Douglass knew before he had set foot upon the pavement that his life was
blasted, that his chance of success and Helen's love were gone,
forfeited by his own egotism, his insane selfishness; but it was only a
half-surrender; something very stark and unyielding rose within him,
preventing his return to ask forgiveness. The scorn, the contempt of
Hugh's words, and the lines of loathing appearing for the first time in
Helen's wonderfully sensitive face burned each moment deeper into his
soul. The sorrows of _Enid's_ world rose like pale clouds above the
immovable mountains of his shame and black despair.
He did not doubt for a moment but that this separation was final. "After
such a revelation of my character," he confessed, "she can do nothing
else but refuse to see me. I have only myself to blame. I was insane,"
and he groaned with his torment. "She is right. Hugh is right in
defending his household against me. My action was that of a fool--a
hideous, egotistic fool."
Seeking refuge in his room, he faced his future in nerveless dejection.
His little store of money was gone, and his profession, long abandoned,
seemed at the moment a broken staff--his place on the press in doubt.
What would his good friend say to him now when he asked for a chance to
earn his bread? He had flouted the critics, the dramatic departments of
all the papers. In his besotted self-confidence he had cast away all his
best friends, and with these reflections came the complete revelation of
Helen's kindness--and her glittering power. Back upon him swept a
realization of the paradise in which he had lived, in whose air his
egotism had expanded like a mushroom.
Leagued with her, enjoying her bounty and sharing in the power which her
success had brought her, he had imagined himself a great writer, a man
with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to
reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet--a crown. With her the
world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy
grovelling at the foot of the ladder of fame.
While he withered over his defeat the electric cars, gigantic insects of
the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered
by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy
murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar
announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he
said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments
of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens.
This thing I have gained--I am rapidly becoming infamous."
His weakness, his shuddering fear made his going forth a torture. Even
the bell-boy who brought his papers seemed to exult over his misery, but
by sternly sending him about an errand the worn playwright managed to
overawe and silence him, and then, with the city's leading papers before
him, he sat down to his bitter medicine. As he had put aside the
judgments of _Lillian's Duty_, with contemptuous gesture, so now he
searched out every line, humbly admitting the truth of every criticism,
instructed even by the lash of those who hated him.
The play had closed unexpectedly well, one paper admitted, but it could
never succeed. It was not dramatic of construction. Another admitted
that it was a novel and pretty entertainment, a kind of prose poem, a
fantasy of the present, but without wide appeal. Others called it a
moonshine monologue--that a girl at once so naïve and so powerful was
impossible. All united in praise of Helen, however, and, as though by
agreement, bewailed her desertion of the rôles in which she won great
renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back
to the twilight of the past, to the costume play. Get out of the garish
light of to-day. The present is suited only for a kind of crass comedy
or Bowery melodrama. Only the past, the foreign, affords setting for the
large play of human passion which Helen Merival's great art demands."
"You are cheating us," wrote another. "There are a thousand little
_ingénues_ who can play acceptably this goody-goody _Enid_, but the best
of them would be lost in the large folds of your cloak in _The Baroness
Telka_."
Only one wrote in almost unmeasured praise, and his words, so well
chosen, salved the smarting wounds of the dramatist. "Those who have
seen Miss Merival only as the melodrama queen or the adventuress in
jet-black evening dress have a surprise in store for them. Her _Enid_
is a dream of cold, chaste girlhood--a lily with heart of fire--in whose
tender, virginal eyes the lust and cruelty of the world arouse only pity
and wonder. So complete was Miss Merival's investiture of herself in
this part that no one recognized her as she stepped on the stage. For a
moment even her best friends sat silent." And yet this friend ended like
the rest in predicting defeat. "The play is away over the heads of any
audience likely to come to see it. The beringed and complacent wives of
New York and their wine-befuddled husbands will find little to entertain
them in this idyl of modern life. As for the author, George Douglass, we
have only this to say: He is twenty years ahead of his time. Let him go
on writing his best and be patient. By-and-by, when we have time to
think of other things than money, when our wives have ceased to struggle
for social success, when the reaction to a simpler and truer life
comes--and it is coming--then the quality of such a play as _Enid's
Choice_ will give its author the fame and the living he deserves."
The tears came to Douglass's eyes. "Good old Jim! He knows I need
comfort this morning. He's prejudiced in my favor--everybody will see
that; and yet there is truth in what he says. I will go to him and ask
for work, for I must get back to earning a weekly wage."
