"Quite normal, thank you," I said.

"Don't believe it." The sympathetic cadence of George Morgan's voice removed all effect of brusqueness from his words. "No playwright was ever normal three hours before the curtain went up on the first night of her play in New York. Now I'll tell you exactly how you feel."

"Don't," I begged. "I _know_."

"But I must!" my friend's remorseless voice went on. "I've got to show my insight into the human heart, as you used to say in your convent days. So here goes. You're sinking into a bottomless pit; you're in a blue funk; your feet are cold and your head is hot; you're breathing with difficulty; you're struggling with a desire to take the first train out of town; you're wondering if you can't go to bed and stay there. You think no one suspects these things, for you're wearing a smile that looks as if it had been tacked on; but it's so painful that your father and mother keep their eyes turned away from it. You're--"

"George, for Heaven's sake--"

"Oh, all right; I merely wanted to show insight and express sympathy.

Having lived through four 'first nights' myself, I know what they mean. And say, May,"--his gay voice took on a deeper note--"I needn't tell you that Josephine and I will be going through the whole thing with you. We've chosen seats in the fifth row of the orchestra, instead of taking a box, because we both expect to burst into loud sobs of joy during your speech, and we'll feel less exposed down on the floor. And, oh yes, wait a minute; your G.o.d-daughter insists on kissing you through the telephone!"

There was an instance's silence; then the breathless little voice of Maria Annunciata Morgan, aged "four 'n a half, mos' five," according to herself, came to my ear.

"'Lo, May, oh-h, May, 'lo, May," it gurgled, excitedly.

"h.e.l.lo, babykins," I said. "Is that a new song you've learned that you're singing for me?"

"No-o-o." Maria Annunciata's tones showed her scorn for grown-up denseness. "I was just 'ginning my conversation," she added, with dignity.

I apologized.

"An' papa says," went on the adorable childish treble, "'at if your play la.s.ses till a mat'nee, I--can--go--an'--see--it!"

"Bless your heart, so you shall, my baby," I laughed. "And if the play la.s.ses only a few minutes, I'll give you a 'mat'nee' all by yourself.

Where's that kiss I was to have? I need it very much."

"Here 'tis. Here's fourteen an' 'leven." They came to me over the wire in a succession of reports like the popping of tiny corks. "An' papa says say good-by now, so I mus'. But I love you _very_ mush!"

"Good-by, darling. I love you very mush, too."

I turned from the telephone wonderfully cheered by the little talk, but almost before I had hung up the receiver the bell rang again.

"h.e.l.lo, May. If you've finished that impa.s.sioned love scene with which you have kept the wire sizzling for the last half-hour I'd like to utter a few calming words."

Bayard, a brilliantly successful playwright, was talking.

"Feel as if you were being boiled in oil, don't you?" was his cheery beginning. "Feel as if you were being burned at the stake? Feel as if you were being butchered to make a Roman holiday, and all that kind of thing? But it's nothing to the way you're going to feel as you drive to the theater and as you watch the curtain go up. However, keep a stiff upper lip. Margaret and I will be in front, and Margaret says you can have my chest to cry on immediately after the performance.

Good luck. Good-by."

Again, before I had left the room, the telephone bell recalled me. It had been like this all day. I had begun to believe that it would always be like this. Life had resolved itself into a series of telephone talks, running through a strenuous but not unpleasant dream.

Every friend I had seemed determined to call me up and alternate rosy good wishes with dark forebodings of disasters possible through no fault of mine. The voice that came to me now was that of Arthur Locke, the best actor and the most charming gentleman on the American stage.

"Good luck, Miss Iverson," he said, heartily. "I don't need to tell you all my wife and I wish for you. But I want to give you a word of warning about the critics. Don't let anything they do to-night disturb you. They've all got their bag of tricks, you know, and they go through them whether they like the play or not. For example"--his beautiful voice took on a delicious quality of sympathetic amus.e.m.e.nt--"Haskins usually drops off to sleep about the middle of the second act. The audience is always immensely impressed by this, and men and women exchange glances and hushed comments over it. But it doesn't mean anything. He wakes up again. He slept through my entire second act last year, and gave me an excellent notice the next morning--to show his grat.i.tude, I suppose. Allen usually leaves during the middle of the third act, gathering up his overcoat with a weary sigh and marching down the middle aisle so that no one can miss his dramatic exit. People are so used to it that they don't mind it much.

