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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
They tore out of the grounds, along roads of glass at a pace that left
both breathless. Nancy felt the sluggishness of the past few days
lashed out of her blood. It flew happily to her cheeks, tingled to her
finger tips, sent the laughter into her lips as the man beside her
gave the latest bits of Broadway gossip, the latest funny story from a
region teeming with them. She stored them up for Dick, picturing his
enjoyment when on his return next day she should give them with
all her embellishment of mimicry.
The first pungent scent of summer, clover and sweet grass and
occasional great mounds of hay, rose from the meadows as they
sped
320 past. The vault above was intensely turquoise and without a
cloud. It would be a heavenly night with a young silver moon etched
against the sky and all things filmed by its light. She wished Dick
were going to be home. They could have taken a tearing ride like
this with all the countryside to themselves.
The breezes became sultry. City smoke crept in. The car jerked over
cobbles, dodging barelegged youngsters and wedging at last into the
clatter of Queensboro Bridge. Nancy’s nose crinkled. She had come
to hate the city with its odors and noises and strained faces and
heavy air, all the elements which had passed unnoticed when she
was part of it and a struggler.
From the cluttered Eastside they went through the district whose
boarded doors and windows like the blank eyes of the blind
proclaimed it fashionable; then the dust-covered green of the Park
and out at the street in the Sixties where down the block three
windows blinked coquettishly.
Nancy descended, held out a hand. “Good luck, Ted. And let’s hear it
when you’ve got it ready.”
His alert gaze was bright with satisfaction. “You’ve set me on the
right track. You always do.”
She waved as he drove off, then rang the bell beside the big door. It
swung back slowly, heavily, and the head-groom stood in the
opening. She caught the look of surprise that swept over his face,
passing as quickly after the manner of well-trained servants who are
supposed to have no emotions.
“How is Lord Chesterfield?” she inquired, stepping out of the
sunlight.
“He’s
321 not been so fine to-day, madam. I think there’s pain in the left
forefoot.”
“I want to have a look at him.”
“Yes, madam.”
He closed the door, led the way to the run. But Nancy started toward
the stairs.
He turned. “Is there anything I can do for you, madam?”
“No, that’s all right, Jarvis. I’ll just leave my coat and come down.”
“I can take it.” He stepped forward hastily, with rather a note of
apology. “The painters are up there, madam. The rain of two days
ago made a leak in the roof and I had to have them in. The place is
in something of a mess.”
But Nancy was already halfway up the stairs. “It doesn’t matter.”
She disappeared, dropped her coat on the divan in the gray room,
and looked ceilingward. No sign of repairs there. Probably the leak
was at the front of the house.
Turning into the hall she noticed that Jarvis had followed her.
“Pardon me, madam—will you be coming down to see Lord
Chesterfield now?”
“Just a minute.”
She threw open the double oak doors at the end. And her breath
stopped as she did on the threshold.
A stream of sunshine flecked with motes came through the far
window and centered on the couch. Lounging there in a position of
uttermost
322 comfort was Dick and at his feet, hatless and cross-legged
like some willing slave of the harem, Lilla Grant. A look of flame was
in his non-committal eyes and in her heavy ones, languor. The ripe
red lips were raised. From her fingers a cigarette dangled as he
leaned close and struck a match. All too evident, though, that it was
not to light the cigarette those lips were lifted.
Nancy’s hand went to her throat. That was all. Went to her throat
and clung there.
The two started at the sound of another’s presence. The match
halted. Cunningham looked up. He straightened, sat for an instant
without moving, then got to his feet.
The provocation faded from Lilla’s lips. A moment before she had
had the unmistakable air of being perfectly at home. Now as she
followed the man’s sharp glance she stiffened. Uneasily she too rose
and, as neither of the others spoke, gave a nervous little laugh.
“Why, Nancy, this is a coincidence! We’ve been expecting Ted Thorne
for tea and only half an hour ago tried you on the phone to get you,
too.”
Nancy made no attempt to refute the glib lie. She simply stood
gazing at her husband as if her eyes were touching him. Then she
turned away.
“I think—I won’t wait,” she managed to say and went out, closing
the door.
At the other side she stopped, hands pressed tight to her lips, and
waited for courage to go forward.
Partway down the stairs she saw Jarvis looking up. Fright grayed his
face.
“I’ll
323 see Lord Chesterfield now,” she told him and followed to the run.
With gaze straining through the train window an hour later at
meadow and woodland she did not see, she was carried back to
Restawhile, to the babies waiting for her.
The moon rose, as she had pictured it, paling the trees outside her
room and the lawn beneath.
At last her door opened. Cunningham entered, closing it softly,
switched on the lights and saw her sitting hunched in a chair, with
eyes bewildered as if they could not realize the thing they had
revealed. He spoke her name—once, twice. She did not even glance
at him.
“Nancy, answer me!”
She turned slowly.
“I ask you not to jump at conclusions. Nancy—”
“Yes!”
“Why didn’t you wait?”
Her gaze locked with his incredulously. “You think I could have
waited?”
“I understand,” he put in hastily. “That’s why I made no attempt to
detain you. The situation was awkward.”
She laughed. It might have been a cry from the soul.
“Awkward, nothing more!” he hurried on. “I admit, it looked
damning. I, myself, would have judged as you did. But I give you my
word—”
She swept it aside.
“Jarvis tried to keep me from going up. That alone proves—”
“Jarvis is a servant, with the view point of his class.”
She
324 uttered the thought that had been spinning round in her brain.

