Life on the Stage Part 34

I did all I could do to get at _Cora's_ character and standing before the dread catastrophe--feeling that her madness must to some extent be tinged by past habits and personal peculiarities. I got a copy of the French novel--that was not an affectation, but a necessity, as it had not then been translated, and I was greatly impressed with the minute description of the destruction done by the bullet _George_ had fired into her face.

Portions of the jaw-bone had been shot away; the eye, much injured, had barely been saved, but it was drawn and distorted.

As the woman's beauty had been her letter of introduction to the gilded world, indeed had been her sole capital, that "scar" became of tremendous value in the make-up of the part, since it would explain, and in some scant measure excuse, her revengeful actions.

Still, as the play was done in Paris, the "scar" was almost ignored by that brilliant actress, Madame Rousseil. I had her photograph in the part of _Cora_, and while she had a drapery pa.s.sed low beneath her jaws to indicate some injury to her neck or breast, her face was absolutely unblemished.

To my mind that weakened _Cora's_ case greatly--she had so much less to resent, to brood over.

I took my trouble to Mr. Daly, after I had been out to the mad-house at Blackwell's Island, and had gained some useful information from that awful aggregation of human woe. He listened to Belot's description of _Cora's_ beauty and its wrecking "scar"; he looked condemningly at the Rousseil picture, and then asked me what I wanted to do.

I told him I wanted a dreadful scar--then I wanted to veil it always; and he broke in with, "Then why have the scar, if it is to be veiled?"

But I hurried on: "My constant care to keep it covered will make people imagine it a hundred times worse than it really is. Then when the veil is torn off by main force, and they catch a glimpse of the horror, they will not wonder that her already-tottering brain should give way under such a blow to her vanity."

Mr. Daly studied over the matter silently for a few moments, then he said: "Yes, you are right. That scar is a great factor in the play; go ahead, and make as much of it as you can."

But right there I came up against an obstacle. I was not good at even an eccentric make-up. I did not know how to proceed to represent such a scar, as I had in my mind.

"Try," said Mr. Daly. I tried, and with tear-reddened eyes announced my failure, but I said: "I shall ask Mr. Lemoyne to help me--he is the cleverest and most artistic maker-up of faces I ever saw."

"Yes," said Mr. Daly, "get him to try it after rehearsal; you have no time to lose now!"

Only too well I knew that; so at once I approached Mr. Lemoyne, and made my wants known. I had not the slightest hesitation in doing so, because, in spite of his sinful delight in playing jokes on me, he was the kindest, most warm-hearted of comrades; and true to that character he at once placed his services at my disposal, though he shook his head very doubtfully over the undertaking.

"You know I never saw a scar of such a nature in my life," he said, as he lighted up his dressing-room.

"Oh," I said, "you, who can change your nose or your mouth or your eyes at will, can make an ugly scar, easily enough," and off went hat and veil, and Mr. Lemoyne, using my countenance for his canvas, began work.

He grew more and more glum as he wiped off and repainted. One scar was too small--oh, much too small. Then the shattered jaw-bone was described.

Again he tried. "Clara," he said, "I can't do it, because I don't know what I am aiming at!"

"Oh, go on!" I pleaded, "make a hideous scar, then I'll learn how from you, and do it myself."

He was patience and kindness personified, but when at last he said he could do no more, I looked in the gla.s.s, and--well, we both laughed aloud, in spite of our chagrin. He said: "It looks as though some street-boy had given you a swat in the eye with a chunk of mud."

I mournfully washed it off and begged him to try just once more--to-morrow; and he promised with a doleful air.

I had tears in my eyes as I left the theatre, I was so horribly cast down, for if Mr. Lemoyne could not make up that scar no one could. But he used too much black--that was a grave mistake, and--oh, dear! _now_ what?

Men were peeling up the stone walk. I could not go home by the Sixth Avenue car as usual, without a lot of bother and muddy shoes. I was just tired enough from rehearsal and disappointed enough to be irritated by the tiniest _contretemps_, and I almost whimpered, as I turned the other way and took a Broadway car. I dropped into a corner. Three men were on my side of the car. I glanced casually at them, and, "Goodness mercy!"

said I to myself, "what are they gazing at--they look fairly frightened?"

