Bethel Merriday

But instantly Bethel was sorrier for Andy, who stepped out cheerily to greet the royal fair one, then felt around him the hatred of his companions for her . . . It was As You Like It rewritten by Strindberg.

They were silent enough to hear him hail her, 'Come join the dance. This is a very special dance of triumph over all critics and creditors.'

'Oh, thanks, but I think you can do it very nicely without me. I'll just watch.'

Miss Hinterwald perched on a decayed boat and, while they tried to resume the gaiety of the dance, she looked as though there were no doubt in her mind that they were all, including Andy, the loosest fools in Connecticut.

At supper-time, at one in the morning, sitting beside the wretched Andy, Joan nibbled one hot dog, but refused the noble mulligan, and immediately afterward walked toward her car and sourly waved good-bye. But that was, for Andy, merely the beginning of trouble. He came back to Mahala, perched on a slightly wet rock, but Mahala did not welcome him.

'Hello, Maggie dear. Haven't had a chance to talk with you this evening,' said Andy.

'Why should you, when you've had elegant Newport society yearning over you?'

'Poor Joan! She felt out of it. I wish you knew her better. She's really a good sport.'

'She wouldn't care to know me better. Don't kid yourself, Andy, my bright young friend. I'm a poor working girl--I don't act to show off, as Joanie would, but to make a living. But you and that young woman are rich, so why do you try and patronize me?'

'Oh, please, Maggie, don't you go and get complicated, too.'

'No. Of course. So sorry. Working girls have no right to get complicated. That's reserved for women that haven't anything else to do.'

It went on. But in concentrated venom, in off-stage staginess, it was no better than the rival show that Bethel was watching over to her left. And that was the spectacle of Toni Titmus watching Pete Chew drawn by Iris Pentire's magnetic emptiness into a fascinated circle: the rowdy Cy Fickerty, the bumbling Harry Mihick, Doc Keezer, who was old enough to know better, the morocco-bound Walter Rolf, who certainly did know better, and even the aesthetic Bruce Pasture. They were all squatting on the sand at Iris's feet as she throned it on a noble beer barrel.

Tudor Blackwall was looking on in delicate reproach, but in Toni's watch over her straying Peter, there was nothing delicate whatever. She stood, arms akimbo, like a plump model of a pioneer woman facing a bear. She was unconscious of being observed, and when she had stood enough, her yell of 'Pete! You come here!' was the pioneer woman communicating across five miles of prairie. Pete weaved over to her sheepishly. Whatever Toni said, it was punctuated by pounding her hand with her fist.

'Oh dear,' sighed the lorn lone Bethel. 'I wish I had anybody as much interested in me as Andy and Mahala are in each other, or Pete and Toni, or Iris and the Seventh Regiment.'

Pete and Toni came to her arm in arm, and it was Pete who looked proud, as though this had been his idea all along, Toni who was shamed and halting.

'We want you to know--nobody else,' caroled Pete. 'The kid and I are going to middle-aisle it. I convinced her that our contribution to the stage will be to back shows and encourage actors. As soon as I can get the rich uncle in Zanesville to let us, we'll have a flat in New York and--wow!--will we catch ourselves a Time. We'll have a lot of actors and writers and bohemians. You must hang out there a lot.'

'That's fine,' said Bethel.

Fletcher Hewitt had been stage-managing the picnic. While the rest made suggestions and looked helpful, he stirred the mulligan, kept the hot dogs hot, bribed Butch Stevens, with forbidden whisky, to play his mouth organ, and soothed away five several quarrels between Roscoe Valentine and Cynthia Aleshire. But the food was gone now, at half past two, along with the moon, and Fletcher had coaxed the apprentices to lug the plates and pots up to the dormitory instead of waiting till dawn.

Mahala had gone off to bed. Sadly Bethel had seen Andy bid her good night--he so pleading, Mahala so patronizing. Why couldn't he pick someone more appreciative?

Fletcher wearily dropped on the sand beside Bethel, scratching up a little pile for a pillow, looking up at the stars, holding her hand casually, and speaking at his most casual and cool and calm.

'So, Beth, it's Commencement. When do you go to New York?'

'After a week or ten days home. You'll be on Broadway before I am.'

'No, I won't be there at all. Beth! I'm going to quit the stage.'

'You're what?'

'I can't face another winter of tramping from office to office, till the snow leaks in through the soles of your shoes, looking for a job. I don't care for making much money, but I do want to buy a few things for my mother--she's so little and sweet and pretty--and for you.'

'Eh?'

'More and more, every day, watching you, I've decided you're extraordinarily like her, and then I knew that someday you and I would be married.'

'Eh?'

'Yes. You'll remember me when you're sick of hunting for glory.'

'But I thought you felt the stage was sort of sacred to you and me.'

'I do. And you're to have your shot at it. But I've done my bit. And when you're tired, you'll come back to me. You see, I'm really the hometown boy that every young actress has waiting for her--I'm him, and not this Charley Hatch you had here. Neighbourhoods don't matter, houses next door don't matter, playing with the same air rifle as kids doesn't matter, time doesn't matter. It's all imagination. In these ten weeks I've become your old schoolmate, that lent you the bandanna handkerchief when your nose bled at the party, haven't I?'

'Yes but.'

'Good. And I know what I'm going to do now. Mother and I have been phoning. I'm going to lease a grand old inn up between Millerton and Lakeville; swell summer business, and I think if it's run right--and you know I do run that kind of thing right?'

'Oh yes.'

'I think I can keep it full all winter. And some day I'm going to try and turn the big old stable there into a first-rate summer theatre. So you see? We won't be giving up the holy cause! And anyway, Mammy and you and I will be there, and we'll have a good serene life. Sound like fun?'

'Yes but.'

'But what?'

'Darling, it's hard to tell you.'

'But you do like me.'

'Oh yes, Fletcher.'

'You know that I think you have the most beautiful eyes--for a skinny chick--and the most graceful walk in the world? And incidentally, if that interests you, a shining soul. And you'd like me better and better. I think you could depend on me.'

'Darling, I just can't.'

'Afraid of my mother complex?'

'I don't believe so.'

'In love with Andrew the Anvil King, Galahad the Grail Hound?'

'Oh, what would be the use of my caring for him?'

'Plenty! He's not such a fool, even if he does let emotional usurers like Mahala tie him up. He'll wake up someday to the fact that you're solid--solid silver--solid gold. Mahala's plated. He'll really see you. Would you be in love with him then?'

'I might be. But I don't think it's Andy, at all. I've always wanted the stage. I can't imagine myself without it.'