Chapter XX

The week that followed Adam Fletcher’s departure was the hardest of all Joan’s hard-worked season. She had no time to miss her lover; she hardly had time to remember his existence. There were six evening performances and two matinées of Juliet, and at each of them points occurred to her for subsequent work and improvement. There were rehearsals every morning of ‘As You Like It,’ in which, next week, she was playing Celia. And--in case Mrs. Vincent-Dawe might still be on the sick list--there was a nightly study of Rosalind that carried her far into the small hours. Sometimes the girl felt quite dazed with her treble life of Shakespeare’s creating. She really could not manage in addition a fourth rôle--herself.

On Thursday evening, after the performance, Mr. Dawe, the husband of the absent star, came round to the back, with a young man in tow. Mr. Dawe’s visits were fairly frequent; indeed, as he supplied the solid foundation of the whole enterprise, there was every reason for his interest. They had not seen him since his wife’s illness, and Joan went up to him eagerly. Now, at last, she could get some definite information as to Mrs. Vincent-Dawe’s appearance next week.

Yes, Mrs. Dawe was much better, he said; quite well, in fact; she was coming to rehearsal to-morrow. Joan gave a sigh of relief. Although she would simply adore playing Rosalind, she did not want to give another hurried and underdone performance. Now she could concentrate with a free mind on her Celia. Mr. Dawe was meanwhile making some complimentary remarks about Juliet in which truthfulness and loyalty to his wife were evidently at variance. “I am so sorry that I have not been able to get down to the theatre to see it before,” he said, “but Mr. Alden here has made up for me. I believe he has been to every performance!” He indicated the fair, blushing youth, who had come in with him, and who was still standing expectantly near. “May I present Mr. Alden to you, Miss North?” Mr. Dawe smiled a little as he thought of the persecution he had endured from the boy during the last week to obtain the desired introduction.

Young Alden turned still pinker as he shook Miss North’s hand. He was about twenty, Joan imagined--no doubt still at College. She felt immeasurably his senior, although in point of years she was probably the younger. The boy stammered something about the great honour and then relapsed into an overwhelmed silence. After a little more chat with Mr. Dawe, Joan ran off to change.

She thought no more about the incident, but the next evening Mr. Alden came behind again--and the next and the next. Although diffident in speech, he evidently had a certain assurance in action. The exclusion of strangers was not as rigorous in this little theatre as on the regular stage, and as young Alden seemed to think that Mr. Dawe’s initial introduction had constituted him an honorary member of the company, no one troubled to contradict him. Indeed, they all liked the nice-looking, good-tempered young fellow, and with these understaffed and short-lived productions, he did soon manage to make himself quite useful. He shifted scenery, rolled ground sheets, and ran errands with a humble alacrity that would have astonished his parents. For young Alden belonged to one of the most exclusive families in Boston--a fact that did not detract from his general acceptability! Once, through some oversight, there was no one to ply the cocoanut shells as galloping horses, and Mr. Alden, who was standing opportunely in the wings, saved the situation. Joan nicknamed him ‘the call boy’s understudy,’ and the infatuated young man glowed with pride at the title.

For the object of Mr. Alden’s presence was patent to everyone. There was hardly a night when he was not standing at the stage door after the performance patiently waiting to accompany Miss North and Mr. and Mrs. Mallock home. Although Joan had some misgivings, she could not help being rather glad of the addition to the party. She had reluctantly promised Granny not to come home late from the theatre alone if it could possibly be avoided, but the Mallocks, although kind, were intellectually limited, and their undiluted society night after night was beginning to pall. Besides a newly married couple probably found her presence a nuisance, she often reflected, and the thought hurt her pride. At least she knew that Mr. Alden did not view her as an inconvenient imposition, while, after the Mallocks, the young fellow’s callow talk struck her as agreeably interesting and cultured.

