The Whirligig of Time Part 29

The strings in the orchestra quavered a few languorous notes and Madge started her song "Can love be controlled by advice." Her voice was a singularly sweet one, of no great volume and yet possessed of a certain carrying quality. The excellence of her instruction, combined with her own good taste, had brought it to a state of what, for that voice, might be called perfection. She also had the good sense never to sing anything too big for her. But though her voice might not be suited to Wagner or Strauss it was far better suited to certain simpler things than a larger voice might have been, and the song she was singing now was one of these. Probably no more happy combination could be effected between singer and song than that of Madge and the slow, plaintive, seventeenth-century melody of "Grim king of the ghosts," which Gay had the good sense to incorporate into his masterpiece.

To say that the audience was spellbound by her rendering of the song would be to stretch a point. It sat, for the most part, silently attentive, enjoying it very much and thinking that it would give her a good round of applause and an encore at the end. Harry, standing in the obscurity of the back part of Aunt Selina's box, was of very much the same mind. For about half of the song, that is. For near the end of the first verse he suddenly realized that Madge was singing not Gay's words, but his own.

It was absurd, of course, but at that realization the whole world seemed suddenly to change. The floor beneath his feet became clouds, the theater a corner of paradise, the people in it choirs of marvelous ethereal beings, Mrs. Peachum (alias Smith) a ministrant seraph, Madge's voice the music of the spheres, and Madge herself, from being an unusually nice girl of his acquaintance, became....

What nonsense! he told himself; the idea of getting so worked up at hearing his own words sung on a stage!--You fool, replied another voice within him, you know perfectly well that that's not it at all.--Don't tell me, replied the other Harry, the sensible one; such things don't happen, except in books; they don't happen to real people--ME, for instance.--Why not? obstinately inquired the other; why not you, as well as any one else?--Well, I can't stop to argue about it now, the practical Harry answered; I've got to go out and see that people are ready for their cues.

He went out, and found everything running perfectly smoothly. People were standing waiting for their entrances minutes ahead of time, the electricians were at their posts, the make-up people had finished their work, the scene-s.h.i.+fters and property men had put everything in readiness for setting the next scene; no one even asked him a question.

He flitted about for a few moments on imaginary errands, asking various people if all was going well; but the real question that he kept asking himself all the time was Is this IT? Is this IT?

"I don't know!" he said at last, loudly and petulantly, and several people turned to see whom he was reproving now.

When he got back to the box he found Madge still singing the last verse of her song. He wondered how many times she had had to repeat it, and hoped Cosgrove was living up to his agreement not to give more than one encore to each song. In reality this was her first encore; his hectic trip behind the scenes had occupied a much shorter time than he supposed. Madge was making a most exquisite piece of work of her little appeal to maternal sympathy; she was actually taking the second verse sitting down, leaning forward with her arms on a table in an att.i.tude of conversational pleading. He had not told her to do that; it was so hard to make effective that he would not have dared to suggest it. When she reached the line, "If heart ever beat in your breast" she suddenly rose, slightly threw back her arms and head, and sang the words on a wholly new note of restrained pa.s.sion, beautifully dramatic and suggestive. The house burst into applause, but Harry was seized with a fit of unholy mirth at the irony of the situation--Madge, perfectly indifferent, singing those words, while he, their author, consumed with an all-devouring flame, stood stifling his pa.s.sion in a dark corner. An insane desire seized him to run out to the middle of the stage and shout at the top of his voice "Have pity on me, for I love!" It would be true then. He supposed, however, that people might think it peculiar.

From then on, as long as Madge held the stage, he stood rooted to the spot, unable to lift his eyes from her. Presently her lover came in, and they started the lovely duet, "Pretty Polly, say." At the end of the encore, according to Harry's instructions, Barnaby leaned over and kissed his Polly on the mouth. A sudden and intense dislike for Mr.

Barnaby at that moment overcame Harry....

