Life on the Stage Part 37

I fell--it did start backward, but Mr. Daly was equal to the emergency.

"Take off the castors and place the chair hard against the end of the piano; now try!"

I did; the chair was firm as a rock. It was settled; I did as I was told, and fell at the end of the act ever after. And Mr. Daly came and patted me on the back, and said, kindly: "Don't fret; I honestly believe there's something in the little part after all. That speech made me feel creepy."

But the scales on my own eyes were still firm and tight, and all I could see in the play was the strength, power, and pa.s.sion of the scenes between the _Count_ and _Countess_, and the probable hit of Mr. Louis James in his part of the _Duc de Mirandol_. The fate of this play rested in other hands than mine, thank goodness, and I rejoiced in the freedom from responsibility my small part gave me, and planned what I would do when Miss Jewett took _Alixe_.

The great night came. Another small auditorium awaited the coming of our patrons. There was a smell of scarce dried paint in front of the curtain and of scrubbing-soap behind it; but all was bright and fresh, and the house was soon packed with a brilliant audience. As the play to be produced had but a small cast, and as Mr. Daly was anxious that the entire company should share in this house-warming, he had invited Mr.

John Brougham to write a sort of prologue, giving a few apt lines to every member of the company, and then to proceed to the play. This was done--but, alas! Mr. Brougham's work was utterly unworthy of him. There was not one flash of his wonderful wit. He confined himself to comments upon the fire, after this manner; I spoke, saying:

"I can't remember half the things I lost, I fear----"

_Mr. Lewis_ (breaking in). "One article you have not lost----"

_C. M._ "What?"

_Lewis._ "'L'Article 47,' my dear."

Then Miss Jewett came forward to exclaim:

"My lovely 'peau de soie,'

The sweetest thing in silk I ever saw!"

It was only spoken one night. But the audience was so heartily kind to us all that many of us had tears of sheer grat.i.tude in our eyes. We were in evening dress and were formed in a crescent-like line from box to box, as the heavy red curtains parted revealing us, and Mr. Daly was very proud of his family of manly-looking men and gracious women, and the audience greeted the a.s.sembled company heartily. But that was nothing to the welcome given as each favorite actor or actress stepped forward to speak--and I was happy, happy, happy! when I found myself counted in as one of them, with the welcome to the beautiful Davenport, Jewett, Dietz, to the ever-favored Mrs. Gilbert, no longer, no heartier than my own! And as I bowed low and gratefully, for just one moment I could not help wishing that I had an important part to play, instead of the childish thing awaiting me.

The prologue being over, Mr. Daly, with a frowning, disappointed face, told those of the play to make all possible haste in changing their dresses, that they might get to work and rub out the bad impression already made.

Every important occasion seems to have its touch of the ridiculous, and so had this one. The "bustle"--the big wire affair, extending to the bottom of the skirt, had reached its hideous apogee of fashion at that time, yet what possible relation could there be between that teetering monstrosity and grace or sentiment or tragedy? Surely, I thought, this girl-pupil, brought straight from convent-school to country-home, might reasonably be bustleless--and I should look so much smaller--so much more graceful! But--Mr. Daly? Never--never! would he consent to such a breach of propriety! Fashion his soul loved! He pored over her plates! he bowed to her mandates!

My courage having failed me, when I hurried to my room I put on the obnoxious structure; but one glimpse of that camel-like hump on the back of _Alixe_, and the thought of the fall in the chair made me desperate. I tore the ma.s.s of wire off, and decided to keep out of sight till the last moment, and then make a rush for the stage.

"Ready, Miss Morris?"

"Ready!" I answered, as the question was asked from door to door.

In a few moments the call-boy came back again: "Are you ready? Everyone is out there but you."

"Oh, yes!" I said, showing myself to him, but still not leaving the shelter of my room; and I heard him saying: "Yes, sir, she's all ready, I saw her."

The curtain rose. Only a few lines were spoken before my entrance. I dared wait no longer--heavens! no! for there was Mr. Daly coming for me.

I gathered up my skirts as bunchily as I could and ran out; but I could not deceive Mr. Daly. In an instant he missed the necessary camel's hump.

"Good heaven and earth!" he shouted, "you've left your bustle!"

I broke into a run. "Wait!" he cried, loudly. He dashed into my open room, caught the big bustle up, and dragging it like a great cage behind him, came plunging down the entrance to me, crying: "Wait--wait!" and waving the other hand commandingly above his head.

