Life on the Stage Part 2

The donning of fles.h.i.+ngs for the first time is an occasion of anxiety to anyone, man or woman. I, however, approached the subject of tights with an open mind, and Blanche freely gave me both information and advice. She chilled my blood by describing the mortifying mishaps, the dread disasters these garments had brought to those who failed to understand them. She declared them to be tricky, unreliable, and malicious in the extreme.

"There's just one way to succeed with 'em," she said, "and that's by bullying 'em. Show you're afraid and they will slip and twist and wrinkle down and make you a perfect laughing-stock. You must take your time, you know, at first, and fit 'em on very carefully and smoothly over your feet and ankles and up over your knees. See that they are nice and straight or you'll look as if you were walking on corkscrews, but after that bully 'em--yank and pull and drag 'em, and when you have 'em drawn up as tight as you can draw 'em, go at 'em and pull 'em up another inch at least.

They'll creak and snap and pretend they're going to tear, but don't you ever leave your dressing-room satisfied, unless you feel you can't possibly get down-stairs without going sideways."

"But," I remonstrated, "they'll break and let my knees through!"

"Oh, no they won't!" she cheerfully answered. "They'll make believe they're going to split at the knee, of course, but instead they'll just keep as safe and smooth as the skin on your arm. But, for Heaven's sake, don't be afraid of 'em!"

And I gravely promised to be as bold as I possibly could in my first encounter with the flesh-colored terrors.

CHAPTER FIFTH

I Receive my First Salary--I am Engaged for the Coming Season.

At last the night came. Hot? Oh, my, hot it was! and we were so crowded in our tiny dressing-room that some of us had to stand on the one chair while we put our skirts on. The confusion was great, and I was glad to get out of the room, down-stairs, where I went to show myself to Mrs.

Bradshaw or Blanche, to see if I was all right. They looked at me, and after a hopeless struggle with their quivering faces they burst into shrieks of laughter. With trembling hands I clutched my tarlatan skirts and peering down at my tights, I groaned: "Are they twisted, or run down, or what?"

But it was not the tights, it was my face. I knew you had to put on powder because the gas made you yellow, and red because powder made you ghastly, but it had not occurred to me that skill was required in applying the same, and I was a sight to make any kindly disposed angel weep! I had not even sense enough to free my eyelashes from the powder clinging to them. My face was chalk white and low down on my cheeks were nice round bright red spots.

Mrs. Bradshaw said: "With your round blue eyes and your round white-and-red face, you look like a cheap china doll! Come here, my dear!"

She dusted off a few thicknesses of the powder, removed the hard scarlet spots, took a great soft hare's foot, which she rubbed over some pink rouge, and then holding it in the air she proceeded: "To-morrow, after you have walked to get a color, go to your gla.s.s and see where that color shows itself. I think you will find it high on your cheek, coming up close under the eye and growing fainter toward the ear. I'll paint you that way to-night on chance. You see _my_ color is low on my cheek. Of course when you are making-up for a character part you go by a different rule, but when you are just trying to look pretty be guided by nature.

Now----"

I felt the soft touch of the hare's foot on my burning cheeks; then she gave me a tooth-brush, which had black on it, and bade me draw it across my lashes. I did so and was surprised at the amount of powder it removed.

She touched her little finger to some red pomade, and said: "Thrust out your under lip--no, not like a kiss--that makes creases--make a sulky lip--so!"

She touched my lip with her finger, then she drew back and laughed again, in a different way. She drew me to the gla.s.s, and said, "Look!"

I looked and cried: "Oh--oh! Mrs. Bradshaw, that girl doesn't look a bit like me--she's ever so much nicer!"

In that lesson on making-up was the beginning and the ending of my theatrical instruction. What I have learned since then has been by observation, study, and direct inquiry--but never by instruction, either free or paid for.

