at her first line, and Mr. Fitch, a hand on his mustache, smiled at Carlson. She's got a voice like a saw, Carlson snapped and walked down the steps. At the bottom, a roar halted him. The audience laughed in a steady ball. He grunted, but the noise came in repeating volleys every time the girl's shrill speech rose grinding, and these bursts had an effect of surging water wonderful to hear, soothing his conceit. But as he listened, a spasm took his stomach. Fitch helped him to a cab, and the cab delivered Carlson trembling to his valet in 18th Street. The attack lasted all night, and did not wane until twilight of next day when Carlson could drink some drugged milk and roll a cigarette. He bade his valet, bring up the morning papers, and was not surprised when Fitch proceeded the man into the room, walking silently on his trim feet, a flower in his blue coat, and his white hands full of scribbled foolscap. I've been writing two scenes in the library, he said, in his usual even whisper, and I'd like to read them if you feel well enough. Two scenes. Once for the first act, and once for the last, I'd like a full rehearsal in the morning too. Carlson lifted himself and slapped the counterpane. He cried, Now Clyde, listen here, that Boyle gal's got enough. I expect she hit, but she's a sassy little hen. I'm not going to spoil her with— Nom de Dieu, said the playwright. I didn't say anything about the Boyle girl. No, these scenes are for young Walling. He can come on with some flowers for Nicoline in the first act, and say something. Then he can bring the dogs in at the last, instead of the maid. We might dress him as a gameskeeper in the last act, green coat, corduroy breeches. Carlson screamed, Corduroy pants! Who the hell are you talking about, Walling? Who's Walling? Mr. Fitch lit a cigar and selected a paper from the bundle the valet held. He bent himself over the back of a cherry velvet chair, which turned his suit vile purple in the dusk, and began to read genially. Into the sordid and sensuous atmosphere of this third act there came a second of relief when the messenger brought Nicoline news of her mother's death. We too rarely see such acting as Mr. Walling's performance of this petty part. His embarrassed, sympathetic stare at Nicoline, his boyish, unaffected speech. The playwright laughed and took another paper. That's William Winter. Here's this idiot. This superb little episode exactly proves the soundness of Carlson's method in rehearsing a company. I am told that Mark Walling, the young actor who plays the role, has been drilled by Mr. Carlson as carefully as though he were a principal. I told him that. Mr. Fitch explained, changing papers. One of the best performances in the long list of forty was that of Mark Walling as... Carlson lay back dizzy on his pillows and snarled. What's it all about for Hell's sake? This feller comes on and gives the gal the letter and says the funeral will be the next day? Well? Well, said his ally, I'd just put you in your cab. I was out in front, standing. This boy came on. They were still laughing at Coraboyle. The minute Walling spoke, everyone shut up. He gave his line about the funeral and some women commenced snivelling. Wiped his nose on his sleeve. Some more women cried. I thought they'd applaud for a minute. He's in all the papers. Nice voice. It's his looks, mostly. Never noticed him. Where did we get him? Mr. Fitch blew some smoke toward the red velvet curtains and chuckled. We didn't get him. He belongs to Coraboyle. She brought him to Rothenstein at the first rehearsal and asked for a part for him. She kidnapped him down in Jersey. She what? Kidnapped him. The playwright assumed a high drawl and recited, Cora, she was boardin' with Mark's folks down to Fayettesville. Mark, he used to speak pieces after supper. Cora, she thought he spoke real nice. So she kidnapped him. She mesmerized him, like Trilby, and brought him along. She's got him cooped up at her boarding-house. She's married him. He says he thinks actin's awful easy. Mr. Fitch again drawled, because all you gotta do is walk out and speak your piece. He's got a brother name of Joe, and his mama she's dead, and sister Sadie, she's married to Eddie something or other. I heard his whole family tree. I went to see him this morning. Someone else is likely to grab him, you know. He told me his sad story in a pair of blue drawers and one sock. He's scared to death of Coraboyle. But—but can he act? The playwright shook his head. No, he hasn't any brains. Are you well enough to get dressed? At half-past ten an usher came into the box-office, where Carlson was sitting, and summoned the manager to the rear of the house. Fitch stood at the throat of an aisle, his pallor made orange by the glow from the stage on which Coraboyle was chaffing the sinful heroine. Amusement sped up this lustrous stirring slope of heads. It was the year of Violette Amair among perfumes, and the scent rolled back to Carlson with the laughter of these ninnies who took Coraboyle for a good comedian. Carlson chafed, but when the lad in blue walked into the light of the untinted globes, this laughter flickered down. Fitch whispered, here, and promptly the boy spoke in a husky, middling voice that somehow reached Carlson clearly, close by a woman gurgled, sweet, and Carlson felt the warm attention of the crowd. Hath understood it as the few lines drawled on. The boy stood square on his brown-painted feet. His flat face was comely. He had dull red, curling hair. As he tramped out there was a faint and scattered rumor, like the birth of applause, cut by the heroine's shriek. You see? Fitch smiled. Carlson said, I ain't a fool. Tell Rothenstein to call a rehearsal for ten in the morning, will you? He then went briskly to hunt down this asset. It took some minutes to locate the dressing-room, Mark Walling shared with five other small parts. He found Mark peeled to faded, azure cotton underclothes, and talking happily to a tall, fair rustic, who slouched on the wall beside the sink where Mark scrubbed paint from his feet with a sponge. Their draws mixed and shut from them the noise of Carlson's step, so the manager regarded his prize stealthily. Mark was a long lad, limber and burly, harmlessly good-looking. His nose was short. His insteps and arms were thick with muscle. He smiled up at his rural friend, who said, But it ain't a long trip, bud, so I'll get your papa to come up next week. Mark shifted the sponge to his other hand and sighed. The sound touched Carlson, who hated actors not old enough to court him cleverly. But this was a homesick peasant. He listened to Mark's answer of, Wish you would, Eddie. I ain't sure papa likes my being here, even if I do. The rustic saw Carlson and mumbled. Mark Walling hopped about on one foot and gave a solemn, frightened gulp. Carlson nodded, inquiring. That's your brother, sonny. No, sir, Joe's home. This is Eddie Burnamer. Well, he's my brother-in-law. He's married with Sadie. Eddie Burnamer gave out attenuated sounds, accepting the introduction. The manager asked lightly, How many sisters have you, son? Just Sadie, she's out looking at the play. And you've married Coral Boyle. Well, said Mark. That's so. He seemed rather puzzled by the fact, suspended the sponge and said to Eddie Burnamer, She ain't but two years older than me, Eddie. I guess Mr. Carlson wants to talk to you, bud, his relative muttered. So I'll go on back and see some more. But you'll come around and wait after the show, Mark wailed. We'll have to catch the cars, bud. Well, goodbye. Mark stood clutching the sponge inside a monstrous, woeful exhalation after Eddie Burnamer. His gray eyes filled. He was hideously homesick. Certain that Fayetsville was a better place than this cellar that stunk of sweated cloth and greasy paint. And Cora hadn't been strikingly pleased by the news of him in this morning's papers. She was odd. He wiped his nose on a wrist and looked hopelessly at Carlson. Rather be back on the farm, wouldn't you? The gaunt man asked. Mark sat down on the floor and thought. His thoughts went slowly across the track of six weeks. He plotted. For all its demerits, this red and gold theater was thrilling. People were jolly, kind enough. The lewd stage-hands had let him help set a scene tonight. The man who handled the lights had shown him how they were turned on and off to make stormy waverings. Cora was exciting. Winter at home was plagued by Aunt Edith, who came out from Trenton to spend the cold months at the farm, and who lectured Mark's father on Methodism. And here was this easy, good job. If he worked hard, it might be that Mr. Carlson, who wasn't now the screaming beast of rehearsals, would let him run the lights instead of acting. Mark said, Well, no. Just as soon stay here, I guess. How old are you, sonny? Going on seventeen, sir. I'll give you forty a week to stay here, said Carlson. Fitch tells me you think acting's pretty easy. I don't see any trick to acting, Mark mused, absorbing the offer of forty dollars a week. There ain't nothing to it but speaking out loud. Yes, I'd like to stay here. He wanted to show himself useful, and got up, pointing to the bulbs clustered on the ceiling in a bed of ten. I think you ought to save some money if you had them down here by the looking-glasses instead of this gas, you see. The fellers don't get any good of the electric light when they're putting paint on, and rehearsal at ten in the morning, said Carlson. Good night. Mark gaped at the black and empty door. Then his homesickness swelled up and he sighed, squeezing the sponge. His body trembled drearily. He lowered his head as does a lonesome calf turned into strange pastures. