Life on the Stage Part 26

"I'll tell Mr. Daly that, please," I answered.

He smiled and said: "Well, then, tell _me_--I'm Mr. Daly--are you----"

"Yes," I answered, "I'm the girl come out of the West, to be inspected.

I'm Clara Morris."

He frowned quickly, though he held out his hand and shook mine heartily enough, and asked me to come into his office.

It was a cranny in the wall. It held a very small desk and one chair, behind which was a folding stool. As he entered, I laughingly said: "I think I'll lean here, I'm not used to sitting on the floor," but to my surprise, as he brought forth the stool, he curtly replied: "I was not going to ask you to sit on the floor," which so amused me that I could not resist asking: "Are you from Scotland, by chance, Mr. Daly?" and he had frowningly said "No!" before the old, old joke about Scotch density came to him.

Then he said, with severity: "Miss Morris, I'm afraid your b.u.mp of reverence is not well developed."

And I laughed and said: "There's a hole there, Mr. Daly, and no b.u.mp at all," and though the words were jestingly spoken, there was truth and to spare in them, and there, too, was the cause of all the jolts and jars and friction between us in our early days together. Mr. Daly was as a G.o.d in his wee theatre, and was always taken seriously. I knew not G.o.ds and took nothing under heaven seriously. No wonder we jarred. Every word I spoke that morning rubbed Mr. Daly's fur the wrong way. I offended him again and again. He wished to show me the theatre, and, striking a match, lit a wax taper and held it up in the auditorium, at which I exclaimed: "Oh, the pretty little match-box! Why, it's just a little toy play-house--is it not?"

Which vexed him so I was quite crushed for a minute or two. One thing only pleased him: I could not tear myself away from the pictures, and I praised, rapturously, a beautiful velvety-shadowed old engraving. We grew quite friendly over that, but when we came to business he informed me I was a comedy woman, root and branch.

"But," I said, "ask Mr. Edwin Booth, or Mr. Davenport, or Mr. Adams!"

He waved me down. "I won't ask anyone," he cried; "I never made a mistake in my life. You couldn't speak a line of sentiment to save your soul!"

"Why, sentiment is my line of business--I play sentiment every week of my life," I protested.

"Oh, you know what I mean," he said, "you can _speak_ and _repeat_ the lines, but you couldn't give a line of sentiment naturally to save your life--your forte is comedy, pure and simple."

It all ended in his offer to engage me, but without a stated line of business. I must trust to his honor not to degrade me by casting me for parts unworthy me. He would give me $35 a week (knowing there were two to live on it), _if I made a favorable impression he would double that salary_.

A poor offer--a risky undertaking. I had no one to consult with. I had in my pocket the signed contract for $100 in gold and two benefits. I must decide now, at once. Mr. Daly was filling up a blank contract.

Thirty-five dollars against $100! "_But if you make a favorable impression_ you'll get $70," I thought. And why should I not make a favorable impression? Yet, if I fail now in New York, I can go West or South, not much harmed. If I wait till I am older, and fail, it will ruin my life.

I slipped my hand in my pocket and gave a little farewell tap to the contract for $100. I took the pen; I looked hard at him. "There's a heap of trusting being asked for in this contract," I remarked. "You won't forget your promise about doubling the salary?"

"I won't forget anything," he answered.

I looked at the pen, it was a stub, the first I ever saw; then I said: "That's what makes your writing look so villainous. I can't sign with that thing--I'd be ashamed to own my signature in court, when we come to the fight we're very likely to have before we are through with each other."

He groaned at my levity, but got another pen. I wrote Clara Morris twice, shook hands, and went out and back to my home--a Western actress with an engagement in a New York theatre for the coming season.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIRST

John c.o.c.kerill and our Eccentric Engagement--I Play a Summer Season at Halifax--Then to New York, and to House-Keeping at Last.

