Part 15

Something flamed within me, instinctive, intense. I half rose, then sank numbly back into my chair. What did it matter? The only thing that disturbed me was the noise. The uproar beat against my eardrums in waves of sound that threatened to burst them. My nightmare was growing worse. Was it taking me to Bedlam? Was I shrieking, too? I must not shriek in the big, quiet room where the silent figure lay "in a stupor-like."

The chair beside me creaked. Gibson had dropped into it. "T. B." and Miss Merrick were on the top notes of their hysteria, but suddenly I ceased to hear them. Every sense I had hung on the new-comer's words. "No change," said Gibson, briefly. "None expected till three or four o'clock. Thought I'd drop in, anyway. Say"--a wraith of his wide and boyish grin appeared--"what's going on? Is _this_ your rehearsal?"

The question meant nothing to me.

"Did you see any of the family?" I whispered.

Gibson nodded.

"Miss Morris came in for a minute at midnight," he told me, "while I was having supper. I opened the door of Godfrey's room an inch, too, and saw him through the crack."

"See here!" "T. B." was bellowing to a frightened boy on the stage. "You're not giving an imitation of Corbett entering the ring; you're supposed to be a gentleman coming into a drawing-room. See? Hook in your spine an' try it. And now you're not havin' a hair-cut. You're greeting a lady. And you're not makin' a face at her, either. You're smiling at her. Smile, smile--my God, man, smile! Try it. T-r-y-y it!"

His voice broke. He seemed about to burst into tears. I caught Gibson's arm.

"Oh, Billy," I gulped, "how did he look?"

Gibson patted my hand glancing away from me as he answered.

"Very quiet," he said. "He's unconscious. The nurse said he was 'resting comfortably.' That's their pet formula, you know. Occasionally he mutters something--a few disconnected words. By Jove, what _is_ that fellow doing now?"

I followed the direction of his eyes. "T. B." had taken one of his flying leaps over the footlights, assisted midway by a chair in the aisle which served the purpose of a spring-board in this acrobatic feat. Now he was at the right first entrance, swaggering through the open door, his hands deep in his pockets, every tooth in his head revealed in a fixed and awful grin. Yet, strangely, through the swagger, under the grin, one detected for an instant something resembling a well-bred college boy entering a drawing-room--something, too, of radiant youth, irresponsible and charming.

"Jove," breathed Gibson, "he gets it, somehow, doesn't he? One sees exactly what he's driving at."

But the little scene had faded as I looked at it, like a negative dimming in the light. The door that opened was the door of the sick-room, and the man who had entered was one of the specialists who watched over Godfrey to-night. I saw him approach the bed and lean over the patient, looking at him in silence for a moment, his finger on the pulse of the thin hand that lay so still. Somewhere near a woman was sobbing. Was it Mrs. Morris, or the young girl in the wings? I did not know. "T. B.'s" voice was cutting its way to me like the blast of a steam siren through a fog.

"Miss Iverson," he yelled. "Cut out that kid's love scene. He can't do it, and no one wants it there, anyway. You've got some drama here now, and, by Heaven, it's about time you had! Don't throw it away. Keep to it." His voice broke on the last words. Again he seemed to be on the verge of tears. "_Keep--to--it_," he almost sobbed.

I carried my manuscript to a point in the wings where, vaguely aided by one electric light hanging far above me, I could make the changes for which "T. B." had asked. They meant new cues for several characters and a number of verbal alterations in their lines. Far down within me something sighed over the loss of that love scene--sighed, and then moaned over the loss of something else. "T. B.," his chin on his chest, his eyes on the floor, brooded somberly in an orchestra seat until we were ready to go over the revised scene. As I finished, Stella Merrick leaned over me, her hand clutching my left shoulder in a grip that hurt. Her teeth were chattering with nervousness.

"How _can_ you be so calm?" she gasped. "I've never seen him as devilish as he is to-night. If you hadn't kept your nerve we'd all have gone to smash. As it is, I have a temperature of a hundred and four!"

