Love's Pilgrimage Part 44

The rehearsals were held in a little hall on the East Side, and thither came the company--six men and three women. There was no furniture or setting, they all wore their street clothing, and in the beginning they went through their parts with the ma.n.u.script in their hands. And yet--they had been selected because they resembled the characters in the play; and every time they went over the lines they gave them with more feeling and understanding. So--vaguely at first, and then more clearly--the poet began to see them as incarnations of his vision. These characters had been creatures of his fancy; they had lived in it, he had walked and talked and laughed and wept with them. Now to discover them outside him--to be able to hear them with his physical ears and see them with his physical eyes--was one of the strangest experiences of his life. It was so thrilling as to be almost uncanny. It was a new kind of inspiration, of that strange "subliminal uprush" which made the mystery of his life. And it was a kind that others could experience with him.

Corydon would come every day to the rehearsals, and for four or five hours at a stretch they would sit and watch and listen in a state of perfect transport.

Section 7. Also, there were things not in the ma.n.u.script which were sources of interest and delight. There was Mr. Tapping, the stage director, for instance; Thyrsis could see himself writing another play, just to get Mr. Tapping in. He was a man well on in years, and wrecked by dissipation--almost bald and toothless, and with one foot crippled with gout. Yet he was a perfect geyser of activity--bounding about the stage, talking swiftly, gesticulating--like some strange gnome or cobold out of the bowels of the earth. Thyrsis was the creator of the play, so far as concerned the words; but this man was to be the creator of it on the stage. And that, too, required a kind of genius, Thyrsis perceived.

Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him at the beginning--talking until two o'clock in the morning, in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten thousand dead cigars. He talked swiftly, eagerly, setting forth his ideas; to Thyrsis it was a most curious experience--to hear the vision of his inmost soul translated into the language of the Tenderloin! "Your fiddler's this kind of a guy," Mr. Tapping would say--"he knows he's got the goods, and he don't care whether those old fogies think he's dippy, or what the h.e.l.l they think. Ain't that the dope, Mr. Author?" And Thyrsis would answer faintly that he thought that was "the dope."--This was a word that Mr.

Tapping used every time he opened his mouth, apparently; it designated all things connected with the play--character, dialogue, action, scenery, music, costume. "That's the way to dope it out to them!" he would cry to the actors.

Miss Lewis, and Mr. Tilford, the leading man, moved through their parts with dignity; the stage director showed them the "business" he had laid out, but they did not trouble to act at rehearsals, and he did not criticize what they did. But all the other people had to be taught their roles and drilled in them; and that meant that Mr. Tapping had to have in him five actors and two actresses, and play all their seven parts as they came. Marvellous it was to see him do this; springing from place to place, and changing his whole aspect in a flash--now scolding shrewishly in the words of Violet Hartman, now discoursing, with the accent and manner of Prof, von Arne, upon the _psychopathia_ _s.e.xualis_ of Genius.

He did not know all the parts, of course; but that was never allowed to trouble him. He would take a sentence out of the actor's lips, and then go on to elaborate it in his Tenderloin dialect; or, if the scene was highly emotional, and required swift speech, he would fall back upon the phrase "and so and so, and so and so." He could run the whole gamut of human emotions with those words, "and so and so."

"No, that's no good!" he would cry to "Mrs. Hartman." "What are those words?--'Wretched, ungrateful son--do you care nothing at all for your parents' feelings? Do you owe us nothing for what we have done? And so and so? And so and so? And so and so?'" Mr. Tapping's voice would rise to a wail; and then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called all the actors by their character-names). "That's your cue, Rosen, you rush in left centre, and throw up your hands--right here--see? And what's your dope?--oh yes--'I have spent seven thousand dollars on this thing! You have ruined me! You have betrayed me! And so and so! And so and so! And so and so!'--And then you run over here to the professor--'You have trapped me! And so and so!'"

Day by day as the work progressed, and the actors came to know their lines, Thyrsis' excitement grew. The great machine was running, he was getting some sense of the power of it! And new aspects of it were revealed to him; there came the composer who was to do the incidental music, and the orchestra-leader who was to conduct it; there came the costume-designer and the scene-painter, and even the press-agent who was to "boost" the play, and wanted picturesque details about the author's life. Corydon and Thyrsis were invited to go with Mr. Tilford to select a wig, and with Mr. Tapping to see the carpenters who were building the various "sets", in a big loft over near the North River. As the two walked home each day after these adventures, it was all they could do to keep from hugging each other on the street.

