Bethel Merriday

The family loyalty of Andy's rich cousin was not strong enough to bring him to the station at two a.m., but the faithful Carl Frazee saw them off--and Carl alone. To Bethel and Doc Keezer he mourned, 'Gee, I'm going to miss you people. The only fun I get is when a troupe like you come to town and let me tag along. Don't forget that even if the papers should pan you sometimes, you are sure-enough missionaries to lonely cranks like me. I love you both! And you will be married! Don't forget to send me a bid to your wedding, you two!' And Carl hesitated, sighed and bolted.

The train was off, to a chorus of 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy' in young voices, and one of 'Oh, shut up and go to bed' in older ones, but Bethel, still dressed, sat in her berth, hands clasping knees, rocking unhappily to the roll of the train. She would miss Carl Frazee. She would probably forget him, after a dozen other towns, a dozen other Carls, but she had never had such pure and kindly affection, nor been so encouraged to believe in her own career.

Could he be right? Was she anything but another girl to the busy Andy, to Zed, to the Douglas Fry who had stage diagrams for veins? She had so often been lonely; she could be lonely again in this travelling village; only Doc Keezer was always there--her Gibraltar.

The singing stopped, and through the train's bumbling she was conscious of Zed and Iris talking, not very discreetly, sitting on the edge of Iris's berth just across the aisle.

'You were leering at him.' (That was Zed.)

'I was not leering at him.'

'I didn't mind even that so much, Iris. Lyle Johnson reaches for a girl the way I do for a Camel. A girl like you, that's simply all one fever of vanity--'

'I am not!'

'--would leer at him. But what I minded was your fatuousness. So proud that you could win Lyle's attentions--which is just about as difficult as winning the influenza. I don't know's I'm much interested any longer, but I hate to see even you acting like a comic strip.'

'You can't talk to me like that!'

'I am talking to you like that, ain't I?'

And silence, and Bethel peeped between the weighty green curtains to see Iris alone, framed by the curtains, slowly weeping. Bethel loved her then, and was her sister, and hated Zed for his contempt of foolish, soft girls whom simpering men had begged, all these years, to be feminine and foolish and soft.

She bounced out from her berth like a small, earnest schoolma'am going after the local bully, and came on Zed, standing alone, stoop-shouldered and unhappy, in the vestibule of the fast train, with the thick canvas of the bellows pulsing, and the grey steel plates, arching over to make a passageway from car to car, lifting and dropping and clanking . . . a place of grime and steel and snow-streaked glass and ceaseless clamour . . . after midnight, pounding through the snow-smeared darkness of the unknown prairie.

He glared at her and said, 'Women!'

'Yes?'

'I've always thought the most naive thing you could do was to make generalizations about women, but it's true. Women are all alike.'

'Zed! I've been listening to you and Iris--'

'Just couldn't help overhearing it, eh!'

'Certainly I could. I didn't want to. And you were beastly to that poor, pretentious little guttersnipe.'

'You see? One girl praising another. "Guttersnipe".'

'You listen to me! She's vain, but she's gay and sweet. And you talked to her like Lyle Johnson. Like a bartender. A cheap, smirking bartender in a cheap hotel. Beating a butterfly, to show how strong you are!'

'Oh, pet, I know it! She's a wild rose. I could kick myself. I got sore at her because she was flirting with Lyle a little. And here I'd gone and built up a real understanding with her. Poor kid, she's got a tough nut of a brother that's in trouble, and she's desperate about raising some money to send him, and here she'd finally promised to let me lend her some--'

'How much?'

'Oh, fifty bucks or so.'

'Have you got it--if you pay any of your debts out of this week's salary?'

'No, not exactly, but I can prob'ly get it from Andy.'

'And you had to coax her to let you "help" her?'

'How do you mean?'

'So that when she does take it, and plenty more after it, you won't feel she's under any obligation to you--it'll be she who's done the favour? I couldn't've believed it. Honestly, I couldn't've believed it. You're so intelligent about scripts and acting, so right, and then about girls, you're just another green young man. Emotionally, you're aged thirteen.'

'Hey, what the--'

'Your Iris is a gold digger of the first water. You ought to know. She trapped you into buying her that mangy new fur.'

'How did you know about--Look! It wasn't mangy! It was a very nice fur . . . It ought to be! How did you know I bought it?'

'I watched her leading you up to it. You child!'

'Imagine our little Beth trying to be superior!'

'I am. Though I didn't know it till now.'

'Oh, I know all about it. You've been panning me to Iris. You told her I was crude. You said my acting technique was all ham. And you even said I didn't make up my nose right!'

'I never said anything of the kind. Don't you know that Iris is a congenital liar? Don't you? Don't you?'

'And you just defending her!'

'She never even talks honestly to herself. Don't you know it?'

'Yes, I suppose I do, if I think about her with my brain, instead of my heart. But why are you so keen about showing her up, all of a sudden?'

She stumbled in replying; she could not answer his 'Why?'

'I'm not keen about it. I've kept myself from telling you anything about her for days now, I just hate to see anybody in this company getting hurt--oh, by his own generosity,' she said.

'Well, I'm not going to be. I know Iris is a liar, all right--though I'm not such a small boy that I needed to have you tell me, pet! I'm going to cut her out. I'm going to cut out all the women in this company. You're all a bunch of spiritual grafters. You all want admiration. And you're the worst of the lot.'

'Oh, Zed, please don't.'

'Yes! You wouldn't take presents from me, but you feel you're the only true devoted actor in the whole bunch! You're the saviour of the stage! You're the only one that's always on time at rehearsals! You're the only one that's read clear through Gene O'Neill! You think you're as devoted as Francine Larrimore. But you're nothing but Andy Deacon's stooge!'

'I--'

'You're the Teacher's Pet in this company! The good little girl that scrubs her face and tattles to teacher!'

At this point she left him, with rapidity.

As she passed the open slanting door of Andy's drawing-room, he called out to her, 'Beth! Just who I was looking for! C'm in here!'

He was slouched on the green divan, tucked in among the impedimenta of the company--mostly, Mahala's blue bags. He was wearing a vile tan sweater and discouraged grey trousers and wrinkled Pullman slippers, like black gloves for his feet.

'What is it?' she worried.

'Here!' He absent-mindedly threw two of Mahala's bags out into the aisle. 'Sit down. I just want to look at you. I'm all in.'

'Oh, not after our grand week in Belluca!'

'It was swell, wasn't it! I knew we'd be a success. But there's been a lot of work--broadcasting and luncheon spiels, and you know, I don't act easily. I'm not a natural actor. I can't relax. I'm always afraid that I'll go up higher than a kite.'

'Honestly? I never knew that.' He had always seemed exasperatingly confident on the stage.

'Yep. I'm the eternal amateur, as your friend Zed would say.'