Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  “Mr. Fane,” Susan protested, “I’m glad my work has been a help to you and your company, but I have to tell you that I did it for the money.”

  Junius Fane blinked. “Money?”

  “Yes. I had broken my leg, Mr. Fane, and had no income. The money you paid me for those scenarios kept me from—well, I suppose I ought to be candid, it kept me from starving.”

  “Miss Bright, the reason I maintained belief in the existence of the Young Lady in High Society was that she never asked recompense for her work. The Young Lady in High Society had only one desire—and that was to see her stories on film.”

  “But I received money for those stories!”

  “Perhaps you did, but it didn’t come from me.”

  Susan fell back against the wall, her head swimming.

  Just then the doctor came out of Jack’s room. “He’s awake, but I’ve given him an injection, and in a few minutes he’ll be asleep.”

  The doctor stood aside, holding the door for Susan.

  Junius Fane entered the room behind her. It was a long room, with a row of half a dozen beds along each wall separated by white curtains. Susan and Junius Fane walked quietly, for the hour was late and most of the patients were sleeping. Susan got to the end of the room, but still had not found Jack. She looked around, baffled anew.

  “Susan.” It was Jack, calling weakly. She turned in the direction of his voice. Even when she saw the man who said her name again, a tall man with his head pressed against the headboard and his feet stuck through the bars at the bottom, she didn’t recognize him. Jack’s beard had been shaved off, and white bandages had been wrapped securely about the upper portion of his chest.

  He looked completely changed—and yet strangely familiar. Even his voice sounded different—but disquietingly reminiscent of one she knew. It was as if Jack had been transformed into a man that was part himself and part someone else. She became more convinced that she was going insane.

  Junius Fane shook his hand. “Mr. Beaumont, I thank you. Just now I told Miss Bright that I—”

  Mr. Fane’s speech faded from Susan’s consciousness. For as she stared down at Jack Beaumont, she realized with blinding suddenness and utter clarity that he wasn’t Jack Beaumont at all.

  He was Jay Austin.

  Jay Austin who had broken her leg.

  Jay Austin who had written her whimpering letters from Chicago.

  Jay Austin who had slipped the five hundred dollars into her cape.

  Jay Austin who had offered her scenarios to Junius Fane gratis.

  Jay Austin who had each time brought back an envelope with five-dollar bills in it.

  Suddenly she remembered Jack’s threadbare dressing gown with the monogram JAB. John A. Beaumont. John Austin Beaumont. J. Austin Beaumont. Jay Austin.

  John Austin Beaumont had humiliated her, making her livelihood spurious and her independence a sham. Her love had been given to a man who didn’t exist.

  “—and also, I should say,” said Mr. Fane, half-turning with a smile for Susan, “that your and Miss Bright’s little deception has been revealed—”

  He broke off in astonishment, for at that moment, Susan lunged forward, grabbed the end of the white iron hospital bed and shook it as hard as she could.

  “Jack Beaumont,” she shouted at the top of her voice, “may there be a hell! And may you be sent there! And may you roast in it for all eternity!”

  She gave one final shove that smashed the bed up against the wall, knocking over the bedside stand and smashing a pitcher of water onto the floor. A nurse came running down the corridor. Susan crashed into her on the way out. Blinded with tears, Susan flailed through the doors into the corridor.

  The ward awakened with puzzled incoherencies, but above the noise and confusion she heard that man—whoever the devil he really was—hoarsely calling her name.

  “Susan! Susan!”

  Part II

  JACK

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JOHN AUSTIN BEAUMONT lay restless in his bed at Bellevue Hospital. The nurse had offered him a sedative, but he’d refused it. He’d preferred to fret about Susan Bright, and his deception of the past months.

  He didn’t regret it, of course, because it had come round to the point he had wanted to reach. That point being that he had asked her to marry him, and she had replied, as on a card in a moving picture, Oh, yes, Jack, gladly.

  “Is there some way that I can send a message?” Jack asked the nurse who came around the next morning, bringing a tray of wretched gruel.

