Part 71

"It's always something," said Mrs. Belloc. "One thing's about as bad as another, and anything can be overcome."

"No, not in my case," said Mildred. "The peculiar quality of my voice--what makes it unusual--is due to the delicateness of my throat."

"Maybe so," said Mrs. Belloc.

"Of course, I can always sing--after a fashion," continued Mildred. "But to be really valuable on the stage you've got to be able always to sing at your best. So I'm afraid I'm in the class of those who'll suit, one about as well as another."

"You've got to get out of that class," said Mrs. Belloc. "The men in that class, and the women, have to do any dirty work the boss sees fit to give 'em--and not much pay, either. Let me tell you one thing, Miss Stevens. If you can't get among the few at the top in the singing game, you must look round for some game where you can hope to be among the few. No matter WHAT it is. By using your brains and working hard, there's something you can do better than pretty nearly anybody else can or will do it. You find that."

The words sank in, sank deep. Mildred, sense of her surroundings lost, was gazing straight ahead with an expression that gave Mrs. Belloc hope and even a certain amount of confidence. There was a distinct advance; for, after she reflected upon all that Mildred had told her, little of her former opinion of Mildred's chances for success had remained but a hope detained not without difficulty. Mrs. Belloc knew the human race unusually well for a woman--unusually well for a human being of whatever sex or experience. She had discovered how rare is the temperament, the combination of intelligence and tenacity, that makes for success. She had learned that most people, judged by any standard, were almost total failures, that most of the more or less successful were so merely because the world had an enormous amount of important work to be done, even though half-way, and had no one but those half-competents to do it. As incompetence in a man would be tolerated where it would not be in a woman, obviously a woman, to get on, must have the real temperament of success.

She now knew enough about Mildred to be able to "place" her in the "lady" class--those brought up not only knowing how to do nothing with a money value (except lawful or unlawful man-trapping), but also trained to a sensitiveness and refinement and false shame about work that made it exceedingly difficult if not impossible for them to learn usefulness. She knew all Mildred's handicaps, both those the girl was conscious of and those far heavier ones which she fatuously regarded as advantages. How was Mildred ever to learn to dismiss and disregard herself as the pretty woman of good social position, an object of admiration and consideration? Mildred, in the bottom of her heart, was regarding herself as already successful--successful at the highest a woman can achieve or ought to aspire to achieve--was regarding her career, however she might talk or might fancy she believed, as a mere livelihood, a side issue. She would be perhaps more than a little ashamed of her stage connections, should she make any, until she should be at the very top--and how get to the top when one is working under the handicap of shame? Above all, how was this indulgently and shelteredly reared lady to become a working woman, living a routine life, toiling away day in and day out, with no let up, permitting no one and nothing to break her routine? "Really," thought Agnes Belloc, "she ought to have married that Baird man--or stayed on with the nasty general. I wonder why she didn't! That's the only thing that gives me hope. There must be something in her--something that don't appear--something she doesn't know about, herself. What is it? Maybe it was only vanity and vacillation. Again, I don't know."

The difficulty Mrs. Belloc labored under in her attempt to explore and map Mildred Gower was a difficulty we all labor under in those same enterprises. We cannot convince ourselves--in spite of experience after experience--that a human character is never consistent and homogeneous, is always conglomerate, that there are no two traits, however naturally exclusive, which cannot coexist in the same personality, that circumstance is the dominating factor in human action and brings forward as dominant characteristics now one trait or set of traits, consistent or inconsistent, and now another. The Alexander who was Aristotle's model pupil was the same Alexander as the drunken debaucher. Indeed, may it not be that the characters which play the large parts in the comedy of life are naturally those that offer to the shifting winds of circumstances the greatest variety of strongly developed and contradictory qualities? For example, if it was Mildred's latent courage rescued her from Siddall, was it not her strong tendency to vacillation that saved her from a loveless and mercenary marriage to Stanley Baird? Perhaps the deep underlying truth is that all unusual people have in common the character that centers a powerful aversion to stagnation; thus, now by their strong qualities, now by their weaknesses, they are swept inevitably on and on and ever on. Good to-day, bad to-morrow, good again the day after, weak in this instance, strong in that, now brave and now cowardly, soft at one time, hard at another, generous and the reverse by turns, they are consistent only in that they are never at rest, but incessantly and inevitably go.

Mildred reluctantly rose, moved toward the door with lingering step. "I guess I'd better make a start," said she.

"That's the talk," said Mrs. Belloc heartily. But the affectionate glance she sent after the girl was dubious--even pitying.