“He would scarcely have tried to protect you if that had been her
first visit.”
“Why not? He concluded because a woman happened to be there
with me—alone—Bah,” he broke off, “that end of it’s not worth
considering! What you think is all that concerns me. And what you
think is only too evident.”
“What I think—what I think!” Her hands clasped and unclasped
incessantly. Her voice came strangled.
He had been pacing up and down. Now he pulled a chair close to
hers.
“But you’re wrong, dear. It’s circumstantial evidence and worth as
much. I came back to-day unexpectedly, looked in at the uptown
office before going home and found a message from Lilla, asking me
to see her this afternoon without fail. I called her hotel and arranged
to meet her at the stable. Jarvis had notified me that Lord
Chesterfield was seedy and it occurred to me that by having her
come there, I’d save time.”
“You—” the words came haltingly as if difficult to speak—“you didn’t
seem in haste when I saw you.”
“Come now—be sporting, dear.” He tried to make a laugh cut the
tension. “You know my interest in the theater.”
“Yes—I know.”
“Well, Lilla’s consulted me any number of times about one thing or
another. And she has a Bohemian way of establishing palship that
you don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.
325 I wouldn’t want you to. But the fact remains that Lilla on the
floor with a cigarette in her mouth means no more than another
woman at the tea table.”
She made no reply.
“Of course she lied when she said we were expecting Thorne,” he
pursued. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. He was out here to-day and motored me in. But I’d have
known anyway.”
“Can’t understand why it’s so much easier for women to lie than tell
the truth.”
“Perhaps men teach them it’s easier.”
There was a breath without words.
“For instance,” she went on monotonously and her eyes dropped to
the hands clenched against her knees, “you’re going to tell me I’ve
no right to misjudge either you or Lilla.”
“Why, my dearest,” Cunningham lifted her lowered face, looked long
into it. “There’s nothing mysterious in the whole affair. Kane offered
to star her in a new production if she’d get him the backing and she
wants me to put up the money. That’s the long and short of it. I had
every intention of consulting you.”
She drew away, looking at him straight and direct. Her lips opened
but closed without speech. She had been on the point of asking how
it happened that he had arrived in town a day ahead of time without
letting her know, why he had failed to telephone. But she could not
bring herself to question him. And he gave little time.
Lifting both her hands he unlocked them, drew them to his breast
and met her eyes unwavering.
“Lilla
326 and I are nothing more than good pals, like—like you and
Thorne. I want you to believe that.”
“It’s impossible, Dick—after what I saw to-day.”
“Why? Have you ever before had cause to doubt me?”
“No.” She hesitated a bit before admitting it.
“Then why seize on the first occasion?”
“Seize on it? Seize on it?” She gave another low breathless laugh.
“That—that’s funny! Seize on my own misery—seize on the
shattering of all I hold dear!”
“You’re nervous and hysterical now and things look monstrous. But I
know you too well to think this mood can last.” His hands crept
toward her shoulders. All through the interview there had been no
conflict on his part, no man-woman antagonism, just an assumption
of honest effort to convince her. And now he adroitly resorted to the
means by which he had won her, a man’s most convincing way of
setting himself right, the lover’s. He drew her, resisting, out of the
