Alice Duer Miller

“ There's a telephone at the stage door.”
He shook his head.
“It isn't that.”
“What is it, then?”
“Well,” said Casley, “I don't want to. That must seem strange to you when so many men would sell their souls for the chance, but——”
“Please don't talk nonsense,” answered Miss Brooks. “No one would sell his soul to take me or any one out to supper. Why do you mind?”
“It isn't that I mind,” said Casley. “Put it like this: if I wanted to take you to supper, I should not want to end my life. It is because nothing has the slightest interest for me that I find it impossible to go on.” ”

“ She gave a little laugh.
“That's the first thing about yourself that I've heard you admit was good,” she said, and skipped to adapt her steps to his long stride.
He looked down at her.
“Would any one consider me to be envied?” he asked, more simply than he had so far spoken to her.
“Oh, yes,” cried Cynthia. “Oh, isn't life a mess? I envy you. You have something I want more than anything—except success in my profession.”
“I have?” said Casley more astonished than he could convey. ”

“ They crossed the park—monumental and empty except for one taxi racketing down the hill. Cynthia's hand on his arm grew heavier and her steps slower. She began to feel sick with the sense of this doom that she could not prevent. Sensitive, wise and humble-minded, she knew that no direct appeal would have the least effect on him. If she asked him to live because his death seemed too horrible to her, she could see his slight mocking smile, could hear his drawling question as to whether she really thought he was likely to set her temporary shock against his deep-seated horror of life. ”

“ Cynthia pressed her hand to her side, for laughing hurt her rib, although her face was like a mask, as she named Grimes to her visitor.
“The trouble with that letter, Mr. Grimes,” said Gertrude, “is that Mr. Casley could not have written it—no gentleman could have written it.”
“Perhaps,” said Grimes, “you don't know just how a gentleman will write when he's going to commit suicide on account of a hopeless passion. Real true human emotion is not always the way it's written about in books.” ”

“ As a mother who has thought her child dead has time, on discovering that it is not, for such a trivial emotion as anger, so Cynthia now in her intense relief at seeing him alive had yet time to feel not only jealousy but fear of the humiliation which she must shortly experience before her rival, for even if he were not engaged to Gertrude, as she really did not believe that he was, he certainly was not engaged to her either. ”

“ Gertrude, however, pointed them out—the great height of one of these, his bulk increased by his flapping overcoat. Casley caught a glimpse of his profile as with a quick characteristic droop he slipped his hat under his seat and sat down in one long motion; the finely modeled nose and the queer contradiction between the tragic slant of the eyes and the fixed slight smile of the mouth, as if the face were divided between the masks of tragedy and comedy ”

“ It was necessary to lay the letter aside for a moment; and as Casley laid it aside face downward—that is to say, menu upward—it had a narrow escape from being whisked away to inform a neighboring table, not about the latest fashion in suicide notes, but about the special dishes of the restaurant.
“That's a very pretty pencil you have,” said Cynthia, and she picked it up and turned it about with her pointed finger tips, and pressed it between the palms of her hands, while the waiter was taking off the covers of the dishes with an egotistical flourish as if he had cooked them all himself. ”

“ There was something tempting about its smooth fawn-colored expanse. “I think, under the circumstances, I may call you Cynthia.”
“Oh, please do,” said Miss Brooks eagerly, and then added less gayly:
“Oh, I see! You mean in your letter. Of course. Fancy any one's killing themselves for the sake of some one he did not call by her first name!”
“That's very easy to imagine,” replied Casley, writing down near the top of the sheet the words “Dearest Cynthia,” in a running university hand which was perfectly legible. “Romance often reaches its climax in a first meeting.” ”

“ But a play is a public matter and demands an attitude toward the public. Casley felt no profound or soul-shaking emotion—only a wearied wonder that he should ever have imagined he could write a play, a state of mind which seemed to him to prove what he had long suspected—that he was entirely incapable of emotion. He exactly expressed his mental attitude when he said to Gertrude as they rose, for the exit of the audience was undelayed by applause, “Well, Gertrude, we never need do that again.” ”

“ Though she felt confident that her cousin, if not hers, was certainly no other woman's, she allowed herself to find him at times dreary. But when she saw him supping with a beautiful actress, a bottle of champagne between them—two heads bent over a pencil and paper—her evening with Caldecott was completely ruined. Earlier in the night the great critic had seemed to her big game, but now she felt as a man might feel who has been distracted by a rabbit from tracking down some monarch of the glen. ”

“ He shook his head.
“The opposite. It makes them wretched and makes them make other people wretched, particularly the unfortunate objects of their passion.”
And as if this subject were now exhausted, he took up his pencil and began to write again. Cynthia, however, had not quite finished.
“Oh, dear,” she sighed, “I had always imagined that when I fell in love I was going to live happily ever after.”
At this Casley looked up and smiled at her his sad twisted smile, this time with something paternal in it. ”

“ Without the awkwardness of a positive avowal, they fell to discussing the form which the suicide note should take. This was not easy. Every form which Casley suggested Grimes rejected as too cold.
“You must get some emotion into it,” he said; “it isn't like serving notice on your landlady that you're going to move. You must make the world feel that you're bidding good-by to the great passion of your life because you yourself recognize that she's out of your class.”
“Oh, Grimesy!” said Cynthia, a little shocked at the mere idea. ”

