eight o’clock and a section of broadway is a throng of throngs, as if all the world were prowling for pleasure. at this theater or that, parts of the crowd turn in.
where many go there is success; but there are sad doorways where few cabs draw up and few people march to the lonely window; and that is a home of failure, though as
much work has been done and as much money deserved. only, the whim of the public is not for that place.
eight o’clock and sheila sits in her dressing-room in an ague of dread, painting her face and wondering why she is here, a lone woman fighting a mob for the sake of a
dying man’s useless glory, and for the ruin of a living man’s schedule of life. why is she not where bret winfield said a woman’s place was—at home?
she wonders about bret. if she fails, if she succeeds, what does it mean to him and her? she understands that he has left her alone till now because he could not help
her. but no flowers, no telegram, nothing? she looks over the heap of telegrams—no, there is nothing from him.
then a note comes. he is there. can he see her? her heart leaps with rapture, but she dares not see him before the play. she would cry and mess her make-up, and she
must enter with gaiety. she sends pennock with word begging him to come after the play is over—“if he still wants to—if he’s not ashamed of me; tell him that.”
she thinks of him wincing as he is turned away from the stage door. then she banishes the thought of him, herself, everybody but the character she is to play.
outside the curtain is a throng eager to be entertained, willing to pay a fortune for entertainment, but merciless to those who fail. there is no active hostility in
the audience—just the passive inertia of a dull, dreary, anxious mob afraid of being bored and cheated of an evening.
“here are our hearts,” it says; “we are sick of our own lives. we do not care what your troubles are or your good intentions. we have left our homes to be made
happy, or to be thrilled to that luxurious sorrow for some one else that is the highest happiness. we have come here at some expense and some inconvenience. we have a
hard day ahead of us to-morrow. it is too late to go elsewhere. you have said you have a good show. show us!”
back of that glum curtain the actors, powdered, caparisoned, painted, wait in the wings like clowns for the crack of the whip—and yet also like soldiers about to
receive the command to charge on trenches where unknown forces lie hidden. no one can tell whether they are to be hurled back in shame and confusion, or to sweep on in
uproarious triumph. their courage, their art, will be the same. the result will be history or oblivion, homage or ridicule.
it is an old story, an incessantly recurring story, a tragi-farce so commonplace that authors and actors and managers and critics make jokes of their failures and
successes—afterward. but they are not jokes at the time.
it was no joke for the husband who had intrusted sheila to the mercy of the public and the press, and who made one of the audience, though he quivered with an anguish
of fear as each line was delivered, and an anguish of joy or woe as it scored or lapsed.
it was no joke to eugene vickery, lying in the quiet white room with the light low and one stolid stranger in white to sentinel him. it was hard not to be there where
the lights were high, where the throngs heard his pen and ink made flesh and blood. it was hard not to know what the words he had put on paper sounded like to new york
—the big town of his people. he wanted to see and hear and his soul would have run there if it could have lifted his body. but that it could not do.
it could lift thousands of hands to applause and lift a thousand voices to cry his name, but it could not lift his own hands or his own voice.
the nurse, who did not understand playwrights, tried to keep him quiet. she kept taking the sheet from his hands where they kept tugging at its edge. she forbade him
to talk. she refused to tell him what time it was.
but he would say, “now the overture’s beginning,” and then, later, “now the curtain’s going up.” he tried to rise with it, but she pressed him back. later he
reckoned that the first act was over, and then that the second act was begun.
then a telephoned message was brought to him that mr. reben telephoned to say, “the first act got over great.”
that almost lifted him to his feet, but he fell back, sighing, “he’d say it anyway, just to cheer me up.”
the same message or better came after the other acts. but he would not believe, he dared not believe, till suddenly sheila was there in her costume of the last act.
the divine light of good news poured from her eyes. she had not waited to meet the people who crowded back to congratulate her—“and they never crowd after a failure,
” she said.
she had not waited to change her costume lest she be too late with her music. she had waited only for bret to run to her and tell her how wonderful she was, and to
crush him as hard as she could in her arms. then she had haled him to the cab that was held in readiness, and they had dashed for vickery’s bed—his “throne,” she
called it.
perhaps she exaggerated the excitement of the audience; perhaps she drew a little on prophecy in quoting what the critics had been overheard to say in praise of the
drama—“epoch-making” was the least word she quoted.
but she brought in with her a very blast of beauty and of rapture, and she carried flowers that she would have flung across his bed if she had not suddenly feared the
look of them there.
as for vickery, he felt the beauty and fragrance of the triumphal red roses on the towering stems.
but he closed the great eyelids over the great eyes and inhaled the sweeter, the ineffable aroma of success. it was so sweet that he turned his face to the wall and
sobbed.
sheila tried to console him—console him for his triumph! she said: “why, ’gene, ’gene, the play is a sensation! the royalties will be enormous. the notices will be
glorious. you mustn’t be unhappy.”
he put out a hand that tried to be soft, he made a sound that tried to be a laugh, and he spoke in a sad rustle that tried to be a voice:
“i’m not unhappy. i never was happy till now. the royalties won’t be necessary where i’m going—just a penny to pay the ferryman. the notices i’ll read over there
—i suppose they get the papers over there so that the obituary notices can be read—the first kind words some of us ever get from this world.
“i owe it to you two that my play got on and succeeded. success! to write your heart’s religion and have it succeed with the people—that’s worth living for—that’
s worth dying for—”
his speech was frail, and broken with long pauses and with paroxysms:
“i hope i haven’t ruined your lives for you two. but you weren’t very happy when i came along, were you? sheila was breaking your heart, bret, just because she
couldn’t keep her own from breaking. you were like a man chained to a dead woman. if you had gone on, maybe you would have been less happy than you will be now. look
at poor dorothy. how long will she stand her unhappiness? my royalties will go to her! they will make her independent of that—but i’ve got no time to be bitter
against anybody now.
“i hope you’ll be happy, you two. but happiness isn’t the thing to work for. the thing to work for is work—to do all you can with what you have. i’m a poor, weak,
ramshackle sack of bones, but i’ve done what i could—and a little more. j’ai fait mon possible. that’s all god or man can ask. go on and do your possible, bret—
you in your factory—and sheila in her factory. i can’t see why your chance for happiness isn’t as good as anybody’s, if you’ll be patient with each other and run
home to each other when you can—and—and—now i’ve got to run home, too.”
then a deep peace soothed him, and them.
curtain
