Time the comedian

Front matter

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Chapter I

It was one of Nora Dakon’s bad days. She sat by the disordered breakfast-table in a muslin dressing- jacket and petticoat, pressed her knuckles into her cheek, and wrote with her fork on the table-cloth over and over again, “ Bate’s Crossing.”

Hannah appeared in the doorway. She was hard-featured, strong as a dray-horse, with big-boned hands outspread on her hips.

“ The man is here for the meat order, m’m,” she said.

“ Oh, yes,” Mrs. Dakon drawled, and still scrawled “ Bate’s Crossing ” on the cloth; “ I don’t know what to get.”

“A fricassee of chicken with dumplings? Mr. Dakon likes that.”

“ That’s as good as anything.”

“ Shall I have the tomatoes stewed, or cut up raw? ”

“ Why — well — ” she said, without looking up, 4 4 just as you like.”

“ Stewed with bread-crusts? ”

44 Yes — yes — stewed, then, Hannah,” and she flung the fork from her nervously.

44 1 haven’t no saleratus.”

Nora closed her eyes and sprang up.

44 Get it, then. Get what you need — anything — anything. Don’t ask me again. I am going up to lie down.”

4 'Ain’t you well? You look like fever. It’s the spring. Shall I put a little lime-water in Miss Ruth’s milk for her dinner? I think she’s bilious.”

Mrs. Dakon rushed up-stairs. In her own room she pressed her fists to her temples.

44 Oh, it’s killing me! This place is killing 2

TIME , TH# COMEDIAN me! I’ll go mad — I know I will. I can’t — I can’t — I can’t ”

She broke into passionate sobbing and went to the window. The May day was lovely. Bird life stirred in the wistaria around the window. A lamb bleated from a neighbor’s pasture. The village street was sunk in sunshiny coma. Nora looked at these things and hated them all. She drew in the green blinds till the room was as cool and dim as a cave. Her hands shook as she took otf her clothes and slipped on a nightgown of tender-colored dimity, smelling of orris. When she had flung some branches of lilac on the bed, she followed them, burying her face in the blossoms, her hair making a pale-gold net over them.

In this manner she frequently salved her ailment, which was of the mind. Hour after hour she would lie in the shadow and quiet, hating her life, longing for what it lacked. The craving was a banal thing made up of small, unsatisfied appetites, and they tortured her now.

She was poor, and she required money as a flower requires water. She lived in Bate’s Crossing in a ten-roomed cottage on a prim street, and she longed for an apartment in New York, reached by a smart lift. She was beautiful, and carried her twenty-eight years as if they were eighteen, but her beauty was a possession as useless as her one bauble, a rare amethyst comb that had been her grandmother’s, and which she never wore. There was no achievement in being anything or having anything in Bate’s Crossing.

“ Eight years of it!” she said aloud, as she lay there, clutching the lilacs. “ Eight years of Bate’s Crossing! This is eighteen hundred and ninety, and, I dare say, the new century will find me groveling here.”

She thought of the first year of her marriage. It was to her life what a jewel would be in a peasant’s smock. It had been spent in Paris, London, and New York. Life had sung in victorious measures. For one year she had been the petted wife of a rich man; then 4 came failure, shock, blackness, and, at nineteen, she had found herself bound and beggared.

It was the common story of misplaced trust on the part of Anthony Dakon’s father in a man who had seemed good. The good man died. The Dakon investments were found to be a fiction, Anthony’s income having been regularly paid to keep up the fraud. The Dakon fortune had long been swallowed in speculation.

Months of struggle afterward in a New York boarding-house, where the towels were few and the stewed prunes many, was not a pleasant memory to Mrs. Dakon on this heavily scented spring day; but even that time had had its variety and sparkle. The shops had been a paradise where boredom was forgotten, even if she went only to price things or to send them home to be paid for, without meaning to keep them, and men had looked at her on the streets as only pretty women are looked at.

Anthony, at this time, hoped to rebuild his 5 fortunes by an invention to be used in chemicals, over which he had toiled and dreamed, but it had failed. When a good position had been offered him in a factory where muslins were colored and where his expert scientific knowledge was to help find those colors, he was glad to make his defeated way to Bate’s Crossing with his wife and baby.

