THE PROMISED CROWN
The Globe Theatre had closed for the summer and the season had ended in
the triumphant manner desired by the manager. He had waved his flags and
beaten his tin pans lustily up to the very last moment, and had
successfully hived the public's swarm of bees in his theatre, as the
honey in the box-office amply proved. Nothing that made for this success
had been too small to receive personal attention, so even that city
directory-like quarter column of "among those present were" had been
cleverly made to serve him through his careful and judicious
introduction of the names of two or three of the great nouveau riche,
among the fashionably holy ones of the Vandergrifts, the Asteroids, the
revolutionary Byrds, the colonial Fishers, the Carmichaels, and the
Vinelanders, etc.--not, mind you, as of them, but as notedly close
students of Shakspere. Oh, what a court-jester was lost in Thrall!
These very new rich men, who, had they owned a folio of earliest
edition, would eagerly have swapped it for an edition de luxe of to-day
and given fifty dollars to boot--so much they knew of Shakspere--were
nevertheless filled with joy to see their names in that dear list,
"among those present were." And their gratitude to the man who had
worked the miracle for them would take the form of steady attendance in
the future, of many box parties, of loud public praise.
So, with these additions to his sure clientele, the season closed, and
Manager Thrall, at first amused and then annoyed by the haunting memory
of a twice seen face, accepted, as had been his wont in former summers,
an invitation to join a gay yachting party, only to find himself more or
less bored. Eating too much, drinking too much, and smoking like a
chimney palled on him. The stories told were all frankly old or poorly
revamped, and he grumbled one night that "chestnuts in summer-time were
an anomaly!"
A young sap-head, dizzy with champagne, gazing at him in heavy-eyed
admiration, remarked: "Isn't he deep? Must be college man, eh--Thrall?
I'm pretty f-fly myself; I know 'chestnut' a-and 'summer,' but
'n-nomaly' puts me out in the first round!"
And with a pencil and paper he went about almost tearfully, begging
people to explain the meaning of the word "anomaly"; and each one
appealed to wrote out a more wildly absurd definition than had the man
before him, which was a highly intellectual amusement indeed.
Only one thing had power to lay, for a little while, the lovely,
dark-eyed ghost haunting the actor, and that was poker--the great
American game played with the aid of the gayly colored pasteboards and
an astonishing vocabulary, containing, among other things, "kitties,"
"antes," and "lob--" no, "jack-pots." A long line of "flushes,"
"straights"--royal, bob-tailed; and people "came in" and "went out"
and "stood pat," and "opened things" and "shut them," and, indeed, did
so much in the course of the wonderful game that it claimed the whole
attention and left no room for memories of any kind. Still poker could
not go on all the time, and finally when one night all hands went ashore
to attend a hotel-hop, Thrall, the waltzer par excellence, suddenly
realized that each frisky young matron, each pretty debutante who so
readily honored him, was being measured by the standard of Sybil's
beauty. This one he found slender to the point of angularity; that one
plump to the verge of lost outlines; another pretty but crudely
overdressed; while the fair face that seemed floating before him as on
waves of melody, with the almost sullen red mouth that could flash into
smiles of such penetrating sweetness, the sensitive color, wavering,
fading, flaming again, the level, tragic brows and dark eyes, in which
burning passion still slept, but lightly--he knew but lightly--was, he
told himself, "simply incomparable"! And then he pulled up short,
saying, angrily: "What in the devil's name has come to me? Am I a green
boy to be bowled over and left sprawling in the dust by a glance from a
pair of fine eyes? Eyes owned by an inexperienced girl, too, a mere
miss--one of those creatures who, knowing nothing, suspect everything,
and keep you ever on guard? Bah! I hate green fruit! let me have it
ripe, with all its florid coloring and rich mellowness--even if many
rough experiences have left a bruised spot here or there. One can turn
the blemished side away, and until the bruise becomes a taint that
embitters all the pulp--then?--why then leave the fruit and seek
something fresher, but not green enough to be astringent to the lips."
He decided, finally, "This is a case of nerves, just such an one as
women suffer from. I am at the end of a long season, I have overworked,
I have lived well but not wisely--no, certainly not wisely!
Result--nerves are all at loose ends, imagination over-stimulated, so
that a strange face makes an unusually vivid impression. Now the thing
for me to do is to see this girl's face again and let a second
impression efface the first, since my imagination has, no doubt, been
playing me tricks, and the real face will fall far short of the beauty
of the imaginary one."
