|PETER rushed like a wild man down the stairs to the street. He looked
up street and down for a cruising taxi; saw one at the opposite curb;
dodged across, behind automobiles and in front of a street-car. A
traffic policeman shouted from the corner. Peter was unaware, he dove
into the taxi, shouting as he did so, the address of the rooms in
Washington Square. The taxi whirled away to the south. Peter, a blaze
of nerves, watched the dial, taking silver coins from his pocket as the
charge mounted. At his door, he plunged out to the walk, threw the money
on the driver's seat, dashed into the old bachelor apartment building.
The rooms had been lonely of late without Hy and the Worm. Now, his mind
on the one great purpose, he forgot that these friends had ever lived.
He ran from the elevator to the apartment door, key in hand,
hurried within and tore into the closet. He emerged with his evening
clothes--the coat on the hanger, the trousers in the press--and his
patent leather shoes. From a bureau drawer he produced white silk
waistcoat (wrapped in tissue-paper) and dress shirt. A moment more and
he was removing, hurriedly yet not without an eye for buttons and the
crease in the trousers, his business suit. He did not forget to transfer
the folded envelope to the inner pocket of his dress coat. But first he
read the sonnet that was penciled on it; and reread it. It seemed to him
astonishingly good. “That's the way,” he reflected, during the process,
standing before the mirror, of knotting his white tie,--“when your
emotions are stirred to white heat, and an idea comes, write it down. No
matter where you are, write it down. Then you've got it.”
He looked thoughtfully at the long serious face that confronted him in
the mirror, made longer by the ribbon that hung from his glasses. His
hair was dark and thick, and it waved back from a high forehead. He
straightened his shoulders, drew in his chin. That really distinguished
young man, there in the mirror, was none other than Eric Mann, the
playwright; author of the new Broadway success, _The Truffler_, a man of
many gifts; a man, in short, of genius. Forgetting for the moment, his
hurry, he drew the folded envelope from his pocket and read the sonnet
aloud, with feeling and with gestures. In the intervals of glancing
at the measured lines, he studied the poet before him. The spectacle
thrilled him. Just as he meant that the poem should thrill the errant
Sue when he should read it to her. He determined now that she should
not see it until he could get her alone and read it aloud. Once before
during this strange year of ups and downs, he had read a thing of his to
Sue and had thrilled her as he was now thrilling himself. Right here in
these rooms. He had swept her off her feet, had kissed her..Well...
He smiled exultingly at the germs in the mirror. Then he had been a
discouraged young playwright, beaten down by failure. How he was--or
shortly would be--the sensation of Broadway, author of the enormously
successful Nature film, and following up that triumph by picking to
pieces the soul of the selfish “modern” bachelor girl--picking it to
pieces so deftly, with such unerring theatrical instinct, that even
the bachelor girl herself would have to join the throngs that would be
crowding into the theater to see how supremely well he did it. More, was
he not minting a new word, a needed word, to describe the creature. “The
Truffler”--truffling--to truffle!
A grand word; it perfectly hit off the sort of thing. Within ten years
it would be in the dictionaries; and he, Peter Ericson Mann, would have
put it there. He must jog Neuerman up about this. To-morrow. Neuerman
must see to it that the word did get into the language. No time to lose.
A publicity job!... Come to think of it he didn't even know who was
doing the publicity for Neuerman now. He must look into that. To-morrow.
Shrewd, hard-hitting publicity work is everything. That's what lands
you. Puts your name in among the household treasures. People take you
for granted; assume your greatness without exactly knowing why you are
great. Then you're entrenched. Then you're famous. No matter if you
do bad work. They don't know the difference. You're famous, that's all
there is to it. They have to take you, talk about you, buy your books,
go to your plays. Mere merit hasn't a chance against you. You smash 'em
every time... fame--money--power!
He saw the simply-clad Sue Wilde; short hair all massed shadows and
shining high lights; olive skin with rose in it; the figure of a boy;
all lightness, ease, grace; those stirring green eyes....
He would read to her again. His sonnet! From the heart--glowing with the
fire that even in his triumph he could not forget.
She would listen!
