The Light of the Star.
by Hamlin Garland.
I
After the appointment with Miss Merival reached him (through the hand of her manager), young Dougla.s.s grew feverishly impatient of the long days which lay between. Waiting became a species of heroism. Each morning he reread his ma.n.u.script and each evening found him at the theatre, partly to while away the time, but mainly in order that he might catch some clew to the real woman behind the shining mask. His brain was filled with the light of the star--her radiance dazzled him.
By day he walked the streets, seeing her name on every bill-board, catching the glow of her subtle and changeful beauty in every window.
She gazed out at him from brows weary with splendid barbaric jewels, her eyes bitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad. She smiled at him in framework of blue and ermine and pearls--the bedecked, heartless coquette of the pleasure-seeking world. She stood in the shadow of gray walls, a grating over her head, with deep, soulful, girlish eyes lifted in piteous appeal; and in each of these characters an unfathomed depth remained to vex and to allure him.
Magnified by these reflections on the walls, haloed by the teeming praise and censure of the press, she seemed to dominate the entire city as she had come to absorb the best of his own life. What her private character really was no one seemed to know, in spite of the special articles and interviews with her managers which fed the almost universal adulation of her dark and changeful face, her savage and sovereign beauty. There was insolence in her tread, and mad allurement in the rounded beauty of her powerful white arm--and at his weakest the young playwright admitted that all else concerning her was of no account.
At the same time he insisted that he was not involved with the woman--only with the actress. "I am not a lover--I am a playwright, eager to have my heroine adequately portrayed," he contended with himself in the solitude of his room, high in one of the great apartment buildings of the middle city. Nevertheless, the tremor in his nerves caused him thought.
Her voice. Yes, that, too, was mysterious. Whence came that undertone like the moan of a weary wastrel tortured with dreams of idyllic innocence long lost? Why did her utterance, like her glorious face, always suggest some inner, darker meaning? There were times when she seemed old--old as vice and cruelty, hoa.r.s.e with complaints, with curses, and then again her lips were childishly sweet, and her voice carried only the wistful accents of adolescence or the melody of girlish awe.
On the night before his appointment she played _The Baroness Telka_, a lurid, l.u.s.tful, remorseless woman--a creature with a vampire"s heart and the glamour of Helen of Troy--a woman whose cheeks were still round and smooth, but whose eyes were alight with the flame of insanity--a frightful, hungry, soulless wretch. And as he sat at the play and watched that glittering, inexplicable woman, and thought of her roles, Dougla.s.s asked himself: "How will she meet me to-morrow? What will be the light in her eyes when she turns them upon me? Will she meet me alone--haughty, weary with praise, or will she be surrounded by those who bow to her as to a queen?" This latter thing he feared.
He had not been without experience with women--even with actresses; but no woman he had ever met had appealed to his imagination beyond the first meeting. Would it be so with Helen Merival? He had loved twice in his life, but not well enough to say so to either of his sweethearts.
Around Myra"s name clung the perfume and moonlight of summer evenings in the far-off mid-continent village where he was born, while Violet recalled the music, the comfort, and the security of a beautiful Eastern home. Neither of these sweet and lovely girls had won his heart completely. How was it that this woman of the blazoning bill-boards had already put more of pa.s.sion into his heart than they of the pure and sheltered life?
He did not deceive himself. It was because Helen could not be understood at a glance. She appealed to his imagination as some strange bird--alien voyager--fled from distant islands in dim, purple seas. She typed the dreams of adventuring youth seeking the princesses of other and more romantic lands.
At times he shuddered with a fear that some hidden decay of Helen Merival"s own soul enabled her to so horrify her audience with these desolating roles, and when the curtain fell on _The Baroness_, he was resolved to put aside the chance of meeting the actress. Was it worth while to be made ashamed and bitter? She might stand revealed as a coa.r.s.e and selfish courtesan--a worn and haggard enchantress whose failing life blazed back to youth only when on the stage. Why be disenchanted? But in the end he rose above this boyish doubt. "What does it matter whether she be true or false? She has genius, and genius I need for my play--genius and power," and in the delusion he rested.
He climbed to his den in the tower as physically wearied as one exhausted with running a race, and fell asleep with his eyelids fluttering in a feverish dream.
