"Dearest Boy: I won't let them wake you, but I must run away. It's early and I must do some shopping before people are about. My house here is closed; Mrs. Secretan is in Maine with the only keys aside from those at Great West Bay; and I'm a positive fright in a coat and skirt borrowed from the stewardess. I don't want even you to see me until I'm decently dressed. I shall put up at the Waldorf; come there to-night, and we will dine together. Every fibre of my being loves you.
"Mary."
Obviously not a note to be cavilled at. Whitaker took a serene and shining face to breakfast in the saloon, under the eyes of Ember.
Veins of optimism and of gratulation like threads of gold ran through the texture of their talk. There seemed to exist a tacit understanding that, with the death of Drummond, the cloud that had shadowed the career of Sara Law had lifted, while her renunciation of her public career had left her with a future of glorified serenity and assured happiness. By common consent, with an almost superstitious awe, they begged the question of the shadowed and inexplicable past—left the dead past to bury itself, bestowing all their fatuous concern with the to-day of rejoicing and the to-morrow of splendid promise.
Toward noon they parted ashore, each taking a taxicab to his lodgings. The understanding was that they were to dine together—all three, Whitaker promising for his wife—upon the morrow.
At six that evening, returning to his rooms to dress, Whitaker found another note awaiting him, in a handwriting that his heart recognized with a sensation of wretched apprehension.
He dared not trust himself to read it in the public hall. It was agony to wait through the maddeningly deliberate upward flight of the elevator. When he at length attained to the privacy of his own apartment, he was sweating like a panic-stricken horse. He could hardly control his fingers to open the envelope. He comprehended its contents with difficulty, half blinded by a swimming mist of foreboding.
"My Dear: I find my strength unequal to the strain of seeing you to-night. Indeed, I am so worn out and nerve-racked that I have had to consult my physician. He orders me immediately to a sanatorium, to rest for a week or two. Don't worry about me. I shan't fail to let you know as soon as I feel strong enough to see you. Forgive me. I love you dearly.
"Mary."
The paper slipped from Whitaker's trembling hand and fluttered unheeded to the floor. He sprang to the telephone and presently had the Waldorf on the wire; it was true, he learned: Mrs. Whitaker had registered at the hotel in the morning, and had left at four in the afternoon. He was refused information as to whether she had left a forwarding address for her mail.
He wrote her immediately, and perhaps not altogether wisely, under stress of distraction, sending the letter by special delivery in care of the hotel. It was returned him in due course of time, embellished with a pencilled memorandum to the effect that Mrs. Whitaker had left no address.
He communicated at once with Ember, promptly enlisting his willing services. But after several days of earnest investigation the detective confessed himself baffled.
"If you ask me," he commented at the conclusion of his report, "the answer is: she means to be let alone until she's quite ready to see you again. I don't pin any medals on myself for this demonstration of extraordinary penetration; I merely point out the obvious for your own good. Contain yourself, my dear man—and stop gnawing your knuckles like the heavy man in a Third Avenue melodrama. It won't do any good; your wife promised to communicate with you as soon as her health was restored. And not only is she a woman who keeps her promise, but it is quite comprehensible that she should have been shaken up by her extraordinary experience to an extent we can hardly appreciate who haven't the highly sensitive organization of a woman to contend with. Give her time."
"I don't believe it!" Whitaker raged. "She—she loved me there on the island. She couldn't change so quickly, bring herself to treat me so cruelly, unless some infernal influence had been brought to bear upon her."
"It's possible, but I—"
"Oh, I don't mean that foolishness about her love being a man's death-warrant. That may have something to do with it, but—but, damn it!—I conquered that once. She promised ... was in my arms ... I'd won her.... She loved me; there wasn't any make-believe about it. If there were any foundation for that poppycock, I'd be a dead man now—instead of a man damnably ill-used!... No: somebody has got hold of her, worked on her sympathies, maligned me...."
"Do you object to telling me whom you have in mind?"
"The man you suspect as well as I—the one man to whom her allegiance means everything: the man you named to me the night we met for the first time, as the one who'd profit the most by keeping her from leaving the stage!"
"Well, if it's Max, you'll know in time. It won't profit him to hide the light of his star under a bushel; he can only make money by displaying it."
"I'll know before long. As soon as he gets back in town—"
"So you've been after him?"
"Why not? But he's out on the Pacific coast; or so they tell me at the theatre."
"And expected back—when?"
"Soon."
"Do you know when he left?"
"About the middle of July—they say in his office."
"Then that lets him out."
"But it's a lie."
"Well—?"
"I've just remembered: Max was at the Fiske place, urging her to return, the night before you caught Drummond at the bungalow. I saw them, walking up and down in front of the cottage, arguing earnestly: I could tell by her bearing she was refusing whatever he proposed. But I didn't know her then, and naturally I never connected Max with the fellow I saw, disguised in a motoring coat and cap. Neither of 'em had any place in my thoughts that night."
Ember uttered a thoughtful "Oh?" adding: "Did you find out at all definitely when Max is expected back?"
"Two or three weeks now, they say. He's got his winter productions to get under way. As a matter of fact, it looks to me as if he must be neglecting 'em strangely; it's my impression that the late summer is a producing manager's busiest time."
