"I mean more than that. I am afraid to have you simulate such pa.s.sions.
They will leave their mark on you. It is defilement. Your womanhood is too fine, too beautiful to be so degraded."
She put her hand to her bosom and looked about her restlessly. His intensity scared her. "I know what you mean, but let us not talk of that now; let us discuss your play. I want to suggest something for your third act, but I must dress now. You will wait, won"t you? We will have a few minutes before I go on. Please sit here and wait for me."
He acquiesced silently, as was his fashion. There was little of the courtier about him, but he became very ill at ease as he realized how significant his waiting must seem to those who saw him there. Deeply in the snare as he was, this sitting beside an actress"s dressing-room door became intolerable to his arrogant soul, and he was about to flee when Hugh came back and engaged him in conversation. So gratified was Dougla.s.s for this kindness, he made himself agreeable till such time as Helen, in brilliant evening-dress, came out; and when Hugh left them together he was less a.s.sertive and brusque in manner.
She was so luminous, so queenly, she dissipated his cloud of doubts and scruples, and the tremor of the boyish lover came back into his limbs as he turned to meet her. His voice all but failed him as he answered to her question.
For some ten minutes from behind her mask she talked of the play with enthusiasm--her sweet eyes untouched of the part she was about to resume. At last she said: "There is my cue. Good-bye! Can you breakfast with us to-morrow, at eleven-thirty? It"s really a luncheon. I know you are an early riser; but we will have something substantial. Will you come?"
Her smooth, strong fingers closed cordially on his hand as she spoke, and he answered, quickly, "With the greatest pleasure in the world."
"We can talk at our leisure then. Good-bye!" and as she opened the canvas door in the "box-scene" he heard her say, with high, cool, insulting voice, "Ah, my dear Countess, you are early." She was _The Baroness_ again. After the fall of the curtain at the end, Dougla.s.s slipped out upon the pavement, his eyes blinded by the radiant picture she made in her splendid bridal robes. It was desolating to see her represent such a role, such agony, such despair; and yet his feet were reluctant to carry him away.
He was like a famishing man, who has been politely turned from the glittering, savory dining-room into the street--only his hunger, immaterial as light, was a thousand times keener than that of the one who lacks only bread and meat. He demanded her face, her voice, as one calls for sunlight, for air. He knew that this day, this night, marked a new era in his life. Old things were pa.s.sed away--new things, sweet, incredible things, were now happening.
Nothing like this unrest and deep-seated desire had ever come into his life, and the realization troubled him as a dangerous weakness. It enslaved him, and he resented it. He secured a new view on his play, also, with its accusing defiance of dramatic law and custom. In this moment of clear vision he was permitted a prevision of Helen struggling with the rebellious critics. Now that he had twice taken her hand he was no longer so indifferent to the warfare of the critics, though he knew they could not harm one so powerful as she.
In the end of his tumult he wrote her a letter, wherein he began by begging her pardon for seeming to interfere in the slightest degree with her work in the world. His letter continued:
"I have back of me the conscience of my Scotch forebears, and though my training in college and in my office has covered my conscience with a layer of office dust it is still there. Of course (and obviously) you are not touched by the words and deeds of the women you represent, but I somehow feel that it is a desecration of your face and voice to put them to such uses. That is the reason I dreaded to go back and see you to-night. If you were seeking praise of your own proper self, the sincerity of this compliment is unquestionable. I ought to say, "I hope my words to-night did not disturb you," but I will not, for I hope to see you speedily drop all such hideous characters as _The Baroness Telka_. I felt as an artist might upon seeing a glorious statue befouled with mire. I say this not because I wish you to do _Lillian_. In the light of last night"s performance my own play is a gray autumn day with a touch of frost in the air. It is inconceivable that you should be vitally interested in it. I fear no play that I care to write will please a sufficient number of people to make its production worth your while. I release you from your promise. Believe me, I am shaken in my confidence to-night. Your audience seemed so heartless, so debased of taste. They applauded most loudly the things most revolting to me. Since I have come to know you I cannot afford to have you make a sacrifice of yourself to produce my play, much as I desire to see you in new characters."
