Half a Rogue - Harold MacGrath (phonics books TXT) 📗

For the past six months he had noted a subtle change in her, a growing reserve, a thoughtfulness that was slowly veiling or subduing her natural gaiety. She now evaded him when he suggested one of their old romps in queer little restaurants; she professed illness when he sent for her to join him in some harmless junketing. She was slowly slipping away from him; no, drifting, since he made no real effort to hold her. And why had he made no real effort? Sometimes he thought he could answer this question, and then again he knew that he could not. Ah, if he only loved her! What a helpmeet: cheerful, resourceful, full of good humor and practical philosophy, a brilliant wit, with all the finished graces of a goddess. Ah, if indeed he only loved her! This thought kept running through his mind persistently; it had done so for days; but it had always led him back to the starting point. Love is not always reasoning with itself. Perhaps-and the thought filled him with regret-perhaps he was indeed incapable of loving any one as his poet's fancy believed he ought to love. And this may account for the truth of the statement that genius is rarely successful in love; the ideal is so high that it is out of the reach of life as we, genius or clod, live it.

"Isn't this determination rather sudden?" he asked, when the pause grew insupportable.

"I have been thinking of it for some time," she replied, smiling. A woman always finds herself at ease during such crises. "Only, I hadn't exactly made up my mind. You were at work?" glancing at the desk.

"Yes, but I'm through for the night. It's only a scenario, and I am not entirely satisfied with it."

She walked over to the desk and picked up a sheet at random. She was a privileged person in these rooms. Warrington never had any nervous dread when she touched his manuscript.

"How is it going to end?" she asked.

"Oh, they are going to marry and be happy ever after," he answered, smiling.

"Ah; then they are never going to have any children?" she said, with a flash of her old-time mischief.

"Will you have a cigarette?" lighting one and offering her the box.

"No; I have a horror of cigarettes since that last play. To smoke in public every night, perforce, took away the charm. I hated that part. An adventuress! It was altogether too close to the quick; for I am nothing more or less than an adventuress who has been successful. Why, the very method I used to make your acquaintance years and years ago, wasn't it?-proved the spirit. 'We hate two kinds of people,'" she read, taking up another page of manuscript; "'the people we wrong and the people who wrong us. Only, the hate for those we have wronged is most enduring.' That isn't half bad, Dick. How do you think of all these things?"

She crossed over to the window to cool her hot face. She, too, heard the voices of the night; not as the poet hears them, but as one in pain. "He never loved me!" she murmured, so softly that even the sparrows in the vine heard her not. And bitter indeed was the pain. But of what use to struggle, or to sigh, or vainly to regret? As things are written, so must they be read. She readily held him guiltless; what she regretted most deeply was the lack of power to have him and to hold him. Long before, she had realized the hopelessness of it all. Knowing that he drank from the cup of dissipation, she had even sought to hold him in contempt; but to her he had never ceased to be a gentleman, tender, manly and kind. It is contempt that casts the first spadeful in the grave of love.

"Come, girl," he said, going to her side; "you have something to tell me. What is it?"

She turned to find his hand outstretched and a friendly look in his eyes. Impulsively she gave him both her hands. He bowed over them with the grave air of the days of powdered wigs. There was not a particle of irony in the movement; rather it was a quiet acknowledgment that he recollected the good influence she had at times worked upon him in some dark days. As he brushed her fingers with his lips, he saw. His head came up quickly.

"Ah!"

"Yes." Her voice was steady and her eyes were brave.

He drew her to the lamp and studied the ring. The ruddy lights dartled as he slowly turned the jewel around.

"It is a beauty. No one but a rich man could have given a ring like that. And on your finger it means but one thing."

"I am to be married in June."

"Do you love him?"

"I respect him; he is noble and good and kind."

Warrington did not press the question. He still retained the hand, though he no longer gazed at the ring.

"I have always wanted a home. The stage never really fascinated me; it was bread and butter."

"Is it necessary to marry in order to have a home?" he asked quietly, letting the hand gently slide from his. "You are wealthy, after a fashion; could you not build a home of your own?"

"Always to be identified as the actress? To be looked at curiously, to be annoyed by those who are not my equals, and only tolerated by those who are? No! I want a man who will protect me from all these things, who will help me to forget some needless follies and the memory that a hundred different men have made play-love to me on the other side of the footlights."