TWO minutes' walk through to Broadway, and she was at her destination. There, on the other side of the way, stood the Gayety Theater, with the offices of Mr. Clarence Crossley overlooking the intersection of the two streets. Crossley was intrenched in the remotest of a series of rooms, each tenanted by under-staffers of diminishing importance as you drew way from the great man. It was next to impossible to get at him--a cause of much sneering and dissatisfaction in theatrical circles. Crossley, they said, was exclusive, had the swollen head, had forgotten that only a few years before he had been a cheap little ticket-seller grateful for a bow from any actor who had ever had his name up. Crossley insisted that he was not a victim of folie de grandeur, that, on the contrary, he had become less vain as he had risen, where he could see how trivial a thing rising was and how accidental. Said he:

"Why do I shut myself in? Because I'm what I am--a good thing, easy fruit. You say that men a hundred times bigger than I'll ever be don't shut themselves up. You say that Mountain, the biggest financier in the country, sits right out where anybody can go up to him. Yes, but who'd dare go up to him? It's generally known that he's a cannibal, that he kills his own food and eats it warm and raw. So he can afford to sit in the open. If I did that, all my time and all my money would go to the cheap-skates with hard-luck tales. I don't hide because I'm haughty, but because I'm weak and soft."

In appearance Mr. Crossley did not suggest his name. He was a tallish, powerful-looking person with a smooth, handsome, audacious face, with fine, laughing, but somehow untrustworthy eyes--at least untrustworthy for women, though women had never profited by the warning. He dressed in excellent taste, almost conspicuously, and the gay and expensive details of his toilet suggested a man given over to liveliness. As a matter of fact, this liveliness was potential rather than actual. Mr. Crossley was always intending to resume the giddy ways of the years before he became a great man, but was always so far behind in the important things to be done and done at once that he was forced to put off. However, his neckties and his shirts and his flirtations, untrustworthy eyes kept him a reputation for being one of the worst cases in Broadway. In vain did his achievements show that he could not possibly have time or strength for anything but work. He looked like a rounder; he was in a business that gave endless dazzling opportunities for the lively life; a rounder he was, therefore.

He was about forty. At first glance, so vivid and energetic was he, he looked like thirty-five, but at second glance one saw the lines, the underlying melancholy signs of strain, the heavy price he had paid for phenomenal success won by a series of the sort of risks that make the hair fall as autumn leaves on a windy day and make such hairs as stick turn rapidly gray. Thus, there were many who thought Crossley was through vanity shy of the truth by five or six years when he said forty.

In ordinary circumstances Mildred would never have got at Crossley. This was the first business call of her life where she had come as an unknown and unsupported suitor. Her reception would have been such at the hands of Crossley's insolent and ill-mannered underlings that she would have fled in shame and confusion. It is even well within the possibilities that she would have given up all idea of a career, would have sent for Baird, and so on. And not one of those who, timid and inexperienced, have suffered rude rebuff at their first advance, would have condemned her. But it so chanced--whether by good fortune or by ill the event was to tell--that she did not have to face a single underling. The hall door was open. She entered. It happened that while she was coming up in the elevator a quarrel between a motorman and a driver had heated into a fight, into a small riot. All the underlings had rushed out on a balcony that commanded a superb view of the battle. The connecting doors were open; Mildred advanced from room to room, seeking someone who would take her card to Mr. Crossley. When she at last faced a closed door she knocked.

"Come!" cried a pleasant voice.

And in she went, to face Crossley himself--Crossley, the "weak and soft," caught behind his last entrenchment with no chance to escape. Had Mildred looked the usual sort who come looking for jobs in musical comedy, Mr. Crossley would not have risen--not because he was snobbish, but because, being a sensitive, high-strung person, he instinctively adopted the manner that would put the person before him at ease. He glanced at Mildred, rose, and thrust back forthwith the slangy, offhand personality that was perhaps the most natural--or was it merely the most used?--of his many personalities. It was Crossley the man of the world, the man of the artistic world, who delighted Mildred with a courteous bow and offer of a chair, as he said:

"You wished to see me?"

"If you are Mr. Crossley," said Mildred.

"I should be tempted to say I was, if I wasn't," said he, and his manner made it a mere pleasantry to put her at ease.

"There was no one in the outside room, so I walked on and on until your door stopped me."

"You'll never know how lucky you were," said he. "They tell me those fellows out there have shocking manners."

"Have you time to see me now? I've come to apply for a position in musical comedy."

"You have not been on the stage, Miss--"

"Gower. Mildred Gower. I've decided to use my own name."

"I know you have not been on the stage."

"Except as an amateur--and not even that for several years. But I've been working at my voice."

Crossley was studying her, as she stood talking--she had refused the chair. He was more than favorably impressed. But the deciding element was not Mildred's excellent figure or her charm of manner or her sweet and lovely face. It was superstition. Just at that time Crossley had been abruptly deserted by Estelle Howard; instead of going on with the rehearsals of "The Full Moon," in which she was to be starred, she had rushed away to Europe with a violinist with whom she had fallen in love at the first rehearsal. Crossley was looking about for someone to take her place. He had been entrenched in those offices for nearly five years; in all that time not a single soul of the desperate crowds that dogged him had broken through his guard. Crossley was as superstitious as was everyone else who has to do with the stage.