New York Stories

by Bob Blaisdell

  Then it turned out that Miss Noyes, new come to little Mrs. Murdock’s own bridge club, knew an actress. She actually knew an actress; the way you and I know collectors of recipes and members of garden clubs and amateurs of needlepoint.

  The name of the actress was Lily Wynton, and it was famous. She was tall and slow and silvery; often she appeared in the role of a duchess, or of a Lady Pam or an Honorable Moira. Critics recurrently referred to her as “that great lady of our stage.” Mrs. Murdock had attended, over years, matinee performances of the Wynton successes. And she had no more thought that she would one day have opportunity to meet Lily Wynton face to face than she had thought—well, than she had thought of flying!

  Yet it was not astounding that Miss Noyes should walk at ease among the glamorous. Miss Noyes was full of depths and mystery, and she could talk with a cigarette still between her lips. She was always doing something difficult, like designing her own pajamas, or reading Proust, or modeling torsos in plasticine. She played excellent bridge. She liked little Mrs. Murdock. “Tiny one,” she called her.

  “How’s for coming to tea tomorrow, tiny one? Lily Wynton’s going to drop up,” she said, at a therefore memorable meeting of the bridge club. “You might like to meet her.”

  The words fell so easily that she could not have realized their weight. Lily Wynton was coming to tea. Mrs. Murdock might like to meet her. Little Mrs. Murdock walked home through the early dark, and stars sang in the sky above her.

  Mr. Murdock was already at home when she arrived. It required but a glance to tell that for him there had been no singing stars that evening in the heavens. He sat with his newspaper opened at the financial page, and bitterness had its way with his soul. It was not the time to cry happily to him of the impending hospitalities of Miss Noyes; not the time, that is, if one anticipated exclamatory sympathy. Mr. Murdock did not like Miss Noyes. When pressed for a reason, he replied that he just plain didn’t like her. Occasionally he added, with a sweep that might have commanded a certain admiration, that all those women made him sick. Usually, when she told him of the temperate activities of the bridge club meetings, Mrs. Murdock kept any mention of Miss Noyes’s name from the accounts. She had found that this omission made for a more agreeable evening. But now she was caught in such a sparkling swirl of excitement that she had scarcely kissed him before she was off on her story.

  “Oh, Jim,” she cried. “Oh, what do you think! Hallie Noyes asked me to tea tomorrow to meet Lily Wynton!”

  “Who’s Lily Wynton?” he said.

  “Ah, Jim,” she said. “Ah, really, Jim. Who’s Lily Wynton! Who’s Greta Garbo, I suppose!”

  “She some actress or something?” he said.

  Mrs. Murdock’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, Jim,” she said. “Yes. Lily Wynton’s an actress.”

  She picked up her purse and started slowly toward the door. But before she had taken three steps, she was again caught up in her sparkling swirl. She turned to him, and her eyes were shining.

  “Honestly,” she said, “it was the funniest thing you ever heard in your life. We’d just finished the last rubber—oh, I forgot to tell you, I won three dollars, isn’t that pretty good for me?—and Hallie Noyes said to me, ‘Come on in to tea tomorrow. Lily Wynton’s going to drop up,’ she said. Just like that, she said it. Just as if it was anybody.”

  “Drop up?” he said. “How can you drop up?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I said when she asked me,” Mrs. Murdock said. “I suppose I said I’d love to—I guess I must have. But I was so simply—Well, you know how I’ve always felt about Lily Wynton. Why, when I was a little girl, I used to collect her pictures. And I’ve seen her in, oh, everything she’s ever been in, I should think, and I’ve read every word about her, and interviews and all. Really and truly, when I think of meeting her—Oh, I’ll simply die. What on earth shall I say to her?”

  “You might ask her how she’d like to try dropping down, for a change,” Mr. Murdock said.

  “All right, Jim,” Mrs. Murdock said. “If that’s the way you want to be.”

  Wearily she went toward the door, and this time she reached it before she turned to him. There were no lights in her eyes.

  “It—it isn’t so awfully nice,” she said, “to spoil somebody’s pleasure in something. I was so thrilled about this. You don’t see what it is to me, to meet Lily Wynton. To meet somebody like that, and see what they’re like, and hear what they say, and maybe get to know them. People like that mean—well, they mean something different to me. They’re not like this. They’re not like me. Who do I ever see? What do I ever hear? All my whole life, I’ve wanted to know—I’ve almost prayed that some day I could meet—Well. All right, Jim.”

