Life on the Stage Part 29

"Mr. Daly," I said, "won't you please trust to my discretion. I don't like lying, even for my daily bread, but if silence is golden, a discreet silence is away above rubies."

He struck his hand angrily on the desk before him: "Miss Morris, when I give an order----"

Up went my head: "Mr. Daly, I have nothing to do with your private affairs; any business order----"

Heaven knows where we would have brought up had not a sudden darkness come into the little room--a woman quickly pa.s.sed the window. Mr. Daly sprang to his feet, caught my fingers in a frantic squeeze, and pushing me from the door rapidly, said: "Yes--yes--well, do your best with it.

I'm very glad Benot found you last night!" Then turning to the new-comer, who had not been present the day before, he cheerfully exclaimed: "Well, you didn't lose to-day's train, I see! I have a charming comedy part for you--come in!"

She went in, and the storm broke, for as I felt my way through the pa.s.sage leading to the stage-stairs, I heard its rolling and rumbling, and two dimly-seen men in front of me laughed, while one, pointing over his shoulder, toward the office, sneered, meaningly: "Ethel stock is going down, isn't it?"

And almost I wished I was back in a family theatre.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURTH

I Rehea.r.s.e Endlessly--I Grow Sick with Dread--I Meet with Success in _Anne Sylvester_.

Up-stairs I found a bare stage, as is often the case for a first mere reading of parts, and most of the company sitting on camp-stools, chatting and laughing. Already M. Benot had announced the change in the cast, and people looked at me in perfect stupefaction: "Good heavens!

what a risk he is taking! Who on earth is she, anyway?" and I cleared my throat in mercy to the speaker, who didn't know I stood behind her.

That morning I was introduced to a number of the ladies and gentlemen, but it was a mere baptism of water, not of the spirit. I was not one of them. Understand, no one was openly rude to me, everyone bowed a "good-morning," but, well, you can bow a good-morning over a large iron fence with a fast-locked gate in it. That my dresses of gray linen or of white linen struck them as being funny in September is not to be wondered at, yet they must have known that necessity forced me to wear them, and that their smiles were not always effaced quickly enough to spare me a cruel pang. And my amazement grew day by day at their own extravagance of dress. Some of the ladies wore a different costume each day during the entire rehearsal of the play. How, I wondered, could they do it? Two of them, Miss Kate Claxton and Miss Newton, had husbands to pay their bills, I found, and Miss Linda Dietz--the gentlest, most sweetly-courteous creature imaginable--had parents and a home; but the magnificence of the others remained an unsolvable mystery.

Another thing against me was, I could not act even the least bit at rehearsal. Foreign actors will act in cold blood at a daylight rehearsal, but few Americans can do it. I read my lines with intelligence, but gave no sign of what I intended to do at night. Of course that made Mr. Daly suffer great anxiety, but he said nothing, only looked at me with such troubled, anxious eyes that I felt sorry for him. One gentleman, however, decided that I was--not to put too fine a point upon it--"a lunk-head."

He treated me with supercilious condescension, varied occasionally with overbearing tyranny. Just one person in the theatre knew that I was really a good actress, of considerable experience, and that was James Lewis; and from a tricksy spirit of mischief he kept the silence of a graven image, and when Mr. Dan Harkins took me aside to teach me to act, Lewis would retire to a quiet spot and writhe with suppressed laughter.

One day he said to me: "Say, you ain't cooking up a huge joke on these gas-balloons, are you, Clara? And upon my soul you are doing it well--you act as green as a cuc.u.mber."

And never did I succeed in convincing him that I had not engineered a great joke on the company by deceptive rehearsing. One tiny incident seemed to give Mr. Daly a touch of confidence in me. In the "Inn scene" a violent storm was raging, and at a critical moment the candle was supposed to be blown out by a gust of wind from the left door, as one of the characters entered. They were using a mechanical device for extinguishing the candle, and it was tried several times one morning, and always, to my surprise, from the _right_ side of the stage. No one seemed to notice anything odd, though the flame streamed out good and long in the wrong direction before going out. At last I ventured, as I was the princ.i.p.al in the scene: "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but is it not the wind from the open door that blows that light out?"

Then, quick and sharp, mine enemy was upon me: "This is _our_ affair, Miss Morris."

