Читать книгу The Lady is Dead - Patrick Laing - Страница 6

The next few weeks drifted by uneventfully insofar as further developments in the affairs of the Fordyces were concerned. Lee dropped around at the house once or twice during that time, and I learned later from Deirdre that the girl’s campaign to win Mark back had practically bogged down. He remained friendly enough, but he had apparently made it plain that he intended to keep that friendship upon a strictly platonic basis.

“What can you do, Paddy,” Deirdre asked me after the second of Lee’s visits, “when a man not only drops you for another woman, but then actually expects you to be interested and sympathetic when he tells you all about her?”

“I don’t know, Derry,” I answered, being in a somewhat flippant mood at the moment. “I’ve never been dropped for another woman. But tell Lee to cheer up. Men don’t have too much sense when they’re just past twenty.”

“Neither,” she retorted pointedly, “do they seem to have too much when they’re past thirty.”

I left that remark strictly alone.

As for Mark himself, I got the impression that he was avoiding me, for he made no further effort to discuss his theatrical problem with me, as I had been almost certain he would after our talk in my office that morning. I learned indirectly that he had accepted and was going on with the part in the play, but whether with or without his father’s consent, I had no way of knowing.

I did, however, have one brief encounter with Eric Fordyce. It was a few days after the explosion in the laboratory when, as I was returning home from an evening class, I encountered him on his way back from the university chemistry laboratory, where he had evidently been putting in a few hours of extra work on his research experiment with his collaborator, Professor Fosdick. Since we were headed in the same direction, we continued the rest of the way together.

“I expect to be leaving here shortly, Laing,” he remarked presently as we walked along. “My experimental work with Professor Fosdick is almost completed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied with sincerity; for while the man’s peculiar reserve had prevented him from becoming on very intimate terms with anybody, I had liked what little I had come to know of him. “I had hoped you might be interested in staying on as a regular member of the faculty.”

“Ordinarily, I’d like nothing better,” he admitted—a little wistfully, I thought. “But I feel that Mark needs a change. He’s becoming restless here.”

“I thought Mark was particularly happy at the university,” I said in surprise.

“He’ll be graduated from the university in June,” he pointed out. “After that, he must decide what he wants to do with his life.”

Since he had, figuratively, unlatched the door for me, I decided to risk pushing it open a little farther.

“Mark seems to be interested in the theater,” I ventured, “and I’ve heard from other sources that he has genuine talent. Has he considered going on the stage as a career?”

The violence of Eric Fordyce’s reaction startled me, even though I had been partially prepared for it.

“No!” he exclaimed. “That is the one thing he shall never do! Mark shall never go on the stage with my consent—or without it, if I am able to prevent it.”

Then, as though realizing belatedly the force of his own words and fearing that they might have given offense, he apologized.

“Sorry, Laing,” he said. “I hadn’t meant to go off like that. It’s merely that I can’t see the theater as a fitting career for my son.”

After that, he seemed lost in his own thoughts; but just before we reached his house, he spoke again.

“Laing,” he said, and his voice sounded strangely tired, as though the weight of the years had suddenly descended upon him, “never undertake to interfere in other people’s lives, just because an illogical quirk in the law has given you the power to do it. For the satisfaction it promises at the outset soon turns into a burden that is too great for any mortal man to bear.”

The speech was a strange one, and he had uttered it almost as though it had been wrung from him by some secret torment which he was unable to bear any longer in silence. But he had not said enough to justify my asking him to say more, and so there was no way left open whereby I could try to help him.

I answered something—I had no idea what either then or later—and we said good night.

For a long time afterward I puzzled over what he had said to me and its possible application to Mark, for I had no doubt that in some way it concerned him. Then gradually it faded from my mind, and was all but forgotten.

For approximately three weeks then all was, if not actually serene, at least quiet. Had I not been so occupied with my own affairs—getting two classes of Senior students over the final hump before graduation, to say nothing of making out final grades for several other classes of both undergraduate and graduate students—I might have realized that this apparent calm was only the lull which precedes the storm. And then, as it was bound to, the storm broke.

I was preparing to leave my office for the day when, somewhat to my surprise, Mark stopped by to extend to Deirdre and me an invitation to attend the dress rehearsal of the Senior play, which was to be held that evening.

“I hope you’ll both come,” he went on with boyish shyness. “Dress rehearsal is a little different from the actual performance—sort of extra special. The audience is made up only of people who have been personally invited by the cast and crew.”

I thanked him and assured him that Deirdre and I would be very happy to attend. Then I asked, “Will your father be there, too, Mark?”

He hesitated. “I’m afraid not, Professor Laing,” he admitted finally. “So far as I know, he isn’t even aware that I’m in the play.”

“You didn’t tell him, then?”

“I couldn’t,” he answered. “He was worried over some difficulty he and Professor Fosdick were having with their experiment, and I didnt want to upset him further. After that straightened itself out, it was too late—I mean for Professor Barto to have got anybody to take my place in case Dad made me step out.”

