VI
In the wearisome grind of rehearsal, Douglass was deeply touched andgratified by Helen's efforts to aid him. She was always willing to tryagain, and remained self-contained even when the author flung down thebook and paced the stage in a breathless rage. "Ah, the stupidity ofthese people!" he exclaimed, after one of these interruptions. "They areimpossible. They haven't the brains of a rabbit. Take Royleston; you'dthink he ought to know enough to read a simple line like that, but hedoesn't. He can't even imitate my way of reading it. They're all soabsorbed in their plans to make a hit--"
"Like their star," she answered, with a gleam in her eyes, "and theauthor."
"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 andlabor 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 armshe 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 casthad to be changed. Two dropped out--allured by a better wage--and allthe work on their characterizations had to be done over. Others werealways late or sick, and Royleston was generally thick-headed fromcarousal at his club. Then there were innumerable details of printingand scenery to be decided upon, and certain overzealous minor actorscame to him to ask about their wigs and their facial make-up.
In desperation over the small-fry he took the stage himself, helpingthem in their groupings and exits, which kept him on his feet and keyedto high nervous tension for hours at a time, so that each day his limbsached and his head swam at the close of the last act.
He marvelled at Helen's endurance and at her self-restraint. She wasalways ready to interpose gently when hot shot began to fly, and couldgenerally bring about a laugh and a temporary truce by some pacificword.
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 togo and slide down-hill somewhere."
"I can't do that," she answered. "It's his play--his firstplay--and--he's right. He has an ideal, and it will do us all good tolive up to it."
To this Hugh replied, with bitterness, "You're too good to him. I wishyou weren't quite so--" He hesitated. "They're beginning to talk aboutit."
"About what?" she asked, quickly.
"About his infatuation."
Her eyes grew steady and penetrating, but a slow, faint flush showed herself-consciousness. "Who are talking?"
"Westervelt--the whole company." He knew his sister and wished he hadnot 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 ridewith him?"
"Well?" she asked, with defiant inflection. "What is to follow? Am I togovern my life to suit Westervelt or the street? I admire and respectMr. Douglass very much. He has more than one side to him. I am sick ofthe slang of the Rialto and the greenroom. I'm tired of cheap witticismsand of gossip. With Mr. Douglass I can discuss calmly and rationallymany questions which trouble me. He helps me. To talk with him enablesme to take a deep breath and try again. He enables me to forget thestage for a few hours."
Hugh remained firm. "But there's your own question--what's to be the endof it? You can't do this without getting talked about."
She smiled, and the glow of her humor disarmed him. "Sufficient unto theend is the evil thereof. I don't think you need to worry--"
Hugh was indeed greatly troubled. He began to dislike and suspectDouglass. They had been antipathetic from the start, and no advance onthe author's part could bring the manager nearer. It was indeed truethat the young playwright was becoming a marked figure on the street,and the paragrapher of _The Saucy Swells_ spoke of him not too obscurelyas the lucky winner of "our modern Helen," which was considered a smartallusion. This paragraph was copied by the leading paper of his nativecity, and his father wrote to know if it were really true that he wasabout to marry a play-actress.
This gave a distinct shock to Douglass, for it made definite and verymoving the vague dreams which had possessed him in his hours ofreflection. His hands clinched, and while his heart beat fast and hisbreath shortened he said: "Yes, I will win her if I can"; but he was notelated. The success of his play was still in the future, and till he hadwon his wreath he had no right to address her in any terms but those offriendship.
In spite of the flood of advance notices and personal paragraphs, inspite of envious gossip, he lived on quietly in his attic-room at theRoanoke. He had few friends and no intimates in the city, and caredlittle for the social opportunities which came to him. Confident ofsuccess, he gave up his connection with _The Blazon_, whose editorvalued his special articles on the drama so much as to pay himhandsomely for them. The editor of this paper, Mr. Anderson, his mostintimate acquaintance, was of the Middle West, and from the firststrongly admired the robust thought of the young architect whose"notions" concerning the American drama made him trouble among hisfellow-craftsmen.
"You're not an architect, you're a critic," he said to him early intheir accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I wantyou to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have anotion you'll startle my readers."
He did. His point of view, so modern, so uncompromising, so unshaded bytradition, delighted Anderson, and thereafter he was able to employ theyoung playwright regularly. These articles came to have a special valueto the thoughtful "artists" of the stage, and were at last made into alittle book, which sold several hundred copies, besides bringing him tothe notice of a few congenial cranks and come-outers who met in an oldtavern far down in the old city.
These articles--this assumption of the superior air of the critic--lednaturally 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 hisanxiety to win the public was very keen. He had a threefold reason fortoiling like mad--to prove his theories, to gain bread, and to winHelen; and his concentration was really destructive. He could think ofnothing else. All his correspondence ceased. He read no more; he went nomore to his club. His only diversions were the rides and the luncheswhich 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 ofthe rehearsal and abandoned themselves to the pure joy of being young.Together they visited the exhibitions of painting and sculpture, and toHelen these afternoons were a heavenly release from her own world.