chair—enfolded her in his arms—bent his lips, whispered: “No other
woman could mean anything while I have you. Don’t you know
that?”
A moment passed, longer than any she had ever lived through.
Then, so low that he could scarcely hear: “I’m going to believe you,
Dick—because I want to believe you,” she said.
Neither of them referred to it again. As if by mutual agreement the
matter was sealed. Whatever scar the experience had left so far as
Nancy was concerned, her lips were closed as the lips of the dead.
When
327 eventually she heard through Thorne that along the Rialto it
was whispered Lilla actually was considering an offer from Kane, she
felt immensely relieved. Dick had told her the truth then about that
end of it. Why was the rest not true as well?
And as if to assure her, his devotion duplicated that of their
honeymoon. Her happiness seemed the thought paramount, her
peace of mind his topmost concern. It continued so until business
called him West, the tangle that for some time had been knotting his
California interests. The letters he sent, when they were not of her
and the children, spoke of his boredom after affairs of the day were
done with, of the humidity and discomfort of the rainy season and
emphasized his eagerness to return. They came from various coast
cities—San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles.
“It’s possible you may not hear from me the next few weeks,” a final
communication told her. “I find it necessary to go to New Mexico to
look into a railroad proposition. For a time I may be located miles
from any post office. But know that I’m safe and thinking of you, my
dearest, and expect me back sometime in September.”
Nancy packed when it arrived and left to visit the Bishops at
Newport. Stopping overnight in town, she ran into Coghlan on his
way to the Knickerbocker Grill, daily trysting place of managers.
“Say, what d’you think of Lilla?” He chortled in the midst of pouring
out plans for the coming season. “Gone to Hawaii to get atmosphere
before she signs up for that lead. Atmosphere! Can you beat it?
Paying
328 her own expenses, too. Told her she was crazy, but nothing
to it—had to go. Developing too much temperament for her own
good, that kid!”
Nancy had not yet brought herself to the point of hearing Lilla’s
name without wincing. But she managed a smile and asked: “When
does she return?”
“Next month sometime. Told her rehearsals begin the fifteenth
whether she’s on the job or not. So you can bank on it, she’ll be
here.” His appraising yet impersonal glance ran the length of Nancy’s
graceful figure, from the wide hat shading her eyes to the narrow
brown pumps and slim ankles. “All to the good, Nancy,” he sighed
regretfully, “all to the good! Just home and mother stuff too! And, by
golly, five years ago I guyed myself into thinking I’d turn you out the
greatest actress in America!”
She wondered vaguely as she sped toward the worldly paradise
whose gates had swung wide to her whether old Jerry was right.
Would she have become a great actress or just the darling of a few
fickle years? That girl with her wild dark eyes and swirl of golden
hair, would the public she had loved have wept and laughed with her
to-day? She wondered and smiled reminiscently, a smile with a tear,
like some bittersweet memory of the dead.
At the station she was met by her host, otherwise known as Mary
Bishop’s husband, and in a supremely groomed car was driven
through supremely groomed streets, ultra as the leaders who dwelt
there. Courty Bishop sat back beside her, caressed his waxed
mustache and regaled her with choice bits of news, just as Coghlan
had
329 regaled her the day before. After all, she told herself, there

