Chapter 21

"No, no. It's doing it at all. Such rotten music--and what a loathsome mess!"

Mrs. Belloc's eyes flashed. "I'm losing all patience!" she cried. "I know you've been brought up like a fool and always surrounded by fools. I suppose you'd rather sell yourself to some man. Do you know what's the matter with you, at bottom? Why, you're lazy and you're a coward. Too lazy to work. And afraid of what a lot of cheap women'll say--women earning their board and clothes in about the lowest way such a thing can be done. Haven't you got any self-respect?"

Mildred rose. "Mrs. Belloc," she said angrily, "I can't permit even you to say such things to me."

"The shoe seems to fit," retorted Mrs. Belloc. "I never yet saw a lady, a real, silk-and-diamonds, sit-in-the-parlor lady, who had any self-respect. If I had my way they wouldn't get a mouthful to eat till they had earned it. That'd be a sure cure for the lady disease. I'm ashamed of you, Miss Stevens! And you're ashamed of yourself."

"Yes, I am," said Mildred, with a sudden change of mood.

"The best thing you can do is to rest till lunch-time. Then start out after lunch and hunt a job. I'll go with you."

"But I've got a job," said Mildred. "That's what's the matter."

Agnes Belloc's jaw dropped and her rather heavy eyebrows shot up toward the low sweeping line of her auburn hair. She made such a ludicrous face that Mildred laughed outright. Said she:

"It's quite time. Fifty a week, for three weeks of rehearsal. No doubt _I_ can go on if I like. Nothing could be easier."

"Crossley?"

"Yes. He was very nice--heard me sing three pieces--and it was all settled. I'm to begin to-morrow."

The color rose in Agnes Belloc's face until she looked apoplectic. She abruptly retreated to her bedroom. After a few minutes she came back, her normal complexion restored. "I couldn't trust myself to speak," said she. "That was the worst case of ingratitude I ever met up with. You, getting a place at fifty dollars a week--and on your first trial--and you come in looking as if you'd lost your money and your reputation. What kind of a girl are you, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Mildred. "I wish I did."

"Well, I'm sorry you got it so easy. Now you'll have a false notion from the start. It's always better to have a hard time getting things. Then you appreciate them, and have learned how to hold on."

"No trouble about holding on to this," said Mildred carelessly.

"Please don't talk that way, child," pleaded Agnes, almost tearful. "It's frightful to me, who've had experience, to hear you invite a fall-down."

Mildred disdainfully fluttered the typewritten copy of the musical comedy. "This is child's play," said she. "The lines are beneath contempt. As for the songs, you never heard such slop."

"The stars in those pieces get four and five hundred, and more, a week," said Mrs. Belloc. "Believe me, those managers don't pay out any such sums for child's play. You look out. You're going at this wrong."

"I shan't care if I do fail," said Mildred.

"Do you mean that?" demanded Mrs. Belloc.

"No, I don't," said Mildred. "Oh, I don't know what I mean."

"I guess you're just talking," said Mrs. Belloc after a reflective silence. "I guess a girl who goes and gets a good job, first crack out of the box, must have a streak of shrewdness."

"I hope so," said Mildred doubtfully.

"I guess you'll work hard, all right. After you went out this morning, I took that paper down to Miss Blond. She's crazy about it. She wants to make a copy of it. I told her I'd ask you."

"Certainly," said Mildred. "She says she'll return it the same day."

"Tell her she can keep it as long as she likes."

Mrs. Belloc eyed her gravely, started to speak, checked herself. Instead, she said, "No, I shan't do that. I'll have it back in your room by this evening. You might change your mind, and want to use it."

"Very well," said Mildred, pointedly uninterested and ignoring Mrs. Belloc's delicate but distinct emphasis upon "might."

Mrs. Belloc kept a suspicious eye upon her--an eye that was not easily deceived. The more she thought about Mildred's state of depression and disdain the more tolerant she became. That mood was the natural and necessary result of the girl's bringing up and mode of life. The important thing--and the wonderful thing--was her being able to overcome it. After a week of rehearsal she said: "I'm making the best of it. But I don't like it, and never shall."

"I should hope not," replied Mrs. Belloc. "You're going to the top. I'd hate to see you contented at the bottom. Aren't you learning a good deal that'll be useful later on?"

"That's why I'm reconciled to it," said she. "The stage director, Mr. Ransdell, is teaching me everything--even how to sing. He knows his business."

