Men of No Property (37 page)

“You were so beautiful upon the stage tonight,” he said.

“Thank you, Val. I’ve waited such a long time for those words.”

He came up behind her and put his hands upon her shoulders as though he would shake her and then plunged them behind his back again. “Oh, Margaret, how ever could you have been so blind? This did not need three years of heartache to accomplish, and a voice gone rasped at the edges with dust and over use. And there’s lines in your face, Margaret, and smudges under your eyes like patches of the plague. God in heaven! I could take a knife with my own hand to Foley’s black Irish heart!”

Peg shuddered for all that she had known it well herself. She could not feel so weary and strained without its showing. She downed the drink and felt the warmer for it. “It was so wonderful in the beginning, Val…There are wonderful players in California, and our company—I don’t think there was ever another quite like it…in the beginning. It was as though we came alive upon the stage in one another’s presence. We admired each other truly and never ourselves as much as when we pleased one another. Let me show you something…” She got the signed letter—the “tribute of players”—from a leather case.

“I wish I had signed that,” he said, having looked at it.

“Tom Foley was one of us in the beginning. He made a small fortune, but in fairness to him, I must say he would have been content with less. Then my scandal hit him, hit all of us, and he changed. And there was no reason for scandal. That’s the strangest thing of all. But it was as though Tom Foley wanted to believe it. He would hear no explanation, swearing his loyalty without it. It made both John Redmond and myself beholden to him. The contract Foley gave us has proved itself our gift to him, however.”

She swung about upon the stool and faced him. “Don’t misunderstand me, Val. I don’t account this story for sympathy but that you will understand what Foley calls my petulance. He has exacted a heavy price for his loyalty. Even my escape has been to his profit, for I’ve escaped into every role I’ve played, and been the better actress for it. I’ve rewarded those who came in response to his sensational billing, sometimes I think each and every one of them with a little piece of my soul…just as they take from my gowns little snips for souvenirs.” She lifted her head. “Isn’t that ridiculous, the snipping of my gowns, I mean?”

Valois ground his teeth and then buried his face in his hands. Peg took the opportunity to have another drink. “I’m frightened…that’s all it is tonight, Val. I do believe if Foley came in now and said ‘We’re off to Memphis in the morning,’ to Cincinnati, to Chicago…to anywhere…except New York…I would caper off to his reception with him.” She got up and moved about the small room restlessly. “What have I complained of? Pay it no attention, Val. What a sorry thing when a player complains of playing! I’ve served an apprenticeship, that’s all. Once I came too early to the New York stage. Val…” She waited until he looked up at her. “You must answer me truly—is it too late I’m coming now?”

“That,” he said, “is quite as stupid a notion as I have ever heard from you, and I think even you will admit to several.”

Peg smiled then. She drew a deep breath and could almost feel the return of her energy. “Isn’t John Redmond a splendid actor?”

“Adequate,” Valois said.

“He was off a bit tonight, but you’ll see.”

“I shall not see unless it’s under someone else’s management. He will be let out of his contract.”

“But
he
doesn’t want to be let out of it.”

“Margaret, it is not my intention to expose—or to tolerate the exposure of your misfortune in New York. I am more than a little offended that you should think I would. If Redmond is as fine an actor as you say he will soon accommodate himself to another company. But you will be received there as an actress, not as an exhibit—or I shall have no part of it.”

“Thank you, Val,” she said in little more than a whisper. “Thank you very much. I have often wished that I might come back with a little dignity.” She sat down at the dressing table then and began to get out of costume. “I’m feeling better now,” she said presently, “the way some women do when they have shed their tears. Shall we go to the reception after all? Or is it too late? Will everyone have gone home to bed?”

“No one goes to bed in Washington in these times. They vituperate all day and spend the nights fêting their enemies. They fear to think upon their legislation in the dark, it is so terrible. We are near civil war, Margaret, and I say let it come now, for nothing short of it will purge the country.”

“Dear Val,” she said, “you are as violent as ever. Will you fasten my gown?” She watched him in the mirror. “Where shall I stay in New York?”

