WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN

Of course it is understood that every graduating class rightfully asserts, and is backed up in its belief by doting and nobly partisan relatives and blindly devoted, hyperbolic friends, that its particular, unique and proper senior dramatics is the most glorious and unforgettable performance in all the histrionic annals of the college, a thing to make Will Shakespeare himself rise and applaud from his high and far off hills of Paradise.

Certainly Tony’s class knew, past any qualms of doubt, and made no bones of proclaiming its conviction that there never had been such a wonderful “As You Like It” and that never, so long as the stars kept their seats in the heavens and senior classes produced Shakespeare two practically synonymous conditions would there ever be such another Rosalind as Tony Holiday, so fresh, so spontaneous, so happy in her acting, so bewitchingly winsome to behold, so boyish, yet so exquisitely feminine in her doublet and hose, so daring, so dainty, so full of wit and grace and sparkle, so tender, so merry, so natural, so all-in-all and utterly as Will himself would have liked his “right Rosalind” to be.

So the class maintained and so they chanted soon and late, in many keys, “with a hey and a ho and a hey nonino.” And who so bold or malicious, or age cankered as to dispute the dictum? Is it not youth’s privilege to fling enthusiasm and superlatives to the wind and to deal in glorious arrogance?

It must be admitted, however, in due justice, that the class that played “As You Like It” that year had some grounds on which to base its pretensions and vain-glory. For had not a great stage manager been present and applauded until his palms were purple and perspiration beaded his beak of a nose? Had he not, as the last curtain, descended, blown his nose, mopped his brow, exclaimed “God bless my soul!” three times in succession and demanded to be shown without delay into the presence of Rosalind?

As we know already, the great stage manager had not come over-willingly or over-hopefully to Northampton to see Tony Holiday play Rosalind. Indeed, when it had been first suggested that he do so, he had objected violently and remarked with conviction that he would “be da er blessed if he would.” But he had come and he had been blessed involuntarily.

For he had seen something he had not expected to see a real play, with real magic to it, such magic as all his cunning stage artifice, all the studied artistry of his fearfully and wonderfully salaried stellar attachments somehow missed achieving. He tried afterwards to explain to Carol Clay, his favorite star, just what the quality of the magic was, but somehow he could not get it into words. It wasn’t exactly wordable perhaps. It was something that rendered negligible the occasionally creaking mechanism and crudeness of stage business and rendition; something compounded of dew and sun and wind, such as could only be found in a veritable Forest of Arden; something elusive, exquisite, iridescent; something he had supposed had vanished from the world about the time they put Pan out of business and stopped up the Pipes of Arcady. It was enchanting, elemental, genuine Elizabethan, had the spirit of Master Skylark himself in it. Maybe it was the spirit of youth itself, immortal youth, playing immortal youth’s supreme play? Who knows or can lay finger upon the secret of the magic? The great stage manager did not and could not. He only knew that, in spite of himself, he had drunk deep for a moment of true elixir.

But as for Rosalind herself that was another matter. Max Hempel was entirely capable of analyzing his impressions there and correlating them with the cold hard business on which he had come. Even if the play had proved a greater bore than he had anticipated, the trip from Broadway to the Academy of Music would still have been materially worth while. Antoinette Holiday was a genuine find, authentic star stuff. They hadn’t spoiled her, plastered her over with meaningless mannerisms. She was virgin material untrained, with worlds to learn, of course; but with a spark of the true fire in her her mother’s own daughter, which was the most promising thing anybody could say of her.

No wonder Max Hempel had peremptorily demanded to be shown behind the scenes without an instant’s delay. He was almost in a panic lest some other manager should likewise have gotten wind of this Rosalind and be lurking in the wings even now to pounce upon his own legitimate prey. He couldn’t quite forget either the tall young man of the afternoon’s encounter, his seatmate up from Springfield. He wasn’t exactly afraid, however, having seen the girl and watched her live Rosalind. The child had wings and would want to fly far and free with them, unless he was mightily mistaken in his reading of her.

