Love's Pilgrimage Part 43

Section 3. Robertson Jones, the great "theatrical producer", was large and ponderous, florid of face and firm in manner--the steam-roller type of business-man. And it became evident at once that he had invited Thyrsis to come and be rolled.

"Miss Lewis tells me you can't agree about the play," said he.

"No," said Thyrsis, faintly.

And then Mr. Jones began. He told Thyrsis what he meant to do with this play. Miss Lewis was one of the country's future "stars", and he was willing to back her without stint. He had permitted her to make her own choice of a role, and she should have her way in everything. There were famous playwrights bidding for a chance to write for her; but she had seen fit to choose "The Genius".

"Personally," said Mr. Jones, "I don't believe in the play. I would never think of producing it--it's not the sort of thing anybody is interested in. But Miss Lewis likes it; she's been reading Ibsen, and she wants to do a 'drama of ideas', and all that sort of thing, you know. And that's all right--she's the sort to make a success of whatever she does. But you must do your share, and give her a part she can make something out of--some chance to show her charm. Otherwise, of course, the thing's impossible."

Mr. Jones paused. "I'm very sorry"--began Thyrsis, weakly.

"What's your idea in refusing?" interrupted the other.

Thyrsis tried to explain--that he had written the play to set forth a certain thesis, and that he was asked to make changes that directly contradicted this thesis.

"Have you ever had a play produced?" demanded the manager abruptly.

"No," said Thyrsis.

"Have you written any other plays?"

"No."

"Your first trial! Well, don't you think it a good deal to expect that your play should be perfect?"

"I don't think"--began Thyrsis.

"Can't you see," persisted the other, "that people who have been in this business all their lives, and have watched thousands of plays succeed and fail, might be able to give you some points on the matter?"--And then Mr. Jones went on to set forth to Thyrsis the laws of the theatrical game--a game in which there was the keenest compet.i.tion, and in which the "ante" was enormously high. To produce "The Genius" would cost ten thousand dollars at the least; and were those who staked this to have no say whatever in the shaping of the play? Manifestly this was absurd; and as the manager pressed home the argument, Thyrsis felt as if he wanted to get up and run! When Mr. Jones talked to you, he looked you squarely in the eye, and you had a feeling of presumption, even of guilt, in standing out against him. Thyrsis shrunk in terror from that type of personality--he would let it have anything in the world it wanted, so only it would not clash with him. But never before had it demanded one of the children of his dreams!

Mr. Jones went on to tell how many things he would do for the play. It would go into rehearsal at once, and would be seen on Broadway by the first of February. They would pay him four, six and eight per cent., and his profits could not be less than three hundred dollars a week. With Ethelynda Lewis in the leading role the play might well run until June--and there would be the road profits the next season, in addition.

Thyrsis' brain reeled as he listened to this; it was in all respects identical with another famous temptation--"The devil taketh him upon a high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the earth!"

"And then there is England"--the man was saying.

"No, no!" cried Thyrsis, wildly. "No!"

"But _why_ not?" demanded the other.

"It's impossible! I _couldn't_ do it!"

"You mean you couldn't do the writing?"

"I wouldn't know how to!"

"Well then, that's easily arranged. Let me get some one to collaborate with you. There's Richard Haberton--you know who he is?"

"No," said Thyrsis, faintly.

"He's the author of 'The Rajah's Diamond'--it's playing with five companions now, and its third season. And he dramatized 'In Honor's Cause'--you've seen that, no doubt. We have paid him some sixty thousand dollars in royalties so far. And he'll take the play and fix it over--you wouldn't have to stir a finger."

Thyrsis sprang up in his agitation. "Please don't ask me, Mr. Jones," he cried. "I simply _could_ not do it!"

It seemed strange to Thyrsis, when he thought it over afterwards, that the great Robertson Jones should have taken the trouble to argue so long with the unknown author of a play in which he did not believe. Was it that opposition incited him to persist? Or had he told Ethelynda Lewis he would get her what she wanted, and was now reluctant to confess defeat? At any rate, so it was--he went on to drive Thyrsis into a corner, to tear open his very soul. Also, he manifested anger; it was a deliberate affront that the boy should stand out like this. And Thyrsis, in great distress of soul, explained that he did not mean it that way--he apologized abjectly for his obstinacy. It was the _ideas_ that he had tried to put into his play, and that he could not give up!

