For months Beverly Carlysle had remained a remote and semi-mysterious
figure. She had been in some hearts and in many minds, but to most of
them she was a name only. She had been the motive behind events she
never heard of, the quiet center in a tornado of emotions that circled
about without touching her.
On the whole she found her life, with the settling down of the piece to
a successful, run, one of prosperous monotony. She had re-opened and was
living in the 56th Street house, keeping a simple establishment of
cook, butler and maid, and in the early fall she added a town car and a
driver. After that she drove out every afternoon except on matinee days,
almost always alone, but sometimes with a young girl from the company.
She was very lonely. The kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York
had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends
remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the
narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the
theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having
its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own
religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions to dinners
and week-ends; even into marriage, now and then with an outlander. But
almost always it went back, eager for its home of dressing-room and
footlights, of stage entrances up dirty alleys, of door-keepers and
managers and parts and costumes.
Occasionally she had callers, men she had met or who were brought to
see her. She saw them over a tea-table, judged them remorselessly, and
eliminated gradually all but one or two. She watched her dignity and her
reputation with the care of an ambitious woman trying to live down the
past, and she succeeded measurably well. Now and then a critic spoke of
her as a second Maude Adams, and those notices she kept and treasured.
But she was always uneasy. Never since the night he had seen Judson
Clark in the theater had they rung up without her brother having
carefully combed the house with his eyes. She knew her limitations; they
would have to ring down if she ever saw him over the footlights. And
the season had brought its incidents, to connect her with the past. One
night Gregory had come back and told her Jean Melis was in the balcony.
The valet was older and heavier, but he had recognized him.
"Did he see you?" was her first question.
"Yes. What about it? He never saw me but once, and that was at night and
out of doors."