Читать книгу: «The Trufflers», страница 18

The curtain came slowly down on the first act. The lights came slowly up. A house that had been profoundly still, absorbed in the clean-cut presentment of apparently real people, stirred, rustled, got up, moved into the aisles, burst into talk that rapidly swelled into a low roar. The applause came a little late, almost as if it were an after-thought, and then ran wild. There were seven curtain calls.

Down-stairs, two critics – blasé young men, wandered out into the lobby.

“Derring’s good,” observed one. “This piece may land her solid on Broadway.”

“First act’s all right,” replied the other casually, lighting a cigarette. “I didn’t suppose Pete Mann could do it.”

Up in the gallery, Sue, looking around, pressed suddenly close to the Worm, and whispered, “Henry – quick! Look at Peter!”

The playwright stood before his aisle seat, staring with wild eyes up at the half-draped plaster ladies on the proscenium arch. A line of persons in his row were pressing toward the aisle. A young woman, next to him, touched his arm and said, “Excuse me, please!” Sue and the Worm heard her but not Peter. He continued to stare – a tall conspicuous man, in black-rimmed glasses, a black ribbon hanging from them down his long face. His hand raised to his chest, clutched what appeared to be an envelope, folded the long way. Plainly he was beside himself.

The crowd in the aisle saw him now and stared. There was whispering. Some one laughed.

Again the young woman touched his arm.

He turned, saw that he was blocking the row, noted the eyes on him. became suddenly red, and stuffing the folded envelope into his pocket and seizing his hat, rapidly elbowed his way up the aisle.

Immediately following this incident attention was shifted to another. A good-looking young woman, apparently an Italian, who had been sitting four rows behind Peter and oft to the left, was struggling, in some evident excitement, to get out and up the aisle. Her impetuosity made her as conspicuous as Peter had been.

Sue, still watching the crowd that had closed in behind the flying Peter, noted the fresh commotion.

“Quite an evening!” she said cheerfully. “Seems to be a lady playwright in our midst, as well.”

The Worm regarded the new center of interest and grew thoughtful. He knew the girl. It was Maria Tonifetti, manicurist at the sanitary barber shop of Marius. He happened, too, to be aware that Peter knew Maria. He had seen Pete in there getting his nails done. Once, this past summer, he had observed them together on a Fifth Avenue bus. And on a Sunday evening he had met them face to face at Coney Island, and Peter had gone red and hurried by. Now he watched Maria slipping swiftly up the aisle, where Peter had disappeared only a moment before. He did not tell Sue that he knew who she was.

CHAPTER XXXVIII – PETER STEALS A PLAY

PETER rushed like a wild man down the stairs to the street. He looked up street and down for a cruising taxi; saw one at the opposite curb; dodged across, behind automobiles and in front of a street-car. A traffic policeman shouted from the corner. Peter was unaware, he dove into the taxi, shouting as he did so, the address of the rooms in Washington Square. The taxi whirled away to the south. Peter, a blaze of nerves, watched the dial, taking silver coins from his pocket as the charge mounted. At his door, he plunged out to the walk, threw the money on the driver’s seat, dashed into the old bachelor apartment building. The rooms had been lonely of late without Hy and the Worm. Now, his mind on the one great purpose, he forgot that these friends had ever lived. He ran from the elevator to the apartment door, key in hand, hurried within and tore into the closet. He emerged with his evening clothes – the coat on the hanger, the trousers in the press – and his patent leather shoes. From a bureau drawer he produced white silk waistcoat (wrapped in tissue-paper) and dress shirt. A moment more and he was removing, hurriedly yet not without an eye for buttons and the crease in the trousers, his business suit. He did not forget to transfer the folded envelope to the inner pocket of his dress coat. But first he read the sonnet that was penciled on it; and reread it. It seemed to him astonishingly good. “That’s the way,” he reflected, during the process, standing before the mirror, of knotting his white tie, – “when your emotions are stirred to white heat, and an idea comes, write it down. No matter where you are, write it down. Then you’ve got it.”