Here Mrs. Dakon’s reflections ceased to pass progressively. She had arrived at a stone wall. She had come to Bate’s Crossing eight years before. She was there still. She was likely to die there. The thought was intolerable. She pushed away the lilacs and went to the open window, placing her hands above her head on the cool glass to ease their fever.

“ Some women would manage to escape from this. Some women would go — somewhere — at any cost. Why can’t I?” she thought with fury against herself ; “ I couldn’t leave Ruth, that’s it. And Tony — he does his best. It isn’t his fault. I suppose I couldn’t leave him, either. I suppose I couldn’t forget 6 his face. I suppose I’ll just stay on until I grow into a wrinkled frump — or else go crazy. Oh, I feel queer to-day! ”

The sound of regular footsteps on the brickpaved street attracted her and she leaned out. It was a village funeral, the coffin on a cart, the mourners following. Some creature had left Bate’s Crossing forever.

A ruminative look came into Mrs. Dakon’s eyes as the thought of death came nearer. Suppose Tony died before she did? Bate’s Crossing would be a necessity no longer. . . . There was his life insurance. . . . Suppose he died soon. . . . Poor Tony! . . . She would be a young and beautiful. widow. . . . She looked so well in black — fair women always did. . . . Some people thought the little white wristbands and collar a labeling of oneself as widowed ; how ridiculous ! . . . She would be certain to wear them. . . . Poor Tony! . . . She heard herself showering all the virtues on him in the past tense! . . . Poor dear, at times he looked very ill. . . • 7

Ruth and she would go away to New York and live simply on her small income; Ruth should wear all white, and they would go out together, hand in hand along Broadway, she in her crepe and violets and those darling little cuffs, and they’d go into crowded restaurants for luncheon, or walk in the park. . . . And sometime, somewhere, among the many men who told her by their glances she was lovely, there would be one or two paying her fascinating little attentions — flowers, bonbons, French novels. . . . She might go to Europe. . . . Poor Tony! . . .

“ Noddy? ”

At the whispered word she felt herself clutched and came out of her reverie. A girl of nine was gazing up at her with motherly inquisitiveness. She was covered by a Holland apron to the edge of her red skirt, a comb shaped like a half circle pushed her brown hair back from her forehead, which projected in a thoughtful curve over bright, greenishhazel eyes. As she smiled, a very deep, irregu- 8 lar dimple flickered in one cheek; her lips moved whimsically. It was an elfin face of beauty and mystery.

“ Noddy, ain’t you coming down to lunch? ” she asked.

Mrs. Dakon had taught Ruth to call her by this corruption of her Christian name. The sound of “ mother ” or “ mama ” was unpleasant to her.

“ You don’t mean, Ruth darling, that it’s noon? ” sighed Mrs. Dakon.

“ Yep. We got a half holiday because Deacon Allen is dead,” and her eyes sparkled.

“ Poor man! you mustn’t rejoice over his death, Ruth,” said Mrs. Dakon, in indifferent, remonstrance as she dressed.

“ But, Noddy, he was over sixty, and he useter comb his hair in a long, slinky scrap over his head,” Ruth explained volubly, “ for there wasn’t — a — single smitch — no, not — a — single — smitch — up — there ! And he useter grunt when he stood up, and shake if a door was slammed, and his eyes cried all — the — 9 time! And one tooth waggled whenever he spoke, like this,” said Ruth, pushing one of her own seed-pearls over her lip, and adding with a ministerial air, a perfect and unconscious imitation of the lank village clergyman : “ So, I guess it’s just as well he’s with his Father in Heaven. Don’t you, Noddy?”

Mrs. Dakon’s smile was checked by the sober, questioning face.

“ I suppose so, darling. Come along, and remember not to say ‘ ain’t ’ and ‘ yep ’ and ‘ guess.’ ”

With Ruth’s arrival Mrs. Dakon’s black mood passed and left her in a twilight regret, poetic and pointless. After luncheon she let the child brush her hair until the caressing fingers sent her to sleep.