"Yes," I answered, "but the house will laugh if the candle goes out _against_ the storm," and Mr. Daly sprang up, and, smiling his first kindly smile at me, said: "What the deuce have we all been thinking of--you're right, the candle must be extinguished from the _left_," and as I glanced across the stage I saw Lewis doing some neat little dancing steps all by himself.

The rehearsals were exhausting in the extreme, the heat was unnatural, the walk far too long, and, well, to be frank, I had not nearly enough to eat. My anxiety was growing hourly, my strength began to fail, and at the last rehearsals, white as wax from weakness, I had to be carried up the stairs to the stage. Having such a quick study, requiring but few rehearsals, I was from the fourth day ready at any moment to go on and play my part. Fancy, then, what a waste of strength there was in forcing me, day after day, to go over long, important scenes--three, five, even seven times of a morning for the benefit of one amateur actress, who simply could not remember to-day what she had been told yesterday. It was foolish, it was risking a breakdown, when they had no one to put in my place. Mr. William Davidge was the next greatest sufferer, and as an experienced old actor he hotly resented being called back to go over a scene, again and again, "that a 'walking vanity' might be taught her business at his expense!"

And though I liked and admired the "walking vanity" (who did not in the least deserve the name), I did think the manner of her training was costly and unjust, and one morning, just before the production of the play, I--luckily as it would seem--lost my self-control for a moment, and created a small sensation. In my individual case, fainting is always preceded by a moment of total darkness, and that again by a sound in my ears as of a rushing wind. That morning, as I finished the sixth repet.i.tion of _Anne's_ big scene with _Lady Glenarm_, the warning whir was already in my ears, when the order came to go over it again, "that _Mrs. Glenarm_ might be quite easy." It was too much--a sudden rage seized upon me: "_Mrs. Glenarm_ will only be quite easy when the rest of us are dead!" I remarked as I took my place again, and when I received my cue I whirled upon her with the speech: "Take care, _Mrs. Glenarm_, I am not naturally a patient woman, trouble has done much to tame my temper, but endurance has its limits!"

It was given with such savage pa.s.sion that Miss Dietz burst into frightened tears and forgot utterly her lines, while a silence that thrilled, absolute, dead, came upon the company for a moment. Hastily I controlled myself, but there were whispers and amazed looks everywhere.

Mr. George Brown, who played the pugilist, said aloud to a group: "She's done the whole crowd--she's an actress to the core!"

Mr. Daly sat leaning forward at the prompt-table, white as he could well be. His eyes were wide and bright, and, to my surprise, he spoke quite gently to me as he said: "Spare yourself--just murmur your lines, Miss Morris." And Miss Dietz said: "Oh, Mr. Daly, I am so glad I am prepared; I should have fallen in my tracks if she had done that to me at night, without warning."

When I left the stage, one of the ladies swept her dress aside, and said: "Sit here by me; how tired you must be!" It was the first friendly advance made to me. Before rehearsal ended I overheard the young man with the bald head saying: "She has sold us all, and I bet she will completely change the map of the Fifth Avenue Theatre."

"Oh, no, she won't," answered Lewis, shortly, "she's not that type of woman!"

"Well, at all events, on the strength of that outburst, I ain't afraid to bet twenty good dollars that she makes pie out of Ethel's vogue!" Then, seeing me, he removed his hat hurriedly, offering his shoulder for me to lean upon as I descended the winding-stairs, and I said to myself: "Yesterday this would have been a kindly service; to-day--to-day it is not far from an humiliation."

Hitherto I had known neither clique nor cabal in a theatre; now I found myself in a network of them. The _favorite_--who, I had supposed, lived only in the historic novel--I now met in real life, and found her as charming, as treacherous, and as troublesome in the theatre as she could ever have been in a royal court. There was no one to explain to me the nature or progress of the game that was being played when I came upon the scene; but I soon discovered there were two factions in the theatre, Miss Agnes Ethel heading one, Miss f.a.n.n.y Davenport the other. Each had a following, but Miss Ethel, who had been all-powerful, had overestimated her strength when she refused, point-blank, to play _Anne Sylvester_, giving as her reason "the immorality of _Anne_." This from the lady who had been acting all season in "Fernande" and "Frou-Frou"--as a gambler's decoy and an adulterous wife abandoning child and home--satisfactorily proved the utter absence of a sense of humor from her charming make-up.

