XIX
HELEN insisted that her playwright should go back to the West for a month's rest.
"I do not need rest, I need you," he answered, recklessly. "It fills me with content merely to see you."
"Nevertheless, you must go. We don't need you here. And, besides, you interfere with my plans."
"Is that true?" His eyes searched deep as he questioned.
"I am speaking as the actress to the playwright." She pointed tragically to the door. "Go! Your poor old, lonely mother awaits you."
"There are six in the family; she's my stepmother, and we don't get on smoothly."
"Your father is waiting to congratulate you."
"On the contrary. He thinks actresses and playwrights akin to 'popery.'"
She laughed. "Well, then, go on my account – on your account. You are tired, and so am I – "
"That is why I should remain, to relieve you, to help you. Or, do you mean you're tired of me?"
"I won't say that; but I must not see you. I must not see any one. If I do this big part right, I must rest. I intend to sleep a good part of the time. I have sent for Henry Olquest, and I intend to put the whole of the stage end of this play in his hands. Our ideals are not concerned in this Alessandra, you remember."
His face clouded. "That is true. I wish it were otherwise. But can you get Olquest?"
"Yes; his new play has failed. 'Too good,' Westervelt said."
"Oh, what blasphemy! To think Harry Olquest's plays are rejected, and on such grounds! You are right – as always. I will go."
"Thank you!"
"I am a little frazled, I admit, and a breath of mountain-air will do me good. I will visit my brother Walt in Darien. It's hard to go. My heart begins to ache already with prospective hunger. You have been my world, my one ambition for three months – my incessant care and thought."
"All the more reason why you should forget me and things dramatic for a while. There is nothing so destructive to peace and tranquillity as the stage."
"Don't I know that? When I was a youth in a Western village I became in some way the possessor of two small photographs of Elsie Melville. She was my ideal till I saw her, fifteen years later."
Helen laughed. "Poor Elsie, she took on flesh dreadfully in her later years."
"Nevertheless, those photographs started me on the road to the stage. I used to fancy myself as Macbeth, but I soon got switched into the belief that I could write plays. Now that I have demonstrated that" – his tone was a little bitter again – "I think I would better return to architecture."
She silenced him. "All that we will discuss when you come back reinvigorated from the mountains." She turned to her desk. "I have something here for you. Here is a small check from Westervelt on account. Don't hesitate to take it. He was glad to give it."
"It is the price of my intellectual honesty."
"By no means!" She laughed, but her heart sickened with a sense of the truth of his phrase. "It's only a very small part payment. You can at least know that the bribe they offer is large."
"Yes" – he looked at her meaningly – "the prize was too great for my poor resolution. All they can give will remain part payment. I wonder if you will be compassionate enough to complete the purchase – "
"That, too, is in the future," she answered, still struggling to be gayly reassuring, though she knew, perfectly well, that she was face to face with a most momentous decision and that an insistent, determined lover was about to be restored to confidence and pride. "And now, good-bye." And she gave him her hand in positive dismissal.
He took the hand and pressed it hard, then turned and went away without speaking.
There was a hint of spring in the air the afternoon of his leaving. The wind came from the southwest, brisk and powerful. In the pale, misty blue of the sky a fleet of small, white clouds swam, like ships with wide and bellying sails, low down in the eastern horizon, and the sight of them somehow made it harder for Douglass to leave the city of his adoption. He was powerfully minded to turn back, to remain on the ferry-boat and land again on the towering island so heavily freighted with human sorrows, so brilliant with human joys, and only a realization that his presence might trouble and distract Helen kept him to his journey's westward course.
As he looked back at the monstrous hive of men the wonder of Helen's personality came to him. That she alone, and unaided (save by her own inborn genius and her beauty), should have succeeded in becoming distinguished, even regnant, among so many eager and striving souls, overwhelmed him with love and admiration.
He wondered how he could have assumed even for an instant the tone of a lover, the gesture of a master. "I, a poor, restless, penniless vagabond on the face of the earth – I presumed to complain of her!" he exclaimed, and shuddered with guilty disgust at thought of that night behind the scenes.
In this mood he rode out into the West, which was bleak with winter winds and piled high with snow. He paused but a day with his father, whom he found busy prolonging the lives of the old people with whom the town was filled. It was always a shock to the son, this contrast between the outward peace and well-seeming of his native town and the inner mortality and swift decay. Even in a day's visit he felt the grim destroyer's presence, palpable as the shadow of a cloud.
He hastened on to Darien, that curious mixture of Spanish-Mexican indolence and bustling American enterprise, a town wherein his brother Walt had established himself some years before.