"But," persisted the manager--"write other plays, and put your ideas into them. If you've once had a Broadway success, then you can write anything you please, and you can make your own terms for production."

That thought had already occurred to Thyrsis; it was the one that nearly broke down his resistance. He would probably have surrendered, had the play not been so fresh from his mind, and so dear to him; if he had had time enough to become dissatisfied with it, as he had with his first novel--or discouraged about its prospects, as he had with "The Hearer of Truth"! But this child of his fancy was not yet weaned; and to tear it from his breast, and hand it to the butcher--no, it could not be thought of!

Section 4. So he parted from Mr. Jones, and went home, to pa.s.s two of the most miserable days of his life. He had p.r.o.nounced his "_Apage,_ _Satanas!_"--he had turned his back upon the kingdoms of the earth. And so presumably--virtue being its own reward--he should have been in a state of utter bliss. But Thyrsis had gone deeper into that problem, and asked himself a revolutionary question: Why should it always be that Satan had the kingdoms of the earth at his bestowal? Thyrsis did not want any kingdoms--he only wanted a chance to live in the country with his wife and child. And why, in order to get these things, must a poet submit himself to Satan?

Then came the third morning after his interview; and Thyrsis found in his mail another letter from Robertson Jones, Inc. It was a letter brief and to the point, and it struck him like a thunderbolt.

"Miss Ethelynda Lewis has decided that she wishes to accept your play as it stands. I enclose herewith a contract in duplicate, and if the terms are acceptable to you, will you kindly return one copy signed, and retain the other yourself."

Thyrsis read, not long after that, of a young playwright who died of heart-failure; and he was not surprised--if all playwrights had to go through experiences such as that. He could hardly believe his eyes, and he read the letter over two or three times; he read the contract, with Mr. Jones' impressive signature at the bottom. He did not know anything about theatrical contracts, but this one seemed fair to him. It provided for a royalty upon the gross receipts, to be paid after the play had earned the expenses of its production. Thyrsis had hoped that he might get some cash in advance, but that was not mentioned. In the flush of his delight he concluded that he would not take the risk of demanding anything additional, but signed the contract and mailed it, and sent a telegram to acquaint Corydon with the glorious tidings.

Section 5. One of the consequences of this triumph was that Thyrsis purchased a new necktie and half a dozen collars; and another was that an angry world was in some part appeased, and permitted the struggling poet to see his wife and child once more.

They met in the park; and strange it was to him to see Corydon after six months' absence. She was beautiful as ever, somewhat paler, though still with the halo of motherhood about her. He could scarcely realize that she was his; she seemed like a dream to him--like some phantom of music, thrilling and wonderful, yet frail and unsubstantial. She clung to his arm, trembling with delight, and pouring out her longing and her grief.

There came to them one of those golden hours, when the deeps of their souls welled up, and they pledged themselves anew to their faith.

Even stranger it was to see the child; to be able to look at him all he pleased, and to speak to him, and to hold him in his arms! He was as beautiful as Thyrsis could have wished, and the father had no trouble at all in being interested in him; his smiles were things to make the angels jealous. Thyrsis would push his carriage out into the park, and they would sit upon a bench and gaze at him--each making sure that the other had missed none of his fine points.

He was beginning to make sounds now, and had achieved the word "puss-ee". This originally had signified the woolly kitten he carried with him, but now by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of living things; and great was the delight of the parents when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, "Puss-ee!" It is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing, how little it takes to make parents happy; regarded, purely as an abstract proposition, it would be difficult to explain why two people who possessed between them a total of sixty-four teeth, more or less, should have been so much excited by the discovery that the baby had four.

But parenthood, as Thyrsis found, meant more than charming baby-prattle and the counting of teeth. Little Cedric's tiny fingers were twisted in his heart-strings--he loved him with a love the intensity of which frightened him when he realized it. And sometimes things went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab of a knife would come the thought that he might some day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child cost, so much it took of one's strength and power; and then, such a fragile thing it was--exposed to so many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant--they were like children themselves; and where should they turn for knowledge? There were doctors, of course; but this took so much money--and even with all the doctors, see how many babies died!

