Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1915 — WHO PAYS? The PRICE Of FAME [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHO PAYS? The PRICE Of FAME

■OnyrtaM. X fcy Paths Bxehanc*. Inc. All Mortar Picture Rl<hta and all Forelan Copyrtffhta Strictly Reserved.)

FIRST STORY i. Prot Cart de Retsky flung a regretful glance at the hills, hurting their ragged battlements against the twilight that marked a definite end to bls vacation. Vacation—rest from the weary grind, the loathsome task of training voices that could never be other than mediocre, voices that tortured his finely tuned nerves so exquisitely he had been forced to these asms hills that the vast silences might perform their healing function. He opened his mouth, laving his throat with the clear air, drinking in great drafts of it as though trying to store away a reserve fun<} of that silence for the future. And then — Then the voice reached out to him. Faintly, at first, but steadily increasing in volume until the silence was put to utter rout. Buch a voice! Rivaling in purity, clarity and sweetness the voices of nature. Dated by his incredulous delight, the singing master followed the sounds till he found himself, leaning against a farm house fence, staring at a young man upon the porch, his handsome face pressed against the bars of a canary’s cage, his eyes glistening with delight as he held vocal contest with the fluffy little creature. A rich, warm red came from beneath the heavy coat of tan as he caught sight of the stranger, halting his song abruptly as he inquiringly approached. “Such a voice! Such an organ—” De Retsky stopped abruptly as he found his enthusiasm carrying him away. "I have never heard the song before,” he continued inquiringly. “Song!” The young chap laughed. "I was just teasing the bird—that’s an." “Teasing the bird!” the singing teacher repeated the words in bewilderment He drew a card from his pocket as the youth smiled. He did not care to be laughed at—De Retsky. The young man caught his displeasure Instantly. “Thank you,” he murmured gratefully. "I was smiling because my father just told me that my voice didn’t go very far when it came to killing weeds.” “You should cultivate that voice—such voices belong to the world and not to the individual,” De Retsky frowned. He stopped as he noticed the change of expression that had come over the singer’s face as he studied the card with evident recognition. "Cultivate my voice?” His voice was husky, hoarse. “Cultivate it! But who will pay for the job—who pays?” He looked about him, at the tiny farm house, the small farm, the shabby outhouses, all indicative of small means. “Yes—that’s it Who pays?" De Retsky muttered, a faint smile upon his lips. For he knew the ultimate payment would not be found within so ■mall a space; would not be taken from wealth or that which went to make wealth, but from the human heart .Whose heart?

11. “—and for * long time, my dear Bella. I could not keep that voice from my ears. Everything was there except the training. As you know, I have heard them all and have not been rated the worst myself, but for natural singing quality I have never heard this young Henry Merwin’s superior." “It merely shows,” he continued, “how possible it is to dodge duty. That voice belonged to the world. But as I recalled what the struggle meant, what must be gone through before the summit is attained, I did not have the courage. Like a coward, a traitor to my art, I fled." He smiled whimsically. "But it was to be. I returned to my work, to the horrible grind. I listened to the sounds that could never be. made into song and always I was hearing the voice of the farmer boy who teased the bird." “And my little words of encouragement had fallen upon a soul worthy of that divine voice. Henry Merwin fought his way to the wagon seat of a milk wagon. That was what he did when he found me, that is what he is doing now—driving a milk wagon— ** "I was in a laundry," the great soprano murmured softly, as though to herself. De Retsky started to speak, but the expression on her face deterred him. “He is married?" she queried abruptly. “Married the little beauty I saw him with that evening as I returned to my hotel—the little country girl he ran to with the news." “And I suppose she was happy in his joy, happy at the encouragement you had given him!" A lurking bitterness was in the singer’s tones, a note that caused the professor to look at . her sharply. "Little Dora twisted her ankle one morning while I was busy with a puplL Young Merwin was driving past and helped the child. He recognized M» Im—lWdy, though I had quite

