paula is involved in the furious history of selma cross and writes a letter to quentin charter
paula thrust the sheets of the letter in her desk drawer and admitted selma cross, an actress whose apartment was across the hall. these two had chatted together many times, sometimes intimately. each had found the other interesting. hints of a past that was almost classic in the fury of its struggle for publicity, had repeatedly come to paula's ears, with other matters she greatly would have preferred not to hear. selma cross was huge to look upon, and at first thought without grace. there was something uncanny in her face and movements, and an extraordinary breadth between her yellow eyes which were wide-lidded, slow-moving and ever-changing. she was but little past thirty, yet the crowded traffic of her years was intricately marked.
"i saw the light under your door, and felt like coming in for a few minutes," she said. "i must talk to some one and my maid, dimity, is snoring. you see, i'm celebrating for two reasons."
"tell me, so i can help," paula answered.
"vhruebert has taken a play for me. you know, i've been begging him to for months. the play was made for me—not that it was written with me in mind, but that i just suit it. selma cross is to be carved in light over a theatre-entrance, twenty seconds from broadway—next april. it will be at the herriot—vhruebert's theatre. we run through hartford, springfield, rochester and that string of second cities earlier in the spring."
paula rose and gave both her hands.
"oh, i'm so glad for you," she said. "i know something about how you have worked for this——"
"yes, and the play is the thing. i am an ugly slaving drudge, but have all the emotions that the sweet ingenue of the piece should have, and the audience watches me deliver. yes, i've waited long for this, and yet i'm not so glad as i thought i should be. i've been pretty sure of it for the last year or two. i said i was celebrating for two things——"
"pray, what is the other?"
"i forget that it might not interest you—though it certainly does me," selma cross said with a queer, low laugh.... "he wasn't ugly about it, but he has been exacting—ugh! the fact is, i have earned the privilege at last of sleeping in my own respectable apartment."
paula couldn't help shivering a bit. "you mean you have left your——"
"oh, he wasn't my husband.... it's such a luxury to pay for your own things—for your own house and clothes and dinners—to earn a dollar for every need and one to put away.... you didn't think that i could get my name above the name of a play—without an angel?"
"i didn't know," paula said, "i saw you with him often. it didn't exactly occur to me that he was your husband, because he didn't come here. but do you mean that now when you don't need him any longer—you told him to go away?"
"just that—except it isn't at all as it looks. you wouldn't pity old man villiers. living god, that's humorous—after what i have given. don't look for wings on theatrical angels, dear."
it was plain that the woman was utterly tired. she regarded paula with a queer expression of embarrassment, and there was a look of harsh self-repression under the now-drooped eyelids.
"i don't apologize," she went on hastily. "what i have done, i would do again—only earlier in the game, but you're the sort of woman i don't like to have look at me that—i mean look down upon me. i haven't many friends. i think i must be half wild, but you make the grade that i have—and you pay the price.... you've always looked attractive to me—so easy and finished and out of the ruck."
there was a real warming sincerity in the words. paula divined on the instant that she could forever check an intimacy—by a word which would betray the depth of her abhorrence for such a concession to ambition, and for the life which seems to demand it. selma cross was sick for a friend, sick from containing herself. on this night of achievement there was something pitiful in the need of her heart.
"new york has turned rather too many pages of life before my eyes, selma, for me to feel far above any one whose struggles i have not endured."
the other leaned forward eagerly, "i liked you from the first moment, paula," she said. "you were so rounded—it seemed to me. i'm all streaky, all one-sided. you're bred. i'm cattle.... some time i'll tell you how it all began. i said i would be the greatest living tragedienne—hurled this at a lot of cat-minds down in kentucky fifteen years ago. of course, i shall. it does not mean so much to me as i thought, and it may be a bauble to you, but i wanted it. its far-awayness doesn't torture me as it once did, but one pays a ghastly price. yes, it's a climb, dear. you must have bone and blood and brain—a sort of brain—and you should have a cheer from below; but i didn't. i wonder if there ever was a fight that can match mine? if so, it would not be a good tale for children or grown-ups with delicate nerves. little women always hated me. i remember, one restaurant cashier on eighth avenue told me i was too unsightly to be a waitress. i have done kitchen pot-boilers and scrubbed tenement-stairs. then, because i repeated parts of plays in those horrid halls—they said i was crazy.... why, i have felt a perfect lust for suicide—felt my breast ache for a cool knife and my hand rise gladly. once i played a freak part—that was my greater degradation—debased my soul by making my body look worse than it is. i went down to hell for that—and was forgiven. i have been so homesick, paula, that i could have eaten the dirt in the road of that little kentucky town.... yes, i pressed against the steel until something broke—it was the steel, not me. oh, i could tell you much!..."
she paused but a moment.