He looked thoughtfully at the long serious face that confronted him in the mirror, made longer by the ribbon that hung from his glasses. His hair was dark and thick, and it waved back from a high forehead. He straightened his shoulders, drew in his chin. That really distinguished young man, there in the mirror, was none other than Eric Mann, the playwright; author of the new Broadway success, The Truffler, a man of many gifts; a man, in short, of genius. Forgetting for the moment, his hurry, he drew the folded envelope from his pocket and read the sonnet aloud, with feeling and with gestures. In the intervals of glancing at the measured lines, he studied the poet before him. The spectacle thrilled him. Just as he meant that the poem should thrill the errant Sue when he should read it to her. He determined now that she should not see it until he could get her alone and read it aloud. Once before during this strange year of ups and downs, he had read a thing of his to Sue and had thrilled her as he was now thrilling himself. Right here in these rooms. He had swept her off her feet, had kissed her..Well… He smiled exultingly at the germs in the mirror. Then he had been a discouraged young playwright, beaten down by failure. How he was – or shortly would be – the sensation of Broadway, author of the enormously successful Nature film, and following up that triumph by picking to pieces the soul of the selfish “modern” bachelor girl – picking it to pieces so deftly, with such unerring theatrical instinct, that even the bachelor girl herself would have to join the throngs that would be crowding into the theater to see how supremely well he did it. More, was he not minting a new word, a needed word, to describe the creature. “The Truffler” – truffling – to truffle!

A grand word; it perfectly hit off the sort of thing. Within ten years it would be in the dictionaries; and he, Peter Ericson Mann, would have put it there. He must jog Neuerman up about this. To-morrow. Neuerman must see to it that the word did get into the language. No time to lose. A publicity job!.. Come to think of it he didn’t even know who was doing the publicity for Neuerman now. He must look into that. To-morrow. Shrewd, hard-hitting publicity work is everything. That’s what lands you. Puts your name in among the household treasures. People take you for granted; assume your greatness without exactly knowing why you are great. Then you’re entrenched. Then you’re famous. No matter if you do bad work. They don’t know the difference. You’re famous, that’s all there is to it. They have to take you, talk about you, buy your books, go to your plays. Mere merit hasn’t a chance against you. You smash ‘em every time… fame – money – power!

He saw the simply-clad Sue Wilde; short hair all massed shadows and shining high lights; olive skin with rose in it; the figure of a boy; all lightness, ease, grace; those stirring green eyes…

He would read to her again. His sonnet! From the heart – glowing with the fire that even in his triumph he could not forget.

She would listen!

The third was the “big act”; (there were four in all). All was ready for the artificial triumph that was to follow it – trained ushers, ticket sellers, door man, behind the last row of orchestra seats, clapping like mad. Experienced friends of the management in groups where they could do the most good. Trick curtains, each suggesting, by grouping or movement on the stage, the next. Neuerman wanted eight curtains after the big act. He got them – and five more. For the claques were overwhelmed. A sophisticated audience that had forgotten for once how to be cold-blooded, tears drying unheeded on grizzled cheeks, was on its feet, clapping, stamping, shouting. After the third curtain came the first shouts for “Author.” The shouts grew into an insistent roar. Again and again the curtain rose on the shifting, carefully devised group effects; the audience had been stirred, and it wanted the man whose genius had stirred it.

Behind, in the prompt corner, there was some confusion. You couldn’t tell that excited mob that Peter Mann hadn’t written fifty lines of that cumulatively moving story. It was his play, by contract. The credit was his; and the money. But no one had seen him for months.

After the tenth call Neuerman ordered the footlights down and the house-lights up. He wore part of a wrinkled business suit; his collar was a rag; his waistcoat partly unbuttoned. He didn’t know where he had thrown his coat. The sweat rolled in rivulets down his fat face.

Out front the roar grew louder. Neuerman ordered the house-lights down again and the footlights up.

“Here, Grace,” he said, to Miss Herring who stood, in the shirt-waist and short skirt of the part, looking very girlish and utterly dazed – “for God’s sake take the author’s call.”

She shook her head. “You take it,” she replied. “I couldn’t say a word – not if it was for my life!”

“Me take it!” He was mimicking her, from sheer nervousness. “Me take it? In these clothes?”

She laughed a little at this, absently. Flowers had come to her – great heaps of them. She snatched up an armful of long-stemmed roses; buried her face in them.

Neuerman waved the curtain up again; took her arm, made her go on. She bowed again, out there, hugging her roses, an excited light in her eyes; and once more backed off.

“For God’s sake, say something!” cried the manager.

She ignored this; bent over and looked through the heaps of flowers for a certain card. It was not there. She pouted – not like her rather experienced self but like the girl she was playing – and hugged the roses again.

For the twelfth time the curtain rose. Again she could only bow.