When the regular breathing told Ruth that her task was ended, she put away the brush and looked at her mother with an unchildish thoughtfulness, her finger on her lip. She admired her more than any one she had ever seen. Angels, she knew, had just such golden 10 hair, so slippery to the touch, and just such deep gray eyes, with lashes around them like brown gauze, and just such little hands. Her mother was prettier than Allison Blount, the beauty of the school, and she didn’t seem a grown-up mother, either. In fact, Ruth felt an instinct of mature protection toward her mother, and this was shown now by her lifting a shawl and gently covering her with it before she stole away, with considerate eyes looking backward.

When Anthony Dakon came home at six o’clock the table was arranged with sprays of lilac, and Nora wore a low-necked lawn gown of the same color. She dressed for dinner only occasionally, too discontented, as a rule, to feel sufficient interest.

He kissed the delicately powdered cheek she lifted to him, and stood for a moment a little bewildered by fatigue before he dropped into the chair by which she stood. They suggested shadow and light. Instead of thirtysix, he looked more than forty. His black 2 11 hair was lustrous with silver; his patient eyes were those from which the inventor’s dream had vanished.

The man that never aspires has the belief to comfort him that he might, perhaps, if he would; but he that has striven to catch the bubble of any ambition and has fallen into space with empty hands, is forever in sackcloth before the inward presence that urged him on. This was the mark on Anthony Dakon. Loss of fortune had been nothing. The failure of his invention had been fatal. His confidence in himself was splintered beyond mending. He was a competent drudge, and would be one to the end.

He went to the door, but paused to look curiously at his wife.

“ What are you staring at? ” she asked.

“ You get prettier every day, Nora.”

“ That’s the first compliment in ages.”

“ That’s a bully gown.”

“Oh, it’s all the gown — not I!” she said impatiently.

When he had gone she sat there, swinging her feet, her vanity smarting. Were all marriages at the best like hers after eleven years? — the passion, the dream, the excitement of each new day all gone? Anthony’s tepid, unaccustomed praise had, for a second, aroused a radiant ghost of her life as it had been when he had swept her into marriage by his impelling, burning love.

“The difference!” she thought drearily; though, as she caught sight of her frowning face in a mirror, she carefully smoothed out the line between her brows.

She had not the understanding to realize that her husband’s love for her had passed into his blood and was part of himself, though he had lost the art of expressing it. He would have died for her; he supposed she knew this, and it seemed enough. But it never is enough. These silent husbands are fatal mistakes. A woman does not want to know that the sun, though overcast, is in the sky; she wants to feel its heat wrapping her life. There is usu- 13 ally an understudy preparing somewhere to play opposite parts to a pretty woman where the husband has failed to give intensity to his lines.

At dinner Nora ate almost nothing. She was silent except when she corrected Ruth for humming, and feeding the cat. There was nothing to talk about. She had been reading a novel that afternoon, its scenes laid in Monte Carlo. Would she ever see that place? Or ever drive again as she did during one delicious year down the Rue Royale to the boulevards? Or look from a London hansom at the delicious greenness of Bird-Cage Walk?

Anthony’s voice broke in upon her dreaming.

“ I’ve some pleasant news for you, Nora.”

She felt no expectation.

“ I did what might have been a foolish thing, but fortunately it has turned out all right. I had a letter, a month ago, from one of my old friends, a broker in New York, giving me some inside information about a speculation that could not fail. He did it out of pure 14

TIME , THtf COMEDIAN good-nature. Well, I don’t believe in risks, but, for a good reason, I ventured. I had put a part of my savings in a New York Central bond. This I put up as margin and bought a hundred shares of gas. It went up ten points, and I sold out almost at the highest figure.”

“ I don’t understand a word of this, Tony.”

“ It means I made a thousand dollars.”

“ Oh, that’s good.”

“ Seven hundred as savings will be practically as good as a thousand,” he said, with his brief smile. “ You shall have three hundred, Nora, and you and Ruth shall go to New York for a holiday.”

