FIFTH CHAPTER
PAULA IS INVOLVED IN THE FURIOUS HISTORY OF SELMA CROSS AND WRITES ALETTER TO QUENTIN CHARTER
Paula thrust the sheets of the letter in her desk drawer and admittedSelma Cross, an actress whose apartment was across the hall. These twohad chatted together many times, sometimes intimately. Each had foundthe other interesting. Hints of a past that was almost classic in thefury of its struggle for publicity, had repeatedly come to Paula's ears,with other matters she greatly would have preferred not to hear. SelmaCross was huge to look upon, and at first thought without grace. Therewas something uncanny in her face and movements, and an extraordinarybreadth between her yellow eyes which were wide-lidded, slow-moving andever-changing. She was but little past thirty, yet the crowded trafficof her years was intricately marked.
"I saw the light under your door, and felt like coming in for a fewminutes," she said. "I must talk to some one and my maid, Dimity, issnoring. You see, I'm celebrating for two reasons."
"Tell me, so I can help," Paula answered.
"Vhruebert has taken a play for me. You know, I've been begging him tofor months. The play was made for me--not that it was written with me inmind, but that I just suit it. Selma Cross is to be carved in light overa theatre-entrance, twenty seconds from Broadway--next April. It will beat the _Herriot_--Vhruebert's theatre. We run through Hartford,Springfield, Rochester and that string of second cities earlier in theSpring."
Paula rose and gave both her hands.
"Oh, I'm so glad for you," she said. "I know something about how youhave worked for this----"
"Yes, and the play is _The Thing_. I am an ugly slaving drudge, but haveall the emotions that the sweet _ingenue_ of the piece should have, andthe audience watches me deliver. Yes, I've waited long for this, and yetI'm not so glad as I thought I should be. I've been pretty sure of itfor the last year or two. I said I was celebrating for two things----"
"Pray, what is the other?"
"I forget that it might not interest you--though it certainly does me,"Selma Cross said with a queer, low laugh.... "He wasn't ugly about it,but he has been exacting--ugh! The fact is, I have earned the privilegeat last of sleeping in my own respectable apartment."
Paula couldn't help shivering a bit. "You mean you have left your----"
"Oh, he wasn't my husband.... It's such a luxury to pay for your ownthings--for your own house and clothes and dinners--to earn a dollar forevery need and one to put away.... You didn't think that I could get myname above the name of a play--without an angel?"
"I didn't know," Paula said, "I saw you with him often. It didn'texactly occur to me that he was your husband, because he didn't comehere. But do you mean that now when you don't need him any longer--youtold him to go away?"
"Just that--except it isn't at all as it looks. You wouldn't pity oldman Villiers. Living God, that's humorous--after what I have given.Don't look for wings on theatrical angels, dear."
It was plain that the woman was utterly tired. She regarded Paula with aqueer expression of embarrassment, and there was a look of harshself-repression under the now-drooped eyelids.
"I don't apologize," she went on hastily. "What I have done, I would doagain--only earlier in the game, but you're the sort of woman I don'tlike to have look at me that--I mean look down upon me. I haven't manyfriends. I think I must be half wild, but you make the grade that Ihave--and you pay the price.... You've always looked attractive tome--so easy and finished and out of the ruck."
There was a real warming sincerity in the words. Paula divined on theinstant that she could forever check an intimacy--by a word which wouldbetray the depth of her abhorrence for such a concession to ambition,and for the life which seems to demand it. Selma Cross was sick for afriend, sick from containing herself. On this night of achievement therewas something pitiful in the need of her heart.
"New York has turned rather too many pages of life before my eyes,Selma, for me to feel far above any one whose struggles I have notendured."
