As he reached Washington square it seemed that the quiet of the section
held a sort of benediction, and such peace as hangs between old walls,
where the fever of stress has passed and left in its wake a philosophy
and a contentment.
But when he came to the house where he had visited her, he was told that
she no longer lived there. With a sudden pang it occurred to him that
once more she might have moved a step down the economic scale toward the
furnished room in one of those dingy lodging-houses which she had
dreaded; places where the heart sickens at the forlornness of its
environment.
He inquired for the girl with whom Marcia had shared the little
apartment, and to his relief learned that she still had her abode here
and would receive him. As he opened the door, Dorothy Melliss was
bending over her drawing-board by a north window, rushing through some
fashion illustrations which must be delivered on the morrow. She greeted
Paul with a nod and went on with her work, while he explained his
mission.
Dorothy was a wholesome young person of clear complexion and
straightforward eyes and she spoke with an independence of manner
amounting to slanginess. She was one of those girls whom an unaided life
in the city fosters. She could take care of herself--and did--but she
knew life and looked it in the face--and dispensed with anything like a
baby stare in doing so. Now she listened to Paul's talk, then suddenly
shoved back her India-ink bottle and wiped her pen, while her pupils
met his with directness.
"Before I answer any of your questions, Mr. Burton, I've got a few to
ask you myself," she announced. "I might as well talk straight from the
shoulder. Just how anxious you are to see Marcia isn't going to make
such a great difference in my young life. Whether or not she wants you
to find her--does make a great deal of difference."
"What do you mean, Miss Melliss?" Paul was genuinely puzzled.
"I mean that of course I know her address--or addresses--because they
change every day. I also know that she gave me the most explicit orders
not to tell you where she could be found."
"Oh!" he exclaimed in disappointment, relinquishing his inquiry at the
first obstacle. "Then I suppose I may as well go."
"Hold on," she commanded tersely. "I'm Marcia Terroll's friend. I think
I'm enough her friend to decide for myself whether I can help her most
by obeying or disobeying her. Sit down for five minutes and listen to
me. I feel like talking."
He obeyed, and the young woman's face flushed with her interest as she
took a chair near him and lighted a cigarette. After that she sat for a
few moments reflectively silent.
"I guess there isn't so much similarity between Marcia and me, but
there's one thing--and it's a bond of kinship in a way." She looked at
him unwaveringly. "We've both been on our own for some time in a town
where there are more Don Juans than Walter Raleighs--and we're both
straight. To the women of _your_ protected set that wouldn't be so much
to brag of--about as much as for a millionaire to boast that he'd never
picked a pocket. None of those sheltered girls in your own world, where
women nibble at life like bon-bons, have anything on Marcia Terroll. In
brain and character and charm she has it over those female noncombatants
like a tent."
"I know all that, Miss Melliss." His reply was vaguely apologetic.
"Maybe you do, but I'm not through yet. She was cut to a delicate
pattern and meant for life's sunshine and God knows she's had plenty of
shadow. She's kept a smile on her lips and a laugh in her eyes through
things that would have crumpled up lots of those tender creatures you
know. You don't guess what it means to that sort of woman--well, to see
life from the angle we get on it, but Marcia knows. You came along and
she--" The young woman broke off in sudden silence.
"She what?" Anxiety sounded through his question.
"Oh, she never told me anything. It's not her fashion to tell such
things, but I have a pair of eyes myself. I figure that Marcia let
herself in for a danger she thought she had put behind her. She allowed
herself to have a dream." She paused and her gaze was almost accusing in
its directness. "From the look in her eyes before she went away I guess
she realized that it was a dream."
Miss Melliss had eyes of a brown softness, but just now they flashed
hard as agate and her voice rose to a scornful indignation.
"As if we haven't enough to handle with the facts of Life, without
hopeless dreams! I'm no anarchist railing at wealth and luxury ... but
you men that want everything ... and give nothing--" She broke off and
abruptly demanded, "Well, when you think about it, what do you call it
to yourselves?"
"Where is she?" demanded Paul.
"She's out with a dinky, barnstorming company, playing one-night
stands--on a route of tank-towns and whistling stations. It was all she
could get. She's making early-morning jumps between shabby hotels with a
bunch of cheap actors and cheaper actresses that are just about as
congenial to her as a herd of goats." The voice vibrated with sincere
feeling.
"Are you going to tell me where I can find her?"
The girl studied her cigarette, drew a puff upon it and exhaled a cloud
of smoke before she answered. Then she spoke reflectively.
"I'm just wondering whether I am or not. If you're going to follow her
up and make her dream again--only to wake up again, I certainly am not.
If you're going to be any comfort to her I am, because God knows she
needs some comfort. She is only going on her nerve."
"Please tell me," he urged very persuasively. At that moment it was in
his mind to write a truthful letter to Loraine Haswell and go to Marcia
with a proposal of marriage. He felt only his need of her--and her
importance to himself. He failed to reckon on the thousand misgivings
and indecisions which would assail him between the moment of impulse and
that of execution. But his eyes were sincere and Dorothy believed them.
She went to her desk and brought back a sheet of paper.
"That's the route for this week--and next," she said. "After that you
must either find out for yourself or go without knowing."
That night with the holiday spirit of a lad let out of a cheerless
school Paul Burton walked along the principal street of a small New
England town where old-fashioned houses sprawled between stark elms.
