The Light of the Star: A Novel

V

THESE three weeks of rehearsal formed the happiest time Douglass had ever known, for all things conspired to make each day brim with mingled work and worship. First of all, and above all, he was permitted to meet Helen each day, and for hours each day, without fear of gossip and without seeking for an excuse.

Each morning, a little before ten, he left his room and went directly to the theatre to meet the company and the manager. The star, prompt as a clock, arrived soon after, and Douglass, beforehand, as a lover, was always there to help her from her carriage and to lead the way through the dark passage to the stage, where the pompous little Saunders was forever marshalling his uneasy vassals in joyous exercise of sovereignty.

Helen was happy as a child during these days, and glowing with new ideas of "business" and stage-setting. "We will spare no work and no expense," she said, buoyantly, to Mr. Westervelt, her manager. "We have a drama worthy of us. I want every one of Mr. Douglass's ideas carried out."

The manager did not know, as Douglass did, that some of the ideas were her own, and so took a melancholy view of every innovation.

"You can't do that," he gloomily repeated. "The public won't stand for new things. They want the old scenes rehashed. The public don't want to think; it wants to laugh. This story is all right for a book, but won't do for a play. I don't see why you quit a good thing for a risk like this. It is foolish and will lose money," he added, as a climax.

"Croak, you old raven – you'll be embarrassed when we fill your money-box," she replied, gayly. "You should have an ideal, Mr. Westervelt."

"An ideal. What should I do with that?"

Like most men, Douglass knew nothing about gowns in their constituent parts, but he had a specially keen eye for the fitting and beautiful in a woman's toilet, and Helen was a constant delight to him because of the distinction of her dresses. They were refined, yet not weakly so – simple, yet always alluring. Under the influence of her optimism (and also because he did not wish to have her apologize for him) he drew on his slender bank-account for funds to provide himself with a carefully tailored suit of clothes and a new hat.

"How well you are looking!" she said, in soft aside, as he met her one morning soon after. "Your hat is very becoming."

"I am made all over new inside– so I hastened to typify the change exteriorly. I am rejoiced if you like me in my 'glad rags,'" he replied.

"You are really splendid," she answered, with admiring fervor. "Let us hurry through to-day; I am tired and want a spin in the park."

"That is for you to say," he answered.

"You are never tired," she sighed. "I wish I had your endurance."

"It is the endurance of desperation. I am staking all I have on this venture." Then, in low-toned intensity, he added: "It hurts me to have you forced to go over and over these lines because of the stupidity of a bunch of cheap little people. Why don't you let me read your part?"

"That would not be fair," she answered, quickly – "neither to them nor to you. No, I am an actress, and this is a part of my life. We are none of us exempt from the universal curse."

"Royleston is our curse. Please let me kick him out the stage-door – he is an insufferable ass, and a bad actor besides."

"He is an ass, but he can act. No, it's too late to change him now. Wait; be patient. He'll pull up and surprise you at the final rehearsal."

At four o'clock they were spinning up Fifth Avenue, which resounded with the hoof-strokes of stately horses, and glittered with the light of varnished leather. The rehearsal was put far behind them. The day was glorious November, and the air sparkling without being chill. A sudden exaltation seized Helen. "It certainly is a beautiful world – don't you think so?" she asked.

"I do now; I didn't two weeks ago," he replied, soberly.

"What has brought the change?"

"You have." He looked at her steadily.

She chose to be evasive. "I had a friend some years ago who was in the deeps of despair because no one would publish her book. Once she had secured the promise of a real publisher that he would take it she was radiant. She thought the firm had been wondrously kind. They made thirty thousand dollars from the sale of her book. I am selfish – don't you think I'm not – I'm going to make fame and lots of money on your play."

"I hope you may, for am I not to share in all your gold and glory? I have greater need of both than you. You already have all that mortal could desire. I don't believe I've told you what I called you before I met you – have I?"

"No; what was it?" Her eyes widened with interest.

"'The glittering woman.'"

She looked puzzled. "Why that?"

"Because of the glamour, the mystery, which surrounded your name."

"Even now I don't see."

