Part 19 (2/2)

”But it hasn't,” I protested; ”I'm just stumping along.”

”You haven't really had it--just being kissed once, what does that amount to?”

”Oh, Sarah, Sarah, that is what hurts me! I haven't really had it. I'm never going to. I'll just go halting like this all my life.”

”No, you won't,” Sarah shook her head, piecing her own knowledge slowly into comfort for me. ”You remember what I told you that time when you found out about Dean and Mr. O'Farrell? There's a kind of feeling that goes with acting that is like loving, only it isn't. I don't know where it comes from. Maybe it is what they call genius, but I know you can slide off from loving into it. That is what makes Jerry think he has to be in love all the time; it is a little stair he climbs up, and then he goes sailing off. You don't think Fancy Filette really does anything for him?”

”Goodness, no; she hasn't a teaspoonful of brains!”

”Well, then,” she triumphed. ”After a while his genius will be so strong in him that he won't need that sort of thing and he will think it ridiculous.”

”And you think that will come to me?”

”It did come. You didn't have to be in love to begin,” Sarah objected.

”Sarah, I will tell you the truth! I was in love all the time, I didn't know with whom, but always wanting somebody ... trying to get through to something; trying to mate. That was it. Nights when I would do my best, and the house would be storming and cheering, I would look around for ... for somebody. And I would go to my room, and he wouldn't be there! I used to think Tommy would be He, I wanted him to be. I thought some day I would turn around suddenly and find him changed into ...

whatever it was I wanted. But I know now he never could have been that.

And all this summer ... I've heard it calling. I've walked and walked.

Sometimes it was just around the corner, but I never caught up with it.

And when I saw Helmeth Garrett, I _knew_!”

I had leaned back out of the circle of our small shaded lamp to make my confession, but Sarah came forward into it the better to show me the condoning tenderness of her smile.

”It's no use, Sarah, I'm no genius; I have to be in love like the rest of them.” She shook her head gently.

”You'll get across. Love would help; I wish you had it. But I'll confess to you; I had love and it only opened the door. There's something beyond, bigger than all men. You must reach out and lay hold of it. Oh, if it were love one needed, I should die--I should die!” I had never seen her so moved before.

”Tell me, Sarah; I've always wanted to know.”

”I want you to know, but it isn't easy! I didn't know anything about love ... how could I the way I was brought up! My father was a Baptist preacher. I had been taught that it was wrong to let anybody ... touch you; and when he kissed me I felt as if he had the right....”

”I know, I know!” I had been kissed that way myself.

”How can anybody know? I loved him, and I was the only one of many. He left me without a word, ... like a woman of the street ... not looking backward.” She got up and moved about the room, the thick coil of her rich brown hair slipping to her shoulders, and her bodily perfection under the thin dressing gown distracting me even from the pa.s.sion of her speech. I had a momentary pang of sympathy with the delinquent Lawrence, I could see how a man might be afraid almost, of the quality of her beauty.

”Sometimes,” she said, ”I think marriage is a much more real relation than people think--that something real but invisible happens between them so that even if they are parted they are never quite the same again. It is like having a limb torn from you; you ache always, in the part you have lost.” I knew something of what that ache could be, but I could only turn my face up to hers that she might see my tears.

”You have enough of your own to bear,” she said. ”I must not lay my troubles on you; but I wanted to tell you how I know it is not love that makes art. I was dying for love when Mr. O'Farrell put me to acting. I was bleeding so ... and suddenly I reached out and laid hold of Whatever is, and I found I could act. It was as if the half of me that had been torn away had been between me and It, and I laid hold of It. That's how I know.” She came behind me, leaning on my chair, and I put up my hands to her.

”Oh, Sarah, Sarah, help me to lay hold of it, too!” But for all her shy confidences, deep within I didn't believe her.

Toward the first of September we went back to the city, Sarah to begin rehearsals for _The Futurist_, and I to take up the dreary round of manager's offices and dramatic agencies. The best that was offered me was poor enough, but it had a faint savour of a superior motive clinging to it. It was from a Mr. Coleman, an actor manager of the old, heavy-jowled Shakespearian type, who was projecting a cla.s.sic revival with himself in all the tragic parts, and I signed with him to play _Portia_, _Cleopatra_, and the wife of _Brutus_. We had been busy with rehearsals about ten days when I had a telegram from Forester saying that mother had died that day and I was to come immediately.

It was late Sunday evening when I received it and I hunted up the manager at the hotel.

”I'm going,” I told him.

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