forgotten him—you see he was nothing but a voice to me —but when he recalled that evening and the scene —’’ He shrugged apologetically, sheepishly. “Well, I knew that it was Fate. I offered to cultivate his voice and take my pay in the future, when it had proved itself." “And you wish me to listen when be comes?” “He is waiting now,” De Retsky smiled as he consulted his watch. “He is always early for his lesson, unwilling to lose a moment of the time." He nodded to the maid, who ushered into the room a blushing, roughly-clad young man, who flushed hotly as he returned the friendly pressure of the great vocalist’s hand, then turned naturally to the piano as she expressed the desire to hear his voice. Her critical sense was swept away even as De Retsky’s had been before her, and the judgment of the artist upon a tyro gave place to unmixed delight as Merwin lavishly poured forth his song. She sighed as De Retsky turned upon her, smiling delightedly at the obvious impression his pupil had made. “You were right, De Retsky, right,” she murmured. "It is a voice that belongs to the world, a voice that does not belong to you any longer. You are the singer, old friend, more than the great teacher of voice production. The is The Voice. It belongs to Spreglia of Paris, Lamperti in Berlin, old Vanuncchinl of Florence. Synney Dalton, here in the United States, in New York, shall have it finally. And he will coach, will make the opera singer out of the man with The Voice. Oh, I shall attend to all that. I must have my share in this discovery, De Retsky.” She turned to where the singer had been and De Retsky frowned as he saw his protege had slipped away under cover of the great vocalist’s enthusiasm. He looked at her uneasily for some sign of irritation, but a smile lurked about the corners of her mouth. “The little country girl who was feeding the turkeys,” she said softly, a curious glitter in her eyes as though a vagrant tear had somehow found a resting place there. “Ah, well, It will make her happy, De Retsky. And happiness should be crowded upon her now.” The two who had eaten of the fruit avoided meeting her eyes, as if in fear. And their fear seemed by some odd freak to have transferred itself to a tiny cottage in the outskirts of the city, where a little woman bent her head lower over her knitting while her husband joyously, eagerly told for the twentieth time of his experience.

She could not analyze the mixture of emotions tugging at her very heart strings, the joyous ache, the leaden ecstasy, the torturing delight ail struggling there for mastery. “Europe, Ann! The greatest teachers of the world! Just think of it! Why, it seems impossible! Wealth, fame, honor, everytihng—•" The tear that had trembled so long a time upon the fringe of her lashes dropped to the tiny shoe upon which she was knitting, clung there until his eyes rested upon it. ’•Aren’t you happy, Ann?” he repeated. She nodded a trifle jerkily, then slowly lifted her eyes to meet his own. Honest eyes they were, loving, worshipful eyes they were, patient eyes, the eyes that belong to women whose souls are so sensitive they chill before the mere shadow of impending tragedy.

"Bo happy, Henry, that —Fm afraid of it—of my happiness,” she answered bravely. 111. Ann shivered again under something she read in Madam Holmes’ eyes. She had felt it even before the woman crossed the threshold, had been feeling It in ever increasing volume while De Retsky and her husband outlined plans for his operatic studies abroad. The great singer had been silent, strangely silent since it was she who was doing the financing of that voice. And now the wife knew that madam was about to speak and with her eyes pleaded to the celebrity—as woman to woman —for pity, for charity. And madam shrank before that look, even while her lips tightened. "Of course,” she said slowly, "I shall provide for your wife while you are abroad, Mr. Merwin.” Though she had been expecting a blow, though she had nerved herself for the worst, Ann could not repress the little cry of incredulous pain that leaped from her lips. Her hands sought her heart gropingly, the hands that still gripped the unfinished shoe. “You mean —you mean that I am not to go—that Henry is to go alone — to leave me and —and —” “A student should have no distraction in his studies.” Ann felt something go dead within her. Her hands went out in groping fashion toward her husband. "Henry you—you want to leave —” She could not finish for the great, choking sob constricting her throat, suffocating her. He wheeled upon her fiercely, plunged into a rage of his own creating, but madam flashed him a warning look as Ann sank back in her chair.

“My dear,” in the great soprano’s voice were all the tones that had quickened tears in the hearts of audiences throughout the world, "you must not make it any harder than it is already. Don’t you know that I understand; that I am a woman, and that I understand your pain at parting?” She moved a step closer, placing her hand upon Ann’s shoulder and turning upon the two men. “You have your choice, Mr. Merwin —milkman or a Voice. I had the choice and Voice won. It has brought me fame, wealth, honor, glory; it has lost me all that my heart would have clung to did I consider happiness alone. I do not say that it is always so, but the price of fame is often misery. The price of Fame must be paid and Fame is a hard bargainer.” Ann looked up eagerly, timidly, yet with a strange ferocity to catch the Impression upon her husband. What she read upon his face filled her with swift self-reproach. “I think I understand,” she whispered softly. “I want the fame for him.”

