It was, indeed, the playwright. Each night he left his boarding-place,
drawn by an impulse he could not resist, to walk slowly to and fro
opposite the theatre entrance, calculating with agonized eye the meagre
numbers of those who entered. At times he took his stand near the door
in a shadowy nook (with coat-collar rolled high about his ears), in
order to observe the passing stream, hoping, exulting, and suffering
alternately as groups from the crowd paused for a moment to study the
displayed photographs, only to pass on to other amusement with some
careless allusion to the fallen star.
This hurt him worst of all--that these motes, these cheap little boys
and girls, could now sneer at or pity Helen Merival. "I brought her to
this," he repeated, with morbid sense of power. "When she met me she was
queen of the city; now she is an object of pity."
This feeling of guilt, this egotism deepened each night as he watched
the city's pleasure-seekers pace past the door. It was of no avail to
say that the few who entered were of higher type than the many who
passed. "The profession which Helen serves cannot live on the wishes of
the few, the many must be pleased. To become exclusive in appeal is to
die of hunger. This is why the sordid, commonplace playwrights and the
business-like managers succeed while the idealists fail. There is an
iron law of limitation here."
"That is why my influence is destructive," he added, and was reassured
in the justice of his resolution to take himself out of Helen's life.
"Everything I stand for is inimical to her interests. To follow my path
is to eat dry crusts, to be without comfort. To amuse this great,
moiling crowd, to dance for them like a monkey, to pander to their base
passions, this means success, and so long as her acting does not smirch
her own soul what does it matter?" In such wise he sometimes argued in
his bitterness and wrath.
From the brilliant street, from the gay crowds rolling on in search of
witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed
one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium.
Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance,
tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, hearing with cold
and sinking heart the faint applause from the orchestra chairs which
used to roar with bravos and sparkle with the clapping of white and
jewelled hands.
There was something horrifying in this change. In his morbid and
overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set
his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his
mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving
fools, for these flabby business men and their capon-stuffed wives. I
will mix them a dramatic cocktail that will make them sit up. I will
create a dazzling rôle for Helen, one that will win back all her
old-time admirers. They shall come like a roaring tide, and she shall
recoup herself for every loss--in purse and prestige."
It was this night, when his face was white with suffering, that Helen
caught a glimpse of him hanging across the railing of the upper balcony.
He went no more to see her play. In his small, shabby room in a musty
house on one of the old side streets he set to work on his new plan. He
wrote now without fervor, without elation, plodding along hour after
hour, erasing, interlining, destroying, rewriting. He toiled terribly.
He permitted himself no fancy flights. He calculated now. "I must have a
young and beautiful duchess or countess," he mused, bitterly. "Our
democratic public loves to see nobility. She must peril her honor for a
lover--a wonderful fellow of the middle-class, not royal, but near it.
The princess must masquerade in a man's clothing for some high purpose.
There must be a lord high chamberlain or the like who discovers her on
this mission to save her lover, and who uses his discovery to demand her
hand in marriage for his son--"
In this cynical mood he worked, sustained only by the memory of "The
Glittering Woman" whose power and beauty had once dazzled him. Slowly
the new play took shape, and, try as he might, he could not keep out of
it a line now and then of real drama--of literature. Each act was
designed to end with a clarion call to the passions, and he was
perfectly certain that the curtain would rise again and again at the
close. At every point was glitter and the rush of heroics.
He lived sparely, seeing no one, going out only at night for a walk in
the square. To send to his brother or his father for money he would
not, not even to write his wonder-working drama. His letters home, while
brief, were studiedly confident of tone. The play-acting business and
all those connected with it stood very remote from the farming village
in which Dr. Donald Douglass lived, and when he read from his son's
letters references to his dramas his mind took but slight hold upon the
words. His replies were brief and to the point. "Go back to your
building and leave the play-actors to themselves. They're a poor, uneasy
lot at the best." To him an architect was a man who built houses and
barns, with a personal share in the physical labor, a wholesome, manly
business. The son understood his father's prejudices, and they formed a
barrier to his approach when in need.
