Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 583
“But there is!” she said piteously. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what an effect on me it might — on me — oh, I know I’ve got to go through with it. I’ve got to! I’ve got to!”
“Well, then, we’d better — —”
“Better get it over!” she gasped. “Come on!” She took his arm closely and they passed out into the short lobby of the theatre, where a cold late afternoon light came faintly through the opaque glass of closed outer doors. “How queer it is in here,” she said. “How lonely a theatre is on Sunday when there’s no rehearsal going on! I don’t suppose there’s a soul in the whole place except that one old man back there, and now he’s turned out the lights on the stage.” She glanced behind her. “Yes, it’s all dark back there. It’ll be dark outdoors, too, very soon, won’t it? It’s near evening, and twenty-four hours from now I ought to be getting ready to come to the theatre to play ‘Hester’. Ah, these ups and downs; they could be tragic, couldn’t they? Owen, do you think she — —”
“See here!” he said. “I think Isabelle has a right to ask to see you, though I wish she hadn’t wanted it. But if it’s going to unnerve you like this you’d better go straight home and let me tell her you couldn’t do it. I’ll speak to her.”
“No,” Lily whispered desperately. “It’s got to be done!”
“Very well.” He opened a door near the closed box-office window and they went into the small room where Isabelle waited. A lamp with a green porcelain shade stood upon a table and had been lighted; Isabelle sat beside the table, and the nurse, a jolly-looking fat girl modishly dressed, rose from a chair near her as the door opened.
“I’ll be just in the lobby,” she said tentatively, “if you — —”
Isabelle spoke to her but looked at Lily. “Yes, if you please, Miss Knowles. I’ll keep you waiting only a few minutes.” She did not rise, herself, but nodded gravely, as the nurse went out to the lobby and closed the door. “Thank you for coming, Lily, and I’m glad you brought Owen with you.”
“Isabelle — —” he began.
“No,” she said in a gentle voice, and looked up at him with a smile that wrung his heart. She sat in a stooping posture, as if bending her back and shoulders somewhat eased an incessant pain; but she was quiet, collected and haggardly sweet. “Let me do the talking — while I can. Curious.” She looked about her musingly. “It was in the room like this, over at the Netherlands, that we played our great apology scene, wasn’t it, Lily? How long ago that was! Does it seem as long ago to you, I wonder, as it does to me?”
Lily’s hands clasped themselves tightly together upon her breast and trembled there. “Isabelle, if I could only tell you how my heart aches for you! If I could only — —”
“No, dear,” Isabelle said in the same small, sweet voice. “Let me speak — I’m not very strong. I’ll never see you again and there’s something I must tell you before I go where I’m going.”
“Where you’re going? Isabelle, you — —”
“No, Lily, please. Just let me say it.” With her hand Isabelle made toward Lily a pleading slight movement that oddly recalled to Owen gestures Lily had used, night after night, when these two had played their last scene together in his play. “I want you to know something and I can’t go where I’m going until you do know it.”
“Don’t talk that way!” Lily gasped in a whispering violent protest. “I can’t bear it! Don’t you see I can’t bear it? Isabelle, you know I can’t bear it! You shan’t — —”
“Wait, dear! Just hear me. You think I’ve hated you, and I did; but not now. Nothing that’s happened has been your fault at all. There’s even nothing for me to forgive you. I’ve tried to fight against youth and genius — and I have neither. I’m just a used-up woman, Lily. It’s all been inevitable — inevitable. Nothing’s left but to get out of the way. ‘Hester’s’ yours and he’s yours, too — a used-up woman couldn’t keep either.”
“A ‘used-up woman’? You’ve no right to call yourself that to me! You mustn’t — —”
“Hush, dear. May I tell you a funny little thought I’ve been having lately, Lily? Such a funny little thought, dear. My father was an old-fashioned evangelistic preacher and I was brought up to believe that when we die, if we’ve done wrong, we go into hell; but lately it’s seemed to me that when we were born we’d really died out of a better life and come into hell, so that perhaps when we die out of this life we’re really escaping from hell. Don’t you think maybe I’m right, dear, and that this life is really the hell we’ve been sent into for doing something wrong before we were born? I’m almost sure of it, myself, and that I — —”
“No! No! You mustn’t say such things!”
