Stage Confidences Part 10

In the amusing correspondence that followed that call, the great preacher was on the defensive from the first, and in reading over two or three letters that, because of blots or errors, had to be recopied, I am fairly amazed at the temerity of some of my remarks. In one place I charge him with "standing upon his closed Bible to lift himself above sinners, instead of going to them with the open volume and teaching them to read its precious message."

Perhaps he forgave much to my youth and pa.s.sionate sincerity; at all events, we were friends. I had the benefit of his advice when needed, and, in spite of our being of different church denominations, he it was who performed the marriage service for my husband and myself.

So, girl writers, who question me, you see there have been other pebbles on my beach, and some big ones, too.

The question, then, that has been put so many times is, "Can there be any compatibility between religion and the stage?"

Now had it been a question of church and stage, I should have been forced to admit that the exclusive spirit of the first, and the unending occupation of the second, kept them uncomfortably far apart.

But the question has invariably been as to a compatibility between religion and the stage. Now I take it that religion means a belief in G.o.d, and the desire and effort to do His will; therefore I see nothing incompatible between religion and acting. I am a church-woman now; but for many years circ.u.mstances prevented my entering the great army of Christians who have made public confession of their faith, and received baptism as an outward and visible sign of a spiritual change. Yet during those long years without a church I was not without religion. I knew naught of "justification," of "predestination," of "transubstantiation."

I only knew I must obey the will of G.o.d. Here was the Bible; it was the word of G.o.d. There was Christ, beautiful, tender, adorable, and he said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Add to these the old Mosaic "Ten," and you have my religious creed complete. And though it is simple enough for a child to comprehend, it is difficult for the wisest to give perfect obedience, because it is not always easy to love that tormenting neighbour, even a little bit, let alone as well as oneself. How I wish there was some other word to take the place of "religion." It has been so abused, so misconstrued.

Thousands of people shrink from the very sound of it, believing that to be religious means the solemn, sour-faced setting of one foot before the other in a hard and narrow way--the shutting out of all beauty, the cutting off of all enjoyment. Oh, the pity! the pity! Can't they read?

"Let all those that seek thee be joyful and glad in thee, and let such as love thee and thy salvation say always, The Lord be praised." Again, "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." But it is not always in giving alone that He loves cheerfulness. Real love and trust in G.o.d--which is religion, mind you--makes the heart feather light, opens the eye to beauty, the heart to sympathy, the ear to harmony, and all the merriment and joy of life is but the sweeter for the reverent grat.i.tude one returns to the Divine Giver.

One evening, in a greenroom chatter, the word "religious" had in some way been applied to me, and a certain actress of "small parts," whose life had been of the bitterness of gall, suddenly broke out with: "What--what's that? religious--you? Well, I guess not! Why, you've more spirits in a minute than the rest of us have in a week, and you are as full of capers as a puppy. I guess I know religion when I see it. It makes children loathe the Bible by forcing them to learn a hundred of its verses for punishment. It pulls down the shades on Sundays, eats cold meat and pickles, locks up bookcase and piano, and discharges the girl for walking with her beau. Oh, no! my dear, you're not religious."

Poor abused word; no wonder it terrifies people.

How many thousand women, I wonder, are kept from church by their inability to dress up to the standard of extravagance raised by those who are more wealthy than thoughtful. Even if the poor woman plucks up her courage and enters the church, the magnificence of her fortunate sisters distracts her attention from the service, and fills her with longing, too often with envy, and surely with humiliation.

Some years ago a party of ultra-high churchwomen decided to wear only black during Lent. One of these ladies condescended to know me, and in speaking of the matter, she said: "Oh, I think this black garb is more than a fad, it really operates for good. It is so appropriate, you know, and--and a constant reminder of that first great fast--the origin of Lent; and as I walk about in trailing black, I know I look devout, and that makes me feel devout, and so I pray often, and you're always the better for praying, even if your dress is at the bottom of it--and, oh, well, I feel that I am in the picture, when I wear black during Lent."

But the important thing is that before the Lenten season was half over, female New York was walking the streets in gentle, black-robed dignity, and evidently enjoying the keeping of Lent because, to use a theatrical expression, "it knew it looked the part."

So much influence do these petted, beloved daughters of the rich exercise over the many, that I have often wished that, for the sake of the poorer women, the wealthy ones would set a fas.h.i.+on of extreme simplicity of costume for church-going. Every female thing has an inalienable right to make herself as lovely as possible; and these graceful, clever women of fas.h.i.+on would know as well how to make simplicity charming as does the _grande dame_ of France, who is never more _grande dame_ than when, in plain little bonnet, simple gown, and a bit of a fichu, she attends her church.

