Next morning Maggy was round at Sidey Street. She felt that confidences
were in the air. If Alexandra was not dying to impart them she at least
was "all of a twitter" to hear them.
"Lexie," she cried, bursting in, "don't have any secrets from me. Who
is he?"
Alexandra was in the act of writing a letter. She looked up
apathetically.
"You mean the man I was with last night?" she said. "I'm not going to
see him any more, so we won't talk about him."
"Oh, yes, we will! Why, I do believe you're writing to him now!"
"You can read what I've written."
Thus invited, Maggy looked over her shoulder. Alexandra had begun a
stilted little note to Bernard Meer in which she briefly refused to meet
him any more.
"I don't think you'll post it," said Maggy shrewdly. "It doesn't ring
true. Besides, what do you want to run away from him for? He looked
just the sort of man one could trust, not a bit like the stage-door pest
kind."
She cross-examined Alexandra, dragged from her the few bald details of
her half-dozen meetings with Meer.
"Of course you're in love with him," she declared. "I saw it in your
face. If I hadn't been so taken up with Fred I should have found out
things before last night. Lexie, what's going to happen?"
The tone in which Maggy asked the question showed that she expected a
particular answer, that she would be surprised if it were not the one
which followed the line of least resistance. It set Alexandra wavering.
"Oh, Maggy," she said desperately, "if any one had told me a few months
ago that I should ever have had to fight against that sort of temptation
I should have died of shame! All last night I lay awake hating and
despising myself, and all the time I was trying to find excuses for
myself. I never thought love would come like this, taking one unawares,
giving one no time to prepare for it. If I ever let myself think of it
at all it was as of some fragrant and beautiful little plant that one
could watch shoot and grow and bud--"
"Instead of that it's gone and done a kind of Mango trick like I saw at
St. George's Hall once--sprouted up into a full-grown tree while you
waited, or rather while you didn't wait. I daresay love might have come
as you picture it, Lexie, if you'd stayed at home. Plants grow faster
in a forcing-house; and the stage is, well--a hot-bed. If you're really
in love you might as well try and get away from it as from an express
train when it's bowled you over. After all, there's just a chance you
won't get scrunched to pieces if you take it lying down."
For the hundredth time in the last twelve hours Alexandra found herself
wondering whether she dared follow Maggy's example, and give herself to
the man she loved. If she did, what would be the outcome of it? How
long would such an affection, at least on the man's part, last? Always
those old set views of hers about life and morality rose up to haunt her
indecision. Was she, after all, to recant, give up the fight, own
herself beaten?
"Poor old Lexie," murmured Maggy, taking her hand after a long silence.
"Maggy,"--Alexandra held her eyes questioningly--"tell me honestly: do
you in any way regret what you did? You know why I want to know."
Maggy looked within herself.
"No," she answered thoughtfully, "I don't. I do admit there's one thing
that spoils it, makes it different to being married. You often wonder
at night, or first thing in the morning, sometimes even in daytime,
whether it's one day nearer the end or how far off the end is. I'm
prepared for Fred to get tired of me one day, though I hope it won't
come for years and years. But so long as he's straight over it I'll
meet him half way. I'll go to my own funeral, and not sniffle. It
wouldn't be reasonable to refuse to take the consequences. You've got to
choose for yourself. I believe it's the only way for us girls on the
stage. With most of us marriage is an accident. Only go into it with
your eyes open. Leave out the fairy-tale notion that 'they lived
happily ever afterwards,' or at least half of it. Thank goodness for
the 'happily,' and be satisfied with it."
"If only I could get right away," murmured Alexandra. "Here I feel
hunted down. I sit and think and think and get weaker and weaker. And
this room and the street simply shriek to me to leave them."
"I know all the symptoms, dear. They're new to you, but I've had them
over and over again. The funny part is, Lexie, now it's come to the
point I feel different about you. Although I was always telling you to
climb over the garden wall to the little boy next door, now that you're
half way up I'm afraid to give you a push. You might drop into
something you didn't expect.... Oh, Lexie, pet, in my mind's eye I only
see you dressed in white and orange blossoms. It's a damned shame you
shouldn't have them.... And yet, if you don't, it may be worse later
on, because you know as well as I do that you can't do any good on the
stage all by yourself, and it's better to have the man you'd have
married if you'd been given the chance than one you don't care a rap
about except for what he can give you. It all sounds so muddley when I
try and put things into words, but I know what I mean myself."
She stayed a little longer, but, after this, they both instinctively
kept to the shallows of conversation, avoiding the depths. When she had
gone, Alexandra, as Maggy had prophesied, tore up her letter. She took
a fresh sheet and without hesitating wrote, "Just when you
wish--Alexandra."
Then she went out and posted it, and, having betrayed herself, came home
and wept bitterly.