Walter Douglass was shocked by the change in his brother. "I can't understand how fourteen months in New York can reduce a lusty youth to the color of a cabbage and the consistency of a gelatine pudding. I reckon you'd better key yourself down to my pace for a while. Look at me!"
The playwright smiled. "I haven't indulged myself too much. You can't hit a very high pace on twelve dollars a week."
"Oh, I don't know. There are cheap brands of whiskey; and you can breathe the bad air of a theatre every night if you climb high enough. I know you've been too strenuous at some point. Now, what's the meaning of it all?"
"I've been working very hard."
"Shouldn't do it. Look at me. I never work and never worry. I play. I weigh two hundred pounds, eat well, sleep like a doorknob, make about three thousand dollars a year, and educate my children. I don't want to seem conceited, but my way of life appeals to me as philosophic; yours is too wasteful. Come, now, you're keeping back something. You might as well 'fess up. What were you doing?"
The playwright remained on his guard. "Well, as I wrote you, I had a couple of plays accepted and helped to produce them. There's nothing more wearing than producing a play. The anxiety is killing."
"I believe you. I think the writing of one act would finish me. Yes, I can see that would be exciting business; but what's all this about your engagement to some big actress?"
This brought the blood to the younger man's cheek, but he was studiedly careless in reply. "All newspaper talk. Of course, in rehearsing the play, I saw a great deal of Miss Merival, but – that's all. She is one of the most successful and brilliant women on the stage, while I – well, I am only a 'writing architect,' earning my board by doing a little dramatic criticism now and then. You need not put any other two things together to know how foolish such reports are."
Walt seemed satisfied. "Well, my advice is: slow down to Darien time. Eat and sleep, and ride a bronco to make you eat more and sleep harder, and in two weeks you'll be like your old-time self."
This advice, so obviously sound, was hard to follow, for each day brought a letter from Helen, studiously brief and very sparing of any terms of affection – frank, good letters, kindly but no more – and young Douglass was dissatisfied, and said so. He spent a large part of each morning pouring out upon paper the thoughts and feelings surging within him. He told her of the town, of the delicious, crisp climate – like October in the East – of the great snow-peaks to the West, of his rides far out on the plain, of his plans for the coming year.
"I dug an old play out of my trunk to-day" (he wrote, towards the end of the first week). "It's the first one I ever attempted. It is very boyish. I had no problems in my mind then, but it is worth while. I am going to rewrite it and send it on to you, for I can't be idle. I believe you'll like it. It is a love drama pure and simple."
To this she replied: "I am interested in what you say of your first play, but don't work – rest and enjoy your vacation."
A few days later he wrote, in exultation: "I got a grip on the play yesterday and re-wrote two whole acts. I think I've put some of the glory of this land and sky into it – I mean the exultation of health and youth. I am putting you into it, too – I mean the adoration I feel for you, my queen!
"Do you know, all the old wonder of you is coming back to me. When I think of you as the great actress my nerves are shaken. Is it possible that the mysterious Helen Merival is my Helen? I am mad to rush back to you to prove it. Isn't it presumptuous of me to say, 'My Helen'? But at this distance you cannot reprove me. I came across some pictures of you in a magazine to-day, and was thrilled and awed by them. I have not said anything of Helen MacDavitt to my people, but of the good and great actress Helen Merival I speak copiously. They all feel very grateful to you for helping me. Father thinks you at least forty. He could not understand how a woman under thirty could rise to such eminence as you have attained. Walt also takes it for granted you are middle-aged. He knows how long the various 'Maggies' and 'Ethels' and 'Annies' have been in public life. He saw something in a paper about us the other day, but took it as a joke. If this fourth play of mine comes off, and you find it worth producing, I shall be happy. It might counteract the baleful influence of Alessandra. I began to wonder how I ever did such a melodrama. Is it as bad as it seems to me now?..
"I daren't ask how Enid is doing. It makes me turn cold to think of the money you are losing. Wouldn't it pay to let the theatre go 'dark' till the new thing is ready?..
"I am amazed at my temerity with you, serene lady. If I had not been filled with the colossal conceit of the young author, I never would have dared to approach – What I did during those mad weeks (you know the ones I mean) gives me such shame and suffering as I have never known, and my whole life is now ordered to make you forget that side of my character. I ask myself now, 'What would Helen have me do?' I don't say this humble mood will last. If Alessandra should make a 'barrel of money,' I am capable of soaring to such heights of audacity that you will be startled."
