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 shudder from this massed, 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 splendour[136] 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 toward fifth avenue, thinking, roused because the streets seemed more speckled with olive cloth. some transport had disgorged 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 haughtily 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 suppers. now she was superb in her vulgar furs with a handsome young jew beside her and a wolfish dog chained on the flying seat. mark got himself away and came home to the panelled library where carlson was stretched under three quilts on his wheeled chair gossiping with an old comedian about the merits of ada rehan. soon the elderly caller left. mark took his chair by carlson and wondered what he would do if his patron died before gurdy got back. carlson couldn’t last much longer, the doctors said, but his mind was active. he yapped, “i’ve got a hunch, sonny.”
“go on.”
[137]“you’re goin’ to see gurdy pretty dam’ quick. i had a nap before ferguson came in. dreamed about the kid.”
“he’d have cabled if he’d sailed,” mark said, “no, he’s still stuck in the mud at saint nazaire. 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 even 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 hose-pipe when the kid got shot—and from all i hear it wasn’t nothin’ but a scratch on his belly. and i used to spend hours trying to teach you to shed one tear when you was actin’! you was the punkest matiny 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 gurdy’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 gurdy for standing still and pale when it was clearly the right thing to make a fuss. the cub was too cool.
“son, son,” said mark.
[138]gurdy 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 prob’ly thinks you been a saint. and don’t go spillin’ any of this talk about goin’ to work on your own like some of these whelps do. mark’s got a three thousand dollar car comin’ for you and he’s goin’ 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 to how margot was runnin’ the red cross in london! after you went off i come pretty near callin’ up the express company and havin’ myself shipped to stockholm! the big calf! chewin’ the paint[139] off the walls every time he heard there’d been fightin’! sentymental lunatic! your papa and mamma’ve 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. gurdy 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 but you’re thin, mark!”
“no exercise. haven’t had time to play golf. now, we’d better get the car and run down to fayettes—”
“i talked to mother from camp merritt. be in camp dix tomorrow. i’ll see them there. they can motor over. only twelve miles. heard from margot lately?”
his uncle beamed saying, “says she wants to come home, son. i’ve got to talk to you about that. what d’you think?”
gurdy 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 isn’t a flirt. chelsea’s full of bright young painters and things. they all come and camp on the doormat. lady ilden’s[140] a sort of fairy godmother, of course.” he lapsed into a sudden state of mind about margot, 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 prospective 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 precisian was annoyed to a snort and mark filled his glass again, smiling.
of course, having seen her, the boy wanted margot home. mark said, “she wrote me you’d 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 gurdy. there was no use doing anything with the incurable, proud man who drove him back to camp merritt at dusk with two bottles of champagne hidden in his motor coat, invited confessions and beamed constantly.
“only don’t act like you’d ever kissed a woman in front of your mother, son. country folks. shock her to death. you any taller? i’ll call up sanford about some clothes for you. good[141] night, sonny. you go straight to the farm when you’re discharged. i’ll be down sunday.”
an illusion of happiness beset gurdy. 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 gurdy 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 worshipper in the transfer to the sandy discomfort of camp dix. there the bernamers 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 had contracted more fat and his sisters were too brawny for real charm. gurdy struggled for righteous detachment while his brothers candidly goggled their admiration and his father examined the purple scar that passed dramatically up gurdy’s milky skin. he found himself blinking 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 fayettesville with clothes rapidly confected. on sunday mark arrived with a small car lettered g.b. in blue on its panel.
[142]“just the blue gurdy’s eyes are,” mrs. bernamer drawled.
gurdy 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 gurdy would marry the girl. gurdy had friends among the right sort of people. poor carlson would die pretty soon. gurdy and margot would live at the house, which were best adorned freshly. the benedictine gave out. they drove into the twisted lanes behind trenton and gurdy 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 y. m. c. a. girl who wanted to have[143] fontainebleau made into a reform school. margot says she found one that wanted to have george turn windsor castle into a hospital for the a. e. f.... you mustn’t mind margot swearing. all the flappers seem to.—oh, i met cora boyle.”
“how’s she looking?”
