'But what has been especially gratifying--It doesn't matter about me. I'm a trouper. I can take it. I can put up with malodorous bedrooms and chop sooey and the dreadful embarrassment, to a man of my scholarly rearing, of having to consort with subway conductors instead of taking taxis. But my wife, Mrs. Nooks, is a woman of the utmost talent and delicacy. She's not as young as she was, but that little woman's ambitions recognize no bounds, as does her affection for my poor self.
'She has for years been longing to study French, but she has lacked both the means and, when I have been in Gotham, the time, since her chief preoccupation has been to give me the most incessant and tender care. But now at last I have been able to begin sending her enough, not only to begin paying up our debts, but for her to enter upon the study of the sparkling native tongue of the witty Gaels, or I suppose you would call them the Franks.
'She has found the most sympathetic teacher, a French lady, not so young any longer, but from a very high-placed aristocratic Parisian family, and Mrs. Nooks has written me, on a postcard which just arrived this morning, that after only one lesson she can say, "Send the head-waiter, I wish to order dinner in this restaurant".
'So I hope that to a dear child like you I shall not seem ridiculous if I confide to you that a lifelong ambition of Mrs. Nooks and myself has been to travel abroad and see with our own eyes the treasures of ancient culture. And now at last we shall be able to do so.
'Our Romeo tour and Broadway appearance are certain to continue for two years at a minimum--I hope so for Andy's sake as well as mine; he is an amateur at acting, but a very generous and loyal young friend--and I am sedulously saving my not over-excessive salary--which I trust that Andy will increase--and at the end of our run--think of it--our dream for years and years of boarding-houses and local trains--our dream that we've talked of till far into the night--Mimi and I will go to France!'
She tried.
She hinted that Andy had vulgar conceptions of the classics; that he was in the clutches of Mahala Vale, who wanted to turn the play into her private bridge to Hollywood.
Nooks did not hear a word. He was talking about his Conception of the Role of the Apothecary. There was a light of bliss upon his tumbling soft white hair, his ever-changing thick red face, and he felt himself a priest and a servant of mankind.
They were at the point where Nooks was booming, 'I know I'm too old to tackle Romeo, but I have some ideas that will surprise you about playing Macbeth', and Bethel was desperately wondering whether her purse and her sobriety would stand another Swedish punch, when she saw Andy fling into the restaurant, look about, look relieved, and shoulder towards them.
His eyes asked what had happened. She shook her head. His lips formed 'I'll do it', silently, and then aloud, very noisily and collegiately aloud, Andy greeted them: 'Well, I'll be darned! What're you two doing here? Buy you a drink? Do you mind if I sit down with you a minute?'
'My dear boy, it's a pleasure,' said Nooks. 'I think of you both as my children. I have just been telling little Bethel here that she mustn't let it worry her if the interpretation of Shakespeare is beyond her feminine powers. She is all the luckier to be born to blush unseen as some good man's wife. I was telling her . . .'
He did not stop for seven minutes.
Andy was able to convey to Bethel, 'Felt like a dog for asking you. I'll do it.' But he got no farther than, 'I'm a little disappointed in the critics' reception, Mr. Nooks. We may have to make some changes', when Nooks was off on the interesting theory that all critics are born of an especial brand of acrobats.
Bethel was less sorry now for him than for Andy, with twenty-eight people's livings to protect--the forlorn big Andy who looked beaten. She heard herself piping:
'Mr. Nooks! Please! Please listen a moment! No--listen! I think that you ought to know that Andy has been compelled to plan some changes. He may have to drop either Iris Pentire or myself--he hasn't decided which, and I hope it won't be me, but of course I'll submit without feeling a bit hurt, if it's necessary for the good of the show--which is what we're all after, isn't it?'
She got in a glance at Andy. He was astonished, he was grateful, he was almost adoring. (Well, he ought to be!)
'And in the same way--I happen to know that he's not satisfied with Zed Wintergeist, and may replace him with an actor who has more suavity.'
At this thundering lie poor Nooks looked delighted.
'And--you can blame it all on me--I'm afraid I've rather encouraged him to feel that just because you do so wonderfully represent one great classic school of acting, Mr. Nooks, you scarcely fit in with the crazy experimental way in which Andy and Satori have done this show, and so--'
Nooks abruptly turned from her to Andy. His mouth, with its wide loose pale lips, opened deeply. Bethel expected a roar. But it was very quietly that he said, 'Andy, do you want to give me my notice, sir?'
'Well--in a way--not exactly--but still--' said Andy.
Nooks slowly stood up, his great head back, his eyes closed for a moment, and his face was the face of a dead man. 'All right.' His eyes were wet. 'I have been very lonely for my wife, anyway. She hasn't many friends in New York. She'll be glad of my return. I'll leave as soon as my successor is ready to take over, sir. Good night to you both, and the greatest of successes.'
He walked out of the restaurant slowly, his shoulders back and his head up.
Bethel and Andy sat silently. Silently he pulled out a bank note and left it on the table for the waiter. Silently he walked with her to her hotel. Only at the door he said, 'I love you for what you've done for me. Good night.'
XXVIII
Two weeks more of one-night stands.
Station platforms and cues and shirred eggs with little farm sausages and No. 17 purple lining salve and the 7.47 a.m. and the rumba on a revolving floor under lights changing from green to fog to crocus and handkerchiefs washed in the bowl and plastered on the side of a bathtub and looking at the name of the newspaper to recall in which town you were and the line 'See what a scourge is laid upon your hate' and a Van Gogh print on a hotel bedroom wall and brown powder that never quite got out of your ears and Doc's organ voice as Friar Laurence and chewing gum and the white mark your hand left on a dusty day-coach seat when you slapped it and telegraph poles scurrying back and borrowing Kleenex from Mabel and a world-long rim of pale scarlet along the horizon at dusk beyond cold December prairies and pots and pots of coffee and Zed's sad hazel eyes as he brooded over a volume of Rupert Brooke by a frosted car window and Exit UR and moonlight lamps staring down pale blue from the borderlights and giggling at a film along with Vera and Charlotte and street crossings of packed snow in corduroy rows glistening under the lights between you and the theatre and here it was almost the half-hour call already and across the way 'Romeo and Juliet' exciting in electric lights on the theatre marquee and bath towels long as yourself and acting beside Zed and small boxes of individual orders of corn flakes and the cross-word puzzle in the morning paper with which you tried to keep awake when your eyes looked red and felt red and your lungs were tickling with train dust and unexpectedly kindly applause and fried oyster sandwiches and Mrs. Boyle heartbreaking in 'It was the nightingale and not the lark'.
Down and across the mighty prairies of the Mississippi Valley: Iowa and South Dakota and Nebraska where, through to-day's cornfields and cement roads, move the ghosts of Mormon pioneers.