It was a thing of especial moment to Thyrsis, because it was the first time in his life that his art had received any a.s.sistance from the outside world--the first time this world had done anything but scold at him and mock him. Here at last was recognition--here was success! Here were material things submitting themselves to his vision, coming to him humbly to be taught, and to co-operate in the creation of beauty! So Thyrsis caught sudden glimpses of what his life might have been. He was like a man who had been chained in a black dungeon, and who now gets sight of the green earth and the blue sky, and smells the perfume of the flowers and hears the singing of the birds. With forces such as this at his command, the power of his vision would be multiplied tenfold; and he was transported with the delight of the discovery, he and Corydon found their souls once more in this new hope.

So out of these moods there began the burgeoning of new plans in his mind. Even amid the rush of rehearsals, he was dreaming of other things to write; some time before "The Genius" had reached the public, he had finished the writing of "The Utopians"--that fragment of a vision which was perhaps the greatest thing he ever did, and certainly the most characteristic.

Section 8. As usual, the immediate occasion of the writing was trivial enough. It was his "leading lady" who was responsible for it. Miss Lewis had taken a curious fancy to Thyrsis--he was a new type to her, and it pleased her to explore him. "How in the world did you ever get him to marry you?" she would exclaim to Corydon. "I could as soon imagine a marble statue making love to me!" And she told others about this strange poet, who was obviously almost starving, and yet had refused to let Richard Haberton revise his play for him, and had all but refused to let Robertson Jones Inc., produce it. Before long she came to Thyrsis to say that one of her friends desired to meet him, and would he come to a supper-party.

Thyrsis heard this with perplexity.

"A supper-party!" he exclaimed. "But I can't!"

"Why not?"

"Why--I have no clothes."

"n.o.body expects a poet to have clothes," laughed Miss Lewis. "Come in the garments of your fancy. And besides, Barry's a true Bohemian."

Barry Creston, the giver of this party, was one of the sons of "Dan"

Creston, the mine-owner and "railroad-king", who a short while before had been elected senator from a Western state under circ.u.mstances of great scandal. "The old man's a hard character, I guess," said Miss Lewis; "but you must not believe all you read in the papers about Barry."

"I never read anything about him," said the other; and so Miss Lewis went on to explain that Griswold, the Wall Street plunger, had got a divorce from his wife after throwing her into Barry's arms; and that Barry's sister had married an Austrian arch-duke who had maltreated her, and that Barry had kicked him out of a hotel-window in Paris.

This invitation was a cause of much discomfort to Thyrsis. He had not come to the point where he was even curious about the life of the Barry Crestons of the world; and yet he did not like to hurt Miss Lewis'

feelings. She made it evident to him that she was determined to exhibit her "lion"; and so he said "all right."

The supper party was at the _Cafe_ _de_ _Boheme_, which was an Aladdin's palace buried underground beneath a building in the "Tenderloin".

Fountains splashed in marble basins, and birds sang amid the branches of tropical flowering trees, while on a little stage a man in the costume and character of a Paris _apache_ sang a song of ferocious cynicism. And after him came a j.a.panese juggler of prodigious swiftness, and then a fat German woman in peasant guise who sang folk-songs, and wound up with "O, du lieber Augustin!" After which the company joined in the chorus of "Funiculi, funicula" and "Gaudeamus igitur"--for the patrons of the "Boheme" were nothing if they were not cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan also was the company at Barry Creston's table. On one side of Thyrsis was Miss Lewis, and on the other was Mlle. Armand, the dancer who had set New York in a furore. Opposite to her was Scarpi, the famous baritone; and then there was Ma.s.sey, a sculptor from Paris, and Miss Rita Seton, of the "Red Hussars" Company, and a Miss Raymond, a gorgeous creature with a red flamingo feather in her hat, who had been Ma.s.sey's model for his sensational figure of "Aurora".

Finally there was Barry Creston himself: a new type, and a disconcerting one. He was not at all the "gilded youth" whom Thyrsis had expected to find; he was a man of about thirty, widely cultured, urbane and gracious in his manner, and quite evidently a man of force. He was altogether free from that crude egotism which Thyrsis had found to be the most prominent characteristic of the American man of wealth. He spoke in French with Armand and in Italian with Scarpi and in German with the head-waiter who worshipped before him; and yet one did not feel that there was any ostentation about it--all this was his _monde_. And although he exhaled an atmosphere of vast wealth, this, too, seemed a matter of course; he a.s.sumed that you also were provided with unlimited funds--that all the world, in fact, was in the same fortunate case.

Evidently he was well-known at the "Boheme", for the waiters gathered like flies around the honey-pot, and the august head-waiter himself took the order, and beamed his approval at Barry's selections. So presently there flowed in a stream of costly viands, served in _outre_ and fantastic fashion--many of them things not known even by name to Thyrsis. There were costly wines as well, and at the end an ice in the shape of a great basket of fruit, wonderfully carved and colored like life, resting upon a slab of ice, which in turn was set in a silver tray with handles.

