CHAPTER XXIII

_The Fall of the Curtain_

There are many tests of youthfulness, the mirror the least accurate.

“A man is as young as he feels,” we are told, but this is misleading. A bad cold, a bill, an ill-cooked dinner, a few hours over-work, and the youthful man of the morning may feel decrepit by night. Thoreau hits it more nearly when he makes the thrill with which spring is hailed the test of age; we are not old, he tells us, if the blood in our veins runs swifter with the mounting sap; if we echo the joyousness of the bluebird’s annunciatory warble.

Akin to this under urban conditions is the expectant thrill with which we await the curtain’s rise upon the drama. Both are anticipatory; both mean youth’s impatience for the play. Each summer is heralded by vague anticipation of delight; each play which we wait to see for the first time hints of unknown pleasures. No one is jaded, no one really old, who is eager for a new joy.

By this test there was a youthful audience gathered in the Stratford Theatre on a night of late November. Great things were said to be in store for that audience. This was the first night of the first play by Richard Latham, the poet.

Those who had ways of knowing something of the play said that it was “great!” Those who had no clue to what they were to see said that Richard Latham never allowed anything to go forth over his name that was unworthy of his growing fame. Obviously, when it was not a matter of a poem in a magazine, but a play on the boards, he would be no less exacting with himself. Consequently, there was a literary and dramatic treat awaiting these first nighters.

The orchestra was playing a Schumann overture to which it was competent; the Stratford, under a renowned management, was deficient in no department. In the stage box on the right sat ex-Governor Abercrombie; with him his magnificently handsome daughter in a golden gown and brilliant jewels; her husband-elect, his battered good looks still striking, and a dark young woman in white who made an excellent foil for the golden Helen, and who might have been George Lanbury’s sister.

Miss Carrington was in the next box, decidedly the elegant old-type gentlewoman in shining silvery silk, point lace, and a few fine diamonds. With her was her nephew, Christopher Carrington, tall and straight, his face youthfully clear, radiating happiness.

A girl as sweet as a flower in pale, rose-coloured crêpe, shrank somewhat into the shadow of Miss Carrington’s shoulder. It was hard for Anne to feel that Richard would not see her and lose something from his hour of triumph. But though Richard knew precisely where Anne sat, and had made Ted Wilberforce describe to him what she wore and how she looked, it did not disturb him. He always wanted Anne, never forgot that he was denied her; this was the established condition of his days; to-night the play must be the thing.

In the box next to the author’s were Mr. and Mrs. Berkley, Joan and Antony, with Peter back of them, ready to stand if his view were impeded, striving to act as though he had spent years going to first nights in theatre boxes, devoutly hoping that his unaccustomedness to plays was not perceptible to the eyes of the audience, which he imagined were upon him. Joan alone had a divided mind. She had been persuaded to leave her baby with Bibiana. Bibiana had been a devoted nurse to little Anne, but when it came to a baby like Barbara, provided you ever could come to a baby like Barbara, the risk of leaving her was too great to get it out of mind. Joan eagerly waited for the curtain to go up, but at the same time she was wondering if the nursery window was down.

The author’s box was the stage box on the left. The audience swayed in an effort to see Latham better, but Richard sat in the shadow of the drapery, additionally screened by a tall man whom those versed in the affairs of the town recognized as Edwin Wilberforce, the painter, Richard Latham’s devoted friend.

In the front of the author’s box, leaning absorbed over its edge, utterly unconscious that people noticed her and speculated on whom she was, why she was chosen to be with Latham on this first presentation of his play, sat a little girl. She was dark, thin, not precisely pretty, but there was a ceaseless play of expression upon her eager little face that placed her beyond mere childish prettiness. She was dressed in filmy white material that threatened to be destroyed by her rapid motions. There were many in the audience who had seen the exhibition of American painters in the last week of October and the first week of November, who recognized this child as the original of “The Mystic,” Wilberforce’s picture, the finest picture of the exhibition, the one most discussed, oftenest printed in sepia-tinted Sunday supplements.

Little Anne turned at last from her absorbed yet horrified contemplation of shoulder blades and spines in the parquette below, the elevation of the box giving her ample opportunity for her study of anatomy and ethics. She looked up at Ted Wilberforce with shocked eyes and spoke to him with bated breath; Mr. Latham was lucky to be blind, after all, she felt.

