The Light of the Star: A Novel

XV

AS the opening night of Enid's Choice drew near, Douglass suffered greater anxiety but experienced far less of nervous excitement than before. He was shaking rather than tense of limb, and did not find it necessary to walk the streets to calm his physical excitement. He was depressed by the knowledge that a second defeat would leave him not merely discredited but practically penniless. Nevertheless, he did not hide; on the contrary, he took a seat in one of the boxes.

The audience he at once perceived was of totally different character and temper from that which greeted Lillian. It was quiet and moderate in size, rather less than the capacity of the orchestra seats, for Helen had asked that no "paper" be distributed. Very few were in the gallery, and those who were had the quietly expectant air of students. Only three of the boxes were occupied. The fashionables were entirely absent.

Plainly these people were in their seats out of interest in the play or because of the known power of the actress. They were not flushed with wine nor heavy with late dinners.

The critics were out again in force, and this gave the young author a little satisfaction, for their presence was indisputable evidence of the interest excited by the literary value of his work. "I have made a gain," he said, grimly. "Such men do not go gunning for small deer." But that they were after blood was shown by the sardonic grins with which they greeted one another as they strolled in at the door or met in the aisles. They expected another "killing," and were resolute to be thorough.

From the friendly shelter of the curtain Douglass could study the house without being seen, and a little glow of fire warmed his heart as he recognized five or six of the best-known literary men of the city seated well down towards the front, and the fifteen minutes' wait before the orchestra leader took his seat was rendered less painful by his pride in the really high character of his audience; but when the music blared forth and the curtain began to rise, his blood chilled with a return of the fear and doubt which had assailed him at the opening of Lillian's Duty. "It is impossible that I should succeed," was his thought.

However, his high expectation of pleasure from the performance came back, for he had resolutely kept away from even the dress rehearsal, and the entire creative force of his lines was about to come to him. "In a few moments my characters will step forth from the world of the disembodied into the mellow glow of the foot-lights," he thought, and the anticipated joy of welcoming them warmed his brain and the chill clutch of fear fell away from his throat. The dignity and the glow, the possibilities of the theatre as a temple of literature came to him with almost humbling force.

He knew that Hugh and the actors had worked night and day towards this event – not for him (he realized how little they cared for him), but for Helen. She, dear girl, thought of everybody, and forgot herself in the event. That Westervelt and Hugh had no confidence in the play, even after dress rehearsal, and that they had ignored him as he came into the theatre he knew, but he put these slights aside. Westervelt was busy incessantly explaining to his intimates and to the critics that he no longer shared in Merival's "grazy schemes. She guarantees me, orderwise I would glose my theatre," he said, with wheezy reiteration.

The first scene opened brilliantly in the home of Calvin Wentworth, a millionaire mine-owner. Into the garish and vulgarly ostentatious reception-room a pale, sweet slip of a girl drifted, with big eyes shining with joy of her home-coming. Some of the auditors again failed to recognize the great actress, so wonderful was her transformation in look and manner. The critics themselves, dazed for a moment, led in the cheer which rose. This warmed the house to a genial glow, and the play started with spirit.

Helen, deeply relieved to see Douglass in the box, advanced towards him, and their eyes met for an instant in a lovers' greeting. Again that subtle interchange of fire took place. She looked marvellously young and light-hearted; it was hard to believe that she was worn with work and weakened by anxiety. Her eyes were bright and her hands like lilies.

The act closed with a very novel piece of business and some very unusual lines passing between Enid and Sidney, her lover. Towards this passage Douglass now leaned, uplifted by a sense of power, exulting in Helen's discernment, which had enabled her to realize, almost perfectly, his principal characters. He had not begun to perceive and suffer from the shortcomings of her support; but when Enid left the stage for a few minutes, the fumbling of the subordinate actors stung and irritated him. They had the wrong accent, they roared where they should have been strong and quiet, and the man who played Sidney stuttered and drawled, utterly unlike the character of the play.

"Oh, the wooden ass!" groaned Douglass. "He'll ruin the piece." A burning rage swept over him. So much depended on this performance, and now – "I should have directed the rehearsals. I was a fool to neglect them. Why does she keep the sot?" And part of his anger flowed out towards the star.