Ransdell not only knew, but also took endless pains with her. He was a tall, thin, dark man, strikingly handsome in the distinguished way. So distinguished looking was he that to meet him was to wonder why he had not made a great name for himself. An extraordinary mind he certainly had, and an insight into the reasons for things that is given only to genius. He had failed as a composer, failed as a playwright, failed as a singer, failed as an actor. He had been forced to take up the profession of putting on dramatic and musical plays, a profession that required vast knowledge and high talents and paid for them in niggardly fashion both in money and in fame. Crossley owed to him more than to any other single element the series of successes that had made him rich; yet the ten thousand a year Crossley paid him was regarded as evidence of Crossley's lavish generosity and was so. It would have been difficult to say why a man so splendidly endowed by nature and so tireless in improving himself was thus unsuccessful. Probably he lacked judgment; indeed, that lack must have been the cause. He could judge for Crossley; but not for himself, not when he had the feeling of ultimate responsibility.

Mildred had anticipated the most repulsive associations--men and women of low origin and of vulgar tastes and of vulgarly loose lives. She found herself surrounded by simple, pleasant people, undoubtedly erratic for the most part in all their habits, but without viciousness. And they were hard workers, all. Ransdell--for Crossley--tolerated no nonsense. His people could live as they pleased, away from the theater, but there they must be prompt and fit. The discipline was as severe as that of a monastery. She saw many signs that all sorts of things of the sort with which she wished to have no contact were going on about her; but as she held slightly--but not at all haughtily--aloof, she would have had to go out of her way to see enough to scandalize her. She soon suspected that she was being treated with extraordinary consideration. This was by Crossley's orders. But the carrying out of their spirit as well as their letter was due to Ransdell. Before the end of that first week she knew that there was the personal element behind his admiration for her voice and her talent for acting, behind his concentrating most of his attention upon her part. He looked his love boldly whenever they were alone; he was always trying to touch her--never in a way that she could have resented, or felt like resenting. He was not unattractive to her, and she was eager to learn all he had to teach, and saw no harm in helping herself by letting him love.

Toward the middle of the second week, when they were alone in her dressing-room, he--with the ingenious lack of abruptness of the experienced man at the game--took her hand, and before she was ready, kissed her. He did not accompany these advances with an outburst of passionate words or with any fiery lighting up of the eyes, but calmly, smilingly, as if it were what she was expecting him to do, what he had a right to do.

She did not know quite how to meet this novel attack. She drew her hand away, went on talking about the part--the changes he had suggested in her entrance, as she sang her best solo. He discussed this with her until they rose to leave the theater. He looked smilingly down on her, and said with the flattering air of the satisfied connoisseur:

"Yes, you are charming, Mildred. I can make a great artist and a great success out of you. We need each other."

"I certainly need you," said she gratefully. "How much you've done for me."

"Only the beginning," replied he. "Ah, I have such plans for you--such plans. Crossley doesn't realize how far you can be made to go--with the right training. Without it--" He shook his head laughingly. "But you shall have it, my dear." And he laid his hands lightly and caressingly upon her shoulders.

The gesture was apparently a friendly familiarity. To resent it, even to draw away, would put her in the attitude of the woman absurdly exercised about the desirability and sacredness of her own charms.

Still smiling, in that friendly, assured way, he went on: "You've been very cold and reserved with me, my dear. Very unappreciative."

Mildred, red and trembling, hung her head in confusion.

"I've been at the business ten years," he went on, "and you're the first woman I've been more than casually interested in. The pretty ones were bores. The homely ones--I can't interest myself in a homely woman, no matter how much talent she has. A woman must first of all satisfy the eye. And you--" He seated himself and drew her toward him. She, cold all over and confused in mind and almost stupefied, resisted with all her strength; but her strength seemed to be oozing away. She said:

"You must not do this. You must not do this. I'm horribly disappointed in you."

He drew her to his lap and held her there without any apparent tax upon his strength. He kissed her, laughingly pushing away the arms with which she tried to shield her face. Suddenly she found strength to wrench herself free and stood at a distance from him. She was panting a little, was pale, was looking at him with cold anger.

"You will please leave this room," said she.

He lit a cigarette, crossed his legs comfortably, and looked at her with laughing eyes. "Don't do that," he said genially. "Surely my lessons in acting haven't been in vain. That's too obviously a pose."

She went to the mirror, arranged her hat, and moved toward the door. He rose and barred the way.

"You are as sensible as you are sweet and lovely," said he. "Why should you insist on our being bad friends?"

"If you don't stand aside, I'll call out to the watchman."

"I'd never have thought you were dishonest. In fact, I don't believe it yet. You don't look like one of those ladies who wish to take everything and give nothing." His tone and manner were most attractive. Besides, she could not forget all he had done for her--and all he could do for her. Said she:

"Mr. Ransdell, if I've done anything to cause you to misunderstand, it was unconscious. And I'm sorry. But I--"

"Be honest," interrupted he. "Haven't I made it plain that I was fascinated by you?"

She could not deny it.

