Part 12 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rt that he had left tumbled. She carefully folded it, then with a surrept.i.tious 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.h.i.+vered 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From the bedroom, to which Bobby had withdrawn, drifted his voice in the melancholy tune and words of one of Lawrence Hope's lyrics: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 pa.s.sionately from lips, for the moment trembling.
”For G.o.d'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 pa.s.s.”
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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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?