The other leaned forward eagerly, "I liked you from the first moment,Paula," she said. "You were so rounded--it seemed to me. I'm allstreaky, all one-sided. You're bred. I'm cattle.... Some time I'll tellyou how it all began. I said I would be the greatest livingtragedienne--hurled this at a lot of cat-minds down in Kentucky fifteenyears ago. Of course, I shall. It does not mean so much to me as Ithought, and it may be a bauble to you, but I wanted it. Itsfar-awayness doesn't torture me as it once did, but one pays a ghastlyprice. Yes, it's a climb, dear. You must have bone and blood andbrain--a sort of brain--and you should have a cheer from below; but Ididn't. I wonder if there ever was a fight that can match mine? If so,it would not be a good tale for children or grown-ups with delicatenerves. Little women always hated me. I remember, one restaurant cashieron Eighth Avenue told me I was too unsightly to be a waitress. I havedone kitchen pot-boilers and scrubbed tenement-stairs. Then, because Irepeated parts of plays in those horrid halls--they said I was crazy....Why, I have felt a perfect lust for suicide--felt my breast ache for acool knife and my hand rise gladly. Once I played a freak part--that wasmy greater degradation--debased my soul by making my body look worsethan it is. I went down to hell for that--and was forgiven. I have beenso homesick, Paula, that I could have eaten the dirt in the road of thatlittle Kentucky town.... Yes, I pressed against the steel untilsomething broke--it was the steel, not me. Oh, I could tell youmuch!..."
She paused but a moment.
"The thing so dreadful to overcome was that I have a body like a greatDane. It would not have hurt a writer, a painter, even a singer, somuch, but we of the drama are so dependent upon the shape of our bodies.Then, my face is like a dog or a horse or a cat--all these I have beenlikened to. Then I was slow to learn repression. This is a part ofculture, I guess--breeding. Mine is a lineage of Kentucky poor whitetrash, who knows, but a speck of 'nigger'? I don't care now, only itgave me a temper of seven devils, if it was so. These are some of thethings I have contended with. I would go to a manager and he would laughme along, trying to get rid of me gracefully, thinking that some of hisfriends were playing a practical joke on him. Vhruebert thought that atfirst. Vhruebert calls me _The Thing_ now. I could have done better hadI been a cripple; there are parts for a cripple. And you watch, Paula,next January when I burn up things here, they'll say my success islargely due to my figure and face!"
As she looked and listened, Paula saw great meanings in the broad bigcountenance, a sort of ruffian strength to carry this perfectinginstrument of emotion. The great body was needed to support suchtalents, handicapped by the lack of beauty. Selma Cross fascinated her.Paula's heart went out to the great crude creature she had been--in pityfor this woman of furious history. The processes by which her brain andflesh had been refined would have slain the body and mind of an ordinaryhuman. It came to Paula that here was one of Mother Nature's mostenthralling experiments--the evolution of an effective instrument fromthe coarsest and vaguest heredity.
"They are all brainless but Vhruebert. You see, unless one is a beauty,you can't get the support of a big manager's name. I mean withoutmoney--there are managers who will lend their name to your stardom, ifyou take the financial risk. Otherwise, you've got to attract them as apossible conquest. All men are like that. If you interest themsexually--they will hear what you have to say----"
"Isn't that a reckless talk?" Paula asked, pale from the repulsivenessof the thought. "You say it without a single qualification----"
Selma Cross stared at her vacantly for a few seconds, then laughedsoftly. "You don't actually believe--to the contrary?"
"Let's pass it by. I should have to be changed--to believe that!"
"I hope the time will never come when you need something terribly from astrange man--one upon whom you have no hold but--yourself.... Ah, butyou--the brighter sort would give you what you asked. You----"
"Please don't go on!" Paula whispered. "The other part is sointeresting."
Selma Cross seemed to stir restlessly in her loo
se, softly-scentedgarments. "I suppose I'm too rough for you. In ninety-nine women out ofa hundred, I'd say your protest was a cheap affectation, but it isn't sowith you...."
"It's your set, smothery pessimism that hurts so, Selma," Paula declaredintensely. "It hurts me most because you seem to have it so locked andimmovable inside.... You have been so big and wonderful to win againsttremendous obstacles--not against ugliness--I can't grant that. Youstartled me, when I saw you first. I think women have held you apartbecause you were uncommon. You show a strange power in your movementsand expression. It's not ugliness----"
"That's mighty rare of you. I haven't had the pleasure of being defiedlike that before. But you are not like other people--not like otherwomen."
