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* Transcriber's Note: Typo "gantlet" was replaced with "gauntlet" but *
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[Illustration: "HE WAS A NOTICEABLY HANDSOME FIGURE AS HE SAT ALONE IN
THE BOX"

[_See p. 31_]




THE

LIGHT OF THE STAR


A Novel


BY

HAMLIN GARLAND

AUTHOR OF "HESPER"

"THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP"

ETC. ETC.


NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS:: MCMIV




THE LIGHT OF THE STAR

Published May, 1904.




THE LIGHT OF THE STAR




I


After the appointment with Miss Merival reached him (through the hand of
her manager), young Douglass grew feverishly impatient of the long days
which lay between. Waiting became a species of heroism. Each morning he
reread his manuscript and each evening found him at the theatre, partly
to while away the time, but mainly in order that he might catch some
clew to the real woman behind the shining mask. His brain was filled
with the light of the star--her radiance dazzled him.

By day he walked the streets, seeing her name on every bill-board,
catching the glow of her subtle and changeful beauty in every window.
She gazed out at him from brows weary with splendid barbaric jewels, her
eyes bitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad. She smiled at him in
framework of blue and ermine and pearls--the bedecked, heartless
coquette of the pleasure-seeking world. She stood in the shadow of gray
walls, a grating over her head, with deep, soulful, girlish eyes lifted
in piteous appeal; and in each of these characters an unfathomed depth
remained to vex and to allure him.

Magnified by these reflections on the walls, haloed by the teeming
praise and censure of the press, she seemed to dominate the entire city
as she had come to absorb the best of his own life. What her private
character really was no one seemed to know, in spite of the special
articles and interviews with her managers which fed the almost universal
adulation of her dark and changeful face, her savage and sovereign
beauty. There was insolence in her tread, and mad allurement in the
rounded beauty of her powerful white arm--and at his weakest the young
playwright admitted that all else concerning her was of no account.

At the same time he insisted that he was not involved with the
woman--only with the actress. "I am not a lover--I am a playwright,
eager to have my heroine adequately portrayed," he contended with
himself in the solitude of his room, high in one of the great apartment
buildings of the middle city. Nevertheless, the tremor in his nerves
caused him thought.

Her voice. Yes, that, too, was mysterious. Whence came that undertone
like the moan of a weary wastrel tortured with dreams of idyllic
innocence long lost? Why did her utterance, like her glorious face,
always suggest some inner, darker meaning? There were times when she
seemed old--old as vice and cruelty, hoarse with complaints, with
curses, and then again her lips were childishly sweet, and her voice
carried only the wistful accents of adolescence or the melody of girlish
awe.

On the night before his appointment she played _The Baroness Telka_, a
lurid, lustful, remorseless woman--a creature with a vampire's heart and
the glamour of Helen of Troy--a woman whose cheeks were still round and
smooth, but whose eyes were alight with the flame of insanity--a
frightful, hungry, soulless wretch. And as he sat at the play and
watched that glittering, inexplicable woman, and thought of her rôles,
Douglass asked himself: "How will she meet me to-morrow? What will be
the light in her eyes when she turns them upon me? Will she meet me
alone--haughty, weary with praise, or will she be surrounded by those
who bow to her as to a queen?" This latter thing he feared.

He had not been without experience with women--even with actresses; but
no woman he had ever met had appealed to his imagination beyond the
first meeting. Would it be so with Helen Merival? He had loved twice in
his life, but not well enough to say so to either of his sweethearts.
Around Myra's name clung the perfume and moonlight of summer evenings in
the far-off mid-continent village where he was born, while Violet
recalled the music, the comfort, and the security of a beautiful Eastern
home. Neither of these sweet and lovely girls had won his heart
completely. How was it that this woman of the blazoning bill-boards had
already put more of passion into his heart than they of the pure and
sheltered life?

He did not deceive himself. It was because Helen could not be understood
at a glance. She appealed to his imagination as some strange bird--alien
voyager--fled from distant islands in dim, purple seas. She typed the
dreams of adventuring youth seeking the princesses of other and more
romantic lands.

At times he shuddered with a fear that some hidden decay of Helen
Merival's own soul enabled her to so horrify her audience with these
desolating rôles, and when the curtain fell on _The Baroness_, he was
resolved to put aside the chance of meeting the actress. Was it worth
while to be made ashamed and bitter? She might stand revealed as a
coarse and selfish courtesan--a worn and haggard enchantress whose
failing life blazed back to youth only when on the stage. Why be
disenchanted? But in the end he rose above this boyish doubt. "What does
it matter whether she be true or false? She has genius, and genius I
need for my play--genius and power," and in the delusion he rested.

He climbed to his den in the tower as physically wearied as one
exhausted with running a race, and fell asleep with his eyelids
fluttering in a feverish dream.

The hour of his appointment with her fell upon Sunday, and as he walked
up the street towards her hotel the bells in a church on a side street
were ringing, and their chimes filled his mind with memories of the
small town from which he came. How peaceful and sweet the life of
Woodstock seemed now. The little meeting-house, whose shingled spire
still pointed at the stars, would always be sweet with the memory of
Myra Thurber, whose timid clasp upon his arm troubled him then and
pained him now. He had so little to give in return for her
devotion--therefore he had given nothing. He had said good-bye almost
harshly--his ambition hardening his heart to her appeal.

Around him, in his dream of those far-off days, moved other agile
forms--young lovers like Myra and himself, their feet creaking on the
glittering snow. They stepped slowly, though the bells called and
called. The moonlight was not more clear and untouched of baleful fire
than Myra's sweet eyes looking up at him, and now he was walking the wet
pavement of the great metropolis, with the clang and grind of cars all
about him, on his way to meet a woman whose life was spent in simulating
acts as destructive as Myra's had been serene and trustful. At the
moment he saw his own life as a thread in some mysterious drama.

"To what does it lead?" he asked, as he drew under the overhanging
portal of the great hotel where the star made her home. It was to the
man of the West a splendid place. Its builders had been lavish of highly
colored marbles and mosaics, spendthrift of light and gilding; on every
side shone the signs and seals of predatory wealth. Its walls were like
costly confectionery, its ornaments insolent, its waste criminal. Every
decorative feature was hot, restless, irreverent, and cruel, quite the
sort of avenue one might expect to find in his walk towards the
glittering woman of the false and ribald drama.

"She chose her abode with instinctive bad taste," he said, bitterly; and
again his weakness, his folly turned him cold; for with all his physical
powers he was shy to the point of fear.

He made a sober and singular spot in the blaze of the rotunda. So sombre
was his look, so intent his gaze. Youths in high hats and shining
shirt-fronts stood in groups conversing loudly, and in the resplendent
dining-hall bediamonded women and their sleek-haired, heavy-jewelled
partners were eating leisurely, attended by swarms of waiters so eager
they trod upon one another's feet.

The clerk eyed him in impassible silence as he took out his worn
card-case, saying: "Please send my card to Miss Merival."

"Miss Merival is not receiving any one this evening," the clerk
answered, with a tone which was like the slap of a wet glove in the
face.

Douglass faced him with a look which made him reflect. "You will let her
be the judge of that," he said, and his tone was that of one accustomed
to be obeyed.

The little man bowed. "Oh, certainly, Mr. Douglass, but as she left
orders--"

When the boy with his card had disappeared into the candy-colored
distances, the playwright found himself again studying the face of his
incomprehensible sorceress, who looked down upon him even at that moment
from a bulletin-board on the hotel wall, Oriental, savage, and
sullen--sad, too, as though alone in her solitary splendor. "She can't
be all of her parts--which one of them will I find as I enter her room?"
he asked himself for the hundredth time.

"Miss Merival will see Mr. Douglass," said the bell-boy. "This way,
sir."

As he stepped into the elevator the young man's face grew stern and his
lips straightened out into a grim line. It was absurd to think he should
be so deeply moved by any woman alive, he who prided himself on his
self-possession.

Down a long hall on the tenth floor the boy led him, and tapped at a
door, which was opened after a pause by a quiet woman who greeted him
with outstretched hand, kindly cordial.

"How do you do, Mr. Douglass? It is very good of you to come," she said,
with the simplest inflection.

"This must be an elder sister," he thought, and followed her into a
large sitting-room, where a gray-haired woman and a young man were
sipping after-dinner coffee.

"Mother, this is Mr. Douglass, the author of _The Modern Stage_, the
little book of essays we liked so well." The elderly lady greeted him
cordially, but with a timid air. "And this is my brother Hugh," the
young man gave Douglass's hand a firm and cordial grip.

"Sit down, please--not there--over here, where the light will fall on
you. I want to see how you look," she added, in smiling candor; and with
that smile he recognized in his hostess the great actress.

He was fairly dazed, and for the moment entirely wordless. From the very
moment the door had opened to him the "glittering woman" had been
receding into remote and ever remoter distances, for the Helen Merival
before him was as simple, candid, and cordial as his own sister. Her
voice had the home inflection; she displayed neither paint nor powder;
her hair was plainly brushed--beautiful hair it was, too--and her dress
was lovely and in quiet taste.

Her face seemed plain at first, just as her stature seemed small. She
was dark, but not so dark as she appeared on the stage, and her face was
thinner, a little careworn, it seemed to him; and her eyes--"those
leering, wicked eyes"--were large and deep and soft. Her figure was
firm, compact, womanly, and modest in every line. No wife could have
seemed more of the home than this famous actress who faced him with
hands folded in her lap.

He was stupefied. Suddenly he perceived the injustice and the crass
folly of his estimate of her character, and with this perception came a
broader and deeper realization of her greatness as an actress. Her real
self now became more complex than his wildest imagined ideal of her.
That this sweet and reflective girl should be the actress was as
difficult to understand as that _The Baroness_ should be at heart a good
woman. For five minutes he hardly heard what she said, so busy was his
mind readjusting itself to this abrupt displacement of values. With
noiseless suddenness all the lurid light which the advertiser had
thrown around the star died away. The faces which mocked and mourned,
the clutching hands, the lines of barbaric ornaments, the golden goblets
of debauchery, the jewelled daggers, the poison phials--all those
accessories, designed to produce the siren of the posters, faded out,
and he found himself face to face with a human being like himself, a
thoughtful, self-contained, and rather serious American girl of
twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age.

Not merely this, but her attitude towards him was that of a pupil. She
lifted eyes to him as to one occupying an intellectual height. She began
to tell him how much she enjoyed his little book on the drama, which a
friend had recommended to her, but as soon as he had fairly recovered
himself he led her away from his own work. "I am supposed to be an
architect," he explained. "I write of the stage because I love it--and
because I am a failure in my profession. My book is a very slight and
unambitious attempt."

"But you know the stage and its principles," she insisted; "and your
view of the future is an inspiration to those of us who wish to do good
work. Your letter was very helpful to me, for I am deeply discouraged
just now. I am disgusted with the drama in which I work. I am weary of
these unwholesome parts. You are quite right, I shall never do my best
work so long as I am forced to assume such uncongenial rôles. They are
all false, every one of them. They are good acting rôles, as acting
goes; but I want plays that I can live as well as act. But my manager
tells me that the public will not have me in anything else. Do you think
they would? Is he right?" She ended in appeal.

"I think the public will take you at your best in anything you do," he
replied, with grave gallantry. "I don't know that managers are
omniscient. They are only men like the rest of us."

She smiled. "That is high treason; but I'm very much inclined to believe
it is true. I am willing to concede that a theatre must be made to pay,
but I am not content to think that this splendid art is always to be
measured by the number of dollars which fall into the box-office. Take
Westervelt as a type. What ideals has he? None whatever, save to find a
play that will run forever and advertise itself."

She had dreams, too, it seemed. She glowed with her plans, and as she
timidly presented them Douglass perceived that the woman was entirely
unconscious of the false glamour, the whirling light and tumult, which
outsiders connected with her name. At the centre of the illumination she
sat looking out upon the glorified bill-boards, the gay shop windows,
the crowded auditoriums, a wholesome, kindly, intelligent woman, subject
to moods of discouragement like himself, unwilling to be a slave to a
money-grubber. Something in his face encouraged the story of her
struggles. She passed to her personal history while he listened as one
enthralled.

The actress fled, and the woman drew near. She looked into the man's
eyes frankly, unshrinkingly, with humor, with appeal. She leaned towards
him, and her face grew exquisitely tender and beautiful. "Oh, it was a
struggle! Mother kept boarders in order that Hugh and I might go to
school--didn't you, dear old muz?" She laid her hand on her mother's
knee, and the mother clasped it. "Father's health grew worse and worse,
and at last he died, and then I had to leave school to help earn our
living. I began to read for entertainments of various sorts. Father was
a Grand Army man, and the posts took an interest in my reading. I really
earned a thousand dollars the second year. I doubled that the next year,
and considered myself a great public success." She smiled. "Mother, may
I let Mr. Douglass see how I looked then?"

The mother nodded consent, and the great actress, after a few moments'
search, returned with a package of circulars, each bearing a piquant,
girlish face.

"There," she said, as she handed them to Douglass, "I felt the full
ecstasy of power when that picture was taken. In this I wore a new gown
and a new hat, and I was earning fifty dollars at each reading. My
success fairly bewildered me; but oh, wasn't it glorious! I took mother
out of a tenement and put her in a lovely little home. I sent Hugh to
college. I refurnished the house. I bought pictures and rugs, for you
know I continued to earn over two thousand a year. And what fun we had
in spending all that money!"

"But how did you reach the stage?" he asked.

She laughed. "By way of 'the Kerosene circuit,' if you know what that
means."

"I've heard the phrase," he answered; "it corresponds to the old-time
'barn-storming,' doesn't it?"

"It does."

Hugh interposed. "I wouldn't go into that, sis."

"Why not? It's great fun--now. I used to think it pretty tragic
sometimes. Yes, I was nineteen when I went on the New England rural
circuit--to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps!
As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York
in answer to advertisements in _The Reflector_, and went out 'on the
road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they
came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the
toil and discomfort they stood for.

Her eyes danced with fun. "I played _The Lady of Lyons_ in a 'kitchen
set,' and the death-scene in _East Lynne_ before a 'wood drop.' And my
costumes were something marvellous, weren't they, mother? Well, this
lasted two seasons--summer seasons; while I continued to read in winter
in order to indulge my passion for the stage in summer and early autumn.
Then I secured a small part in a real company, and at a salary that
permitted me to send some money home. I knocked about the country this
way two seasons more--that makes me twenty-two. I knew the office of
every manager in New York by this time, but had been able to reach an
audience with but one or two. They were kind enough, but failed to 'see
anything' in me, as the phrase goes; and I was quite disheartened. Oh,
'the Rialto'!" Her face clouded and her voice softened. "It is a
brilliant and amusing place to the successful, but to the girl who walks
it seeking a theatrical engagement it is a heartless and cruel place.
You can see them there to-day--girls eager and earnest and ready to work
hard and conscientiously--haunting the agencies and the anterooms of the
managers just as I did in those days--only five years ago."

"It seems incredible," exclaimed Douglass. "I thought you came here from
a London success."

"So I did, and that is the miraculous chapter of my story. I went to
London with Farnum--with only a little part--but McLennan saw me and
liked my work, and asked me to take the American adventuress in his new
play. And then--my fortune was made. The play was only a partial
success, but my own position was established. I continued to play the
gay and evil-minded French and Russian woman of the English stage till I
was tired of them. Then I tried _Joan of Arc_ and _Charlotte Corday_.
The public forced me back to _The Baroness Telka_, and to wealth and
great fame; and then I read your little book, which seemed directed
straight to me, and I asked Hugh to write you--now you have the 'story
of me life.' I have had no struggle since--only hard work and great
acclaim." She faced her mother with a proud smile. Then her face
darkened. "But--there is always a but--I want New York to know me in
some better way. I'm tired of these women with cigarettes and spangled
dinner-gowns."

She laid her hand again on her mother's knee, and the gentle old fingers
closed around the firm, smooth wrist.

"I've told mother that I will cut these rôles out. We are at last in a
position to do as we please. I am now waiting for something worth while
to come to me. That is my present situation, Mr. Douglass. I don't know
why I've been so frank. Now let me hear your play."

He flushed a little. "To tell the truth, I find it rather hard to begin.
I feel as though I were re-enacting a worn-out scene in some way. Every
other man in the car writes plays nowadays and torments his friends by
reading to them, which, I admit, is an abominable practice. However, as
I came here for that express purpose, I will at least outline my
scenario."

"Didn't you bring the play itself?"

"Yes; but, really, I hesitate. It may bore you to death."

"You could not write a play that would bore me--I am sure of that."

"Very well," he soberly answered, and drew forth his manuscript. As if
upon signal, the mother and her son rose to withdraw. "You are entirely
justified," said Douglass, with some humor. "I quite understand your
feelings."

"We should like very much to hear it, but--"

"No excuses, I beg of you. I wonder at Miss Merival's hardihood. I am
quite sure she will live to repent her temerity."

In this spirit of banter the playwright and the star were left alone
with the manuscript of the play. As he read on, Douglass was carried out
of his own impassivity by the changes in the face before him. It became
once more elusive, duskily mysterious in its lines. A reflective shadow
darkened the glorious eyes, veiled by drooping lids. Without knowing it,
the actress took on from moment to moment the heart-trials of the woman
of the play. In a subconscious way even as he read, Douglass analyzed
and understood her power. Hers was a soul of swift and subtle sympathy.
A word, a mere inflection, was sufficient to set in motion the most
complicate and obscure conceptions in her brain, permitting her to
comprehend with equal clarity the Egyptian queen of pleasure and the
austere devotee to whom joy is a snare. From time to time she uttered
little exclamations of pleasure, and at the end of each act motioned him
to proceed, as if eager to get a unified impression.

It was after eleven o'clock when he threw down the manuscript, and,
white with emotion, awaited her verdict. She was tense with the strain,
and her lashes were wet with tears, but her eyes were bright and her
mind alert. She had already entered upon a new part, having been swept
up into a region of resolution as far away from the pleasant hostess as
from the heartless adventuress whose garments she had worn but the night
before. With hands clasped between her knees, and shoulders laxly
drooping, she brooded on the sorrows of his mimic world.

"I will do your play," she said at last. "I will do it because I believe
in its method and because I think it worthy of my highest powers."

The blood rushed to the playwright's throat and a smarting heat dimmed
his eyes. He spoke with difficulty. "I thank you," he said, hoarsely.
"It is more than I expected; and now that you have promised to do it, I
feel you ought not to take the risk." He could say no more, overcome by
the cordial emphasis of her decision.

"There is a risk, I will be frank with you; but your play is worth it. I
have not been so powerfully moved in years. You have thrilled me. Really
I cannot tell you how deeply your theme has sunk into my heart. You have
the Northern conscience--so have I; that is why I rebel at being merely
the plaything of a careless public. Yes, I will do your play. It is a
work of genius. I hope you wrote it in a garret. It's the kind of thing
to come from a diet of black bread and water."

He smiled. "I live in a sort of garret, and my meals are frequently
beans and brown bread. I hope that will do."

"I am glad the bread is at least brown.... But you are tired. Leave the
manuscript with me." He rose and she moved towards him with a gesture
of confidence which made words impossible to him. "When we meet again I
want you to tell me something of yourself.... Good-night. You will hear
from me soon." She was regal as she said this--regal in her own proper
person, and he went away rapt with wonder and admiration of the real
Helen Merival as she now stood revealed to him.

