The fact that Arthur Wantage was to be seen and heard, nightly, in a
brilliant comedy by the author of "Pious Aeneas," was not so much the
attraction that drew people to his theatre, as was the fact that he had
not yet, that season, delivered himself of a curtain speech. His curtain
speeches were wont to be insults delivered in an elaborately honeyed
manner; he took the pose of considering his audiences with contempt; he
admired himself far more for his condescension in playing to them than
he respected his audiences for having the taste to admire him.
The comedy in which he was now appearing was the perfection of paradox.
It pretended to be frivolous and was really philosophic. The kernel of
real wisdom was behind the elaborately poised mask of wit. A delightful
impertinence and exaggeration informed every line of the dialogue. The
pose of inimitable, candid egoism showed under every situation. The play
was typical of the author as well as of the player. It veiled, as thinly
as possible, a deal of irony at the expense of the play going public; it
took some of that public's dearest foibles and riddled them to shreds.
It was currently reported that the only excuse for comparatively
amicable relations between Wantage and O'Deigh, who had written this
comedy, was the fact of there being an ocean between them. Even at that
Wantage found it difficult to suffer the many praises he heard bestowed,
not upon himself but O'Deigh. He had burst out in spleen at this
adulation, once, in the hearing of an intimate.
"My dear Arthur," said the other, "you strike me as very ungrateful. For
my part, when I see your theatre crowded nightly, when I see how your
exchequer fills steadily, it occurs to me that you should go down on
your knees every night, and thank God that O'Deigh has done you such a
stunning play."
"Oh," was Wantage's grudging answer, "I do, you know I do. But I also
say: Oh, God, why did it have to be by O'Deigh?"
The secret of his hatred for O'Deigh was the secret of his hatred for
all dramatists. He was a curious compound of egoism, childishness and
shrewdness. Part of his shrewdness--or was it his childishness?--showed
in his aversion to paying authors' royalties. He always tried to
re-write all the plays he accepted; if the playwrights objected there
was sure to be a row of some sort. When he could find no writers willing
to make him a present of plays, for the sake, as he put it, of having it
done by as eminent an actor as himself, and in so beautiful a theatre,
he was in the habit of announcing that he would forsake the theatre, and
turn critic. He pretended that the world--the public, the press, even
the minor players--were in league against him. There was a conspiracy to
drive him from the theatre; the riff-raff resented that a man of genius
should be so successful. They lied about him; he was sure they lied; for
stories, of preposterous import, came to him; he vowed he never read the
newspapers--never. As for London--oh, he could spin you the most
fascinating yarn of the cabal that had dampened his London triumph. He
mentioned, with a world of meaning in his tone, the name of the other
great player of the time; he insinuated that to have him, Wantage,
succeed in London, had not been to that other player's mind; so the
wires had been pulled; oh, it was all very well done. He laughed at the
reminiscence,--a brave, bluff laugh, that told you he could afford to
let such petty jealousies amuse him.
The riddle of Arthur Wantage's character had never yet been read. There
were those who averred he was never doing anything but acting, not in
the most intimate moments of his life; some called him a keen
moneymaker, retaining the mummer's pose off the stage for the mere
effect of it on the press and the public. What the man's really honest,
unrehearsed thoughts were,--or if he ever had such--no man could say. To
many earnest students of life this puzzle had presented itself. It
began to present itself, now, to Orson Vane.
This, surely, was a secret worth the reading. Here were, so to say, two
masks to lift at once. This man, Arthur Wantage, who came out before the
curtain now as this, now as that, character of fancy or history, what
shred of vital, individual personality had he retained through all these
changings? The enthusiasm of discovery, of adventure came upon Vane with
a sharpness that he had not felt since the day he had mocked the
futility of human science because it could not unlock other men's
brains.
The horseshoe-shaped space that held the audience glittered with babble
and beauty as Orson Vane took his seat in the stalls. The presence of
the smart set gave the theatre a very garland of charm, of grace, and of
beauty's bud and blossom. The stalls were radiant, and full of polite
chatter. The boxes wore an air of dignified twilight,--a twilight of
goddesses. The least garish of the goddesses, yet the one holding the
subtlest sway, was Jeanette Vanlief. She sat, in the shadow of an upper
box, with her father and Luke Moncreith. On her pale face the veins
showed, now and then; the flush of rose came to it like a surprise--like
the birth of a new world. She radiated no obvious, blatant fascination.
Her hands slim and white; her voice firm and low; her eyes of a hue like
that of bronze, streaked like the tiger-lilies; her profile sharp as a
cameo's; the nose, with its finely-chiseled nostrils, curved in Roman
mode; the mouth, thin and of the faintest possible red, slightly
drooping. And then, her hair! It held, again, a spray of lilies of the
valley; the artificial lights discovered in the waves and the curls of
it the most unexpected shades, the most mercurial tints. The slight
touch of melancholy that hovered over her merely enhanced her charm.
