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The Mystery of Murray Davenport

R >> Robert Neilson Stephens >> The Mystery of Murray Davenport




A breath of relief escaped Davenport, and he said, with a faint smile:

"There was a time when I had my say about the play. We've had scenes, I
can tell you. But Bagley is a man who can brazen out any assertion; he's
a man impossible to outface. Even when he and I are alone together, he
plays the same part; won't admit that I wrote the piece; and pretends to
think I suffer under a delusion. I _was_ ill at the time he disposed of
my play; but I had written it long before the time of my illness."

"How did he manage to pass it off as his?"

"We were friends then, as he says, or at least comrades. We met through
being inmates of the same lodging-house. I rather took to him at first.
I thought he was a breezy, cordial fellow; mistook his loudness for
frankness, and found something droll and pleasing in his nasal drawl.
That brass-horn voice!--ye gods, how I grew to shudder at it afterward!
But I liked his company over a glass of beer; he was convivial, and told
amusing stories of the people in the country town he came from, and of
his struggles in trying to get a start in business. I was struggling as
hard in my different way--a very different way, for he was an utter
savage as far as art and letters were concerned. But we exchanged
accounts of our daily efforts and disappointments, and knew all about
each other's affairs,--at least he knew all about mine. And one of mine
was the play which I wrote during the first months of our acquaintance.
I read it to him, and he seemed impressed by it, or as much of it as he
could understand. I had some idea of sending it to an actor who was then
in need of a new piece, through the failure of one he had just produced.
My play seemed rather suitable to him, and I told Bagley I thought of
submitting it as soon as I could get it typewritten. But before I could
do that, I was on my back with pneumonia, utterly helpless, and not
thinking of anything in the world except how to draw my breath.

"The first thing I did begin to worry about, when I was on the way to
recovery, was my debts, and particularly my debt to the landlady. She
was a good woman, and wouldn't let me be moved to a hospital, but took
care of me herself through all my illness. She furnished my food during
that time, and paid for my medicines; and, furthermore, I owed her for
several weeks' previous rent. So I bemoaned my indebtedness, and the
hopelessness of ever getting out of it, a thousand times, day and night,
till it became an old song in the ears of Bagley. One day he came in
with his face full of news, and told me he had got some money from the
sale of a farm, in which he had inherited a ninth interest. He said he
intended to risk his portion in the theatrical business--he had had some
experience as an advance agent--and offered to buy my play outright for
five hundred dollars.

"Well, it was like an oar held out to a drowning man. I had never before
had as much money at the same time. It was enough to pay all my debts,
and keep me on my feet for awhile to come. Of course I knew that if my
play were a fair success, the author's percentage would be many times
five hundred dollars. But it might never be accepted,--no play of mine
had been, and I had hawked two or three around among the managers,--and
in that case I should get nothing at all. As for Bagley, his risk in
producing a play by an unknown man was great. His chances of loss seemed
to me about nine in ten. I took it that his offer was out of friendship.
I grasped at the immediate certainty, and the play became the property
of Bagley.