IV. Strange the quips and whimsies of Chance, elusive Chance. Years that seemed interminable, years of goading desperation, discouragement, self-sacrifice, endurance stretched behind Henry Merwin as he halted a moment at the stage door of the New York Grand Opera house to allow one of the stars to enter. A bitter smile curved his lips, lips that had tightened since the days when the milk route alone oppressed his mind, as he slowly made-up in the male dressing room for a peasant in the opening act of “Pagllaccl.” He was a chorus man —only a chorus man. From below he could hear the strains of ’'Cavalleria Rusticana’’ which preceded “Pagliacci” and the voice of Cabosso, greatest of all tenors. Cabosso, who stood where the ignorant young milkman had dreamed of standing; Cabosso, the announcement of whose singing was sufficient to pack the great house. The soul of the artist within him struggled impotently at his situation, the difference between the dream and the reality. Cabosso singing Canio, the bitter, disillusioned pantaloon, when everything that life could hold was his: and he, Henry Merwin, with a voice no less than that of the star, sang among the peasants. Unconsciously he threw himself into the role of the man, compelled to amuse the public with his antics, compelled to don grease paint when he wished to smear his face with the blood of rival and unfaithful wife. His lips opened and the tenor aria at the close of the first act poured from his throat. He stopped abruptly as a hand fell upon his shoulder, bititfg his lips in mute embarrassment as he looked up into the eyes of tho stage manager. It dawned upon him that he was transgressing the rules of the house in singing, that in all likelihood, he would be discharged. And suddenly he was seized with a vast, overwhelming desire to hold this position that a moment before had roused all his resentment. “Are you up on the role —on Canio?" The words were crisp, brittle, mandatory. For a moment he did not understand, then a quick flush mantled his cheeks at what he took for sarcasm. A hot answer was on the tip of his tongue, checked only in time as he read upon the faces about him that the man was really in earnest. He rose swiftly, his hand gripping at the lapel of the stage manager’s coat even as the man fairly dragged him down the narrow, iron stairway toward the director, who raged about in the wings, his face the picture of misery. He laughed ironically as his underling whispered to him. sizing the chorus-man up and down. “Canio!" he laughed. “Substitute

by EDWIN BILSS

for Cabosso! What U your training? Who coached you?” “Spreglia, Lampert!—” "But who coached you in Canio?" Though his interruption was harsh, Merwin could see a light of interest in his eyes. "De Retsky—Jean himself, coached.” "Make up—quickly,” the director decided sharply. He heard nothing of the stage manager’s instructions, was numbly conscious of getting into the costume of the pantaloon, heard nothing of the director’s instructions as, in a cold perspiration he waited for the baritone to finish with the prologue. Fear was upon him, cold, dank fear. Could he hare run from the place, could he have put a finish to every ambition he had pressed so closely to his very soul, could he have thrust it all aside at that moment, he would have dons so rather than suffer the fiery heat alternating with icy cold that seized his body, be tor-

tured by the prickling fingers at his spine, the harsh grip at his heart. “ don’t mind the whispering and talking while you sing. They do it with everyone but Cabosso —” He heard no more, but these words seared themselves in letters of fire upon his brain. His teeth clicked shut with an audible sound. Suddenly all the stage fright disappeared before an anticipatory rage. They should not whisper and talk while he sang; they should treat his voice with the same respect they treated that of Cabosso. His voice was the equal of the great tenor’s. Unconscious of his audience, of the stir of curiosity at his appearance instead of the familiar Cabosso, regardless of everything save overweening desire to win, Henry Merwin hardly realized he was upon the stage before the curtain stared him in the face, the curtain w’hich formed a barrier against the tumultuous applause of the audience at his performance, and shut him into the other world behind the scenes, the world of fellow-singers who made him realize the tremendous impression he had created. He suddenly felt himself very weak, felt his impotence. He needed help, sympathy—he needed —Ann — Swiftly he discarded his costume, but illy wiping the grease paint from his countenance. But in his eyes glowed something of happiness, growing from more than fame as, half an hour later, he reread the message he had just written before passing it to the agent. Ann Merwin, Los Angeles, Cal.: Come to New York at once. No more poverty. HENRY.

