The Playwright and the Lady/Chapter 12
XII.
As anyone who has tried to write has probably learned to his despair, it is one thing to be willing and quite another thing to perform. Roger was more than willing to get down to work again; he was impatiently eager. For did not the return of the lady with the violet eyes depend upon the completion of his task?
That very afternoon, filled with high resolves, he ordered his table placed in an upstairs room, immune from the interruptions of river traffic and out of sound of the plaintive whistled melodies of Denis. But his mind refused to stay placed upon the matter in hand. It wandered continually. His thoughts would not be marshaled for a consideration of the doings of Miriam Tregatha. Even his eyes rebelled and wandered truantly to the open windows. Five o’clock found him still where he had started, the sheet of paper before him showing only a confused jumble of meaningless marks and words. He went to his bath in a thoroughly ill-tempered frame of mind, and only recovered some degree of equanimity when, after dinner, he accompanied Denis to the flower garden again and directed the cutting and dispatching of a quantity of dahlias to the Hall.
The following day was no better. In the morning, possibly from force of habit, he went down to the gate. But there was nothing to keep him there. At ten o’clock the whistle of the train leaving the depot plunged him into a gentle melancholy from which Alfred’s most delicate cheese fondant failed to arouse him when luncheon time came. He strove to work in the afternoon and again after dinner, and did succeed in covering three pages, but before he went to bed the pages were scattered over the floor in fragments.
When he awoke the next morning it was to look out upon a cheerless, gray world. At breakfast he swore at Alfred—mildly, to be sure, but yet quite succinctly and with intention. After a second cup of coffee—one was his usual allowance—he felt less suicidal. At nine, after wandering aimlessly over the house and porch, he ordered Alfred to have Denis harness up and take him to the station for the ten o’clock train. Then he changed his clothes, armed himself with raincoat and umbrella and countermanded the order for the trap. He would walk to the station. He might be back that evening or he might stay away a week; he didn’t know. Alfred said, “Yes, sir; very good, sir,” with emotionless countenance and watched him swing off toward the road. Then Alfred shook his head with the air of one oppressed by misgivings, returned to the library, lighted one of Roger’s cigarettes and, stretching himself at ease in a basket-chair, turned to the English political news in yesterday’s paper.
Roger, as he tramped the mile between The Beeches and the railroad station, felt like a small boy playing hookey. Nor did the not unagreeable sensation leave him until he had reached the city and had deposited himself in a hansom. He gave the driver Sommers’ address and leaned back with a comfortable sense of excitement.
As they trotted along, his eyes swept the sidewalks ceaselessly, for, or so he told himself, with the fine hopefulness of the lover, at any instant he might be rewarded with the sight of Mrs. Huggins. But his hopes were doomed to disappointment. And it seemed that failure was to be his lot throughout the day. Sommers had gone to Philadelphia the evening before and was not expected back until the following morning.
He left his card, purposely refraining from adding to it any enlightening message, in the hope that Sommers would be worried, and went on to his club. There he dismissed the hansom and entered on a scene that would have made Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village” seem by comparison a noisy metropolis. Room after room was empty, dark and dank. The newspapers and magazines fairly cried aloud for attention.
He passed one or two semi-wakeful attendants, and was cheered at length by the sound of voices. The grill room held eight men; they looked a crowd. Roger nodded to one or two and sought a corner table, where a shining bald head, peeping above a morning paper, looked unmistakably familiar. Roger took the vacant chair, and the paper was drawn fiercely aside. But the glare of annoyance turned to a grin of pleasure and surprise, and Roger placed his hand in the long, thin fingers that were extended over the cutlets.
Burlington, the famous dramatic critic, was lean and tall, with a pale, ascetic face, which was quite hairless. The same might have been said of his entire head were it not for a slight fringe of grizzled hair starting back of the ears and meeting in a fairly luxuriant patch at the rear. He was awkward in his movements and abrupt in his speech.
“Well, Tempest, is it you?” he asked, heartily. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”
“Up the Hudson.”
“Working?”