Helen, returning, restored the illusion, so complete was her assumption of the part, and the current set swiftly towards that unparalleled ending, those deeply significant lines which had come to the author only late in the week, but which formed, indeed, the very key to Sidney's character – they were his chief enthusiasm in this act, suggesting, as they did, so much. Tingling, aching with pleasurable suspense, the author waited.

The curtain fell on a totally different effect – with Sidney reading utterly different lines!

For a moment the author sat stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened. At last the revelation came. "They have failed to incorporate the changes I made. They have gone back to the weak, trashy ending which I discarded. They have ruined the scene utterly!" and, looking at two of the chief critics, he caught them in the act of laughing evilly, even as they applauded.

With face set in rage, he made his way back of the curtain towards Helen's room. She met him at the door, her face shining with joy. "It's going! It's going!" she cried out, gleefully.

His reply was like a blow in the face. "Why didn't you incorporate that new ending of the act?" he asked, with bitter harshness.

Helen staggered, and her hands rose as if to shield herself from violence. She stammered, "I – I – I – couldn't. You see, the lines came so late. They would have thrown us all out. I will do so to-morrow," she added.

"To-morrow!" he answered, through his set teeth. "Why to-morrow? To-night is the time. Don't you see I'm staking my reputation on to-night? To-night we win or lose. The house is full of critics. They will write of what we do, not of what we are going to do." He began to pace up and down, trembling with disappointment and fury. He turned suddenly. "How about the second act? Did you make those changes in Sidney's lines? I infer not," he added, with a sneer.

Helen spoke with difficulty, her bosom heaving, her eyes fixed in wonder and pain on his face. "No. How could I? You brought them only yesterday morning; they would have endangered the whole act." Then, as the indignity, the injustice, the burning shame of his assault forced themselves into her mind, she flamed out in reproach: "Why did you come back here at all? Why didn't you stay away, as you did before? You are cruel, heartless!" The tears dimmed her eyes. "You've ruined my whole performance. You've broken my heart. Have you no soul – no sense of honor? Go away! I hate you! I'll never speak to you again! I hate you!" And she turned, leaving him dumb and staring, in partial realization of his selfish, brutal demands.

Hugh approached him with lowering brows and clinched hands. "You've done it now. You've broken her nerve, and she'll fail in her part. Haven't you any sense? We pick you off the street and feed you and clothe you – and do your miserable plays – and you rush in here and strike my sister, Helen Merival, in the face. I ought to kick you into the street!"

Douglass stood through this like a man whose brain is benumbed by the crashing echoes of a thunderbolt, hardly aware of the fury of the speaker, but this final threat cleared his mind and stung him into reply.

"You are at liberty to try that," he answered, and an answering ferocity shone in his eyes. "I gave you this play; it's good work, and, properly done, would succeed. Ruin it if you want to. I am done with it and you."

"Thank God!" exclaimed the brother, as the playwright turned away. "Good riddance to a costly acquaintance."

Hardly had the street door clapped behind the blinded author when Helen, white and agitated, reappeared, breathlessly asking, "Where is he; has he gone?"

"Yes; I am glad to say he has."

"Call him back – quick! Don't let him go away angry. I must see him again! Go, bring him back!"

Hugh took her by the arm. "What do you intend to do – give him another chance to insult you? He isn't worth another thought from you. Let him go, and his plays with him."

The orchestra, roaring on its finale, ended with a crash. Hugh lifted his hand in warning. "There goes the curtain, Helen. Go on. Don't let him kill your performance. Go on!" And he took her by the arm.

The training as well as the spirit and quality of the actress reasserted their dominion, and as she walked out upon the stage not even the searching glare of the foot-lights could reveal the cold shadow which lay about her heart.

When the curtain fell on the final "picture" she fairly collapsed, refusing to take the curtain call which a goodly number of her auditors insisted upon. "I'm too tired," she made answer to Hugh. "Too heart-sick," she admitted to herself, for Douglass was gone with angry lights in his eyes, bearing bitter and accusing words in his ears. The temple of amusement was at the moment a place of sorrow, of despair.