"You will meet many real men and women--wiser and kinder than I am. Ithink your pessimism cannot endure--when you look for the good inpeople----"
"The kind I have known would not let me. They're just as hateful now--Imean the stuffy dolls of the stage--just as hateful, calling me 'dear'and 'love' and saying, 'How tremendous you are, Selma Cross!....'Listen, it is only a little while ago that the same women used to ask meto walk on Broadway with them--to use me as a foil for their baby faces!Oh, women are horrible--dusty shavings inside--and men are of the samefamily."
"You poor, dear unfortunate--not to know the really wonderful kind! Youare worn to the bone from winning your victory, but when you're rested,you'll be able to see the beautiful--clearly."
"One only knows as far as one can see."
This sentence was a shock to Paula's intelligence. It was spoken withoutconsciousness of the meaning which drove so deep into the other's mind.It suggested a mind dependent altogether upon physical eyes. Paularefused to believe that this was the key to the whole matter.
"They have been so cruel to me--those female things which bloom a year,"Selma Cross continued. "Flesh-flowers! They harried me to martyrdom. Ihad to hate them, because I was forced to be one with them--I, a bigsavage, dreaming unutterable things. It's all so close yet, I haven'tcome to pity them.... Maybe you can tell me what good they are--whatthey mean in the world--the shallow, brainless things who make the stagefull! They are in factories, too, everywhere--daughters of the cooliesand peasants of Europe--only worse over here because their fathers havelost their low fixed place in society, and are all mixed in their dim,brute minds. They have no one to rule them. You will see a family ofdirty, frightened, low-minded children--the eldest, say a girl offifteen. A dog or a cat with a good home is rich beside them. Take thiseldest girl of a brood--with all the filth of foreign New York in andabout her. She is fifteen and ready for the streets. It is the year ofher miracle. I've seen it a score of times. You miss her a few monthsand she appears again at work somewhere--her face decently clean, hereyes clear, a bit of bright ribbon and a gown wrung somewhere from thebeds of torture. It is her brief bloom--so horrid to look at when youknow what it means. All the fifteen years of squalor, evil, andlow-mindedness for this one year--a bloom-girl out of the dirt! And thenext, she has fallen back, unwashed, high-voiced, hardening,stiffening,--a babe at her breast, dull hell in her heart. All herliving before and to come--for that one bloom year. Maybe you can tellme what the big purpose of it all is. Earth uses them quite asruthlessly as any weed or flower--gives them a year to bloom, not forbeauty, but that more crude seeds may be scattered. Perpetuate! Flowersbloom to catch a bug--such girls, to catch a man--perpetuate--oh God,what for? And these things have laughed at me in the chorus, called me'Crazy Sal,' because I spoke of things they never dreamed."
"Yes," Paula said quickly, "I've seen something like that. How you willpity them when you are rested! It is hard for us to understand why suchnumbers are sacrificed like a common kind of plants. Nietzsche callsthem 'the much-too-many.' But Nietzsche does not know quite so much asthe Energy that wills them to manifest. It is dreadful, it is pitiful.It would seem, if God so loved the world--that He could not endure suchpity as would be His at the sight of this suffering and degradation....But you have no right to despise them--you, of all women. You'reblooming up, up, up,--farther and farther out of the common--yourblooming has been for years because you have kindled your mind. You mustbloom for years still--that's the only meaning of your strength--becauseyou will kindle your soul.... A woman with power like yours--has noright but to love the weak. Think what strength you have! There havebeen moments in the last half-hour that you have roused me to such apitch of thinking--that I have felt weak and ineffectual beside you. Youmade me think sometimes of a great submarine--I don't know justwhy--flashing in the depths."