"She is greater than my dreams of her," he said, in a sort of rapture as
he walked the street. "She is greater than she herself can know; for her
genius is of the subtle, unspeakable deeps--below her own consciousness,
beyond her own analysis. How much greater her art seems, now that I have
seen her. It is marvellous! She will do my play, and she will
succeed--her power as an actress would carry it to a success if it were
a bad play, which it is not. My day has dawned at last."

       *       *       *       *       *

Helen went to bed that night with a consciousness that something new and
powerful had come into her life. Not merely the play and her
determination to do it moved her--the man himself profoundly impressed
her. His seriousness, his decision and directness of utterance, and the
idealism which shone from his rugged, boyish face remained with her to
the verge of sleep. He was very handsome, and his voice singularly
beautiful, but his power to charm lay over and beyond these. His sincere
eyes, his freedom from flippant slang, these impressed her with a sense
of his reliability, his moral worth.

"He is stern and harsh, but he is fine," she said to her mother next
morning, "and his play is very strong. I am going to do it. You will
like the part of _Lillian_. It has the Scotch sense of moral
responsibility in it."




II


Douglass rose next morning with a bound, as if life had somehow become
surcharged with fresh significance, fresh opportunity. His professional
career seemed dull and prosaic--his critical work of small avail. His
whole mind centred on his play.

His was a moody, sensitive nature. Stern as he looked, and strong as he
really was, he could be depressed by a trifle or exalted by a word. And
reviewing his meeting with Helen in the light of the morning, he had
more than a suspicion that he had allowed himself to talk too freely in
the presence of the brother and mother, and that he had been
over-enthusiastic, not to say egotistic; but he was saved from dejection
by the memory of the star's great, brown-black eyes. There was no
pretence in them. She had been rapt--carried out of conventional words
and graces by something which rose from the lines he had written, the
characters he had depicted.

The deeper his scrutiny went the more important she became to him. She
was not simple--she was very complex, and an artist of wonderful range,
and certainty of appeal. He liked the plain and simple (almost angular)
gestures and attitudes she used when talking to him. They were so
broadly indicative of the real Helen Merival, and so far from the
affectations he had expected to see. Of course, she was the actress--the
mobility of her face, her command of herself, was far beyond that of any
untrained woman, no matter how versatile; but she was nobly the actress,
broadened and deepened by her art.

He was very eager to see her again, and as the day wore on this desire
grew to be an ache at his heart most disturbing. He became very restless
at last, and did little but walk around the park, returning occasionally
as the hour for the postman came. "I don't know why I should expect a
letter from her. I know well the dilatory methods of theatrical
people--and to-day is rehearsal, too. I am unreasonable. If I hear from
her in a week I may count myself lucky."

A message from the dramatic editor of _The Blazon_, asking him to do a
special study of an English actor opening that night at the Broadway,
annoyed him. "I can't do it," he answered. "I have another engagement."
And recklessly put aside the opportunity to earn a week's board, so
exalted was he by reason of the word of the woman.

At dinner he lacked appetite entirely, and as he had taken but an egg
and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and had missed luncheon altogether,
he began to question himself as to the meaning of his ailment, with sad
attempt at humor. "It isn't exactly as serious as dying. Even if she
reconsiders and returns my play, I can still make a living." He would
not admit that any other motive was involved.

He had barely returned to his room before a knock at the door announced
a boy with a note. As he took it in his hand his nerves tingled as
though he had touched the wondrous woman's hand. The note was brief, yet
fateful:

     "I enclose a ticket for the manager's box. I hope you can come. I
     want to talk about your play. I will send my brother to bring you
     in back to see me. I have been rehearsing all the afternoon, but I
     re-read the play this morning while in bed. I like it better and
     better, but you can do more with it--I feel that you have
     suppressed the poetry here and there. My quarrel with you realists
     is that you are afraid to put into your representations of life the
     emotions that make life a dynamic thing. But it is stirring and
     suggestive as it is. Come in and talk with me, for I am full of it
     and see great possibilities in the final act."

His hands were tremulous and his eyes glowing as he put the note down
and faced himself in the glass. The pleasure of meeting her again under
such conditions made him forget, for the moment, the rôle she was to
play--a part he particularly detested. Truly he was the most fortunate
and distinguished of men--to be thus taken by the hand and lifted from
nameless obscurity to the most desired position beside a great star.

He dressed with unusual care, and was a noticeably handsome figure as he
sat alone in the box; and elated, tense, self-conscious. When she came
on and walked close down to the foot-lights nearest him, flashing a
glance of recognition into his eyes, his breath quickened and his face
flushed. A swift interchange of light and fire took place at the moment,
her eyelids fell. She recoiled as if in dismay, then turned and
apparently forgot him and every one else in the fervor of her art.

A transforming readjustment of all the lines of her face took place. She
became sinister, mocking, and pitiless. An exultant cruelty croaked in
her voice. Minute, repulsive remodellings of her neck and cheeks changed
her to a harpy, and seeing these evidences of her great genius Douglass
grew bitterly resentful, and when she laughed, with the action of a
vulture thrusting her head forward from the shoulders, he sickened and
turned away. It was marvellous work, but how desecrating to her glorious
womanhood. Coming so close on that moment of mystic tenderness it was
horrible. "My God! She must not play such parts. They will leave their
mark upon her."

When the curtain fell he did not applaud, but drew back into the shadow,
sullen, brooding, sorrowful. In the tableau which followed the recall,
her eyes again sought for him (though she still moved in character),
and the curtain fell upon the scene while yet she was seeking him.

Here now began a transformation in the man. He had come to the theatre
tremulous with eagerness to look upon her face, to touch her hand, but
when her brother entered the box, saying, "Mr. Douglass, this is the
best time to see my sister," he rose slowly with a curious reluctance.

Through devious passages beneath the theatre, Hugh led the way, while
with greater poignancy than ever before the young playwright sensed the
vulgarity, the immodesty, and the dirt of the world behind and below the
scenes. It was all familiar enough to him, for he had several friends
among the actors, but the thought of one so sovereign as Helen in the
midst of a region so squalid stung him. He was jealous of the actors,
the scene-shifters, who were permitted to see her come and go.

He was reserved and rather pale, but perfectly self-contained, as he
entered the little reception-hall leading to her dressing-room. He
faced her with a sense of dread--apprehensive of some disenchantment.
She met him cordially, without the slightest reference to her make-up,
which was less offensive than he had feared; but he winced,
nevertheless, at the vulgarity of her part so skilfully suggested by
paint and powder. She gave him her hand with a frank gesture. "You
didn't applaud my scenes to-night," she said, with a smile as enigmatic
as the one she used in _The Baroness_.

His voice was curt with emotion as he replied, "No, I did not; I
couldn't. They saddened me."

"What do you mean?" she asked, with a startled, anxious paling beneath
her rouge.

His voice was low, but fiercely reproachful in answer. "I mean you
should treat your beautiful self and your splendid art with greater
consideration."

"You mean I should not be playing such women? I know it--I hate them.
But no one ever accused me of taking my art lightly. I work harder on
these uncongenial rôles than upon any other. They require infinitely
more effort, because I loathe them so."

"I mean more than that. I am afraid to have you simulate such passions.
They will leave their mark on you. It is defilement. Your womanhood is
too fine, too beautiful to be so degraded."

She put her hand to her bosom and looked about her restlessly. His
intensity scared her. "I know what you mean, but let us not talk of that
now; let us discuss your play. I want to suggest something for your
third act, but I must dress now. You will wait, won't you? We will have
a few minutes before I go on. Please sit here and wait for me."

He acquiesced silently, as was his fashion. There was little of the
courtier about him, but he became very ill at ease as he realized how
significant his waiting must seem to those who saw him there. Deeply in
the snare as he was, this sitting beside an actress's dressing-room door
became intolerable to his arrogant soul, and he was about to flee when
Hugh came back and engaged him in conversation. So gratified was
Douglass for this kindness, he made himself agreeable till such time as
Helen, in brilliant evening-dress, came out; and when Hugh left them
together he was less assertive and brusque in manner.

She was so luminous, so queenly, she dissipated his cloud of doubts and
scruples, and the tremor of the boyish lover came back into his limbs as
he turned to meet her. His voice all but failed him as he answered to
her question.

For some ten minutes from behind her mask she talked of the play with
enthusiasm--her sweet eyes untouched of the part she was about to
resume. At last she said: "There is my cue. Good-bye! Can you breakfast
with us to-morrow, at eleven-thirty? It's really a luncheon. I know you
are an early riser; but we will have something substantial. Will you
come?"

Her smooth, strong fingers closed cordially on his hand as she spoke,
and he answered, quickly, "With the greatest pleasure in the world."

"We can talk at our leisure then. Good-bye!" and as she opened the
canvas door in the "box-scene" he heard her say, with high, cool,
insulting voice, "Ah, my dear Countess, you are early." She was _The
Baroness_ again. After the fall of the curtain at the end, Douglass
slipped out upon the pavement, his eyes blinded by the radiant picture
she made in her splendid bridal robes. It was desolating to see her
represent such a rôle, such agony, such despair; and yet his feet were
reluctant to carry him away.

He was like a famishing man, who has been politely turned from the
glittering, savory dining-room into the street--only his hunger,
immaterial as light, was a thousand times keener than that of the one
who lacks only bread and meat. He demanded her face, her voice, as one
calls for sunlight, for air. He knew that this day, this night, marked a
new era in his life. Old things were passed away--new things, sweet,
incredible things, were now happening.

Nothing like this unrest and deep-seated desire had ever come into his
life, and the realization troubled him as a dangerous weakness. It
enslaved him, and he resented it. He secured a new view on his play,
also, with its accusing defiance of dramatic law and custom. In this
moment of clear vision he was permitted a prevision of Helen struggling
with the rebellious critics. Now that he had twice taken her hand he was
no longer so indifferent to the warfare of the critics, though he knew
they could not harm one so powerful as she.

In the end of his tumult he wrote her a letter, wherein he began by
begging her pardon for seeming to interfere in the slightest degree with
her work in the world. His letter continued:

     "I have back of me the conscience of my Scotch forebears, and
     though my training in college and in my office has covered my
     conscience with a layer of office dust it is still there. Of course
     (and obviously) you are not touched by the words and deeds of the
     women you represent, but I somehow feel that it is a desecration of
     your face and voice to put them to such uses. That is the reason I
     dreaded to go back and see you to-night. If you were seeking praise
     of your own proper self, the sincerity of this compliment is
     unquestionable. I ought to say, 'I hope my words to-night did not
     disturb you,' but I will not, for I hope to see you speedily drop
     all such hideous characters as _The Baroness Telka_. I felt as an
     artist might upon seeing a glorious statue befouled with mire. I
     say this not because I wish you to do _Lillian_. In the light of
     last night's performance my own play is a gray autumn day with a
     touch of frost in the air. It is inconceivable that you should be
     vitally interested in it. I fear no play that I care to write will
     please a sufficient number of people to make its production worth
     your while. I release you from your promise. Believe me, I am
     shaken in my confidence to-night. Your audience seemed so
     heartless, so debased of taste. They applauded most loudly the
     things most revolting to me. Since I have come to know you I cannot
     afford to have you make a sacrifice of yourself to produce my play,
     much as I desire to see you in new characters."

As he dropped this letter into the box a storm-wave of his former
bitterness and self-accusation swept over him.

"That ends another attempt to get my play staged. Her manager will
unquestionably refuse to consider it."




III


Helen read Douglass's letter next morning while still in bed, and its
forthright assault made her shiver. She did not attempt to deceive
herself. She acknowledged the singular power of this young man to shake
her, to change her course of action. From the first she acknowledged
something almost terrifying in the appeal of his eyes, a power which he
seemed unconscious of. His words of condemnation, of solicitude,
troubled her as the praise of no other man in all her life had done. He
had spoken to her soul, making her triumph over the vast audience
loathsome--almost criminal.

He was handsome--a manly man--but so were dozens of others of her wide
acquaintance. His talent was undeniable, but he was still obscure,
undeveloped, a failure as an architect, unambitious as a critic, though
that was his best point. His articles in _The Blazon_ possessed unusual
insight and candor. Beyond this she knew as little of him as of any
other of the young newspaper men who sought her acquaintance, and yet he
had somehow changed her world for her in these two meetings.

She let the letter fall on her breast, and lay with her eyes fastened
upon a big rose in a pot on the window-sill--the gift of another
admirer. "I do know more of him. I know that he is strong, sincere. He
does not flatter me--not even to win me to his play. He does not hasten
to send me flowers, and I like him for that. If I were to take his point
of view, all my rôles and half my triumphs would drop from me. But _is_
there not a subtle letting-down, a disintegration? May he not be right,
after all?"

She went over once more the talk of the few moments they had spent
together, finding each time in all his words less to criticise and more
to admire. "He does not conceal his hate," she said; and she might have
added, "Or his love," for she was aware of her dominion, and divined,
though she did not whisper it even to herself, that his change of
attitude with regard to her rôles came from his change of feeling
towards her. "He has a great career. I will not allow him to spoil his
own future," she decided, at length, in her own large-minded way. And
there were sweet, girlish lines about her mouth when her mother came in
to inquire how she felt.

"Very much like work, mamma, and I'm going to catch up on my
correspondence. Mr. Douglass is coming to take breakfast with us, to
talk about his play. I wish you would see that there is something that a
big man can eat."

       *       *       *       *       *

The note she sent in answer to his was like herself--firm, assured, but
gentle:

     "MR. DOUGLASS,--'What came you out for to see--a reed shaken with
     the wind?' I know my own mind, and I am not afraid of my future. I
     should be sorry to fail, of course, especially on your account, but
     a _succès d'estime_ is certain in your case, and my own personal
     following is large enough--joined with the actual lovers of good
     drama--to make the play pay for itself. Please come to my
     combination breakfast and luncheon, as you promised, and we can
     arrange dates and other details of the production, for my mind is
     made up. I am going to do your play, come what will. I thank you
     for having started all my dormant resolutions into life again. I
     shall expect you at twelve-thirty."

Having despatched this note by special messenger, she serenely set to
work on less important matters, and met him in modish street dress--trim
and neat and very far from the meretricious glitter of _The Baroness_.
He was glad of this; he would have disliked her in négligée, no matter
how "artistic."

Her greeting was frank and unstudied. "I'm glad you've come. There are
oceans of things to talk over."

"There was nothing else for me to do but come," he replied, with a
meaning light in his eyes. "Your letter was a command."

"I'm sorry it takes a command to bring you to breakfast with us. True,
this is not the breakfast to be given in your honor--that will come
later."

"It would be safer to have it before the play is produced," he replied,
grimly.

Helen turned to her brother. "Hugh, we have in Mr. Douglass a man not
sanguine of the success of his play. What does that argue?"

"A big hit!" he promptly replied.

The servants came and went deftly, and Douglass quite lost sight of the
fact that the breakfast-room was high in a tower-like hotel, for Helen's
long engagement in the city had enabled her to make herself exceedingly
comfortable even amid the hectic color and insistent gilt of the Hotel
Embric. The apartment not only received the sun, a royal privilege in
New York, but it was gay with flowers, both potted and in vases, and the
walls were decorated with drawings of her own choosing. Only the
furniture remained uncompromisingly of the hotel tone.

"I did intend to refurnish, but mother, who retains a little of her old
Scotch training, talked me out of it," Helen explained, in answer to a
query. "Is there anything more hopelessly 'handsome' and shining than
these chairs? There's so little to find fault with, and so little to
really admire."

"They're like a ready-made suit--unobjectionable, but not fit."

"They have no soul. How could they have? They were made by machines for
undistinguished millions." She broke off this discussion. "I am eager
for a run through the park. Won't you go? Hugh is my engineer. Reckless
as he looks, I find him quite reliable as a tinker, and you know the
auto is still in the tinkery stage."

"I have a feeling that it is still in the dangerous stage," he said.
"But I will go." He said this in a tone of desperation which amused them
all very much.

It was impossible for him to remain glum in the midst of the good cheer
of that luxurious little breakfast with the promise of a ride in the
park in prospect. A few moments later a young girl, Miss Fanny Cummings,
came in with a young man who looked like an actor, but was, in fact,
Hugh's college-mate and "advance man" for Helen, and together they went
down to the auto-car.

There was a well-defined sense of luxury in being in Helen Merival's
party. The attendants in the hotel were so genuinely eager to serve her,
and the carefully considered comfort of everything she possessed was
very attractive to a man like George Douglass, son of a village doctor,
who had toiled from childhood to earn every dollar he spent. To ride in
such swift and shining state with any one would have had extraordinary
interest, and to sit beside Helen in the comparative privacy of the rear
seat put a boyish glow of romance into his heart. Her buoyant and sunny
spirit reacted on his moody and supersensitive nature till his face
shone with pleasure. He forgot his bitter letter of the night before,
and for the moment work and worry were driven from his world. He entered
upon a dreamland--the city of menace disappeared.

The avenue was gay with promenaders and thick with carriages. Other
autos met them with cordial clamor of gongs, and now and then some
driver more lawless than Hugh dashed past them in reckless race towards
the park. The playwright had never seen so many of New York's glittering
carriages, and the growing arrogance of its wealth took on a new aspect
from his newly acquired viewpoint. Here were rapidly centring the great
leaders of art, of music, of finance. Here the social climbers were
clustering, eager to be great in a city of greatness. Here the chief
ones in literature and the drama must come as to a market-place, and
with this thought came a mighty uplift. "Surely success is now mine," he
thought, exultantly, "for here I sit the favored dramatist of this
wondrous woman."

There was little connected conversation--only short volleys of jests as
they whizzed along the splendid drives of the park--but Douglass needed
little more than Helen's shining face to put him at peace with all the
world. Each moment increased their intimacy.

He told her of his stern old father, a country doctor in the West, of
the way in which his brother and sisters were scattered from North to
South, and how he came to set his face Eastward while all the others
went West.

"How handsome he is," thought Helen.

"How beautiful you are," his glances said in answer, and both grew
young beneath the touch of love.

When they were once more in the hotel Helen cried out:

"There! Isn't your brain washed clear of all doubts? Come, let's to work
at the play."

He looked down at her with eyes whose glow made her eyelids fall in
maidenly defence. "I am capable of anything you ask," he said, with
quiet power.

After a long and spirited discussion of the last act she said: "Well,
now, we'll put it in rehearsal as soon as you feel that it is ready. I
believe in doing a part while the spell of its newness is on me. I shall
put this on in place of the revival of _Rachel Endicott_." She rose on
the wave of her enthusiasm. "I feel the part taking hold of me. I will
make _Lillian's Duty_ the greatest success of my life, and the lion's
share of both honor and money shall be yours."

He left the hotel quite as exalted as he had been previously depressed.
The pleasure of sitting by her side for four blessed hours enriched him
to the point of being sorry for all the rest of the world. The Prince of
Wales had been denied an introduction to her, he had read; therefore the
Prince was poor.




IV


The reading of the play took place on the Monday morning following, and
was an exceedingly formal and dignified function. The principal players
came prepared to be politely interested, while some of the lesser minds
were actually curious to taste the quality of the play as a piece of
writing.

