"Not now, Hugh. In a few moments."
"There are some people here to see you--"
She wanted to say, "I don't want to see them," but she only said,
"Please ask them to wait."
She knew by the tone of her brother's voice that he, too, was choking
with indignation, and she dreaded the meeting with him and with
Westervelt. She was sustained by the hope that Douglass would be there
to share her punishment. "Why had he not shown himself?" she asked
again, with growing resentment.
When she came out fully dressed she looked tired and pale, but her head
was high and her manner proudly self-contained.
Westervelt, surrounded by a small group of depressed auditors, among
whom were Mrs. MacDavitt, Hugh, and Royleston, was holding forth in a
kind of bellow. "It proves what? Simply that they will not have her in
these preachy domestic parts, that's all. Every time she tries it she
gets a 'knock.' I complain, I advise to the contrary. Does it do any
good? No. She must chance it, all to please this crank, this reformer."
The mother, reading the disappointment and suffering in Helen's white
face, reached for her tremulously and drew her to her bosom. "Never
mind what they say, Nellie; it was beautiful and it was true."
Even Westervelt was awed by the calm look Helen turned on the group.
"You are very sure of yourself, Mr. Westervelt, but to my mind this
night only proves that this audience came to hear me without intelligent
design." She faced the silent group with white and weary face.
"Certainly Mr. Douglass's play is not for such an audience as that which
has been gathering to see me as _The Baroness_, but that does not mean
that I have no other audience. There is a public for me in this higher
work. If there isn't, I will retire."
Westervelt threw his hands in the air with a tragic gesture. "Retire! My
Gott, that would be insanity!"
Helen turned. "Come, mother, you are tired, and so am I. Mr. Westervelt,
this is no place for this discussion. Good-night." She bowed to the
friends who had loyally gathered to greet her. "I am grateful to you for
your sympathy."
There was, up to this time, no word of the author; but Hugh, as he
walked by her side, broke out resentfully, "Do you know that beggar
playwright--"
"Not a word of him, Hugh," she said. "You don't know what that poor
fellow is suffering. Our disappointment is nothing in comparison with
his. Think of what he has lost."
"Nonsense! He has lost nothing, because he had nothing to lose. He gets
us involved--"
"Hugh!" There was something in her utterance of his name which silenced
him more effectually than a blow. "I produced this play of my own free
will," she added, a moment later, "and I will take the responsibility of
it."
In the carriage the proud girl leaned back against the cushions, and
pressed her two hands to her aching eyes, from which the tears streamed.
It was all so tragically different from their anticipations. They were
to have had a little supper of jubilation together, to talk it all
over, to review the evening's triumph, and now here she sat chill with
disappointment, while he was away somewhere in the great, heartless city
suffering tortures, alone and despairing.
The sweet, old mother put her arm about her daughter's waist.
"Don't cry, dearie; it will all come right. You can endure one failure.
'Tis not as bad as it seems."
Helen did not reply as she was tempted to do by saying, "It isn't my
defeat, it is his failure to stand beside me and receive his share of
the disaster." And they rode the rest of the way in sad silence.
As she entered her room a maid handed her a letter which she knew to be
from Douglass even before she saw the handwriting, and, without opening
it, passed on into her room. "His message is too sacred for any other to
see," she said to herself, with instant apprehension of the bitter
self-accusation with which he had written.
The suffering expressed by the scrawling lines softened her heart, her
anger died away, and only big tears of pity filled her glorious eyes.
"Poor boy! His heart is broken." And a desire to comfort him swelled her
bosom with a passion almost maternal in its dignity. Now that his pride
was humbled, his strong figure bowed, his clear brain in turmoil, her
woman's tenderness sought him and embraced him without shame. Her own
strength and resolution came back to her. "I will save you from
yourself," she said, softly.
When she returned to the reception-room she found Westervelt and Hugh
and several of the leading actors (who took the evening's "frost" as a
reflection on themselves, an injury to their reputations), all in
excited clamor; but when they saw their star enter they fell silent, and
Westervelt, sweating with excitement, turned to meet her.
"You must not go on. It is not the money alone; it will ruin you with
the public. It is not for you to lecture the people. They will not have
it. Such a failure I have never seen. It was not a 'frost,' it was a
frozen solid. We will announce _The Baroness_ for to-morrow. The
pressmen are waiting below. I shall tell them?" His voice rose in
question.
"Mr. Westervelt, this is my answer, and it is final. I will not take the
play off, and I shall expect you to work with your best energy to make
it a success. One night does not prove _Lillian_ a failure. The audience
to-night was not up to it, but that condemns the auditors, not the play.
I do not wish to hear any more argument. Good-night."
The astounded and crestfallen manager bowed his head and went out.
Helen turned to the others. "I am tired of this discussion. One would
think the sky had fallen--from all this tumult. I am sorry for you, Mr.
Royleston, but you are no deeper in the slough than Miss Collins and the
rest, and they are not complaining. Now let us sit down to our supper
and talk of something else."
Royleston excused himself and went away, and only Hugh, Miss Collins,
Miss Carmichael, and the old mother drank with the star to celebrate the
first performance of _Lillian's Duty_.