Now, while I was engaged to go on with the crowd, fate willed after all that I should have an independent entrance for my first appearance on the stage. The matter would be too trivial to mention were it not for the influence it had upon my future. One act of the play represented the back of a stage during a performance. The scenes were turned around with their unpainted sides to the public. The scene-s.h.i.+fters and gas-men were standing about--everything was going wrong. The manager was giving orders wildly, and then a dancer was late. She was called frantically and finally when she appeared on the run, the manager caught her by the shoulders, rushed her across the stage and fairly pitched her on the imaginary stage--to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the audience.

The tallest and prettiest girl in the ballet had been picked out to do this bit of work, and she had been rehea.r.s.ed and rehea.r.s.ed as if she were preparing for the balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet"; and day after day the stage-manager would groan: "Can't you run? Did you never run? Imagine the house a-fire and that you are running for your life!"

At last, on that opening night, we were all gathered ready for our first entrance and dance, which followed a few moments after the incident I have described. The tall girl had a queer look on her face as she stood in her place--her cue came, but she never moved.

I heard the rus.h.i.+ng footsteps of the stage-manager: "That's you!" he shouted; "go on! go on, run!"

Run? She seemed to have grown fast to the floor. We heard the angry _aside_ of the actor on the stage: "Send someone on here--for Heaven's sake!"

"Are you going on?" cried the frantic prompter.

She dropped her arms limply at her sides and whispered: "I--I--c-a-n-t!"

He turned, and as he ran his imploring eye over the line of faces, each girl shrank back from it. He reached me--I had no fear, and he saw it.

"Can you go on there?" he cried. I nodded. "Then for G.o.d's sake go!"

I gave a bound and a rush that carried me half, across the stage before the manager caught me--and so I made my entrance on the stage, and danced and marched and sang with the rest, and all unconsciously took my first step upon the path that I was to follow through shadow and through suns.h.i.+ne--to follow by steep and stony places, over threatening bogs, through green and pleasant meadows--to follow steadily and faithfully for many and many a year to come.

On our first salary day, to the surprise of all concerned, I did not go to claim my week's pay. To everyone who spoke to me of the matter, I simply answered: "Oh, that will be all right." When the second day came I was the last to present myself at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler was there and he opened the door and asked me to come in. As I signed my name on the salary list I hesitated perceptibly and he laughingly said: "Don't you know your own name?" Now on the first day of all, when the stage-manager had taken down our names, I had been gazing at the scenery and when he called out: "Little girl, what is your name?" I had not heard, and someone standing by had said: "Her name is Clara--Clara Morris, or Morrisey, or Morrison, or something like that," and he dropped the last syllable from my name Morrison, and wrote me down Morris; so when Mr. Ellsler put his question, "Don't you know your name?" that was certainly the moment when I should have spoken--but I was too shy, and there and thereafter held my peace, and have been in consequence Clara Morris ever since.

I having signed for and received my two weeks' salary, Mr. Ellsler asked why I had not come the week before, and I told him I preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. And he gravely nodded and said "it was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time"--and, though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me.

Then he said: "You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went on alone and unrehea.r.s.ed the other night you proved you had both adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theatre. Will you come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in September next?"

I think it must have been my ears that finally stopped my ever-widening smile while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.

"To be sure," said he, "to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her, then, and let me know whether you can or not."

Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe that Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death everyone must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that 90-in-the-shade summer day, racing along in a whirl of short skirts, with the boyish, self-kicking gait peculiar to running girls of thirteen.

One man, a tailor, ran out hatless and coatless and looked up the street anxiously in the direction from which I came. A big boy on the corner yelled after me: "S-a-a-y, Sis, where's the fire?" but you see they did not know that I was carrying home my first earnings--that I was clutching six damp one-dollar bills in the hands that had been so empty all my life! Poor little hands that had never held a greater sum than one big Canadian penny, that had never held a dollar bill till they had first earned it. But if the boy was blind to what I held, so was I blind to what the future held--which made us equal.

I had meant to take off my hat and smooth my hair, and in a decorous and proper manner approach my mother and deliver my nice little speech, and then hand her the money. But, alas! as I rushed into the house I came upon her unexpectedly--for, fearing dinner was going to be late, she was hurrying things by sh.e.l.ling a great basket of peas as she sat by the dining-room window. At sight of her tired face, all my nicely planned speech disappeared. I flung my arm about her neck, dropped the bills on top of the empty pods, and cried with beautiful lucidity: "Oh, mother!

that's mine--and it's all yours!"

