Olive laughed, repeated the prophecy in a dozen turning phrases and drove with Gurdy to the station after dinner. But she was oppressed. She could imagine Mark’s bewilderment clearly. He found Rand a somewhat comic person, a frail young poser towed after the robust beauty of his wife, perhaps bullied. The car brought Olive back to the white portico of the cottage and she found Margot distracting a middle aged sugar broker. It was time for bed when the addled man’s car puffed away. Margot yawned and mounted the brown stairs in a flutter of marigold skirts. The living-room fell still. Olive settled at a table and commenced a letter to Ilden. “I shall not start for Japan for some time. Margot is behaving rather queerly. Having fancied that I could follow the eccentric curves of her mind I am much annoyed to find that I can not. This cottage will be closed next week. Heaven knows what will become of the furniture unless Mark should use it in a play. I have a curiosity to see the opening of his new theatre. He is working frantically over the play for its opening. Gurdy Bernamer tells me that a New York first night is like nothing else on earth for bounderishness. He says that awful and obscene creatures come creeping from nowhere and flap about in free seats and that all the cinema queens appear covered with rubies. It—”
The telephone on the table clicked but did not ring. Olive glared at the instrument. She abominated the telephone since it had brought her news of her son’s death. She finished her letter and climbed the stairs, aching for bed after a nervous day. Then she heard Margot talking behind the closed door of her room. The girl hadn’t a maid. Olive’s own maid was visible in her chamber at the end of the corridor. Olive passed on. She came back on impulse and heard “All right, Cossy. Carry on. ’By—ee.” Then the small clatter of Margot’s bedside telephone set on the glass of a table. Olive opened the door and saw the girl subsiding into the mass of her pillows.
“I’ve just blown Cosmo Rand up properly, Olive.”
“I wondered why you were talking.”
Margot yawned, “Gurdy asked me to write him. I’d rather talk. His dear wife’s back from California and his voice sounded as though they’d been throwing supper dishes at each other. He didn’t seem pleased.”
“My dear, I don’t see why Mr. Rand should be pleased to be lectured on his art over the telephone at midnight!”
“It’s rather cheeky, isn’t it? But Gurdy made such a point of it. And all I could say was that he mustn’t be too difficult at rehearsals. But that’s all I could have said in a note. It seems to me that it’s distinctly dad’s business. But Gurdy’s such an everlasting old woman about dad! And I am rather responsible for bringing ‘Todgers’ over. Dare say I ought to help out, if I can.”
Olive slung a dart carelessly, asking, “What’s Rand’s real name, dear?”
“Rand.”
“I meant the Cosmo. That’s not an American name at all.”