So, acting at once upon that idea, he fell back upon the perennial
"business telegram" excuse, tore himself away from his jovial
companions, and returned to the oven-like city, from which wild horses
could not have dragged Mrs. Van Camp until August, when she left with a
heavy heart and "wholly in the interest of appearances," she said. He
arranged with the old lady for a business chat with her god-daughter
next day but one and spent the intervening time superintending the
movements of a brigade of cleaners, painters, and paper-hangers whom he
had sent charging through the closed theatre--the cleaners routing out
dust and dirt from stairs and floors and long-dimmed windows, the
painters following and covering up head-marks, finger-marks, scratches,
or bruises appearing on the white woodwork and retouching the gilding
where it had darkened or worn thin; while the paper-hangers made the
boxes not only fresh but most attractive to women, through hanging them
with the dull, lustreless velvet paper that makes such a perfect
background for a careful toilette and its lovely wearer.
It was a dreary job, for surely one can find no more desolate and
melancholy place in a great city than a theatre seen by daylight. From
the front of the house one receives an impression of loss. The sight of
an empty chair is saddening--here are a thousand of them. This dimness
and vastness, this gilding and crystal and metal that does not glisten
nor glitter. The depressing silence of checked music, of vanished
laughter--even an actor shivers at sight of the auditorium of a closed
theatre; it is like looking on the face of a dead pleasure. But to turn
about and look at the stage is even worse, so distressingly complete is
the betrayal of its shabby deceptions. It is as though an admired,
brilliant, and successful liar stood there who had been found out and
suddenly reduced to telling the bare, bald truth. No, a day in a closed
theatre during the house-cleaning period is not an enlivening
experience, and Thrall told himself that that was why he looked forward
so eagerly to his late afternoon call at Mrs. Van Camp's, where he was
to have his business chat with Sybil.
And then when he had arrived and was being effusively greeted by Mrs.
Van Camp, a gracious young figure in a white linen gown came slowly out
from the shadows of the darkened room, a red damask rose drowsing on her
breast, and, smiling, waited to offer him greeting; and in that moment
he knew his plan had failed--the second impression would not efface the
first, because the real, the living face was fairer than his mental
portrait of it.
So it happened that Mr. Thrall's manner toward this young would-be
actress was one of dignity and reserve that was in sharp contrast to the
gay freedom and almost boyish liberty of his conduct toward his ancient
hostess, who did her fair share toward spoiling him. And not knowing the
true cause of the swift change and difference, she could but consider
him a very properly correct young man in his attitude as the manager of
her namesake, Sybil Lawton; and therefore she withdrew into the far
extension breakfast-room and conversed with a mumbling old parrot, who
for thirty years had implored the people of his world to "scratch
Polly's head," and had invariably rewarded the good Samaritan who heeded
his appeal by biting viciously the hand that scratched.
Only an occasional artificial laugh from Polly reached to the dim
parlor, whose white-matted floor, flowery chintz furniture covering,
great Chinese screens, strange sea-shells, old portraits, and mighty
china jars made a quaint eighteenth century sort of background for the
white-gowned maiden with the dark, eager face, whom her father had
lovingly likened to a June rose. And the ever-alert dramatic instinct of
the actor-manager, working in seeming independence of the preoccupied
mere man and naissant lover, took note of the room as a possible
charming stage-setting for some new comedy. That instinct, keen, never
sleeping, is one of the unpleasant traits in the make-up of a great
actor; for there is no situation in life too sacred, no emotion even of
his own heart too tender not to be "used" if it seems dramatic.
And so now, through the bald, forced questions with which he began his
interview, like his dignified reserve of manner, were the result of a
violent restraint, he was putting upon a sudden passionate longing--an
idiotic impulse that had seized him at sight of Sybil, to take her head
between his hands and bury his face in the warm darkness of her cloudy
hair--even that struggle with impulse did not prevent the dramatic
instinct of the stage-manager from taking note of surroundings.
Presently the calm and earnest answers of the girl and his own effort at
self-control restored his poise, and his more gracious manner returned
to him. He found that she was faithfully devoting herself to the small
parts first; and in discussing the Shaksperian characters she put
questions to him anent the meaning of certain passages that more than
once "gave him pause" ere he could answer them. She even so far forgot
her awe of him as manager as boldly to differ with the view he took of
Desdemona's character, she declaring that a greater tragedy than mere
physical murder would have come about had the fair Venetian lived
longer.