Mr. Worthington pa.s.sed out of my life after he had done me the service he set out to do. It had been an odd notion to step down from his carriage, as it were, and point out to a girl, struggling along a rough and dusty path, a short cut to the fair broad highway of prosperity; but I thank him heartily, for without his urging voice, his steadily pointing hand, I should have continued plodding along in the dust--heaven knows how long.

One of the few people I came to know well in Cincinnati was John A.

c.o.c.kerill. At that time he was the city editor on the _Enquirer_, and my devoted friend. We were both young, poor, energetic, ambitious. We exchanged confidences, plans, hopes, and dreams, and were as happy as possible so long as we were just plain friends, but as soon as sentiment pushed in and an engagement was acknowledged between us, we, as the farmer says:

"Quarrel'd and fit--and scratched and bit--"

For John was jealous of my profession, which made my temper hot, and we were a queer engaged pair. I used to say to him: "It's just a question which one of us suicides first!"

Yet on some days we would forget we were engaged and be quite cheerful and happy; and when I came back from New York, I cried: "Congratulate me, John, I've got an engagement, so we can't nag each other to death for a year at least!" and though that gave a lovely opening for a quarrel he pa.s.sed it by, congratulating me very gently instead, but very sadly, adding: "You are getting so far ahead of me, dear--and you will learn to despise a man who comes toiling always behind you!"

A statement that came so dangerously near the truth that it threw me into a pa.s.sion, and we had a battle royal then and there. However, we parted in a gale of laughter, for as John suddenly discovered he was overstaying his intended short visit, he sprang up and grabbed his hat and exclaimed: "Well, good-by, Clara, we haven't indulged in much sentiment to-day, but," drawing a long, satisfied breath, "we've enjoyed a good l.u.s.ty old row all the same!"

No wonder we laughed. We were a rare engaged couple. Lovers? why Cupid had never even pointed an arrow at us for fun! We were chums--good fellows in sunny weather; loyal, active friends in time of trouble, and, after I came to New York, and found quarreling at length, with pen and ink, too fatiguing, I broke the engagement, and we were happy ever after--our friendship always standing firm through the years; and when, in the _Herald's_ interests, he started on that last long journey to report upon the j.a.panese-Chinese War, he said to me: "I never understood the meaning of the word friendship until that day when you flung all your natural caution--your calm good sense aside, and rushed through the first cheering message that reached me after that awful St. Louis shooting: 'You acted in self-defence, I _know_--command any service from your faithful friend,' that's what you said, over your full name, while as yet you knew absolutely nothing. And when I realized that, guilty or innocent, you meant to stand by me, I--well, you and my blessed mother live in a little corner of my heart, just by your two loyal selves."

And when he left me he carried on either cheek as affectionate a kiss as I knew how to put there, and again, and for the last time, we parted in a gale of laughter, as he cried: "You would have seen me in the bottomless pit before you would have done that in Cincinnati!"

"Oh, well," I replied, "we both preferred quarreling to kissing in those days!"

"Speak for yourself!" he laughed, and so we parted for all time.

I had returned to my work in Cincinnati; had thanked the Washington and San Francisco managers for their offers of engagements, and was putting in some spare moments in worrying about the summer, when (without meaning to be irreverent) G.o.d opened a door right before me. Never, since I had closed a small geography at school, had I heard of "Halifax," save as a subst.i.tute for another place beginning with H, but here, all suddenly, I was invited to Halifax--not sent there in anger, for, oh, incredible! for a four, perhaps six, weeks' summer engagement. Was I not happy? Was I not grateful? One silver half-dollar did I recklessly give away to the Irish washerwoman, who had said: "G.o.d niver shuts one dure without openin'

anither!" I could not help it, and she, being in trouble at the time, declared, with hope rising in her tired old eyes, that she would "at onct burn a waxen candle before the blissed Virgin!" Poor soul! I hope her loving offering found favor in the eyes of the gentle Saint she honored!

