His theatre, which had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, was now cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony, wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-hearted hand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a man wore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative. Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious, a brazen clatter raised to reinforce the courage of the ushers, who flitted about like uneasy spirits. There were no carriages in waiting, and the audience returned to the street in silence like funeral guests from a church.
Hugh remained bravely at his post in front. Each night after a careful toilet he took his stand in the lobby watching with calculating eye and impassive face the stream of people rushing by his door. "If we could only catch one in a hundred?" he said to Westervelt. "I never expected to see Helen Merival left like this. I didn't think it possible. I thought she could make any piece go. To play to fifty dollars was out of my reckoning. It is slaughter."
Once his disgust topped all restraint, and he burst forth to Helen: "Look at this man Douglass. He bamboozles us into producing his play, then runs off and leaves us to sink or swim. He won't even change the lines—says he's working on a new one that will make us all 'barrels of money.' That's the way of these dramatists—always full of some new pipe-dream. Meanwhile we're going into the hole every night. I can't stand it. We were making all kinds of money with The Baroness. Come, let's go back to it!" His voice filled with love, for she was his ideal. "Sis, I hate to see you doing this. It cuts me to the heart. Why, some of these newspaper shads actually pretend to pity you—you, the greatest romantic actress in America! This man Douglass has got you hypnotized. Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you. Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time, Nellie—now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'll fire him and his misbegotten plays to-night."
To this Helen made simple reply. "No, Hugh; I intend to stand to my promise. We will keep Lillian on till the new play is ready. It would be unfair to Mr. Douglass—"
"But he has lost all interest in it himself. He never shows up in front, never makes a suggestion."
"He is saving all his energy for the new play."
Hugh's lips twisted in scorn. "The new play! Yes, he's filled with a lot of pale-blue moonshine now. He's got another 'idea.' That's the trouble with these literary chaps, they're so swelled by their own notions they can't write what the common audience wants. His new play will be a worse 'frost' than this. You'll ruin us all if you don't drop him. We stand to lose forty thousand dollars on Lillian already."
"Nevertheless, I shall give the new play a production," she replied, and Hugh turned away in speechless dismay and disgust.
The papers were filled with stinging allusions to her failure. A shrewd friend from Boston met her with commiseration in her face. "It's a good play and a fine part," she said, "but they don't want you in such work. They like you when you look wicked."
"I know that, but I'm tired of playing the wanton adventuress for such people. I want to appeal to a more thoughtful public for the rest of my stage career."