To this she replied: "I am not working at rehearsal more than is necessary. Mr. Olquest is a jewel. He has taken the whole burden of the stage direction off my hands. I lie in bed till noon each morning and go for a drive each pleasant afternoon. Our spring weather is gone. Winter has returned upon us again… I miss you very much. For all the worry you gave us, we found entertainment in you. Don't trouble about the money we are losing. Westervelt is putting up all the cash for the new production and is angelic of manner – or means to be. I prefer him when in the dumps. He attends every rehearsal and is greatly excited over my part. He now thinks you great, and calls you 'the American Sardou.' … I have put all our dismal hours behind me. 'All this, too, shall pass away.' … I care not to what audacity you wing your way, if only you come back to us your good, sane, undaunted self once more."
In this letter, as in all her intercourse with him, there was restraint, as though love were being counselled by prudence. And this was, indeed, the case. A foreboding of all that an acknowledgment of a man's domination might mean to her troubled Helen. The question, "How would marriage affect my plans," beset her, though she tried to thrust it away, to retire it to the indefinite future.
Her love grew steadily, feeding upon his letters, which became each day more buoyant and manly, bringing to her again the sense of unbounded ambition and sane power with which his presence had filled her at their first meeting.
"You are not of the city," she wrote. "You belong to the country. Think how near New York came to destroying you. You ought not to come back. Why don't you settle out there and take up public life?"
His answer was definite: "You need not fear. The city will never again dominate me. I have found myself – through you. With you to inspire me I cannot fail. Public life! Do you mean politics? I am now fit for only one thing – to write. I have found my work. And do you think I could live anywhere without hope of seeing you? My whole life is directed towards you – to be worthy of you, to be justified in asking you to join your life to mine. These are my ambitions, my audacious desires. I love you, and you must know that I cannot be content with your friendship – your affection – which I know I have. I want your love in return. Not now – not while I am a man of words merely. As I now feel Alessandra is a little thing compared with the sacrifice you have made for me. I have stripped away all my foolish egotism, and when I return to see you on the opening night I shall rejoice in your success without a tinge of bitterness. It isn't as if the melodrama were degrading in its appeal. It does not represent my literary ideals, of course, but it is not contemptible, it is merely conventional. My mind has cleared since I came here. I see myself in proper relation to you and to the public. I see now that with the large theatre, with the long 'run' ideals, a play must be very general in its appeal, and with such conditions it is folly for us to quarrel. We must have our own little theatre wherein we can play the subtler phases of American life – the phases we both rejoice in. If Alessandra should pay my debt to you – you see how my mind comes back to that thought – we will use it to build our own temple of art. As I think of you there, toiling without me, I am wild with desire to return to be doing something. I am ready now to turn my hand to any humble thing – to direct rehearsals, to design costumes, anything, only to be near you. One word from you and I will come."
To this she replied: "No; on the contrary, you must stay a week longer. We have postponed the production on account of some extra scenic effect which Hugh wishes to perfect. They profess wonder now at your knowledge of scenic effect as well as your eye for costume and stage-setting. Your last letter disturbed me greatly, while it pleased me. I liked its tone of boyish enthusiasm, but your directness of speech scared me. I'm almost afraid to meet you. You men are so literal, so insistent in your demands. A woman doesn't know what she wants – sometimes; she doesn't like to be brought to bay so roundly. You have put so much at stake on Alessandra that I am a-tremble with fear of consequences. If it succeeds you will be insufferably conceited and assured; if it fails we will never see you again. Truly the life of a star is not all glitter."
This letter threw him into a panic. He hastened to disclaim any wish to disturb her. "If you will forgive me this time I will not offend again. I did not mean to press for an answer. I distinctly said that at present I have no right to do so. I daren't do so, in fact. I send you, under another cover, the youthful play which I call The Morning. Isn't that fanciful enough? It means, of course, that I am now just reaching the point in my life where the man of thirty-odd looks back upon the boy of eighteen with a wistful tenderness, feeling that the mystery of the world has in some sense departed with the morning. Of a certainty this idea is not new, but I took a joy in writing this little idyl, and I would like to see you do 'the wonderful lady I see in my dreams.' Can you find an actor who can do my lad of 'the poetic fancy'?"