I had a benefit in Cincinnati before the season closed, and so it came about that I was able to get my mother a spring gown and bonnet that she might go home in proper state to Cleveland for a visit; while I turned my face toward Halifax, the picturesque, to play a summer engagement, and then to make my way to New York and find a resting-place for my foot in some hotel, while I searched for rooms to which my mother might be summoned, for I had determined I could board no longer.

If we had rooms we could make a little home in them. If we had still to go hungry, we could at least hunger after our own fashion, and endure our privations in decent privacy. So, with plans all made, I landed at Halifax and felt a shock of surprise, followed by a pang of homesickness, at the first sight of the scarlet splendor of the British flag waving against the pale blue sky, when instinctively my eyes had looked for the radiant beauty of Old Glory. The next thing that impressed me was the astonishing number of people who were in mourning. Men in shops, in offices, on the streets, were wearing crepe bands about their left arms, and women, like moving pillars of crepe, dotted the walks thickly, darkened the shops, and gloomed in private carriages. What does it mean? I asked. I never before saw so many people in black. And one made answer: "Ah, your question shows you are a stranger, or you would know that there are few well-to-do homes and _no_ business house in Halifax that does not mourn for at least one victim of that great mystery of the sea, the unexplained loss of the City of Boston--that monster steamer, crowded with youth and beauty, wealth, power, and brains!"

I recalled then how, at the most fashionable wedding of the year in Cincinnati, the bride and groom had been dragged from the just-beginning wedding-breakfast, and rushed off at break-neck speed that they might be in time for the sailing of the City of Boston, and after her sailing no word ever came of her. What had been her fate no man knew--no man knows to-day. The ocean gave no sign, no clew, as it often has done in other disasters. It sent back no sc.r.a.p of wood, of oar, of boat, of mast, of life-preserver--nothing, nothing! No fire had been sighted by other ships. Had she been in collision with an iceberg, been caught in the centre of a tornado, had she run upon a derelict, been stricken by lightning, been blown up by explosion? No answer had ever come from the mighty bosom of the deep, that will keep its grim secret until the awful day when, trembling at G.o.d's own command, it will give up its dead!

Meantime thousands of tender ties were broken. The awful mystery shrouding the fate of the floating city turned more than one brain, and sent mourners to mad-houses to end their ruined lives. Halifax was a very sad city that summer.

I met in the company there Mr. Leslie Allen (the father of Miss Viola Allen), Mr. Dan Maginnis (the Boston comedian), and Mr. John W. Norton.

The future St. Louis manager was then leading man, and the friendship we formed while working together through those summer weeks was never broken, never clouded, but lasted fair and strong up to that very day when, sitting in the train on his way to New York, John Norton had, in that flashing moment of time, put off mortality.

He had changed greatly from the John Norton of those early days. He had known cruel physical suffering, and while he had won friends and money, shame and bitter sorrow had been brought upon him by another. No wonder the laughing brightness had gone out of him. It was said that he believed in but two people on earth--Mary Anderson and Clara Morris, and he said of them: "One is a Catholic, the other an Episcopalian; they are next-door neighbors in religion; they are both honest, G.o.d-fearing women, and the only ones I bow my head to." Oh, poor man! to have grown so bitter! But in the Halifax days he loved his kind, and was as full of fun as a boy of ten, as full of kindness as would be the gentlest woman.

Mr. Maginnis had his sister-in-law with him, a helpless invalid. She knew her days were numbered, yet she always faced us smilingly and with pleasant words. She was pa.s.sionately fond of driving, but dreaded lonely outings; so clubbing together, that no one might feel a sense of obligation, we four, Dan and his sister, John Norton and I, used evenly to divide the expense of a big, comfortable carriage, and go on long, delightful drives about the outskirts of the gray old hilly city.

