Went up to Boston on noon cars. Joined Lottie as per arrangement in Brown’s Hotel. Very tough joint. Lottie preparing to open two weeks season with Farquarson and Freedom. Urged writer to take job with company as bit-player, walk-on, crowd recruiter and bouncer. Theater more free and easy than today. Great attraction of times was Count Johannes. Audience came armed with over-ripe produce. Missiles began to fly before first act ended. Actors served as moving targets for remainder of performance. Sometimes produced bushel baskets and nets to catch vegetables. No reflection on theatrical greats intended. Julia Marlowe as Parthenia in Ingomar. Glorious! E. H. Sothern in Romeo and Juliet. Basset D’Arcy’s Lear. Howard Athenaeum then open. Also Boston Museum, Old Boston Theatre and Hollis Street Theatre.
Accepted position with Farquarson and Freedom. Played Marcellus in opening production of Hamlet with Farquarson as Hamlet and Lottie as Ophelia. Played numerous soldiers, sailors, gentlemen, guards and sundry watch-men during two-week season. Opened National Tour in Congress Opera House, Providence, R.I.
Tour included Worcester, Springfield, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Jamestown, Ashtabula, Cleveland, Columbus and Zanesville. Suspected Lottie of concupiscence in Jamestown. Found naked stranger in clothes closet in Ashtabula. Caught redhanded in Cleveland. Sold gold cuff-links and returned to Boston via steam-cars on March 18th. No hard feelings. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.
When Moses had Honora’s letter he was much more alarmed than his brother. He had mortgaged his trust on the strength of Honora’s age and he wrote directly to Boston. The Appleton Bank and Trust Company did not reply and when he telephoned Boston they told him that the trust officer was skiing in Peru. On Sunday night Moses took a plane to Detroit, starting on a wild-goose chase across the country to see if he could raise fifty thousand dollars on the strength, largely, of his charm. Fifty thousand dollars would barely cover his obligations.
On Monday night, alone in the house with the cook and her son, Melissa had a sentimental dream. The landscape was romantic. It was evening, and since there was no trace anywhere of mechanical things—automobile tracks and the noise of planes—it seemed to her to be evening in another century. The sun had set, but a polished afterglow lighted up the sky. There was a winding stream with alders, and on the farther banks the ruins of a castle. She spread a white cloth on the grass and set this with long-necked wine bottles and a loaf of new bread, whose fragrance and warmth were a part of the dream. Upstream a man was swimming naked in a pool. He spoke to her in French, and it was part of the dream’s lightness that it all transpired in another country, another time. She saw the man pull himself up onto the banks and dry himself with a cloth while she went on setting out the things for supper.
She was waked from this dream by the barking of a dog. It was 3 A.M. She heard the wind. It was changing its quarter and beginning to blow from the northwest. She was about to fall asleep when she heard the front door come open. Sweat started at her armpits and her young heart strained its muscles, although she knew it was only the wind that had opened the door. Not long ago, a thief had broken into a house in the neighborhood. In the garden, behind a lilac bush, a pile of cigarette ends had been found, where he must have waited patiently for hours for the lights of the house to be turned out. He had made an opening in a window with a glass cutter, rifled a wall safe of cash and jewelry, and left by the front door. In reporting the theft, the police had described his movements in detail: He had waited in the garden. He had entered by a back window. He had gone through the kitchen and pantry into the dining room. But who was he? Had he been tall or short, heavy or slender? Had his heart throbbed with tenor in the dark rooms, or had he experienced the thief’s supreme sense of triumph over a pretentious and gullible society? He had left traces of himself—cigarette ends, footprints, broken glass and a rifled safe—but he had never been found, and so he remained disembodied and faceless.
