XV

Tlast the new play was finished and the author brought it and laid it in the hands of the actress as if it were a new-born child, and her heart leaped with joy. He was no longer the stern and self-absorbed writer. His voice was tender as he said, "I give this to you in the hope that it may regain for you what you have lost."

The tears sprang to Helen's eyes, and a word of love rose to her lips. "It is very beautiful, and we will triumph in it."

He seemed about to speak some revealing, sealing word, but the presence of the mother restrained him. Helen, recognizing the returning tide of his love, to which she related no self-seeking, was radiant.

"Come, we will put it in rehearsal at once," she said. "I know you are as eager to have it staged as I. I will not read it. I will wait till you read it for the company to-morrow morning."

"I do not go to that ordeal with the same joy as before," he admitted.

The company met him with far less of interest in this reading of the second play, and his own manner was distinctly less confident. Hugh and Westervelt maintained silence, but their opposition was as palpable as a cold wind. Royleston's cynical face expressed an open contempt. The lesser people were anxious to know the kind of characters they were to play, and a few were sympathetically eager to hear the play itself.

He read the manuscript with some assurance of manner, but made no suggestion as to the stage business, contenting himself with producing an effect on the minds of the principals; but as the girlish charm ofEnid'scharacter made itself felt, the women of the company began to glow.

"Why, it's very beautiful!" they exclaimed.

Hugh, on the scent for another "problem," began to relax, and even Westervelt grunted a few words of approval, qualified at once by the whispered words, "Not a cent in it—not a cent." Royleston, between his acts, regarded the air with dreamy gaze. "I don't see myself in that part yet, but it's very good—very good."

The reading closed rather well, producing the desired effect of "happy tears" on the faces of several of the feminine members of the cast, and Helen again spoke of her pleasure in such work and asked them to "lend themselves" to the lines. "This play is a kind of poem," she said, "and makes a direct appeal to women, and yet I believe it will also win its way to the hearts of the men."

As they rose Douglass returned the manuscript to Helen with a bow. "I renounce all rights. Hereafter I am but a spectator."

"I think you are right in not attempting rehearsals. You are worn and tired. Why don't you go away for a time? A sea voyage would do you good."

"No, I must stay and face the music, as my father used to say. I do not wish to seem to run away, and, besides, I may be able to offer a suggestion now and then."

"Oh, I didn't mean to have you miss the first night. You could come back for that. If you stay we will be glad of any suggestion at any time—won't we, Hugh?"

Hugh refused to be brought into any marked agreement. "Of course, the author's advice is valuable, but with a man like Olquest—"

"I don't want to see a single rehearsal," replied Douglass. "I want to have the joy this time of seeing my characters on the opening night fully embodied. If the success of the play depended upon my personal supervision, the case would be different, but it doesn't. I trust you and Olquest. I will keep away."

Again they went to lunch together, but the old-time elation was sadly wanting. Hugh was silent and Douglass gloomy. Helen cut the luncheon for a ride in the park, which did them good, for the wind was keen and inspiriting and the landscape wintry white and blue and gold. She succeeded in provoking her playwright to a smile now and then by some audacious sally against the sombre silence of her cavaliers.

They halted for half an hour in the upper park while she called the squirrels to her and fed them from her own hands—those wonderful hands that had so often lured with jewels and threatened with steel. No one seeing this refined, sweet woman in tasteful furs would have related her with theGismondaandIstar, but Douglass thrilled with sudden accession of confidence. "How beautiful she will be asEnid!" he thought, as, with a squirrel on her shoulder, she turned with shining face to softly call: "This is David. Isn't he a dear?"

She waited until the keen-eyed rascals had taken her last nut, then slowly returned to the carriage side. "I like to win animals like that. It thrills my heart to have them set their fearless little feet on my arm."

Hugh uttered a warning. "You want to be careful how you handle them; they bite like demons."

"Oh, now, don't spoil it!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure they know me and trust me."