“handsome.” gurdy thought for a second and then inquired. “what did you—”
mark comprehended the stop. he said, “she was the first woman ever took any notice of me.—why, i suppose she was a kind of ideal. i mean, i liked that kind of looks. lord knows what she married me for. wonder, is that rand kid still married to her? is? i guess she’s settled down in london for keeps. well, i want you to look at the plans of the walling, son. they’ve made me a model. tell me if you see anything wrong.”
he simmered with joy when gurdy approved the whole plan except the shape of the boxes. the boy ran back and forth between fayettesville and the city in his car, asked seemly young men to dine in fifty fifth street, read 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.
[144]“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 nineteen fourteen. if you’d told me five years back that a piece like redemption could have a 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 d’you call it?—impressionist scenery.... the game’s changed.—oh, the big money makers’ll always be hogwash, gurdy! don’t bet any other way. i ain’t such a fool as to think that heaven’s opened 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 wench in a lot of duds starts throwin’ his pearls back at the man that’s keepin’ 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’s 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 ’em’s a[145] lot of niggers havin’ a voodoo party. sounds fine. i picked him up down in greenwich village.”
“i should think all those half married ladies and near anarchists would shock you to death.”
“bosh, brother. i don’t like ’em enough to get shocked at ’em. 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 mamma 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. “fifty per cent 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, here’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 loeffler with a note. next day, loeffler called me up and said i ought to be hung for the sake of public morals. this play knocked round the offices and every one 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 this[146] fellow’d written a play where every one came on the stage stark naked and danced the hoochy coochee. it wasn’t a nice idea but where’s it worse than nine tenths 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!”
gurdy 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 blotter with a pencil, then shyly laughed, “supposing some one 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, n. j., married in hoboken. started quarreling in martin’s café. caught her kissing a fellow at longbranch. 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 tea at mrs. lemoyne’s when frank worthing got me off in a corner and told me about her and jarvis hope. i was sittin’ in the bath tub 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[147] mark a thick manuscript lettered “captain salvador: stephen o’mara.” and withdrew. mark went on, “but my married life wouldn’t make much of a show—green kid from the country and a—a cora boyle. 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 a girl thinkin’ she was pure—as pure as folks are, anyhow—and finds 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’mara’s handed me.”
he bought the rights to “captain salvador” two hours later. gurdy was willing to rejoice with him after he read the cuban tragedy. carlson yapped, “the women’ll hate it, mark. where’s your clothes?”
“bosh,” said mark, “there weren’t any women’s clothes in ervine’s ‘john ferguson’ and the women ate it alive!”
“but that fellow ervine’s an englishman, 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 gawp at! you’re off your head. ain’t i told you a million times that the new york woman won’t swallow a home[148] grown show that’s tragic unless it’s all dressed up? stop him, gurdy!”
“it’s a damned good play, sir,” said gurdy.
he thought it high fortune that mark should find anything so adroit and moving for the walling’s first play. some of the critics believed in o’mara’s talent. several artists in scenery were asked to submit designs. the pressmen began a scattering campaign of notes on o’mara 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 they’re fools,” gurdy 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 any more. 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 lookin’ or’ve got brains. you’ll have to go a long ways if you want a good lookin’ wench for that part. god, you keep talkin’ like actin’ was 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’n some one smart in comedy. a tragedian’s nothin’ but a hunk of[149] 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 makin’ any leadin’ 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 panelled 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 augustin daly.
“softhearted as an egg,” said mark, hesitated and resumed, “he’s got fifty thousand apiece for you and margot in 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 rather like to. lacy martin—remember him? i roomed with him freshman year at college—lacy 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 ilden thursday. margot sailed friday. ought to land day after tomorrow.” he saw the orange level of gurdy’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[150] noise to his pantry. the tapestry of chinese flowers behind gurdy’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 lacy’s got the blues, run ahead out 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 gurdy’s confession that he needed a good deal. he gave the boy errands about chicago to aid the retreat. “there’s a girl named marryatt playing at the la salle. 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 any one 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, sanbridge. see if he’s got a play up his sleeve. o’mara was talking about him.”
he saw gurdy off for chicago, the next noon,[151] then set 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’s school had frightened matrons. she was some one protected by his celebrity and trained by olive ilden. he must contrive her content until she married gurdy. 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 risen 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 marshalled the cleverest of the critics and the young women who dealt in publicity. gurdy 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 colours. she strolled in mark’s mind most visibly. he hummed, inspecting his house.
