XIII
Helen's pride contended unceasingly with her love during the weeks ofher lover's alienation; for, with all her sweet dispraise of herself,she was very proud of her place in the world, and it was not easy to bowher head to neglect. Sometimes when he forgot to answer her or rushedaway to his room with a hasty good-bye, she raged with a perfectlyjustifiable anger. "You are selfish and brutal," she cried out after himon one occasion. "You think only of yourself. You are vain, egotistical.All that I have done is forgotten the moment you are stung bycriticism," and she tried to put him aside. "What do his personaltraits matter to me?" she said, as if in answer to her own charge. "Heis my dramatist, not my husband."
But when he came back to her, an absent-minded smile upon his handsomelips, holding in his hands some pages of exquisite dialogue, she humbledherself before him. "After all, what am I beside him? He is a poet, acreative mind, while I am only a mimic," and straightway she began tomake excuses for him. "Have I not always had the same selfish, desperateconcentration? Am I always a sweet and lovely companion? Certainly theartistic temperament is not a strange thing to me."
Nevertheless, she suffered. It was hard to be the one optimist in themidst of so many pessimists. The nightly performance to an empty housewore on her most distressingly, and no wonder. She, who had neverhitherto given a moment's troubled thought to such matters, now sat inher dressing-room listening to the infrequent, hollow clang of thefalling chair seats, attempting thus to estimate the audience stragglingsparsely, desolately in. To re-enter the stage after an exit was like anicy shower-bath. Each night she hoped to find the receipts larger, andindeed they did from time to time advance suddenly, only to drop back todesolating driblets the following night. These gains were due to thework of the loyal Hugh as advertising agent, or to some desperatediscount sale to a club on the part of Westervelt, who haunted the frontof the house, a pale and flabby wraith of himself, racking his brain,swearing strange, German oaths, and perpetually conjuring up newadvertising devices. His suffering approached the tragic.
His theatre, which had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, wasnow cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony,wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-heartedhand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a manwore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative.Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious,a brazen clatter raised to reinforce the courage of the ushers, whoflitted about like uneasy spirits. There were no carriages in waiting,and the audience returned to the street in silence like funeral guestsfrom a church.
Hugh remained bravely at his post in front. Each night after a carefultoilet he took his stand in the lobby watching with calculating eye andimpassive face the stream of people rushing by his door. "If we couldonly catch one in a hundred?" he said to Westervelt. "I never expectedto see Helen Merival left like this. I didn't think it possible. Ithought she could make any piece go. To play to fifty dollars was out ofmy reckoning. It is slaughter."
Once his disgust topped all restraint, and he burst forth to Helen:"Look at this man Douglass. He bamboozles us into producing his play,then runs off and leaves us to sink or swim. He won't even change thelines--says he's working on a new one that will make us all 'barrels ofmoney.' That's the way of these dramatists--always full of some newpipe-dream. Meanwhile we're going into the hole every night. I can'tstand it. We were making all kinds of money with _The Baroness_. Come,let's go back to it!" His voice filled with love, for she was his ideal."Sis, I hate to see you doing this. It cuts me to the heart. Why, someof these newspaper shads actually pretend to pity you--you, the greatestromantic actress in America! This man Douglass has got you hypnotized.Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you.Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time,Nellie--now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'llfire him and his misbegotten plays to-night."
To this Helen made simple reply. "No, Hugh; I intend to stand to mypromise. We will keep _Lillian_ on till the new play is ready. It wouldbe unfair to Mr. Douglass--"
"But he has lost all interest in it himself. He never shows up in front,never makes a suggestion."
"He is saving all his energy for the new play."
Hugh's lips twisted in scorn. "The new play! Yes, he's filled with a lotof pale-blue moonshine now. He's got another 'idea.' That's the troublewith these literary chaps, they're so swelled by their own notions theycan't write what the common audience wants. His new play will be a worse'frost' than this. You'll ruin us all if you don't drop him. We stand tolose forty thousand dollars on _Lillian_ already."
"Nevertheless, I shall give the new play a production," she replied, andHugh turned away in speechless dismay and disgust.
The papers were filled with stinging allusions to her failure. A shrewdfriend from Boston met her with commiseration in her face. "It's a goodplay and a fine part," she said, "but they don't want you in such work.They like you when you look wicked."
"I know that, but I'm tired of playing the wanton adventuress for suchpeople. I want to appeal to a more thoughtful public for the rest of mystage career."
"Why not organize a church like Mrs. Allinger?" sneered another lessfriendly critic. "The stage is no place for sermons."
"You are horribly unjust. _Lillian's Duty_ is a powerful acting drama,and has its audience if I could reach it. Perhaps I'm not the one to doMr. Douglass's work, after all," she added, humbly.
Deep in her heart Helen MacDavitt the woman was hungry for some one totell her that he loved her. She longed to put her head down on a strongman's breast to weep. "If Douglass would only open his arms to me Iwould go to him. I would not care what the world says."
She wished to see him reinstate himself not merely with the public butin her own estimate of him. As she believed that by means of his pen hewould conquer, she comprehended that his present condition was fevered,unnatural, and she hoped--she believed--it to be temporary. "Successwill bring back the old, brave, sanguine, self-contained Douglass whoseforthright power and self-confidence won my admiration," she said, andwith this secret motive to sustain her she went to her nightlydelineation of _Lillian_.
She had lived long without love, and her heart now sought for it with anintensity which made her art of the highest account only as served theman she loved. Praise and publicity were alike of no value unless theybrought success and happiness to him whose eyes called her with growingpower.
The Light of the Star: A Novel Page 13
