There was no outward indication that Bill was on the down grade; a hit at the New Strand, a hit at the Prince of Wales, and the weekly grosses pouring in almost as well as they had two or three years before in New York. Certainly a man of action was justified in changing his base. And the man who, an hour later, turned into his Hyde Park house for dinner had all the vitality of the late twenties. Emmy, very tired and clumsy, lay on a couch in the upstairs sitting room. He held her for a moment in his arms.
“Almost over now,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s true. You’re always beautiful. I don’t know why. Perhaps because you’ve got character, and that’s always in your face, even when you’re like this.”
She was pleased; she ran her hand through his hair.
“Character is the greatest thing in the world,” he declared, “and you’ve got more than anybody I know.”
“Did you see Brancusi?”
“I did, the little louse! I decided not to bring him home to dinner.”
“What was the matter?”
“Oh, just snooty—talking about my row with Aronstael, as if it was my fault.”
She hesitated, closed her mouth tight, and then said quietly, “You got into that fight with Aronstael because you were drinking.”
He rose impatiently.
“Are you going to start—”
“No, Bill, but you’re drinking too much now. You know you are.”
Aware that she was right, he evaded the matter and they went in to dinner. On the glow of a bottle of claret he decided he would go on the wagon tomorrow till after the baby was born.
“I always stop when I want, don’t I? I always do what I say. You never saw me quit yet.”
“Never yet.”
They had coffee together, and afterward he got up.
“Come back early,” said Emmy.
“Oh, sure… What’s the matter, baby?”
“I’m just crying. Don’t mind me. Oh, go on; don’t just stand there like a big idiot.”
“But I’m worried, naturally. I don’t like to see you cry.”
“Oh, I don’t know where you go in the evenings; I don’t know who you’re with. And that Lady Sybil Combrinck who kept phoning. It’s all right, I suppose, but I wake up in the night and I feel so alone, Bill. Because we’ve always been together, haven’t we, until recently?”
“But we’re together still… What’s happened to you, Emmy?”
“I know—I’m just crazy. We’d never let each other down, would we? We never have—”
“Of course not.”
“Come back early, or when you can.”
He looked in for a minute at the Prince of Wales Theatre; then he went into the hotel next door and called a number.
“I’d like to speak to her Ladyship. Mr. McChesney calling.”
It was some time before Lady Sybil answered:
“This is rather a surprise. It’s been several weeks since I’ve been lucky enough to hear from you.”
Her voice was flip as a whip and cold as automatic refrigeration, in the mode grown familiar since British ladies took to piecing themselves together out of literature. It had fascinated Bill for a while, but just for a while. He had kept his head.
“I haven’t had a minute,” he explained easily. “You’re not sore, are you?”
“I should scarcely say ‘sore.’”
“I was afraid you might be; you didn’t send me an invitation to your party tonight. My idea was that after we talked it all over we agreed—”
“You talked a great deal,” she said; “possibly a little too much.”
Suddenly, to Bill’s astonishment, she hung up.
“Going British on me,” he thought. “A little skit entitled The Daughter of a Thousand Earls.”
The snub roused him, the indifference revived his waning interest. Usually women forgave his changes of heart because of his obvious devotion to Emmy, and he was remembered by various ladies with a not unpleasant sigh. But he had detected no such sigh upon the phone.
“I’d like to clear up this mess,” he thought. Had he been wearing evening clothes, he might have dropped in at the dance and talked it over with her, still he didn’t want to go home. Upon consideration it seemed important that the misunderstanding should be fixed up at once, and presently he began to entertain the idea of going as he was; Americans were excused unconventionalities of dress. In any case, it was not nearly time, and, in the company of several highballs, he considered the matter for an hour.
At midnight he walked up the steps of her Mayfair house. The coat-room attendants scrutinized his tweeds disapprovingly and a footman peered in vain for his name on the list of guests. Fortunately his friend Sir Humphrey Dunn arrived at the same time and convinced the footman it must be a mistake.
