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Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 34 |
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_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHAPTER XXXIV The day of the ordeal arrived. Mary could not remember any occasion to which she had gone with such a sense of terror and misgiving, but this neither Mr. Lewis nor any of his subordinates suspected. It had pleased the management to call a morning rehearsal, so Mary had not been able to go home before her matinee debut. Tomorrow, if all went well, she could remove her parents to a greater comfort, so it was her affair to see that all went well. Her mother had been less well than usual during these last few days and Mary had impressed upon old Tom Burton the necessity of remaining on watch during her own absence. But, out of the advance she had received, Old Tom had drawn a small allowance, and it was remarkable how greatly the manner of bartenders had changed for the better in the brief space of a few days. By forenoon Thomas Standish Burton was more than tipsy, and by two o'clock as he emerged from a side door his step was so unsteady that he found the slippery footing a matter requiring studious attention. Once he would have fallen had a policeman not caught his arm. "I thank you, sir," acknowledged the old man, "I am deeply gra'fle, sir." "You're deeply loaded," replied the officer. "I ought to run you in for your own protection." "I'm sure--" Burton's eyes were watery and his voice thick--"you wouldn't do that. M' wife's sick an'--" "Well, get on back to her, and--if you want good advice--when you get indoors, stay in." With a kindly tolerance the policeman assisted the pedestrian across the street and watched him tack along until he was lost to sight. It was a bad day for uncertain feet and legs. The town lay locked in a grip of ice which sheeted streets and sidewalks with a treacherous danger. Horses struggled with hooves that shot outward, and children slid merrily and the elderly picked their way with a guarded caution. Old Tom Burton made the trip back to the lodging-house and up the double flight of stairs in safety. One leg was a little painful, for in that fine irony, which sometimes seems to prove Life a cynical humorist, Thomas Standish Burton had been endowed with a single relic of wealth and epicureanism--he suffered from gout. So, as he climbed, he laboriously favored the crippled foot. Then he opened the door of his wife's room and entered. But after one step he stood still, then he brushed a sleeve across his eyes to see more clearly. Elizabeth Burton lay, full length, on the floor near her chair--and she seemed unconscious. The old man hurried over to her and succeeded in lifting her weight to the bed. She must have suffered a heart-attack and fallen as she tried to cross the room alone. A great fear seized upon his heart and in some degree sobered him. He listened for the heart-beat and clasped shaking fingers to a wrist that at first seemed pulseless. But at last he found a faint flutter of life in the body he had thought lifeless--so faint and wavering a flutter that it seemed only a whispered echo of a departed vitality. For a while he stood stupefied, then he thought of Mary. Of course, he must send word to Mary. Perhaps, too, life could still be coaxed back, if a doctor came quickly enough. Down the stairs he hobbled with a speed that drove him into a sort of frantic and clumsy gallop. On the first floor he knocked on the landlord's door and implored him to call a physician at once, while he himself went out to the telephone. The nearest instrument was in a saloon and hither the old man hurried. Mary had given him the number of the stage 'phone, and he called it. Despite the coldness of the afternoon, perspiration burst out and beaded his forehead as he waited--only to hear the exasperating voice of the operator announce, "Busy." Three times this was repeated and while he waited, pacing frenziedly back and forth, he sought, after each successive failure, to allay the jump and tremor of his shocked nerves with whiskey, and he poured generously. At last he had the theater number and was told that Miss Burton could not answer just then, but a message would be delivered. "Tell her to come home at once," he shouted wildly into the receiver. "Her mother's dying." "Wait," came the somewhat startled reply. Then after a moment a new and truculent voice sounded in his ear. "What is this," it demanded, "a bum joke you're trying to put over, or what? Come home at once!--Don't you know a packed house is waiting to see Miss Burton in her act? What do ye mean, come home at once?" "But I tell you--" "Go tell it somewhere else." Thomas Burton did not know that it was Abey Lewis himself who spoke. "I don't believe you--you're trying to string somebody--and if the Queen of China was dying she couldn't come now anyways." Slowly Abey Lewis turned from the receiver he had abruptly hung up and beckoned the subordinate who had first taken the message. "Don't mention this to anybody," directed the chief tersely. "Do you get me? The girl mustn't hear it--and if any telegrams or messages come, you bring 'em to me, first, see?" Then to the stage door-man he gave a similar command, and looked at his watch. It was two forty-five. Mary's act, held for the latter part of the bill, was not due for an hour. For just a moment Mr. Lewis considered the advisability of advancing it on the program. That might be safer--but also it would mar the climacteric effect and so offend his sense of artistic fitness. He thought that, after all, he had safeguarded matters well enough. But Old Tom Burton had rushed out of the saloon and was hastening at his awkward gallop to the Eighth-street station of the elevated. He was going