  “There’s a boy who’ll go anywhere for a quarter and carfare,” said the nurse. “The son of one of the ambulance drivers.”

  Jack wasn’t surprised to hear it. Ragged platoons of boys had established themselves in every corner of the city to make the course of true love run smooth. The ones on the west side of town generally charged no more than a dime. Bellevue, Jack observed silently, was on the east side, and the price was higher. Jack, laboriously scrawling with his uninjured left hand, penned a note to Susan. He had intended to spell out to her a long explanation of precisely why he had done what he had done, but his penmanship wasn’t up to that. He satisfied himself with:

  PLEASE COME

  JACK

  She didn’t.

  He waited all day, through a change of bandages, the examination of two doctors, a humiliating incident with a bedpan, and a noontime meal so wretched he was tempted to ask for his breakfast gruel again. At three o’clock, tea was brought around and Jack managed to spill an entire pot of it across his good left hand, leaving red, stinging burns. The nurse eyed him with an expression that clearly said, I know your type.

  He once again summoned the ambulance driver’s son, gave him a dollar, and handed him another note. This was addressed to Hosmer Collamore, in care of the Cosmic Film Company, 27 West Twenty-seventh Street. It ready simply:

  PLEASE COME

  BELLEVUE HOSP.

  JACK BEAUMONT

  The worst thing about a hospital, Jack decided bitterly, was not the pain of the accident or the disease that put you there, not the casual humiliation and embarrassment and general sense of worthlessness that pervaded your paltry soul, but the frustration attendant on any attempt to guide your destiny from the confines of a narrow iron bed and thin white sheets.

  Here he lay, bandaged and burning, listening to the damn birds in the damn tree outside the damn window, while Susan Bright sat at home, thinking the worst of him and saying to that damn dog, You were right about him all along, Tripod.

  Jack was pushing away the supper tray, which made him think that he should have eaten more of his luncheon, just as Hosmer Collamore entered the ward, peering down the line of beds in search of him. Jack waved his better hand.

  “You’re a hero,” said Hosmer, peering into Jack’s face to make certain the beardless face was indeed Jack. Satisfied he had the right patient, Hosmer offered his hand to be squeezed by Jack’s less burned one.

  “I’m an unhappy hero,” said Jack. “Have you seen Susan today?”

  “No, but Mr. Fane made an announcement about her being the Young Lady in High Society, and he said that the entire company owed their jobs and livelihoods to her and to you for saving the building from burning to the ground last night. And then there’s the night watchman. He owes you his life, and he said he’s coming to visit you and bringing his wife and five children. They’re all going to thank you in person.”

  “I’d much prefer a sandwich and a cup of coffee. It’s a wonder anybody ever gets well in this place. I have to see Susan.”

  “I assumed she’d be here.”

  “We had a slight misunderstanding.”

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” Hosmer said with a leer.

  “Something like that,” returned Jack uncomfortably.

  “Want me to give her a message?”

  “Yes. Please ask her to come here, no matter what she thinks of me, no matter what she thinks I may have done, and no matter who she thinks I a
m.”

  “Interesting quarrel,” said Hosmer, suppressing his curiosity.

  “Not really a quarrel,” said Jack, “only a misunderstanding. A small misunderstanding at that.” He opened his mouth to say something more, but then desisted.

  Hosmer waited for that something else, and when it didn’t come, he asked, “What if she won’t come? What if she says no? What if she says, ‘I never want to speak to Jack Beaumont again?’ I’m not saying she will, mind you, but what if she does?”

  Jack blushed up to the roots of his hair. He, of course, had a fear that that was exactly what Susan would say. Then Hosmer would come back with the message of rejection, and Jack would have to tell him the whole story, and plead with him to become an emissary of reconciliation. A delay of at least twenty-four hours in which Susan Bright would brood over the wrongs and humiliations done her.

  “Would you consent to be my intermediary?” Jack asked suddenly.

