Stage Confidences Part 4

_CHAPTER VI

"ODETTE" IN THE WEST. A CHILD'S FIRST PLAY_

An odd and somewhat touching little incident occurred one evening when we were in the far Northwest. There was a blizzard on just then, and the cold was something terrible. I had a severe attack of throat trouble, and my doctor had been with me most of the day. His little boy, hearing him speak of me, was seized with a desire to go to the theatre, and coaxed so well that his father promised to take him.

The play was "Odette." The doctor and his pretty little son sat in the end seats of the parquet circle, close to the stage and almost facing the whole house. The little fellow watched his first play closely. As the comedy bit went on, he smiled up at his father, saying audibly, "I like her--don't you, papa?"

Papa silenced him, while a few people who had overheard smiled over the child's unconsciousness of observers. But when I had changed my dress and crept into the darkened room in a _robe de chambre_; when the husband had discovered my wrong-doing and was driving me out of his house, a child's cry of protest came from the audience. At the same moment, the husband raised his hand to strike. I repelled him with a gesture and went staggering off the stage; while that indignant little voice cried, "Papa! papa! can't you have that man arrested?" and the curtain fell.

One of the actors ran to the peep-hole in the curtain, and saw the doctor leading out the little man, who was then crying bitterly, the audience smiling and applauding him, one might say affectionately.

A bit later the doctor came to my dressing-room to apologize and to tell me the rest of it. When the curtain had fallen, the child had begged: "Take me out--take me out!" and the doctor, thinking he might be ill, rose and led him out. No sooner had they reached the door, however, than he pulled his hand away, crying: "Quick, papa! quick! you go round the block that way, and I'll run round this way, and we'll be sure to find that poor lady that's out in the cold--just in her nighty!"

In vain he tried to explain, the child only grew more wildly excited; and finally the doctor promised, if the child would come home at once, only two blocks away, he would return and look for the lady--in the nighty. And he had taken the little fellow home and had seen him fling himself into his mother's arms, and with tears and sobs tell her of the "poor lady whose husband had driven her right out into the blizzard, don't you think, mamma, and only her nighty on; and, mamma, she hadn't done one single bad thing--not one!"

Poor, warm-hearted, innocent little man; he was a.s.sured later on that the lady had been found and taken to a hotel; and I hope his next play was better suited to his tender years.

In Philadelphia we had a very ludicrous interruption during the last act of "Man and Wife." The play was as popular as the Wilkie Collins' story from which it had been taken, and therefore the house was crowded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Clara Morris as "Odette"_]

I was lying on the bed in the darkened room, in that profound and swift-coming sleep known, alas! only to the stage hero or heroine. The paper on the wall began to move noiselessly aside, and in the opening thus disclosed at the head of the bed, lamp-illumined, appeared the murderous faces of Delamain and Hesther Detheridge. As the latter raised the wet, suffocating napkin that was to be placed over my face, a short, fat man in the balcony started to his feet, and broke the creepy silence with the shout:--

"Mein Gott in Himmel! vill dey murder her alreaty?"

Some one tried to pull him down into his seat, but he struck the hand away, crying loudly, "Stob it! stob it, I say!" And while the people rocked back and forth with laughter, an usher led the excited German out, declaring all the way that "A blay vas a blay, but somedings might be dangerous even in a blay! unt dat ting vat he saw should be s...o...b..d alreaty!" Meantime I had quite a little rest on my bed before quiet could be restored and the play proceed.

I have often wondered if any audience in the world can be as quick to see a point as is the New York audience. During my first season in this city there was a play on at Mr. Daly's that I was not in, but I was looking on at it.

In one scene there stood a handsome bronze bust on a tall pedestal. From a careless glance I took it to be an Ariadne. At the changing of the scene the pedestal received a blow that toppled it over, and the beautiful "bronze" bust broke into a hundred pieces of white plaster.

The laughter that followed was simply caused by the discovery of a stage trick. The next character coming upon the stage was played by Miss Newton, in private life known as Mrs. Charles Backus, wife of the then famous minstrel. No sooner did she appear upon the stage, not even speaking one line, than the laugh broke forth again, swelled, and grew, until the entire audience joined in one great roar. I expected to see the lady embarra.s.sed, distressed; but not she! After her first startled glance at the house, she looked at the pedestal, and then she, too, laughed, when the audience gave a hearty round of applause, which she acknowledged.

A scene-hand, noticing my amazed face, said, "You don't see it, do you?"

"No," I answered.

"Well," said he, "did you know who that bust was?"

"Yes," I replied, "I think it was Ariadne."

"Oh, no!" he said, "it was a bust of Bacchus; then, when Mrs. Backus appeared--"

"Oh!" I interrupted. "They all said to themselves: 'Poor Backus is broken all up! Backus has busted!'"

And that was why they laughed; and she saw it and laughed with them, and they saw _that_ and applauded her. Well, that's a quick-witted audience--an opinion I still retain.

People are fond of saying, "A woman can't keep a secret." Well, perhaps she doesn't keep her secrets forever; but here's how two women kept a secret for a good many years, and betrayed it through a scene in a play.

Mr. Daly's treasurer had given tickets to some friends for a performance of "Divorce." They were ladies--mother and daughter. At first greatly pleased, the elder lady soon began to grow nervous, then tearful as the play went on; and her daughter, watching her closely, was about to propose their retirement, when the mother, with clasped hands and tear-blurred eyes, seeing the stealing of my little son by the order of his father, thrilled the audience and terrified her daughter by flinging up her arms and crying wildly: "Don't do it! for G.o.d's sake, don't do it! You don't know what agony it means!" and fell fainting against the frightened girl beside her.