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Of the Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Fair Rewards by Thomas Beer. Chapter 2 He Progresses Nicolene lasted until April 1896. Mark played the country boy in Mr. Bell all the next season, and duly coached by Sarah Cowell Lemoine, figured as the young Duke in the Princess of Croy when Carlson imported that disaster in the autumn of 1897. Its failure afflicted Mark less than his private griefs. He played for four months in Carlson's Boston Stock Company. This was pinnable. He had never been so far from his adored family. True, freed of Cora, he could send ten or twenty dollars a week to his father, but he missed Sundays in Fayettesville, and the Boston wind gave him chill-blanes. The friendly women of the Stock Company found him shy, and here began the legend of Mark's misogyny. He read novels and tramped about Boston, surveyed the theatrical setting of Lewisburg Square, and side-long admired the ladies walking rigidly in sober hats on Commonwealth Avenue. Such persons, he mused, would never fling hot curling irons in a husband's face, and it wasn't possible to imagine them smoking cigarettes in bed. But he hated Boston, and the war was welcome as it honorably pulled him back to a New Jersey infantry regiment. In June 1898, he sat on a palmetto trunk in the filthy camp of Tampa, watching Eddie Brnemer pitch a ball to Joe Walling. Mark had every satisfaction in the sight, and liked his piebald uniform much more than any costume hitherto. The camp pleased him as a problem. There would be plays made on the war, of course, and it wouldn't be so easy to mount them. These bright trees and the muddle of railroad ties could be affected, but the theater lacked lights to send down this parching glitter on black mud and strolling men. He sighed for realism. He had spent hours in Davidge's workshop, while the grass of the Princess of Croix was being made. It hadn't the right sheen. The sunset had turned it blue, and the sunset was all wrong, even though the critics had praised it. Mark swung his gators and pondered irreproducible nature. But it would be nice to counterfeit all this, the glister of remote tin roofing, the harsh palms, the listless soldiery. The police would object to exactness, of course. Brother Joe was pitching the ball with great flexures of his bronze-naked chest. Eddie Brnemer swore astoundingly when he ripped his undershirt. One couldn't be so honest on the stage, or echo the sharp, unreal note of male call sounding. Mark ran off to see if the wayward postal service had brought him a letter. There was a roll of newspapers addressed to his brother-in-law, and Brnemer, a bad reader, turned them over to Mark and Joe. It was Joe who found the penciled paragraph Mark rather expected. He slapped Mark's back and grunted, well, so there you are, bud. Mark read, The suit for divorce began by Mark Walling, the well-known young actor against his wife, Coral Boyle Walling, was concluded yesterday. Neither party to the action was present in court. Miss Boyle is touring the West with the Jarvis Hope Stock Company. Jarvis Hope is named co-responded in the case. The action was not defended. Mr. Walling is now with the N.J. Infantry. The divorced couple were married in August, 1895. They have no children. Good riddance to bad rubbish, said Eddie Brnemer, and don't you let the next woman looks at you haul you off to a preacher, neither. Mark felt dubious. There had never been a divorce in the family. He said, I guess if we'd had a baby she wouldn't have done oh. It's kind of too bad. His relatives denied it. They had never liked Coral Boyle. She wasn't a lady, and her clothes had shocked Sadie's conservative mind. They pointed out that a stable and meritorious woman wouldn't have seduced Mark before marriage. They were glad to see the boy free, and were puzzled by his mournfulness. He agreed with their judgments. But his eyes moistened for all their affectionate pawing. He muttered, She was awful good-looking. And sat moody while they indicated advantages. He could save his pay now and wear respectable black neck ties as a walling should. He wouldn't be bullied or have hot curling irons flung in his face. He could come home on the Saturday midnight train and stay until Monday afternoon. And Joe reasonably assured him that women were plentiful. But Mark mourned in his tangled fashion the collapse of beauty. Cora, he choked, didn't match her outside. She was ruthless, disturbing. She cared nothing for Mark's pet plan of an ideal lighting system for theaters. She had spilled coffee on his smudged laborious chart of a stage to be made in hinged parts. She called his sacred family a parcel of mossbacks, and left the flat when Sadie and Bernemer brought their baby to town for a day. Still, Mark was mournful and often missed her for several years. He shuddered from marriage as a game more complicated than golf. He was playing golf in May 1902 with Ian Gale when the English playwright checked his grammar. Mark flushed. The Englishman fooled with a putter for a second, considering this color. He said, I say, old son, do you mind my giving you some advice? Go ahead. Carlson's closing the play next week, he tells me. What will you do with yourself all summer? Go home. Where's that and what's it like? Mark sat down on the green and chattered of the farm, and his family, with particular mention of his nephew, George Dewey Bernemer, born May 15, 1898, who called himself Gertie. About Jill Walling's baby daughter, Mark wasn't as yet enthusiastic. He talked with broad lapses into New Jersey's sing-song. His gray eyes dilated. He babbled like an upset pale. The lean Englishman didn't seem bored. Other people, Mrs. Lemoine, old Mrs. Gilbert, had scolded Mark about these explosions. Gale let him talk for twenty minutes of warm noon, and then said, quite right, old son, stick to your people. You're a sentimental ass, of course. I daresay that's why you can put up with dinner at Carlson's, in that seething mass of red plush. But I like Carlson, been mighty good. Of course he's good to you, and it was good of you to make him mount my last play so decently. For some reason or other, you've an eye for decoration. That's by the way. Now, I have a female cousin in Winchester. A Mrs. Ilden. She writes bad novels that no one reads, and her husband's in the Navy. I'm going to write her about you. You run across after the play stops. She'll put you up for a month, and you'll pay her. I suggest a hundred pounds. Pay her for what? Her conversation, my boy. She's quite clever, and fearfully learned. Shaw likes her. She's an anarchist, and a determinist, and all that. And much older than you. She makes a business of tutoring youngsters who need doing over a bit. You seem to have been reared on Hinty and Shakespeare. Even Carlson says you need pruning. There's no use being anti-Diluvian, even if you are a rising young leading man. God, how I hate the breed. I shouldn't waste these words on you if you didn't show vagrum gleams of common sense now and then. So I must seriously beg of you to go and let Olive, Mrs. Ilden, tutor you for a fortnight. Mark was always docile before authority, he asked. What'll she do to me? She can tell you anything you want to know and explain Winchester. The history of Winchester is the history of England, Gale said. And of course, that's the history of the world. Thus, in early June, Mark was driven through Winchester and landed at the door of a brick house painted plum color. A gray wall continued on either side of the ruddy front and nameless vines waved on the coping. Mark's head ached from a supper at Ramanos the night previous, but he admired the house and the obvious romance of the curving lane stippled with sunshine in plaques of honey. He rang the bell, gave a fat parlor maid his card, and waited for Mrs. Ilden in stolid terror. The hall had white panels of an approved stage pattern and was dotted with photographs. Mark was looking at the face of a bearded man whose eyebrows had a diabolic slant when Olive Ilden came in from her garden. She came in a bad temper, deserting the discussion of Chamberlain's imperial policy about her tea table. She was prepared for a repetition of her last paying pupil, the one son of a rand millionaire, a cub who wore five rubies on one hand and who talked racing at four meals a day. Mark unsettled her by his wooden stare and the blink decency of his dress. His clothes were English, he was always tanned. The scar of Coral Boyle's curling irons lay in a thread along his left jaw. Olive revised a theory that Americans were short and looked up at him. I have some friends at tea, she said. Of course I don't wish to impose tea on a Yankee. I think I'd like some, Mark said miserably, and followed her trailing white skirts down an endless garden. He thought