I wondered what Godfrey's temperature was. Gibson had not told me. There must be a fever-chart in the sick-room. It seemed almost as if I could read it. Certainly I could see the jagged peaks of it, the last point running off in a long wavering line of weakness. Perhaps Gibson knew what the temperature was. But when I returned to my seat in the orchestra Gibson was no longer there.

"Open some of those windows," ordered "T. B.," irritably. "It's like a furnace in here."

Was that an ice-cap on Godfrey's head? Of course. The nurse was changing it for a fresh one. For a moment, the first in that endless night, I seemed to see his face, waxen, the sensitive nostrils pinched, the gray eyes open now and staring unseeingly into space.

"No change," said Gibson's voice.

Another period of time had dragged its way past me like a sluggish snake.

"What o'clock?" I heard myself ask.

Gibson looked at his watch.

"Quarter of two," he told me, snapping the case shut. "I saw Dr. Weymarth just before I left."

"What did he say?"

Gibson's eyes shifted from mine, which vainly tried to hold them.

"No change," he repeated.

"Was that all?"

Gibson's eyes returned to mine for an instant and shifted again.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"He's disappointed in the heart. It's been holding its own, though the temperature has been terrific from the first. But since midnight--"

"Yes, since midnight--"

"It's not quite so strong."

Gibson's words came slowly, as if against his will. There was a strange silence over the theater. Through it the voice of "T. B." ripped its way to us.

"Now we'll run through that scene again. And if the author and the ladies and gentlemen of the company will kindly remember that this is a rehearsal, and not an afternoon tea, perhaps we'll get somewhere."

"Billy," I whispered, "I can't bear it."

"I know." Gibson patted my hand. "Sit tight," he murmured. "I'm off again. I'll be back in an hour or so. By then they ought to know."

I watched him slip like a shadow through the dark house, along the wall, and back toward the stage-door. The voice of Stella Merrick was filling the theater. I heard my name.

"Miss Iverson doesn't agree with me," she was saying, "but I think that in this scene, when we are reconciled and I say to my husband, 'My boy,' he ought to answer, 'My mumsey!'"

"T. B.'s" reply sounded like a pistol-shot.

"What for?" he exploded. "Want to turn this play into a farce?"

"Certainly _not_!"

"Then follow the lines."

It was the settlement for all time of an argument which Miss Merrick and I had waged for weeks. One scene at least, the final, vital scene, would be spared to me. I felt a throb of gratitude, followed by a sudden sick, indescribable sinking of the heart. Had I for one instant forgotten? I remembered again. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever matter.

Some one sat down beside me, smiled at me, then stared frankly. "Good Heaven, Miss Iverson, did I frighten you?" cried Elman. "You look like a ghost!"

Before I could answer, "T. B." approached us both. Leaning over Elman, he nodded toward the youth who was still vainly trying to act like a gentleman.

"Get rid of him."

"But we open in Atlantic City to-morrow night--" began Elman.

"Get rid of him." "T. B.'s" tones permitted no argument. "Get rid of Haskins, too, and of Miss Arnold."

"But, great Scott, Governor--"

Elman's voice, usually so controlled, was almost a wail. "T. B." strolled away. To "open" the next night with three new members in the company seemed impossible. Probably we wouldn't open at all. By to-morrow night I would know. Godfrey would be out of danger, or Godfrey would be--Why didn't Gibson come? Elman murmured something to me about "not taking it so hard," but I caught only a few words. He said it could be done--that he had the right people at hand. He would see them the first thing in the morning, and go over the lines with them and have them word-perfect by night.

My eyes were strained in the direction of the stage-door. My ears were awaiting the sound of Gibson's quick footsteps. For now, I knew, in the sick-room, where my mind and heart had been all night, the crisis was near. Through the open windows the blue-gray dawn was visible. The shaded lights were taking on a spectral pallor. Nurse and doctors were close to the bed, watching, listening for the change that meant life or death.

"Good--mighty good!" whispered Elman.

On the stage Miss Merrick and Peyton, the leading man, were going through their final scene. The familiar words, over which I had labored for months, came to me as if out of a life I had lived on some other planet ages back.

"You seem so far away," said the man. "I feel as if I'd have to call across the world to make you hear me. But I love you. Oh, Harriet, can't you hear that?"

