XI
He did not try to understand what it was that lay glimmering at the bottom of that deep look of hers. Her talk of Coulton and of "Miss Richardson" had put before him a whole picture of his life, from the days when he had played with little "Miss Margaret" in the broken summer-house, down to the last written words which he had received from her in Leipzig; and he went back over it all, incident by incident, and chapter by chapter, as if it were a printed story of which he had yet to read the end. Was it possible that, so far as she was concerned, it was already ended? Was she gone out of his life for ever? Was his future to be a disjoined series of new incidents to which she would be a stranger?
He revolted against the thought as if against a change in his own identity. Surely love could not be such an impotent tragedy. Surely he was not wrecked here in a life that had settled down to mere aimless regret. Surely it was a very law of existence that his future should be a development of his past. He said to himself that it must be so, that it should be so, that he would make it so. With a determined effort he threw off the depression that had fastened on him; and by a trick of imagination he made himself feel a confident expectation that Margaret would come back to him, and that his life would continue to fulfil the promise with which it had begun.
When he returned to his rooms, both the Pittseys were out, and he opened his trunk and began to re-read his collection of her letters, brooding over them fondly and striving to recall every detail of this past that had threatened to escape him. He opened the back of his watchcase, to find that her face was almost lost in the lustrous brown of the "unfixed" proof, as if it, too, were trying to fade away from him! And he sat gazing at it—in an attempt to stamp it for ever on the memory of his retina—until the light had quite obliterated it. Then he closed his eyes and smiled when he saw the after-image of her face, glancing aside in the pose of girlish shyness which he loved. That picture should never fade. He would summon it back every hour of the day, so that it might be glowing in the darkness when he gave himself up to the last sleepy thoughts of her at night.
She would return to him from Europe; he would be waiting, ready for her, in some position which should not be unworthy of her; their lives would join in a happy completion of the destiny foreshadowed by their past. Of that he made himself feel sure. For he was not merely an unconscious idealist, now; he was becoming a visionary. He not only believed in what was the unsupported tissue of his hope; he was making the hope itself and then believing in it.
It occurred to him—when he met Miss Morris on the stage again, and was greeted by her with an almost eager smile—that she had just such a confidence in him, and that she had intended to let him know as much in her parting from him on Sunday afternoon. He felt that he had shared his past with her; that she had watched him always with interest; and that she believed in him still.
"Well, what have you been doing?" she asked, as soon as they were paired off in their promenade.
"I've been making plans."
"Have you? What sort?"
"Why—I feel that I've been drifting. I've been trying to take a course again, and sail it."
She said feelingly: "Oh, I'm so glad! What have you decided to do?"
She surprised him by the warmth of her curiosity, questioning him with an eagerness that had an air of triumph, as if she had tried to awaken his ambition and was flattered by her success. He guessed that she too had been planning for him; and he said: "I haven't found out. Tell me—can't you suggest something?"
"Oh, a thousand things!" She laughed. "For instance, here you are, behind the scenes, watching the machinery of a play—with a college education and lots of imagination, I know. Why don't you begin to write plays?"
"Like Peter Polk?" he joked.
She winced. "Please—please"
"I beg your pardon. . . . Do you really mean it?"
"Most certainly. Why not? You could act, if you would let yourself—but if you don't want to come out and 'read' lines yourself, you certainly can't object to writing them for others. And I'm sure you could do it."
He trussed himself up with his cane, holding it across his back in the crooks of his elbows, and frowning out at the parade of supers in the calcium light. "I tried to write—newspaper stuff—for Bert Pittsey. And I couldn't do it at all."
"Newspaper stuff!" she said contemptuously. "No! But surely you could write the dialogue of a play. Look at that Polk. He can hardly write a readable letter. But he knows how people talk, and he knows how to put them on the stage."
He looked around at her in sudden surprise. "Do you know," he said, "I believe I could! I used to make them up—plays—for figures cut out of pictures—pictures from the old 'Graphic'—long ago. Wouldn't it be fun!—if I could!"
