Life on the Stage Part 41

And his honest sympathy for my new affliction spoiled his evening right up to the point of discovery that it was all in the play. Then he enjoyed the laugh against himself almost as much as I enjoyed his recognition of my laboriously acquired symptoms.

And now for Mr. Palmer's beloved cast.

With what a mixture of pleasure and grief I recall Sara Jewett, the loveliest woman and the most perfect representative of a French lady of quality I have ever seen in the part of _Mathilde_.

Mr. James O'Neil's success in _Maurice de la Tour_ was particularly agreeable to me, because I had earnestly called attention to him some time before he was finally summoned to New York. His fine work in Chicago, where I had first met him, had convinced me that he ought to be here, and that beautiful performance fully justified every claim I had made for him in the first place. The part is a difficult one. Some men rant in it, some are savagely cruel, some cold as stone. O'Neil's _Maurice_ bore his wound with a patient dignity that made his one outbreak into hot pa.s.sion tremendously effective, through force of contrast; while his sympathetic voice gave great value to the last tender words of pardon.

And that ancient couple--that never-to-be-forgotten pair, Mr. Stoddard and Mrs. Wilkins! The latter's husband, belonging to the English bar, had been Sergeant Wilkins, a witty, well-living, popular man, who quite adored his pretty young wife and lavished his entire income upon their ever-open house, so that his sudden taking off left her barely able to pay for a sea of c.r.a.pe--with not a pound left over for a life-preserver or raft of any kind. But on her return to the stage, her knowledge of social amenities, the dignity and aplomb acquired by the experienced hostess, remained with her, in a certain manner, an air of suave and gentle authority, that was invaluable to her in the performance of gentlewomen; while the good-fellowship, the downright jollity of her infectious laugh were the crown of her comedy work. Who can forget the Multon tea-table scene between Mrs. Wilkins and Mr. Stoddard. How the audience used to laugh and laugh when, after his accusing snort: "More copperas!" he sat and glared at her pretty protesting face framed in its soft white curls. He was so ludicrously savage I had to coin a name for him; and one night when the house simply would not stop laughing, I remarked: "Oh, doesn't he look like a perfect old Sardonyx?"

"Yes-m!" quickly replied the property boy beside me; "yes-m, that's the very beast he reminds _me_ of!"

Certainly, I never expect to find another _Dr. Osborne_ so capable of contradicting a savage growl with a tender caress.

Mr. Pa.r.s.elle, as the gentle old Latin scholar, tutor, and acting G.o.dfather, was beyond praise. He admitted to me one night, coming out of a brown study, that he believed _Belin_ was a character actually beyond criticism, and that, next to creating it as author, he ranked the honor of acting it; but there spoke the old-school actor who respected his profession.

And those children--were they not charming? That _Sister Jane_, given so sweetly, so sincerely by the daughter of the famous Matilda Heron, who, christened Helene, was known only by the pet name Bijou, in public as well as in private life. And the boy _Paul_, her little brother. Almost, I believe, Mabel Leonard was herself created expressly to play that part.

Never did female thing wear male clothes so happily. All the impish perversity, all the wriggling restlessness of the small boy were to be found in the person of the handsome, erratic, little Mabel.

Even the two maids were out of the common, one being played by a clever and very versatile actress, who had been a friend of my old Cleveland days. She came to me out of the laughing merry past, but all pale and sad in trailing black, for death had been robbing her most cruelly. She wished for a New York engagement and astonished me by declaring she would play anything, no matter how small, if only the part gave her a foothold on the New York stage.

I sought Mr. Palmer and talked hard and long for my friend, but he laughed and answered: "An actress as clever as that will be very apt to slight a part of only two scenes."

But I a.s.sured him to the contrary; that she would make the most of every line, and the part would be a stepping-stone to bigger things. He granted my prayer, and Louise Sylvester, by her earnestness, her breathless excitement in rushing to and fro, bearing messages, answering bells, and her excellent dancing, raised _Kitty_ to a character part, while _Louise_, the smallest of them all, was played with a brisk and bright a.s.surance that made it hard to believe that Helen Vincent had come direct from her convent school to the stage-door--as she had.

A great, great triumph for everyone was that first night of "Miss Multon," and one of the sweetest drops in my own cup was added by the hand of New York's honored and beloved poet, Edmund Clarence Stedman, for, all nested in a basket of sweet violets, came a sonnet from him to me, and though my unworthiness was evident enough, nevertheless I took keenest joy in the beauty of its every line--surely a very sweet and gracious token from one who was secure to one who was still struggling.

And now, when years have pa.s.sed, he has given me another beautiful memory to keep the first one company. I was taking my first steps in the new profession of letters, which seems somewhat uncertain, slow, and introspective, when compared with the swift, decisive, if rather superficial profession of acting, and Mr. Stedman, in a pause from his own giant labor on his great "Anthology," looked at, nay, actually considered, that shivering fledgling thing, my first book, and wrote a letter that spelled for me the word _encouragement_, and being a past-master in the art of subtle flattery, quoted from my own book and set alight a little flame of hope in my heart that is not extinguished yet. So gently kind remain some people who are great. Just as Toma.s.so Salvini, from the heights of his unquestioned supremacy--but stay, the line must be drawn somewhere. It would not be kind to go on until my publisher himself cried: "Halt!"

So I shall stop and lock away the pen and paper--lock them hard and fast, because so many charming, so many famous people came within my knowledge in the next few years that the temptation to gossip about them is hard to resist. But to those patient ones, who have listened to this story of a little maid's clamber upward toward the air and sunshine, that G.o.d meant for us all, I send greeting, as, between mother and husband, with the inevitable small dog on my knee, I prepare to lock the desk--I pause just to kiss my hands to you and say _Au revoir_!

THE END