"Max runs himself by his own original code, I'm afraid. The chances are he's trying to raise money out on the Coast. No money, no productions—in other words."
"I shouldn't wonder."
"But there may be something in what you say—suspect, that is. If I agree to keep an eye on him, will you promise to give me a free hand?"
"Meaning—?"
"Keep out of Max's way: don't risk a wrangle with him."
"Why the devil should I be afraid of Max?"
"I know of no reason—as yet. But I prefer to work unhampered by the indiscretions of my principals."
"Oh—go ahead—to blazes—as far as you like."
"Thanks," Ember dryly wound up the conference; "but these passing flirtations with your present-day temper leave me with no hankering for greater warmth...."
Days ran stolidly on into weeks, and these into a month. Nothing happened. Max did not return; the whispered rumour played wild-fire in theatrical circles that the eccentric manager had encountered financial difficulties insuperable. The billboards flanking the entrance to the Theatre Max continued to display posters announcing the reopening early in September with a musical comedy by Tynan Dodd; but the comedy was not even in rehearsal by September fifteenth.
Ember went darkly about his various businesses, taciturn—even a trace more than ever reserved in his communication with Whitaker—preoccupied, but constant in his endeavour to enhearten the desponding husband. He refused to hazard any surmises whatever until the return of Max or the reappearance of Mary Whitaker.
She made no sign. Now and then Whitaker would lose patience and write to her: desperate letters, fond and endearing, passionate and insistent, wistful and pleading, strung upon a single theme. Despatched under the address of her town house, they vanished from his ken as mysteriously and completely as she herself had vanished. He received not a line of acknowledgment.
Day by day he made up his mind finally and definitely to give it up, to make an end of waiting, to accept the harsh cruelty of her treatment of him as an absolute definition of her wishes—to sever his renewed life in New York and return once and for all to the Antipodes. And day by day he paltered, doubted, put off going to the steamship office to engage passage. The memory of that last day on the lonely island would not down. Surely she dared not deny the self she had then revealed to him! Surely she must be desperately ill and unable to write, rather than ignoring him so heartlessly and intentionally. Surely the morrow would bring word of her!
Sometimes, fretted to a frenzy, he sought out Ember and made wild and unreasonable demands upon him. These failing of any effect other than the resigned retort, "I am a detective, not a miracle-monger," he would fly into desperate, gnawing, black rages that made Ember fear for his sanity and self-control and caused him to be haunted by that gentleman for hours—once or twice for days—until he resumed his normal poise of a sober and civilized man. He was, however, not often aware of this sedulous espionage.
September waned and October dawned in grateful coolness: an exquisite month of crisp nights and enlivening days, of mellowing sunlight and early gloamings tenderly coloured. Country houses were closed and theatres reopened. Fifth Avenue after four in the afternoon became thronged with an ever thickening army—horse, foot and motor-car. Several main-travelled thoroughfares were promptly torn to pieces and set up on end by municipal authorities with a keen eye for the discomfort of the public. A fresh electric sign blazed on Broadway every evening, and from Thirty-fourth Street to Columbus Circle the first nights crackled, detonated, sputtered and fizzled like a string of cheap Chinese firecrackers. One after another the most exorbitant restaurants advanced their prices and decreased their portions to the prompt and extraordinary multiplication of their clientèle: restaurant French for a species of citizen whose birth-rate is said to be steadfast to the ratio of sixty to the hour. Wall Street wailed loudly of its poverty and hurled bitter anathemas at the President, the business interest of the country continued to suffer excruciating agonies, and the proprietors of leading hotels continued to add odd thousands of acres to their game preserves.
Then suddenly the town blossomed overnight with huge eight-sheet posters on every available hoarding, blazoning the news:
JULES MAX
begs to announce the return of
SARA LAW
in a new Comedy entitled Faith
by JULES MAX
Theatre MAX—Friday October 15th
But Whitaker had the information before he saw the broad-sides in the streets. The morning paper propped up on his breakfast table contained the illuminating note under the caption, "News of Plays and Players":
"Jules Max has sprung another and perhaps his greatest surprise on the theatre-going public of this city. In the face of the rumor that he was in dire financial straits and would make no productions whatever this year, the astute manager has been out of town for two months secretly rehearsing the new comedy entitled 'Faith' of which he is the author and in which Sara Law will return finally to the stage.
"Additional interest attaches to this announcement in view of the fact that Miss Law has authorized the publication of her intention never again to retire from the stage. Miss Law is said to have expressed herself as follows: 'It is my dearest wish to die in harness. I have come to realize that a great artiste has no duty greater than her duty to her art. I dedicate my life and artistry to the American Public.'
"The opening performance of 'Faith' will take place at the Theatre Max to-morrow evening, Friday, October 15. The sale of seats opens at the box-office this morning. Despite the short notice, a bumper house is confidently expected to welcome back this justly popular and most charming American actress in the first play of which Mr. Max has confessed being the author."
Whitaker glanced up incredulously at the date-line of the sheet. Short notice, indeed: the date was Thursday, October fourteenth. Max had planned his game and had played his cards cunningly, in withholding this announcement until the last moment. So much was very clear to him whose eyes had wit to read between those lines of trite press-agent phraseology.
