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."