Neuerman mopped his forehead; then wrung out his handkerchief.

“Somebody say something,” he cried. “Ardrey could do it.” (Ardrey was the leading man.) “Where’s Ardrey? Here you – call Mr. Ardrey! Quick!”

“I’ll take the call,” said a quiet voice at his elbow.

Neuerman gave the newcomer a look of intense relief.

Miss Derring caught her breath, reached for a scene-support to steady herself; murmured:

“Why – Peter!”

The curtain slid swiftly up. And Peter Ericson Mann, looking really distinguished in his evening clothes, with the big glasses and the heavy black ribbon, very grave, walked deliberately out front, faced the footlights and the indistinct sea of faces, and unsmiling, waited for the uproar that greeted him to die down. He waited – it was almost painful – until the house was still..

Up in the gallery, Sue Wilde, leaning forward, her chin propped on her two small fists, said:

“That beats anything I ever…” She ended with a slow smile.

The Worm was studying the erect dignified figure down there on the stage. “You’ve got to hand it to Pete,” said he musingly. “He sensed it in the first act. He saw it was going to be a knock-out.”

“And,” said Sue, “he decided, after all, that it was his play. Henry, I’m not sure that he isn’t the most irritating man on the earth.”

“He’s that, all right, Sue, child; but I’m not sure that he isn’t a genius.”

“I suppose they are like that,” said Sue, thoughtful.

“Egotists, of course, looking at everything with a squint – all off balance! Take Pete’s own heroes, Cellini, Wagner – ”

“Hush!” she said, slipping her hand into his, twisting her slim fingers among his – “Listen!”

Peter began speaking. His voice was well placed.

You could hear every syllable. And he looked straight up at Sue. She noted this, and pressed closer to the man at her side.

“This is an unfashionable play (thus Peter). If you like it, I am of course deeply pleased. I did not write it to please you. It is a preachment. For some years I have quietly observed the modern young woman, the more or less self-supporting bachelor girl, the girl who places her independence, her capricious freedom, her ‘rights’ above all those functions and duties to others on which woman’s traditional quality, her finest quality, must rest. She is not interested in marriage, this bachelor girl, because she will surrender no item in her program of self indulgence. She is not interested in motherhood, because that implies self-abnegation. She talks economic independence while profiting by her sex-attraction. She uses men by disturbing them, confusing them; and thus shrewdly makes her own way. She plays with life, producing nothing. She builds no home, she rears no young. She talks glibly the selfish philosophy of Nietzsche, of Artzibasheff. She bases her self-justifying faith on the hideous animalism of Freud. She asserts her right, as she says, to give love, not to sell it in what she terms the property marriage. She speaks casually of ‘the free relation’ in love. She will not use the phrase ‘free love’; but that, of course, is what she means.

“No nation can become better that the quality of its womanhood, of its motherhood. No nation without an ideal, a standard of nobility, can endure. We have come upon the days, these devastating days of war, when each nation is put to the test. Each nation must now exhibit its quality or die. This quality, in the last analysis, is capacity for sacrifice. It is endurance, and self-abnegation in the interest of all. It is surrender – the surrender to principle, order, duty, without which there can be no victory. The woman, like the man, who will not live for her country may yet be forced to die for her country.

“The educated young woman of to-day, the bachelor girl, the ‘modern’ girl, will speak loudly of her right to vote, her right to express herself, – that is her great phrase, ‘self-expression’! – her intellectual superiority to marriage and motherhood. She will insist on what she calls freedom. For that she will even become militant. These phrases, and the not very pleasant life they cover, mean sterility, they mean anarchism, they mean disorganization, and perhaps death. They are the doctrine of the truffler, the woman who turns from duty to a passionate pursuit of enjoyment. They are eating, those phrases, like foul bacteria, at the once sound heart of our national life.

“So you see, in presenting this little picture of a girl who thought freedom – for herself – was everything, and of the havoc she wrought in one perhaps representative home, I have not been trying to entertain you. I have been preaching at you. If, inadvertently, I have entertained you as well, so much the better. For then my little sermon will have a wider audience.”

And, deliberately, he walked off stage.

On the stairs, moving slowly down from the gallery, Sue and the Worm looked at each other.

“I’m rather bewildered,” said she.

“Yes. Nobody knew the play was about all that. But they believe him. Hear them yelling in there. He has put it over. Pete is a serious artist now. He admits it.”

“There was rather a personal animus in the speech. Didn’t you think so?”

