Bethel Merriday

'Lookit, Beth,' he implored, as they sat on a branch of a maple, twenty feet up in the air. 'Of course a girl wouldn't know about all such things--'

'I bet I would!'

'--but you got no idea what you'd be up against if you tried to go and get to be an actress and went looking for a job on Broadway. It's full of pitfalls.'

'Pitfalls?'

'Pitfalls.'

'What kind of pitfalls?'

'Awful pitfalls! Managers and all like that, that betray young girls.'

'How do they betray them?'

'You wouldn't understand.'

'What do they do to 'em?'

'Beth! What language! It ain't ladylike. Golly! You're already showing what awful influence the stage has got on you. You don't want to be immoral and bohemian, do you?'

With the utmost sweetness, like an indignant wren, Bethel explained, 'How do I know? I don't know what you have to do to be immoral, but of course if I have to, to be a great actress, why then I have to. Don't you see?'

'This is awful! I never heard anything like it! You don't know what you're talking about!'

'I do so know what I'm talking about!'

'You do not know what you're talking about.'

'Oh, shut up!'

'Shut up yourself, telling me to shut up!'

'Oh, Charley, I'm sorry if I was rude.'

'Oh, that's okay. But I don't think you had ought to be immoral, just the same.'

'Well, maybe I won't have to. And honestly I like loganberry juice much better than beer. Gee!'

Upon Bethel's solicitation, Alva Prindle did go to The Silver Cord Wednesday matinee. And she hated it. Bethel met her at the Rex Pharmacy for her report.

'It was so talky!' Alva complained into her cherry sundae. 'Maybe some folks might like it, but what I say is, it don't hold your attention, like a movie.'

'Twice as much!'

'It did not! There wasn't anything happening. Not even a penthouse or a machine-gun. All talk!'

'Alva, you just wait till I get to be an actress--'

'So you're still going to be an actress!'

'I certainly am. And I'm going to talk on the stage--oh, about everything--about patriotism, and love--'

'Why, Beth-el Mer-ri-day!'

'--and why a person feels religious--'

'It would be awfully improper to talk about religion, right up there on the stage. They never do, in the movies. People hate it.'

'But I will--honestly I will. And I'm going to get up a dramatic society in high school next year.'

'That'd be kind of fun.'

'It'll be kind of hard work, too, let me tell you! There's not going to be any fooling around when I get up a play!'

'Oh, there isn't, eh! You think you know so much! I bet you don't even know what a stage door is!'

'I do so!'

'How do you know?' scoffed Alva.

'I read about it.'

'That's a heck of a way to learn about things--to read about them! But I bet you didn't dare go to the stage door at the Crystal.'

'You didn't?'

'I certainly did!'

'Alva! And you saw the actors, close?'

'I certainly did. And I got old McDermid's autograph, and Elsie's and Irma's.'

'Oh, you didn't bother them for their autographs!'

'I certainly did! What would you talk to actors for, except to get their autographs?'

'Tell me, Alva--oh, tell me! Is Mr. McDermid as handsome as he is on the stage?'

'Him? Old Mac? No! He's maybe forty-five, and he wears a wig.'

'Oh no! Oh, darling! It couldn't be! Oh, not forty-five! Almost as old as my father! And a wig! But I don't care. I think Mr. McDermid is just--uh--adorable.'

'You do, eh?' Alva had regained all her Hollywood superiority. 'Well, let me tell you, baby, Mac's married to that red-headed little dumbbell, Elsie Krall. You better stay off.'

'Oh no! How do you know he is?'

'The stage doorman told me. And Mac treats Elsie terrible, the poor kid.'

'Do you know what I think?' said Bethel. 'What?'

'I think you're a liar. You're like that mother in the play. Good-bye!'

This from the meek Bethel who, year by year, had let Alva snatch her lollypop, her scooter, her beaux.

She waited till no [sic] Wednesday, the second week of the McDermid company's season, when they played Dulcy with Elsie Krall as the ingénue Angela. She had to know about Alva's strictures on her favourite gods. She was there on Monday evening, not embarrassed now, and when her last agitated laugh was finished, she marched down the alley to the stage door, rather wishing that Alva could see how professionally she went about it.

The stage entrance was at the back of the theatre, on a rotting balcony overhanging Swan Creek, now a sewerlike trickle between muddy banks, but once, when Sladesbury was a country town, a handsome stream. She was annoyed by the crowd of three girls with autograph albums, but she wrapped herself in an imaginary cloak--black lined with crimson--and waited, mysterious under an arch in Venice.

The magic beings were coming out of fairyland, and Bethel knew that she was right about them.

Caryl McDermid--yes, he must be forty-five or more--quite an old man--but that certainly was no wig, that lovely mane thick as horsehair, and he smiled so easily, took in the autograph hunters with his gaily curved lips, his innocent eyes. Elsie was on his arm, clinging, adoring. And there were Irma Wheat, whose smiling made her more beautiful than on the stage, and the terrible Maggie Sample, the overwhelming character woman, who was a pillar of ice.

Bethel tried to resist, but as these four walked through the alley, down Charter Oak Avenue, with its red neon lights over bowling alleys and cafés, she followed them, glad that they really were so beautiful . . . even if she did notice that Mr. McDermid's elbows were shiny, and Elsie's heels worn down. To what glamorous party were they going? Would they meet professors and newspapermen from great Hartford? Was Mrs. Beaseley Payne's sixteen-cylinder Cadillac waiting to whisk them to splendours at her pine Gothic castle on Bucks Hill?

Her idols were turning into Boze's Beanery . . . they were casually sitting down at a long marble-topped table . . . they were ordering hamburgers and flapjacks and coffee . . . and Bethel heard Elsie addressing McDermid: 'Oh, darling, I think I'm stinking in Dulcy. I wish to God I could act,' and heard Maggie Sample's snappish, 'So do I--wish you could!'

Bethel was sitting at the other end of that Beanery table, too scared to move, her voice breaking as she ordered, 'P-please, a chocolate éclair and a g-glass of m-milk.'

There was an elegance about Caryl McDermid that was hard to define. His suit, of soft blue flannel, was glassy at the seams; he wore a commonplace soft white shirt and solid blue tie; but there was an unwrinkled firmness and smoothness about his cheeks and chin; and the lapel of his coat curved as though he had magnificent shoulders. His smile was consuming; it took in everybody, as though he loved them yet realized all their absurdities.

Elsie Krall, his wife--the child must have been thirty years younger than he--was frail copper and ivory; the statuette of a stilled dancer; but her eyes were not alive like McDermid's. They rested always on him, gratefully; and imploringly on the bitter Miss Maggie Sample.

They were real gods, as Bethel had known they must be.

She was not shocked by the undivinity of their chatter. Probably she really had the professional stage virus in her system.