"I consoled myself with the reflection that, if the play made a real
success, I should gain some prestige as an author, and find an easier
hearing for future work. I was reading a newspaper one morning when the
name of my play caught my eye. You can imagine how eagerly I started to
read the item about it, and what my feelings were when I saw that it was
immediately to be produced by the very actor to whom I had talked of
sending it, and that the author was George A. Bagley. I thought there
must be some mistake, and fell upon Bagley for an explanation as soon as
he came home. He laughed, as men of his kind do when they think they have
played some clever business trick; said he had decided to rent the play
to the actor instead of taking it on the road himself; and declared that
as it was his sole property, he could represent it as the work of anybody
he chose. I raised a great stew about the matter; wrote to the
newspapers, and rushed to see the actor. He may have thought I was a
lunatic from my excitement; however, he showed me the manuscript Bagley
had given him. It was typewritten, but the address of the typewriter
copyist was on the cover. I hastened to the lady, and inquired about the
manuscript from which she had made the copy. I showed her some of my
penmanship, but she assured me the manuscript was in another hand. I ran
home, and demanded the original manuscript from Bagley. 'Oh, certainly,'
he said, and fished out a manuscript in his own writing. He had copied
even my interlineations and erasures, to give his manuscript the look of
an original draft. This was the copy from which the typewriter had
worked. My own handwritten copy he had destroyed. I have sometimes
thought that when the idea first occurred to him of submitting my play to
the actor, he had meant to deal fairly with me, and to profit only by an
agent's commission. But he may have inquired about the earnings of plays,
and learned how much money a successful one brings; and the discovery may
have tempted him to the fraud. Or his design may have been complete from
the first. It is easy to understand his desire to become the sole owner
of the play. Why he wanted to figure as the author is not so clear. It
may have been mere vanity; it may have been--more probably was--a desire
to keep to himself even the author's prestige, to serve him in future
transactions of the same sort. In any case, he had created evidence of
his authorship, and destroyed all existing proof of mine. He had made
good terms,--a percentage on a sliding scale; one thousand dollars down
on account. It was out of that thousand that he paid me the five hundred.
The play was a great money-winner; Bagley's earnings from it were more
than twenty thousand dollars in two seasons. That is the sum I should
have had if I had submitted the play to the same actor, as I had intended
to do. I made a stir in the newspapers for awhile; told my tale to
managers and actors and reporters; started to take it to the courts, but
had to give up for lack of funds; in short, got myself the name, as I
told you today, of a man with a grievance. People smiled tolerantly at my
story; it got to be one of the jokes of the Rialto. Bagley soon hit on
the policy of claiming the authorship to my face, and pretending to treat
my assertion charitably, as the result of a delusion conceived in
illness. You heard him tonight. But it no longer disturbs me."

"Has he ever written any plays of his own? Or had any more produced over
his name?" asked Larcher.

"No. He put the greater part of his profits into theatrical management.
He multiplied his investment. Then he 'branched out;' tried Wall Street
and the race-tracks; went into real estate. He speculates now in many
things. I don't know how rich he is. He isn't openly in theatrical
management any more, but he still has large interests there; he is what
they call an 'angel.'"

"He spoke of being your good angel."

"He has been the reverse, perhaps. It's true, many a time when I've been
at the last pinch, he has come to my rescue, employing me in some affair
incidental to his manifold operations. Unless you have been hungry, and
without a market for your work; unless you have walked the streets
penniless, and been generally 'despised and rejected of men,' you,
perhaps, can't understand how I could accept anything at his hands. But
I could, and sometimes eagerly. As soon as possible after our break, he
assumed the benevolent attitude toward me. I resisted it with proper
scorn for a time. But hard lines came; 'my poverty but not my will'
consented. In course of time, there ceased to be anything strange in the
situation. I got used to his service, and his pay, yet without ever
compounding for the trick he played me. He trusts me thoroughly--he
knows men. This association with him, though it has saved me from
desperate straits, is loathsome to me, of course. It has contributed as
much as anything to my self-hate. If I had resolutely declined it, I
might have found other resources at the last extremity. My life might
have taken a different course. That is why I say he has been, perhaps,
the reverse of a good angel to me."

"But you must have written other plays," pursued Larcher.

"Yes; and have even had three of them produced. Two had moderate success;
but one of those I sold on low terms, in my eagerness to have it accepted
and establish a name. On the other, I couldn't collect my royalties. The
third was a failure. But none of these, or of any I have written, was up
to the level of the play that Bagley dealt with. I admit that. It was my
one work of first-class merit. I think my poor powers were affected by my
experience with that play; but certainly for some reason I

'... never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.'

I should have been a different man if I had received the honor and the
profits of that first accepted play of mine."

"I should think that, as Bagley is so rich, he would quietly hand you
over twenty thousand dollars, at least, for the sake of his conscience."

"Men of Bagley's sort have no conscience where money is concerned. I used
to wonder just what share of his fortune was rightly mine, if one knew
how to estimate. It was my twenty thousand dollars he invested; what
percentage of the gains would belong to me, giving him his full due for
labor and skill? And then the credit of the authorship,--which he flatly
robbed me of,--what would be its value? But that is all matter for mere
speculation. As to the twenty thousand alone, there can be no doubt."

"And yet he said tonight he would trust you with every dollar he had in
the world."