She grew very pale. A long sigh went through her. Her eyes became rapacious.

“ Do you mean it? ”

“You can go to Aunt Abby, you know, for part of the time.”

“A month,” she said, and her hand closed over Ruth’s.

“ May is lovely in New York. I only wish 15

I could go with you. I’ll write to Lawrence Brundage to take you about. Larry’s an awful swell, but the best-natured fellow in the world.”

“O Tony!” was all she could say, and seeing a look of expectancy on his face, she went to his chair and kissed him.

Her mind-picture of his death, which had been pleasantly sad, came back to her memory and touched her to a light remorse. As she ran her fingers through his hair, she murmured, “ I wish you could come, too.”

Chapter II

It was after eleven. Breakfast was ready for Lawrence Brundage. Jenkins, who was almost a second mind to him as well as hands and feet, had pushed the table close to the open window, and, under the fluttering awning, bits of morning life on Fifth Avenue flashed up in the May brilliance.

Brundage appeared, an early morning frown on his otherwise agreeable face. Like many chronic travelers, he adopted within doors whatever of foreign habits was most conducive to comfort. In winter he liked for lounging a wadded Japanese kimono of dark silk, and felt slippers with one-toed, woolen stockings. For this warm morning he had put on a white linen suit, thin and loose, the sort 17 he wore in the tropics, and his bare feet were in cane sandals. Clothes never dignified him. He gave character to whatever he wore.

His figure was like an English guardsman’s, strong and graceful. Except for his light gray eyes, heavy and with a puffiness under them which proclaimed him a reckless liver at a glance, he was as Spanish as one of Velasquez’s grandees. His expression was lazy. There was no expectancy in the face, but his smile was charming, and flashed over the weariness like a light.

Jenkins uncovered a dish of strawberries and placed them before him, at the same time speaking in his self-effacing semitones.

“ You didn’t say positively you’d go to Tuxedo with Mr. Wix, sir. Shall I pack? ”

“No. I forgot to mention that I’m not going.”

“ The deuce you say! ” cried Wix, who entered in riding clothes. “ Why not? ”

“ Breakfasted? ” asked Lawrence.

The other, perspiring and breathless, sprawled in a chair. He was a type that was at its best a century ago. He should have been a fox-hunting squire who lived in the pink and got drunk every night. His hair was as pale as new rope, and his short, thick nose verged on plum-color; in another five years his figure would have the outlines of a squat toby.

“ I’ve had a cocktail and coffee at Claremont — two things that keep their charm no matter how seedy I am. Why aren’t you going to Tuxedo? ”

“ If I said it was because I didn’t want to, Charlie, would you think that sufficient? ”

“ Oh, if there’s any mystery about it — ” came testily.

“ There’s no mystery — merely this : I got a letter last night from Tony Dakon.”

“ Isn’t he dead? Thought he went under, ages ago,” Wix said, in an injured tone, as he took a match from Jenkins.

“Well, he didn’t, poor old Tony. He 19 might as well, though — scratching for a living in a factory in Pennsylvania.”

“ Bet he’s struck you for a loan, for old affection’s sake! ”

Lawrence’s light eyes flashed; his lip gave a characteristic curl.

“We won’t discuss him. I forgot you didn’t know him very well.”

The color rushed into Wix’s face. His fortune, now on its last legs, was a new one, and had been made by his father in a certain toiletwater.

“ What do you mean by that? I knew him well enough to think he gave himself damned airs.”

“ Charlie, shut up! You get more choleric every day. Try dieting. Now let me finish about Tony Dakon, who was and is a thoroughbred, as fine a chap as God ever made, and with a run of the blackest luck following him.” The fatigue had gone from his face. It shone with sincere affection. “ This letter, which came last night, tells me his wife and 20 her little daughter have come to New York on a short visit. He asks me to give her as much attention as I can, to do what I can to make her enjoy herself. I can imagine the poor woman is worn out from life in that hideous town. I mean to give her a good time.”

Wix broke into a roar of laughter and kicked his legs.

