quentin charter and selma cross join issue on a new battle-ground, each leaving the field with open wounds
charter was seized with vertigo. it was his sorry thought that the old scar-tissues, however bravely they sufficed in the days of easy-going, could not endure a crux like this. but he was wrong. it was the shock to his spirit, which made of selma cross a giantess of vague outlines in a room filled with swimming objects. need for the woman of his visions had culminated in the outer hall. in the substitution there was an inner wrench, which to one of charter's intense concentration was like a stroke; and then, too, the horrible outburst of energy in adjusting the skylark spirit to the eminent flesh of this old plaything of his, left him drained. he steadied himself into the music-room, and sank into a deep chair, where his heart pumped furiously, but light and empty, as if it could not grip the blood locked in his veins.
he sat in a sort of trance, glimpses of many thoughts running through his brain. he deserved punishment. that was all very well, but something was wrong here. the premonition became a reality in his consciousness that he had entered upon a great desert; that he was to endure again one of his terrible thirsts; not a throat-thirst alone, but a soul-thirst. in the atmosphere of the woman, in the very odor of the room, he felt the old impassioned lyric-maker crush back into the dominance of his mind with all the impish exultation of that lower self. pride asserted itself now. what an idiot passage in the career of a rising writer! he should always remember with shame this coming to new york—a youthful marius in whose veins was injected mid-summer madness—coming to this city (where dollar-work is king and plumaged-woman queen) with an abortive conception from garret dreams.... a strong white light fell upon the leather cover of her reading-table, but their faces were in shadow, like the hundred actor faces in photograph upon the wall and mantel. selma cross was studying him keenly. the emptiness of it all was so pervading—as his blood began to move again—that he laughed aloud.
"do you know," selma cross said softly, "i thought at first you had been drinking too much. i hardly knew you otherwise, remember. shall i tell you what added thought came to me, as you crossed the floor so unsteadily—looking so white?"
"locomotor ataxia, i suppose. i hear it is getting quite the thing for middle-generation new yorkers.... i expected to see you a little later in your new play, but not here—to-night——"
"that is what i thought—that incurable thing. you seem floored. i didn't know a woman could do that. in the old days, you were adaptable—if nothing else."
his collar felt tight, and he stretched it out, needing more air in his lungs and more blood in his brain. it was clear enough to him now how skylark had been stricken. the real devastation was that she belonged to this sort of thing at all; that she could consent to this trick, this trap. it was all so different from the consummate fineness, the pervading delicacy, of all skylark thoughts. having consented to the trick, might she not be listening?... he did not mind her hearing; indeed, he might say things which were needful for her to know—but that she should listen! he writhed. this was not his skylark at all.... it was hardly charter's way now to plunge into the centre of things. there was a feline elegance in the manner and movement of selma cross; she seemed so delightfully at ease, that he was willing to make it a bit harder for her.
"i suppose i was more adaptable formerly," he said slowly. "it is something, however, suddenly to encounter an old friend who has made good so fearfully and tremendously in the past week. of course, i had read all about it. still, i repeat it was an experience to encounter your stardom actually on the boards; and more of an experience to find you here. i'm really very glad that you secured the one great vehicle. as for your work—few know its quality better than i."
she studied him long, her eyes glowing behind the narrowed lids. "as for that, you've been biting the flaky top-crust, too," she said finally. "i never doubted what you could do in your game, but i confess i feared that whiskey would beat you to it.... do you know you are wonderfully changed—so white, so lean? your work has come to me since you went away; what else have you been doing?—i mean, to change you so finely."
"garret."
her brow clouded at the word. it was as if she had expected to laugh at him long before this. "did any woman ever tell you that you're rather a mean sort, quentin charter?"
"doubtless i have deserved it," he answered. "what are you thinking?"
"i was thinking of your garret—where you gather your victims for vivisection."
"that's put very clearly."
"do you think this is big-man stuff?"
"my case is rather an ugly one to look back upon, truly," charter granted. "for a long time, it appeared to me that i must learn things at first-hand. with first-water talents, perhaps this is not necessary."
"a woman finally brings a man face to face," she said with sudden scorn, "and he becomes limp, agrees with everything she says.... 'yes, it is quite true, i was an awful beast. what else, dear?'—ugh!"
charter smiled. she was very swift and deft in supplying a man's evil motives. it is a terrible feminine misfortune—this gift of imputing—and happy women do not possess it. few men, incidentally, are deep enough to avail themselves of all the crafts and cunnings with which they may be accredited.