"Yes, he would." Davenport smiled. "He knows that _I_ know the difference
between a moral right and a legal right. He knows the difficulties in
the way of any attempt at self-restitution on my part,--and the
unpleasant consequences. Oh, yes, he would trust me with large sums; has
done so, in fact. I have handled plenty of his cash. He is what they call
a 'ready-money man;' does a good deal of business with bank-notes of high
denomination,--it enables him to seize opportunities and make swift
transactions. He should interest you, if you have an eye for character."

Upon which remark, Davenport raised his cup, as if to finish the coffee
and the subject at the same time. Larcher sat silently wondering what
other dramas were comprised in the history of his singular companion,
besides that wherein Bagley was concerned, and that in which the fickle
woman had borne a part. He found himself interested, on his own account,
in this haggard-eyed, world-wearied, yet not unattractive man, as well
as for Miss Hill. When Davenport spoke again, it was in regard to the
artistic business which now formed a tie between himself and Larcher.

This business was in due time performed. It entailed as much association
with Davenport as Larcher could wish for his purpose. He learnt little
more of the man than he had learned on the first day of their
acquaintance, but that in itself was considerable. Of it he wrote a full
report to Miss Hill; and in the next few weeks he added some trifling
discoveries. In October that young woman and her aunt returned to town,
and to possession of a flat immediately south of Central Park. Often as
Larcher called there, he could not draw from Edna the cause of her
interest in Davenport. But his own interest sufficed to keep him the
regular associate of that gentleman; he planned further magazine work for
himself to write and Davenport to illustrate, and their collaboration
took them together to various parts of the city.




CHAPTER IV.


AN UNPROFITABLE CHILD

The lower part of Fifth Avenue, the part between Madison and Washington
Squares, the part which alone was "the Fifth Avenue" whereof Thackeray
wrote in the far-off days when it was the abode of fashion,--the far-off
days when fashion itself had not become old-fashioned and got improved
into Smart Society,--this haunted half-mile or more still retains many
fine old residences of brown stone and of red brick, which are spruce
and well-kept. One such, on the west side of the street, of red brick,
with a high stoop of brown stone, is a boarding-house, and in it is an
apartment to which, on a certain clear, cold afternoon in October, the
reader's presence in the spirit is respectfully invited.

The hallway of the house is prolonged far beyond the ordinary limits of
hallways, in order to lead to a secluded parlor at the rear, apparently
used by its occupants as a private sitting and dining room. At the left
side of this room, after one enters, are folding doors opening from what
is evidently somebody's bed-chamber. At the same side, further on, is a
large window, the only window in the room. As the ceiling is so high, and
the wall-paper so dark, the place is rather dim of light at all times,
even on this sunny autumn afternoon when the world outside is so full of
wintry brightness.

The view of the world outside afforded by the window--which looks
southward--is of part of a Gothic church in profile, and the backs of
houses, all framing an expanse of gardens. It is a peaceful view, and
this back parlor itself, being such a very back parlor, receives the
city's noises dulled and softened. One seems very far, here, from the
clatter and bang, the rush and strenuousness, really so near at hand.
The dimness is restful; it is relieved, near the window, by a splash of
sunlight; and, at the rear of the room, by a coal fire in the grate. The
furniture is old and heavy, consisting largely of chairs of black wood
in red velvet. Half lying back in one of these is a fretful-looking,
fine-featured man of late middle age, with flowing gray hair and flowing
gray mustache. His eyes are closed, but perhaps he is not asleep. There
is a piano near a corner, opposite the window, and out of the splash of
sunshine, but its rosewood surface reflects here and there the firelight.
And at the piano, playing a soft accompaniment, sits a tall, slender
young woman, with a beautiful but troubled face, who sings in a low voice
one of Tosti's love-songs.