Tony was still resplendent in her wedding white, and with her arms full of roses, when she obeyed the summons to the stage door on being told that the great manager wished to see her. She came toward him, flushed, excited, adorably pretty. She laid down her roses and held out her hand, shy, but perfectly self-possessed.

“‘Well, this is the Forest of Arden,’” she quoted. “It must be or else I am dreaming. As long as I can remember I have wanted to meet you, and here you are, right on the edge of the forest.”

He bowed low over her hand and raised it gallantly to his lips.

“I rather think I am still in Arden myself,” he said. “My dear, you have given me a treat such as I never expected to enjoy again in this world. You made me forget I knew anything about plays or was seeing one. You carried me off with you to Arden.”

“Did you really like the play?” begged Tony, shining-eyed at the praise of the great man.

“I liked it amazingly and I liked your playing even more amazingly. Is it true that you are going on the stage?” He had dropped Arden now, gotten down to what he would have called brass tacks. The difference was in his voice. Tony sensed it vaguely and was suddenly a little frightened.

“Why, I I don’t know,” she faltered. “I hope so. Sometime.”

“Sometime is never,” he snapped. “That won’t do.”

The Arden magic was quite gone by this time. He was scowling a little and thrust out his upper lip in a way Tony did not care for at all. It occurred to her inconsequentially that he looked a good deal like the wolf, in the story, who threatened to “huff and puff” until he blew in the house of the little pigs. She didn’t want her house blown in. She wished Uncle Phil would come. She stooped to gather up her roses as if they might serve as a barricade between her and the wolf. But suddenly she forgot her misgivings again, for Max Hempel was saying incredible things, things which set her imagination agog and her pulses leaping. He was offering her a small rôle, a maid’s part, in one of his road companies.

“Me!” she gasped from behind her roses.

“You.”

“When?”

“To-morrow the day after next week at the latest. Chances like that don’t go begging long, young lady. Will you take it?”

“Oh, I wish I could!” sighed Tony. “But I am afraid I can’t. Oh, there is Uncle Phil!” she interrupted herself to exclaim with perceptible relief.

In a moment Doctor Holiday was with them, his arm around Tony while he acknowledged the introduction to the stage manager, who eyed him somewhat uncordially. The two men took each the other’s measure. Possibly a spark of antagonism flashed between them for an instant. Each wanted the lovely little Rosalind on his own side of the fence, and each suspected the other of desiring to lure her to the other side if he could. For the moment however, the advantage was all with the doctor, with his protecting arm around Tony.

“Holiday!” muttered Hempel. “There was a Holiday once who married one of the finest actresses of the American stage carried her off to nurse his babies. I never forgave that man. He was a brute.”

Tony stiffened. Her eyes flashed. She drew away from her uncle and confronted the stage manager angrily.

“He wasn’t a brute, if you mean my father!” she burst out. “My mother was Laura LaRue.”

“I know it,” grinned the manager, thoroughly delighted to have struck fire. The girl was better even than he had thought. She was magnificent, angry. “That’s why I’m here,” he added. “I just offered this young person a part in a practically all-star cast, touring the West. Do you mind?” he challenged Doctor Holiday.

“I should mind her accepting,” said the other man tranquilly. “As it is, I am duly appreciative of the offer. Thank you.”

“What if I told you she had accepted?” the wolf snapped.

Tony saw the swift shadow cloud her uncle’s face and hated the manager for hurting him like that.

“I didn’t,” she protested indignantly. “You know I wouldn’t promise anything without talking to you, Uncle Phil. I told him I couldn’t go.”

“But you wanted to,” persisted the wolf, bound to get his fangs in somewhere.

Tony smiled a little wistfully.

“I wanted to most awfully,” she confessed, patting her uncle’s arm to take the sting out of her admission. “Will you ask me again some day?” she appealed to the manager.

He snorted at that.