“yes,” carlson sneered, “she’s been footloose amongst a pack of dukes and things and you think she’s going to like bein’ 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[152] 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 margot to luncheon next fall.
“she’s quite nice,” margot 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 matinée—oh, how you hate that word! how nice your nose is! where on earth’s gurdy?—lake forest? oh, that’s where all the chicago pig kings live, isn’t it? they have chateaux and moats and exclude—but it’s rather rotten he isn’t here. i’ve a couple of awful french novels for him. he speaks such rather remarkable french. i can’t make the right j 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[153] in electric bulbs along here. be rather as though you were running about naked. did i write you about ronny dufford’s new play? been a most tremendous success. you should bring it over. that’s the astor, isn’t it? what colour’s the walling to be inside? blue? rather dark blue? and swear to me that you won’t have russian decorations!”
“i swear, daughter.”
“you old saint,” said margot, “and you’re still the best looking man in the known world!”
her lips had a curious, untinted brilliance as though the blood might burst from them. dizzy 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 tam o’shanter of black velvet was inseparable from her hair in the mist of his eyes. silver buckles swayed and twinkled when her gleaming feet moved about his house and she smiled in a veil of cigarette smoke.
“you’ve simply natural good taste, dad. born, not made. don’t think i’m keen on that venice glass in the dining room. too heavy. where does gurdy 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,[154] “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 huntin’ a husband? that’s gratitude!”
“oh, you,” said margot, spinning on a heel, “if you were ninety seven 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 a 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. he 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 margot, “i met him in devonshire. i hate being painted. you’ve never had a portrait done? dreary. one has to sit and[155] smirk.” she went fluttering a yellow frock up the library to find an ash tray, came back smoking a cigarette, neared mark’s chair then veered off to pat carlson’s jaw.
“you used to set 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 ronny dufford to send you a copy of his play. ronny’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 gurdy such a lot. what the deuce an’ all is gurdy doing in chicago? bargin’ about with the pigstickers?”
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. villay invited her to southampton before leaving. margot shook her hair free of two silver combs and shrugged as the front 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 mister. just why, darling?”
[156]“well, he’s forty years older than me, sister. and he made me. he—”
“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. margot dismissed herself to fayettesville 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 margot was clearly born to captivate women. he wrote to gurdy 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 cowbarn. 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 olive ilden says she is going to japan pretty soon and will come this way. i see in the london news that cora 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[157] house.’ it is a conversation, not a play. i wish shaw would do something like c?sar 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.”
gurdy 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 this feeling for margot. 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 blackhaired woman across a lawn would interrupt the motion of his blood. he set his brain tasks, meditated the girl at fayettesville, hoped 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’s sisters, amiable, blond girls were much the same thing, rarified by trips to europe, suave frocks and some weak topics in the cerebral change. they held dunsany a fascinating dramatist and thought there was something to be said for communism. chicago puzzled him with its summer negligence and the candour of its wealth,[158] with the air of stressed vice in the loop restaurants and the sudden change from metropolis to a country town within the 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 travelling english poet held lowly in chelsea, described by olive ilden as a derivative angleworm. at this dance he heard of margot 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 margot walling and lady ilden. at a play. margot was wearing one of her yellow frocks. i was the other side of the gangway. i wondered about you, rather. margot always snubs me. i’m a countess of sorts and it always interests me when americans 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, eh?—well, margot 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[159] dance for a cheapjack penny 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? saint andrew’s? my brothers did groton. 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 of a 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 margot going to marry ronny dufford?”
gurdy jumped, inescapably startled. he said, “colonel dufford? the general staff man who writes plays? i’m sure i don’t know.”
“it wouldn’t be a bad thing. ronny’s all right—the gentleman bohemian touch and i dare say she has money.” the lank woman coughed,[160] went on, “she’ll take on an englishman in any case, though.”
“she’s in new york.”
“oh, she’ll get fed 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. place is 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 met 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. but that’s egyptian history.” she began to cough fearfully. the pearls clattered on her gown.