Her figure is still girlish, but her face is womanly; a classic face, not
like the man's in expression, but faintly resembling it in form, though
her features, clearly outlined, have not the smallness of his. Her eyes
are large and deep blue. There is enough rich color of lip, and fainter
color of cheek, to relieve the whiteness of her complexion. The trouble
on her face is of some permanence; it is not petty like that of the
man's, but is at one with the nobility of her countenance. It seems to
find rest in the tender sadness of the song, which, having finished, she
softly begins again:

"'I think of what thou art to me,
I think of what thou canst not be'"--

As the man gives signs of animation, such as yawning, and moving in his
chair, the girl breaks off gently and looks to see if he is annoyed by
the song. He opens his eyes, and says, in a slow, complaining voice:

"Yes, you can sing, there's no doubt of that. And such
expression!--unconscious expression, too. What a pity--what a
shame--that your gift should be utterly wasted!"

"It isn't wasted if my singing pleases you, father," says the girl,
patiently.

"I don't want to keep the pleasure all to myself," replies the man,
peevishly. "I'm not selfish enough for that. We have no right to hide
our light under a bushel. The world has a claim on our talents. And the
world pays for them, too. Think of the money--think of how we might live!
Ah, Florence, what a disappointment you've been to me!"

She listens as one who has many times heard the same plaint; and answers
as one who has as often made the same answer:

"I have tried, but my voice is not strong enough for the concert stage,
and the choirs are all full."

"You know well enough where your chance is. With your looks, in comic
opera--"

The girl frowns, and speaks for the first time with some impatience: "And
you know well enough my determination about that. The one week's
experience I had--"

"Oh, nonsense!" interrupted the man. "All managers are not like that
fellow. There are plenty of good, gentle young women on the comic opera
stage."

"No doubt there are. But the atmosphere was not to my taste. If I
absolutely had to endure it, of course I could. But we are not put to
that necessity."

"Necessity! Good Heaven, don't we live poorly enough?"

"We live comfortably enough. As long as Dick insists on making us our
present allowance--"

"Insists? I should think he would insist! As if my own son, whom I
brought up and started in life, shouldn't provide for his old father to
the full extent of his ability!"

"All the same, it's a far greater allowance than most sons or brothers
make."

"Because other sons are ungrateful, and blind to their duty, it doesn't
follow that Dick ought to be. Thank Heaven, I brought him up better than
that. I'm only sorry that his sister can't see things in the same light
as he does. After all the trouble of raising my children, and the hopes
I've built on them--"

"But you know perfectly well," she protests, softly, "that Dick makes us
such a liberal allowance in order that I needn't go out and earn money.
He has often said that. Even when you praise him for his dutifulness to
you, he says it's not that, but his love for me. And because it is the
free gift of his love, I'm willing to accept it."

"I suppose so, I suppose so," says the man, in a tone of resignation to
injury. "It's very little that I'm considered, after all. You were always
a pair, always insensible of the pains I've taken over you. You always
seemed to regard it as a matter of course that I should feed you, and
clothe you, and educate you."

The girl sighs, and begins faintly to touch the keys of the piano again.
The man sighs, too, and continues, with a heightened note of personal
grievance:

"If any man's hopes ever came to shipwreck, mine have. Just look back
over my life. Look at the professional career I gave up when I married
your mother, in order to be with her more than I otherwise could have
been. Look how poorly we lived, she and I, on the little income she
brought me. And then the burden of you children! And what some men would
have felt a burden, as you grew up, I made a source of hopes. I had
endowed you both with good looks and talent; Dick with business ability,
and you with a gift for music. In order to cultivate these advantages,
which you had inherited from me, I refrained from going into any business
when your mother died. I was satisfied to share the small allowance her
father made you two children. I never complained. I said to myself, 'I
will invest my time in bringing up my children.' I thought it would turn
out the most profitable investment in the world,--I gave you children
that much credit then. How I looked forward to the time when I should
begin to realize on the investment!"

"I'm sure you can't say Dick hasn't repaid you," says the girl. "He
began to earn money as soon as he was nineteen, and he has never--"

"Time enough, too," the man breaks in. "It was a very fortunate thing I
had fitted him for it by then. Where would he have been, and you, when
your grandfather died in debt, and the allowance stopped short, if I
hadn't prepared Dick to step in and make his living?"

"_Our_ living," says the girl.