As there was no greenroom in the Westervelt, the reading took place on
the open stage, which was bleak and draughty. The company sat in a
funereal semicircle, with the author, the star, and the manager in a
short line facing them. All the men retained their overcoats, for the
morning was miserably raw, and at Helen's positive command kept their
heads covered; and the supernumerary women sat shivering in their
jackets. Helen was regal in a splendid cloak of sable, otherwise there
was little of the successful actress in her dress. At her suggestion a
box-scene was set around them to keep off at least a part of the
draught, and under these depressing conditions the reading proceeded.

Douglass was visibly disheartened by the surroundings, but set manfully
to work, and soon controlled the attention of all the players except
two, who made it a boast that they had never read a play or listened to
one. "I am interested only in me lines, me boy," said one of them.

"And your acting shows it," replied Douglass, with quiet sarcasm, and
proceeded to the second act.

"You read that with greater power here than to me," said Helen. "I wish
we could give it the same unity and sweep of expression as we act it."
She addressed the company in her calm, clear voice: "I hope you will all
observe carefully Mr. Douglass's reading. He is giving us most valuable
advice in every inflection."

Her attitude towards her company was admirable in its simplicity and
reserve. It was plain that she respected their personalities and
expected the same high courtesy from them. Some of the men were of the
kind who say "My deah" to every woman, and "My deah boy" to the most
casual acquaintance--vain, egotistical, wordy, and pompous; but one
glance from Helen was sufficient to check an over-familiar hand in
mid-air. The boldest of them did not clap her on the shoulder but once.

The reading passed to a rather enthusiastic finish, and Douglass then
said: "I have read the play to you carefully, because I believe--_I
know_--that an intelligent rendition of your individual parts is
impossible without a clear knowledge of the whole drama. My theories of
a play and its representation are these: As an author, I see every
detail of a scene as if it were a section of life. I know where all my
people are at each moment of time, and their positions must be
determined by the logic of the picture without any reference to those
who wish to hold the centre of the stage. In a certain sense you are
only different-colored pigments in my hands, to be laid on to form a
unified painting. You must first of all learn to subordinate yourselves
to the designs of the author. I know this sounds harsh--seems to reduce
you to a very low level of intelligence; but, as a matter of fact, the
most highly gifted of our actors to-day are those who are able to do
this very thing--to carry in their minds a conception of the unity of a
scene, never thrusting their personalities through it or out of it. I
mention these points because I intend to assist in the rehearsals, and I
don't want to be misunderstood."

Helen interposed a word: "I need not say that I consider this a very
powerful play--with that opinion you all agree, I am sure--but I want
to say further that Mr. Douglass has the right to demand of each of us
subordination to the inner design of his work. I am personally very glad
always to avail myself of the author's criticism and suggestion. I hope
you will all feel the same willingness to carry out Mr. Douglass's
scenes as he has written them. Mr. Saunders, will you please give out
the parts and call a rehearsal for to-morrow at ten o'clock sharp?"

At this point all rose. Saunders, a plain little man, highly pleased
with his authority, began to bustle about, bellowing boisterously: "Here
you are now--everybody come letter-perfect to-morrow. Sharp at ten. No
lagging."

The players, accustomed to his sounding assumption of command, paid no
attention other than to clutch their rolls of type-written manuscript.
Each withdrew into the street with an air of haste.

As Helen received her portion Saunders said: "Here, Miss Merival, is a
fat part--must be yours. Jee-rusalem the golden! I'd hate to tackle that
rôle."

Douglass was ready to collar the ass for his impudent tone, but Helen
seemed to consider it no more than the harmless howl of a chair sliding
across the floor. She was inured to the old-time "assistant
stage-manager."

Turning to Douglass, she said, "Do you realize, Mr. Author, that we are
now actually begun upon your play?"

"No, I do not. I confess it all seems a make-believe--a joke."

"You'll not think it a joke at the end of the week. It's terribly hard
work to put on a big piece like this. If I seem apathetic in my part I
beg you not to worry. I must save myself all I can. I never begin to act
at rehearsal till I have thought the business all out in my mind. But
come, you are to lunch with us in honor of the first rehearsal, and it
is late."

"It seems a deplorable thing that you must come every morning to this
gloomy and repellent place--"

"Ah! this is a part of our life the public knows nothing of. They all
come to it--the divine Sarah, Duse--none are exempt. The glamour of the
foot-lights at night does not warm the theatre at eleven of the
morning."

"I see it does not," he answered, lightly; but in reality he felt that
something sweet and something regal was passing out of his conception of
her. To see her even seated with these commonplace men and women
detracted even from her glory, subjected her to the same laws. It was a
relief to get out into the gay street--to her carriage, and to the hotel
where the attendants hovered about her as bees about their queen.

She was in high spirits all through the luncheon, and Douglass was
carried out of his dark gravity by her splendid vitality, her humor, and
her hopefulness.

"All you need is a hearing," she said. "And you shall have that. Oh, but
there is a wilderness of work before us! Can you design the scenes? I
like to do that. It's like playing with doll-houses. I'll show you how.
We'll leave the financial side of it to you, Hugh," she said, to her
brother. "Come, Mr. Playwright," and they set to work with paste and
card-board like a couple of children, and soon had models of all the
sets. They seemed childish things indeed, but Helen was mistress of even
the mechanical side of the stage, and these paste-pot sketches were of
the greatest value to the scene-painter and the carpenter.




V


These three weeks of rehearsal formed the happiest time Douglass had
ever known, for all things conspired to make each day brim with mingled
work and worship. First of all, and above all, he was permitted to meet
Helen each day, and for hours each day, without fear of gossip and
without seeking for an excuse.

Each morning, a little before ten, he left his room and went directly to
the theatre to meet the company and the manager. The star, prompt as a
clock, arrived soon after, and Douglass, beforehand, as a lover, was
always there to help her from her carriage and to lead the way through
the dark passage to the stage, where the pompous little Saunders was
forever marshalling his uneasy vassals in joyous exercise of
sovereignty.

Helen was happy as a child during these days, and glowing with new ideas
of "business" and stage-setting. "We will spare no work and no expense,"
she said, buoyantly, to Mr. Westervelt, her manager. "We have a drama
worthy of us. I want every one of Mr. Douglass's ideas carried out."

The manager did not know, as Douglass did, that some of the ideas were
her own, and so took a melancholy view of every innovation.

"You can't do that," he gloomily repeated. "The public won't stand for
new things. They want the old scenes rehashed. The public don't want to
think; it wants to laugh. This story is all right for a book, but won't
do for a play. I don't see why you quit a good thing for a risk like
this. It is foolish and will lose money," he added, as a climax.

"Croak, you old raven--you'll be embarrassed when we fill your
money-box," she replied, gayly. "You should have an ideal, Mr.
Westervelt."

"An ideal. What should I do with that?"

Like most men, Douglass knew nothing about gowns in their constituent
parts, but he had a specially keen eye for the fitting and beautiful in
a woman's toilet, and Helen was a constant delight to him because of the
distinction of her dresses. They were refined, yet not weakly
so--simple, yet always alluring. Under the influence of her optimism
(and also because he did not wish to have her apologize for him) he drew
on his slender bank-account for funds to provide himself with a
carefully tailored suit of clothes and a new hat.

"How well you are looking!" she said, in soft aside, as he met her one
morning soon after. "Your hat is very becoming."

"I am made all over new _inside_--so I hastened to typify the change
exteriorly. I am rejoiced if you like me in my 'glad rags,'" he
replied.

"You are really splendid," she answered, with admiring fervor. "Let us
hurry through to-day; I am tired and want a spin in the park."

"That is for you to say," he answered.

"You are never tired," she sighed. "I wish I had your endurance."

"It is the endurance of desperation. I am staking all I have on this
venture." Then, in low-toned intensity, he added: "It hurts me to have
you forced to go over and over these lines because of the stupidity of a
bunch of cheap little people. Why don't you let me read your part?"

"That would not be fair," she answered, quickly--"neither to them nor to
you. No, I am an actress, and this is a part of my life. We are none of
us exempt from the universal curse."

"Royleston is our curse. Please let me kick him out the stage-door--he
is an insufferable ass, and a bad actor besides."

"He is an ass, but he can act. No, it's too late to change him now.
Wait; be patient. He'll pull up and surprise you at the final
rehearsal."

At four o'clock they were spinning up Fifth Avenue, which resounded with
the hoof-strokes of stately horses, and glittered with the light of
varnished leather. The rehearsal was put far behind them. The day was
glorious November, and the air sparkling without being chill. A sudden
exaltation seized Helen. "It certainly is a beautiful world--don't you
think so?" she asked.

"I do now; I didn't two weeks ago," he replied, soberly.

"What has brought the change?"

"You have." He looked at her steadily.

She chose to be evasive. "I had a friend some years ago who was in the
deeps of despair because no one would publish her book. Once she had
secured the promise of a real publisher that he would take it she was
radiant. She thought the firm had been wondrously kind. They made thirty
thousand dollars from the sale of her book. I am selfish--don't you
think I'm not--I'm going to make fame and lots of money on your play."

"I hope you may, for am I not to share in all your gold and glory? I
have greater need of both than you. You already have all that mortal
could desire. I don't believe I've told you what I called you before I
met you--have I?"

"No; what was it?" Her eyes widened with interest.

"'The glittering woman.'"

She looked puzzled. "Why that?"

"Because of the glamour, the mystery, which surrounded your name."

"Even now I don't see."

He looked amused and cried out: "On my life, I believe you don't! Being
at the source of the light, you can't see it, of course. It's like
wearing a crown of electric lamps--others see you as a dazzling thing;
you are in the dark. It is my trade to use words to express my meaning,
but I confess my hesitation in trying to make you see yourself as I saw
you. You were like a baleful, purple star, something monstrous yet
beautiful. Your fame filled the world and fell into my garret chamber
like a lurid sunrise. With your coming, mysterious posters bloomed and
crimson letters blazed on street-walls. Praiseful paragraphs appeared in
the newspapers, gowns and hats (named after you) and belt-buckles and
shoes and cigarettes arranged themselves in the windows, each bearing
your name."

"What a load of tinsel for a poor little woman to carry around! How it
must have shocked you to find me so commonplace! None of us escape the
common fates. It is always a surprise to me to discover how simple the
men of great literary fame are. A friend of mine once spent a whole
evening with a great novelist without discovering who he was. She said
to him when she found him out, 'I couldn't believe that any one I could
meet could be great.' Really, I hope you will forgive me for not being
as superhuman as my posters. It was the mystery of the unknown. If you
knew all about me I would be entirely commonplace." She was more
concerned about his opinion of her than she expressed in words. Her
eagerness appeared in her voice.

"I found you infinitely more womanly than I had supposed, and simpler.
Even yet I don't see how you can carry this oppressive weight of
advertising glory and still be--what you are."

"You seem to hesitate to tell me what I am."

"I do," he gravely answered, and for a moment she sat in silence.

"There's one objection to your assisting at rehearsals," she said,
irrelevantly. "You will lose all the intoxication of seeing your play
freshly bodied forth. It will be a poor, old, ragged story for you at
the end of the three weeks."

"I've thought of that; but there are other compensations."

"You mean the pleasure of having the work go right--"

"Yes, partly that--partly the suggestion that comes from a daily study
of it."

But the greatest compensation of all--the joy in her daily
companionship--he did not have the courage to mention, and though she
divined other and deeper emotions she, too, was silent.




VI


In the wearisome grind of rehearsal, Douglass was deeply touched and
gratified by Helen's efforts to aid him. She was always willing to try
again, and remained self-contained even when the author flung down the
book and paced the stage in a breathless rage. "Ah, the stupidity of
these people!" he exclaimed, after one of these interruptions. "They are
impossible. They haven't the brains of a rabbit. Take Royleston; you'd
think he ought to know enough to read a simple line like that, but he
doesn't. He can't even imitate my way of reading it. They're all so
absorbed in their plans to make a hit--"

"Like their star," she answered, with a gleam in her eyes, "and the
author."

"But our aims are larger."

"But not more vital; their board and washing hang on their success."

He refused to smile. "They are geese. I hate to have you giving time and
labor to such numskulls. You should give your time to your own part."

"I'm a quick study. Please don't worry about me. Come, let's go on;
we'll forget all about it to-morrow," and with a light hand on his arm
she led him back to the front of the stage, and the rehearsal proceeded.

It was the hardest work he ever did, and he showed it. Some of the cast
had to be changed. Two dropped out--allured by a better wage--and all
the work on their characterizations had to be done over. Others were
always late or sick, and Royleston was generally thick-headed from
carousal at his club. Then there were innumerable details of printing
and scenery to be decided upon, and certain overzealous minor actors
came to him to ask about their wigs and their facial make-up.

In desperation over the small-fry he took the stage himself, helping
them in their groupings and exits, which kept him on his feet and keyed
to high nervous tension for hours at a time, so that each day his limbs
ached and his head swam at the close of the last act.

He marvelled at Helen's endurance and at her self-restraint. She was
always ready to interpose gently when hot shot began to fly, and could
generally bring about a laugh and a temporary truce by some pacific
word.

Hugh and Westervelt both came to her to say: "Tell Douglass to let up.
He expects too much of these people. He's got 'em rattled. Tell him to
go and slide down-hill somewhere."

"I can't do that," she answered. "It's his play--his first
play--and--he's right. He has an ideal, and it will do us all good to
live up to it."

To this Hugh replied, with bitterness, "You're too good to him. I wish
you weren't quite so--" He hesitated. "They're beginning to talk about
it."

"About what?" she asked, quickly.

"About his infatuation."

Her eyes grew steady and penetrating, but a slow, faint flush showed her
self-consciousness. "Who are talking?"

"Westervelt--the whole company." He knew his sister and wished he had
not spoken, but he added: "The fellows on the street have noticed it.
How could they help it when you walk with him and eat with him and ride
with him?"

"Well?" she asked, with defiant inflection. "What is to follow? Am I to
govern my life to suit Westervelt or the street? I admire and respect
Mr. Douglass very much. He has more than one side to him. I am sick of
the slang of the Rialto and the greenroom. I'm tired of cheap witticisms
and of gossip. With Mr. Douglass I can discuss calmly and rationally
many questions which trouble me. He helps me. To talk with him enables
me to take a deep breath and try again. He enables me to forget the
stage for a few hours."

Hugh remained firm. "But there's your own question--what's to be the end
of it? You can't do this without getting talked about."

She smiled, and the glow of her humor disarmed him. "Sufficient unto the
end is the evil thereof. I don't think you need to worry--"

Hugh was indeed greatly troubled. He began to dislike and suspect
Douglass. They had been antipathetic from the start, and no advance on
the author's part could bring the manager nearer. It was indeed true
that the young playwright was becoming a marked figure on the street,
and the paragrapher of _The Saucy Swells_ spoke of him not too obscurely
as the lucky winner of "our modern Helen," which was considered a smart
allusion. This paragraph was copied by the leading paper of his native
city, and his father wrote to know if it were really true that he was
about to marry a play-actress.

This gave a distinct shock to Douglass, for it made definite and very
moving the vague dreams which had possessed him in his hours of
reflection. His hands clinched, and while his heart beat fast and his
breath shortened he said: "Yes, I will win her if I can"; but he was not
elated. The success of his play was still in the future, and till he had
won his wreath he had no right to address her in any terms but those of
friendship.

In spite of the flood of advance notices and personal paragraphs, in
spite of envious gossip, he lived on quietly in his attic-room at the
Roanoke. He had few friends and no intimates in the city, and cared
little for the social opportunities which came to him. Confident of
success, he gave up his connection with _The Blazon_, whose editor
valued his special articles on the drama so much as to pay him
handsomely for them. The editor of this paper, Mr. Anderson, his most
intimate acquaintance, was of the Middle West, and from the first
strongly admired the robust thought of the young architect whose
"notions" concerning the American drama made him trouble among his
fellow-craftsmen.

"You're not an architect, you're a critic," he said to him early in
their accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I want
you to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have a
notion you'll startle my readers."

He did. His point of view, so modern, so uncompromising, so unshaded by
tradition, delighted Anderson, and thereafter he was able to employ the
young playwright regularly. These articles came to have a special value
to the thoughtful "artists" of the stage, and were at last made into a
little book, which sold several hundred copies, besides bringing him to
the notice of a few congenial cranks and come-outers who met in an old
tavern far down in the old city.

These articles--this assumption of the superior air of the critic--led
naturally to the determination to write a play to prove his theories,
and now that the play was written and the trial about to be made his
anxiety to win the public was very keen. He had a threefold reason for
toiling like mad--to prove his theories, to gain bread, and to win
Helen; and his concentration was really destructive. He could think of
nothing else. All his correspondence ceased. He read no more; he went no
more to his club. His only diversions were the rides and the lunches
which he took with Helen.

With her in the park he was a man transformed. His heaviness left him.
His tongue loosened, and together they rose above the toilsome level of
the rehearsal and abandoned themselves to the pure joy of being young.
Together they visited the exhibitions of painting and sculpture, and to
Helen these afternoons were a heavenly release from her own world.

It made no difference to her who objected to her friendship with
Douglass. After years of incredible solitude and seclusion and hard work
in the midst of multitudes of admirers and in the swift-beating heart of
cities, with every inducement to take pleasure, she had remained the
self-denying student of acting. Her summers had been spent in England or
France, where she saw no one socially and met only those who were
interested in her continued business success. Now she abandoned this
policy of reserve and permitted herself the joys of a young girl in
company with a handsome and honorable man, denying herself even to the
few.

She played badly during these three weeks, and Westervelt was both sad
and furious. Her joyous companionship with Douglass, her work on his
sane and wholesome drama, their discussions of what the stage should be
and do unfitted her for the factitious parts she was playing.

"I am going to drop all of these characters into the nearest abyss,"
she repeated each time with greater intensity. "I shall never play them
again after your drama is ready. My contract with Westervelt has really
expired so far as his exclusive control over me is concerned, and I will
not be coerced into a return to such work."

Her eyes were opened also to the effect of her characters on the
audiences that assembled night after night to hear her, and she began to
be troubled by the thousands of young girls who flocked to her matinées.
"Is it possible that what I call 'my art' is debasing to their bright
young souls?" she asked herself. "Is Mr. Douglass right? Am I
responsible?"

It was the depression of these moods which gave her corresponding
elation as she met her lover's clear, calm eyes of a morning, and walked
into the atmosphere of his drama, whose every line told for joy and
right living as well as for serious art.

Those were glorious days for her--the delicious surprise of her
surrender came back each morning. She had loved once, with the sweet
single-heartedness of a girl, shaken with sweet and yielding joy of a
boyish face and a slim and graceful figure. What he had said she could
not remember; what he was, no longer counted; but what that love had
been to her mattered a great deal, for when he passed out of her life
the glow of his worship remained in her heart, enabling her to keep a
jealous mastery of her art and to remain untouched by the admiration of
those who sought her favor in every city she visited. Douglass was
amazed to find how restricted her social circle was. Eagerly sought by
many of the great drawing-rooms of the city, she seldom went to even the
house of a friend.

"Her art is a jealous master," her intimates were accustomed to say,
implying that she had remained single in order that she might climb
higher on the shining ladder of fame, and in a sense this was true; but
she was not sordid in her ambitions--she was a child of nature. She
loved rocks, hills, trees, and clouds. And it was this elemental
simplicity of taste which made Douglass the conquering hero that he was.
She felt in him concrete, rugged strength and honesty of purpose, as
wide as the sky from the polished courtesy and the conventional evasions
of her urban admirers.

