# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 44/Number 6/'Thea Zell

Extracted from The Red Book Magazine, 1925 April, pp. 31–36, 145–154. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
He didn't make the caress so deferential as it had been at rehearsals, either. This was his last chance.
'Thea Zell
By Booth Tarkington
Illustrated by Ernest Fuhr
Readers of this magazine will join with its editors in a warm welcome to Mr. Tarkington, who in this story “comes home again,” so to speak, following an absence of several months. And in no other of his short stories has America's foremost living novelist written with deeper insight than in this story of a girl—and woman. Perfect in its simplicity, very great in its art, it will be called, we prophesy, one of its author's most distinguished pieces of work.
EVERYBODY in our town knew 'Thea Zell by sight even when she wasn't more than ten or eleven years old. In those days we were already claiming a population of seventy-five thousand, so it's easily understood that she must have been a pretty remarkable child, and she was. Anybody who had a good look at 'Thea Zell in her youth never forgot her. That is to say, he might forget her name; perhaps, but he'd never lose the picture of her out of his memory.
When her faded little mother brought her downtown, shopping, or going to Milton Zell's hardware store, maybe, everybody on the sidewalk would turn and stare at 'Thea; strangers in town would ask right away who she was; and clerks in the stores, seeing her pass the big show-windows, would point her out to customers, as if any chance to see her oughtn't to be missed. “Look quick!” they'd say. “There goes 'Thea Zell!”
'Thea's scene with Richelieu and the King made the audience gasp. To see her so revealed in public was startling.
Everybody had seen her or heard about her, even before she danced at the Orphan Asylum Benefit at Masonic Hall. She was about twelve then, and her costume looked as if it must have cost probably a little more than what her father made that year out of the hardware business. Nobody could tell what the dancing and so forth was all about, but you usually can't, anyhow, and don't expect to, unless there's some explanation on the program; so that didn't matter. There was a full orchestra, playing Weber's “Invitation to the Dance;” but 'Thea didn't seem to be inviting anybody to dance with her. She just twirled around the stage, moving her arms in a graceful way, and kneeling sometimes, and sometimes standing on one foot and lifting the other one up slowly, and then twirling again and waving her arms some more. As a matter of fact, she wasn't a very good dancer; but she kept pretty good time to the music, and she was so everlastingly graceful that nobody thought much about whether she was an Adeline Genée, or not.
It really didn't matter how she danced; all anybody wanted was just to sit and look at her, and that's why they encored her till the child must have been ready to drop. Counting encores and all, she must have danced a full hour, because 'Thea was game, even when she had to dance the same thing over seven or eight times; she was never in her life unwilling to give people all the chance to look at her they wanted.
People wanted to look at her a good long time, too; it was hard to get enough of looking at 'Thea. The first minute anybody saw her, he knew he was looking at the prettiest girl he ever had seen or ever would see, probably—the prettiest girl in the world, very likely. It doesn't happen often, a beauty like 'Thea Zell's; and when it does, it's something you can't describe any more than you can photograph it. Everybody would be disappointed in a photograph of Helen of Troy; it's a good thing she never had one taken.
Dorothea Zell's looks were perfect—that's one way of trying to tell what they were; and it's true. Just by chance, apparently, a human being without any flaw, from the crown of her little gold head to the soles of her pretty little feet, had been born into a world made up of people pretty generally rather homely; and this perfect-looking person happened to be 'Thea Zell of our town. Milton Zell was what people used to call “a mighty fine-looking man,” and 'Thea's mother had been pretty, people who knew her said; yet neither of them showed anything to account for their having a daughter like 'Thea. But then, 'Thea would have been a miracle anywhere, no matter who her parents were.
People often speak of a girl's having “golden hair” when they really mean blonde hair or fair hair; and it's only a few times in your life when you see a head of hair that actually might have been made of gold turned into hair. That was the kind 'Thea had; it looked as if somebody had taken a pretty large fortune in gold—not new gold, but gold that's been used a little and gets a tint in it almost greenish—and had made it into the finest kind of hair for 'Thea Zell.
HER mother was always curling it and working with it. If you sat across from Mrs. Zell and 'Thea in a street-car, you'd see Mrs. Zell patting the little girl's lace collar or skirt, or something, to get it a tiny bit straighter, or perhaps flicking some dust off of her patent leather slippers with a handkerchief,—she kept 'Thea dressed for a party all the time,—and when she'd done that, she never failed to curl some of the gold hair round her finger. It curled naturally, but never enough to suit Mrs. Zell.
'Thea's features and her white-and-rose complexion were like the rest of her, perfect, the best that Nature knows how to produce in inspirational moments; and you could tell that her eyes were blue if you saw her on the other side of one of our widest streets, which are all pretty wide. Old Will Thompson, who kept the drugstore on the corner below the Zells', said, “They're the kind of blue eyes that make you think you never saw blue eyes before,” and his son George, who clerked in the store, and wrote poetry that wasn't too good, wrote some about 'Thea's eyes. “Cornflowers shot through and through with sunshine,” George said they were.
She had the loveliest figure in the world; it had the dainty kind of slimness that isn't thin; and every bit of her was shapely. She was graceful, too, whatever she did; though her motions were a little bit slow, just as her eyes, bright as they were, always had a look a little absent-minded, as if she were thinking of something more interesting somewhere else. And when you talked to her you got the same effect: she looked at you sweetly—she always had a sweet expression and used the sweetest tones in her soft voice—but all the time she seemed to have some part of her mind on something more important than you were.
Even before she danced for the Orphan Asylum Benefit, everybody knew who she was, but after that her mother didn't seem to take any rest at all from keeping 'Thea before our public. Mrs. Zell was the greatest organizer of charity entertainments we ever had; and the poor certainly should have blessed her. There wasn't a month in the year, it seemed, when 'Thea didn't appear as the star of some sort of kermess or pageant or bazaar-show. All the other children were background strictly. They'd dance together, and chirp out some little recitations, or the words of a fairy play Mrs. Zell had found somewhere, or written herself perhaps; and then seven or eight fairies would bring in the Queen's Palanquin, or it might.be a Giant Sea Shell—and out would step 'Thea, all white and glittering; and after that you couldn't see anybody else.