She kissed me, but to my grieved amazement put the money back into my hand, folding my four stiff, unwilling fingers over it, as she said: "No, you have earned this money yourself--you are the only one who has the right to use it--you are to do with it exactly as you please."

And while tears of disappointment were yet swimming in my eyes, triumph sprang up in my heart at her last words; for if I could do exactly as I pleased, why, after all, she should have the new summer dress she needed so badly. So I took the money to our room, and having secreted it in the most intricate and involved manner I could think of, I returned and laid Mr. Ellsler's offer before my mother, who at first hesitated, but learning that Mrs. Bradshaw was engaged for another season, she finally consented, and I rushed back to the theatre, where, red and hot and out of breath, I was engaged for the ballet for the next season. After this I was conscious of a new feeling, which I would have found it very hard to explain then. It was not importance, it was not vanity, it was a pleasant feeling, it lifted the head and gave one patience to bear calmly many things that had been very hard to bear. I know now it was the self-respect that comes to everyone who is a bread-winner.

Directly after breakfast next day I was off to get my mother's dress. I went quite alone, and my head was well in the air; for this was indeed an important occasion. I looked long and felt gravely at the edges of the goods, I did not know what for, but I had seen other people do it, and when my lavender-flowered muslin was cut off, done up and paid for, I found quite a large hole in my six dollars; for it was war time, and anything made of cotton cost a dreadful price. But, good Heaven! how happy I was, and how proud that I should get a dress for my mother, instead of her getting one for me! Undoubtedly, had there been a fire just then, I would have risked my life to save that flowered muslin gown.

I had not been more than two or three days in the theatre when I discovered that its people seemed to be divided into two distinct parties--the guyers and the guyed--those who laughed and those who were laughed at. All my life I have had a horror of practical joking, and I very quickly decided I would not be among the guyed. I had borrowed many of Mrs. Bradshaw's play books to read, and often found in the directions for costumes the old word "ibid." "Count Rudolph--black velvet doublet, hose and short cloak. Count Adolph, ibid." So when the property-man, an incorrigible joker, asked me to go home and borrow Mrs. Bradshaw's ibid for him, I simply looked at him and smiled a broad, silent smile and never moved a peg. He gave me a sharp look, then affecting great anger at my laziness, he wrote a request for an ibid and gave it to the fattest girl in the crowd, and she carried it to Mrs. Bradshaw, who wrote on it that her ibid was at Mrs. d.i.c.kson's, and the fat girl went to Mrs.

d.i.c.kson's, who said she had lent it to Mr. Lewis--so the poor fat goose was kept waddling through the heat, from one place to another, until she was half dead, to the great enjoyment of the property-man.

Next day he was very busy, when, glancing up, he saw me looking on at his work. Instantly he caught up a bottle, and said: "Run upstairs to the paint-frame (three flights up) and ask the painter to put a little ad-libitum in this bottle for me--there's a good girl!"

Now I did not yet know what ad-libitum meant, but I was a very close observer, and I saw the same malicious twinkle in his eye that had shone there when he had sent the fat girl on her hot journey, and once more I slowly chewed my gum, and smiled my wide, unbelieving smile. He waited a moment, but as I did not touch the bottle he tossed it aside, saying: "What a suspicious little devil you are!"

But when a man wanted me to blow down a gun-barrel next morning, the property-man exclaimed: "Here, you! let saucer-eyes alone! I don't know whether she gets her _savey_ out of her head or chews it out of her gum, but she don't guy worth a cent, so you needn't try to put anything on to her!"

And from that day to this I have been free from the attacks of the practical joker.

CHAPTER SIXTH

The Regular Season Opens--I have a Small Part to Play--I am among Lovers of Shakespeare--I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the Charm.

Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to learn something of another world--fairy-like in fascination, marvellous in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns, such women of splendid chill chast.i.ty, fierce ambition, thistle-down lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think of.