"I have had a letter from Mr. Douglass," Helen said, softly, when they
were alone. "Poor fellow, he is absolutely prostrate in the dust, and
asks me to throw him overboard as our Jonah. Put yourself in his place,
Hugh, before speaking harshly of him."
"I don't like a coward," he replied, contemptuously. "Why didn't he face
the music to-night? I never so much as set eyes on him after he came in.
He must have been hiding in the gallery. He leads you into this crazy
venture and then deserts you. A man who does that is a puppy."
A spark of amusement lit Helen's eyes. "You might call him that when you
meet him next."
Hugh, with a sudden remembrance of the playwright's powerful frame,
replied, a little less truculently: "I'll call him something more fit
than that when I see him. But we won't see him again. He's out of the
running."
Helen laid her cheek on her folded hands, and, with a smile which
cleared the air like a burst of sunshine, said, laughingly: "Hugh,
you're a big, bad boy. You should be out on the ice skating instead of
managing a theatre. You have no more idea of George Douglass than a bear
has of a lion. This mood of depression is only a cloud; it will pass and
you will be glad to beg his pardon. My faith in him and in _Lillian's
Duty_ is unshaken. He has the artistic temperament, but he has also the
pertinacity of genius. Come, let's all go to bed and forget our hurts."
And with this she rose and kissed her mother good-night.
Hugh, still moody, replied, with sudden tenderness: "It hurt me to see
them go out on your last scene. I can't forgive Douglass for that."
She patted his cheek. "Never mind that, Hughie. 'This, too, shall pass
away.'"
X
At two o'clock, when Douglass returned to his hotel, tired and reckless
of any man's scorn, the night clerk smiled and said, as he handed him a
handful of letters, "I hear you had a great audience, Mr. Douglass."
The playwright did not discover Helen's note among his letters till he
had reached his room, and then, without removing his overcoat, he stood
beneath the gas-jet and read:
"MY DEAR AUTHOR,--My heart bleeds for you. I know how you must
suffer, but you must not despair. A first night is not conclusive.
Do not blame yourself. I took up your play with my eyes open to
consequences. You are wrong if you think even the failure of this
play (which I do not grant) can make any difference in my feeling
towards you. The power of the lines, your high purpose, remain.
Suppose it does fail? You are young and fertile of imagination. You
can write another and better play in a month, and I will produce
it. My faith in you is not weakened, for I know your work is good.
I have turned my back on the old art and the old rôles; I need you
to supply me with new ones. This is no light thing with me. I
confess to surprise and dismay to-night, but I should not have been
depressed had you been there beside me. I was deeply hurt and
puzzled by your absence, but I think I understand how sore and
wounded you were. Come in to see me to-morrow, as usual, and we
will consider what can be done with this play and plan for a new
one. Come! You are too strong and too proud to let a single
unfriendly audience dishearten you. We will read the papers
together at luncheon and laugh at the critics. Don't let your
enemies think they have driven you into retirement. Forget them in
some new work, and remember my faith in you is not shaken."
This letter, so brave, so gravely tender and so generous, filled him
with love, choked him with grateful admiration. "You are the noblest
woman in the world, the bravest, the most forgiving. I will not
disappoint you."
His bitterness and shame vanished, his fists clinched in new resolution.
"You are right. I can write another play, and I will. My critics shall
laugh from the other side of their mouths. They shall not have the
satisfaction of knowing that they have even wounded me. I will justify
your faith in my powers. I will set to work to-morrow--this very
night--on a new play. I will make you proud of me yet, Helen, my queen,
my love." With that word all his doubts vanished. "Yes, I love her, and
I will win her."
In the glow of his love-born resolution he began to search among his
papers for an unfinished scenario called _Enid's Choice_. When he had
found it he set to work upon it with a concentration that seemed uncanny
in the light of his day's distraction and dismay. _Lillian's Duty_ and
the evening's bitter failure had already grown dim in his mind.
Helen's understanding of him was precise. He was of those who never
really capitulate to the storm, no matter how deeply they may sink at
times in the trough of the sea. As everything had been against him up to
that moment, he was not really taken by surprise. All his life he had
gone directly against the advice and wishes of his family. He had
studied architecture rather than medicine, and had set his face towards
the East rather than the West. Every dollar he had spent he had earned
by toil, and the things he loved had always seemed the wasteful and
dangerous things. He wrote plays in secret when he should have been
soliciting commissions for warehouses, and read novels when he should
have been intent upon his business.
"It was impossible that I should succeed so quickly, so easily, even
with the help of one so powerful as Helen Merival. It is my fate to work
for what I get." And with this return of his belief that to himself
alone he must look for victory, his self-poise and self-confidence came
back.
He looked strong, happy, and very handsome next morning as he greeted
the clerk of the Embric, who had no guile in his voice as he said:
"Good-morning, Mr. Douglass. I hear that your play made a big hit last
night."
"I reckon it hit something," he replied, with easy evasion.
The clerk continued: "My wife's sister was there. She liked it very
much."
"I am very glad she did," replied Douglass, heartily. As he walked over
towards the elevator a couple of young men accosted him.