“ Will you go up Fifth Avenue with them? By Jove! I’ll stay in the club window and see the show, you and the countrywoman and the kid! ”

He sprang up and gave a mincing exhibition of an over-attentive escort stooping to talk to a child and smiling with oily, exaggerated sweetness. This was followed by antics with a supposititious doll, the setting off of pinwheels and blowing of balloons. The whole thing was a bit of perfect rough comedy. Lawrence roared, and J enkins could not help a smile passing over his monk-like face.

People often wondered at Brundage’s friendship for Charlie Wix, why he chose to have him share his houses and go with him on his long yachting cruises. This was the secret. Wix amused him. His caustic, coarse tongue and perfect mimicry could make him laugh. He was a present-day survival of a king’s jester.

“ You make me eager for the experience,” said Lawrence. “ Our cry to-day is, ‘ Lord, give us something new ! ’ I’ll fly a balloon with Tony’s child, I swear.”

“ While the mother looks on with a reticule over her arm, dressed all in drab silk, fastened with a brooch made of mother’s hair!” said Wix.

“ I saw her at a distance ten years ago, in Paris. Jove! she was pretty then. Looked something like Ingres’s ‘ La Source.’ Just that big-eyed innocence and apple-blossom coloring!”

“ Well, after a ten-years’ dose of pie and hot bread for breakfast, of making over her 22 clothes and doing the dusting, I’ll bet she’s yellow, with thin hair turning gray, and says ‘ Yes? ’ to everything.”

“ I shouldn’t wonder,” said Lawrence.

Chapter III

Mrs. Dakon went to a boarding-house in Thirty-second Street, near Fifth Avenue. It had been recommended by a friend to whom she had written. For the first three days she spent the time in the shops, mostly of the small and expensive sort, where she bought soft silk and mull frocks already made, which shamed those of the seamstress at Bate’s Crossing. She also bought a big hat twined with pink roses for herself; a Leghorn flat for Ruth, under which her sparkling face was like a vivid flower ; a big box of bonbons from a famous shop, silk stockings, big-buckled slippers, a flowering plant, novels, and fashion magazines. She drove from place to place in hansoms, lunched with Ruth at Delmonico’s and the Brunswick, both of which had sweetest memories for her, and she thrilled with satis- 24 faction as she saw the appreciative and speculative expressions on the faces of men she passed. Life was just as satisfying as it had been ten years before.

When the first keen edge of delight in simply being one of the crowd was gone, she sent a line to Lawrence Brundage and nervously waited for his appearance at the appointed hour. She and Ruth were arrayed in their prettiest clothes. Her pale blue muslin gave her face a porcelain pallor, and her gray eyes were like bright agates. When four o’clock came her hands were icy. She kept glancing at the door, fluffed her hair at the mirror, haunted the window, and gave a nervous twitch when the servant came up with Lawrence Brundage’s card. As she went down the stairs with Ruth she felt helpless, awkward. This was the mark of Bate’s Crossing upon her — a timidity belonging to school-days. She tried to arrange in her mind what she should say to this “ awful swell,” as Tony had described him. While she was still perturbed, 25 she entered the parlor and found herself face to face with him.

He was leaning against the mantel directly opposite the door. But though he stood up straight quickly when she came in, he was too surprised to speak, and she saw the surprise. It gave her assurance, and she found herself murmuring at random the conventional nothings of greeting.

The visit lasted perhaps half an hour. During that time Lawrence took his eyes from Mrs. Dakon’s face only when he petted Ruth, with whom he became a favorite at once.

This was the type of man Nora Dakon adored — good-looking, young, distinguished, fashionable, wealthy. She loved lazy eyes like his that brightened in appreciation of her chatter. He was a man who lived in the real sense, who had experienced everything, to whom stupendous luxury was as usual as bread and butter to her. She felt this with him. The suggestion that he had used up most of the best in him in the furnace of past emotions 26 piqued her imagination, which was full-fed on French novels. To have such a man admire her was the greatest triumph she had known in her life, and it was evident that he was astonished to find her beautiful, that he enjoyed being with her and meant to see a great deal of her. He had come because of friendship for Tony, and now he was thinking only of her.