"No, I am not a bit in society," she confessed, in answer to some remark
from him. "I couldn't give up my time and strength to it if I wished,
and I don't wish. I'd rather have a few friends in for a quiet little
evening after the play than go to the swellest reception."

During all this glorious time no shadow of approaching failure crossed
their horizon. The weather might be cold and gray; their inner sky
remained unspotted of any vapor. If it rained, they lunched at the
hotel; if the day was clear they ran out into the country or through the
park in delightful comradeship, gay, yet thoughtful, full of brisk talk,
even argument, but not on the drama. She had said, "Once for all, I do
not intend to talk shop when I am out for pleasure," and he respected
her wishes. He had read widely though haphazardly, and his memory was
tenacious, and all he had, his whole mind, his best thought, was at her
command during those hours of recreation.

He began to see the city from the angle of the successful man. It no
longer menaced him; he even began to dream of dominating it by sheer
force of genius. When at her side he was invincible. Her buoyant nature
transformed him. Her faith, her joy in life was a steady flame; nothing
seemed to disturb her or make her afraid. And she attributed this
strength, this joyous calm, to his innate sense of power--and admired
him for it. That he drew from her, relied upon her, never entered her
conception of their relations to each other.

Nevertheless, as the play was nearing its initial production the critics
loomed larger. Together they ran over the list. "There is the man who
resembles Shakespeare?" she asked.

"He will be kindly."

"And the fat man with shifty gray eyes?"

"He will slate us, unless--"

"And the big man with the grizzled beard?"

"We'll furnish him a joke or two."

"And the man who comes in on crutches?"

"He'll slaughter us; he hates the modern."

"Then the man who looks like Lincoln?"

"He is on our side. But how about the man with the waxed mustache?"

"He'll praise me."

"And slit the playwright's ears. Well, I will not complain. What will
the 'Free Lance' do--the one who accepts bribes and cares for his
crippled daughter like an angel--what will he do?"

"Well, that depends. Do you know him?"

"I do not, and don't care to. That exhausts the list of the notables;
the rest are bright young fellows who are ready to welcome a good
thing. Some of them I know slightly, but I do not intend to do one
thing, aside from my work, to win their support."

"That is right, of course. Westervelt may take a different course." And
in this confident way they approached the day of trial.

Westervelt, watching with uneasy eyes the growing intimacy of his star
and her playwright, began to hint his displeasure to Hugh, and at last
openly to protest. "What does she mean?" he asked, explosively. "Does
she dream of marrying the man? That would be madness! Death! Tell her
so, my boy."

Hugh concealed his own anxiety. "Oh, don't worry, they're only good
comrades."

Westervelt grunted with infinite contempt. "Comrades! If he is not
making love to her I'm a Greek."

Hugh was much more uneasy than the manager, but he had more sense than
to rush in upon his famous sister with a demand. He made his complaint
to the gentle mother. "I wish she would drop this social business with
Douglass. He's a good fellow, but she oughtn't to encourage him in this
way. What's the sense of having him on the string every blessed
afternoon? Do you imagine she's in earnest? What does she mean? It would
be fatal to have her marry anybody now--it would ruin her with the
public. Besides, Douglass is only a poor grub of a journalist, and a
failure in his own line of business. Can't we do something?"

The mother stood in awe of her shining daughter and shook her head. "She
is old enough to know her own mind, Hugh. I darena speak to her.
Besides, I like Mr. Douglass."

"Yes, he won you by claiming Scotch blood. I don't like it. She is
completely absorbed in him. All I can hope is it won't last."

"If she loves him I canna interfere, and if she doesna there is no need
to interfere," replied Mrs. MacDavitt, with sententious wisdom.




VII


At the last moment, when face to face with the public, young Douglass
lost courage. The stake for which he played was so great! Like a man who
has put his last dollar upon the hazard, he was ready to snatch his gold
from the boards. The whole thing seemed weakly tenuous at
dress-rehearsal, and Royleston, half-drunk as usual, persistently
bungled his lines. The children in the second act squeaked like nervous
poll-parrots, and even Helen's sunny brow was darkened by a frown as her
leading man stumbled along to a dead halt again and again.

"Mr. Royleston," she said, with dismay and anger in her voice, "I beg of
you to remember that this is a most serious matter."

Her tone steadied the man, for he was a really brilliant and famous
actor beginning to break. He grew courtly. "Miss Merival, I assure you I
shall be all right to-night."

At this Douglass, tense and hot, shouted an angry word, and rushed into
the semi-darkness of the side aisle. There Helen found him when she came
off, his face black with anger and disgust. "It's all off," he said.
"That conceited fool will ruin us."

"Don't take things too seriously," she pleaded. "Royleston isn't half so
hopeless as he seems; he will come on to-night alert as a sparrow and
astonish you. We have worked very hard, and the whole company needs rest
now rather than more drill. To show your own worry would make them worse
than they are."

In the end he went back to his seat ashamed of his outburst of temper,
and the rehearsal came to an end almost triumphantly, due entirely to
the spirit and example of the star, who permitted herself to act for the
first time.

It was a marvellous experience to see her transformed, by the mere
putting aside of her cloak, from the sweet-faced, thoughtful girl to the
stern, accusing, dark, and tense woman of the play. Her voice took on
the quivering intonation of the seeress, and her spread hand seemed to
clutch at the hearts of her perfidious friends. At such moments Douglass
sat entranced, afraid to breathe for fear of breaking the spell, and
when she dropped her rôle and resumed her cloak he shivered with pain.

It hurt him, also, to have her say to Royleston: "Now, to-morrow night I
shall be here at the mirror when you enter; I will turn and walk towards
you till I reach this little stand. I will move around this to the
right," etc. It seemed to belittle her art, to render it mechanical, and
yet he admitted the necessity; for those who were to play with her were
entitled to know, within certain limits, where to find her in the
scene. He began to regret having had anything to do with the rehearsal.
It would have been so much more splendid to see the finished product of
her art with no vexing memory of the prosaic processes of its
upbuilding.

She seemed to divine his feelings, and explained: "Up to a certain point
every art is mechanical; the outlines of my acting are fixed, but within
those limits I am guided by impulse. Even if I dared to rely on the
inspiration of the moment my support cannot; they must know what I am
going to do. I sincerely wish now that you had left us to our struggle;
and yet we've had a good time, haven't we?"

"The best of my whole life," he answered, fervently.

"Now, let's rest. Let's go to the opera to-night, for to-morrow I cannot
see you--no, nor Monday, either. I shall remain in seclusion all day in
a darkened room. I must think my part all out alone. There in the dark
I shall sleep as much as possible. Helen's 'unconscious cerebration'
must now get in its work," she ended, laughingly.

They all dined together at her table, and sat together in the box, while
the vast harmonies of _Siegfried_ rose like sun-shot mist from beneath
them.

Helen was rapt, swept out of herself; and Douglass, with delicate
consideration, left her alone with her musings, whose depth and
intensity appeared in the lines of her sensitive face. He had begun to
understand the sources of her power--that is to say, her fluid and
instant imagination which permitted her to share in the joy of every
art. Under the spell of a great master she was able to divine the
passion which directed him. She understood the sense of power, the
supreme ease and dignity of Ternina, of De Reszke, just as she was able
to partake in the pride of the great athlete who wrestled upon the mat.
She touched life through her marvellous intuition at a hundred points.

He was not discouraged, therefore, when, as they were going out, she
said, with a quick clasp of her hand on his arm, "This matchless music
makes our venture seem very small." He understood her mood, and to a
lesser degree shared it.

"I don't want to talk," she said at the door of her carriage. "Good-bye
till Monday night. Courage!"




VIII


Deprivation of Helen's companionship even for a day produced in Douglass
such longing that his hours were misery, and, though Sunday was long and
lonely, Monday stretched to an intolerable length. He became greatly
disturbed, and could neither work nor sit still, so active was his
imagination. He tried to sleep, but could not, even though his nerves
were twitching for want of it; and at last, in desperate resolution, he
set himself the task of walking to Grant's tomb and back, in the hope
that physical weariness would benumb his restless brain. This good
result followed. He was in deep slumber when the bell-boy rapped at his
door and called, "Half-past six, sir."

He sprang up, moved by the thought, "In two hours Helen will be entering
upon that first great scene," and for the first time gave serious
consideration to the question of an audience. "I hope Westervelt has
neglected nothing. It would be shameful if Helen played to a single
empty seat. I will give tickets away on the sidewalk rather than have it
so. But, good Heavens, such a condition is impossible!"

After dressing with great care, he hastened directly to the theatre. It
was early, and as he stepped into the entrance he found only the
attendants, smiling, expectant, in their places. A doubt of success
filled him with sudden weakness, and he slipped out on the street again,
not caring to be recognized by any one at that hour. "They will laugh at
my boyish excitement," he said, shamefacedly.

Broadway, the chief thoroughfare of the pleasure-seekers of all
America, was just beginning to thicken with life. The cafés were sending
forth gayly dressed groups of diners jovially crowding into their
waiting carriages. Automobiles and cabs were rushing northward to meet
the theatre-goers of the up-town streets, while the humbler patrons of
the "family circles" and "galleries" of the play-houses lower down were
moving southward on foot, sharing for a few moments in the brilliancy
and wealth of the upper avenue. The surface cars, clamorous, irritable,
and timid, jammed at the crossings like sheep at a river-ford, while
overhead the electric trains thundered to and fro, crowded with other
citizens also theatre-bound. It seemed that the whole metropolis, alert
to the drama, had flung its health and wealth into one narrow stream,
and yet, "in all these thousands of careless citizens, who thinks of
_Lillian's Duty_?" thought the unnerved playwright.

"What do these laughing, insatiate amusement-seekers care about any
one's duty? They are out to enjoy life. They are the well-to-do, the
well-fed, the careless livers. Many of them are keen, relentless
business-men wearied by the day's toil. They are now seeking relaxation,
and not at all concerned with acquiring wisdom or grace. They are,
indeed, the very kind of men to whom my play sets the cold steel, and
their wives, of higher purpose, of gentler wills, are, nevertheless,
quite as incapable of steady and serious thought. Not one of them has
any interest in the problem I have set myself to delineate."

He was saved from utter rout by remembrance of Helen. He recalled the
Wondrous Woman as she had seemed to him of old, striving to regain his
former sense of her power, her irresistible fascination. He assured
himself that her indirect influence over the city had been proven to be
enormous, almost fantastic, though her worshippers knew the real woman
not at all, allured only by the aureoled actress. Yes, she would
triumph, even if the play failed, for they would see her at last in a
congenial rôle wherein her nobility, her intellectual power would be
given full and free expression. Her appeal to her worshippers would be
doubled.

When he returned to the theatre a throng of people filled the
entrance-way, and he was emboldened to pass in--even bowed to the
attendants and to Hugh, who stood in the lobby, in shining raiment, a
_boutonnière_ in his coat, his face radiating confidence and pride.

"We've got 'em coming," he announced, with glee. "We are all sold
out--not a seat left, and only the necessary 'paper' out. They're
curious to see her in a new rôle. You are made!"

"I hope so," replied the playwright, weakly. "Tuesday night tells the
story."

Hugh laughed. "Why, man, I believe you're scared. We're all right. I can
sniff victory in the air."

This confidence, so far from inspiriting Douglass, still further
depressed him, and he passed in and on up into the second gallery,
where he had privately purchased a reserved seat with intent to sense
for himself the feeling of the upper part of the house during the first
act. Keeping his muffler pinned close so that his evening dress escaped
notice, he found his way down to the railing quite secure from
recognition by any one at the peep-hole of the curtain or in the boxes,
and there took his seat to watch the late-comers ripple down the aisles.
He was experienced enough to know that "first-nighters" do not always
count and that they are sometimes false prophets, and yet he could not
suppress a growing exaltation as the beautiful auditorium filled with
men and women such as he had himself often called "representative," and,
best of all, many of the city's artists and literarians were present.

He knew also that the dramatic critics were assembling, jaded and worn
with ceaseless attendance on worthless dramas, a condition which should
have fitted them for the keener enjoyment of any fresh, original work,
but he did not deceive himself. He knew from their snarling onslaughts
on plays he had praised that they were not to be pleased with
anything--at least not all of them at the same time. That they were
friendly to Helen he knew, that they would praise her he was assured,
but that they would "slate" his play he was beginning to find
inevitable.

As the curtain rose on the first scene he felt the full force of Helen's
words, "You won't enjoy the performance at all." He began now to pay for
the joy he had taken in her companionship. He knew the weakness of every
actor, and suffered with them and for them. Royleston from the first
tortured him by mumbling his lines, palpably "faking" at times. "The
idiot, he'll fail to give his cues!" muttered Douglass. "He'll ruin the
play." The children scared him also, they were so important to Helen at
the close of the act.

At last the star came on--so quietly that the audience did not at the
moment recognize her, but when those nearest the stage started a
greeting to her it was taken up all over the shining house--a
magnificent "hand."

Never before had Helen Merival appeared before an audience in character
so near her own good self, and the lovely simplicity of her manner came
as a revelation to those of her admirers who had longed to know more of
her private character. For several minutes they applauded while she
smilingly bowed, but at last the clapping died away, and each auditor
shrugged himself into an easy posture in his chair, waiting for the
great star to take up her rôle.

This she did with a security and repose of manner which thrilled
Douglass in spite of his intimate knowledge of her work at rehearsals.
The subtlety of her reading, the quiet, controlled precision and grace
of her action restored his confidence in her power. "She has them in her
hand. She cannot fail."

The act closed triumphantly, though some among the audience began to
wince. Helen came before the curtain several times, and each time with
eyes that searched for some one, and Douglass knew with definiteness
that she sought her playwright in order that she might share her triumph
with him. But a perverse mood had seized him. "This is all very well,
but wait till the men realize the message of the play," he muttered, and
lifted the programme to hide his face.

A buzz of excited comment rose from below, and though he could not hear
a word beyond the water-boy's call he was able to imagine the comment.

"Why, how lovely! I didn't suppose Helen Merival could do a sweet,
domestic thing like that."

"Isn't her gown exquisite? I've heard she is a dainty dresser in real
life, quite removed from the kind of thing she wears on the stage. I
wish she were not so seclusive. I'd like to know her."

"But do you suppose this is her real self?"

"It must be. She doesn't seem to be acting at all. I must say I prefer
her in her usual parts."

"She's wonderful as _The Baroness_."

"I never let my daughters see her in those dreadful characters--they are
too bold; but they are both here to-night. I understood it was to be
quite a departure."

Douglass, knowing well that Hugh and the manager were searching for him,
sat with face bent low until the lights were again lowered. "Now comes
the first assault. Now we will see them wince."

The second act was distinctly less pleasing to those who sat below him
in the orchestra and dress circle. Applause was still hearty, but it
lacked the fervor of the first act. He could see men turn and whisper to
one another now and then. They laughed, of course, and remarked each to
the other, "Brown, you're getting a 'slat' to-night."

"They are cheering the actress, not the play," observed the author.

The gallery, less sensitive or more genuinely patriotic, thundered on,
applauding the lines as well as the growing power of Helen's
impersonation. Royleston was at last beginning to play, the fumes of his
heavy dinner having cleared away. He began to grip his lines, and that
gave the star her first opportunity to forget his weakness and throw
herself into her part. All in all, only a very discriminating ear could
have detected a falling-off of favor in this act. The curtain was lifted
four times, and a few feeble cries for the author were heard, chiefly
from the first balcony.

Here was the point whereat his hoped-for triumph was to have begun, but
it did not. He was touched by an invisible hand which kept him to his
seat, though he knew that Helen was waiting for him to receive,
hand-in-hand with her, the honors of the act.

Some foreknowledge of defeat clarified the young author's vision, and a
bitter melancholy crept over him as the third act unrolled. "They will
go out," he said to himself, "and they will not come back for the last
act. The play is doomed to disaster." And a flame of hatred rose in his
heart against the audience. "They are brutes!" he muttered.

The scenes were deeply exciting, the clash of interest upon interest was
swift, novel in sequence, and most dramatic in outcome, but the applause
was sharp and spasmodic, not long continued and hearty as before. Some
of the men who had clapped loudest at the opening now sat gnawing their
mustaches in sullen resentment.

Douglass divined their thought: "This is a confidence game. We came to
be amused, and this fellow instructs in sociology. We didn't cough up
two dollars to listen to a sermon; we came to be rested. There's trouble
enough in the street without displaying it in a place of amusement. The
fellow ought to be cut out."

Others ceased to cheer because both acting and play had mounted beyond
their understanding. Its grim humor, its pitiless character-drawing,
wearied them. Audience and play, speaking generally, were at
cross-purposes. A minority, it was true, caught every point, shouting
with great joy, and a few, who disapproved of the play, but were most
devoted admirers of Helen's art, joined half-heartedly in their
applause. But the act closed dismally, notwithstanding its tremendous
climax. A chill east wind had swept over the auditorium and a few
sensitive souls shivered. "What right has Helen Merival to do a thing
like this? What possesses her? It must be true that she is infatuated
with this young man and produces his dreadful plays to please him."

"They say she is carried away with him. He's very handsome, they tell
me. I wish they'd call him out."

A buzz of complaining talk on the part of those aggrieved filled in the
interlude. The few who believed in the drama were valiant in its
defence, but their arguments did not add to the good-will of those who
loved the actress but detested the play.

"This won't do," said the most authoritative critic, as a detachment
lined up at the bar of the neighboring saloon. "Merival must lop off
this young dramatist or he'll 'queer' her with her best friends. She
mustn't attempt to force this kind of thing down our throats."

"He won't last a week," said another.

Their finality of tone resembled that of emperors and sultans in
counsel.

Douglass, sitting humped and motionless among his gallery auditors, was
clearly aware that Helen was weary and agitated, yet he remained in his
seat, his brain surging with rebellious passion.

His perverse pride was now joined by shame, who seized him by the other
arm and held him prisoner. He felt like fleeing down the fire-escape.
The thought of running the gauntlet of the smirking attendants, the
possibility of meeting some of the exultant dramatic critics, most of
whom were there to cut him to pieces, revolted him. Their joyous grins
were harder to face than cannon, therefore he cowered in his place
during the long wait, his mind awhirl, his teeth set hard.

There were plenty of empty seats in the orchestra when the curtain
lifted on the last act. Several of the critics failed to return. The
playwright dared not look at his watch, for the scenes were dragging
interminably. His muscles ached with the sort of fatigue one feels when
riding in a slow train, and he detected himself pushing with his feet as
if to hurry the action. The galleries did not display an empty bench,
but he took small comfort in this, for he was not a believer in the
old-time theory of pleasing the gallery. "In this city the two-dollar
seats must be filled," he said. "Helen is ruined if she loses them."

He began to pity her and to blame himself. "What right had I to force my
ferocious theories upon her?" he asked himself, and at the moment it
seemed that he had completely destroyed her prestige. She was plainly
dispirited, and her auditors looked at one another in astonishment.
"Can this sad woman in gray, struggling with a cold audience and a group
of dismayed actors, be the brilliant and beautiful Helen Merival?"

That a part of this effect--most of it, in fact--lay in the rôle of
_Lillian_ they had not penetration enough to distinguish; they began to
doubt whether she had ever been the very great success and the powerful
woman they had supposed her to be.

The play did not really close, the audience began to dribble out before
the last half of the act began, and the curtain went down on the final
scene while scores of women were putting on their wraps. A loyal few
called Helen before the curtain, and her brave attempt to smile made
every friendly heart bleed.