On the morning of the fifteenth day _Alessandra_ went to the
type-writer, and the weary playwright lifted his head and took a full,
free breath. He was convinced beyond any question that this melodrama
would please. It had all the elements which he despised, therefore it
must succeed. His desire to see Helen now overpowered him. Worn with his
toil and exultant in his freedom, he went out into the street to see
what the world was doing.
_Enid's Choice_ was still running. A slight gain at the end of the first
week had enabled Helen to withhold her surrender to mammon. The second
week increased the attendance, but the loss on the two plays was now
very heavy, and Hugh and Westervelt and all her friends as well urged
her to give way to the imperious public; but some deep loyalty to
Douglass, some reason which she was not free to give, made her say, "No,
while there is the slightest hope I am going to keep on." To her mother
she said: "They are associated in my mind with something sweet and
fine--a man's aspiration. They taste good in my mouth after all these
years of rancid melodrama."
To herself she said: "If they succeed--if they win the public--my lover
will come back. He can then come as a conqueror." And the hope of this,
the almost certain happiness and honor which awaited them both led her
to devise new methods of letting the great non-theatre-going public know
that in George Douglass's _Enid_ they might be comforted--that it was,
indeed, a dramatic sign of promise. "We will give it a faithful trial
here, then go on the road. Life is less strenuous in the smaller
towns--they have time to think."
Hugh and Westervelt counselled against any form of advertising that
would seem to set the play in a class by itself, but Helen, made keen by
her suffering, bluntly replied: "You are both wrong, utterly wrong. Our
only possible chance of success lies in reaching that vast, sane,
thoughtful public which seldom or never goes to the theatre. This public
very properly holds a prejudice against the theatrical world, but it
will welcome a play which is high and poetic without being dull. This
public is so vast it makes the ordinary theatre-going public seem but a
handful. We must change all our methods of printing."
These ideas were sourly adopted in the third week, just when a note from
Douglass reached her by the hand of a special messenger. In this letter
he said: "I have completed another play. I have been grubbing night and
day with incessant struggle to put myself and all my ideals aside--to
give the public what it wants--to win your old admirers back, in order
that I might see you playing once more to crowded and brilliant houses.
It will succeed because it is diametrically opposed to all I have
expressed. It is my sacrifice. Will you accept it? Will you read my
play? Shall I send it to you?"
Something went out from this letter which hurt Helen deeply. First of
all there was a certain humble aloofness in his attitude which troubled
her, but more significant still was his confessed departure from his
ideals. Her brave and splendid lover had surrendered to the enemy--for
her sake. Her first impulse was to write refusing to accept his
sacrifice. But on second thought she craftily wrote: "I do not like to
think of you writing to please the public, which I have put aside, but
come and bring your play. I cannot believe that you have really written
down to a melodramatic audience. What I will do I cannot say till I have
seen your piece. Where have you kept yourself? Have you been West? Come
and tell me all about it."
To this self-contained note he replied by sending the drama. "No, I
cannot come till Hugh and you have read and accepted this play. I want
your manager to pass on _Alessandra_. You know what I mean. You are an
idealist like myself. You will condemn this drama, but Westervelt may
see in it a chance to restore the glitter to his theatre. Ask them both
to read it--without letting them know who wrote it. If they accept it,
then I can meet them again on equal terms. I long to see you; but I am
in disgrace and infinitely poorer than when I first met you."
Over this letter Helen pondered long. Her first impulse was to send the
play back without reading it, but her love suggested another subterfuge.
"I will do his will, and if Hugh and Westervelt find the play acceptable
I will share in his triumph. But I will not do the play except as a last
resort--for his sake. _Enid_ is more than holding its own. So long as it
does I will not permit him to lower his splendid powers."
To Hugh she carelessly said: "Here is another play--a melodrama, to
judge from the title. Look it over and see if there is anything in it."
As plays were constantly coming in to them, Hugh took this one quite as
a matter of routine, with expectation of being bored. He was a little
surprised next morning when she asked, "Did you look into that
manuscript?"