The hour of his appointment with her fell upon Sunday, and as he walked up the street towards her hotel the bells in a church on a side street were ringing, and their chimes filled his mind with memories of the small town from which he came. How peaceful and sweet the life of Woodstock seemed now. The little meeting-house, whose shingled spire still pointed at the stars, would always be sweet with the memory of Myra Thurber, whose timid clasp upon his arm troubled him then and pained him now. He had so little to give in return for her devotion--therefore he had given nothing. He had said good-bye almost harshly--his ambition hardening his heart to her appeal.
Around him, in his dream of those far-off days, moved other agile forms--young lovers like Myra and himself, their feet creaking on the glittering snow. They stepped slowly, though the bells called and called. The moonlight was not more clear and untouched of baleful fire than Myra"s sweet eyes looking up at him, and now he was walking the wet pavement of the great metropolis, with the clang and grind of cars all about him, on his way to meet a woman whose life was spent in simulating acts as destructive as Myra"s had been serene and trustful. At the moment he saw his own life as a thread in some mysterious drama.
"To what does it lead?" he asked, as he drew under the overhanging portal of the great hotel where the star made her home. It was to the man of the West a splendid place. Its builders had been lavish of highly colored marbles and mosaics, spendthrift of light and gilding; on every side shone the signs and seals of predatory wealth. Its walls were like costly confectionery, its ornaments insolent, its waste criminal. Every decorative feature was hot, restless, irreverent, and cruel, quite the sort of avenue one might expect to find in his walk towards the glittering woman of the false and ribald drama.
"She chose her abode with instinctive bad taste," he said, bitterly; and again his weakness, his folly turned him cold; for with all his physical powers he was shy to the point of fear.
He made a sober and singular spot in the blaze of the rotunda. So sombre was his look, so intent his gaze. Youths in high hats and shining shirt-fronts stood in groups conversing loudly, and in the resplendent dining-hall bediamonded women and their sleek-haired, heavy-jewelled partners were eating leisurely, attended by swarms of waiters so eager they trod upon one another"s feet.
The clerk eyed him in impa.s.sible silence as he took out his worn card-case, saying: "Please send my card to Miss Merival."
"Miss Merival is not receiving any one this evening," the clerk answered, with a tone which was like the slap of a wet glove in the face.
Dougla.s.s faced him with a look which made him reflect. "You will let her be the judge of that," he said, and his tone was that of one accustomed to be obeyed.
The little man bowed. "Oh, certainly, Mr. Dougla.s.s, but as she left orders--"
When the boy with his card had disappeared into the candy-colored distances, the playwright found himself again studying the face of his incomprehensible sorceress, who looked down upon him even at that moment from a bulletin-board on the hotel wall, Oriental, savage, and sullen--sad, too, as though alone in her solitary splendor. "She can"t be all of her parts--which one of them will I find as I enter her room?"
he asked himself for the hundredth time.
"Miss Merival will see Mr. Dougla.s.s," said the bell-boy. "This way, sir."
As he stepped into the elevator the young man"s face grew stern and his lips straightened out into a grim line. It was absurd to think he should be so deeply moved by any woman alive, he who prided himself on his self-possession.
Down a long hall on the tenth floor the boy led him, and tapped at a door, which was opened after a pause by a quiet woman who greeted him with outstretched hand, kindly cordial.
"How do you do, Mr. Dougla.s.s? It is very good of you to come," she said, with the simplest inflection.
"This must be an elder sister," he thought, and followed her into a large sitting-room, where a gray-haired woman and a young man were sipping after-dinner coffee.
"Mother, this is Mr. Dougla.s.s, the author of _The Modern Stage_, the little book of essays we liked so well." The elderly lady greeted him cordially, but with a timid air. "And this is my brother Hugh," the young man gave Dougla.s.s"s hand a firm and cordial grip.
"Sit down, please--not there--over here, where the light will fall on you. I want to see how you look," she added, in smiling candor; and with that smile he recognized in his hostess the great actress.
He was fairly dazed, and for the moment entirely wordless. From the very moment the door had opened to him the "glittering woman" had been receding into remote and ever remoter distances, for the Helen Merival before him was as simple, candid, and cordial as his own sister. Her voice had the home inflection; she displayed neither paint nor powder; her hair was plainly brushed--beautiful hair it was, too--and her dress was lovely and in quiet taste.
Her face seemed plain at first, just as her stature seemed small. She was dark, but not so dark as she appeared on the stage, and her face was thinner, a little careworn, it seemed to him; and her eyes--"those leering, wicked eyes"--were large and deep and soft. Her figure was firm, compact, womanly, and modest in every line. No wife could have seemed more of the home than this famous actress who faced him with hands folded in her lap.
