IX
HELEN was more deeply hurt and humiliated by her playwright's flight than by the apparent failure of the play, but the two experiences coming together fairly stunned her. To have the curtain go down on her final scenes to feeble and hesitating applause was a new and painful experience. Never since her first public reading had she failed to move and interest her audience. What had happened? What had so swiftly weakened her hold on her admirers? Up to that moment she had been sure that she could make any character successful.
For a few moments she stood in the middle of the stage stifling with a sense of mortification and defeat, then turned, and without a word or look to any one went to her dressing-room.
Her maid was deeply sympathetic, and by sudden impulse stooped and kissed her cheek, saying, "Never mind, Miss Merival, it was beautiful."
This unexpected caress brought the tears to the proud girl's eyes. "Thank you, Nora. Some of the audience will agree with you, I hope."
"I'm sure of it, miss. Don't be downcast."
Hugh knocked at the door. "Can you come out?"
"Not now, Hugh. In a few moments."
"There are some people here to see you – "
She wanted to say, "I don't want to see them," but she only said, "Please ask them to wait."
She knew by the tone of her brother's voice that he, too, was choking with indignation, and she dreaded the meeting with him and with Westervelt. She was sustained by the hope that Douglass would be there to share her punishment. "Why had he not shown himself?" she asked again, with growing resentment.
When she came out fully dressed she looked tired and pale, but her head was high and her manner proudly self-contained.
Westervelt, surrounded by a small group of depressed auditors, among whom were Mrs. MacDavitt, Hugh, and Royleston, was holding forth in a kind of bellow. "It proves what? Simply that they will not have her in these preachy domestic parts, that's all. Every time she tries it she gets a 'knock.' I complain, I advise to the contrary. Does it do any good? No. She must chance it, all to please this crank, this reformer."
The mother, reading the disappointment and suffering in Helen's white face, reached for her tremulously and drew her to her bosom. "Never mind what they say, Nellie; it was beautiful and it was true."
Even Westervelt was awed by the calm look Helen turned on the group. "You are very sure of yourself, Mr. Westervelt, but to my mind this night only proves that this audience came to hear me without intelligent design." She faced the silent group with white and weary face. "Certainly Mr. Douglass's play is not for such an audience as that which has been gathering to see me as The Baroness, but that does not mean that I have no other audience. There is a public for me in this higher work. If there isn't, I will retire."
Westervelt threw his hands in the air with a tragic gesture. "Retire! My Gott, that would be insanity!"
Helen turned. "Come, mother, you are tired, and so am I. Mr. Westervelt, this is no place for this discussion. Good-night." She bowed to the friends who had loyally gathered to greet her. "I am grateful to you for your sympathy."
There was, up to this time, no word of the author; but Hugh, as he walked by her side, broke out resentfully, "Do you know that beggar playwright – "
"Not a word of him, Hugh," she said. "You don't know what that poor fellow is suffering. Our disappointment is nothing in comparison with his. Think of what he has lost."
"Nonsense! He has lost nothing, because he had nothing to lose. He gets us involved – "
"Hugh!" There was something in her utterance of his name which silenced him more effectually than a blow. "I produced this play of my own free will," she added, a moment later, "and I will take the responsibility of it."
In the carriage the proud girl leaned back against the cushions, and pressed her two hands to her aching eyes, from which the tears streamed. It was all so tragically different from their anticipations. They were to have had a little supper of jubilation together, to talk it all over, to review the evening's triumph, and now here she sat chill with disappointment, while he was away somewhere in the great, heartless city suffering tortures, alone and despairing.
The sweet, old mother put her arm about her daughter's waist.
"Don't cry, dearie; it will all come right. You can endure one failure. 'Tis not as bad as it seems."
Helen did not reply as she was tempted to do by saying, "It isn't my defeat, it is his failure to stand beside me and receive his share of the disaster." And they rode the rest of the way in sad silence.
As she entered her room a maid handed her a letter which she knew to be from Douglass even before she saw the handwriting, and, without opening it, passed on into her room. "His message is too sacred for any other to see," she said to herself, with instant apprehension of the bitter self-accusation with which he had written.
