He relieved Gurdy close to the Rand table. When the boy joined Olive she asked, “Mr. Russell isn’t a typical stage director, is he?... I thought not. One of the new school in your theatre? A well educated man?... Rather entertaining.”
“He writes a little. Been an engineer. Stage directors are weird. One of them used to be an Egyptologist.—I say, help me keep Mark here the rest of the week, will you? He’s dead tired. Did he run when he saw Cora Boyle coming?”
“Yes. He seems positively afraid of her!”
Gurdy said, “He is afraid of her. Great Scott, he was only sixteen when he married her and dad says he was—pretty blooming innocent. Mark’s all full of moral conventions, Lady Ilden. Ever noticed that?”
“When you were in pinafores, my child! I always thought he’d shed some of his Puritan fancies. He doesn’t.”
“Grandfather’s awfully strict, even if he is an atheist. And mother ... isn’t what you’d call reckless. They brought him up. And he still thinks their ... well, moral standards are just about right.—I’m the same way. Got it pounded into me at school that bad grammar and loud clothes were immoral. Don’t suppose I’ll get over that.—Mark says he’s never flirted with a married woman in his life.”
Olive yawned, “I don’t suppose that he has, consciously. Oh, to be sure, I can understand why Mark would think of Miss Boyle as the Scarlet Woman. The Puritan upbringing.—We never quite get over early influences, Gurdy. I always find myself bristling a bit over dropped H’s even when a famous novelist does the dropping.—Mark prophesies bad reviews for the play, in the morning. Do leave word to have the papers sent up to me. I’m so sleepy I shall forget about it.—Thank heaven, Margot’s stopped dancing.”
In their double bedroom at the New Willard Margot talked jauntily of “Todgers Intrudes,” until Olive fell asleep wondering why the girl should interpret amiable laughter as the shout of success. In the morning two newspapers arrived with breakfast. The critics praised the acting and both sniffed at the play. Olive read the columns over her tea. Both critics dealt kindly with Rand. One thought his manner resembled that of Cyril Maude, the other said that he imitated George Arliss. Margot came trailing a green robe from the bathtub and stood pressed against the brass bedfoot reading the comments. The sun redoubled on her silver girdle and the numerous polychrome tassels of the foolish, charming drapery inside which her body stirred before she cried, “How American! Thin! It’s no thinner than that rot dad has running at the Forty Fifth Street!”
“My darling Margot, that’s thin American comedy. It’s something national, comprehensible. As for ‘Todgers,’ why—why should you expect a pack of American war office clerks and provincials to care whether a Baron precedes an Earl or no? I can’t help being surprised that so many of them seemed to know what it was all about! The play is thin—horribly thin. I’m sure it did well at home on account of Maurice Ealy’s following. The critics say rather nice things about Rand, all things considered.... Well, were you impressed with him last night? Do you still think he’s a fine actor?”
Margot tilted her face toward the ceiling and the sun made a visard across her narrowed eyes. She twisted the silver girdle between her hands and stood silent. Olive felt the final barrier between creatures, suddenly and keenly. She had lived in intimacy with the girl for five years. Here was a strange mind revolving under the black, carven hair and the mask of sun.