The Climbers Part 33

Two! [_Taking out his own stylographic pen._] What's his ink? [_Makes a mark with his pen on his cuff._] Good! the same! Why not make it twelve?

[_Marking a one before the two._] Just in case--I might as well be on the safe side!

[_He rings an electric bell beside the mantel, and waves the paper in the air to dry it._ BLANCHE _enters Right._

BLANCHE. I heard the doctor go. Is anything serious the matter?

STERLING. _If_ it were my _body_ only that had gone wrong, Blanche!

[LEONARD _enters Left._

[_To_ LEONARD.] Take this prescription round the corner and have it put up.

LEONARD. Yes, sir.

STERLING. And bring it to me with a gla.s.s of water.

LEONARD. Yes, sir.

[_He goes out Left._

[BLANCHE _is still standing._ STERLING _sinks into a chair, and puts his head in his hands, his elbows on the table. He lifts his head and looks at her._

STERLING. I know what you're going to do; you don't have to tell me; of course you're going to divorce me.

BLANCHE. No.

STERLING. What!

[_His hands drop to the table; he looks her straight in the face, doubting what he hears._

BLANCHE. [_Looking back into his eyes._] No.

STERLING. [_Cries._] Blanche!

[_In a tone of amazement and joy._

BLANCHE. I give you one more chance, for your sake _only as my boy's father_. But--_don't make it impossible for me_--do you understand?

STERLING. Yes! I must take the true advantage of this chance your goodness gives me. I must right myself, so that people need not hesitate to speak of his father in Richard's presence. _And this I will do._ [_With great conviction he rises._] I know I am at the cross-roads, and I know the way; _but_ I don't choose it for _your_ reasons; I choose for my own reason--which is that, unfit as _I am, I love you._

[_He speaks deliberately and with real feeling, bending over her._

BLANCHE. I tell you truly my love for you is gone for good.

STERLING. I'll win it back--you _did_ love me, you _did_, didn't you, Blanche?

BLANCHE.. I loved the man I thought you were. Do you remember that day in the mountains when we first really came to know each other, when we walked many, many miles without dreaming of being tired?

STERLING. And found ourselves at sunset at the top instead of below, by our hotel! Oh, yes, I remember! The world changed for me that day.

[_He sinks back into the arm-chair, overcome, in his weakened state, by his memories and his realization of what he has made of the present._

BLANCHE. And for me! I knew then for the first time you loved me, and that I loved you. Oh! how short life of a sudden seemed! Not half long enough for the happiness it held for me! [_She turns upon him with a vivid change of feeling._] Has it turned out so?

STERLING. How different! Oh, what a beast! what a fool!

BLANCHE. [_Speaking with pathetic emotion, tears in her throat and in her eyes._] And that early summer's day you asked me to be your wife!

[_She gives a little exclamation, half a sob, half a laugh._] It was in the corner of the garden; I can smell the lilacs now! And the raindrops fell from the branches as my happy tears did on father's shoulder that night, when I said, "Father, he will make me the happiest woman in the world!"

STERLING. O G.o.d! to have your love back!

BLANCHE. You can't breathe life back into a dead thing; how different the world would be if one could!

STERLING. You can bring back life to the drowned; perhaps your love is only drowned in the sorrow I've caused.

BLANCHE. [_Smiles sadly and shakes her head; the smile dies away._] Life to me then was like a glorious staircase, and I mounted happy step after step led by your hand till everything _seemed_ to culminate on the day of our wedding. You men don't, _can't_ realize, what that service means to a girl. In those few moments she parts from all that have cherished her, made her life, and gives her whole self, her love, her body, and even her soul sometimes--for love often overwhelms us women--to _the_ man who, she believes, wants, _starves_, for her gifts. All that a woman who marries for love feels at the altar I tell you a _man_ can't understand! You treated this gift of mine, d.i.c.k, like a child does a Santa Claus plaything--for a while you were never happy away from it, then you grew accustomed to it, then you broke it, and now you have even lost the broken pieces!

STERLING. [_Comes to her, growing more and more determined._] I will _find_ them, and put them together again.

BLANCHE. [_Again smiles sadly and shakes her head._] First we made of _every Tuesday_ a festival--our wedding anniversary. After a while we kept the twenty-eighth of _every month_! The second year you were satisfied with the twenty-eighth of April only, and last year you forgot the day altogether. And yet what a happy first year it was!

STERLING. Ah, you see I _did_ make you happy once!

BLANCHE. Blessedly happy! Our long silences in those days were not broken by an oath and a fling out of the room. Oh, the happiness it means to a wife to see it is hard for her husband to leave her in the morning, and to be taken so quickly--even roughly--into his arms at night that she knows he has been longing to come back to her. Nothing grew tame that first year. And at its end I climbed to the highest step I had reached yet, when you leaned over my bed and cried big man's tears, the first I'd ever seen you cry, and kissed me first, and then little Richard lying on my warm arm, and said, "G.o.d bless you, little mother." [_There is a pause._ BLANCHE _cries softly a moment._ STERLING _is silent, ashamed. Again she turns upon him, rousing herself, but with a voice broken with emotion._] And what a _bad_ father you've been to that boy!

STERLING. I didn't mean to! That's done, that's past, but Richard's my boy. I'll make him proud of me, somehow! I'll win your love back--you'll see!

[BLANCHE _is about to speak in remonstrance, but stops because of the entrance of_ LEONARD. _He brings a small chemist's box of tablets in an envelope and a gla.s.s of water on a small silver tray._

LEONARD. Your medicine, sir.

[_He puts it on the table and goes out Right._

STERLING. Thank you, thank you!

[_He takes the box of tablets out of the envelope._

BLANCHE. [_Going to him._] _You don't realize_ why I've told you all this!

STERLING. [_Counting out the tablets._] One, two. To give me hope! To give me hope!

[_He empties the other ten tablets into the envelope, twists it up, and throws it in the fireplace._

BLANCHE. No, no, just the opposite!

STERLING. Then you've defeated your end, dear; you will stay here with me.

BLANCHE. [_Trying to make him realize the exact position._] Opposite you at the table, receiving our friends, keeping up appearances, yes--but nearer to you than that? No! Never!