When it came to reciting, or speaking the words, she wasn't at her best. She just chirped, like most of the others; but nobody noticed the words much, anyhow. She usually didn't have a great deal to say in these spectacles, and, for that matter, she didn't when she wasn't in them. That is, she didn't when she was a little girl; she talked more as she grew older, and everything she said seemed marvelous to the boys she knew.
BY the time 'Thea was fifteen she'd had four proposals of marriage, Mrs. Zell told her friends; and 'Thea's father said he was getting “mighty tired of having to wade knee-deep in boys” every time he went up or down the steps of his own front porch.
'Thea was sweet to us all, for I was one of the knee-deep boys, myself. I lived only a few doors north of her house; it wasn't to be expected that I should be immune to such a spell; and my sixteenth and seventeenth years are mortifying to remember on account of the things my upset condition made me do. Once, for instance, after a high-school party when I was a little late and couldn't get a dance or a single moment alone with her all evening, I sat on the Zells' side fence, just suffering, till three o'clock in the morning. I'd have sat there longer than that if Mr. Zell hadn't got up to throw a tin mustard-plaster box out of the window at some cats that were wandering around the yard, suffering too. He recognized me in the moonlight.
“Oh, for gosh sake!” he said. “Go on home!”
'Thea didn't show discrimination in favor of any of the knee-deep boys; she was as sweet and absent-minded with every one of us as she was with the others. Her sister Jane helped to take care of the overflow sometimes; but not often. Jane pretty well obliterated herself, because Mrs. Zell had got her into the habit. There were just the two sisters, no other children; Jane had come along a couple of years after 'Thea, and, especially with the mother, Jane never seemed to count.
She was a pretty good-looking girl, at that; but of course, the trouble was she couldn't be anything except 'Thea Zell's sister. If she'd had a chance away from 'Thea, she might have attracted more notice, because she'd have had a chance to shine a little on her own account. She was capable of doing that, under other circumstances; but, as matters were, she usually didn't have even very good clothes, unless 'Thea happened not to like something new her mother had bought for her. Jane was quiet; she knew well enough she was only background, and she kept to herself and did a great deal of reading.
'Thea would send her on errands, sometimes; but she did that with her mother, too. “Mamma, slip upstairs and get me the scissors,” I've heard her say, when Jane wasn't available; and Mrs. Zell went, as a matter of course. In fact, she hurried, and when she came back, she was anxious about whether she'd brought the right scissors or not. 'Thea was always gentle, so Mrs. Zell couldn't have been afraid of a scolding; probably her hurry and anxiety were partly from habit and partly from fear that if 'Thea wasn't pleased she might frown and so start to get lines in her lovely forehead.
IN those days I never knew 'Thea to be in any danger of getting lines on her forehead except once; and that was on the night when she had her greatest triumph. She was seventeen then, and Mrs. Zell was busier than ever organizing charity shows for 'Thea and the worthy poor. This time it was “The Sleeping Beauty,” to buy Thanksgiving dinners for the unemployed; and it was given at the old Grand Opera House just before that old building was torn down.
All the young people were in “The Sleeping Beauty,” and it was considered a pretty elaborate entertainment. First, there was the court, with a kermess sort of thing showing all the national dances of the world—except a few from Africa and the South Seas, because we didn't know about those then, and the authorities wouldn't have allowed them anyhow, not even for charity. The international dancing was supposed to be done in order to cheer up the King and Queen, who were very gloomy about something. They wouldn't liven up at all until a sedan chair was brought in by four Nubians, and out stepped a veiled damsel, who danced a dance called “The Genius of America.” At the end, she threw off the veil from her face and unfurled a big bright satin American flag, standing under it with her lovely golden head shining in the spotlight.
The King and Queen were in high spirits by this time. They recognized the unknown damsel as their own daughter, the Princess, and they came down from their thrones to congratulate her, while the band kept on playing and the audience applauded. 'Thea had to do it all over, because her mother called her back behind the scenes and had her get into the chair and be carried on again—and when she had finished the encore, that Bad Fairy arrived.
This was Jane Zell. None of the other girls wanted to be the Bad Fairy, but Jane didn't mind, she said; and she did it splendidly. She had a good, clear voice with something appealing in it that made you want to listen as soon as she spoke; and she put a queer kind of pathos into the indignation the Bad Fairy was supposed to feel over something or other. When she finished her speech and the waving of her wand that put the Princess and all the Court to sleep, there was hearty applause for her, she did it with so much feeling and intelligence. People looked on their programs to see who she was; and for the first time there appeared to be a person named Jane Zell who was something more than merely 'Thea's sister.
Then, after the curtain had gone down on all of us falling to sleep, there was a scene showing the Prince getting caught in thorns and cobwebs outside the Enchanted Castle. The Prince was Fred Cooper, whose father owned the Cooper Car Wheel Works, and Fred looked the part of a fine, tall young prince most excellently. He looked it too well to please the Courtiers—the rest of us knee-deep boys were only Courtiers—and at rehearsals there had been some slight writhings in our sleep when he woke the Princess with a deferential kiss. It was Mrs. Zell who put Fred into the Prince's part; and the Courtiers were all certain she did it because his father owned the Car Wheel Works and not because he was any handsomer than the general run of Courtiers and other people.
The scene after the one showing Fred poking around among the cobwebs and thorns outside, was inside the Castle again; and there was lots of applause for 'Thea when she was discovered asleep on a silver sofa, with the King and Queen and Courtiers draped over chairs and tables and lying around on the floor. The lights were all focused upon her, and she was a glorious sight; no wonder they applauded, and no wonder we writhed again when Fred Cooper kissed her! He didn't make the caress so deferential as it had been at rehearsals, either. This was his last chance, and Fred showed so much earnestness that I doubt if any Courtiers ever suffered more than we did.
“But all the rest of the applause was for you,” Mrs. Zell said. “Jane only got that little bit.”
