TWO DISCOVERIES
Bob Maxwell was standing before the fire. He turned abstractedly and set
his untouched glass on the mantel shelf.
"You've got a grouch, Bobby," lectured the young actress, "at a time
when you ought to be all puffed up and chesty. Aren't you glad we made
good in the same piece? It would be nice of you to say so."
He turned on her a face strangely drawn and his words came swiftly in
agitation.
"Triumph, did you say? Don't you know that it's only when you get the
thing you've worked for, that you realize it's not worth working for?
That's not triumph--it's despair. Triumph means laying your prize at
somebody's feet--" he broke off with a sort of groan. "To hell with such
success!" he burst out with sudden bitterness. "To hell and damnation
with the whole of it!"
For a long while the girl held him in a steady scrutiny. They had both
forgotten me, silent in my corner. Her cheeks paled a little, and when
finally she reiterated her old question, her steady voice betrayed the
training of strong effort.
"Who is she?"
"Listen, Grace," he said. "I've got to talk to some one. You have come
here, so you let yourself in for it.... Ten years ago I was reporting on
a paper for a few dollars a week. It was a long way from Broadway. There
was a dusty typewriter and dirty walls decorated with yellowed
clippings--but ... There was wild young ambition and all of life ahead.
_That_ was living."
"Who was she?" insistently repeated the actress, when he paused.
"What can it matter how big a play one writes," demanded the author, "if
he presents it to an empty house? The absence of one woman can make any
house empty for any man. I'd give it all, to hear her say once more--"
He broke off in abrupt silence.
"To hear her say what, Bobby?" prompted Grace Bristol, softly.
"Well," he answered with a miserable laugh, "something she used to say."
"I suppose, Bobby--" the girl spoke very slowly, and a little wistfully,
too--"I suppose it wouldn't do any good to--to hear any one else say
it?"
He shook his head.
"Do you remember, Grace," he went on, "the other evening, when we were
sitting in the cafe at the Lorillard and the orchestra in another room
was playing 'Whispering Angels'? The hundred noises of the place almost
drowned it out, yet we were always straining our ears to catch the
music--and when there came a momentary lull, it would swell up over
everything else. That's how it is with this--and sometimes it swells up
and slugs one--simply slugs one, that's all." He broke off and laughed
again. "I guess I'm talking no end of rot. You probably don't
understand."
She raised her face and spoke with dignity.
"Why don't I understand, Bobby? Because I'm a show-girl?"
My old friend's voice was contrite in its quick apology.
"Forgive me, Grace--of course I didn't mean that. You're the cleverest
woman on Broadway."
She laughed. "I'm said to be quite an emotional ash-trash," she
responded.
It seemed inconceivable that Maxwell should miss the note of bitter
misery in her voice; yet, blinded by his own quarrel with Fate, he
passed into the next room oblivious of all else.
She crossed to the table which lay littered with the confusion of his
untidy packing, and took up a shirt that he had left tumbled. She
carefully folded it, then with a surreptitious glance over her shoulder
to make sure that she was not observed, she tore a rose from her belt
and, holding it for an impulsive moment against her breast, dropped it
into the bag. My face was averted, but through a mirror I saw the
pitiful pantomime. From the table she turned and stood gazing off
through his window, with her face averted. From my seat I could also
catch some of the detail that the window framed. Below stretched
Washington Square, almost as desolately empty as in those days when,
instead of asphalt and trees and fountain, it held only the many graves
of the pauper dead. The arch at the Avenue loomed stark and white and
the naked branches of a sycamore were like skeleton fingers against the
garish light flung from an arc lamp. The girl had thrown up the sash and
stood drinking in the cold air, though she shivered a little, and
forgetful of my presence clenched her hands at her back.
From the bedroom, to which Bobby had withdrawn, drifted his voice in the
melancholy tune and words of one of Lawrence Hope's lyrics:
"Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheels--"
The girl at the window turned with a violent start and her exclamation
broke passionately from lips, for the moment trembling.
"For God's sake, Bobby, _don't_!"
"What's the matter with my singing?" demanded his aggrieved voice from
beyond the door.
She forced a laugh.
"Oh, nothing," she said carelessly enough, "only when anybody pulls one
of those Indian Love Lyrics on me, I pass."
He returned a moment later to find her still standing by the window. At
last she turned back to the room and took up her hat. She lifted it to
her head as though it were very heavy, and her arms very tired.
"I guess, Bobby, I'll be running along," she announced.
"Grace," he said earnestly, "it's good to know that from this time on
you are a star."
She laughed.
"Yes, isn't it?" she answered. "I'm a real ash-trash now. No--don't
bother to see me down. Mr. Deprayne will put me into the taxi'."
Outside the threshold she paused to thrust her head back into the room,
and to laugh gaily as she shouted in the slang of the street:
"Oh, you Galahad!"
But her eyes were swimming with tears.
As I climbed the creaking stairs again, I was pondering the question of
contentment. Here were three of us. One had raked success out of the
fire of failure and had written what promised to be the season's
dramatic sensation. One had earned the right to read her name, nightly,
in Broadway's incandescent roster. I myself had been preserved from
cannibal flesh-pots. All of us were seemingly brands snatched from the
burning, and all of us were deeply miserable. I wondered if the fourth
was happy; the woman who had once said to Maxwell the things he now
vainly longed to hear? And She--the lady I had never seen; what of her?
I found the author gazing off with a far-away reminiscence which was
mostly pain. The taxi' was whirring under the arch, but he had already
forgotten it and its occupant.
"Do you want to unbosom yourself, Bobby?" I questioned.
He shook his head.
"To you?" he inquired with a smile. "You're a woman-hater."
