May Iverson's Career Part 23

"That's right," he said, heartily. "A word to the wise. And now I'm really off."

Almost before the door had closed behind him Miss Merrick had seized her hat and was driving her hat-pins through it with quick, determined fingers.

"I'm going home and to bed," she said. "We can both get in three hours' sleep before the rehearsal--and believe me, Miss Iverson, we'll need it! Do you remember what General Sherman said about war? He should have saved his words for a description of 'T. B.'"

I followed her out into the hall and to the elevator door. I felt oddly exhilarated, almost as if I had been given some powerfully stimulating drug.

"He doesn't exactly kill, burn, or pillage, does he?" I asked, gaily.

With one foot in the elevator, our star stopped a second and looked back at me. There was a world of meaning in her blue eyes.

"If he did nothing but that, my lamb!" she breathed, and dropped from sight.

I returned to my desk. I had no idea of going to bed. I was no Napoleon, to slumber soundly on the eve of a decisive battle, but there was nothing else I could do except to sweep the peppermint drops out of sight and tuck the diagrammed blotter behind a radiator.

While I was engaged in these homely tasks the bell of my telephone rang.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Iverson," I heard when I took down the receiver. "Are you going to be at home to-night?"

My heart leaped at the familiar greeting of Billy Gibson, star reporter of the _Searchlight_, and one of my stanch friends ever since the days, five long years ago, when he had given me my first lesson in practical reporting. Almost before I could reply to him I noticed something unnatural in the quality of his voice. It was a little too easy, too casual, too carefully controlled.

"Heard any late news about Morris?" asked Gibson.

"News?" I echoed. "What news? What do you mean?"

"Oh, then you don't know."

Gibson's voice was still ostentatiously cheerful, but it dropped a little on his next words.

"Why, he's sick," he said. "Pretty sick. Has pneumonia."

"I didn't know," I said, slowly. It had been difficult to bring out the words. It was for some reason impossible to say more, but Gibson went on without waiting, thus giving me time to think.

"Haven't lost all interest in us, have you, now that you've been away from us a year and are writing plays?" he asked, cheerfully.

"Oh, Billy, what about him?" At last I was able to bring out the words. "Is it serious?" I asked.

"No one at the office realized it was until to-day," said Gibson.

"This morning Colonel Cartwell stopped at the Morris house on his way down-town and happened to meet one of the consulting physicians.

G.o.dfrey's pretty low," he added, gently. "The crisis is expected to-night."

For what seemed a long time I sat staring blankly at the telephone.

Once or twice I tried to speak, but no speech came. The forgotten receiver shook in my hand. Every thought but one was wiped out of my mind. G.o.dfrey Morris was ill--very ill. He had been ill for days--perhaps for weeks--and I had not known it because I had been absorbed in my petty interests, which until this moment had seemed so big.

"If you care to have me," went on Gibson, hesitatingly, "I'll telephone you later. I'm to be at the Morris house most of the night and keep the office posted from there. I can call you up once or twice if--it won't disturb you."

I found my voice, but it sounded strange in my own ears. For an instant I had seen myself sitting in my study the long night through, getting messages from the sick-room, but now I remembered my work and the others who were concerned in it.

"Billy," I said, "we're having the dress rehearsal of my play to-night. I may have to be at the Berwyck Theater until three or four in the morning. Can you send me word there--several times?"

Gibson's answer was prompt.

"You bet I can," he said. "I'll bring it. The Morris house is only a few blocks from the Berwyck, and I'll be glad of something to do besides receiving and sending bulletins. Tell your door-man to let me pa.s.s, and I'll drop in two or three times during the night." His voice changed. "I thought," he added, almost diffidently, "you'd want to know."

"Yes," I said, slowly, "I want to know. Thank you."

I hung up the receiver, which slipped in my stiff fingers. The exhilaration of a few minutes before lay dead within me. I felt cold and numb. From the living-room off my study the light of my open fire winked at me as if in cheery rea.s.surance. I crossed the room and crouched down before it, stretching out shaking hands to the blaze. I seemed to be moving in a nightmare, but with every sense horribly acute. I remembered previous dreams in which I had seemed to see, as I saw now, the familiar objects of my home around me. I heard the beating of my heart, the hammering of the blood in my head, the sound of the quick breath I drew--almost the murmur of G.o.dfrey's voice as he babbled in delirium in his distant sick-room.

"_The crisis is expected to-night._" Gibson's words came back to me.

What was it we had arranged? Oh yes--that he was to drop into the Berwyck several times and give me the latest bulletins. But that would be hours from now, and suddenly I realized that I could not wait. With a rush I was back at the telephone asking for the Morris home. I had neglected Grace Morris during the past few months, as I had neglected all my other friends in the work which had absorbed me.

I dared not ask for her now, when the English accents of the Morris butler met my ear.

"Is that you, Crumley?" I asked. "This is Miss Iverson. I've just heard that Mr. Morris is very ill. Can you tell me how he is?"

Crumley's reply showed the impa.s.siveness of the well-trained servant.

"He's very low, Miss," he replied, evenly. "Very low indeed. Two of the doctors are here now. They don't hope for any change till toward morning."

I found words for one more question.