My father had let me borrow our “family carriage” and negro driver to take the Zell family to the theater, and when I'd changed from the sateen and cotton costume of a professional courtier to my own clothes, I went to look for 'Thea. I found Mrs. Zell on the stage, and she said she couldn't go yet; she had a lot of things to attend to, and Mr. Zell would wait and help her; they'd come home on a street-car. But 'Thea and Jane had already gone out to the carriage, she said, and she wished I'd take them home right away, because 'Thea was still in her costume and might catch cold.
So I drove the girls home, they on the back seat and I sitting in front with the driver; and all the way neither of them spoke once, except when I said that it had been a great evening for 'Thea. Jane said, “Yes; wasn't it?” and her voice had the trembling in it that it had when she was the Bad Fairy. 'Thea didn't say anything at all; something seemed to be the matter, and I couldn't tell what it was, so I kept quiet.
When we got to the Zells' house, Jane jumped out, before anybody could help her, as she always did; and she ran into the house, calling back indistinctly to thank me, when she was almost indoors. 'Thea didn't say anything as she and I went up the walk to the front porch of their frame “Queen Anne” house; but all at once I heard a queer sound from her, as if she were choking; and leaning close to her in the darkness, I saw that she was crying.
“Why, what on earth's the matter?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all!” But when we got up the steps, she sank down on one of the porch chairs and began to cry as if her heart would break.
I thought it would kill me! It didn't seem possible to live and see that divine creature suffer. I begged her to tell me what was the matter; but she'd only say, “Nothing!” again, and go on sobbing harder. I begged her and begged her to tell me. I got down on my knees beside her chair; I blabbed out all I felt about her, or, at least, all I knew how to tell. Then, like an idiot, I took one of her beautiful little cold hands in mine and began to rub it as if she were in a chill.
I don't think she was conscious of a thing I said; I doubt if she realized that I was rubbing her hand; for suddenly she jumped up. “I'll fix her!” she sobbed; and I didn't have the remotest idea of what she meant. She rushed into the house, and like a blundering ninny, I went after her, still begging to know what was wrong.
Jane was sitting in their parlor, just off the hall, staring up at the gas chandelier, which had only one globe lighted; and she didn't move or change the direction of her look when we came rushing in.
“You know what you did!” 'Thea almost shouted at her. “You did it on purpose and you know you did!”
Jane turned then, and she looked at her sister in a serious, troubled way that seemed to get 'Thea all the more upset. “I didn't mean to do anything at all,” she said. “I only did what I had to. I couldn't do it any other way.”
“You did it on purpose!” Thea said; and she seemed to be accusing Jane of something terribly treacherous. “You knew it would ruin everything for me, and you deliberately went ahead to spoil it and hurt me!”
“I didn't,” Jane told her. “I never dreamed it would have anything to do with you, and it didn't.”
“Didn't it?” 'Thea sobbed. “It spoiled—”
“It didn't,” Jane said, and she looked pretty stubborn.
“It did!”
“It didn't!”
They were saying that over again when their father and mother came in. Mr. Zell took one look at his two daughters. “Well, good-night!” he said, and he went up the stairs; but Mrs. Zell threw her arms round 'Thea and began to pat her. “Don't cry,” she said. “You mustn't cry, 'Thea; you know what it does to people's eyes and foreheads. You mustn't!”
“How can I help it?” 'Thea wailed. “How can I help it when my own sister treats me as she did tonight?”
“She didn't mean to,” Mrs. Zell told her, comfortingly. “Jane never thought—”
“She did! She knew it would spoil everything. She knew it was the most important part of the whole thing, just when I was supposed to be going to sleep, and she knew how often I'd rehearsed that very part. She knew I'd practiced it hour after hour with the looking-glass, learning how to droop down on the sofa. Don't tell me she didn't know! Oh, Mamma, how can you stand up for her when she treated me like that?”
MRS. ZELL had begun to cry too, she was so upset. “You mustn't cry, 'Thea,” she said. “You know how it ruins the eyes. Jane didn't mean—”
“She did!” 'Thea was stormy. She choked and sobbed and stamped her foot, and her soft voice was getting wet-sounding and hoarse. “She meant it! She knew we were acting the story of the Sleeping Beauty, didn't she? It isn't for myself I care anything about it, Mamma; it's because she spoiled the story. I was supposed to be the Beauty, wasn't I? And that was where I was supposed to be going to sleep, wasn't it? The audience were supposed to be looking at me, weren't they?”
“They were looking at you,” Mrs. Zell told her. “They watched you all the time. They never took their eyes off of you a second.”
“They did, too!” 'Thea screamed. “Right at the most important time they never looked at me at all! I could see 'em, couldn't I? I didn't have my eyes tight shut, did I? I tell you that girl there,”—she pointed at Jane and shook her finger at her,—“that girl did everything on earth to keep them from looking at me and made them all look at her! She tried to make 'em applaud her, and they did!”
“No, no,” Mrs. Zell told her. “It was for you. It was every bit for you.”
“It wasn't! I was supposed to be the Sleeping Beauty; but what they were applauding for was the Bad Fairy! That was nice, wasn't it? When the Sleeping Beauty was being injured by the Bad Fairy, they applauded the Bad Fairy!”
“But all the rest of the applause was for you,” Mrs. Zell said. “Jane only got that little bit along in there. All the rest of it was for you, darling.”
“What do I care for that?” 'Thea sobbed. “It was just when I ought to've had the most she kept me from getting any! She did it on purpose and I'll never forgive her as long as I live! I wont, Mamma, I wont; I never will. Never, never, never!”
Then she clung to her mother and cried and shook all over, she cried so hard, while Mrs. Zell kept patting her and talking to her, trying to soothe her.
JANE didn't say anything at all. She got up and went by them, walking rather slowly, going to the hall stairway; but she stopped for a second or so, with one hand on the newel post, and turned her head to look at me.
I was shilly-shallying around near the front door, knowing I ought to have gone home before all this happened, but not seeing just how to get myself out while it was going on. 'Thea and Mrs. Zell didn't seem to know I was there—of course, to them I was just a neighborhood boy, one of 'Thea's love-stricken cubs—and it was strange that even poor Jane should notice my still being there; but she did.