  She went out, and on to her bedroom.

  Mr. Murdock was left with only his newspaper and his bitterness for company. But he spoke aloud.

  “‘Drop up!’” he said. “‘Drop up,’ for God’s sake!”

  The Murdocks dined, not in silence, but in pronounced quiet. There was something straitened about Mr. Murdock’s stillness; but little Mrs. Murdock’s was the sweet, far quiet of one given over to dreams. She had forgotten her weary words to her husband, she had passed through her excitement and her disappointment. Luxuriously she floated on innocent visions of days after the morrow. She heard her own voice in future conversations. . . .

  I saw Lily Wynton at Hallie’s the other day, and she was telling me all about her new play—no, I’m terribly sorry, but it’s a secret, I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone the name of it. . . . Lily Wynton dropped up to tea yesterday, and we just got to talking, and she told me the most interesting things about her life; she said she’d never dreamed of telling them to anyone else. . . . Why, I’d love to come, but I promised to have lunch with Lily Wynton. . . . I had a long, long letter from Lily Wynton. . . . Lily Wynton called me up this morning. . . . Whenever I feel blue, I just go and have a talk with Lily Wynton, and then I’m all right again. . . . Lily Wynton told me . . . Lily Wynton and I. . . “Lily,” I said to her. . .

  The next morning, Mr. Murdock had left for his office before Mrs. Murdock rose. This had happened several times before, but not often. Mrs. Murdock felt a little queer about it. Then she told herself that it was probably just as well. Then she forgot all about it, and gave her mind to the selection of a costume suitable to the afternoon’s event. Deeply she felt that her small wardrobe included no dress adequate to the occasion; for, of course, such an occasion had never before arisen. She finally decided upon a frock of dark blue serge with fluted white muslin about the neck and wrists. It was her style, that was the most she could say for it. And that was all she could say for herself. Blue serge and little white ruffles—that was she.

  The very becomingness of the dress lowered her spirits. A nobody’s frock, worn by a nobody. She blushed and went hot when she recalled the dreams she had woven the night before, the mad visions of intimacy, of equality with Lily Wynton. Timidity turned her heart liquid, and she thought of telephoning Miss Noyes and saying she had a bad cold and could not come. She steadied, when she planned a course of conduct to pursue at teatime. She would not try to say anything; if she stayed silent, she could not sound foolish. She would listen and watch and worship and then come home, stronger, braver, better for an hour she would remember proudly all her life.

  Miss Noyes’s living-room was done in the early modern period. There were a great many oblique lines and acute angles, zigzags of aluminum and horizontal stretches of mirror. The color scheme was sawdust and steel. No seat was more than twelve inches above the floor, no table was made of wood. It was, as has been said of larger places, all right for a visit.

  Little Mrs. Murdock was the first arrival. She was glad of that: no, maybe it would have been better to have come after Lily Wynton; no, maybe this was right. The maid motioned her toward the living-room, and Miss Noyes greeted her in the cool voice and the warm words that were her special combination. She wore black velvet trous
ers, a red cummerbund, and a white silk shirt, opened at the throat. A cigarette clung to her lower lip, and her eyes, as was her habit, were held narrow against its near smoke.

  “Come in, come in, tiny one,” she said. “Bless its little heart. Take off its little coat. Good Lord, you look easily eleven years old in that dress. Sit ye doon, here beside of me. There’ll be a spot of tea in a jiff.”

  Mrs. Murdock sat down on the vast, perilously low divan, and, because she was never good at reclining among cushions, held her back straight. There was room for six like her, between herself and her hostess. Miss Noyes lay back with one ankle flung upon the other knee, and looked at her.

  “I’m a wreck,” Miss Noyes announced. “I was modeling like a mad thing, all night long. It’s taken everything out of me. I was like a thing bewitched.”

  “Oh, what were you making?” cried Mrs. Murdock.

  “Oh, Eve,” Miss Noyes said. “I always do Eve. What else is there to do? You must come pose for me some time, tiny one. You’d be nice to do. Ye-es, you’d be very nice to do. My tiny one.”

