Part 10 (2/2)

”I know,” he said. ”I was watching you. You were green under the paint, Grace.”

”If you'd spoken to me just then, I'd have screamed and had spasms,” she laughed, ”but now--” she pointed victoriously to a maze of roses on her dresser--”there are the flowers that glow under gla.s.s, tra-la! You wrote me the bulliest part I ever played, old pal. You made me a star.” I had come to-night simply to congratulate. I had known something of my friend's struggles and I wished to be among those who were there to say ”well done.” My own thoughts were coursing in channels far away from the life of theaters and green-rooms, where this young woman, undeniably pretty, beyond doubt talented, was enjoying her moment of high triumph.

In her delight was that hysterical touch which stamps moments of reaction. She had been through the ordeal of a ”first night” and now she knew that the experiment was successful. Bobby too must have had the same exaltation, though his masculine nature did not break so frankly into emotion. I felt that I was the extra person, entirely superfluous, so I murmured some good-night and started to leave the place. But my friend stopped me.

”I want to talk with you later, old man,” he said, and I remained to be, as it developed, catapulted into a new discovery.

Bobby helped Miss Bristol into her coat and the two of us gathered up as many of the flowers as we could carry and made our way with her through the stage-entrance and out into the street. As we hailed a taxi' at the curb, the night life of never-sleeping places was racing at full tide along Broadway, and swirling in an eddy about Longacre Square. It bore on its crest its gay flotillas of pleasure--and its drift of derelicts.

To me it pointed all the miserable morals of contrast.

”Where to?” inquired Bobby. ”Do you show yourself in triumph at Rector's grill, or go home to dream of applauding thousands?”

The lady shrugged her shapely shoulders.

”Me for the hay!” she announced with prompt decisiveness. ”Jump in, boys,” she invited in afterthought. ”I may as well drive you down to your rooms and drop you first. I need a breath of air to quiet my nerves.”

Out of the garish color and clangor of Broadway, we swept into the tempered quiet of Fifth Avenue, stretching ghostlike between the twin threads of electric opals.

”We must both be pretty tired,” he suggested when Was.h.i.+ngton Arch loomed ahead. ”We haven't spoken since Herald Square.”

”I'm too happy to talk,” she answered. ”For ten pretty rough years I've been building for to-night.” She sighed contentedly, then went on, ”I began about the usual way ... musical comedy ... in tights ... carrying a spear. My first promotion was to the front row. I wasn't fool enough to kid myself into the notion that it was because I was a Melba or a Fiske. If I used to go to my hall bedroom every night and cry myself to sleep it was n.o.body's business but my own.” She must have felt Maxwell's eyes on her, for her voice took on a note of the defiant as she added, ”And if I didn't always go straight to my hall bedroom, maybe that was my own business too.” She seemed to be reviewing her struggle as she leaned restfully back against the cus.h.i.+ons with to-night's roses in her lap. Her lids drooped contentedly. ”But to-night,” she added, ”well, to-night I felt all that was paid for and the receipt signed. How do you feel, Bobby?”

”Glad it's over,” said the man. ”I'm tired.”

”It hasn't been just exactly a snap for you either,” she sympathetically conceded. ”When I first knew you, you were haunting Park Row for a cheap job, and getting canned by office boys. It's been a long way, we've come, boy, but we kept plugging when the going was bad, and now, thank G.o.d, we've arrived.”

The taxi' drew up before the door of the house where Maxwell had his quarters. It was a dingy building which has harbored under its roof the beginnings of a half-dozen literary reputations.

”Bobby,” said the young woman suddenly, ”have you any Scotch in your rooms?”

He reflected.

”I believe there's some Bourbon left in the bottle,” he admitted.

”'Twill have to do,” she said with a grimace. ”I believe I'll climb the steps and have a highball. We ought to toast the piece, you know. It's been good to us.”

”I thought you were too tired,” suggested the author in surprise. ”We might have stopped where they had champagne.”

”I didn't want wine. But I need a quiet little chat to work off this nervousness.”

In his sitting-room Bobby announced, ”I've got to pack. I'm leaving in the morning. Deprayne will entertain you with traveler's tales.”

Miss Bristol paused with her hands raised and her hatpins half drawn.

Her face, for a moment, clouded.

”Where are you going?”

”Out west for a month or two.”

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