COMING back to town, Felix forced himself to ask for another raise in salary. It was less because he needed the money than because he wanted to assure himself that he really was what he was supposed to be—a person of some importance. He got his raise—one which made his pay now commensurate with his position as dramatic critic of a great newspaper.
And the same week he received word that the Artists’ Theatre had accepted his play, “The Dryad.” It was to be presented on the opening bill, along with Schnitzler and Wedekind!
The acceptance of this play, taken in conjunction with such a realistic fact as his raise in salary, seemed to mean something; he wanted to believe that it did—but he was rather afraid to believe it. Instead, he began to tell himself that in sober truth it meant nothing at all.
He went to see Gregory Storm, the director, and was urged to attend the rehearsals. “At all events,” he said to himself, “I can look on and learn something practical about the mechanics of the theatre.”
2
Rose-Ann refused to accompany him to the rehearsal. “You are getting into a terrible habit of having me on your mind whenever I’m around,” she said. “I’ve noticed it when you write; I bother you. I’d rather stay away. Besides, if I went, I should want to be in it myself!”
He went alone, reflecting that what Rose-Ann had said was true. If she were in the room he was more selfconscious, 308by reason of being so conscious of her. He must get over it....
He found the players assembled on their tiny stage, hardly larger than the one in the children’s theatre at Community House. The house would seat ninety-nine people only; one more seat, and the Artists’ Theatre would have come within the theatre ordinance and been required to pay a theatre-tax. Officially then, as a theatre, it did not exist. The actors, Felix knew, received no pay; they were lawyers and doctors, painters and poets, business men’s wives and ambitious young women just out of school. The authors of the plays would receive no royalty; the income from seat-sales would not cover the rent of the theatre itself, and the deficit would have to be made up by enthusiasts.... In a manner of speaking, it wasn’t a theatre at all—it was a dream.
As soon as he entered the theatre Felix felt its irresistible dream quality. Upon the stage, walking up and down, was the slight, striking, dramatic figure of Gregory Storm—the dreamer whose dream all this was, the man who still, in the years of maturity, was trying to achieve a childish, absurd and delightful impossibility. It was he who had named this enterprise “The Artists’ Theatre”; no one else in Chicago would have been so brave, or so foolish....
He turned, saw Felix, nodded at him, and clapped his hands. “Cast of ‘The Dryad’!” he cried.
Three men and a girl stood up. The others left the stage. Felix clambered up over the place where the footlights would have been if Gregory Storm had not passionately disbelieved in footlights.
Gregory Storm shook Felix’s hand hastily, and turned to the others. “This is the author, Mr. Fay. Miss Macklin, Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Whipple, Mr. Deedy.” Felix bowed. “We’ll have the scenery.” He clapped his hands again. “Set for ‘The Dryad’!”
A man whom Felix recognized as an enterprising young architect appeared at the back, struggling with a tall painted canvas frame.... As the set was put together, Felix felt 309a genuine thrill of pleasure; it was so completely, and so startlingly, in the spirit of his play. He had feared that he would be given a realistic woodland setting—and that would have shown up the utter artifice of his play. But this was a wood as some artist of the Yellow Book in his gayest mood might have pictured it—a wood that was, after all, a fashionable drawing-room or a perfumed boudoir, set for the graceful and heartless loves of shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in silks and satins.... The young architect grinned at him. “Like it?” he whispered. “I did it myself. Pretty good, I think!”
“We had a good deal of difficulty with that little song in your play,” said Gregory Storm. “The one the fat man sings.” He smiled appreciatively. “We set it to two or three old ballad tunes before we got the right one. Would you mind, Mr. Deedy, trying it for us?”
Mr. Deedy, who was to take the part of the Banker in the play, stepped forward and sang in a mournful voice:
“Do you remember when first we met,
How, in that April weather,
Chasing a butterfly, we ran,
Over the hills together!”
“Good!” said Gregory Storm. “Now the last stanza.”
“But shall we then withhold our hands
And stay our foolish feet
When next illusion flutters by?
I wonder, O my sweet!”
The effect was quite as droll as Felix had desired.
“Mr. Whipple,” said Gregory Storm, “is the Advertising Man. Mr. Deedy is the Guide. And Miss Macklin, of course, is the Dryad. Are you ready?” He clapped his hands again.
Miss Macklin stepped back into the wings; the three men lay down, in attitudes of sleep, beside what was supposed to be a camp-fire in a forest, and Felix’s play had begun.
Felix was looking at the girl in the wings. He had never taken the performance of his play very seriously; he had 310never supposed that any group of people would ever be able to enter into its spirit. He had misjudged Gregory Storm. No fantasy was too quaint and absurd for him to understand, it seemed: and moreover, he had conveyed to these men on the stage his own zest in the fantasy—they really succeeded in transporting one into this realm of pseudo-reality in which anything might happen.... And that girl: she was, of all persons in the world, the one to play that part. She had an elvish look, the very air and gesture of one of those soulless, ever-living creatures of the wood, who have in one form or another haunted and tormented the imagination of masculine mankind. There was something about the shape of her mouth, a delicate sharpness of contour, which made it look inhuman, as though not made for mortal kisses; and the way her forehead went up and back on each side in strange receding planes to the roots of her tangled black hair—there was foreignness, and remoteness, and mystery, in that face.... He took his eyes from her.
These men were doing very well indeed. But what would an audience think? That was a different matter.
He waited for the Dryad’s entrance. He wanted to hear her speak—she had not as yet uttered a single word.... Yes, her voice was all that it should be—low, deep, cool, clear, and as if from far away, beautiful and emotionless, the voice of an elf.... And really, it was amusing, this absurd discussion of morals that ensued, when the Dryad offered to accompany these men to Chicago—the discussion of what their wives would think, and her na?ve questions, and their laboured explanations of marriage, and morality, and clothes, all the civilized things which a poor Dryad would find it so hard to understand and a Banker and an Advertising Man so difficult to explain. And then the Guide, the very Shavian Guide with a philosophy of his own—not a bad touch!
When Felix left the Artists’ Theatre that night, he had a feeling that he had been away from the real world for a long time—like Rip Van Winkle coming back from a brief 311stay in the Troll’s Garden to find his friends all dead or grown old.... It was too deep an allurement. He must not go to any more rehearsals. They could get along well enough without him.
“How did the rehearsal go?” Rose-Ann waked up to ask.
“Beautifully,” he said. “But the theatre is too much for me. I feel as though if I went behind the scenes again I would never come back.”
“Would that be so terrible?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“But—I might go, too.... I’d like to play a part like your Dryad—if I could.”
He remembered her suddenly as he had seen her among the children at the Community House Theatre. Yes, she could play such a part. But ... he didn’t want her to—for some reason which he could not understand. She must stay here in the world of reality—and keep him here.
“They said something about a ball—to make some money for the theatre,” he remarked. “I suppose we’ll have to go?”
“I’d like to go,” she said, and commenced planning their costumes with enthusiasm.