Max Reinhardt

“ Zere is some big mistake; ze fool of a captain supposes me to be English, and makes me a prisoner. We are two prisoners togezer. Zis is not ze time for coldness between friends. Wizout you, I should not be here at zis moment." Reinhardt was unaware how truly he had spoken. "You owe me much. But you are young, and like many young men, you do not know your best friends."
Errington, on his part, was thoroughly amazed when he saw Reinhardt enter the room. Hearing footsteps outside the door, he had expected to see Burroughs again. ”

“ Cardinge observed drily. “It was not even clear that they desired war.”
Reinhardt became discreet.
“These matters,” he pronounced, “do not lend themselves to profitable discussion.
“The Marquis looked at Reinhardt. The action appeared to require some self-control. 'You have seen my patients?' he inquired.”
After dinner Reinhardt planted himself stolidly before Madame. He held his coffee cup in one hand, his cigar and liqueur brandy were near by.
“Madame,” he said, “I received your summons. I am here.”
“Very much here,” Madame agreed. “You have grown very large, Otto Reinhardt.” ”

“ Max that morning, a big man, almost as tall as K. Le Moyne, eager of life, strong and a bit reckless, not fine, perhaps, but not evil. He had the same zest of living as Sidney, but with this difference—the girl stood ready to give herself to life: he knew that life would come to him. All-dominating male was Dr. Max, that morning, as he drew on his gloves before stepping into his car. It was after nine o'clock. K. Le Moyne had been an hour at his desk. The McKee napkins lay ironed in orderly piles. ”

“ Maddock will have learned of Reinhardt's intended visit to England and immediately begun his preparations. His scheme—and a most ingenious one it was, I must confess—was clearly to cause Reinhardt to disappear in one locality and produce his body after a considerable interval in another at some distance; and the house on the Heath was apparently taken with this object and to be near Reinhardt's haunts. ”

“ In the center of the table was an inset glass bowl, lit by tiny electric lights—a bowl, floating in the waters of which were great clusters of cut roses. A butler and two footmen waited with noiseless efficiency. Armand, who had come in late and confessed to having lost money at baccarat at Nice, ate and drank in sulky silence. Reinhardt was exceedingly careful in the topics of conversation which he introduced. Madame declined to allow any embarrassment, however, as to his nationality.
“Tell me how they receive you when you travel,” she insisted. “Has the world changed yet? ”

“ And what answers do you suggest to the questions that Marchmont propounded? You answer his first question: 'Is Reinhardt alive?' in the affirmative. What about the others?"
"As to where he is," I replied. "I can only say, the Lord knows; probably skulking somewhere on the Continent. As to his state of mind, the facts seem to suggest that, in vulgar parlance, he has gone off his onion. He must be as mad as a hatter to have behaved in the way that he has. ”

“ Cardinge nodded.
“No one knows,” he said.
“The silence,” Reinhardt mumbled, “may be mutual.”
“It shall,” Cardinge promised. “But what a hell of a nerve you've got to come here!”
Reinhardt sat down. He was beginning to feel more at his ease. Besides, in the room behind, he could hear the clink of ice, which seemed to establish his presence reassuringly in the haunts of civilization.
“I do not know about that,” he protested. “An oath is a great thing. The summons called me. In the old days to have disobeyed it would have been equivalent to death. Besides, I seek my quittance.” ”

“ K. turned the automobile toward the country roads. He was remembering acutely that other ride after Joe in his small car, the trouble he had had to get a machine, the fear of he knew not what ahead, and his arrival at last at the road-house, to find Max lying at the head of the stairs and Carlotta on her knees beside him. ”

“ If there was a shadow in K.'s eyes, she did not see it. He waved them off smilingly from the pavement, and went rather heavily back into the house.
“Just how many men are in love with you, Sidney?” asked Max, as Peggy started up the Street.
“No one that I know of, unless—”
“Exactly. Unless—”
“What I meant,” she said with dignity, “is that unless one counts very young men, and that isn't really love.”
“We'll leave out Joe Drummond and myself—for, of course, I am very young. Who is in love with you besides Le Moyne? Any of the internes at the hospital?” ”

