The tomb scene of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was nearing the end. The big New
York audience was strangely hushed--a hush that meant more than all
their previous enthusiastic applause. The house was so still that you
could not hear a pin drop--no pin would drop from such rigid rows of
tense humanity. At last, as the white-robed Juliet snatched up the
dagger, a tremor ran through the house. John Vandeleur, who had kept
himself carefully concealed all the evening at the back of his box,
made an involuntary start forward. His movement was not noticed, for
everybody’s attention, like his own, was concentrated on the stage;
recovering himself he retreated to his former unseen position. “This is
thy sheath,” Juliet went on in her wonderful, poignant voice; “there
rest and let me die.” As she fell forward on her lover’s body, several
women in the audience broke into hysterical sobbing. A tear was rolling
down Mr. Vandeleur’s cheek; he did not seem to know it.
This was practically the end of the play, and certainly the end
of Juliet. The curtain fell amid a perfect cannonade of applause,
but although it rose repeatedly, showing the actors in various
combinations, ‘Joan North’ was not among them. The delay merely whetted
the appetite of the audience. She must be reserving herself for a grand
final call, they felt. The cheering and clapping increased rather than
diminished in fervour. No one imagined for a moment that the actress
would not appear when the evening’s triumph had been so largely her
personal one. As a red-eyed lady remarked to her neighbour, “I declare
I quite forgot the play was Shakespeare and improving, Juliet was that
lovely.”
The scene in front of the house was louder, but not more intense,
than the scene that was taking place in Miss North’s dressing-room.
For Joan, in her white robe, was standing defiantly at bay, while her
grandmother, still in her dress as the Nurse, was vainly trying to pull
her forward, and Mr. Hobson, scarlet with rage, literally danced in the
corridor outside. “Don’t, Granny,” the girl was saying, “I can’t come
on. I can’t.”
“But surely you went on at Boston?” Mrs. Lennox urged. She was clearly
on the verge of tears.
“That was different. I was only an understudy. But I always planned
that I would not go on if I had the part myself. Don’t you see that it
would not be art? I can’t do it. Juliet is killed.”
“It’s the production that will be killed,” Mr. Hobson shouted as he
stood in the doorway. “And your career too. I tell you it’ll be all in.
Do you want to throw away every chance? The house won’t stand it much
longer. Come on, don’t be a fool.” He caught hold of the girl as though
to drag her by main force.
Joan snatched away her hand. The manager’s fury only stiffened her
resolution. “I won’t go on.” She stamped her foot.
“Oh, if only Mr. Fletcher were here, he might make you see some sense,”
Mrs. Lennox wailed.
“Mr. Fletcher would agree with me. So would the audience if you or Mr.
Hobson would explain it to them. Juliet is dead, and it is ridiculous
for her to bob up, bowing and smiling.”
“Ridiculous, is it? It’s you that’s making yourself ridiculous. Who in
thunder are you to carry on in this style? You can take your notice,
and that’s all there is to it.” Mr. Hobson turned and slammed the door
behind him in a final paroxysm of rage.
“Oh, Joan, how can you, my dear child?” Mrs. Lennox was beginning
tremulously, when she heard Mr. Hobson call. “Miss West,” he was
shouting. She hurried from the dressing-room after him. “Come on, Miss
West, it’s up to us to smooth them down somehow,” and seizing her hand,
he raced her towards the stage.
The applause of the audience had changed. The manager’s practised ear
caught the note of anger. “Juliet, Juliet, Juliet,” they were shouting
staccato. “Not even an author to send on, curse it,” Mr. Hobson
muttered. As they reached the centre of the stage he called, “Ring up!”