She touched him on the arm, to start him out for their turn in the procession. "Of course you could. It's the very thing you could do. It's what Edith said when she heard you were going to study law—that you had too much imagination for law or business or anything else unless you took to poetry. And no one can make a living out of poetry, whereas Polk has made thousands of dollars out of his 'Tommy Tenderfoot' alone. . . . I thought of it once, myself, and got a lot of books on the technique of the Drama and all that—I'll let you have them, if you wish—but I had no invention. I had to fall back on trying to dramatize novels. While you"
He scarcely heard her. His imagination had leaped to her suggestion like a child to a new toy. To earn his living by writing plays! It would be a game of "pretend" such as he had used to play with Frankie. It would be played in this glittering world of the theatre, away from office drudgery and the slavery of business, above all the deceits and conventions and sufferings and vices of real life, looking down on the work-a-day world—as he had looked down from the top of the Fifth Avenue stage—with Margaret beside him, in an endless happiness. He felt that a door which he had been groping for in darkness had suddenly been opened to him. It was work—a future—everything!
"It—it would be great!" he said. "Wouldn't it?"
"It would be the very thing for you. I wonder you didn't think of it yourself."
He smiled up at the calcium light, as if it were the wholesome sunshine on his face. "I couldn't see any future for me here—and still I liked it so much. I hated to leave it. I didn't know what to do."
The cry from the jeweller's counter broke in on them. They exchanged parting smiles as they were separated by the crowd—the smile of congratulation and the smile of ambition; for Don, at last, had found an object and a task in life.
He walked to her door, that night, to borrow her few books; and he went to the Astor Library, next morning, to look over the list of volumes on the "Drama." He was not discouraged when he found hundreds of titles under that head; the more guides, he thought, the surer travelling. He confided to Walter Pittsey that he had serious thoughts of trying to write a play, and Pittsey nodded: "Why not?" He had been through the playwriting period himself, and was tolerant.
"There's a pile of money in it," Bert Pittsey said, "and you're nearer it in the theatre than the rest of us outside."
"I don't care so much about the money," Don replied. "It's the—the fun of it."
"Oh, go on," Bert replied. "Take the money. You may need it some day."
"All right," Don laughed. "Since you are so pressing."
He was in high spirits. He took optimistically the news from his mother that Frankie's departure for college had left the house very empty, and that Conroy was giving Uncle John so much trouble that the "poor man" looked ten years older. It would all come out right. Everything would come out right. He tried to cheer Miss Morris with that hope when she caught the rib-point of her umbrella in the gauze netting of the Jeweller's window and was called a "fool" by the stage manager. "I am a fool," she said bitterly, "for having brought myself down to the level of such beasts."
"Never mind," he joked. "When we get that play written, you'll have the 'lead' to do, and you'll help me abuse the stage manager."
"You'll have forgotten me by that time."
"Forgotten you! Oh say, what do you think I am!"
They were sitting at their table under their stage tree. She looked around her scornfully at her neighbours. "I think you're the only person here I'd—I'd care to be remembered by."
"That's pleasant!"
She turned her eyes to him. "It's true."
It struck him that she had changed since their first meeting, that she had come to the surface, that she was no longer hidden behind the mask of her beauty; for the expression of face with which she said "It's true!" was alive with a sort of proud emotion that confessed friendship and invited its return.
He said humbly: "It's—it's mighty good of you to say so. You've been kindness itself to me here."
She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward toward him in her chair. "Because I wanted you to like me," she said in a low voice. "Do you? . . . Because," she went on fiercely, "I've hated myself so—in this life here—that I thought you would despise me. And I—I've done despicable things. Polk—he was in one of them—before I learned what such men are. You don't know. You can't—because you're—you're different."
He tried to speak, with a confused smile.
