Bethel Merriday

XXIV

In her energetic small life, Bethel had rarely loafed and lolled and languished; and never, till this morning between dress rehearsal and first night, had she revelled in it. But to-day she slept till noon, and lay afterward on the bed, gossiping yawningly with Iris, reading the newspapers down to the real-estate transfers, and feeling like an actress in society novels. But in her new plain camel's-hair dressing-gown and her pale blue cotton pyjamas, she looked like a counsellor in a girls' camp; while Iris's pale delicacy was set off by plum-coloured silk pyjamas piped with white, and a dressing-gown of green taffeta with a batik scarf for sash. On her milky feet were mules of gilded alligator hide.

'Isn't that outfit all new?' said Bethel. Maybe just on the sniffy side.

'And how!'

'Where'd you ever raise the money?'

Iris smiled, tender as a young cobra. 'A gentleman friend, he asked me if I had anything to wear cold mornings on the tour, and I said no--'

'But you have! You had a swell dressing-gown in Grampion.'

'Oh. That? I--lost it. And I said no, and he just dragged me into Bonwit Teller's and bought this layout--honestly, I had no idea he meant it for me, I thought he just wanted my advice about colours, I thought prob'ly he meant it for his sister or somebody, and then when he shoved the parcels in my arms and said, "It's all yours, baby", I was so surprised, and I said, "For me? Oh I can't take presents from a man", and he said if I didn't take 'em, he'd throw 'em down the subway, and I made it clear he couldn't buy my affections, not with anything, and he said yes, sure, he understood that. So what could I do?' The epithet 'gold digger' dazzled Bethel's mind as crimson spheres dazzle the lidded eyes when you close them in bed, but she managed to keep still, as she made several notes about rooming by herself before the tour was over. She recalled now Iris's new silver bracelet, her new silver brush and comb; she remembered Iris coming out of a luggage shop, in New York, with Zed Wintergeist--and Iris had a new hatbox with that shop's label.

But she didn't want to be a prig. She did think the bumptious Zed ought to have enough wit to protect himself. Perhaps, on that page in Saint Peter's folio devoted to Bethel, there stands a small gold star because she shut up.

With innocent outrageousness, young gentlemen also in dressing-gowns--Andy, Douglas Fry, Lyle Johnson, Antonio Murphy--banged at the door and came in and sat on the beds and talked about the only subjects that could be of interest to the world--how the dress rehearsal had gone, how Miss Staghorn had blown, and the prospects for tonight. By evening there were cigarette butts in every receptacle in the room except Bethel's slippers. And in a growing, edgy tension, ten of them, boiling with chatter, ate at a round table in the Coffee Shop.

'Gosh, we've got to be good!' agonized Henry Purvis. 'I hear the house is sold out.'

'And there's a reviewer come from Chicago!' quaked Charlotte.

Mahala leered at Bethel, 'And the audience aren't good neighbours here, like a summer theatre, that are pulling for you to succeed. These are wolves. They want their two dollars and eighty cents' worth.'

And so they shakily set out to walk to the theatre and the opening.

When, in her Goddess of Liberty gown for the role of Prologue, Bethel stood way down right in the wings, listening to the orchestra's slow murder of Tchaikovsky and waiting for the signal to go on, when it was too late to do anything about it, she knew that her first nights in A Doll's House and Stage Door hadn't helped her in the least, and that if she played for thirty years and endured fifty first nights, she would be just as terrified and just as watery in the knees.

Terrified of what? she demanded.

Of making a fool of herself before that mob--friendly, gay and cruel. Of forgetting her lines. Of standing out there a bedlam fool.

Then Nathan Eldred, gently pushing, was muttering, 'On you go, dear. Good luck!' and she was edging between the tormentor and the backing flats, in front of the curtain, holding her small hands out to the sudden-silenced audience and appealing: 'Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .'

Her voice was warm and young and so earnest. She was begging them so to love the pair of star-crossed lovers.

As the voice went on, without her having much to do with it, she found that she could, through the haze of beams from the spotlights, make out, not individual faces, but the circling front of the top balcony. She must have unknown friends up there, among the students; all the young girls and boys who wanted to go on the stage. They were with her--and all her terror was gone.