As he dropped this letter into the box a storm-wave of his former bitterness and self-accusation swept over him.
"That ends another attempt to get my play staged. Her manager will unquestionably refuse to consider it."
III
Helen read Dougla.s.s"s letter next morning while still in bed, and its forthright a.s.sault made her shiver. She did not attempt to deceive herself. She acknowledged the singular power of this young man to shake her, to change her course of action. From the first she acknowledged something almost terrifying in the appeal of his eyes, a power which he seemed unconscious of. His words of condemnation, of solicitude, troubled her as the praise of no other man in all her life had done. He had spoken to her soul, making her triumph over the vast audience loathsome--almost criminal.
He was handsome--a manly man--but so were dozens of others of her wide acquaintance. His talent was undeniable, but he was still obscure, undeveloped, a failure as an architect, unambitious as a critic, though that was his best point. His articles in _The Blazon_ possessed unusual insight and candor. Beyond this she knew as little of him as of any other of the young newspaper men who sought her acquaintance, and yet he had somehow changed her world for her in these two meetings.
She let the letter fall on her breast, and lay with her eyes fastened upon a big rose in a pot on the window-sill--the gift of another admirer. "I do know more of him. I know that he is strong, sincere. He does not flatter me--not even to win me to his play. He does not hasten to send me flowers, and I like him for that. If I were to take his point of view, all my roles and half my triumphs would drop from me. But _is_ there not a subtle letting-down, a disintegration? May he not be right, after all?"
She went over once more the talk of the few moments they had spent together, finding each time in all his words less to criticise and more to admire. "He does not conceal his hate," she said; and she might have added, "Or his love," for she was aware of her dominion, and divined, though she did not whisper it even to herself, that his change of att.i.tude with regard to her roles came from his change of feeling towards her. "He has a great career. I will not allow him to spoil his own future," she decided, at length, in her own large-minded way. And there were sweet, girlish lines about her mouth when her mother came in to inquire how she felt.
"Very much like work, mamma, and I"m going to catch up on my correspondence. Mr. Dougla.s.s is coming to take breakfast with us, to talk about his play. I wish you would see that there is something that a big man can eat."
The note she sent in answer to his was like herself--firm, a.s.sured, but gentle:
"MR. DOUGLa.s.s,--"What came you out for to see--a reed shaken with the wind?" I know my own mind, and I am not afraid of my future. I should be sorry to fail, of course, especially on your account, but a _succes d"estime_ is certain in your case, and my own personal following is large enough--joined with the actual lovers of good drama--to make the play pay for itself. Please come to my combination breakfast and luncheon, as you promised, and we can arrange dates and other details of the production, for my mind is made up. I am going to do your play, come what will. I thank you for having started all my dormant resolutions into life again. I shall expect you at twelve-thirty."
Having despatched this note by special messenger, she serenely set to work on less important matters, and met him in modish street dress--trim and neat and very far from the meretricious glitter of _The Baroness_.
He was glad of this; he would have disliked her in negligee, no matter how "artistic."
Her greeting was frank and unstudied. "I"m glad you"ve come. There are oceans of things to talk over."
"There was nothing else for me to do but come," he replied, with a meaning light in his eyes. "Your letter was a command."
"I"m sorry it takes a command to bring you to breakfast with us. True, this is not the breakfast to be given in your honor--that will come later."
"It would be safer to have it before the play is produced," he replied, grimly.
Helen turned to her brother. "Hugh, we have in Mr. Dougla.s.s a man not sanguine of the success of his play. What does that argue?"
"A big hit!" he promptly replied.
The servants came and went deftly, and Dougla.s.s quite lost sight of the fact that the breakfast-room was high in a tower-like hotel, for Helen"s long engagement in the city had enabled her to make herself exceedingly comfortable even amid the hectic color and insistent gilt of the Hotel Embric. The apartment not only received the sun, a royal privilege in New York, but it was gay with flowers, both potted and in vases, and the walls were decorated with drawings of her own choosing. Only the furniture remained uncompromisingly of the hotel tone.