"i have no intention of destroying the slightest gratification you may draw, selma, from questioning me," he said. "if i appear limp, please remember that i'm a bit in the dark as yet. i came to this floor on a different errand. i had this errand in mind—not self-examination. however, i'll attend now in all sincerity. you were speaking of my victims for vivisection in the garret."
she appeared not to trust him in the least. "i've always wanted to know if you believed—what an apprentice i really was in love—give-and-take—when you came?"
"that was easily believed, selma——"
"then you grant i wasn't acting—when i gave myself to you?"
"i didn't think you were acting——"
"then you were acting, because when the time came—you dropped me quite as easily as you would drop a street-cur you had been pleased to feed."
"just there you are a bit in error. i was furiously interested, and certainly not acting altogether, until——"
"enter—the wine," she said with a sneer.
"yes, if you will." he was irritated for a second, having meant to say something entirely different.
"a woman so loves to hear that a man's passion for her depends upon his drinking!"
"i have always been very fond of and grateful to you. it was the whole life that the drinking carried me into—that i had such horror for when, when i became well."
"you got well very suddenly after you left me," she told him. her huge face was livid, and her lips dry.
"on the contrary, i was a long time ill." her temper chilled his attempts at sincerity.
"it looked so from those first few—letters, is rather a dignified word."
"i say it with shame, i was practically unable to write. i was burnt out when i left here. i had been to asia—gone from home seven months—and the returning fool permitted the bars to welcome him——"
"you seized a moment to dictate a letter——"
"silence would have been far better," he said. "i see that now. my only idea was to let you hear. writing myself was out of the question by that time."
"you wrote an article about stage people—with all the loftiness of an anæmic priest."
"that was written before i left here—written and delivered——"
"all the worse, that you could write such an article—while you were spending so much time with me."
"i have never belittled what you gave me, selma. i could praise you, without admiring the stage. you are amazingly different. i think that's why new york is talking about you to-night. i had made many trips to new york and knew many stage people, before i met you. if you had belonged to the type familiar to me, i should have needed a stronger stimulus than drink to force an interest. had there been others like you—had i even encountered 'five holy ones in the city'—i should not have written that stage article, or others before it."
"you were one with the broadway glowworms, quentin charter. few of them drank so steadily as you."
"i have already told you that for a long time i was an unutterable fool. until three years ago, i did not begin to know—the breath of life."
selma cross arose and paced the room, stretching out her great arms from time to time as she walked. "you're getting back your glibness," she exclaimed, "your quick little sentences which fit in so nicely! ah, i know them well, as other women are learning them. but i have things which you cannot answer so easily—you of the garret penances.... you find a starved woman of thirty—play with her for a fortnight, showing her everything that she can desire, and seeming to have no thought, but of her. i discover that there was not a moment in which you were so ardent that you forgot to be an analyst. i forgive that, as you might forgive things in my day's work. you put on your gray garret-garb, and forget the hearts of my people, to uncover their weaknesses before the world—you, so recently one of us, and none more drunk or drained with the dawn—than you! such preaching is not good to the nostrils, but i forgive that. you are sick, and even the drink won't warm you, so you leave me at a moment's notice——"
"there was another reason."
"hear me out, first," she commanded.... "to you, it is just, 'adios, my dear'; to me, it is an uprooting—oh, i don't mind telling you. i was overturned in that furrow, left naked for the long burning day, but i remembered my work—the work you despise! i, who had reason to know how noble your pen can be, forgave even those first paltry letters, filled with excuses such as a cheap clerk might write. i forgave the dictation, because it said you were ill—forgave the silences.... but when you came to new york six months afterwards, and did not so much as 'phone or send me a card of greeting—selma called in her silly tears."
"it was vile ingratitude," he said earnestly. "that's where my big fault lay. i wonder if you would try to understand the only palliation. you were strangely generous and wonderful in your ways. i did not cease to think of that. personally, you are far above the things i came to abhor. no one understands but the victim, what alcohol does to a man when it gets him down. i tried to kill myself. i became convalescent literally by force. slowly approaching the normal again, i was glad enough to live, but the horrors never leave the mind entirely. everything connected with the old life filled me with shuddering fear. i tell you no one hates alcohol like a drunkard fresh in his reform."
"but i did not make you drink," she said impatiently. "i'm not a drink-loving woman."
charter's face flushed. the interview was becoming a farce. it had been agony for him to make this confession. she would not see that he realized his ingratitude; that it was his derangement caused by indulging low propensities which made him identify her with the days of evil.
"i know that very well, selma cross," he said wearily, "but the stage is a part of that old life, that sick night-life that runs eternally around the belt-line."
she hated him for reverting to this point. holding fast to what she still had to say, the actress picked up a broken thread. "you said there was another reason why you left new york so suddenly."
charter expected now to learn if any one were listening. he was cold with the thought of the interview being weighed in the balances of a third mind.