Douglass was moved to their defence, and strove during the remainder of the ride to add to Helen's pleasure; and this effort on his part made her eyes shine with joy—a joy almost pathetic in its intensity.

As they parted at the door of his hotel he said: "If you do not succeed this time I will utterly despair of the public. I know how sweet you will be asEnid. They must bow down before you as I do."

"I will give my best powers to this—be sure nothing will be neglected at rehearsal."

"I know you will," he answered, feelingly.

She was better than her promise, laboring tirelessly in the effort to embody through her company the poetry, the charm, which lay even in the smaller rôles of the play. That one so big and brusque as Douglass should be able to define so many and such fugitive feminine emotions was a constant source of wonder and delight to her. The discovery gave her trust and confidence in him, and to her admiration of his power was added something which stole into her mind like music, causing foolish dreams and moments of reckless exaltation wherein she asked herself whether to be a great actress was not, after all, a thing of less profit than to be a wife and mother.

She saw much less of him than she wished, for Hugh remained coldly unresponsive in his presence, and threw over their meetings a restraint which prevented the joyous companionship of their first acquaintanceship.

More than this, Helen was conscious of being watched and commented upon, not merely by Hugh and Westervelt, but by guests of the hotel and representatives of the society press. Douglass, in order to shield her, and also because his position in the world was less secure than ever, returned to his self-absorbed, impersonal manner of speech. He took no part in the rehearsals, except to rush in at the close with some changes which he wished embodied at once, regardless of the vexation and confusion resulting. His brain was still perilously active, and not only cut and refined the dialogue, but made most radical modifications of the "business."

Helen began to show the effects of the strain upon her; for she was not merely carrying the burden ofLillian's Duty, and directing rehearsals of the new piece—she was deeply involved in the greatest problem than can come to a woman. She loved Douglass; but did she love him strongly enough to warrant her in saying so—when he should ask her?

His present poverty she put aside as of no serious account. A man so physically powerful, so mentally alert, was rich in possibilities. The work which he had already done entitled him to rank above millionaires, but that his very forcefulness, his strong will, his dominating idealism would make him her master—would inevitably change her relation to the world—had already changed it, in fact—she was not ready to acknowledge.

Up to this time her love for the stage had been single-minded. No man had touched her heart with sufficient fire to disturb her serenity, but now she was not merely following where he led, she was questioning the value and morality of her avocation.

"If I cannot play high rôles, if the public will not have me in work like this I am now rehearsing, then I will retire to private life. I will no longer be a plaything for the man-headed monster," she said one day.

"You should have retired before sinking your good money in these Douglass plays," Hugh bitterly rejoined. "It looks now as though we might end in the police station."

"I have no fear of that, Hugh; I am perfectly certain thatEnidis to regain all our losses."

"I wish I had your beautiful faith," he made answer, and walked away.

Westervelt said little to her during these days; he only looked, and his doleful gestures, his lugubrious grimaces, were comic. He stood to lose nothing, except possible profits for Helen. She was paying him full rental, but he claimed that his house was being ruined. "It will get the reputation of doing nothing but failures," he said to her once, in a last despairing appeal, and to this she replied:

"Very well. If at the end of four weeksEniddoes not pull up to paying business I will release you from your contract. I will free your house of Helen Merival."

"No, no! I don't want that. I want you, but I do not want this crazy man Douglass. You must not leave me!" His voice grew husky with appeal. "Return to the old plays, sign a five-year contract, and I will make you again rich."

"There will be time to consider that four weeks hence."

"Yes, but the season is passing."

"Courage, mein Herr!" she said, with a smile, and left him almost in tears.

Sthe opening night ofEnid's Choicedrew 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 greetedLillian. 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 ofLillian'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 betweenEnidandSidney, 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 whenEnidleft 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 playedSidneystuttered 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 toSidney'scharacter—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—withSidneyreading 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 aregoingto 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 inSidney'slines? 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 itsfinale, 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.