The suffering expressed by the scrawling lines softened her heart, her anger died away, and only big tears of pity filled her glorious eyes. "Poor boy! His heart is broken." And a desire to comfort him swelled her bosom with a passion almost maternal in its dignity. Now that his pride was humbled, his strong figure bowed, his clear brain in turmoil, her woman's tenderness sought him and embraced him without shame. Her own strength and resolution came back to her. "I will save you from yourself," she said, softly.
When she returned to the reception-room she found Westervelt and Hugh and several of the leading actors (who took the evening's "frost" as a reflection on themselves, an injury to their reputations), all in excited clamor; but when they saw their star enter they fell silent, and Westervelt, sweating with excitement, turned to meet her.
"You must not go on. It is not the money alone; it will ruin you with the public. It is not for you to lecture the people. They will not have it. Such a failure I have never seen. It was not a 'frost,' it was a frozen solid. We will announce The Baroness for to-morrow. The pressmen are waiting below. I shall tell them?" His voice rose in question.
"Mr. Westervelt, this is my answer, and it is final. I will not take the play off, and I shall expect you to work with your best energy to make it a success. One night does not prove Lillian a failure. The audience to-night was not up to it, but that condemns the auditors, not the play. I do not wish to hear any more argument. Good-night."
The astounded and crestfallen manager bowed his head and went out.
Helen turned to the others. "I am tired of this discussion. One would think the sky had fallen – from all this tumult. I am sorry for you, Mr. Royleston, but you are no deeper in the slough than Miss Collins and the rest, and they are not complaining. Now let us sit down to our supper and talk of something else."
Royleston excused himself and went away, and only Hugh, Miss Collins, Miss Carmichael, and the old mother drank with the star to celebrate the first performance of Lillian's Duty.
"I have had a letter from Mr. Douglass," Helen said, softly, when they were alone. "Poor fellow, he is absolutely prostrate in the dust, and asks me to throw him overboard as our Jonah. Put yourself in his place, Hugh, before speaking harshly of him."
"I don't like a coward," he replied, contemptuously. "Why didn't he face the music to-night? I never so much as set eyes on him after he came in. He must have been hiding in the gallery. He leads you into this crazy venture and then deserts you. A man who does that is a puppy."
A spark of amusement lit Helen's eyes. "You might call him that when you meet him next."
Hugh, with a sudden remembrance of the playwright's powerful frame, replied, a little less truculently: "I'll call him something more fit than that when I see him. But we won't see him again. He's out of the running."
Helen laid her cheek on her folded hands, and, with a smile which cleared the air like a burst of sunshine, said, laughingly: "Hugh, you're a big, bad boy. You should be out on the ice skating instead of managing a theatre. You have no more idea of George Douglass than a bear has of a lion. This mood of depression is only a cloud; it will pass and you will be glad to beg his pardon. My faith in him and in Lillian's Duty is unshaken. He has the artistic temperament, but he has also the pertinacity of genius. Come, let's all go to bed and forget our hurts."
And with this she rose and kissed her mother good-night.
Hugh, still moody, replied, with sudden tenderness: "It hurt me to see them go out on your last scene. I can't forgive Douglass for that."
She patted his cheek. "Never mind that, Hughie. 'This, too, shall pass away.'"
X
AT two o'clock, when Douglass returned to his hotel, tired and reckless of any man's scorn, the night clerk smiled and said, as he handed him a handful of letters, "I hear you had a great audience, Mr. Douglass."
The playwright did not discover Helen's note among his letters till he had reached his room, and then, without removing his overcoat, he stood beneath the gas-jet and read:
"My dear Author, – My heart bleeds for you. I know how you must suffer, but you must not despair. A first night is not conclusive. Do not blame yourself. I took up your play with my eyes open to consequences. You are wrong if you think even the failure of this play (which I do not grant) can make any difference in my feeling towards you. The power of the lines, your high purpose, remain. Suppose it does fail? You are young and fertile of imagination. You can write another and better play in a month, and I will produce it. My faith in you is not weakened, for I know your work is good. I have turned my back on the old art and the old rôles; I need you to supply me with new ones. This is no light thing with me. I confess to surprise and dismay to-night, but I should not have been depressed had you been there beside me. I was deeply hurt and puzzled by your absence, but I think I understand how sore and wounded you were. Come in to see me to-morrow, as usual, and we will consider what can be done with this play and plan for a new one. Come! You are too strong and too proud to let a single unfriendly audience dishearten you. We will read the papers together at luncheon and laugh at the critics. Don't let your enemies think they have driven you into retirement. Forget them in some new work, and remember my faith in you is not shaken."