Her voice came sure and urgent at the end of the prologue:

'If you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.'

'Swell!' whispered Eldred, as she pushed back into the wings again, and the pompous curtain set sail upward.

As much as she could, she watched from the wings.

Andy maintained through the play the easy serenity he had shown at dress rehearsal, but Zed Wintergeist ceased to be himself; he was Mercutio, completely. His Mab speech was half drunk with young fantasy; in his duel with Tybalt he was the young nobleman, fierce, swift, haughty, one who could revel in every sin save cowardice.

Doc Keezer--in frock coat and reversed collar, as Friar Laurence--stood beside Bethel, his arm lightly through hers, as they watched Zed's last scene: Mercutio blazingly angry with Death, but not afraid.

Doc sighed: 'I certainly don't like that young Wintergeist. He thinks he knows it all . . . and he whistles in his dressing-room. I'm not superstitious, but everybody knows that's bad luck. And he's the kind that'd treat women like cattle. But just the same, he ought to be playing Romeo!'

'And what ought Andy to be playing?'

'My two parts, chick. He'd be a fine sun-ripened Montague and a holy friar. And me, I ought to be playing animal noises on the radio. Or playing checkers back in Vermont. I'll lure you up there yet.'

It seemed to roll. Andy was voluminously in love; Mrs. Boyle sighed her softest sighs; Hugh Challis-Capulet was undiluted acid of domestic petulance; and Mabel Staghorn the most lewdly winking beldam that ever set a gallery giggling.

In the one long intermission the actors hugged one another, not quite sure just whom they were hugging, and shook the powder off their make-up aprons, and screamed, 'Oh, they're loving it--they're eating it up--we've got a Success!'

And when, a little reluctant to end the sweet last chords, Bethel appealed to them with her epilogue--'Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things'--the applause was like the roof falling.

There were sixteen curtain calls. And on one of them Andy led out Bethel and Iris, and it seemed to Bethel that the pounding hands were louder than for Mrs. Boyle and Mahala. At the end of it all, Andy made a curtain speech, while Bethel stood in the wings and worshipped. He was boyish and grateful and endearingly awkward:

. . . They were all so grateful to this, the first audience to greet their humble efforts, and if the audience had half the pleasure that the company had felt . . .

Zed, beside Bethel, was grunting, 'What a lousy Mothers' Day speech that is!'

Bethel actually swung about, her hand up like a cat's paw, to slap him, and if she stayed her hand, it was because of Zed's expectant leering and not for the sake of manners befitting a little lady. Later she heard Iris confiding to Zed, 'Let's go out and dance after the show; I've heard about a place with a hot orchestra', and Zed agreeing. But it was over, and they were all too tired to be anything but hysterically happy.

She had seven opening-night telegrams. (Andy had sixty-three, Mrs. Boyle had four, Hugh Challis had one hundred and sixteen, and Zed had seventeen.) In one wire Fletcher Hewitt coaxed her.

THIS NIGHT DO ENVY YOU HOWEVER WE GOING HAVE HOUSEFUL GUESTS CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS WISH WERE THERE TO-NIGHT TO GIVE EARNEST WISHES IN PERSON DON'T FORGET FLETCHER.

But most astounding was the wire from Professor Miss Bickling:

IN YOUR GREAT TRIUMPH DO NOT FORGET OLD FRIENDS WHO WERE HAPPY EARLY TO PREDICT YOUR FUTURE SUCCESS.

Bethel laid that yellow telegram down in a mess of tan powder and burnt-out paper matches and lining pencils and sat quiet, almost weeping. She had forgotten Miss Bickling and Point Royal College. They were antique and dated and a little absurd and achingly kind.

It was six months and nine days since she had played Nora.

The Belluca stage doorman had pretty liberal ideas about admitting visitors without bothering himself by taking in their cards.