Northrup sits with his eyebrows up in his pompadour, as if pained beyond expression by the whole performance, and Elkins will take all your best comedy with sad, sad shakes of the head. To equalize this, however, Webster will grin over your pathetic scenes. The best thing to do is not to look at any of them. You know where their seats are, don't you? Keep your eyes the other way."

"Thank you," I said, faintly. "I think I will."

Beyond question Mr. Locke's intentions had been friendly, but his words had not perceptibly soothed my uneasy nerves. Before I walked from my study into my living-room I stopped a moment to straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath. My entire family had come on from the West to attend the first-night performance of my play in New York--my father, my sister Grace, my brother Jack, now a lieutenant in the army, even my delicate mother, to whom journeys and excitement were not among life's usual privileges. They were, I knew, having tea together, and as I opened the living-room door I found my features taking on the stiff and artificial smile I must have unconsciously worn all day. A saving memory of George Morgan's words came to me in time, and I banished the smile and soberly entered the room.

The members of the familiar group greeted me characteristically. My mother, by whose chair I stopped for an instant, smiled up at me in silence, patting my hand. My father drew a deep, inviting chair close to the open fire; my brother brought me the cup of tea my sister hurriedly prepared. Each beloved face wore a look of acute nervous strain, and from the moment of my entrance every one talked at once, on subjects so remote from the drama that it seemed almost improper to introduce it by repeating the telephone conversations I had just had.

I did so, however, and in the midst of the badinage that followed, Stella Merrick, our "star," was announced.

She lived across the Square from me, and she promptly explained as she drank her tea that she had been "too nervous to stay at home." For her comfort I repeated again the pregnant words of Mr. Locke concerning the New York critics, and she nodded in depressed confirmation. During the close a.s.sociation required by our rehearsals, and our months together "on the road," I had not a.n.a.lyzed to my satisfaction the contradictions of Miss Merrick's temperament. She loved every line of my play and was admirable, if not ideal, in the leading role. She fiercely resented the slightest suggestion from me, and combated almost every change I wished to make in the text as my work revealed itself to me more clearly during rehearsals and performances. She seemed to have a genuine fondness for me and a singular personal dependence. She was uneasy if I missed a rehearsal, and had been almost panic-stricken when once or twice during our preliminary tour I had missed a first night in an important city. She claimed the credit of all merit in the play and freely pa.s.sed on to me the criticisms.

The slightest suggestion made by the "cub reporter" on any newspaper or the call-boy in any theater seemed to have more weight with her than any advice of mine. To-day, under the soothing influence of tea, fire-light, and the not too stimulating charms of family conversation, we could see her tense nerves relax.

"I've been working mentally on the critics," she confessed, as she pa.s.sed her cup to Grace for the second time. "They're the only persons I've been afraid of here in New York. I know we'll get our audience.

We always do. And if Miss Iverson will stand by us, and make a speech when she's called for, we're sure to have a brilliant night."

She smiled her charming smile at me.

"But the New York critics are enough to appal the strongest soul," she went on. "They're so unjust sometimes, so merciless, so fiendishly clever in suggesting labels that stick to one through life. Do you remember what they said about Miss Carew--that her play was so feminine she must have done it with crochet needles? And they said n.a.z.imova looked like 'the cussed damosel,' and that Fairbanks had the figure of Romeo and the face of the apothecary. Those things appal me.

So for the last few days I've been working on them mentally. I believe in mental science, you know."

She paused for a moment and sat stirring her tea, a reflective haze over the brilliance of her blue eyes.

"Some way," she resumed, "in the forty-eight hours since I've been trying the power of mind on them I have ceased to be afraid of the critics. I realize now that they cannot hurt us or our work. I know they are our friends. I have a wonderfully kind feeling for them.

Why,"--her voice took on a seductive tenderness, her eyes dwelt on the fire with a dreamy abstraction in their depths--"now I almost love the d.a.m.ned things!" she ended, peacefully.

My brother Jack choked, then laughed irrepressibly. My sister and I joined him. But my mother was staring at Miss Merrick with startled eyes, while Miss Merrick stared back at her with a face full of sudden consternation.

"Mrs. Iverson," she gasped, "I beg your pardon! I didn't know what I was saying. I was--really--thinking aloud!"

