Unhappy Endings

I HAD not been to the play a dozen times in my life, though I’d acted Mother Goose in our own real nursery theatre, and Molière at school. But the actress was such a darling — after I had watched her a few minutes, I knew I could write a play for her. It bubbled into my mind like a fountain of champagne.

It was to be a historical drama. There were no histories for reference in our London hotel, but that did n’t matter. And the scene was to be laid in Scotland. I had never been there, but that did n’t matter either. I considered that I knew all about history and Scotland.

So I began to write. In the Kensington Museum, in trains, in Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwick Castle, on the steamer, I secretly scrawled hurried sentences on scraps of paper, and hid them in my blouse. Nobody noticed my writing, or I’d have been hopelessly embarrassed.

I finished it at home in the country. Locked in my room, I wrote feverishly, day after day, perched on a chair-arm before the high secretary my grandmother left me. It was generally twilight at that desk, for the trees came so near my windows that the shutters always caught in the branches when you tried to open or close them. You had to push very hard. One narrow, tall drawer of the secretary my grandmother used to keep full of gold. I too would fill it with gold, as soon as my play succeeded.

The most recent dramatist of my acquaintance was Shakespeare. So after much thought I used him for stage directions, feeling that Æschylus and Aristophanes did not furnish trustworthy models.

When it was finished, I went down to father’s office, and laboriously picked it out on a typewriter.

The famous actress and her more famous husband came to New York. I sent them the play.

In a few days a telegram arrived. They said it was charming, and could I come to see them.

That was a thrilling day’s journey to New York, with one’s trunk full of Paris gowns and one’s heart full of hopes.

In her dressing-room the actress was even lovelier than on the stage. Her beautiful little face was a mere rim around her immense eyes. Those expressive eyes looked rather startled when they passed beyond my Rue de la Paix splendor to my braids tied up with a ribbon.

But she was extraordinarily gracious. They liked the play. The dialogue was delicious. They were considering it quite seriously. They had even chosen a tentative cast. Had I a great deal of experience of the stage?

Well, I had n’t any, except the nursery theatre. I told her about Mother Goose and Molière. I had a dim feeling that fluent falsehood might have served me here, but one needs experience in that too.

Enthralled, I sat and watched her meddle with the perfection of her face before a mirror, while her maid changed the slippers on her elastic little feet, and she went on questioning me in a caressing voice.

Born and reared in Scotland, was n’t I? she asked.

I said I had never been in Scotland.

She turned at that and declared a doubt.

‘ My husband is a Scot, and he says you must be one.’

Though elated by this, I could not leave her under a misapprehension. I firmly disclaimed Scotland.

Her engaging countenance was gradually clouding with worry.

Producing plays was a very risky business, she explained. Their last two had been failures. They could n’t afford another fiasco. This looked delightful to them, but it did end tragically, and they were distrustful of their own judgment. If only it did n’t end so sadly! But it did. I was n’t old enough to be interested in cheerful endings.

The iridescent dream was fading.

She asked me to come next day to see her husband. She offered me a box, from which that night I witnessed the latest failure.

I came and met the husband, who, he also, was shocked by the hair-ribbon. Quite obviously, a playwright should be a blasé elderly man with a farce under his arm.

‘I don’t want you to play it if you think it would be a failure,’ I assured them haughtily.

It was very discouraging, but since the dramatic world did not seem to need me, I could go home and be a womanly woman on a pedestal once more. Never again, I perceived, would my grandmother’s drawer be full of gold.

Last winter I went to a huge reception given in their honor. Years had not dimmed the actress’s enchantment.

I blocked the steady advance of the hand-shaking line a moment.

‘Once I sent you a play. You won’t remember,’ I said.

She caught my hand tight.

‘Indeed I do remember,’ she contradicted. ‘It was most charming. I wrote you afterwards, but you never answered.’ The queue behind me pressed hard. ‘It was such a clever, clever play, but so sad! Why would n’t you answer my letter?’

A senator’s wife gave me a determined shove, and broke our clasp with violence.

‘So charming! But so sad!’ the actress repeated regretfully to my retreating back.

However, had she known, nothing in the play was half so sad as her rejection of it.

‘This sounds too real to be convincing,’ objected the First Reader. (The sentiment seems strangely cynical and advanced for a First Reader.) But it is real, if not convincing. Lady ForbesRobertson, beautiful and bewitching, knows that.