wasn’t much difference in the two worlds. Appraisingly, but with a

look not quite so impersonal as that of her former manager, the
sophisticated eyes turned to scan her beauty while his facile tongue
rambled on.
“I say—you top ’em all, Nancy! What a risk that boy, Dick, takes—
leaving you alone so long!”
“Not so much of a risk,” she laughed, mentally placing her husband
next to the little man.
“But what the deuce takes him such a distance this time of year?”
“Oh, railroad stuff.”
“Bore—the tropics in midsummer!”
“Tropics?”
“Well,—that’s what I’d call the Hawaiian Islands. One of my men,
McIntyre, met him on the way out. Wrote that if Cunningham didn’t
kick at going, guessed he couldn’t. But why in hades—”
The woman beside him heard no more. Hawaii!! Like some giant
machinery against her ears, his words became a whirr. She smiled
mechanically, as so many women have done, while the world stood
still.
Fate had lifted the prompter’s hand and slowly the curtain
descended on Act II of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.
330 CHAPTER III—ACT III

T HE hum of arrival in that great hive, the Grand Central, kept up

an incessant drone. Scurrying figures swarmed like bees from
the gates to disappear into the night. Red caps raced back and forth,
elbowing one another in the rush for spoils. City husbands reached
out eagerly from roped-off lines to country wives and sunburned
youngsters. Embraces and laughter and inarticulate efforts to tell
everything in one moment kept the air abuzz. Life, centralized in one
small area of space, was at its busiest.
Into this hubbub from the Lake Shore Limited swung a man in tweed
suit, the porter at his side laden with the trappings of a long trip. His
big shoulders pushed through the throng into the lighted terminal
and he looked around. Rapidly his glance traveled from face to face,
then back along the congested line and once again its length. A look
of annoyance that brought brows together followed the swift
scrutiny and he made for the telephone booths. Impatiently he gave
the operator a number, concentrating his gaze on her while she
made the Long Island connection. When some three minutes later
he emerged from the booth, the look of annoyance had changed to
anger.
With characteristic stride of authority he moved across the crowded
stone floor, bounded up the steps and waited, peering at his watch
in the outer gloom as taxis unloaded their burdens and took on
others.
331 When his turn came he sprang in, gave the address of a
small select hotel off Fifth Avenue and all the way there sat staring
fixedly out at the lighted shops, his lips a thin, angry line.
The line had not disappeared as he stepped from the elevator to the
door of a suite and imperatively rang the bell. It was opened by a
girl in nursemaid’s cap who gave a start when she saw who it was.
He pushed past with the same look he had cast about the station.
Then he turned abruptly, sending at her a volley of rapid-fire
questions.
Madam was not there, she answered. Yes, the children were, but
Mrs. Cunningham had gone to dinner and the theater. No, she did
not believe any telegram had been received from him. Madam, she
was sure, had not expected him to-night. They had been in town
since the beginning of the week. No, Mrs. Cunningham had not gone
out with any one. To The Coghlan Theatre, she believed.
Her curious gaze followed him as he went down the hall to the
elevator. Then softly she shut the door.
At ten minutes to nine he strolled into The Coghlan Theater, the last
of a fashionably late audience.
The place was packed and he leaned leisurely against the rear
balustrade to wait for the curtain before trying to locate his wife.
Across the footlights palm trees swayed, recalling the land of secrets
he had left behind. Something about the sensuous atmosphere so
realistically reproduced made him turn away. Then his eyes took in
the woman who held the center of the stage. Her voice—low,
beautifully
332 modulated—rolled toward him. Her eyes, burning black,
turned in his direction. He gripped the rail, bent over it.
Nancy!! In spite of the dark wig and olive tinted skin, there was no
mistake! Nancy—on the stage of The Coghlan! The sudden sharp
crackle of a program broke the stillness.