“I shall arrange all that, but first, Margaret, I want you to go to the seashore for at least a fortnight of utter and complete rest. There are certain remedies I want you to take for your voice—and a play I want you to read.”

“A new one?”

Valois nodded. “Translated from the French. Dumas. It is called
The Lady of the Camellias
or, as I prefer, just
Camille
.”

“When shall I see it?”

“In good time,” he said.

Peg caught his hand and kissed it. “I am glad to be going back, Val. Truly I am, though I didn’t know it until this moment.”

Valois laughed. “Many an actress has risen from her deathbed when promised a new play.”

Peg shook out her hair and rebraided it. “There is something I must ask you before we go—do you remember Stephen Farrell?”

“I do.”

“Is he in Washington, do you know?”

“He is in New York, set up in the practice of law and housekeeping.”

“He’s married?”

“Yes, thank God.”

Peg smiled. “You needn’t be so fervent about it. I asked only because when last I knew of him he was in Washington, and I didn’t want to meet him unexpectedly tonight.”

“Perhaps you will meet the bride’s father. He’s a senator from South Carolina and a fire eater.”

“Is he?” Peg murmured. “Isn’t that strange.”

“Not strange at all,” he said.

Peg decided there was no reason to explain her remark. “Val, am I remembered in New York by anyone save yourself?”

“I have a letter for you from Jeremiah. By the weight of it I should say you are well remembered.”

“My dear Miss Margaret,”… So began her last mile home, Peg thought, and she would take it slowly. Not a sip did she drink during the two weeks’ seclusion, and night after night she slept the clock around. Scarcely a word she spoke except to the woman attending her cottage who was not inclined herself to conversation and an occasional hallo to a fisherman passing out of the cove. Never in her life had she known so much solitude. Nor would she again by her choosing. Too many phantoms walked with her amongst the dunes, and could she have met any one of them in the flesh he would not have said the old, familiar things. Vinnie was in his second year at Yale…Matt had a brother sent there, she remembered his telling, who came home Abolitionist to Alabama. “I am taking the liberty of informing your sister the date of your arrival,” Mr. Finn wrote, “for I know how anxious she has been of your welfare. Your father is here, you know, living with them…” No, Peg thought, I did not know, but how typical of Norah to have sent for him. One more phantom to be met in the flesh.

The best she could remember of him was his wailing after her mother:
My poor lost bride, my love, my life.
How she had despised him for his weakness then, and fled his groping, clinging arms.
You are a cruel one, my daughter,
he had said to her, and she had smiled because that hurt her more even than her mother’s death. She had run from the house in fury when Norah took him to her bosom, making him weep the more. Thinking back on it now she could see where she had vied with him for Norah’s affections, and as she won them he took more deeply to the drink. It was all too true, she had been cruel, and all the time protesting that it was herself was put upon by his intemperance, and believing it: youth enjoying its righteousness and self-conjured pain.

Well, old man, Norah has made it up to you. And how does your son-in-law feel? He has no sympathy with bottle men, and little more for failures. He likes a fighter, Dennis Lavery does, a man to stand up and fight for his rights, as he fights for his…five markets, three children and a Tammany sachem, whatever that might be.

And not a word from Mr. Finn on Stephen. How he must have labored over that omission, putting and taking and tearing up and beginning again, for he must know at the very least as much as Valois. A wife was to be expected, and perhaps as Val said, thank God. But a Southern wife—what a remarkable coincidence!

Poor Matt. How he enjoyed self-righteousness and the pain it gave him, even to death and the pitiful confession,
I did it for my wife.
Did he believe it? He must have needed to, being never more than a child. And ten years from now, remembering Matt, would she say: I was cruel to him, too? The cruelty was in marrying him. But as God knows my heart’s intent, she thought, it bore no evil in that consent. Not a whit cared I for his promised inheritance could he prove his worth of it; nor cared I a whit for the proud votin’ Stuarts whose only measure of a son was could he make a fortune. More loving of him who had distinguished himself a black sheep were they likely than ever they would have been had he returned a failure. All for the love of a woman, poor lad, they would say. She turned his head, an actress. And if there were not ladies present, unmarried ladies leastaways, one would nudge another and confide: I never thought the boy had it in him, myself.

