Key and sat down to read as hard as she could.
Her brain was very clear that night it seemed. She felt as if she could
have written a book about woman herself.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*THE CAUSE AND THE CAREER*
For two weeks after that Barb saw nothing of Phil, a fact for which she
was exceedingly grateful. The news of Sylvia's engagement had come up
from Greendale, and Barb had no wish to see the look which she knew
would be in Phil's blue eyes, if he too, had heard, as no doubt he had.
Neither had she any desire to say "I told you so," though it was her
right. Her warning, though late, had been justified. No one could
expect Sylvia Arden to sit down and wait "for a man to get his eyes open
like a Maltese kitten." Sylvia had not waited, and Phil's eyes were
open at least twenty-four hours too late.
The next time Phil and Barb met was at a public meeting. Miss Murray
had been scheduled to speak but at the last moment had succumbed to
laryngitis, and Barbara, dismayed and protesting, had been haled into
the breach.
It was the first time Barb had ever spoken in public, though she had
more than once sat on platforms with her aunt, striving to look
dignified and impressive and generally worthy of the "mantle." She was
desperately frightened now and when she finally rose to face the
audience, which was made up mostly of women of the working-class, her
knees shook and her throat felt as if she were trying to swallow the
whole Sahara Desert. The upturned faces paralyzed her forces. She
wished an earthquake would come and dispose of the audience and bury
herself in eternal oblivion. And then suddenly behind those weary-eyed,
apathetic faces in the foreground, she saw Phil Lorrimer's friendly,
encouraging eyes and some tension within her snapped. She began to talk
slowly at first, and then more swiftly, borne along on the current of
her own surging thought and emotion. She never knew afterward quite
what she said. She seemed to have talked more about happiness than
about enfranchisement. Perhaps the women who listened were more
interested in happiness than they were in the vote anyway. At all
events, they listened respectfully, even eagerly, as Barbara Day painted
for them her crystal clear vision of a world where women were to be
neither drudges nor toys, but honored co-workers, laboring in joyous
self-expression, side by side with men, a world where motherhood should
be respected and supported by the nation, where education should be open
not to the favored few but to the many, a world where war and brutality
and slavery, of soul and body, and all blood guiltiness should be
impossible, a world enlightened, free, strong, glad. And this
millennium, the women of America were to help to bring about, _must_
help if they were to save themselves and their sisters--so Barbara Day
told them. "We have to work together. Whatever we are, the one thing we
cannot be is indifferent--you and I--we must be awake--wide awake."
And with that Barb had slipped shyly back into her seat amid the
applause which greeted her little speech, terribly frightened again now
it was all over and wondering if it had not been intolerably
presumptuous in her to have spoken at all, much less present so
portentous a plea.
There were other speeches but Barb scarcely heard them. She fell into a
revery, in which she carried the vision she had shared with these women
on and on until it became almost as the new Jerusalem in its
transcendent splendor.
And in her vision she seemed to see why it had been given her to desire
and to have no fruition of desire, to know the flare of happiness and to
know happiness gone out like a wind blown candle, to understand what it
was to be acquainted with heartache and loneliness. For all these
things would teach her how other women yearned and suffered and were
denied. If she herself had found her heart's desire in a good man's
protecting love, in the warm glow of her own hearth fires, with her own
children in her arms, would she have desired so poignantly to help these
others to find life more abundant? By the measure of what she had lost,
had she not gained?
"Happiness left us content with happiness but sorrow bids us rise up and
seek something divine," says some one, and Barbara Day had come to
understand this with many other things. As the old music teacher had
said: "Love is the great Master."
The hint of the "Something divine" was still in Barb's eyes when she
took Phil's outstretched hand in the doorway where he waited. He had
meant to congratulate her on her speech but somehow the words evaporated
before the look on her face as she lifted it to him. He saw she had
been in some far, high place where he could not follow and the spell was
still upon her.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked presently, as they made their
way to the Subway together in silence.
"Your aunt sent me word. I am tremendously grateful. I wouldn't have
missed it for anything. Barb, you made me understand a whole lot of
things."