"No! no!" cried Sybil, "she was not the doll you think her! High-born,
high-bred, musician, artist, student, over-accomplished,
over-cultivated--the intellect rebelled! Over-guarded, over-restrained,
repressed--nature revolted. Othello, the splendid perfection of the
animal-man looming in black majesty against a background of flame and
smoke, glittering in harness, blazing with honors and orders, armed with
barbaric weapons--his very power to destroy fascinated! Contrariety
attracted and a great wave of passion swept the petted daughter of the
Venetian senator into the arms of the Moorish warrior. But had she lived
to regain her normal vision--to see her husband as the world saw him,
merely a rough but very honest soldier, without tastes or even memories
in common--she would have wearied of him and of their wandering life.
She would have longed for the ease and luxury and refinement of old
days. She would have sighed for the companionship of the learned and
accomplished--and the beautiful "misunderstood," being no longer blind
with passion, would probably have gone, girl fashion, to the other
extreme and have loathed the blackness of her lord, while adoring,
possibly, the whiteness of--y-e-s, there might be a worse tragedy than
the dreadful murder of innocent Desdemona!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Sybil, in trepidation, for Thrall had broken into
sudden, hearty laughter, "oh, are my ideas so bad as that? It's--it's
horrid to be laughed at, but I suppose I have not expressed myself very
clearly; only if Desdemona inherited the characteristics of her people,
duplicity was as strong in her as love of luxury and appreciation of
art--and a dead passion is a thing to conceal; and when concealment
begins, duplicity may follow, may it not?"
She stopped suddenly; she had spoken rapidly, in impetuous self-defence.
Now angry tears rushed to her eyes. "Oh," she cried, "I don't make you
understand one bit! No wonder you laugh! Only I feel somehow that
Desdemona's was not a love that would have lasted. But I'm punished for
going out beyond my depth in argument. I won't do it again!"
The fact that Sybil's reasoning had been so good made it all the harder
for Thrall to explain his laughter. Few men understood the eternal
feminine better than he did; and when the young girl, with innocent,
instinctive knowledge, was speaking of a "passion" as distinct from
"love," her glance met his as straightly, as frankly, as if she had been
a boy. And suddenly there came to him the memory of a little child he
had once seen playing, ignorantly happy, with his mother's scissors and
his father's knife, and he laughed aloud in spite of himself, for he
knew well that the girl was clashing together her terms of "love" and
"passion" with just as much real knowledge as the baby had had of the
scissors and the knife. And when he saw the angry tears shining in her
eyes he could have kissed them away with as pure tenderness as if she
had been that baby's self.
And all the time the managerial side of his brain, so to speak, was
receiving impressions and was trying to get the attention of the man's
whole mind; and presently, through the smallest of incidents, it
succeeded. While Thrall was trying to reassure Sybil and convince her
that he had meant no mockery by his laughter, she sat with down-bent
face, hiding her mortifying tears. He noted the hair, dark clouding over
the straight, black brows, the outward thrust of the sullen, red lip
that made and kept the whole face mutinous, when a quick glint came to
the averted eyes, a lift to the brows, a tremor to the lips that
suddenly parted, curling like petals into the most delicious smile ever
made for man's undoing. Old Poll, sidling into view and waddling across
the floor in search of mischief, had caused the swift change of
expression, and the expression had brought the stage-manager to the
front with a bound.
"Great Shakspere!" said Thrall to himself; "what a face for the balcony
scene! The sweetness--the positive radiance--the lovely outline of the
down-bent face! I've half a mind--I--why, the girl has just shown she
has brains, whether her ideas of Desdemona are right or wrong; it proves
that she can think for herself! And--and if to her beauty, youth, and
brains you can add good family, and to them all the subtle, intangible
thing we call charm--what do all these things mean to a manager? Why,
unless he's a dolt, a blind bat, they mean a find, a discovery, a future
card of great commercial value! Dear Lord! if I only knew whether she
could walk across the stage without going to pieces, whether the sight
of the audience would give her a palsy!"
He had come there intending to tell her that she was to have a part of
eight lines in the opening play of the New York season--but now, but
now! New ideas were rushing through his mind. If only she had a little
training! All at once--apropos of nothing, he asked: "Miss Lawton, do
you dance?"
She raised her eyes in unspeakable surprise.
His face brightened; he went on rising as he spoke: "Do you waltz?"
In a breath she was swaying in his encircling arms to the waltz he
softly hummed. As they circled the big room and stopped by the window a
boy went down the street, whistling high and clear, and simply from the
actor-like habit of quoting, Thrall said, with a laugh:
"It was the lark--the herald of the morn!"
When, like a flash, Sybil, with pretty impatience and obstinacy, made
response:
"It was the nightingale and _not_ the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear!"