OUGLASSknew 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 ofEnid'sworld 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 ofLillian'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 littleingénueswho can play acceptably this goody-goodyEnid, but the best of them would be lost in the large folds of your cloak inThe 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. HerEnidis 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 asEnid's Choicewill 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 momentEnid'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.Enidis 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, Imustrepay 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 mymétier. 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."

"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.Enidis 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, Imustrepay 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 mymétier. 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."

HISletter came to Helen with her coffee, and the reading of it blotted out the glory of the morning, filling her eyes with smarting tears. It put a sudden ache into her heart, a fierce resentment. At the moment his assumed humbleness, his self-derision, his confession of failure irritated her.

"I don't want you to bend and bow," she thought, as if speaking to him. "I'd rather you were fierce and hard, as you were last night." She read on to the end, so deeply moved that she could scarcely see the lines. Her resentment melted away and a pity, profound and almost maternal, filled her heart. "Poor boy! What could Hugh have said to him! I will know. It has been a bitter experience for him. And is this the end of our good days?"

With this internal question a sense of vital loss took hold upon her. For the first time in her life the future seemed desolate and her past futile. Back upon her a throng of memories came rushing—memories of the high and splendid moments they had spent together. First of all she remembered him as the cold, stern, handsome stranger of that first night—that night when she learned that his coldness was assumed, his sternness a mask. She realized once again that at this first meeting he had won her by his voice, by his hand-clasp, by the swiftness and fervor of his speech; he had dominated her, swept her from her feet.

And now this was the end of all their plans, their dreams of conquest. There could be no doubt of his meaning in this letter: he had cut himself off from her, perversely, bitterly, in despair and deep humiliation. She did not doubt his ability to keep his word. There was something inexorable in him. She had felt it before—a sort of blind, self-torturing obstinacy which would keep him to his vow though he bled for every letter.

And yet she wrote again, patiently, sweetly, asking him to come to her. "I don't know what Hugh said to you—no matter, forgive him. We were all at high tension last night. I know you didn't intend to hurt me, and I have put it all away. I will forget your reproach, but I cannot have you go out of my life in this way. It is too cruel, too hopeless. Come to me again, your good, strong, buoyant self, and let us plan for the future."

This message, so high, so divinely forgiving, came back to her unopened, with a line from the clerk on the back—"Mr. Douglass left the city this evening. No address."

This laconic message struck her like a blow. It was as if Douglass himself had refused her outstretched hand. Her nerves, tense and quivering, gave way. Her resentment flamed up again.

"Very well." She tore the note in small pieces, slowly, with painful precision, as if by so doing she were tearing and blowing away the great passion which had grown up in her heart. "I was mistaken in you. You are unworthy of my confidence. After all, you are only a weak, egotistical 'genius'—morbid, selfish. Hugh is right. You have proved my evil genius. You skulked the night of your first play. You alternately ignored and made use of me—as you pleased—and after all I had done for you you flouted me in the face of my company." She flung the fragments of the note into the fire. "There are your words—all counting for nothing."

And she rose and walked out to her brother and her manager, determined that no sign of her suffering and despair should be written upon her face.

The day dragged wearily forward, and when Westervelt came in with a sorrowful tale of diminishing demand for seats she gave her consent to a return toBaroness Telkaon the following Monday morning.

The manager was jubilant. "Now we will see a theatre once more. I tought I vas running a church or a school. Now we will see carriages at the door again and some dress-suits pefore the orchestra. Eh, Hugh?"

"I'm glad to see you come to your senses," said Hugh, ignoring Westervelt. "That chap had us all—"

She stopped him. "Not a word of that. Mr. Douglass was right and his plays are right, but the public is not yet risen to such work. I admire his work just as much now as ever. I am only doubting the public. If there is no sign of increasing interest on Saturday we will takeEnidoff. That is all I will say now."

It seemed a pitiful, a monstrous thing. Hugh made no further protest, but that his queenly sister, after walking untouched through swarms of rich and talented suitors, should fall a victim to a poor and unknown architect, who was a failure at his own business as well as a playwright.

