“Frightfully. And blue.... Can’t you make dad try ‘Todgers’ in New York, Gurdy?” Directly and with a sharp motion she added, “No. That’s utterly silly. I’ve no business asking it.... But I do feel—And yet I don’t know the New York taste—You really think it wouldn’t do?”
“I really don’t, Margot. And you can’t get a theatre for love, blood or money. They’re even trying to buy theatres to bring plays into. Mark would have to run the play on the road for weeks—months, perhaps, before he could get a theatre.”
She dropped the matter, spoke of the dance again and at the hotel hurried up the corridor to her rooms. Mark sat up as Gurdy slid into the other bed of his chamber and passed a hand across his throat, “Oh, son, what an evening! ‘Todgers’ to the boneyard! Crape on the door!”
“Fizzled? People were knocking it at the Jannan’s.”
“Awful! Every one coughed. I will say Rand worked hard. No, it’s dead. I’ll let it run tomorrow night and then close it.—Stick with me tomorrow. I’ll have to break the bad news to Rand.”
He broke the news to Rand just as Gurdy was leaving to take the train for Trenton, after lunch. The actor strolled up to them beside the door, a grey furred coat over his arm and his bronze eyes patently anxious.
“Going away, Bernamer?”
“The country.”
“Decent day for it.... I say, Walling, they weren’t nice to us in the papers.”
Gurdy saw Mark begin to act. The voice deepened to its kindest drawl. Mark said, “Just called up the theatre. Only sold two hundred seats for tonight and its almost three, now. That’s too bad.”