This letter, so brave, so gravely tender and so generous, filled him with love, choked him with grateful admiration. "You are the noblest woman in the world, the bravest, the most forgiving. I will not disappoint you."
His bitterness and shame vanished, his fists clinched in new resolution. "You are right. I can write another play, and I will. My critics shall laugh from the other side of their mouths. They shall not have the satisfaction of knowing that they have even wounded me. I will justify your faith in my powers. I will set to work to-morrow – this very night – on a new play. I will make you proud of me yet, Helen, my queen, my love." With that word all his doubts vanished. "Yes, I love her, and I will win her."
In the glow of his love-born resolution he began to search among his papers for an unfinished scenario called Enid's Choice. When he had found it he set to work upon it with a concentration that seemed uncanny in the light of his day's distraction and dismay. Lillian's Duty and the evening's bitter failure had already grown dim in his mind.
Helen's understanding of him was precise. He was of those who never really capitulate to the storm, no matter how deeply they may sink at times in the trough of the sea. As everything had been against him up to that moment, he was not really taken by surprise. All his life he had gone directly against the advice and wishes of his family. He had studied architecture rather than medicine, and had set his face towards the East rather than the West. Every dollar he had spent he had earned by toil, and the things he loved had always seemed the wasteful and dangerous things. He wrote plays in secret when he should have been soliciting commissions for warehouses, and read novels when he should have been intent upon his business.
"It was impossible that I should succeed so quickly, so easily, even with the help of one so powerful as Helen Merival. It is my fate to work for what I get." And with this return of his belief that to himself alone he must look for victory, his self-poise and self-confidence came back.
He looked strong, happy, and very handsome next morning as he greeted the clerk of the Embric, who had no guile in his voice as he said:
"Good-morning, Mr. Douglass. I hear that your play made a big hit last night."
"I reckon it hit something," he replied, with easy evasion.
The clerk continued: "My wife's sister was there. She liked it very much."
"I am very glad she did," replied Douglass, heartily. As he walked over towards the elevator a couple of young men accosted him.
"Good-morning, Mr. Douglass. We are from The Blazon. We would like to get a little talk out of you about last night's performance. How do you feel about the verdict."
"It was a 'frost,'" replied Douglass, with engaging candor, "but I don't consider the verdict final. I am not at all discouraged. You see, it's all in getting a hearing. Miss Merival gave my play a superb production, and her impersonation ought to fill the theatre, even if Lillian's Duty were an indifferent play, which it is not. Miss Merival, in changing the entire tone and character of her work, must necessarily disappoint a certain type of admirer. Last night's audience was very largely made up of those who hate serious drama, and naturally they did not like my text. All that is a detail. We will create our own audience."
The reporters carried away a vivid impression of the author's youth, strength, and confidence, and one of them sat down to convey to the public his admiration in these words:
"Mr. Douglass is a Western man, and boldly shies his buckskin into the arena and invites the keenest of his critics to take it up. If any one thinks the 'roast' of his play has even singed the author's wings, he is mistaken. He is very much pleased with himself. As he says, a hearing is a great thing. He may be a chopping-block, but he don't look it."
Helen met her playwright with an anxious, tired look upon her face, but when he touched her fingers to his lips and said, "At your service, my lady," she laughed in radiant, sudden relief.
"Oh, but I'm glad to see you looking so gay and strong. I was heart-sore for you last night. I fancied you in all kinds of torture."
His face darkened. "I was. My blue devils assailed me, but I vanquished them, thanks to your note," he added, with a burning glance deep-sent, and his voice fell to a tenderness which betrayed his heart. "I think you are the most tolerant star that ever put out a hand to a poor author. What a beast I was to run away! But I couldn't help it then. I wanted to see you, but I couldn't face Westervelt and Royleston. I couldn't endure to hear them say, 'I told you so.' You understood, I'm sure of it."