After a pause Whitaker rose and began to walk the length of the room, hands in his pockets, head bowed in thought. He was telling himself that he was not greatly surprised, after all; he was wondering at his coolness; and he was conning over, with a grim, sardonic kink in his twisted smile, the needless precautions taken by the dapper little manager in his fear of Whitaker's righteous wrath. For Whitaker had no intention of interfering in any way. He conceived it a possibility that his congé might have been more kindly given him, but ... he had received it, and he was not slow to recognize it as absolute and without appeal. The thing was finished. The play was over, so far as concerned his part therein. He had no doubt played it poorly; but at least his exit would not lack a certain quality of dignity. Whitaker promised himself that.
He thought it really astonishing, his coolness. He analyzed his psychological processes with a growing wonder and with as much, if less definite, resentment. He would not have thought it credible of himself. Search as he would, he could discover no rankling indignation, no smouldering rage threatening to flame at the least breath of provocation, not even what he might have most confidently looked forward to—the sickening writhings of self-love mortally wounded and impotent to avenge itself: nothing but some self-contempt, that he had allowed himself to be so carried away by infatuation for an ignoble woman, and a cynic humour that made it possible for him to derive a certain satisfaction from contemplating the completeness of this final revelation of herself.
However, he had more important things to claim his attention than the spectacle of a degraded soul making public show of its dishonour.
He halted by the window to look out. Over the withered tree-tops of Bryant Square, set against the rich turquoise of that late autumnal sky, a gigantic sign-board heralded the news of perfidy to an unperceptive world that bustled on, heedless of Jules Max, ignorant (largely) of the existence of Hugh Whitaker, unconcerned with Sara Law save as she employed herself for its amusement.
After all, the truth was secret and like to stay so, jealously husbanded in four bosoms at most. Max would guard it as he would a system for winning at roulette; Mary Whitaker might well be trusted never to declare herself; Ember was as secret as the grave....
Returning to the breakfast table, he took up the paper, turned to the shipping news and ran his eye down the list of scheduled sailings: nothing for Friday; his pick of half a dozen boats listed to sail Saturday.
The telephone enabled him to make a hasty reservation on the biggest and fastest of them all.
He had just concluded that business and was waiting with his hand on the receiver to call up Ember and announce his departure, when the door-bell interrupted. Expecting the waiter to remove the breakfast things, he went to the door, threw it open, and turned back instantly to the telephone. As his fingers closed round the receiver a second time, he looked round and saw his wife....
His hand fell to his side. Otherwise he did not move. But his glance was that of one incuriously comprehending the existence of a stranger.
The woman met it fairly and fearlessly, with her head high and her lips touched with a trace of her shadowy, illegible smile. She was dressed for walking, very prettily and perfectly. There were roses in her cheeks: a healthful glow distinguishable even in the tempered light of the hallway. Her self-possession was faultless.
After a moment she inclined her head slightly. "The hall-boys said you were busy on the telephone. I insisted on coming directly up. I wish very much to see you for a few moments. Do you mind?"
"By no means," he said, a little stiffly but quite calmly. "If you will be good enough to come in—"
He stood against the wall to let her pass. For a breath she was too close to him: he felt his pulses quicken faintly to the delicate and indefinite perfume of her person. But it was over in an instant: she had passed into the living-room. He followed, grave, collected, aloof.
"I had to come this morning," she explained, turning. "This afternoon we have a rehearsal...."
He bowed an acknowledgment. "Won't you sit down?"
"Thank you." Seated, she subjected him to a quick, open appraisal, disarming in its naïve honesty.
"Hugh ... aren't you a bit thinner?"
"I believe so." He had a match for that impertinence: "But you, I see, have come off without a blemish."
"I am very well," she admitted, unperturbed. Her glance embraced the room. "You're very comfortable here."
"I have been."
"I hope that doesn't mean I'm in the way."
"To the contrary; but I sail day after to-morrow for Australia."
"Oh? That's very sudden, isn't it? You don't seem to have done any packing. Or perhaps you mean to come back before a great while?"
"I shan't come back, ever."
"Must I believe you made up your mind this morning?"
"I have only just read the announcement of your opening to-morrow night."
"Then ... I am driving you out of the country?"
Her look was impersonal and curious. He prided himself that he was managing his temper admirably—at least until he discovered that he had, inexplicably, no temper to speak of; that he, in fact, suffered mostly from what seemed to be nothing more than annoyance at being hindered in making the necessary arrangements against his departure.
His shoulders moved negligently. "Not to rant about it," he replied: "I find I am not needed here."
"Oh, dear!" Her lips formed a fugitive, petulant moue: "And it's my fault?"
"There's no use mincing matters, is there? I am not heartbroken, and if I am bitterly disappointed I don't care to—in fact, I lack the ability—to dramatize it."
"You are taking it well, Hugh," said she, critical.
Expressionless, he waited an instant before inquiring pointedly: "Well...?"
Deliberately laying aside her light muff, her scarf and hand-bag, she rose: equality of poise was impossible if he would persist in standing. She moved a little nearer, examining his face closely, shook her head, smiled almost diffidently, and gave a helpless gesture.
"Hugh," she said in a voice of sincerity, "I'm awfully sorry—truly I am!"
