For months Beverly Carlysle had remained a remote
and semi-mysterious figure. She had been in
some hearts and in many minds, but to most of them
she was a name only. She had been the motive
behind events she never heard of, the quiet center
in a tornado of emotions that circled about without
touching her.
On the whole she found her life, with the settling
down of the piece to a successful, run, one of prosperous
monotony. She had re-opened and was living in
the 56th Street house, keeping a simple establishment
of cook, butler and maid, and in the early fall she
added a town car and a driver. After that she
drove out every afternoon except on matinee days,
almost always alone, but sometimes with a young girl
from the company.
She was very lonely. The kaleidoscope that is
theatrical New York had altered since she left it.
Only one or two of her former friends remained, and
she found them uninteresting and narrow with the narrowness
of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten
that the theater was like an island, cut off from
the rest of the world, having its own politics, its
own society divided by caste, almost its own religion.
Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions
to dinners and week-ends; even into marriage, now and
then with an outlander. But almost always it
went back, eager for its home of dressing-room and
footlights, of stage entrances up dirty alleys, of
door-keepers and managers and parts and costumes.
Occasionally she had callers, men she had met or who
were brought to see her. She saw them over a
tea-table, judged them remorselessly, and eliminated
gradually all but one or two. She watched her
dignity and her reputation with the care of an ambitious
woman trying to live down the past, and she succeeded
measurably well. Now and then a critic spoke
of her as a second Maude Adams, and those notices she
kept and treasured.
But she was always uneasy. Never since the night
he had seen Judson Clark in the theater had they rung
up without her brother having carefully combed the
house with his eyes. She knew her limitations;
they would have to ring down if she ever saw him over
the footlights. And the season had brought its
incidents, to connect her with the past. One
night Gregory had come back and told her Jean Melis
was in the balcony.
The valet was older and heavier, but he had recognized
him.
“Did he see you?” was her first question.
“Yes. What about it? He never saw
me but once, and that was at night and out of doors.”
“Sometimes I think I can’t stand it, Fred.
The eternal suspense, the waiting for something to
happen.”
“If anything was going to happen it would have
happened months ago. Bassett has given it up.
And Jud’s dead. Even Wilkins knows that.”
She turned on him angrily.
“You haven’t a heart, have you?
You’re glad he’s dead.”
