The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fair Rewards, by Thomas Beer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Fair Rewards Author: Thomas Beer Release Date: December 9, 2019 [EBook #60885] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAIR REWARDS *** Produced by David E. Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE FAIR REWARDS NEW BORZOI NOVELS SPRING, 1922 Wanderers Knut Hamsun Men of Affairs Roland Pertwee The Fair Rewards Thomas Beer I Walked in Arden Jack Crawford Guest the One-Eyed Gunnar Gunnarsson The Garden Party Katherine Mansfield The Longest Journey E. M. Forster The Soul of a Child Edwin Björkman Cytherea Joseph Hergesheimer Explorers of the Dawn Mazo de la Roche The White Kami Edward Alden Jewell THE FAIR REWARDS THOMAS BEER “Tell arts they have no soundness But vary by esteeming Tell schools they want profoundness And stand too much on seeming”— Ralegh “Eh, sirs,” says Koshchei, “I contemplate the spectacle with appropriate emotions.” NEW YORK ALFRED·A·KNOPF 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. Published, February, 1922 Set up and electrotyped by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N.Y. Paper furnished by S. D. Warren & Co., Boston, Mass. Printed and bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To M. A. A. B. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Manufacture of a Personage, 9 II He Progresses, 23 III Full Bloom, 47 IV Penalties, 78 V Margot, 104 VI Gurdy, 135 VII “Todgers Intrudes,” 170 VIII Cosmo Rand, 192 IX Bubble, 214 X The Idolater, 250 XI The Walling, 272 J I Manufacture of a Personage OHN CARLSON began the rehearsals of “Nicoline” in early August of 1895. For a week he tried to correct the hot labours 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 his 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 Zenda” at the Lyceum, fainted during the second act and was revived with brandy in Mr. Frohman’s office. The brandy gave him fever; he spent the six days remaining before “Nicoline” 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 Martin’s with young Mr. Fitch who had adapted “Nicoline” 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 sayin’?” “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 that 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, y’mean? She’s no good. Had her last winter in Mountain Dew. Common as dirt and no more sense than a turnip.” Mr. Fitch answered in his affable whisper, “Of course she’s common as dirt. That’s why I asked you to get her. Why waste time training some one to be common when the town’s full of them?” “But that ain’t actin’, 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 Lynne. 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 moustaches 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 “Nicoline” played he saw from his box that Cora Boyle’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 hook her gown and yelled over the powder of her advertised shoulders, “If you want that sassy Boyle gal to be the hit of the show, go on! You act like you’d lost your last cent 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 years 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 that Cora Boyle be corrected before her present entrance. “What’s the good, Clyde? She ain’t any sense. She’s a 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. Cora Boyle was standing ten feet back from the canvas arch that was, for the audience, the street door of the Café Printemps. She patted 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 Miss Leslie’s tellin’ about her mother or talk as loud as you’ve been doin’, neither. This ain’t a camp meetin’, hear?” The black haired girl grinned at him, nodding. She spat out a fold of chewing gum and patted 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 Cora Boyle, biting his lips and hunting words wherewith to blast her. She let him [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] stare unchecked. A false diamond on its thin chain glittered 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 rouged her chin to offset a wide mouth. Carlson jeered, “Better get somebody to show you a good makeup, sister, and quit talkin’ 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 boardin’ at Fayettesville, 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 boardin’ with Mark’s folks. He—” “Your cue,” said Mr. Fitch and the girl, with a splendid swagger, marched into the lit scene beyond this 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 moustache, 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 bawl. 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 preceded 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?” “One’s for the first act and one’s 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 goin’ 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 gamekeeper in the last act. Green coat, corduroy breeches —” Carlson screamed, “Cord’roy pants? Who the hell you talkin’ 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 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 rôle, 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’ll be 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 Cora Boyle. The minute Walling spoke, every one 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 Cora Boyle. 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 acting’s awful easy”—Mr. Fitch again drawled, “cause all you gotta do is walk out, an’ speak your piece. He’s got a brother name of Joe and his mamma 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. Some one 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 Cora Boyle.” [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] “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 Cora Boyle was chaffing the sinful heroine. Amusement sped up this lustrous, stirring slope of heads. It was the year of Violette Amère among perfumes and the scent rolled back to Carlson with the laughter of these ninnies who took Cora Boyle 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, “Hear?” 