He made no reply; waited.
"Perhaps I'm wrong," she went on, "but I think most women would have spared themselves this meeting—"
"Themselves and the man," he interjected dryly.
"Don't be cross, Hugh.... I had to come. I had to explain myself. I wanted you to understand. Hugh, I—" She was twisting her hands together with a manner denoting great mental strain. Of a sudden she checked and dropped them, limp and open by her sides. "You see," she said with the apologetic smile, "I'm trying not to act."
"Oh," he said in a tone of dawning comprehension—"so that's it!"
"I'm afraid so, Hugh.... I'm dreadfully sorry for you—poor boy!—but I'm afraid that's the trouble with me, and it can never be helped. I was born with a talent for acting; life has made me an actress. Hugh ... I've found out something." Her eyes appealed wistfully. "I'm not genuine."
He nodded interestedly.
"I'm just an actress, an instrument for the music of emotions. I've been trained to respond, until now I respond without knowing it, when there's no true response here." She touched the bosom of her frock.
He said nothing.
With a half sigh she moved away to the window, and before she spoke again posed herself very effectively there, looking out over the park while she cleared her mind.
"Of course, you despise me. I despise myself—I mean, the self that was me before I turned from a woman into an actress. But it's the truth: I have no longer any real capacity for emotion, merely an infinite capacity for appreciation of the artistic delineation of emotion, true or feigned. That ... that is why, when you showed me you had grown to love me so, I responded so quickly. You were in love—more honestly than I had ever seen love revealed. It touched me. I was proud to have inspired such a love. I wanted, for the time being, to have you with me always, that I might always study the wonderful, the beautiful manifestations of your love. Why, Hugh, you even managed to make me believe I was worth it—that my response was sufficient repayment for your adoration...."
He said nothing. She glanced furtively at him and continued:
"I meant to be sweet and faithful when I left that note for you on the yacht, Hugh; I was grateful, and I meant to be generous.... But when I went to the Waldorf, the first person I met was Max. Of course I had to tell him what had happened. And then he threw himself upon my compassion. It seems that losing me had put him in the most terrible trouble about money. He was short, and he couldn't get the backing he needed without me, his call upon my services, by way of assurance to his backers. And I began to think. I knew I didn't love you honestly, Hugh, and that life with you would be a living lie. What right had I to deceive you that way, just to gratify my love of being loved? And especially if by doing that I ruined Max, the man to whom, next to you, I owed everything? I couldn't do it. But I took time to think it over—truly I did. I really did go to a sanatorium, and rested there while I turned the whole matter over carefully in my mind, and at length reached my decision to stick by Max and let you go, free to win the heart of a woman worthy of you."
She paused again, but still he was mute and immobile.
"So now you know me—what I am. No other man has ever known or ever will. But I had to tell you the truth. It seems that the only thing my career had left uncalloused was my fundamental sense of honesty. So I had to come and tell you."
And still he held silence, attentive, but with a set face that betrayed nothing of the tenor of his thoughts.
Almost timidly, with nervously fumbling fingers, she extracted from her pocket-book a small ticket envelope.
"Max was afraid you might upset the performance again, as you did on my last appearance, Hugh," she said; "but I assured him it was just the shock of recognizing you that bowled me over. So I've bought you a box for to-morrow night. I want you to use it—you and Mr. Ember."
He broke in with a curt monosyllable: "Why?"
"Why—why because—because I want you—I suppose it's simply my vanity—to see me act. Perhaps you'll feel a little less hardly toward me if you see that I am really a great actress, that I give you up for something bigger than just love—"
"What rot!" he said with an odd, short laugh. "Besides, I harbour no resentment."
She stared, losing a little colour, eyes darkening with apprehension.
"I did hope you'd come," she murmured.
"Oh, I'll come," he said with spirit. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
"Really, Hugh? And you don't mind? Oh, I'm glad!"
"I really don't mind," he assured her with a strange smile. "But ... would you mind excusing me one moment? I've forgotten something very important."
"Why, certainly...."
He was already at the telephone in the hallway, just beyond the living-room door. It was impossible to escape overhearing his words. The woman listened perforce with, in the beginning, a little visible wonder, then with astonishment, ultimately with a consternation that shook her with violent tremblings.
"Hello," said Whitaker; "get me Rector two-two-hundred....
"Hello? Rector two-two-hundred? North German Lloyd?... This is Mr. H. M. Whitaker. I telephoned you fifteen minutes ago about a reservation on the George Washington, sailing Saturday ... Yes.... Yes.... Yes, I promised to call for the ticket before noon, but I now find I shan't be able to go. Will you be kind enough to cancel it, if you please.... Thank you.... Good-by."
But when he turned back into the living-room he found awaiting him a quiet and collected woman, perhaps a thought more pale than when she had entered and with eyes that seemed a trifle darker; but on the whole positively the mistress of herself.
"Why did you do that?" she asked evenly.