Douglass, stiff and sore, as one who has been cudgelled, rose with the
crowd and made his way to one of the outside exits, eager to escape
recognition, to become one of the indistinguishable figures of the
street.

A couple of tousled-headed students going down the stairway before him
tossed him his first and only crumb of comfort. "It won't go, of
course," said one, in a tone of conviction, "but it's a great play all
the same."

"Right, old man," replied the other, with the decision of a master.
"It's too good for this town. What New York wants is a continuous
variety show."

Douglass knew keenly, deeply, that Helen needed him--was looking for
him--but the thought of those who would be near at their meeting made
his entrance of the stage door impossible. He walked aimlessly, drifting
with the current up the street, throbbing, tense, and hot with anger,
shame, and despair. At the moment all seemed lost--his play, his own
position, and Helen. Helen would surely drop him. The incredible had
happened--he had not merely defeated himself, he had brought battle and
pain and a stinging reproof to a splendid, triumphant woman. The
enormous egotism involved in this he did not at the moment apprehend. He
was like a wounded animal, content merely to escape.

He longed to reach her, to beg her pardon, to absolve her from any
promise, and yet he could not face Westervelt. He revolted at the
thought of meeting Royleston and Miss Carmichael and Hugh. "No; it is
impossible. I will wait for her at the hotel."

At this word he was filled with a new terror. "The clerks and the
bell-boys will have learned of my failure. I cannot face them to-night."
And he turned and fled as if confronted by serpents. "And yet I must
send a message. I must thank Helen and set her free. She must not go
through another such night for my sake."

He ended by dropping into another hotel to write her a passionate note,
which he sent by a messenger:

     "Forgive me for the part I have played in bringing this disaster
     upon you. I had no idea that anything I could say or do would so
     deeply injure you--you the Wondrous One. It was incredible--their
     disdain of you. I was a fool, a selfish boaster, to allow you to go
     into this thing. The possible loss of money we both discussed, but
     that any words of mine could injure you as an artist never came to
     me. Believe me, my dearest friend, I am astounded. I am crushed
     with the thought, and I dare not show my face among your friends. I
     feel like an assassin. I will call to-morrow--I can't do it
     to-night. I am bleeding at the heart because I have made you share
     the shame and failure which I feel to-night are always to be mine.
     I was born to be of the minority. Please don't give another thought
     to me or my play. Go your own way. Get back to the plays that
     please people. Be happy. You have the right to be happy, and I am a
     selfish, unthinking criminal whom you would better forget. Don't
     waste another dollar or another moment on my play--it is madness.
     I am overwhelmed with my debt to you, but I shall repay it some
     day."




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."




XI


Helen's warning was not as playful as it seemed to her lover, for
something in the glow of his eyes and something vibrant in the tones of
his voice had disturbed her profoundly. The fear of something which he
seemed perilously near saying filled her with unrest, bringing up
questions which had thus far been kept in the background of her scheme
of life.

"Some time I shall marry, I suppose," she had said to one of her
friends, "but not now; my art will not permit it. Wedlock to an
actress," she added, "is almost as significant as death. It may mean an
end of her playing--a death to her ambitions. When I decide to marry I
shall also decide to give up the stage."

"Oh, I don't know," replied the other. "There are plenty who do not. In
fact, Mary Anderson is the exception. When the conquering one comes
along you'll marry him and make him your leading man, the way so many
others do."

"When 'the conquering one' comes along I shall despise the stage,"
retorted Helen, with laughing eyes--"at least I'm told I will."

"Pish! You'd give a dozen husbands for the joy of facing a big
first-night audience. I tell Horace that if it comes to a matter of
choice for me he'll have to go. Gracious goodness! I could no more live
without the applause of the stage--"

"How about the children?"

"The children! Oh, that's different. The dear tots! Well, luckily,
they're not absolutely barred. It's hard to leave the darlings behind.
When I go on the road I miss their sweet little caresses; but I have to
earn their bread, you see, and what better career is open to me."

Helen grew grave also. "I don't like to think of myself as an _old_
actress. I want to have a fixed abiding-place when I am forty-five. Gray
hairs should shine in the light of a fireside."

"There's always peroxide," put in the other, and their little mood of
seriousness vanished.

It was, indeed, a very unusual situation for a young and charming
actress. The Hotel Embric stood just where three great streams of wealth
and power and fashion met and mingled. Its halls rustled with the spread
silks of pride and glittered with the jewels of spendthrift vanity, and
yet few knew that high in the building one of the most admired women of
the city lived in almost monastic seclusion. The few men who recognized
her in the elevator or in the hall bowed with deferential admiration.
She was never seen in the dining-rooms, and it was known that she
denied herself to all callers except a very few intimate friends.

This seclusion--this close adherence to her work--added to her mystery,
and her allurement in the eyes of her suitors increased as they sought
vainly for an introduction. It was reported that this way of life was
"all a matter of business, a cold, managerial proposition," a method of
advertising; but so far as Helen herself was implicated, it was a method
of protection.

She had an instinctive dislike, almost a fear, of those who sought her
acquaintance, and when Westervelt, with blundering tactlessness or
impudent design, brought round some friends, she froze them both with a
single glance.

Furthermore, by denying herself to one she was able to escape the other,
and thus save herself for her work; for though she had grown to hate the
plays through which she reached the public, she believed in the power
and the dignity of her art. It was a means of livelihood, it gratified
her vanity; but it was more than this. In a dim way she felt herself in
league with a mighty force, and the desire to mark an epoch in the
American drama came to her. This, too, was a form of egotism, but a high
form.

"I do not care to return to the old," she said. "There are plenty of
women to do _Beatrice_ and _Viola_ and _Lady Macbeth_. I am modern. I
believe in the modern and I believe in America. I don't care to start a
fad for Ibsen or Shaw. I would like to develop our own drama."

"You will have to eliminate the tired business-man and his fat wife and
their late dinners," said a cynical friend.

"All business-men are not tired and all wives are not fat. I believe
there is a public ready to pay their money to see good American drama. I
have found a man who can write--"

"Beware of that man," said the cynic, with a twofold meaning in his
tone. "'He is a dreamer; let him pass.'"

"I do not fear him," she replied, with a gay smile.




XII


Douglass now set to work on his second play with teeth clinched. "I will
win out in spite of them," he said. "They think I am beaten, but I am
just beginning to fight." As the days wore on his self-absorption became
more and more marked. All his morning hours were spent at his writing,
and when he came to Helen he was cold and listless, and talked of
nothing but _Enid_ and her troubles. Even as they rode in the park his
mind seemed forever revolving lines and scenes. In the midst of her
attempt to amuse him, to divert him, he returned to his theme. He
invited her judgments and immediately forgot to listen, so morbidly
self-centred was he.

He made no further changes in the book of _Lillian's Duty_, but put
aside Westervelt's request with a wave of his hand. "I leave all that to
Miss Merival," he said. "I can't give it any thought now."

From one point of view Helen could not but admire this power of
concentration, but when she perceived that her playwright's work had
filled his mind to the exclusion of herself she began to suffer. Her
pride resented his indifference, and she was saved from anger and
disgust only by the beauty of the writing he brought to her.

"The fury of the poet is on him. I must not complain," she thought, and
yet a certain regret darkened her face. "All that was so sweet and fine
has passed out of our intercourse," she sadly admitted to herself. "I am
no longer even the great actress to him. Once he worshipped me--I felt
it; now I am a commonplace friend. Is the fault in me? Am I one whom
familiarity lessens in value?"

She did not permit herself to think that this was a lasting change, that
he had forever passed beyond the lover, and that she would never again
fill his world with mystery and light and longing.

And yet this monstrous recession was the truth. In the stress of his
work the glamour had utterly died out of Douglass's conception of Helen,
just as the lurid light of her old-time advertising had faded from the
bill-boards and from the window displays of Broadway. As cold, black,
and gray instantaneous photographs had taken the place of the gorgeous,
jewel-bedecked, elaborate lithographs of the old plays, so now his
thought of her was without warmth.

Helen became aware, too, of an outside change. Her friends used this as
a further warning.

"You are becoming commonplace to the public," one said, with a touch of
bitterness. "Your admirers no longer wonder. Go back to the glitter and
the glory."

"No," she replied. "I will regain my place, and with my own unaided
character--and my lines," she added, with a return to her faith in
Douglass.

And yet her meetings with him were now a species of torture. Her
self-respect suffered with every glance of his eyes. He resembled a man
suffering from a fever. At times he talked with tiresome intensity about
some new situation, quoting his own characters, beating and hammering at
his scenes until Helen closed her eyes for very weariness. Only at wide
intervals did he return to some dim realization of his indebtedness to
her. One day he gratified her by saying, with a note of tenderness in
his voice: "You are keeping the old play on; don't do it. Throw it away;
it is a tract--a sermon." Then spoiled it all by bitterly adding, "Go
back to your old successes."

"You used to dislike me in such rôles," she answered, with pain and
reproach in face and voice.

"It will only be for a little while," he replied, with a swift return to
his enthusiasm. "In two weeks I'll have the new part ready for you." But
the sting of his advice remained long in the proud woman's heart.

He went no more to the theatre. "I can't bear to see you playing to
empty seats," he declared, in explanation, but in reality he had a
horror of the scene of his defeat.

He came to lunch less often, and when they went driving or visiting the
galleries all the old-time, joyous companionship was gone. Not
infrequently, as they stood before some picture or sat at a concert, he
would whisper, "I have it; the act will end with _Enid_ doing
so-and-so," and not infrequently he hurried away from her to catch some
fugitive illumination which he feared to lose. He came to her
reception-room only once of a Saturday afternoon, just before the play
closed.

"How is the house?" he asked, with indifference.

"Bad."

"Very bad?"

"Oh yes."

"I must work the harder," he replied, and sank into a sombre silence. He
never came inside again.

Helen was deeply wounded by this visit, and was sorely tempted to take
him at his word and end the production, but she did not. She could not,
so deep had her interest in him become. Loyal to him she must remain,
loyal to his work.

As his bank account grew perilously small, Douglass fell into deeps of
black despair, wherein all imaginative power left him. At such times the
lack of depth and significance in his work appalled him. "It is
hopelessly poor and weak; it does not deserve to succeed. I've a mind to
tear it in rags." But he resisted this spirit, partly restrained by some
hidden power traceable to the influence of Helen and partly by his
desire to retrieve himself in the estimation of the world, but mainly
because of some hidden force in his own brain, and set to work each time
filing and polishing with renewed care of word and phrase.

Slowly the second drama took on form and quality, developing a web of
purpose not unlike that involved in a strain of solemn music, and at the
last the author's attention was directed towards eliminating minute
inharmonies or to the insertion of cacophony with design to make the
_andante_ passages the more enthrallingly sweet. As the play neared
completion his absorption began to show results. He lost vigor, and
Helen's eyes took anxious note of his weariness. "You are growing thin
and white, Mr. Author," she said to him, with solicitude in her voice.
"You don't look like the rugged Western Scotchman you were when I found
you. Am I to be your vampire?"

"On the contrary, I am to destroy you, to judge from the money you are
losing on my wretched play. I begin to fear I can never repay you, not
even with a great success. I have days when I doubt my power to write a
successful drama."

"You work too hard. You must not ruin your health by undue haste. A week
or two will not make a killing difference with us. I don't mind playing
_Lillian_ another month, if you need the time. It is good discipline,
and, besides, I enjoy the part."

"That is because you are good and loyal to a poor writer," he answered,
with a break to humble appreciation of her bounty and her bravery. "Be
patient with me," he pleaded. "_Enid_ will recoup you for all you have
suffered. It will win back all your funds. I have made it as near pure
poetry as our harsh, definite life and our elliptical speech will
permit." And straightway his mind was filled with dreams of conquering,
even while he faced his love, so strangely are courtship and ambition
mingled in the heart of man.

At last he began to exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of
the lines spoken by _Enid_. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm
are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the
conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in
them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the
heroes who tunnel mountains and bridge cataracts. When she looks from
her slender, white hands to their gross and powerful bodies she shudders
with a sort of fearsome admiration."

"Can all that appear in the lines?"

"Yes. In the lines and in the acting; it _must_ appear in your acting,"
he added, with a note of admonition.

Her face clouded with pain. "He begins to doubt my ability to delineate
his work," she thought, and turned away in order that he might not know
how deeply he had wounded her.




XIII


Helen's pride contended unceasingly with her love during the weeks of
her lover's alienation; for, with all her sweet dispraise of herself,
she was very proud of her place in the world, and it was not easy to bow
her head to neglect. Sometimes when he forgot to answer her or rushed
away to his room with a hasty good-bye, she raged with a perfectly
justifiable anger. "You are selfish and brutal," she cried out after him
on one occasion. "You think only of yourself. You are vain, egotistical.
All that I have done is forgotten the moment you are stung by
criticism," and she tried to put him aside. "What do his personal
traits matter to me?" she said, as if in answer to her own charge. "He
is my dramatist, not my husband."

But when he came back to her, an absent-minded smile upon his handsome
lips, holding in his hands some pages of exquisite dialogue, she humbled
herself before him. "After all, what am I beside him? He is a poet, a
creative mind, while I am only a mimic," and straightway she began to
make excuses for him. "Have I not always had the same selfish, desperate
concentration? Am I always a sweet and lovely companion? Certainly the
artistic temperament is not a strange thing to me."

Nevertheless, she suffered. It was hard to be the one optimist in the
midst of so many pessimists. The nightly performance to an empty house
wore on her most distressingly, and no wonder. She, who had never
hitherto given a moment's troubled thought to such matters, now sat in
her dressing-room listening to the infrequent, hollow clang of the
falling chair seats, attempting thus to estimate the audience straggling
sparsely, desolately in. To re-enter the stage after an exit was like an
icy shower-bath. Each night she hoped to find the receipts larger, and
indeed they did from time to time advance suddenly, only to drop back to
desolating driblets the following night. These gains were due to the
work of the loyal Hugh as advertising agent, or to some desperate
discount sale to a club on the part of Westervelt, who haunted the front
of the house, a pale and flabby wraith of himself, racking his brain,
swearing strange, German oaths, and perpetually conjuring up new
advertising devices. His suffering approached the tragic.

His theatre, which had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, was
now cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony,
wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-hearted
hand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a man
wore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative.
Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious,
a brazen clatter raised to reinforce the courage of the ushers, who
flitted about like uneasy spirits. There were no carriages in waiting,
and the audience returned to the street in silence like funeral guests
from a church.

Hugh remained bravely at his post in front. Each night after a careful
toilet he took his stand in the lobby watching with calculating eye and
impassive face the stream of people rushing by his door. "If we could
only catch one in a hundred?" he said to Westervelt. "I never expected
to see Helen Merival left like this. I didn't think it possible. I
thought she could make any piece go. To play to fifty dollars was out of
my reckoning. It is slaughter."

Once his disgust topped all restraint, and he burst forth to Helen:
"Look at this man Douglass. He bamboozles us into producing his play,
then runs off and leaves us to sink or swim. He won't even change the
lines--says he's working on a new one that will make us all 'barrels of
money.' That's the way of these dramatists--always full of some new
pipe-dream. Meanwhile we're going into the hole every night. I can't
stand it. We were making all kinds of money with _The Baroness_. Come,
let's go back to it!" His voice filled with love, for she was his ideal.
"Sis, I hate to see you doing this. It cuts me to the heart. Why, some
of these newspaper shads actually pretend to pity you--you, the greatest
romantic actress in America! This man Douglass has got you hypnotized.
Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you.
Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time,
Nellie--now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'll
fire him and his misbegotten plays to-night."

To this Helen made simple reply. "No, Hugh; I intend to stand to my
promise. We will keep _Lillian_ on till the new play is ready. It would
be unfair to Mr. Douglass--"

"But he has lost all interest in it himself. He never shows up in front,
never makes a suggestion."

"He is saving all his energy for the new play."

Hugh's lips twisted in scorn. "The new play! Yes, he's filled with a lot
of pale-blue moonshine now. He's got another 'idea.' That's the trouble
with these literary chaps, they're so swelled by their own notions they
can't write what the common audience wants. His new play will be a worse
'frost' than this. You'll ruin us all if you don't drop him. We stand to
lose forty thousand dollars on _Lillian_ already."

"Nevertheless, I shall give the new play a production," she replied, and
Hugh turned away in speechless dismay and disgust.

The papers were filled with stinging allusions to her failure. A shrewd
friend from Boston met her with commiseration in her face. "It's a good
play and a fine part," she said, "but they don't want you in such work.
They like you when you look wicked."

"I know that, but I'm tired of playing the wanton adventuress for such
people. I want to appeal to a more thoughtful public for the rest of my
stage career."

"Why not organize a church like Mrs. Allinger?" sneered another less
friendly critic. "The stage is no place for sermons."

"You are horribly unjust. _Lillian's Duty_ is a powerful acting drama,
and has its audience if I could reach it. Perhaps I'm not the one to do
Mr. Douglass's work, after all," she added, humbly.

Deep in her heart Helen MacDavitt the woman was hungry for some one to
tell her that he loved her. She longed to put her head down on a strong
man's breast to weep. "If Douglass would only open his arms to me I
would go to him. I would not care what the world says."

She wished to see him reinstate himself not merely with the public but
in her own estimate of him. As she believed that by means of his pen he
would conquer, she comprehended that his present condition was fevered,
unnatural, and she hoped--she believed--it to be temporary. "Success
will bring back the old, brave, sanguine, self-contained Douglass whose
forthright power and self-confidence won my admiration," she said, and
with this secret motive to sustain her she went to her nightly
delineation of _Lillian_.

She had lived long without love, and her heart now sought for it with an
intensity which made her art of the highest account only as served the
man she loved. Praise and publicity were alike of no value unless they
brought success and happiness to him whose eyes called her with growing
power.




XIV


At last the new play was finished and the author brought it and laid it
in the hands of the actress as if it were a new-born child, and her
heart leaped with joy. He was no longer the stern and self-absorbed
writer. His voice was tender as he said, "I give this to you in the hope
that it may regain for you what you have lost."

The tears sprang to Helen's eyes, and a word of love rose to her lips.
"It is very beautiful, and we will triumph in it."

He seemed about to speak some revealing, sealing word, but the presence
of the mother restrained him. Helen, recognizing the returning tide of
his love, to which she related no self-seeking, was radiant.

"Come, we will put it in rehearsal at once," she said. "I know you are
as eager to have it staged as I. I will not read it. I will wait till
you read it for the company to-morrow morning."

"I do not go to that ordeal with the same joy as before," he admitted.

The company met him with far less of interest in this reading of the
second play, and his own manner was distinctly less confident. Hugh and
Westervelt maintained silence, but their opposition was as palpable as a
cold wind. Royleston's cynical face expressed an open contempt. The
lesser people were anxious to know the kind of characters they were to
play, and a few were sympathetically eager to hear the play itself.

He read the manuscript with some assurance of manner, but made no
suggestion as to the stage business, contenting himself with producing
an effect on the minds of the principals; but as the girlish charm of
_Enid's_ character made itself felt, the women of the company began to
glow.

"Why, it's very beautiful!" they exclaimed.

Hugh, on the scent for another "problem," began to relax, and even
Westervelt grunted a few words of approval, qualified at once by the
whispered words, "Not a cent in it--not a cent." Royleston, between his
acts, regarded the air with dreamy gaze. "I don't see myself in that
part yet, but it's very good--very good."