When he reached the Palace Theater, the performance had begun, so he
hurriedly bought a ticket and found himself sitting near the front
with many empty seats about him. It was a cheap "follow up" company
with an old piece that had once been a Broadway hit. He had never
seen Marcia act. Now he was seeing her under the most inauspicious
circumstances--and he knew that only want of opportunity and the
uncompromising plane on which she had pitched her dealings in managerial
offices had balked her ambitions. She could act and was acting with a
force, intelligence and finesse that were wasted here, and as he watched
her suddenly their eyes met and across the blazing separation of the
"foots" she recognized him. For just an instant her pupils dilated and
she missed a cue. It looked as though she would "go up" in her lines,
but before the prompter could come to her aid she had recovered herself
and her performance went on unbroken. But during the following
intermission the women who dressed near by could hear her humming a gay
tune, and as she came out at her call they saw in her eyes a sparkle
that had not been there before.
As Marcia sat in her dressing-room before the mirror which was fastened
against a brick wall, the squalidness of the cubbyhole ceased to depress
her. On the slab before her lay scattered the details of make-up, and
crowded into one corner stood her open wardrobe trunk. A placard near a
light-bulb read, "Please remember that YOU are here for a few days, but
we are here all the time. Do not deface our home," and under that
notice, probably tempted by it into irony, a former occupant had
scrawled in huge letters "Oh, you home!"
But now the chilly little dressing-room was no longer a dingy cell. She
had recognized Paul Burton's face out in front, and, as she changed for
the next act, little snatches of song broke from her lips, and she
smiled at herself in the glass until the small, glistening teeth flashed
like those of a pleased child.
Fate gives no guarantee of responsibility for the targeting of the
Love-God's darts. This whimsical deity seems to owe no duty to fitness
or consistency. He may choose to make a strong and excellent character
love one too weak to be worthy its thought and no higher power
intervenes. After all, Marcia had met Paul when she was lonely and they
had for a while comforted each other's unhappiness. When she had ordered
him to stay away the damage was already done, and since then she had
been infinitely more lonely--had craved more desperately companionship
with someone of the world from which her poverty had so long exiled her,
though its memories remained. Now he had disobeyed her and come to her.
He had sought her out contrary to command and that must mean that he had
found a new strength and would have something to say to her which a man
may worthily say to a woman. He had so thoroughly understood her edict
that his coming could have no other meaning. She could not know that he
was still actuated solely by his own selfish craving for comfort, nor
that he had occupied his time on the train countering and balancing
considerations until his sudden determination had oozed miserably out of
him. Although he could no longer awaken a throbbing of his pulses with
the thought of Loraine Haswell, neither could he fortify his mind to
cut the tie and give her up.
When the curtain rang down on the last act the door-man brought in his
card, and Marcia ran light-heartedly out to meet him.
"You see, I disobeyed you," he announced, and she sought to reply with
great severity, but delight broke through that affectation and riddled
it with smiles.
"Unless you are too tired," she suggested, "let's take a walk before we
go back to that desolate morgue they call a hotel."
It was a cold and sparkling night and the old street, which was once a
post road, twisted between the elms under a moon that threw the rambling
houses into softened shapes and underscored them duskily with shadow.
They had walked perhaps a half-mile when they came upon a building that
had in its more prosperous years been a mansion of some pretense and
dignity. It sat back in its generous yard, with a cheery light blazing
at its lower windows, wearing an aspect of elderly and beneficent
reminiscence. An electric bulb by the gate lighted a small swinging sign
inscribed in antique type, "The Sign of the Tea-pot. Lunch, tea and
dancing."
"Down-at-the-heels gentility gone into trade," smiled Marcia.
Paul Burton halted and listened, but the dancing had ended and the old
house was silent.
"I wonder," he ventured, "if the tea-pot is still on duty."
"By this time," she laughed, "it would have tucked its head under its
wing and gone to roost."
"Let's try it, none the less," he challenged, and with the spirit of two
children on a lark they opened the creaking gate and traversed the
brick walk, arm in arm.
In answer to their knock, which echoed through the place, there came
after a time a pleasant-faced elderly woman to the door. For a few
moments she reflected, then decided that, although it was a little late,
she would undertake to produce some sort of a supper--if they would make
allowances for its deficient quality.
The scene seemed set for adventure, even romance. In a large, pleasantly
furnished room glowed a cheery fire, and as they waited they sat before
it, falling silent, and Marcia's face continued to smile. She had
learned to make the most of a pleasant moment while it lasted and to
leave regrets until they forced themselves.
When they had finished an excellent supper and the woman had withdrawn
they asked and received permission to linger a while before the inviting
hearth.
Abruptly Marcia looked up and announced, "I forgive you your
disobedience. I'm glad you came. You can't imagine how lonely it's
been." Her small nose puckered fastidiously as she added, "The company
is odious and I hate the play and the hotels provide unfinished
road-beds to sleep on and I've been headachy and altogether miserable."
Then she broke off and laughed again, "Which will be about enough
Jeremiad for the present. Have you missed me?"
Paul Burton bent forward and studied the red tip of his cigar. It seemed
to him that he had missed her more than he had ever missed anyone else.
For the first time since the terrible day in the Street with its
battalion of misfortunes, his heart felt at rest and his nerves quiet.
He tossed the cigar away and took her hands in his. Deep in her eyes
glowed a quiet tenderness and her breath quickened. The man seated
himself on the arm of her deep chair, passing one arm about her and
holding her two hands close to her breast. Her hat tilted back as he
stooped to kiss her, but she did not appear to resent that
disarrangement.
"I have missed you terribly," he said and the glow in her pupils
heightened in brightness.
Marcia was content. After all, her dream was coming true. Here in this
old room of an old house, where other generations had made courtly love,
he would tell her that resolution had come to his heart, driving out
weak vacillation, and resolution spelt her name. It was worth having
been lonely for. Here were just the two of them in the light of a fire
on a hearth--emblem of home.
On their two faces, close together, the blaze threw warm little dashes
of its own color. Into the heart of Marcia Terroll stole belief once
more, and the cheer of the glowing coals.