her gown distinctly bad and sloppy. She must be older than she looked or she wouldn't be so careless. The girdle was crooked and the gauze across her shoulders was too tight, but it was a foreign body, tall and proportionate. Her hair was illustrious black. Meanwhile, he had to think about this scene of an English garden. It phrased itself simply, wall, rear, tower of church, right background, two small children playing with a kitten, tea table, three ladies, young man in tweeds, one clergyman, it was like the garden set for the princess of Croy. Mark braced himself, bowed, and murmured in the manner of Mrs. Lemoyne, leaned on one of the limes in the manner of Herbert Kelsey, and drank his tea in the manner of Mr. Drew. The minor cannon gave him a cigarette, and Mark said, Thanks so much. The youth in tweeds asserted that it was beastly hot for June, and Mark admitted, Rather. He stood somber against the lime, and the group was chilled by his chill. Two of the ladies fancied him a poet by the red curling of his hair. The guest withdrew. Olive Ilden fiddled with a teaspoon and frowned. I rather expected you on Tuesday. Had to stay in London. Mr. Carlson wanted me to look at a couple of plays he's thinking of bringing over here. Really, I don't see why you Yankees always import our nonsense. One hears of the Panero rubbish playing for thousands of nights in the States. Why? Why? The women like it, he wildly said, quoting Carlson. Are those your kids? Mine and my husbands. Olive laughed and called Joan and Robert Ilden from their game with the kitten. Mark played with them in all content for half an hour, didn't glance at Olive, and told her blonde children about his best nephew, Gertie Burnamer. The bored infants broke his watch chain, and their puzzled mother took Mark to walk. She led him down through the college and wondered why he paused to stare at the cathedral walls, where the sunshine was pallet on the weathered stone. He was thinking that bulb's tinted straw color might get this glow against the properly painted canvas. His eyes opened and his drowsy gaze pleased the woman. She said, Do you like it, the cathedral? The tower's too small, he said. Clever of you, yes, architects think so. Glad you noticed. Anybody could see that. Is that the bishop? He asked, seeing black gators in motion on a lawn. A mere dean, and the birds are rooks. All the best cathedrals have rooks about. Shall we go in? I had just assumed, he nodded, regretting that the queer shade of the elms wasn't possible on a backdrop. The interior charmed him. He forgot his headache. His thoughts hopped. Church scenes never went well. No way to capture the slow echo for the stage. The upper brightness made him raise his eyes. This range of high windows, where the lights melted together, was called a chlorestory. The mingled glory almost frightened him. He saw a white butterfly that jiggled and wheeled irreverent, solitary on the far shadows of the vault. Mark smiled. Small Gertie Bernamer named butterflies, bruffles, and was probably chasing one now, across the hot perfume of the Fatesville Garden. The fancy made him homesick. He blinked. The woman watching him saw crystal wetness point his lashes and hastily stated, This is William de Wickham's tomb. Mark examined the painted tomb, wished he could sketch the canopy and the pygmy monks who prey at the bishop's feet. Gertie Bernamer would like the monks and would break them. He rubbed his nose and chuckled. I suppose, all have said, that all this seems rather silly to you, you're a practical people. It's good-looking. I don't see how a good-looking thing can be silly exactly. I was thinking my kid nephew'd like those monks to play with, but he'd bust them. Isn't King William Rufus buried here? You've been reading a guidebook. Oh no, that's in history. They lugged him here on a wagon or something and buried him. Where's he plant buried? Mark wished that the dark lady would stop frowning as she steered him to the glum polished tomb in the choir. He must be offensive to her. She said, This is supposed to be the tomb, they're not sure. And Mark stared at the raised slab of ugly stone with awe. The organ began to growl softly in a transept. It was solemn to stand, reflecting on the red king while the organ moaned a marching air. William Rufus had been dead so long, history was amazing. When he had a theatre of his own, Mark meant to open it with Richard III or with Henry V. Carlson told him that no one would ever play Richard III again as Booth had gone too high in the part. But the Walling Theatre would be opened with a romantic play full of radiant clothes and scenes that would match the playhouse itself. The Walling would have a ceiling of dull blue and boxes curtained in silk, black as a woman's hair. The lamps would wane in the new manner when the axe began and there would be mirrors rimmed in faint silver to gleam in far nooks of the balcony, something to shimmer in the corners and shadows of his dream. Mark stared down the nave and built his theatre against the gray age of this place until all of sat in a heap of muslin on the tomb of William Rufus. One doesn't have to bother about such an indifferent king. There are some more in those tins, I mean caskets, on top of the choir screen, Edmund and so on. More kings, but won't a sacriston or something come and chase you off of here? What do you know about sacristons? Cathedrals always have them in books. I dare say you read quantities of bad novels, she observed. Well, I like Monserbo Kerr and Kim better than anything I've read lately, said her bewildering pupil. Say, who was Pico della Mirandola? I don't think I can talk about the renaissance in Winchester Choir. Olive choked and took him away. Save for the studied clarity of voice he showed no theatrical traits. He resented the sign of the plume of feathers beside the west gate because it spoiled the wall. He asked if the Buttercross was a well and bought several postcards at a shop where the squared panes arrested him. Olive made conjectures. She was twenty-six. She had known actors in some bulk. This wasn't an actor, observably. She guided him back toward the college and threw a swarm of lads and flannels. At these, Mark looked and sighed. Why that sob? Don't know. I suppose because kids are having such an awful good time and don't know it. I mean, they'll get married and all that. Are you married? Mark said cheerfully, divorced. Tell me about it. Don't think I'd better, Mrs. Ilden. Is that American? Is, is what? That delicate respect for my sensibilities. Don't know what you mean exactly. I had to divorce Cora, my wife, and I'd rather not talk about it. Olive felt alarmed. She said, I'm supposed to tutor you in art and ethics, and I'm merely trying to get your point of view, you know. Don't look so shocked. I don't see what my getting divorced has to do with art and ethics. Oh, was that man Layton a better painter than Whistler? His questions ranged from the salary of cannons to professional cricket. He wore a small and single pearl in his shirt at dinner, sat eating chastely, and stared at Olive between the candles that made his gray eyes black in the brown of his face. The parlor maid brought him the silver bowl of chutney three unnecessary times. He timidly corrected Olive's views on farm labor in the United States with, I'm afraid you're wrong, I was brought up on a farm. Really, I was wondering. Fayette'sville, it's in the woods near Trenton. Say, what's the Primrose League? For a week, Olive tried to outline this mentality. He plunged from subject to subject. Economics wearied him. What's it matter what kind of government you got, so long as folks get enough to eat and kids ain't don't have to work? Religion, he said, was all poppycock. His papa admired Robert Ingersoll, and what's it matter whether folks have souls or not? You're a materialist, she laughed. Well, what of it? I'm trying to find out what your ethical standards are. Why don't you cheat at Poca? Because it ain't fair, it's like stealing a man's wife. Someone stole your wife, didn't he? Mark finally chuckled. You'd hardly call it stealing, she just walked off when she knew I'd heard about it. He blushed, hoping he hadn't transgressed, and hurriedly asked whether Bernard Shaw was really a vegetarian. He had no opinion of Shaw's plays, but thought the devil's disciple a better play than Magda. The sunken bell was pretty near up Shakespeare. He was worried because Treasure Island couldn't be dramatized, and recited Thanatopsis to the horror of Olive's children. Olive interrupted the recital. That'll be quite enough, thanks. Wherever did you pick up that sentimental rot? Just what is being sentimental? Mark demanded. Writing such stuff and liking it when it's written, I suspect you of Tennyson. Never read any, tried to, couldn't accept that Ulysses thing. Let's go take a walk. Too warm, thanks. Said Olive, wanting to see whether this would hold him in his basket chair under the limes. I'll be back at about tea time, Mark promised. Paused on his way up the garden to kiss Bobby Ilden's fair head, as the little boy reminded him of Gertie Burnamer, and vanished whistling, the banks of the Wabash. All his clothes were black, said young Joan Ilden, but I was helping Edith