The surprise was so startling that Thrall caught the girl's face between
his hands almost roughly, exclaiming: "Why! do you know the lines of
Juliet?"
And poutingly she answered: "Does not every stage-struck girl know
them?"
But he frowned: "That's no answer! Be direct in matters of business! Do
you or do you not know Juliet's lines?"
She was vaguely conscious that she really ought to be angry at the
liberty this man was guilty of, but she quailed at the frown and
answered, meekly: "Only part of them. I studied up to the potion scene,
and there I got frightened and stopped!"
"Ah!" he exclaimed; "and may I ask what frightened you?" He released her
as he spoke.
"Well," she said, with her head a little to one side, as she traced the
pattern on the curtain with one slim finger, "well, you see, it was
night, and--and Dorrie was asleep--and--there are a good many owls in
our trees, and they do hoot and shiver their voices so! And they and the
vault and the 'dead men's bones' rather got on my nerves, I suppose, for
I only got as far as Tybalt--in his 'festering shroud'--when I was so
scared I backed over to the bed and Dorrie! Oh, I didn't dare turn
around, you see!"
Stewart Thrall fairly shook with laughter, in which this time both Sybil
and Polly joined. Then he said at last, not without a touch of sarcasm:
"It was not the fear of acting the part that disturbed you, then?"
"Oh, no!" she replied with great simplicity. "It's too soon to get
frightened about that--ages too soon!" She sighed heavily: "I'm nineteen
now, and I suppose I must wait years and years--five at the very
least--before I dare even to hope to act Juliet? And then people say no
one can play her unless they have loved."
"No one can," assented Thrall.
"Oh, well, in five years," Sybil responded, hopefully and vaguely.
"Yes," thought the man, "in far less than five years, you lovely child,
you will have learned to play Juliet!"
An old engraving of Mrs. Siddons hung upon the wall, and Sybil stood
looking at it. The crown the actress wore well became the high chill
beauty of her face.
"Queen of the English-speaking stage," murmured Sybil. "How proud and
happy she must have been! what love and homage her fame must have won
from her countrymen!" Quickly turning her head, she asked: "Mr. Thrall,
when you have become famous, do you forget all the bitterness of past
struggles and feel like loving the whole world for very joy and
gratitude?"
"Having no experience to guide me, I am unable to answer your question,"
was the somewhat curt reply.
"Unable?" repeated the girl, all her respectful admiration writ large
upon her face. "You mean----"
"I mean," he interrupted, "that I am not famous; that now I never shall
be! I started out meaning to--to win fame, but I--missed the way." He
paused a moment, then went on, bitterly: "Question me about notoriety,
Miss Lawton, and no man alive can give you more authentic information as
to the method of its creation, its staying power, and its value. But I
know not fame! If I died to-morrow I'd die like a dog--so far as memory
or renown is concerned. Learn early to distinguish between the sound,
noise, and rumor of notoriety and the credit, honor, and excellence of
fame!"
"I'll try," the girl answered, simply, and then she added, gently: "I'm
sorry you missed the way!"
A dimness came into the man's eyes as he responded, briefly, "Thank
you!" and gazed at the picture that Sybil had returned to.
"Crowned queen!" she repeated. "Of course if you give me the chance, Mr.
Thrall, I shall work hard for work's own sake, as well as to be a
bread-winner. But all the time down in my heart I shall hope and hope
that some day, in years to come, I may win a crown like that!"
The actor laughed derisively. "A pasteboard crown," he cried, "so thinly
covered with gold-leaf you dare not try to burnish it!"
"You do not mean that, Mr. Thrall!"
"I do mean it! A cheap and gaudy thing, the outside blazing with rare
jewels, made of glass! Inside, paper, glue--a pasteboard crown! A thing
worthless, meaningless!"
"No!" protested the girl; "your words are very cruel! I do not think you
rightly judge the value of the Crown Dramatic, for even if it were but
pasteboard it would not be worthless or meaningless! It would still be a
sign, a symbol, of artistic triumph, of true excellence, of the world's
approval!"
"You are obstinate," he declared.
"And you are not grateful to your profession, I'm afraid," she said,
reproachfully; then she hurriedly added: "I beg your pardon! Of course
you know of what you speak, and I am very presuming in my ignorance,
but"--she clasped her hands tightly above the rose on her breast--"I
long to wear that crown some day."
A few red petals fell from the rose and were caught in Thrall's hand. He
glanced at Sybil's rapt young face--his resolve was taken. "You shall
have your wish," he said. "I will place the crown upon your head; only
promise not to reproach me when you find for yourself that it is only
pasteboard!"