Tales from Bohemia Part 26

Along the corridor, through which the sound of chorus girls' laughter came, strolled the comedian, his cigar already lighted and behind it his cheerful, hearty, smooth-shaven visage appearing ruddy from the recent washing off of "make-up."

"h.e.l.lo!" he began, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pockets. "By the way, while I think of it, I just pa.s.sed Miss Moran coming from the dressing-room, and suddenly that name came back to me, the name of her husband. It was a peculiar name,--Ernest Ruddle."

Ernest Ruddle! the name on the ma.n.u.script! The man of the restaurant and the gallery, the tears, the waiting at the stage door, were explained now. Ere we reached the stage door, the actress herself appeared in the corridor, on the arm of her maid. She was laughing, rather coa.r.s.ely. We stepped aside to let her pa.s.s out into the night.

"So the manager said he'd give me $50 more on the road," she was saying, "and I said he would have to make it $75 more--gracious! what's this?"

She had stumbled over something just outside the threshold of the stage door. Her companion stooped, while the actress jumped aside and looked down at the large black object with both fright and curiosity.

"It's a man," said the maid; "drunk, or asleep, or dead. He looks frozen. He's a tramp, I guess; hurry away! We'll tell the policeman on the corner."

The actress pa.s.sed on, with a final look of half-aversion, half-pity, at the prostrate body. The comedian and I were both by that body within two seconds.

"Frozen or starved, sure!" said the comedian. "Poor beggar! Look at his straw hat. Observe his death-clutch on the cane."

From down the alley came two sounds: one was a policeman's approaching footsteps; the other, of a woman's laughter. What, to be sure, was the dead or drunken body of an unknown vagabond to her?

And it seems strange that I, who never exchanged speech with either the woman or the man, was the only one in the world who might recognize in the momentary contact of the living with the dead, a dramatic situation.

XXII. -- "POOR YORICK"

[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J.B.

Lippincott Company.]

The name by which he was indicated on the playbills was Overfield. His real name was buried in the far past. By several members of the company to which he belonged he was often called "Poor Yorick."

I asked the leading juvenile of the company--young Bridges, who was supposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification "The Lady of Lyons" was sometimes revived at matinees--how the old man had acquired the nickname.

"I gave it to him myself last season," replied Bridges, loftily. "Can't you guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet.' The skull of Yorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years.

Yorick had been dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for about the same length of time,--professionally dead, I mean. See?"

It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old man was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite unimportant parts.

It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the n.o.blest man in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman who usually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and best heart in the profession.

Poor Yorick was a thin man, with a smooth, gentle face, lamblike blue eyes, and curling gray locks that receded gracefully from his forehead.

He had just an individualizing amount of the pomposity characteristic of many old-time actors. He was not known to have any living kin. He permitted himself one weakness, a liking for whiskey, an indulgence which was never noticed to have brought appreciable harm upon him.

Once I asked him when he had made his debut. He answered, "When Joe Jefferson was still young and before Billie Crane was heard of."

"In what role?"

"As four soldiers," he replied.

"How could that be?"

He explained that he had first appeared as a super in a military drama, marching as a soldier. The procession, in order to create an illusion of length, had pa.s.sed across the stage and back, the return being made behind the scenes four times continuously in the same direction.

The old man took uncomplainingly to the name applied to him by Bridges.

He must have known what it implied, for surely he could not have mistaken himself for "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." His non-resentment was but an evidence of his good nature, for he was aware that it was not a very general custom of actors to give each other nicknames, and that his case was an exception.

When he was playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of a New York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came to know Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more to do in the play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some papers on a desk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light.

Bridges was doing the role of the bank clerk in love with the banker's daughter. Yorick and Bridges, through some set of circ.u.mstances or other, were sharers of the same dressing-room.

Upon a certain Wednesday, and after a matinee, the two were in their dressing-room, hastily washing up their faces and putting on their street clothes. Said the old man:

"Did you notice the pretty little girl in the upper box? She reminds me of--" here his voice fell and took on suddenly a tone of sadness--"of some one I knew once, long ago."

