This letter came to Helen with her coffee, and the reading of it blotted
out the glory of the morning, filling her eyes with smarting tears. It
put a sudden ache into her heart, a fierce resentment. At the moment his
assumed humbleness, his self-derision, his confession of failure
irritated her.
"I don't want you to bend and bow," she thought, as if speaking to him.
"I'd rather you were fierce and hard, as you were last night." She read
on to the end, so deeply moved that she could scarcely see the lines.
Her resentment melted away and a pity, profound and almost maternal,
filled her heart. "Poor boy! What could Hugh have said to him! I will
know. It has been a bitter experience for him. And is this the end of
our good days?"
With this internal question a sense of vital loss took hold upon her.
For the first time in her life the future seemed desolate and her past
futile. Back upon her a throng of memories came rushing--memories of the
high and splendid moments they had spent together. First of all she
remembered him as the cold, stern, handsome stranger of that first
night--that night when she learned that his coldness was assumed, his
sternness a mask. She realized once again that at this first meeting he
had won her by his voice, by his hand-clasp, by the swiftness and fervor
of his speech; he had dominated her, swept her from her feet.
And now this was the end of all their plans, their dreams of conquest.
There could be no doubt of his meaning in this letter: he had cut
himself off from her, perversely, bitterly, in despair and deep
humiliation. She did not doubt his ability to keep his word. There was
something inexorable in him. She had felt it before--a sort of blind,
self-torturing obstinacy which would keep him to his vow though he bled
for every letter.
And yet she wrote again, patiently, sweetly, asking him to come to her.
"I don't know what Hugh said to you--no matter, forgive him. We were all
at high tension last night. I know you didn't intend to hurt me, and I
have put it all away. I will forget your reproach, but I cannot have you
go out of my life in this way. It is too cruel, too hopeless. Come to me
again, your good, strong, buoyant self, and let us plan for the future."
This message, so high, so divinely forgiving, came back to her unopened,
with a line from the clerk on the back--"Mr. Douglass left the city this
evening. No address."
This laconic message struck her like a blow. It was as if Douglass
himself had refused her outstretched hand. Her nerves, tense and
quivering, gave way. Her resentment flamed up again.
"Very well." She tore the note in small pieces, slowly, with painful
precision, as if by so doing she were tearing and blowing away the great
passion which had grown up in her heart. "I was mistaken in you. You are
unworthy of my confidence. After all, you are only a weak, egotistical
'genius'--morbid, selfish. Hugh is right. You have proved my evil
genius. You skulked the night of your first play. You alternately
ignored and made use of me--as you pleased--and after all I had done for
you you flouted me in the face of my company." She flung the fragments
of the note into the fire. "There are your words--all counting for
nothing."
And she rose and walked out to her brother and her manager, determined
that no sign of her suffering and despair should be written upon her
face.
The day dragged wearily forward, and when Westervelt came in with a
sorrowful tale of diminishing demand for seats she gave her consent to a
return to _Baroness Telka_ on the following Monday morning.
The manager was jubilant. "Now we will see a theatre once more. I tought
I vas running a church or a school. Now we will see carriages at the
door again and some dress-suits pefore the orchestra. Eh, Hugh?"
"I'm glad to see you come to your senses," said Hugh, ignoring
Westervelt. "That chap had us all--"
She stopped him. "Not a word of that. Mr. Douglass was right and his
plays are right, but the public is not yet risen to such work. I admire
his work just as much now as ever. I am only doubting the public. If
there is no sign of increasing interest on Saturday we will take _Enid_
off. That is all I will say now."
It seemed a pitiful, a monstrous thing. Hugh made no further protest,
but that his queenly sister, after walking untouched through swarms of
rich and talented suitors, should fall a victim to a poor and unknown
architect, who was a failure at his own business as well as a
playwright.
Mrs. MacDavitt, who stood quite in awe of her daughter, and who feared
the sudden, hot temper of her son, passed through some trying hours as
the days went by. Helen was plainly suffering, and the mother cautioned
the son to speak gently. "I fear she prized him highly--the young
Douglass," she said, "and, I confess, I had a kin' o' liking for the
lad. He was so keen and resolved."
"He was keen to 'do' us, mother, and when he found he couldn't he pulled
his freight. He could write, I'll admit that, but he wouldn't write what
people wanted to hear. He was too badly stuck on his own 'genius.'"
Helen went to her task at the theatre without heart, though she
pretended to a greater enthusiasm than ever. But each time she entered
upon the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came
to her. She enjoyed the words with which _Enid_ questions the life of
her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness,
simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new
sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play
each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as
a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like
his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she
played the remainder of the act with mind distraught. "Can it be
possible that he is still in the city?" she asked herself.