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, half 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 rumour 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 mornin’, 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 drawls 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 nex’ 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 bein’ 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 your brother, sonny?” “No, sir. Joe’s home. This is Eddie Bernamer. Well, he’s my brother-in-law. He’s married with Sadie.” Eddie Bernamer gave out attenuated sounds, accepting the introduction. The manager asked lightly, “How many sisters have you, son?” “Just Sadie. She’s out lookin’ at the play.” “And you’ve married Cora Boyle?” “Well,” said Mark, “that’s so.” He seemed rather puzzled by the fact, suspended the sponge and said to Eddie Bernamer, “She ain’t but two years older’n 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 round an’ wait after the show?” Mark wailed. “We’ll have to catch the cars, Bud. Well, goo’ bye.” Mark stood clutching the sponge and sighed a monstrous, woeful exhalation after Eddie Bernamer. His grey eyes filled. He was hideously homesick, certain that Fayettesville 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 plodded. For all its demerits this red and gold theatre was thrilling. People were jolly, kind enough. The lewd stagehands 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?” “Goin’ 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 nothin’ to it but speakin’ 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 tin, “I should think you’d ought to save money if you had them down here by the lookin’ glasses instead of this gas, y’see? The fellers don’t get any good of the electric light while they’re puttin’ paint on, and—” [19] [20] [21] [22] “Rehearsal at ten in the morning,” said Carlson, “Good-night.” Marked 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. “N II He Progresses ICOLINE” lasted until April, 1896. Mark played the country boy in “Mr. Bell” all the next season and, duly coached by Sarah Cowell LeMoyne, 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 penible. 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 chilblains. 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 Louisburg Square and sidelong 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 honourably 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 Bernamer 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 easy to mount them. These bright trees and the muddle of railroad ties could be effected but the theatre 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 Croy” 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 gaiters 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 Bernamer swore astoundingly when he ripped his undershirt. One couldn’t be so honest on the stage or echo the sharp, unreal note of mail 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 Bernamer, a bad reader, turned them over to Mark and Joe. It was Joe who found the pencilled paragraph Mark rather expected. He slapped Mark’s back and grunted, “Well, so there y’are, Bud.” Mark read, “The suit for divorce begun by Mark Walling, the well known young actor against his wife, Cora 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 as co-respondent in the case. The action was not defended. Mr. Walling is now with the —th N.J. Infantry. The divorced couple were married in August, 1895. They have no children.” “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Eddie Bernamer, “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 of —Dunno.... It’s kind of too bad.” His relatives denied it. They had never liked Cora 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 lookin’,” and sat moody while they indicated advantages. He could save his pay, now, and wear respectable, black neckties, 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 theatres. 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 Bernamer 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 Gail when the English playwright checked his grammar. Mark flushed. The Englishman fooled with a putter for a second, considering this colour. He said, “I say, old son, d’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 Bernamer (born May 15, 1898) who called himself Gurdy. About Joe Walling’s baby daughter Mark wasn’t as yet enthusiastic. He talked with broad lapses into New Jersey singsong. His grey eyes dilated. He babbled like an upset pail. The lean Englishman didn’t seem bored. Other people—Mrs. LeMoyne, old Mrs. Gilbert—had scolded Mark about these explosions. Gail let him talk for twenty minutes of warm noon and then said, “Quite right, old son. Stick to [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] your people.... You’re a sentimental ass, of course. I dare say that’s why you can put up with dinner at Carlson’s in that seething mass of red plush.” “But I like Mr. Carlson. Been mighty good—” “Of course he’s good to you. And it was good of you to make him mount my last act so decently.... For some reason or other you’ve an eye for decoration. That’s by the way.—Now, I’ve 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 Henty and Shakespeare. Even Carlson says you need pruning. There’s no use being antediluvian 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 vagrom gleams of common sense now and then. So I most 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,” Gail 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 colour. A grey wall continued on either side of the ruddy front and nameless vines waved on the coping. Mark’s head ached from a supper at Romano’s 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 parlour-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 black decency of his dress. His clothes were English. He was always tanned. The scar of Cora 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’ve 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 fine body, tall and proportionate. Her hair was a lustreless 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 Kelcey, and drank his tea in the manner of Mr. Drew. The minor canon 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 sombre 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 guests 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 thinkin’ of bringing over.” “Really, I don’t see why you Yankees always import our nonsense. One hears of the Pinero rubbish playing for thousands of nights in the States. Why?” “The women like it,” he wildly said, quoting Carlson. “Are those your kids?” “Mine and my husband’s,” 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 blond children about his best nephew, Gurdy Bernamer. 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 pallid on the weathered stone.