CHAPTER II

A Kane opening is not an ordinary first night. It happens, at the outside, twice a season at the two most artistic theaters in New York. It is an event as important socially as theatrically. Weeks before, the hum of it is in the air. The public palpitates with anticipation. When Oswald Kane imports a play from Paris, it is the most chic, effervescent and gay the winking eye of Paris has gazed upon. When he produces a period play, he trusts neither to his own imagination nor the costumer’s but enlists the advice of experts and dresses his product with the care of a modiste turning out a woman of fashion. Every member of his casts, down to the most minute part, is selected with an eye to ensemble effect. Sometimes the effect is overdone, a surface glazed too smooth to be startling. But it is never underdone, and the New York first night audience is often hypnotized under the hand of the magician into believing a mediocre piece of work an outstanding masterpiece.

Through the audience that flowed into the Kane Theater on the night of November 5th, like an undulating stream of scented sparkling color, drifted that murmur of eagerness which was breath of life to the famous producer. In it he found all the satisfaction of a woman in her beauty or a painter in the eyes lifted to his canvas. Glitter, the incandescence of anticipation, they were the arclights along the path of his greatness. He stood in the wings, a gentle, artistic hand straying through the wavy black hair that fell across his forehead, giving his attention to the final details of to-night’s opening. As the actors assembled he gave each an encouraging word, the last moment stimulus of a faith not always felt.

The mirror in a dressing-room just a few yards beyond Kane’s point of vantage reflected a face mask-like in its immobility. The man before it sat staring at the reflection as if it belonged to another. A shirt open at the neck showed muscles hard and tense. Even make-up could not widen the tight red line of the mouth. The eyes were dulled as if viewed through a curtain. Frank Moore went through his final preparations like a machine correctly set in motion. When the last touch had been given, he walked to the door and listened to the surge of the incoming throng like the song of the sea on a smooth beach.

Suddenly rebellion shook him. What right had they? Pleasure! That was all they cared about. To make of him a puppet, a thing for their amusement! God, what a joke! Those lights, the chatter, the laughter—himself about to stalk on the stage!

A few minutes later, as he made his entrance to an anticipatory round of applause, he had an insane desire to step down to the footlights and shout his thoughts to the upturned faces that came vague and white out of the dark. Those gay seekers who were using him for an hour’s diversion, why should they not know what that hour meant of anguish to him? Why should the curtain that lifted to them lift only on illusion? Why should their pleasure be permitted to surmount his pain?

But those in front saw only a man going through his part with leaden apathy. Frank Moore, the spontaneous, the man who with the lift of an eyebrow or the flick of a little finger against a cigarette ash could carry an audience into his mood, what had happened to him? A stir, that faint but agonizing presage of dissatisfaction, sent its warning up and over the footlights. Moore felt it with the rest but it quickened neither fear nor blood in his veins. Only grim resentment and dull indifference. He could not shake them off. He didn’t care.

Backstage the sensitive fingers of Oswald Kane on the pulse of his public trembled for the sum, always enormous, that would sink with the swaying ship of the production. As the act drew to its close his restless feet paced the boards, his black brows drew together. Yet when the curtain fell and Moore came off, the manager showed no anxiety. He approached the actor, gently taking his arm. Moore looked up a trifle dazedly as if not quite sure where he was.

“Wish I could do something for you, old man!” was all the other man said.

“Rotten, wasn’t I?” Moore answered with a tight smile.

Kane said nothing.

“Do my best this act,” Moore supplemented.

“Shall I telephone and find out how things are? You might like to know.”

“No—don’t—don’t! I couldn’t—stand it!” His strained eyes closed. He went quickly into his dressing-room and banged the door.

Kane stood for a second, hesitant, then hurried out to the elevator that mounted to his studio at the top of the building.

In the lobby critics exchanged a few cryptic remarks, conservatively trying to withhold snap judgment. But frankly puzzled, they asked each other what was the matter with Kane. He was permitting an actor like Franklyn Moore to walk through his part like an automaton.

The auditorium darkened. The curtain lifted on Act II. Moore made his entrance. He played a statesman, ruthlessly trampling under iron hoof friends, family, wife, to reach the pinnacle of his ambition. But up to that moment he had not been iron. He had been wooden. Not ruthless force but numbed suffering marked his gestures, the intonation of his deep voice. More than once his hand strayed with desperate weariness to his thick brown hair. He managed to catch the gesture in time. But even halted midway, it marked itself as strangely out of character.

As he came off at his first exit Kane was in his path, pacing up and down. Once more he took the actor’s arm, but this time his voice shook.

“Do you want to go home, old man? Shall I step out now and explain? We can ring down the curtain.”

“You mean I’ve flivved the whole thing, anyway. You mean there’s no use going on.”

“No!” Kane pulled down the hands that tremblingly covered the staring, empty eyes. “No—don’t say that. But it was too much to ask of you. I had no right.”

“You—you weren’t the only one who asked it of me. I’m going through with it, I tell you! I—I’ll get them yet.”

A shout of laughter came from the auditorium. Kane could not control a sigh. It was relief after the murmuring quiet that had marked the play’s reception from the first. Moore looked up with a quick, comprehending glance. He _had_ flivved the production. Failure was upon his shoulders—his alone! He squared them determinedly. He waited attentively for his cue.

