Into the Night

When the season ended, he went to New York, armed with a letter of introduction from the summer-playhouse manager, to tackle the theater there. After heartbreaking months he managed to get a job, and then after he’d worked like a dog over his lights and gelatin slides and dissolves and all the rest of it, the play promptly closed down after its second performance. Presently he landed another, and it went on like that.

One or two of the reviews even had a line of praise in them for the lighting effects, which is a very unusual thing. But you can’t eat lines of praise, and his name was never mentioned, anyway, so who cared?

“It still wasn’t my kind of work. It was a dead end. And the layoff between shows was awfully long sometimes.”

Then one night the leading lady of the current particular show he’d lighted caught him in the act of taking candid shots of her from the wings as she came off. She got him to show her the finished prints the next day, and she was so impressed when she looked them over, she offered to buy them from him. He gave them to her instead. One thing led to another, and in the course of conversation he told her what his dream was. She ended up by staking him to it, advancing him enough money to open his own studio and start out by himself.

“Everyone in the case, of course, thought there was something else behind it. She was a woman about forty and she was known to have a weakness for much younger men. But there was nothing like that in back of it at all. As a matter of fact she was very much in love with somebody else right at the very time. But she was a great humanitarian, and she believed enough in my talent and ability to want to help me. That was all there was to it. And I made a point of seeing to it that she got back every penny of that loan by the time I was through.”

She knew he had; that was his characteristic.

“She was my first sitter. And she let me display one of the portraits I made of her under glass alongside the street entrance to the studio. The publicity helped. She didn’t need it; I did.”

He left at about eleven. Not much had been accomplished, but at least a start had been made. The groundwork had been laid. They were “Vick” and “Madeline” to one another now. And he owed her a dinner. That was important, because he had an abnormally acute sense of reciprocal obligation, she had detected that about him already. What he owed, he repaid.

At any rate, the ball had started rolling.

He called a week later, toward the end of the week.

“Vick Herrick.”

“Hello, Vick.”

“I’ve been given two tickets to a show, and if you’re not doing anything tonight, I was wondering if you’d care to take it in with me.”

“I would,” she said immediately.

“Have dinner with me first and—”

“No,” she said, just as immediately. “Give me a rain check on the dinner part.” She wanted to keep the obligation going, so she would have that much of a lien on seeing him a third time.

“You won’t let me buy you dinner?” he said, crestfallen.

“Next time around I will, not tonight. But I will take in the show with you, and you can buy me a cup of coffee afterward. I like to sit up late and talk.”

“All right, I’ll pick you up at the hotel.”

“I can meet you at the theater, if you want.”

“No, it’s one of these off-trail playhouses, you might have a hard time finding it. I’ll stop by for you at eight.”

She waited for him just inside the lobby entrance, in order to save time and trouble. Since this wasn’t a romance, there was no reason for playing coy or hard to get and making him come inside, call up to her room, and all the rest of the courtship trimmings.

She recognized him through the cab window as it drove up, went outside, and joined him just as he opened the door and stepped out.

“How’s that for timing?” she asked cheerfully.

“To a tee,” he grinned. “You’re the kind of person I’d like to have along when I have to make a train in a hurry.”

The backtracking lights outside stippled their faces as the cab got underway again.

“Get your pictures all right?”

“Vick, they’re simply incredible. How do you do it?”

“It’s my métier, as the French say. By the way, you never did tell me — just what were you thinking when you got that marvelous hike into your brows?”

She laughed. “You know something? If I were to tell you, you’d be the one with a hike in your brows.”

“I don’t guarantee this thing we’re going to,” he said. “It was done in New York two years ago, at one of the little off-Broadway theaters. Even then, I don’t think professionals were in it. So tonight you might say we’re going to see a road company of an amateur production.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said leniently. “It’ll be an experience, at least.”