"I did intend to refurnish, but mother, who retains a little of her old Scotch training, talked me out of it," Helen explained, in answer to a query. "Is there anything more hopelessly "handsome" and shining than these chairs? There"s so little to find fault with, and so little to really admire."
"They"re like a ready-made suit--un.o.bjectionable, but not fit."
"They have no soul. How could they have? They were made by machines for undistinguished millions." She broke off this discussion. "I am eager for a run through the park. Won"t you go? Hugh is my engineer. Reckless as he looks, I find him quite reliable as a tinker, and you know the auto is still in the tinkery stage."
"I have a feeling that it is still in the dangerous stage," he said.
"But I will go." He said this in a tone of desperation which amused them all very much.
It was impossible for him to remain glum in the midst of the good cheer of that luxurious little breakfast with the promise of a ride in the park in prospect. A few moments later a young girl, Miss f.a.n.n.y c.u.mmings, came in with a young man who looked like an actor, but was, in fact, Hugh"s college-mate and "advance man" for Helen, and together they went down to the auto-car.
There was a well-defined sense of luxury in being in Helen Merival"s party. The attendants in the hotel were so genuinely eager to serve her, and the carefully considered comfort of everything she possessed was very attractive to a man like George Dougla.s.s, son of a village doctor, who had toiled from childhood to earn every dollar he spent. To ride in such swift and shining state with any one would have had extraordinary interest, and to sit beside Helen in the comparative privacy of the rear seat put a boyish glow of romance into his heart. Her buoyant and sunny spirit reacted on his moody and supersensitive nature till his face shone with pleasure. He forgot his bitter letter of the night before, and for the moment work and worry were driven from his world. He entered upon a dreamland--the city of menace disappeared.
The avenue was gay with promenaders and thick with carriages. Other autos met them with cordial clamor of gongs, and now and then some driver more lawless than Hugh dashed past them in reckless race towards the park. The playwright had never seen so many of New York"s glittering carriages, and the growing arrogance of its wealth took on a new aspect from his newly acquired viewpoint. Here were rapidly centring the great leaders of art, of music, of finance. Here the social climbers were cl.u.s.tering, eager to be great in a city of greatness. Here the chief ones in literature and the drama must come as to a market-place, and with this thought came a mighty uplift. "Surely success is now mine," he thought, exultantly, "for here I sit the favored dramatist of this wondrous woman."
There was little connected conversation--only short volleys of jests as they whizzed along the splendid drives of the park--but Dougla.s.s needed little more than Helen"s shining face to put him at peace with all the world. Each moment increased their intimacy.
He told her of his stern old father, a country doctor in the West, of the way in which his brother and sisters were scattered from North to South, and how he came to set his face Eastward while all the others went West.
"How handsome he is," thought Helen.
"How beautiful you are," his glances said in answer, and both grew young beneath the touch of love.
When they were once more in the hotel Helen cried out:
"There! Isn"t your brain washed clear of all doubts? Come, let"s to work at the play."
He looked down at her with eyes whose glow made her eyelids fall in maidenly defence. "I am capable of anything you ask," he said, with quiet power.
After a long and spirited discussion of the last act she said: "Well, now, we"ll put it in rehearsal as soon as you feel that it is ready. I believe in doing a part while the spell of its newness is on me. I shall put this on in place of the revival of _Rachel Endicott_." She rose on the wave of her enthusiasm. "I feel the part taking hold of me. I will make _Lillian"s Duty_ the greatest success of my life, and the lion"s share of both honor and money shall be yours."
He left the hotel quite as exalted as he had been previously depressed.
The pleasure of sitting by her side for four blessed hours enriched him to the point of being sorry for all the rest of the world. The Prince of Wales had been denied an introduction to her, he had read; therefore the Prince was poor.