She replied to this: "Your play made me cry, for I, too, am leaving the dewy morning behind. I like this play; it is very tender and beautiful, and do you know I believe it would touch more hearts than your gorgeous melodrama. Mr. Howells somewhere beautifully says that when he is most intimate in the disclosures of his own feelings he finds himself most widely responded to – or something like that. I really am eager to do this play. It has increased my wonder of your powers. I really begin to feel that I know only part of you. First Lillian's Duty taught me some of your stern Scotch morality. Then Enid's Choice revealed to me your conception of the integrity of a good woman's soul – that nothing can debase it. Alessandra disclosed your learning and your imaginative power. Now here I feel the poet, the imaginative boy. I will not say this has increased my faith in you – it has added to my knowledge of you. But I must confess to you it has made it very difficult for me to go on with Alessandra. All the other plays are in line of a national drama. Alessandra is a bitter and ironical concession. The Morning makes its splendor almost tawdry. It hurt me to go to rehearsal to-day. Westervelt's presence was a gloating presence, and I hated him. Hugh's report of the exultant 'I told you so's' of the dramatic critics sickened me – " Her letter ended abruptly, almost at this point.
His reply contained these words: "It is not singular that you feel irritated by Alessandra while I am growing resigned, for you are in daily contact with the sordid business. Tell me I may come back. I want to be at the opening. I know you will secure a great personal triumph. I want to see you shining again amid a shower of roses. I want to help take your horses from your carriage, and wheel you in glory through the streets as they used to do in olden times as tribute to their great favorites. I haven't seen a New York paper since I came West. I hope you have put Enid away. What is the use wearing yourself out playing a disastrous rôle while forced to rehearse a new one? My longing to see you is so great that the sight of your picture on my desk is a sweet torture. Write me that you want me, dearest."
She replied, very simply: "You may come. Our opening night is now fixed for Monday next. You will have just time to get here. All is well."
To this he wired reply: "I start to-night. Arrive on Monday at Grand Central. Eleven-thirty."
Helen was waiting for him at the gate of the station in a beautiful spring hat, her face abloom, her eyes dancing, and the sight of her robbed him of all caution. Dropping his valise, he rushed towards her, intent to take her in his arms.
She stopped him with one outstretched hand. "How well you look!" Her voice, so rich, so vibrant, moved him like song.
"And you – you are the embodiment of spring." Then, in a low voice, close to her ear, he added: "I love you! I love you! How beautiful you are!"
"Hush!" She lifted a finger in a gesture of warning. "You must not say such things to me – here." With the addition of that final word her face grew arch. Then in a louder tone: "I was right, was I not, to send you away?"
"I am a new being," he answered, "morally and physically. But tell me, what is the meaning of these notices? Have you put The Morning on in place of Alessandra?"
Hugh interposed. "That's what she's done," and offered his hand with unexpected cordiality.
"You take my breath away," said Douglass. "I can't follow your reckless campaigns."
"We'll explain. We're not as reckless as we seem."
They began to move towards the street, Hugh leading the way with the playwright's bag.
Helen laughed at her lover's perplexity and dismay. "You look befoozled."
"I am. I can't understand. After all that work and expense – after all my toilsome grind – my sacrifice of principles."
She was close to his shoulder as she said, looking up at him with beaming, tender eyes:
"That's just it. I couldn't accept your offering. After The Morning came in, my soul revolted. I ordered the Alessandra manuscript brought in. Do you know what I did with it?"
"Rewrote it, I hope."
Her face expressed daring, humor, triumph, but the hand lifted to the chin expressed a little apprehension as she replied: "Rewrote it? No, I didn't think of that. I burned it."
He stopped, unconscious of the streaming crowds. "Burned it! I can't believe you. My greatest work – "
"It is gone." The smile died out of her eyes, her face became very grave and very sweet. "I couldn't bear to have you bow your head to please a public not worthy of you. The play was un-American, and should not have been written by you."
He was dazed by the enormous consequences of this action, and his mind flashed from point to point before he answered, in a single word: "Westervelt."
Thereat they both laughed, and she explained. "It was dreadful. He raged, he shook the whole block as he trotted to and fro tearing his hair. I think he wished to tear my hair. He really resembled the elder Salvini as Othello – you know the scene I mean. I gave him a check to compensate him. He tore it up and blew it into the air with a curse. Oh, it was beautiful comedy. I told him our interview would make a hit as a 'turn' on the vaudeville stage. Nothing could calm him. I was firm, and Alessandra was in ashes."
They moved on out upon the walk and into the hideous clamor of Forty-second Street, his mind still busy with the significance of her news. Henry Olquest in an auto sat waiting for them. After a quick hand-shake Douglass lifted Helen to her place, followed her with a leap, and they were off on a ride which represented to him more than an association with success – it seemed a triumphal progress. Something in Helen's eyes exalted him, filled his throat with an emotion nigh to tears. His eyes were indeed smarting as she turned to say: "You are just in time for dress rehearsal. Do you want to see it?"
"No, I leave it all to you. I want to be the author if I can. I want to get the thrill."