“Do you s’pose, do you really, truly s’pose, they _all_ thought there wouldn’t be anybody here but just themselves?” little Anne asked.

“Poor little Anne!” exclaimed Ted Wilberforce.

He pitied the child’s pang at her first dash with the world in which at least one of the inimical triumvirate runs at large. “It’s the custom just now, dear; they don’t see it as we do--in a two-fold sense!”

“I’m going to say a prayer for ’em. It’s awful!” groaned little Anne with a shudder.

Then she proved that everywhere she behaved as the same little Anne, by closing her eyes, clasping her hands, and moving her lips fast, seated in the front of the stage box.

Having thrown the responsibility of rescuing these unfortunates, who were perfectly self-satisfied, upon their Maker, little Anne turned with zest to the stage.

The curtain was slowly rising upon a peaceful river, flowing between its banks under a marvellous effect of sunrise. The scene struck little Anne as familiar.

“It looks just like Cleavedge river, only I’m never out at sunrise,” she said.

“Mr. Wilberforce made the sketch; it is our river, Anne,” said Richard.

He forgot his misfortune and leaned forward as if he might see the heroine’s entrance. She emerged from the rosy mists that enveloped her, a beautiful, effective entrance for the character that was to embody youth, purity, and self-forgetful love.

The audience applauded, but was quickly silent, for the girl was speaking the lovely opening lines which embodied the aim of the play. From this moment there was complete quiet over the house, the absence of those fidgeting movements which reveal a lack of interest; the silence was far higher praise than applause could be. Yet applause followed on the first curtain fall, calling it up again and yet again, and cries of “Author!” began to arise here and there, though the time for them had not come.

Visiting set in when the plaudits ceased. People streamed out into the lobby, men came and hung over the orchestra chairs in which sat the ladies who had so afflicted little Anne.

Richard Latham’s box was besieged by acquaintances and newspaper men in search of first-hand information as to how he had come to write “The Guerdon,” what his idea was in producing a play so unlike the usual thing, what he should write next, and all the other big-little facts demanded by the public, which rightly sees biography as supremely important.

Ted Wilberforce had carried little Anne out to walk in the lobby, lifting her over the crowd.

“I’m afraid,” she said, seriously, as he set her down, “that people will not know that I was eight last month. It makes you look even less’n seven to be carried. But I thank you just the same, Mr. Wilberforce, and it’s nice to walk the kinks out, and a box is quite warm, though, of course, it sounds so.”

The curtain rose on the second act with everyone back in his seat. That alone proved how the play was taking.

This act closed on a peculiarly silent house. There were handkerchiefs fluttering against eyes which were not accustomed to moisten over sentiment so simple, so denuded of all but a direct appeal to the finest human ideals. “The Guerdon” voiced this appeal without much supplementary stage craft. The acting was perfect. This time with calls for the author came calls for the three principal actors.

“Oh, if I could see them! They speak the lines as if they were inspired!” sighed Richard, permitting himself to bemoan his blindness. But he did not respond to the calls for a speech from him.

“The third act is the test; I’ll try to say something after it, if it pleases them,” Richard told the delighted manager who made his impeded way into the poet’s box.

When the curtain fell on the third act, after a moment’s hush the applause was tempestuous, and this time there was no resisting the enthusiastic shouts of “Author! Speech! Author!”

Richard had not intended to resist his audience if it wanted him to talk after this act. He arose and patted little Anne’s shoulder in farewell.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going on the stage, little Anne, and it might be as well to pray for me to say the right thing as to pray for the ladies of the shoulder blades,” said Richard, smiling.

Little Anne at once closed her eyes, and obeyed him literally.

Richard came forth from the side of the curtain, the same calm, gentle Richard that little Anne knew at home, and she heard Ted Wilberforce draw in his breath sharply.

Richard stood bowing from left to right for a few minutes while the audience frantically welcomed him. The pathos of his blindness had never been more poignant.

Then silence fell, the impressive silence of a concourse of people.