She studied him with admiring eyes. "Yes, I understood – later. At first I was crushed. It shook my faith in you for a little while." She put off this mood (whose recollected shadows translated into her face filled Douglass's throat with remorse) and a smile disclosed her returning sense of humor. "Oh, Hugh and Westervelt are angry – perfectly purple with indignation against you for leading me into a trap – "
"I feared that. That is why I begged you to throw my play – "
She laid a finger on her lips, for Mrs. MacDavitt came in. "Mother, here is Mr. Douglass. I told you he would come. I hope you are hungry. Let us take our places. Hugh is fairly used up this morning. Do you see that bunch of papers?" she asked, pointing at a ragged pile. "After breakfast we take our medicine."
"No," he said, firmly. "I have determined not to read a line of them. To every word you speak I will listen, but I will not be harrowed up by a hodgepodge of personal prejudices written by my enemies before the play was produced or in a hurried hour between the fall of the curtain and going to press. I know too much about how these judgments are cooked up. I saw the faults of the play a good deal clearer than did any of those sleepy gentlemen who came to the theatre surfeited and weary and resentful of your change of programme."
She looked thoughtful. "Perhaps you are right," she said, at last. "I will not read them. I know what they will say – "
"I thought the play was very beautiful," said Mrs. MacDavitt. "And my Nellie was grand."
Helen patted her mother's hand. "We have one loyal supporter, Mr. Douglass."
"Ye've many more, if the truth were known," said the old mother, stoutly, for she liked young Douglass.
"I believe that," cried Helen. "Did you consider that as I change my rôles and plays I must also, to a large extent, change my audience? The people who like me as Baroness Telka are amazed and angered by your play. They will not come to see me. But there are others," she added, with a smile at the slang phrase.
"I thought of that, but not till last night."
"It will take longer to inform and interest our new public than any of us realized. I am determined to keep Lillian on for at least four weeks. Meanwhile you can prune it and set to work on a new one. Have you a theme?"
"I have a scenario," he triumphantly answered. "I worked it out this morning between two o'clock and four."
She reached her hand to him impulsively, and as he took it a warm flush came into her face and her eyes were suffused with happy tears.
"That's brave," she said. "I told them you could not be crushed. I knew you were of those who fight hardest when closest pressed. You must tell me about it at once – not this minute, of course, but when we are alone."
When Hugh came in a few minutes later he found them discussing a new automobile which had just made a successful trial run. The play became the topic of conversation again, but on a different plane.
Hugh was blunt, but not so abusive as he had declared his intention to be. "There's nothing in Lillian," he said – "not a dollar. We're throwing our money away. We might better close the theatre. We won't have fifty dollars in the house to-night. It's all right as a story, but it won't do for the stage."
Douglass kept his temper. "It was too long; but I can better that in a few hours. I'll have a much closer-knit action by Wednesday night."
As they were rising from the table Westervelt entered with a face like a horse, so long and lax was it. "They have burned us alive!" he exclaimed, as he sank into a chair and mopped his red neck. He shook like a gelatine pudding, and Helen could not repress a smile.
"Your mistake was in reading them. We burned the critics."
The manager stared in vast amaze. "You didn't read the papers?"
"Not one."
"Well, they say – "
She stopped him. "Don't tell me what they say – not a word. We did our best and we did good work, and will do better to-night, so don't come here like a bird of ill-omen, Herr Westervelt. Go kill the critics if you feel like it, but don't worry us with tales of woe. Our duty is to the play. We cannot afford to waste nervous energy writhing under criticism. What is said is said, and repeating it only hurts us all." Her tone became friendly. "Really, you take it too hard. It is only a matter of a few thousand dollars at the worst, and to free you from all further anxiety I will assume the entire risk. I will rent your theatre."
"No, no!" cried Hugh. "We can't afford to do that."
"We can't afford to do less. I insist," she replied, firmly.
The manager lifted his fat shoulders in a convulsive shrug. His face indicated despair of her folly. "Good Gott! Well, you are the doctor, only remember there will not be one hundred people in the house to-night." He began to recover speech. "Think of that! Helen Merival playing to empty chairs – in my theatre. Himmel!"