"I think you will like our production. Mr. Olquest has done marvels with it. You'll enjoy it; I know you will. It will restore your lost youth to you."
"I hope it will restore some of your lost dollars. I saw by the papers that you were still struggling with Enid. I shudder to think what that means. The other poor little play will never be able to lift that huge debt."
"I'm not so sure about that," she gayly answered. "The rehearsals have almost resigned" – she pointed at Hugh's back – "him to the change."
"I confess I was surprised by his cordial greeting."
"Oh, he's quite shifted his point of view. He thinks The Morning may 'catch 'em' on other grounds."
"And you – you are radiant. I expected to find you worn out. You dazzle me."
"You mustn't look at me then. Look at the avenue. Isn't it fine this morning?"
He took her hint. "It is glorious. I feel that I am again at the centre of things. After all, this is our one great city, the only place where life is diverse enough to give the dramatist his material. I begin to understand the attitude of actors when they land from the ferry-boat, draw a long breath, and say, 'Thank God, I'm in New York again.'"
"It's the only city in America where an artist can be judged by his peers. I suppose that is one reason why we love it."
"Yes, it's worth conquering, and I'll make my mark upon it yet," and his tone was a note of self-mastery as well as of resolution. "It is a city set on a hill. To take it brings great glory and lasting honor."
She smiled up at him again, a proud light in her eyes. "Now you are your good, rugged self, the man who 'hypnotized' me into taking Lillian's Duty. You'll need all your courage; the critics are to be out in force."
"I do not fear them," he answered, as they whirled into the plaza and up to the side entrance of the hotel.
"I've engaged a room for you here, Douglass," said Hugh, and the new note of almost comradeship struck the playwright with wonder. He was a little sceptical of it.
"Very well," he answered. "I am reckless. I will stay one day."
"Mother will be waiting to see you," said Helen, as they entered the hall. "She is your stanch supporter."
"She is a dear mother. I wish she were my own."
Each word he uttered now carried a hidden meaning, and some inner relenting, some sweet, secret concession which he dimly felt but dared not presume upon, gave her a girlish charm which she had never before worn in his eyes.
They took lunch together, seated at the same table in the same way, and yet not in the same spirit. He was less self-centred, less insistent. His winter of proved inefficiency, his sense of indebtedness to her, his all-controlling love for her gave him a new appeal. He was at once tender and humorous as he referred again to Alessandra.
"Well, now that my chief work of art is destroyed, I must begin again at the bottom. I have definitely given up all idea of following my profession. I am going to do specials for one of the weeklies. Anderson has interceded for me. I am to enter the ranks of the enemy. I am not sure but I ought to do a criticism of my own play to-morrow night."
She was thinking of other things. "Tell me of your people. Did you talk of me to them? What did they say of me?"
"They all think of you as a kind, middle-aged lady, who has been very good to a poor country boy."
She laughed. "How funny! Why should they think me so old?"
"They can't conceive how a mere girl can be so rich and powerful. How could they realize the reckless outpouring of gold which flows from those who seek pleasure to those who give it."
She grew instantly graver. "They would despise me if they knew. I don't like being a mere toy of the public – a pleasure-giver and nothing else. Of course there are different ways of pleasing. That is why I couldn't do Alessandra. Tell me of your brother. I liked what you wrote of him. He is our direct opposite, isn't he? Does he talk as well as you reported, or were you polishing him a little?"
"No, Walt has a remarkable taste in words. He has always been the literary member of our family, but is too lazy to write. He is content to grow fat in his little round of daily duties."
"I wonder if we haven't lost something by becoming enslaved to the great city! Our pleasures are more intense, but they do wear us out. Think of you and me to-morrow night – our anxiety fairly cancelling our pleasure – and then think of your brother going leisurely home to his wife, his babies, and his books. I don't know – sometimes when I think of growing old in a flat or a hotel I am appalled. I hate to keep mother here. Sometimes I think of giving it all up for a year or two and going back to the country, just to see how it would affect me. I don't want to get artificial and slangy with no interests but the stage, like so many good actresses I know. It's such a horribly egotistic business – "
"There are others," he said.
"Writers are bad enough, but actors and opera-singers are infinitely worse. Mother has helped me." She put her soft palm on her mother's wrinkled hand. "Nothing can spoil mother; nothing can take away the home atmosphere – not even the hotel. Well, now I must go to our final rehearsal. I will not see you again till the close of the second act. You must be in your place to-night," she said, with tender warning. "I want to see your face whenever I look for it."
"I am done with running away," he answered, as he slowly released her hand. "I shall pray for your success – not my own."
"Fortunately my success is yours."
"In the deepest sense that is true," he answered.