Chapter 14. The "Ash-Trash Lady"

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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE "ASH-TRASH LADY"

But when we parted at Honolulu the name was still eluding Keller's memory and I had to continue on my way uninformed.

I was at first all for breaking my journey and remaining with him until some flash of memory should bring back the one word I needed, but he pointed out to me that little would be gained by this course. I think he was, in fact, so sensitive as to the mental quirk which had survived his attack that the idea of a man's shadowing him, waiting for him to remember, was unwelcome and would have taxed his self-respect. I felt bound to regard his whim, inasmuch as he promised that if I would wait a while, two or three weeks at the most, he would arm me with information. Even if his memory continued to play truant, a word with his wife, when he met her, would set him straight, and he would at once communicate with me.

At all events, as we shook hands, looking out across the sapphire bay, we both pretended that the lapse of his memory was a trivial thing. I did not affect indifference for its subject, but I assured him that inasmuch as I had still some days of voyage ahead of me it was quite probable that the name might come to his memory again before I landed in 'Frisco, and I made him promise that if such was the case he would cable the important surname to the St. Francis. There was still the bare chance, he reminded me, that the rumored engagement had not after all resulted in marriage. He fell back on those adages calculated to convey last hope to the forlorn, and since there was nothing else to be done I accepted his lame comfort in the spirit that prompted it. Possibly now that I had before me the prospect of learning the identity of the lady I really welcomed a few days of uncertainty. At least while they lasted I should have the shred of possible hope and could be shaping my resolution to face the answer. Long after one has told himself that there is no longer a chance of hope he none the less clings to a shred, and when I arrived at the hotel St. Francis and inquired for a cablegram, I think that relief outweighed disappointment as the clerk ran through the miscellaneous sheaf of messages and shook his head. "I don't find anything," he said, and strange as it may seem, I felt like a reprieved man who still faces dreaded news but has not actually received it.

Before that breakfast at the club my life had been merely prefatory; a sum of dilute emotions. At Harvard I had taken my degree and won my "H" on the gridiron. Since then I had gone through my days just missing every goal. There had been little even of innocuous flirtation and nothing of grand passion.

I had tried to paint, and my masters discovered promise which came to nothing. I adventured into the practise of law and went briefless. I essayed music without distinction. I finally decided that my genius was seeking its goal along mistaken avenues. It should be mine to move men and women to smiles and tears by the magic of pen and ink and printed word. But the editors were on duty. They received my assaults on a phalanx of blue pencils. They flung me back, defeated and unpublished.

Perhaps had I fallen in love, it might have been different. Had some woman kindled the sleeping fires in me I might not have remained an extinct volcano of a man. Perhaps, so energized, I might have incited juries to tears--and verdicts. Possibly I might have stormed the editorial outposts and set my banner of manuscript at the forefront of literature. Be that as it may, I had heretofore never loved.

Now I did. Now I was the most quaintly tortured of men; wholly, unqualifiedly and to the depths, stirred by the worship of a woman I had never seen. Moreover she was probably some other man's wife and the mother of his children.

She had come to me over the sea, bringing with her my destiny. She had smiled on me and saved me. She had taken tribute of my soul. Now it was ended. I had worshiped her among crags of coral, under the dome of a volcano. I had come to think of her as a splendid and vivid orchid which a man might hope to wear very proudly at the heart of his life. To what end had the Fates lured me into this cul-de-sac?

I made the rest of the journey in a fog of sullen misery, and emerged, at its end, from the Pennsylvania station a morose and hopeless man. As a taxicab bore me to my club I felt a tremendous suspense. Doubtless there was a message there. If Keller's memory had flashed back to him, as memory sometimes does, the name in which I was so vitally interested, information should have arrived before me in New York. Since it had not intercepted me in San Francisco I judged that the blank had not, up to that time been filled. Supposing that he had remained in Hawaii a week, he would have left there a day after I arrived in 'Frisco, and then for the six days at sea I should hardly expect him to communicate with me. But I had stopped two days in the coast city, arranging financial affairs by telegraph, since I had landed stripped of everything but my chest and my borrowed clothes.

I had also crossed the continent, and by this time he should also have arrived in the States, unless his sailing had been again delayed. Of course I recognized that he had many things close to his own heart, but this service to me involved only the asking of a single question, which his wife could answer in one word. I was sure that he would not prove laggard in the matter, and so I braced myself at the door of the Club to receive tidings which might put hope to death, or might by bare possibility, give it new life.

And yet my mail held only the accumulation of unimportant things. Old advertisements and invitations and bills, many of which had come while I was out there at the edge of things.

Could it be, I asked myself, that Keller had forgotten me, too? Had it been possible that the card upon which I had so carefully written my address had been misplaced? I had been willing to put off the moment at San Francisco. Now I found myself eagerly impatient for the answer.

In the breakfast-room I encountered the doctor, who was dallying over a cup of coffee and a morning paper. He glanced up and for a moment his eyes lingered.

"Hello," he said, "how long have you been gone?"

