IX
“Everything passes,” runs the old saying, and the contrary is also true. Nothing passes.
If you had looked at that stalwart and serious gentleman in the box, correct, evidently prosperous, with his honest and rather blank gaze, you would certainly have imagined him to be one of those fortunate creatures without a history, a soul without a scar. He was there with an agreeable, well-bred wife and a pretty young daughter, and he was apparently enjoying the play with a temperate and sedate enjoyment—interested, but not very much interested, you know.
And yet he is none other than the black sheep of twenty years ago, the disgraced and abandoned Tommy. Moreover, the actress whom he is watching with so tepid an air is Esther herself, and he is very cunningly concealing a great confusion of feelings.
He had casually suggested going to see her act that evening, as he had done four or five times before, since he had by chance discovered that Esther and the celebrated Elinor Vaughn were one and the same person. He had no knowledge of the means by which she had risen, but he was by no means surprised to find her at the top. Why shouldn’t she be? Indeed, how could she not be? She was certainly born for victory.
Each time that he watched her magnificent outbursts of dramatic passion, her rages and her griefs, he felt a secret and delightful joy. Only imagine what he had escaped! Only think what such a woman, capable of moving the most cynical heart, could have done with him! He looked cautiously at the people about him, saw them stirred to horror, grief, or delight, and he felt himself superior to them all. They didn’t know that it was only Esther Van Brink!
He watched her to-night, at the end of her famous second act, winning by heartbreaking entreaties the mercy of a vindictive and obdurate husband. Never could he have withstood her. He would have been lost!
The curtain fell, rose again, fell, and she came out to stand for a moment before the footlights, bowing, smiling a little wearily; and then she saw him.
He drew back hastily, but it was too late. When she came before the curtain again, she looked at him and smiled. Before the third act began, a boy came to the box with a note:
Please, Tommy, come behind and see me for a moment.
Esther.
“It seems she’s some one I used to know,” he explained to his wife. She raised her eyebrows and smiled politely, but he knew she wasn’t satisfied. “I suppose I’ll have to go,” he said.
“Oh, by all means!” replied his wife. “Alice and I won’t wait.”
He was uneasy and annoyed. That was just like Esther—no consideration!
He found her in her dressing room, with a crowd of people, but she sent them all away.
“He’s an awfully old friend,” she explained, “and very shy. I’ll never be able to catch him again.”
The little country girl had certainly become a handsome woman, he reflected, and she had lost none of her impudent charm, her mocking tranquillity.
“Well, Tommy!” she said.[Pg 40]
“Well!” he answered, and he had exactly his old air of a boy acting the man of the world.
“My, you’ve got on!” she said admiringly. “You’re really splendid, Tommy! Are you a millionaire?”
“No,” he answered, flushing, well aware that she was laughing at him. “I’m in business.”
“How did you do that?”
Naturally he didn’t care to talk about his heroic effort to rehabilitate himself—how he had actually found himself a job, and won his alarming uncle’s forgiveness for his one wickedness by patient industry and some years of complete self-effacement.
“And you’re married, if my eyes do not betray me.”
“Yes, I’m married,” he answered stiffly.
He wasn’t going to permit any Esther on earth to make light of that respectable and very happy union.
“Oh, Tommy!” she sighed. “I’m glad! I’m glad it’s all turned out so well for you—and for me, too. I don’t believe I would ever have become the actress I am if it hadn’t been for all I suffered through your desertion.”
“What?” he cried, astounded. “My desertion?”
And there were actually tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “You nearly broke my heart, but it made me.”
He could scarcely believe his ears.
“But—but—” he stammered, with a feeble effort to remind her of her own treachery.
“I only wanted to see you and tell you that I forgave you long ago, Tommy—forgave you frankly and freely. I owe my success to that suffering.”
She held out her hand. He grasped it, and hurriedly took his leave. She forgave him! She forgave him his desertion, which had nearly broken her heart!
He stopped in the street outside the theater, ready to denounce her to the silent sky; but in spite of himself began to smile, with reluctance, with an immense and grudging admiration.