"No," she said, with the same desperate rapidity of utterance, "don't say that. Don't say anything. I'm—they've That brute has upset me. I shouldn't be saying such things. I can't help it. I—I have to speak or I shall be crying. Don't look at me." He fixed his eyes on the floor, bewildered. "I hated everyone. I looked at them and hated them. It's your fault that" She choked. "You mustn't judge me. You came to me from Coulton, and that afternoon at Port George—from the life I'd run away from—and you spoke to me from it. It was that. That's why I wanted you to go away, to go home—and you wouldn't. And I wasn't strong enough—myself—I wanted to see you and talk to you. You mustn't judge me. You can't—you can't understand. It's"
The cue came: "Lady Whortley, the tenantry are waiting on the lawn." When Don looked up, she was lost in the exit of the supers.
He followed her, amazed by this outburst, which he could not understand. He wished to assure her that of course he liked her; that he had always had the greatest admiration and respect for her; that, if he had not shown it, it was because he had been a little in awe of her. As for her accusations against herself, they were foolish (he would tell her). She must not let herself think such things. She was everything that was high-minded, he knew. It was only her own over-sensitiveness that accused her of imaginary defects.
He tried to meet her in the wings, but she avoided him by not coming from the women's dressing-room until the instant that she was to go on the stage; and the play kept them separated there. He decided to meet her at the stage entrance and escort her to her boarding-house; but when the last curtain had fallen and he hurried to the supers' dressing-room to get into his street clothes, he found that Walter Pittsey and Mr. Kidder were waiting to speak to him. "I'm going to Boston," Pittsey explained, "to open an agency for Mr. Kidder. He wants you to take charge here, in my place. What do you say?"
"Why—why, yes, of course," Don stammered, as if reluctantly. "If Mr. Kidder wants me to"
Kidder, instead of being offended—as Pittsey seemed to fear he might be—put in, rather apologetically: "I'm going to have something better for you, pretty soon. You look after these boys, now. See that they take care of their costumes; that's the main thing. Pittsey 'll explain all that. Come and see me to-morrow morning and I'll give you the new pay roll. Two of the boys are quitting to-night." He patted Don on the shoulder, flatteringly, as he turned away. "I got something up my sleeve for you."
Don had to remain with Pittsey until the last of the "boys" had departed and the last article of their wardrobe had been hung on its appointed hook; and then Walter accompanied him on his way back to their rooms, giving him instructions in his duties as time-keeper and "head of the supers." "It's ten a week, you know," Pittsey said, "and a chance to get some sort of little 'thinking part' if one turns up. You do the square thing by Kidder, and he'll shove you."
"Shall I have the—the same place on the stage, with Miss Morris?" Don asked.
Pittsey smiled at a street lamp. "Certainly—unless, as I said, the stage manager wants someone to do a little bit and asks Kidder—or puts you into it, himself. You'll not have anything new to do, immediately—except in the dressing-rooms. One of the new men will take my place in the ranks."
"Oh, I see," Don said, relieved. He added, on second thoughts: "I'm sorry you're going. I'll be lost without you."
Pittsey laughed. "Oh, you'll get along."
"I don't mean that," Don said. "I don't—care about that. You've been so If it hadn't been for you"
"That's all right, old man," Pittsey put in hastily. "I'm only worried about the apartment—about my share in it. I" He turned to watch a passing car, with a pretended interest, touched by Don's gratitude, but nervously afraid of this expression of it. Don said, out of the silence: "I wish Miss Morris . . . wasn't a woman."
"Wasn't a"
"So that she could take it. You and she—you're the best friends I've had. She doesn't seem very happy, alone that way." Pittsey looked at him with a quizzical lift of the eyebrow; but he went on innocently: "It's pretty hard for a girl. I'd give anything to be able to help her the way you did me. We get on so well together, too. . . . Funny thing—to-night—she thought I didn't like her."
He spoke as if he were thinking aloud; and Pittsey, as if ashamed of overhearing him, checked him with: "Perhaps Bert 'll know someone—to come in with you."
As they turned up the old and broken brownstone steps that mounted from the street to the front door of their lodgings, Don said: "For that matter—now that I'm getting ten a week—we could keep the place for you till you come back." And Walter was still remonstrating against this folly, when they entered the "dining-room" and were confronted by Conroy, soiled and dishevelled, eating at the table.