the business-man—one must not feel emotions that would not pay. Also, one boomed and boosted his own particular emotions, celebrating their merits in the language of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a certain play, you considered it the greatest play that had ever made its bow to Broadway; and you actually persuaded yourself to believe it—at least those who made the real successes were men who possessed that hypnotic power.
There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-agent and advertising-man. He was certain that "The Genius" was a play of genius, and its author a man of genius; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it, Mr. Rosenberg would have called it "rot". Mr. Rosenberg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses Rosen in the play—so much so that he felt the resemblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortunately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt. Thyrsis had written the play without having met either a press-agent or the head of a music-bureau; he had drawn the character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards discovers it with his telescope.
As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors—to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the
play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the eternal question of the lack of "charm" in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an unhappy frame of mind; she had begun to doubt whether the "drama of ideas" was her forte after all— and whether the ideas in this particular drama were real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion of the last friend; so the production was like a ship whose pilot has lost his bearings.
The time drew near for the opening-performance, which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New England. The nerves of all the company were stretched to the breaking point; and overwrought as he was himself, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy "leading lady"? who could hardly keep herself together, even with the drugs he saw her taking.
The "dress-rehearsal" began at six o'clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at .some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes—it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o'clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep.
Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hard-earned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heartbroken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel—cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery.
The hour of the performance came; and Thyrsis, like a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience and the play. The house was crowded; and the playwright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of the night before had been needless—the performance went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also, to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to "score". He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered what understanding they could have of his tragedy of "genius". But they seemed to be understanding; at any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd smashed the violin over von Arne's head and the curtain went down, there was quite a little uproar.
Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which was also applauded; and then came the last act, and the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time, and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box, rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the playwright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play
THE END OF THE TETHER 391
was a certain success; and then he went to bed, assuredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that fifty-cent hotel!
But alas—the next morning, there were the local papers ; and with one accord they all "roasted" the play ! Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the play itself—those extracts which the two professors had read from the criticisms of Lloyd's concert! Thyr-sis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence at the satire!
Then, going to the theatre, the first person he met was Rosenberg, who sent another chill to his heart. "First nights are always good," said Mr. Rosenberg. "It was all 'paper', you know. To-night is the real test."
And so the second performance came; and in the theatre were some two hundred people, and the occasion was the most awful "frost" that ever froze the heart of an unhappy partisan of the "drama of ideas". After which, according to schedule, the play moved to another manufacturing town; and in the theatre were some two hundred and fifty people—and a frost some ten degrees lower yet!
§ 11. So at twelve o'clock that night there was a consultation in a room at the hotel, attended by Thyrsis and Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping and Mr. Jones.
"You see," said the last named; "the play is a failure."
"Absolutely!" said Mr. Tapping.
"I knew it would be!" cried Miss Lewis.
"And you?" asked Mr. Jones of Thyrsis.
"It has not succeeded in these towns," said Thyrsis. "But then—how could it succeed, except where there
are intellectual people? You promised to take it to New York."
"It's no use!" declared Jones. "New York would laugh it dead in one night."
"It would," said Mr. Tapping, decisively.
"I knew it all along," cried Miss Lewis.
So they went on for ten minutes; and then, "What are you going to do?" asked Thyrsis, in terror. 'The play must be altered," said Jones.
"How altered?"
"It must be altered as Miss Lewis asked you at first."
Thyrsis sprang up. "What!" he cried.
"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones.
"It must," said Mr. Tapping.
"I knew it all along!" cried Miss Lewis again.
"But I won't stand for it!" exclaimed Thyrsis, wildly.
"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones, in his heaviest steam-roller tone.
"But I won't have it!"
"What'll you do?"
"I'll go to law! I'll get an injunction."
"What is there in our contract to prevent our altering the play?" demanded the man.
"What!" gasped Thyrsis. "You know what our understanding was!"
"Humph!" said the other. "Can you prove it?"
"And do you mean that you would go back on that understanding ?"
"And do you mean that you expect me to see this money wasted and the play sent to pot?"