He went down and out into the street. The city seemed unusually
brilliant and uncaring. From every quarter of the suburbs floods of
people were streaming in to work or to shop, quite unknowing of any
one's misfortunes but their own, each intent on earning a living or
securing a bargain. "How can I appeal to these motes?" he asked himself.
"By what magic can I lift myself out of this press to earn a living--out
of this common drudgery?" He studied the faces in the coffee-house where
he sat. "How many of these citizens are capable of understanding for a
moment _Enid's Choice_? Is there any subject holding an interest common
to them and to me which would not in a sense be degrading in me to
dramatize for their pleasure?"
This was the question, and though his breakfast and a walk on the avenue
cleared his brain, it did not solve his problem. "They don't want my
ideas on architecture. My dramatic criticism interests but a few. My
plays are a proved failure. What is to be done?"
Mingled with these gloomy thoughts, constantly recurring like the dull,
far-off boom of a sombre bell, was the consciousness of his loss of
Helen. He did not think of returning to ask forgiveness. "I do not
deserve it," he repeated each time his heart prompted a message to her.
"She is well rid of me. I have been a source of loss, of trouble, and
vexation to her. She will be glad of my self-revelation." Nevertheless,
when he found her letter waiting for him in his box at the office he was
smitten with sudden weakness. "What would she say? She has every reason
to hate me, to cast me and my play to the winds. Has she done so? I
cannot blame her."
Safe in his room, he opened the letter, the most fateful that had ever
come to him in all his life. The very lines showed the agitation of the
writer:
"MY DEAR AUTHOR,--Pardon me for my harshness last night, and come
to see me at once. I was nervous and anxious, as you were. I should
have made allowances for the strain you were under. Please forgive
me. Come and lunch, as usual, and talk of the play. I believe in
it, in spite of all. It must make its own public, but I believe it
will do so. Come and let me hear you say you have forgotten my
words of last night. I didn't really mean them; you must have known
that."
His throat filled with tenderness and his head bowed in humility as he
read these good, sweet, womanly lines, and for the moment he was ready
to go to her and receive pardon kneeling. But as he thought of the wrong
he had done her, the misfortune he had brought upon her, a stubborn,
unaccountable resolution hardened his heart. "No, I will not go back
till I can go as her equal. I am broken and in disgrace now. I will not
burden her generosity further."
The thought of making his peace with Hugh, of meeting Westervelt's hard
stare, aided this resolution, and, sitting at his desk, he wrote a long
and passionate letter, wherein he delineated with unsparing hand his
miserable failure. He took a pride and a sort of morbid pleasure in
punishing himself, in denying himself any further joy in her company.
"It is better for you and better for me that we do not meet
again--at least till I have won the tolerance of your brother and
manager and my own self-respect. The work I have done is honest
work; I will not admit that it is wholly bad, but I cannot meet
Hugh again till I can demand consideration. It was not so much the
words he used as the tone. I was helpless in resenting it. That I
am a beggar, a dangerous influence, I admit. I am appalled at the
thought of what I have done to injure you. Cast me overboard. Not
even your beauty, your great fame, can make my work vital to the
public. I am too perverse, too individual. There is good in me, but
it is evil to you. I no longer care what they say of me, but I feel
every word derogatory of you as if it were a red-hot point of
steel. I did not sleep last night; I spent the time in
reconstructing myself. I confessed my grievous sins, and I long to
do penance. This play is also a failure. I grew cold with hate of
myself last night as I thought of the irreparable injury I had done
to you. I here relinquish all claim to both pieces; they are yours
to do with as you like. Take them, rewrite them, play them, or burn
them, as you will.
"You see, I am very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride
underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear,
self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. _Enid_ is beautiful,
and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no
right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a
playwright robs me of every chance of meeting you on equal terms. I
want to repay you, I _must_ repay you, for what you have done. If I
could write now, it would be not to please myself, but to please
you, to help you regain your dominion. I want to see you the
radiant one again, speaking to throngs of happy people. If I could
by any sacrifice of myself call back the homage of the critics and
place you where I found you, the acknowledged queen of American
actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or
write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand--some
recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign
influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you
playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to
do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my _métier_. You
are the one to grant pardon; I am the malefactor. I am taking
myself out of your world. Forgive me and--forget me. Hugh was
right. My very presence is a curse to you. Good-bye."