"I don't think you see me right," Selma Cross said wearily. "Many timesI have been lost in the dark. I have been wicked--hated the forces thatmade me. I have so much in me of the peasant--that I abhor. There havebeen times when I would have been a prostitute for a clean house anddecent clothes to cover me, but men did not look at _The Thing_--onlythe old man, and one other!" Her eyes brightened, either at the memoryor at the thought that she was free from the former.... "Don't wince andI'll tell you about that angel. You will be wiser. I don't want you formy friend, if I must keep something back. It was over three years ago,during my first real success. I was rather startling as Sarah Blixton inHeber's _Caller Herrin_. It was in that that I learned repression. Thatwas my struggle--to repress.... Old man Villiers saw me, and was wiseenough to see my future. 'Here's a girl,' I can imagine him saying, 'whois ugly enough to be square to one man, and she's a comer in spite ofher face.' He showed where his check-book could be of unspeakableservice. It was all very clear to me. I felt I had struggled enough, andwent with him.... Villiers is that kind of New Yorker who feels that hehas nothing left to live for, when he ceases to desire women. In hisvanity--they are always vain--he wanted to be seen with a womanmentioned on Broadway. It was his idea of being looked up to--and ofmaking other men envious. You know his sort have no interest--save wherethey can ruin.
"Then for two winter months, Villiers and I had a falling out. He wentSouth, and I remained here to work. During this time I had my first realbrush with love--a young Westerner. It was terrific. He was a brilliant,but turned out a rotten cad. I couldn't stand that in a young man....You can pity an old man, much the worse for living, when he is brazenlya cad--doesn't know anything else.... When Villiers came back from theSouth I was bought again. I put it all nakedly, Paula, but I was olderthan you are now, when that sort of thing began with me. Remember that!Still, I mustn't take too much credit, because I didn't attract men....If you don't abhor me now, you never will, little neighbor, because youhave the worst.... Sometime I'll tell you a real little love story--oh,I'm praying it's real! He's a hunch-back, Paula,--the author of _TheThing_.... Nobody could possibly want a hunch-back but me--yet I'm notgood enough. He's so noble and so fine!... The past is so full ofabominations, and I'm not a liar.... I don't think he'd want me--thoughI could be his nurse. I could _carry him_!... Then there is a long-agopromise.... Oh, I know I'm not fit for that kind of happiness!..."
There was an inspiration in the last. It was strong enough to subvertPaula's mind from the road of dreary degradation over which she had beenled. From rousing heights of admiration to black pits of shame, she hadfallen, but here again was a tonic breath from clean altitudes. Thepicture in her mind of this great glowing creature tenderly motheringthe poor crippled genius of _The Thing_--was a thrilling conception.
"There is nothing which cannot be forgiven--save soul-death!" Paula saidardently. "What you have told me is very hard to adjust, but I hope foryour new love. Oh, I am glad, Selma, that the other is all behind! Idon't know much of such things, but it has come to me that it is easierfor a man to separate himself from past degradations and be clean--thana woman. This is because a man gives--_but the woman receives her sin_!That which is given cannot continue to defile, but woman is thematrix.... Still, you do not lie. Such things are so dreadful whenmatted in lies. We all carry burdensome devils--but few uncover them, asyou have done for me. There is something noble in looking back into thepast wit
h a shudder, saying,--'I was sick and full of disease in thosedays,' but when one hugs the corrosion, painting it white allover--there is an inner devouring that is never appeased.... All oursisters are in trouble. I think we live in a world of sufferingsororities. You are big and powerful. Your greater life is to come.... Iam glad for what you have put behind. You will progress farther andfarther from it. I am glad you are back across the hall--alone!"
* * * * *
For many moments after Selma Cross had gone, Paula sat thinking underthe lamp. At last she drew the sheets of the letter to Charter from thedesk-drawer, and read them over. The same rapt smile came to her lips,as when she was writing. It was a letter to her Ideal--the big figure ofcleanness and strength, she wanted this man to be. Even a line or twoshe added. No one ever knew, but Paula.... At length, she began tearingthe sheets. Finer and finer became the squares under her tensefingers--a little pile of _confetti_ on the desk at last--and brushedinto a basket.... Then she wrote another letter, blithe, brief,gracious--about his book and her opinion. It was a letter such as hewould expect....