to tell Mary in person and to bring her home. Around the turn of the rails he saw a train coming, and, urged by his obsession of haste, he strove for a greater speed. The top steps were slippery, and Old Tom was giddy and his legs uncertain. His foot shot sideways without warning, and his body went hurtling backward. He clutched desperately for the hand-rail and missed it. Down the long flight of iron-edged stairs, in a bundle of ragged old humanity, he rolled limply, and lay shapeless on the pavement. At once, a rush of feet brought a little crowd, and the same policeman who had helped him home earlier bent over him. "Who is he?" asked someone, and the officer shook his head. "Search me," he said. "He smells like a booze-barrel. I ought to have locked him up the first time." An ambulance came with much clanging of its gong, and when they examined him at Bellevue, searching his pockets, they found some letters and Mary's memorandum. So they learned his identity, and sent a telephone message to the theater--to be followed a half-hour later by a second announcing that life was extinct. But while old Thomas was making his dash for the top of the stairs at the elevated, the landlord, followed by a physician, tapped on the door of the room Thomas Burton had left--and, receiving no response, the pair went in. Swiftly the doctor labored, and as the powerful hypodermic worked, the old woman rallied a little and her lids wavered and opened. Her eyes wandered about the place and she spoke with a feeble voice. "Who are you?" "I am the doctor, but you mustn't try to talk," came the grave reply. "Where are my children--my boys and my girl?" Elizabeth Burton's face suddenly became a face of terror and her eyes dilated. "Where are my children?" she once more demanded. "There is no one here just now." The doctor spoke as soothingly as he could. "You mustn't talk." A spark of returned sanity crept into the dying woman's pupils and she groaned. "No one here! I remember," she said while she shook with a sudden realization. "I remember--they're all gone." Her gaze traveled around the squalid room, and realized what that meant, too. "Am I dying?" she inquired. The physician murmured something evasive, and from her thin lips broke a low, smothered outcry. "Yes," she said, striving to rise and falling back, "I'm dying--alone--abandoned--by myself--in this attic." Then her eyes closed. The physician bent over the bed with his fingers on the pulse, and then bent his ear to the breast. "We have nothing more to do here," he announced briefly, "except to notify her daughter and the coroner. Have you the young woman's 'phone number?" The landlord nodded. All of these scraps of information were received by Mr. Abey Lewis. He had taken his place near the 'phone and stood sentinel there. But when the second communication arrived he procured a pair of clippers from the stage carpenter and quietly cut the connecting wire close to the wall where it would not show. He was taking no imprudent chances. * * * * * Smitherton reached the theater early and stood for a while at the elbow of the ticket-taker, watching the throngs crowd in. But at the commencement of the performance he went inside and sat near the back of the house. It was only when he knew that Mary's act was due in a few minutes that he went behind. She might want just a word or smile of encouragement at the final moment. For Mary this had been a morning and afternoon of soul-trying torture and she had been sustained only by the knowledge that she was doing what she was doing not for herself--but for those helpless ones whom she loved. As the moment drew nearer, she strained more tightly that elastic and strong thread of courage which had so far held. As an antidote to the increased loathing she fixed her mind on one supporting thought and tried to hold it focused there. Tomorrow she could begin looking for better quarters, and then the two old people should return, not to the lavish wealth of former times, but to its more essential comfort. She heard the orchestra tuning for the overture, and shivered. She felt much more like a victim waiting her turn to be thrown to the lions than a young woman about to make her debut as a "headliner." To herself she kept repeating under her breath, "Tomorrow they will be comfortable again." She did not know that already they were comfortable without her assistance and that her ordeal was pitifully wasted. Her fortitude wavered momentarily as she looked at her watch--wavered, but held, and at last she found herself on the stage with no concise recollection of how she had reached it, beyond a shadowy memory of Smitherton's smiling face in the wings. The curtain rose, and the public--part of it was the rabble--fed its eyes on the beauty they had paid to see--the beauty of a fallen royalty. There are times when vaudeville galleries are not excessively polite. This was such a time. For a few moments Mary Burton had the stage to herself, and her acting was in dumb-show. This was the author's device for allowing the audience a full realization of her remarkable beauty--and to the device the audience responded. From high up among the hoodlums Mary caught, quite distinctly, long low whistles of very sensual admiration and such critical epigrams as "Wow!" "Oi-yoi!"