Bridges, drying his face with a towel before the big mirror, did not observe the old man's change of voice, nor did he heed the last part of the sentence.

"Notice her?" he answered, with a touch of triumphant vanity in his manner of speech. "I should say I did. She was there on my account.

I'm going to make a date with her for supper after the performance to-night."

Old Overfield, sitting on a trunk, stared at Bridges in surprise.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

"No," replied the leading juvenile. "That is, I have never met her, but she's been writing me mash notes lately, asking for a meeting. In the last one she said she could get away from her house this evening, as her father's out of town and her mother is going over to Philadelphia this afternoon. So she invited me to have supper with her to-night, and was good enough to say she'd occupy that box this afternoon, so I could see what she was like. Didn't you observe her embarra.s.sment when I came on the stage? I paid no attention to her first letter. But, having seen her, you bet I'll answer the last one right away. Don't you wish you were me, old fellow?"

The old fellow stood up and looked at Bridges severely.

"Yes, I do wish I were you,--just long enough to see that you don't answer that girl's letter. Surely you don't mean to!"

"h.e.l.lo! What have you got to do with it? Do you know the young woman?"

"No, I don't. But I can easily guess all about her. She's some romantic little girl, still pure and good, afflicted with one of those idiotic infatuations for an actor, which is sure to bring trouble to her if you don't behave like a white man. You want to show her the idiocy of writing those letters, by ignoring them. You know that actors who care to do themselves and the profession credit make it a rule never to answer a letter from a girl like that, unless to give her a word of advice. Come, my boy, don't disgrace yourself and profession. Don't spoil the life of a pretty but foolish girl who, if you do the right thing, will soon repent her silliness, and make some square young fellow a good wife."

Bridges had continued to dress himself during this long speech, a.s.suming a show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield, astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in a quiet but rather insolent tone:

"Look here, old man, don't try to work the Polonius racket on me. I don't like advice, and I'm going to meet that girl, see? She arranged the whole thing herself; she's to be at a certain spot at eleven-thirty P.M. with a cab. All I've got to do is to signify my a.s.sent in a single line, which I'm going to write and send by messenger as soon as I get out of here. Of course, if the girl was a friend of yours, it would be different, but she isn't, and if you want to remain on good terms with me, you won't put in your oar. Now that's all settled."

"Is it? Well, young man, I don't want to remain on good terms with anybody I can't respect. I can't respect a man who would take advantage of a love-struck girl's ignorance of life. If you meet her, you will simply be obtaining favours on false pretences, anyhow, for you know you're not really half the fascinating, romantic, clever youth that you seem when you're on the stage speaking another man's thoughts. That girl is probably good, and she looks like some one I used to know. If I can save her, I will, by thunder!"

"Really, old man, you're quite worked up. If you could act half that well on the stage, you'd be doing lead, instead of dusting furniture while the audience gets settled in its seats."

Old Yorick stood for a moment speechless, stung by the insult. Then he took up his hat, excitedly, and left the dressing-room without a word.

Some of the other members of the company wondered at the angry, flushed look on his face when he hurried through the corridor to the stage door.

A few minutes later he was seen walking down the street, apparently much heated in mind. When he reached a certain cafe he went in, sat down, and called for whiskey. He remained alone in deep thought, mechanically and unconsciously answering the salutations bestowed upon him by two or three acquaintances who strolled in. Suddenly he nodded thrice, as if denoting the acquiescence of his judgment in some plan of action formed by his inventive faculty. He rose quickly, paid his bill at the cashier's desk, and moved rapidly across the street to the ---- Hotel.

Pa.s.sing in through a broad entrance, he turned aside to a writing-room, where, without removing his soft hat, he sat down at a desk.

He was soon immersed in the composition of a letter, which caused him many contractions of the brow, many lapses during which he abstractedly stared at vacancy, many fresh beginnings, and the whole of the two hours allowed him before the evening's performance for dinner.

When he had finished the letter, he carefully read it, and made a few corrections. Then he folded it up, put it in an envelope, and placed it unsealed in his inside coat pocket. He arose with an expression of resolution about his eyes that was quite new there.