These bright b.u.t.terflies have all the long week to flutter their magnificence in. Their lunches, dinners, teas, dances, games, yachts, links, race-courses--everyone gives occasion for glorious display. Will they not, then, be sweetly demure on Sunday for the sake of the "picture," spare their sisters the agony of craving for like beautiful apparel? for G.o.d has made them so, and they can't help wanting to be lovely, too.

Perhaps some day a woman of fas.h.i.+on, simply clad, will turn up her pretty nose contemptuously at splendour of dress at church service, and whisper, "What bad form!"

Then, indeed, as the tide sets her way, she will realize her power, and the church will have many more attendants. The very poor woman will not be so cruelly humiliated, and the wage-earning girl, who puts so much of her money into finery, will have a more artistic and more suitable model to follow.

And you are beginning to think that free silver is not the only mad idea that has been put forward by a seemingly sane person. Ah, well, it's sixteen to one, you know, that this is both first and last of the church dress-reform.

To those two little maids who so anxiously inquire "if I believe prayer is of any real service, and why, since my own could not always have been answered," I can only say, they being in a minority, I have no authority to answer their question here. Perhaps, though, they may recall the fact that their loving mothers tenderly refused some of their most pa.s.sionate demands in babyhood. And we are yet but children, who often pray improperly to our Father.

_CHAPTER XVII

A DAILY UNPLEASANTNESS_

What is the most unpleasant experience in the daily life of a young actress?

Without pause for thought, and most emphatically too, I answer, her pa.s.sing unattended through the city streets at night; that is made unalloyed misery, through terror and humiliation. The backwoods girl makes her lonely way through the forest by blazed trees, but the way of the lonely girl through the city streets is marked by blazing blushes.

It is an infamy that a girl's honesty should not protect her by night as well as by day. Those hideous hyenas of the midnight streets are never deceived. By one glance they can distinguish between a good woman and those poor wandering ghosts of dead modesty and honour, who flit restlessly back and forth from alleys dark to bright gas glare; but bring one of these men to book, and he will declare that "decent women have no right to be in the streets after nightfall," as though citizens were to maintain public highways for the sole use one-half the time of all the evil things that hide from light to creep out at dark and meet those companions who are fair by day and foul by night.

Some girls never learn to face the homeward walk with steady nerves, others grow used to the swift approach, the rapidly spoken word, and receive them with set, stony face and deaf ears; but oh, the terror and the shame of it at first! And this horror of the night takes so many forms that it is hard to say which one is the most revolting--hard to decide between the vile innuendo whispered by a sober brute or the roared ribaldry of a drunken beast.

In one respect I differ from most of my companions in misery, since they almost invariably fear most the drunkard; while I ground my greater fear of the sober man upon the simple fact that I can't outrun him as I can a drunken one, at a pinch. One night, in returning home from a performance of "Divorce,"--a very long play that brought me into the street extra late,--a shrieking man flew across my path, and as a second rushed after him with knife uplifted for a killing blow, his foot caught in mine, and as he pitched forward the knife sank into his victim's arm instead of his back as he had intended; and with the cries of "Murder!

Police!" ringing in my ears, I ran as if I were the murderess. These things are in themselves a pretty high price to pay for being an actress.

I had a friend, an ancient lady, a relative of one of our greatest actors, who, for independence' sake, taught music in her old age. One night she had played at a concert and was returning home. Tall and slight and heavily veiled, she walked alone. Then suddenly appeared a well-looking young son of Belial, undoubtedly a gentleman by daylight.

He tipped his hat and twirled his mustache; she turned away her head. He cleared his throat; she seemed quite deaf. He spoke; he called her "girlie" (the scamp!). She walked the faster; so did he. He protested she should not walk home alone; she stopped; she spoke, "Will you please allow me to walk home in peace?"

But, no, that was just what he would not do, and suddenly she answered, "Very well, then, I accept your escort, though under protest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Clara Morris in "Evadne"_]

Surprised, he walked at her side. The way was long, the silence grew painful. He ventured to suggest supper as they pa.s.sed a restaurant; she gently declined. At last she stopped directly beneath a gas-lamp, and from her face, with sorrow-hollowed eyes and temples, where everyone of her seventy-six years had been stamped in cruel line and crease and wrinkle, she lifted up the veil and raised her sad old eyes reproachfully to his. He staggered back, turned red, turned white, stammered, took off his hat, attempted to apologize, then turned and fled.

"And what," I asked, "did you say to him?"