The voice of his wife, who was forgiving him and taking him back, replied with the little break in its beautiful notes which Stella Merrick always gave to her answer.

"Yes, dear; I guess I'd hear that anywhere." And then, as she drew his head to her breast, "My boy!"

Within me something alive, suffering and struggling, cried out in sick revolt. What did these puppets know about love? What had I known about it when I wrote so arrogantly? But I knew now. Oh yes, I knew now. Love and suspense and agony--I knew them all.

On the dim stage the leading man and woman melted into the embrace that accompanied the slow fall of the curtain. In the wings, but well in view, the members of the company clustered, watching the final scene and wiping their wet eyes. They invariably cried over that scene, partly because the leading man and woman set the example, but more because they were temperamental and tired. Even the brilliant eyes of Elman, who still sat beside me, took on a sudden softness. He smiled at "T. B.," who had dropped into a seat near us.

"No change there, I guess," he hazarded.

"T. B." looked at his watch.

"Quarter of four," he said, with surprise. Then he yawned, and, rising, reached for his light overcoat which lay on the back of a chair.

"That's all," he called, as he struggled into it. "Boyce, study your lines to-morrow, or you're going to have trouble. Peyton, you and Miss Mason better go over that scene in the second act in the morning. So-long, Miss Merrick."

He started to go, then stopped at my seat.

"Good night, Miss Iverson," he said, kindly. "You've got the right nerve for this business. Of course we can't make predictions, but I shouldn't wonder if we're giving the public what they want in this play."

He nodded and was gone. I had barely caught his words. Over his big shoulders I saw Gibson approaching, his face one wide, expansive grin. Never before had anything seemed so beautiful to me as that familiar Gibson smile. Never had I dreamed I could be so rapturously happy in seeing it.

"Good news," he said, as soon as he came within speaking-distance; and he added when he reached me, "He's better. The doctors say they'll pull him through."

At the first glimpse of him I had risen to my feet with some vague impulse to take, standing, whatever was coming. For a moment I stood quite still. Then the thing of horror that had ridden me through the night loosened its grip slowly, reluctantly, and I drew a deep, deep breath. I wanted to throw myself in Gibson's arms. I wanted to laugh, to cry, to shout. But I did none of these things. I merely stood and looked at him till he took my hand and drew it through his arm.

"Rehearsal's over, I see," he said. "I'm going to hunt up a taxi and take you home."

Together we went out into the gray morning light, and I stood on the curb, full-lunged, ecstatic, until Gibson and the taxi-cab appeared. He helped me into the cab and took the seat beside me.

"You ought to go home," I murmured, with sudden compunction. "You must be horribly tired."

They were my first words. I had made no comment on the message he brought, and it was clear that he had expected none. Now he smiled at me--the wide, kind, understanding smile that had warmed the five years of our friendship.

"Let me do this much for you, May," he said. "You see, it's all I can do."

Our eyes met, and suddenly I understood. An irrepressible cry broke from me.

"Oh, Billy," I said. "Not _you_! Not _me_!"

He smiled again.

"Yes," he replied. "Just that. Just you and me. But it's all right. I'd rather be your friend than the husband of any other woman in the world."

The taxi-cab hummed on its way. The east reddened, then sent up a flaming banner of light. I should have been tired; I should have been hungry; I should, perhaps, have been excited over "T. B.'s" final words. I was none of those things. I was merely in a state of supreme content. Nothing mattered but the one thing in life which mattered supremely. Godfrey was better; Godfrey would live!

XII

THE RISE OF THE CURTAIN

On the desk in my study the bell of the telephone sounded a faint warning, then rang compellingly. It had been ringing thus at five-minute intervals throughout the day, but there was neither impatience nor weariness in the haste with which I responded. I knew what was coming; it was the same thing that had been coming since nine o'clock that morning; and it was a pleasant sort of thing, diverting to an exceedingly anxious mind.

"Hello, hello! Is that you, May? This is your awe-struck friend, George Morgan. Josephine and I want to inquire the condition of your temperature and your pulse."

I laughed.

"Quite normal, thank you," I said.