Great confusion followed; the ushers, a.s.sisted by those seated near, removed the unconscious woman to Mr. Daly's private office; but so greatly had her words affected the people, that when the men on the stage escaped through the window with the child in their arms, the curtain fell to a volley of hisses.

In the office, as smelling salts, water, and fresh air were brought into requisition, in answer to a question of Mr. Daly's, the treasurer was saying, "She is Mrs. W----, a widow," when a faint voice interrupted, "No--no; I'm no widow!"

The treasurer smiled pityingly, and continued, "I have known her intimately for twelve years, sir; she is the widow of--"

"No--no!" came the now sobbing voice. "No--no! Oh, Daisy, dear, tell him! tell him!"

And the young girl, very white, and trembling visibly, said: "I hope you will forgive us, Mr. W----, but from causeless jealousy my father deserted mother, and--and he stole my little brother, mamma's only son!

We have never heard of either of them since. Widowhood seemed a sort of protection to poor mamma, and she has hidden behind its veil for sixteen years. She meant no harm. She would have told you before--"

She turned crimson and stopped, but that burning blush told its story plainly; and Mr. Daly busied himself over the pouring of a gla.s.s of wine for the robbed mother, while the treasurer in low tones a.s.sured Daisy there was nothing to forgive, and gratefully accepted the permission granted him to see the poor things safely home.

Sixteen years' silence is not so bad for a s.e.x who can't keep a secret!

_CHAPTER VII

A CASE OF "TRYING IT ON A DOG"_

It was before I came to New York that I one night saw a really fine performance almost ruined by a single interruption. It was a domestic tragedy of English rural life, and one act began with a tableau copied exactly from a popular painting called "Waiting for the Verdict," which was also the t.i.tle of the play.

The scene gave an exterior view of the building within which the husband and father was being tried for his life on a charge of murder. The trembling old grandsire leaned heavily on his staff; the devoted wife sat wearily by the closed iron gate, with a babe on her breast, tired but vigilant; a faithful dog stretched himself at her feet, while his s.h.a.ggy shoulders pillowed the head of the sleeping child, who was the accused man's darling.

The curtain rose on this picture, which was always heartily greeted, and often, so well it told its pathetic story, a second and a third round of applause greeted it before the dialogue began. The manager's little daughter, who did the sleeping child, contracted a cold and was advised not to venture out of the house for a fortnight, so a subst.i.tute had to be found, and a fine lot of trouble the stage-manager had. He declared half the children of Columbus had been through his sieve; and there was the trouble--they all went through, there was no one left to act as subst.i.tute. But at last he found two promising little girls, sisters they were, and very poor; but the mother vowed her children must be in bed at nine, theatre or no theatre; yes, she would like to have the money, but she'd do without it rather than have a child out of bed at all hours. At first she held out for nine o'clock, but at last yielded the additional half-hour; and to the great disappointment of the younger child, the elder one was accepted, for the odd reason that she looked so much younger than her sister.

The company had come from Cleveland, and there were the usual slight delays attendant on a first night; but the house was "good"; the star (Mr. Buchanan) was making a fine impression, and the play was evidently a "go." The big picture was looked forward to eagerly, and when it was arranged, we had to admit that the pale, pinched little face of the strange child was more effective as it rested on the dog's shoulder than had been the plump, smiling face of the manager's little one. The curtain went up, the applause followed; those behind the scenes crowded to the "wings" to look on; no one noted that the hands of the clock stood at 9.40; no one heard through the second burst of applause the slam of the stage door behind the very, very small person who entered, and silently peering this way and that, found her stern, avenging way to the stage, and that too-favoured sister basking in the sunlight of public approval.

The grandsire had just lifted his head and was about to deliver his beautiful speech of trust and hope, when he was stricken helpless by the entrance upon the stage of a boldly advancing small person of most amazing appearance. Her thin little legs emerged from the shortest of skirts, while her small body was well pinned up in a great blanket shawl, the point of which trailed fully a quarter of a yard on the floor behind her. She wore a woman's hood on her head, and from its cavernous depth, where there gleamed a pale, malignant small face, a voice issued--the far-reaching voice of a child--that triumphantly commanded:--

"You, Mary Ann, yu're ter get up out of that an' com' home straight away--an' yu're ter go ter bed, too,--mother says so!" and the small Nemesis turned on her heel and trailed off the stage, followed by laughter that seemed fairly to shake the building. Nor was that all. No sooner had Mary Ann grasped the full meaning of this dread message than she turned over on her face, and scrambling up by all fours, she eluded the restraining hands of the actress-mother and made a hasty exit to perfect shrieks of laughter and storms of applause; while the climax was only reached when the dog, trained to lie still so long as the pressure of the child's head was upon his shoulder, finding himself free, rose, shook himself violently, and trotted off, waving his tail pleasantly as he went.

That finished it; the curtain had to fall, a short overture was played, and the curtain rose again without the complete tableau, and the action of the play was resumed; but several times the laughter was renewed. It was only necessary for some person to t.i.tter over the ludicrous recollection, and instantly the house was laughing with that person. The next night the manager's child, swathed in flannel, with a mouth full of cough-drops, held the well-trained dog in his place until the proper moment for him to rise, and the play went on its way rejoicing.

And just to show how long-lasting is the a.s.sociation of ideas, I will state that years, many years afterward, I met a gentleman who had been in the auditorium that night, and he told me he had never since seen a blanket shawl, whether in store for sale or on some broad back, that he had not instantly laughed outright, always seeing poor Mary Ann's obedient exit after that vengeful small sister with her trailing shawl.

_CHAPTER VIII

THE CAT IN "CAMILLE"_