"the thing so dreadful to overcome was that i have a body like a great dane. it would not have hurt a writer, a painter, even a singer, so much, but we of the drama are so dependent upon the shape of our bodies. then, my face is like a dog or a horse or a cat—all these i have been likened to. then i was slow to learn repression. this is a part of culture, i guess—breeding. mine is a lineage of kentucky poor white trash, who knows, but a speck of 'nigger'? i don't care now, only it gave me a temper of seven devils, if it was so. these are some of the things i have contended with. i would go to a manager and he would laugh me along, trying to get rid of me gracefully, thinking that some of his friends were playing a practical joke on him. vhruebert thought that at first. vhruebert calls me the thing now. i could have done better had i been a cripple; there are parts for a cripple. and you watch, paula, next january when i burn up things here, they'll say my success is largely due to my figure and face!"
as she looked and listened, paula saw great meanings in the broad big countenance, a sort of ruffian strength to carry this perfecting instrument of emotion. the great body was needed to support such talents, handicapped by the lack of beauty. selma cross fascinated her. paula's heart went out to the great crude creature she had been—in pity for this woman of furious history. the processes by which her brain and flesh had been refined would have slain the body and mind of an ordinary human. it came to paula that here was one of mother nature's most enthralling experiments—the evolution of an effective instrument from the coarsest and vaguest heredity.
"they are all brainless but vhruebert. you see, unless one is a beauty, you can't get the support of a big manager's name. i mean without money—there are managers who will lend their name to your stardom, if you take the financial risk. otherwise, you've got to attract them as a possible conquest. all men are like that. if you interest them sexually—they will hear what you have to say——"
"isn't that a reckless talk?" paula asked, pale from the repulsiveness of the thought. "you say it without a single qualification——"
selma cross stared at her vacantly for a few seconds, then laughed softly. "you don't actually believe—to the contrary?"
"let's pass it by. i should have to be changed—to believe that!"
"i hope the time will never come when you need something terribly from a strange man—one upon whom you have no hold but—yourself.... ah, but you—the brighter sort would give you what you asked. you——"
"please don't go on!" paula whispered. "the other part is so interesting."
selma cross seemed to stir restlessly in her loose, softly-scented garments. "i suppose i'm too rough for you. in ninety-nine women out of a hundred, i'd say your protest was a cheap affectation, but it isn't so with you...."
"it's your set, smothery pessimism that hurts so, selma," paula declared intensely. "it hurts me most because you seem to have it so locked and immovable inside.... you have been so big and wonderful to win against tremendous obstacles—not against ugliness—i can't grant that. you startled me, when i saw you first. i think women have held you apart because you were uncommon. you show a strange power in your movements and expression. it's not ugliness——"
"that's mighty rare of you. i haven't had the pleasure of being defied like that before. but you are not like other people—not like other women."
"you will meet many real men and women—wiser and kinder than i am. i think your pessimism cannot endure—when you look for the good in people——"
"the kind i have known would not let me. they're just as hateful now—i mean the stuffy dolls of the stage—just as hateful, calling me 'dear' and 'love' and saying, 'how tremendous you are, selma cross!....' listen, it is only a little while ago that the same women used to ask me to walk on broadway with them—to use me as a foil for their baby faces! oh, women are horrible—dusty shavings inside—and men are of the same family."
"you poor, dear unfortunate—not to know the really wonderful kind! you are worn to the bone from winning your victory, but when you're rested, you'll be able to see the beautiful—clearly."
"one only knows as far as one can see."
this sentence was a shock to paula's intelligence. it was spoken without consciousness of the meaning which drove so deep into the other's mind. it suggested a mind dependent altogether upon physical eyes. paula refused to believe that this was the key to the whole matter.
"they have been so cruel to me—those female things which bloom a year," selma cross continued. "flesh-flowers! they harried me to martyrdom. i had to hate them, because i was forced to be one with them—i, a big savage, dreaming unutterable things. it's all so close yet, i haven't come to pity them.... maybe you can tell me what good they are—what they mean in the world—the shallow, brainless things who make the stage full! they are in factories, too, everywhere—daughters of the coolies and peasants of europe—only worse over here because their fathers have lost their low fixed place in society, and are all mixed in their dim, brute minds. they have no one to rule them. you will see a family of dirty, frightened, low-minded children—the eldest, say a girl of fifteen. a dog or a cat with a good home is rich beside them. take this eldest girl of a brood—with all the filth of foreign new york in and about her. she is fifteen and ready for the streets. it is the year of her miracle. i've seen it a score of times. you miss her a few months and she appears again at work somewhere—her face decently clean, her eyes clear, a bit of bright ribbon and a gown wrung somewhere from the beds of torture. it is her brief bloom—so horrid to look at when you know what it means. all the fifteen years of squalor, evil, and low-mindedness for this one year—a bloom-girl out of the dirt! and the next, she has fallen back, unwashed, high-voiced, hardening, stiffening,—a babe at her breast, dull hell in her heart. all her living before and to come—for that one bloom year. maybe you can tell me what the big purpose of it all is. earth uses them quite as ruthlessly as any weed or flower—gives them a year to bloom, not for beauty, but that more crude seeds may be scattered. perpetuate! flowers bloom to catch a bug—such girls, to catch a man—perpetuate—oh god, what for? and these things have laughed at me in the chorus, called me 'crazy sal,' because i spoke of things they never dreamed."