"Say, say," she repeated; "justice need not be cruel. Why add anything to the sight of this?" and she drew a finger down her withered cheek.

'Twas said with laughing bitterness, for she had been very fair, and well guarded, too, in the distant past; while then I could but catch her tired hands and kiss them, in a burst of pity that this ancient gentlewoman might not walk in peace through the city streets because fate had left her without a protector.

Appeal to the police, I think some one says. Of course, if he is about; but recall that famous old recipe of Mrs. Gla.s.s beginning, "First catch your hare and then--" so, just catch your policeman. But believe me, they rarely appear together,--your tormentor of women and your policeman,--unless, indeed, the former is stupidly in liquor; and then what good if he is arrested? shame will prevent you from appearing against him. Silence and speed, therefore, are generally the best defensive weapons of the frightened, lonely girl.

Once through fright, fatigue, and shame I lost all self-control, and turning to the creature whom I could not outwalk, I cried out with a sob, "Oh, I am so tired, so frightened, and so ashamed; you make me wish that I were dead!" And to my amazement, he answered gruffly, "It's a pity _I'm_ not," and disappeared in the dark side street.

After an actress has married and has a protector to see her safely home nights, she is apt to recall and to tell amusing stories of her past experiences; but I notice those tales are never told by the girls--they only become funny when looked at from the point of perfect safety, though like everything else in the world, the dreaded midnight walk shows a touch of the ludicrous now and then.

I recall one snowy January night when I was returning home. It was on a Sat.u.r.day, and I had played a five-act play twice with but a sandwich for my dinner, the weather forbidding my going home after the matinee. So being without change to ride with, hungry and unutterably weary, I started, bag in hand, to walk up Sixth Avenue. On the east side stood a certain club house (it stands there yet, by the way), whose peculiar feature was a vine-hung veranda across its entire front, from which an unusually long flight of steps led to the sidewalk. Quite unmolested, I had walked from the stage door almost to this building, when suddenly, as if he had sprung from the very earth, a man was at my elbow addressing me, and the fact that he was not English, and so not understood, did not in the slightest degree lessen the terror his evil face inspired. I shrank away from him, and he caught at my wrist. It was too much. I gave a cry and started to run, when, tall and broad, a man appeared at the foot of the club-house steps, just ahead of me. Ashamed to be seen running, I halted, and dropped into a walk again.

Then with that exaggerated straightening of back and stiffening of knee adopted by one who tries to walk a floor-crack or chalk-line, the second man approached me. He was very big, he was silvery grey, and his dignity was portentous. At every step he struck the pavement a ringing blow with a splendid malacca cane. Old-fas.h.i.+oned and gold-headed, it looked enough like its owner to have been his twin brother. He lifted his high silk hat, and with somewhat florid indignation inquired: "My c-hild, was that in-nfamous cur annoying you shust now? A-a-h!" he broke off, flouris.h.i.+ng his cane over his head, "there y-you slink; I w-wish I had hold of you." And I heard the running footsteps of No. 1 as he darted away, across and down the avenue.

"An-and the police?" sarcastically resumed the big man, who wavered unsteadily now and then. "H-how useful are the police! How many do y-you see at this moment, pray, eh? And, by the way, m' child, what in the devil's name brings yer on the street alone at this hour, say, tell me that?" and he a.s.sumed a most judicial att.i.tude and manner.

I replied, "I am going home from my work, sir."

"Y-your w-what?" he growled.

"My work, sir, at the theatre."

"Good Lord!" he groaned, "and t-that crawlin' r-reptile couldn't let you pa.s.s, you poor little soul, you!"

Upon my word, I thought he was going to weep over me. Next moment he turned his collar up with a violence that nearly upset him, and exclaimed: "D-don't you be a-fraid. I'll see you safely home. G-go by yourself? not much you won't! I'll take you to your mother. S-say, you've got a mother, haven't you? Yes, that's right; every girl's worth anythin's got a mother. I-I'll take you to her, sure; receive maternal thanks, a-and all that. Oh, say, boys! look here!" he shouted, and holding out the big cane in front of me to prevent my pa.s.sing, he called to him two other men, who slowly and with almost superhuman caution were negotiating the snowy steps.

"Say, Colonel! Judge! come here and help me p-pr'tect this un-fortunate child." The Judge at that moment sat heavily and unintentionally down on the bottom step, and the Colonel remarked pleasantly, though a trifle vaguely, "T-that's the time he hit it"; while the fallen man asked calmly from his snowy seat, "P-pr-protect what--f-from who?"

"This poor ch-i-ld from raging beasts and in-famous scoundrels, Judge,"

remarked my bombastic friend.