"you've made a big point of my going away," he essayed. "the other reason is not a pretty matter, and doubtless you will call any repugnance of mine an affectation——"
"repugnance—what do you mean?" she asked savagely, yet she was afraid, afraid of his cool tongue. "i never lied to you."
"that may be true. i'm not curious for evidence to the contrary. the day before i left for the west, a friend told me that you and i were being watched; that all our movements were known. i didn't believe it; could not see the sense—until it was proved that same night by the devious walk we took.... you doubtless remember the face of that young night-bird whom we once laughed about. we thought it just one of those coincidences which frequently occur—a certain face bobbing up everywhere for a number of days. i assured myself that night that you knew nothing of this remarkable outside interest in our affairs."
selma cross, with swift stealth, disappeared into the apartment-hall and closed the outer door; then returned, facing him. her yellow eyes were wide open, filled with a misty, tortured look. to charter the place and the woman had become haggard with emptiness. he missed the occasional click of the elevator in the outer-hall, for it had seemed to keep him in touch with the world's activities. the old carnal magnetism of selma cross stirred not a tissue in him now; the odor of her garments which once roused him, was forbidding. he had not the strength to believe that the door had been shut for any other reason than to prevent skylark from hearing. the actress had not minded how their voices carried, so long as he was being arraigned.... the air was devitalized. it was as if they were dying of heart-break—without a sound.... it had been so wonderful—this thought of finding his mate after the æons, his completion—a woman beautiful with soul-age and spiritual light....
selma cross was speaking. charter stirred from his great trouble. she was changed, no longer the clever mistress of a dramatic hour.... each was so burdened with a personal tragedy that pity for the other was slow to warm between them.
"do you mean that old villiers paid the night-bird to watch us—to learn where we went, and possibly what we said?" she was saying hoarsely. selma cross felt already that her cad was exploded.
"yes, and that was unpleasant," charter told her. "i didn't like the feel of that procurer's eyes, but what revolted me was villiers himself. i took pains to learn his name the next day—that last day. there isn't a more unclean human package in new york.... it was so unlike you. i couldn't adjust the two. i couldn't be where he had been. i was sick with my own degradation. i went back to my garret."
selma cross was crippled; she saw there was no lie in this. at what a price had been bought the restoration of faith for paula linster!... she had heard after their compact about villiers' early days. there had been times when her fingers itched to tighten upon his scrawny throat. to have quentin charter hear this record was fire in her veins; it embraced the added horror that stephen cabot might also hear.... there was nothing further with which to charge the man before her. she nursed her wrath to keep from crying out.
"was it a man's way to give me no chance to explain?" she demanded.
"broadway knew villiers."
"i did not!"
"anyway, i couldn't get it straight in my mind, then," charter said hastily. "you're no vulgar woman, mad after colors and dollars. you love your work too much to be one of those insatiable deserts of passion. nor are you a creature of black evolution who prefers the soul, to the body of man, for a plaything.... you were all that was generous and normally fervent with me.... let's cut the subject. it does not excuse me for not calling when i came to new york. you were nothing if not good to me."
"then villiers paid to find out things about us," she said slowly. "he said you bragged about such matters to your friends."
charter shivered. "i fail to see how you troubled about a man not writing—if you could believe that about him."
"i didn't see how he could know our places of meeting—any other way. i should never have seen him again, if he hadn't made me believe this of you."
charter scarcely heard her. the thought was inevitable now that the actress might have represented him to skylark as one with the loathed habit of talking about women to his friends. the quick inclination to inquire could not overcome his distaste for mentioning a dear name in this room. the radiant, flashing spirit behind the letters did not belong here.... his brain ached with emptiness; he wondered continually how he could ever fill the spaces expanded by the skylark's singing....
in the brain of selma cross a furious struggle was joined. never before had she been given to see so clearly her own limitations—and this in the high light of her great dramatic triumph. her womanhood contained that mighty quality of worshiping intellect. this, she had loved in charter long ago; in stephen cabot now. the inner key to her greatness was her capacity to forget the animal in man—if he proved a brain. there is only one higher reverence—that of forgetting brain to worship soul. perceiving the attitude of quentin charter to her old life, it was made clear to her that she must preserve a lie in her relation with stephen cabot; if, indeed, the playwright did not learn outside, as charter had done. it was plain that he did not know yet, since he had not run from her—to a garret somewhere. what a hideous mockery was this night—begun in pride! distantly she was grateful that paula linster was at hand to be restored, but her own mind was whipped and cowed by its thoughts—so there was little energy for another's romance.... charter had made no comment on her last remark. she realized now that his thoughts were bearing him close to the truth.