“you’ve taken 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 saranac—at[161] a house party, with a social register and an army list. a war where eighty per cent. 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 exag—”
“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. “d’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. good-bye. too chilly out here.” she rattled away.
gurdy 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[162] 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 emotion 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 marvelled at love. in the morning he announced his present departure. at noon he had a special delivery letter from his youngest brother, edward bernamer, junior, a placid boy of thirteen interested in stamp collecting. the scrawl was the worse for that complacency.
“dear gurd, for the love of mike come on home and help take care of margot e. walling. she has got mamma 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.”
gurdy came whirling east to new york and found mark at the 45th street theatre, humming over the model for a scene of “captain salvador.” but plainly mark knew nothing of any fissure in the sacred group at fayettesville. he was busy rehearsing a comedy, had been to the farm only once. in any event mark mustn’t be hurt. gurdy took breath and delicately put[163] forth, “i want you to do something damned extravagant, mark.”
“easy, sonny. 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. but grandfather goes to bed at nine. the kids play rags on the phonograph all afternoon. it gets tiresome after a while. i—”
“oh, son,” said mark, “i’m not so thickheaded i can’t see that sister’ll get bored down there.” he beamed, thinking gurdy superb in grey tweeds, his white skin overlayed 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’ll be here in july and we ought to have a cottage somewhere. i don’t think your dad and olive’d have much to talk over.” mark grinned. gurdy laughed, curling on a corner of the desk, approving the man’s common shrewdness. mark patted 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[164] find where it is. oh, here’s this piece margot’s friend dufford’s 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 going, son. you can catch the three o’clock for trenton.”
gurdy strove with this fragility in neat prose all the way to trenton. it had to do with a 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 wilde and maugham. 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 fayettesville. he hired a battered car at trenton. the fayettesville military academy was closing for the summer, by all signs. lads bustled toward the station towing parents and gaudy 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 sideways at gurdy and drawled, “must have been having a damn good time in chicago, gurd,” but nothing[165] else was said. the car panted into the stone walled dooryard. his grandfather waved a linen clad arm at gurdy from the padded chair on the veranda. his sisters accepted the usual candy and hid a motion picture magazine from him, giggling. mrs. bernamer was at a funeral in trenton. gurdy found bernamer in the dairy yard studying a calf. it was always easy to be frank with the 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’s she been acting?”
bernamer pulled his belt tight and lifted his hard face toward the sky. gurdy felt the mute courtesy of his pause. 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 feller 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 gurdy. “it’s kind of funny hearin’ her cuss, though.”
[166]“she over does that, a little. just what’s 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 boyle wench mark married. she’s got the old man all worried. your mamma’s scared to death of her. so’s the girls.—she ain’t so damned polite it hurts her any.... say, i wouldn’t hurt mark’s feelings for the world—and i notice she don’t carry on so high and mighty when mark’s here, neither.—ain’t there some place else she could go?”
gurdy had a second of futile rage that divided itself between margot and his family. this wasn’t within remedy. she had absorbed the attitudes, the impatience of worlds exterior to the flat peace 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. mebbe that englishwoman spoiled her, lettin’ her gallivant too much. mebbe it’s her father comin’ out in her. between us, joe was tougher’n most boys. you’ll likely find her down in the orchard smokin’ her head off. it’s all kind of funny ... and then it ain’t.”
[167]she wasn’t smoking. she sat with a novel spread on her yellow lap and the bole of an apple tree behind her head. there was a shattered plate of ruddy 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 stolidity. 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—o, 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 fil-lums do you? or whether jane rupp’s going to marry that coe 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 gurdy.
but the girl’s red lips had retracted. she was shivering. she had lost her charm of posture. she cried, “oh, yes! they’re our people and all the rest of that tosh! i’m not a hypocrite. it’s a stable! a stable!” her breath choked her.[168] 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 gurdy’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 could stay here? three weeks! of course, he hasn’t any breed—”
“shut up,” said gurdy, “that’ll be all! we were born here. mark took us and had us dressed and looked after—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, d’you think he’d have bothered about taking care of you—of 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 shrivelled in this fire. she was swiftly and horribly like an angry trull. she said,[169] “sentimentalist! you’re a damned milk and sugar sentimentalist like—”
“ah,” said gurdy, “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 then left him cold. he was tired. his body felt like stone, heavy and dead. the illusion of desire was gone out of gurdy.