"Because," said Whitaker, "I've had my eyes opened. I've been watching the finest living actress play a carefully rehearsed rôle, one that she had given long study and all her heart to—but her interpretation didn't ring true. Mary, I admit, at first you got me: I believed you meant what you said. But only my mind believed it; my heart knew better, just as it has always known better, all through this wretched time of doubt and misery and separation you've subjected us both to. And that was why I couldn't trust myself to answer you; for if I had, I should have laughed for joy. O Mary, Mary!" he cried, his voice softening, "my dear, dear woman, you can't lie to love! You betray yourself in every dear word that would be heartless, in every adorable gesture that would seem final! And love knows better always.... Of course I shall be in that box to-morrow night; of course I shall be there to witness your triumph! And after you've won it, dear, I shall carry you off with me...."
He opened his arms wide, but with a smothered cry she backed away, placing the table between them.
"No!" she protested; and the words were almost sobs—"No!"
"Yes!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Yes! A thousand times yes! It must be so!"
With a swift movement she seized her muff and scarf from the chair and fled to the door. There pausing, she turned, her face white and blazing.
"It is not true!" she cried. "You are mistaken. Do you hear me? You are utterly mistaken. I do not love you. You are mad to think it. I have just told you I don't love you. I am afraid of you; I daren't stay with you for fear of you. I—I despise you!"
"I do not love you. You are mad to think it"
"I don't believe it!" he cried, advancing.
But she was gone. The hall door slammed before he could reach it.
He halted, turned back, his whole long body shaking, his face wrung with fear and uncertainty.
"Good God!" he cried—"which of us is right—she or I?"
XXI
BLACK OUT
Toward eight in the evening, after a day-long search through all his accustomed haunts, Ember ran Whitaker to earth in the dining-room of the Primordial. The young man, alone at table, was in the act of topping off an excellent dinner with a still more excellent cordial and a super-excellent cigar. His person seemed to diffuse a generous atmosphere of contentment and satisfaction, no less mental than physical and singularly at variance with his appearance, which, moreover, was singularly out of keeping not only with his surroundings but also with his normal aspect.
He wore rough tweeds, and they were damp and baggy; his boots were muddy; his hair was a trifle disorderly. The ensemble made a figure wildly incongruous to the soberly splendid and stately dining-hall of the Primordial Club, with its sparse patronage of members in evening-dress.
Ember, himself as severely beautiful in black and white as the ceremonious livery of to-day permits a man to be, was wonder-struck at sight of Whitaker in such unconventional guise, at such a time, in such a place. With neither invitation nor salutation, he slipped into a chair on the other side of the table, and stared.
Whitaker smiled benignantly upon him, and called a waiter.
Ember, always abstemious, lifted his hand and smiled a negative smile.
Whitaker dismissed the waiter.
"Well...?" he inquired cheerfully.
"What right have you got to look like that?" Ember demanded.
"The right of every free-born American citizen to make an ass of himself according to the dictates of his conscience. I've been exploring the dark backwards and abysm of the Bronx—afoot. Got caught in the rain on the way home. Was late getting back, and dropped in here to celebrate."
"I've been looking for you everywhere, since morning."
"I suspected you would be. That's why I went walking—to be lonesome and thoughtful for once in a way."
Ember stroked his chin with thoughtful fingers.
"You've heard the news, then?"
"In three ways," Whitaker returned, with calm.
"How's that—three ways?"
"Through the newspapers, the billboards, and—from the lips of my wife."
Ember opened his eyes wide.
"You've been to see her?"
"On the contrary."
"The devil you say!"
"She called this morning—"
But Ember interrupted, thrusting a ready and generous hand across the table:
"My dear man, I am glad!"
Whitaker took the proffered hand readily and firmly. "Thank you.... I was saying: she called this morning to inform me that, though wedded once, we must be strangers now—and evermore!"
"But you—of course—you argued that nonsense out of her head."
"To the contrary—again."
"But—my dear man!—you said you were celebrating; you permitted me to congratulate you just now—"
"The point is," said Whitaker, with a bland and confident grin; "I've succeeded in arguing that nonsense out of my head—not hers—mine."
Ember gave a helpless gesture. "I'm afraid this is one of my stupid nights...."
"I mean that, though Mary ran away from me, wouldn't listen to reason, I have, in the course of an afternoon's hard tramping, come to the conclusion that there is nothing under the sun which binds me to sit back and accept whatever treatment she purposes according me by courtesy of Jules Max."
Whitaker bent forward, his countenance discovering a phase of seriousness hitherto masked by his twisted smile. He emphasized his points with a stiff, tapping forefinger on the cloth.
"I mean, I'm tired of all this poppycock. Unless I'm an infatuated ass, Mary loves me with all her heart. She has made up her mind to renounce me partly because Max has worked upon her feelings by painting some lurid picture of his imminent artistic and financial damnation if she leaves him, partly because she believes, or has been led to believe, in this 'destroying angel' moonshine. Now she's got to listen to reason. So, likewise, Max."
"You're becoming more human word by word," commented Ember with open approval. "Continue; elucidate; I can understand how a fairly resolute lover with the gift of gab can talk a weak-minded, fond female into denying her pet superstition; but how you're going to get round Max passes my comprehension. The man unquestionably has her under contract—"
"But you forgot his god is Mammon," Whitaker put in. "Max will do anything in the world for money. Therein resides the kernel of my plan. It's simplicity itself: I'm going to buy him."
"Buy Max!"
"Body—artistic soul—and breeches," Whitaker affirmed confidently.