She shook her head and gave me a queer look—a look I never forgot, though I couldn't have put into words what it meant, except it was as though she thought there wasn't much use in anything at all. After that, she went on up the stairs and out of my sight, though I stood looking up at her as long as I could see her; and then I contrived somehow to get myself out of the house. Mrs. Zell and 'Thea didn't pay any attention to me or notice that I said good-night. They were both crying hard, and Mrs. Zell was begging 'Thea to stop and not get her eyes all red.
When I got outdoors, I was astonished, because I found that something curious had happened to me; I had a big blank space inside and it seemed to be located in my chest. Half an hour earlier when 'Thea Zell first began to cry, I was just killed by every weepy sound she made; but before she got through, I didn't care if she went on like that forever. I didn't care anything about her at all; and as for any effect her looks had on me, she might as well have been a gold-headed wax doll. The blank space in my chest was where my feeling for her had been.
These changes come over boys and young men, as most of them know, though often they can't tell, themselves, what makes the change. It seems just to happen that perhaps for a month or a year, or even longer, a girl appears to a young man to be the whole glory of life concentrated into one person; and then, all of a sudden, within half an hour, or even as short a time as five minutes, everything alters, and he doesn't see any glory about her at all. She's just the same, then, as any other girl, except that she's painful to him and other girls aren't.
I'm not speaking of mere sailorlike fickleness, but of the kind of change that came over me when I listened to 'Thea Zell carrying on the way she did with her sister. The change in me was permanent, as such changes usually are; though I doubt if 'Thea ever noticed it. There were too many of the knee-deep boys, and I still went over there sometimes. Usually I talked to Jane, if she was anywhere to be seen.
That wasn't often, because she kept herself shyer than ever; and she had a good reason. When 'Thea said she'd never forgive her, evidently 'Thea meant it. At any rate, her sense of injury took a long time to wear out. She wasn't revengeful, exactly; she didn't say sharp things to Jane, or make little remarks about her; she just ignored her more completely; and if she looked at her, or if anyone spoke of Jane to her, 'Thea's superb blue eyes would look hurt and disapproving. Even when several years had gone by, things were not quite the same between the two sisters as before “The Sleeping Beauty.”
PROBABLY it's true to say that things were never quite the same again between them, though Jane was 'Thea's “maid of honor” when 'Thea got married and killed her mother. That's exactly what she did; she got married and killed her mother, doing both things with the one action, and I'm far from blaming her for either. She had a right to get married and to choose whom she pleased, and if Mrs. Zell died of it, that was her own fault for taking it so hard.
Of course what she wanted most of all was for 'Thea to go on the stage, or if she didn't do that, to marry somebody like Lord Kitchener of Khartum, or else wait till there was a bachelor President of the United States. Fred Cooper was about the best match in the city, and for a while Mrs. Zell didn't seem to mind 'Thea's beginning to like him better than she did the rest; but Fred's father sold the Car Wheel Works and made bad investments with the money; and after that, Mrs. Zell couldn't stand Fred at all. But it was too late. 'Thea had developed a real infatuation for him; she'd always had everything she wanted, and she couldn't be stopped from getting anything she wanted as much as she did Fred Cooper.
IT was poor Mrs. Zell's tragedy. She fought as long as she was able, but it was no use; all she succeeded in doing was antagonizing 'Thea, and when the wedding was over and the bridal couple ready to start, if Jane hadn't begged 'Thea to do it, she wouldn't have gone to Mrs. Zell's room to kiss her mother good-by. Mrs. Zell was already lying on the bed from which she never got up; she'd held out till the ceremony was over, and then they just got her upstairs before she collapsed.
What ailed her was “anemia,” they said; but to Jane it was clear that her mother's disease was a broken heart. She'd made every sacrifice of her strength; she'd worn herself out working for 'Thea to be a great public ornament, and the hope for that to happen some day on the grand scale was her life; so when 'Thea simply married, like any other girl in love, and her whole prospect was to be Mrs. Fred Cooper, her mother saw everything she'd lived for thrown away. “'Thea's ruined herself for the sake of a mere little infatuation—the kind that comes to any ordinary girl. She could have had anything in the world; but because she got excited about a good-looking nobody, she's ruined herself! What's the use of having spent your life working like a drudge when you see all you've built up thrown out in the ash-barrel?”
She got so sick they thought they'd have to telegraph 'Thea to come home before the wedding journey was over; but Mrs. Zell had a slight rally, and she lived until after the bridal couple had been home a week. The last thing she said was to 'Thea, Jane told me.
'Thea was sitting beside the bed, and Mrs. Zell had been looking at her a long time. That's all she seemed to want to do, just look at 'Thea. Jane said that this last time there had come to be tears in her mother's eyes, as she looked and looked; and evidently this was what made Mrs. Zell say what she did. She couldn't speak out loud, by that time; she could only whisper, and that pretty feebly.
“'Thea,” she said, in this slim little whisper that was all the voice she had left, “'Thea, you must be careful not to cry much; you know what it does to the eyes.”
'Thea did cry, though, half an hour later; she showed the most genuine kind of grief for her mother, and for months she was depressed and hardly went anywhere at all. In fact, she was pretty quiet during the first few years of her married life. She and Fred had two children, and 'Thea had become “thoroughly domestic,” everybody said. Fred had a salaried position in the corporation that bought the Car Wheel Works, and they were fairly comfortable in a modest way, with excellent prospects besides, for Fred was industrious and intelligent. All the indications were that here was a happy little family with most of the ordinary “best things in life” to live for.
BUT it wasn't so, though it took me a long while to suspect that anything was the matter. I was interested, naturally, and I had a right to be. I suppose the queer look Jane gave me the night of the “Sleeping Beauty” performance started it; but however that may be, I began to think Jane a pretty fine girl, and went on thinking her finer and finer—and I was right about it. In fact, I never was so right about anything else in my life, and by the time I discovered there was trouble in the Cooper family, I'd been related to them for several years. I was 'Thea's brother-in-law, you see.