Poor, poor Matt. No wonder he died misunderstanding. That much he had in him at least, to covet and claim a woman he never believed himself worthy of. And needful she was of such adoration to have yielded to his persuasions. Not out of spite did I marry him, not out of ambition, nor greed, nor lust, but out of the need for love in honor and honor in love, and never thinking for a minute was what I brought as honorable as what I sought. I married out of my own weakness in truth—even as my father took the bottle to himself in the stead of love. Perhaps I am his daughter after all. What do you say to that, old man?

“M
ANY A DREAM HAS
a man for his childer’ when he puts them by for himself, but never in my wildest conjurin’ could I o’ coaxed a night like this.”

So said the old man to Peg on the night of her opening. He had come to the stage door and insisted on seeing his daughter although there was but a half hour before curtain time. There was not a member of the cast who didn’t know him, for on every day of rehearsal he called for Peg to promenade her the few blocks up Broadway to her hotel. “The ol’ dandy is here,” was the way in which he was always announced, and this night was no exception. Peg came out to him, took his flowers and fondling and herself gave him into the hands of the boxkeeper, telling him he was the handsomest man she would see the night. He was not out of sight when he turned back to tell her that Norah and Mr. Finn blessed her also, but they had come in the front door while he the back. Peg eased him again into the charge of the boxkeeper, and seeing finally the tail of his coat laughed aloud while Valois fumed. “And to make matters worse,” she said, teasing, “he’s an Irishman.” “His disguise is fair enough, if only he would keep his mouth shut,” Val said.

Peg was never cheerier than in such moments. When tempers were shortest backstage, hers was the most soothing. No virtue she thought, but self-preservation. She went a moment then to the door of the Green Room. “Bless us all,” she said in to the assembled players, and took with her their echoing blessings as she returned to her dressing room. There she waited, eye to eye with her other self in the mirror, and in the manner she had come to prepare a role, examined again the conscience of the character as ruthlessly as though she must in fact be confessed of her most secret sins. And she would go forth then to live upon the stage the life confessed.

It was a night to be conjured out of a dream as the old man had foretold, but for most of the audience it commenced as might a hundred other nights of theatre. Valois had muffled Tom Foley, had indeed all but banished him, and the publicity had been devoted to the play with only the most reserved mention of its star. The small theatre, consequently, was not even full, and the playgoers distinctive only in the number of critics among them. Valois had invited the critics first to an elegant dinner in the selection of which his reputation was greater than it was in the theatre. He gazed out upon them in the final agonizing moments before curtain and for an instant wished they were not there at all. He watched the prompter light his candle through its wire cage and set it upon the box. The call boy stood with his fistful of sheets in one hand and with the other scratched himself. Then to Valois’ horror, he shifted the callslips from one hand to the other to better reach the spot that itched him. Finally the boy gave a great yawn and Val ground his teeth to keep from screaming.

“Camille, you are called…”

Unknown by appearance to most of her audience, Mrs. Stuart made her entrance without flutter or flourish, and paying the audience no attention by which they might take their cue to applaud the star. The play for being much to her was more to them, and when Camille’s first moment of travail arrived and she did not bring it downstage to thrust upon them, they went willingly within the play with her. Of a poignancy strange to everyone was the instant when she turned her back on them entirely. Her very shoulders seemed frail and the slow drooping of her head quite heartbreaking.

So real, so true, so much of flesh and blood upon the stage she was that ladies of extreme delicacy withdrew from the forward seats at the end of the first act lest, as they explained, the experience permanently afflict them. Such sensitivity was reassuring to their escorts, for many a man despised the younger Duval or the elder in himself, according to his years, not for his cruelty to the courtesan, but for his stupidity. If Camille was pitiable, she was by no means pathetic: this was the disturbing part of the interpretation. As the
Tribune
critic was to write, in Mrs. Stuart’s hands the play became a comment on society. Camille was responsible for her own fate, which must sorely wound the pride of gentlemen accustomed to beating their breasts over the ruination of a woman.