  Hosmer cocked his head and didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said, a little mysteriously, “I could be afraid of Suss when her mad is up.”

  “‘Her mad is up’ only against me, Hosmer. I’m going to explain the whole story to you, so that you can explain it to her. Because the way she probably feels about me right now, I don’t think I could get her to sit still for an explanation, even if you could persuade her to come here.”

  “Here’s the ears,” said Hosmer, placing his hands on either side of his head. “They’re bending and attending.”

  “To begin with, my name really is Jack Beaumont.”

  “Never doubted it. Should I have?”

  “When I first met Susan, I was going by the name Jay Austin.”

  “I see,” said Hosmer, with a knowing wink.

  “Hosmer, please let me go on, or we’ll never finish with this. My full name is John Austin Beaumont, and I used the pseudonym because”—Jack paused a moment while a truly terrifying blush suffused his face and caused it to burn like his hands burned. He wiped beaded perspiration away from his forehead with a corner of sheet—“because I was not in a position to have it known that I was pursuing a young woman in the theater.”

  A puzzled expression crept over Hosmer’s features, but he said nothing. The story suddenly seemed more interesting than he had previously thought.

  “I was at that time—we’re speaking of early January of this year—in a position of some prominence downtown. The fact is, I was managing director of a fairly large financial investment company on Wall Street. You’ve probably never heard of it, but I was ultimately responsible for the investment of tens of millions of dollars a year.”

  “Are you sure a burning beam didn’t fall on your coco last night?” Hosmer wondered.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” said Jack seriously. “The company is owned by my uncle, and it has been in my family since the early part of the last century. It will be mine someday—if I continue to please my uncle.”

  “You’re just a tinkerer! A damned tinkerer fit to fix my alarm clock, that’s what you are!” the cameraman exclaimed, as if offended by the thought that Jack Beaumont might turn out to be something more.

  “Tinkering has always been my hobby, that’s all. Please let me finish, Hosmer. My uncle was, and is, an old-fashioned sort, and he feels that actresses are—well, you know what people think of actresses, and always have thought of actresses—so when I sent a letter backstage to Susan, I did not use my own name. Just a precaution—the sort of precaution I always take in my work. But that very night, there was an accident—”

  “The anarchist?”

  “That’s right. And I was the unfortunate and unwitting cause of Susan’s breaking her leg. She was laid up here in this very hospital, as you know. She wouldn’t see me, she wouldn’t accept my assistance, she wouldn’t answer my letters or notes.”

  Hosmer shifted in his chair. He was looking at Jack with new eyes. It wasn’t that he exactly believed Jack’s story about having authority over tens of millions of dollars, but he was considering the possibility that Jack might be more than an impoverished tinkerer living third floor front in a second-rate apartment building on West Sixtieth Street. At any rate, Hosmer was paying close attention.

  “But there was a solution to my problem. Susan wasn’t refusing to see everyone, she was just refusing to see Jay Austin. She did not even know that Jack Beaumont existed. I grew a beard. I went through my wardrobe and pulled out all my oldest clothes. I rented the room directly below hers, and across the hall from you.”

  “Fortunate it came available just at that time,” said Hosmer skeptically. “Mr. Delamore and his wife—”

  “—had no intention of moving out,” Jack interrupted, “until I persuaded them that they could afford a much more substantial rent in a much nicer section of the city.” Hosmer’s eyes widened. “So I moved in. Even though we’d met only once, and though she’d seen me only at night, and at the time I was coming down with the grippe so my voice was hoarse and distorted, I was still afraid Susan would recognize me. So I changed the way I treated her. I was gruff at first, as if I cared nothing for her company, and only gradually changed. I don’t think she ever suspected that I was anything but an impoverished inventor. Not until last night, that is, when she saw me without my beard, and heard my croaking voice.”

  Hosmer thought for a few moments. “Were you going to tell her…?”

  “Very soon. And before we were married. Lucky girl—she was going to discover that her impoverished husband was in reality a man who had more than his share of wealth.”

  “This is the story you want me to take to Suss?”