dust in his room this morning, and he has the nicest blue pajamas. Do go pull Bobby out of the raspberries, Olive said, and fell into a sulk which she didn't define. She lounged in her chair, watching the light play on the straight bowl of a tree, behind the empty place where Mark had been sitting. Rage succeeded the sulk. This was a stupid augmentation of her income. Olive disapproved land-holding, but it would be easier every way when Ilden's uncle died, and he came into the Suffolk property. Then she would be able to live in London, instead of flitting there for a breath of diversion. She hoped Mark would go to London soon. He had the mind of a badly schooled stockbroker. Olive lifted her portfolio from the table, and penciled a note to her husband. I do wish you could slaughter your dear Uncle Jack. Ian Gale has sent me a silly Yankee to educate. I hope I have no insular prejudice against the harmless necessary colonial, but this cad. Then she thought, what am I saying here? I don't mean it. I'm lying. And tore up the paper. Mark went swimming in the itchen, and did not come home until seven. He dressed in six minutes, and found Olive clad in black lace by the drawing-room mantel of white stone. He said, Say, I ran into a flock of sheep in an old feller with a crook. Do they still do that? Do. Crooks. And he had on a blue, what do you call it, smock. Olive laughed, and lifted her arms behind her head. Did you think someone was staging a pastoral for your benefit? But you didn't come home to tea, and there were some quite amusing people here. I kept them as long as I could. Too bad, said Mark. I'm sorry. You shouldn't lie so. You're not at all sorry. You're bored when people come, and you have to play the British gentleman. And there are so many other things better worth doing. That's in Shah, Mark guessed. Clyde Fitch was talking about it. But what's wrong with acting like a gentleman? What's the use? Your manners are quite all right. If you talk to people and collect ideas, it's so much more important to straighten out your ideas than to stand and hold a teacup properly. A butler can do that. I could train a navvy to do that, and that's an awful good-looking dress, he broke in. Nicest you've had on since I've been here. Olive let an arm trail on the mantle, where the stone cooled it. I'm talking about your intellect, and you talk about my frock. I know something about dresses, and I don't know a thing about intellect. You ought to wear dark things, because you've got a nice complexion. I don't bother about clothes, except when Jack's at home, and I want to keep his attention. You were in Cuba, you said. Did you kill anyone? Don't know. Tried to. Why? I was wondering whether you'd mind killing an old duffer in Suffolk. He keeps my husband out of twelve hundred a year and a decentish house. Would you mind? Mark saw this was meant as a joke and laughed, studying her arm, which gleamed white on the white stone. My husband's uncle, he's easily eighty, and he's very Tory. Haven't gotten any uncles, got an aunt that's pretty awful, she's a Methodist. He wouldn't look at her. He still stared at the arm, sprawled on the mantle, and smiled like a child. Olive wanted to hurt him suddenly, to rouse him. The glowing stare was too childish, she drawled. I went into your bedroom to see that they'd swept it decently. Are those the family portraits on the desk? Who's the fat girl with the baby? Sadie, my sister, she's putting on weight. Papa keeps two hired girls now, and she don't have to cook. The yellow-headed fella's her husband, Eddie Burnamer, awful fine man. He beamed at Olive now, doting on Eddie Burnamer's perfections. Olive tried, and the lad with the very huge pearl in his scarf is your brother. And they all live on your father's farm, and you go down there and bore yourself to death over weekends. Don't bore myself at all. I get all the New York I want weekdays. Fine to get out and ride a horse around, nice house. We built a wing on when Joe got married last year. The parlor maid announced dinner. Mark gave Olive his arm, and wanted to stroke her arm white across the black of his sleeve. He talked of his family through the meal and after it, leaning on the piano while Olive played. He tortured her with anecdotes of his and Joe's infancy, and with the deeds of Gertie Burnamer. He sighed, reporting that Sadie's oldest girl had died. You mean you're wearing mourning for a six-year-old child? Of course, said Mark. And then you ask me what a sentimentalist is. Olive struck a discord into the Good Friday spell and sneered. I daresay you think life so full of unpleasantness that it shouldn't be brought into the theatre. No, I don't think that exactly. But I don't think there's any sense in doing a play where you can't, can't, well, make it good-looking. These plays where there's nothing but a perfectly ordinary family having a fight and all that. A show ought to be something more. You get the music in an opera. Carmen'd be a fine hunk of Bosch if you didn't have the music and the Spanish clothes. Just a dirty yarn. There ought to be something good-looking in a play. Nobody believes a play but girls out of high school. If you can't have poetry like Shakespeare, you ought to have something. Something pretty. I don't mean pretty. I mean... Olive stopped the music. Mark descended rapidly and went on. I don't care about these two-cent comedies, either. You don't like comedy. Not much. Truth is, I don't catch a joke easy. I tried reading Molle Guerre, but it sounds pretty dry to me. Haven't tried Aristophanes. I guess that's deeper and I could swim. Rot. You mustn't let yourself. What is it? Be blinded by the glory of great names. Anyone who can see the point in patience can understand Aristophanes. But you haven't much humor. But you've played in comedy. Some. I'd just assume. Olive began a neatress dance, knowing that he liked melodrama and watched his eyes brighten, dilating. A fine comedian's the greatest boon in the world. Women especially. Is it true that women who are good in comedy are usually rather serious off the stage? Can't say. Well, my wife was pretty damn serious. His huge sigh made Olive laugh. She asked, You've no children. No. Guess that was the trouble. Play that pure get-morning thing. I've played enough, said Olive. You say Mr. Carlson sent you over to look at some plays for him. He must trust your judgment. Mark answered happily. Sure. He says that if I take to a play, so will everyone else. He says I've got lots of judgment about plays. Olive shut the piano and rose. Her face wrinkled off into laughter. She said, You dear thing. I dare say he's quite right about that. Good night. She strolled out of the drawing room and Mark could see her passing up the long stairs. She moved splendidly against the white panels. One wrist caressed the rail. The black gown dragged gently up the rosy treads. She vanished slowly into the dark and Mark said golly. As he went to get his hat. He wandered over to the bar of the black swan and drank cold ale while he meditated. He mustn't fall in love. Eddie Burnamer and Joe disapproved of affairs with married women. They were right, of course. And nothing must interfere with his tutelage. And Eldon was at sea. But this was vexatious. He wished she did not stroll so lazily upstairs across gardens. He wished that her hair wasn't black. He found himself blushing at breakfast when she came in with a yellow garden hat on the black of her hair. Now that he'd begun to think of it, she looked rather like Cora Boyle. He thought of Cora Boyle again in the garden after luncheon. The children had left a green rubber ball on the turf. Mark rolled it about with one sole and watched Olive trim a patch of dull blue flowers. His place in the ball underfoot recalled something cloudy. He worked to evolve a real memory and laughed. Olive quickly glanced up. You keep asking about my wife. She was boreden with us up at the farm. First time she ever spoke to me I was kicking a ball around in the garden. This way I was barefoot. Cora said, ain't you too old to go barefooted? I forget what I said. But with the ball that day you played no more. That sounds like a piece of a play, said Mark. It's from a comedy, Olive snapped. Do get your hat and take a walk. I'll be busy for an hour. Look at the deanery garden. The dean's gone to Scotland. Got to write a letter first. Boat from Liverpool tomorrow. He mailed a letter to Joe's wife, born Margaret Healy, trampled down to the close and examined the dean's garden. It would make a neat setting. The mass of the cathedral to the left, the foliate house to the right, a maid in black and white passed over the grass and reminded him of Joe's wife again by a certain dragging gate. He went into the cathedral and studied the Wickham tomb from all angles. Some tourists hummed in the nave. A guide in a frock coat ambled after them the scanting thinly of dead kings. Mark fell into a genial peace, leaned on a column, smiling at the far roof. The feet of the tourists made a small melody among the tombs, and this seemed to increase. He heard a rapid breath and saw Olive with his coat over her arm. She panted, I've packed your things, they're in the cab. At the gates, hurry. You've hardly time to get to the