"Don't believe it." The sympathetic cadence of George Morgan's voice removed all effect of brusqueness from his words. "No playwright was ever normal three hours before the curtain went up on the first night of her play in New York. Now I'll tell you exactly how you feel."

"Don't," I begged. "I _know_."

"But I must!" my friend's remorseless voice went on. "I've got to show my insight into the human heart, as you used to say in your convent days. So here goes. You're sinking into a bottomless pit; you're in a blue funk; your feet are cold and your head is hot; you're breathing with difficulty; you're struggling with a desire to take the first train out of town; you're wondering if you can't go to bed and stay there. You think no one suspects these things, for you're wearing a smile that looks as if it had been tacked on; but it's so painful that your father and mother keep their eyes turned away from it. You're--"

"George, for Heaven's sake--"

"Oh, all right; I merely wanted to show insight and express sympathy. Having lived through four 'first nights' myself, I know what they mean. And say, May,"--his gay voice took on a deeper note--"I needn't tell you that Josephine and I will be going through the whole thing with you. We've chosen seats in the fifth row of the orchestra, instead of taking a box, because we both expect to burst into loud sobs of joy during your speech, and we'll feel less exposed down on the floor. And, oh yes, wait a minute; your god-daughter insists on kissing you through the telephone!"

There was an instance's silence; then the breathless little voice of Maria Annunciata Morgan, aged "four 'n a half, mos' five," according to herself, came to my ear.

"'Lo, May, oh-h, May, 'lo, May," it gurgled, excitedly.

"Hello, babykins," I said. "Is that a new song you've learned that you're singing for me?"

"No-o-o." Maria Annunciata's tones showed her scorn for grown-up denseness. "I was just 'ginning my conversation," she added, with dignity.

I apologized.

"An' papa says," went on the adorable childish treble, "'at if your play lasses till a mat'née, I--can--go--an'--see--it!"

"Bless your heart, so you shall, my baby," I laughed. "And if the play lasses only a few minutes, I'll give you a 'mat'née' all by yourself. Where's that kiss I was to have? I need it very much."

"Here 'tis. Here's fourteen an' 'leven." They came to me over the wire in a succession of reports like the popping of tiny corks. "An' papa says say good-by now, so I mus'. But I love you _very_ mush!"

"Good-by, darling. I love you very mush, too."

I turned from the telephone wonderfully cheered by the little talk, but almost before I had hung up the receiver the bell rang again.

"Hello, May. If you've finished that impassioned love scene with which you have kept the wire sizzling for the last half-hour I'd like to utter a few calming words."

Bayard, a brilliantly successful playwright, was talking.

"Feel as if you were being boiled in oil, don't you?" was his cheery beginning. "Feel as if you were being burned at the stake? Feel as if you were being butchered to make a Roman holiday, and all that kind of thing? But it's nothing to the way you're going to feel as you drive to the theater and as you watch the curtain go up. However, keep a stiff upper lip. Margaret and I will be in front, and Margaret says you can have my chest to cry on immediately after the performance. Good luck. Good-by."

Again, before I had left the room, the telephone bell recalled me. It had been like this all day. I had begun to believe that it would always be like this. Life had resolved itself into a series of telephone talks, running through a strenuous but not unpleasant dream. Every friend I had seemed determined to call me up and alternate rosy good wishes with dark forebodings of disasters possible through no fault of mine. The voice that came to me now was that of Arthur Locke, the best actor and the most charming gentleman on the American stage.

"Good luck, Miss Iverson," he said, heartily. "I don't need to tell you all my wife and I wish for you. But I want to give you a word of warning about the critics. Don't let anything they do to-night disturb you. They've all got their bag of tricks, you know, and they go through them whether they like the play or not. For example"--his beautiful voice took on a delicious quality of sympathetic amusement--"Haskins usually drops off to sleep about the middle of the second act. The audience is always immensely impressed by this, and men and women exchange glances and hushed comments over it. But it doesn't mean anything. He wakes up again. He slept through my entire second act last year, and gave me an excellent notice the next morning--to show his gratitude, I suppose. Allen usually leaves during the middle of the third act, gathering up his overcoat with a weary sigh and marching down the middle aisle so that no one can miss his dramatic exit. People are so used to it that they don't mind it much. Northrup sits with his eyebrows up in his pompadour, as if pained beyond expression by the whole performance, and Elkins will take all your best comedy with sad, sad shakes of the head. To equalize this, however, Webster will grin over your pathetic scenes. The best thing to do is not to look at any of them. You know where their seats are, don't you? Keep your eyes the other way."