Mrs. MacDavitt, who stood quite in awe of her daughter, and who feared the sudden, hot temper of her son, passed through some trying hours as the days went by. Helen was plainly suffering, and the mother cautioned the son to speak gently. "I fear she prized him highly—the young Douglass," she said, "and, I confess, I had a kin' o' liking for the lad. He was so keen and resolved."

"He was keen to 'do' us, mother, and when he found he couldn't he pulled his freight. He could write, I'll admit that, but he wouldn't write what people wanted to hear. He was too badly stuck on his own 'genius.'"

Helen went to her task at the theatre without heart, though she pretended to a greater enthusiasm than ever. But each time she entered upon the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came to her. She enjoyed the words with whichEnidquestions the life of her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness, simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she played the remainder of the act with mind distraught. "Can it be possible that he is still in the city?" she asked herself.

Twas, indeed, the playwright. Each night he left his boarding-place, drawn by an impulse he could not resist, to walk slowly to and fro opposite the theatre entrance, calculating with agonized eye the meagre numbers of those who entered. At times he took his stand near the door in a shadowy nook (with coat-collar rolled high about his ears), in order to observe the passing stream, hoping, exulting, and suffering alternately as groups from the crowd paused for a moment to study the displayed photographs, only to pass on to other amusement with some careless allusion to the fallen star.

This hurt him worst of all—that these motes, these cheap little boys and girls, could now sneer at or pity Helen Merival. "I brought her to this," he repeated, with morbid sense of power. "When she met me she was queen of the city; now she is an object of pity."

This feeling of guilt, this egotism deepened each night as he watched the city's pleasure-seekers pace past the door. It was of no avail to say that the few who entered were of higher type than the many who passed. "The profession which Helen serves cannot live on the wishes of the few, the many must be pleased. To become exclusive in appeal is to die of hunger. This is why the sordid, commonplace playwrights and the business-like managers succeed while the idealists fail. There is an iron law of limitation here."

"That is why my influence is destructive," he added, and was reassured in the justice of his resolution to take himself out of Helen's life. "Everything I stand for is inimical to her interests. To follow my path is to eat dry crusts, to be without comfort. To amuse this great, moiling crowd, to dance for them like a monkey, to pander to their base passions, this means success, and so long as her acting does not smirch her own soul what does it matter?" In such wise he sometimes argued in his bitterness and wrath.

From the brilliant street, from the gay crowds rolling on in search of witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium. Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance, tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, hearing with cold and sinking heart the faint applause from the orchestra chairs which used to roar with bravos and sparkle with the clapping of white and jewelled hands.

There was something horrifying in this change. In his morbid and overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving fools, for these flabby business men and their capon-stuffed wives. I will mix them a dramatic cocktail that will make them sit up. I will create a dazzling rôle for Helen, one that will win back all her old-time admirers. They shall come like a roaring tide, and she shall recoup herself for every loss—in purse and prestige."

It was this night, when his face was white with suffering, that Helen caught a glimpse of him hanging across the railing of the upper balcony.

He went no more to see her play. In his small, shabby room in a musty house on one of the old side streets he set to work on his new plan. He wrote now without fervor, without elation, plodding along hour after hour, erasing, interlining, destroying, rewriting. He toiled terribly. He permitted himself no fancy flights. He calculated now. "I must have a young and beautiful duchess or countess," he mused, bitterly. "Our democratic public loves to see nobility. She must peril her honor for a lover—a wonderful fellow of the middle-class, not royal, but near it. The princess must masquerade in a man's clothing for some high purpose. There must be a lord high chamberlain or the like who discovers her on this mission to save her lover, and who uses his discovery to demand her hand in marriage for his son—"

In this cynical mood he worked, sustained only by the memory of "The Glittering Woman" whose power and beauty had once dazzled him. Slowly the new play took shape, and, try as he might, he could not keep out of it a line now and then of real drama—of literature. Each act was designed to end with a clarion call to the passions, and he was perfectly certain that the curtain would rise again and again at the close. At every point was glitter and the rush of heroics.