“ Max stared; then he rose. Blackness had descended on them again, except for the dull glow of K.'s old pipe.
“For God's sake!”
“Sh! The neighbors next door have a bad habit of sitting just inside the curtains.”
“But—you!”
“Sit down. Sidney will be back in a moment. I'll talk to you, if you'll sit still. Can you hear me plainly?”
After a moment—“Yes.”
“I've been here—in the city, I mean—for a year. Name's Le Moyne. Don't forget it—Le Moyne. I've got a position in the gas office, clerical. I get fifteen dollars a week. I have reason to think I'm going to be moved up. ”

“ He motored out to the farm the next day, to be told that Miss Harrison had gone for a long walk and had not said when she would be back. That pleased him. Evidently she was frightened. Every man likes to think that he is a bit of a devil. Dr. Max settled his tie, and, leaving his car outside the whitewashed fence, departed blithely on foot in the direction Carlotta had taken. ”

“ She learned afterwards that Jake knew a saloon-keeper who had a mixture of kind-heartedness and long-headedness, the first of which led him to trust Reinhardt for the beer and tobacco, while the second justified the course because Reinhardt’s presence at his bar made one consumer more when a round of drinks was ordered for the house. Then, one day, suddenly, just as Emily thought she was getting the family on its feet, Reinhardt felled a man in the saloon with a blow of a billiard cue, and was thrown into jail on a charge of assault with intent to kill. ”

“ Reinhardt demanded. “A hospital?”
Cardinge shook his head.
“It is one of the most famous châteaux of France,” he answered. “The Marquis, however, is a very unhappy man. He lost three sons in the war. For their sakes, he entertains here a score of invalids. Can you guess what is the matter with these men, Reinhard?”
“They look like consumptives,” was the muttered reply.
CARDINGE led him on, spoke to one of the nurses, who welcomed him as an habitué, and exchanged a few words with some of the patients. Then he turned back to his companion. ”

“ You have always done the best in your work; you always will. But the other is a part of you too, Max. Even if I cared, I would not dare to run the risk.”
Under the window rang the sharp gong of a city patrol-wagon. It rumbled through the gates back to the courtyard, where its continued clamor summoned white-coated orderlies.
An operating-room case, probably. Sidney, chin lifted, listened carefully. If it was a case for her, the elevator would go up to the operating-room. With a renewed sense of loss, Max saw that already she had put him out of her mind. ”

“ K. stopped and put a kindly hand on Joe's shoulder.
“A man's got to stand up under a thing like this, you know. I mean, it mustn't be a knockout. Keeping busy is a darned good method.”
Joe shook himself free, but without resentment. “I'll tell you what's eating me up,” he exploded. “It's Max Wilson. Don't talk to me about her going to the hospital to be useful. She's crazy about him, and he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg.”
“Perhaps. But it's always up to the girl. You know that.” ”

“ They are artists, and one of them, Reinhardt, is attracted to the spot by his longing for the sweet village-flower, whom he has not forgotten in the whirl of the great world. Already he sees the windows of his sweet-heart glimmer through the trees, when suddenly light footsteps cause the friends to hide behind a large oak-tree. The two maidens who appear are Lorle and Bärbele. The former prays fervently, then throwing her garland she shyly calls her lover's name Reinhardt. The latter stepping from behind the tree skillfully catches the wreath—and the maiden. ”

“ Max was his brother, unselfishly proud, of his skill, of his handsome person, of his easy good manners; very humble, too, of his own knowledge and experience. If he ever suspected any lack of finer fiber in Max, he put the thought away. Probably he was too rigid himself. Max was young, a hard worker. He had a right to play hard.
He prepared his black bag for the day's calls—stethoscope, thermometer, eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton in a not over-fresh towel ”

“ It has been Reinhardt’s major fault, this failure to bring every feature of a production to the highest point of perfection within his grasp. He has always been satisfied to slight one part if the whole could be “put over” by emphasis on another part. Those who remember Sumurûn will recall things in this brilliantly exciting pantomime that struck them as impossibly slack—bad painting on the canvas flats, a bald contrast between the flimsy front scenes and the solid structure of the court of the harem behind.
In Orpheus his negligence seems to have begun in the choice of a designer. ”