There was a sudden pause in the uproar as the rising curtain disclosed
this new couple, and then a burst of good-natured and interested
laughter. The great little manager did not as a rule ‘come on’ at his
productions, and so he had the charm of novelty. Moreover his rotund
form, neatly clad in a trim, blue serge suit, presented an amusing
contrast with the picturesque old nurse and her voluminous white
draperies. The first moment of silence was penetrated by Mr. Hobson’s
cheery, nasal voice. “I’m not here in the hope of being mistook for
Juliet,” he informed the audience in his most colloquial tone, with his
hand in his trouser pocket. “I guess I ain’t exactly got the figger ‘to
cut out in little stars,’ don’t you know? I’m just Juliet’s manager,
and Miss West, of course, is her Nurse. Well, we’ve come to say we’re
a failure. I can’t manage Juliet one little bit, and she won’t mind
Nurse. As you may have discovered from the play, Miss Juliet is a young
lady who knows what she wants and has it. What she wants just now is
not to take her calls. She says she’s a corpse and can’t. We’ve done
every mortal thing to persuade her, but it’s no use. She says it isn’t
art with a big A for a dead woman to bob up smiling. That being so, she
says she’s certain sure you can’t want her to. And for the same reason
the Author can’t take his call either. I’m mighty sorry, ladies and
gentlemen. Thank you for a bully reception.” He hastily signed down the
curtain.
The audience was charmed. There were shouts of laughter. Mr. Vandeleur
in his box was smiling too, although a shade grimly. “So it appears
I am not the only person who cannot manage her!” he was thinking.
Although he would not have admitted it, he felt an immense pride in
his daughter. Delight in success and disgust at vulgarity had always
been his two strong, and usually antagonistic, sentiments. But Joan’s
triumph in a Shakespearean tragedy, especially with this climax, could
hardly be dismissed as vulgar notoriety. An uneasy feeling began to
steal over him that perhaps genius made its own rules.
Meanwhile, as the laughter was dying down, a man in the upper gallery
suddenly sprang on his seat. “Three cheers for Juliet,” he cried,
waving his hat. “Loud enough to reach the tomb,” another voice shouted.
Three terrific cheers followed. They penetrated even to the street:
passers-by stopped and asked what was happening. Then the audience
melted away. The great Mr. Hobson was still standing on the stage.
“Good land,” he murmured, “she’s going to pull it off after all.”
Joan did ‘pull it off’--although unintentionally--even from Mr.
Hobson’s and the box office point of view. That instinct which the
great manager’s friends called his ‘genius for publicity’ and his
enemies his ‘tub-thumping commercialism’ had for once failed him.
Joan’s non-appearance instead of killing the evening’s success,
definitely stamped it. The morning papers came out with flaring
headlines. “New Actress Appears but Won’t Re-appear,” “Juliet Dead
at Last,” “Joan North too Great for Applause.” The box office was
besieged. By the evening people were booking for a fortnight ahead. All
New York flocked to see Joan North not take her calls.
The second performance went even better than the first. At the end
there was the same ovation and the same three cheers. They had
apparently become part of the ritual. Mr. Hobson was in a strangely
chastened mood. To his relief Joan was merciful enough not to refer
to the notice he had flung at her. Indeed, she was too radiant even to
remember it. The one cloud on her horizon was Adam Fletcher’s absence.
The Pittsburg engineers were again threatening a strike, this time
against the orders of their own Union officials, and the young labour
leader had been frantically telegraphed for the previous day. Joan
began talking about it in the flower-laden automobile as she and her
grandmother drove home together on the second night. “They said Adam
was the only person in the country who might be able to bring the men
to reason,” she announced. “I do wish though the men had chosen another
time to be unreasonable and not taken Adam away just for my opening!
Perhaps it was to keep me from being too outrageously happy.”
Mrs. Lennox looked up quickly, but in the dim automobile she could not
see Joan’s face. Both the words and the tone had been more loverlike
than any she had ever heard from her granddaughter before. Probably
Joan was conscious of the scrutiny, for she gave a slightly embarrassed
laugh and then changed the subject. “Look at this mountain of letters
for me, Granny.” She held up a big bundle that had been handed her at
the stage door. “I shall soon want a secretary!” When they got home she
laughingly spread them out all over the table. “Why, this is Father’s
writing,” she suddenly exclaimed.