XVI

DOUGLASS knew before he had set foot upon the pavement that his life was blasted, that his chance of success and Helen's love were gone, forfeited by his own egotism, his insane selfishness; but it was only a half-surrender; something very stark and unyielding rose within him, preventing his return to ask forgiveness. The scorn, the contempt of Hugh's words, and the lines of loathing appearing for the first time in Helen's wonderfully sensitive face burned each moment deeper into his soul. The sorrows of Enid's world rose like pale clouds above the immovable mountains of his shame and black despair.

He did not doubt for a moment but that this separation was final. "After such a revelation of my character," he confessed, "she can do nothing else but refuse to see me. I have only myself to blame. I was insane," and he groaned with his torment. "She is right. Hugh is right in defending his household against me. My action was that of a fool – a hideous, egotistic fool."

Seeking refuge in his room, he faced his future in nerveless dejection. His little store of money was gone, and his profession, long abandoned, seemed at the moment a broken staff – his place on the press in doubt. What would his good friend say to him now when he asked for a chance to earn his bread? He had flouted the critics, the dramatic departments of all the papers. In his besotted self-confidence he had cast away all his best friends, and with these reflections came the complete revelation of Helen's kindness – and her glittering power. Back upon him swept a realization of the paradise in which he had lived, in whose air his egotism had expanded like a mushroom.

Leagued with her, enjoying her bounty and sharing in the power w1hich her success had brought her, he had imagined himself a great writer, a man with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet – a crown. With her the world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy grovelling at the foot of the ladder of fame.

While he withered over his defeat the electric cars, gigantic insects of the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens. This thing I have gained – I am rapidly becoming infamous."

His weakness, his shuddering fear made his going forth a torture. Even the bell-boy who brought his papers seemed to exult over his misery, but by sternly sending him about an errand the worn playwright managed to overawe and silence him, and then, with the city's leading papers before him, he sat down to his bitter medicine. As he had put aside the judgments of Lillian's Duty, with contemptuous gesture, so now he searched out every line, humbly admitting the truth of every criticism, instructed even by the lash of those who hated him.

The play had closed unexpectedly well, one paper admitted, but it could never succeed. It was not dramatic of construction. Another admitted that it was a novel and pretty entertainment, a kind of prose poem, a fantasy of the present, but without wide appeal. Others called it a moonshine monologue – that a girl at once so naïve and so powerful was impossible. All united in praise of Helen, however, and, as though by agreement, bewailed her desertion of the rôles in which she won great renown. "Our advice, given in the friendliest spirit, is this: go back to the twilight of the past, to the costume play. Get out of the garish light of to-day. The present is suited only for a kind of crass comedy or Bowery melodrama. Only the past, the foreign, affords setting for the large play of human passion which Helen Merival's great art demands."

"You are cheating us," wrote another. "There are a thousand little ingénues who can play acceptably this goody-goody Enid, but the best of them would be lost in the large folds of your cloak in The Baroness Telka."

Only one wrote in almost unmeasured praise, and his words, so well chosen, salved the smarting wounds of the dramatist. "Those who have seen Miss Merival only as the melodrama queen or the adventuress in jet-black evening dress have a surprise in store for them. Her Enid is a dream of cold, chaste girlhood – a lily with heart of fire – in whose tender, virginal eyes the lust and cruelty of the world arouse only pity and wonder. So complete was Miss Merival's investiture of herself in this part that no one recognized her as she stepped on the stage. For a moment even her best friends sat silent." And yet this friend ended like the rest in predicting defeat. "The play is away over the heads of any audience likely to come to see it. The beringed and complacent wives of New York and their wine-befuddled husbands will find little to entertain them in this idyl of modern life. As for the author, George Douglass, we have only this to say: He is twenty years ahead of his time. Let him go on writing his best and be patient. By-and-by, when we have time to think of other things than money, when our wives have ceased to struggle for social success, when the reaction to a simpler and truer life comes – and it is coming – then the quality of such a play as Enid's Choice will give its author the fame and the living he deserves."

