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.