Only after ‘As You Like It’ had opened, did it suddenly occur to Joan that, of course, Mr. Alden must be responsible for the nightly flowers. She smiled as she remembered Adam’s prophecy that the donor would not long remain anonymous. Enquiries proved her right, and her devotee’s offering was peremptorily stopped. In any case it was a relief not to get these bouquets; during that last week of ‘Juliet’ they had been almost the last straw. For Joan could not bear leaving the poor constricted blossoms to wither all night, and so had spent cold, very early morning hours untwisting miles of fine wire and drawing out damp, supporting spikes as she murmured her Rosalind lines. Henceforward a smell of rust was indelibly associated in the girl’s mind with a sense of overpowering weariness. She began to realize why a maid was necessary for a star.

Naturally poor Mr. Alden was spared these ungrateful particulars. Indeed, he was so cast down by the refusal of further floral tribute that Joan was quite sorry for him. She really liked the boy, and, in addition, had discovered an amusing link, of which he himself was supremely unconscious. One of her schoolfellows had had an aunt at Boston, a certain Mrs. Alden, with whom she frequently spent her vacation. On one occasion there had been an idea of Joan accompanying her, and although the project had afterwards fallen through, Joan still remembered the aunt’s extremely gushing letter of invitation to ‘dearest Miss Vandeleur.’ Careful questioning now elicited the fact, that, as Joan expected, this aunt and Mr. Alden’s mother were the same, but Mrs. Alden’s receptivity towards a millionaire’s daughter evidently did not extend to an unknown strolling player. Her son’s constraint once or twice when her name came up made this evident. One day Joan was mischievously inspired. “I believe your mother thinks I am a harpy,” she laughed. “She considers me a designing creature, an adventuress, now doesn’t she?”

Poor Alden turned scarlet and looked as though he were going to cry. “No,” he stammered confusedly. “At least, it is only that she doesn’t know you.” Joan did, indeed, look as little like an adventuress as it was possible to imagine, as she stood there in her neat blue serge costume with her strong, young face and candid eyes. “Mother doesn’t know how wonderful you are.” His voice broke.

“Oh, of course, I am a compendium of all the talents and virtues.” Joan laughed again, but not unkindly. “But really I agree with your mother that you are wasting a great deal of time down here. I don’t wonder she is cross!”

Naturally in the end the inevitable happened. The last spark to kindle the young man’s ardour was, paradoxically enough, the property man’s taking a drop too much. After the first performance of ‘Twelfth Night,’ Mrs. Vincent-Dawe had called Joan on to the stage to discuss some point, and they stayed there for a considerable time. The property man, an ill-conditioned fellow, not liking to disturb the leading lady, who was also his employer, stood sulkily at the wings, waiting to collect his ‘props.’ At last Mrs. Vincent-Dawe went off on the other side, while Joan had to pass out near where the man was standing. He did not move, and in the harrow passage way the end of the lute she carried brushed against his face. “Aw, to hell, you!” he shouted with sudden bibulous rage.

“Apologize to Miss North or I’ll knock you down.” It was, of course, young Alden who also had been hovering impatiently.

The property man hesitated. He was still sober enough to recognize that this was ‘the stage door dude’ who had been hanging about so much of late. The chap was a big bug, some one had told him. If there was any row, it was a poor working man like himself who’d get into trouble. Mrs. Vincent-Dawe would clean him out sure. Her show was run more like a blamed mission meeting than a theatre. He muttered an apology and stumbled off.

When Joan came down from her dressing-room, Mr. Alden was standing there as usual, but the Mallocks had gone. They could not wait any longer, the young fellow said. Joan felt vexed that just to-night she and Mr. Alden would be alone. As she feared, the incident had unloosened his tongue. Directly they got into the street the young fellow started off. “You ought not to be exposed to that sort of thing, Miss North,” he said passionately. “It is desecration.” He was trembling as he spoke.

“Oh, the man must have been drunk. Such a thing has never happened to me before, and I don’t suppose it will ever happen again.” Joan tried to speak lightly.

“It ought never to have happened at all.” Suddenly the poor boy began to pour out his devotion, his desire to shelter and protect her. “You know I have got piles of money,” he naïvely urged. “Let me take you out of all this--give you the position you ought to have. We needn’t live in Boston; we could go to New York if you would rather. We might have a house on Fifth Avenue.”