"Haven't I been showing you that I was willing to do everything I could for you?"

"I thought you were concerned only about the success of the piece."

"The piece be jiggered," said he. "You don't imagine YOU are necessary to its success, do you? You, a raw, untrained girl. Don't your good sense tell you I could find a dozen who would do, let us say, ALMOST as well?"

"I understand that," murmured she.

"Perhaps you do, but I doubt it," rejoined he. "Vanity's a fast growing weed. However, I rather expected that you would remain sane and reasonably humble until you'd had a real success. But it seems not. Now tell me, why should I give my time and my talent to training you--to putting you in the way of quick and big success?"

She was silent.

"What did you count on giving me in return? Your thanks?"

She colored, hung her head.

"Wasn't I doing for you something worth while? And what had you to give in return?" He laughed with gentle mockery. "Really, you should have been grateful that I was willing to do so much for so little, for what I wanted ought--if you are a sensible woman--to seem to you a trifle in comparison with what I was doing for you. It was my part, not yours, to think the complimentary things about you. How shallow and vain you women are! Can't you see that the value of your charms is not in them, but in the imagination of some man?"

"I can't answer you," said she. "You've put it all wrong. You oughtn't to ask payment for a favor beyond price."

"No, I oughtn't to HAVE to ask," corrected he, in the same pleasantly ironic way. "You ought to have been more than glad to give freely. But, curiously, while we've been talking, I've changed my mind about those precious jewels of yours. We'll say they're pearls, and that my taste has suddenly changed to diamonds." He bowed mockingly. "So, dear lady, keep your pearls."

And he stood aside, opening the door for her. She hesitated, dazed that she was leaving, with the feeling of the conquered, a field on which, by all the precedents, she ought to have been victor. She passed a troubled night, debated whether to relate her queer experience to Mrs. Belloc, decided for silence. It drafted into service all her reserve of courage to walk into the theater the next day and to appear on the stage among the assembled company with her usual air. Ransdell greeted her with his customary friendly courtesy and gave her his attention, as always. By the time they had got through the first act, in which her part was one of four of about equal importance, she had recovered herself and was in the way to forget the strange stage director's strange attack and even stranger retreat. But the situation changed with the second act, in which she was on the stage all the time and had the whole burden. The act as originally written had been less generous to her; but Ransdell had taken one thing after another away from the others and had given it to her. She made her first entrance precisely as he had trained her to make it and began. A few seconds, and he stopped her.

"Please try again, Miss Gower," said he. "I'm afraid that won't do."

She tried again; again he stopped her. She tried a third time. His manner was all courtesy and consideration, not the shade of a change. But she began to feel a latent hostility. Instinctively she knew that he would no longer help her, that he would leave her to her own resources, and judge her by how she acquitted herself. She made a blunder of her third trial.

"Really, Miss Gower, that will never do," said he mildly. "Let me show you how you did it."

He gave an imitation of her--a slight caricature. A titter ran through the chorus. He sternly rebuked them and requested her to try again. Her fourth attempt was her worst. He shook his head in gentle remonstrance. "Not quite right yet," said he regretfully. "But we'll go on."

Not far, however. He stopped her again. Again the courteous, kindly criticism. And so on, through the entire act. By the end of it, Mildred's nerves were unstrung. She saw the whole game, and realized how helpless she was. Before the end of that rehearsal, Mildred had slipped back from promising professional into clumsy amateur, tolerable only because of the beautiful freshness of her voice--and it was a question whether voice alone would save her. Yet no one but Mildred herself suspected that Ransdell had done it, had revenged himself, had served notice on her that since she felt strong enough to stand alone she was to have every opportunity to do so. He had said nothing disagreeable; on the contrary, he had been most courteous, most forbearing.

In the third act she was worse than in the second. At the end of the rehearsal the others, theretofore flattering and encouraging, turned away to talk among themselves and avoided her. Ransdell, about to leave, said:

"Don't look so down-hearted, Miss Gower. You'll be all right to-morrow. An off day's nothing."

He said it loudly enough for the others to hear. Mildred's face grew red with white streaks across it, like the prints of a lash. The subtlest feature of his malevolence had been that, whereas on other days he had taken her aside to criticize her, on this day he had spoken out--gently, deprecatingly, but frankly--before the whole company. Never had Mildred Gower been so sad and so blue as she was that day and that night. She came to the rehearsal the following day with a sore throat. She sang, but her voice cracked on the high notes. It was a painful exhibition. Her fellow principals, who had been rather glad of her set-back the day before, were full of pity and sympathy. They did not express it; they were too kind for that. But their looks, their drawing away from her--Mildred could have borne sneers and jeers better. And Ransdell was SO forbearing, SO gentle.