She flashed him a quick, startled glance. She did not wish him to
understand too much. But she need not have feared. Phil was as blind
as ever so far as she was concerned.
"You are a wonder, Barbie. I'm a little scared of you all at once. I
am afraid I haven't been quite appreciating what an angel I was
entertaining--or rather letting entertain me."
"Don't. If you mean that silly speech, you needn't talk. I feel as
humble as--that puddle," groping for a simile she happened to let her
gaze fall upon a pool which a recent shower had left in the gutter.
Phil smiled.
"There's a star reflected in the puddle," he said gently, then dropped
the subject as she obviously desired.
As they stood in the crowded Subway later there was little chance for
conversation, but Barb noticed that Phil looked worn and tired, almost
haggard. Her heart was very tender for him. It didn't matter how much
she was hurt. Barb sensed intuitively that women were meant to be hurt.
But that Phil should suffer was all but intolerable. She almost hated
Sylvia who had brought that look to his eyes. Alas! What a jumble
things were! How changed everything was since that happy September week
with Sylvia at Arden Hall! She remembered how Suzanne had rallied
Sylvia on her fitness for matrimony and charged herself in jest with
having designs on Phil Lorrimer. Funny Suzanne! Poor Suzanne! What
was she doing?
It happened at the moment Suzanne was sitting by the fire in Miss
Murray's apartment, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in many
strenuous weeks. There Barbara and Phil found her a few moments later,
to their unbounded astonishment.
"Well, aren't you going to greet the returning prodigal?" asked Suzanne,
getting up.
Whereupon Barb recovered sufficiently to throw her arms around her
friend with a series of little rapturous, inarticulate, affectionate
gurgles such as women occasionally indulge in.
When she had finished it was Phil's turn, and though his greeting was
more decorous, it was no less hearty.
"Where have I been? I know that is what you are bursting to ask. Sit
down all and let me tell you. Dearly beloved, I have been on the road.
No, not selling petticoats like the immortal Emma, but in the chorus of
'The Prettiest Princess,' and it's been worth a fortune to me."
"In the chorus! Oh, Suzanne! What did your father and mother say?"
"They haven't said anything up to present speaking, for the very good
reason that they don't know what I've been up to. I told them I was
traveling. I was. Gee! How I've traveled! I also told them I had been
visiting Aunt Selina in Salt Lake City. I did visit Aunt Selina. I
spent a week with her while the 'Prettiest Princess' and her retinue
delighted the enthusiastic Mormon gentlemen. For Heaven's sake, don't
stare so, Barb! I assure you both my virtue and my looks are
unimpaired. You can see the latter for yourself."
Suzanne whirled round to the mirror as if to assure herself that her
statement was true. Certainly the others could see for themselves that
Suzanne had never looked prettier in her life.
Little by little the story came out, delivered with much glee and gusto
by the irrepressible Suzanne. That night Phil had found her in the
Square she had come to the end of her resources and knew something had
to be done at once if she were going to avoid an ignominious return to
Norton, Pa., or the sacrifice of her pride to ask for an advance of
money. A manager had refused her latest play that day but even as he
had done so he had offered her a place in the third company of the
musical comedy he was just starting on the road. Suzanne had asked for
a night to consider and she had been considering when Phil had
interrupted her meditations. In his society, too, she had decided to
take the offer. The next day she had become a member of the third
company and the next was "on the road."
"Why did you come home? Show bust?"
"Indeed, no. The 'Prettiest Princess' goes on as cheerfully as may be
lacking its most charming first row right chorus girl."
"Fired?" still further inquired Phil.
"Nope. Resigned. Came into a fortune and flew back to the Great White
Way instanter."
"What kind of a fortune? Anybody died?"
"Thank goodness no. On the contrary. An editor came to life. I've
sold a series of stories to the Ultra Urban, two hundred plunks per.
'Melissa on the Road' is the general title, Melissa being, of course,
Suzanne, thinly disguised. I thought I might as well make copy out of
myself and I did. I've given things so close to the way they really were
that every one will swear they are fiction of the most romancy order."
