Rope Part 27

Henry was tense. "I don't mean if I leased the _theatre_. I mean if I leased some _part_ of it--some part that wouldn't interfere with the show."

Anna closed her eyes. Mr. Archer's brows had risen to normal. "Why, in that case, I should certainly say that the income would count, Henry. Let's see the lease?"

Anna wished that Henry would come over to her, and hold her in his arms while Mr. Archer, with maddening deliberation, glanced through the long typewritten doc.u.ment--but Henry had turned his back, and was gazing out of the window.

"Peter McClellan? What's _he_ want so much s.p.a.ce for?"

Henry made no response. There was a long hiatus, broken only by the rustling of the pages.

"Just a minute, Henry. Some of this is all right--and some isn't. The s.p.a.ce you mention is what you're using now for the--er--nursery, I take it. And the privilege of the lessee to enlarge the upper story at his own expense is all right." His brows had gone down again, and Anna shivered. "But even if you've got your whole rental in advance, you aren't ent.i.tled to claim all of it belongs to this year's income. As a matter of fact, you actually _earn_ a twenty-fourth of that whole payment every month for twenty-four months."

Henry spoke over his shoulder. "You haven't read far enough."

"Oh!" Mr. Archer laughed, but his voice was no lighter. "Why, how on earth did you persuade anybody to execute such an agreement as that?"

Henry faced around. "Bob Standish engineered it. Told this chap as long as he paid in advance anyway, to get a bargain, it wouldn't make any difference to _him_, and it made a lot to me. Nine hundred and fifty a month for July and August and fifty a month for the next twenty-two months."

"But my dear boy, you still don't _earn_ more than a twenty-fourth of the whole rental each month. That's ordinary book-keeping. I should have thought you'd have learned it. It makes no difference _when_ the lessee pays. All you can credit yourself in July and August is--"

"Oh, no, Mr. Archer. There's a consideration. You'll find it on the next page. I'm to keep the theatre closed every afternoon in July and August so the lessee can make his alterations to the second story. And the extra price for those months is to pay me for loss of revenue. So it _does_ count on this year's income. Maybe I'm no impresario, but by gosh, I can keep a set of books."

Mr. Archer nodded briskly. "That _is_ different. Why, Henry, as far as I can see ... what's this? 300 Chestnut Street? But the Orpheum's on Main."

"300 Chestnut is the back entrance," said Henry. He smiled across at Anna, and she stood up and came a perilous step towards him. "Well, old lady," said Henry, and the same wide, foolish smile of utter joy was on his lips. "I guess this fixes it. I--"

He was rudely interrupted by the violent opening of the door. His Aunt Mirabelle stood there, dynamic, and behind her, in a great fl.u.s.ter of dismay and apprehension, stood the chairman of the Quarters Committee of the Reform League.

"Henry! Henry Devereux! You--you swindler!" Her speech was seriously impeded by her wrath. "You--you--you." She flung a savage gesture towards the little man in the background. "You had an agent show him--show Mr. McClellan--this place through the back door!--_He_ didn't know I--Henry Devereux, you've got _my_ three thousand dollars, and you're going to give it straight back to me! This minute! Do you _hear_?"

Anna stared at her, and at Henry, and sat down plump and cried into her handkerchief, from sheer hysterical reaction.

"Oh, yes," said Henry. "Through the back door, if you say so. But that's the regular business entrance. I suppose the agent thought it looked better, too."

"The agent! That Standish man! You _conspired_. You--"

Henry's chin went up. "Excuse me, Aunt Mirabelle, but I didn't know the first thing about it until Bob Standish told me he had a client ready to close, and to pay in advance. I didn't even know your man by sight. I'd have rented it to anybody on earth on the same terms."

The little chairman edged forward. "Miss Starkweather--Mrs. Mix--I knew how you feel about motion pictures, of course, but how could _I_ know you wouldn't even want to be in the same building with--"

"Oh, dry up!" She whirled on the lawyer. "Is that fair? Do you call that fair? _Do_ you?"

Mr. Archer put his hand on Henry's shoulder, and nodded benignly. "To tell the truth, Mrs. Mix, I can't see where this concerns you personally at all. It's a straightforward commercial transaction between Henry and Mr. McClellan."

"It isn't, either! Mr. McClellan had authority from the League to get us a hall and sign a lease in his own name. I had the directors give it to him, myself. And it was _my_ money that paid for it! Mine!"

Henry grinned at the lawyer. "I didn't know it until last Sat.u.r.day.

Bob told me if I'd make a dirt-low rent I could get it in advance, and up to Sat.u.r.day I didn't even know who I was d.i.c.kering with."