“ The first scene of Tchehoff’s Uncle Vanya. Here Pitoëff indicates a Russian country side by a rustic bench and slender birch trees formally spaced against a flat gray curtain.
It is ordinarily very hard to say what share the artist or the director has had in the scheme of a setting, or whether the director has bothered his head at all about the setting after confiding it to what he considers competent hands. It is an interesting speculation just how much the physical shape of Reinhardt’s productions has been the sole creation of his artist, Stern. ”

“ K.'s mind was busy with the past—with the day he decided to give up and go away, with the months of wandering and homelessness, with the night he had come upon the Street and had seen Sidney on the doorstep of the little house.
“That's the worst, is it?” Max Wilson demanded at last.
“That's enough.”
“It's extremely significant. You had an enemy somewhere—on your staff, probably. This profession of ours is a big one, but you know its jealousies. Let a man get his shoulders above the crowd, and the pack is after him.” ”

“ Monsieur le Marquis, Reinhardt, has lost his three sons during the war and has devoted the remainder of his life to taking care of those who suffered as they suffered but whose lives were spared. Monsieur le Marquis' three sons died of gas-poisoning.”
'It is most regrettable,” Reinhardt muttered.
“Monsieur le Marquis' whole income,” Cardinge proceeded, “goes to the support of these poor fellows. It is not sufficient. He has a small grant from the French Government. Other friends—Madame among them—have been privileged to subscribe. ”

“ Max of the Street, but a new person, one she had never known—stood in his white office, tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, competent, holding out his long, immaculate surgeon's hand, and smiling down at her.
Men, like jewels, require a setting. A clerk on a high stool, poring over a ledger, is not unimpressive, or a cook over her stove. But place the cook on the stool, poring over the ledger! Dr. Max, who had lived all his life on the edge of Sidney's horizon, now, by the simple changing of her point of view, loomed large and magnificent. ”

“ No tablet on the college wall could change that. And when, late that night, Wilson found him on the balcony and added appeal to argument, the situation remained unchanged. He realized its hopelessness when K. lapsed into whimsical humor.
“I'm not absolutely useless where I am, you know, Max,” he said. “I've raised three tomato plants and a family of kittens this summer, helped to plan a trousseau, assisted in selecting wall-paper for the room just inside,—did you notice it?—and developed a boy pitcher with a ball that twists around the bat like a Colles fracture around a splint!” ”

“ His brother Max is a big surgeon there. I expect you've heard of him. We're very proud of him in the Street.”
Lucky for K. Le Moyne that the moon no longer shone on the low gray doorstep, that Sidney's mind had traveled far away to shining floors and rows of white beds. “Life—in the raw,” Dr. Ed had said that other afternoon. Closer to her than the hospital was life in the raw that night.
So, even here, on this quiet street in this distant city, there was to be no peace. Max Wilson just across the way! It—it was ironic. Was there no place where a man could lose himself? ”

“ Max raised a glass of benedictine and posed for a moment, melodramatically.
“To the Wilson roof garden!” he said. “To Kit, who inspired; to the creators, who perspired; and to Takahiro—may he not have expired.”
Every one was very gay; I think the knowledge that tomorrow Aunt Selina might be with them urged them to make the most of this last night of freedom. I tried to be jolly, and succeeded in being feverish. Mr. Harbison did not come up to enjoy what he had wrought. Jim brought up his guitar and sang love songs in a beautiful tenor, looking at Bella all the time. ”

“ Wilson began to bring all his problems to Le Moyne. There were long consultations in that small upper room. Perhaps more than one man or woman who did not know of K.'s existence owed his life to him that fall.
Under K.'s direction, Max did marvels. Cases began to come in to him from the surrounding towns. To his own daring was added a new and remarkable technique. But Le Moyne, who had found resignation if not content, was once again in touch with the work he loved. ”