Part 17 (1/2)
”I am not speaking of the vast library of ma.n.u.script failures, but of a small proportion which get into the sinister glare of Broadway----”
”My G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.nable, 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 s.e.xes 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 prost.i.tuted 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 G.o.d's hands--let us hope.”
”It is good to laugh at you, Quentin Charter. You have another appet.i.te.
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 mult.i.tude takes from out our b.r.e.a.s.t.s--and call ours a prost.i.tution, 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sion--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 s.e.xless 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 pa.s.sion 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.