“Not even if they’re true, Lily? But you’ll understand, won’t you, that I must find peace? Before peace comes to me — when I go away — I must know that you believe there’s no hate in my heart for you. I want you to say of me, instead, ‘She had good will toward me.’ You’ll believe it, won’t you, Lily?”
Lily began to cry passionately. “Isabelle! Don’t you see what you’re doing to me? I can’t stand it! You mustn’t — —”
“Ah, please, please, dear!” Isabelle rose, and, though she still stooped, there was a strange brightness upon her face; a ghostly sweetness seemed all about her. “I’m just telling you goodbye and giving Eugene to you forever. I want you both to remember that what I wanted most, now at the end, was that you both should be happy. To-morrow night in the triumph that you and he will have together I want you to spare just a single little thought to me. You’ll have such a wealth of flowers — toss just one tiny spray of rosemary to me and say, ‘Perhaps she knows this and is glad for us.’ ”
“You mustn’t do this to me!” Lily sobbed. “You can’t — —”
“Now will you let me kiss you goodbye, Lily?” Isabelle stepped close to her and kissed her upon the cheek; but, upon this, Lily uttered a loud cry of sharpest lamentation, and, as Isabelle moved on toward the door, sought to detain her.
“No, no, you shan’t do it! You shan’t go like this! You shan’t — —”
But Isabelle was already at the door and had opened it. “Yes, Miss Knowles,” she said quietly; the nurse came to her and the two disappeared in the darkened lobby.
Lily flung herself upon Owen, and he could not comfort or quiet her. “Don’t you see what she’s done to me?” she cried over and over. An agony of self-reproach had seized her. “Who am I?” she sobbed. “What am I? You asked me — but nobody knows! I’m poison — I bring a curse on everything I touch! I ruined Minnie Bush and now I’ve ruined Isabelle. You heard what she said — she’ll kill herself! I don’t want Eugene! I don’t want anything! Mother — Clara — I haven’t sent them a penny — I haven’t even written them a decent letter! Somebody ought to put me to torture — somebody ought to kill me — I’m a thousand times more unfit to live than Isabelle is! I despise myself! Oh, oh, oh, everybody’ll despise me! I ought to be working at Vance’s — dying at Vance’s — at Vance’s — at Vance’s!”
“You’ll be all right to-morrow,” he told her again and again, and once, when she heeded him enough to cry out that she’d never be all right again, he stormed at her. “You’ve got to be, Lily! You’ve got to make up to your mother and Clara now at last for how you’ve treated them! You’ll get hold of yourself and be in shape for to-morrow morning’s rehearsal or you’ll botch to-morrow night, and that will ruin them and yourself, too, and all the rest of us! Do you hear me?”
“To-morrow night!” she cried, in a voice grown hoarse. “You don’t see! You don’t see! You don’t see!”
She became incoherent and was not able to explain to him what it was that he didn’t see. He had ado to quiet her enough to get her out to the dark street and into a cab, within the half hour. She cried steadily and incoherently, and was incoherent still as he drove with her to Madison Avenue and left her sobbing in the arms of Jennie Lebrun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DINING ALONE AT a corner table in the Sunday evening quiet of the Players’ grill-room, he thought appreciatively of Jennie Lebrun, of her easy competence on the stage and her calmness off of it. The passage of “Catalpa House” to this final phase had been like that of a vessel through cyclonic waters; typhoons had struck, the Captain had worked resourcefully, but even now at the harbor mouth two of those upon whom the safety of the ship depended seemed distractedly about to sink her. Ah, if all the crew had half the cheerful steadiness of Jennie Lebrun and Rita Carlin! Then, to be no more than just, he thought that poor Isabelle herself might have been as steady and cheerfully dependable as Jennie and Rita if wild young genius hadn’t thrust among the company.