“Upon my word!” he said aloud. “What a woman![Pg 41]”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
NOVEMBER. 1922
Vol. LXXVII NUMBER 2
Like a Leopard
HOW JOHNNY BRECKENBRIDGE RECEIVED A NEW LIGHT ON THE NATURE OF A GOOD WIFE
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
IT was a frightful night. Brecky turned up the collar of his overcoat, pulled his cap lower over his eyes, and left the shelter of the railway station for the open road. He heard the train that had brought him from the city pull out again and rush whistling through the fields and marshes. When it had gone, everything human had vanished, leaving him alone with the great and terrible wind and the cold rain.
He made what haste he could along the muddy road, his head down against the gale. The driving rain half blinded him, the tumult confused him, with the unceasing rush of the wind and the dull sound of the sea. His way lay through immeasurable desolation, past house after house empty and black, shops all closed and shuttered, streets in which there was not one human creature. It was a sort of Pompeii, a deserted village, a nightmare; but to the practical Brecky it was nothing more or less than Shorehaven, a summer resort, naturally deserted in midwinter.
He was not a man of imagination, this Johnny Breckenbridge. He was a wiry young chap with an impassive, weather-beaten face. He dressed very soberly, but he had an incorrigibly sporting air, and there was something rakish and jaunty about him. He was nimble, alert, and just a trifle bow-legged. He was never tired, never discouraged. He had all his wits about him, and knew his way in the world.
He had been, one might say, born a jockey, and he had been a good one, too, for years; but he had grown tired of the restrictions of a jockey’s life. He was fond of eating and drinking, and he liked to be his own master.
He had continued his activities on the race track in a less official capacity. He had done well as a bookie, too, for he was shrewd, cautious, and trustworthy; but he had suddenly fallen in love and married.
“And that’s no life for a married man,” he observed to his many friends. “Got to settle down now.”
Brecky was thorough in everything, and he wished to be a thoroughly married man. He took his new obligations with great seriousness. He intended to do well for his jolly little Kathleen. He knew that his duty in life was to make money for her.
He never thought of consulting her, however. She had been a waitress in a little restaurant in the city, and he had admired her brisk good humor and her common sense. She was a pretty kid, too—dark, small, vigorous. She had received a great deal of attention, but she was never silly or vain about it. She knew how to take care of herself. She liked a good time, but no monkey business. She was mighty independent, Kathleen was.
To Brecky’s uncomplex mind, the wedding ring was to transform her completely. She was to be no longer Kathleen, but a wife; and to him all good wives were alike. They were kind, gentle, contented, and very helpful. You made money gladly for them; but if you were a real man, you didn’t let them spend much of it.
He had looked about the world thoughtfully for a few months. Then he had taken nearly every penny he had saved and had bought a hotel at the seaside, with a heavy mortgage on it. To this place he had brought his Kathleen, that she might help and comfort him while he mastered his new business.
Extraordinary friends of his used to come down and give him advice. He listened and learned. He knew a number of men connected with hotels, night clerks, head waiters, and so on; and they were[Pg 43] willing and anxious to help him, because every one liked him.
He had no iconoclastic ideas. He wished to run his hotel according to all the tried and tested rules of the business. He wore out his advisers. Those who came down to look over Brecky’s hotel went away exhausted and squeezed dry, leaving whatever valuable knowledge they owned in Brecky’s possession.
In midwinter, when the place lay like a frozen village on the shore of an inhuman sea, lights used to shine from the windows of Brecky’s immense hotel, and to flit from one floor to another. That meant Brecky and some consulting friend, muffled in sweaters and overcoats, inspecting the rows and rows of bedrooms, discussing the wall paper, the flimsy furniture, debating with breath that congealed in the frigid air, whether this or that room was going to be cool enough, shady enough, airy enough.
But however the lights might flit about the building in those winter nights, there was one that remained steady and constant as the beam from a lighthouse. It came from the kitchen window. It sprang up every evening when dusk began to close in, and it always burned until nine o’clock or so. Brecky saw it now, as he turned the corner and struggled down the street at the end of which his hotel stood.
This was the hardest stretch, in the teeth of the terrific wind blowing inshore. It was like leaving the world and plunging into chaos. He went at it, head down, his eyes fixed upon the cheerful light, an agreeable hunger rising within him. That light meant Kathleen and the excellent dinner she was sure to have ready for him.