His aunt was menacing. "Henry Devereux, if you try to cheat me out of my rightful property by any such flim-flam as this, I ... I ... I don't know _what_ I'll do!"

"Oh, don't, Aunt Mirabelle," said Henry compa.s.sionately. "You know I won't be a hog about it."

Some of the fury went out of her expression, and Mirabelle was on the verge of sniffling. "That's just exactly it. I _know_ you won't. And the humiliation of it to _me_. When you know perfectly well if _I_'d--"

She stopped there, with her mouth wide open. They all waited, courteously, for her to speak, but Mirabelle was speechless. She was thinking partly of the past, and partly of the future, but chiefly of the present--the hideous, unnecessary present in which Mr. Mix was motoring serenely about the city, paying out good money to theatre managers. Mirabelle's money, not to be replaced. And then--she nearly collapsed!--the unspeakable humiliation of retracting her pledge to the national convention. Her pledge through Mr. Mix of twenty-five thousand dollars. How could she ever offer an excuse that would hold water? And how could she tell the truth? And to think of Mr. Mix's place in the community when it was shown--as inevitably it would be shown--that he had acted merely as a toy balloon, inflated by Mirabelle's vain expectations.

"Humph!" she said at length, and her voice was a hoa.r.s.e, thin whisper.

"Well--you just wait--'till I get hold of him!"

The door had closed behind her: the door had been closed behind Mr.

Archer, whose kindly congratulations had been the more affecting because he had learned to love and respect the boy who had won them: Henry and his wife stood gazing into each other's eyes. He took a step forward and held out his arms, and she ran to him, and held tightly to him, and sobbed a little for a postscript.

He stroked her hair, gently. "Well--Archer says it's going to be about seven hundred thousand. And I deserve about thirty cents. And you're responsible for all the rest of it.... What do you want first? Those golden pheasants, or humming-birds' wings?"

She lifted her face. "Both--b-_because I won't have to cook 'em_. Oh, my dear, my dear, I've l-loved it, I've loved it, I've loved working and saving and being poor with you and everything--b-but look at my h-hands, Henry, and _don't_ laugh at me--but I'm going to have a cook!

I'm going to have a cook! I'm going to have a cook!"

He kissed her hands.

"It's all over, isn't it? All over, and _we_'re doing the shouting. No more wild men of Borneo, no more dishes to wash, no more Orpheum.

Remember what Aunt Mirabelle said a year ago? She was dead right.

Look! See the writing on the wall, baby?"

He swung her towards the door! she brushed away her tears, and beheld the writing. It was in large red letters, and what it said was very brief and very appropriate. It said: EXIT.

CHAPTER XVII

In the living-room of an unfashionable house on an unfashionable street, Mrs. Theodore Mix sat in stately importance at her desk, composing a vitriolic message to the unsympathetic world. As her husband entered, she glanced up at him with chronic disapproval; she was on the point of giving voice to it, not for any specific reason but on general principles, but Mr. Mix had learned something from experience, so his get-away was almost simultaneous with his entrance.

"Mail!" said Mr. Mix, and on the wing, he dropped it on his wife's desk, and went on out of the room.

The mail consisted of one letter; it contained the check which Henry sent her regularly, on the first of each month.

She sat back for a moment, and stared out at the unfashionable street.

Mr. Mix was always urging her to live in a better neighbourhood, but with only her own two hundred and fifty a month, and four hundred more from Henry, she could hardly afford it,--certainly not while she gave so generously to the Reform League.

She thought of the big brick house on the hill and sighed profoundly.

She would have made it a national shrine, and Henry--Henry was even worse than his uncle. He kept it full of people who were satisfied to squander the precious stuff of life by enjoying themselves. It made her sick, simply to think of Henry. People said he and Bob Standish were the two cleverest men that ever lived in town. Doubled the Starkweather business in two years. Directors of banks. Directors of the a.s.sociated Charities and trustees of the City Hospital. Humph! As if she didn't know Henry's capabilities. Just flippancy and monkey-tricks. And married to a girl who was a walking advertis.e.m.e.nt of exactly what every right-minded woman should revolt against. _That_ girl to be the mother of children! Oh Lord, oh Lord, if Anna were a modern specimen, what would the _next_ generation be?

She sighed again, and went back to the lecture she was composing. "The Influence of Dress on Modern Society." Suddenly, she c.o.c.ked her head and sniffed. She rose cautiously, as one who is about to trail suspicion. She went to the side-window, and peered out. From a little grape-arbor on the lawn, there floated to her the unmistakable odour of tobacco--yes, and she could see a curling wisp of smoke.

"_Theodore!_"