"Impossible!"
"You forget how well fixed I am. What's the use of my owning half the gold in New Guinea if it won't buy me what I already own by every moral and legal right?"
"He won't listen to you; you don't know Max."
"I'm willing to lay you a small bet that there will be no first performance at the Theatre Max to-morrow night."
"You'll never persuade him—"
"I'll buy the show outright and my wife's freedom to boot—or else Max will begin to accumulate the local colour of a hospital ward."
Ember smiled grimly. "You're beginning to convince even me. When, may I ask, do you propose to pull off this sporting proposition?"
"Do you know where Max can be found to-night?"
"At the theatre—"
"Then the matter will be arranged at the theatre between this hour and midnight."
"I doubt if you succeed in getting the ear of the great man before midnight; however, I'm not disposed to quibble about a few hours."
"But why shouldn't I?"
"Because Max is going to be the busiest young person in town to-night. And that is why I've been looking for you.... Conforming to his custom, he's giving an advance glimpse of the production to the critics and a few friends in the form of a final grand dress-rehearsal to-night. Again, in conformance with his custom, he has honoured me with a bid. I've been chasing you all day to find out if you'd care to go—"
"Eight o'clock and a bit after," Whitaker interrupted briskly, consulting his watch. "Here, boy," he hailed a passing page; "call a taxicab for me." And then, rising alertly: "Come along; I've got to hustle home and make myself look respectable enough for the occasion; but at that, with luck, I fancy we'll be there before the first curtain."
This mood of faith, of self-reliance and assured optimism held unruffled throughout the dash homewards, his hurried change of clothing and the ride to the theatre. Nothing that Ember, purposely pessimistic, could say or do availed to diminish the high buoyancy of his humour. He maintained a serene faith in his star, a spirited temper that refused to recognize obstacles in the way of his desire.
In the taxicab, en route to the Theatre Max, he contrived even to distil a good omen from the driving autumnal downpour itself.... The rain-swept pavements, their polished blackness shot with a thousand strands of golden brilliance; the painted bosom of the lowering, heavy sky; the tear-drenched window-panes; even the incessant crepitation on the roof of the scurrying, skidding cab seemed to lend a colour of assurance to his thoughts.
"On such a day as this," he told his doubting friend, "I won her first; on such a day I shall win her anew, finally and for all time!..."
From Broadway to Sixth Avenue, Forty-sixth Street was bright with the yellow glare of the huge sign in front of the Theatre Max. But this night, unlike that other night when he had approached the stage of his wife's triumphs, there was no crawling rank of cabs, no eager and curious press of people in the street; but few vehicles disputed their way; otherwise the rain and the hurrying, rain-coated wayfarers had the thoroughfare to themselves.... And even this he chose to consider a favourable omen: there was not now a public to come between him and his love—only Max and her frightened fancies.
The man at the door recognized Ember with a cheerful nod; Whitaker he did not know.
"Just in time, Mr. Ember; curtain's been up about ten minutes...."
The auditorium was in almost total darkness. A single voice was audible from the stage that confronted it like some tremendous, moonlight canvas in a huge frame of tarnished gold. They stole silently round the orchestra seats to the stage-box—the same box that Whitaker had on the former occasion occupied in company with Max.
They succeeded in taking possession without attracting attention, either from the owners of that scanty scattering of shirt-bosoms in the orchestra—the critical fraternity and those intimates bidden by the manager to the first glimpse of his new revelation in stage-craft—or from those occupying the stage.
The latter were but two. Evidently, though the curtain had been up for some minutes, the action of the piece had not yet been permitted to begin to unfold. Whitaker inferred that Max had been dissatisfied with something about the lighting of the scene. The manager was standing in mid-stage, staring up at the borders: a stout and pompous figure, tenacious to every detail of that public self which he had striven so successfully to make unforgettably individual; a figure quaintly incongruous in his impeccable morning-coat and striped trousers and flat-brimmed silk hat, perched well back on his head, with his malacca stick and lemon-coloured gloves and small and excessively glossy patent-leather shoes, posed against the counterfeit of a moonlit formal garden.
Aside from him, the only other occupant of the stage was Sara Law. She sat on a stone bench with her profile to the audience, her back to the right of the proscenium arch; so that she could not, without turning, have noticed the entrance of Ember and her husband. A shy, slight, deathlessly youthful figure in pale and flowing garments that moulded themselves fluently to her sweet and girlish body, in a posture of pensive meditation: she was nothing less than adorable. Whitaker could not take his eyes from her, for sheer wonder and delight.
He was only vaguely conscious that Max, at length satisfied, barked a word to that effect to an unseen electrician off to the left, and waving his hand with a gesture indelibly associated with his personality, dragged a light cane-seated chair to the left of the proscenium and sat himself down.
"All ready?" he demanded in a sharp and irritable voice.
The woman on the marble seat nodded imperceptibly.
"Go ahead," snapped the manager....
An actor advanced from the wings, paused and addressed the seated woman. His lines were brief. She lifted her head with a startled air, listening. He ceased to speak, and her voice of golden velvet filled the house with the flowing beauty of its unforgettably sweet modulations. Beyond the footlights a handful of sophisticated and sceptical habitués of the theatre forgot for the moment their ingrained incredulity and thrilled in sympathy with the wonderful rapture of that voice of eternal Youth. Whitaker himself for the time forgot that he was the husband of this woman and her lover; she moved before his vision in the guise of some divine creature, divinely unattainable, a dream woman divorced utterly from any semblance of reality.