NANCY BRADSHAW
in
“Broken Wings”
There it was—Nancy Bradshaw—staring at him from the sheet he
had not troubled to read.
Nancy! Mrs. Richard Cunningham!
He made the lobby like a bull gone mad. Generations of training,
years of the will to control, were as if they had never been. He was
the outraged male, bent on destroying the thing which had defied
him.
Outside he found Coghlan who, from the box-office, had glimpsed
him sauntering in and evidently anticipated precisely what had
happened.
Jerry’s good-natured face with its row of chins was hard as an iron
mask as he blocked Cunningham’s onrush.
“Hello, there,” he said genially, reaching out a hand.
Cunningham’s fists clenched white.
“I’ve got to see my wife.”
“Well, can’t see her from anywhere but in there until after the
performance. Nobody goes backstage—strict orders.” Then smiling
broadly, “Made a hell of a hit! You ought to be damn proud of her.”
“I’m going to see her now!”
Jerry
333 grinned serenely. “Don’t blame you. Should have been here
Monday for the opening—sensation, old man! Always said that in
five years she’d be the greatest actress in the country. And take it
from me—”
From within, a swelling volume of applause told the fall of the
curtain.
Cunningham made a lunge to pass the figure that blocked him.
“Careful, careful, old boy!” came firmly from the manager. “Hold
tight there! They’ll be coming out—take it easy.”
The other man’s face was set.
“I’ve told you—”
“And I tell you! This is my theater! Anybody who causes any
disturbance gets out!”
A prominent clubman sighted Cunningham at this juncture and
hurried across the lobby. From that moment Nancy’s husband was
forced to assume an easy pride calculated to disarm gossip, forced
to become the center of a throng bent upon congratulating him on
his wife’s success.
During the ten minutes of intermission he bore it with a smile
chiseled on his handsome face, then left the theater as the lights
went low. Back to the hotel he tramped, turned and retraced his
steps like some madman muttering to himself. Then up and down
the dark alley of the stage entrance, watching for signs that the final
curtain had fallen, unable to consider the sane and sensible
alternative of waiting for his wife in the privacy of her own rooms.
When
334 at last they stood face to face under the brilliant lights of her
dressing-room it was evident Coghlan had warned her.
She was alone. In the little room where they had met five years ago
they met once more. And to-night as that night a flame like a living
thing darted between them. Then it had been white and warming.
Now it filled the place, a devastating fury. But in the face of it she
stood calm.
It would have taken an observer less self-absorbed to note that her
hand trembled as it grasped a chair-back, that her breath came
quickly. In silence they measured each other. In silence she waited,
her eyes never leaving him.
At last he spoke and his voice was as hard as that of a judge
pronouncing extreme penalty.
“Well—have you anything to say for yourself?”
She shook her head and not defiance but sadness was in the look
she sent him. “Nothing I want to say.”
“You realize, of course, that I’m going to put a stop to this business
here and now.”
Again that look—half regret, half sorrow.
“You can no longer put a stop to anything I do.”
In his unreasoning wrath the actual import of her words missed him.
“I don’t care what contracts you’ve made—to-night finishes them.”
“Suppose we try to talk this over quietly”—she gave a slight gesture
of weariness as she sat down before her dressing-table—“if it must
be discussed.”
“Must
335 be discussed? Good God! I come back after three months,
ring my home, find that my wife has moved into town without a
word to me—”
“You forget—you had overlooked giving me your address.”
“And come up against the fact,” he rushed on, “that she’s taken
advantage of my absence to put over— What’s your explanation of
this damned outrage?” he broke off hotly.
Her eyes, tense and brilliant, held his. He gave a short laugh.
“I assume you and Coghlan have concocted one.”
“Coghlan has no idea of my reason for doing it. He merely knows
that in July I sent word to him that I would take this part if Lilla
Grant refused it. He didn’t wait to find out, though she cabled him a
week later saying Kane was going to star her.”
“And you thought I’d let you get away with it! After five years of
living with me you thought I’d stand for anything like this!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you stand for it or not.”
He had been pacing up and down, hands thrust into his pockets,
ready to plunge through the walls. Now suddenly he veered about,
stood rooted.
“I mean it.” Softly she answered his amazement. “I’m back on the
stage because I realize how little my leaving it meant to you.”
He went close to her then, threat in every line of his big frame.
“You’re my wife—the mother of my children.”
“Yes—that’s all.”
“All?”
“I336bore your name, I bore your children. I gave up the stage to do
both. And in giving it up, I sacrificed your love.”
Her back was turned but out of the shadows of her triple mirror
gazed a face white with pity of him, with suffering for the thing
which, through him, both had lost.
“Sacrificed my love?” he began as a man feels his way along paths
he is not sure of. “What in heaven’s name gave you that idea?”
“Please,” she stopped him with a swift gesture, “please—don’t speak
of it! I can’t bear it!”
“Look here, Nancy,” came somewhat more calmly, “this is nonsense
—silly woman stuff. I’m not saying you didn’t think you had some
rational excuse for doing this thing. But it’s out of the question. It
simply can’t continue. I made that clear when I married you.
Boredom or restlessness or the sort of unreasoning mood that gets
hold of women probably drove you to it.”
“You drove me to it,” she answered quietly.
“What’s got over you?” he came back sharply. “You talk like a mad
woman.”
“No—I’m quite sane. I see quite clearly—too clearly. I’ve had plenty
of time to go over it—to face the truth. I thought when I married
you that you loved the woman in me. Now I know it was the actress.
You loved me for the thing I gave up because I loved you—the
glamour of the stage. Popularity—the fact that I was conspicuous
made me desirable. You demanded that I sacrifice all that. And
when I did, I became the same to you as hundreds of women you’d
known, women you were tired of. You cut me off completely from
my
337 old life, except as a spectator—then sought in that old life the