“My friends,” Richard’s quiet, thrilling voice broke the silence, “it is not custom that makes me call you my friends. It seems to me that in your reception of my play there is a quality that means friendship for the man that wrote it. Or is it that I like to think so? I am deeply grateful to you. Having said that, I might stop talking, for what can I add? Truly, indeed, I thank you! The first night of his first play means a great deal to an author. It means pretty much what it must have meant to Wendy, John, and little Michael to be taken by Peter Pan into the Never Never Land. It means one’s dreams come true.

“For three years I carried ‛The Guerdon’ around with me in vague, mist-encircled thoughts of it, a waking dream. Gradually the characters in it emerged farther and farther out of the mist, taking shape as the events of that period of their lives with which the play deals evolved and developed them. I knew what happened to these people because I knew the people, and, again, I knew the people because of what happened to them.

“Perhaps we do not realize how much of us the events of our lives reveal. There are certain things that cannot befall people of a certain type, and the reverse is equally true: there are events almost sure to befall a certain type of people. The law of attraction, it seems to me, holds in all combinations, in all orders of creation. Circumstances develop from within outward. Though we are acted upon extraneously it is because we call forth and yield ourselves to the action.

“Thus I came to know the people in this play through what happened to them, and I understood what they must be to receive the particular guerdon that you are seeing come to them. Nor has it seemed to me that I caused these events of the play, nor created the people. It is an unending marvel to us who write how wilful our puppets become, how we stand aside and watch them make or mar their lives in spite of us, precisely as do our other friends who are clothed in flesh. I have had help in writing this play for which I shall be grateful all my life. It grew in a quiet room in Cleavedge, and its writing was a never-to-be-forgotten joy; a present joy that abides is mine, though the play is done. Whatever comes to me later, I can never write another first play, nor lose the happiness this one brought to me, crowned to-night by your great kindness to it.

“You have shown me that I have not quite failed to share the dream with you. You approve ‛The Guerdon.’ With all my heart I thank you. That is my guerdon. I am a happy man to-night. I am grateful to the men and women who have embodied the people in the play as I knew them, but as you could not know them but for this acting, since outside my brain and that quiet room in Cleavedge these play-people had never ventured. Out of a grateful heart I thank you all.”

Anne shrank farther back as she listened to Richard talking here as simply, as quietly as he had talked to her in that quiet room. His allusion to it brought it before her so vividly that the theatre, the audience were blotted out. She was back in that room, the bees humming in the beautiful garden, their hum and the scent of the flowers they were rifling coming in through the windows, open to the light breeze. She knew that Richard was speaking to _her_, telling _her_ not to grieve, to remember that he was sincerely glad to carry with him the memory of the days that had left him only memory. Kit, seeing Anne’s face, came forward to take her chair and give her his place, a little back of his aunt.

“Don’t look like that, honey!” he whispered. “People will notice, and hang and quarter me! There’s always someone about who knows too much! I don’t care if Latham did write ‛The Guerdon!’ ‛But notta Carlotta! I gotta Carlotta!’ However you pity him, you can’t marry us both, dear! Latham is happy! That’s true. Look at him!”

Richard was acknowledging the applause of his modest speech; his smile was bright, his face shining. Ted Wilberforce was clapping with all his might over little Anne’s head, and little Anne was waving both arms over the rail of the box, leaning out of it dangerously, and shouting shrilly:

“You dear, you dear, you dear!” to the delight of everyone within range of her clear, childish voice.

Miss Carrington fell back in her chair after her emphatic applause of Richard. She looked at Kit proudly, amusement and satisfaction in her eyes.

“Fancy being the power behind the throne, the victorious rival in a scene like this, Master Kit! I’ve always thought you a nice lad, Christopher, but I never expected to see you before the public, which does not suspect your glory, the scorner of such a creature as yonder splendid Helen; the victor over the winner of the laurels which muses and men bestow! Is it possible that I ever bought you copper-toed boots, and ordered mutton tallow on your properly scornful nose!” she said.

The fourth act followed, a worthy climax to the play, and when the final curtain was rung down on “The Guerdon” Richard’s triumph was complete. His box was full of flowers, masses of roses and orchids bearing bits of cardboard, each with a well-known name engraved on it.

“Too bad this isn’t a church!” observed little Anne, to whom flowers and altars were synonymous.

“I’ll send them all to the nearest church in your name, little Anne!” declared Richard. “Now you and Ted come with me to the manager’s room. I’m going to bid you good-bye there. Kit and Miss Dallas are coming. They will not come to my supper of celebration, and you’re too small to sup with me. So we’ll part, to meet again in Cleavedge in the spring.”