That opening scene was one perhaps unique in the history of the stage. Composed by Max in some mad, poetical moment of inspired plagiarism, it not only owned a poignant and enthralling beauty of imagery, but it moved with an almost Grecian certitude, with a significance extraordinarily direct and devoid of circumlocution, seeming to lay bare the living tissue of immortal drama.
But with the appearance of other characters, there came a change: the rare atmosphere of the opening began to dissipate perceptibly. The action clouded and grew vague. The auditors began to feel the flutterings of uncertainty in the air. Something was failing to cross the footlights. The sweeping and assured gesture of the accomplished playwright faltered: a clumsy bit of construction was damningly exposed; faults of characterization multiplied depressingly. Sara Law herself lost an indefinable proportion of her rare and provoking charm; the strangeness of failing to hold her audience in an ineluctable grasp seemed at once to nettle and distress her. Max himself seemed suddenly to wake to the amazing fact that there was something enormously and irremediably wrong; he began with exasperating frequency to halt the action, to interrupt scenes with advice and demands for repetition. He found it impossible to be still, to keep his seat or control his rasping, irritable voice. Subordinate characters on the stage lost their heads and either forgot to act or overacted. And then—intolerable climax!—of a sudden somebody in the orchestra chairs laughed in outright derision in the middle of a passage meant to be tenderly emotional.
The voice of Sara Law broke and fell. She stood trembling and unstrung. Max without a word turned on his heel and swung out of sight into the wings. Four other actors on the stage, aside from Sara Law, hesitated and drew together in doubt and bewilderment. And then abruptly, with no warning whatever, the illusion of gloom in the auditorium and moonlight in the postscenium was rent away by the glare of the full complement of electric lights installed in the house.
A thought later, while still all were blinking and gasping with surprise, Max strode into view just behind the footlights. Halting, he swept the array of auditors with an ominous and truculent stare.
So quickly was this startling change consummated that Whitaker had no more than time to realize the reappearance of the manager before he caught his wrathful and venomous glance fixed to his own bewildered face. And something in the light that flickered wildly behind Max's eyes reminded him so strongly of a similar expression he had remarked in the eyes of Drummond, the night the latter had been captured by Ember and Sum Fat, that in alarm he half rose from his seat.
Simultaneously he saw Max spring toward the box, with a distorted and snarling countenance. He was tugging at something in his pocket. It appeared in the shape of a heavy pistol.
Instantly Whitaker was caught and tripped by Ember and sent sprawling on the floor of the box. As this happened, he heard the voice of the firearm, sharp and vicious—a single report.
Unhurt, he picked himself up in time to catch a glimpse of Max, on the stage, momentarily helpless in the embrace of a desperate and frantic woman who had caught his arms from behind and, presumably, had so deflected his arm. In the same breath Ember, who had leaped to the railing round the box, threw himself across the footlights with the lithe certainty of a beast of prey and, seemingly in as many deft motions, knocked the pistol from the manager's hand, wrested him from the arms of the actress, laid him flat and knelt upon him.
With a single bound Whitaker followed him to the stage; in another he had his wife in his arms and was soothing her first transports of semi-hysterical terror....
It was possibly a quarter of an hour later when Ember paused before a door in the ground floor dressing-room gangway of the Theatre Max—a door distinguished by the initials "S L" in the centre of a golden star. With some hesitation, with even a little diffidence, he lifted a hand and knocked.
At once the door was opened by the maid, Elise. Recognizing Ember, she smiled and stood aside, making way for him to enter the small, curtained lobby.
"Madam—and Monsieur," she said with smiling significance, "told me to show you in at once, Monsieur Ember."
From beyond the curtains, Whitaker's voice lifted up impatiently: "That you, old man? Come right in!"
Nodding to the maid, Ember thrust aside the portières and stepped into the brightly-lighted dressing-room, then paused, bowing and smiling his self-contained, tolerant smile: in appearance as imperturbable and well-groomed as though he had just escaped from the attentions of a valet, rather than from a furious hand-to-hand tussle with a vicious monomaniac.
Mary Whitaker, as yet a little pale and distrait and still in costume, was reclining on a chaise-longue. Whitaker was standing close beside his wife; his face the theatre of conflicting emotions; Ember, at least, thought with a shrewd glance to recognize a pulsating light of joy beneath a mask of interest and distress and a flush of embarrassment.
"I am intruding?" he suggested gravely, with a slight turn as if offering to withdraw.
"No."
The word faltering on the lips of Mary Whitaker was lost in an emphatic iteration by Whitaker.
"Sit down!" he insisted. "As if we'd let you escape, now, after you'd kept us here in suspense!"
He offered a chair, but Ember first advanced to take the hand held out to him by the woman on the chaise-longue.
"You are feeling—more composed?" he inquired.
Her gaze met his bravely. "I am—troubled, perhaps—but happy," she said.
"Then I am very glad," he said, smiling at the delicate colour that enhanced her exquisite beauty as she made the confession. "I had hoped as much." He looked from the one to the other. "You ... have made up your minds?"
