The Portal of Dreams Part 11

"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 gla.s.ses 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 gla.s.ses. 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 a.s.serted, "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 t.i.tle 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 nave 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 a.s.sure 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."

CHAPTER XV

TWO DISCOVERIES

Bob Maxwell was standing before the fire. He turned abstractedly and set his untouched gla.s.s on the mantel shelf.

"You've got a grouch, Bobby," lectured the young actress, "at a time when you ought to be all puffed up and chesty. Aren't you glad we made good in the same piece? It would be nice of you to say so."

He turned on her a face strangely drawn and his words came swiftly in agitation.

"Triumph, did you say? Don't you know that it's only when you get the thing you've worked for, that you realize it's not worth working for?

That's not triumph--it's despair. Triumph means laying your prize at somebody's feet--" he broke off with a sort of groan. "To h.e.l.l with such success!" he burst out with sudden bitterness. "To h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation with the whole of it!"

For a long while the girl held him in a steady scrutiny. They had both forgotten me, silent in my corner. Her cheeks paled a little, and when finally she reiterated her old question, her steady voice betrayed the training of strong effort.

"Who is she?"

"Listen, Grace," he said. "I've got to talk to some one. You have come here, so you let yourself in for it.... Ten years ago I was reporting on a paper for a few dollars a week. It was a long way from Broadway. There was a dusty typewriter and dirty walls decorated with yellowed clippings--but ... There was wild young ambition and all of life ahead.

_That_ was living."

"Who was she?" insistently repeated the actress, when he paused.

"What can it matter how big a play one writes," demanded the author, "if he presents it to an empty house? The absence of one woman can make any house empty for any man. I'd give it all, to hear her say once more--"

He broke off in abrupt silence.

"To hear her say what, Bobby?" prompted Grace Bristol, softly.