Thyrsis was learning the bitter truth of Bacon's saying about "giving hostages to fortune." And dearly as he loved the child, the artist in him cried out against these ties. Where now was that care-free outlook, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle, which made up so much of the artist's att.i.tude? When one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies--one lived, them; and one got from them, not _katharsis_, but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and didactic, and other inartistic things. One learned that life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not its goal!

Cedric had been weaned; but still he was not growing properly. Could it be that there was something wrong with what they fed him? Corydon would come upon advertis.e.m.e.nts telling of wonderful newly-discovered foods for infants, and giving pictures of the rosy and stalwart ones who were fed upon these foods. She would take to buying them--and they were not cheap foods either. Then, during the winter, the child caught cold; and they took that to mean that it had been in some way exposed--that was what everybody said, and what the name "cold" itself suggested. So Corydon would add more flannel dresses and blankets, until the unfortunate mite of life would be in a purple stew. And still, apparently, these mysterious "colds" were not to be thwarted. Thyrsis felt that in all this there must be something radically wrong, and yet he knew not what to do. Surely it should not have been such a task to keep life in one human infant.

Then, too, the training of the baby was going badly. He lived in close contact with nervous people who were disturbed if he cried; and so Corydon's energies were given to a terrified effort to keep him from crying. He must be dandled and rocked to sleep, he must be played with and amused, and have everything he cried for; and it was amazing how early in life this little creature learned the hold which he had upon his mother. His chief want had come to be to sleep all day and lie awake half the night; and during these hours of wakefulness he pursued the delightful pastime of holding some one's hand and playing with it.

Corydon, nervous and sick and wrestling with melancholia, would have to lie awake for uncounted hours and submit to this torment. The infant had invented a name for the diversion; he called it "Hoodaloo mungie"--which being translated signified "Hold your finger". To the mother this was like the pa.s.s-word of some secret order of demons, who preyed upon and racked her in the night; so that never after in her life could she hear the phrase, even in jest, without experiencing a nervous shock.

Section 6. This was a period of great hopefulness for Thyrsis, but also of desperate struggle. For until the production of his play in January, he had somehow to keep alive, and that meant more hack-work. Also he had to lay something by, for after the rehearsals the play would go on the road for a couple of weeks, to be "tried on the dog"; and during that period he must have money enough to travel, and stay at hotels, and also to take Corydon with him, if possible.

The rehearsals began an interesting experience for him; he was introduced into a new and strange world. Thyrsis himself was shy, and disposed to run away and hide his emotions; but here were people--the actor-folk--whose business it was to live them in sight of the world.

And these emotions were their life; they were very intense, yet quick both to come and to go. Such people were intensely personal; they were like great children, vain and sensitive, their moods and excitements not to be taken too seriously. But it was long before Thyrsis came to realize this, and meanwhile he had some uncomfortable times. To each of the players, apparently, the interest of a play centered in those places in which he was engaged in speaking his lines; and to each the author of the play was a more or less benevolent despot, who had the happiness of the rest of the world in his keeping. Once at a rehearsal, when Thyrsis was engaged in cutting out one of the speeches attributed to "Mrs.

Hartman", he discovered that lady standing behind him in a flood of tears!

In the beginning Thyrsis paid many visits to the apartment on Riverside Drive; for Miss Lewis professed to be very anxious that he should consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to _her_ ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis' portrayal of Helena--it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some "charming"

lines into her part. "You boy!" she would exclaim. "I believe you are as obstinate as your hero!" Miss Lewis was only two years older than the "boy", but she saw fit to adopt this grandmotherly att.i.tude toward him.

And then came Robertson Jones, suggesting a man who could play the part of Lloyd. But Miss Lewis declared indignantly that she would not have him, because he was not handsome enough. "If," she vowed, "I've got to make love to a man and be rejected by him, at least I'm not going to have it an ugly man!" When an actor was finally agreed upon and engaged, Thyrsis had a talk with him, and it seemed as if Miss Lewis, in her preoccupation with his looks, had overlooked the matter of his brains.

But Thyrsis was so new at this game that he did not feel capable of judging. He shrunk from the thought of having any actor play his part--that was so precious and so full of meaning to him.

But when the rehearsals began, Thyrsis speedily forgot this feeling. The most sensitive poet to the contrary notwithstanding, the purpose of a play is to be acted; and Thyrsis was like an inventor, who has dreamed a great machine, and now sees the parts of it appearing as solid steel and bra.s.s; sees them put together, and the great device getting actually under way.