"That was for you," said he and he said it with an absence of sympathy that made it brutal.
"For only me," said she--frivolously.
"You seem not to mind."
"Certainly I mind. I"m not made of wood or stone."
"Don"t you think you"d better give it up?"
She looked at him with a steely light from the violet eyes, a light that had never been there before.
"Give up?" said she. "Not even if you give me up. This thing has got to be put through."
He simply nodded. "All right," he said. "It will be."
"That booing--it almost struck me dead. When it didn"t, I for the first time felt sure I was going to win."
He nodded again, gave her one of his quick expressive, fleeting glances that somehow made her forget and forgive everything and feel fresh and eager to start in again. He said:
"When the booing began and you didn"t break down and run off the stage, I knew that what I hoped and believed about you was true."
Streathern joined them. His large, soft eyes were full of sympathetic tears. He was so moved that he braved Brent. He said to Susan:
"It wasn"t your fault, Miss Lenox. You were doing exactly as Mr. Brent ordered, when the booing broke out."
"Exactly," said Brent.
Streathern regarded him with a certain nervousness and veiled pity. Streathern had been brought into contact with many great men. He had found them, each and every one, with this same streak of wild folly, this habit of doing things that were to him obviously useless and ridiculous. It was a profound mystery to him why such men succeeded while he himself who never did such things remained in obscurity. The only explanation was the abysmal stupidity, ignorance, and folly of the ma.s.ses of mankind. What a harbor of refuge that reflection has ever been for mediocrity"s shattered and sinking vanity! Yet the one indisputable fact about the great geniuses of long ago is that in their own country and age "the common people heard them gladly." Streathern could not now close his mouth upon one last appeal on behalf of the clever and lovely and so amiable victim of Brent"s mania.
"I say, Mr. Brent," pleaded he, "don"t you think--Really now, if you"ll permit a chap not without experience to say so--Don"t you think that by drilling her so much and so--so _beastly_ minutely--you"re making her wooden--machine-like?"
"I hope so," said Brent, in a tone that sent Streathern scurrying away to a place where he could express himself unseen and unheard.
In her fifth week she began to improve. She felt at home on the stage; she felt at home in her part, whatever it happened to be. She was giving what could really be called a performance. Streathern, when he was sure Brent could not hear, congratulated her. "It"s wonderfully plucky of you, my dear," said he, "quite amazingly plucky--to get yourself together and go straight ahead, in spite of what your American friend has been doing to you."
"In spite of it." cried Susan. "Why, don"t you see that it"s because of what he"s been doing? I felt it, all the time. I see it now."
"Oh, really--do you think so?" said Streathern.
His tone made it a polite and extremely discreet way of telling her he thought she had become as mad as Brent. She did not try to explain to him why she was improving. In that week she advanced by long strides, and Brent was radiant.
"Now we"ll teach you scales," said he. "We"ll teach you the mechanics of expressing every variety of emotion. Then we"ll be ready to study a strong part."
She had known in the broad from the outset what Brent was trying to accomplish--that he was giving her the trade side of the art, was giving it to her quickly and systematically. But she did not appreciate how profoundly right he was until she was "learning scales." Then she understood why most so called "professional" performances are amateurish, haphazard, without any precision. She was learning to posture, and to utter every emotion so accurately that any spectator would recognize it at once.
"And in time your voice and your body," said Brent, "will become as much your servants as are Paderewski"s ten fingers.
He doesn"t rely upon any such rot as inspiration. Nor does any master of any art. A mind can be inspired but not a body.
It must be taught. You must first have a perfect instrument.
Then, if you are a genius, your genius, having a perfect instrument to work with, will produce perfect results. To ignore or to neglect the mechanics of an art is to hamper or to kill inspiration. Geniuses--a few--and they not the greatest--have been too lazy to train their instruments. But anyone who is merely talented dares not take the risk. And you--we"d better a.s.sume--are merely talented."
Streathern, who had a deserved reputation as a coach, was disgusted with Brent"s degradation of an art. As openly as he dared, he warned Susan against the danger of becoming a mere machine--a puppet, responding stiffly to the pulling of strings. But Susan had got over her momentary irritation against Brent, her doubt of his judgment in her particular case. She ignored Streathern"s advice that she should be natural, that she should let her own temperament dictate variations on his cut and dried formulae for expression. She continued to do as she was bid.
"If you are _not_ a natural born actress," said Brent, "at least you will be a good one--so good that most critics will call you great. And if you _are_ a natural born genius at acting, you will soon put color in the cheeks of these dolls I"m giving you--and ease into their bodies--and nerves and muscles and blood in place of the strings."