Into their dressing-room--Charlotte's, Vera Cross's, Miss Staghorn's and Bethel's--after the play, the visitors moved like doubtful elephants blundering down to a new waterhole. Charlotte had two Belluca residents who apparently knew and detested each other: a tall woman, very diamond and sable and positive, and a thin, shy, olive-coloured young man who was certainly either a Communist or so guilty about not being one that he was going to a psychoanalyst. There was no one for Vera--who was at least as lost an orphan as Bethel--and for Miss Staghorn only an overstuffed woman who sighed between phrases and smiled as though it hurt her. She had apparently given up the stage for matrimony, and didn't think it had been much of an idea.

Then, with horror, Bethel saw oozing into the door a trial of her own: a classmate in Point Royal whom she had always disliked. She was, in fact, the kind of a girl who wasn't any kind of a girl but solely a classmate. Bethel was yet to learn that there is a separate breed, roughly to be classed among human beings, called College Classmates. You can recognize the species on the street ten buildings away, but never place any of its individuals. 'That looks like a classmate,' you say, and shudder.

This particular one had had the habit of leaning over Bethel's shoulder at a table in the college library and smacking gum, slowly and firmly, in her ear. She entered now remarking: 'And you never even let me know you were coming! Getting the big head already!'

'Why, Mary, I didn't know you lived here in Belluca!' gurgled Bethel.

Of course she didn't know it! If she had, that would have been the one secret, haunting horror in this otherwise benign and imperial city.

'Oh yes, I'm married now!'

Already? Impossible! Bethel felt herself still a baby.

'Well, isn't that dandy?' said Bethel.

'Oh yes, I'm very happy. But my, who ever thought you'd be an actress. You were so cranky to everybody about acting in college, and talking about discipline and what have you, that I thought you really hated it!'

Oh, a darling, just a Belluca darling.

The classmate was followed by a woman, stringy and chronically indignant and to Bethel perfectly strange, who shrieked, 'Well, Beth, guess you don't remember me.'

'Oh, I'm sorry--'

'Well, 's matter of fact, I don't know how you could, because you never saw me, not really, but I'm your cousin Lizzie.'

'Oh-uh.'

'Well, your second cousin, I guess it is, really. Lizzie Porch--you know--Mrs. Reginald Porch. My husband is in gents' outfitting, but he hasn't been so well lately. I'm your mother's sister's husband's first wife's daughter, and I don't know just what that makes us, but after all, relatives are relatives, aren't they, and they can't very well be strangers.'

'Yes, that's dandy!' said Bethel. Detestable word 'dandy' with which she had not befouled her virginal tongue since she had left Sladesbury but that she had used now--so corrupting and hideous are unwanted visitors to dressing-rooms--twice in five minutes. 'That's dandy. And did you enjoy our show?'

'That's what I came to see you about. Reggie and I can't afford to buy theatre tickets, now that we're paying for the new car and the new electric garbage disposer and Junior's tennis lessons, but of course as you're my cousin, I did think it would be nice to honour you while you're here by giving you a supper party, with a theatre party beforehand, and I'd be delighted to arrange it any time you say, any evening at all, except Wednesday or Thursday, and if you'll choose the time that's most convenient to you, and if you could get me eight tickets--they needn't be in a box; the orchestra would be all right--I'll go right ahead and arrange it.'

There had been time when Bethel's feeling for Mabel Staghorn had been somewhat less than adoration. Mabel asked questions about her feelings for Andy; Mabel looked at the notes on Bethel's little pad; Mabel had a hot and puffy hand. But now did Mabel arise and become a comrade at arms.

'Excuse my intruding, Mrs. Porch, but Beth is so shy she'd never tell you--but you know she's cuing all of us every evening--gracious, almost till dawn, sometimes--and of course you know that she'd have to buy the tickets, and eight times two-eighty--what does that make?--I never was any good at figures, but it'd set her back somewhere around twenty-five bucks, wouldn't it, and nobody asked me, but it strikes me that's a whole lot to ask of a cousin you never seen before!'

'Oh, if you feel that way about it, but I must say, it strikes me as a pretty poor return for all my efforts to introduce Bethel to some of the most influential people in town!' said Mrs. Porch to Mabel, and to Bethel, 'But of course if you prefer casual people you just met on the stage to your own flesh and blood, well, all I can say is--'

'Good night,' suggested Charlotte.