thrill and interest I could no longer give you.”

She paused. Her hand went to her throat as it had that day in the
house of the fir trees.
“All these five years when I’ve longed for a glimpse of it—just a
glimpse—to become part of it again if only for a little while, I’ve felt
guilty, almost as if I’d been untrue to you. I’ve thrust the thought
aside as something unworthy. I’ve let you fill my life. Well,” she
paused, “now I’ve gone back to it. I’ve gone back to the thing that
made you love me. And I’ve gone—to stay.”
Defiance at last leaped at him. It tore from her, as they stood
measuring each other, like a panther from some rustling jungle. It
gripped his throat.
“Woman excuses!” he brought out at last. “Without rhyme or reason
to back them! Well, they won’t answer. I’m still waiting for a straight,
rational explanation. Suppose you let me have it—now.”
“All right, I will. I didn’t want to, but since you demand it you shall
have it. I’ve given you my reason, my motive. I’ve told you what
sent me back to the stage. But the thing that brought me to my
senses, that made me realize the truth, can be summed up in just
three words: Hawaii—Lilla Grant.”
She spoke as if merely voicing them were tearing open a wound
unhealed, spoke them so low that they came like a breath.
And hearing, he straightened, stood silent, too stunned to think of
an answer.
The
338 noise of slamming doors and scurrying feet beat instead against

the stillness, all the echoing movements that strike bare walls when
the play is done.
“It was rather funny—wasn’t it?—that I should have believed you
that first time,” she went on. “But I told myself what I had seen was
impossible; that if I had given up the thing that was life to me,
surely you wouldn’t go back to it for the fascination of grease-paint
and footlights. Surely you couldn’t seek in another woman the thing
you had denied me! That’s why I accepted your half truths—eagerly.
Because I wanted to—and one does so many foolish things when
one wants to. That’s why it was so much harder when I did find out.”
“Nancy—” he began.
“Please don’t try to explain this away!” came breathlessly. “It can’t
be set right. It’s done! And I’d like to go on being friends, because,
you see, I did love you.”
“Then—” he seized on the note in her voice.
“No! Never!”
They were just two words, low as a conscience whisper. But they
closed the gates of what had been with the grim certainty of fate.
His steel-colored eyes—habitually so sure of themselves—wavered.
His fists gripped against an enemy unknown. And only the woman
whose gaze locked with his knew that the enemy was himself.
He looked down at the blonde head round which the lights of the
theater glimmered once more; those lights he had torn away to
make her entirely his.
“You mean that?” he brought out at last.
“Yes.”
“Finally?”
339

“It can’t be otherwise—now.”

