In the passage outside her dressing room a small group was listening with new respect to the producer who had found the girl. «What do you think of her, Carrie?» he asked amiably as Caroline approached.
«I think she's a darling,» replied Caroline.
«Carrie,»said he, «she's the biggest discovery since you walked on that night in Newport.»
Caroline smiled and entered her dressing room. Through the half-open door she heard someone say, «But do you think she'll make an actress?»
«Let me tell you, my boy,» returned the fortunate discoverer. «I was out front all through the second act. Now, when you're talking to that kid the way I'm talking to you, what is she? Just a kid. But, my boy, when she walks on the stage — she's YOUTH. The crazy, lovely, dizzy, unlucky, stumble-bum youth of this day and age, my boy! And she tears your goddam heart out. So I don't give a hoot in hell if she ever learns to act. In fact I hope to God she never will. I've put on as many good shows as anyone else over the last fifteen years, and I remember what Wolcott Gibbs said about some dame quite a time ago. 'When youth and beauty walk on the stage,' he said, 'to hell with Sarah Bernhardt.'»
Caroline closed her door.
That night she couldn't get home fast enough. She felt she needed Alan. She felt like a wounded animal that instinctively seeks some bitter herb, the one thing that will cure it. She knew, as it were, the flavour of what she needed from him: harsh, astringent, healing to the bruised ego; the acrid emanation of … which of his qualities. «Anyway, it's there,» she thought in the elevator. «It's there in his ugly smile; in the way he …» Here she stopped short. «Alan's smile? Ugly? I'm certainly good and mixed up. Never mind! At least I'm home.»
She went in, and the place was empty. The emptiness of one's own home at midnight, when one has fled there for comfort, is an abomination and an injury, and Caroline took it as such, though it was the most ordinary thing in the world for Alan to go out while she was at the theatre, and to get home after she did. Recently, he had done so almost every night, and she hadn't given it a thought. But tonight she was injured and angry.
She walked from one room to another, looked at the largest photograph of Alan, and felt dissatisfied with his smile. «It's not mature,» she said. She looked in the glass and tried, with considerable difficulty, a smile of her own. This she found even more unsatisfactory, but for the opposite reason. «I may as well face it,» said this valetudinarian of twenty-seven, «I'm old.» She stood there watching her reflection as she drew down the corners of her mouth, and in the stillness and silence of the apartment she could feel and almost hear the remorseless erosion of time. Moment after moment particles of skin wore away; hair follicles broke, splintered, and decayed like the roots of dead trees. All those little tubes and miles of thread-like channels in the inner organs were silting up like doomed rivers. And the glands, the all-important glands, were choking, clogging, abrading, falling apart. And she felt her marriage was falling apart, and Alan would be gone, and life would be gone.
Her eyes were already on the little phial. She took it up, she unscrewed the top, and she drank the contents. She was very calm and controlled as she went to the bathroom and refilled the phial with water, and added a little quinine to give it the bitter taste. She put the phial back in its place, eyed her reflection again as she did so, and called herself by a name so extremely coarse and offensive that it is almost unbelievable that so charming a girl as Caroline could have uttered the word.
When Alan returned that night, she did not ask him where he had been, but overwhelmed him with tenderness, feeling of course as if she had unspeakably betrayed him, and was going to desert him, and go away into an endless springtime, where he could never follow her.
This mood continued over the weeks that followed, and should, one would say, have been matched by an equal remorseful tenderness in Alan, but things are not always as they should be. The fact is, the only inconvenience he suffered from his little secret concerning the phial, was the thought of being married to an aging woman, which makes a man feel like a gigolo.
So time, which was the cause of all this trouble, went on, and both Caroline and Alan, secure in imperishable youth, saw in the other, as through a magnifying glass, more and more of the hastening signs of decay. Alan began to feel very much ill-used. He felt that Caroline at the very least should have provided herself with a younger sister. One night he dropped into the theatre and discovered that, in a manner of speaking, she had done so.
Soon after this Alan began to win his matches again, and by the same comfortable margin as before. The experts all noted that he had entirely regained his old fire and aggressiveness, and they confidently expected him to win back the championship the following year.
All this time, Humphrey, being trained to await patiently the outcome of his experiments, waited patiently. It may be asked how he knew that both of them would take the potion. The answer is, he was completely indifferent as to whether both of them took it, or one of them, or neither. It was his opinion that a good marriage would survive the phial, and a bad one would be wrecked by it, whichever way it happened.
Very late one evening his doorbell rang three or four times in rapid succession. He raised his eyebrows, and hurried to open it. There stood Caroline. Her hat, hair, dress, and all the rest of it looked just as usual; yet she gave the impression of having run all the way. Humphrey gave her his ugly smile, and, saying never a word, he led her through into the living-room, where she sat down, got up, walked about a little, and at last turned to him. «I've left Alan,» she said.
«These things happen,»said Humphrey.
«It's your fault,» she said. «Not really yours, perhaps, but it was that horrible stuff you gave us. Humphrey, I'm the lowest, the most despicable rat; I'm such a hypocrite and traitor as you can't ever imagine.»
«I very much doubt it,» said Humphrey. «I suppose this means you drank the stuff.»
«Yes, behind his back,»
«And what did he say when you told him?»
«I haven't told him, Humphrey. I wouldn't dare. No. I filled the thing up with water and put some quinine in it, and …»
«Tell me why you put quinine in it.»
«To give it that bitter taste.»
«I see. Go on.»
«Oh, I felt so horrible afterwards. I can't tell you how awful I felt. I tried, I tried so hard to love him more than ever to make up for it. But you can't make up for a thing like that. Besides …»
«Yes?»
«Oh, it just ruined everything, in all sorts of ways. I suppose I've been watching him — you can't help watching a person who's aging in front of your eyes. And when you watch anyone like that you see all sorts of things wrong with them. And I know he's felt it because he … well, he hasn't been very nice lately. But it's my fault, because I don't love him any more. Maybe I never did.» With that she began to weep, which showed a very proper feeling. «Don't tell me,» said Humphrey, «that you don't want to be young forever.»
«Not if I can't ever love anyone again.»
«There's always yourself, you know.»
«It's cruel of you to say that. It's cruel even if it's true.»
«It's lonely being like this,» said Humphrey. «But that's the price we pay for our little immortality. You, and me, and of course old Vingleberg. We're animals of a new species. There's us» — his hand swept a little circle around them —«and the rest of the world.» They sat for quite a long time in silence, alone together in this imaginary circle. The sensation was not at all unpleasant. «Of course,» added Humphrey, «I used to think we were like that for quite a different reason.»