“You’ll come asking me, young lady, and before long, too. Laura LaRue’s daughter isn’t going to settle down to being either a butterfly or a blue-stocking. You are going on the stage and you know it. No use, Holiday. You won’t be able to hold her back. It’s in the blood. You may be able to dam the tide for a time, but not forever.”

“I don’t intend to dam it,” said the doctor gravely. “If, when the time comes, Tony wishes to go on the stage, I shall not try to prevent her. In fact I shall help her in every way in my power.”

“Uncle Phil!” Tony’s voice had a tiny catch in it. She knew her grandmother would be bitterly opposed to her going on the stage, and had imagined she would have to win even her uncle over by slow degrees to the gratifying of this desire of her heart. It had hurt her even to think of hurting him or going against him in any way he who was, “father and mother and a’” to her. Dear Uncle Phil! How he always understood and took the big, broad viewpoint!

The manager grunted approval at that. His belligerency waned.

“Congratulate you, sir. That’s spoken like a man of sense. Evidently you are able to see over the wall farther than most of the witch-ridden New Englanders I’ve met. I should like the chance to launch this Rosalind of yours. But don’t make it too far off. Youth is the biggest drawing card in the world and the most transient. You have to get in the game early to get away with it. I’ll start her whenever you say next week next month next year. Guarantee to have her ready to understudy a star in three months and perhaps a star herself in six. She might jump into the heavens overnight. Stranger things have happened. What do you say? May I have an option on the young lady?”

“That is rather too big a question to settle off hand at midnight. Tony is barely twenty-two and she has home obligations which will have to be considered. Her grandmother is old and frail and a New Englander of the old school.”

“Too bad,” commiserated the manager. “But never mind all that. All I ask is that you won’t let her sign up with anybody else without giving me a chance first.”

“I think we may safely promise that and thank you. Tony and I both appreciate that you are doing her a good deal of honor for one small school girl, eh Tony?” The doctor smiled down at his flushed, starry-eyed niece. He understood precisely what a big moment it was for her.

“Oh, I should think so!” sighed Tony. “You are awfully kind, Mr. Hempel. It is like a wonderful dream almost too good to be true.”

Both men smiled at that. For youth no dream is quite too extravagant or incredible to be potentially true. No grim specters of failure and disillusionment and frustration dog its bright path. All possibilities are its divine inheritance.

“Mr. Hempel, did you know my mother?” Tony asked suddenly, with a shadow of wistfulness in her dark eyes. There were so few people whom she met that had known her mother. It was as if Laura LaRue had moved in a different orbit from that of her daughter. It always hurt Tony to feel that. But here was one who was of her mother’s own world. No wonder her eyes were beseeching as they sought the great manager’s.

He bowed gravely.

“I knew her very well. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and one of the greatest actresses. Your father was a lucky man, my dear. Few women would have given up for any man what she gave up for him.”

“Oh, but she loved him,” explained Laura LaRue’s daughter simply.

Again Hempel nodded.

“She did,” he admitted grimly. After all these years there was no use admitting that that had been the deepest rub of all, that Laura had loved Ned Holiday and had never, for even the span of a moment, thought of caring for himself. “I repeat, your father was a very lucky man a damnably lucky one.”

And with that they shook hands and parted.

It was many months before Tony was to see Max Hempel again and many waters were to run under the bridge before the meeting came to pass.

Outside in the car, Ted, Dick and the twins waited the arrival of the heroine of the evening. The three latter greeted her with a burst of prideful congratulation; the former, being merely a brother, was distinctly cross at having been kept waiting so long and did not hesitate to express his sentiments fully out loud. But Doctor Holiday cut short his nephew’s somewhat ungracious speech by a quiet reminder that the car was here primarily for Tony’s use, and the boy subsided, having no more to say until, having deposited the occupants of the car at their various destinations, he announced to his uncle with elaborate carelessness that he would take the car around to the garage.

But he did not turn in at the side street where the garage was. Instead he shot out Elm Street, “hitting her up” at forty. There had been a reason for his impatience. Ted Holiday had important private business to transact ere cock crow.