And Mrs. Porch was stamping out, and Bethel was very happy and a professional and a success beyond dreams . . . for ten minutes more.

She had assumed that the lot of them would go somewhere to celebrate, that night. Andy would take care of it--trust old Andy.

She came out into the waste of cement floor about the dressing-rooms, to see Zed going off with Iris, Charlotte with her two friends and with Henry Purvis, Vera Cross with young Douglas Fry, and then a whole cavalcade. Andy's rich cousin and his wife were leading it, and after them, laughing, shouting, misquoting Shakespeare, came Andy, Mahala, Mrs. Boyle and Hugh Challis, and they were all in evening clothes.

It was the first time that Bethel had ever seen Andy in the unapproachable magnificence of tails, white tie, top hat and ebony stick. Mahala was in an ivory frock, and Andy's cousin was Raleighesquely hanging her cape about her.

They all went past Bethel, at her dressing-room door, with not one look.

She felt not so much poor and dull-tongued and unbeautiful as immature and brattish. How had she ever dared to think that she could be really friendly with smiling, surefooted, older gods like Andy?

She saw herself walking alone back to the hotel, into the littered double room to which Iris would not return till dawn. The glory of being Epilogue in a silk dress was gone. And the small of her back hurt with weariness. She turned toward the stairs up from the basement.

Then there was Andy, flying down to her, his Inverness cape (so silly to her, and so darling!) agitated with his speed, crying to her, 'Beth, it just occurred to me that some of you kids won't be having a party to-night. How about you and Iris and Vera?'

'They're--uh--going dancing.'

'You're alone?'

'It doesn't matter, I'd rather be. I'm so tired.'

'Darling! Poor sweet darling! Now you do look like a half-drowned kitten--back all ruffled and paws all wet--shaking 'em so ruefully! I'll tell you what. Come along with us.'

'I couldn't.'

'You'd save my life! My cousin is the worst stuffed shirt in a family renowned for stuffiness and shirtiness.'

From the stairs, the voice of Romer Ingalls, the cousin: 'Andy? Where are you? Come on! We're waiting.'

Andy urged her, 'Oh, come on. It'll be a favour to me. I'll have somebody to talk to.'

'Huh! You'll have your Mahala.'

'Our Mahala is talented, but--well, she's too fond of being coyly rebuking. No, honestly, I wouldn't go to the party at all--champagne and the rumba and Corona-Coronas--except to work up some carriage trade for the show.'

'I'm merely an understudy, Mr. Deacon!'

'Please don't be haughty.'

'But Andy, honestly, I haven't an evening dress. I will have, as soon as I save up, and then--'

'Look, kitten, I'll take you out and buy you a frock tomorrow. Shall we?'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

'I'd like to!'

'I couldn't wear anything I didn't earn. I'd feel--' She didn't quite end up the sentence 'like an Iris.'

'I know, darling. And if this show goes over--as it will!--maybe you'll have a big enough raise in salary to earn twenty dresses, all gold and emeralds. Good night. I'll miss you!' And he was gone with a kiss that--she wasn't quite sure but that it had almost meant something.

She had a warm small happiness curled inside her then, and she turned to find Doc Keezer looking on, friendly, only a little sardonic. He said nothing about Andy's kiss; he merely yawned, 'Come on to the Yorkshire Grill and I'll buy you a bevy of chops.'

It was consoling to walk the winter streets to the Grill with Doc Keezer. He did not prance like Andy or Zed or Douglas Fry, did not pour out plans to vanquish fairyland. He walked steadily, held her arm steadily, knew exactly where he was going, waited for the red light at street corners, and told her that on stage she 'gargled her l's too much', which was the most useful thing anyone had said since Sol Gadto.

The Yorkshire Grill was an imitation of all the New York Chop Houses that imitate Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, of London, which imitates itself. Bethel was ashamed of her Lone Cinderella role back at the theatre when she saw that there were plenty of other members of the company who were not festive on first night.