'Thea had joined an amateur theatrical club, and from time to time she took part in little plays that didn't amount to much. Jane and I didn't belong to the club, so we didn't see the performances or hear much about them. The truth is, we didn't see the Coopers very often, though relations were friendly enough; 'Thea's manner to Jane was amiable, but there was still something a little withholding about it, and the sisters weren't intimate. We heard from other people about 'Thea's being in these amateur plays; and then after while there was a big charity operetta at the New Winston Theater, and we went to that and saw 'Thea in her glory again.
It was the old 'Thea—center of the stage, spotlight and everything—only she was more beautiful than ever. She had to sing one or two little songs, and she never could sing much, so her songs didn't set the river on fire, but her beauty did. She danced, too, in this performance, and fairly well—about the same as she used to—but to hear the audience, you'd have thought she was the queen ballerina of the world. She must have been satisfied, that night; she got all the applause those people had to give.
After that, it was the same sort of thing it had been in her childhood and girlhood; only the celebrity of little 'Thea Zell was small (just as the town was smaller then) compared to that of Mrs. Frederick Cooper. She was the star in everything that went on; and probably some of our charities would have had to be given up if it hadn't been for 'Thea. The first thing to do for important visitors was to see that they met Mrs. Frederick Cooper. When aldermen voted the Keys of the City to a middle-aged “royal personage” who was touring the country, it was 'Thea, dressed as Columbia, who presented the blue velvet box to him; and the personage was so appreciative that his entourage had a lot of trouble with him, persuading him to go on to the next town. 'Thea represented Columbia again in the pageant celebrating the hundredth anniversary of our city's founding; and when she wasn't Columbia, or England, or Cleopatra or Ophelia in some celebration or pageant of one sort or another, or occupied with tableaux vivants or charity spectacles, she was busy being the shining light of the amateur theatrical club she and Fred had joined. She'd certainly got bravely over her “domestic” period; she was in the local papers pretty nearly every day.
AS I say, the two sisters weren't intimate; but we saw something of Fred—much more than we did of 'Thea—and Jane was fond of their little boy and girl. She did quite a little looking after them, in fact, and Fred got into the habit of usually bringing them to our house for Sunday afternoon dinner, when 'Thea was nearly always busy rehearsing for something or other. At first Fred was proud of 'Thea's prominence; he seemed pleased to have his wife's beauty praised, and he was glad that she enjoyed herself. But as she got to spending more and more time preparing what might be called public exhibitions of herself, so that they got to be more “semi-professional” than is ordinarily thought desirable for the mother of a private family, so to speak, we could see that things had begun to wear on Fred considerably. Not that he said so—up to the time of “Love and Ladies,” he never once spoke a word of complaint.
“Love and Ladies” was a pretty important episode in the upper-class history of our city. For one thing, it showed how ideas had changed in those years when we didn't realize the change was going on. By the time “Love and Ladies” was performed, Mr. Zell was dead; I'd lost my own parents; and a great many of the fathers and mothers of people my own age had died. Most of those who were left no longer took an active part in the social life of the place; they were old, now, and old-fashioned, too; and besides that they were quiet—they didn't carry much weight. They'd been pretty strict, and probably too narrow in their views of what was proper and what wasn't; but at any rate the reaction from their views had set in, and the new era had begun. It wasn't what it is now, when nobody is shocked at anything any more; but it was well started. “Love and Ladies” gave full proof of that.
“Love and Ladies” was a sort of musical spectacle, written by a man named Hubert Vairing—at least that was the name he traveled under—and he played a part in it himself, besides directing it and running it generally. He went about the country, getting up his show for charities on a percentage basis. He'd come to a city and some benevolent board would take up his idea—they'd do the organizing and rent the theater and attend to the advertisements and selling the tickets. Vairing would get up the show with local amateurs in his cast and choruses; then he'd take half the profits, and the charity would take the other half. It was a “big show,” too; two or three hundred people in it in our city, and they had to rehearse for six or seven weeks beforehand.
Of course 'Thea was to be the star. Vairing was expected to select her for it, and he did, naturally, without any hesitation. He made a lot of fuss over her, it seems, and 'Thea was more excited about “Love and Ladies” than anything she'd ever been in. She was so much so, in fact, and in such a state over this Vairing, that she even brought him to call on Jane and me for a little while one evening. He was a good enough looking man, dark haired and thin, and pretty close to forty, I judged; and he had a black mustache and some deepish lines in his pale face that made him look a little like the pictures of Edgar Allen Poe. Maybe he knew it, because he wore his thick black hair pretty long, and had a great deal of black satin round his collar, like an old-fashioned stock. His manner was cordial, but nervous—he was what the girls used to call “intense.”
OF course he and 'Thea didn't talk about anything except “Love and Ladies”—they were on their way to a rehearsal—and since Jane and I naturally didn't know much about the show, the two of them did most of the talking while Jane and I just sat and said things like, “It must be,” or “I should think so.”
Most of what 'Thea said was about her own part, of course. “In the Du Barry scene,” she said, for instance, “do you think where I look over my shoulder at Zamar, after I've been looking into the mirror, do you think I've got that turn of the head just right?”
“It's one of the most perfect things you do,” he told her. “In fact, I think it's one of the very best bits in the whole production, though it's such a subtle little thing you can't expect a big public audience to appreciate it.” He turned to my wife. “Of course I needn't tell you what a great future your sister has before her. It's simply colossal!”
Jane didn't say anything to that, but 'Thea laughed in a caressing way she had when she was pleased, and said she was afraid some of the old-fashioned people were going to be a little shocked; the idea didn't seem to distress her. “Some of the old-timers are going to think it's pretty risqué,” she laughed. “We're fearfully modern! I'm afraid you'd better get Aunt Clara to stay away, Jane.”
“No; let her come,” Vairing cut in, before Jane could speak. “Let her come. If she's of the old school, let her come, because it will do her good to see what the revolt has established.” This subject seemed to warm him up, because he talked at us as loudly as if he'd been an orator on the platform and we the back row in the hall. “Let your Aunt Clara come!” he said. “Let her come and discover that the days of the old Puritanical tyranny are over. Let your Aunt Clara find out that the new world doesn't tolerate the old ogreish hatred of beauty. Let her come and discover the disappearance of the old nonsense that made it a crime not to conceal the divine contours the pure Greeks worshiped. Let her come and find out that all sensible people have long since accepted the new view of what is pure and what is impure. Let your Aunt Clara come and find out that Aunt Claraism is dead!”