"Good-morning, Mr. Douglass. We are from _The Blazon_. We would like to
get a little talk out of you about last night's performance. How do you
feel about the verdict."
"It was a 'frost,'" replied Douglass, with engaging candor, "but I don't
consider the verdict final. I am not at all discouraged. You see, it's
all in getting a hearing. Miss Merival gave my play a superb production,
and her impersonation ought to fill the theatre, even if _Lillian's
Duty_ were an indifferent play, which it is not. Miss Merival, in
changing the entire tone and character of her work, must necessarily
disappoint a certain type of admirer. Last night's audience was very
largely made up of those who hate serious drama, and naturally they did
not like my text. All that is a detail. We will create our own
audience."
The reporters carried away a vivid impression of the author's youth,
strength, and confidence, and one of them sat down to convey to the
public his admiration in these words:
"Mr. Douglass is a Western man, and boldly shies his buckskin into
the arena and invites the keenest of his critics to take it up. If
any one thinks the 'roast' of his play has even singed the author's
wings, he is mistaken. He is very much pleased with himself. As he
says, a hearing is a great thing. He may be a chopping-block, but
he don't look it."
Helen met her playwright with an anxious, tired look upon her face, but
when he touched her fingers to his lips and said, "At your service, my
lady," she laughed in radiant, sudden relief.
"Oh, but I'm glad to see you looking so gay and strong. I was heart-sore
for you last night. I fancied you in all kinds of torture."
His face darkened. "I was. My blue devils assailed me, but I vanquished
them, thanks to your note," he added, with a burning glance deep-sent,
and his voice fell to a tenderness which betrayed his heart. "I think
you are the most tolerant star that ever put out a hand to a poor
author. What a beast I was to run away! But I couldn't help it then. I
wanted to see you, but I couldn't face Westervelt and Royleston. I
couldn't endure to hear them say, 'I told you so.' You understood, I'm
sure of it."
She studied him with admiring eyes. "Yes, I understood--later. At first
I was crushed. It shook my faith in you for a little while." She put off
this mood (whose recollected shadows translated into her face filled
Douglass's throat with remorse) and a smile disclosed her returning
sense of humor. "Oh, Hugh and Westervelt are angry--perfectly purple
with indignation against you for leading me into a trap--"
"I feared that. That is why I begged you to throw my play--"
She laid a finger on her lips, for Mrs. MacDavitt came in. "Mother, here
is Mr. Douglass. I told you he would come. I hope you are hungry. Let us
take our places. Hugh is fairly used up this morning. Do you see that
bunch of papers?" she asked, pointing at a ragged pile. "After
breakfast we take our medicine."
"No," he said, firmly. "I have determined not to read a line of them. To
every word you speak I will listen, but I will not be harrowed up by a
hodgepodge of personal prejudices written by my enemies before the play
was produced or in a hurried hour between the fall of the curtain and
going to press. I know too much about how these judgments are cooked up.
I saw the faults of the play a good deal clearer than did any of those
sleepy gentlemen who came to the theatre surfeited and weary and
resentful of your change of programme."
She looked thoughtful. "Perhaps you are right," she said, at last. "I
will not read them. I know what they will say--"
"I thought the play was very beautiful," said Mrs. MacDavitt. "And my
Nellie was grand."
Helen patted her mother's hand. "We have one loyal supporter, Mr.
Douglass."
"Ye've many more, if the truth were known," said the old mother,
stoutly, for she liked young Douglass.
"I believe that," cried Helen. "Did you consider that as I change my
rôles and plays I must also, to a large extent, change my audience? The
people who like me as _Baroness Telka_ are amazed and angered by your
play. They will not come to see me. But there are others," she added,
with a smile at the slang phrase.
"I thought of that, but not till last night."
"It will take longer to inform and interest our new public than any of
us realized. I am determined to keep _Lillian_ on for at least four
weeks. Meanwhile you can prune it and set to work on a new one. Have you
a theme?"
"I have a scenario," he triumphantly answered. "I worked it out this
morning between two o'clock and four."
She reached her hand to him impulsively, and as he took it a warm flush
came into her face and her eyes were suffused with happy tears.
"That's brave," she said. "I told them you could not be crushed. I knew
you were of those who fight hardest when closest pressed. You must tell
me about it at once--not this minute, of course, but when we are alone."
When Hugh came in a few minutes later he found them discussing a new
automobile which had just made a successful trial run. The play became
the topic of conversation again, but on a different plane.
Hugh was blunt, but not so abusive as he had declared his intention to
be. "There's nothing in _Lillian_," he said--"not a dollar. We're
throwing our money away. We might better close the theatre. We won't
have fifty dollars in the house to-night. It's all right as a story, but
it won't do for the stage."
Douglass kept his temper. "It was too long; but I can better that in a
few hours. I'll have a much closer-knit action by Wednesday night."
As they were rising from the table Westervelt entered with a face like a
horse, so long and lax was it. "They have burned us alive!" he
exclaimed, as he sank into a chair and mopped his red neck. He shook
like a gelatine pudding, and Helen could not repress a smile.
"Your mistake was in reading them. We burned the critics."