The Light of the Star Part 4

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

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

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

"'The glittering woman.'"

She looked puzzled. "Why that?"

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

"Even now I don't see."

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

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

"I found you infinitely more womanly than I had supposed, and simpler.

Even yet I don't see how you can carry this oppressive weight of advertising glory and still be--what you are."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI

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

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

"But our aims are larger."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugh and Westervelt both came to her to say: "Tell Dougla.s.s to let up.

He expects too much of these people. He's got 'em rattled. Tell him to go and slide down-hill somewhere."

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

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

"About what?" she asked, quickly.

"About his infatuation."

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

"Westervelt--the whole company." He knew his sister and wished he had not spoken, but he added: "The fellows on the street have noticed it.

How could they help it when you walk with him and eat with him and ride with him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With her in the park he was a man transformed. His heaviness left him.

His tongue loosened, and together they rose above the toilsome level of the rehearsal and abandoned themselves to the pure joy of being young.

Together they visited the exhibitions of painting and sculpture, and to Helen these afternoons were a heavenly release from her own world.

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