Roger nodded and studied the menu.
“They tell me you’re doing a play for Sommers—so?”
“Yes, that is so, I’m sorry to say.”
Burlington raised his thin eyebrows.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I can’t seem to knuckle down to work lately. I’ve finished two acts, but the rest simply won’t come.”
“How long you been up there?”
“Three weeks or more.”
“Humph! Of course you can’t work. You’ve collapsed. My dear fellow, a man can’t bury himself in the country for that length of time and hope to have any inspiration left. He needs to come down and mingle; to get a few full breaths of this impure air into his lungs; to imbibe some of this atmosphere of hurry and struggle. A man simply gets flat, like a balloon with a hole in it, after a fortnight in the country. It may be good for the nerves, but it’s bloody bad for the mental faculties. You’ve hit on the right remedy, Gale; you’ve come to the right sanatorium. A few days in this seething caldron will send you back with your fingers itching for the pen and the Great Thoughts simply oozing out of your brain.”
“I’m going back to-morrow; maybe to-night. I haven’t time for a course in your sanatorium.”
“Well, that’s a short time to effect a cure, but—I tell you, Gale, you stay until to-morrow and I’ll undertake to work a complete cure; not a lasting one, to be sure—there’s no money for the physicians in that sort—but I’ll send you home fairly sober and aching for work. I have been immorally virtuous for something over two months. You shall lead me astray. We will seek together the pleasant vices. Thank Heaven, the vices summer in town; they’re the only comforting thing we have left since the roof-gardens have gone to the Jews! And”
He thumped the table violently.
“Here, you, Algernon, or whatever your damned name may be, come here and take Mr. Gale’s order! I swear, Gale, the service here is getting rottener every day. If we had a house committee who could read writing, I'd send in a complaint that would make them see colored lights! Don’t order cutlets, whatever you do. A man has no business eating veal in summer, and every time I run counter to my convictions I regret it. I never saw a veal and don’t know what sort of an animal it is, but I’ll bet any money it plays house in summer, like the oyster, and isn’t meant to be eaten.”
“What’s the news here?” asked Roger, when he had ordered.
“News? When did anything ever happen in this place from June to September? I might give you a lot of newspaper gossip, but I fancy you read the sheets yourself. For instance, Frohman is abroad visiting the literary junk shops in search of material, Fitch is keeping a half dozen stenographers at work, Thomas is dramatizing another State—or maybe it’s a territory; what’s the difference, anyhow?—and Sothern—or, so they say—is writing another play for his wife, to be called ‘Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,’ or something similar. But that’s all newspaper gossip, and may or may not be.”
“What do you think of next season?”
“Ought to be good. I think it will be. There’s nothing brilliant in sight, and that’s encouraging. The only event promised, that I know of, is Vynn’s appearance in the fall. But you know as much of that as I do. If you only give her a good play, she'll make some fur fly. The Lord knows I’ve had my belly full of English wonders, but Vynn isn’t like the usual. For that matter, she isn’t any more English that I am; and I was born in Camden. My boy, she can act! I don’t mean merely dress and speak her lines, and I don’t mean rant and flop; I mean Act, with a full size, upper-case A. I saw her in that fool thing of Ibsen’s last winter. She almost made a drama of it! Mark my words, Gale, she’s going to be the one little female It of the stage in a few years. I wish to goodness, though, she had a decent manager over here.”
“What’s the matter with Sommers?”
“He isn’t good enough. He doesn’t know how. He'll start her out like a blooming aggregation of English Daisies. Look here, there’s your chance. If the play makes a hit with her, get her to sign a contract with you for next year; I’ll swear you could manage her and make her tell.”
“No, thanks, Burlington. It’s one thing to handle pitch and another to become defiled. I’ll write plays, but I won't go into practical theatrical affairs. Why don’t you speak for yourself?”
“Me? By Jove, I’d damned well like the chance of managing Nydia Vynn.”
“I’ll bear the fact in mind. Maybe something will come of it.”