"Are they coming out under your own name?" Barb found breath to ask.
"No. I thought they might begin to appear before I had a chance to
explain things, so it seemed better to break the shock, as it were.
They are anonymous, which will make them more spicy."
"Good for you!" chuckled Phil. "I'll bet they are spicy all right."
"But the best isn't told. I've written a play--a real play that is
going to make the managers sit up on their haunches and beg prettily.
And I've got a Star in my crown--I mean in my circle of friends--who
wants to play the lead. What do you think of that? Let Broadway stop,
look, and listen. Suzanne is coming, Hurray! Hurray!" she chanted.
"I'll cause more of a sensation than my predecessor at the bath. Now,
tell me the news."
*CHAPTER XIX*
*OH, SUZANNE!*
It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the
intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the
stream of Suzanne's confidences.
"When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep,
if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to
announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and
a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary
and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it
gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't
teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it
couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock
itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know
all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more
than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker
thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped
Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.
Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of
life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little
tired, she thought, this knowing things.
"I don't know whether you ever guessed," Suzanne rattled on, "how near I
was to the end of my rope last November. Phil knew, but he kept my
secret, like the good dear he is. By the way, what is the matter with
Phil? He looks awfully seedy and sober. Don't know but you do, too,
come to think of it. City got on your nerves?"
Suzanne's keen eyes sought her friend's face with an intentness that
made the latter turn under pretense of switching off the light.
"Nothing the matter with me," she said cheerfully. "With Phil, of
course, it is Sylvia."
"H'm, I suppose so. He certainly looked as jolly as a tombstone when we
were talking about her engagement a while ago. Well, why didn't he go
in and get her himself? He could have last September easily enough.
Anybody could have seen that with half an eye. Gets me why he didn't
clinch it that night at Lover's Leap."
Barb made no reply. Even with Suzanne she could not discuss Phil's
mischance, especially as Suzanne would be sure to say it served him
right. Barb was very pitiful for Phil. She did not want to hear
anybody say sharp things about him.
"Go on about yourself," she suggested, getting into bed. "Do you mean
you were really hard up, last November?"
"Hard up!" chuckled Suzanne. "My dear, I was not merely badly bent. I
was broke. That night I was up here to supper I was as hungry as a
wolf. I hadn't been eating much of anything for days."
"Oh, Suzanne! And you never told me!"
"Naturally not. I had made my own bed and I intended to lie on it even
if it was a bit rocky. Of course they would have sent me money from
home, or Sylvia or any of you would have lent me some. But I wouldn't
ask anybody. I set myself to work out my own salvation and I meant to
finish up the job."
"You are a wonder, Suzanne! But wasn't the show work dreadful?"
"Not so dreadful as you might think. You have to work like everything,
and there is a good deal naturally that you have to shut your eyes and
ears to, but it was Life with a capital letter, which was what I was
looking for. Heaven knows I got it! Sometimes more than I bargained
for." There was a catch in Suzanne's voice which made Barb come a
little nearer and put out her hand until it touched her friend's.
"Barbie!" Suzanne's voice was lowered.
"Yes."
"Did you ever think goodness was a sort of relative thing? That some
girls are good just negatively because they never have any temptation or
opportunity to be anything else?"
"Yes," said Barbara again.
"You don't know what you are really like inside until you suddenly come
up against the sharp edges of things. Do you remember when Sylvia said
she wanted to get acquainted with herself and I said I knew all about
myself. Well, I didn't, that's all. I found out."
"Suzanne!" Barb's voice had a motherly croon to it.
"Don't be scared. I'm all right. I did get scorched a little, and I
know fire now when I see it. Who do you suppose came to my rescue when I
was singeing?" And Suzanne mentioned the name of a "Star" all America
knows and loves--a Star of the first magnitude.
"There was a big snow storm and we were blocked for a day this side of
Kansas City. Her company happened to be on the same train ours was. I
dug her Chow out of a snow bank for her and we got acquainted. I guess
she saw where I was drifting. Anyway, she pulled me back just in season.
