Tales from Bohemia Part 25

"Of course you'll reject it?"

"Naturally. I'll ease his mind by telling him the subject lacks contemporaneousness. Have a cigarette? By the way, have you any special interest in the rubbish?"

"No; I only think I've seen it before somewhere. What's the writer's name and address?"

"It's to be called for. He didn't leave any address. From that fact and his appearance, I infer that he doesn't have any permanent abode. Here's his name,--Ernest Ruddle. Not half as much individuality in the name as in the man. I remember him because he had a straw hat on."

The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday article saw the light for the first time on the following Monday night.

There being no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the town--represented by the critics and the sporting and self-styled Bohemian elements--was there. The performance was to have a popular comedian as the central figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce a once favourite comic-opera prima donna, who had been abroad for some years. This stage queen had once beheld the town at her feet. She had abdicated her throne in the height of her glory, having made the greatest success of her career on a certain Monday night, and having disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly afterward materializing in Paris.

There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she had grown a bit pa.s.see; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked "as rosy and youthful as ever." Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot of masculinity cla.s.sified under the general head of "men about town,"

crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in s.h.i.+ning drab tights, she had a long and noisy reception.

My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage manager had served to obtain for me an unusual privilege,--that of witnessing the first night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across the stage and the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish haze, a familiar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in some risk of decapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at once distinguished it from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous faces that rose back of it. The face was that of my man of the restaurant and of the blue-covered ma.n.u.script.

I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could command most of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from parquet to roof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much sang-froid and a London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous dialogue, came toward the footlights to sing. While the conductor of the orchestra poised his baton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she began:

"I'm one of the swells Whose accent tells That we've done the Contenong."

When she had sung only to this point, people in the audience were exchanging significant smiles. There was no doubt of it; Louise Moran's voice had lost its beauty. The years and joys of life abroad had done their work. We now knew why she had given up comic opera and had gone into burlesque. The house was so taken by surprise that at the end of her second stanza, where applause should have come, none came. There was no occasion for her to draw upon her supply of "encore verses."

Unprepared for the chilling silence that followed her song, she bestowed upon the audience a look of mingled astonishment, pain, and resentment.

But she recovered self-possession promptly and delivered the few spoken lines preceding her exit gaily enough. Her face clouded as soon as she was off the stage. She abused her maid in her dressing-room and sent the comedian's "dresser" out for some troches. The state of her mind was not improved by the sound of a hail-storm-like sound that came from the direction of the stage shortly after,--the applause at the leading comedian's entrance.

As the newspapers said the next day, the only honours of that performance were with the comedian. The star of Louise Moran had set.

Not only was her singing-voice a ruin, but the actress had grown coa.r.s.e in visage. The once willowy outlines of her figure had rounded vulgarly.

On the face, audacity had taken place of piquancy. Even the dark gray eyes, which somehow seemed black across the footlights, had lost some l.u.s.tre.

Why had the once lovely creature come back from Europe to disturb the memories of her other radiant self, and to turn those dainty photographs of her earlier person into lies?

Every man in the house was thinking this question at the end of the first act.

She had another solo to sing in the second act. It was while she was attempting this that my glance strayed to the man in the gallery. His face this time surprised me.

It wore a look of ineffable sympathy and sorrow. Surely tears were falling from the sad eyes.

This pity touched me. It was so solitary. The feeling of the rest of the audience was plainly one of resentful derision at being disappointed.

After the performance I waited for the comedian. He was called before the curtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few faint cries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had summoned the manager to her dressing-room. While she hastily a.s.sumed her wraps for the street, she was excitedly complaining of the musical director "for not knowing his business," the comedian for "interfering"

in her scenes, the composer for writing the music too high, and the librettist for supplying such "beastly rubbish" in the way of dialogue.

"Very well; I'll call a rehearsal to-morrow at ten," the conciliatory manager replied. "You talk to Myers" (the musical director) "yourself about it. And you can introduce those two songs you speak of. Myers will fix the other music to suit your voice."

"And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once," she commanded, "and see that that song and dance clown" (the comedian) "never comes on the stage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't go on at all. That's settled!"

The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab was waiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which the stage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way from a main street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fas.h.i.+oned street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it eventually reaches another main street.

This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadows opposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not think that within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic realm which the people "in front" idealize into a wonderful inaccessible country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and before the playworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of terrestrial beer and sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from the crowds of men and women in the theatre and from the illumined street in front.

The ordinary world, when pa.s.sing this strange place, peers in curiously from the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate players being up there. s.n.a.t.c.hes of song from feminine throats, mere trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence.