“No such luck. I’ll go down to my grave writing criticisms that no one cares a cuss for; unless some one comes along some day and starts a paper that isn’t run by the advertising manager and lets me do my worst. In that case, life might be worth living. By the way, speaking of Nydia Vynn, I met her yesterday and had a long talk with her. Oh, she’s charming, Gale; and a perfect beauty, too! I never saw such eyes nor such a complexion! And it’s all true; give you my word, No Bloom of Youth need apply.”
“She’s in New York?”
“For a week or so, I think she told me. She’s at the Cambria. If you like, we'll call there this afternoon. Not to-night, though, my boy. She’s not our kind to-night. Oh, she’s clean and straight, that girl—so far. It does you good to meet one of her kind now and then.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Burlington, don’t always talk as though every actress was indecent. You don’t mean it, I know, but it sounds beastly.”
“Do I talk that way? Well, no, I don’t mean to imply that every actress is immoral—any more than that every theatrical critic writes what he really thinks, or that every playwright strives only for the elevation of the stage.”
“There you go; your apologies are worse than your offenses.”
Burlington laughed good-naturedly as he pushed his cigarette case across the table.
“Well, we won’t trouble ourselves about virtue, my boy. To-night we seek other quarry, and, give you my word, Gale, I’ll introduce you to the prettiest woman in New York, and you'll owe me a debt of gratitude for the rest of your life. I’ll send a message up after you’re through and make an engagement for dinner. We might run down to Manhattan Beach if it only looked less like rain. But—don’t worry, my boy, there’s going to be a time around here to-night that will leave your brain as clear and fresh as a—a By the way, Gale, where do you live up the river?”
Roger told him.
“You'd better come up and stay over Sunday with me some time,” he added.
“You might have asked me before. But better late than never. Maybe I’ll wander in some night for food and lodging if I get a chance. Finished?”
“Yes, and I must be getting on. I’m glad I met you; my brain already feels differently, and I think I am quite reconciled to country life again. Are you going my way, toward the station?”
“What the devil! Aren’t you going to stay down over to-night?”
“No, I’m going to catch the three-thirty, if the Lord will let me.”
“Then you didn’t intend to stay at all, you fakir!”
“M’m, yes, I think I did—when I met you. But I’ve changed my mind, Burlington.”
“For the love of Mike! I believe you’re getting virtuous!”
“Maybe I am. There’s one thing certain, and that is, if I stayed down and went through that program of yours, I wouldn't be able to look the innocent cow in the face when I went back.”
“Oh! Well, now, let me tell you something. I’ll forgive you for fooling me and for compelling me to wander on alone on the Straight and Narrow; for I simply can’t be decently immoral without a friend to help. But, for your own sake, Gale, don’t go to getting Pure White Thoughts; it don’t do for a man who writes plays. If you do you'll be out of a job in three years. Swear to goodness, Gale, I’ve seen more men like you go to the ash heap through that sort of thing than from any other one cause. Look at Withers; he was a genius, a veritable twentieth century Sheridan, before he got married and raised a family. Now look at him—if you know where to look; I don’t! Five years ago he was the Whole Thing. To-day—why, some one told me last winter that Withers was writing a history of the American stage. Well, that’s about all for Withers. After that comes writing Parlor Plays for Young Amateurs, and then—pouf!—blown out! And then there was Whitewell“
“Thanks, old chap,” laughed Roger. “You mean well enough, and I’ll try to remember your advice—at least until I get home. But you needn't fear for the fit of my coat on account of wings; I don’t believe you’d find even a pin-feather. The fact is, I haven't any inclination to get drunk or be nasty. Without inclination, it would be a mighty unpleasant medicine. Good-by; and drop in some time. Never mind about letting me know; just walk onto the train and come up.”
“Thanks; maybe I will. Only,” he added, gloomily, “you don’t deserve to have my cheering presence after the way you’ve done me out of my little combustion. I’ve half a mind to go it alone. Well, good-by, there’s your hansom. Look me up when you come down again. Guess you'll need that umbrella. I never saw such rotten weather.”
Roger left him on the steps, scowling up the avenue.