Inside, Bill immediately looked about for his hostess.
She was a very tall young woman, half American and all the more intensely English. In a sense, she had discovered Bill McChesney, vouched for his savage charms; his retirement was one of her most humiliating experiences since she had begun being bad.
She stood with her husband at the head of the receiving line—Bill had never seen them together before. He decided to choose a less formal moment for presenting himself.
As the receiving went on interminably, he became increasingly uncomfortable. He saw a few people he knew, but not many, and he was conscious that his clothes were attracting a certain attention; he was aware also that Lady Sybil saw him and could have relieved his embarrassment with a wave of her hand, but she made no sign. He was sorry he had come, but to withdraw now would be absurd, and going to a buffet table, he took a glass of champagne.
When he turned around she was alone at last, and he was about to approach her when the butler spoke to him:
“Pardon me, sir. Have you a card?”
“I’m a friend of Lady Sybil’s,” said Bill impatiently. He turned away, but the butler followed.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’ll have to ask you to step aside with me and straighten this up.”
“There’s no need. I’m just about to speak to Lady Sybil now.”
“My orders are different, sir,” said the butler firmly.
Then, before Bill realized what was happening, his arms were pressed quietly to his sides and he was propelled into a little anteroom back of the buffet.
There he faced a man in a pince-nez in whom he recognized the Combrincks’ private secretary.
The secretary nodded to the butler, saying, “This is the man”; whereupon Bill was released.
“Mr. McChesney,” said the secretary, “you have seen fit to force your way here without a card, and His Lordship requests that you leave his house at once. Will you kindly give me the check for your coat?”
Then Bill understood, and the single word that he found applicable to Lady Sybil sprang to his lips; whereupon the secretary gave a sign to two footmen, and in a furious struggle Bill was carried through a pantry where busy bus boys stared at the scene, down a long hall, and pushed out a door into the night. The door closed; a moment later it was opened again to let his coat billow forth and his cane clatter down the steps.
As he stood there, overwhelmed, stricken aghast, a taxicab stopped beside him and the driver called:
“Feeling ill, gov’nor?”
“What?”
“I know where you can get a good pick-me-up, gov’nor. Never too late.”
The door of the taxi opened on a nightmare. There was a cabaret that broke the closing hours; there was being with strangers he had picked up somewhere; then there were arguments, and trying to cash a check, and suddenly proclaiming over and over that he was William McChesney, the producer, and convincing no one of the fact, not even himself. It seemed important to see Lady Sybil right away and call her to account; but presently nothing was important at all. He was in a taxicab whose driver had just shaken him awake in front of his own home.
The telephone was ringing as he went in, but he walked stonily past the maid and only heard her voice when his foot was on the stair.
“Mr. McChesney, it’s the hospital calling again. Mrs. McChesney’s there and they’ve been phoning every hour.”
Still in a daze, he held the receiver up to his ear.
“We’re calling from the Midland Hospital, for your wife. She was delivered of a still-born child at nine this morning.”
“Wait a minute.” His voice was dry and cracking. “I don’t understand.”
After a while he understood that Emmy’s child was dead and she wanted him. His knees sagged groggily as he walked down the street, looking for a taxi.
The room was dark; Emmy looked up and saw him from a rumpled bed.
“It’s you!” she cried. “I thought you were dead! Where did you go?”
He threw himself down on his knees beside the bed, but she turned away.
“Oh, you smell awful,” she said. “It makes me sick.”
But she kept her hand in his hair, and he knelt there motionless for a long time.
“I’m done with you,” she muttered, “but it was awful when I thought you were dead. Everybody’s dead. I wish I was dead.”
A curtain parted with the wind, and as he rose to arrange it, she saw him in the full morning light, pale and terrible, with rumpled clothes and bruises on his face. This time she hated him instead of those who had hurt him. She could feel him slipping out of her heart, feel the space he left, and all at once he