In the seventh week he abruptly took her out of the company and up to London to have each day an hour of singing, an hour of dancing, and an hour of fencing. "You"ll ruin her health,"
protested Freddie. "You"re making her work like a ditch digger."
Brent replied, "If she hasn"t the health, she"s got to abandon the career. If she has health, this training will give it steadiness and solidity. If there"s a weakness anywhere, it"ll show itself and can be remedied."
And he piled the work on her, dictated her hours of sleep, her hours for rest and for walking, her diet--and little he gave her to eat. When he had her thoroughly broken to his regimen, he announced that business compelled his going immediately to America. "I shall be back in a month," said he.
"I think I"ll run over with you," said Palmer. "Do you mind, Susan?"
"Clelie and I shall get on very well," she replied. She would be glad to have both out of the way that she might give her whole mind to the only thing that now interested her. For the first time she was experiencing the highest joy that comes to mortals, the only joy that endures and grows and defies all the calamities of circ.u.mstances--the joy of work congenial and developing.
"Yes--come along," said Brent to Palmer. "Here you"ll be tempting her to break the rules." He added, "Not that you would succeed. She understands what it all means, now--and nothing could stop her. That"s why I feel free to leave her."
"Yes, I understand," said Susan. She was gazing away into s.p.a.ce; at sight of her expression Freddie turned hastily away.
On a Sat.u.r.day morning Susan and Clelie, after waiting on the platform at Euston Station until the long, crowded train for Liverpool and the _Lusitania_ disappeared, went back to the lodgings in Half Moon Street with a sudden sense of the vastness of London, of its loneliness and dreariness, of its awkward inhospitality to the stranger under its pall of foggy smoke. Susan was thinking of Brent"s last words:
She had said, "I"ll try to deserve all the pains you"ve taken, Mr. Brent."
"Yes, I have done a lot for you," he had replied. "I"ve put you beyond the reach of any of the calamities of life--beyond the need of any of its consolations. Don"t forget that if the steamer goes down with all on board."
And then she had looked at him--and as Freddie"s back was half turned, she hoped he had not seen--in fact, she was sure he had not, or she would not have dared. And Brent--had returned her look with his usual quizzical smile; but she had learned how to see through that mask. Then--she had submitted to Freddie"s energetic embrace--had given her hand to Brent--"Good-by," she had said; and "Good luck," he.
Beyond the reach of _any_ of the calamities? Beyond the need of _any_ of the consolations? Yes--it was almost literally true. She felt the big interest--the career--growing up within her, and expanding, and already overstepping all other interests and emotions.
Brent had left her and Clelie more to do than could be done; thus they had no time to bother either about the absent or about themselves. Looking back in after years on the days that Freddie was away, Susan could recall that from time to time she would find her mind wandering, as if groping in the darkness of its own cellars or closets for a lost thought, a missing link in some chain of thought. This even awakened her several times in the night--made her leap from sleep into acute and painful consciousness as if she had recalled and instantly forgotten some startling and terrible thing.
And when Freddie unexpectedly came--having taken pa.s.sage on the _Lusitania_ for the return voyage, after only six nights and five days in New York--she was astonished by her delight at seeing him, and by the kind of delight it was. For it rather seemed a sort of relief, as from a heavy burden of anxiety.
"Why didn"t you wait and come with Brent?" asked she.
"Couldn"t stand it," replied he. "I"ve grown clear away from New York--at least from the only New York I know. I don"t like the boys any more. They bore me. They--offend me. And I know if I stayed on a few days they"d begin to suspect. No, it isn"t Europe. It"s--you. You"re responsible for the change in me."
He was speaking entirely of the internal change, which indeed was great. For while he was still fond of all kinds of sporting, it was not in his former crude way; he had even become something of a connoisseur of pictures and was cultivating a respect for the purity of the English language that made him wince at Susan"s and Brent"s slang. But when he spoke thus frankly and feelingly of the change in him, Susan looked at him--and, not having seen him in two weeks and three days, she really saw him for the first time in many a month.
She could not think of the internal change he spoke of for noting the external change. He had grown at least fifty pounds heavier than he had been when they came abroad. In one way this was an improvement; it gave him a dignity, an air of consequence in place of the boyish good looks of the days before the automobile and before the effects of high living began to show. But it made of him a different man in Susan"s eyes--a man who now seemed almost a stranger to her.
"Yes, you _have_ changed," replied she absently. And she went and examined herself in a mirror.
"You, too," said Freddie. "You don"t look older--as I do.
But--there"s a--a--I can"t describe it."
Susan could not see it. "I"m just the same," she insisted.
Palmer laughed. "You can"t judge about yourself. But all this excitement--and studying--and thinking--and G.o.d knows what---- You"re not at all the woman I came abroad with."