Life on the Stage Part 5

My clear skin, bright eyes, and round face gave me an appearance of perfect health, which was belied by the pain I almost unceasingly endured. The very inadequate provision my poor mother had been able to make for the necessaries of her child's welfare, the cruel restrictions placed upon my exercise, even upon movement in that wooden chair, where I sat with numb limbs five hours at a stretch, had greatly aggravated a slight injury to my spine received in babyhood. And now I was facing a life of hard work, handicapped by that most tenacious, most cruel of torments, a spinal trouble.

At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back, spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words "fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented, crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of uncertain health may have caused the capricious appet.i.te that tormented me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coa.r.s.e food. Heavy meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by rice-pudding.

But the trouble from the fastidious appet.i.te came when it suddenly demanded something for its gratification--imperiously, even furiously demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appet.i.te of mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else.

Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be piled on my table (I lived far from sh.e.l.l-oysters then), and when I awoke I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been saved for.

At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things, but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. Fifteen or twenty-five cents was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.

But, good gracious! what a sum of money--ten cents for a mere pleasure!

though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long, blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pa.s.s in the "torture-chamber,"

but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I could live on memory, and the next upon antic.i.p.ation, and so get through the long vacation in comparative comfort.

There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the lignum-vitae chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.

The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel, buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked; but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction.

The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights, to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill--and then my heart stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear G.o.d! a man's great red hand was grasping it--was clutching it, here and there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs--too late. The dress lay in the doorway--the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed eyes. The smell of a musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk; then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping craving for ice-cream.

It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my first theatrical vacation.

CHAPTER NINTH

The Season Reopens--I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility Man--Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work.

The exuberance of my joy over the opening of the new season was somewhat modified by my close relations with a certain pair of knee-breeches--and I wish to say right here that when Gail Hamilton declared inanimate things were endowed with powers of malice and general mischievousness, she was not exaggerating, but speaking strictly by the card.

Some men think her charge was made solely against collar-b.u.t.tons, whose conduct the world admits is detrimental to good morals; but they are wrong; she included many things in her charge. Consider the innocent-looking rocking-chair, for instance. When it strikes does not the rocker always find your ankle-joint? In darkness or in light did it ever miss that exact spot? Never! And then how gently it will sway, while you rear and stamp, and, with briny eyes, say--well, things you should not say, things you would not say but for the malice of an inanimate thing.

Perhaps the quickest way to win your sympathy is to tell you at once that those knee-breeches were made of yellow plush, bright yellow--I thought that would move you! There was a coat, too--yes, things can always be worse, you see; and when I was crowded into that awful livery I felt like hopping about in a search for hemp-seed, I looked so like an enormous canary that had outgrown its cage.

Had Gail Hamilton known those breeches she would have said: "Here is total depravity in yellow plush!"

You see, the way they got their grip on me originally was this. There had been two utility men engaged for the company, but one of them was taken sick and could not come to the city at all, and the other one made the manager sick, and was discharged for utter incompetency, and that very night there was required a male servant who could in the first act summon the star to the presence of his employer, with a name hard to p.r.o.nounce; and in the last act, when the star had become the boss of the whole affair, could announce the coming of his carriage.

"Could I do those two lines?"

"Oh, yes!" I joyfully announced my ability and my willingness; "but I had no clothes."

And then, instead of turning the part into a girl attendant, in an evil moment the manager bethought himself of some wardrobe he had purchased from a broken up or down opera manager, and search discovered the yellow-plush breeches, coat, and white wig. I put them on--the canary was hatched!

I played the part of two announcements; I walked out clear from the hip, like a boy--and I became the utility man of the company, and the tormented victim of the yellow breeches.

I was a patient young person and willing to endure much for art's sake, but that wig was too much. Built of white horse-hair mounted upon linen, its heat and weight were fearful. It had evidently been constructed for a big, round, perfectly b.u.mpless head. It came down to my very eyebrows on top, and at the sides, instead of terminating just at the hair-line above the ear, it swallowed up my ears, covered my temples, and extended clear to my eyes, giving me the appearance of being harnessed up in large white blinders--like a shying horse. In common humanity the manager released me from the wig and let me wear powder, but the clutch of the yellow breeches remained unbroken.

As in their opera days (I don't know what they sang, but they were probably in the chorus) they had wandered through the world, knowing all continental Europe and the South Americas, so now they wandered through dramatic literature. One night accompanying me on to deliver a note to Madame de Pompadour, the next night those same yellow breeches and I skipped back to Louis XIV., and admitted many lords and ladies, with tongue-tying names, to that monarch's presence, only to skip forward again, in a few days, to bring in mail-bags to snuffy rural gentry, under almost any of the Georges. Though the lace ruffles and jabots of the French period might give place to a plain red waistcoat for the Georgian English household, the canary breeches were always there, ready to burst into song at any moment, to basely fire off a b.u.t.ton or break a buckle just at the moment of my entrance-cue, treacherously suggesting, by their easy wrinkling while I stood, that I might just as well sit down and rest my tired feet, and the moment I attempted to lower myself to a chair, beginning such a mad cracking and snapping in every seam as brought me upright with a bound and the settled conviction that weariness was preferable to public shame.