He lived sparely, seeing no one, going out only at night for a walk in the square. To send to his brother or his father for money he would not, not even to write his wonder-working drama. His letters home, while brief, were studiedly confident of tone. The play-acting business and all those connected with it stood very remote from the farming village in which Dr. Donald Douglass lived, and when he read from his son's letters references to his dramas his mind took but slight hold upon the words. His replies were brief and to the point. "Go back to your building and leave the play-actors to themselves. They're a poor, uneasy lot at the best." To him an architect was a man who built houses and barns, with a personal share in the physical labor, a wholesome, manly business. The son understood his father's prejudices, and they formed a barrier to his approach when in need.

On the morning of the fifteenth dayAlessandrawent to the type-writer, and the weary playwright lifted his head and took a full, free breath. He was convinced beyond any question that this melodrama would please. It had all the elements which he despised, therefore it must succeed. His desire to see Helen now overpowered him. Worn with his toil and exultant in his freedom, he went out into the street to see what the world was doing.

Enid's Choicewas still running. A slight gain at the end of the first week had enabled Helen to withhold her surrender to mammon. The second week increased the attendance, but the loss on the two plays was now very heavy, and Hugh and Westervelt and all her friends as well urged her to give way to the imperious public; but some deep loyalty to Douglass, some reason which she was not free to give, made her say, "No, while there is the slightest hope I am going to keep on." To her mother she said: "They are associated in my mind with something sweet and fine—a man's aspiration. They taste good in my mouth after all these years of rancid melodrama."

To herself she said: "If they succeed—if they win the public—my lover will come back. He can then come as a conqueror." And the hope of this, the almost certain happiness and honor which awaited them both led her to devise new methods of letting the great non-theatre-going public know that in George Douglass'sEnidthey might be comforted—that it was, indeed, a dramatic sign of promise. "We will give it a faithful trial here, then go on the road. Life is less strenuous in the smaller towns—they have time to think."

Hugh and Westervelt counselled against any form of advertising that would seem to set the play in a class by itself, but Helen, made keen by her suffering, bluntly replied: "You are both wrong, utterly wrong. Our only possible chance of success lies in reaching that vast, sane, thoughtful public which seldom or never goes to the theatre. This public very properly holds a prejudice against the theatrical world, but it will welcome a play which is high and poetic without being dull. This public is so vast it makes the ordinary theatre-going public seem but a handful. We must change all our methods of printing."

These ideas were sourly adopted in the third week, just when a note from Douglass reached her by the hand of a special messenger. In this letter he said: "I have completed another play. I have been grubbing night and day with incessant struggle to put myself and all my ideals aside—to give the public what it wants—to win your old admirers back, in order that I might see you playing once more to crowded and brilliant houses. It will succeed because it is diametrically opposed to all I have expressed. It is my sacrifice. Will you accept it? Will you read my play? Shall I send it to you?"

Something went out from this letter which hurt Helen deeply. First of all there was a certain humble aloofness in his attitude which troubled her, but more significant still was his confessed departure from his ideals. Her brave and splendid lover had surrendered to the enemy—for her sake. Her first impulse was to write refusing to accept his sacrifice. But on second thought she craftily wrote: "I do not like to think of you writing to please the public, which I have put aside, but come and bring your play. I cannot believe that you have really written down to a melodramatic audience. What I will do I cannot say till I have seen your piece. Where have you kept yourself? Have you been West? Come and tell me all about it."

To this self-contained note he replied by sending the drama. "No, I cannot come till Hugh and you have read and accepted this play. I want your manager to pass onAlessandra. You know what I mean. You are an idealist like myself. You will condemn this drama, but Westervelt may see in it a chance to restore the glitter to his theatre. Ask them both to read it—without letting them know who wrote it. If they accept it, then I can meet them again on equal terms. I long to see you; but I am in disgrace and infinitely poorer than when I first met you."

