"How do you do, Mr. Douglass? It is very good of you to come," she said, with the simplest inflection.
"This must be an elder sister," he thought, and followed her into a large sitting-room, where a gray-haired woman and a young man were sipping after-dinner coffee.
"Mother, this is Mr. Douglass, the author of The Modern Stage, the little book of essays we liked so well." The elderly lady greeted him cordially, but with a timid air. "And this is my brother Hugh," the young man gave Douglass's hand a firm and cordial grip.
"Sit down, please – not there – over here, where the light will fall on you. I want to see how you look," she added, in smiling candor; and with that smile he recognized in his hostess the great actress.
He was fairly dazed, and for the moment entirely wordless. From the very moment the door had opened to him the "glittering woman" had been receding into remote and ever remoter distances, for the Helen Merival before him was as simple, candid, and cordial as his own sister. Her voice had the home inflection; she displayed neither paint nor powder; her hair was plainly brushed – beautiful hair it was, too – and her dress was lovely and in quiet taste.
Her face seemed plain at first, just as her stature seemed small. She was dark, but not so dark as she appeared on the stage, and her face was thinner, a little careworn, it seemed to him; and her eyes – "those leering, wicked eyes" – were large and deep and soft. Her figure was firm, compact, womanly, and modest in every line. No wife could have seemed more of the home than this famous actress who faced him with hands folded in her lap.
He was stupefied. Suddenly he perceived the injustice and the crass folly of his estimate of her character, and with this perception came a broader and deeper realization of her greatness as an actress. Her real self now became more complex than his wildest imagined ideal of her. That this sweet and reflective girl should be the actress was as difficult to understand as that The Baroness should be at heart a good woman. For five minutes he hardly heard what she said, so busy was his mind readjusting itself to this abrupt displacement of values. With noiseless suddenness all the lurid light which the advertiser had thrown around the star died away. The faces which mocked and mourned, the clutching hands, the lines of barbaric ornaments, the golden goblets of debauchery, the jewelled daggers, the poison phials – all those accessories, designed to produce the siren of the posters, faded out, and he found himself face to face with a human being like himself, a thoughtful, self-contained, and rather serious American girl of twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age.
Not merely this, but her attitude towards him was that of a pupil. She lifted eyes to him as to one occupying an intellectual height. She began to tell him how much she enjoyed his little book on the drama, which a friend had recommended to her, but as soon as he had fairly recovered himself he led her away from his own work. "I am supposed to be an architect," he explained. "I write of the stage because I love it – and because I am a failure in my profession. My book is a very slight and unambitious attempt."
"But you know the stage and its principles," she insisted; "and your view of the future is an inspiration to those of us who wish to do good work. Your letter was very helpful to me, for I am deeply discouraged just now. I am disgusted with the drama in which I work. I am weary of these unwholesome parts. You are quite right, I shall never do my best work so long as I am forced to assume such uncongenial rôles. They are all false, every one of them. They are good acting rôles, as acting goes; but I want plays that I can live as well as act. But my manager tells me that the public will not have me in anything else. Do you think they would? Is he right?" She ended in appeal.
"I think the public will take you at your best in anything you do," he replied, with grave gallantry. "I don't know that managers are omniscient. They are only men like the rest of us."
She smiled. "That is high treason; but I'm very much inclined to believe it is true. I am willing to concede that a theatre must be made to pay, but I am not content to think that this splendid art is always to be measured by the number of dollars which fall into the box-office. Take Westervelt as a type. What ideals has he? None whatever, save to find a play that will run forever and advertise itself."
She had dreams, too, it seemed. She glowed with her plans, and as she timidly presented them Douglass perceived that the woman was entirely unconscious of the false glamour, the whirling light and tumult, which outsiders connected with her name. At the centre of the illumination she sat looking out upon the glorified bill-boards, the gay shop windows, the crowded auditoriums, a wholesome, kindly, intelligent woman, subject to moods of discouragement like himself, unwilling to be a slave to a money-grubber. Something in his face encouraged the story of her struggles. She passed to her personal history while he listened as one enthralled.
The actress fled, and the woman drew near. She looked into the man's eyes frankly, unshrinkingly, with humor, with appeal. She leaned towards him, and her face grew exquisitely tender and beautiful. "Oh, it was a struggle! Mother kept boarders in order that Hugh and I might go to school – didn't you, dear old muz?" She laid her hand on her mother's knee, and the mother clasped it. "Father's health grew worse and worse, and at last he died, and then I had to leave school to help earn our living. I began to read for entertainments of various sorts. Father was a Grand Army man, and the posts took an interest in my reading. I really earned a thousand dollars the second year. I doubled that the next year, and considered myself a great public success." She smiled. "Mother, may I let Mr. Douglass see how I looked then?"
The mother nodded consent, and the great actress, after a few moments' search, returned with a package of circulars, each bearing a piquant, girlish face.
"There," she said, as she handed them to Douglass, "I felt the full ecstasy of power when that picture was taken. In this I wore a new gown and a new hat, and I was earning fifty dollars at each reading. My success fairly bewildered me; but oh, wasn't it glorious! I took mother out of a tenement and put her in a lovely little home. I sent Hugh to college. I refurnished the house. I bought pictures and rugs, for you know I continued to earn over two thousand a year. And what fun we had in spending all that money!"
"But how did you reach the stage?" he asked.
She laughed. "By way of 'the Kerosene circuit,' if you know what that means."
"I've heard the phrase," he answered; "it corresponds to the old-time 'barn-storming,' doesn't it?"
"It does."
Hugh interposed. "I wouldn't go into that, sis."
"Why not? It's great fun – now. I used to think it pretty tragic sometimes. Yes, I was nineteen when I went on the New England rural circuit – to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil and discomfort they stood for.
Her eyes danced with fun. "I played The Lady of Lyons in a 'kitchen set,' and the death-scene in East Lynne before a 'wood drop.' And my costumes were something marvellous, weren't they, mother? Well, this lasted two seasons – summer seasons; while I continued to read in winter in order to indulge my passion for the stage in summer and early autumn. Then I secured a small part in a real company, and at a salary that permitted me to send some money home. I knocked about the country this way two seasons more – that makes me twenty-two. I knew the office of every manager in New York by this time, but had been able to reach an audience with but one or two. They were kind enough, but failed to 'see anything' in me, as the phrase goes; and I was quite disheartened. Oh, 'the Rialto'!" Her face clouded and her voice softened. "It is a brilliant and amusing place to the successful, but to the girl who walks it seeking a theatrical engagement it is a heartless and cruel place. You can see them there to-day – girls eager and earnest and ready to work hard and conscientiously – haunting the agencies and the anterooms of the managers just as I did in those days – only five years ago."
"It seems incredible," exclaimed Douglass. "I thought you came here from a London success."
"So