Mr. Daly, like every other man, could be managed with a little patient _finesse_, but he would not be bullied in business affairs by any living creature, as he proved when, rather than change the play to please the actress he then regarded as his strongest card, he trusted a great part to the hands of an unknown, untried girl, and gave out to the newspapers that Miss Ethel had sprained her ankle, and, though in perfect health, could not walk well enough to act. And, after my momentary outburst, the anti-Ethelites suddenly placed me on one of the sixty-four squares of their chess-board; but I knew not whether I was castle, knight, bishop, or p.a.w.n, I only knew that I had become a piece of value in their game, and they hoped to move me against Ethel.

It was all very bewildering, but I had other things to think about, and more important. My money had run so low I was desperately afraid I could not get dresses for the play, and for the white mousseline necessary for the croquet-party of the first act I was forced to go to a very cheap department store, a fact the dress nightly proclaimed aloud from every inch of its surface. Shawl dresses were the novelty of that season, and at Stewart's I found a modestly priced dark-gray shawl overskirt and jacket that I could wear over a black alpaca skirt for two acts. The other two dresses I luckily had in my wardrobe, and when my new shoes, a long gray veil, and two pairs of gray gloves were laid into the dressing-room basket, I had in the whole world $2.38, on which we had to live until my first week's salary came to me. But, oh, that last awful day before the opening night. I was suffering bodily as well as mentally.

I had had an alarming attack of pleurisy. My mother had rung the bell and left a message at the first house that carried a doctor's sign. He came; he was far gone in liquor; he was obstinate, almost abusive--to be brief, he blistered me shockingly; another doctor had to be called to dress and treat the hideous blisters the first had produced; and the tight closing of dress-waists about me was an agony not yet forgotten. But what was that to the nervous terror, the icy chill, the burning fever, the deadly nausea! I could not swallow food--I _could_ not! My mother stood over me while, with tear-filled eyes, I disposed of a raw, beaten egg, and then she was guilty of the dreadful extravagance of buying two chops, of which she made a cup of broth, and fearing a breakdown if I attempted without food five such acts as awaited me, she almost forced me to swallow it to the last drop after my hat was on and I was ready to start. I always kiss my mother good-by, and that night my lips were so cold and stiff with fright that they would not move. I dropped my head for a moment upon her shoulder, she patted me silently with one hand and opened the door with the other. My little dog, escaping from the room, rushed to me, leaping against my knees. I caught her up, and she covered my troubled, veiled face with frantic kisses. I pa.s.sed her to mother and crept painfully down the steps. I glanced back--mother waved her hand and innocently called: "Good luck! G.o.d bless you!"

The astonishing conjunction of superst.i.tion and orthodox faith touched my sense of the ridiculous. I laughed aloud, Bertie barked excitedly, I faced about and went forward almost gayly to meet--what? As I reached Broadway, I remember quite distinctly that I said aloud, to myself: "Well, G.o.d's good to the Irish, and at all events I was born on St.

Patrick's day--so Garryowen forever!"

The pendulum was swinging to the other extreme, I was in high spirits; nor need you be surprised, for such is the acting temperament.

I had not on that first night even the comfort of a dressing-room to myself, but shared one of the tiniest closets with Mrs. Roberta Norwood, in whose chic blonde person I failed utterly to see a future friend. The terrible heat, the crowding, the strange companion, all brought back the memory of that far-away first night of all in Cleveland; but now there was no Mrs. Bradshaw to go to for advice or commendation. The sense of utter loneliness came upon me suddenly, and I bent my head low over the buckling of my shoe that my rising tears might not be noticed.

We were directly beneath the auditorium parquet, and every seat flung down by the ushers seemed to strike a blow upon our heads, while applause shook dust into our eyes and hair. Forced occupation is the best cure for nervousness, and in the hurried making-up and dressing I for the time forgot my fright. Two or three persons had come to the door to speak to Mrs. Norwood, and it seemed to me they were all made up unusually pale. I looked at myself in the gla.s.s, I hesitated, at last I turned and asked if I wore too much color--if I was too red, and the answer I received was: "That's a matter of taste."

Now it was not a matter of taste, but a matter of business. She was familiar with the size and the lighting of the theatre, and I was not, yet either from extreme self-occupation or utter indifference she allowed me to go upon that tiny stage painted like an Indian about to take the war-path. Truly I was climbing up a th.o.r.n.y stem to reach the flower of success.