Thyrsis was dazed at all this waste, and at the uproar in the place, where dozens of other parties were squandering money in the same blind fashion, and all laughing, chatting, joining in the choruses with the performers on the stage. Now and then he would catch a little of his host's conversation, which was of all the capitals of Europe, and of art-worlds, the very existence of which was unknown to him. And then, on his left hand, there was Mlle. Armand, deftly picking off the leaves of an artichoke and dipping them into _mayonnaise_, and saying in her little bird's voice, "They tell me, Monsieur, that you have _du genie_.

Oh, you should go to Paree to live--it is not here that one appreciates _du genie_!" And, then while Thyrsis was working out an explanation of his failure to visit Paris, some one in the cafe caught sight of Scarpi, and there was a general call for him; and according to the genial custom of the "Boheme" he stood up, amid tumultuous applause, and sang one of his own rollicking songs.

So the revelry went forward, while Thyrsis marvelled, and tried to hide his pain. There could be no question of any enjoyment for him--when he knew that the cost of this affair would have paid all his expenses for a winter! Doubtless what Barry Creston spent for his cigars would have saved Thyrsis and his family from misery all their lives; and he wondered if the man would have cared had he known. Barry was one of the princes of the new dispensation; and sometimes princes were compa.s.sionate, Thyrsis reflected. Apparently this one was all urbanity and charm, having no thought in life save to play the perfect host to brilliant artists and _demi-mondaimes_, and to skim the cream off the top of civilization.

But then suddenly the conversation took a new turn, and Thyrsis got another view of the young prince. There had been trouble out in the Western mines; and some one mentioned it--when in a flash Thyrsis saw the set jaw and the clenched fist and the steel grey eye of old "Dan"

Creston. (Thyrsis had read somewhere a sketch of this senator, whose fortune was estimated at fifty millions, and who ran the governments of three states.) Barry, it seemed, had had charge of the mines for three years--that was how he had won his spurs. In those days, he said, there had been no unions--he told with a quiet smile how he had broken them.

Now again "agitators" had crept in, so that in some of the camps the men were being moved out bodily, and replaced by foreigners, who knew a good job when they had it. To make this change had taken the militia; but it would be done thoroughly, and afterwards there would be no more trouble.

The supper-party broke up about two o'clock, and Miss Raymond, the lady of the flamingo hat, was the only one who showed any effects from all the wine that had been consumed. Thyrsis, to his great surprise discovered that his host had taken a fancy to him, and had asked Miss Lewis to bring him out to luncheon at the Creston place in the country.

And so came the wonderful experience which brought to him the vision of "The Utopians."

Section 9. They went, one Sat.u.r.day morning, in Miss Lewis'

automobile--out to Riverside Drive, and up the valley of the Hudson.

This was in itself a Utopian experience for Thyrsis, who had never before taken a trip in one of these magic chariots. It leaped over the frozen roads like a thing of life, and he lay back in the cushioned seats and closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the machinery, imagining what life might be for him, if he could rest like this when he was worn from overwork. It was like some great adventure in music, like a minstrel's chanting of heroic deeds; it was Nature with all her pageantry unrolled in a panorama before his eyes. And meantime Miss Lewis was chattering on about the play and its prospects; and about other plays and their prospects; and about the people at the supper-party and their various loves and hates.

So they came to the great stone castle of the Crestons, set upon a mountain-top overlooking the valley of this "American Rhine." Thyrsis gasped when he saw it, and he gasped many times again while Barry was showing them about. For this place was a triumph of a hundred arts and sciences; into its perfections had gone all the skill of the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors of a score of centuries and climes. The very dairies, the stables, the dog-kennels were things to be wondered at and studied; and in the vast halls were single pictures over which Thyrsis would fain have lingered for hours. Then, best of all, the great portico, with its stone pillars, and its view of the n.o.ble river, and of the snow-clad hills, dazzling in the sunlight!

They had luncheon; after which Barry played upon the organ, and Miss Lewis sat beside him and left Thyrsis to wander at will. He made his way out to the portico, and paced back and forth there; and while the organ rolled and thundered to him, the majesty of the scene swept over him, and in towering splendors his soul arose. He thought of the wretched room in which he was pent, he thought of his starved and struggling life; and all the rage of his defeated genius awoke in him. In the name of that genius he uttered his defiance, and by the t.i.tle of it he took possession of this castle, and of all things it contained. Yes--for he was the true lord and master of it--he was the prince disinherited! And the meaning of it, its excuse for being, was this brief hour! For this its glories had been a.s.sembled; for this the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors had labored in a score of centuries and climes; for this the great organ had been built, and for this the great musician had composed--that he might behold, in one hour of transfiguration, what the life of man would be in that glad time when all the arts of civilization were turned to the fostering of the soul! When he who carried in the womb of his spirit the new life of the ages, would be loved instead of being hated, would be cherished instead of being neglected, would be reverenced instead of being mocked!

When palaces would be built for him and beauty and joy would be gathered for him, and the paths would be made clear before his feet! So out of boundless love and rapture would he speak to men, and bring to them those gifts that were beyond price, the treasures of his unfolding inspiration.

So it was that the Utopians came to Thyrsis; those men of the future, worshippers of joy! They came to him, alive and in the flesh, beautiful and n.o.ble, gracious and free-hearted--as some day they will come, if so the earth endure; as they will stand upon that portico, and listen to that music, and gaze upon the valley of that American Rhine! And will they remember the long-dead dreamer, and how they walked with him there and spoke with him; how they put their arms about him, and gave him of their love and understanding? Will they remember what shuddering rapture their touch conveyed to him; how the tears ran down his cheeks, and he pledged his soul to yet more years of torment, so only their glory might come to be upon earth? Will they read the blazing words in which he pictured them, the trumpet-blast he sounded to the dead souls of his time?

Thyrsis knew that this was the greatest hour of his life, and he fought like mad to hold it. But that might not be--the music ceased, and he heard the voices of his host and Miss Lewis. They came to the door; and then Thyrsis' thoughts came back quickly to earth. For he saw that Barry Creston's arm was about the woman, and she was leaning upon him; nor did they separate when they saw him, but stood there, smiling; so that at last Thyrsis had solved for him the problem of their relationship. It was not so that the Utopians loved, he thought, as he watched them; and found himself wondering if young Creston was as imperious with his women as he was with the slaves in his Western mines.

The car came to the door, and they parted from their host and sped back to the city. "What do you think of him?" asked Miss Lewis--and went on in a burst of confidence to tell him that it was to this prince of the new dispensation that he owed the great chance of his life. For it was Barry Creston who had given the Broadway "show-girl" the start that had made her a popular _comedienne_; it was Barry Creston who had awakened in her an interest in the "drama of ideas", and had set her to fermenting with new ambitions; and finally it was Barry Creston who in a moment of indulgence had promised the money which had set the managers and actors and musicians, the stage-carpenters and scene-painters and press-agents to work at the task of embodying "The Genius"!

Section 10. It may have been a coincidence; but from that hour dated the process of Thyrsis' disillusionment concerning the production of his play. Could it be, he asked himself, that such wealth as Barry Creston's could buy true art? Could it be that forces set in motion by it could really express his vision? "Genius surrounded by Commercialism", had been the formula of his play; and did not the formula describe his own position as well as Lloyd's?

A strange thing was this theatrical business--the business of selling emotions! One had really to feel the emotions, in order to portray them with force; yet one had at the same time to appraise them with the eye of the business-man--one must not feel emotions that would not pay.

Also, one boomed and boosted his own particular emotions, celebrating their merits in the language of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a certain play, you considered it the greatest play that had ever made its bow to Broadway; and you actually persuaded yourself to believe it--at least those who made the real successes were men who possessed that hypnotic power.

There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-agent and advertising-man. He was certain that "The Genius" was a play of genius, and its author a man of genius; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it, Mr.

Rosenberg would have called it "rot". Mr. Rosenberg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses Rosen in the play--so much so that he felt the resemblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortunately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt.

Thyrsis had written the play without having met either a press-agent or the head of a music-bureau; he had drawn the character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards discovers it with his telescope.

As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors--to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the eternal question of the lack of "charm" in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an unhappy frame of mind; she had begun to doubt whether the "drama of ideas" was her _forte_ after all--and whether the ideas in this particular drama were real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion of the last friend; so the production was like a ship whose pilot has lost his bearings.

The time drew near for the opening-performance, which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New England. The nerves of all the company were stretched to the breaking point; and overwrought as he was himself, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy "leading lady", who could hardly keep herself together, even with the drugs he saw her taking.

The "dress-rehearsal" began at six o'clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes--it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o'clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep.

Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel--cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery.

The hour of the performance came; and Thyrsis, like a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience and the play. The house was crowded; and the play-wright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of the night before had been needless--the performance went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also, to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to "score". He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered what understanding they could have of his tragedy of "genius". But they seemed to be understanding; at any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd smashed the violin over von Arne's head and the curtain went down, there was quite a little uproar.

Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which was also applauded; and then came the last act, and the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time, and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box, rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the play-wright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play was a certain success; and then he went to bed, a.s.suredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that fifty-cent hotel!

But alas--the next morning, there were the local papers; and with one accord they all "roasted" the play! Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the play itself--those extracts which the two professors had read from the criticisms of Lloyd's concert! Thyrsis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence at the satire!

Then, going to the theatre, the first person he met was Rosenberg, who sent another chill to his heart. "First nights are always good," said Mr. Rosenberg. "It was all 'paper', you know. To-night is the real test."