I am glad to this day that the stage-door was always kept locked, for, had it been open, heaven only knows where those cosmopolitan breeches might have taken me--they were such experienced travellers that a trip to Havana or to the City of Mexico would have struck them as a nice little jaunt.

My pleasantest moments as utility man came to me when, in a very brief white cotton Roman shirt and sandals, I led the shouts for the _supers_, who are proverbially dumb creatures before the audience, though noisy enough behind the scenes. So all the furious and destructive mobs of that season were led on by a little whipper-snapper who yelled like a demon with a copper-lined throat and then stood about afterward peacefully making tatting.

It must not be thought that I had in the first place a monopoly of the small parts; far from it, but the company being rather short of utility people, if the ballet-girls could play speaking servants, it not only saved a salary or two to the manager, but it was of immense advantage to the girls themselves. Then, too, Mr. Ellsler was particularly anxious to avoid any charge of favoritism; so in the earliest days these little parts were given out turn and turn about, without choice or favor--indeed, two or three times my short dress caused me to be pa.s.sed over in favor of long dresses and done-up hair. But a few disasters, caused by failure of memory or loss of nerve on the part of these compet.i.tors, gave the _pas_ to me, and it must be remembered that these lapses and mishaps, though amusing to recall, were absolutely disastrous at the time, ruining, as they did, the scene, if not the entire act, in which they occurred.

With special vividness I recall the first one of these happenings. "Romeo and Juliet" was the play, and _Balthazar_ the part. I longed for it because, aside from his fine speech, he was really quite important and had to show tenderness, anxiety, and determination during the time _Romeo_ addressed him. I pleaded with my eyes, but I could not, dared not speak up and ask for the part, as did Annie, who was older than I. The star and prompter exchanged a few low-spoken sentences. I caught the condemnatory word "child," and knew my fate was sealed--long skirts and turned-up hair had won. However, my wound was salved when the page to _Paris_ was given me with two lines to speak.

Now there is no one but _Romeo_ on the stage when _Balthazar_ enters, which, of course, gives him great prominence. His first speech, of some fifty or fifty-six words, is simply expressed, not at all involved, yet from the moment Annie received the part she became a broken, terror-stricken creature. Many people when nervous bite their nails, but Annie, in that state of mind, had a funny habit of putting her hand to the nape of her neck and rubbing her hair upward. She had a pretty dress of her own, but she had to borrow a wig, and, like all borrowed wigs, it failed to fit; it was too small, and at last, when the best had been done, its wobbly insecurity must have been terrifying.

The girl's figure was charming, and as she stood in the entrance in her boy's costume, I remarked: "You look lovely, Annie!"

Silently she turned her gla.s.sy, unseeing eyes toward me, while she shifted her weight swiftly from one foot to the other, opening and shutting her hands spasmodically. _Romeo_ was on, and he joyously declared:

"My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne!"

He then described his happy dream--I heard the words:

"When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!"

And there Annie staggered forward on to the stage.

"News from Verona!" cried _Romeo_: "How now, Balthazar?"

Oh, well might he ask "How now?" for, shifting from foot to foot, this stricken _Balthazar_ was already feeling at the nape of her neck, and instead of answering the questions of _Romeo_ about _Juliet_ with the words:

"Then she is well, and nothing can be ill, Her body sleeps in Capets' monument, And her immortal part with angels lives; I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, And presently took post to tell it you: O pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir,"

these were the startling statements he made in gulps and gasps:

"O-Oh, y-yes! Sh-e's very well--and nothing's wrong;

[t.i.tter from audience, and amazement on _Romeo's_ face]

H-her immortal parts are in a vault, I--I saw them laid there, and come to tell you!"

Perhaps she would have got to the right words at last, but just there the wig, pushed too hard, lurched over on one side, giving such a piratical look to the troubled face that a very gale of laughter filled the house, and she retired then and there, though in the next speech she should have refused to leave _Romeo_:

"Pardon me, sir, I will not leave you thus: Your looks are pale and wild,"

yet now, because his looks were red and wild, she left without permission, and the enraged instead of grieving _Romeo_ had no one to receive his order:

"----get me ink and paper, And hire post horses."

So when, in his confusion, he went on continuing his lines as they were written, and, addressing empty s.p.a.ce, fiercely bade _Balthazar_:

"----get thee gone!"

and in unintentionally suggestive tones promised: