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
anaemic 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 aeons, 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 anaemic 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.