I couldn’t help wondering whether most of that explanation hadn’t been merely a convenient sop to his conscience, but I refrained from saying so.

The play was being presented in the drama department’s little theater, a recently erected building on the edge of the campus. The auditorium was less than a quarter full when Deirdre and I arrived about fifteen minutes before the time the rehearsal had been scheduled to begin. Most of the audience were students, both male and female, but there was also a smattering of faculty members who spoke to us as we came in.

“What’s the play to be, Paddy?” Deirdre inquired as we found seats midway down the center aisle. “I haven’t even heard.”

“Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus,” I replied. “Mark is playing the title role.”

“Dr. Faustus,” she repeated pensively. “I hope the hell-fire will all be confined to the stage.”

We had been seated only a few minutes when Lee Laurence came prancing up to us. “Hello, you two!” she greeted us gaily. “Mark said this morning he was inviting you, or I’d have asked you myself.”

“I didn’t know you had a part in the play, Lee,” Deirdre said. “Should I tell you your costume looks very well, or would that be the wrong thing to say under the circumstances?”

“Just so you don’t make any remarks about type casting,” the girl answered with a light laugh, then explained for my benefit, “I’m one of the devils. How do you like my horns, Patrick?” She bent toward us.

I passed the tips of my fingers over the soft fluff of her bangs, where two tiny devil’s horns nestled.

“Very becoming,” I assured her. “You should try wearing them to class some day.”

She giggled and, saying something about the rehearsal’s being about ready to start, dashed off again.

“Lee seems unusually gay tonight,” I observed to Deirdre. “Have she and Mark had a reconciliation?”

“Not that I know of,” she replied doubtfully. “I’m afraid it’s just an act she’s putting on for his benefit. He’s standing over by the door that leads backstage—talking to a woman.”

“The woman?”

“I imagine so.” Deirdre paused a moment, then added, “And, Paddy, I’m afraid Lee’s description of her was pretty close to the truth. She is a little—well, flamboyant in appearance, and she must be close to her middle thirties, although she’s made up to look much younger.”

Just then Barto came out upon the stage to make a brief curtain speech, and we were obliged to fall silent.

He spoke for barely a minute; then the play began. The speech of the Greek chorus which Christopher Marlowe had written for the opening had been omitted, so that the play started with Dr. Faustus alone in his study. Mark delivered his lines well, better than many professionals I had heard. The shy, immature schoolboy I had known seemed to have vanished, transformed into the elderly medieval scholar philosophizing upon the nature and purpose of his scholarship as he contemplated the forbidden necromantic lore. By the time the first scene had ended and he had made his exit amid a burst of enthusiastic applause from his audience, I found myself agreeing with Barto that the stage was the boy’s natural heritage, and that to deny it to him would be a sin indeed.

“He’s good!” Deirdre whispered to me under cover of the applause. “Even his gestures are the gestures of an old man! I wish his father were here to see him, Paddy. It might make him change his mind about allowing him to go on the stage professionally.”

However, I doubted that. Remembering Eric Fordyce’s impassioned outburst that evening when I had suggested the possibility of Mark’s pursuing a theatrical career, I was convinced that talent or the lack of it had very little to do with the doctor’s attitude in the matter.

The play progressed on a more or less even keel—most of the supporting players were woefully lacking in Mark’s natural ability—up to the conjuring scene wherein Dr. Faustus, yielding to the temptation of the forbidden arts, has resolved to “try the uttermost magic can perform.” Mark had repeated the long Latin incantation, and there came the burst of stage thunder heralding the first appearance of Mephistopheles. And then, before its echo had entirely died away, a voice spoke from the rear of the auditorium.

“Stop!” it commanded hoarsely. “Stop this play at once!”

There was a startled gasp from the audience and the rustle of people turning in their seats to discover who had caused the disturbance. Two or three co-eds giggled nervously, then fell abruptly silent.

Deirdre had turned with the others. “Merciful Heaven!” she gasped, clutching my arm. “Paddy, it’s Dr. Fordyce! He looks angry enough to kill Mark!”

Eric Fordyce strode down the aisle, his footsteps echoing hollowly through the now otherwise silent theater. At sight of his father, Mark must have been stricken speechless, for he had made no effort to go on with his lines.

The dreadful silence continued until Dr. Fordyce must have been within a few rows of the front of the auditorium. Then a voice spoke from the stage.

“What is the meaning of this interruption?” it demanded. It belonged to Antonio Barto.

Eric Fordyce ignored him and addressed his son. “Take off that ridiculous get-up and put on your own clothes, Mark,” he commanded with deadly calm. “You’re coming with me.”

“He shall not!” Barto denied, and now it was he who thundered. “Marco, remain where you are.”

“Did you hear me, Mark?” Fordyce’s voice had become as a blade of cold, tempered steel. “Do as I say.”

There was another of those heart-breaking, leaden silences; then Mark Fordyce spoke.

“Very well, Dad,” he said slowly and distinctly, so that everyone in the auditorium heard his words, “I’ll do as you say—for the last time. But I warn you, I’ll make you regret this if it’s the last thing I ever do.”