At the Grill, Tudor Blackwall and Victor Swenson were sedately eating Irish stew--'Oh, Bethel, darling, you were too, too lovely to-night!' they chorused. Old Wyndham Nooks (steak, rare) was telling Mrs. Golly, the wardrobe mistress (deviled beef bone) of his early triumphs--early or not at all. Bethel heard from him a trailing, 'So I said to Dave Belasco, "Dave, I've got an idea that'll make a fortune for you", and Dave said to me, "Wyndy, let's have it".' Douglas was demonstrating to Vera Cross a ground plan for a new setting for Macbeth.

She was at home again, and comforted, and Doc Keezer ordered chops, with bitter ale in pewter mugs, which, for the sake of her well-loved Dickens and J. B. Priestley, she tried to enjoy, and which for her own sake she thought was nasty.

'Get a wire from Fletch Hewitt to-night, Beth?' said Doc Keezer.

'Yes. A nice one.'

'You're the kind of young woman, chick, neither too maternal nor too grasping, with a career but not willing to step on everybody to get it, that'll always have good, steady, dull dogs like Hewitt and Charley Hatch hanging around you, claiming they want to support you, but really wanting to be supported mentally.'

'How did you ever know anything about Charley Hatch?'

'I watched him when he came to visit you at Grampion. An old unmarried trouper like me--oh, I was married for about a year one time, when I was a hoofer; but she liked Italian orchestra leaders with moustaches--most of us get to be great hermits, and as tightwad as a Yankee character actor--walk twenty blocks out of the way to find a hotel room that smells more of old carpets and costs fifty cents less a night. And we sit off one side backstage and nurse our arms, and prob'ly we only know our own parts, and never find out whether Juliet marries the apothecary or Prince Escalus at the end of the play.

'But we do get a kind of compensation: we study the people around us, all the time, and get to know 'em. I know you better than Andy does, or young Wintergeist or any of 'em. They think you're a lively kid, pretty naive yet, but sweet. I know you're a serious student--maybe you'll never be a great actress, but you'll be a dependable one, if the luck runs with you. Ergal, you ought to count a lot more on me than on those young flibbertigibbets--who I also know them better than you do. Andy is better'n ninety-five per cent of Rich Young Men. But if he doesn't make a ten strike at play producing quick, it'll be a wonder if he doesn't go back to his gardener and his butler. Wintergeist has ability. If he stays clear of booze and gold diggers. He's the kind that's born drunk, and born in love, and just one extra drink or one more girl will send him haywire.'

'But Doc, if you're disposing of 'em, what about the boys I really like--Douglas Fry and Harry Purvis?'

'Two light-waisted, both of 'em. And too self-satisfied. But there is a lot bigger threat.'

'Eh?'

'What you have to watch out for is your own friendly heart, and it makes you feel responsible to the Steady Old Dogs--the home-town boys--Fletcher and Hatch . . . and me.'

'Oh!'

'Yes. Haven't you sort of noticed that in my methodical aged way, I've been falling in love with you, Bethel?'

'Oh no. Oh, Doc--'

'I know, dear. I know all the lines. I've played 'em in Clyde Fitch and Charles Klein: You just felt that we were good friends. That you could depend on me. Can't it remain like that? . . . And it can, dear. I hope it will. I'm too old and too lazy to go and get lyric on you. I won't write you one single triolet--that's its name, ain't it? I'll always be here--holding the gloves and buying you hot dogs, and sending you home to bed early--and alone. But if you ever should get sick of these galloping young men, you might some day get interested in an old ham that's gone through about all the rough weather there is, and come out pretty cheerful, and even reasonably kind and honest--which is all the flowers I'm ever going to hand myself. Positively! And a fellow pro that would nurse your career and guide you and cue you--and of course the only reason any sensible actress ever gets married is to have somebody cue her.

'And as to what you would do for me--well, it would give me a youth I never really had.'

'How old are you, Doc? Please forgive me--'

'Sure. I'm fifty, last month. And you're twenty-two. I know all the arguments about May versus December--the poor kid sitting at home when she wants to go dancing, because Pop loves his pipe and slippers--though nowadays, seems like it's just the opposite: Pop wants to be out doing the rumba with the cuties, the old fool, and his girl wants to stay home and study her admiralty law. But when a couple are together, in the same art, like acting, or the same profession, then maybe age don't matter as much. You don't get along with Wintergeist just because he's only a year or a couple years older, but because you're playing his page. And that's all on the subject. Have a brandy? . . . No? I think I will, if you don't mind. Say, did you hear old Nooks squawking to-night? The steam pipes in his dressing-room were leaking. . . .'