"Some men marry actresses to gratify their vanity; does this man love you?"

"Yes; and he will make me what Heaven intended I should be-a woman. Oh, I have uttered no deceit. This man will take me for what I am."

"And you have come here to-night to ask me to forget, too?" There was no bitterness in his tone, but there was a strong leaven of regret. "Well, I promise to forget."

"It was not necessary to ask you that," generously. "But I thought I would come to you and tell you everything. I did not wish you to misjudge me. For the world will say that I am marrying this good man for his money; whereas, if he was a man of the most moderate circumstances, I should still marry him."

"And who might this lucky man be? To win a woman, such as I know you to be, this man must have some extraordinary attributes." And all at once a sense of infinite relief entered into his heart: if she were indeed married, there would no longer be that tantalizing doubt on his part, that peculiar attraction which at one time resembled love and at another time was simply fascination. She would pass out of his life definitely. He perfectly recognized the fact that he admired her above all other women he knew; but it was also apparent that to see her day by day, year by year, his partner in the commonplaces as well as in the heights, romance would become threadbare quickly enough. "Who is he?" he repeated.

"That I prefer not to disclose to you just yet. What are you going to call your new play?" with a wave of her hand toward the manuscript.

"I had intended to call it Love and Money, but the very name presages failure."

"Yes, it needs the cement of compatibility to keep the two together."

"Well, from my heart I wish you all the best luck in the world," he said, the absence of any mental reservation in his eyes. "You would make any man a good wife. If I weren't a born fool-"

She leaned toward him, her face suddenly tense and eager.

"-if I weren't a born fool," with a smile that was whimsical, "I'd have married you myself, long ago. But fate has cut me out for a bachelor." He knocked the ash from a cold pipe, filled and lighted it. "By the way," he said, "I received a curious letter to-day." Its production would relieve the awkwardness of the moment. "Would you like to see it?" opening the drawer and handing the letter to her. "It's one of the few letters of the sort I'm going to keep."

She accepted the letter, but without any spirit of interest. For a moment a thought had all but swept her off her feet; yet she realized instantly that this thought was futile. Warrington did not love her; and there was nothing to do but to follow out the course she had planned. She had come to him that night with a single purpose in mind: to plumb the very heart of this man who was an enigma to every woman he met. She had plumbed it. Warrington loved nobody but Warrington and pleasure. Oh, he was capable of the grand passion, she very well knew, but the woman to arouse it had not yet crossed his path.

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

She came closer to the lamp. It was only pretense, but Warrington was not aware of it. She had stared at the sheet, reading only her miserable thoughts. Presently she smiled; the girlish exuberance amused her.

"She has put you quite out of reach. What a fine thing it must be to have such faith in any man!"

"And I'm not worth in her esteem an ounce to the pound." He was quite frank with himself. "I would to Heaven I were!"

"And this is the kind of woman that you will fall violently in love with, some day, Dick. It will be your punishment." She had fully recovered by now, and the old-time raillery was in the ascendant. "Oh, she has read you fairly well. You are good and kind and wise, but these virtues are not of equal weight. Your goodness and wisdom will never catch up with your abundant kindness. I've a good deal to thank you for, Dick; a good deal."

"Nonsense! The shoe is on the other foot. You have made half my plays what they are to-day." He rang and ordered some coffee.

She dropped into his desk-chair and propped her chin in her palms, viewing him through half-closed, speculative eyes.

"We've had some jolly larks together," he said. "I shall miss you; how much I shall know only when you are gone. Is he good-looking?"

"Very. He is tall and straight, with a manly face, fine eyes, and a good nose. You know that I'm always particular about a man's nose."

"And young, of course?" not without some feeling of jealousy.

"And young."

"Tell me all about him," drawing up a chair and facing her.

"He is a lucky chap," he summed up when she had done.

"That remains to be seen," lightly. "I may prove the worst wife possible. Perhaps, when I have burned my bridges, I shall be mad for the very publicity I'm trying to escape. Women are like extinct volcanos; they are most to be dreaded when written perfectly harmless."

Warrington shook his head and laughed. Here the coffee came in. He dismissed his man, and poured the nectar himself.

"You are the one man I know who never asks to sweeten my coffee," she observed.

"And yet I had to learn. You haven't taught this other fellow yet, I