The overture was at its closing bars, all were rushing to the stairs for the first act. I stopped behind the dressing-room door and bent my head for one dumbly pleading moment, then muttering "Amen--amen," I, too, hurried up the stairs to face the awful first appearance before a New York audience.

I had always been rehea.r.s.ed to enter with the crowd of guests. The cue came, and as I stepped forward, a strong hand caught my arm. Mr. Daly had suddenly changed his mind, he held me fast till all were on, then let me go, whispering, "Now--now," and I went on alone.

I had to retire to the back of the stage and wait a few moments till spoken to. Never shall I forget the sort of horror the closeness of the audience caused me, I felt I should step upon the upturned faces; I wanted to put out my hands and push the people back, and their use of opera-gla.s.ses filled my eyes with angry tears. Suddenly I understood the meaning of the lightly painted faces. I raised my handkerchief and wiped some of the red from my cheeks, while somewhat bitterly, I am afraid, I thought that "love ye one another" and "thy neighbor as thyself" had been relegated to the garret with "G.o.d bless our home."

Then the astonishing beauty of the women on the stage struck me with dismay; their exquisite lacy dresses, their jewel-loaded fingers. Oh! I thought, how can I ever hope to stand with them. I grew sick and cold.

Then there dully reached my ears the words of _Lady Lundy_: "I choose--Anne Sylvester." It was my cue. I came slowly down; no one knew me, no one greeted me. I opened my lips, but no sound came. I saw a frightened look on Miss Newton's face; I tried again, and in a husky whisper, answered: "Thank you; I'd rather not play."

Out in front one actor friend, John W. Norton, watched and prayed for a success for me; when he heard the hoa.r.s.e murmur, he dropped his head and groaned: "A failure--total and complete!" But I also had noted that hoa.r.s.e croak, and it had acted like a mighty spur. I was made desperate by it. I threw up my head, and answered my next cue with: "No, Lady Lundy, nothing is the matter; I am not very well, but I will play if you wish it."

I gave the words so bell-clear and with so much insolent humility that a round of applause of lightning quickness followed them. It was the first bit of genuine hearty kindness I had received in the city of New York. In my pleasure I forgot the character of _Anne_ completely, and turned to the audience a face every feature of which, from wide, surprised eyes to more widely-smiling lips, radiated such satisfaction and good-fellowship that they first laughed aloud and then a second time applauded.

At last! I was starting fair, we had shaken hands, my audience and I; my nerves were steady, my heart strong, the "part" good. I would try hard, I would do my best. I made my whispered appointment to meet _Geoffrey_, and when I returned and stood a moment, silently watching him, there came upon the house the silence that my soul loves--the silence that might thrill a graven image into acting, and I was not stone.

Our scene began. _Anne_, striving desperately to restrain her feelings, said: "You are rich, a scholar, and a gentleman; are you something else besides all these--_are you a coward and a villain, sir?_"

Clear and distinct from the right box, in suppressed tones, came the words: "Larmes de la voix! larmes de la voix!" Many glanced at the box, a few hissed impatiently at the new mayor, Oakey Hall, who had spoken. Our interview was interrupted by _Lady Lundy_ (Miss Newton) and _Sir Patrick Lundy_ (Mr. Lewis). I was dismissed by the first and left the stage.

Applause broke forth--continued. Mr. Lewis and Miss Newton began to speak--the applause redoubled. I turned angrily. "What bad manners!" I said. Mr. Daly ran up to me, waving his hands: "Go on! go on! It's you, you fool!"

"I know it," I replied, "but I'm not going to insult any actor by taking a call in the middle of his scene."

"Confound you!" he said, "will you do as I tell you?" He caught me, whirled me about and, putting his hand between my shoulders, literally pitched me on to the stage, where I stood ashamed and mortified by what I honestly felt to be a slight to those two waiting to proceed.

After that the evening's triumph, like the rolling s...o...b..ll, grew as it advanced. At the end of the quarrel act with _Mrs. Glenarm_ the curtain was raised on the stage picture--once, twice, three times. Then M. Benot said to Mr. Daly: "They want her," and Mr. Daly answered, sharply: "I know what they want, and I know what I don't want--ring up again!"

He did so; no use, the applause went on. Then Mr. Daly said to me: "Take _Mrs. Glenarm_ on with you, and acknowledge this call."

We went on together; retired; more applause. Again we went on together; no use, the applause _would_ not stop. "Oh, well, ring up once more,"