"Our living, of course. It would be very strange if I weren't to reap a
bare living, at least, from my labor and care. Who should get a living
out of Dick's work if not his father, who equipped him with the qualities
for success?" The gentleman speaks as if, in passing on those valuable
qualities to his son by heredity, he had deprived himself. "Dick hasn't
done any more than he ought to; he never could. And yet what _he_ has
done, is so much more than nothing at all, that--" He stops as if it were
useless to finish, and looks at his daughter, who, despite the fact that
this conversation is an almost daily repetition, colors with displeasure.

After a moment, she gathers some spirit, and says: "Well, if I haven't
earned any money for you, I've at least made some sacrifices to please
you."

"You mean about the young fellow that hung on to us so close on our trip
to Europe?"

"The young man who did us so many kindnesses, and was of so much use to
you, on our trip to Europe," she corrects.

"He thought I was rich, my dear, and that you were an heiress. He was a
nobody, an adventurer, probably. If things had gone any further between
you and him, your future might have been ruined. It was only another
example of my solicitude for you; another instance that deserves your
thanks, but elicits your ingratitude. If you are fastidious about a
musical career, at least you have still a possibility of a good marriage.
It was my duty to prevent that possibility from being cut off."

She turns upon him a look of high reproach.

"And that was the only motive, then," she cries, "for your tears and your
illness, and the scenes that wrung from me the promise to break with
him?"

"It was motive enough, wasn't it?" he replies, defensively, a little
frightened at her sudden manner of revolt. "My thoughtfulness for your
future--my duty as a father--my love for my child--"

"You pretended it was your jealous love for me, your feeling of
desertion, your loneliness. I might have known better! You played on my
pity, on my love for you, on my sense of duty as a daughter left to fill
my mother's place. When you cried over being abandoned, when you looked
so forlorn, my heart melted. And that night when you said you were dying,
when you kept calling for me--'Flo, where is little Flo'--although I was
there leaning over you, I couldn't endure to grieve you, and I gave my
promise. And it was only that mercenary motive, after all!--to save me
for a profitable marriage!" She gazes at her father with an expression so
new to him on her face, that he moves about in his chair, and coughs
before answering:

"You will appreciate my action some day. And besides, your promise to
drop the man wasn't so much to give. You admitted, yourself, he hadn't
written to you. He had afforded you good cause, by his neglect."

"He was very busy at that time. I always thought there was something
strange about his sudden failure to write--something that could have
been explained, if my promise to you hadn't kept me from inquiring."

The father coughs again, at this, and turns his gaze upon the fire, which
he contemplates deeply, to the exclusion of all other objects. The girl,
after regarding him for a moment, sighs profoundly; placing her elbows on
the keyboard, she leans forward and buries her face in her hands.

This picture, not disturbed by further speech, abides for several ticks
of the French clock on the mantelpiece. Suddenly it is broken by a knock
at the door. Florence sits upright, and dries her eyes. A negro man
servant with a discreet manner enters and announces two visitors. "Show
them in at once," says Florence, quickly, as if to forestall any possible
objection from her father. The negro withdraws, and presently, with a
rapid swish of skirts, in marches a very spick and span young lady,
her diminutive but exceedingly trim figure dressed like an animated
fashion-plate. She is Miss Edna Hill, and she comes brisk and dashing,
with cheeks afire from the cold, bringing into the dull, dreamy room the
life and freshness of the wintry day without. Behind her appears a
stranger, whose name Florence scarcely heeded when it was announced, and
who enters with the solemn, hesitant air of one hitherto unknown to the
people of the house. He is a young man clothed to be the fit companion of
Miss Hill, and he waits self-effacingly while that young lady vivaciously
greets Florence as her dearest, and while she bestows a touch of her
gloved fingers and a "How d'ye do, Mr. Kenby," on the father. She then
introduces the young man as Mr. Larcher, on whose face, as he bows, there
appears a surprised admiration of Florence Kenby's beauty.

Miss Hill monopolizes Florence, however, and Larcher is left to wander to
the fire, and take a pose there, and discuss the weather with Mr. Kenby,
who does not seem to find the subject, or Larcher himself, at all
interesting, a fact which the young man is not slow in divining. Strained
relations immediately ensue between the two gentlemen.

As soon as the young ladies are over the preliminary burst of compliments
and news, Edna says:

"I'm lucky to find you at home, but really you oughtn't to be moping in
a dark place like this, such a fine afternoon."

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