Jane didn't know what the new view was, and she didn't ask him; but she looked unenthusiastic, and when he and 'Thea left—they had only stayed about fifteen minutes—she looked more so. “I wish he wouldn't say things to 'Thea like that,” she said.
“Like what?” I asked her. “You mean about Aunt Clara-ism and not concealing the divine contours the pure Greeks worshiped?”
“I mean about 'Thea's having a great future. He said it again the last thing before they went out—'I needn't tell you what a magnificent future your sister has before her'—and I'm sure he says it to her all the time.” Jane looked thoughtful. “It's not good for 'Thea; and I'm positive,” she said, “I'm positive he dyes his mustache!”
She was right about both, too, and though I never had any actual proof as to the mustache, it was only a few evenings after this call of 'Thea's and Vairing's that I saw more reason to believe Jane knew what she was talking about when she said his influence wasn't good for 'Thea. Fred Cooper dropped in—he'd got the children to bed, he told us, and just thought he'd like to come over and have a smoke with me before he turned in, himself. But it was easy to see he was worrying over something, and easier still to guess what it was.
He kept off the subject for a time; and then, right while he and I were talking about something else, he turned and asked Jane what she heard about “Love and Ladies.”
“Nothing much,” she told him. “I understand 'Thea's delighted with her part.”
“Yes,” he said, “I should think she would be! There isn't much else to this show, except what Vairing does, and the choruses and ballets and scenery. In the first act 'Thea is Salome. In the second she's Lucrezia Borgia. In the third she's Madame Du Barry. That ought to be enough for her!”
“What's Vairing do?” I asked.
Fred laughed, but not with much enjoyment. “I believe he's King Herod when 'Thea's Salome, and Cæsar Borgia when she's Lucrezia, and the Duc de Richelieu when she's Du Barry.”
“Well,” I said, “you were the Prince when she was the Sleeping Beauty.”
“Yes,” he answered. “And I married her.” Then he laughed again, and didn't seem to enjoy doing it even so much as the first time. “They haven't let me go to any of the rehearsals, but I hear enough about it, heaven knows! To tell the truth,” he said to Jane, “I'm a little nervous about this thing, and I thought maybe it wouldn't do any harm if you'd say just a word or so to 'Thea.”
“Why don't you?” Jane asked him.
“I?” he said, and he seemed surprised at the idea. “I guess I made a big mistake a good while ago, encouraging her to go into such things. Just after we were married and Mrs. Zell died, 'Thea seemed to like being at home with me; and all the time the children were babies, she was the same way. Then she began to get restless, and—well, I think maybe she felt she'd made a mistake in believing she cared so much about me. I think maybe she felt she'd been wrong in opposing her mother about our marriage. Anyhow, I could see she'd begun to be different and restless—it was rather as though she'd had about all of that kind of life she wanted—and when she began to go into these shows, I encouraged her because I thought maybe it would make her more contented. I'm afraid I made a mistake.”
JANE looked up from her sewing, and shook her head. “No,” she told him. “'Thea'd have done it anyhow. You only kept things more peaceful. What is it you want me to say to her?”
“It's like this,” he said. “If I speak to her again, I'm afraid she'll only be more positive it's from some feeling she thinks I have about this Vairing. I tried to say something about her being with him so much of the time, and that's the way she took it. She was pretty hurt and pretty angry; she accused me of being jealous and wouldn't listen to any explanation. I'd already monopolized a great part of her life, she said—meaning I'd spoiled it—and now, just when her great chance had come, I wanted to spoil the rest of it. Well, I never could talk to her when she's like that, and I've just shut up. So I thought that maybe you—”
“It wont do any good,” Jane told him. “Not a bit. I'll try, if you ask me, but one of the best ways to get 'Thea to do anything is for me to ask her not to. What do you want me to say to her?”
“It's not easy to tell you,” he said. “I know of course there isn't a chance to persuade her to resign and drop the whole thing, particularly this late in the day. But there are two things that worry me most, and one of them is—well, I'm afraid she's got it into her head to go on the professional stage.”
“She's always had that,” Jane told him.
“I know,” he said. “But until lately I think it was more or less vague—just something discontented and ambitious in the back of her head. She didn't know how to go about it, and what I'm afraid of is that now she thinks she does know—through this Vairing. She thinks he's a great manager and a great actor and that if he thought enough of her 'work'—that's how she speaks of it—he could put her right into a New York theater as a star. That's what he's made her believe, and naturally it makes me nervous. When I think of the children—”
“They'd get along all right,” Jane told him. “And so would you.”
He was surprised to hear her say this, and he told her so. “You don't think it would be right in her, do you, Jane?” he asked.
“No, I don't, and I'll tell her whatever you want me to; but I think you and the children would get along about as well as you do now. What was the other thing you said worried you especially, Fred?”
HE looked embarrassed when she asked him that. He got red and stammered. “Well, it's—it's about her costumes—or at least about what I understand they're to be, from hearing her and this—this Vairing talk about them. She's excited about them—in fact, she's just wild to get them on and—and show off in them! I understand the Salome one is to be what's called 'extremely daring,' and that makes her all the more eager to wear it. I haven't seen any of them; I've only heard her and Vairing talk about them, you see, so they may be milder than I suspect; but the way they talk makes me scared. I believe the Lucrezia Borgia one is a little more 'extremely daring' than the Salome.”
“I don't see why,” Jane said. “I never heard of Lucrezia Borgia going about in any special state of undress. Did you?”
“No,” Fred answered. “Nor did anybody else; but you see this—this Vairing wrote the stuff and designed the costumes; he could do whatever he wanted to, and I don't suppose history cuts any great figure with him! The scheme of the thing is supposed to be 'Beauty and Love through the Ages;' that's to be on the program as explaining 'Love and Ladies,' I believe. But the Du Barry scene is the one I'm most afraid of. It comes last; so it's to be the 'extremely daring' limit, I'm afraid.”