The reading closed rather well, producing the desired effect of "happy
tears" on the faces of several of the feminine members of the cast, and
Helen again spoke of her pleasure in such work and asked them to "lend
themselves" to the lines. "This play is a kind of poem," she said, "and
makes a direct appeal to women, and yet I believe it will also win its
way to the hearts of the men."

As they rose Douglass returned the manuscript to Helen with a bow. "I
renounce all rights. Hereafter I am but a spectator."

"I think you are right in not attempting rehearsals. You are worn and
tired. Why don't you go away for a time? A sea voyage would do you
good."

"No, I must stay and face the music, as my father used to say. I do not
wish to seem to run away, and, besides, I may be able to offer a
suggestion now and then."

"Oh, I didn't mean to have you miss the first night. You could come back
for that. If you stay we will be glad of any suggestion at any
time--won't we, Hugh?"

Hugh refused to be brought into any marked agreement. "Of course, the
author's advice is valuable, but with a man like Olquest--"

"I don't want to see a single rehearsal," replied Douglass. "I want to
have the joy this time of seeing my characters on the opening night
fully embodied. If the success of the play depended upon my personal
supervision, the case would be different, but it doesn't. I trust you
and Olquest. I will keep away."

Again they went to lunch together, but the old-time elation was sadly
wanting. Hugh was silent and Douglass gloomy. Helen cut the luncheon for
a ride in the park, which did them good, for the wind was keen and
inspiriting and the landscape wintry white and blue and gold. She
succeeded in provoking her playwright to a smile now and then by some
audacious sally against the sombre silence of her cavaliers.

They halted for half an hour in the upper park while she called the
squirrels to her and fed them from her own hands--those wonderful hands
that had so often lured with jewels and threatened with steel. No one
seeing this refined, sweet woman in tasteful furs would have related her
with the _Gismonda_ and _Istar_, but Douglass thrilled with sudden
accession of confidence. "How beautiful she will be as _Enid_!" he
thought, as, with a squirrel on her shoulder, she turned with shining
face to softly call: "This is David. Isn't he a dear?"

She waited until the keen-eyed rascals had taken her last nut, then
slowly returned to the carriage side. "I like to win animals like that.
It thrills my heart to have them set their fearless little feet on my
arm."

Hugh uttered a warning. "You want to be careful how you handle them;
they bite like demons."

"Oh, now, don't spoil it!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure they know me and
trust me."

Douglass was moved to their defence, and strove during the remainder of
the ride to add to Helen's pleasure; and this effort on his part made
her eyes shine with joy--a joy almost pathetic in its intensity.

As they parted at the door of his hotel he said: "If you do not succeed
this time I will utterly despair of the public. I know how sweet you
will be as _Enid_. They must bow down before you as I do."

"I will give my best powers to this--be sure nothing will be neglected
at rehearsal."

"I know you will," he answered, feelingly.

She was better than her promise, laboring tirelessly in the effort to
embody through her company the poetry, the charm, which lay even in the
smaller rôles of the play. That one so big and brusque as Douglass
should be able to define so many and such fugitive feminine emotions was
a constant source of wonder and delight to her. The discovery gave her
trust and confidence in him, and to her admiration of his power was
added something which stole into her mind like music, causing foolish
dreams and moments of reckless exaltation wherein she asked herself
whether to be a great actress was not, after all, a thing of less profit
than to be a wife and mother.

She saw much less of him than she wished, for Hugh remained coldly
unresponsive in his presence, and threw over their meetings a restraint
which prevented the joyous companionship of their first
acquaintanceship.

More than this, Helen was conscious of being watched and commented upon,
not merely by Hugh and Westervelt, but by guests of the hotel and
representatives of the society press. Douglass, in order to shield her,
and also because his position in the world was less secure than ever,
returned to his self-absorbed, impersonal manner of speech. He took no
part in the rehearsals, except to rush in at the close with some changes
which he wished embodied at once, regardless of the vexation and
confusion resulting. His brain was still perilously active, and not only
cut and refined the dialogue, but made most radical modifications of the
"business."

Helen began to show the effects of the strain upon her; for she was not
merely carrying the burden of _Lillian's Duty_, and directing rehearsals
of the new piece--she was deeply involved in the greatest problem than
can come to a woman. She loved Douglass; but did she love him strongly
enough to warrant her in saying so--when he should ask her?

His present poverty she put aside as of no serious account. A man so
physically powerful, so mentally alert, was rich in possibilities. The
work which he had already done entitled him to rank above millionaires,
but that his very forcefulness, his strong will, his dominating idealism
would make him her master--would inevitably change her relation to the
world--had already changed it, in fact--she was not ready to
acknowledge.

Up to this time her love for the stage had been single-minded. No man
had touched her heart with sufficient fire to disturb her serenity, but
now she was not merely following where he led, she was questioning the
value and morality of her avocation.

"If I cannot play high rôles, if the public will not have me in work
like this I am now rehearsing, then I will retire to private life. I
will no longer be a plaything for the man-headed monster," she said one
day.

"You should have retired before sinking your good money in these
Douglass plays," Hugh bitterly rejoined. "It looks now as though we
might end in the police station."

"I have no fear of that, Hugh; I am perfectly certain that _Enid_ is to
regain all our losses."

"I wish I had your beautiful faith," he made answer, and walked away.

Westervelt said little to her during these days; he only looked, and his
doleful gestures, his lugubrious grimaces, were comic. He stood to lose
nothing, except possible profits for Helen. She was paying him full
rental, but he claimed that his house was being ruined. "It will get the
reputation of doing nothing but failures," he said to her once, in a
last despairing appeal, and to this she replied:

"Very well. If at the end of four weeks _Enid_ does not pull up to
paying business I will release you from your contract. I will free your
house of Helen Merival."

"No, no! I don't want that. I want you, but I do not want this crazy man
Douglass. You must not leave me!" His voice grew husky with appeal.
"Return to the old plays, sign a five-year contract, and I will make you
again rich."

"There will be time to consider that four weeks hence."

"Yes, but the season is passing."

"Courage, mein Herr!" she said, with a smile, and left him almost in
tears.




XV


As the opening night of _Enid's Choice_ drew near, Douglass suffered
greater anxiety but experienced far less of nervous excitement than
before. He was shaking rather than tense of limb, and did not find it
necessary to walk the streets to calm his physical excitement. He was
depressed by the knowledge that a second defeat would leave him not
merely discredited but practically penniless. Nevertheless, he did not
hide; on the contrary, he took a seat in one of the boxes.

The audience he at once perceived was of totally different character and
temper from that which greeted _Lillian_. It was quiet and moderate in
size, rather less than the capacity of the orchestra seats, for Helen
had asked that no "paper" be distributed. Very few were in the gallery,
and those who were had the quietly expectant air of students. Only three
of the boxes were occupied. The fashionables were entirely absent.

Plainly these people were in their seats out of interest in the play or
because of the known power of the actress. They were not flushed with
wine nor heavy with late dinners.

The critics were out again in force, and this gave the young author a
little satisfaction, for their presence was indisputable evidence of the
interest excited by the literary value of his work. "I have made a
gain," he said, grimly. "Such men do not go gunning for small deer." But
that they were after blood was shown by the sardonic grins with which
they greeted one another as they strolled in at the door or met in the
aisles. They expected another "killing," and were resolute to be
thorough.

From the friendly shelter of the curtain Douglass could study the house
without being seen, and a little glow of fire warmed his heart as he
recognized five or six of the best-known literary men of the city seated
well down towards the front, and the fifteen minutes' wait before the
orchestra leader took his seat was rendered less painful by his pride in
the really high character of his audience; but when the music blared
forth and the curtain began to rise, his blood chilled with a return of
the fear and doubt which had assailed him at the opening of _Lillian's
Duty_. "It is impossible that I should succeed," was his thought.

However, his high expectation of pleasure from the performance came
back, for he had resolutely kept away from even the dress rehearsal, and
the entire creative force of his lines was about to come to him. "In a
few moments my characters will step forth from the world of the
disembodied into the mellow glow of the foot-lights," he thought, and
the anticipated joy of welcoming them warmed his brain and the chill
clutch of fear fell away from his throat. The dignity and the glow, the
possibilities of the theatre as a temple of literature came to him with
almost humbling force.

He knew that Hugh and the actors had worked night and day towards this
event--not for him (he realized how little they cared for him), but for
Helen. She, dear girl, thought of everybody, and forgot herself in the
event. That Westervelt and Hugh had no confidence in the play, even
after dress rehearsal, and that they had ignored him as he came into the
theatre he knew, but he put these slights aside. Westervelt was busy
incessantly explaining to his intimates and to the critics that he no
longer shared in Merival's "grazy schemes. She guarantees me, orderwise
I would glose my theatre," he said, with wheezy reiteration.

The first scene opened brilliantly in the home of Calvin Wentworth, a
millionaire mine-owner. Into the garish and vulgarly ostentatious
reception-room a pale, sweet slip of a girl drifted, with big eyes
shining with joy of her home-coming. Some of the auditors again failed
to recognize the great actress, so wonderful was her transformation in
look and manner. The critics themselves, dazed for a moment, led in the
cheer which rose. This warmed the house to a genial glow, and the play
started with spirit.

Helen, deeply relieved to see Douglass in the box, advanced towards him,
and their eyes met for an instant in a lovers' greeting. Again that
subtle interchange of fire took place. She looked marvellously young and
light-hearted; it was hard to believe that she was worn with work and
weakened by anxiety. Her eyes were bright and her hands like lilies.

The act closed with a very novel piece of business and some very unusual
lines passing between _Enid_ and _Sidney_, her lover. Towards this
passage Douglass now leaned, uplifted by a sense of power, exulting in
Helen's discernment, which had enabled her to realize, almost perfectly,
his principal characters. He had not begun to perceive and suffer from
the shortcomings of her support; but when _Enid_ left the stage for a
few minutes, the fumbling of the subordinate actors stung and irritated
him. They had the wrong accent, they roared where they should have been
strong and quiet, and the man who played _Sidney_ stuttered and drawled,
utterly unlike the character of the play.

"Oh, the wooden ass!" groaned Douglass. "He'll ruin the piece." A
burning rage swept over him. So much depended on this performance, and
now--"I should have directed the rehearsals. I was a fool to neglect
them. Why does she keep the sot?" And part of his anger flowed out
towards the star.

Helen, returning, restored the illusion, so complete was her assumption
of the part, and the current set swiftly towards that unparalleled
ending, those deeply significant lines which had come to the author only
late in the week, but which formed, indeed, the very key to _Sidney's_
character--they were his chief enthusiasm in this act, suggesting, as
they did, so much. Tingling, aching with pleasurable suspense, the
author waited.

The curtain fell on a totally different effect--with _Sidney_ reading
utterly different lines!

For a moment the author sat stunned, unable to comprehend what had
happened. At last the revelation came. "They have failed to incorporate
the changes I made. They have gone back to the weak, trashy ending which
I discarded. They have ruined the scene utterly!" and, looking at two of
the chief critics, he caught them in the act of laughing evilly, even as
they applauded.

With face set in rage, he made his way back of the curtain towards
Helen's room. She met him at the door, her face shining with joy. "It's
going! It's going!" she cried out, gleefully.

His reply was like a blow in the face. "Why didn't you incorporate that
new ending of the act?" he asked, with bitter harshness.

Helen staggered, and her hands rose as if to shield herself from
violence. She stammered, "I--I--I--couldn't. You see, the lines came so
late. They would have thrown us all out. I will do so to-morrow," she
added.

"To-morrow!" he answered, through his set teeth. "Why to-morrow?
To-night is the time. Don't you see I'm staking my reputation on
to-night? To-night we win or lose. The house is full of critics. They
will write of what we do, not of what we are _going_ to do." He began to
pace up and down, trembling with disappointment and fury. He turned
suddenly. "How about the second act? Did you make those changes in
_Sidney's_ lines? I infer not," he added, with a sneer.

Helen spoke with difficulty, her bosom heaving, her eyes fixed in wonder
and pain on his face. "No. How could I? You brought them only yesterday
morning; they would have endangered the whole act." Then, as the
indignity, the injustice, the burning shame of his assault forced
themselves into her mind, she flamed out in reproach: "Why did you come
back here at all? Why didn't you stay away, as you did before? You are
cruel, heartless!" The tears dimmed her eyes. "You've ruined my whole
performance. You've broken my heart. Have you no soul--no sense of
honor? Go away! I hate you! I'll never speak to you again! I hate you!"
And she turned, leaving him dumb and staring, in partial realization of
his selfish, brutal demands.

Hugh approached him with lowering brows and clinched hands. "You've done
it now. You've broken her nerve, and she'll fail in her part. Haven't
you any sense? We pick you off the street and feed you and clothe
you--and do your miserable plays--and you rush in here and strike my
sister, Helen Merival, in the face. I ought to kick you into the
street!"

Douglass stood through this like a man whose brain is benumbed by the
crashing echoes of a thunderbolt, hardly aware of the fury of the
speaker, but this final threat cleared his mind and stung him into
reply.

"You are at liberty to try that," he answered, and an answering ferocity
shone in his eyes. "I gave you this play; it's good work, and, properly
done, would succeed. Ruin it if you want to. I am done with it and you."

"Thank God!" exclaimed the brother, as the playwright turned away. "Good
riddance to a costly acquaintance."

Hardly had the street door clapped behind the blinded author when Helen,
white and agitated, reappeared, breathlessly asking, "Where is he; has
he gone?"

"Yes; I am glad to say he has."

"Call him back--quick! Don't let him go away angry. I must see him
again! Go, bring him back!"

Hugh took her by the arm. "What do you intend to do--give him another
chance to insult you? He isn't worth another thought from you. Let him
go, and his plays with him."

The orchestra, roaring on its _finale_, ended with a crash. Hugh lifted
his hand in warning. "There goes the curtain, Helen. Go on. Don't let
him kill your performance. Go on!" And he took her by the arm.

The training as well as the spirit and quality of the actress reasserted
their dominion, and as she walked out upon the stage not even the
searching glare of the foot-lights could reveal the cold shadow which
lay about her heart.

When the curtain fell on the final "picture" she fairly collapsed,
refusing to take the curtain call which a goodly number of her auditors
insisted upon. "I'm too tired," she made answer to Hugh. "Too
heart-sick," she admitted to herself, for Douglass was gone with angry
lights in his eyes, bearing bitter and accusing words in his ears. The
temple of amusement was at the moment a place of sorrow, of despair.




XVI


Douglass knew before he had set foot upon the pavement that his life was
blasted, that his chance of success and Helen's love were gone,
forfeited by his own egotism, his insane selfishness; but it was only a
half-surrender; something very stark and unyielding rose within him,
preventing his return to ask forgiveness. The scorn, the contempt of
Hugh's words, and the lines of loathing appearing for the first time in
Helen's wonderfully sensitive face burned each moment deeper into his
soul. The sorrows of _Enid's_ world rose like pale clouds above the
immovable mountains of his shame and black despair.

He did not doubt for a moment but that this separation was final. "After
such a revelation of my character," he confessed, "she can do nothing
else but refuse to see me. I have only myself to blame. I was insane,"
and he groaned with his torment. "She is right. Hugh is right in
defending his household against me. My action was that of a fool--a
hideous, egotistic fool."

Seeking refuge in his room, he faced his future in nerveless dejection.
His little store of money was gone, and his profession, long abandoned,
seemed at the moment a broken staff--his place on the press in doubt.
What would his good friend say to him now when he asked for a chance to
earn his bread? He had flouted the critics, the dramatic departments of
all the papers. In his besotted self-confidence he had cast away all his
best friends, and with these reflections came the complete revelation of
Helen's kindness--and her glittering power. Back upon him swept a
realization of the paradise in which he had lived, in whose air his
egotism had expanded like a mushroom.

Leagued with her, enjoying her bounty and sharing in the power which her
success had brought her, he had imagined himself a great writer, a man
with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to
reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet--a crown. With her the
world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy
grovelling at the foot of the ladder of fame.

While he withered over his defeat the electric cars, gigantic insects of
the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered
by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy
murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar
announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he
said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments
of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens.
This thing I have gained--I am rapidly becoming infamous."

His weakness, his shuddering fear made his going forth a torture. Even
the bell-boy who brought his papers seemed to exult over his misery, but
by sternly sending him about an errand the worn playwright managed to
overawe and silence him, and then, with the city's leading papers before
him, he sat down to his bitter medicine. As he had put aside the
judgments of _Lillian's Duty_, with contemptuous gesture, so now he
searched out every line, humbly admitting the truth of every criticism,
instructed even by the lash of those who hated him.

The play had closed unexpectedly well, one paper admitted, but it could
never succeed. It was not dramatic of construction. Another admitted
that it was a novel and pretty entertainment, a kind of prose poem, a
fantasy of the present, but without wide appeal. Others called it a
moonshine monologue--that a girl at once so naïve and so powerful was
impossible. All united in praise of Helen, however, and, as though by
agreement, bewailed her desertion of the rôles in which she won great
renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back
to the twilight of the past, to the costume play. Get out of the garish
light of to-day. The present is suited only for a kind of crass comedy
or Bowery melodrama. Only the past, the foreign, affords setting for the
large play of human passion which Helen Merival's great art demands."

"You are cheating us," wrote another. "There are a thousand little
_ingénues_ who can play acceptably this goody-goody _Enid_, but the best
of them would be lost in the large folds of your cloak in _The Baroness
Telka_."

Only one wrote in almost unmeasured praise, and his words, so well
chosen, salved the smarting wounds of the dramatist. "Those who have
seen Miss Merival only as the melodrama queen or the adventuress in
jet-black evening dress have a surprise in store for them. Her _Enid_
is a dream of cold, chaste girlhood--a lily with heart of fire--in whose
tender, virginal eyes the lust and cruelty of the world arouse only pity
and wonder. So complete was Miss Merival's investiture of herself in
this part that no one recognized her as she stepped on the stage. For a
moment even her best friends sat silent." And yet this friend ended like
the rest in predicting defeat. "The play is away over the heads of any
audience likely to come to see it. The beringed and complacent wives of
New York and their wine-befuddled husbands will find little to entertain
them in this idyl of modern life. As for the author, George Douglass, we
have only this to say: He is twenty years ahead of his time. Let him go
on writing his best and be patient. By-and-by, when we have time to
think of other things than money, when our wives have ceased to struggle
for social success, when the reaction to a simpler and truer life
comes--and it is coming--then the quality of such a play as _Enid's
Choice_ will give its author the fame and the living he deserves."

The tears came to Douglass's eyes. "Good old Jim! He knows I need
comfort this morning. He's prejudiced in my favor--everybody will see
that; and yet there is truth in what he says. I will go to him and ask
for work, for I must get back to earning a weekly wage."

He went down and out into the street. The city seemed unusually
brilliant and uncaring. From every quarter of the suburbs floods of
people were streaming in to work or to shop, quite unknowing of any
one's misfortunes but their own, each intent on earning a living or
securing a bargain. "How can I appeal to these motes?" he asked himself.
"By what magic can I lift myself out of this press to earn a living--out
of this common drudgery?" He studied the faces in the coffee-house where
he sat. "How many of these citizens are capable of understanding for a
moment _Enid's Choice_? Is there any subject holding an interest common
to them and to me which would not in a sense be degrading in me to
dramatize for their pleasure?"