These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before the actors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is constantly opening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a few bold youths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying to look like men of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of these young men struck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon the stage door, my man of the restaurant, and the ma.n.u.script, and the gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was cold, he s.h.i.+vered perceptibly.

"Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?" I said, aloud.

The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon his seat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat:

"Oh, he's waiting for Miss Moran. She didn't always go home from the theatre in a cab. She acquired the habit abroad, I suppose. How she's changed. I knew her in other days."

"Really? I didn't know that. Tell me about her."

"It's a common story. She's the result of a mercenary mother's schemes.

She's not as old as people think, you know. Her career has been eventful, which makes it seem long. But I was in the cast, playing a small part in the first play she ever appeared in, and that was only twelve years ago. She was about twenty-one then. She waited on customers in her mother's little stationery store, until one day she eloped with a poor young fellow whom she loved, in order to escape a rich old man whom her mother had selected for a son-in-law. She could have endured poverty well enough, if the mother hadn't done the 'I--forgive--and--Heaven--bless--you--my--children' act, after which she succeeded in making the girl quarrel with her husband continually. She was a schemer, that mother. A theatrical manager, whom she knew, was introduced to the girl, who was more beautiful then than ever afterward.

The mother managed to have the girl's husband discharged from the bank where he was employed on the same day that the manager made the girl an offer to go on the stage. The boy naturally wanted to keep his wife with him, but the mother told him he was a fool.

"'I'll travel with her,' she said, 'and you stay here and get another situation.' The wife, intoxicated at the prospects of stage triumphs, urged, and the boy gave in.

"A year or so after that, the girl had drifted completely out of the husband's life, as they say in society plays, the mother managed to bring about the estrangement so promptly.

"The husband stayed at home and got work in a railroad office or somewhere, so as to earn money with which to drink himself to death--I say, let's go in here and eat. If we go to the club, I'll be bored to death with congratulations."

We turned into a lighted vestibule and mounted the stairs to a modest little cafe over a Broadway saloon. There, over the cigars and Pilsner presently the comedian continued the story:

"When the husband learned that to his charming mother-in-law's machinations he owed the loss of his position and his wife, he bided his time, like a sensible fellow, and one day he called upon the old lady at her flat. Without a word, he proceeded to pull out much of her hair and otherwise to disfigure her permanently, which, as she was a vain woman, made her miserable the rest of her days. Then he disappeared, and has not been heard of since. It seems strange the thing never got into the newspapers. By the way, you won't print this story, my boy, until she or I leave the profession."

"Why not? Are you the only man who knows it?"

"No; it was general gossip in the profession at that time."

"How did you get it so straight?"

"She told me. I knew her well in those days. Oh, use the story if you like, only don't credit it to me. She's very mad because I made a hit to-night and she didn't."

"But what was the name of her husband?"

"Poor devil!--his name was--what was it, anyhow? By Jove, I can't think of it! It'll come back to me, though, and I'll let you know later. He had literary aspirations, by the way. She used to laugh at the poetry he had written about her. Poor boy!"

The next night, radical changes having been effected in the burlesque, the prima donna made a more creditable showing. I happened to be at the stage door again when she came out with her maid after the performance, as I had under my guidance one of the newspaper's artists, who had been making some sketches of life behind the scenes. She was in a gayer mood than that in which she had been on the previous night.

As she was entering the cab, I heard a m.u.f.fled exclamation, which came from the shadow opposite the stage door. Dimly in that shadow could be seen a form with arms outstretched toward the woman, as in an involuntary gesture. The cab rolled away. The form emerged from the darkness and wearily strode by. It was that of my ma.n.u.script man. He had the same straw hat, stick, and frock coat.

"That queer old chap must be really in love with her," I thought, smiling. Such things often happen. I knew a gallery G.o.d--but that will keep. Evidently here was an amusing case, not without its aspect of pathos.

Being in that vicinity on the following night, I strolled up to the stage door, merely to see whether the straw hat would be there again.

There it was, patiently waiting, scourged by the most ferocious of January winds.

Doubtless the man came here every night to catch a glimpse of his divinity. He was quite un.o.btrusive, and I was probably the only one who noticed his constant attendance. I learned at the newspaper office that he had called for the rejected ma.n.u.script bearing his name,--Ernest Ruddle. Then for a time I neither saw nor thought of him.

One night, in the last of January,--the coldest of that savage winter,--I happened again to be in the corridor leading to the stage door, having come from within the theatre in advance of my friend the comedian, with whom I was to have supper at the Actors' Athletic Club.

The actress's cab was waiting. The dark little portion of the world back there was deserted.