It made no difference to her who objected to her friendship withDouglass. After years of incredible solitude and seclusion and hard workin the midst of multitudes of admirers and in the swift-beating heart ofcities, with every inducement to take pleasure, she had remained theself-denying student of acting. Her summers had been spent in England orFrance, where she saw no one socially and met only those who wereinterested in her continued business success. Now she abandoned thispolicy of reserve and permitted herself the joys of a young girl incompany with a handsome and honorable man, denying herself even to thefew.
She played badly during these three weeks, and Westervelt was both sadand furious. Her joyous companionship with Douglass, her work on hissane and wholesome drama, their discussions of what the stage should beand 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 themagain after your drama is ready. My contract with Westervelt has reallyexpired so far as his exclusive control over me is concerned, and I willnot be coerced into a return to such work."
Her eyes were opened also to the effect of her characters on theaudiences that assembled night after night to hear her, and she began tobe troubled by the thousands of young
girls who flocked to her matinees."Is it possible that what I call 'my art' is debasing to their brightyoung souls?" she asked herself. "Is Mr. Douglass right? Am Iresponsible?"
It was the depression of these moods which gave her correspondingelation as she met her lover's clear, calm eyes of a morning, and walkedinto the atmosphere of his drama, whose every line told for joy andright living as well as for serious art.
Those were glorious days for her--the delicious surprise of hersurrender came back each morning. She had loved once, with the sweetsingle-heartedness of a girl, shaken with sweet and yielding joy of aboyish face and a slim and graceful figure. What he had said she couldnot remember; what he was, no longer counted; but what that love hadbeen to her mattered a great deal, for when he passed out of her lifethe glow of his worship remained in her heart, enabling her to keep ajealous mastery of her art and to remain untouched by the admiration ofthose who sought her favor in every city she visited. Douglass wasamazed to find how restricted her social circle was. Eagerly sought bymany of the great drawing-rooms of the city, she seldom went to even thehouse 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 climbhigher on the shining ladder of fame, and in a sense this was true; butshe was not sordid in her ambitions--she was a child of nature. Sheloved rocks, hills, trees, and clouds. And it was this elementalsimplicity of taste which made Douglass the conquering hero that he was.She felt in him concrete, rugged strength and honesty of purpose, aswide as the sky from the polished courtesy and the conventional evasionsof her urban admirers.
"No, I am not a bit in society," she confessed, in answer to some remarkfrom 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 littleevening after the play than go to the swellest reception."
During all this glorious time no shadow of approaching failure crossedtheir horizon. The weather might be cold and gray; their inner skyremained unspotted of any vapor. If it rained, they lunched at thehotel; if the day was clear they ran out into the country or through thepark in delightful comradeship, gay, yet thoughtful, full of brisk talk,even argument, but not on the drama. She had said, "Once for all, I donot intend to talk shop when I am out for pleasure," and he respectedher wishes. He had read widely though haphazardly, and his memory wastenacious, and all he had, his whole mind, his best thought, was at hercommand during those hours of recreation.
He began to see the city from the angle of the successful man. It nolonger menaced him; he even began to dream of dominating it by sheerforce of genius. When at her side he was invincible. Her buoyant naturetransformed him. Her faith, her joy in life was a steady flame; nothingseemed to disturb her or make her afraid. And she attributed thisstrength, this joyous calm, to his innate sense of power--and admiredhim for it. That he drew from her, relied upon her, never entered herconception of their relations to each other.
Nevertheless, as the play was nearing its initial production the criticsloomed larger. Together they ran over the list. "There is the man whoresembles 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 willthe 'Free Lance' do--the one who accepts bribes and cares for hiscrippled 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 goodthing. Some of them I know slightly, but I do not intend to do onething, aside from my work, to win their support."
"That is right, of course. Westervelt may take a different course." Andin this confident way they approached the day of trial.
Westervelt, watching with uneasy eyes the growing intimacy of his starand her playwright, began to hint his displeasure to Hugh, and at lastopenly to protest. "What does she mean?" he asked, explosively. "Doesshe dream of marrying the man? That would be madness! Death! Tell herso, my boy."
Hugh concealed his own anxiety. "Oh, don't worry, they're only goodcomrades."
Westervelt grunted with infinite contempt. "Comrades! If he is notmaking love to her I'm a Greek."
Hugh was much more uneasy than the manager, but he had more sense thanto rush in upon his famous sister with a demand. He made his complaintto the gentle mother. "I wish she would drop this social business withDouglass. He's a good fellow, but she oughtn't to encourage him in thisway. What's the sense of having him on the string every blessedafternoon? Do you imagine she's in earnest? What does she mean? It wouldbe fatal to have her marry anybody now--it would ruin her with thepublic. Besides, Douglass is only a poor grub of a journalist, and afailure in his own line of business. Can't we do something?"
The mother stood in awe of her shining daughter and shook her head. "Sheis 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 iscompletely 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 needto interfere," replied Mrs. MacDavitt, with sententious wisdom.