"you say they forced you to cast out your enemy," she declared hoarsely. "i cast out mine of my own accord. if there is palliation for you, there should be for a woman in her first experience. you asked me to stretch my imagination about a drink-reaction making you avoid me. i ask you, how is a woman, for the first time alone with a man—to know that he is different from other men? add to this, a woman who has come up from the dregs—for years in the midst of the slum-blooms of the chorus? what i heard from them of their nights—would have taxed the versatility of even villiers—to make me see him lower than i expected! i ask you—how did i know he was an exception—rather than the rule among the glowworms?"
"i'm rather glad you said that," charter declared quickly. "it's a point of view i'm grateful for. do you wonder that the life from which you have risen to one of the regnant queens has become inseparable in my mind with shuddering aversion?"
in the extremity of her suffering, her mind had reverted, as an artist's always does when desperately pressed, to thoughts of work—work, the healer, the refuge where devils truly are cast out. even in her work she now encountered the lash, since charter despised it. literally, she was at bay before him.
"always that!" she cried. "it is detestable in you always to blame my work. i broke training. i should have won without the damned angel. you degraded yourself for years in your work, but i don't hear you blaming art for your debaucheries! you have sat alone so long that you think all men outside are foul. you sit high in your attic, so that all men look like bugs below!"
"there is something in what you say," he answered, aroused by her bigness and strength. "yet in my garret, i do not deal with rootless abstractions. everything has its foundation in actual observation. i moved long among the play-managers, and found them men of huckster-minds—brainless money-bags, dependent upon every passing wind of criticism. i tell you, when one talked to them or to their office-apes—one felt himself, his inner-self, rushing forth as if to fill something bottomless——"
"you do not know vhruebert——"
"eliminate him. i am not speaking of any particular man. i do not mean all playwrights when i say that i found playwrights as a class, not literary workers—but literary tricksters. i am not speaking of the thing, nor of its author, of whom i have heard excellent word—when i say that plays are not written, but rewritten by elementals, who, through their sheer coarseness, sense the slow vibrations of the mob, and feculate the original lines to suit."
"bah—an idea from one of your nights, when you tried to drown the blue devils! it broods over all your thinking! you forget the great army, that silent army, which is continually lifting itself artistically by writing one after another—impossible plays. you forget the great hearts of the players—men and women who pull together for big results."
"i am not speaking of the vast library of manuscript failures, but of a small proportion which get into the sinister glare of broadway——"
"my god, broadway is not new york!"
"for which i am powerfully glad," he answered with energy. "as for warm human hearts—there is warmth and loyalty, genuine tears and decent hopes in every brothel and bar—yet the black trends of their existence course on. this was so hard for me to learn, that i have it very clearly.... i remember the opening night of martha boardman as a star—telegrams pouring in, critics besieging her dressing-room. even her manager didn't know what he had, until the critics told him the play would stay in new york a year—yet his name was on the boards above the star and bigger than the author's. i watched the bleak, painted faces of the women and heard their false voices acclaiming the new star. what they had in their hearts was not praise, but envy. their words were sham, indecency and lying. eternally simulating—that's the stage life. pity the women—poor maachas, if you will—but their work is damnable, nevertheless. it is from such unhappy creatures evading motherhood that youths get the abominable notion that real manhood lies in the loins."
"poor youths—go on! when you have finished i shall tell you something."
"don't misunderstand me, selma cross. no one knows better than i—how the sexes prey upon each other—how they drag each other to the ground. only i was thinking of the poor things in ties, canes, cigarettes and coatings—out catching!... i saw the whole horrid, empty game of the stage. you have come wonderfully and differently into the glare, but let me ask where is martha boardman to-night—a few short years later?"
"yes, she was tired, her energy burned out, when she finally arrived. it's a stiff grade," selma cross said gently.
"i would explain it, that she was prostituted from excessive simulation—season after season of simulation—emotion after emotion false to herself! the law says, 'live your own life.' the stage says, 'act mine,'—so pitiably often a poor playwright's abortive sensations! what can happen to a body that continually makes of itself a lying instrument? like the queen-bee whose whole life is made up of egg-laying—the brain of this poor purveyor of emotions becomes a waxy pulp. as for her soul—it is in god's hands—let us hope."