This was the question, and though his breakfast and a walk on the avenue
cleared his brain, it did not solve his problem. "They don't want my
ideas on architecture. My dramatic criticism interests but a few. My
plays are a proved failure. What is to be done?"

Mingled with these gloomy thoughts, constantly recurring like the dull,
far-off boom of a sombre bell, was the consciousness of his loss of
Helen. He did not think of returning to ask forgiveness. "I do not
deserve it," he repeated each time his heart prompted a message to her.
"She is well rid of me. I have been a source of loss, of trouble, and
vexation to her. She will be glad of my self-revelation." Nevertheless,
when he found her letter waiting for him in his box at the office he was
smitten with sudden weakness. "What would she say? She has every reason
to hate me, to cast me and my play to the winds. Has she done so? I
cannot blame her."

Safe in his room, he opened the letter, the most fateful that had ever
come to him in all his life. The very lines showed the agitation of the
writer:

     "MY DEAR AUTHOR,--Pardon me for my harshness last night, and come
     to see me at once. I was nervous and anxious, as you were. I should
     have made allowances for the strain you were under. Please forgive
     me. Come and lunch, as usual, and talk of the play. I believe in
     it, in spite of all. It must make its own public, but I believe it
     will do so. Come and let me hear you say you have forgotten my
     words of last night. I didn't really mean them; you must have known
     that."

His throat filled with tenderness and his head bowed in humility as he
read these good, sweet, womanly lines, and for the moment he was ready
to go to her and receive pardon kneeling. But as he thought of the wrong
he had done her, the misfortune he had brought upon her, a stubborn,
unaccountable resolution hardened his heart. "No, I will not go back
till I can go as her equal. I am broken and in disgrace now. I will not
burden her generosity further."

The thought of making his peace with Hugh, of meeting Westervelt's hard
stare, aided this resolution, and, sitting at his desk, he wrote a long
and passionate letter, wherein he delineated with unsparing hand his
miserable failure. He took a pride and a sort of morbid pleasure in
punishing himself, in denying himself any further joy in her company.

     "It is better for you and better for me that we do not meet
     again--at least till I have won the tolerance of your brother and
     manager and my own self-respect. The work I have done is honest
     work; I will not admit that it is wholly bad, but I cannot meet
     Hugh again till I can demand consideration. It was not so much the
     words he used as the tone. I was helpless in resenting it. That I
     am a beggar, a dangerous influence, I admit. I am appalled at the
     thought of what I have done to injure you. Cast me overboard. Not
     even your beauty, your great fame, can make my work vital to the
     public. I am too perverse, too individual. There is good in me, but
     it is evil to you. I no longer care what they say of me, but I feel
     every word derogatory of you as if it were a red-hot point of
     steel. I did not sleep last night; I spent the time in
     reconstructing myself. I confessed my grievous sins, and I long to
     do penance. This play is also a failure. I grew cold with hate of
     myself last night as I thought of the irreparable injury I had done
     to you. I here relinquish all claim to both pieces; they are yours
     to do with as you like. Take them, rewrite them, play them, or burn
     them, as you will.

     "You see, I am very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride
     underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear,
     self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. _Enid_ is beautiful,
     and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no
     right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a
     playwright robs me of every chance of meeting you on equal terms. I
     want to repay you, I _must_ repay you, for what you have done. If I
     could write now, it would be not to please myself, but to please
     you, to help you regain your dominion. I want to see you the
     radiant one again, speaking to throngs of happy people. If I could
     by any sacrifice of myself call back the homage of the critics and
     place you where I found you, the acknowledged queen of American
     actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or
     write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand--some
     recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign
     influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you
     playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to
     do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my _métier_. You
     are the one to grant pardon; I am the malefactor. I am taking
     myself out of your world. Forgive me and--forget me. Hugh was
     right. My very presence is a curse to you. Good-bye."




XVII


This letter came to Helen with her coffee, and the reading of it blotted
out the glory of the morning, filling her eyes with smarting tears. It
put a sudden ache into her heart, a fierce resentment. At the moment his
assumed humbleness, his self-derision, his confession of failure
irritated her.

"I don't want you to bend and bow," she thought, as if speaking to him.
"I'd rather you were fierce and hard, as you were last night." She read
on to the end, so deeply moved that she could scarcely see the lines.
Her resentment melted away and a pity, profound and almost maternal,
filled her heart. "Poor boy! What could Hugh have said to him! I will
know. It has been a bitter experience for him. And is this the end of
our good days?"

With this internal question a sense of vital loss took hold upon her.
For the first time in her life the future seemed desolate and her past
futile. Back upon her a throng of memories came rushing--memories of the
high and splendid moments they had spent together. First of all she
remembered him as the cold, stern, handsome stranger of that first
night--that night when she learned that his coldness was assumed, his
sternness a mask. She realized once again that at this first meeting he
had won her by his voice, by his hand-clasp, by the swiftness and fervor
of his speech; he had dominated her, swept her from her feet.

And now this was the end of all their plans, their dreams of conquest.
There could be no doubt of his meaning in this letter: he had cut
himself off from her, perversely, bitterly, in despair and deep
humiliation. She did not doubt his ability to keep his word. There was
something inexorable in him. She had felt it before--a sort of blind,
self-torturing obstinacy which would keep him to his vow though he bled
for every letter.

And yet she wrote again, patiently, sweetly, asking him to come to her.
"I don't know what Hugh said to you--no matter, forgive him. We were all
at high tension last night. I know you didn't intend to hurt me, and I
have put it all away. I will forget your reproach, but I cannot have you
go out of my life in this way. It is too cruel, too hopeless. Come to me
again, your good, strong, buoyant self, and let us plan for the future."

This message, so high, so divinely forgiving, came back to her unopened,
with a line from the clerk on the back--"Mr. Douglass left the city this
evening. No address."

This laconic message struck her like a blow. It was as if Douglass
himself had refused her outstretched hand. Her nerves, tense and
quivering, gave way. Her resentment flamed up again.

"Very well." She tore the note in small pieces, slowly, with painful
precision, as if by so doing she were tearing and blowing away the great
passion which had grown up in her heart. "I was mistaken in you. You are
unworthy of my confidence. After all, you are only a weak, egotistical
'genius'--morbid, selfish. Hugh is right. You have proved my evil
genius. You skulked the night of your first play. You alternately
ignored and made use of me--as you pleased--and after all I had done for
you you flouted me in the face of my company." She flung the fragments
of the note into the fire. "There are your words--all counting for
nothing."

And she rose and walked out to her brother and her manager, determined
that no sign of her suffering and despair should be written upon her
face.

The day dragged wearily forward, and when Westervelt came in with a
sorrowful tale of diminishing demand for seats she gave her consent to a
return to _Baroness Telka_ on the following Monday morning.

The manager was jubilant. "Now we will see a theatre once more. I tought
I vas running a church or a school. Now we will see carriages at the
door again and some dress-suits pefore the orchestra. Eh, Hugh?"

"I'm glad to see you come to your senses," said Hugh, ignoring
Westervelt. "That chap had us all--"

She stopped him. "Not a word of that. Mr. Douglass was right and his
plays are right, but the public is not yet risen to such work. I admire
his work just as much now as ever. I am only doubting the public. If
there is no sign of increasing interest on Saturday we will take _Enid_
off. That is all I will say now."

It seemed a pitiful, a monstrous thing. Hugh made no further protest,
but that his queenly sister, after walking untouched through swarms of
rich and talented suitors, should fall a victim to a poor and unknown
architect, who was a failure at his own business as well as a
playwright.

Mrs. MacDavitt, who stood quite in awe of her daughter, and who feared
the sudden, hot temper of her son, passed through some trying hours as
the days went by. Helen was plainly suffering, and the mother cautioned
the son to speak gently. "I fear she prized him highly--the young
Douglass," she said, "and, I confess, I had a kin' o' liking for the
lad. He was so keen and resolved."

"He was keen to 'do' us, mother, and when he found he couldn't he pulled
his freight. He could write, I'll admit that, but he wouldn't write what
people wanted to hear. He was too badly stuck on his own 'genius.'"

Helen went to her task at the theatre without heart, though she
pretended to a greater enthusiasm than ever. But each time she entered
upon the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came
to her. She enjoyed the words with which _Enid_ questions the life of
her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness,
simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new
sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play
each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as
a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like
his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she
played the remainder of the act with mind distraught. "Can it be
possible that he is still in the city?" she asked herself.




XVIII


It was, indeed, the playwright. Each night he left his boarding-place,
drawn by an impulse he could not resist, to walk slowly to and fro
opposite the theatre entrance, calculating with agonized eye the meagre
numbers of those who entered. At times he took his stand near the door
in a shadowy nook (with coat-collar rolled high about his ears), in
order to observe the passing stream, hoping, exulting, and suffering
alternately as groups from the crowd paused for a moment to study the
displayed photographs, only to pass on to other amusement with some
careless allusion to the fallen star.

This hurt him worst of all--that these motes, these cheap little boys
and girls, could now sneer at or pity Helen Merival. "I brought her to
this," he repeated, with morbid sense of power. "When she met me she was
queen of the city; now she is an object of pity."

This feeling of guilt, this egotism deepened each night as he watched
the city's pleasure-seekers pace past the door. It was of no avail to
say that the few who entered were of higher type than the many who
passed. "The profession which Helen serves cannot live on the wishes of
the few, the many must be pleased. To become exclusive in appeal is to
die of hunger. This is why the sordid, commonplace playwrights and the
business-like managers succeed while the idealists fail. There is an
iron law of limitation here."

"That is why my influence is destructive," he added, and was reassured
in the justice of his resolution to take himself out of Helen's life.
"Everything I stand for is inimical to her interests. To follow my path
is to eat dry crusts, to be without comfort. To amuse this great,
moiling crowd, to dance for them like a monkey, to pander to their base
passions, this means success, and so long as her acting does not smirch
her own soul what does it matter?" In such wise he sometimes argued in
his bitterness and wrath.

From the brilliant street, from the gay crowds rolling on in search of
witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed
one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium.
Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance,
tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, hearing with cold
and sinking heart the faint applause from the orchestra chairs which
used to roar with bravos and sparkle with the clapping of white and
jewelled hands.

There was something horrifying in this change. In his morbid and
overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set
his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his
mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving
fools, for these flabby business men and their capon-stuffed wives. I
will mix them a dramatic cocktail that will make them sit up. I will
create a dazzling rôle for Helen, one that will win back all her
old-time admirers. They shall come like a roaring tide, and she shall
recoup herself for every loss--in purse and prestige."

It was this night, when his face was white with suffering, that Helen
caught a glimpse of him hanging across the railing of the upper balcony.

He went no more to see her play. In his small, shabby room in a musty
house on one of the old side streets he set to work on his new plan. He
wrote now without fervor, without elation, plodding along hour after
hour, erasing, interlining, destroying, rewriting. He toiled terribly.
He permitted himself no fancy flights. He calculated now. "I must have a
young and beautiful duchess or countess," he mused, bitterly. "Our
democratic public loves to see nobility. She must peril her honor for a
lover--a wonderful fellow of the middle-class, not royal, but near it.
The princess must masquerade in a man's clothing for some high purpose.
There must be a lord high chamberlain or the like who discovers her on
this mission to save her lover, and who uses his discovery to demand her
hand in marriage for his son--"

In this cynical mood he worked, sustained only by the memory of "The
Glittering Woman" whose power and beauty had once dazzled him. Slowly
the new play took shape, and, try as he might, he could not keep out of
it a line now and then of real drama--of literature. Each act was
designed to end with a clarion call to the passions, and he was
perfectly certain that the curtain would rise again and again at the
close. At every point was glitter and the rush of heroics.

He lived sparely, seeing no one, going out only at night for a walk in
the square. To send to his brother or his father for money he would
not, not even to write his wonder-working drama. His letters home, while
brief, were studiedly confident of tone. The play-acting business and
all those connected with it stood very remote from the farming village
in which Dr. Donald Douglass lived, and when he read from his son's
letters references to his dramas his mind took but slight hold upon the
words. His replies were brief and to the point. "Go back to your
building and leave the play-actors to themselves. They're a poor, uneasy
lot at the best." To him an architect was a man who built houses and
barns, with a personal share in the physical labor, a wholesome, manly
business. The son understood his father's prejudices, and they formed a
barrier to his approach when in need.

On the morning of the fifteenth day _Alessandra_ went to the
type-writer, and the weary playwright lifted his head and took a full,
free breath. He was convinced beyond any question that this melodrama
would please. It had all the elements which he despised, therefore it
must succeed. His desire to see Helen now overpowered him. Worn with his
toil and exultant in his freedom, he went out into the street to see
what the world was doing.

_Enid's Choice_ was still running. A slight gain at the end of the first
week had enabled Helen to withhold her surrender to mammon. The second
week increased the attendance, but the loss on the two plays was now
very heavy, and Hugh and Westervelt and all her friends as well urged
her to give way to the imperious public; but some deep loyalty to
Douglass, some reason which she was not free to give, made her say, "No,
while there is the slightest hope I am going to keep on." To her mother
she said: "They are associated in my mind with something sweet and
fine--a man's aspiration. They taste good in my mouth after all these
years of rancid melodrama."

To herself she said: "If they succeed--if they win the public--my lover
will come back. He can then come as a conqueror." And the hope of this,
the almost certain happiness and honor which awaited them both led her
to devise new methods of letting the great non-theatre-going public know
that in George Douglass's _Enid_ they might be comforted--that it was,
indeed, a dramatic sign of promise. "We will give it a faithful trial
here, then go on the road. Life is less strenuous in the smaller
towns--they have time to think."

Hugh and Westervelt counselled against any form of advertising that
would seem to set the play in a class by itself, but Helen, made keen by
her suffering, bluntly replied: "You are both wrong, utterly wrong. Our
only possible chance of success lies in reaching that vast, sane,
thoughtful public which seldom or never goes to the theatre. This public
very properly holds a prejudice against the theatrical world, but it
will welcome a play which is high and poetic without being dull. This
public is so vast it makes the ordinary theatre-going public seem but a
handful. We must change all our methods of printing."

These ideas were sourly adopted in the third week, just when a note from
Douglass reached her by the hand of a special messenger. In this letter
he said: "I have completed another play. I have been grubbing night and
day with incessant struggle to put myself and all my ideals aside--to
give the public what it wants--to win your old admirers back, in order
that I might see you playing once more to crowded and brilliant houses.
It will succeed because it is diametrically opposed to all I have
expressed. It is my sacrifice. Will you accept it? Will you read my
play? Shall I send it to you?"

Something went out from this letter which hurt Helen deeply. First of
all there was a certain humble aloofness in his attitude which troubled
her, but more significant still was his confessed departure from his
ideals. Her brave and splendid lover had surrendered to the enemy--for
her sake. Her first impulse was to write refusing to accept his
sacrifice. But on second thought she craftily wrote: "I do not like to
think of you writing to please the public, which I have put aside, but
come and bring your play. I cannot believe that you have really written
down to a melodramatic audience. What I will do I cannot say till I have
seen your piece. Where have you kept yourself? Have you been West? Come
and tell me all about it."

To this self-contained note he replied by sending the drama. "No, I
cannot come till Hugh and you have read and accepted this play. I want
your manager to pass on _Alessandra_. You know what I mean. You are an
idealist like myself. You will condemn this drama, but Westervelt may
see in it a chance to restore the glitter to his theatre. Ask them both
to read it--without letting them know who wrote it. If they accept it,
then I can meet them again on equal terms. I long to see you; but I am
in disgrace and infinitely poorer than when I first met you."

Over this letter Helen pondered long. Her first impulse was to send the
play back without reading it, but her love suggested another subterfuge.
"I will do his will, and if Hugh and Westervelt find the play acceptable
I will share in his triumph. But I will not do the play except as a last
resort--for his sake. _Enid_ is more than holding its own. So long as it
does I will not permit him to lower his splendid powers."

To Hugh she carelessly said: "Here is another play--a melodrama, to
judge from the title. Look it over and see if there is anything in it."

As plays were constantly coming in to them, Hugh took this one quite as
a matter of routine, with expectation of being bored. He was a little
surprised next morning when she asked, "Did you look into that
manuscript?"

He answered: "No. I didn't get time."

She could hardly conceal her impatience. "I wish you'd go over it this
morning. From the title it's one of those middle-age Italian things that
costume well."

"Oh, is it?" he exclaimed. "Well, I'll get right at it." Her interest in
it more than the title moved him. It was a most hopeful sign of
weakening on her part.

He came to lunch full of enthusiasm. "Say, sis, that play is a corker.
There is a part in it that sees the _Baroness_ and goes her one better.
If the last act keeps up we've got a prize-winner. Who's Edwin Baxter,
anyhow?"

Helen quietly stirred her tea. "I never heard the name before. A new man
in the theatrical world, apparently."

"Well, he's all right. I'm going over the whole thing again. Have you
read it?"

"No, I thought best to let you and Westervelt decide this time. I merely
glanced at it."

"Well, it looks like the thing to pull us out of our hole."

That night Westervelt came behind the scenes with shining face. "I hope
you will consent to do this new piece; it is a cracker-jack." He grew
cautious. "It really is an immensely better piece of work than _The
Baroness_, and yet it has elements of popularity. I have read it
hastily. I shall study it to-night. If it looks as big to me to-morrow
morning as now I will return to the old arrangement with you--if you
wish."

"How is the house to-night?" she asked.

His face dropped. "No better than last night." He shrugged his
shoulders. "Oh, ten or fifteen dollars, maybe. We can play all winter to
two hundred dollars a night with this play. I do not understand such
audiences. Apparently each man sends just one to take his place. There
is no increase."

"Well, report to me to-morrow about _Alessandra_, then I will decide
upon the whole matter."

In spite of herself she shared in the glow which shone on the faces of
her supports, for the word had been passed to the leading members that
they were going back to the old drama. "They've found a new play--a
corking melodrama."

Royleston straightened. "What's the subject?"

"Middle-age Italian intrigue, so Hugh says--bully costumes--a wonder of
a part for Merival."

"Then we are on velvet again," said Royleston.

The influence of the news ran through the action on the stage. The
performance took on spirit and gusto. The audience immediately felt the
glow of the players' enthusiasm, and warmed to both actress and
playwright, and the curtain went down to the most vigorous applause of
the entire run. But Westervelt did not perceive this, so engrossed was
he in the new manuscript. Reading was prodigious labor for him--required
all his attention.

He was at the hotel early the next morning, impatient to see his star.
As he waited he figured on a little pad. His face was flushed as if with
drink. His eyes swam with tears of joy, and when Helen appeared he took
her hand in both his fat pads, crying out:

"My dear lady, we have found you a new play. It is to be a big
production. It will cost a barrel of money to put it on, but it is a
winner. Tell the writer to come on and talk terms."

Helen remained quite cool. "You go too fast, Herr Westervelt. I have not
read the piece. I may not like the title rôle."

The manager winced. "You will like it--you must like it. It is a
wonderful part. The costuming is magnificent--the scenes superb."

"Is there any text?"

Westervelt did not feel the sarcasm. "Excellent text. It is not
Sardou--of course not--but it is of his school, and very well done
indeed. The situations are not new, but they are powerfully worked out.
I am anxious to secure it. If not for you, for some one else."

