They made a family portrait--Andy with his arms about his two children, Zed and Bethel.
XXXI
Kansas City, which is in Missouri and not in Kansas, and which was the terminus of the Santa Fe trail and the arena of Yankee Abolitionists and Pro-slavery riders, is one of the remarkable cities of the United States. But to Bethel Merriday, on the gloomy first to the fourth of January 1939, Kansas City was the Golgotha where the Romeo and Juliet company first met unconcealable disaster.
It was not only meagre, unconvinced audiences; it was Mrs. Boyle.
On New Year's Day, on Sunday in Kansas City, Mrs. Boyle was drinking by midmorning. Naturally, there was no one large feast, if Andy did not give it, but there were a dozen small ones, with Scotch and White Rock in tooth-mugs and paper cups in bedrooms. Andy himself impressively dressed up in morning coat and striped trousers and attended church with Mahala, who liked that sort of thing once a year. Bethel sat and did a good deal of small weeping, in between letters home. In Lyle Johnson's room, next to hers with both hall doors open, she could hear Lyle and Mrs. Boyle and Jeff Hoy and Harry Purvis and Tony Murphy and, surprisingly, the new Apothecary, Jones Awkwright, telling stories and singing 'The Old Man Came Rolling Home'. She heard Zed join them, and distinctly heard him hold forth:
'No, I won't have a drink. I'm on the water wagon . . . Eh? As of right now! Harry--Jeff--I want to run through the Death of Tybalt scene. We're doing it too mechanically. . . . You won't, eh? Then to hell with you. You're getting so you play like a stock company, all of you, including me. . . . What? Oh no, Mrs. Boyle, I couldn't possibly mean you--how could I!'
That's what Bethel heard.
He came into her room and sat down--by some amazing lapse of direction not on the edge of the bed, but just on the floor, in the corner, his knees up to his chin, looking twelve years old and sulky. They stared at each other for some time. He grumbled, 'They've got the right idea. I think I'll go out and get cockeyed. No, I haven't even got the spirit to do that. You're certainly a hell of a girl to think about falling in love with. You're so pink and white and black, so respectable, so milk-sick, so fussy, so generally Yankee, I mean it.'
He bounced out. She could see his rough, quick-changing face, his strong hands, after he had left the room. Oh, why couldn't he have taken her to the movies, at least, this lonely New Year's Day?
She did go to the movies, with Purvis and Charlotte, that evening, and she told herself that she was homesick for the Fletcher Hewitt who would have had surprises and kindness for her on her holiday in exile.
But her mind's eye could see only Zed.
Late that afternoon and all that evening, Mrs. Boyle was not to be seen or heard, but there were rumours that she had gone to a very wet party in the Country Club district, and been convoyed home at four a.m.
Bethel was, as Mrs. Boyle's understudy, supposed to look in on her dressing-room at seven-thirty, and when she did so on Monday evening, the first of their three performances in Kansas City, she found the star blank and doubtful, with a bottle of Scotch on her dressing-table.
Ever since Zed had called her a 'tattler' and 'teacher's pet', Bethel had hated going to Andy with reports. She had to, now.
Andy cursed--much better than he was wont to. He penetrated the star's dressing-room with an awkward excuse about props, and reported to Bethel, standing aquiver in the dressing-room alley, that 'the old girl is certainly a little soused, but she's so well trained, I think she'll get through'.
She did. The only remarkable thing about Mrs. Boyle's performance that evening was its ponderous sobriety. She made Juliet as dull as the minutes of a house committee. And after the show, when Lyle Johnson ventured in to invite her for a drink, she was to be heard demanding, in tones ministerial but fuzzy, 'Who may you be? I am a leading lady. I never shaw you before. I am not cushomed to associate with minor members of my company'.
At one in the morning, as Bethel lay on her bed, reading, Andy telephoned:
'Beth? Come quick. No, not bad news exactly--maybe not.'
She found him exalted with disaster.
'The Boyle is not only drunk but promises to go on all night. She's down in the Old Canteen Room. When I saw her last, she was dancing the tango, except that she was rendering it as the St. Vitus Dance.'
'With who?'
'Lyle Johnson . . . He says she called him up at midnight and bawled him out for not keeping some boozing date she seemed to think they had made. I tried to get her to go to bed. She told me--oh well, why remember that? I can't get her arrested. I certainly would if I could. She'll never be able to play Juliet to-morrow night. You'll have to, Beth darling. And it's your great chance!'
The understudy who, by tradition, should have hurrahed at her slow-coming 'great chance' was appalled.
'Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I can. The part is so long. I'm scared to death!'
'You've got to. And you will. And well.'
'Oh, I will try, if I have to.'
'Of course you will. I'm going to cue you all night long. I've taken a suite down the hall for it . . . Hm!' He laughed at himself. 'I guess I was glad of an excuse to get out of this hard-times room. Come on. We'll order up some coffee and begin.'
Mahala's voice, just then, at the door:
'Andy, are you still awake? Come on down and buy me some grub.'
And, when he opened the door, Mahala's presence, lovely in coy blue organdie with white cuffs and collar.
But Bethel was suddenly thinking that when she had first seen Mahala, descending from the train at Grampion Centre, only six months ago, she had seemed a great lady, a fabulous actress, while now she was just another girl in the touring company . . . prettier than most, but not beautiful like Charlotte, not radiant like Mrs. Boyle.
Mahala glided in, looked astounded at Bethel's presence, said--oh, you know, just what Mahala Vale or Mabel Staghorn would have said: 'I hope I'm not interrupting.' Significantly, you know.
'Very pleasantly,' purred Andy. 'Keep this strictly under your hat, but the Boyle is boiled and Beth may have to play Juliet to-morrow night. And I've got an idea. Prob'ly be a good thing if she got cued all night. You start in with it, and I'll get a couple hours' sleep, and then I'll take over and give the third degree to the poor darling the rest of the night.'
'Oh, you and the "poor darling" seem to be quite happy without me. I wouldn't intrude, not for words, I mean, not for worlds. I hope you have a happy night!'
Afterward, Andy said only, 'I agree with you! I don't know how I got the Mahala habit. They're putting it in cigarettes now, you know . . . Come on, to work, dear.'
Shaking, sick, while he kept hurling her cues at her and making her go on steadily, without a recess, through the huge long speeches, Bethel went over the Juliet part till dawn--at first sitting in a large chair, cool and amused, trying to look like a veteran actress, like Mahala; at the last, leaning her cheek against Andy's sturdy shoulder and whimpering while, more savage than Zed, Andy kept whipping her on.
She slept till noon and awoke too tired to wonder whether she was really going to the gallows that night.
She was. Andy reported that Mrs. Boyle was in her room, abed and yelling for cognac.
Before Bethel was out of bed, Andy and Hugh Challis and Mabel and Charlotte and Harry Purvis and Iris--the last a delicate green of incredulous envy--were all jammed into the room, offering to help: 'Get out of here, all of you, and I'll order the child some coffee and start a little slave-driving again,' said Andy, affectionately.