"Is he suffering?" I asked, almost in a whisper.

"Suffering, Miss?" echoed Crumley. "No, Miss, I think not. He's very quiet indeed--in a stupor-like."

I hung up the receiver with a steadier hand and sat down, staring straight before me. As I had rallied to Elman's words half an hour ago, so now I tried to meet this new demand upon me. There was nothing I could do for G.o.dfrey; but a few hours later there might be much to do for the manager and the company who were giving my work to the public. I must stand by them and it--that was the one clear fact in a reeling world. I must be very cool, very clear-headed, very alert. I must have, Elman had told me, all my nerve, "and then some." All this, as I repeated it to myself, was quite plain, yet it meant nothing vital to me. It was as if one side of me had lashed with these reminders of duty another side which remained unmoved. The only thing of which I was vividly conscious was a scene which I suddenly visualized--a sick-room, large and cool and dim, a silent figure in a big bed, doctors and nurses bending over it. At the foot of the bed sat a figure I recognized, G.o.dfrey's mother. Of course she would be there. I saw the gleam of her white hair, the look in the gray eyes which were so like her son's.

"_The crisis is expected to-night._" The old clock in my hall seemed to be ticking off the words, over and over. The hammering blood in my brain was making them into a refrain which I found myself dully repeating.

With a start I pulled myself together. I was on my feet again, walking back and forth, back and forth, across my study. It was growing late.

Through my dark windows the lights of surrounding buildings glowed in at me like evil eyes. I must get ready for my work. Resolutely I held my thoughts to that point for an instant, then they swung away. "_The crisis is expected to-night. The--crisis--is--expected--to-night.

Time--to--get--to--work. The crisis is expected to-night._"

I found that I was dressing. Well, let "T. B." do his worst. He could tear me and my play to tatters, he could disband the company and disrupt the universe, if only for a few blessed hours he could keep me from seeing that shadowy room, that still, helpless figure. But he couldn't.

"_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night. The--crisis--is--expected-- to-night._" And when it came, while the great battle was waged that I now knew meant life to me, too, I would be in an up-town theater, listening to petty human beings recite the petty lines of a petty play, to which in my incredible blindness I had given my time for months, shutting myself away from my friends, shutting myself away from G.o.dfrey. How many times had he telephoned and written? Half a dozen at least. He had urged me to go to a concert or two, to a play or two, but I had been "too busy." It was monstrous, it was unbelievable, but it was true. "_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night._"

I was at the theater now. How I had reached it was not quite clear.

The members of the company were there before me, scattered about in the wings and on the big empty stage, lit by a single "bunch" light.

The information that "T. B." himself was to conduct had fallen upon them like a pall. Under its sable influence they whispered together in stricken groups of three or four. Near the right first entrance Elman and Miss Merrick sat, their heads close, the star talking softly but rapidly, Elman listening with his tired, courteous air. They nodded across the stage at me when I appeared, but I did not join them.

Instead I slipped down into the dark auditorium and took my place in an orchestra seat, where I could be alone. The whole thing was a nightmare, of course. I could not possibly be sitting there when only a few blocks away that sick-room held its watching group, its silent, helpless patient. "_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night._"

There was a sudden stir on the stage, a quick straightening of every figure there, a business-like bustle, and much scurrying to and fro.

"T. B." had entered the theater by the front door and was striding down the middle aisle. I saw a huge bulk that loomed grotesque for an instant as it leaned toward the dark footlights for a word with Mr.

Elman, and dropped with a grunt into a chair in the third row. Other figures--I did not know how many--had entered the dark theater and taken their places around me. From where I sat, half a dozen rows behind him, I had a view of "T. B.'s" hair under the slouch hat he kept on his head, the bulge of his jaw as he turned his profile toward me, the sharp upward angle of the huge cigar in his mouth. The company were in their places in the wings and on the stage. I heard Elman's quick word, "Curtain." The rehearsal had begun. The familiar words of the opening scene rolled over the footlights as cold and vague as a fog that rolls in from the sea. "_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night._"

No, that was not what the office boy on the stage had just said. It was what Gibson had said that afternoon, a thousand years ago, when he had called me on the telephone.

Things were going badly up there on the stage. Like a patient coming out of ether during an operation, and vaguely conscious of what was pa.s.sing around her, I had moments of realizing this. Boyce did not know his lines; he was garbling them frightfully, and, by failing to give his a.s.sociates their cues, was adding to the panic into which "T.

B.'s" presence had already thrown them. There! He had ruined Miss Merrick's opening scene, which was flattening out, going to pieces. It seemed as if some one should do something. Yet, what could be done?

"_The--crisis--is--expected--to-night._" What difference did it make what happened on that stage? The conscious interval was over. The babble that came over the footlights meant nothing.

From his orchestra seat, into which he seemed to be sinking deeper as the moments pa.s.sed, "T. B." sent forth a sardonic croak. It was a horrible noise--nerve-racking. It reached down to where I was submerged, caught me, drew me up to the surface again. I saw the company cringe under it, heard Elman's reprimand of Boyce, and his sharp command to begin the scene again. Confusion, confusion, so much confusion over such little things, when only a few blocks away was that shadowy sick-room in which the great battle between life and death was being fought with hardly a sound.