The act ended; the house went wild again; the curtain flopped up and down with no apparent intention of ever stopping; ushers rushed down the aisles with great beribboned bunches of flowers. This gave Harry an idea; as soon as the second act was safely under way he rushed out to the nearest florist's shop and commandeered all the American Beauty roses in the place, to be delivered to Miss Elliston with his card at the end of the next act.

As he was going out of the shop he stopped to look at some peculiar little pink and white flowers in a vase near the door.

"What are those?" he asked.

"Bleeding hearts," said the florist's clerk. "Just up from Florida; very hard to get at this time of year."

Harry stood still, thinking. If he sent those--would she Know--Of course she would, answered the practical Harry immediately; she would not only Know but would call him a fool for his pains.--Oh, shut up! retorted the other.

"I'll have these then, instead of the roses, please," he said aloud.

"All of them, and don't forget the card."

They did not meet till after the performance was over. He caught sight of her making a sort of triumphal progress through the back of the stage, on her way to the dressing rooms, and deliberately placed himself in her path. She was looking rather surprisingly solemn, he noticed. Her face lighted up, however, when she saw him. She smiled, at least.

"Well, what did _you_ think of it?" she asked.

"I think the performance was very creditable," he answered. "To say what I think of you would be compromising."

She laughed and went on without making any reply. He could not see her face, but something gave him the impression that her smile did not last very long after she had turned away from him.

He walked home alone through the crisp March night, breathing deeply and trying to reduce his teeming brain to a state of order and clarity. The walk from the theater home was not sufficient for this; he walked far beyond his house and all the way back again before he could think clearly enough. At last he raised his eyes to the comfortable stars and spoke a few words aloud in a low, calm voice.

"I really think," he said, "that this is IT. I really do think so ...

But I must be very careful," he added, to himself; "_very_ careful. I must take no chances--this time. Both on Madge's account and on mine."

"No," he added after a moment; "not on my account. On Madge's."

CHAPTER II

CONGREVE

Little had happened to mark the greater part of the time that had elapsed since Harry's graduation. For three years he had studied hard for his doctor's degree, and during the fourth year he had been set to teaching English literature to freshmen, which task, on the whole, he accomplished with marked success. But during the fifth year, the year in which we next see him, he was not teaching freshmen, though he was still living in New Haven, and working, according to his own accounts, like a galley slave. The events which led up to this state of things form a matter of some moment in his career.

These began with the production, during his fourth year out of college, of a play of his by the college dramatic a.s.sociation. Or, to be more exact, it really began some months before that, when Harry, leaving a theater one evening after witnessing a poor play, had remarked to his companion of the moment: "I actually believe that I could write a better play than that." To which the friend made the obvious answer, "Why don't you, then?" "I will," replied Harry, and he did.

It was his first venture in that field of composition. In all his literary activities he had never before, to borrow his own phrase, committed dramaturgy. To the very fact that his maiden effort came so late Harry was wont, in later years, to attribute a large measure of his success. His idea was that if he had begun earlier his first results would have been so excruciatingly bad as to discourage him from sustained effort in that direction.

However this may be, the play was judged the best of those submitted in a compet.i.tion organized by the dramatic a.s.sociation, and was produced by it during the following winter with a very fair amount of success.

n.o.body could fairly have called it a remarkable play, but neither could any one have been justified in calling it a bad one. Its theme was, apart from its setting, singularly characteristic of the subsequent style of its author and may be said to have struck the tragi-comic note that sounded through all his later work. It concerned the experiences of a struggling young English author, poor, but of gentle birth, who is first seen inveighing against the sn.o.bbery, coldness and indifference shown toward him by people of wealth and position, and later, after coming unexpectedly into a peerage and a large fortune, is horrified to find himself forced into displaying the very qualities which he had so fiercely condemned in others. The machinery of the play was somewhat artificial, but the characterization and dramatic interest were skilfully worked out. The dialogue was everywhere delightful and the contrast afforded between the conscientious, introspective sincerity of the young author and the gaily unscrupulous casuistry of his wife was a forecast, if not actually an early example, of his best work.

