The Playwright and the Lady/Chapter 1
I.
ROGER GALE tossed his cigarette into the scarlet sage that bordered the veranda, thrust his hands into the pockets of his flannel trousers, and scowled despairingly at the half-written sheet before him. Things were not going well. In fact, for the last three days—that is to say, ever since his arrival at The Beeches with a steamer trunk and Alfred—things had gone about as badly as they could.
At first he had laid the blame on that convenient scapegoat, the weather, which for a week had been insufferable with the enervating heat peculiar to the month of August. But this morning he was forced to absolve the weather and charge his failure to get on with his task to his own lack of invention and imagination.
In short, to-day, as he sat there with hands in pockets and scowled upon the result of three days’ labor, he told himself bitterly that he had undertaken the impossible, that his efforts were foredoomed to failure; the advice regarding the cobbler and his last struck him as particularly applicable to himself. He, the successful, the noted writer of comedy, had undertaken an emotional drama; and, as sure as fate, he was destined to make a beastly mess of it! And, as though that were not enough to discourage and spoil a naturally good temper, the weather was abominably hot.
Not a breath of air reached him here on the front veranda, where he sat in the mid-forenoon shade, although the topmost branches of the beeches and elms were swaying and quivering slightly in some vagrant current. In front of the house, the lawn dipped to a series of terraces, which, in turn, gave place to the long slope of a lush meadow. Beyond the meadow lay the river, a broad, sun-smitten expanse that dazzled and pained the eyes. Beyond the river was a village of white houses under green branches; fields and orchards, and, still beyond, the foothills and mountains, the latter rising majestically against a cloudless sky. And everywhere, above the flower beds, above the red brick walks, above the gravel driveway and the close-cropped lawn, the heat waves trembled and shimmered.
Roger sighed, brushed the beads of perspiration from his forehead with one bare arm, and arose.
“Oh, it’s no use,” he muttered, hopelessly.
He selected a cigarette from the gold case lying open on the table, lighted it, and began a restless promenade of the veranda.
He did not look the least bit in the world like a man destined to failure in his undertakings. He was above the average height, with broad shoulders, muscles well defined under a somewhat sallow skin, and a finely shaped head. I doubt if you would have called him handsome, despite that his rather generously proportioned and very straight nose, as well as so much of his mouth as was visible under a dark, brown mustache, were each well formed; but you would have looked twice at him, and liked what you saw, for the man as a whole proclaimed honesty, kindness and a strong capability, both physical and mental.
And ultimately you would have fallen victim to his eyes, which were reddish brown, and which, when he was busy with his own thoughts, were held a little closed in a sort of speculating squint, just as one will hold them when looking into a strong light. This gave him a near-sighted look, which was not born out by fact. But when he became interested in his own conversation, or another’s, the eyes lost their squint and became large and softly luminous, with a glint of laughter lying in their depths. His complexion was sallow, but neither looked nor was unhealthy. He was thirty-six years of age, and because of this, or in spite of it, his dark hair, at present uncovered, was threaded with silver about the temples.
A white cheviot shirt, open at the neck and rolled above the elbows as a concession to the heat, immaculate white flannel trousers, and white yachting shoes, made up a costume at once eminently becoming and almost comfortable.
At the end of one of his trips to and fro, he paused where, at the left corner of the house, the veranda ended in a flight of two stone steps. Hereabouts the giant, smooth-trunked beeches, from which, over a hundred years ago, the place had found its name, came close to the old stone building. From where he stood a broad, graveled path, a veritable avenue, led straight away to the northern limits of the grounds, and thence continued through the adjoining estate to a brick, ivy-draped house, seen dimly down the vista of intermingling branches.
The path was as completely in shadow as if under roof, and, although he knew well enough that it offered no mitigation of the heat, Roger found the green gloom attractive. Returning to the table, he slipped the cigarette case into his pocket, laid his watch on the motionless sheets in case—idle hope!—a breeze should spring up, and sought the Beech Walk.
The tree-lined path was quite as hot as the veranda had been, but its twilight was a relief from the glare that had assailed his eyes for the past hour or more, and Roger was grateful for that. Presently, as he moved slowly and silently along, his hands met each other behind him and clasped, his chin sank onto his breast, and he faced again the quandary which confronted him.
Who was Miriam?
His play was mapped out, two of the scenes were even skeletonized; the lover, the husband, the gentle Sylvia, the shallow and vulgar Lady Broadwold, the good-hearted, blundering curate, were each and all flesh and blood creations who had dwelt with him day by day since he had begun his work, but the most important character of all in the play, the one about whose life problem the story revolved, Miriam Tregatha, was only an elusive shadow, a shape that, half seen at times, dissolved instantly into thinnest air when he strove to fix its image on to the sheets of white paper.
It was maddening! For a month, at first in town, and now here at The Beeches, he had sought to grasp her, but always, like a mocking wraith, she had eluded him.
He had never been troubled so before. His fertile brain had evolved character after character, all clear-drawn and distinct, startlingly natural in many instances—even the most venomous of his critics acknowledged that—until the sum of them was immense. And now, now that he had undertaken the most important contract of his career, now that he had for the moment laid aside the laughing mask and essayed the serious, his invention failed him! It was maddening, indeed!
And, most tantalizing feature of it, all the time he was aware that somewhere back in the furthermost recesses of his brain the image of Miriam Tregatha stood awaiting—what? It was there beyond doubt; at times he caught fleeting glimpses of it, glimpses that sent his heart into his throat, glimpses like visions caught in a lightning flash between utter dark and dark, too swift to register upon the mind. Yes, the shape, the image, was there, but—he could not grasp it. In his own words, he could not “see” Miriam, and until he could, until she, like the other characters, stood before him alive and breathing, a flesh-and-blood reality, the work could not goon. For the thousandth time he gritted his teeth at realization of his brain’s impotence. And then, for the first time in many minutes, he raised his eyes, and a low cry sprang to his lips.
She was there, before him, her eyes looking into his.