  “Why, I—” Mrs. Murdock said, and stopped. “Thank you very much, though,” she said.

  “I wonder where Lily is,” Miss Noyes said. “She said she’d be here early—well, she always says that. You’ll adore her, tiny one. She’s really rare. She’s a real person. And she’s been through perfect hell. God, what a time she’s had!”

  “Ah, what’s been the matter?” said Mrs. Murdock.

  “Men,” Miss Noyes said. “Men. She never had a man that wasn’t a louse.” Gloomily she stared at the toe of her flat-heeled patent leather pump. “A pack of lice, always. All of them. Leave her for the first little floozie that comes along.”

  “But—” Mrs. Murdock began. No, she couldn’t have heard right. How could it be right? Lily Wynton was a great actress. A great actress meant romance. Romance meant Grand Dukes and Crown Princes and diplomats touched with gray at the temples and lean, bronzed, reckless Younger Sons. It meant pearls and emeralds and chinchilla and rubies red as the blood that was shed for them. It meant a grim-faced boy sitting in the fearful Indian midnight, beneath the dreary whirring of the punkahs, writing a letter to the lady he had seen but once; writing his poor heart out, before he turned to the service revolver that lay beside him on the table. It meant a golden-locked poet, floating face downward in the sea, and in his pocket his last great sonnet to the lady of ivory. It meant brave, beautiful men, living and dying for the lady who was the pale bride of art, whose eyes and heart were soft with only compassion for them.

  A pack of lice. Crawling after little floozies; whom Mrs. Murdock swiftly and hazily pictured as rather like ants.

  “But—” said little Mrs. Murdock.

  “She gave them all her money,” Miss Noyes said. “She always did. Or if she didn’t, they took it anyway. Took every cent she had, and then spat in her face. Well, maybe I’m teaching her a little bit of sense now. Oh, there’s the bell—that’ll be Lily. No, sit ye doon, tiny one. You belong there.” Miss Noyes rose and made for the archway that separated the living-room from the hall. As she passed Mrs. Murdock, she stooped suddenly, cupped her guest’s round chin, and quickly, lightly kissed her mouth.

  “Don’t tell Lily,” she murmured, very low.

  Mrs. Murdock puzzled. Don’t tell Lily what? Could Hallie Noyes think that she might babble to the Lily Wynton of these strange confidences about the actress’s life? Or did she mean—But she had no more time for puzzling. Lily Wynton stood in the archway. There she stood, one hand resting on the wooden molding and her body swayed toward it, exactly as she stood for her third-act entrance of her latest play, and for a like half-minute.

  You would have known her anywhere, Mrs. Murdock thought. Oh, yes, anywhere. Or at least you would have exclaimed, “That woman looks something like Lily Wynton.” For she was somehow different in the daylight. Her figure looked heavier, thicker, and her face—there was so much of her face that the surplus sagged from the strong, fine bones. And her eyes, those famous dark, liquid eyes. They were dark, yes, and certainly liquid, but they were set in little hammocks of folded flesh, and seemed to be set but loosely, so readily did they roll. Their whites, that were visible all around the irises, were threaded with tiny scarlet veins.

  “I suppose footlights are an awful strain on their eyes,” thought little Mrs. Murdock.

  Lily Wynton wore, just as she should have, black satin and sables, and long white gloves were wrinkled luxuriously about her wrists. But there were delicate streaks of grime in the folds of her gloves, and down the shining length of her gown there were small, irregularly shaped dull patches; bits of food or drops of drink, or perhaps both, sometime must have slipped their carriers and found brief sanctuary there. Her hat—oh, her hat. It was romance, it was mystery, it was strange, sweet sorrow; it was Lily Wynton’s hat, of all the world, and no other could dare it. Black it was, and tilted, and a great, soft plume drooped from it to follow her cheek and curl across her throat.

  Beneath it, her hair had the various hues of neglected brass. But, oh, her hat.

  “Darling!” cried Miss Noyes.

  “Angel,” said Lily Wynton. “My sweet.”

  It was that voice. It was that deep, soft, glowing voice. “Like purple velvet,” someone had written. Mrs. Murdock’s heart beat visibly.

  Lily Wynton cast herself upon the steep bosom of her hostess, and murmured there. Across Miss Noyes’s shoulder she caught sight of little Mrs. Murdock.