"yes," paula said quickly, "i've seen something like that. how you will pity them when you are rested! it is hard for us to understand why such numbers are sacrificed like a common kind of plants. nietzsche calls them 'the much-too-many.' but nietzsche does not know quite so much as the energy that wills them to manifest. it is dreadful, it is pitiful. it would seem, if god so loved the world—that he could not endure such pity as would be his at the sight of this suffering and degradation.... but you have no right to despise them—you, of all women. you're blooming up, up, up,—farther and farther out of the common—your blooming has been for years because you have kindled your mind. you must bloom for years still—that's the only meaning of your strength—because you will kindle your soul.... a woman with power like yours—has no right but to love the weak. think what strength you have! there have been moments in the last half-hour that you have roused me to such a pitch of thinking—that i have felt weak and ineffectual beside you. you made me think sometimes of a great submarine—i don't know just why—flashing in the depths."
"i don't think you see me right," selma cross said wearily. "many times i have been lost in the dark. i have been wicked—hated the forces that made me. i have so much in me of the peasant—that i abhor. there have been times when i would have been a prostitute for a clean house and decent clothes to cover me, but men did not look at the thing—only the old man, and one other!" her eyes brightened, either at the memory or at the thought that she was free from the former.... "don't wince and i'll tell you about that angel. you will be wiser. i don't want you for my friend, if i must keep something back. it was over three years ago, during my first real success. i was rather startling as sarah blixton in heber's caller herrin. it was in that that i learned repression. that was my struggle—to repress.... old man villiers saw me, and was wise enough to see my future. 'here's a girl,' i can imagine him saying, 'who is ugly enough to be square to one man, and she's a comer in spite of her face.' he showed where his check-book could be of unspeakable service. it was all very clear to me. i felt i had struggled enough, and went with him.... villiers is that kind of new yorker who feels that he has nothing left to live for, when he ceases to desire women. in his vanity—they are always vain—he wanted to be seen with a woman mentioned on broadway. it was his idea of being looked up to—and of making other men envious. you know his sort have no interest—save where they can ruin.
"then for two winter months, villiers and i had a falling out. he went south, and i remained here to work. during this time i had my first real brush with love—a young westerner. it was terrific. he was a brilliant, but turned out a rotten cad. i couldn't stand that in a young man.... you can pity an old man, much the worse for living, when he is brazenly a cad—doesn't know anything else.... when villiers came back from the south i was bought again. i put it all nakedly, paula, but i was older than you are now, when that sort of thing began with me. remember that! still, i mustn't take too much credit, because i didn't attract men.... if you don't abhor me now, you never will, little neighbor, because you have the worst.... sometime i'll tell you a real little love story—oh, i'm praying it's real! he's a hunch-back, paula,—the author of the thing.... nobody could possibly want a hunch-back but me—yet i'm not good enough. he's so noble and so fine!... the past is so full of abominations, and i'm not a liar.... i don't think he'd want me—though i could be his nurse. i could carry him!... then there is a long-ago promise.... oh, i know i'm not fit for that kind of happiness!..."
there was an inspiration in the last. it was strong enough to subvert paula's mind from the road of dreary degradation over which she had been led. from rousing heights of admiration to black pits of shame, she had fallen, but here again was a tonic breath from clean altitudes. the picture in her mind of this great glowing creature tenderly mothering the poor crippled genius of the thing—was a thrilling conception.
"there is nothing which cannot be forgiven—save soul-death!" paula said ardently. "what you have told me is very hard to adjust, but i hope for your new love. oh, i am glad, selma, that the other is all behind! i don't know much of such things, but it has come to me that it is easier for a man to separate himself from past degradations and be clean—than a woman. this is because a man gives—but the woman receives her sin! that which is given cannot continue to defile, but woman is the matrix.... still, you do not lie. such things are so dreadful when matted in lies. we all carry burdensome devils—but few uncover them, as you have done for me. there is something noble in looking back into the past with a shudder, saying,—'i was sick and full of disease in those days,' but when one hugs the corrosion, painting it white all over—there is an inner devouring that is never appeased.... all our sisters are in trouble. i think we live in a world of suffering sororities. you are big and powerful. your greater life is to come.... i am glad for what you have put behind. you will progress farther and farther from it. i am glad you are back across the hall—alone!"
for many moments after selma cross had gone, paula sat thinking under the lamp. at last she drew the sheets of the letter to charter from the desk-drawer, and read them over. the same rapt smile came to her lips, as when she was writing. it was a letter to her ideal—the big figure of cleanness and strength, she wanted this man to be. even a line or two she added. no one ever knew, but paula.... at length, she began tearing the sheets. finer and finer became the squares under her tense fingers—a little pile of confetti on the desk at last—and brushed into a basket.... then she wrote another letter, blithe, brief, gracious—about his book and her opinion. it was a letter such as he would expect....