The third was the “big act”; (there were four in all). All was ready
for the artificial triumph that was to follow it--trained ushers, ticket
sellers, door man, behind the last row of orchestra seats, clapping like
mad. Experienced friends of the management in groups where they could do
the most good. Trick curtains, each suggesting, by grouping or movement
on the stage, the next. Neuerman wanted eight curtains after the big
act. He got them--and five more. For the claques were overwhelmed.
A sophisticated audience that had forgotten for once how to be
cold-blooded, tears drying unheeded on grizzled cheeks, was on its feet,
clapping, stamping, shouting. After the third curtain came the first
shouts for “Author.” The shouts grew into an insistent roar. Again and
again the curtain rose on the shifting, carefully devised group effects;
the audience had been stirred, and it wanted the man whose genius had
stirred it.
Behind, in the prompt corner, there was some confusion. You couldn't
tell that excited mob that Peter Mann hadn't written fifty lines of that
cumulatively moving story. It was his play, by contract. The credit was
his; and the money. But no one had seen him for months.
After the tenth call Neuerman ordered the footlights down and the
house-lights up. He wore part of a wrinkled business suit; his collar
was a rag; his waistcoat partly unbuttoned. He didn't know where he had
thrown his coat. The sweat rolled in rivulets down his fat face.
Out front the roar grew louder. Neuerman ordered the house-lights down
again and the footlights up.
“Here, Grace,” he said, to Miss Herring who stood, in the shirt-waist
and short skirt of the part, looking very girlish and utterly
dazed--“for God's sake take the author's call.”
She shook her head. “You take it,” she replied. “I couldn't say a
word--not if it was for my life!”
“Me take it!” He was mimicking her, from sheer nervousness. “_Me_ take
it? In these clothes?”
She laughed a little at this, absently. Flowers had come to her--great
heaps of them. She snatched up an armful of long-stemmed roses; buried
her face in them.
Neuerman waved the curtain up again; took her arm, made her go on. She
bowed again, out there, hugging her roses, an excited light in her eyes;
and once more backed off.
“For God's sake, _say_ something!” cried the manager.
She ignored this; bent over and looked through the heaps of flowers
for a certain card. It was not there. She pouted--not like her rather
experienced self but like the girl she was playing--and hugged the roses
again.
For the twelfth time the curtain rose. Again she could only bow.
Neuerman mopped his forehead; then wrung out his handkerchief.
“Somebody say something,” he cried. “Ardrey could do it.” (Ardrey was
the leading man.) “Where's Ardrey? Here you--call Mr. Ardrey! Quick!”
“I'll take the call,” said a quiet voice at his elbow.
Neuerman gave the newcomer a look of intense relief.
Miss Derring caught her breath, reached for a scene-support to steady
herself; murmured:
“Why--Peter!”
The curtain slid swiftly up. And Peter Ericson Mann, looking really
distinguished in his evening clothes, with the big glasses and the
heavy black ribbon, very grave, walked deliberately out front, faced the
footlights and the indistinct sea of faces, and unsmiling, waited
for the uproar that greeted him to die down. He waited--it was almost
painful--until the house was still..
Up in the gallery, Sue Wilde, leaning forward, her chin propped on her
two small fists, said:
“That beats anything I ever....” She ended with a slow smile.
The Worm was studying the erect dignified figure down there on the
stage. “You've got to hand it to Pete,” said he musingly. “He sensed it
in the first act. He saw it was going to be a knock-out.”
“And,” said Sue, “he decided, after all, that it was his play. Henry,
I'm not sure that he isn't the most irritating man on the earth.”
“He's that, all right, Sue, child; but I'm not sure that he isn't a
genius.”
“I suppose they are like that,” said Sue, thoughtful.
“Egotists, of course, looking at everything with a squint--all off
balance! Take Pete's own heroes, Cellini, Wagner--”
“Hush!” she said, slipping her hand into his, twisting her slim fingers
among his--“Listen!”
Peter began speaking. His voice was well placed.
You could hear every syllable. And he looked straight up at Sue. She
noted this, and pressed closer to the man at her side.