She looked over at Vera Cross and Douglas Fry, young and credulous. Youth seemed to her not a quality, but an objective thing, not rosy-cheeked, as they said, and robust, but fragile and ardently to be protected and preserved.

And then the young Carl Frazee, of the Evening News, came charging up.

'There you are, Beth--I've been looking in every joint in town for you.'

And then she was young, too; a child escaped from the house on Sunday afternoon when Aunty Bess and Gramma have come visiting, and blessedly invited to a good, wholesome, violent game of cops and robbers.

'Did you give us a good review?' begged Bethel.

'Not ethics to ask, young Juliet. But I don't think you'll kick much, when you see it to-morrow.'

Carl had, instantly, Douglas, Vera, Tudor, Swenson about him, as well as Bethel and Doc Keezer. He effervescently told them that they were all (he included himself, and Tudor, who was thirty-five) young and brave and missionaries of culture. (As Carl shouted, Bethel was very pleased about it, and would have gone on touring in Shakespeare if she had had to walk.) They were more important than all the college presidents and bishops and gross newspaper owners--God what a stinker his boss was!--in the world. And Lord but did it save his (Carl's) life, when a real theatrical troupe came to this jungle, where you were expected to report the speeches of bathtub barons and the Da Vincis of insulated piping.

Yawning, Doc Keezer arose.

'Well, I'll leave you infants to build a chain of theatres. Just let me have a job. Will you see the baby here gets home safe, Carl?'

When Doc was gone, Bethel said defensively, 'He's really sweet. He's my Friar Laurence.'

'Look--look--something I want to ask you--c'm'ere,' yelled Carl, and dragged her out to the vestibule. He was only a little crazy. 'Don't you make any mistake about Doc Keezer!'

'I don't. He's safe as houses.'

'You're telling me! He prob'ly thinks the whole gang of us are a bunch of chicks who want to tell the old hens what a swell place a barnyard is, and he's prob'ly right. He's a professional. He'll put on a good show the night you play Arroyo City in a blizzard, yes, and old Ma Boyle will, too, when your Andy blows higher than a kite, and Mahala won't leave the hotel, and you, my precious, are too scared to speak. My guess, from the way you look at Andy, is that you're in love with him--or will be. But I'll bet that before this tour is over--and it'll last at least two years, no doubt of that--'

'You honestly think so?'

'I know it! You'll play clear out to L.A., and then prob'ly Australia.'

'That would be glorious.'

'Yuh, and before it's over, you'll marry Doc Keezer--I've see him look at you. You two will have an abandoned farm house in Connecticut, you and Doc, and I'll come stay with you, and Doc and I will write a play together--he'll supply all stagecrafts--exits are the damnedest things, in my experience!--and you'll star in it. But what a time I'm going to have keeping myself from taking you away from him, when the play is finished. What a wow the play's going to be--and you too, I mean. Come on, come on, urchin, we can't keep those people waiting all night, you know, and I want to tell Doug about how to stage a Carlo van Loo comedy!'

And by this strident egotism of Youth, it is regretfully to be reported that Bethel was not shocked at all.

When Carl escorted her home--talking--he insisted on peeping into the Pocahontas Room of the Buckingham-Bradley, an affair of black-and-gold tiled walls, and lights that shifted from rose to saffron to green, and the smart young things of Belluca moving smoothly and slowly in what they thought to be a dance. And instantly she saw Iris moving so with Zed; they were cheek to cheek, and Iris's head was tilted back, her eyes closed, her eyelids like little mounds of pale blue silk.

The wordly wise Carl Frazee followed her look, and pontificated, 'And thank God, in marrying you Doc will keep you from ever falling for that guy Wintergeist there, who's too bumptious to live. Modesty is so important, don't you think?'

'Oh yes!' said the young Bethel.