“Oh, me!” sighed little Anne. “Nothing keeps right on. Heaven is best. I don’t want you to go!”

Richard and Ted Wilberforce, with little Anne, went to the manager’s room.

Anne and Kit were waiting there.

Richard took Kit’s outstretched hand in both of his and held it. They talked earnestly for a few minutes, while Ted talked to his cousin. Anne was nervously fighting back her tears and Ted was evidently reassuring her.

Richard turned from Kit and crossed over to her.

“We are the only ones who know how much of ‛The Guerdon’ is yours, patient little collaborator!” he said. “I shall not see you till spring. Ted and I have decided upon Rome in February. Then Cleavedge for us both! Will you make a room for me in the new home which you’re to begin at Easter? Kit says ‛Yes!’ Will Kit’s wife also welcome me?”

“Oh, dear Richard, who so beloved or so welcome?” Anne cried.

“Good-bye, then, for a time. I am content. What a night! And how much of it due to you! I’m a lucky poet! Good-bye, dearest of women.” Richard took Anne’s hand, held it for a moment, then relinquished it, laying it down amid the folds of her skirt with a tiny smile. But his lips had grown white, and the movement was like laying down a dead, not a living hand. The three adults watching him knew that he then bade farewell forever to Anne Dallas, whom he should always love.

Then he turned to little Anne.

“And good-bye to you, little Anne, darling, but only for a half year!” he said.

He stooped to kiss her, but little Anne threw her arms around him with such a tempestuous embrace that he raised her, clinging to his neck, to his breast.

“If only nothing ever changed!” she sobbed.

“What shall I bring you from Rome, dear child? I’ll be back when May comes to Cleavedge.”

Little Anne traced a tiny cross on his forehead with her thumbnail.

“Only you. Take care of yourself and bring me you,” she said. “I shall study hard’s I can to be ready to help you when you come home. I’m going to learn to write on a typewriter and make squiggles so you can tell me your works like Anne! But if you have time I’d just love to have you pray for me in the catacombs!”

“How I wish I could take you with me! It would be worth anything to show you St. Peter’s, little Anne!” said Richard.

“Oh, yes!” little Anne breathlessly agreed.

Then she added, with one of her exalted moods suddenly sweeping her beyond the grief of parting and the desire for Rome:

“But every place is the same, if you’ve got God!”

“What a valedictory to a theatrical triumph!” exclaimed Richard.

Anne and Kit took little Anne’s cold hands and went away. Ted Wilberforce followed them down the corridor to say good-bye to the child and a last word to his cousin.

“Good-bye, little Anne! Remember to love me with Richard. And go to sleep in a trice, for this is dissipation, you know!” said Ted.

Little Anne warmly returned his farewell kiss.

“I’ve had a wonderful time, and I don’t truly think I could go to sleep,” she said. “I’d just as lief as not sit up hours and hours to talk about it to Mother and Father and Joan and Peter and everyone! It’s rather wasteful to go to bed when you feel wide awake, ’way through, don’t you think so? But good-bye, dear Mr. Wilberforce. I do love you, too!”

Ted returned to Richard to go with him to the supper that he was giving to celebrate “The Guerdon.” Anne and Kit took little Anne with them to the hotel where they all were to spend the night, and return to Cleavedge in the morning.

“It’s all over!” said Anne.

“It’s all beginning, little wife!” Kit corrected her.

“Isn’t something always like that, all over and just beginning?” asked wise little Anne.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as printed in the original publication except as follows:

Page 27 dropped back into his chiar _changed to_ dropped back into his chair

Page 67 lighty kissing Miss Carrington’s _changed to_ lightly kissing Miss Carrington’s

Page 76 Sister something-or-Other _changed to_ Sister Something-or-Other

Page 84 went so far as to to try _changed to_ went so far as to try

Page 149 the pity whth which _changed to_ the pity with which

Page 158 I’m sure I don’t knew _changed to_ I’m sure I don’t know

Page 173 interpretating Kit’s unconsidered _changed to_ interpreting Kit’s unconsidered

Page 240 tight little white yoke-top _changed to_ tight little white yoke top