Bethel Merriday

Mahala Vale descended from the dusty local train like a leading woman determined to be pleasant, and with a high handshake she caroled, 'It was so sweet of you to meet me, Miss Merriday'.

Mahala could not have been over twenty-five or -six, but she looked like a young woman who knew her job; carrying herself with authority, on the tall side, wide-browed, chestnut-haired, the true goddess; beautiful in a standard way where Iris was pretty in an exciting, perplexing way, and Bethel was either insignificant, or as tantalizing as music.

'A station wagon? How very exciting! Shall I sit up beside you? It smells of fish, doesn't it!' said Mahala.

Bethel was hereafter to hear her say a great many things in her 'cello voice, and never to know whether Mahala meant any of them, or what she was thinking, or whether she was thinking at all. If Iris Pentire was openly mysterious, Mahala Vale was mysteriously open; if Iris bewildered the frank heart of Bethel by her silence, Mahala baffled her by easy and indecipherable chatter.

All sixteen of the apprentices and most of the stock company had arrived by Saturday evening, and they sat all over the rocks by the shore, as vocal as a flock of blackbirds. Bethel again felt like a freshman--like a freshbird. She was an approachable fledgeling, but a lone one, never quite willing to belong completely to the rule of any bevy.

She looked at the bumptious Pete Chew and the enterprising Toni Titmus snickering together--and sometimes, she felt uncomfortably, glancing over at her. She looked at Iris Pentire, alone, posed as a lone sweet goddess (small-sized) awaiting the mystery of the moon. She looked at Mahala Vale, being gracious and countess-like on behalf of a circle composed of the handsome Tudor Blackwall, Doc Keezer, the trouper, Walter Rolf, and the rustic Harry Mihick; telling them what she had said to George Jean Nathan--though with a considerable avoidance of what George Jean Nathan had said to her. She looked at the honest Fletcher Hewitt being respectful--God knows why!--to Roscoe Valentine and to Cynthia Aleshire, the scene designer. Suddenly she preferred the honest guttersnipes, Pete and Toni, to all of them, and felt elated when she saw Pete (to-night incomparable in a cream Palm Beach suit with a white silk shirt and a crocus-yellow sash about his globular middle) rolling toward her.

'Look, Beth,' Pete whispered hoarsely, 'don't worry about you telling me about your Past.'

'What are you talking about? I haven't got a Past!'

'You can trust me, Beth. I'm like the grave. I haven't told a soul.'

'Except Toni!'

'Huh? Oh. Her. Well. Yes. Maybe. She don't count. How about you and me going to Clinton to the dance tonight?'

'Aren't you afraid to go with me?'

'Well, I think a fellow ought to have experience, if he's going to be a star. In school I didn't hardly have a chance to see any life.'

'How about that little waitress?'

Now Bethel knew nothing whatever regarding the relationship of Pete Chew to any waitress. Something inside her had told her to say that; and she was as astonished as Pete, who gasped like a carp, and begged:

'How the dickens did you ever--Honestly, that didn't mean anything at all. I fixed it all up. Oh, sure! I learned about women from her. But Beth, you got to remember, you got to remember that I've always been kept down by a whole slew of rich relatives and profs. You got to teach me. Golly, you and me could be such friends. Would you like a snake-skin belt?'

'I would not!'

'I know where I can get an elegant one for you, cheap. I mean I want to give it to you. I mean a present. You know. I mean just as a present.'

'No, thank you, Pete.'

'And you won't go to the dance with me?'

That intrusive inner voice was again speaking: 'Don't be such a blasted prig to this poor Bronxville Casanova. He's an amateur even at that. Even with the best tutors and the best champagne, he'll never be a good flirt--not a real specialist.' Thus warned, she said almost tenderly:

'Not now, Pete. Maybe some time.'

'And could I give you a box of candy? Two pounds!'

'If you'd like.'

'I'll drive right into the Centre and buy it.'

It was the first of the assaults on her virtue which, as an actress, she had the right to expect, in tribute to her charm and beauty, and she was alarmed to find that she felt rather proud of it.

Pete gone, Bethel saw Toni Titmus scampering toward her. If Toni was not as fat as Pete Chew, there was no reason why she mightn't become so. Bethel could see them, forty years from now, as an admirable old married couple, devoted to food, the theatre, and the rights of immorality.

Toni said cautiously, 'Well, how do you like it here, Beth?'

'Oh, fine.'

'Well . . . I guess you find it pretty tame, though.'

With huge gratification, Bethel saw that someone was in awe of her. She felt beautiful, languorous, and a little weary of strange sins. All of that she put into her line: 'Oh, it's good to get away to the quiet country for a change.'

'Tell me, Beth--honestly, I've never had a chance to ask any girl that knew: Do you think it's better, when you've had a row with the boy friend and you're in wrong but of course you don't want to admit it--should you call him up or wait for him to phone?'

This fundamental social problem--one that Bethel had, actually, never encountered--she solved airily: 'My experience is, you better wait and keep him guessing. If he doesn't phone, then you haven't really got him captured anyway, and so you're safely out of it. These men! You have to be brutal with 'em.'

'Are you brutal with 'em, Beth?'

'Oh, always!'

'Are you really, sure enough?'

'Certainly. Anyone with experience is.'

'How do you handle 'em if a boy comes home with you and makes a pass at you--one that you don't want to have make a pass at you, I mean.'

'Just look at 'em and smile sort of cynically.'

'Cynically?'

'Yes, sure--cynically.'

'Well, I don't know. Of course I haven't been much persecuted by really dangerous men yet.' She sighed. 'Oh, there's plenty of boys that chase you in the university, and back home in Fond du Lac, but that don't get far if you're living home or with a lot of girls. Of course when I get to New York and take a job on the stage, I guess I'll have a little apartment to myself--of course just a little one, not very big--and then I guess I'll have to cope with some pretty unscrupulous fellows, producers and playwrights and like that, old unscrupulous ones, forty or so, and I'll just have to cope with 'em!' She looked much brighter.

Swept by Toni's narrative powers, seeing her own self facing a vicious old seducer of forty or so in the stilly perils of a one-room apartment, Bethel panted, forgot the theme of her own role, and stated with indignant virtue, 'A man like that, you just look him square in the eye and say, "Now don't be silly! I'm not your sort and you better know it right now. Don't you try--"'

She stopped, realizing that Toni was staring at her, meditative, then derisive; and after a pause was jeering, 'Look here now, Bethel Merriday! My Lord, and you fooled wise old rounders like Pete and me! But I'll bet you're nothing at all but a Good Girl!'

Bethel looked stricken.

'Isn't that true? Huh? Huh? Isn't it?'

'I'm afraid it is--more or less,' whimpered Bethel.

Toni was triumphant, then forgiving: 'Gee, I don't blame you for fooling a dumbbell like Pete. He's asking for it. Oh, he's had experience, all right, but just with waitresses and heiresses and screwballs like that. He don't understand educated artists, like you and I! And--God knows if this got known around it would ruin me--but the truth is I'm still a Good Girl myself! Ain't that the limit!'