Woven with the Ship Part 25

"Nellie!" he cried as he ran, in a voice that vibrated above the applause in the theatre. "Don't you know me? Nellie! Nellie!" he continued, stretching out his arms toward the little girl.

The noise of clapping hands died away as if by magic, as they heard the cry, full of love and longing. The man stopped in full view of the great audience. The little girl, hearing the cry, with one hand still in the air where the kisses had stopped half blown away, looked at the man over the footlights, half-dazed, apparently, by the situation.

"Papa! Papa!" she cried, suddenly awakening to life and bounding toward him. "Papa, take me home!" Every soul in the hushed theatre heard the words in the sweet treble of childhood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Papa! Papa!" she cried, "take me home!"]

"Where's your mother, baby?" asked the man, apparently oblivious of everything but the little la.s.s.

"She's dead, papa," answered the child, brushing her little hand across her eyes. "I'm so glad you've found me. Oh, take me away!"

"I will! I will!" said the man, desperately, forcing his way toward the stage.

Two of the ushers and an officer had hurried down the aisle and seized him by the arms. The piano-player rose from his neglected instrument and caught him also.

"Let me go!" roared the man, shoving them aside with superhuman strength, apparently. "She's my daughter, I tell you! I will have her!"

The lights on the stage were suddenly turned up. A hard-featured man came forward and grasped the child by the arm.

"What's all this row?" he cried; "I'm the manager of Mademoiselle Helene. Her mother left the child with me. She gets good food and clothes and is well taken care of. What more does she want?"

"I want my papa! Oh, I want you!" cried the little girl.

"And you shall have me, dear."

"No," said the man on the stage, roughly, "she shall not!"

"Gentlemen," cried the other man, turning about and facing the audience. "Friends, there is my little daughter. Her mother ran away from me, left me. I haven't seen Nellie for two years. I just happened in here to-night and recognized her, and----"

"Give him his daughter," broke out a burly man in the third row of the parquet, rising in his seat as he spoke and shaking his fist at the man on the stage, "or----"

The house was in a perfect uproar now. The women in tears, the men screaming with flushed, excited faces.

"Let him have her!"

"Give her up!"

"Let the child go with her father!"

"Shame! Shame!"

"Mob him!"

"Lynch the wretch!"

The man on the stage fairly quailed before this outburst of popular pa.s.sion; the ushers and officer had released the other man, but before he could take a step the local manager appeared on the stage in the midst of the confusion. Lifting his hand to the crowd, he finally succeeded in stilling the tumult.

"I have heard it all!" he cried, as soon as he could command attention. "This theatre don't want to part father and daughter. Give the child to the man. And get out of here!" he added, turning fiercely and shaking his fist at the hard-featured man on the stage.

The latter let go the child's arm and shrank back in the wings, followed by the jeers of the crowd. Then the local manager took the little girl in his arms, stepped over the footlights, and handed her to the man who had claimed her.

He lifted her up, kissed her, and pressed her tenderly to his breast.

She clasped her little arms around his neck and dropped her head on his shoulder with a low cry of content.

"Thank you, sir!" said the man to the manager; "thank you all, ladies and gentlemen! Oh, I have got her back again!"

He turned with his precious burden and walked rapidly down the aisle, pa.s.sed out of the door, and disappeared in the night.

The house rang with cheers. Men and women stood up and clapped and applauded and yelled like mad. When a semblance of order was restored, the local manager dismissed the audience. As he said, none of the performers were in condition to go on further after the little tragedy they had witnessed, which had ended so happily, after all. Nor was the audience in a mood for any more vaudeville after the bit of real life in which they had partic.i.p.ated.

"How did it go off, Bill?" asked the brown-haired man of the local manager in the office half an hour later.

"Fine!" said the manager. "It was the greatest act I ever saw. You did splendidly, old man. I congratulate you."

"It has only one disadvantage," remarked the hard-featured man: "you can only do it once in each town. It's only good for one-night stands."

"And didn't Nellie do it well?" returned the other.

"She did that," replied the local manager; "she couldn't have done it better! It almost made me weep myself."

"That child's a born actress," said the hard-featured man; "she'll be a treasure some day, sure."

"She's a treasure now," replied the local manager. "What a pity we couldn't do it over to-night!"

"Do you know, men," said the brown-haired man, "I feel real guilty somehow. Seems like such a fraud----"

"Nonsense, Bill!" interrupted the manager, yet with a note of sympathy in his tone.

"Rot!" commented hard features, not the least comprehending.

"Where is she now?" asked the other, shaking his head dubiously, still uncertain and unconvinced.

"Her father and mother took her home right after the performance, and I hope she is fast asleep in her bed by this time, like a good little girl," continued the manager. "Here's your check, Bill. Be on hand Monday night when we open at X----"

THE LAST TRIBUTE TO HIS GENIUS

TRAGEDY

"I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play, Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ."

SHAKESPEARE

The crime had been one of peculiar atrociousness. While the little old man who kept the quaint curiosity-shop down on Linden Street seemed to have few or no friends, he was blessed with a great many acquaintances, especially among the people of the better cla.s.s, for whom it was quite a fad to visit the dingy, shabby little store, with its a.s.sortment of bric-a-brac, mouldy books, articles of virtu, and antiques, genuine or spurious, valuable or worthless, all heaped about in promiscuous confusion.