The stolid publicity of Tommy Atkins's love-making had at first covered us with confusion, but we soon grew used to the sight of the scarlet sleeve about the willing waist in the most public places, while a loving smack, coming from the direction of a park bench, simply became a sound quite apropos to the situation.

One yellow-haired, plaided and kilted young Highlander, whom I came upon in a public garden, just as he lifted his head from an explosive kiss on his sweetheart's lips, startled at my presence, flushing red, lifted his hand in a half-salute, and at the same moment, in laughing apologetic confusion, he--winked at me! And his flushing young face was so bonnie, that had I known how I believe in my heart I'd have winked back, just from sheer good-fellowship and understanding.

In that short season I had one experience, the memory of which makes me pull a wry face to this day. I played _Juliet_ to a "woman-_Romeo_"--a so plump _Romeo_, who seemed all French heels, tights, and wig, with _Romeo_ marked "absent." I little dreamed I was bidding a personal farewell to Shakespeare and the old cla.s.sic drama, as I really was doing.

One other memory of that summer engagement that sticks is of that performance of Boucicault's "Jessie Brown, or the Siege of Lucknow," in which real soldiers acted as supernumeraries, and having been too well treated beforehand and being moved by the play, they became so hot that they attacked the _mutineers_ not only with oaths but with clubbed muskets; and while blood was flowing and heads being cracked in sickening earnest on one side of the stage, a sudden wall-rending howl of derisive laughter rose from that part of the theatre favored by soldiers. I saw women holding programmes close, close to their eyes, and knew by that that something was awfully wrong.

The Scotch laddies were pouring over the wall, coming to the rescue of the starving besieged. I looked behind me. The wall, a stage wall, was cleated down the middle to keep the join there firm, and no less than three of the soldiers had had portions of their clothing caught by the cleats as they scaled the wall. The cloth would not tear, the men were too mad to be able to see, and there they hung, kicking like fiends and--well, the words of a ginny old woman, who sold apples and oranges in front of the house, will explain the situation. She cried out, at the top of her voice: "Yah! yah! why do ye no pull down yer kilties, instead o'

kickin' there? yah! yer no decent--do you ken?" and the curtain had to come whirling down before the proper time to save the lives of the men being pounded to death, and the feelings of the women who were being shamed to death.

A surgeon had to attend to two heads before their owners could leave the theatre, and after that an officer was kind enough to come and take charge of the men loaned to the manager.

Then I bade the people, whom I had found so pleasant, good-by--Mr. Louis Aldrich arriving as I was about leaving, keen, clever, active, full of visions, of plans, just as he is to-day. I and my little dog-companion made our way to New York. A lady and gentleman, traveling acquaintances, advised me to go to the St. Nicholas, and as all hotels looked alike to me I went there. My worst dread was the dining-room. I could not afford to take meals privately, yet how could I face that great roomful of people alone! At last I resolved on a plan of action. I went up to the head waiter--from his manner an invisible crown pressed his brow; his eyes gazed coldly above my humble head, his "Eh?--beg pardon!" was haughty and curt, yet, believe it or not, when I told him I was quite alone, and asked could he place me at some quiet retired table, he became human, he looked straightly and kindly at me. He himself escorted me, not to a seat in line with the kitchen smells or the pantry quarrels, as I had expected, but to a very retired, very pleasant table by an open window, and a.s.sured me the seat should be reserved for me every day of my stay, and only ladies seated there. I was grateful from my heart, and I mention it now simply to show the general willingness there is in America to aid, to oblige the unprotected woman traveler.

Naturally anxious to find, as quickly as possible, a less expensive dwelling-place, I showed my utter ignorance of the city by the blunder I made in joyfully engaging rooms in a quiet old-fashioned brick house because it was on Twenty-first Street and the theatre was on Twenty-fourth, and the walk would be such a short one. All good New Yorkers will know just how "short" that walk was when I add that to reach the neat little brick house I had first to cross to Second Avenue, and, alas! for me on stormy nights, there was no cross-town car, then.