Tales from Bohemia Part 6

A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not of "the profession."

Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither he nor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He still waited and hoped.

For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened by a distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of his occupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearily describe as a "favourable impression." This he ascribed to lack of opportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. and Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent for the newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought the notices of the performance. These records never contained a word of either praise or censure for Mogley.

Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a "walking gentleman." It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz) that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her that life-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue acting. She had swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope of his triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she suffered more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied.

She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face from which the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much to Mogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of his aspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully the hard life that a player at "one-night stands" must endure in the interest of art.

This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was about to start "on the road" with the "Two Lives for One" Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or die,--perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, who in the end drowns the princ.i.p.al villain in the tank of real water, while his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the small room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street.

The "Two Lives for One" Company "collapsed," as the newspapers say, in Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstanding the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the manager at the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough money from him to take them back to New York.

Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,--a really heartrending smile.

"Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I don't know whether I can live out the season."

"Don't say that, Alice, for G.o.d's sake!"

"I would be resigned, Tom, if only--if only you would make a success before I go."

"If only I could get the chance, Alice!"

As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live on nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, but medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door:

"Anything yet?"

"Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is overcrowded!"

But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In the dark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor.

"Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse," said the physician, abruptly. "I'm afraid she won't live until midnight."

Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to "break news gently" in cases where they stand small chances of remuneration.

Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he had such good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news would reanimate her.

"Alice," he cried, as he threw open the door, "you must get well! My chance has come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, is here."

She sat up in bed, trembling. "What is it, Tom?"

"This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman this afternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'Silver King' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why this extravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexter explained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't be put on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too sick to walk. 'No one else knows the part,' Hexter said. Then I told him I knew the part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the piece was first produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust up-to-date' from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late dinners and too much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the piece had run more'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it.

Well, Hexter said, as everything was ready to put on the piece, if I thought I was up in the part, he'd let me try it. So we went to Renshaw's room and got the part and here it is."

"But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line."

"Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone of power.' That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides, burlesque is the thing now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and Powers. They're the men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit in this part, my fortune is sure."

"But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery."

"That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries."

Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome in the same words.

"And then besides--why, Alice, what's the matter?"

She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

"Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying."

Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hard enough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it be without her?

The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside.

"Hexter and his Mephis...o...b.. d----d!" said Mogley. "I shall stay at home with you to-night."

"No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before I die, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until you come to join me."

Mogley's weaker will succ.u.mbed to hers. So, with his right hand around Mrs. Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the steeple which was visible through the narrow window, that he might know when to administer her medicine, he held his "part" in his left hand and refreshed his recollection of the lines.

At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon her cheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep, but she murmured:

"May G.o.d help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre with you. Good-bye."

Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and then during the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper intervals.

Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw's dressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind ever turning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to the words and "business" of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights and crimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted the exaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood by, giving him hints as to new "business" invented by Renshaw.

"You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a specialty."

"Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the part and the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do some imitations of actors."

At eight he was ready to go on the stage.

"May G.o.d be with you!" reechoed in his ear,--the echo of a weak voice put forth with an effort.

He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that, "owing to Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr.

Thomas Mogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice, without a rehearsal."

He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and he involuntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and delicious words reached his ears.

The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, then an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance of Mephisto.

Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminary announcement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, rather disconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes had ranged over the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the footlights, there sounded in the depths of his brain:

"My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!"

There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them on the front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant seat throughout the evening.