station. Do hurry. I'll telegraph to Liverpool and tell them to hold a cabin, stateroom, whatever they call them. Oh, do hurry. What's happened? Oh, this. I didn't look at the cover. Thought it was from Jack. Mark snatched the telegram and read, Joe and Margaret killed Wreck Triton, come if. Then rolled the paper into his palm. Olive saw his eyes swell and gasped. Who's Margaret? Joe's wife. Where's the cab? At the gate. Run. He dashed into the sun, beyond the open doors. Then the red hair gleamed as he came wheeling back to gulp. Send you a check from— Olive spread her hands out crying, No, no, I shan't take it. And saw him rush off again. The cab made no noise that she could hear. She shivered as if a warming fire died suddenly in winter and left her cold. Presently she struck a palm on the stone beside her and said, Sentimentalist, Sentimentalist, while she wept. She made use of Mark, though, in her next novel, The Barbarian, which began her success. Mark was rather flattered by the picture, and glad that he hadn't insulted this clever wise woman by making love to her. He thought of Olive as exalted from the ranks of passionate, clutching females, and often wrote long, artless letters to her. CHAPTER III. FULL BLOOM The family council prudently allowed Mark to adopt his brother's orphan, Margaret. He sometimes borrowed Gertie Bernamer to keep the dark child company in his New York flat. By 1905 the borrowing settled into a habit. Gertie provided activity for a French nurse and then for an English governess dispatched by Olive Ilden. He was a silent, restless creature. He disliked motor-cars for his own unrevealed reason that they resembled the herces of his uncle's funeral. He had a prejudice against small Margaret because she looked like her dead mother, an objectionable person, smelling of orange water, and because Mark made such a fuss over the child. He learned to read newspapers, copying Mark's breakfast occupation, and in September 1907 noted that Carlson and Walling would tonight inaugurate their partnership by the presentation of Red Winter at their new 45th Street Theater. Inaugurate, charmed Gertie, it conveyed an image of Mark and the bony Mr. Carlson doing something with a monstrous augur. Mark had forever stopped acting in May, would henceforth manage. Curiosity pulled Gertie from the window-seat of his playroom and Mark's new house on 55th Street. He waited for a moment when the governess, Miss Converse, was scolding young Margaret and couldn't see him slide down the hall stairs. He scuttled west, then south, and navigated Broadway until he reached the mad corner of 45th Street, where a gentleman took him by the collar of his blouse and halted him. Where are you going? Gertie recognized a quiet character who came to luncheons now and then. He said, Hello, Mr. Froman. Dutifully and looked about for the theater, the stooping man detained him gravely. I thought you weren't old enough for shows. I'm looking for Mark. Mr. Froman chuckled, leaning on a stick. He said, He's in his office. Where's that? Gertie stared past the pointing stick and saw a cream face of columns and windows. He saw the stone above a ring of heads. People were gaping at his calm acquaintance as if this plump, tired man was a kicking horse. He remembered civility and asked, How's your rheumatism? Better, said Mr. Froman, and limped away. Gertie pushed scornfully past the gapers and trotted into the white vestibule of the theater, where men were arranging flowers, horseshoes of orchids, ugly and damp, roses in all tents, lumps of unknown bloom, on standards wrapped in silver foil. A red-haired, hatless youth listed the cards dangling from these treasures and told Gertie to go to hell when Gertie asked for his uncle, but another man nodded to the stairs of yellow, slick marble. On the landing Gertie found a door stenciled in gold, Carlson and Walling. Gertie stood wondering at the furious shades of neckties and the gray hard hats which Miss Converse thought vulgar. My God! said Carlson, Mark, look at that coming in! Mark groaned. He had a compact with Mrs. Bernamer that the borrowed boy shouldn't enter a theater until he was twelve. He was tall enough for twelve, but he was only nine. He stayed in the doorway, studying the red walls of the room, his white socks far apart, and his hands thrust into the pockets of his short loose breeches. The collars stared at the tough legs, brown from a summer on the farm. The boy's one-patent beauty, his soft pale hair, was hidden by his English sailor cap and his white blouse was spotted with ink stains. But the men grinned and chuckled, admiringly. Gertie made no sound when Carlson set him on the top of the bookcase, but gazed contemptuously at the crowding men and let himself be petted. When do you inaugurate, Mark? Eight-fifteen, when you'll be in bed, sonny. Gertie drawled. I don't get to bed till quarter of nine, and you ought to know that by this time. He frowned, partly closing his dark blue eyes as the men laughed. What are all those flowers for? A man in a corner lifted his white face from a book and whispered, Those are gifts the Greeks brought. This caused stillness, then unpleasing chuckles. Gertie climbed down from the bookcase and went to talk to Mr. Fitch. They talked of French lessons and the vagaries of governesses. The other collars complimented Mark on the boy's good looks. The flattery was soothing after the strain of the last rehearsal. Mark knew it for flattery. Gertie's face was too long, his sober mouth too wide, and his jaw prematurely square. But the compliments were the due of a successful actor turned manager. He sat for a little, watching Mr. Fitch lazily chat with the boy as though he were a grown man. On the playwright's warning he had lately published a careful interview announcing Gertie and Margo as adopted children and his relationship to them. But people still probably reported Gertie an illegitimate son and Margo his daughter by Cora Boyle. Mark sighed and took Gertie down through the flowers to see the cream and gold playhouse where men were squirting perfume from syringes along the red aisles, killing the smell of paint. He let Gertie have a syringe and went into the vestibule. The red-haired clerk, listing the gifts of other managers, handed him the card wet from its journey in a ball of pink roses. Mrs. Cosmo Rand, who the devil is Mrs. Cosmo Rand, Billy? The clerk scratched his ear and grinned. You'd ought to know, sir. But I don't, Cosmo Rand, heard of him. Lefler's got him in something, who's she? Miss Cora Boyle said the clerk and strolled off to insult a messenger, bringing in more flowers. Mark had a curious, disheartening shock. He didn't bow to Cora Boyle on the street. What right had she to send him flowers? It must be a passing rudeness. She might remember that he disliked pink roses. Mark rested on the ledge of the box-office, brooding. But she might mean to be pleasant. Her manager, Lefler, was on bad terms with Carlson. This might be a dictated, indirect peace offering. Mark padded the florid-carved stone of the ledge and thought. Cora's new play wasn't a success. The reviews had been tart. She might be tired of Lefler. Mark was perplexed, but the hunt for motives always wearied him. A scarlet petticoat went by outside the vestibule and led off his mind. He bade his treasurer, telephone for the motor, and stood joking with the man through the box-office window, until a flat stop in the noise behind him made Mark turn his head. The florists and clerks were motionless regarding the street. A coop had stopped. A footman was helping a woman and a tumult of varied flowers to the sidewalk. She came forward to the doors gallantly, her face quite hidden in the enormous bouquet. But the treasurer said, by G. I'd know her in hell by her walk. And chuckled. She tripped on the sill and screamed gaily to Mark in French. Mark jumped to catch the sheaf of yellow roses. Miss Held waved her gray gloves wide and dipped her chin. Mark Antoine, and out as Beatrice get along to teach you French. Pretty fair, haven't had much time lately. Thought you'd taken your show on the road, Anna. Next week, up the stairs, someone began to whistle La Petite Tonquenoise. The little woman vibrated inside the gray case of her lacy gown and pursed her lips. Oh, but I am sick of that tune. Make him stop. The whistler heard and ceased. Miss Held swayed to and fro among the flowers, noting cards. She adopted a huge orchid for her waist and smiled down at it. A dozen grins woken the collecting crowd. Mark was aware of upholsterers oozing from the theatre. Miss Held hummed from gift to gift. La moine, David, nice lilies. She moved in a succession of swift steps that seemed balanced leaps. One of the florist's girls sighed a positive sob of envy. The curving body and the embellished eyes kept the crowd still. The soft gloves drooped on the hard luster of the stirring arms. Mark wondered at her cool sardonic mastery of attention. She was bored, unwell, and her frock was nothing new. She was Anna Held, and the people were edging in from the sidewalk to look at her. Like to see the house, Anna? Oh, no. I very well know what that would be, all red and gold fishes in the ceiling, eh. No, I must go away. She strolled off toward