“Oh, yes. He was talking straight at you. Back last spring I gathered that he was writing the play at you – his original version of it.”

From one landing to another Sue was silent. Then she said:

“I never knew such a contradictory man. Why, he wrote the Nature film. And that is all for freedom.”

The Worm smiled. “Pete never had an idea in his life. He soaks up atmospheres and then, because he is a playwright and a dam’ good one, he turns them into plays. He sees nothing but effects. Pete can’t think! And then, of course, he sees the main chance. He never misses that. Why, that speech was pure genius. Gives ‘em a chance to believe that the stuff they love because it’s amusing and makes ‘em blubber is really serious and important. Once you can make ‘em believe that, you’re made. Pete is made, right now. He’s a whale of a success. He’s going to be rich.”

“But, Henry, they’ll see through him.”

“Not for a minute!”

“But – but” – she was laughing a little – “it’s outrageous. Here are two successes – right here on Broadway – both by Peter – each a preachment and each flatly contradicting the other. Do you mean to say that somebody won’t point it out?”

“What if somebody does? Who’d care? The public can’t think either, you see. They’re like Pete, all they can see is effects. And, of course, the main chance. They love his effectiveness. And they admire him for succeeding. I’m not sure, myself, that he isn’t on the way to becoming what they call a great man.”

CHAPTER XXXIX – A MOMENT OF MELODRAMA

THEY wandered into the crowded lobby.

Friends were there from Greenwich Village. There was a high buzz of excitement. Jaded critics were smiling with pleasure; it was a relief, now and then, to be spared boredom. Peter had spared them.

Peter himself appeared, wearing his high hat – flushed, his eyes blazing, but unsmiling. He held a folded envelope against his shirt-front.

Acquaintances caught at him as he passed. One critic publicly congratulated him. It was an ovation; or it would have been had he responded. But he saw, out near the entrance, through the crowd, the face of Sue Wilde. He pressed through to her side.

“Sue,” he murmured in her ear. “I want to see you? How about to-morrow? Lunch with me perhaps? I’ve written something…”

His excited eyes wandered down to the paper in his hand.

Sue, smiling a little, suddenly rather excited herself, pulled at the Worm’s elbow. That young man turned.

“It seems to be across, Pete,” he said casually.

Peter glared at him.

But the words he might have uttered, by way of putting this too casual old friend in his place, remained unsaid. For Sue, demure of everything excepting eyes, remarked:

“My husband, Peter. We were married to-day.”

The playwright dropped, in one instant, from the pinnacle of fame, money power, on which, for nearly two hours, he had been exultingly poised. His chin sagged. His eyes were dazed. A white pinched expression came over his long face.

“Married – to-day!” He repeated the words in a flat voice.

She nodded. “You must congratulate us, Peter. We’re dreadfully happy.”

Peter seemed unable, however, to say anything more. He continued to stare. The beginnings of a low laugh of sheer delight bubbled upward within Sue’s radiant being. Peter heard it, or felt it. Suddenly he bolted – out through the crowd to the sidewalk. He brushed aside the enthusiastic hands that would detain him. He disappeared.

There are conflicting reports as to what occurred after this. The Evening Earth described the incident as taking place on the sidewalk directly in front of the theater. The Press-Record had it on the farther corner, across the side street. The Morning Bulletin and The Continental agreed that the woman pursued him through the stage door.

Outside there, the traffic was heavy. Street-cars and motors filled the street from curb to curb. Women and their escorts were passing out of and into the famous restaurant that is next door but one to the Astoria. The sidewalk was crowded as always in the theater district on a fine September evening.

MacMerry, dramatic critic of The Standard, was the one closest to it. He had stepped outside to smoke his cigarette, found himself at the playwright’s elbow, and spoke pleasantly to him of the play. He noted at the time, as he explained later at his club, that Mann was oblivious. He was very pale, stared straight ahead, and appeared to be drifting with the crowd.

The stage entrance to the Astoria is not around the corner, but is a narrow passage leading back from the street on the farther side of the restaurant. It was at this point, said MacMerry, that Mann came to a stop. He seemed dazed. Which was not unnatural, considering the occasion.

As he stood there, a young woman rushed forward. She was of an Italian cast of countenance, not bad-looking, but evidently in a state of extreme excitement. Apparently she had been standing close to the building, watching the crowd. She had a knife in her hand.