He looked amused and cried out: "On my life, I believe you don't! Being at the source of the light, you can't see it, of course. It's like wearing a crown of electric lamps – others see you as a dazzling thing; you are in the dark. It is my trade to use words to express my meaning, but I confess my hesitation in trying to make you see yourself as I saw you. You were like a baleful, purple star, something monstrous yet beautiful. Your fame filled the world and fell into my garret chamber like a lurid sunrise. With your coming, mysterious posters bloomed and crimson letters blazed on street-walls. Praiseful paragraphs appeared in the newspapers, gowns and hats (named after you) and belt-buckles and shoes and cigarettes arranged themselves in the windows, each bearing your name."

"What a load of tinsel for a poor little woman to carry around! How it must have shocked you to find me so commonplace! None of us escape the common fates. It is always a surprise to me to discover how simple the men of great literary fame are. A friend of mine once spent a whole evening with a great novelist without discovering who he was. She said to him when she found him out, 'I couldn't believe that any one I could meet could be great.' Really, I hope you will forgive me for not being as superhuman as my posters. It was the mystery of the unknown. If you knew all about me I would be entirely commonplace." She was more concerned about his opinion of her than she expressed in words. Her eagerness appeared in her voice.

"I found you infinitely more womanly than I had supposed, and simpler. Even yet I don't see how you can carry this oppressive weight of advertising glory and still be – what you are."

"You seem to hesitate to tell me what I am."

"I do," he gravely answered, and for a moment she sat in silence.

"There's one objection to your assisting at rehearsals," she said, irrelevantly. "You will lose all the intoxication of seeing your play freshly bodied forth. It will be a poor, old, ragged story for you at the end of the three weeks."

"I've thought of that; but there are other compensations."

"You mean the pleasure of having the work go right – "

"Yes, partly that – partly the suggestion that comes from a daily study of it."

But the greatest compensation of all – the joy in her daily companionship – he did not have the courage to mention, and though she divined other and deeper emotions she, too, was silent.

VI

IN the wearisome grind of rehearsal, Douglass was deeply touched and gratified by Helen's efforts to aid him. She was always willing to try again, and remained self-contained even when the author flung down the book and paced the stage in a breathless rage. "Ah, the stupidity of these people!" he exclaimed, after one of these interruptions. "They are impossible. They haven't the brains of a rabbit. Take Royleston; you'd think he ought to know enough to read a simple line like that, but he doesn't. He can't even imitate my way of reading it. They're all so absorbed in their plans to make a hit – "

"Like their star," she answered, with a gleam in her eyes, "and the author."

"But our aims are larger."

"But not more vital; their board and washing hang on their success."

He refused to smile. "They are geese. I hate to have you giving time and labor to such numskulls. You should give your time to your own part."

"I'm a quick study. Please don't worry about me. Come, let's go on; we'll forget all about it to-morrow," and with a light hand on his arm she led him back to the front of the stage, and the rehearsal proceeded.

It was the hardest work he ever did, and he showed it. Some of the cast had to be changed. Two dropped out – allured by a better wage – and all the work on their characterizations had to be done over. Others were always late or sick, and Royleston was generally thick-headed from carousal at his club. Then there were innumerable details of printing and scenery to be decided upon, and certain overzealous minor actors came to him to ask about their wigs and their facial make-up.

In desperation over the small-fry he took the stage himself, helping them in their groupings and exits, which kept him on his feet and keyed to high nervous tension for hours at a time, so that each day his limbs ached and his head swam at the close of the last act.

He marvelled at Helen's endurance and at her self-restraint. She was always ready to interpose gently when hot shot began to fly, and could generally bring about a laugh and a temporary truce by some pacific word.

Hugh and Westervelt both came to her to say: "Tell Douglass to let up. He expects too much of these people. He's got 'em rattled. Tell him to go and slide down-hill somewhere."

"I can't do that," she answered. "It's his play – his first play – and – he's right. He has an ideal, and it will do us all good to live up to it."

To this Hugh replied, with bitterness, "You're too good to him. I wish you weren't quite so – " He hesitated. "They're beginning to talk about it."

"About what?" she asked, quickly.

"About his infatuation."

Her eyes grew steady and penetrating, but a slow, faint flush showed her self-consciousness. "Who are talking?"

"Westervelt – the whole company." He knew his sister and wished he had not spoken, but he added: "The fellows on the street have noticed it. How could they help it when you walk with him and eat with him and ride with him?"

