A Woman of Genius Part 24

"You'd care too, if you had seen as much of her; it's like watching a drowning man: you don't stop to ask if he's worth it before you plunge in!"

"I can't swim myself," I protested.

I didn't want to be dragged in, rescuing Cecelia; I had myself to save and wasn't sure I could do it. It was after this talk, however, that Griff, who still hung about the Variete from habit, told me that Sarah had fallen into the way of stopping to pick up Cecelia on her way home from her own theatre. He thought it a futile performance.

"Nothing can stop that kind; they don't always know it, but that's what draws them to the stage in the first place. It's a kind of what-do-you-call-it, going back to the thing they were a long time ago."

"Atavism," I supplied; I thought it very likely. All the centuries of bringing women up to be toys must have had its fruit somehow. Cecelia was made to be played with; she wasn't serviceable for anything else.

And what was more, I didn't care to be identified with her even in the Christian att.i.tude of a rescuer. I said as much to Sarah one evening about a week later, when I had gone with Jerry to give my opinion of some changes in the cast, preparatory to going on the road with his play, and in the overflow of his satisfaction at the way the audience rose to them, he had asked me to go to supper with him. Then as Sarah joined us and the spirit of the crowd caught him, pouring along the street, bright almost as by day and with the added brightness of evening garments, Jerry, always open to the infection of the holiday mood, proposed that for once we stretch a point by going to supper at Reeves's. Sarah and I demurred as women will at such a proposal from a man whose family exigencies are known to them, but Sarah found a prohibitory objection in a promise she professed to have made, to go around for Cecelia on her way home, which Jerry promptly quashed by including her in the invitation. I protested.

"Supper at Reeves's is quite enough of an adventure for one time.

Cecelia paints."

"Not really," Sarah protested. "It's only that she uses so little make-up that she doesn't think it necessary to take it off."

"All the better," insisted Jerry. "I never did take supper at Reeves's with a painted lady, and I'm told it is quite one of the things to do."

I let it pa.s.s rather than spoil his high mood. It was not more than three blocks to the Variete, and at the stage door Sarah insisted on getting out herself.

"Why did you let her?" I protested to Jerry.

"Because it will please her, and Miss Brune will be gone; Sarah doesn't realize how late we are." I could see her returning through the fogged gla.s.s of the stage door.

"Cecelia's gone! The man said she was going to Reeves's too; we can pick her up there."

"Oh," I objected, "I can stand Cecelia, but I draw the line at her gentleman friends. She didn't go there alone, I fancy."

"We'll have a look at him, anyway, before we give him the glad hand,"

Jerry temporized.

The cab discharged us into the press of black-coated men and bright-gowned women that at that hour poured steadily into the anteroom of Reeves's, which was level with the pavement, divided from it by a screen of plate gla.s.s and palms. Beyond that and raised by a few steps, was the palm room, flanked on either side by dressing rooms; and opening out back, the great revolving doors, m.u.f.fled with crimson curtains, that received the guests and sorted them like a hopper, according to the degree of their resistance to the particular allurements of Reeves's.

There was a sleek, satin-suited attendant who swung the leaves of the door at just the right angle that inducted you to the public cafe, or to the corridor that led to private rooms, and was famed never to have made a mistake. Jerry dared us hilariously as we went up the steps, to put his discrimination to the test.

"You and I alone then; Olivia's black dress would give us away," Sarah insisted.

"I want you to stay here and watch for Cecelia," she whispered to me; "I must see her; I _must_."

Her going on with Jerry would give her an opportunity to look through the cafe; if Cecelia hadn't already arrived, I would be sure to see her come in with the crowd that broke against the bank of palms into two streams of bright and dark, proceeding to the dressing rooms, and returning by twos and threes to be swallowed up by the hopper turning half unseen behind its velvet curtains. I slipped behind a group of bright-gowned women waiting for their escorts under the palms. I was hypnotized by the movement and the glitter; I believe I forgot what I was looking for; and all at once she was before me.

The theatrical quality of Cecelia's prettiness and the length of her plumes would have picked her out anywhere even without the blackened rim of the eyelids and the air she had always of having just stepped into the spot light.

She had stationed herself, with her professional instinct for effect, just under the Australian fern tree, waiting for her escort, and in the moment it took me to gather myself together he joined her. I had come up behind Cecelia and was brought face to face with him; it wasn't until he had wheeled into step with her that he saw me and his face went mottled all at once and settled to a slow purple. Cecelia was magnificent.

"Oh, you here! How de do!" She slipped her hand under her escort's arm and sailed out with him. I caught the glint of the bra.s.s-bound door under the curtains. I don't know how long I stood staring before I started after her, to be met by the leaves of the revolving door which, reversing its motion, projected Sarah and Jerry into the palm room beside me.

"I have been all over the cafe----" Sarah began.

"Didn't you meet her?"

"In the cafe? I was just telling you ..."

"No, no. In the corridor, just now; they went through."

"But they couldn't," urged Sarah. "I was standing at the door of the cafe with Jerry ..." The truth of the situation began to dawn on her.

"There's such a crowd, of course you missed her." Jerry began to build up a probability by which we could sustain Sarah through the supper which followed. We all of us talked a great deal as people will when they are anxious not to talk of a particular thing. When we were in the dressing room again, putting on our wraps, Sarah turned on me.

"She wasn't in the cafe at all," she declared.

"I never said she was. I said she went through into the corridor." In the silence I could feel Cecelia dropping into the pit.

"Did you know the man?"

I nodded. "It was Henry Mills!"

CHAPTER VI

Before I had an opportunity to talk the incident over with Sarah, she had seen Cecelia.

"She is perfectly furious with you," she reported. "She hasn't heard from Mr. Mills since, and she thinks it is on your account; that you have taken steps for breaking it off."

"Well, if she admits there was something to break off ... I tell you, Sarah, you are fretting yourself to no purpose, the girl had been there before."

"I'm afraid so." Sarah's taking it so much to heart was a credit to her, but I was more curious than commiserating.

"Tell me, what is in the mind of a girl when she does things like that?

What does she get out of it?"

"Excitement, of course; the sense of being in the stir, and the feeling of being protected. She says Mr. Mills has been kind to her. It is odd, but she seems to think it is all right so long as it is going on; it is only when it is broken off she can't bear it. That is why she is so angry at you."

"There might be something in that," I conceded. "When it is broken off she is able to realize how cheap and temporary it has been; while it is going on she can justify it on the ground that it is going on forever.

That _would_ justify it, I suppose." I did not know how I knew this, but lately I had discovered in myself capacities for understanding a great many things of which I had had no experience. What concerned me was not Cecelia's relation to the incident.

"Whatever am I going to do about going there again, to Pauline's, I mean?"

"You can't tell!"

"And I can't go there and not tell. I've got to choose between deceiving Pauline and condoning Henry, and I've no disposition to do either."

Sarah thought it over.

"There is only one thing you can do. You'll simply have to go to New York."

"For a great many reasons besides. You needn't tell me that. But how?

How?"