"Oh, she wasn"t a heroine, either. She was just human--taking happiness when it offered. And her gayety--and her capriciousness. A man will always break away from a solemn, intense woman to get that sort of sunshine."
"Yes--yes--go on," said Brent.
"And her sour, serious, solemn husband explains why wives are untrue to their husbands. At least, it seems so to me."
He was walking up and down again. Every trace of indolence, of relaxation, was gone from his gait and from his features.
His mind was evidently working like an engine at full speed.
Suddenly he halted. "You"ve given me a big idea," said he.
"I"ll throw away the play I was working on. I"ll do your play."
Susan laughed--pleased, yet a little afraid he was kinder than she deserved. "What I said was only common sense--what my experience has taught me."
"That"s all that genius is, my dear," replied he. "As soon as we"re born, our eyes are operated on so that we shall never see anything as it is. The geniuses are those who either escape the operation or are reendowed with true sight by experience." He nodded approvingly at her. "You"re going to be a person--or, rather, you"re going to show you"re a person.
But that comes later. You thought of _Lola_ as your part?"
"I tried to. But I don"t know anything about acting except what I"ve seen and the talk I"ve heard."
"As I said the other day, that means you"ve little to learn.
Now--as to _Lola"s_ entrance."
"Oh, I thought of a lot of things to do--to show that she, too, loved _Turiddu_ and that she had as much right to love--and to be loved--as _Santuzza_ had. _Santuzza_ had had her chance, and had failed."
Brent was highly amused. "You seem to forget that _Lola_ was a married woman--and that if _Santuzza_ didn"t get a husband she"d be the mother of a fatherless child."
Never had he seen in her face such a charm of sweet melancholy as at that moment. "I suppose the way I was born and the life I"ve led make me think less of those things than most people do," replied she. "I was talking about natural hearts--what people think inside--the way they act when they have courage."
"When they have courage," Brent repeated reflectively. "But who has courage?"
"A great many people are compelled to have it," said she.
"I never had it until I got enough money to be independent."
"I never had it," said Susan, "until I had no money."
He leaned against the big table, folded his arms on his chest, looked at her with eyes that made her feel absolutely at ease with him. Said he:
"You have known what it was to have no money--none?"
Susan nodded. "And no friends--no place to sleep--worse off than _Robinson Crusoe_ when the waves threw him on the island.
I had to--to suck my own blood to keep alive."
"You smile as you say that," said he.
"If I hadn"t learned to smile over such things," she answered, "I"d have been dead long ago."
He seated himself opposite her. He asked:
"Why didn"t you kill yourself?"
"I was afraid."
"Of the hereafter?"
"Oh no. Of missing the coming true of my dreams about life."
"Love?"
"That--and more. Just love wouldn"t satisfy me. I want to see the world--to know the world--and to be somebody. I want to try _everything_."
She laughed gayly--a sudden fascinating vanishing of the melancholy of eyes and mouth, a sudden flashing out of young beauty. "I"ve been down about as deep as one can go. I want to explore in the other direction."
"Yes--yes," said Brent, absently. "You must see it all."
He remained for some time in a profound reverie, she as unconscious of the pa.s.sing of time as he for if he had his thoughts, she had his face to study. Try as she would, she could not a.s.sociate the idea of age with him--any age. He seemed simply a grown man. And the more closely she studied him the greater her awe became. He knew so much; he understood so well. She could not imagine him swept away by any of the petty emotions--the vanities, the jealousies, the small rages, the small pa.s.sions and loves that made up the petty days of the small creatures who inhabit the world and call it theirs. Could he fall in love? Had he been in love?
Yes--he must have been in love many times--for many women must have taken trouble to please a man so well worth while, and he must have pa.s.sed from one woman to another as his whims or his tastes changed. Could he ever care about her--as a woman?
Did he think her worn out as a physical woman? Or would he realize that body is nothing by itself; that unless the soul enters it, it is cold and meaningless and worthless--like the electric bulb when the filament is dark and the beautiful, hot, brilliant and intensely living current is not in it?
Could she love him? Could she ever feel equal and at ease, through and through, with a man so superior?
"You"d better study the part of _Lola_--learn the lines," said he, when he had finished his reflecting. "Then--this day week at the same hour--we will begin. We will work all afternoon--we will dine together--go to some theater where I can ill.u.s.trate what I mean. Beginning with next Wednesday that will be the program every day until further notice."
"Until you see whether you can do anything with me or not?"
"Just so. You are living with Spenser?"
"Yes." Susan could have wished his tone less matter-of-fact.
"How is he getting on?"
"He and Sperry are doing a play for Fitzalan."
"Really? That"s good. He has talent. If he"ll learn of Sperry and talk less and work more, and steadily, he"ll make a lot of money. You are not tied to him in any way?"
"No--not now that he"s prospering. Except, of course, that I"m fond of him."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, everybody must have somebody.
You"ve not seen this house. I"ll show it to you, as we"ve still fifteen minutes."
A luxurious house it was--filled with things curious and, some of them, beautiful--things gathered in excursions through Europe, Susan a.s.sumed. The only absolutely simple room was his bedroom, big and bare and so arranged that he could sleep practically out of doors. She saw servants--two men besides the butler, several women. But the house was a bachelor"s house, with not a trace of feminine influence. And evidently he cared nothing about it but lived entirely in that wonderful world which so awed Susan--the world he had created within himself, the world of which she had alluring glimpses through his eyes, through his tones and gestures even. Small people strive to make, and do make, impression of themselves by laboring to show what they know and think. But the person of the larger kind makes no such effort. In everything Brent said and did and wore, in all his movements, gestures, expressions, there was the unmistakable hallmark of the man worth while. The social life has banished simplicity from even the most savage tribe. Indeed, savages, filled with superst.i.tions, their every movement the result of some notion of proper ceremonial, are the most complex of all the human kind. The effort toward simplicity is not a movement back to nature, for there savage and lower animal are completely enslaved by custom and instinct; it is a movement upward toward the freedom of thought and action of which our best intelligence has given us a conception and for which it has given us a longing. Never had Susan met so simple a man; and never had she seen one so far from all the silly ostentations of rudeness, of unattractive dress, of eccentric or coa.r.s.e speech wherewith the cheap sort of man strives to proclaim himself individual and free.
With her instinct for recognizing the best at first sight, Susan at once understood. And she was like one who has been stumbling about searching for the right road, and has it suddenly shown to him. She fairly darted along this right road. She was immediately busy, noting the mistakes in her own ideas of manners and dress, of good and bad taste. She realized how much she had to learn. But this did not discourage her. For she realized at the same time that she could learn--and his obvious belief in her as a possibility was most encouraging.
When he bade her good-by at the front door and it closed behind her, she was all at once so tired that it seemed to her she would then and there sink down through sheer fatigue and fall asleep. For no physical exercise so quickly and utterly exhausts as real brain exercise--thinking, studying, learning with all the concentrated intensity of a thoroughbred in the last quarter of the mile race.
CHAPTER XV