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Jewel Weed

Page 44

"It's a comfort that my collar fits so well," she reassured herself.

"After all, there is nothing more important than a collar. I don't look

in the least 'common'."

Among the hats stood a photograph of a popular actress, pert and pretty.

The sight of it sent Lena's thoughts afield into new wastes of

bitterness.

The idea of the stage had once come to her like an inspiration. Nothing

could be more easy and natural to her than to act; nothing more

delectable than the tribute paid to the star. Money, flowing gowns,

footlights, tumults of applause had seemed inevitable. Lena shivered

now, with something else than cold inside her flimsy jacket, as she

remembered the crumbling of her dream. She saw again the fat man with

the sensual mouth who had given her a job; and felt again her tingling

resentment when she found how small the part was, and how poorly paid.

She remembered how she had held herself aloof from the other girls, who,

like herself, had trivial parts, and how they had snubbed her in return;

how even the little that she did was made ridiculous through the trick

of a hook-nosed, gum-chewing rival, and how the first audience that she

faced had tittered at her stumble. A wave of heat succeeded the shiver

at this point in her remembrance. Then she recalled her impertinent

answer to the vituperation of the manager, and how he had sworn at her

for a damned minx, who thought herself a professional beauty.

"Vulgar! Vulgar! Vulgar!" she said to herself in impotent anger. She

wished they could all know how she despised them. For she could act! She

was still sure that she could play any part--except that of patient

endurance. Yet, so far, hardship was all that life had offered her. A

chance! That was it. So far, she had never had a ghost of a chance.

Would fate--or luck--or Providence--or whatever it is that rules, never

give her a turn of the wheel?

Next to the art of the milliner was displayed the art, less interesting

to Lena, of the brush. Before the picture store a span of horses shook

their jingling harness, and a brightly-buttoned coachman waited, with

impassive face turned steadily to the front. There came from the doorway

a girl who was lifted above the pharisaism of clothes into the purer

ether. She was calm-eyed and well-poised, and Lena hated her for the

rest of her life for her obliviousness of the sordid. Behind her walked

a young man who now opened the carriage door and lingered a moment and

laughed as he talked with the girl who had taken her seat. Lena

involuntarily drew her feet closer beneath her skirts that no careless

glance of that girl should fall upon their shabbiness. She looked at the

man as she looked at the Russian sables. He was a type of that

delectable world from which she was shut out.

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