Her voice got better, got worse. Her acting remained mediocre to bad. At the fifth rehearsal after the break with the stage-director, Mildred saw Crossley seated far back in the dusk of the empty theater. It was his first appearance at rehearsals since the middle of the first week. As soon as he had satisfied himself that all was going well, he had given his attention to other matters where things were not going well. Mildred knew why he was there--and she acted and sang atrociously. Ransdell aggravated her nervousness by ostentatiously trying to help her, by making seemingly adroit attempts to cover her mistakes--attempts apparently thwarted and exposed only because she was hopelessly bad.

In the pause between the second and third acts Ransdell went down and sat with Crossley, and they engaged in earnest conversation. The while, the members of the company wandered restlessly about the stage, making feeble attempts to lift the gloom with affected cheerfulness. Ransdell returned to the stage, went up to Mildred, who was sitting idly turning the leaves of a part-book.

"Miss Gower," said he, and never had his voice been so friendly as in these regretful accents, "don't try to go on to-day. You're evidently not yourself. Go home and rest for a few days. We'll get along with your understudy, Miss Esmond. When Mr. Crossley wants to put you in again, he'll send for you. You mustn't be discouraged. I know how beginners take these things to heart. Don't fret about it. You can't fail to succeed."

Mildred rose and, how she never knew, crossed the stage. She stumbled into the flats, fumbled her way to the passageway, to her dressing-room. She felt that she must escape from that theater quickly, or she would give way to some sort of wild attack of nerves. She fairly ran through the streets to Mrs. Belloc's, shut herself in her room. But instead of the relief of a storm of tears, there came a black, hideous depression. Hour after hour she sat, almost without motion. The afternoon waned; the early darkness came. Still she did not move--could not move. At eight o'clock Mrs. Belloc knocked. Mildred did not answer. Her door opened--she had forgotten to lock it. In came Mrs. Belloc.

"Isn't that you, sitting by the window?" she said.

"Yes," replied Mildred.

"I recognized the outline of your hat. Besides, who else could it be but you? I've saved some dinner for you. I thought you were still out."

Mildred did not answer.

"What's the matter?" said Agnes? "Ill? bad news?"

"I've lost my position," said Mildred.

A pause. Then Mrs. Belloc felt her way across the room until she was touching the girl. "Tell me about it, dear," said she.

In a monotonous, lifeless way Mildred told the story. It was some time after she finished when Agnes said:

"That's bad--bad, but it might be worse. You must go to see the manager, Crossley."

"Why?" said Mildred.

"Tell him what you told me."

Mildred's silence was dissent.

"It can't do any harm," urged Agnes.

"It can't do any good," replied Mildred.

"That isn't the way to look at it."

A long pause. Then Mildred said: "If I got a place somewhere else, I'd meet the same thing in another form."

"You've got to risk that."

"Besides, I'd never have had a chance of succeeding if Mr. Ransdell hadn't taught me and stood behind me."

It was many minutes before Agnes Belloc said in a hesitating, restrained voice: "They say that success--any kind of success--has its price, and that one has to be ready to pay that price or fail."

Again the profound silence. Into it gradually penetrated the soft, insistent sound of the distant roar of New York--a cruel, clamorous, devouring sound like a demand for that price of success. Said Agnes timidly:

"Why not go to see Mr. Ransdell."

"He wouldn't make it up," said Mildred. "And I--I couldn't. I tried to marry Stanley Baird for money--and I couldn't. It would be the same way now--only more so."

"But you've got to do something."

"Yes, and I will." Mildred had risen abruptly, was standing at the window. Agnes Belloc could feel her soul rearing defiantly at the city into which she was gazing. "I will!" she replied.

"It sounds as if you'd been pushed to where you'd turn and make a fight," said Agnes.

"I hope so," said Mildred. "It's high time."

She thought out several more or less ingenious indirect routes into Mr. Crossley's stronghold, for use in case frontal attack failed. But she did not need them. Still, the hours she spent in planning them were by no means wasted. No time is wasted that is spent in desperate, concentrated thinking about any of the practical problems of life. And Mildred Gower, as much as any other woman of her training--or lack of training--was deficient in ability to use her mind purposefully. Most of us let our minds act like a sheep in a pasture--go wandering hither and yon, nibbling at whatever happens to offer. Only the superior few deliberately select a pasture, select a line of procedure in that pasture and keep to it, concentrating upon what is useful to us, and that alone. So it was excellent experience for Mildred to sit down and think connectedly and with wholly absorbed mind upon the phase of her career most important at the moment. When she had worked out all the plans that had promise in them she went tranquilly to sleep, a stronger and a more determined person, for she had said with the energy that counts: "I shall see him, somehow. If none of these schemes works, I'll work out others. He's got to see me."