"Very well. I will read the manuscript. If I like it I will send for the
author."

With this show of tepid interest on the part of his star Westervelt had
to be content. To Hugh he complained: "The influence of that crazy
Douglass is strong with her yet. I'm afraid she will turn down this
part."

Hugh was also alarmed by her indifference, and at frequent intervals
during the day asked how she was getting on with the reading.

To this query she each time replied: "Slowly. I'm giving it careful
thought."

She was, indeed, struggling with her tempted self. She was more deeply
curious to read the manuscript than any one else could possibly be, and
yet she feared to open the envelope which contained it. She did not wish
to be in any sense a party to her lover's surrender. She knew that he
must have written falsely and without conviction to have made such a
profound impression on Westervelt. The very fact that the theme was
Italian, and of the Middle Ages, was a proof of his abandonment of a
cardinal principle, for he had often told her how he hated all that sort
of thing. "What kind of a national drama would that be which dealt
entirely with French or Italian mediæval heroes?" he had once asked,
with vast scorn.

It would win back her former worshippers, she felt sure of that. The
theatre would fill again with men whose palates required the highly
seasoned, the far-fetched. The critics would rejoice in their victory,
and welcome Helen Merival to her rightful place with added fervor. The
bill-boards would glow again with magnificent posters of Helen Merival,
as _Alessandra_, stooping with wild eyes and streaming hair over her
slain paramour on the marble stairway, a dagger in her hand. People
would crowd again behind the scenes at the close of the play. The
magazines would add their chorus of praise.

And over against this stood the slim, poetic figure of _Enid_, so white
of soul, so simple, so elemental of appeal. A whole world lay between
the two parts. All that each stood for was diametrically opposed to the
other. One was modern as the telephone, true, sound, and revealing. The
other false from beginning to end, belonging to a world that never
existed, a brilliant, flashing pageant, a struggle of beasts in robes of
gold and velvet--assassins dancing in jewelled garters. Every scene,
every motion was worn with use on the stage, and yet her own romance,
her happiness, seemed to depend upon her capitulation as well as his.

"If they accept _Alessandra_ he will come back to me proudly--at least
with a sense of victory over his ignoble enemies. If I return it he will
know I am right, but will still be left so deeply in my debt that he
will never come to see me again." And with this thought she determined
upon a course of action which led at least to a meeting and to a
reconciliation between the author and the manager, and with the thought
of seeing him again her heart grew light.

When she came to the theatre at night Westervelt was waiting at the
door.

"Well?" he asked, anxiously. "What do you think of it?"

"I have sent for the author," she answered, coldly. "He will meet me
to-morrow at eleven. Come to the hotel and I will introduce him to you."

"Splendid! splendid!" exclaimed the manager. "You found it suited to
you! A great part, eh?"

"I like it better than _The Baroness_," she replied, and left him
broad-faced with joy.

"She is coming sensible again," he chuckled. "Now that that crank is out
of the way we shall see her as she was--triumphant."

Again the audience responded to every line she spoke, and as she played
something reassuring came up to her from the faces below. The house was
perceptibly less empty, but the comfort arose from something more
intangible than an increase of filled chairs. "I believe the tide has
turned," she thought, exultantly, but dared not say so to Hugh.

That night she sent a note to Douglass, and the words of her message
filled him with mingled feelings of exultation and bitterness:

"You have won! Westervelt and Hugh are crazy to meet the author of
_Alessandra_. They see a great success for you, for me, for all of us.
Westervelt is ready to pour out his money to stage the thing gorgeously.
Come to-morrow to meet them. Come proudly. You will find them both ready
to take your hand--eager to acknowledge that they have misjudged you. We
have both made a fight for good work and failed. No one can blame us if
we yield to necessity."

The thought of once more meeting her, of facing her managers with
confident gaze on equal terms, made Douglass tremble with excitement. He
dressed with care, attempting as best he could to put away all the dust
and odors of his miserable tenement, and went forth looking much like
the old-time, self-confident youth who faced down the clerk. His mind
ran over every word in Helen's note a dozen times, extracting each time
new and hidden meanings.

"If it is the great success they think it, my fortune is made." His
spirits began to overleap all bounds. "It will enable me to meet her as
an equal--not in worth," he acknowledged--"she is so much finer and
nobler than any man that ever lived--but I will at least be something
more than a tramp kennelled in a musty hole." His mind took another
flight. "I can go home with pride also. Oh, success is a sovereign
thing. Think of Hugh and Westervelt waiting to welcome me--and Helen!"

When he thought of her his confident air failed him, his face flushed,
his hands felt numb. She shone now like a far-off violet star. She had
recovered her aloofness, her allurement in his mind, and it was
difficult for him to realize that he had once known her intimately and
that he had treated her inconsiderately. "I must have been mad," he
exclaimed. It seemed months since he had looked into her face.

The clerk he dreaded to meet was off duty, and as the elevator boy knew
him he did not approach the desk, but went at once to Helen's
apartments.

She did not meet him at the door as he had foolishly expected. Delia,
the maid, greeted him with a smile, and led him back to the
reception-room and left him alone.

He heard Helen's voice, the rustle of her dress, and then she stood
before him. As he looked into her face and read love and pity in her
eyes he lost all fear, all doubt, and caught her hand in both of his,
unable to speak a word in his defence--unable even to tell her of his
gratitude and love.

She recovered herself first, and, drawing back, looked at him
searchingly. "You poor fellow, you've been working like mad. You are
ill!"

"No, I am not ill--only tired. I have had only one thought, one aim
since I saw you last, that was to write something to restore you to your
old place----"

"I do not want to be restored. Now listen, Lord Douglass. If I do
_Alessandra_, it is because we both need the money and the prestige; but
I do not despair, and you must not. Please let me manage this whole
affair; will you?"

"I am your slave."

"Don't say such things. I don't want you to be humble. I want you to be
as brave, as proud as before."

She said this in such a tone that he rose to it. His face reset in lines
of resolution. "I will not be humble with any other human being but you.
I worship you."

She stood for a moment looking at him fixedly, a smile of pride and
tender dream on her lips, then said, "You must not say such things to
me--not now." The bell rang. "Here comes your new-found admirers," she
exclaimed, gleefully. "Now, you sit here, a little in the shadow, and I
will bring them in."

Douglass heard Hugh ask, eagerly, "Is he here?"

"Yes, he is waiting for you." A moment later she re-entered, followed
closely by Westervelt. "Herr Westervelt, let me introduce Mr. George
Douglass, author of _Alessandra_, _Lillian's Duty_, and _Enid's
Choice_."

For an instant Westervelt's face was a confused, lumpy mass of amazement
and resentment; then he capitulated, quick to know on which side his
bread was buttered, and, flinging out a fat hand, he roared:

"Very good joke. Ha! ha! You have fooled me completely. Mr. Douglass, I
congratulate you. You have now given Helen Merival the best part she has
ever had. You found we were right, eh?"

Douglass remained a little stiff. "Yes, for the present we'll say you
are right; but the time is coming--"

Hugh came forward with less of enthusiasm, but his wall of reserve was
melting. "I'm mighty glad to know that you wrote _Alessandra_, Douglass.
It is worthy of Sardou, and it will win back every dollar we've lost in
the other plays."

"That's what I wrote it for," said Douglass, sombrely.

Westervelt had no further scruples--no reservations. "Well, now, as to
terms and date of production. Let's get to business."

Helen interposed. "No more of that for to-day. Mr. Douglass is tired and
needs recreation. Leave business till to-morrow. Come, let us go to
mother; she is anxious to see you--and you are to breakfast with us in
the good old spirit."

It was sweet to sit with them again on the old footing--to be released
from his load of guilty responsibility. To face the shining table, the
dear old mother--and Helen! Something indefinably domestic and tender
came from her hesitating speech and shone in her liquid, beaming eyes.

The room swam in vivid sunshine, and seemed thus to typify the toiler's
escape from poverty and defeat.

"Don't expect me to talk," he said, slowly, strangely. "I'm too dazed,
too happy to think clearly. I can't believe it. I have lived two months
in a horrible nightmare; but now that the business men, the practical
ones, say you are to be saved by me, I must believe it. I would be
perfectly happy if only I had won the success on my own lines without
compromise."

"Put that aside," she commanded, softly. "The fuller success will come.
We have that to work towards."




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.




XX


As Douglass entered the theatre that night Westervelt met him with
beaming smile. "I am glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Douglass." He
nodded and winked. "You are all right now, my boy. You have them coming.
I was all wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't she tell you?"

"You mean about the advance sale?--no."

Westervelt grew cautious. "Oh--well, then, I will be quiet. She wants to
tell you. She will do so."

"Advance sale must be good," thought the playwright, as he walked on
into the auditorium. The ushers smiled, and the old gatekeeper greeted
him shortly.

"Ye've won out, Mr. Douglass."

"Can it be that this play is to mark the returning tide of Helen's
popularity?" he asked himself, and a tremor of excitement ran over him,
the first thrill of the evening. Up to this moment he had a curious
sense of aloofness, indifference, as if the play were not his own but
that of a stranger. He began now to realize that this was his third
attempt to win the favor of the public, and according to an old boyish
superstition should be successful.

Helen had invited a great American writer--a gracious and inspiring
personality--to occupy her box to meet her playwright, and once within
his seat Douglass awaited the coming of the great man with impatience
and concern. He was conscious of a great change in himself and his
attitude towards Helen since he last sat waiting for the curtain to
rise.

"Nothing--not even the dropping of an act--could rouse in me the
slightest resentment towards her." He flushed with torturing shame at
the recollection of his rage, his selfish, demoniacal, egotistic fury
over the omission of his pet lines.

"I was insane," he muttered, pressing a hand to his eyes as if to shut
out the memory of Helen's face as she looked that night. "And she
forgave me! She must have known I was demented." And her sweetness, her
largeness of sympathy again overwhelmed him. "Dare I ask her to marry
me?" He no longer troubled himself about her wealth nor with the
difference between them as to achievement, but he comprehended at last
that her superiority lay in her ability to forgive, in her power to
inspire love and confidence, in her tact, her consideration for others,
her wondrous unselfishness.

"What does the public know of her real greatness? Capable of imagining
the most diverse types of feminine character, living each night on the
stage in an atmosphere of heartless and destructive intrigue, she yet
retains a divine integrity, an inalienable graciousness. Dare I, a
moody, selfish brute, touch the hem of her garment?"

In this mood he watched the audience gather--a smiling, cheerful-voiced,
neighborly throng. There were many young girls among them, and their
graceful, bared heads gave to the orchestra chairs a brilliant and
charmingly intimate effect. The _roué_, the puffed and beefy man of
sensual type, was absent. The middle-aged, bespangled, gluttonous woman
was absent. The faces were all refined and gracious--an audience
selected by a common interest from among the millions who dwell within
an hour's travel of the theatre.

Douglass fancied he could detect in these auditors the same feeling of
security, of satisfaction, of comfort with which they were accustomed to
sit down of an evening with a new book by a favorite author.

"If I could but win a place like that," he exclaimed to himself, "I
would be satisfied. It can be done when the right man comes."

A dinner engagement delayed the eminent author, but he came in as the
curtain was rising, and, shaking hands cordially, presented Mr. Rufus
Brown, a visiting London critic.

"Mr. Brown is deeply interested in your attempt to do an American play,"
said the great novelist. "I hope--I am sure he will witness your triumph
to-night." Thereupon they took seats with flattering promptness in order
not to miss a word of the play.

Helen, coming on a moment after, was given a greeting almost frenziedly
cordial, and when she bowed her eyes sought the box in which her lover
sat, and the audience, seeing the distinguished novelist and feeling
some connection between them, renewed their applause. Douglass, at the
back of the box, rose and stood with intent to express to Helen the
admiration, the love, and the respect which he felt for her. She was,
indeed, "the beautiful, golden-haired lady" of whom he had written as a
boy, and a singular timidity, a wave of worship went over him.

He became the imaginative lad of the play, who stood in awe and worship
of mature womanhood. The familiar Helen was gone, the glittering woman
was gone, and in her place stood the ideal of the boy--the author
himself had returned to "the land of morning glow"--to the time when the
curl of a woman's lip was greater than any war. The boy on the stage
chanted:

  "Where I shall find her I know not.
  But I trust in the future! To me
  She will come. I am not forgot.
  Out in the great world she's waiting,
  Perhaps by the shore of the sea,
  By the fabulous sea, where the white sand gleams,
  I shall meet her and know her and claim her.
  The beautiful, stately lady I see in my dreams."

"I dare not claim her," said the man, humbled by her beauty. "I am not
worthy of her."

The applause continued to rise instant and cordial in support of players
and play. Auditors, actors, and author seemed in singularly harmonious
relation. As the curtain fell cries of approval mingled with the
hand-clapping.

The novelist reached a kindly hand. "You've found your public, my dear
fellow. These people are here after an intelligent study of your other
plays. This is a gallant beginning. Don't you think so, Brown?"

"Very interesting attempt to dramatize those boyish fancies," the
English critic replied. "But I don't quite see how you can advance on
these idyllic lines. It's pretty, but is it drama?"

"He will show us," replied the novelist. "I have great faith in Mr.
Douglass. He is helping to found an American drama. You must see his
other plays."

Westervelt came to the box wheezing with excitement. "My boy, you are
made. The critics are disarmed. They begin to sing of you."

Douglass remained calm. "There is plenty of time for them to turn
bitter," he answered. "I am most sceptical when they are gracious."

The second act left the idyllic ground, and by force of stern contrast
held the audience enthralled. The boy was being disillusioned. _The
Morning_ had grown gray. Doubt of his ideal beset the poet. The world's
forces began to benumb and appall him. His ideal woman passed to the
possession of another. He lost faith in himself. The cloud deepened, the
sky, overshadowed as by tempest, let fall lightning and a crash of
thunder. So the act closed.

The applause was unreservedly cordial--no one failed to join in the fine
roar--and in the midst of it Douglass, true to his promise, hurried back
to the scenes to find Helen.

She met him, radiant with excitement. "My brave boy! You have won your
victory. They are calling for you." He protested. She insisted. "No, no.
It is _you_. I've been out. Hear them; they want the author. Come!"

Dazed and wordless, weak from stage-fright, he permitted himself to be
led forth into the terrifying glare of the footlight world. There his
guide left him, abandoned him, pitifully exposed to a thousand eyes,
helpless and awkward. He turned to flee, to follow her, but the roguish
smile on her face, as she kissed her fingers towards him, somehow roused
his pride and gave him courage to face the tumult. As he squared himself
an awesome silence settled over the house--a silence that inspired as
well as appalled by its expectancy.

"Friends, I thank you," the pale and resolute author weakly began. "I
didn't know I had so many friends in the world. Two minutes ago I was so
scared my teeth chattered. Now I am entirely at my ease--you notice
that." The little ripple of laughter which followed this remark really
gave him time to think--gave him courage. "I feel that I am at last face
to face with an audience that knows my work--that is ready to support a
serious attempt at playwriting. I claim that a play may do something
more than amuse--it may _interest_. There is a wide difference, you will
see. To be an amusement merely is to degrade our stage to the level of a
Punch-and-Judy show. I am sorry for tired men and weary women, but as a
dramatist I can't afford to take their troubles into account. I am
writing for those who are mentally alert and willing to support plays
that have at least the dignity of intention which lies in our best
novels. This does not mean gloomy plays or problem plays, but it does
mean conscientious study of American life. If you like me as well after
the close of the play"--he made dramatic pause--"well I shall not be
able to sleep to-night. I sincerely thank you. You have given me a fair
hearing--that is all I can ask--and I am very grateful."

This little speech seemed to please his auditors, but his real reward
came when Helen met him at the wings and caught his arm to her side in
an ecstatic little hug. "You did beautifully! You make me afraid of you
when you stand tall and grand like that. You were scared though. I
could see that."

"You deserted me," he answered, in mock accusation. "You led me into the
crackling musketry and ran away."

"I wanted to see of what metal you were made," she answered, and fled to
her dressing-room to prepare for the final act.

"Now for the real test," said the novelist, with a kindly smile. "I
think we could all write plays if it were not for the difficulty of
ending them."

"I begin to tremble for my climax," Douglass answered. "It is so
important to leave a sweet and sonorous sound in the ear at the last. It
must die on the sense like the sound of a bell."

"It's a remarkable achievement, do you know," began the English critic,
"to carry a parable along with a realistic study of life. I can't really
see how you're coming out."

"I don't know myself," replied Douglass.

The play closed quietly, with a subjective climax so deep, so true to
human nature that it laid hold upon every heart. The applause was slow
in rising, but grew in power till it filled the theatre like some great
anthem. No one rose, no one was putting on wraps. The spell lasted till
the curtain rose three times on the final picture.

Douglass could not speak as the critic shook his hand. It was so much
more affecting than he had dared to hope. To sit there while his ideals,
his hopes, his best thoughts, his finest conceptions were thus
gloriously embodied was the greatest pleasure of his life. All his doubt
and bitterness was lost in a flood of gratitude to Helen and to the
kindly audience.

As soon as he could decently escape he hurried again to Helen. The stage
this time was crowded with people. The star was hid, as of old, in a mob
of her admirers, but they were of finer quality than ever before. The
grateful acknowledgment of these good people was an inspiration. Every
one smiled, and yet in the eyes of many of the women tears sparkled.

Helen, catching sight of her lover, lifted her hand and called to him,
and though he shrank from entering the throng he obeyed. Those who
recognized him fell back with a sort of awe of his good-fortune. Helen
reached her hand, saying, huskily, "I am tired--take me away."

He took her arm and turned to the people still crowding to speak to her.
"Friends, Miss Merival is very weary. I beg you to excuse her. It has
been a very hard week for her."

And with an air of mastery, as significant as it was unconscious he led
her to her room.

Safely inside the door she turned, and with a finger to her lips, a
roguish light in her eyes, she said: "I want to tell you something. I
can't wait any longer. _Enid's Choice_ ran to the capacity of the house
last week."

For a moment he did not realize the full significance of this. "What!
_Enid's Choice_? Why, how can that be? I thought--"

"We had twelve hundred and eighty dollars at the Saturday matinée and
eleven hundred at night. Of course part of this was due to the knowledge
that it was the last day of the piece, but there is no doubt of its
success."

A choking came to his throat, his eyes grew dim. "I can't believe it.
Such success is impossible to me."

"It is true, and that is the reason I was able to burn _Alessandra_."

"And that is the reason Hugh and Westervelt were so cordial, and I
thought it was all on account of the advance sale of _The Morning_!"

"And this is only the beginning. I intend to play all your plays in a
repertoire, and you're to write me others as I need them. And
finally--and this I hate to acknowledge--you are no longer in my debt."

"That I know is not true," he said. "Everything I am to-night I owe to
you."

"The resplendent author has made the wondrous woman very proud and yet
very humble to-night," she ended, softly, with eyelashes drooping.

"She has reared a giant that seeks to devour her." He caught her to his
side. "Do you know what all this means to you and to me? It means that
we are to be something more than playwright and star. It means that I
will not be satisfied till your life and mine are one."

She put him away in such wise that her gesture of dismissal allured.
"You must go, dearest. Our friends are waiting, and I must dress. Some
time I will tell you how much--you have become to me--but not now!"

He turned away exultant, for her eyes had already confessed the secret
which her lips still shrank from uttering.


THE END