When he walked on the stage again, he looked out upon the vague faces in that crowded cavern at his feet and then his gaze traveled to an empty chair in the stage box. It rested there an instant and gradually something was woven into the mauve velvet. Filmy and gauze-like as a cloud across the sun, it took at first no form. Only white and gentle and indefinite. But even before it floated into the folds of a woman’s gown, he knew that above it two dark eyes were sending the flame of inspiration into his, a silky blond head was bent forward with the light of love gleaming from it. The lips were slightly parted as if to call to him. Against the rail of the box rested transparent hands, ready to lift in applause. She was so eager, so intent, so full of faith and urge and hope that he did not realize his imagination had put her there. Those other men and women must see her, too. They must know now that the one he needed to help him onward had come because of that need.

His head went up. A light lifted the curtain of his eyes. A live look loosened the tension of his mouth. He turned toward the leading woman and again his glance swept the audience. Something electric passed over them. Franklyn Moore had come to life. He was acting now. No, not acting! For as his deep voice responded to the unvoiced call which had come to him, it swept that waiting throng across the footlights. Not illusion but reality made them move forward with the drama. To them he was no longer an actor playing a part. He was a man living in anguish because in tearing the laurel wreath from another’s brow, he had torn down his own happiness. The wife he loved had turned to the man from whom he had snatched it.

“Of what use is the applause of the multitude,” he pleaded, “if I must lose you?”

And as he spoke the words only a few in that vast audience saw his eyes fasten on an empty chair in the stage box.

The dark eyes that met his shone. The shadowy hands came together in applause. The white throat pulsed. She was so alive in all her vagueness. She was sending out to him what he had always known she would give him when the moment came, the spark she had said she lacked, the power of love to leap the chasm of uncertainty, to know the heights of achievement.

His lips formed “Elaine!” He waited for the applause to die down. Then with the man’s eyes still on that box, the actor crossed the stage to the woman he had lost.

“I ask you only not to leave me! Not now! Give me the chance to share with you the success that has robbed me of—everything. One chance! Just one!”

And as she told him it was too late to ask anything of her and the door shut behind her, he lifted his two arms and his voice broke with the tragedy of the immortal tenor’s in “Il Pagliacci” as he cried out:—

“I am at the top—and I am alone.”

Even before the curtain fell the bravos rang out. The force of them was deafening. That drawing aside of the curtain of his soul, that sudden springing to life of the fire of genius had an effect more dynamic than would have been an easy success from the very beginning.

It was like a clarion blast across a silent world. It galvanized the sullen crowd to action. It carried them out of their seats. Through the din and the repeated rise and fall of the curtain Moore did not move. They clamored for a speech. He shook his head. But like insistent children they shouted his name, and as the curtain remained lifted, he stepped downstage.

“There’s nothing I can say—the credit for this is not mine— It belongs to one—” his voice halted. It broke. He stepped back.

Construing his few words as a tribute to his illustrious manager, they called for Kane—called and waited. He did not come.

From the wings members of the cast scurried in search of him. It was not like Oswald Kane on a first night to be far from the footlights at the curtain of the big act. He was always close at hand, after eight or ten calls, for a gracious speech of thanks.

But to-night he could not be found. They sent a callboy to his studio. He was not there. He had evidently left the theater. Discouraged by Moore’s early failure, he had apparently given up all possible hope of the ultimate overwhelming triumph that was his.

The curtain descended finally after announcement had been made that the manager could not be located.

Keyed to his topmost effort, Moore changed for the last act. He had come through! He had scored—nothing could alter that. And _she_ had made him do it. It was her success! His Elaine’s! He had not failed her. Two masters! She had said he must serve only one. Had he? And if so was it not she, his beloved, whom he had served?

He was on the stage, with that swift glance toward her place, that prayer to a filmy figure of his imagination. And yet not quite. More than his imagination—his spirit! They two were one, would be one for all time. He knew that now.

With the same fire of inspiration he went through the final scenes. For her he played his part—to her he spoke his lines. “You’ve come back to me!” he cried as the door opened and the wife of the play entered. “You’ve come back. I haven’t lost you, dear.” And a vast throng of seasoned New Yorkers responded, unashamed of their emotion.

The play was done. As the last clatter of hot hands died away Frank Moore covered with quick, precipitate steps the short space to his dressing-room. His eyes were still lifted and alight. He caught hold of the door knob and as he did so, another hand covered his.

“Frank—”

Oswald Kane was standing beside him.

“I put it over!” came swiftly from the actor and with a breath of triumphant relief.

“I know!”

“But I wasn’t the one who did it. She did!”

“I know that, too!”

“You—?”

“I was there with her.”

“You—?” Frank Moore repeated.

“When I saw you were winning out, I felt she ought to know. I went over to tell her.”

“You saw her? You talked to her?”

“Yes. She knew all about it. Frank—if you could have seen her joy! It was like a light from heaven.”

Moore pushed past him.

“I’ll go to her—I’ll see it now!”

“Frank—wait!”

The actor paused under the shaky, detaining hand.

“Frank—not yet!”

Frank Moore looked up dumbly.

“You will see a smile on her lips,” Kane went on. “It will be there—always.”

The man who heard him stood silent. One would have said no change had occurred. Then very low, he brought out:—

“Are you telling me—?”

“Yes, my boy.”

Quietly the hand dropped away from the door. He stood looking up into the sympathetic face of the great manager. Then with slow, shuffling steps, he went back to the dismantled boards that faced the dark auditorium. With shoulders sagging and head bent he stood for a moment. And then a stagehand, moving the last piece of scenery, saw him lift his arms and stretch them out to an empty chair in the stage box.

UPSTAGE

_COMEDY_

Like beauty, color is in the eye of the beholder. To one who looks through shadows, white is—well, gray. To the uninitiated, a chorus is like a game of roulette—rouge et noir. Yet even to play that game, some of the chips must be white.

UPSTAGE