"It is sad, I confess, but not hopeless, Herr Westervelt. We must work the harder to let the thoughtful people of the city know what we are trying to do."
"Thoughtful people!" Again his scorn ran beyond his words for a moment and his tongue grew German. "Doughtful beople. Dey dondt bay dwo tollors fer seats! Our pusiness iss to attract the rich – the gay theatre-goers. Who is going to pring a theatre-barty to see a sermon on the stage – hay?"
"You are unjust to Lillian's Duty. It is not a sermon; it is a powerful acting play – the best part, from a purely acting standpoint, I have ever undertaken to do. But we will not discuss that now. The venture is my own, and you will be safe-guarded. I will instruct my brother to make the new arrangement at once."
With a final, despairing shrug the manager rose and went out, and Helen, turning an amused face to Douglass, asked, humorously: "Isn't he the typical manager? – in the clouds to-day, stuck in the mud to-morrow. Sometimes he is excruciatingly funny, and then he disgusts me. They're almost all alike. If business should be unexpectedly good to-night he would be a man transformed. His face would shine, he would grasp every actor by the hand, he would fairly fall upon your neck; but if business went down ten dollars on Wednesday night then look for the 'icy mitt' again. Big as he is he curls up like a sensitive plant when touched by adversity. He can't help it; he's really a child – a big, fat boy. But come, we must now consider the cuts for Lillian; then to our scenario."
As the attendants whisked away the breakfast things Helen brought out the original manuscript of Lillian's Duty, and took a seat beside her playwright. "Now, what is the matter with the first act?"
"Nothing."
"I agree. What is out in the second?"
"Needs cutting."
"Where?"
"Here and here and here," he answered, turning the leaves rapidly.
"I felt it. I couldn't hold them there. Royleston's part wants the knife badly. Now, the third act?"
"It is too diffuse, and the sociologic background gets obstinately into the foreground. As I sat there last night I saw that the interest was too abstract, too impersonal for the ordinary play-goer. I can better that. The fourth act must be entirely rewritten. I will do that this afternoon."
She faced him, glowing with recovered joy and recovered confidence. "Now you are Richard once again upon his horse."
"A hobby horse," he answered, with a laugh, then sobered. "In truth, my strength comes from you. At least you roused me. I was fairly in the grasp of the Evil One when your note came. Your splendid confidence set me free. It was beautiful of you to write me after I had sneaked away like a wounded coyote. I cannot tell you what your letter was to me."
She held up a finger. "Hush! No more of that. We are forgetting, and you are becoming personal." She said this in a tone peculiarly at variance with the words. "Now read me the scenario of the new play. I am eager to know what has moved you, set you on high again."
The creative fire began to glow in his eyes. "This is to be as individual, as poetic, as the other was sociologic. The character you are to play is that of a young girl who knows nothing of life, but a great deal of books. Enid's whole world is revealed by the light which streams from the window of a convent library – a gray, cold light with deep shadows. She is tall and pale and severe of line, but her blue eyes are deep and brooding. Her father, a Western mine-owner, losing his second wife, calls on his daughter to return from the Canadian convent in which she has spent seven years. She takes her position as an heiress in his great house. She is plunged at once into the midst of a pleasure-seeking, thoughtless throng of young people whose interests in life seem to her to be grossly material. She becomes the prey of adventurers, male and female, and has nothing but her innate purity to defend her. Ultimately there come to her two men who type the forces at war around her, and she is forced to choose between them."
As he outlined this new drama the mind of the actress took hold of Enid's character, so opposite in energy to Lillian, and its great possibilities exalted her, filled her with admiration for the mind which could so quickly create a new character.
"I see I shall never want for parts while you are my playwright," she said, when he had finished.
"Oh, I can write – so long as I have you to write for and to work for," he replied. "You are the greatest woman in the world. Your faith in me, your forgiveness of my cowardice, have given me a sense of power – "
She spoke quickly and with an effort to smile. "We are getting personal again."
He bowed to the reminder. "I beg your pardon. I will not offend again."