Joan was struggling between laughter and anger. “Oh, I shouldn’t know how to behave on Fifth Avenue among all your aristocratic set,” she said demurely.

“Yes, you would. You would shine anywhere.” Young Alden was really a nice boy, but the constant reiteration by his mother of his being such a good match had not left him entirely unscathed. “No one need know anything about all this. You would take your position as my wife.”

Joan’s anger suddenly got the upper hand. “You do not seem to know it, but you are insulting me. Do you think I would exchange my Art for anything you could offer? Why, I wouldn’t give it up for--all the Vandeleur millions,” she concluded audaciously.

“I--I--I am sorry,” the unfortunate suitor stammered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It isn’t that I mind your acting--but--but my people.--Oh, Miss North,” he burst out with a boyish simplicity that was rather appealing, “I can’t say it, but it is just that I care for you so awfully. Won’t you care for me?”

For the first time Joan felt compassionate. The boy had forgotten his miserable money and position. He was just asking her to marry him for himself. She saw with relief that they had reached the door of her boarding house. “I can’t care for you,” she said softly, “because--oh, well, that part is already cast.”

It was April when Joan again joined her grandmother at Wood Haven. They were both overjoyed to see each other, and yet, after the first day, Mrs. Lennox did not feel satisfied. Her granddaughter did not seem herself; she was listless, almost depressed--a most unusual condition for Joan. The grandmother led the conversation round to Mr. Fletcher, in a way that she fondly considered a miracle of tact. Joan replied without hesitation that she had only seen him once--that time before Christmas. He had been out West; she believed he was now at Pittsburg, where there was a big engineering strike. Mrs. Lennox’s old habit of late rising kept her from realizing that a letter came for Joan every morning in Mr. Fletcher’s handwriting, and the girl’s careless tone deceived her. Nor did there seem to be any other aspirant. No, it must just be that Joan was worn out after the hard season, Mrs. Lennox told herself. Indeed, the girl herself confessed to being very tired.

One morning, after they had been at Wood Haven about three weeks, Mrs. Lennox was just finishing her leisurely breakfast in bed, when Joan came into her room. The girl’s face was aglow with a sort of suppressed radiance; her whole walk had changed. “Mr. Fletcher will be here this morning. The strike is over and we have won. I am going to meet him.” Before her grandmother could collect her startled senses, Joan had gone.

She was the first person whom Adam Fletcher saw as he got out of the train. This was more than he had dared to hope. They walked sedately through the little town and across the meadow to the short cut through the woods. Then the sedateness vanished. “It has been perfectly wretched here,” Joan murmured presently, “with no work and missing you every minute.” She clung to him quite passionately.

It was a considerable while before they started walking again, and even then Adam Fletcher’s arm was round her. At first they went along in silence; then they began to talk. The man was too full of his recent triumph to keep from it long. “Wasn’t it bully our pulling off the strike, darling?” he said boyishly. “It was about this time yesterday that it was fixed up. Three of us and three of the principal owners had met to discuss. Suddenly they told us they’d give in. We could hardly believe it. A big crowd was outside--hungry women and children--they’re what tie one’s hands. You should have seen the scene when we announced the news. Talk of drama! I do wish you could have been there.”

“Oh, why didn’t you send for me?” Joan cried.

“As if your grandmother would have allowed it!” Adam hesitated. Then he resolved to risk it. She had been so sweet, so demonstrative. “You know, Joan, that it would be a heap more convenient if you did make up your mind to get it over and marry me.”

But Joan’s face had clouded. “No, you are not to. I told you that you weren’t to speak about marrying at all. It will spoil everything. And it wouldn’t make much difference,” she went on more relentingly. “We shall be here together all the summer, and in the winter you couldn’t tour round the country with me, in any case. Promise you won’t speak about getting married--anyway until I am a star. Promise!”

