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Smitherton reached the theater early and stood for a while at the elbow of the ticket-taker, watching the throngs crowd in. But at the commencement of the performance he went inside and sat near the back of the house. It was only when he knew that Mary's act was due in a few minutes that he went behind. She might want just a word or smile of encouragement at the final moment.
Smitherton finished pasting a clipping into the blank place in a type-written page and rose slowly. "Well?" he inquired shortly. "What is it? This is Smitherton." At once he recognized the voice which replied, and recognized that it came faintly and full of indecision. "This is Mary Burton, Mr. Smitherton. Do you do you think you could still find me work in vaudeville?" "Oh!"
He saw Mary Burton, with all her distaste masked behind the regal tranquillity of her splendid eyes and her cruelly wasted courage, bowing, not like an actress, but like an empress. Then she passed them and closed the door of her dressing-room. Smitherton heard Lewis' voice once more, accompanied by something like a sigh. "Now comes the tough part," said the manager.
Abey Lewis did not at all understand her, though he had handled a variety of people during his long career as a purveyor of "refined vaudeville" to the public. He confessed as much to Mr. Smitherton, with whom, as Miss Burton's business manager, he came into constant association. "I don't get her at all, Mr. Smitherton," he querulously complained.
The girl had by this time attained a certain reliance in her own abilities of human appraisement. She believed what young Smitherton said and she answered with equal frankness. "It is so bad that we face sheer starvation, that's all." After a keen glance at her he observed quietly: "At this moment you are not overfed." "N no."
Her trembling fingers made a task of turning the pages of the directory and finding the number of a newspaper on Park row, but at last she succeeded. "Is Mr. Smitherton there?" she asked, and the curt direction came back, "Hold the wire." Smitherton was sitting at a desk littered with newspaper clippings and sheaves of copy-paper.
She had to stop there for a moment and a mist came to her eyes which she resolutely kept from overflowing in actual tears as she went on. "It was when he wanted me to write down all his words and publish his letters that I realized I couldn't fight even starvation that way." "The damned brute!" muttered Smitherton. "The unspeakable beast!"
When he sat down beside Smitherton, Abey Lewis shook his head. "I ain't sure we didn't make a mistake in giving her a straight dramatic sketch," he said dubiously. "She ain't got no emotion. She needs more pep. Now if she had an act with lots of changes of costume something that would show her off better, it might go bigger." Smitherton growled.
Smitherton, he spoke of all these terrible, hideous things, that I lie awake remembering, as 'sob-stuff' and I knew that the worst of them were times that made sobs impossible when even tears wouldn't come." "I had no idea it had been that bad." Smitherton's sympathy was genuine and spontaneous. "It was worse even," she went on.
Then suddenly a scornful fire mounted through her arteries and with that serene and regal dignity that added majesty to her beauty she went on as though this stage were her rightful throne and those people out there were gazing up at her from a ground level. The act ran twenty-five minutes, during which time Mr. Lewis and Mr. Smitherton stood together in the wings. Mr. Lewis rubbed his hands.
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