I heard my music; I sprang to the platform I had to enter from. "That's me!" I cried. "Wait!" he ordered and reached out to catch me. I evaded his grasp and skipped through the door, leaving but a fold of my skirt in his hand. I was on the stage--and joy, oh, joy! I was without a bustle!

Mr. Daly did not like being laughed at, but when he glanced down and saw the thing he was dragging behind him, after the manner of a baby's tin wagon, he had to laugh, and verily there were others who laughed with him, while the scandalized dresser carried the rejected article back to a decent seclusion.

There is no manager, star, or agent alive whose experience will enable him to foresee the fate of an untried play. A very curious thing is that what is called an "actor's" play--one, that is, that actors praise and enjoy in the rehearsing, is almost always a failure, while the managerial judgment has been reversed so often by the public, that even the most enthusiastic producer of new plays is apt "to hedge" a bit, with: "Unless I deceive myself, this will prove to be the greatest play," etc.; while the mistakes made by actors and managers both anent the value of certain parts are ill.u.s.trated sufficiently by E. H. Sothern, C. W. Couldock, Joseph Jefferson--all three of whom made immense hits in parts they had absolutely refused to accept, yielding only from necessity or obligingness, and to their own astonishment finding fame in presenting the unwelcome characters. And to the misjudged _Lord Dundreary_, _Asa Trenchard_, etc., that night was added the name of _Alixe_.

Refined, intensely modern, the play was nevertheless a dread tragedy, and being French it almost naturally dealt with the breaking of a certain great commandment. And now--see: we actors thought that the stress and power of the play would be shown in the confession of the wife and in the scene of wild recrimination between her and the _Comte de Somerive_, when they met after eighteen years of separation. But see, how different was the view the public took. In the very first place then, when I escaped the bustle, and entered, straight, and slim, art had so reduced my usual height and changed my coloring, that until I spoke I was not recognized.

The kindly welcome then given me calmed my fears, and I said to myself: "I can't be looking ridiculous in the part, or they would not do that!"

And women, at least, can understand how my very soul was comforted by the knowledge. And just then a curious sense of joy seemed to bubble up in my heart. The sudden relief, the feeling of irresponsibility, the first-night excitement. Perhaps one, perhaps all together caused it. I don't know--I only know that meaning no disrespect, no irreverence, I could have sung aloud from the Benedicite: "_Omnia opera Domini!_" "Bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever!"

And the audience accepted the joyous little maid almost from the first girlish, love-betraying words she spoke, and yet--so sensitive is an audience at times--while still laughing over her sweet ignorance, they thrilled with a nameless dread of coming evil. They seemed to see the blue sky darkening, the threatening clouds piling up silently behind the white-robed child, whose perfect innocence left her so alone! Before the first act ended we discovered that the tragedy was shifting from the sinful mother and was settling down with crushing weight upon the shoulders of the stainless child. Indeed, the whole play was like a dramatization of the awful words: "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children!"

As the play went on and the impetuous grief of the child changed into proud self-restraint, while her agonizing jealousy of her adored mother developed, Mr. Daly, with wide, bright eyes, exclaimed: "I must have been blind--stone-blind! Why _Alixe_ is the bone and marrow, the heart and soul of this play!"

Certainly the audience seemed to share his belief, for it called and called and called again for that misunderstood young person, in addition to the hearty approval bestowed upon the other more prominent characters.

It was a very fine cast, Miss f.a.n.n.y Morant making a stately and powerful _Comtesse de Somerive_, while Mr. Louis James gave a performance of the _Duc de Mirandol_ that I never saw even approached again. Every other actor made of him either a fool or a brute, while James made of him a delightful enigma--a sort of well-bred simpleton, rattle-brain, and braggart, who at the last moment shows himself, beneath all disguise, a brave and loyal gentleman.

But the greatest triumph for _Alixe_ followed in that act--the last--in which she does not speak at all. She had been able to bear loss, sorrow, renunciation, but as in olden times poison-tests were kept, crystal cups of such rare purity they shattered under contact with an evil liquid--so her pure heart broke at contact with her mother's shame. Poor, loving, little base-born! Pathetic little marplot! Seeing herself as only a stumbling-block to others, she sought self-effacement beneath the gentle waters of the lily-pond. And early in that last act, as her drowned body, carried in the arms of the two men who had loved her, was laid before the starting eyes of the guilty mother, and the loving, forgiving, pleading letter of the suicide was read above her, actual sobs rose from the front of the house. It _was_ a heart-breaking scene.

