Part 16 (1/2)

”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 a.n.a.lyst. 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 n.o.ble 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 ingrat.i.tude,” 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 ingrat.i.tude; 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 a.s.sured myself that night that you knew nothing of this remarkable outside interest in our affairs.”