The wife answered for both: "It is settled, dear friend: I can struggle no longer. I thought myself a strong woman; I have tried to believe myself a genius bound upon the wheel of an ill-starred destiny; but I find I am"—the glorious voice trembled slightly—"only a woman in love and no stronger than her love."
"I am very glad," Ember repeated, "for both your sakes. It's a happy consummation of my dearest wishes."
"We owe you everything," Whitaker said with feeling, dropping an awkward hand on the other's shoulder. "It was you who threw us together, down there on the Great West Bay, so that we learned to know one another...."
"I plead guilty to that little plot—yes," Ember laughed. "But, best of all, this comes at just the right time—the rightest time, when there can no longer be any doubts or questions or misunderstandings, no ground for further fears and apprehensions, when 'the destroying angel' of your 'ill-starred destiny,' my dear"—he turned to the woman—"is exorcised—banished—proscribed—"
"Max—!" Whitaker struck in explosively.
"—is on his way to the police-station, well guarded," Ember affirmed with a nod and a grim smile. "I have his confession, roughly jotted down but signed, and attested by several witnesses.... I'm glad you were out of the way; it was rather a painful scene, and disorderly; it wouldn't have been pleasant for Mrs. Whitaker.... We had the deuce of a time clearing the theatre: human curiosity is a tremendously persistent and resistant force. And then I had some trouble dealing with the misplaced loyalty of the staff of the house.... However, eventually I got Max to myself—alone, that is, with several men I could depend on. And then I heartlessly put him through the third degree—forestalling my friends, the police. By dint of asserting as truths and personal discoveries what I merely suspected, I broke down his denials. He owned up, doggedly enough, and yet with that singular pride which I have learned to associate with some phases of homicidal mania.... I won't distress you with details: the truth is that Max was quite mad on the subject of his luck; he considered it, as I suspected, indissolubly associated with Sara Law. When poor Custer committed suicide, he saved Max from ruin and innocently showed him the way to save himself thereafter, when he felt in peril, by assassinating Hamilton and, later, Thurston. Drummond only cheated a like fate, and you"—turning to Whitaker—"escaped by the narrowest shave. Max hadn't meant to run the risk of putting you out of the way unless he thought it absolutely necessary, but the failure of his silly play in rehearsal to-night, coupled with the discovery that you were in the theatre, drove him temporarily insane with hate, chagrin and jealousy."
Concluding, Ember rose. "I must follow him now to the police-station.... I shall see you both soon again—?"
The woman gave him both her hands. "There's no way to thank you," she said—"our dear, dear friend!"
"No way," Whitaker echoed regretfully.
"No way?" Ember laughed quietly, holding her hands tightly clasped. "But I see you together—happy—Oh, believe me, I am fully thanked!"
Bowing, he touched his lips gently to both hands, released them with a little sigh that ended in a contented chuckle, exchanged a short, firm grasp with Whitaker, and left them....
Whitaker, following almost immediately to the gangway, found that Ember had already left the theatre.
For some minutes he wandered to and fro in the gangway, pausing now and again on the borders of the deserted stage. There were but few of the house staff visible, and those few were methodically busy with preparations to close up. Beyond the dismal gutter of the footlights the auditorium yawned cavernous and shadowy, peopled only by low rows of chairs ghostly in their dust-cloths. The street entrances were already closed, locked and dark. On the stage a single cluster-stand of electric bulbs made visible the vast, gloomy dome of the flies and the whitewashed walls against which sections of scenery were stacked like cards. An electrician in his street clothes lounged beside the door-keeper's cubicle, at the stage entrance, smoking a cigarette and conferring with the doorman while subjecting Whitaker to a curious and antagonistic stare. The muffled rumble of their voices were the only sounds audible, aside from an occasional racket of boot-heels in the gangways as one actor after another left his dressing-room and hastened to the street, keen-set for the clash of gossiping tongues in theatrical clubs and restaurants.
Gradually the building grew more and more empty and silent, until at length Whitaker was left alone with the shadows and the two employees. These last betrayed signs of impatience. He himself felt a little sympathy for their temper. Women certainly did take an unconscionable time to dress!...
At length he heard them hurrying along the lower gangway, and turned to join his wife at the stage-entrance. Elise passed on, burdened with two heavy hand-bags, and disappeared into the rain-washed alleyway. The electrician detached his shoulders from the wall, ground his cigarette under heel and lounged over to the switchboard.
Mary Whitaker turned her face, shadowy and mystical, touched with her faint and inscrutable smile, up to her husband's.
"Wait," she begged in a whisper. "I want to see"—her breath checked—"the end of it all."
They heard hissings and clickings at the switchboard. The gangway lights vanished in a breath. The single cluster-stand on the stage disappeared—and the house disappeared utterly with its extinguishment. There remained alight only the single dull bulb in the doorman's cubicle.
Whitaker slipped an arm round his wife. She trembled within his embrace.
"Black out," she said in a gentle and regretful voice: "the last exit: Curtain—End of the Play!"
"No," he said in a voice of sublime confidence—"no; it's only the prologue curtain. Now for the play, dear heart ... the real play ... life ... love...."