The tears came to Douglass's eyes. "Good old Jim! He knows I need comfort this morning. He's prejudiced in my favor – everybody will see that; and yet there is truth in what he says. I will go to him and ask for work, for I must get back to earning a weekly wage."

He went down and out into the street. The city seemed unusually brilliant and uncaring. From every quarter of the suburbs floods of people were streaming in to work or to shop, quite unknowing of any one's misfortunes but their own, each intent on earning a living or securing a bargain. "How can I appeal to these motes?" he asked himself. "By what magic can I lift myself out of this press to earn a living – out of this common drudgery?" He studied the faces in the coffee-house where he sat. "How many of these citizens are capable of understanding for a moment Enid's Choice? Is there any subject holding an interest common to them and to me which would not in a sense be degrading in me to dramatize for their pleasure?"

This was the question, and though his breakfast and a walk on the avenue cleared his brain, it did not solve his problem. "They don't want my ideas on architecture. My dramatic criticism interests but a few. My plays are a proved failure. What is to be done?"

Mingled with these gloomy thoughts, constantly recurring like the dull, far-off boom of a sombre bell, was the consciousness of his loss of Helen. He did not think of returning to ask forgiveness. "I do not deserve it," he repeated each time his heart prompted a message to her. "She is well rid of me. I have been a source of loss, of trouble, and vexation to her. She will be glad of my self-revelation." Nevertheless, when he found her letter waiting for him in his box at the office he was smitten with sudden weakness. "What would she say? She has every reason to hate me, to cast me and my play to the winds. Has she done so? I cannot blame her."

Safe in his room, he opened the letter, the most fateful that had ever come to him in all his life. The very lines showed the agitation of the writer:

"My dear Author, – Pardon me for my harshness last night, and come to see me at once. I was nervous and anxious, as you were. I should have made allowances for the strain you were under. Please forgive me. Come and lunch, as usual, and talk of the play. I believe in it, in spite of all. It must make its own public, but I believe it will do so. Come and let me hear you say you have forgotten my words of last night. I didn't really mean them; you must have known that."

His throat filled with tenderness and his head bowed in humility as he read these good, sweet, womanly lines, and for the moment he was ready to go to her and receive pardon kneeling. But as he thought of the wrong he had done her, the misfortune he had brought upon her, a stubborn, unaccountable resolution hardened his heart. "No, I will not go back till I can go as her equal. I am broken and in disgrace now. I will not burden her generosity further."

The thought of making his peace with Hugh, of meeting Westervelt's hard stare, aided this resolution, and, sitting at his desk, he wrote a long and passionate letter, wherein he delineated with unsparing hand his miserable failure. He took a pride and a sort of morbid pleasure in punishing himself, in denying himself any further joy in her company.

"It is better for you and better for me that we do not meet again – at least till I have won the tolerance of your brother and manager and my own self-respect. The work I have done is honest work; I will not admit that it is wholly bad, but I cannot meet Hugh again till I can demand consideration. It was not so much the words he used as the tone. I was helpless in resenting it. That I am a beggar, a dangerous influence, I admit. I am appalled at the thought of what I have done to injure you. Cast me overboard. Not even your beauty, your great fame, can make my work vital to the public. I am too perverse, too individual. There is good in me, but it is evil to you. I no longer care what they say of me, but I feel every word derogatory of you as if it were a red-hot point of steel. I did not sleep last night; I spent the time in reconstructing myself. I confessed my grievous sins, and I long to do penance. This play is also a failure. I grew cold with hate of myself last night as I thought of the irreparable injury I had done to you. I here relinquish all claim to both pieces; they are yours to do with as you like. Take them, rewrite them, play them, or burn them, as you will.

"You see, I am very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a playwright robs me of every chance of meeting you on equal terms. I want to repay you, I must repay you, for what you have done. If I could write now, it would be not to please myself, but to please you, to help you regain your dominion. I want to see you the radiant one again, speaking to throngs of happy people. If I could by any sacrifice of myself call back the homage of the critics and place you where I found you, the acknowledged queen of American actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand – some recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my métier. You are the one to grant pardon; I am the malefactor. I am taking myself out of your world. Forgive me and – forget me. Hugh was right. My very presence is a curse to you. Good-bye."