He had done his best to assuage Lily’s fear that Isabelle intended to make away with herself, though Lily had paid no heed to him and much of her choking and sobbing incoherence had seemed to revert to this theme. Owen’s own apprehension upon the point was slight; he had the impression that people who plan self-destruction do not speak of it beforehand with the insistent almost poetic pathos that Isabelle had used. It seemed to him that she had been as pathetic as she possibly could be, so much so, indeed, that she had been almost deliberately pathetic. This did not mean, of course, that her suffering was not heart-rendingly actual; nevertheless, it appeared that the evidences of her true anguish had been unable to resist being put forth with an artistic touch. He was sympathetic and understood that Isabelle had sought relief in expression and in wringing a rival’s heart; she had followed a pressing impulse to ease her unbearable misery a little by playing a scene of abnegation, and playing it well — even so well that she had unconsciously borrowed from Lily herself small half-gestures and a broken-looking back, that posture in the stiff little chair!
“These people!” he said once more to himself; but he said it now sadly and with a larger and more indulgent comprehension than he had been wont to say it. After all, too, even if Isabelle had been acting when she spoke of suicide, wasn’t it possible that she had meant what she said? He thought not; yet the possibility troubled him, bothered him the more, the more he thought of it, and finally, late in the evening, worried him into going to the telephone and calling Hurley.
The manager’s voice sounded wearily irritated. “Well, what’s the matter now? What’s on your mind?”
“Isabelle. I’m afraid she — —”
“Oh, my cripes! You’re going to tell me not to let her jump off a dock, now, are you? Listen! She isn’t — —”
“Suppose you listen, yourself, George!” Owen interrupted, nettled and puzzled, too. “How the devil did you know that was what I was going to talk to you about?”
“Oh, Lord! Lily’s been calling me up, having spasms about it. Told me you were there when Isabelle talked to her. What the devil’d you let it happen for, anyhow? Why didn’t you send Lily home and tell Isabelle you’d taken the responsibility, on account of not wanting the child to get in the state of mind she is in with a First Night hanging over her?”
“But, George, I felt that Isabelle had a right to — —”
“Fiddlededee! If I can ever find just one single grain of common sense in anybody connected with the theatre I give you my solemn word — I’ll take any oath you can think of — I’ll — —”
“You’re wasting time,” the annoyed playwright said sharply. “What I want to — —”
“I know! I know! Listen! Listen and don’t make me yell my head off into this instrument. Isabelle isn’t the type that does it and isn’t in that condition of mind, either. Understand me? She isn’t. I’ve just had Dr. Coombs call Lily up to tell her so. Lily’s been at me every fifteen minutes on the telephone. I had to make Coombs go around and see Isabelle again and he says it’s damn nonsense to anticipate any such thing and besides he’s instructed the nurse to look out, though he knows it isn’t going to occur. I knew it wasn’t, of course; but I did it to try and calm Lily down, and a whole lot of calming it’s done! Sounds like a five-year-old child with its doll’s head off! Says she knows Isabelle’s going to do it just about the time the curtain goes up to-morrow night! My cripes! Told Jennie Lebrun to put her to bed and sit by her till she gets to sleep — if she does! Fine condition you’ve let your leading lady get into, with her opening night right — —”
Owen interrupted again and spoke with an increased sharpness. “I won’t discuss the question of responsibility. I don’t think you perceive that it involves a question of ethics that — —”
“Ethics? My cripes!” The telephonic instrument at the playwright’s ear seemed to tingle and its sound became tinny. “Now, for God’s sake! Don’t you realize that the child’s nerves were already like fiddle strings tuned up too high and in danger of breaking, because of playing a colossal part in a New York opening on a few hours’ notice? Think she’s made of iron? Then on top of that, you had to let her walk into a scene with a wild woman that would get anybody’s nerve, even without being all worked up over an opening — and now you want to tell me all about ethics! For God’s sake! As sure as God made little apples and lets me live, I give you my solemn word and I’ll take any oath the meanest lawyer on earth ever thought of or ever will think of, I’ll give a million dollars if I ever find one single infinitesimal morsel of common sense in anybody connected with — —”
“Goodnight, George!”