V. He waited in the library, listening to the sounds of delight from Ann’s room. In the week he had tasted the fruit of success and laughed at the fear he had entertained of it To be sought out by the great director and placed under a contract at a figure he had only vaguely dreamed of ever earning; to be the toast of town and press, to be invited into the very heart of society’s most sanctified circle; to know that It was all deserved —surely they were fools who had told him the price to be paid for fame was heavy. And now Ann was here, was so close to him he had but to tap upon the adjoining door to see her, so close to him he could hear her delighted exclamations over the gown he had bought for her to wear at Mrs. Van Rolphe’s reception that very night. Slowly a frown crossed his forehead, a perplexed and anxious frown. Ann—would Ann be able to live up to the position he had created for her? A little cry from the doorway, and he clasped her to his heart, fiercely, for the doubt that- had been his. But, as he held her away from him, he was filled with the bitter realization that the doubt remained. Pretty, fresh, wholesome—yet she was obviously uncomfortable in her finery. There was something of the out-of-doors about her that did not seem to fit into the new life. He felt himself guiltily contrasting her with the dark, exotic beauty of Olga Drake, the woman who had made so much of him at a reception of the day be*

fore; the woman who had seemed so desirous of being with him alone, despite the gallants besieging her. And Olga Drake, mistress of wealth and beauty, was not lees famous as a social dictator that he was as a singer. In the carriage he could not drive that contrast from his preoccupied mind. He felt himself already a bit irritated at the insistence of Ann that the tiny cottage, the humble little home in Los Angeles should not be sold, that not a stick of the furniture be changed. He flushed hotly as she stumbled upon her train as they made their entrance at the Van Rolphes’, angry with himself for the impulse which made him seek out the eyes of Olga Drake to find whether she had noticed the slip, more angry to know that he had smiled with her at his wife’s mishap. Ann was his wife, the woman he loved, and no one had the right to smile at her. He turned toward her, assisting her to their hostess, bracing his shoulders against the gibes he knew her manner occasioned, with a smile upon his lips. And then the guilty feeling came upon him that he was feeling the martyr, that he was taking pride in his attitude of suffering. In the mortification of the moment he found himself offering his arm to Olga Drake, passing his wife without a glance. “I’m afraid we frightened your poor wife,” Miss Drake murmured in his ear. He looked furtively at Olga Drake at the note of sympathy in her voice. And yet he merely smiled and sought out his wife with his eyes, dropping them more swiftly as they met the mute appeal in Ann’s own eyes. He was conscious of chattering volubly about nothing in particular, was aware that his face was burning. A farmer’s daughter he had married. A milkman’s wife he had made her. And, equally indifferent to aught she was one still.

VI. He paced the library floor nervously, every nerve in his body jangling discordantly at the chatter of his wife in the next room, the confusion of her undignified romping with the baby. Only the night before he had given a wretched performance, his voice turning hoarse. Only the night before he had tiffed with Olga Drake, for the first time in all the months during which their intimacy had grown to such an extent, that there were whispers about it. First, he had tried to break away from the spell she cast upon him. But his work threw him with her set and his wife used every subterfuge to avoid accompanying him to any affair which might aid him in the social world, always pleading to be allowed to remain with the baby. And now she was late. He looked at his watph nervously then whirled to the stairs and tapped upon her door. “I forgot again, Henry,” she replied, before he had a chance to say a word. “Please forgive me, but —but I don’t think I help you with these people—” “You make no effort to improve yourself. You are constantly doing everything you can to annoy me. You are ruining my voice, clouding my whole career. “And you don’t try to do better. You don’t care for anything but the vile little hole in Los Angeles. You want me to be ruined. You want me to lose my voice. You know you do — you want a milkman because you are nothing and never will be anything but fit for a milkman’s wife.’’ “But what can I do, Henry? What do you want me to do?” “Do?” He laughed, laughed in her face. “Why, get a divorce, of course. I’m through. Get it before I’m completely ruined. I’ll give you the divorce—there’ll be no trouble about that —and fifty thousand dollars.” She regarded him steadily, searchingly. “No, there’ll be no trouble —about that,” she repeated after him, as he slammed the door. “No trouble, Henry.”