Over this letter Helen pondered long. Her first impulse was to send the play back without reading it, but her love suggested another subterfuge. "I will do his will, and if Hugh and Westervelt find the play acceptable I will share in his triumph. But I will not do the play except as a last resort—for his sake.Enidis more than holding its own. So long as it does I will not permit him to lower his splendid powers."

To Hugh she carelessly said: "Here is another play—a melodrama, to judge from the title. Look it over and see if there is anything in it."

As plays were constantly coming in to them, Hugh took this one quite as a matter of routine, with expectation of being bored. He was a little surprised next morning when she asked, "Did you look into that manuscript?"

He answered: "No. I didn't get time."

She could hardly conceal her impatience. "I wish you'd go over it this morning. From the title it's one of those middle-age Italian things that costume well."

"Oh, is it?" he exclaimed. "Well, I'll get right at it." Her interest in it more than the title moved him. It was a most hopeful sign of weakening on her part.

He came to lunch full of enthusiasm. "Say, sis, that play is a corker. There is a part in it that sees theBaronessand goes her one better. If the last act keeps up we've got a prize-winner. Who's Edwin Baxter, anyhow?"

Helen quietly stirred her tea. "I never heard the name before. A new man in the theatrical world, apparently."

"Well, he's all right. I'm going over the whole thing again. Have you read it?"

"No, I thought best to let you and Westervelt decide this time. I merely glanced at it."

"Well, it looks like the thing to pull us out of our hole."

That night Westervelt came behind the scenes with shining face. "I hope you will consent to do this new piece; it is a cracker-jack." He grew cautious. "It really is an immensely better piece of work thanThe Baroness, and yet it has elements of popularity. I have read it hastily. I shall study it to-night. If it looks as big to me to-morrow morning as now I will return to the old arrangement with you—if you wish."

"How is the house to-night?" she asked.

His face dropped. "No better than last night." He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, ten or fifteen dollars, maybe. We can play all winter to two hundred dollars a night with this play. I do not understand such audiences. Apparently each man sends just one to take his place. There is no increase."

"Well, report to me to-morrow aboutAlessandra, then I will decide upon the whole matter."

In spite of herself she shared in the glow which shone on the faces of her supports, for the word had been passed to the leading members that they were going back to the old drama. "They've found a new play—a corking melodrama."

Royleston straightened. "What's the subject?"

"Middle-age Italian intrigue, so Hugh says—bully costumes—a wonder of a part for Merival."

"Then we are on velvet again," said Royleston.

The influence of the news ran through the action on the stage. The performance took on spirit and gusto. The audience immediately felt the glow of the players' enthusiasm, and warmed to both actress and playwright, and the curtain went down to the most vigorous applause of the entire run. But Westervelt did not perceive this, so engrossed was he in the new manuscript. Reading was prodigious labor for him—required all his attention.

He was at the hotel early the next morning, impatient to see his star. As he waited he figured on a little pad. His face was flushed as if with drink. His eyes swam with tears of joy, and when Helen appeared he took her hand in both his fat pads, crying out:

"My dear lady, we have found you a new play. It is to be a big production. It will cost a barrel of money to put it on, but it is a winner. Tell the writer to come on and talk terms."

Helen remained quite cool. "You go too fast, Herr Westervelt. I have not read the piece. I may not like the title rôle."

The manager winced. "You will like it—you must like it. It is a wonderful part. The costuming is magnificent—the scenes superb."

"Is there any text?"

Westervelt did not feel the sarcasm. "Excellent text. It is not Sardou—of course not—but it is of his school, and very well done indeed. The situations are not new, but they are powerfully worked out. I am anxious to secure it. If not for you, for some one else."

"Very well. I will read the manuscript. If I like it I will send for the author."

With this show of tepid interest on the part of his star Westervelt had to be content. To Hugh he complained: "The influence of that crazy Douglass is strong with her yet. I'm afraid she will turn down this part."