“How?” I asked him. “Is it the old stuff about Mrs. Du Barry taking chocolate in bed?”
“No; I wish it were.” He looked at Jane, then got red again and looked away. “I suppose I'm old-fashioned, but just even to hear about it—well, it scares me! As I understand them, the Duc de Richelieu wants the King to fall in love with Madame Du Barry. 'Thea is to appear in the scene at first in an eighteenth-century French court costume, and then Richelieu, to show the King how beautiful she is—he—well, I dresses her on the stage.”
“Oh, no!” Jane said. “No!”
“I'm afraid it's—it's something like that, Jane,” Fred said, pretty miserably. “Of course they explained to me it's all done to music as a sort of dance and it's 'purely symbolical,' or something; and they have to be 'real' because 'realism is absolutely art, and anybody who thinks there's anything improper about art ought to be hooted and condemned. When I objected again and wanted to know more details about the Du Barry scene, 'Thea asked me if I had minded her wearing a bathing-suit last summer, and what was the difference? She said she wouldn't stand for any 'Aunt Clara-ism,' whatever that means, and told me I must have an impure mind.” He swallowed, and looked at Jane in a pitiful sort of way. “The truth is,” he said, “I can't do a thing with her. I haven't any influence at all to stop this thing; and she's never done anything like it before. I'd hate to have her 'talked about' for it. I'm afraid people will misjudge her. Could you—couldn't you—”
“I'll try,” Jane said. “But of course nothing on earth could keep her out of the silly thing, and I don't know that I can even get her not to be 'daring.' You see 'Thea's always known how beautiful she is and—well, you can't often keep people with beautiful voices from letting other people hear them sing, can you? I'll do what I can do to modify matters; but I'm pretty certain I wont get anywhere with her.”
JANE was right. When I came home from the office, next evening, I asked her if she'd seen 'Thea, and she shook her head; but by that she didn't mean she hadn't seen her; she meant she hadn't accomplished anything and had unpleasant forebodings.
“I went there and asked 'Thea to show me her costumes,' she told me. “The Salome one is pretty wild; there isn't any back to it at all, above the girdle, and not a great deal more in front; but I've seen ball-gowns lately almost like it. As 'Thea says, people have changed their views about such things, and I think myself that she can wear the Salome costume and not be severely criticized, except by a few old-fashioned people. The Lucrezia Borgia dress is really gorgeous, and she'll look magnificent in it. It's a little more revealing than the Salome, and I'm afraid even moderately 'modern' people will be rather shocked. The Du Barry dress is entirely modest; I'd wear it myself, and I'm afraid that's the point of it—since it's to be taken off! I wanted her to show me how that was to be done and how she'd look then—but she declined. She's borrowed 'Aunt Clara-ism' from that Vairing man, and told me she didn't want any from me. I said what I could; but I didn't do any good. She's excited beyond all reason; Vairing is supposed to be going to make a great opening for her on the professional stage, and she's wild about him!”
“What?” I asked. “You don't mean she's fallen in love with him?”
Jane shook her head again. “She may think she has; I don't know whether she does or not. But if she does think so, she's mistaken. She's wild about him, not for himself, but because she thinks he can give her what she's wanted all her life.”
“I suspect she's wrong about that,” I said. “If he's such a power, what's he going around getting up charity amateur shows for? 'Thea's not in her first youth any more; and though she's beautiful, she can't act any, and she can't sing any, and she can't really dance to speak of, either. You couldn't pound any sense into her head at all?”
“No,” said Jane. “And she's so happy I wasn't even able to make her angry. Poor Fred! I'm afraid he's got a trial in store for him next Wednesday night; and I'm glad the children aren't going. I'm pretty sure you and Fred and Aunt Clara and I are going to be embarrassed.”
Jane was right again. The next Wednesday was a “gala night” I'm never likely to forget! Jane and Aunt Clara and poor old Fred and I—sitting together—were embarrassed from the very lifting of the first curtain. Most of the nicest young people we knew were in the chorus, and if Herod's court dressed as lightly as these young people supposed to be representing them did, Jerusalem was no place for a dressmaker to make a living.
Salome was only a little more so than the others, and nobody ever saw anything more glorious than 'Thea was—simply to look at, I mean. She got round after round of applause, and I suppose her relatives were about the only people who hated to see so much of her loveliness.
Fred couldn't stand it; and after that act, he told me he wasn't able to go on sitting with us down there in the orchestra any longer; he was going up to the top of the gallery where nobody knew him; so he did.
After the next act, when 'Thea had been Lucrezia Borgia in a dress and a dancing love-scene that both made me ask myself if I could really be the brother-in-law of any such Italian heroine, Aunt Clara looked at Jane and me for several long seconds. “Did you know about this beforehand?” she asked Jane.
“I knew a little,” Jane told her.
“Then you had no business to let me come here,” Aunt Clara said. “I bid you good-night!”
She got up right then and there and went out; and I followed her, and telephoned to her house to get her car to come for her earlier than expected. She talked freely in the lobby, while we were waiting; but I didn't argue with her (except when she tried to prove that Jane could have done something to stop 'Thea), and when I got back to my seat, the lights were out, and the Palace of Versailles was the background for a lot of dancers and singers on the stage.
'Thea's scene with the Duc de Richelieu and the King came almost at the end, and when it did come, it made the audience gasp. I suppose there are “artistic” people and “modern” people who would only have thought it was beautiful, and that 'Thea's splendid loveliness had some Grecian sort of right to be disclosed so generally. In a professional ballet of the “modern” type, I doubt if I'd have thought it immoral or improper, myself—probably I shouldn't have thought anything about it at all. But to see the woman who'd been little 'Thea Zell that we all knew, Fred Cooper's wife—and everybody knew Fred, too—to see her so revealed in public, step by step, so to speak, was more than startling. If 'Thea hadn't begun the scene with so many clothes on, it wouldn't have been so dismaying to see her finish it with almost none.
BEING her brother-in-law, I didn't want to mingle much with that buzzing audience when “Love and Ladies” was over; and Jane didn't. She kept swallowing and swallowing, and we pretended to be hunting for something under the seats until most of the people had gone out. Then we got up and sneaked after them.
