“Oh, no!” She was serious now. He thought she looked hurt, almost. The thought gave him sudden savage pleasure. “Surely, I didn’t say that.”
“You did. And you added that my insight into life is just about that of a hardened director of one-reel films.”
She was hurt now. She walked on for a little time, quite silent.
Finally she stopped short, looked right at him, threw out her hands (he noted and felt the grace of the movement!) and said —
“I don’t know how to answer you. Probably I did say just about those words.”
“They are exact… and of course, in one sense, I meant them. I do feel that way about your work. But not at all in the personal sense that you have taken it. And I recognize your ability as clearly as anybody. Can’t you see, man – that’s exactly the reason I talked that way to you?” There was feeling in her voice now. “I suppose I had a crazy, kiddish notion of converting you, of making you work for us. It was because you are so good at it that I went after you like that. You are worth going after.” She hesitated, and bit her lip. “That’s why I was so pleased when Zanin thought he needed you for our big plan and disappointed now that he can’t include you in it – because you could help us and we could perhaps help you. Yes, disappointed – in spite of – and – and don’t forget the other thing I said, that those of us that believe in truth in the theater owe it to our faith to get to work on the men that supply the plays… Can’t you see, man!”
She threw out her arms again. His eyes, something of the heady spirits that she would perhaps have called sex attraction shining in them now, could see little more than those arms, the slim curves of her body in the sweater and short skirt, her eager glowing face and fine eyes. And his mind could see no more than his eyes.
An automobile horn sounded. He caught her arm and hurried her to the roadside. There were more of the large bare trees here; and a rail fence by which they stood.
“You say Zanin has given up the idea of coming to me with his plan?” He spoke guardedly, thinking that he must not betray the confidences of Betty and Hy.
“Yes, he has had to.”
“He spoke to me about it, once.”
“Yes, I know. But the man that is going to back him wants to do that part of it himself or have his own director do it.”
Pictures unreeled suddenly before his mind’s eye – Sue, in “a pretty primitive costume,” exploited at once by the egotistical self-seeking Zanin, the unscrupulous, masterful Silverstone, a temperamental, commercial director! He shivered.
“Look here,” he began – he would fall back on his age and position; he would control this little situation, not drift through it! – “you mentioned my experience. Well, you’re right. I’ve seen these Broadway managers with their coats off. And I’ve seen what happens to enthusiastic girls that fall into their hands.”
He hesitated; that miserable letter flashed on his brain. He could fairly see it. And then his tongue ran wild.
“Don’t you know that Broadway is paved with the skulls of enthusiastic girls!.. Silverstone? Why, if I were to give you a tenth of Silverstone’s history you would shrink from him – you wouldn’t touch the man’s ugly hand. Here you are, young, attractive – yes, beautiful, in your own strange way! – full of a real faith in what you call the truth, on the edge of giving up your youth and your gifts into the hands of a bunch of Broadway crooks. You talk about me and the Broadway Thing. Good God, can’t you see that it’s girls like you that make the Broadway Thing possible!.. You talk of my sentimentality about women, my ‘home-and-mother-stuff,’ can’t you see the reason for that home-and-mother stuff, for that sentimentality, is the tens of thousands of girls, like you and unlike you who wanted to experiment, who thought they could make the world what they wanted it!”
He paused to breathe. The girl before him was distinctly flushed now, and was facing him with wide eyes – hard eyes, he thought. He had poured out a flood of feeling, and it had left her cold.
She was leaning back against the fence, her arms extended along the top rail, looking and looking at him.
“Silverstone!” he snorted, unable to keep silence “Silverstone! The man’s a crook, I tell you. Nothing that he wants gets away from him. Understand me? Nothing! You people will be children beside him… Zanin is bad enough. He’s smart! He’ll wait you out! He doesn’t believe in marriage, he doesn’t! But Zanin – why, Silverstone’ll play with him!”
Her eyes were still on him – wide and cold. Now her lips parted, and she drew in a quick breath, “How on earth,” she said, “did you learn all this! Who told you?”
He shut his lips close together. Plainly he had broken; he had gone wild, cleared the traces. Staring at her, at that sweater, he tried to think… She would upbraid Betty. How would he ever square things with Hy!
He saw her hands grip the fence rail so tightly that her finger-tips went white.
“Tell me,” she said again, with deliberate emphasis, “where you learned these things. Who told you?”
He felt rather than saw the movement of her body within the sweater as she breathed with a slow inhalation. His own breath came quickly. His throat was suddenly dry. He swallowed – once, twice. Then he stepped forward and laid his hand, a trembling hard, on her forearm.
She shook it off and sprang back.
“Don’t look at me like that!” his voice said. And rushed on: “Can’t you see that I’m pleading for your very life! Can’t you see that I know what you are headed for – that I want to save you from yourself – that I love you – that I’m offering you my life – that I want to take you out of this crazy atmosphere of the Village and give…”
He stopped, partly because he was out of breath, and felt, besides, as if his tonsils had abruptly swollen and filled his throat; partly because she turned deliberately away from him.
He waited, uneasily leaning against the fence while she walked off a little way, very slowly; stood thinking; then came back. She looked rather white now, he thought.
“Suppose,” she said, “we drop this and finish our walk. It’s a good three hours yet over to the other railroad. We may as well make a job of it.”
“Oh, Sue,” he cried – “how can you!..”
She stopped him. “Please!” she said.
“But – but – ”
“Please!” she said again.
“But – but – ”
She turned away. “I simply can not keep up this personal talk. I would be glad to finish the walk with you, but…”
He pulled himself together amid the wreckage of his thoughts and feelings. “But if I won’t or can’t, you’ll have to walk alone,” he said for her.
“Yes, I did mean that. I am sorry. I did hope it would be possible.” She compressed her lips, then added: “Of course I should have seen that it wasn’t possible, after what happened.”
“Very well,” said he.
They walked on, silent, past the woods, past more plowed fields, up another hillside.
She broke the silence. Gravely, she said: “I will say just one thing more, since you already know so much. Zarin signs up with Silverstone to-morrow morning. Or as soon as they can finish drawing up the contracts. Then within one or two weeks – very soon, certainly – we go down to Cuba or Florida to begin taking the outdoor scenes. That, you see, settles it.”
Peter’s mind blurred again. Ugly foggy