“Well--I promise.” Adam Fletcher’s voice had a fleeting tinge of coldness. Amid all his devotion he could not help wondering sometimes whether it ever occurred to Joan to think of this matter from his point of view. It was pretty difficult to go on like this indefinitely. However, if you fell in love with a star, he reminded himself, or even with a prospective one, you couldn’t expect to hang it up to light your parlour. “I’ve thought of a fine idea for a play out of the strike,” he told her, deliberately turning the subject.

He could not now complain of lack of sympathy. Joan listened with rapt attention. It was the Romeo and Juliet theme in modern terms, he said--the strike leader and the boss’s daughter falling in love with each other.

“Why, that is something like us,” Joan exclaimed in amused surprise.

“No, it isn’t a bit, really. I hadn’t even thought of us. Because in my play the chief difficulty is that the man has only got his pay--fifteen or twenty dollars a week--and the girl has no profession or money of her own. He does not like to take her out of the luxury to which she has been accustomed. And then the girl is so fond of her father--the president of the Company. She can’t bear to leave him; she thinks it would break him all up.”

“I wonder what would have happened if Father and I had cared for each other like that,” Joan meditated. “How queer it would have been.”

“But when you were a little girl, didn’t your father ever make a fuss over you?” Adam asked incredulously.

“I hardly ever saw him, and when I did, affection didn’t seem to come into it. I would as soon have thought of being fond of--of Niagara. It was only after I had left home and came across a snapshot of Father in a paper once, that it ever occurred to me anyone might be fond of him. He looked unhappy and quite human. That was the time I have told you about, that I wrote to him and offered to live with him when I wasn’t touring. I am thankful now he wouldn’t have me. But tell me more about your play.”

“Well, my man and girl care for each other, and, of course, they want to get married frightfully.” Adam again stopped. Whatever he said seemed to stumble on the personal; or rather the embarrassment of his last remark lay in its being so impersonal. No one could accuse Joan of ‘wanting to get married frightfully,’ he felt with a renewed but transient asperity. “But I haven’t thought out my play properly yet,” he concluded rather lamely.

“Well, think it out and write it; write it soon. It will be fine!” Joan assured him. “Of course, I am to play the girl?” They were still discussing the great work when they arrived home very late for lunch.

It was not until the evening that Mrs. Lennox got a chance for any private conversation with her granddaughter. Mr. Fletcher had just left, Joan waving good-night to him through the open window. “My dear,” Mrs. Lennox said, as the girl turned. “Are you, or are you not, engaged to that young man?”

“Let me think.” Joan sat down, and putting her hand to her brow, assumed an attitude of profound meditation. “No, I don’t think I am engaged to him, Granny. I really don’t see how I can be, for he has never asked me to be engaged.”

Mrs. Lennox gave a half-vexed laugh. “Well, that can only be because you haven’t let him. I am certain that poor Mr. Fletcher wants nothing better than to be engaged.”--“I guess he does,” Joan murmured, but her grandmother did not hear her.--“Really, Joan, I don’t think you are behaving well to Mr. Fletcher. It isn’t fair on him to keep him dangling on year after year if you don’t mean to marry him.”

Joan laughed. “What a terrible picture, Granny! It sounds as if you ought to write to some Prevention of Cruelty Society. But why isn’t it fair to go on being friends? I make a very nice friend.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Mrs. Lennox spoke quite sharply. “You know perfectly well that you can’t go on like this for ever. Suppose after a few years one of you wants to marry some one else, the other would be stranded. It is an impossible position.”

“But Granny, of course when Adam and I do want to get married, we shall marry each other. _Ca va sans dire._ Why, he was saying only this morning that being married would be more convenient.”

“Convenient!” The phraseology of the young man’s lovemaking left Mrs. Lennox dazed. And he an author! “Well, if you have got to the point of discussing the convenience of marriage,” she suggested with a smile, “I suppose most people would consider you engaged.”

“Well, I don’t. You see, Granny,” Joan’s voice grew softer, “you see, I feel that Adam and I belong to each other, and that makes all this talk of engagements and proposals and things like that seem simply ridiculous.”

“If you feel that way, I should think you would want to get married,” Mrs. Lennox said feebly. Really Joan was rather bewildering.