As Mrs. Lennox watched her granddaughter reading the letter, her
thoughts turned to its writer. John Vandeleur had been a good deal
in her mind of late, for the papers had been full of Imogen’s recent
marriage to her Senator. The fashion journals had gloated over the
wonderful trousseau. The bride’s dress had been of orthodox white
satin with a veil and deep flounce of priceless point de Venise--part
of the famed Vandeleur lace--while she carried a bouquet of lilies of
the valley. How could Imogen have done it? her mother felt again with
a quiver of amused disgust. And how John must have hated it, John
with his patrician pride, his scornful reserve! A feeling almost of
compassion came over Mrs. Lennox for her superior son-in-law.
Joan now silently handed her the letter. The girl’s eyelashes were
glistening suspiciously; she turned aside her head. “I am to read it?”
Mrs. Lennox said, and put on her pince-nez.
“My dear Joan,--For the first time for forty years I visited
a play-house last night and witnessed your début. Your
determination not to appear at the end, in accordance with the
present detestable and vulgar custom, showed both courage and
artistic feeling. I have been giving the whole matter a great
deal of consideration, and I have come to the conclusion that
when a talent is as strongly marked as in your case, I was in
the wrong to oppose it. Your work, instead of tarnishing the
name of Vandeleur as I feared, may serve to add a lustre to
it--a lustre which is at present decidedly needed. Therefore
if you will openly resume your position as my daughter, as you
kindly suggested some eighteen months ago, I shall be more than
pleased--I shall be proud. Probably you will prefer to continue
making your home with your grandmother, but I trust that we may
meet very often. Business calls me away from New York to-day, but
I expect to return on Sunday evening. I shall then hope to find
your reply awaiting me. I remain your very affectionate father.”
“Well?” Mrs. Lennox asked as the letter came to an end. As Joan did not
answer, she looked up. How white the child had got. “Well, what are you
going to reply?”
“Oh, I told Father long ago that I would come whenever he wanted me--if
it did not interfere with my work.” Her voice sounded husky. “I saw
Father in an automobile a few days ago; he didn’t see me. He looks very
changed and old.--I am tired. I shall go to bed,” the girl broke off.
Her granddaughter took the reconciliation very calmly, Mrs. Lennox
felt. Still as John Vandeleur did not want her to live with him, it
would not make so very much difference--except to the newspapers. What
a sensation there would be! Mr. Hobson would be more delighted than
ever! Well, she was tired, too, the grandmother realized. She gathered
together the rest of the letters that Joan had left strewn over the
table, and she also went to bed.
To bed, but not to sleep. Her brain was too stimulated for that. In
not unpleasant meditation the hours slipped away. She was surprised
to hear the clock strike two. Was Joan asleep yet? she wondered. But,
of course, she would be; she always slept well and she had looked so
tired. Dear child, what a magnificent success she had had! Mrs. Lennox
felt reproachfully that she had never really told her granddaughter how
glad she was about it. The night before she had been too upset over the
business of not taking the calls. And to-night, in the automobile, Joan
had been in such spirits that it had been almost impossible to get in
a word; then when they reached home, there had been John Vandeleur’s
letter. But perhaps Joan had been thinking that she was unsympathetic.
She would like just to tell her child how her old Granny rejoiced in
her triumph. Possibly, after all the excitement, Joan might still be
awake. Slipping on a dressing-gown, Mrs. Lennox crept to the girl’s
room.
Joan was awake. Mrs. Lennox could see the line of light under the door.
A curious sound reached her ears. It sounded as though someone were
weeping. But Joan never cried. What could be the matter? She must be
ill--in pain. Mrs. Lennox quickly opened the door.
Joan was still dressed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing
in absolute abandonment. She must have heard her grandmother come in,
but it did not check her. “My dear child, my darling, what is it?”
Mrs. Lennox exclaimed.
The heartbroken crying continued. What should she do? Mrs. Lennox
asked herself. If only Joan would speak. She could not bear to see her
child in such grief. But how could she comfort her, when she could not
imagine what was wrong? Joan had had a triumph that any other actress
in the States might have envied. It could not be about her work.
Nor could it be anything to do with Adam Fletcher. The grandmother
reminded herself of the way Joan had spoken of him in the auto. It was
impossible for her to have heard anything either from or about the
young man since. A mere desire to see him would not account for such
a transport of woe. “What is it, dear one? Do try and tell me,” she
repeated.