  “She hates it when people call her that, Hosmer.”

  “She won’t believe a word of it. Not sure I do, either.”

  “Every word is true. No more deceptions.”

  “I suppose you mean for Suss and me to believe that you have been running a financial empire from that greasy little flat across from mine?”

  “Not at all. For the past two months I’ve been exactly what I appeared to be: an inventor living on the money he makes repairing broken alarm clocks and typewriting machines. An inventor who also hopes to make a good deal of money on the camera patent he’s about to take out.”

  Hosmer shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You know that five hundred dollars my ‘uncle’ invested in your patent? That wasn’t my uncle. That was Susan’s money.”

  “I know that.”

  “So, despite the fact that you’re rich—at least you say you are—and Suss had nothing, you knowingly took all the money she had in the bank.”

  “Susan was doing well enough with the scenarios she was writing. She was making more money at that than she would have ever made on the stage.”

  “What money? Mr. Fane didn’t pay—”

  “I paid her, Hosmer, and told her it was all from Mr. Fane. I imagine that Susan is a little upset about that too, if Mr. Fane told her.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, if she doesn’t know, then I don’t think you need to tell her.”

  Hosmer’s eyes darted nervously about. He cracked his knuckles. “What about your uncle? If he doesn’t like actresses, what does he think of nephews who wear old clothes and repair alarm clocks and live on the wrong side of town?”

  “He wouldn’t approve, if he knew. But he doesn’t know, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He thinks I’ve taken a trip to Havana for my health. I told him I’d been coming down with too many illnesses this past winter. He’s expecting me back next month, full of vigor.”

  “It’s a romance,” Hosmer remarked after shaking his head for a few moments.

  “But you believe me now?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe, you only have to worry about what Suss believes. If I was Suss, I wouldn’t believe much.”

  “Proof’s easy,” said Jack, with more confidence in the favorable outcome of this than he actually felt. “So you’ll speak to Susan? Will you tell her wh
at I just told you? That I did everything for love of her? That I love her still? That I beg her forgiveness? And that we can be married anywhere and anytime she pleases?”

  “Sure,” said Hosmer, after a moment of reflection, “and if I can’t do anything with her, then I’ll speak to Ida. And Ida’ll make all things right. Right as a rain-barrel.”

  Jack hoped that Hosmer would not have to resort to the assistance of Ida Conquest.

  Jack waited out another day in the hospital. His bandages were changed again, and a nurse rubbed salve on his burned skin. His throat—feeling charred after the long conversation with Hosmer Collamore—felt better after he drank some thick, syrupy liquid. He began to dream of long life with Susan—in more comfortable surroundings than those they had enjoyed together till now. He envisaged the time when this interlude would be looked back on as a time of high romance for them. He wondered if they’d have children, and to while away the time, he began to think of names for them.

  Such thoughts were more pleasant than meditations on subjects that were probably nearer to reality. These included the possibility that Susan would never speak to him again, that the untimely discovery of his deception had spoiled all possibility of their ever uniting, that Hosmer and Ida and President Wilson together couldn’t convince Susan that Jack’s perfidy hadn’t been perfidy at all, but merely an expression of his affection for her.

  There was no sign of Susan the next morning, and no Hosmer either.

  Nor did anyone come to visit that afternoon.

  Each and every one of the other patients in the ward received visitors. There were flowers on all the other bedside tables. Jack fretted and twisted, and sent the ambulance driver’s boy with more notes to the Fenwick.

  No reply came from either Susan or Hosmer.

  Jack continued to fret and fume, despite the nurse’s warning that if he kept on like this he was never going to get well.

  Five days after the fire in the Cosmic Film Company, Jack was released from the hospital. He was bandaged across his chest beneath his clothing and one side of his face and neck still showed signs of having been burned, but not severely. The doctor had suggested that he allow his beard to grow again to cover a possible healing scar, but Jack had refused, despite the pain that shaving caused him. He didn’t want Susan to be confronted with the old, false Jack Beaumont.