Thus the unamiable interview closed with the click of a metal prong. Owen Gilbert went to an uneasy bed and woke in the morning to a conviction of calamity. In dreams already forgotten he had been a witness of disasters that left their shadows in his mood; he seemed possessed of foreknowledge that “Catalpa House” was to be murdered and that when evening came the stage of the Forty-first Street Theatre would be as dark as his own depression. He had coffee sent to his room and partook of it hurriedly, for with it was brought a written message from the clerk in the office downstairs. “Mr. Hurley just telephoned saying he wouldn’t wait for you to answer but to ask you please come to his office in the Netherlands Theatre Building as soon as you can get there.”
“Ah, what now, what now?” the playwright groaned; but increased his haste.
In Hurley’s office he found Pinkney Monk and Eugene; they stood confronting the manager, who sat at his desk, and their backs were toward the door. But they turned as Owen came in, and Eugene’s face was paler than he had ever seen it. “You’re in at the death,” the actor said bitterly. “I hope you’ll enjoy my last throes; I’m through with the stage forever!”
“Oh, you are, are you?” Monk asked satirically, and for the first time in Owen’s acquaintance with him showed irritation. “Seems to me I’ve heard actors say that before — just a few times! Haven’t we got enough on our hands, damn it! without your wasting our time talking balderdash?”
Eugene became tragic. “Balderdash! All I want to do now is to go straight to the devil! Is it balderdash when an actor does that? Ah, yes! He’s only an actor, so what does it matter? Only an actor! Who cares when he goes to the dogs? Only an — —”
“Listen!” Hurley shouted, and, glowering, struck the desk powerfully with his fist. “Quiet down, will you? You’ve got about twenty-five minutes to get your nerve in shape before the last rehearsal of this play.”
“Rehearsal?” Eugene laughed wildly. “Rehearsal? Who’ll I rehearse with? How do I rehearse with nobody opposite? Do I play ‘Hawkins’ and ‘Hester’ too? Both parts? Do I — —”
Owen interrupted him. “Is Lily ill?”
“Ill?” Eugene laughed again. “Ill? No, she isn’t ill! Do you want to know what she’s done?”
“I believe that would be the inference,” Owen said, with grimness; but before the response came he knew what it would be. He had a flash of revelation and reminiscence mingled together, and his mind’s eye saw Lily dancing gayly into the front door of the “double house” at night, saw her agonizing over Minnie Bush in his mother’s library the next morning, saw swift-flitting pictures of the scene of renunciation and atonement Lily had played so ardently and irresponsibly then; he knew that now she had done the same thing again, this time upon a grander and more dazzling and destructive scale.
“She’s gone!” Eugene cried. “She’s struck me down; she’s struck me down to the very gutter! She’s where we can’t get hold of her — can’t, can’t, can’t! She’s at least four hundred miles away by this time! She couldn’t get back if she wanted to, herself! She’s on a train! On a train, do you hear me? On a train! On a train! On a train! On a — —”
“Hush up!” Hurley said quietly, and spoke to Owen. “Jennie thought she’d got her quieted down and almost asleep a little after eleven. About half-past twelve she went into her room again and she wasn’t there. The landlady was sitting up, reading, downstairs in the parlor and said Lily’d come down with her grips, borrowed a railroad time-table, paid her bill, got a cab and gone. Left a letter on her pillow for Jennie to hand to me. Here it is.”
Owen read it.
“For hours I’ve known I must do this thing — there’s no other way out of it all — no other way — no other way George dear, no other way — it’s the only way. When you read these words it will all be over and I’ll be far far away from you on the train. What is left of my shattered life must be given to making-up to my mother and sister for my heartless neglect of even writing to them in this brief span of glory that has been so absorbing I was thoughtless of them but now I go in shame and remorse to atone to them by giving them what is left of my life and the labor of my hands.
“I lay down this jewelled happy life you have given me like a glittering garment I am not fit to wear for if I kept it upon me it would be at the cost of another’s life because I am sure she would go that far — no matter what the doctor says. So I must do this thing to keep from going crazy — I must save her and give her back all I have taken from her.