her carriage, chattering sudden French which Mark did not understand. He heard an immense discussion surge up in the vestibule, as he shut the coop door, walked through it into the theatre, where two upholsterers were quarreling over the age of the Paragon, and where Mark bumped up against a man in brown, who seemed to inspect the gold dolphins of the vault. Clumsy, said the man, briskly. Didn't see you, sir. I meant the decoration. The man flicked a hand at the ceiling and the red boxes. Like August and Daley's first house, but much worse, we should have passed that, guilt. It's the Scoredom anti-mortem in architecture. He jammed a cigarette between the straight lips of his flushed face, and went on in a rattle of dry syllables. One should write a monograph on gold paint in the theatrical temperament, plush in passion, stigmata. Can you give me a match? Where's Carlson's office? He bustled out of the foyer. Mark wearily tore Coraboyle's card in his tanned fingers and nodded. The stranger was right. This new theatre was stale. The gold sparkled stupidly. The shades of velvet were afflicting. But Carlson liked it. Mark sighed and thought, rather sadly, that his patron's whole concept of the trade was vulgar and outworn, like this gaudy expense. Red velvet, heavy gold, bright lamps, the trappings of his apprenticeship. Old actors told Mark that this was a variant of the very first daily theatre. The stranger was right then. Mark wondered and went upstairs to the office. But the flushed man was gone. That fellow hunnaker was in trying to get me to hire some orchestra leader. Carlson said. But I thought hunnaker was a young man, Mark answered. Mr. Fitch whispered from his corner. He hasn't any particular age. What was that riot downstairs, Mark? Anna Held dropped in and left some flowers. She ain't looking well. The playwright closed his magazine and lifted himself from the chair, assuming his strange furry hat. We have just so much vitality. She's losing hers. But if she died tomorrow, it would make almost as much noise as killing a president. And that's quite right. Presidents never make anyone feel sinful. Good night. Carlson asked. You're coming to night, Clyde. Not feeling right. Thanks. Mark followed the bent back down the stairs. Fitch was stooped by a lounger at the doors. Loaned the old fellow ten dollars and passed, unobtrusive along 45th Street. He went shadow-like in his vivid dress. Like the man, Mark frowned. The exhausted courtesy, the slow voice, always left him puzzled. It was as though the playwright's prosperity kept within it a dead core of something pained, as if the ghost of an old hunger somehow lived on under the colored superfluity. Mark's motor arrived outside. He went to whistle Gertie up from an investigation of the orchestra pit. All the bulbs burned about the house. For a second Mark liked the place. Then the gilt and mulberry hangings bothered him. He chased Gertie up an aisle to the vestibule. The treasurer slipped from the box office to say, young Rand just called up. I said you wasn't here. Who? Coral Boyle's new husband, that English kid. Mark shrugged and shoved Gertie into the dull blue limousine at the curb. The motor took him away from the theatre and away from several beckoning hands on the sidewalk. His shift to manager's ship had changed the fashion of salutes. People now beckoned him with a posture of confidential affection and earnestness. They had friends to recommend, deep suggestions. Carlson had warned him, mind you're a kid with a pocket full of candy now. You've stopped being just one of the gang. Better riding cabs if you want to get any place. Well, the motor, with its adorable slippery blue crust, kept people at a distance. Mark wound an arm about Gertie and pulled himself into a corner of the seat. The car was hampered by a dilatory van that lurched ahead of its hood. The chauffeur cursed in Canadian French and a messenger boy on the van's tail cursed back joyously foul, impotently shooting accusations of all sins in a sweet sexless howl that pierced the glass about Mark and made him grin, absently amused. He's mad, said Gertie, dispassionately. No, he's just talking, son. Huh? Gertie grunted, trying to match the words with ordinary conversation. The messenger boy was plainly an accomplished fellow. The van rolled over Broadway in a shock of light and dust. Gertie saw red winter on a poster and asked, is this red winter a good playmark? Pretty fair, honey. Well, can I come to it? No. Why? Too dirty, Mark said. Then, all about killing folks, son. Gertie argued, well, low and grin is all about killing people, and misconverse took me to see that and it was in Dutch. German, sonny. I like French better in German. Gertie yawned, waving a leg in the air and went on. I think Broadway's ugly. You're right, Mark said, enchanted by such taste. Yet Carlson really liked to stroll on Broadway, and Coral Boyle had often led Mark for dusty hours through this complexity of hesitant, garrulous people. Along these sidewalks where there was nothing to be seen, he rubbed his jaw and thought of Paris, feud last summer, of the long, swooping street at Winchester, guilt in the afterglow. Oh, after dark, Broadway was tolerable. Then the revolving people were shapes of no consequence, and with a little mist. These lights were aqueous, flotillas of shimmering points on a hovering, uncertain vastness. Now, the roadway was a dappled smear of bodies. The sidewalks writhed, unseemly. But Coral Boyle liked it. The pretty, dark-haired dancer, just then lodged at Mark's cost, had rooms overlooking the new width above Forty Second Street, and she liked that. And she liked the scenery of red winter. Poor stuff, he thought. He cursed scene-painters. Charles Froman had heard of a fellow who'd studied the art in Berlin, and made astonishing sets. He must telephone Froman and get the man's name. He was tired. Red winter had tired him. The leading woman had a way of saying, California, through her nose that had vexed him all week. A poor play. His head was full of jagged, swift ideas of memories. Eddie Burnamer milking a young cow against a sulfur wall, and laughing when Mark tried to sketch him on the fly-leaf of an algebra. Coral Boyle swaggering into rectors in a blue dress. Clyde Fitch telling Little Margaret that her name was Margo. Stanford White shouting with laughter, because Mark softened the C.H. of architecture. Why hadn't they given White a billion dollars and let him build the whole city into charms of tranquil, columnar symmetry? Gertie knew that his uncle was oppressed. When Mark thought hard, he stroked the scar on his jaw. Gertie wanted to talk now, and tossed a leg over Mark's black, rocky knee. What are you thinking about, Mark? Just Bosch. What's Margo been doing all day? Having a bellyache. That terrified Mark. He sweated suddenly, and called through the tube, bidding the driver to hurry. Spinal meningitis, he read, began with nausea. But when he ran into the paneled library of his house, Margo was playing with her largest doll, and the angular governess assured him, in simple French, that a pill had set things right. Margo lifted her black eyes and said, rubbing her stomach, I was ill, Papa, in her leisurely way. Ate breakfast too fast, Gertie said, in grim displeasure, watching Mark double his lean height, and began to cuddle Margo. Margo stared at her cousin with an aggrieved, brief pout, and then wound herself into Mark's lap. The large doll was named Aunt Sadie for Mrs. Birnamer. Margo said, Miss Converse fixed Aunt Sadie's drawers, Papa. And her brown face rippled as she displayed three stitches. Then she rided the doll and gazed at Mark devotedly, solemnly, preening her starch skirt of pink linen. Pink went with her black hair and her tawny skin. Mark touched a roaming mesh of her hair, and her face rippled once more. Her skin had this amber haze, like the water of a pool in the pine forest behind the farm. In that pool he had bathed with her father through endless afternoons, idling on until other boys lagged off, and the shadows were ink on the crumbled ochre clay of the margin where pink boneset grew. And now Joe was dead, and his black-haired wife was dead, an unskilled cook before marriage, half Irish, half Italian, a good sleepy woman who ate with her knife and wore a chaplet blessed for her Roman mother by some pope. Margo would never know them. He kissed her hair. She was this warm bubble enclosed in his arms. Love me any, sister? Course, said Margo. Gertie snorted and stalked away. Mark talked to the stiff governess and padded Margo. Miss Converse soared and chatted about Conrad's novels, then getting fashionable. She assented, very interesting, romantic, of course. I daresay color attracts you. Of course, said Mark. And what if they are romantic? She had some vague objection. If she bored him, Mark was still grateful that she hadn't tried to marry him. She was necessary to the training of the children, but her buff, bulky face wasn't alluring, and her gowns hurt him by a prevalence of mole embroidery and rumpled lace. She was a gentle woman, wonderfully learned and obliging about his pet heirs on the piano. Mark talked and wished that he could escape, like Gertie who went to practice handsprings in the