"Thank you," I said, faintly. "I think I will."

Beyond question Mr. Locke's intentions had been friendly, but his words had not perceptibly soothed my uneasy nerves. Before I walked from my study into my living-room I stopped a moment to straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath. My entire family had come on from the West to attend the first-night performance of my play in New York--my father, my sister Grace, my brother Jack, now a lieutenant in the army, even my delicate mother, to whom journeys and excitement were not among life's usual privileges. They were, I knew, having tea together, and as I opened the living-room door I found my features taking on the stiff and artificial smile I must have unconsciously worn all day. A saving memory of George Morgan's words came to me in time, and I banished the smile and soberly entered the room.

The members of the familiar group greeted me characteristically. My mother, by whose chair I stopped for an instant, smiled up at me in silence, patting my hand. My father drew a deep, inviting chair close to the open fire; my brother brought me the cup of tea my sister hurriedly prepared. Each beloved face wore a look of acute nervous strain, and from the moment of my entrance every one talked at once, on subjects so remote from the drama that it seemed almost improper to introduce it by repeating the telephone conversations I had just had. I did so, however, and in the midst of the badinage that followed, Stella Merrick, our "star," was announced.

She lived across the Square from me, and she promptly explained as she drank her tea that she had been "too nervous to stay at home." For her comfort I repeated again the pregnant words of Mr. Locke concerning the New York critics, and she nodded in depressed confirmation. During the close association required by our rehearsals, and our months together "on the road," I had not analyzed to my satisfaction the contradictions of Miss Merrick's temperament. She loved every line of my play and was admirable, if not ideal, in the leading rôle. She fiercely resented the slightest suggestion from me, and combated almost every change I wished to make in the text as my work revealed itself to me more clearly during rehearsals and performances. She seemed to have a genuine fondness for me and a singular personal dependence. She was uneasy if I missed a rehearsal, and had been almost panic-stricken when once or twice during our preliminary tour I had missed a first night in an important city. She claimed the credit of all merit in the play and freely passed on to me the criticisms. The slightest suggestion made by the "cub reporter" on any newspaper or the call-boy in any theater seemed to have more weight with her than any advice of mine. To-day, under the soothing influence of tea, fire-light, and the not too stimulating charms of family conversation, we could see her tense nerves relax.

"I've been working mentally on the critics," she confessed, as she passed her cup to Grace for the second time. "They're the only persons I've been afraid of here in New York. I know we'll get our audience. We always do. And if Miss Iverson will stand by us, and make a speech when she's called for, we're sure to have a brilliant night."

She smiled her charming smile at me.

"But the New York critics are enough to appal the strongest soul," she went on. "They're so unjust sometimes, so merciless, so fiendishly clever in suggesting labels that stick to one through life. Do you remember what they said about Miss Carew--that her play was so feminine she must have done it with crochet needles? And they said Nazimova looked like 'the cussed damosel,' and that Fairbanks had the figure of Romeo and the face of the apothecary. Those things appal me. So for the last few days I've been working on them mentally. I believe in mental science, you know."

She paused for a moment and sat stirring her tea, a reflective haze over the brilliance of her blue eyes.

"Some way," she resumed, "in the forty-eight hours since I've been trying the power of mind on them I have ceased to be afraid of the critics. I realize now that they cannot hurt us or our work. I know they are our friends. I have a wonderfully kind feeling for them. Why,"--her voice took on a seductive tenderness, her eyes dwelt on the fire with a dreamy abstraction in their depths--"now I almost love the damned things!" she ended, peacefully.

My brother Jack choked, then laughed irrepressibly. My sister and I joined him. But my mother was staring at Miss Merrick with startled eyes, while Miss Merrick stared back at her with a face full of sudden consternation.