He turned swiftly on his heel and went the length of the room, then
back to where she stood. He pulled up sharp and his lips snapped
together.
“All right. But you leave one item out of the reckoning. As long as
you bear my name, you respect it! If you persist in this—I’ll divorce
you.”
“The name is yours. I am Nancy Bradshaw again.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only what I said. You can have it back any time you want. I won’t
make a move to stop you. You can have everything you’ve ever
given me—everything. The one thing I had a right to keep—you’ve
taken away. So what else matters?”
She walked slowly over to where her clothes hung behind a cretonne
curtain, took down a black hat and pulled it over her shining hair.
She stood there, shoulders drooping, head bent.
Outside the soft shuffle of the old watchman’s feet told he was going
the rounds. Good-nights had been tossed from one to another of the
departing company. That heavy quiet of night in a darkened theater
rolled backstage. The world of make-believe had vanished. Only the
shell remained.
Cunningham leaned a bit heavily against the door. For the first time
life had thwarted, left him impotent, and a new sensation, when
unpleasant, is difficult to handle.
The woman he had loved and desired, the woman who had stirred
him, who had been his, came toward him as to a stranger.
“I’m
340 afraid I must go,” she said.

He roused himself to a final stand.

“You realize,” came hoarsely, “that I’ll fight this—fight it to a finish?
You realize as well that the children will come to me?”
Pain for what had been and what might have been; memories, all
that had made these moments a requiem, vanished from her voice.
She went close to him. Like his own her body went taut, her hands
tense, her head high. Primitive even as himself, she met him, ready
for combat.
Suddenly something in her answering gaze, in the black of her eyes
that could flame up like two live things, made clear the writing on
the wall.
“I don’t think you’ll try to do that. I shan’t attempt to keep them
from you, of course. But they’re mine, you know,—and I haven’t
forfeited the right to them.”
Without another word, she stood waiting for him to step aside. He
hesitated, made as if to speak, then turned abruptly and the slam of
a door resounded like thunder.
One by one she turned off the lights. Out across the familiar boards
she went to the center of the stage, set for to-morrow. Face lifted to
the darkness, she stood where had come to her the struggle eternal
—success, conflict, love, renunciation. And to her lips came the
question woman will always ask, the question always unanswered:
“Why?”
And so the curtain descended on Act III of Nancy Bradshaw’s life
drama.
341 THE CURTAIN FALLS

The lights of the auditorium flame high. The audience rises. It has
stepped down from the footlights. It moves in undulating tide toward
the wide-flung doors.
Beyond those doors is night, the world of care. The brief hours of
living in a house of dreams is over. Forgetfulness gives place to
memory. The spirit of the theater lifts its magic touch from tired
eyes.
Backstage all is dark and wondering. Have we played our parts as an
audience and sensed its heartbeats? Have we smiled its smiles?
Teased its vanity? Gained its approval? We of this little play—have
we succeeded in our striving to make a critical throng throb to it?
Back of the swaying curtain, before which one of asbestos has
dropped heavily, all is wild hope, eager prayer, despairing question.
The house of dreams is empty, the soft-armed chairs shrouded as if
each held a pale ghost. Is it to be alight or dark? Do we live or die?
To-morrow holds the answer.
Transcriber’s Note
A small number of clear typographic errors have been corrected.
Consistent period spelling has been retained, as has inconsistent
hyphenation.
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