“This is an unfashionable play (thus Peter). If you like it, I am
of course deeply pleased. I did not write it to please you. It is a
preachment. For some years I have quietly observed the modern young
woman, the more or less self-supporting bachelor girl, the girl who
places her independence, her capricious freedom, her 'rights' above
all those functions and duties to others on which woman's traditional
quality, her finest quality, must rest. She is not interested in
marriage, this bachelor girl, because she will surrender no item in her
program of self indulgence. She is not interested in motherhood, because
that implies self-abnegation. She talks economic independence while
profiting by her sex-attraction. She uses men by disturbing them,
confusing them; and thus shrewdly makes her own way. She plays with
life, producing nothing. She builds no home, she rears no young. She
talks glibly the selfish philosophy of Nietzsche, of Artzibasheff.
She bases her self-justifying faith on the hideous animalism of Freud.
She asserts her right, as she says, to give love, not to sell it in
what she terms the property marriage. She speaks casually of 'the free
relation' in love. She will not use the phrase 'free love'; but that, of
course, is what she means.
“No nation can become better that the quality of its womanhood, of its
motherhood. No nation without an ideal, a standard of nobility, can
endure. We have come upon the days, these devastating days of war, when
each nation is put to the test. Each nation must now exhibit its quality
or die. This quality, in the last analysis, is capacity for sacrifice.
It is endurance, and self-abnegation in the interest of all. It is
surrender--the surrender to principle, order, duty, without which there
can be no victory. The woman, like the man, who will not live for her
country may yet be forced to die for her country.
“The educated young woman of to-day, the bachelor girl, the 'modern'
girl, will speak loudly of her right to vote, her right to express
herself,--that is her great phrase, 'self-expression'!--her intellectual
superiority to marriage and motherhood. She will insist on what she
calls freedom. For that she will even become militant. These phrases,
and the not very pleasant life they cover, mean sterility, they mean
anarchism, they mean disorganization, and perhaps death. They are the
doctrine of the truffler, the woman who turns from duty to a passionate
pursuit of enjoyment. They are eating, those phrases, like foul
bacteria, at the once sound heart of our national life.
“So you see, in presenting this little picture of a girl who thought
freedom--for herself--was everything, and of the havoc she wrought in
one perhaps representative home, I have not been trying to entertain
you. I have been preaching at you. If, inadvertently, I have entertained
you as well, so much the better. For then my little sermon will have a
wider audience.”
And, deliberately, he walked off stage.
On the stairs, moving slowly down from the gallery, Sue and the Worm
looked at each other.
“I'm rather bewildered,” said she.
“Yes. Nobody knew the play was about all that. But they believe him.
Hear them yelling in there. He has put it over. Pete is a serious artist
now. He admits it.”
“There was rather a personal animus in the speech. Didn't you think so?”
“Oh, yes. He was talking straight at you. Back last spring I gathered
that he was writing the play at you--his original version of it.”
From one landing to another Sue was silent. Then she said:
“I never knew such a contradictory man. Why, he wrote the Nature film.
And that is all for freedom.”
The Worm smiled. “Pete never had an idea in his life. He soaks up
atmospheres and then, because he _is_ a playwright and a dam' good
one, he turns them into plays. He sees nothing but effects. Pete can't
_think!_ And then, of course, he sees the main chance. He never misses
that. Why, that speech was pure genius. Gives 'em a chance to believe
that the stuff they love because it's amusing and makes 'em blubber is
really serious and important. Once you can make 'em believe that, you're
made. Pete is made, right now. He's a whale of a success. He's going to
be rich.”
“But, Henry, they'll see through him.”
“Not for a minute!”
“But--but”--she was laughing a little--“it's outrageous. Here are two
successes--right here on Broadway--both by Peter--each a preachment and
each flatly contradicting the other. Do you mean to say that somebody
won't point it out?”
“What if somebody does? Who'd care? The public can't think either, you
see. They're like Pete, all they can see is effects. And, of course,
the main chance. They love his effectiveness. And they admire him for
succeeding. I'm not sure, myself, that he isn't on the way to becoming
what they call a great man.”