Tony lay awake a long time that night, dreaming dreams that carried her far and far into the future, until Rosalind’s happy triumph of the evening almost faded away in the glory of the yet-to-be. It was characteristic of the girl’s stage of development that in all her dreams, no lovers, much less a possible husband, ever once entered. Tony Holiday was in love with life and life alone that wonderful June night. As Hempel had shrewdly perceived she was conscious of having wings and desirous of flying far and free with them ere she came to pause.

She did remember, in passing however, how she had caught Dick’s eyes once as he sat in the box near the stage, and how his rapt gaze had thrilled her to intenser playing of her part. And she remembered how dear he was afterward in the car when he held her roses and told her softly what a wonderful, wonderful Rosalind she was. But, on the whole, Dick, like most of the rest of the people with whom she had held converse since the curtain went down upon Arden, seemed unimportant and indistinct, like courtiers and foresters, not specifically named among the dramatis personae, just put in to fill out and make a more effective stage setting.

Dick, too, in his room on Greene Street, was wakeful. He sat by the window far into the night. His heart was heavy within him. The gulf between him and Tony had suddenly widened immeasureably. She was a real actress. He hadn’t needed a great manager’s verdict to teach him that. He had seen it with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears, felt it with his own heart. He had worshiped and adored and been made unutterably sad and lonely by her dazzling success, glad as he was that it had come to her. Tony would go on in her shining path. He would always lag behind in the shadows. They would never come together as long as they both lived. She had started too far ahead. He could never overtake her.

If only there were some way of finding out who he was, get some clue as to his parentage. He only knew that the man they called Jim, who had kicked and beaten and sworn at him with foul oaths until he could bear it no longer, was no kin of his, though the other had claimed the authority to abuse him as he abused his horses and dogs when drink and ugliness were upon him. If only he could find Jim again after all these years, perhaps he could manage to get the truth out of him, find out what the man knew of himself, and how he had come to be in a circus troupe. Yet after all, perhaps it was better not to know. The facts might separate him from Tony even more than he was separated by his ignorance of them. As it was, he started even, with neither honor nor shame bequeathed him from the past. What he was, he was in himself. And if by any miracle of fortune Tony ever did come to care for him it would be just himself, plain Dick, that she would love. He knew that.

The thought was vaguely comforting and he, too, fell adreaming. Most of us foiled humans learn to play the game of make-believe and to find such consolation as we may therein. Often and often in his lonely hours Dick Carson had summoned Tony Holiday to his side, a Tony as bright and beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe he was no longer a nameless, impecunious cub reporter, but a man who had arrived somewhere, made himself worthy, so far as any mere man could, of the supreme gift of Tony’s caring.

To-night, too, Dick played the game determinedly, but somehow he found its consolation rather meager, as cold and remote as the sparkle of the June stars, millions of miles away up there in the velvet sky, after having sat by the side of the living, breathing Tony and, looking into her happy eyes, known how little, how very little, he was in her thoughts. She liked him to be near her, he knew, just as she liked her roses to be fragrant, but neither the roses nor himself was a vital necessity to her. She could do very well without either. That was the pity of it.

At last he got up and went to bed. Falling into troubled sleep he dreamed that he and Tony were wandering, hand in hand, in the Forest of Arden. From afar off came the sound of music, airy voices chanting:

“When birds do sing, hey ding a ding
Sweet lovers love the spring.”

And then somebody laughed mockingly, like Jacques, and somebody else, clad in motley like Touchstone, but who seemed to speak in Dick’s own voice, murmured, “Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I.”

And even with these words the forest vanished and Tony with it and the dreamer was left alone on a steep and dusty road, lost and aching for the missing touch of her hand.

But later he woke to the song of a thousand birds greeting the new day with full-throated joy. And his heart, too, began to sing. For it was indeed a new day a day in which he should see Tony. He was irrationally content. Of such is the kingdom of lad’s love!