"Well?" she asked, with defiant inflection. "What is to follow? Am I to govern my life to suit Westervelt or the street? I admire and respect Mr. Douglass very much. He has more than one side to him. I am sick of the slang of the Rialto and the greenroom. I'm tired of cheap witticisms and of gossip. With Mr. Douglass I can discuss calmly and rationally many questions which trouble me. He helps me. To talk with him enables me to take a deep breath and try again. He enables me to forget the stage for a few hours."

Hugh remained firm. "But there's your own question – what's to be the end of it? You can't do this without getting talked about."

She smiled, and the glow of her humor disarmed him. "Sufficient unto the end is the evil thereof. I don't think you need to worry – "

Hugh was indeed greatly troubled. He began to dislike and suspect Douglass. They had been antipathetic from the start, and no advance on the author's part could bring the manager nearer. It was indeed true that the young playwright was becoming a marked figure on the street, and the paragrapher of The Saucy Swells spoke of him not too obscurely as the lucky winner of "our modern Helen," which was considered a smart allusion. This paragraph was copied by the leading paper of his native city, and his father wrote to know if it were really true that he was about to marry a play-actress.

This gave a distinct shock to Douglass, for it made definite and very moving the vague dreams which had possessed him in his hours of reflection. His hands clinched, and while his heart beat fast and his breath shortened he said: "Yes, I will win her if I can"; but he was not elated. The success of his play was still in the future, and till he had won his wreath he had no right to address her in any terms but those of friendship.

In spite of the flood of advance notices and personal paragraphs, in spite of envious gossip, he lived on quietly in his attic-room at the Roanoke. He had few friends and no intimates in the city, and cared little for the social opportunities which came to him. Confident of success, he gave up his connection with The Blazon, whose editor valued his special articles on the drama so much as to pay him handsomely for them. The editor of this paper, Mr. Anderson, his most intimate acquaintance, was of the Middle West, and from the first strongly admired the robust thought of the young architect whose "notions" concerning the American drama made him trouble among his fellow-craftsmen.

"You're not an architect, you're a critic," he said to him early in their accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I want you to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have a notion you'll startle my readers."

He did. His point of view, so modern, so uncompromising, so unshaded by tradition, delighted Anderson, and thereafter he was able to employ the young playwright regularly. These articles came to have a special value to the thoughtful "artists" of the stage, and were at last made into a little book, which sold several hundred copies, besides bringing him to the notice of a few congenial cranks and come-outers who met in an old tavern far down in the old city.

These articles – this assumption of the superior air of the critic – led naturally to the determination to write a play to prove his theories, and now that the play was written and the trial about to be made his anxiety to win the public was very keen. He had a threefold reason for toiling like mad – to prove his theories, to gain bread, and to win Helen; and his concentration was really destructive. He could think of nothing else. All his correspondence ceased. He read no more; he went no more to his club. His only diversions were the rides and the lunches which he took with Helen.

With her in the park he was a man transformed. His heaviness left him. His tongue loosened, and together they rose above the toilsome level of the rehearsal and abandoned themselves to the pure joy of being young. Together they visited the exhibitions of painting and sculpture, and to Helen these afternoons were a heavenly release from her own world.

It made no difference to her who objected to her friendship with Douglass. After years of incredible solitude and seclusion and hard work in the midst of multitudes of admirers and in the swift-beating heart of cities, with every inducement to take pleasure, she had remained the self-denying student of acting. Her summers had been spent in England or France, where she saw no one socially and met only those who were interested in her continued business success. Now she abandoned this policy of reserve and permitted herself the joys of a young girl in company with a handsome and honorable man, denying herself even to the few.

She played badly during these three weeks, and Westervelt was both sad and furious. Her joyous companionship with Douglass, her work on his sane and wholesome drama, their discussions of what the stage should be and do unfitted her for the factitious parts she was playing.

"I am going to drop all of these characters into the nearest abyss," she repeated each time with greater intensity. "I shall never play them again after your drama is ready. My contract with Westervelt has really expired so far as his exclusive control over me is concerned, and I will not be coerced into a return to such work."

Her eyes were opened also to the effect of her characters on the audiences that assembled night after night to hear her, and she began to be troubled by the thousands of young girls who flocked to her matinées. "Is it possible that what I call 'my art' is debasing to their bright young souls?" she asked herself. "Is Mr. Douglass right? Am I responsible?"

