Such a play is at once the easiest and the hardest to act--the easiest because every audience understands it perfectly and supplies unconsciously almost any defect in the acting; the hardest because any actor with the education necessary to acting well finds it next to impossible to divest himself or herself of the sophistications of education and get back to the elemental animal.
_Santuzza_ or _Lola_? Susan debated._Santuzza_ was the big and easy part; _Lola_, the smaller part, was of the kind that is usually neglected.But Susan saw possibilities in the character of the woman who won _Turiddu_ away--the triumphant woman.The two women represented the two kinds of love--the love that is serious, the love that is light.And experience had taught her why it is that human nature soon tires of intensity, turns to frivolity.She felt that, if she could act, she would try to show that not _Turiddu's_ fickleness nor his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but _Santuzza's_ sad intensity and _Lola's_ butterfly gayety had cost _Santuzza_ her lover and her lover his life.So, it was not _Santuzza's_ but _Lola's_ first entrance that she studied.
In the next morning's mail, under cover addressed "Miss Susan Lenox, care of Miss Lorna Sackville," as she had written it for Brent, came the promised check for forty dollars.It was signed John P.Garvey, Secretary, and was inclosed with a note bearing the same signature:
DEAR MADAM:
Herewith I send you a check for forty dollars for the first week's salary under your arrangement with Mr.Brent.No receipt is necessary.Until further notice a check for the same amount will be mailed you each Thursday.Unless you receive notice to the contrary, please call as before, at three o'clock next Wednesday.
It made her nervous to think of those five days before she should see Brent.He had assured her he would expect nothing from her; but she felt she must be able to show him that she had not been wasting her time--his time, the time for which he was paying nearly six dollars a day.She must work every waking hour, except the two hours each day at the hospital.
She recalled what Brent had said about the advantage of being contented alone--and how everything worth doing must be done in solitude.She had never thought about her own feelings as to company and solitude, as it was not her habit to think about herself.But now she realized how solitary she had been, and how it had bred in her habits of thinking and reading--and how valuable these habits would be to her in her work.There was Rod, for example.He hated being alone, must have someone around even when he was writing; and he had no taste for order or system.She understood why it was so hard for him to stick at anything, to put anything through to the finish.With her fondness for being alone, with her passion for reading and thinking about what she read, surely she ought soon to begin to accomplish something--if there was any ability in her.
She found Rod in higher spirits.Several ideas for his play had come to him; he already saw it acted, successful, drawing crowded houses, bringing him in anywhere from five hundred to a thousand a week.She was not troubled hunting for things to talk about with him--she, who could think of but one thing and that a secret from him.He talked his play, a steady stream with not a seeing glance at her or a question about her.She watched the little clock at the side of the bed.At the end of an hour to the minute, she interrupted him in the middle of a sentence."I must go now," said she, rising.
"Sit down," he cried."You can stay all day.The doctor says it will do me good to have you to talk with.And Sperry isn't coming until tomorrow.""I can't do it," said she."I must go."
He misunderstood her avoiding glance."Now, Susie--sit down there," commanded he."We've got plenty of money.You--you needn't bother about it any more.""We're not settled yet," said she."Until we are, I'd not dare take the risk." She was subtly adroit by chance, not by design.
"Risk!" exclaimed he angrily."There's no risk.I've as good as got the advance money.Sit down."She hesitated."Don't be angry," pleaded she in a voice that faltered."But I must go."Into his eyes came the gleam of distrust and jealousy."Look at me," he ordered.
With some difficulty she forced her eyes to meet his.
"Have you got a lover?"
"No."
"Then where do you get the money we're living on?" He counted on her being too humiliated to answer in words.Instead of the hanging head and burning cheeks he saw clear, steady eyes, heard a calm, gentle and dignified voice say:
"In the streets."
His eyes dropped and a look of abject shame made his face pitiable."Good Heavens," he muttered.
"How low we are!"
"We've been doing the best we could," said she simply.
"Isn't there any decency anywhere in you?" he flashed out, eagerly seizing the chance to forget his own shame in contemplating her greater degradation.
She looked out of the window.There was something terrible in the calmness of her profile.She finally said in an even, pensive voice:
"You have been intimate with a great many women, Rod.But you have never got acquainted with a single one."He laughed good-humoredly."Oh, yes, I have.I've learned that `every woman is at heart a rake,' as Mr.Jingle Pope says."She looked at him again, her face now curiously lighted by her slow faint smile."Perhaps they showed you only what they thought you'd be able to appreciate," she suggested.
He took this as evidence of her being jealous of him."Tell me, Susan, did you leave me--in Forty-fourth Street--because you thought or heard I wasn't true to you?""What did Drumley tell you?"