But a moment later he came over and laid his hand affectionately on my
shoulder, fearing he had offended me.
"I guess, old man," he explained, "there's no balm in post-mortems. I
loved her, that's all, and I still do."
"She married?" I inquired.
"She is now Mrs. William Clay Weighborne of Lexington. It's a prettier
name than Fanny Maxwell, and looks better on a check. I was number
three, that's all."
"Mrs. Who?" I repeated, in astonishment. "You don't mean the wife of W.
C. Weighborne?"
"Why?" he asked suddenly. "Is the gentleman an acquaintance of yours?"
"Since this morning, yes. He is even a business associate."
"How you birds of a financial feather do flock around the same pabulum,"
he coolly observed.
"I was rather well impressed with him," I admitted idiotically enough.
"He seemed a very decent sort of chap."
Maxwell lighted a cigarette. His voice was a trifle unenthusiastic as he
replied.
"So I am informed."
A few days later I arrived at Lexington and Weighborne, who met me at
the station with his car, announced that I was to go to his home on the
Frankfort turnpike. But at this arrangement I balked. Despite a certain
curiosity to see his wife, the lady who had left such a melancholy
impress on the heart of my friend, there were considerations which
outweighed curiosity. My own peculiar afflictions bore more heavily on
me than those of my acquaintances and I had no yearning for the effort
of socializing.
So Weighborne protestingly drove me to the Ph[oe]nix, and armed me with
a visitor's card to the Lexington Union Club. I could see that he was
deeply absorbed. His mind was so tensely focused on coal and timber
development that it was difficult for him to think of other matters. My
apathy lagged at the prospect of following his untiring energy over
hours of close application to detail. I would put it off until
to-morrow. Yet I had hardly taken my seat at table in the dining-room of
the Ph[oe]nix, when a page called me to the telephone booth and
Weighborne's voice came through the transmitter.
"Hullo, old man, did I drag you away from food? Sorry, but there are
some papers here I'd like mighty well to have you look over. I might
bring them in, but if you don't mind running out it would be better."
Of necessity I assented.
"I'll have my chauffeur call for you at 8:30," he arranged, "and
meanwhile I'll be getting things into shape here. By the way"--his voice
took on a reassuring note--"you sidestepped my rooftree this evening,
and I gathered that you were not in the mood for meeting people."
I murmured some insincere assurance to the contrary, which did not
beguile him.
"We shall have the house quite to ourselves," he said. "All the family
are flitting off to a dance at the Country Club."
An hour later his car turned in at a stone gate, and up a long
maple-lined avenue. From the windows of a generously broad, colonial
mansion came a cheery blaze of light, throwing shadows outward from the
tall white columns at the front. I could not help thinking of Maxwell's
lodgings in Washington Square, and reflecting that, all prejudice aside,
the flower of his worship had not chosen so badly in transplanting
herself here.
Weighborne met me at the entrance of a hall over which hung the charm of
ripe old portraits and wainscoted walls. Furnishings of unostentatious
elegance made the place a delight. We passed into a large library where
a wide hearth dispensed the cheer of blazing logs and our feet sunk deep
in Persian rugs.
Yet even here, although instinctively hospitable, my host was plainly
immersed in thoughts of coal and timber, for as soon as he had done the
honors he plunged me into a litter of statistics.
I, poor business man that I was, had, time after time, to force my mind
back from its undisciplined straying. As he talked of coal veins, I
would find myself thinking of coral reefs. When he enlarged upon
advances in timber tracts I would be seeing in my memory a circle of
mahogany-skinned pigmies squatting silently about a portrait spiked to a
sailor's chest with a pair of Damascus daggers.
At last Weighborne began sorting through the papers for some misplaced
and necessary memorandum. He crossed the room to a desk at one corner
which he found locked, and his ejaculation was one of deep annoyance.
"My wife has locked the desk and Heaven only knows where she has put the
key," he complained. "I'll have to call the Country Club and ask her."
His words must have carried to the next room, for at once a voice
answered. It was a richly musical contralto, and at its first syllable
my heart stood still, and the room commenced to whirl about me. I had
never heard it and yet I _had_ heard it--singing in a wilderness of
coral and orchids. Surely after all the big, little doctor was right, I
was becoming a lunatic.
"Billy," called the voice, "you needn't 'phone. I'm here. I'll unlock
it."
My host turned in surprise and walked over to the door.
"Hullo, Frances!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you go to the Club?"
"I had a headache," replied the voice. "I sent the others off, and
stayed at home. I'll come in just a moment."
I stood waiting, my pulses pounding turbulently. Had my host not been
just then dedicated to a single idea he must have noticed my pallor and
wondered at the fascination with which I came to my feet and stood
gazing at the door.
And as I gazed she appeared on the threshold, the blaze from the logs
lighting her and throwing a nimbus about her hair of gold and honey. I
placed both my hands on the top of the table and braced myself as a man
may do when the executioner whispers the warning "ready!"
She might have stepped from the picture herself. Again she was in
evening dress, which clung to her in soft lines of unspeakable grace. At
her throat hung a string of pearls--the same pearls--and as she paused
and our eyes met, I could have sworn that her muscles grew momentarily
taut, and her lips twitched in a gasp. She put out one hand and steadied
herself against the door jamb; then with the gracious recognition of a
half-smile for a guest not yet duly presented, she went over and
unlocked the desk.
I stood looking after her. I was conscious of a numbness of spirit--a
sickening of hopelessness. The question was answered. The Frances of my
Island, the Frances of Maxwell's heartbreak, the Frances who had married
my business associate, were, by a monstrous sequence of hideous
circumstances and coincidence, one and the same. She stood ten feet and
twenty sky depths away from me.