Douglass now set to work on his second play with teeth clinched. "I will
win out in spite of them," he said. "They think I am beaten, but I am
just beginning to fight." As the days wore on his self-absorption became
more and more marked. All his morning hours were spent at his writing,
and when he came to Helen he was cold and listless, and talked of
nothing but _Enid_ and her troubles. Even as they rode in the park his
mind seemed forever revolving lines and scenes. In the midst of her
attempt to amuse him, to divert him, he returned to his theme. He
invited her judgments and immediately forgot to listen, so morbidly
self-centred was he.
He made no further changes in the book of _Lillian's Duty_, but put
aside Westervelt's request with a wave of his hand. "I leave all that to
Miss Merival," he said. "I can't give it any thought now."
From one point of view Helen could not but admire this power of
concentration, but when she perceived that her playwright's work had
filled his mind to the exclusion of herself she began to suffer. Her
pride resented his indifference, and she was saved from anger and
disgust only by the beauty of the writing he brought to her.
"The fury of the poet is on him. I must not complain," she thought, and
yet a certain regret darkened her face. "All that was so sweet and fine
has passed out of our intercourse," she sadly admitted to herself. "I am
no longer even the great actress to him. Once he worshipped me--I felt
it; now I am a commonplace friend. Is the fault in me? Am I one whom
familiarity lessens in value?"
She did not permit herself to think that this was a lasting change, that
he had forever passed beyond the lover, and that she would never again
fill his world with mystery and light and longing.
And yet this monstrous recession was the truth. In the stress of his
work the glamour had utterly died out of Douglass's conception of Helen,
just as the lurid light of her old-time advertising had faded from the
bill-boards and from the window displays of Broadway. As cold, black,
and gray instantaneous photographs had taken the place of the gorgeous,
jewel-bedecked, elaborate lithographs of the old plays, so now his
thought of her was without warmth.
Helen became aware, too, of an outside change. Her friends used this as
a further warning.
"You are becoming commonplace to the public," one said, with a touch of
bitterness. "Your admirers no longer wonder. Go back to the glitter and
the glory."
"No," she replied. "I will regain my place, and with my own unaided
character--and my lines," she added, with a return to her faith in
Douglass.
And yet her meetings with him were now a species of torture. Her
self-respect suffered with every glance of his eyes. He resembled a man
suffering from a fever. At times he talked with tiresome intensity about
some new situation, quoting his own characters, beating and hammering at
his scenes until Helen closed her eyes for very weariness. Only at wide
intervals did he return to some dim realization of his indebtedness to
her. One day he gratified her by saying, with a note of tenderness in
his voice: "You are keeping the old play on; don't do it. Throw it away;
it is a tract--a sermon." Then spoiled it all by bitterly adding, "Go
back to your old successes."
"You used to dislike me in such rôles," she answered, with pain and
reproach in face and voice.
"It will only be for a little while," he replied, with a swift return to
his enthusiasm. "In two weeks I'll have the new part ready for you." But
the sting of his advice remained long in the proud woman's heart.
He went no more to the theatre. "I can't bear to see you playing to
empty seats," he declared, in explanation, but in reality he had a
horror of the scene of his defeat.
He came to lunch less often, and when they went driving or visiting the
galleries all the old-time, joyous companionship was gone. Not
infrequently, as they stood before some picture or sat at a concert, he
would whisper, "I have it; the act will end with _Enid_ doing
so-and-so," and not infrequently he hurried away from her to catch some
fugitive illumination which he feared to lose. He came to her
reception-room only once of a Saturday afternoon, just before the play
closed.
"How is the house?" he asked, with indifference.
"Bad."
"Very bad?"
"Oh yes."
"I must work the harder," he replied, and sank into a sombre silence. He
never came inside again.
Helen was deeply wounded by this visit, and was sorely tempted to take
him at his word and end the production, but she did not. She could not,
so deep had her interest in him become. Loyal to him she must remain,
loyal to his work.
As his bank account grew perilously small, Douglass fell into deeps of
black despair, wherein all imaginative power left him. At such times the
lack of depth and significance in his work appalled him. "It is
hopelessly poor and weak; it does not deserve to succeed. I've a mind to
tear it in rags." But he resisted this spirit, partly restrained by some
hidden power traceable to the influence of Helen and partly by his
desire to retrieve himself in the estimation of the world, but mainly
because of some hidden force in his own brain, and set to work each time
filing and polishing with renewed care of word and phrase.
Slowly the second drama took on form and quality, developing a web of
purpose not unlike that involved in a strain of solemn music, and at the
last the author's attention was directed towards eliminating minute
inharmonies or to the insertion of cacophony with design to make the
_andante_ passages the more enthrallingly sweet. As the play neared
completion his absorption began to show results. He lost vigor, and
Helen's eyes took anxious note of his weariness. "You are growing thin
and white, Mr. Author," she said to him, with solicitude in her voice.
"You don't look like the rugged Western Scotchman you were when I found
you. Am I to be your vampire?"
"On the contrary, I am to destroy you, to judge from the money you are
losing on my wretched play. I begin to fear I can never repay you, not
even with a great success. I have days when I doubt my power to write a
successful drama."
"You work too hard. You must not ruin your health by undue haste. A week
or two will not make a killing difference with us. I don't mind playing
_Lillian_ another month, if you need the time. It is good discipline,
and, besides, I enjoy the part."
"That is because you are good and loyal to a poor writer," he answered,
with a break to humble appreciation of her bounty and her bravery. "Be
patient with me," he pleaded. "_Enid_ will recoup you for all you have
suffered. It will win back all your funds. I have made it as near pure
poetry as our harsh, definite life and our elliptical speech will
permit." And straightway his mind was filled with dreams of conquering,
even while he faced his love, so strangely are courtship and ambition
mingled in the heart of man.
At last he began to exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of
the lines spoken by _Enid_. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm
are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the
conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in
them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the
heroes who tunnel mountains and bridge cataracts. When she looks from
her slender, white hands to their gross and powerful bodies she shudders
with a sort of fearsome admiration."
"Can all that appear in the lines?"
"Yes. In the lines and in the acting; it _must_ appear in your acting,"
he added, with a note of admonition.
Her face clouded with pain. "He begins to doubt my ability to delineate
his work," she thought, and turned away in order that he might not know
how deeply he had wounded her.