VII. Merwin felt a curious elation upon him, a sudden lightness of heart, one of those miraculous sensations of utter delight that come at the most unexpected moments when one Is performing one’s work a little better than ever it has been performed before. Arrogant with the delightful arrogance of the artist who has worked hard for achievement his eyes sought those of Olga Drake in her box at the head of the diamond horseshoe. That very day Ann had been granted her interlocutory decree of divorce; that very day a sensational newspaper had whispered the name of Miss Drake in connection with it; that very day he had boasted to her that he would make amends for that; and now — now, in the first performance of the widely heralded new opera, he was singing as he had never sung before. Clear, ringing, sweet toned as any bell, holding the audience spellbound, with eyes aglow the voice of Merwin rang out And then the song died in mid-air, seemed to halt upon its course. The singer’s hand clutched at his throat, clutched desperately there as though by sheer brute strength *he would force out the sounds that the vocal chords refused to give. His lipa opened and dosed, closed and opened. A mute he stood there, a ludicrous mute, sawing the air with his hands, desperately, wlldA laugh hurtled from the gallery, the laugh that was sufficient to guide the mob. It grew in volume, grew so that its sound penetrated the heavy

curtain as it slowly descended upon a wild-eyed, sobbing tenor, who glared piteously at the back of a laughing woman in the box nt the head of the diamond horseshoe. With the ready effervescent sympathy of the Romance people the director pillowed the head of his great “find” upon his shoulder. But over that head his eyes sought those of Doctor Holbrook, the world’s renowned throat specialist, who had been treating Merwin now for months. And a hard expression, a look of flint was in the director’s eyes as the specialist shook his head to indicate the death of another voice. “It is the fault of the atmosphere, the early training,” coolly declared the impresario later that evening to the reporters. “Now, Merwin, with the proper, early training would have proved the greatest tenor of ou» time.” He shrugged a bit contemptously. “You call it here, I believe, a flash in the pan.” •, '

VIII. Ann Merwin’s hands still gripped tightly the newspaper with which she had fled from hpr attorney’s office, the newspaper whose startling head had caught her eye even as her hand received the final decree of divorce. There was a wild expression in her eyes as she lunged through the crowded traffic of the streets toward the city hospital where the story said Henry had been taken. _ Forgotten the document in her handbag, forgotten the bitterness with which he had treated her. She only remembered that he was the father of her child, that he was the man she had loved —the man she loved still. Voiceless, forsaken by friends, an object of pity and contempt, a vagrant succumbing to exposure at the dark waterside where he might have contemplated making his final resting place—he was still her husband just as he always had been. She did not heed the curious glances of the nurses nor the Internes as she demanded admittance to his bedside. That the story of the celebrity’s downfall, the divorce and attendant scandal belonged to the world meant nothing to her. A queen—she demanded the right to be with her husband in his hour of need.

She did not shrink away from the poor creatures upon the cots In the wards through which they passed. The flotsam and jetsam of a great city was there, but that mattered nothing to her. That her husband was just such another dependent upon a city’s charity meant nothing to her. She felt a little pain in her heart as the Interne paused beside a snowy cot, hesitated a second before approaching the delirious man, tossing and tumbling upon the cot, then bravely moved forward again. The interne rested hla hand upon her arm. She looked into his face with surprise and saw nothing but sympathy there and desire to avoid harm coming to her. She brushed him aside and then a voice reached out to her, a voice wild and hoarse, throbbing with the insanity of delirium yet with the longing of a world in it, a voice she would have known from all the voices of the world. “Olga—Olga—Olga—” } On and on and on, Interminably, and always with that same piteous appeal, that same throbbing note of heart-rending helplessness cried the voice; the voice*of Henry Merwin, her husband toward the woman, the laughing woman’s back, the Olga Drake who sat in the head box pf the diamond horseshoe. She held her head proudly, defiantly as the superintendent of the hospital tried to suppress the pity In hla look with which he accepted the

money she had placed upon his desk, when she fled from that ward, fled from that voice. “When he is well,” she said quietly, “give him this money. Say it is from a —a friend.” “But—” "From— a—friend,” she repeated softly, a faint smile upon, her lips. She rose suddenly for the scent of roses was in her nostrils, the vision of far-flung hills in her eyes, with a tiny white cottage nestling at the foot of them. ' "Perhaps he may go back,” she murmured to heroelf, as she left the place. '“Perhaps he may go back — home —and be glad—glad the home didn’t go when everything else was paid—paid. Who Pays?”

Trying Out His Voice.

“You Want Me to Lose My Voice!”

Wife and Child Neglected.