As she talked of her life and what the visit to New York meant to her, while Ruth nestled against his knees and played with his watchfob, she had a delightful, subconscious certainty of pleasant days in the future with him, perhaps of a friendship that would sponge the monotony from her life.

“ What are you doing to-night? ” he asked, making ready to leave — “ anything? ”

“ We’re dining with Tony’s aunt. She has a house near the park, and lives alone. Next week we go to stay with her a while.”

“ Breakfast with me to-morrow at Claremont, then.”

“ Delicious,” she murmured.

“ I’ll get a box for to-morrow night at the Academy of Music. A big show. I want to watch Ruth at her first ballet,” he said, putting his finger on her cheek where the dimple made a little well as she smiled up at him.

“ I knew a little girl,” he said, “ who used to pray for a dimple like this, but she never got it.”

“ I didn’t pray for it,” said Ruth solemnly. “ It didn’t come from Heaven. It’s only a dust-pan dimple.”

“ She means she fell down against the point of a dust-pan and it marked her cheek that wav,” Mrs. Dakon explained. “ She calls it her dust-pan dimple.”

“ Keep this fact to yourself,” said Lawrence, looking into Ruth’s serious eyes as gravely, “ or dust-pans will become fashionable and our beauties will try to fall against them at the proper angle. That big dimple is a nest for Cupid to move into and settle down, and he will, some day.”

After he left, Lawrence made ready for a long ride into Westchester. He reached the country club for dinner after eight. Wix had ridden up, too, and was sprawling in his usual fashion at a table, his third cocktail before him.

“Well, how’s the balloon business?” he asked, when Lawrence joined him.

“ Wait,” was the answer given with a mysterious nod and smiling eyes. “ Wait till you see Tony Dakon’s wife. You’ll be knocked down.”

“ From that smirk I take it that she’s pretty.”

“ The loveliest little woman imaginable. Her eyes ”

Wix waved his hand.

“ Xo more. I can fill out the picture, nose, mouth, hair, etc. Worth knowing?”

“ Rather. At least I mean to know her. You wouldn’t like her. She’s a simple, honest little creature ”

“ I’m fond of the simple, honest brand. A 29 woman needn’t have a past in order to interest me.”

“ Your first instinct would be to help her manufacture one.”

“ Like your impudence! ” said Wix, staring. “ Since when did you go out of the business? ”

“I’ve retired definitely,” said Lawrence, and began to order dinner.

During three weeks following, Lawrence spent little time with Charlie Wix. A week’s fishing in Canada had been given up, and there was every prospect of Lawrence’s remaining in New York into June. Wix felt a personal resentment against Mrs. Dakon. Lawrence had become her shadow, but did not seem disposed to admit him to a close acquaintanceship with the country beauty. He had seen her driving with Lawrence, and one night he had dined with them at Claremont. It was annoying that she should have come to town just when it was getting hot, and smash all the plans made weeks before. Then, too, the devotion seemed likely to last. He had not seen 30

Lawrence so interested in a woman in years. If he fell in love, really in love, what a muff he would become! There would be no fun with him. He would not go yachting or fishing; he might even go up and rusticate at Bate’s Crossing.

“Wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Wix thought as he made ready for dinner one night. “ He’s the kind of man a woman as pretty as she is could bowl clean over, and he wouldn’t know it till he whacked his head. Why can’t he be like me? There isn’t enough feminine loveliness in the world to compare with a good canvasback and a quart of warm Burgundy.”

Lawrence came in at this moment, and Wix faced him with a pout.

“ Going to dine with me? ”

“ You’re to have that honor.”

“ Why, what’s the matter with the Bate’s Crossing Venus? Has she a toothache? ”

“ I’ve been a truant, Charlie, I admit,” said Lawrence, with a thoughtful self-conscious- 31 ness in his laugh, and he strolled into his bedroom to dress.

Wix followed him, and made himself comfortable in an East Indian chair.

“ It’s up to me to give you a few words of counsel. You’re making an awful ass of yourself, Larry. It can’t be you’re seriously ‘ gone ’ on this Mrs. Dakon.”