Hugh was also alarmed by her indifference, and at frequent intervals during the day asked how she was getting on with the reading.

To this query she each time replied: "Slowly. I'm giving it careful thought."

She was, indeed, struggling with her tempted self. She was more deeply curious to read the manuscript than any one else could possibly be, and yet she feared to open the envelope which contained it. She did not wish to be in any sense a party to her lover's surrender. She knew that he must have written falsely and without conviction to have made such a profound impression on Westervelt. The very fact that the theme was Italian, and of the Middle Ages, was a proof of his abandonment of a cardinal principle, for he had often told her how he hated all that sort of thing. "What kind of a national drama would that be which dealt entirely with French or Italian mediæval heroes?" he had once asked, with vast scorn.

It would win back her former worshippers, she felt sure of that. The theatre would fill again with men whose palates required the highly seasoned, the far-fetched. The critics would rejoice in their victory, and welcome Helen Merival to her rightful place with added fervor. The bill-boards would glow again with magnificent posters of Helen Merival, asAlessandra, stooping with wild eyes and streaming hair over her slain paramour on the marble stairway, a dagger in her hand. People would crowd again behind the scenes at the close of the play. The magazines would add their chorus of praise.

And over against this stood the slim, poetic figure ofEnid, so white of soul, so simple, so elemental of appeal. A whole world lay between the two parts. All that each stood for was diametrically opposed to the other. One was modern as the telephone, true, sound, and revealing. The other false from beginning to end, belonging to a world that never existed, a brilliant, flashing pageant, a struggle of beasts in robes of gold and velvet—assassins dancing in jewelled garters. Every scene, every motion was worn with use on the stage, and yet her own romance, her happiness, seemed to depend upon her capitulation as well as his.

"If they acceptAlessandrahe will come back to me proudly—at least with a sense of victory over his ignoble enemies. If I return it he will know I am right, but will still be left so deeply in my debt that he will never come to see me again." And with this thought she determined upon a course of action which led at least to a meeting and to a reconciliation between the author and the manager, and with the thought of seeing him again her heart grew light.

When she came to the theatre at night Westervelt was waiting at the door.

"Well?" he asked, anxiously. "What do you think of it?"

"I have sent for the author," she answered, coldly. "He will meet me to-morrow at eleven. Come to the hotel and I will introduce him to you."

"Splendid! splendid!" exclaimed the manager. "You found it suited to you! A great part, eh?"

"I like it better thanThe Baroness," she replied, and left him broad-faced with joy.

"She is coming sensible again," he chuckled. "Now that that crank is out of the way we shall see her as she was—triumphant."

Again the audience responded to every line she spoke, and as she played something reassuring came up to her from the faces below. The house was perceptibly less empty, but the comfort arose from something more intangible than an increase of filled chairs. "I believe the tide has turned," she thought, exultantly, but dared not say so to Hugh.

That night she sent a note to Douglass, and the words of her message filled him with mingled feelings of exultation and bitterness:

"You have won! Westervelt and Hugh are crazy to meet the author ofAlessandra. They see a great success for you, for me, for all of us. Westervelt is ready to pour out his money to stage the thing gorgeously. Come to-morrow to meet them. Come proudly. You will find them both ready to take your hand—eager to acknowledge that they have misjudged you. We have both made a fight for good work and failed. No one can blame us if we yield to necessity."

The thought of once more meeting her, of facing her managers with confident gaze on equal terms, made Douglass tremble with excitement. He dressed with care, attempting as best he could to put away all the dust and odors of his miserable tenement, and went forth looking much like the old-time, self-confident youth who faced down the clerk. His mind ran over every word in Helen's note a dozen times, extracting each time new and hidden meanings.

"If it is the great success they think it, my fortune is made." His spirits began to overleap all bounds. "It will enable me to meet her as an equal—not in worth," he acknowledged—"she is so much finer and nobler than any man that ever lived—but I will at least be something more than a tramp kennelled in a musty hole." His mind took another flight. "I can go home with pride also. Oh, success is a sovereign thing. Think of Hugh and Westervelt waiting to welcome me—and Helen!"