Never mind who the man was. He doesn't count any more. He never counted
very much. I was just dizzy with life. It all frothed and bubbled and
sparkled like champagne, and I was a little drunk with it all maybe.
She made me see things. She'd been there. She knew."
Barb nestled closer, but did not speak. Did she not understand? Had
life not frothed and bubbled and sparkled for her, too? Did she not
know how nearly anything could happen when you felt like that?
Especially if the man cared or pretended to care. It had been at once
her own safety and torture that in her case the man had not cared.
"I saw her again at Denver," continued Suzanne, "and she told me the
kind of a play she wanted. And Barb, just like a flash of lightning it
came so quick, I knew I was going to try to write a play for her and I
did. And she's seen it and she likes it and she wants me to take it to
----. He's her manager--just as soon as I can and tell him she liked
it. And I'm going to, to-morrow. Oh, Barbie! If he should like it.
But he won't. I mustn't think he's going to. I'd die if I were sure,
I'd be so happy."
And to-morrow Suzanne had taken the play to the great manager and had
sent in the Star's card bearing the magic caption, "Introducing Miss
Morrison." The caption had worked like a charm, swung open doors and
fore-shortened delays. It was an incredibly brief space of time before
Suzanne found herself in the most inner of all the offices with a pair
of shrewd kindly eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.
The manager had glanced over her manuscript with a swift apprising gaze,
then glanced over Suzanne in something of the same manner.
"I'll read this, this afternoon," he promised. "I have the greatest
confidence in the judgment of that lady," with a nod at the card which
lay among the litter on his desk. "If she says this is good, I have no
doubt it is. At any rate, we will hope for the best. Lord knows we are
looking for something good. I'll telephone you to-morrow if you will
leave me your number and address. By the way--" he frowned a little.
"Haven't I seen you before somewhere, Miss Morrison?"
Suzanne twinkled.
"I've brought you three plays--all impossible," she said.
"Indeed! Let us hope this one--" he glanced at the manuscript--"will be
at least--probable."
"It is more than that," said Suzanne. "It is a dead sure thing. Read
it. You will see." And with that parting shot Suzanne withdrew,
leaving the manager grinning at her effrontery.
But the next day when the great manager sought to communicate with
Suzanne over the telephone, Suzanne, white and silent, was packing to
take the next train for Norton, Pa.
A telegram had been sent to Salt Lake City in her aunt's care and
followed her back to New York. The telegram had said: "Mother very sick.
Come home at once."
"It is Mr. ----" said Miss Murray from the telephone. "Will you speak
to him, Suzanne?"
"No," said Suzanne curtly. "Tell him I'm out of town. Tell him
anything. I don't care."
Thus did the Nemesis of Suzanne's joyous tilting with the universe
overtake her. At the moment when victory seemed well within her hands
life had struck back. Like the star of the seer's vision, the star of
her ambition fell burning into the waters.
"_And the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third part of the
waters became wormwood and many died of the waters because they were
made bitter._"
At the station in Norton, Roger Minot waited with his car to meet
Suzanne--a crushed anguished Suzanne, her pertness and her prettiness
equally in eclipse. She could only put out her hand to him with a
little moan and gasp "Mother?"
"She is holding her own. There is hope--at least a little," he told
her. "When did you start?"
"From New York?"
"From Salt Lake City?"
"I haven't been in Salt Lake City for days. I got to New York
yesterday. I didn't know. I didn't know. Oh, Roger, it's dreadful!
I've been so selfish--so everything that is horrid."
Roger Minot looked straight ahead of him and said nothing. Perhaps he
knew it was for the good of Suzanne's soul to taste the whole acrid cup
of her remorse.
But as they neared the parsonage his heart was smitten with pity.
Suzanne looked so wan and grief-stricken and subdued, so utterly unlike
the Suzanne he knew, all sparkles and ripples and laughter, like a
little shallow stream running along through sunshine. The hand which
was not busy at the wheel closed over Suzanne's.
