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.