"You'll have to take a company out for yourself," was Jerry's solution. "I'll write you a play. I've got a ripping idea—a man, with a gift, and two women, good women both of them—that's where I score against the eternal triangle—each of them trying to save him from the other and breaking him between them." Jerry's plays were never anything more than dramatizations of his immediate experience. "You and Sarah Croyden, you set each other off; I'll write it for both of you." He walked up and down in my little room with his hands in his pockets and his shining black hair rising like quills.
"Jerry, how long will it take you to write that play? And how much will it cost to produce it?"
"Ten thousand dollars," he answered to the last question. "About eighteen months if I go right at it."
"And I've money enough to last me to the end of February. No," to his swift generous gesture. "You have to live eighteen months on yours—and another child coming." I made up my mind that I should have to speak to Pauline and Henry Mills.
Greater than any mystery of creative art to me, is the mystery by which the recipients of its benefits manage to keep ignorant of its essential processes. I have never been able to figure to myself how Pauline and Henry escaped knowing that the creative mood, the keen hunger of which is more importunate than any need of food or raiment, was to be had for very little more than they spent fattening their souls on its choice products. For it is always to be bought; it is the distinction of genius as against talent, always to know in what far, unlikely market the precious commodity is to be bought. How was it that Henry escaped knowing that the appealing femininity which plays so large a part in the success of an actress with an audience of Millses, is largely the result of having been the object of that solicitious protection which it is supposed to provoke? With what, since it was agreed between Pauline and me that I was not to pay down on that counter what Cecelia and Jerry parted with cheerfully, was I ultimately to pay for it? Now that I had on all sides of me the witness of desperation, I began to be irritated at the way in which, in view of our long friendship, they accepted it for me.
As the holiday season approached, without any change in my circumstances other than a steady diminution of my bank account, I came to the conclusion that the only possible move was toward New York and that I should have to ask Henry to advance me the money for it. In view of what came to me afterward it was a reasonable proposition, but I reckoned without that extraordinary blankness to the processes of art which is common to those most entertained by it.
It was a day or two after Christmas, from which I had been excused by my recent bereavement, that I went out to dinner there with the determination to bring something to pass commensurate with their usual attitude of high admiration for and confidence in my gift. We had gone into the library after dinner, at least it was a room that went by that name, though I don't know for what reason except that Henry smoked there and the furniture was upholstered in leather, as in Evanston it was indispensable that all libraries should be.
Here and there were touches that suggested that if Henry moved his income up a notch or two, Pauline's taste might not be able to keep pace with it. Henry warmed his back at the gas log and wished to know how things went with me.
"As well as I could expect them here. I've made up my mind to try for New York as soon as I can manage it."
"What's the matter with Chicago?" Henry's manner implied that whatever you believed about it, you'd have to show him.