—He was thinking that bulbs tinted straw colour might get this glow against 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 gaiters 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’d just as soon,” 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 [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] capture this 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 “clerestory.” The mingled glory almost frightened him. He saw a white butterfly that jigged and wheeled, irreverent, solitary on the far shadows of the vault. Mark smiled. Small Gurdy Bernamer named butterflies “bruffles” and was probably chasing one, now, across the hot perfume of the Fayettesville 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 Wykeham’s tomb.” Mark examined the painted tomb, wished he could sketch the canopy and the pygmy monks who pray at the Bishop’s feet. Gurdy Bernamer would like the monks and would break them. He rubbed his nose and chuckled. “I suppose,” Olive said, “that all this seems rather silly to you. You’re a practical people.” “It’s good lookin’. I don’t see how a good lookin’ thing can be silly, exactly. I was thinkin’ 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 guide book!” “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 should wane in the new manner when the acts began and there would be mirrors rimmed in faint silver to gleam in far nooks of the balcony—something to shimmer in corners and shadows of his dream.... Mark stared down the nave and built his theatre against the grey age of this place until Olive 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—a sacristan or something come an’ chase you off of here?” “What do you know about sacristans?” “Cathedrals always have sacristans in books.” “I dare say you read quantities of bad novels,” she observed. “Well, I like Monsieur Beaucaire and Kim better’n anything I’ve read lately,” said her bewildering pupil, “Say, who was Pico della Mirandola?” “I don’t think I can talk about the Renascence 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 Butter Cross 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 through a swarm of lads in flannels. At these Mark looked and sighed. “Why that sob?” “Dunno. I s’pose because kids are havin’ 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.” “D—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 Cor—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 gettin’ divorced has to do with art and ethics.... Oh, was this man Leighton a better painter’n Whistler?” His questions ranged from the salary of canons to professional cricket. He wore a small and single pearl in his shirt at [33] [34] [35] [36] dinner, sat eating chastely and stared at Olive between the candles that made his grey eyes black in the brown of his face. The parlour-maid brought him the silver bowl of chutney three unnecessary times. He timidly corrected Olive’s views on farm labour in the United States with, “I’m afraid you’re wrong. I was brought up on a farm.” “Really? I was wondering.” “Fayettesville. It’s up in the woods behind 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 a gover’ment you have so long as folks get enough to eat and the 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 poker?” “Because it ain’t fair. It’s like stealin’ a man’s wife.” “Some one 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 to 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 bein’ 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, except 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 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 Gurdy Bernamer and vanished whistling “The Banks of the Wabash.” “All his clothes are black,” said young Joan Ilden, “but I was helping Edith dust in his room this morning and he has the nicest blue pyjamas.” “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 bole of a tree behind the emptied place where Mark had been sitting.... Rage succeeded the sulk. This was a stupid augmentation of her income. Olive disapproved landholding 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 stock-broker! 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 Gail 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 an’ an old feller with a crook. Do they still do that?” “Do?” “Crooks. And he had on a blue—what d’you call it?—smock?” Olive laughed and lifted her arms behind her head. “Did you think some one 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 Shaw,” Mark guessed, “Clyde Fitch was talkin’ about it. But what’s wrong with actin’ like a gentleman?” “What’s the use? Your manners are quite all right. If you’d 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.” [37] [38] [39] Olive let an arm trail on the mantel 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 such a nice sk—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 any one?” “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 got 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 mantel 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 puttin’ on weight. Papa keeps two hired girls now and she don’t have to cook. The yellow- headed fellow’s her husband—Eddie Bernamer. Awful fine man.” He beamed at Olive now, doting on Eddie Bernamer’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 round. Nice house. We built a wing on when Joe got married last year.” The parlour-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 Gurdy Bernamer. 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 dare say you think life’s 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 doin’ a play where you can’t—can’t—well, make it good lookin’. These plays where there’s nothin’ but a perfec’ly ordinary family havin’ 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 bosh if you didn’t have the music and the Spanish clothes. Just a dirty yarn!... There’d ought to be somethin’ good lookin’ 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’ve tried readin’ Molière but it sounds pretty dry to me. Haven’t tried —Aristophanes?—I guess that’s deeper’n I could swim—” “Rot! You mustn’t let yourself—what is it?—be blinded by the glory of great names. Any one who can see the point in Patience can understand Aristophanes.... But you haven’t much humour. But you’ve played in comedy?” “Some. I’d just as soon.” Olive began “Anitra’s Dance” knowing that he liked melodrama and watched his eyes brighten, dilating. She said amiably, “A fine comedian’s the greatest boon in the world. Women especially. Is it true that women who’re 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 Peer Gynt Mornin’ 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’ll every one 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 [40] [41] [42] [43] 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 Bernamer and Joe disapproved of affairs with married women. They were right, of course. And nothing must interfere with his tutelage. And Ilden was at sea. But this was vexatious! He wished she did not stroll so lazily up stairs, 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 and 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 boardin’ with us 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, tramped 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 gait. He went into the cathedral and studied the Wykeham tomb from all angles. Some tourists hummed in the nave; a guide in a frock coat ambled after them descanting 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 ask 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 Trenton come if—” then rolled the paper into his palm. Olive saw his eyes swell and gasped, “Who’s Margaret?” “Joe’s wife. Where’s cab?” “At the gates. 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! 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. [44] [45] [46]