Harry was never blind to the faults of the play, but he remained convinced that it was good in the main, and, what was more important, retained his interest in dramatic composition. He worked hard during the following spring and summer and at length evolved another play, which he called "Chances" and believed was a great improvement upon his first work. Early in August he sent the play to a New York manager to whom he had obtained an introduction and after a week or two made an appointment with him.

The secret trepidation with which he first entered the office of the great, the redoubtable Leo Bachmann was largely allayed by the appearance of the manager. He was a large flabby man, with scant stringy hair and a not unpleasant smile. He sat heavily back in an office chair and puffed continually at a much-chewed cigar, the ashes of which fell unnoticed and collected in the furrows of his waistcoat. He spoke in a soft thick voice, with a strong German accent. Harry did not see anything particularly terrifying about him.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Vimbourne," said the manager when Harry had made himself known. "You have sent me a play, yes? Ah, here it is.... Unfortunately I have not had time to read it; I am very, very busy just now, but my man Jennings has read it and tells me it is very nice. Very nice, indeed ..." he puffed in ruminative silence for a few seconds. "Could you come back next week, say Friday, Mr. Vimbourne? and we will talk it over. I am sorry to trouble you, but you see I am so very, very busy...."

Harry made another appointment and left, not wholly dissatisfied. He returned, ten days afterward, to his second interview, which was an almost exact replica of the first. He allowed himself to be put off another ten days, but when he returned for the third time and was greeted by precisely the same soft words he was irritated and hardly able to conceal the fact.

"Ah, yes, your play," said the manager, as though he had just heard of it for the first time. "Jennings was speaking to me of it only the other night. I am sorry to say I have not read it yet." He took the ma.n.u.script from a pile on his desk and turned over the leaves. "I am sorry--very sorry--I have so little time...."

"I don't believe you, Mr. Bachmann," said Harry.

"Ah?" said the manager, without the slightest apparent interest. "Why not, Mr. Vimbourne?"

"Well, you turned straight to the best scene in it just now, for one thing.... Beside, you wouldn't keep me hanging on this way if you didn't see something in it, and if you see anything in it of course you've read it. And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Bachmann, that isn't my idea of business."

Mr. Bachmann's next remark was so unexpected that Harry nearly swooned in his chair. "I read it the day after it came," he said softly.

"Then why on earth didn't you say so in the first place?" stammered Harry.

The manager made no reply for some moments, but sat silently puffing and turning over the pages of Harry's ma.n.u.script.

"I like to know people," he murmured at last, very gently and with apparent irrelevance. Harry, however, saw the bearing of the remark and suddenly felt extraordinarily small. He had been rather proud of his little burst of spirit and independence; he now saw that Leo Bachmann had drawn it from him with the ease and certainty of touch with which a musician produces a note from a flute. He wondered, abjectly, how many other self-satisfied young authors had sat where he sat and been played upon by that great puffing ma.s.s of pulp.

Bachmann was the next to speak. "I like your play very much, Mr.

Vimbourne," he said. "It is very nice--some things in it not so good, but on the whole, it is very nice. I think I vill try to produce it, Mr.

Vimbourne, but not yet--not till I see how my September plays go. I shall keep yours in reserve, and then, later, we may try it. About the first of November, when the Fifth Avenue crowd comes back to town...."

He smiled slightly. "They are the people that vill vant to see it. Not Harlem. Not Brooklyn. The four hundred. Even so," he continued, ruminatively, "even so, I shall not make on it."

This seemed to Harry a good opening for a proposition he had been longing to make since the very first but had never quite dared. "If you want me to put anything up on it, Mr. Bachmann, why--I...."

"No," said Mr. Bachmann gently; "I never do that, I produce my own plays, for my own reasons. I vill pay you a sum, down. And a small royalty, perhaps--after the hundredth performance."

Harry looked up and smiled, and the manager smiled back at him. His smile grew quite broad, almost a laugh, in fact. Then he rose from his chair--the first time Harry had seen him out of it--and clasped Harry's hand between his two large plump ones.

"I think we shall get on very well, Mr. Vimbourne," he said. "Very well, indeed. I vill let you know when rehearsals begin. And you must write more--a great deal more. But--vait till after the rehearsals!"