Probably the distress in her grandmother’s voice penetrated to Joan.
There came a sobbing gasp. “Father!”
Mrs. Lennox could hardly believe her ears. It seemed such an inadequate
cause for so much misery. “But, my dear, surely you cannot mind seeing
your father so much?” she remonstrated. “Why, you are not even going to
live with him.”
“I shall like seeing him,” Joan sobbed. Her grandmother grew more
perplexed. Then there came another gasp. “It’s Adam.”
Oh, of course, how stupid she had been, the grandmother told herself.
Of course, Joan was thinking that her father would object to Mr.
Fletcher, or rather to Mr. Fletcher’s socialism. She must be meaning to
marry him soon after all. “But, my dear child,” Mrs. Lennox ventured
mildly, “if your father’s disapproval did not keep you from going on
the stage, I cannot imagine you will let it make much difference with
regard to Mr. Fletcher. Indeed, I do not think your father would have
any right to object,” the grandmother went on warmly, “after washing
his hands of you for nearly three years.”
Joan raised her face. It was swollen and disfigured with tears, but a
certain surprise was now manifest. “It isn’t Father objecting to Adam!”
she said. “I had not thought of that. It is Adam objecting to Father!”
“What?” Mrs. Lennox was so surprised that she subsided into a chair.
“Why should he object to your father? I didn’t know he even knew him.”
“He doesn’t; it’s the money.” Joan had again buried her face in the
pillow.
“But Mr. Fletcher need not take your father’s money!” Mrs. Lennox’s
sympathy was almost submerged in astonishment. “Do explain, darling,”
she pleaded.
Joan sat up with unusual obedience. “Don’t you see, Granny,” she began
tremulously, “Adam is out to fight capitalism. If he married John
Vandeleur’s daughter it would make his whole position ridiculous. His
work would be of no use. Why, he was frightfully shocked when I first
told him who Father was. Only we both felt that as no one knew, and as
we thought Father had cut me off for ever, it didn’t matter. But now--”
She again broke down.
Mrs. Lennox had never had much opinion of socialism; now she had
still less. To think of an absurd thing of this sort making the child
so miserable. “Well, let Mr. Fletcher give up that work then,” she
suggested cheerfully. “He has got the playwriting, and mighty fine he
is at it too. Mr. Hobson thinks the new play is going to be another
‘Under Dog.’ Your father’s money won’t harm him in that!”
But Joan had started up. “Granny, how can you?” she cried indignantly.
“Don’t you know that Adam is a labour leader? That is his real
interest--what he cares about--just as I care about my acting. And
his work is going to make the world better, fairer--it is a splendid
work! I wouldn’t let him give it up even if he wanted to.--And I
wouldn’t mind about not getting married,” she went on desperately,
“if we could go on being friends. But you will say that isn’t fair on
him. You will want me to give him up altogether--never to see him any
more. I can’t bear it. I can’t, I can’t. And I can’t be cruel to Father
either. Father needs me--he needs me as his daughter--just seeing him
privately would be of no use. I am all he has to be proud of now. Oh
Father--Adam--” The sobbing broke out again with a renewed intensity.
The poor grandmother began to feel the whole position was beyond
her, though she had a shrewd suspicion that it was all dramatically
exaggerated, with youth’s tragic intensity and headlong extremism, not
to mention the special emotionality of an actress feeling a situation
for all it was worth. However of one thing she was certain--if Joan
went on crying like this, she would be ill. “Remember, you have no
understudy yet,” she said decisively.
The effect was magical. The sobs ceased almost at once. Although
the girl’s breast was still heaving, she was evidently making an
extraordinary effort to master herself. Her three years on the stage
had been long enough to stamp her with its tradition. “We shall surely
find some way out of this tangle, when Mr. Fletcher gets back,” her
grandmother went on soothingly. “And till then you have got to think of
your Juliet and nothing else.”
“Yes, Granny.” Joan got up and began to sponge her eyes. “Granny,
will you give me one of your headache tabloids?” She took it and went
to bed. Ten minutes later, when Mrs. Lennox again crept in, Joan was
asleep.