Moncreith told himself that he would go to the uttermost ends of evil to
win this woman. He had come, the afternoon of that day, through the most
dangerous stream in the world, the stream of loveliness that flows over
certain portions of the town at certain fashionable hours. It is a
stream the eddies of which are of lace and silk; its pools are the blue
of eye and the rose of mouth; its cataracts are skirts that swirl and
whisper and sing of ivory outlines and velvet shadows. Yet, as he looked
at Jeannette Vanlief, all that fascinating, dangerous stream lost its
enticement for him; he saw her as a dream too high for comparison with
the mere earthiness of the town. He felt, with a grim resolution, that
nothing human should come between him and Jeannette.
Orson Vane, from his chair, paid scant attention to his fellow
spectators. He was intent upon the dish that O'Deigh and Wantage had
prepared for his delectation. He felt a delicious interest in every
line, every situation. He had made up his mind that he would go to the
root of the mystery that men called Arthur Wantage. Whether that mask
concealed a real, high intelligence, or a mere, cunning, monkeylike
facility in imitation--his was to be the solution of that question.
Wrapped up in that thought he never so much as glanced toward the box
where his friends sat.
At the end of the first act Vane strolled out into the lobby. He nodded
hither and thither, but he felt no desire for nearer converse. A hand on
his shoulder brought him face to face with Professor Vanlief. He was
asked to come up to the box. He listened, gravely, to the Professor's
words, and thanked him. So Moncreith was smitten? He smiled in a kindly
way; he understood, now, the many brusqueries of his friend. That day,
long ago, when he had been so inexplicable in the little bookshop; the
many other occasions, since then, when Luke had been rude and bitter. A
man in love was never to be reckoned on. He wished Luke all the luck in
the world. It struck him but faintly that he himself had once longed for
that sweet daughter of Augustus Vanlief's; he told himself that it was a
dream he must put away. He was a mariner bent on many deep-sea voyages
and many hazards of fate; it would be unfair to ask any woman to share
in any such life. His life would be devoted to furthering the
Professor's discoveries; he meant to be an adventurer into the regions
of the human soul; it was a land whither none could follow.
Perhaps, if he had seen Jeannette, he might have felt no such
resignation. His mood was so tense in its devotion to the puzzle
presented by the player, Wantage, that the news brought him by Vanlief
did not suffice to rouse him. He had a field of his own; that other one
he was content to leave to Moncreith.
Moncreith, in the meanwhile, was making the most of the opportunity the
Professor, in the kindness of his heart, had given him. The orchestra
was playing a Puccini potpourri. It rose feebly against the prattle and
the chatter and the hissing of the human voices. Moncreith, at first,
found only the most obvious words.
"A trifle bitter, the play," he said, "rather like a sneer, don't you
think?"
"Well," granted Jeannette, indolently, "I suppose it is not called
'Voltaire' for nothing. And there are moods that such a play might
suit."
"No doubt. But--do you think one can be bitter, when one loves?"
The girl looked up in wonder. She blushed. The melancholy did not leave
her face. "Bitter? Love?" she echoed. "They spell the same thing."
"Oh," he urged, "the play has made you morbid. As for me, I have heard
nothing, seen nothing, but you. The bitterness of the play has skimmed
by me, that is all; I have been in too sweet a dream to let those people
on the stage--"
"How Wantage would rage if he heard you," said the girl. She felt what
was coming, and she meant to fence as well as she could to avoid it.
"Wantage? Bother Wantage!" He leaned down to her, and whispered,
"Jeannette!"
The flush on her cheek deepened, but she did not stir. It was as if she
had not heard. She shut her eyes. All her weapons dropped at once. She
knew it had to come; she knew, too, that, in this crisis, her heart
stood plainly legible to her. Moncreith's name was not there.
"Jeannette," Moncreith went on, in his vibrant whisper, "don't you guess
what dream I have been living in for so long? Don't you know that it is
you, you, you--" He faltered, his emotions outstriding his words. "It is
you," he finished, "that spell happiness for me. I--oh, is there no
other, less crude way of putting it?--I love you, Jeannette! And you?"
He waited. The chattering and light laughter in the stalls and
throughout the house seemed to lull into a mere hushed murmur, like the
fluttering and twittering of a thousand birds. Moncreith, in his tense
expectation, had heed only for the face of the girl beside him. He did
not see, in the aisle below, Orson Vane, sauntering to his seat. He did
not follow the direction of Jeannette Vanlief's eyes, the instant before
she turned, and answered.
"I wish you had not spoken. I can't say anything--anything that you
would like. Please, please--" She shook her head, in evident distress.
"Ah," he burst out, "then it is true, after all, what I have feared. It
is true that you prefer that--that--"
She stayed him with a quick look.
"I did not say I preferred anyone. I simply said that you must consider
the question closed. I am sorry, oh, so sorry. I wish a man and a woman
could ever be friends, in this world, without risking either love or
hate."
"All the same," he muttered, fiercely, "I believe you prefer that
fellow--"
"Orson Vane's downstairs," said the Professor entering the box at that
moment.
"That damned chameleon!" So Moncreith closed, under his breath, his just
interrupted speech.