This knife she wielded on the playwright. Three or four separate times she stabbed at his chest, evidently striking for the heart. Trying to seize her hand, Mann received a slight cut on the fingers. MacMerry himself finally caught her forearm, threw her back against the building, and took the knife away from her. By this time, of course, a dense crowd had pressed about them. And Mann, without a word, had slipped into the passage leading to the stage. Certainly, when the policeman got through to the critic’s side, Mann was not there.

They talked it over in the lobby. There the Worm, catching an inkling of the catastrophe, took a hand. Learning from MacMerry that the girl was evidently an Italian, he put forth the theory that she had probably mistaken Pete for a man of her own blood. Peter was dark of hair and skin. Considering this, MacMerry recalled that Peter had given no sign of knowing the woman. And he could not recall that she had spoken his name. He and the Worm then talked this over with the newspaper men that came rushing to the scene. The theory-found its acceptors. The Worm pointed out that Peter was a man of quiet manners and of considerable dignity. He was never a roysterer. His ideas were serious. It was not likely that the woman had any claim upon him.

Perhaps the strongest influence working in Peter’s interest was the fact that he was actually, at the moment, bursting into a big success. Every one, newspaper workers among the others, was glad to help him along. It was the thing to do. So by midnight all had agreed that it was a case of mistaken identity. Peter’s luck held.

Meantime a little drama more real than any Peter had yet been credited with writing was taking place behind the scenes.

Act four was short; and from curtain to curtain Miss Derring held the stage. Therefore she had no knowledge of what was taking place in her dressing-room. Whether Peter came back with any coherent intention of finding Grace. I can not say. It is not likely. The most intensely exciting evening of his life had reached its climax in a short scene in which a young woman had stabbed him. Immediately preceding this event, he had encountered the astounding fact that the girl it seemed to him he had always loved more than any one else in the world was married – married to his old chum.

As he ran through the dark passage from the street to the stage door, his hand still clutched the paper on which he had written the sonnet that was to touch her heart. You are to remember that this bit of verse had considerable emotional quality and more than a touch of grace. He had written it on an old envelope, seated in a crowded theater; but then, Schubert wrote wonderful songs on restaurant menus. It is so that things are done in the world of temperament… I don’t believe he knew what he was doing, then or later; perhaps, until the next morning. If Peter ever knew what he was doing!

The curtain was already up when he slipped sidewise past the doorman, through the vestibule, on to the stage. It was dim and still back there. Far away, beyond the great shadowy cluster of canvas and wood structures that made up the fourth act set, he could hear Grace’s voice. Down front, by the prompt corner stood a silent little group – four or five actors, the electrician, the mighty Max Neuerman in his shirt-sleeves.

Scene flats, six deep, were propped against the wall. He had to pick his way between piled-up properties and furniture. Two stage hands moved aside and let him by. He was conscious of feeling weak. His head was a maelstrom of whirling emotions. He was frightened. He couldn’t get his breath. It wouldn’t do to stay around here – perhaps make a scene and spoil his own play. He had no means of knowing for certain that Maria had not escaped MacMerry and pursued him up the passage. What if she should overpower the doorman – a superannuated actor – and get at him again! Even if she shouldn’t, he might faint, or die. It was curiously hard to breathe.

He felt his way past more scenery, more properties. There was a doorway in the concrete stage wall, leading to dressing-rooms on a corridor, and more dressing-rooms up a twisting iron stairway.

Grace would have the star’s room, of course. She wasn’t a star yet, but Neuerman was featuring her name in all the advertising. That would naturally entitle her to the star’s room. That would be the end room with the outside light. The door was ajar. It was a large room. Yes, he could see her first act frock, over a chair. And Minna, the maid who had been with her when – when he and she had been on rather good terms, very good terms – was sitting quietly by the dresser, sewing. Minna was a discreet little person. She had carried notes and things. Still, it was awkward. He would prefer not having Minna see him just now… He was weak.

He found it necessary to catch at the iron stair rail and steady himself… Grace, you had to admit, was a good deal of a girl. It was rather remarkable, considering her hard life, the work, the travel, the – well, the one or two experiences – how fresh she looked, how young, how full of magnetic charm. Why, Grace was twenty-eight if she was a day! But she was putting the play over in great style. You had to admire her for that. It was too bad, thinking it all ever, that their relations hadn’t gone quietly along on a friendly basis, that emotions should have torn her so, intensifying her demands on him, making it really necessary for him to break off with her.

He plunged into the dressing-room.