"it is good to laugh at you, quentin charter. you have another appetite. you wanted alcohol when i knew you first—now you thirst after purists and winged women. i have a lover now who can live among men, soar just as high as you do, work with just as much greatness and strength, without ever having degraded himself or believed all human creatures vile. the stage has its shams, its mockeries, but its glories, too. it is not all deranged by money-bags. the most brilliant of your writers give us our lines—the most wonderful of your mystics. it is true we simulate; true that ours is a constant giving; but call in your garret-high logic now, sir prophet: look at the tired empty faces of my company, look at mine, after we have finished the thing; then look at the strengthened grip on life and the lifted hopes which, each night, the multitude takes from out our breasts—and call ours a prostitution, if you can!"
charter arose and extended his hand, which she took gracelessly, but was instantly sorry that she had misjudged his intent.
"can't you see, selma cross, that you and i have no difference, no point for argument, if the general run of plays were like the thing—as you make me see it? we had eliminated this from the discussion, but i have nothing but praise for vhruebert, nothing but enthusiasm for mr. cabot and for you—if the combination gives the people an expansion of hope and a lifted ideal. do that, and you need not reckon with critics."
instantly she changed her point of view again, so that he was both chilled and puzzled. "i should have been glad to come out in any successful play," she said wearily. "the thing just happens to have an uplift——"
"so much is accomplished for you, then. you will never be content again with a play that has not. oh, i don't mean ostensible good, melodramatically contrasted with obvious bad, but the subtle inspiration of real artists—that marvellous flexibility of line and largeness of meaning that fits about every life! just as you can draw fresh strength again and again from a great poem; so, in performing a great play—one does not act, but lives!"
"are you going?" she questioned absently.
"yes, i confess i haven't been so consumed in years——"
she drew close to him.... "it has been dramatic, if not literary, hasn't it?" her nostrils dilated and her lower lip was drawn back between her teeth.
he smiled.
"i feel burnt out, too," she went on softly. "it has been strange to be with you again—almost like—those early mornings.... did you ever hear me calling you—'way off there in the west? i used to lie awake, all feverish after you went away, calling in a whisper, 'quentin—quentin!...' it seemed you must come, if you were alive. there were times after you went away, that i would have given this week's victory, which i saw from afar,—to have you rush in for just one hour!... in god's name," she cried suddenly, "is there really this sort of honor in living man—is it because you hate me—or do you have to drink to take a woman in your arms? you, who used to be—singing flames?"
charter was not unattracted, but his self-command was strangely imperious. there was magnetism now in the old passion—but a flutter of wings broke the attraction.... darkness covered the wings, and the song was stilled; yet in that faint rustling, was enchantment which changed to brute matter—these open arms and the rising breast.
"i'm afraid it is as you said—about the anæmic priest," he muttered laughingly.... and then it occurred to him that there might have been a trick to her tempting.... from this point he was sexless and could pity her, though his nerves were raw from her verbal punishments. it was altogether new in his experience—this word-whipping; and though he had not sharpened a sentence in retaliation, he could not but see the ghastly way in which a woman is betrayed by her temper, which checks a man's passion like a sudden fright. between a woman given to rages and her lover—lies a naked sword. consummate, in truth, is the siren who has mastered the art of silence.... selma cross sank back into a chair. the world's wear was on her brow and under her eyes, as she laughed bitterly.
"you always had a way of making me sick of life," she said strangely. "i wonder if ever there was a humiliation so artistically complete as mine?"
this was another facet to the prism of the woman. charter could not be quite certain as to her present intent, so frequently alternating had been the currents of her emotion during the interview. typically an actress, she had run through her whole range of effects. he was not prepared yet to say which was trick, which reality; which was the woman, selma cross, or the tragedienne. he did not miss the thought that his theory was amazingly strengthened here—the theory that moral derangement results from excessive simulation.
"you—would—not—kiss—me," she repeated. "for my own sake, i'd like to believe—that you're trying to be true to some one,—but it's all rot that there are men like that! it's because i no longer tempt you—you spook!"
"you said you had a lover——"
she shivered. "you left me unfinished." there was a tragic plaint in her tone, and she added hastily, "there was a reason for my trying you.... i think the most corroding of the knives you have left in me to-night, is that you have refused to ask why i brought you here—refused even to utter the name—of the woman you expected to see—in my presence.... you may be a man; you may be a cad; you may be a new appetite, or a god resurrected out of a glowworm. i either hate or love you—or both—to the point of death! either way—remember this—i'll be square as a die—to you and to my friend. you'll begin to see what i mean—to-morrow, i think...."
he was at the door. "good-night," he said and touched the signal for the elevator.
she called him back, "come and see me—at my best—at the herriot—won't you?"
"yes——"
"but tell me what performance—and where your seat is——"
"... good-night."
the car stopped at the floor.