It was the depression of these moods which gave her corresponding elation as she met her lover's clear, calm eyes of a morning, and walked into the atmosphere of his drama, whose every line told for joy and right living as well as for serious art.

Those were glorious days for her – the delicious surprise of her surrender came back each morning. She had loved once, with the sweet single-heartedness of a girl, shaken with sweet and yielding joy of a boyish face and a slim and graceful figure. What he had said she could not remember; what he was, no longer counted; but what that love had been to her mattered a great deal, for when he passed out of her life the glow of his worship remained in her heart, enabling her to keep a jealous mastery of her art and to remain untouched by the admiration of those who sought her favor in every city she visited. Douglass was amazed to find how restricted her social circle was. Eagerly sought by many of the great drawing-rooms of the city, she seldom went to even the house of a friend.

"Her art is a jealous master," her intimates were accustomed to say, implying that she had remained single in order that she might climb higher on the shining ladder of fame, and in a sense this was true; but she was not sordid in her ambitions – she was a child of nature. She loved rocks, hills, trees, and clouds. And it was this elemental simplicity of taste which made Douglass the conquering hero that he was. She felt in him concrete, rugged strength and honesty of purpose, as wide as the sky from the polished courtesy and the conventional evasions of her urban admirers.

"No, I am not a bit in society," she confessed, in answer to some remark from him. "I couldn't give up my time and strength to it if I wished, and I don't wish. I'd rather have a few friends in for a quiet little evening after the play than go to the swellest reception."

During all this glorious time no shadow of approaching failure crossed their horizon. The weather might be cold and gray; their inner sky remained unspotted of any vapor. If it rained, they lunched at the hotel; if the day was clear they ran out into the country or through the park in delightful comradeship, gay, yet thoughtful, full of brisk talk, even argument, but not on the drama. She had said, "Once for all, I do not intend to talk shop when I am out for pleasure," and he respected her wishes. He had read widely though haphazardly, and his memory was tenacious, and all he had, his whole mind, his best thought, was at her command during those hours of recreation.

He began to see the city from the angle of the successful man. It no longer menaced him; he even began to dream of dominating it by sheer force of genius. When at her side he was invincible. Her buoyant nature transformed him. Her faith, her joy in life was a steady flame; nothing seemed to disturb her or make her afraid. And she attributed this strength, this joyous calm, to his innate sense of power – and admired him for it. That he drew from her, relied upon her, never entered her conception of their relations to each other.

Nevertheless, as the play was nearing its initial production the critics loomed larger. Together they ran over the list. "There is the man who resembles Shakespeare?" she asked.

"He will be kindly."

"And the fat man with shifty gray eyes?"

"He will slate us, unless – "

"And the big man with the grizzled beard?"

"We'll furnish him a joke or two."

"And the man who comes in on crutches?"

"He'll slaughter us; he hates the modern."

"Then the man who looks like Lincoln?"

"He is on our side. But how about the man with the waxed mustache?"

"He'll praise me."

"And slit the playwright's ears. Well, I will not complain. What will the 'Free Lance' do – the one who accepts bribes and cares for his crippled daughter like an angel – what will he do?"

"Well, that depends. Do you know him?"

"I do not, and don't care to. That exhausts the list of the notables; the rest are bright young fellows who are ready to welcome a good thing. Some of them I know slightly, but I do not intend to do one thing, aside from my work, to win their support."

"That is right, of course. Westervelt may take a different course." And in this confident way they approached the day of trial.

Westervelt, watching with uneasy eyes the growing intimacy of his star and her playwright, began to hint his displeasure to Hugh, and at last openly to protest. "What does she mean?" he asked, explosively. "Does she dream of marrying the man? That would be madness! Death! Tell her so, my boy."

Hugh concealed his own anxiety. "Oh, don't worry, they're only good comrades."

Westervelt grunted with infinite contempt. "Comrades! If he is not making love to her I'm a Greek."

Hugh was much more uneasy than the manager, but he had more sense than to rush in upon his famous sister with a demand. He made his complaint to the gentle mother. "I wish she would drop this social business with Douglass. He's a good fellow, but she oughtn't to encourage him in this way. What's the sense of having him on the string every blessed afternoon? Do you imagine she's in earnest? What does she mean? It would be fatal to have her marry anybody now – it would ruin her with the public. Besides, Douglass is only a poor grub of a journalist, and a failure in his own line of business. Can't we do something?"