“But I don’t want it! I have got my work. How can I do everything at once? I just want to stop as we are. It is extraordinary that no one can understand that.”

“Well, it is very unsatisfactory,” Mrs. Lennox opined with a wise shake of her head.

In spite of Adam Fletcher’s enthusiasm over his idea for the new play, and in spite of Joan’s eager sympathy, the work did not make much progress. The fact was he felt too unsettled for writing, too distracted, perhaps too much in love. However, by an immense effort, he got a rough draft finished and took it to show Mr. Hobson when the great man came back from Europe early in July.

The manager, in stage parlance, ‘grabbed for it.’ “That’s the stuff, my boy,” he exclaimed at the end of the reading. “Beautiful! There’s a big sentimental punch to it.” He patted Fletcher on the shoulder. “I’ll send the contract right along. How soon can you get it done?”

“I don’t know.” Adam Fletcher was usually a very quick worker, but with a recollection of his difficulties during the last two months, he felt he could not bind himself. “Not for an autumn opening any way.”

“Well, you just get busy on it, and let me have it as quick as ever. We might open in it for the New Year. This is going to fetch ’em--heart interest, good and strong. You ain’t no pink tea author, not you.” The little man chuckled with appreciation. He was enormously bitten. “Now for the cast.”

“I must have Miss North for my girl,” Adam Fletcher said quickly.

“I’m sorry, Miss North ain’t under my management any more.” Mr. Hobson cooled perceptibly.

“Oh, she will want to play this.” As the great manager showed no sign of agreeing, Fletcher broke out, “Why, if I don’t mind Miss North having chucked ‘The Combine,’ you needn’t! After all, my profit was certain, but you very likely stood in to lose heavily. I consider you ought to be very grateful to Miss North!”

Mr. Hobson laughed. He would not have stood such ‘back talk’ from any of his other ‘young men,’ but Adam Fletcher was a privileged person. Apart from the marvellous success of ‘The Under Dog,’ which he felt this new play might repeat, he had always had a genuine liking for him. “Well, as to gratitood there may be two opinions, but Miss North’s got the real stuff in her--I’ll allow that,” he conceded grudgingly.

Fletcher followed up the advantage. “Yes, she did some fine work up at Boston last winter--her Juliet made quite a sensation.”

“Oh, I know all about that; saw her in it myself.” Noticing Fletcher’s surprise, the manager elucidated that a certain ‘young feller,’ Cyril Mallock, had been pestering for years to come under his management, and so being up at Boston, he had gone in one evening to see him play. “He ain’t a bad actor either, but Miss North knocks spots out of him.”

“Why not give them both a New York appearance in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ till my play’s ready?” Fletcher suggested with a sudden inspiration.

“Well, that’s an idea! First the old ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ then the noo. We’ll show ’em there’s as good pebbles on the shore as ever came off it.” Fletcher hadn’t meant to invite quite such a trying comparison, still he thought it wiser not to protest. “And Miss West for Juliet’s nurse; she’ll do it fine.” The great manager was always childishly eager when a scheme appealed to him.--“I suppose the critics wouldn’t let us give the piece a happy ending?” he added wistfully. “Romeo wakes up in the nick of time. Snatches away Juliet’s dagger. Kiss. Curtain--Eh?”

“I am afraid it would hardly do, Mr. Hobson.” Adam Fletcher smiled. “You will have to content yourself with _my_ play ending well.”

“I guessed you’d say so. Anyway, it will make them like your play all the better--be more of a contrast.”

“It will be a contrast all right!” This time Fletcher laughed out loud. “Then that is settled?”

“Yes, but you’ve got to answer for Miss North; I ain’t going to be turned down a second time. I suppose if we write her at Miss West’s, that will find? By the way, where’s your contract to be mailed?”

“To Wood Haven, Maine.”

“Why, ain’t that where Miss West----?” A smile broke over Mr. Hobson’s face. He felt that he had put two and two together, or rather one and one. “Well, you let me have that play real soon. I tell you there’s rich human blood in it. That’s what the public wants, my boy--blood. They’re sick to death of the Ibsen-Shaw-Maeterlinck gang.”