He was stupefied. Suddenly he perceived the injustice and the cra.s.s folly of his estimate of her character, and with this perception came a broader and deeper realization of her greatness as an actress. Her real self now became more complex than his wildest imagined ideal of her.
That this sweet and reflective girl should be the actress was as difficult to understand as that _The Baroness_ should be at heart a good woman. For five minutes he hardly heard what she said, so busy was his mind readjusting itself to this abrupt displacement of values. With noiseless suddenness all the lurid light which the advertiser had thrown around the star died away. The faces which mocked and mourned, the clutching hands, the lines of barbaric ornaments, the golden goblets of debauchery, the jewelled daggers, the poison phials--all those accessories, designed to produce the siren of the posters, faded out, and he found himself face to face with a human being like himself, a thoughtful, self-contained, and rather serious American girl of twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age.
Not merely this, but her att.i.tude towards him was that of a pupil. She lifted eyes to him as to one occupying an intellectual height. She began to tell him how much she enjoyed his little book on the drama, which a friend had recommended to her, but as soon as he had fairly recovered himself he led her away from his own work. "I am supposed to be an architect," he explained. "I write of the stage because I love it--and because I am a failure in my profession. My book is a very slight and unambitious attempt."
"But you know the stage and its principles," she insisted; "and your view of the future is an inspiration to those of us who wish to do good work. Your letter was very helpful to me, for I am deeply discouraged just now. I am disgusted with the drama in which I work. I am weary of these unwholesome parts. You are quite right, I shall never do my best work so long as I am forced to a.s.sume such uncongenial roles. They are all false, every one of them. They are good acting roles, as acting goes; but I want plays that I can live as well as act. But my manager tells me that the public will not have me in anything else. Do you think they would? Is he right?" She ended in appeal.
"I think the public will take you at your best in anything you do," he replied, with grave gallantry. "I don"t know that managers are omniscient. They are only men like the rest of us."
She smiled. "That is high treason; but I"m very much inclined to believe it is true. I am willing to concede that a theatre must be made to pay, but I am not content to think that this splendid art is always to be measured by the number of dollars which fall into the box-office. Take Westervelt as a type. What ideals has he? None whatever, save to find a play that will run forever and advertise itself."
She had dreams, too, it seemed. She glowed with her plans, and as she timidly presented them Dougla.s.s perceived that the woman was entirely unconscious of the false glamour, the whirling light and tumult, which outsiders connected with her name. At the centre of the illumination she sat looking out upon the glorified bill-boards, the gay shop windows, the crowded auditoriums, a wholesome, kindly, intelligent woman, subject to moods of discouragement like himself, unwilling to be a slave to a money-grubber. Something in his face encouraged the story of her struggles. She pa.s.sed to her personal history while he listened as one enthralled.
The actress fled, and the woman drew near. She looked into the man"s eyes frankly, unshrinkingly, with humor, with appeal. She leaned towards him, and her face grew exquisitely tender and beautiful. "Oh, it was a struggle! Mother kept boarders in order that Hugh and I might go to school--didn"t you, dear old muz?" She laid her hand on her mother"s knee, and the mother clasped it. "Father"s health grew worse and worse, and at last he died, and then I had to leave school to help earn our living. I began to read for entertainments of various sorts. Father was a Grand Army man, and the posts took an interest in my reading. I really earned a thousand dollars the second year. I doubled that the next year, and considered myself a great public success." She smiled. "Mother, may I let Mr. Dougla.s.s see how I looked then?"
The mother nodded consent, and the great actress, after a few moments"
search, returned with a package of circulars, each bearing a piquant, girlish face.
"There," she said, as she handed them to Dougla.s.s, "I felt the full ecstasy of power when that picture was taken. In this I wore a new gown and a new hat, and I was earning fifty dollars at each reading. My success fairly bewildered me; but oh, wasn"t it glorious! I took mother out of a tenement and put her in a lovely little home. I sent Hugh to college. I refurnished the house. I bought pictures and rugs, for you know I continued to earn over two thousand a year. And what fun we had in spending all that money!"
"But how did you reach the stage?" he asked.
She laughed. "By way of "the Kerosene circuit," if you know what that means."
"I"ve heard the phrase," he answered; "it corresponds to the old-time "barn-storming," doesn"t it?"
"It does."
Hugh interposed. "I wouldn"t go into that, sis."
"Why not? It"s great fun--now. I used to think it pretty tragic sometimes. Yes, I was nineteen when I went on the New England rural circuit--to give it a better name. Oh, I"ve been through all the steps!