On the sidewalk in front of the theater Fred Cooper, with the brim of his hat pulled down, came up to us. “Are you going around to her dressing-room to—to say anything to her?” he asked.
“Why, no,” I said. “We thought we wouldn't. Are you?”
“No,” he said. “I'll wait for her at home. I've got a hired car here I'll leave for her. Would you mind taking me up as far as my house with you?”
So we took him in with us, and none of us said anything till we got to where he lived, about a mile and a half up the street. Then he got out and thanked us; but before he said good-night, Jane nudged me and I understood what she meant; so I got out too.
“I'll walk the rest of the way home,” I told him. “But first I'll come in and wait with you a little while.”
So we went in and sat and waited together, pretty quiet. I smoked a couple of cigars, while he was upstairs looking to see if the children were asleep all right, and when he came down he said 'Thea seemed to be taking her time about coming home.
“There was probably a big crowd to congratulate her,” I told him. “You know they did applaud her pretty heartily, even at the end, Fred. Of course you understand we're her relatives; other people wouldn't take the same view of it that we do.”
He looked at me; and his eyes got red and his face was working. “You know I did think she was—I did think anyhow she was modest!” he said.
Then he began to walk the floor slowly, with his hands behind his back, and after while he noticed me as I was looking at my watch, and he stopped still. “Probably gone to a supper or something,' I said. “Amateur companies usually like to celebrate afterward that way.”
So he went on walking the floor, and I sat with him waiting—waiting for 'Thea to come home.
SHE never did come home.
It was after two o'clock when the messenger boy rang the bell. He handed in the note from her; and so far as Fred Cooper was concerned, that was the last of the 'Thea Zell he'd kissed when he was the Prince and she was the Sleeping Beauty.
She'd left for New York on the two o'clock train, so she was out of town a little while before the note reached us. Haste was important, she said, because Mr. Vairing knew of a remarkable opening for her that wouldn't wait. She realized that it might have been better, she said, to come home and make arrangements with Fred, so that she could follow her career and come to some formal agreement for a separation if he desired it—but it was difficult to plan things calmly with the ovation she'd received still ringing in her ears—and besides, the New York opening was one that mightn't come again in a lifetime.
The treasurer of the charity organization responsible for “Love and Ladies” was a good friend of mine, and I knew him well enough to get him out of bed to the telephone. Vairing had collected his share of the proceeds from the box-office by midnight—he'd explained that he was called suddenly to New York.....
'Thea left him six months later, we heard, when she finally became convinced that he had no power to put her upon the stage and no means to do anything for her in any way at all. She got one or two small parts for herself; but we didn't hear anything about how they turned out, and the next definite thing we knew of her was that a manager of considerable eminence in that line of business had taken an interest in her and was going to produce a musical show, a sort of “revue,” I think, with 'Thea as the star. There was quite a little about it in the papers, and we saw pictures of “'Thea Zell, the New Beauty;” but the piece failed and was taken off after a few performances in Atlantic City and Wilmington, Delaware. 'Thea wrote Jane a letter that was pretty bitter about the newspapers; and the manager had behaved poorly too, she said.
After that we didn't hear from her for a long time; and then she began writing again, but didn't say much.
She never came back to her own town but once, and it wasn't such a long while ago. She was booked here for a week in a sumer vaudeville company, not a “headliner,” eleven years after she went away with Vairing, that night of “Love and Ladies;” and hardly any notice was taken of her making this reappearance. Things are forgotten quickly; old people go and new people come, as the town grows; and Jane was relieved to find that this temporary return of 'Thea's didn't make any stir at all.
Fred had married again, two years after she left him; and the children got fond of the second Mrs. Cooper right away, and never mentioned their real mother. But Jane thought 'Thea had a right to see them, and that they ought to see her, because 'Thea wanted it; and Fred gave his consent. So Jane arranged for 'Thea to come up to our house from the boarding-place where she stayed that week, and she had the two young people come over from Fred's to meet their mother. It was vacation, and they were both home from college.
THE meeting wasn't much of a success. 'Thea was “made up” pretty heavily, and she had a kind of brassy tang to her, so to express it. Her clothes looked too economical in some directions and too lively in others; her voice was louder than it used to be, too; and though you could still see she'd been very good-looking, she'd got that old sweetness of hers too much emphasized, so that it seemed to be a pure affectation, like the mixed-up too-cultured accent she used.
The young people were awkward about greeting her; you could see they were just as much embarrassed as they would have been if they'd met a stranger of that type. Probably they were more embarrassed because of their knowing she was their mother; and so, being young and nervous, they were rather stiff in their manner, of course. They looked surprised when 'Thea kissed them, though they probably expected it; and they didn't seem to have anything at all to say; so Jane and I went out and left them alone with their mother, thinking they'd warm up some maybe, if we were out of the way.
They didn't. It wasn't more than twenty minutes before 'Thea called us back; and they were gone. They had an engagement to play tennis with our own two youngsters; they'd told her, and, looking out of the window, we could see the four of them, already busy putting up the net on the tennis-court.
'Thea stood and looked at them and I saw her biting her underlip. I was afraid she was going to be emotional; but she wasn't—not very, at least. It was to Jane she spoke.
“Mother did better by you,” she said; that was all.
Then, as she began winking and biting her lip again, she saw herself in the mirror across the room. She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and when she took it down she looked at it suspiciously and saw some coloring stuff on it from her eyebrows and eyelids. “Dear me!” she said, and went over to the mirror and began straightening out her make-up, where she'd mussed it, and freshening up generally.
“Dear me!” she said, and she laughed pettishly, as if she were provoked with herself. “I ought to know better than to cry!”
But it was Jane who did the crying, after 'Thea had gone. I never saw Jane cry so long or so heartbrokenly over anything else in my life. It was because of what 'Thea'd missed, she told me, and because what 'Thea had said about their mother was true.
   “Geraldine,” another impressive story of a woman's life, told as only Booth Tarkington knows how to tell it, will appear in a forthcoming issue.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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