... "Me for that!" and "_Some_ girl!" She felt for an instant that she was standing there wrapped in a blaze of shame, bound to a stake of vulgar heckling. Then suddenly a scornful fire mounted through her arteries and with that serene and regal dignity that added majesty to her beauty she went on as though this stage were her rightful throne and those people out there were gazing up at her from a ground level. The act ran twenty-five minutes, during which time Mr. Lewis and Mr. Smitherton stood together in the wings. Mr. Lewis rubbed his hands. "I ask you, Smitherton," he inquired, "could we have arranged it better if we was running the world ... first-page stories again tomorrow in every paper in town. We'll have to hire the Hippodrome." "First-page stories, what do you mean?" Lewis looked at the young man and enlightened. "Oh, I forgot you didn't know the latest. Well, the girl's mother is dead and the old man's just followed suit in a pauper's cot in Bellevue. How's that for heart-interest? You're a reporter. I ask you, will they feature that on Park row? Will they give us space for _that_ I ask you?" "And she went on ... my God!" "Oh, of course I ain't told her yet," Mr. Lewis hastened to add. "She might have gone up." Smitherton caught him violently by the arm and backed him farther against the wall. His own face was suddenly pale. "You withheld the news and let her go on? You did that?" But the vaudeville manager only gazed blankly back into those indignant eyes and his face was full of perplexity. "For God's sake, Smitherton, what are you pulling all this tragedy stuff about? Ain't you her manager? Did you want the whole act queered? Wasn't the old woman nutty and the old man a bum, and weren't they dead-weight for her to carry? Didn't they have to die sometime--and could they ever have picked a luckier time to do it? I ask you now, could they?" "Great God!" exclaimed the reporter. But the manager went on. "I call it a miracle of luck. God's good to some folks! Here that girl gets all her troubles settled at a single stroke--and tomorrow she's the biggest headliner on Broadway ... and you, the feller that ought to be out hustling her business interests, stand there gaping like you was sore because she didn't fliver. I don't get you." Mr. Lewis's voice was freighted with disgust, then, seeing that the climax had been reached on the stage, he turned away and signaled to ring down. "Take all the curtains you can get out of it," he instructed the stage-manager--as he once more rubbed his hands. Smitherton stood silent, seeing the curtain descend, then rise and fall time after time to a thunder of applause. He saw Mary Burton, with all her distaste masked behind the regal tranquillity of her splendid eyes and her cruelly wasted courage, bowing, not like an actress, but like an empress. Then she passed them and closed the door of her dressing-room. Smitherton heard Lewis' voice once more, accompanied by something like a sigh. "Now comes the tough part," said the manager. "I've got to go and break it to her. Of course, just at first she ain't likely to see the lucky side of it." The reporter stopped him. "To hell with you!" he cried out fiercely. "I'll tell her myself--and if you interrupt me or say a word to her--I'm going to hurt you." He went slowly to the door, but the manager had followed him with some excitement, and with no realization that his voice was loud, as he prompted. "Put it to her tactful. Remind her that she's made on Broadway, and, now that the old man and old woman are both dead, she's free." The dressing-room door suddenly opened, and they saw the girl standing there unsteadily, but as they approached she took a backward step and leaned against the wall. Her eyes had slowly widened, as they had widened before under the sickening and staggering blows of tragedy. Her lips moved to speak, but for a while could shape no words. From her shaken bosom came a long and pitiful moan, which was not loud, and then her voice returned, and she said, "I heard you. They are--gone." Smitherton knew that words could hardly help. He closed the door again and turned aside. Even Lewis moved away and stood silent. But a few minutes later the dressing-room door once more swung outward and they saw her at the threshold. She had thrown a cloak around her. The deadly pallor of her cheeks was grotesquely heightened by the remnants of rouge which her shaking fingers had failed to completely remove. Her eyes were wide and staring, gazing into the future or the past ... into eternity it might have been. Mr. Abey Lewis laid a hand on her arm. "Miss Burton," he suggested, "you ain't quite got the paint off yet. It needs a little more cold cream, still." But Mary did not hear him. She heard nothing; saw nothing of these surroundings which stood for the pitifully wasted crucifixion of all her instincts of delicacy. "This evening at eight," the manager reminded her. "Don't forget--and maybe you'll feel better then." For a moment she halted. She had reached the stage-door, other performers were leaving the theater. She gazed back into the face of Mr. Abey Lewis, and said blankly, "This evening--what is this evening?" They sought to stop her, but there was something in those wide eyes that petrified them all. For the time Mr. Lewis remained as one hypnotized. The door-man was gazing at her with an expression of awe and wonderment. Mary herself stood there with the cloak falling open so that the convulsive throbbing of her throat was laid bare. The two marvelous and mismated eyes looked at them all and did not see them. The sister of Hamilton Burton, the woman whom two continents had toasted, was seeing other things. "Let me pass," she commanded, and they stood aside and saw her go out into the gathering night and the blizzard. Smitherton rushed after her. "Let me at least put you in a taxi'," he pleaded, but she shook her head. "You can do only one thing now," she said. "For God's sake, leave me alone." Though he knew she was in no condition to be left to herself, the spell of those eyes was upon him, too. It was impossible to disobey. He stood there and saw her turn the corner, buffeted by the wind, and disappear. Then he became conscious of a newsboy's shrieking: "Last 'dition--All 'bout the Burton trad-egy!" _ |
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