When he thought of her his confident air failed him, his face flushed, his hands felt numb. She shone now like a far-off violet star. She had recovered her aloofness, her allurement in his mind, and it was difficult for him to realize that he had once known her intimately and that he had treated her inconsiderately. "I must have been mad," he exclaimed. It seemed months since he had looked into her face.

The clerk he dreaded to meet was off duty, and as the elevator boy knew him he did not approach the desk, but went at once to Helen's apartments.

She did not meet him at the door as he had foolishly expected. Delia, the maid, greeted him with a smile, and led him back to the reception-room and left him alone.

He heard Helen's voice, the rustle of her dress, and then she stood before him. As he looked into her face and read love and pity in her eyes he lost all fear, all doubt, and caught her hand in both of his, unable to speak a word in his defence—unable even to tell her of his gratitude and love.

She recovered herself first, and, drawing back, looked at him searchingly. "You poor fellow, you've been working like mad. You are ill!"

"No, I am not ill—only tired. I have had only one thought, one aim since I saw you last, that was to write something to restore you to your old place——"

"I do not want to be restored. Now listen, Lord Douglass. If I doAlessandra, it is because we both need the money and the prestige; but I do not despair, and you must not. Please let me manage this whole affair; will you?"

"I am your slave."

"Don't say such things. I don't want you to be humble. I want you to be as brave, as proud as before."

She said this in such a tone that he rose to it. His face reset in lines of resolution. "I will not be humble with any other human being but you. I worship you."

She stood for a moment looking at him fixedly, a smile of pride and tender dream on her lips, then said, "You must not say such things to me—not now." The bell rang. "Here comes your new-found admirers," she exclaimed, gleefully. "Now, you sit here, a little in the shadow, and I will bring them in."

Douglass heard Hugh ask, eagerly, "Is he here?"

"Yes, he is waiting for you." A moment later she re-entered, followed closely by Westervelt. "Herr Westervelt, let me introduce Mr. George Douglass, author ofAlessandra,Lillian's Duty, andEnid's Choice."

For an instant Westervelt's face was a confused, lumpy mass of amazement and resentment; then he capitulated, quick to know on which side his bread was buttered, and, flinging out a fat hand, he roared:

"Very good joke. Ha! ha! You have fooled me completely. Mr. Douglass, I congratulate you. You have now given Helen Merival the best part she has ever had. You found we were right, eh?"

Douglass remained a little stiff. "Yes, for the present we'll say you are right; but the time is coming—"

Hugh came forward with less of enthusiasm, but his wall of reserve was melting. "I'm mighty glad to know that you wroteAlessandra, Douglass. It is worthy of Sardou, and it will win back every dollar we've lost in the other plays."

"That's what I wrote it for," said Douglass, sombrely.

Westervelt had no further scruples—no reservations. "Well, now, as to terms and date of production. Let's get to business."

Helen interposed. "No more of that for to-day. Mr. Douglass is tired and needs recreation. Leave business till to-morrow. Come, let us go to mother; she is anxious to see you—and you are to breakfast with us in the good old spirit."

It was sweet to sit with them again on the old footing—to be released from his load of guilty responsibility. To face the shining table, the dear old mother—and Helen! Something indefinably domestic and tender came from her hesitating speech and shone in her liquid, beaming eyes.

The room swam in vivid sunshine, and seemed thus to typify the toiler's escape from poverty and defeat.

"Don't expect me to talk," he said, slowly, strangely. "I'm too dazed, too happy to think clearly. I can't believe it. I have lived two months in a horrible nightmare; but now that the business men, the practical ones, say you are to be saved by me, I must believe it. I would be perfectly happy if only I had won the success on my own lines without compromise."

"Put that aside," she commanded, softly. "The fuller success will come. We have that to work towards."

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