Tramping on Life Part 93

Two days before the play, as I was walking by the Bellman House, I saw Jarvis Alexander Mackworth standing there, come up from Osageville for a regents' conference....

"h.e.l.lo!" the dear, good man called, "you heavenly b.u.m! You starry young tramp!"

His eyes were twinkling in appreciative merriment over his quaint phraseology.

"What are you doing in Laurel, Mr. Mackworth?"

I noticed that he did not wear his many-patched trousers, but was well dressed....

--"attending a regents' meeting, young man,--where I suppose I'll have to stand up in your defence again....

"It's a good thing you don't run after the women, Gregory, or your case would be entirely lost."

(Yet Mackworth didn't know of the dirty trick that had been played on me:

One of the boys from the school, running wild down in Kansas City, had, with a curious sense of humour, given my name as his ... to the "girls"

in various houses of prost.i.tution....

And "do you know Johnnie Gregory?" and "when is Johnnie Gregory coming to see us again?" other students were asked who frequented the "houses.")

"And what are you up to now?" asked Mackworth.

--"acting ... in Van Maarden's _Iistral_ ... leading role!"

"You look skinnier than ever!"

"I am taking the part seriously, and it's bringing me down. I like to do real things when I get a chance, Mr. Mackworth ... and I am going to make the two performances of _Iistral_ memorable ones."

"You need a new suit of clothes very badly."

"I know I do. But I have no money, and no credit."

"Well see about that, my young Villon."

Mackworth took me to one side and thrust a fifty-dollar bill into my hand.

I hurried down to Locker, the clothier....

In a very little while I was again walking by the Bellman House, completely togged out in new apparel from head to heel.

Mackworth was still standing there, and he laughed with astonishment at the lightning-quick change in my appearance....

"You're a card, Gregory!"

He afterward repeated the story with gusto....

The day before the night of our first performance at the Bowersby Opera House, Jack Travers, always turning up, came to me with a smile of faint sarcasm on his face--

"How's the great actor, eh?"

"Don't be an a.s.s, Jack!"

"I've got a good proposition to make for advertising the show--and there'll be a lot of fun in it, too....

"Suppose we kidnap you, take you out somewhere in the country--then, after a day or so--find you bound, in a farm house....

"Of course it would compel them to put off the performances for a few days ... but look at the excitement; and the stories in the papers!...

afterwards you could go on tour through all the princ.i.p.al cities of Kansas."

The idea fascinated me, in spite of myself....

"But how about Dineen? He'd go nearly crazy!"

"There's where a lot of the fun would come in. And to see the way Gertie Black, the elocution teacher, would carry on!..."

But after a long pause of temptation I shook my head in negation of the suggestion....

It _would_ be a lark, but I had pledged Dineen that I would give him no more trouble with my vagaries....

And, besides, I didn't trust Jack Travers--once they had me in their power, he and his kidnappers might hide me away for several weeks ... to "bust up" the play entirely; would, I wisely reflected, be, to Travers, even a greater joke than merely to delay its production.

And I wanted this time to show my enemies that I could be depended on in affairs of moment....

We had to have recourse to Kansas City for our costumes. And we were more fortunate in them than the cast of _She Stoops to Conquer_ had been the year before....

Costumes had then been rented for them which left the children mysteriously itching, driven to the inexplicable necessity of scratching in embarra.s.sing localities....

The poor girls especially were terror-stricken ... and many of the boys were too innocent to conjecture what was the matter ... at first they thought that the rented costumes had imparted some obscure skin disease to the entire company ... and word was conveyed to the costuming firm that they were to be sued....

But when it was discovered that an indecent sort of vermin was the cause, the case was dropped....

Suit could not be conducted on such grounds....

But the joke was pa.s.sed around and caused considerable merriment among the wise ones.

The only thing I allowed the elocution teacher and directress to do was to put on my make-up for me ... including the sticking to my face of a close Van d.y.k.e beard....

I refused to avail myself of her instruction for acting, as I perceived that was all bosh....