“ Cynthia's mind, like her eyes, entirely abandoned young Robertson, who, after a few seconds, fell silent; for you cannot go on talking, however great your gift for sarcasm, to the tops of two bent heads. And after a few seconds more he turned on his heel and strode out of the restaurant—a very good exit, only nobody except the head waiter saw it, for it was now getting late and every one else had gone home.
Then Casley, too, stood up, for he saw that Cynthia, under the circumstances, would think it discourteous to make the move; and they went through the empty room toward the door. ”

“ Each time he knocked the man down he said with a clarity born of enunciation in his classroom, “I'll teach you to knock a lady down and then laugh at her!” It became an almost continuous repetition.
The driver wasted no time in protesting his innocence; he began shouting for help, and presently the same young policeman whom Casley and Cynthia had passed so indifferently a moment before came running round the corner, his club in hand ready for action; he ran, as some people do, with a motion that looks as if their hips grew longer and longer as they run. ”

“ Love and death might be floating about him, but to Weyburn the play was the priceless thing, the great climax and interpretation of life. He was alive with electric energy.
“Here, Grimes,” he said, “get this to the typewriter and have her type the parts, and take one yourself to Derham. It's all new for him—and for Cynthia. Not so much for the others, fortunately. If she knew it we could put it on to-night. We can try anyhow. Get along, Grimes.” He himself moved to the door. “At three, Cynthia,” he said.
“No, not at three,” said Casley. ”

“ She said it triumphantly; but, as a matter of fact, she regretted her superior knowledge of law.
“There,” said Casley, “you are wrong. Marriage by a magistrate or justice is binding, although no license has been obtained. The unfortunate magistrate lays himself open to certain penalties, but a friend will do that much for a friend. Such a friend is now waiting downstairs—if the taxicab has come, as I believe by this time it must have.”
“But this is absurd,” said Cynthia, and she felt sorry that so strong and brave a man in such a fine fury should make such a silly mistake. ”

“ You're wonderful to look at, and strong and wise and violent and mad and superior and all the things women adore. You know almost everything, darling, except the most obvious thing in the world, which you don't seem ever to have suspected.” And she rose, and, kneeling like a beggar in the streets, she walked the length of her chaise longue on her knees until she could put her arms about his neck. “You're in love with me, Benedict, and you have been since we started rehearsals.” ”

“ Cynthia, unsuspected by any but a few intimate friends, had a secret passion for culture. This part was exactly the sort of part she had dreamed of playing, and she knew now that the play couldn't last a week. Even Weyburn, the most generous of producers, couldn't keep such an expensive production playing to empty houses—and they would be empty. She was largely responsible for Weyburn having put it on, for she had fallen in love with it when she first read it. ”

“ The first time he had seen her he had fallen in love with her, completely and passionately; he didn't sleep or eat or work. They became engaged. There was always another man—other men; he had been wildly, bitterly jealous; she had explained with explanations he knew were lies. Then it appeared that she was engaged to both men at once.
“She thought that funny?” asked Cynthia.
“She had almost no sense of humor,” answered Casley. “I think it was the risk that appealed to her. She was a gambler; she loved danger, although she eventually married the chairman of the board of trustees.” ”

“ THE LAST NIGHT I Well, Casley thought, as he folded his long spare body into a seat in the front row of the balcony, it came to this: If a man could not feel any emotion at the first night of his first play, he might as well die. Much of his six feet of height came between his knee and his hip; the railing of the balcony was uncomfortably close; he crossed his legs with difficulty and leaned back, folding his arms.
“Isn't it thrilling?” murmured his cousin Gertrude, laying her hand for a moment on the hard muscles of his forearm. ”

“ Established thus in his favorable acquaintance, Cynthia started her story—a great deal may be told even in two blocks. She told him how she was acting in Professor Casley's play, what a great man he was, how celebrated, how the play had been a failure, how they were terribly in love, but how they had had a ridiculous quarrel and as a result Casley was threatening to kill himself. She knew there would be no use in telling any one as full of life as the policeman that he was going to kill himself because he was bored with living—this was much better. ”

“ The physical appearance of Henry VIII is so well known that it was necessary to find an actor large and ruddy and vital. The selection finally fell on Brayton Halley, an actor who was not only experienced but who looked the part perfectly—a great, broad-shouldered, red-haired man, with a deep rolling voice. As he strode on the stage in his short furred coat, all embroidery and jewels, his flat feathered hat on his head and his thumb stuck in his belt, he looked so exactly like Holbein's portrait of Henry that the audience gave a cry of delight. ”

“ Isn't there any one whose throat you'd like cut? For be assured that a person about to take his own life thinks lightly of other people's. Or think how Millicent Mills' whole success in the theater was built on that young Italian nobleman who so thoughtfully blew out his brains on her lawn. Though I have the disadvantage of being a mere Anglo-Saxon, and coming from rather plain ancestry, I rather fancied that there was something about my being a college professor which that objectionable young man who does your publicity for you might turn into what I believe he calls a stunt. ”