Half an hour later I went with her to the elevator for a final word.

"I'm going straight to the theater," she told me. "Be early, won't you? And come in to see me for a moment just before we begin."

She took my hands in a grip that hurt.

"We're going to win," she said, as she entered the elevator.

It was almost six. I had barely time to dress, to dine comfortably, and to get to the theater before the curtain rose. At every stage of my toilet the inexorable telephone called me; telegrams, too, were coming from all parts of the country. My heart swelled. Whether I proved to be a playwright or not, I had friends--many of them new ones, made during the progress of this dramatic adventure. They would not be too dearly bought, it seemed to me then, even by failure.

Dinner began as a silent meal. No one cared to talk. I recalled with a sardonic smile the invitation of a society friend who had bought three boxes for my first night and was giving a large dinner to precede the play. She had expected me to grace that function and to sit in one of her boxes; and she would never understand, I knew, why I refused to do so. G.o.dfrey Morris was coming at half after seven, with much pomp and his new limousine, to take us to the theater. His mother and sister were giving a box-party, but G.o.dfrey was to sit with us in the body of the house. I had frankly refused to have even him join us at dinner. Four pairs of eyes fixed on me with loving sympathy during that repast were, I realized, all I could endure. Even G.o.dfrey's understanding gaze would be the one thing too much--because it was so understanding.

At the table the first few remarks of the family dropped and lay like visible, neglected things before us. Then Grace and Jack entered upon a discussion which they succeeded in making animated, and in which it was not necessary that I should take part. It gave me an opportunity to swallow naturally, to try to control the queer fluttering of my heart and the sense of faintness, almost of nausea, that threatened to overcome me. When I went to my room to put on my evening coat I looked at myself in the long mirror that paneled the door. To my relief, I looked quite natural--pale, beyond question, but I never had much color. Of the iciness and rigidity of my hands and feet, of the panic that shook the very soul of me, no one but myself need know.

I greeted G.o.dfrey with both hands outstretched and a real smile. I had seen him only once before since his return three days ago from Palm Beach, where he had gone for his convalescence after his attack of pneumonia. He had come back for my first night--he had made that very clear--and for a blessed instant my panic vanished in the comfort of his presence, of the sure grasp of his firm hands, the look in his gray eyes. In the next instant it returned with c.u.mulative force. I could bear failure alone if I had to. Others, many others, had borne it before me, and there was always the future in which one could try again. I could bear it before my family, for they would never believe that the fault of failure was mine; or before the eyes of all my friends, for the theater would be full of them. But to bear it in the presence of G.o.dfrey, to have him see me fail--no, that was unthinkable. I had reached the point where I must set my teeth, take my nerves and my imagination in hand, and control them as I had once controlled a team of frantic horses plunging toward a river-bank.

"A good deal like being executed in the public square, isn't it?"

asked G.o.dfrey, gently. We were on our way up-town, and now over the whole party a sudden silence fell. The illuminated sign of the big Broadway theater was before us: the name of my play and that of our "star" stared at us in letters of fire that took strange shapes before my eyes. My own name modestly adorned the tablet on each side of the entrance and the bill-boards in the lobby. The latter, when we entered it, was banked with flowers. We were early, but the theater was filling rapidly, and the usual throng of "first-nighters," equally ready for an execution or a triumph, chatted on the sidewalk and thronged the entrance. The house manager, his coat adorned with a white carnation, greeted me as we pa.s.sed in.

"Good luck, Miss Iverson," he said, cordially. "Lots of telegrams here for you. Wait, I'll get them. Here, Fred, let's have Miss Iverson's telegrams."

He checked the line at the box-office, thrust a hand through the little window, and drew it out with a thick package of the yellow envelopes. G.o.dfrey held out his hand.

"I'll take care of them, if you wish," he said, and as I nodded he dropped them into a pocket of his coat.

In silence we filed down the aisle to our seats. The boxes were already filled; the body of the house filled as we watched it. On every side were faces I knew and loved--Mrs. Morris and Grace with Colonel and Mrs. Cartwell and Mr. and Mrs. Nestor Hurd; the Morgans, with Kittie James and Maudie Joyce, who had come from Chicago for this big night in my life; my friend of the rejected dinner and her brilliantly jeweled guests; a deputation from the _Searchlight_ and my magazine offices, which, it seemed to me, filled half the house.