seats, and when, during the stage show, an enormous samovar rose up out of the orchestra pit and debouched forty men in Cossack uniform singing “Dark Eyes,” Alice and Mildred-Rose shouted with joy. The stage show, beneath its grandeur, seemed to conceal a simple and familiar intelligence, as if the drafts that stirred the miles of golden curtain had blown straight from Indiana. The performance left Alice and Mildred-Rose distracted with pleasure, and on the way back to the Mentone, Evarts had to lead them along the sidewalk to keep them from walking into hydrants. It was a quarter of three when they got back to the hotel. Evarts kissed his wife and child goodbye and started for Murchison’s.
He got lost. He was afraid that he would be late. He began to run. He asked directions of a couple of policemen and finally reached the office building.
The front room of Murchison’s office was dingy?intentionally dingy, Evarts hoped?but it was not inglorious, for there were many beautiful men and women there, waiting to see Mr. Murchison. None of them were sitting down, and they chatted together as if delighted by the delay that held them there. The receptionist led Evarts into a further office. This office was also crowded, but the atmosphere was of haste and trouble, as if the place were being besieged. Murchison was there and he greeted Evarts strenuously. “I’ve got your contracts right here,” he said, and he handed Evarts a pen and pushed a stack of contracts toward him. “Now I want you to rush over and see Madge,” Murchison said as soon as Evarts had signed the contracts. He looked at Evarts, plucked the feather carnation out of his lapel, and tossed it into a wastebasket. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he said. “She’s at 400 Park Avenue. She’s crazy to see you. She’s waiting now. I’ll see you later tonight?I think Madge has something planned?but hurry.”
Evarts rushed into the hall and rang impatiently for the elevator. As soon as he had left the building, he got lost and wandered into the fur district. A policeman directed him back to the Mentone. Alice and Mildred-Rose were waiting in the lobby, and he told them what had happened. “I’m on my way to see Madge Beatty now,” he said. “I’ve got to hurry!” Bitsey, the bellboy, overheard this conversation. He dropped some bags he was carrying and joined the group. He told Evarts how to get to Park Avenue. Evarts kissed Alice and Mildred-Rose again. They waved goodbye as he ran out the door.
Evarts had seen so many movies of Park Avenue that he observed its breadth and bleakness with a sense of familiarity. He took an elevator to the Murchisons’ apartment and was led by a maid into a pretty living room. A fire was burning, and there were flowers on the mantel. He sprang to his feet when Madge Beatty came in. She was frail, animated, and golden, and her hoarse and accomplished voice made him feel naked. “I read your play, Evarts,” she said, “and I loved it, I loved it, I loved it.” She moved lightly around the room, talking now directly at him, now over her shoulder. She was not as young as she had first appeared to be, and in the light from the windows she looked almost wizened. “You’re going to do more with my part when you write the second act, I hope,” she said. “You’re going to build it up and build it up and build it up.”
“I’ll do anything you want, Miss Beatty,” Evarts said.
She sat down and folded her beautiful hands. Her feet were very big, Evarts noticed. Her shins were thin, and this made her feet seem very big. “Oh, we love your play, Evarts,” she said. “We love it, we want it, we need it. Do you know how much we need it? We’re in debt, Evarts, we’re dreadfully in debt.” She laid a hand on her breast and spoke in a whisper. “We owe one million nine hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars.” She let the precious light flood her voice again. “But now I’m keeping you from writing your beautiful play,” she said. “I’m keeping you from work, and I want you to go back and write and write and write, and I want you and your wife to come here any time after nine tonight and meet a few of our warmest friends.”
Evarts asked the doorman how to get back to the Mentone, but he misunderstood the directions and got lost again. He walked around the East Side until he found a policeman, who directed him back to the hotel. It was so late when he returned that Mildred-Rose was crying with hunger. The three of them washed and went to the Automat and walked up and down Broadway until nearly nine. Then they went back to the hotel. Alice put on her evening dress, and she and Evarts kissed Mildred-Rose good night. In the lobby, they met Bitsey and told him where they were going. He promised to keep an eye on Mildred-Rose.
The walk over to the Murchisons’ was longer than Evarts remembered. Alice’s wrap was light. She was blue with cold when they reached the apartment building. They could hear in the distance, as they left the elevator, someone playing a piano and a woman singing “A kiss is but a kiss, a sigh is but a sigh…” A maid took their wraps, and Mr. Murchison greeted them from a farther door. Alice ruffled and arranged the cloth peony that hung from the front of her dress, and they went in.
The room was crowded, the lights were dim, the singer was ending her song. There was a heady smell of animal skins and astringent perfume in the air. Mr. Murchison introduced the Malloys to a couple who stood near the door, and abandoned them. The couple turned their backs on the Malloys. Evarts was shy and quiet, but Alice was excited and began to speculate, in a whisper, about the identities of the people around the piano. She felt sure that they were all movie stars, and she was right.
The singer finished her song, got up from the piano, and walked away. There was a little applause and then a curious silence. Mr. Murchison asked another woman to sing. “I’m not going to go on after her,” the woman said. The situation, whatever it was, had stopped conversation. Mr. Murchison asked several people to perform, but they all refused. “Perhaps Mrs. Malloy will sing for us,” he said bitterly.
“All right,” Alice said. She walked to the center of the room. She took a position and, folding her hands and holding them breast high, began to sing.
Alice’s mother had taught her to sing whenever her host asked, and Alice had never violated any of her mother’s teachings. As a child, she had taken singing lessons from Mrs. Bachman, an elderly widow who lived in Wentworth. She had sung in grammar-school assemblies and in high-school assemblies. On family holidays, there had always come a time, in the late afternoon, when she would be asked to sing; then she would rise from her place on the hard sofa near the stove or come from the kitchen, where she had been washing dishes, to sing the songs Mrs. Bachman had taught her.
The invitation that night had been so unexpected that Evarts had not had a chance to stop his