White Hall and slid downstairs on the note of the doorbell. Gertie slid along the handrail of black wood, so admired by collars, and jumped for the dining room, which had doors of glass coated in blue silk. These doors opened into the drawing room, which Gertie despised for its furniture all black and silver, and its hangings of cloudy tapestry, impossibly noiseless when one bounced balls against them. Yet people called it a lovely room. And now, peering through a rift of the blue silk, Gertie saw the butler turn a visitor into this space, and the visitor looked about with brown eyes, seeming to admire. Gertie speculated, and decided that this slight man was an actor come to talk to Mark about a part. His hair curled, his overcoat clung to his middle neatly, his white gaiters were unspotted, his pale mustache didn't overhang his little mouth. He was visibly an actor. Gertie had examined many through this spy-hole, and like many of the fellows went to glance at a circular mirror above the cabinet with tiny doors, which Miss Converse called the Sienese. As Mark's feet descended, the man straightened himself and began to smile. Gertie listened to the jar of his high voice against Mark's fuller drawl. Mr. Rand? Yes, don't think we ever met. Dare say you know who I am and all that. Yes, said Mark. Gertie noted the long pause. He held that actors were a talkative lot. Mr. Rand worked with his mustache an indefinite time before he spoke again. My wife sent me along. I'm a sort of ambassador, you know, matter of business entirely. Mark said, I see, wondering how old the man was. The mustache had an appearance of soft youth. He smiled, wanting Chora's third husband to be at ease, and nodded to a chair. Oh, thanks no. Mrs. Rand wants to know if you'd mind meeting her, at her hotel, for instance. I don't mind at all. Mark lied, glad to, any time. Then she may let you know, thanks ever so. Good luck to your play tonight. Said the young man, and walked out gracefully. Gertie came through the glass doors and asked, Who's he? Mark lifted the pliant, hard body, in the air. He fancied that Gertie must feel something odd here. How old would you say he was, darling? Dunno, who's Mrs. Rand? An actress. Put me down, said Gertie. My pants are coming off. Mark breathed comfortably, helped the boy on his knee, tighten the white trousers, and passed into dotage. Eddie Burnamer and Joe Walling had begotten these bodies. The fact mattered nothing. Mark was a father. He had possession. When things went wrong, he could come home to gloat over Margot and Gertie. He promised, I shan't be busy now for a week. We'll ride in the park and feed the squirrels, sonny. All right. Say, Mark, you're all thin. There's the doorbell again. Oh say, a lady telephoned at noon. Her name was Ms. Monroe, and she wanted you to call her up. I like her nerve. Gertie jumped at this loud snort of his uncle. Who's she? She's an actress. Mark stammered, hoping the boy wouldn't go on. And Carlson came in. His yellow face splotched as though he'd been walking fast. That ran squirt been here? He yelled at Mark. Yes, why? I passed him. What's he want? Me to meet her. You going to? Guess I better, Mr. Carlson. Carlson jabbed Gertie's stomach with his cane and panted. I can tell you what she wants and don't listen to it, neither. She's had a fight with Billy Leffler. He won't put this welp she married in her company. I bet she quits Leffler. Her show's no good anyhow. Well, I won't take her on. She's a second raider. She's an onion. I won't have her for nothing. Don't you get sentimental about Cora Boyle any more, son? You needn't worry, said Mark, patting Gertie's ear. Gertie sat up and inquired, Is that the Cora Boyle grand-papa says was a loose-footed heifer? So Carlson broke into screaming mirth. Mark flushed and mumbled, sent the boy away, and scowled respectfully at his partner. Sometimes Carlson's crude amusement stung him. For God's sake, don't talk of her in front of the kids, sir. All right, son. Going to let Gertie come to the show tonight? Not much. The old man lounged into a chair and jeered at his fosterling. Mark's horror diverted him. He yapped. Still think it's a dirty show, do you? Yes. Oh, I don't know. If there was anything to the slop but the second act, I wouldn't care. Nothing but Saffo over again, old as the hills. What's new in the show business, son? The merry widow is, Mark laughed, and you wouldn't buy it. Savage is bringing it in, week after next. They were playing the music at Rector's last night. Look here, the set for the last act is all wrong still. Those green curtains. You and your sets, God, said Carlson. You ought to have been a scene painter. I wish I could be, for about one week. Mark let a grievance loose, slapping his leg. These people make me sick. You tell them you want something new, and they trot out some sketch of a room that everyone's seen for 20 years. They never think of. You ain't ever satisfied. You act like a scenery made a show. Mark sighed. Well, we're not giving the public its money's worth with this piece. The scenery's mediocre. Come up and see Margo. The old man poked Margo's doll with a shaking thumb, and called her Maggie to see her scowl, like Mark. The little girl's solemn vanity delighted him. He was also delighted by Gertie, who became an embodied sneer, when Mark fondled Margo. The boy watched Mark kiss this female nuisance, then walked hotly out of the library, and set to work banging the piano in the upper playroom. All you needs a wife and a mother-in-law and you'd have a happy home, Carlson said, when Mark let him out the front door. Think I haven't? I suppose you have. Ain't any truth in this that you're gonna marry that Monroe gal? No. I gave her a ring last week. I suppose she's been airing it. Sure, you big calf? The old man said with gloom. You always act so kind of surprised when one of them brags of you. You ain't but twenty-nine and you're a fine-looking jackass. Of course she'll show off her solid tear. A gal's as vain as a man any day. One of them will get you married yet. Yell at that cab, son. My legs are mighty tired. See you at eight sharp. Now, mind, I won't have nothing to say to coral boil. Mark waited until the opening night of the Merry Widow for more news of Cora Boyle. She deserted her manager, Leffler, while Red Winter was in the first week of its run at the 45th Street Theatre. Mark saw her lunching in the Knickerbocker Grill with her young husband and a critic who always touted her as the successor of Ada Rian. A busybody assured Mark that Cosmo Rand was twenty, Cora was thirty-one. All three of her husbands then were younger. The oddity of theatrical marriage still alarmed Mark. In Fayettesville it was a fixed convention that girls should be younger than their husbands. But she was luscious to see at the Merry Widow opening. Mark thought how well she looked, hung above the crowd in the green-lined box. She found novel fashions of massing her hair. That night it rose in a black peak sustained by silver combs. She kept a yellow cloak slung across one bare shoulder concealing her gown. Against the gentle green of her background appeared three men. Rand wore a single eyeglass that sparkled duly when the outer lights were low. Through the music and the applause Mark was conscious of the box and of Cora's red-feathered fan. Her second husband, a thin Jewish comedian, went up to shake hands between the acts. Women behind Mark giggled wildly. He wandered into the bronze lobby where men were already whistling the slow melody of Aida. He was chaffed by an Irish actor-manager born in Chicago, whose accent was a triumph of maintained vowels. And why don't you go shake hands with Cora, boy? Shut up, Terry. Come have a drink. He steered his friend to a new bar. The Irishman was rather drunk but vastly genial. He maundered. A fool Cora was to let go of you, boy. You're telling me you've wasted money in the stock market, too. A little, Mark admitted. I've had no luck that way. Well, a fool Cora was. And how's it feel being a manager, lad? Fine. The Irishman looked at Mark side-long over his glass, then up at the gold stars of the ceiling. Oh, yes, it's a fine ceiling. Wait until you've put on a couple of frosts, boy, and have to go hat in your hand hunting a backer. You lend money easy. You'll see all the bar flies that have had their ten and twenty off you time and time again, and you'll see them run when they see you coming. Well, here to-night and hell to-morrow. So Cora's quit Billy Leffler, has she? The dear man, may his children all be acrobats. Twas Gus Daly taught the scut every trick she knows. The Napoleon of Broadway. Well, you wanted to be a manager, and here you are, and here's luck. It's a fine game, the finest there is. And mind you, I've been practicing burglar and a plumber. Drink up! They drank and returned to the Green Theatre, resonant with the prelude of the next act. Mark was struggling in the half-lit thresh of men, strolling toward their seats when Cosmo Rand halted him. You'd not mind coming up to supper in our rooms at the knickerbocker. Mark accepted. The scene of the maxim revel was lost to him, while he wondered what Cora wanted. He wouldn't engage her. Carlson's prejudice was probably valid. The old man