Mark groaned. He had a compact with Mrs. Bernamer that the borrowed boy shouldn’t enter a theatre until he was twelve. He was tall enough for twelve but he was only nine. He stayed in the doorway, studying the red walls of the room, his white socks far apart and his hands thrust into the pockets of his short, loose breeches. The callers stared at the tough legs brown from summer on the farm. The boy’s one patent beauty, his soft, pale hair, was hidden by his English sailor cap and his white blouse was spotted with ink stains. But the men grinned and chuckled, admiringly. Gurdy made no sound when Carlson set him on the top of the bookcase but gazed contemptuously at the crowding men and let himself be petted.
“When d’you inaugurate, Mark?”
“Eight fifteen, when you’ll be in bed, sonny.”
Gurdy drawled, “I don’t get to bed till quarter of nine and you ought to know that by this time.” He frowned, partly closing his dark blue eyes, as the men laughed. “What are all those flowers for?”
A man in a corner lifted his white face from a book and whispered, “Those are gifts the Greeks brought.” This caused stillness, then unpleasing chuckles. Gurdy climbed down from the bookcase and went to talk to Mr. Fitch. They talked of French lessons and the vagaries of governesses. The other callers complimented Mark on the boy’s good looks. The flattery was soothing after the strain of the last rehearsal. Mark knew it for flattery. Gurdy’s face was too long, his sober mouth too wide and his jaw prematurely square. But the compliments were the due of a successful actor turned manager. He sat for a little watching Mr. Fitch lazily chat with the boy as though he were a grown man. On the playwright’s warning he had lately published a careful interview announcing Gurdy and Margot as adopted children and his relationship to them. But people still probably reported Gurdy an illegitimate son and Margot his daughter by Cora Boyle. Mark sighed and took Gurdy down through the flowers to see the cream and gold play house where men were squirting perfume from syringes along the red aisles, killing the smell of paint. He let Gurdy have a syringe and went into the vestibule. The redhaired clerk listing the gifts of other managers handed him the card wet from its journey in a ball of pink roses.
“Mrs. Cosmo Rand.... Who the devil’s Mrs. Cosmo Rand, Billy?”
The clerk scratched his ear and grinned. “You’d ought to know, sir.”
“But I don’t. Cosmo Rand? Heard of him. Loeffler’s got him in something. Who’s she?”
“Miss Cora Boyle,” said the clerk and strolled off to insult a messenger bringing in more flowers.
Mark had a curious, disheartening shock. He didn’t bow to Cora Boyle on the street. What right had she to send him flowers? It must be a passing rudeness. She might remember that he disliked pink roses. Mark rested on the ledge of the box office, brooding. But she might mean to be pleasant. Her manager, Loeffler, was on bad terms with Carlson. This might be a dictated, indirect peace offering. Mark patted the florid carved stone of the ledge and thought. Cora’s new play wasn’t a success. The reviews had been tart. She might be tired of Loeffler. Mark was perplexed but the hunt for motives always wearied him. A scarlet petticoat went by outside the vestibule and led off his mind. He bade his treasurer telephone for the motor and stood joking with the man through the box office window until a flat stop in the noise behind him made Mark turn his head. The florists and clerks were motionless, regarding the street. A coupé had stopped. A footman was helping a woman and a tumult of varied flowers to the sidewalk. She came toward the doors gallantly, her face quite hidden in the enormous bouquet but the treasurer said, “By gee, I’d know her in hell, by her walk,” and chuckled. She tripped on the sill and screamed gaily to Mark, “Au s’ cours!”