  “And who is this?” she said. She disengaged herself.

  “That’s my tiny one,” Miss Noyes said. “Mrs. Murdock.”

  “What a clever little face,” said Lily Wynton. “Clever, clever little face. What does she do, sweet Hallie? I’m sure she writes, doesn’t she? Yes, I can feel it. She writes beautiful, beautiful words. Don’t you, child?”

  “Oh, no, really I—” Mrs. Murdock said.

  “And you must write me a play,” said Lily Wynton. “A beautiful, beautiful play. And I will play in it, over and over the world, until I am a very, very old lady. And then I will die. But I will never be forgotten, because of the years I played in your beautiful, beautiful play.”

  She moved across the room. There was a slight hesitancy, a seeming insecurity, in her step, and when she would have sunk into a chair, she began to sink two inches, perhaps, to its right. But she swayed just in time in her descent, and was safe.

  “To write,” she said, smiling sadly at Mrs. Murdock, “to write. And such a little thing, for such a big gift. Oh, the privilege of it. But the anguish of it, too. The agony.”

  “But, you see, I—” said little Mrs. Murdock.

  “Tiny one doesn’t write, Lily,” Miss Noyes said. She threw herself back upon the divan. “She’s a museum piece. She’s a devoted wife.”

  “A wife!” Lily Wynton said. “A wife. Your first marriage, child?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Murdock.

  “How sweet,” Lily Wynton said. “How sweet, sweet, sweet. Tell me, child, do you love him very, very much?”

  “Why, I—” said little Mrs. Murdock, and blushed. “I’ve been married for ages,” she said.

  “You love him,” Lily Wynton said. “You love him. And is it sweet to go to bed with him?”

  “Oh—” said Mrs. Murdock, and blushed till it hurt.

  “The first marriage,” Lily Wynton said. “Youth, youth. Yes, when I was your age I used to marry, too. Oh, treasure your love, child, guard it, live in it. Laugh and dance in the love of your man. Until you find out what he’s really like.”

  There came a sudden visitation upon her. Her shoulders jerked upward, her cheeks puffed, her eyes sought to start from their hammocks. For a moment she sat thus, then slowly all subsided into place. She lay back in her chair, tenderly patting her chest. She shook her head sadly, and there was grieved wonder in the look with which she held Mrs. Murdock.

  “Gas,” said Lily Wynton, in the famous voice. “Gas. Nobody knows w
hat I suffer from it.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Murdock said. “Is there anything—”

  “Nothing,” Lily Wynton said. “There is nothing. There is nothing that can be done for it. I’ve been everywhere.”

  “How’s for a spot of tea, perhaps?” Miss Noyes said. “It might help.” She turned her face toward the archway and lifted up her voice. “Mary! Where the hell’s the tea?”

  “You don’t know,” Lily Wynton said, with her grieved eyes fixed on Mrs. Murdock, “you don’t know what stomach distress is. You can never, never know, unless you’re a stomach sufferer yourself. I’ve been one for years. Years and years and years.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Mrs. Murdock said.

  “Nobody knows the anguish,” Lily Wynton said. “The agony.”

  The maid appeared, bearing a triangular tray upon which was set an heroic-sized tea service of bright white china, each piece a hectagon. She set it down on a table within the long reach of Miss Noyes and retired, as she had come, bashfully.

  “Sweet Hallie,” Lily Wynton said, “my sweet. Tea—I adore it. I worship it. But my distress turns it to gall and wormwood in me. Gall and wormwood. For hours, I should have no peace. Let me have a little, tiny bit of your beautiful, beautiful brandy, instead.”

  “You really think you should, darling?” Miss Noyes said. “You know—”

  “My angel,” said Lily Wynton, “it’s the only thing for acidity.”

  “Well,” Miss Noyes said. “But do remember you’ve got a performance tonight.” Again she hurled her voice at the archway. “Mary! Bring the brandy and a lot of soda and ice and things.”

  “Oh, no, my saint,” Lily Wynton said. “No, no, sweet Hallie. Soda and ice are rank poison to me. Do you want to freeze my poor, weak stomach? Do you want to kill poor, poor Lily?”

  “Mary!” roared Miss Noyes. “Just bring the brandy and a glass.” She turned to little Mrs. Murdock. “How’s for your tea, tiny one? Cream? Lemon?”