swore that she was worthless outside light comedy. Yet she had good notices in all her parts. She was famous for clothes. She signed recommendations for silks and ungwants. She had made a dressmaker popular among actresses. She had played in a failure in London whence came legends of a passionate Duke. The Duke's passion might be invented like other legends. He mused. The flowing waltz music made him melancholy. What sort of woman was Cora nowadays? Everyone changed. He himself had changed. He was getting callous to ready amities. Explosions of mean jealousy. He knew nothing of Cora, really. She might be a different person. Better tempered, less frank. Women were incomprehensible, anyhow. He would never understand them, doubted that anyone did, and sighed. He walked to Cora's hotel with a feeling of great dignity. She had mauled him badly, abused him, lied to him, and now she was seeking peace. Then, rising in the lift, he knew that this dignity had a hollow heart. He was afraid of Cora Boyle. This is awfully good of you, she said, shaking hands. Then she rested one arm on the shelf, filled with flowers, and smiled slowly, theatrically, kicking her rosy train into the right swath about her feet. Mark felt the display as a boast of her body. She resumed. There's really no sense in our looking at each other over a fence, is there? His face, seen in a mirror, among the flowers, cheered Mark to a grin. He looked impassive and bland. He drawled, no sense at all, and stepped back. But she confused him. He had to speak. He said, that's a stunning frock. You always did notice clothes, didn't you, Cosmo? Give Mr. Walling a drink. Her voice had rounded, and came crisply with an English hint. But it was not music. It jangled badly against Rand's level. What'll you have, sir? From the table where there were bottles and plates of sandwiches. Mark considered this boy as they talked of the merry widow. He saw man's beauty inexpertly enough. Young Rand was handsome, in the fragile, groomed manner of an English illustration. His chin was pointed. His eyes seemed brown. His curls lay in even bands. He had neither length nor strength. But he talked sensibly, rather shrewdly. There'll be a great deal of money lost bringing over Viennese pieces, of course. This thing's won in a thousand, quite charming. Mark asked. You've not been over here long. I? Rand laughed. Lord, yes. I'm a Canadian. Born in Iowa, as a matter of fact. I've been a good deal in England, of course. Oh, I was at your new piece the other night. Red winter, I mean. How very nice you've mounted it. I really felt beastly cold in that second act. The snow's so good. Mark bowed, selecting a sandwich. The critics had praised the snow scene. Rand might truly admire it. If the snow hadn't satisfied Mark, it had pleased everyone else. He lost himself in thoughts of snow. Kora trailed her rose gown to the table and poured water into a glass of pale wine. A broad bracelet on her wrist clicked against the glass. She said, You and Carlson own all the rights to Red Winter, don't you? Yes. Are you going to send it to London? He laughed and put down his glass. London? What for? It'd last just about one week. Kora smiled over her shoulder, retiring to the shelf of flowers. It would do better than that, Mark. I've played in London. I've never played there, but I've been there enough to know better. California gold rush. They don't know there was such a thing. Oh, I say, said Rand. Kora sipped some watered wine. The light shot through the glass and made a pair of glow on her throat. She was motionless, drinking. She became a shape set separate from the world in a momentary gleam. He knew that she was acting. Then she said sharply, I'll buy the English racks if you and Carlson'll make me a decent figure. Oh, look here, you'd lose. I was talking to Ian Gale about it last night. It wouldn't make a scent in England. They wouldn't know what it's all about. And it's such a rotten play. There's nothing in it. She asked, looking at him. Can I have it? And her flat voice took fire in the question, achieved music. She must want the poor play badly. Rand's pink nails were lined along his mustache, hiding its silk. The room fell silent. Oh, sure, Mark said. You can have it, Kora. I'll see Mr. Carlson in the morning. But damned if I can make out what there is in the play. It's not the sort of thing you like, I know. But I'm sick of comedy, and that's all I'm ever offered here. And I'm sick of New York. Well, make an offer of the English rights, only I'm no bankmark. She swaggered to the piano, and tamely played a few bars of the merry widow Waltz. She hadn't all of Ilden's grace. So seated, and the rose gown seemed sallow against the black of the piano. She had finished her scene. Mark saw the familiar stir of her throat as she hid a yawn. He promised to hurry the business of the English rights to the melodrama, and took his leave. What had he feared? He tried to think in the corridor. Recapture, perhaps, by this woman who wasn't, after all, half as wicked as others. Her new elegance hadn't moved him. The stage did refine people. Kora had the full air of celebrity. She was now controlled, vainer. She still might be a shrew. He saddened, ringing for the lift, and thought of Cosmo Rand's future, if red winter failed in London. The elevator deposited a page with a silver bucket, and this went clinking to Kora's door. Rand and she would drink champagne. Mark sank, pondering to the lounge, and stopped to buy a cigar there. It was almost one o'clock. Many of the lights had been turned out. The threaded marble lost sheen in the smoky gloom. Parties ebbed from the supper room, and a wedge of dressed men waved to Mark. A candy merchant, in the lead, balled to him, and Mark went to be introduced to an English actress on the millionaire's arm. She swayed, gracious and tipsy, involved in a cloak of jet velvet. Her voice murmurous as brushed harp strings, emerging from the pallor of her face, above the browning gardenias on the cloak, she asked, Like this wrap? Makes me look like a very big black cigar, and I should have a very broad red and gold band. The men pressed about her fame, sniggered, respecting this lovely myth. She was assigned in legend to the desire of princes. The candy merchant grinned, cuddling her hand on his waistcoat. She tapped the brass edge of the turning door with a gardenia stem, and smiled at Mark's silk hat, then at the millionaire. Am I talking too loud, cherished one? Shout your head off, the candy merchant said. It's a free country. Oh, only the bond are free, she proclaimed. She told Mark, Bond Street is getting frightfully shabby. Max Bierbaum says I do rather look like a big black cigar, don't I? Do stop pulling my arm, you dear fat thing. The car's here, honey. How dear of the car! We're going to sup somewhere, aren't we? Oh, no, to bed! Like a very big black cigar. She was drawn through the brazen doors away from Mark. The men pushed after her avidly. She went tottering to the great motor, was engulfed. Mark blinked at the waning smell of gardenias, waited for the motor to be gone, and walked into the street. He saw rain falling. There was no taxi cab in sight along the street. From the west an orange palpitation flooded this darker way. Steam from a clamorous drill blew north about the white tower of the Times Building. Wet cabs jerked north and south along the gleam of rails. The higher lights were gone. The rain dropped from an upper purple, and rain wrapped the crown of his hat, as Mark strolled to the corner. Someone began to talk to him before he reached Broadway. Mark glanced at this beggar carelessly, and paused to dig in a pocket for change. The shivering voice continued, Ain't like I've come bothering you before, I ain't that kind. But you've got companies on the road, and honest, Walling, I'm as good as ever I was. You've maybe heard that I'm taking dope, not so. Some of that bunch at Bill Leffler's office have been putting that out, honest. Three white-capped young sailors, blundered past, all laughing, and jarred the shadowy body away from Mark. The man came shuffling back, and clung to Mark's sleeve. His face lavender and the rainy light above a shapeless overcoat. He whispered on, honest. Some of the things that bunch at Leffler's place say about you and Carlson, but I ain't taken nothing, Walling. Had a run of bad luck, I'm on the rocks. And you've seen me run a show, you know I can handle a company. The light's so bad, said Mark, and your caller, I'm not just sure who— Oh, I thought you was acting kind of chilly to an old pal. I'm Jim Rothenstein, you know? I was stage manager for Carlson back when you was playing Kid and Nicolene. You know, I gave you your job. Cora Boyle, she brought you into me and asked if there wasn't a little part. Honest, I ain't taken dope. That bunch. Mark gulped. Of course you're not. Some harsh drug escaped the man's rag. This was nightmare. Mark found a bill, and held it out, backing from the shadow. Come round to my office some day, and I'll see what— A handsome cab pulled to the curb, and the driver raised his whip. Mark ran to shelter, shouting his address. The grey horse moved toward Broadway. Mark shoved up the trap and shouted to the driver, No. Go up Fifth Avenue.