"Little less than a year."

"You went away a youngish sort of man and you return with distinguished white temples." He summarized. "There must be a story locked up in you."

I glanced impatiently at the card and called for eggs.

"I haven't been nibbling at life this time," I retorted with some touch of asperity.

"I didn't instruct you to gluttonize," he reminded me.

I gave him only a partial history. Even the revised version of my adventures, which I had by this time learned to tell glibly enough to conceal the fact that I was omitting the major part, was sufficiently beyond the rut of things to beguile a half-hour in the eventless walls of a Manhattan club. But my table-companion eyed me with his customary and disquieting sharpness, and finally fell into his old habit of diagnosis.

"Something is lying heavily on your mind, Deprayne," he announced, "and it's not merely the memory of cannibals and exposure. Dangers of that sort become pleasant reminiscences when we view them through the retrospective end of the glasses. There's something else. What is it?"

I laughed at him over my raised coffee-cup. This was one man above all others in whom I should not confide the facts. He would promptly have prescribed a sanatorium.

"Nonsense!" I scoffed, and just as I said it a bell-boy arrived at the table with a telegram on a small silver tray.

"A message for Mr. Deprayne."

I was totally unable to control the violent start that caused the cup to drop on the tablecloth with a crash, and doubtless made my face momentarily pale. My effort at regained composure did not escape the doctor. I saw his eyes narrow and heard him murmur, "Nerves. Shaken nerves."

I took the telegram, calmly enough. I had had my moment of excitement and was again calm. I even held the missive unopened as the dining-room boys spread a clean napkin over the coffee stains. Then with a murmur of apology I tore the end and drew out the blank. I don't think the doctor detected the disgust of perusal.

"Have just arrived from Florida. If in town call and see me. Aunt Sarah."

Aunt Sarah was one of those disquieting persons who loathe telephones and note-paper. Her city messages came by wire with the insistence of commands.

The end was that the doctor decided I must get my mind active, and after vainly trying to bully me back into literary effort he took a new tack.

"Are you too surly and apathetic to combine a small service to friends with the augmenting of your own fortunes?" he demanded, and before I could reply he fell into the discussion of a matter which just now lay at the front of his interests. There was a Kentuckian in town, with glowing projects for fortune reaping along the ridges of the Cumberlands. He was not a mere promoter, but a man of large means and ability, who was also much the gentleman. His present scheme of things required the enlistment of additional capital, and he had come to men who had interested the doctor as well as themselves. The Kentuckian had suggested, however, that before committing themselves in the matter they send one of their own number with him to look over the options. None of the others, as it happened, could go. Here, declared the doctor, was my opportunity to try the novelty of useful occupation.

The man, whose name was Weighborne, was to lunch with him. Would I meet him and talk it over, and if I was favorably impressed accompany him to the Kentucky mountains?

We were sitting by a Fifth Avenue window as he outlined the matter with persuasiveness. The sky was drear with the ash gray of autumn. 'Busses, motors and taxis were trailing along in the same old hopeless monotony. At the thought of remaining here I sickened. Until a letter or message could arrive from Keller I could do little, and this trip would take only ten days or two weeks. I now inferred that Keller had awaited the next steamer. If that were so there would still be the six days at sea. At all events Kentucky is on the telegraph lines. His word could follow me there without loss of time. Then he had said, "the loveliest girl in Dixie." South of Mason and Dixon's line I might be closer to my discoveries when the name arrived. But above all that, I must fill in the time of waiting with some sort of action. There in the hills I should at least be away from the scenes which, in the few hours since my return, had begun to spell insufferable ennui. Yes, I said I would meet Mr. Weighborne. Why not?

Having promised to be on hand at two o'clock, I began a strange quest that came to nothing. In Times Square and Park Row I spent several dusty hours running through newspaper files, and going back to dates five and six years old. I was hunting for a pictorial section of the same general style as that which bore the portrait. I found one or two printed with a like make-up on similar paper, but not even of the exact size, and although I followed these through the Sundays of several years, I came in the end only to the conclusion that the paper had been printed outside of New York.

Weighborne impressed me. In physique and mind and energy he was big and virile. One could glance at him in his carelessly correct clothes and know that he would be equally at home in drawing-room or saddle. The Kentuckian had to cut short his visit with us, since he was leaving the same day for the South, and what talk we had was limited in its scope. Yet his personality charmed me and compelled admiration. He was that type of man who escaped the preliminaries with which the average promoter of large schemes must convince his hearers. His own bearing and breadth carried with it an assurance of trustworthiness and energy. His steady gray eyes had a compelling and purposeful clarity, and I could not help thinking as we talked what such a companionship would have meant in those other days of loneliness and danger. Weighborne was the sort of fellow one would like to have at his back in difficulties. I agreed to meet him in Lexington three days hence and accompany him to the properties which he hoped to develop.

There was a minor element of personal risk, he warned me. We should perhaps encounter the dislike of certain men who were of the feudist type. He spoke lightly of this feature, but as a matter concerning which it was only the part of fairness to inform me.