"Don't give up, little girl. Maybe it will come out right, after all.
Anyway, remember I'm right here if you need me."
Suzanne uttered a sound which was a little bit like a sob. When,
indeed, had Roger not been right there when she needed him? though she
had treated him as the very dust beneath her feet. Dear Roger! And with
an impulse of penitent tenderness she gave back the pressure of his
hand.
And then in a moment they were at home, where the chairs still stood
stiff and angular against the wall, though up there in a quiet room
above the hand that had put them in their places lay very still and
white. Suzanne's mother was very sick indeed. It was she, after all,
and not her willful little daughter that had pulled the family out of
its comfortable rut and cast a sad spell of differentness upon the
household. Suzanne had stayed away but sickness had come in and another
darker guest waited outside the door, his shadow already on the
threshold. Poor Suzanne! The waters were made bitter, indeed, at the
falling of her star.
*CHAPTER XX*
*SYLVIA AND LIFE*
In the meanwhile Sylvia, home at Arden Hall again, slipped back very
easily and naturally into the old ways and almost as easily and
naturally into the new one of being engaged.
"It is really quite a comfortable state," she told Felicia. "You don't
have to wonder about every new man you meet when you are all
satisfactorily accounted for and checked off yourself. You can even
enjoy flirting more," she added wickedly with a Sylvia twinkle, "since
everybody knows you don't mean anything by it. Anyway, I'm so used to
having Jack around that it isn't much different being engaged to him
from not being engaged to him. I am afraid I am a hopelessly unromantic
person, Felicia. I always supposed when people got engaged it was a
fearsome, sublimated sort of experience like being on top of an Alp or
something of the sort. But I don't feel any different from what I did
before, except for the comfortable settled feeling I have already
mentioned. And I'm not going to get married for a long time. I am
going to make the most of the privileges and immunities of my present
blissful state."
But as was perhaps natural Jack did not share his fiancee's leisurely
attitude. In fact the two came more than once near to quarreling on the
subject of the date of their marriage. But Sylvia's will was stronger
and Sylvia would not be married for another year. That was a flat and
unequivocable dictum and Jack had to put up with it as best he could. He
dared not hurry his perverse lady love for it must be confessed he
sometimes experienced doubts whether he had won her at all, so slight
seemed the bond between them. The very tranquillizing effect of the
engagement upon Sylvia was disturbing to Jack. That she could take so
placidly what was the biggest thing in the universe to him was alarming
and a little exasperating. Sometimes he would accuse her of not caring
for him at all and then she would still further disconcert him by
looking very directly and questioningly at him as if she, too, had some
doubts on the subject.
Sylvia knew she had floated into the engagement from the crest of one
wave of emotion to another. Her estrangement from Phil Lorrimer, her
disillusionment about Jeanette's married life, the panic-stricken horror
and shame with which her own affair with Porter Robinson had filled her,
her generally overwrought, hysterical, nervous condition had all
contributed to throw her into Jack's arms that night. He had seemed an
oasis on a desert, a spar to the drowning. She had awakened soon enough
to the realization that it was by no means a grand passion, a life and
death affair, this placid, even affection she felt for Jack. She loved
him sufficiently. She knew she could be fairly happy with him and make
him happy, perhaps could even let her affection deepen into something
approaching a great love in due time. They were ideal comrades already,
and Sylvia had a theory that comradeship was a better basis than stormy
passion for happy wedlock. Yet perhaps down in her heart there was a
fear that something was lacking in it all, something that kept her
stubbornly insistent on postponing the wedding for a year. Impulsively
she had yielded the first redoubt. She intended to be sure of herself
before she surrendered the fortress for good and all. She meant to do
it in the end without reservation, for better for worse. There should
be no shilly-shallying like Jeanette's in her life. That she was
determined upon.
Part of the steadying effect of her engagement expressed itself in a
sincere desire to stop the unsatisfactory flitting from flower to flower
process, sipping honey here and there, into which she had drifted during
the restless winter months past. She had had enough tasting of
experience and honestly sought serious employment for her energies.