"Do you mind?" The author turned to the real Diane, and she shook her
head, saying, uncertainly:
"It's--very good of you."
"Very well. If you will hold the manuscript, Mr. Francis, I'll try to
show what I feel the scene lacks. However, I don't think I'll need any
prompting. Now, then, we'll begin at John Danton's entrance."
With the mocking smile still upon his lips, Francis took the
manuscript and seated himself upon the prompter's table.
It was by no means remarkable that Henry Phillips should know
something about acting, for he had long been a stage manager, and in
emergencies he has assumed a good many divergent rôles. He felt no
self-consciousness, therefore, as he exchanged places with Francis;
only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to
an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he
forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton
as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every
time he read the play or saw it acted.
Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the
written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain
by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts
expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden,
hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same
mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and
left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had
acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in
solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He
found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he
was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a rôle of his
creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he
had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the
real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in
timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman
and stirred her to a new response.
As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with
astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was
indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had
served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and
to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the
spectacle held him enthralled.
Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed
thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she
dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and
actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The
conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a
blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence
her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part,
this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame
grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart
had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his
lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they
filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant
until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who
spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an
exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's
presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own
making.
Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on
a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained
unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors
wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him,
nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was
indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips
and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton,
in whom he could see no one but himself.
After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard
some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found Léontine
Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering
visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She
had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her
strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many
properties.
Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such
melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole
body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury
which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The
truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the
author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his
admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult
spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality,
not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the
make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a
smothered cry.
Léontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through
livid lips.
Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a
cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could
not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Léontine plucked at his sleeve
and whispered again:
"You _fool_!"
Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a
man throttled. Léontine could feel his muscles stiffen.
But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of
the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can
tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart
pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his
arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned;
her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce,
impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.
Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him
paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his
ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man
who had played his part, he awoke.
"She knows he loves her," Léontine was saying. "You let him tell her
in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"
Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they
rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She
also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it
forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she
breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.
It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which
aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw
him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save
the latter.
The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage
fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly
driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and,
half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply
into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden
transition from his real world to his make-believe.
When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her
husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was
cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and
brutal.
"Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew
till now; but it's true! It's _true_!"
"You've killed him!" Léontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the
shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs.
Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent
man, calling wildly to him.
The dénouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of
them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led
him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white,
his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of
means of escape.
"My God! My God!" Léontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"
Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him,
and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife
at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness
which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he
stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet;
then his hand slid down and sought hers.
"You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see--this is the new
dagger I got for the end of the act."
He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted
that it was strangely shortened--that the point of the sliding blade
was barely exposed beneath the hilt.
Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with
relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold!
A prop knife!" he cried.
"You--you're not really--" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.
Léontine laughed.
"By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't
deny--" He gasped and tugged at his collar.
"I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He
looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at the
quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is
there?" he inquired of Norma.
"Nothing!" she said. "I--I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."
Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he
began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to
him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by
stammering:
"I--I made a frightful mistake. I'm--not myself; really, I'm not. It
was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of Léontine's
scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered
things--she made me--I--I'm very sorry--Mr. Phillips, and I'll play
the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."
Léontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her
as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:
"Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr.
Francis--that is, until the management supplies you with a new play;
but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and
henceforth."
"Then, I'm--discharged? Norma--d'you hear that? We're canceled.
Fired!"
"No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she
cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down
at the woman, and she nodded.
"Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I _must_ stay. I daren't go back." That
hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now
as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to
go--forward--not backward, if there is any way."
"I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it
together."
He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her
hand in his.