But when the curtain fell, oh! what a very whirlwind broke loose in that little theatre! The curtain shot up and down, up and down, and then, to my amazement, Mr. Daly signaled for me to go before the curtain, and I couldn't move. He stamped his foot and shouted: "Come over here and take this call!" and I called back: "I can't! I am all pinned up, so I can't walk!"

For, that my skirts might not fall away from my ankles, when I was being carried across the stage, I had stood upon a chair and had my garments tightly wound about me and securely fastened, and unfortunately the pins were behind--and I all trussed up, nice and tight and helpless.

Mr. Daly came tearing over to me, and down he went upon his knee to try to free me, but a muttered "D----n!" told me that he could not find the pins, and the applause, oh, the precious applause that was being wasted out there! Suddenly he rose--tossed that extraordinary hat of his off, picked me up in his arms and carried me like a big property doll to the curtain's side, signaled it up, and, with his arm about me, supported me on to the stage. Oh, but I was proud to stand there with him, for in those days he would not make the simplest speech; would not show himself even. Why, at the banquet of his own giving, he hid behind a big floral piece and made Mr. Oakey Hall speak for him. And yet he had been pleased enough with my work to bring me there himself. I saw his hand upon my shoulder, and suddenly I stooped my head and kissed it, in purest grat.i.tude.

Afterward, when I had been unpinned, as we walked through the entrance together, he said, with a gleeful laugh: "This is the third and greatest, but we share it."

"The third what?" I asked.

"The third surprise," he answered. "First you surprised the town in 'Man and Wife'; second, you surprised _me_ in 'L'Article 47'; now 'Alixe'--the greatest of all--surprises you as well as me!"

He stopped, stepped in front of me and asked: "What do you most wish for?"

I stared at him. He added, "About your home, say?"

And swiftly I made answer: "A writing-desk; why?"

He laughed a little and said: "Good-night, now. Oh, by the way, there's a forfeit against you for not wearing your bustle to-night."

But I was not greatly alarmed or excited--not half so much as I was next day, about four o'clock, when some men drove up and insisted upon leaving in my room a handsome inlaid desk that was taller than I was. At first I protested, but a card, saying that it was "A souvenir of 'Alixe,' from your manager and friend, A. Daly," changed my bearing to one of most unseemly pride.

In the next ten days I wrote I think to every soul I knew, and kept up my diary with vicious exact.i.tude, just for the pleasure of sitting before the lovely desk, that to-day stands in my "den" in the attic. Its mirror-door, is dim and cloudy, its sky-blue velvet writing-leaf faded to a silvery gray, but even so it still remains "A souvenir of 'Alixe,' from A. Daly."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIRST

Trouble about Obnoxious Lines in "Madeline Morel"--Mr. Daly's Manipulation of Father X: In Spite of our Anxiety the Audience accepts the Situation and the Play--Mr. Daly gives me the smallest Dog in New York.

The last and fourth success that was granted to me under Mr. Daly's management was in "Madeline Morel." Of course I played in many plays, sometimes small, comparatively unimportant parts, sometimes, as in the two-hundred-night run of "Divorce," I played a long, hard-working part, that was without any marked characteristic or salient feature to make a hit with.

But I only mention "Madeline Morel" because of a couple of small incidents connected with its production. First of all, let me say that I believe Mr. Daly, who was an ardent Catholic, was not the first manager to give benefits to the Orphan Asylums, for I think that had long been a custom, but he was the first to arrange those monster programmes, which included the names of every great attraction in the city--bar none. The result was not merely an Academy of Music literally packed, but crowds turned from its doors. I remember what excitement there was over the gathering together in one performance of such people as Fechter, Sothern, Adelaide Neilson, Aimee, and Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams. I first saw the beautiful Mary Anderson at one of these benefits, as well as those two clever English women, Rose Coghlan and Jeffreys Lewis. Later on, when I was under Mr. Palmer's management, I had an experience at a benefit that I am not likely to forget. I had consented to do the fourth act of "Camille" (the ball-room scene), and when I swept through the crowd of "guests," every word was wiped clean out of my memory, for as they faced me I recognized in the supposed supers and extras all the various stars--the leading ladies and gentlemen who had had a place on the lengthy programme. Working hard, giving of their best, they had all laughingly joined in this gracious whim of playing supernumeraries in Dumas's ball-scene. And I remember that Mademoiselle Aimee was particularly determined to be recognized as she walked and strolled up and down. Once I whispered imploringly to her: "Turn your back, Madame!"