Later in the day while glancing over the papers I came upon the announcement that a new play was to have its premiere that evening at a Broadway house, and in the name of the author, I found my interest piqued. Bob Maxwell was an old friend. He had fought a long fight for success and had found the goddess cold and offstanding. We had been fellows in literary aspiration, and he had been, when I last saw him, still floundering for support in the unstable waters of newspaperdom. If his play succeeded, he was made. I tried vainly to reach him by 'phone, and went that evening to the theater to lend my applause.

From the unpainted side of the stage-sets I listened to the salvoes of handclapping that were waves lifting him to success.

When at last the ordeal was over and my friend's triumph assured, he led me along the whitewashed walls to the star's dressing room. In response to his rapping, the door opened on a scene of confusion. The young woman whom the coming of this night had made a star turned upon us, from her make-up mirror, a triumphantly flushed face.

The place was aglow with elation. The spirit of success showed even in the movements of the quiet little French maid as she gathered and stored the beribboned linen which still littered the green-room. Grace Bristol herself took a quick, impulsive step forward and placed a grateful hand on each of the author's shoulders. For me, when I was presented, she had only a hurried nod of greeting.

"Thank God, Bobby!" she exclaimed with a half-hysterical catch in her throat. "Thank God, it's over. My knees were knocking so while I was waiting for my entrance cue that I wanted to run away and hide."

"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 glass, 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 Washington 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 nobody'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 cushions 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 God, 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."

"Oh," she said slowly. "What's the idea? Girl?"

He shook his head.

"Rest," he enlightened. "I'm tired."

The smile came again to her lips.

"Oh, very well," she said. "Get out your bag. I'll help you pack it."

Maxwell went in search of glasses and bottles.

A shaded lamp on the table left the corners of the book-lined walls in shadow. In the open fireplace a bank of coals glowed redly. The young woman took her place before it on the Spanish-leather cushions of a divan, drawing her feet under her and nestling snugly back with her hands clasped behind her head. Her lips were parted in a smile and her eyes, fixed on the coals, were deep with reflection. The face became again the face of a young girl, bearing no trace of the experience which had made up ten years of war with Broadway. To me she paid not the slighted attention. Shortly he returned and handed us glasses. She raised hers, smiling.

"To you," she said--"the author!"

They clinked rims.

"To you," he gravely responded,--"the star!"

After that neither of them spoke, until the girl broke the silence with a laugh.

"Some day, Bobby" she asserted, "you must tell me the story you haven't dramatized--the story of your life."

"Why do you think it would prove interesting?"

She regarded him for a time with close scrutiny.

"Well, I don't quite get you, Bobby. You are rather a riddle in a way. Sir Galahad on Broadway--doesn't that strike you as a funny combination?"

"Rather paradoxical," he admitted, "the environment might fit Don Juan better. But why Sir Galahad on Broadway?"

"That's what they all call you. You are notoriously unattainable. The only man in this game who hasn't had an affair with any ash-trash."

"With any what?" he questioned, puzzled.

"Ash-trash; actress," she enlightened. "The title is a little conceit of my own--poor but original. You know perfectly well that Stella Marcine simply threw herself at your head during the rehearsals. And she told me that you never even asked her out to supper."

"Why should I?"

She smiled.

"Everybody else does. Most men marry her, at one time or another."

"Oh."

"Of course," she went on thoughtfully after a pause, "it's very charming to remain naive after years of this life, unless, as stage gossip says, it's merely a pose."

"It's not a pose," replied the man quietly.

"I know that," she hastened to assure him. "But what I want to know is this. What's behind it? Who is she?"

"Why should there necessarily be any She?" he demanded. "Can't a man live his own life independently of prevalent customs--merely because it is his own life?"

She shook her head and flecked the ash from her cigarette. She seemed to be pondering the matter before hazarding judgment. Then her words came positively enough.

"Don't pull that old line on me, about being the captain of your soul, Bobby; I know better.... Oh, I used to believe all those pretty things. I wanted to go on believing them, but there wasn't a chance."

"What did you find?"

"Just what the fool sailor finds who has the idea that he's bigger than tides and gales; who fancies he can sail his little duck-pond boat in the gulf stream, through reefs and hurricanes and bring it out with the paint fresh." Her voice had perceptibly hardened. "You probably know a lot of girls, Bobby, who wouldn't invite me to tea--certainly not if they knew all my story. Nevertheless when we line up for the big tryout, I guess the Almighty will take a look at their untempted innocence, and a glance at me--and somehow I'm not worried about what He'll say. No woman would muddy her shoes if we all had Walter Raleighs to spread coats over the puddles."

The man lighted a cigarette and said nothing.

"But get the angle on me right, Bobby," she hastened to amend. "I haven't loafed. Now, I've made good. From this on I can be the captain of my soul--and you can be pretty sure I will." _

Read next: Chapter 15. Two Discoveries

Read previous: Chapter 13. Enter The Infantryman

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