I followed the direction of their eyes, and, I gasped! I felt goose-flesh creeping up my arms! On the opposite side sat a large and handsome mulatto woman, a small basket of white linen was on her knees, her face was turned toward the driver, and oh, good G.o.d! not so long ago, her throat had been cut almost from ear to ear!

The scar was hideous--sickening, it made one feel faint and frightened, but I held my quivering nerves with an iron hand--here was my scar for _Cora_! I must study it while I could. It had not been well cared for, I imagine, for the edges of the awful gash were puckered, as though a gathering thread held them. There was a queer, cord-like welt that looked white, while the flesh either side was red and threatening; and then, as if she felt my eyes, the woman turned and faced me. A dull color rose slowly over her mutilated throat and handsome face, and she felt hastily for a kerchief, which was pinned at the back of her dress-collar, and drew the ends forward and tied them.

I kept my eyes averted after that, but when I left the car weariness was forgotten. I stopped at a druggist's shop, bought sticking-plaster, gold-beaters' skin, and absorbent cotton, and with springy steps reached home, materials in hand, model in memory--I was content, I had found my scar at last!

If you are about to accuse me of hardness of heart in using, to my own advantage, this poor woman's misfortune, don't, or at least wait a moment first.

When I had gone through the asylum's wards and the doctor had called my attention to this or that exceptional case and had tried to make clear _cause_ and _effect_; when I had noted ophidian's stealth in one and tigerish ferocity in another, I suddenly realized that to single one of these unfortunates out, then to go before an indifferent crowd of people and present to them a close copy of the helpless afflicted one, would be an act of atrocious cruelty. I could not do it! I would instead seize upon some of the general symptoms, common to all mad people, and build up a mad-scene with their aid, thus avoiding a cruel imitation of one of G.o.d's afflicted.

So in this scar I was not going exactly to copy that riven throat, but, with slender rolls of cotton, covered and held by gold-beaters' skin, I was going to create dull white welts with angry red s.p.a.ces painted between--with strong sticking-plaster attached to my eyelid, I was going to draw it from its natural position. Oh, I should have a rare scar! yet that poor woman might herself see it without suspecting she had given me the idea.

Oh, what a time of misery it was, the preparation of that play! Poor Mr.

Daly--and poor, poor Miss Morris!

You see everything hung upon the mad-scene. Yet, when we came to that, I simply stood still and spoke the broken, disjointed words.

"But what are you going to do at night?" Mr. Daly cried. "Act your scene, Miss Morris."

Act it, in cold blood, there, in the gray, lifeless daylight? with a circle of grinning, sardonic faces, ready to be vastly amused over my efforts? He might better have asked me to deliver a polished address in beautiful, pellucid Greek, to compose at command a charming little _rondeau_ in sparkling French, or a prayer in sonorous Latin--they would have been easier for me to do, than to gibber, to laugh, to screech, to whisper, whimper, rave, to crouch, crawl, stride, fall to order in street-clothes, and always with those fiendish "guyers" ready to a.s.sist in my undoing. Yet, poor Mr. Daly, too! I was sorry for him, he had so much at stake. It _was_ asking a good deal of him to trust his fate entirely, blindly to me.

"Oh!" I said, "I would if I could--do please believe me! I want to do as you wish me to, but, dear Mr. Daly, I can't, my blood is cold in daylight, I am ashamed, constrained! I cannot act then!"

"Well, give me some _faint_ idea of what you are going to do," he cried, impatiently.

"Dear goodness!" I groaned, "I am going to try to do all sorts of things--loud and quiet, fast and slow, close-eyed cunning, wide-eyed terror! There, that's all I can tell about it!" and I burst into hara.s.sed tears.

He said never another word, but I used to feel dreadfully when, at rehearsals, he would rise and leave the stage as soon as we reached the mad-scene.

Then it happened we could not produce the play on Monday. An old comedy was put on for that one night. I was not in it, and Mr. Daly, seeing how near I was to the breaking-point with hard work and terror, tried to give me a bit of pleasure. He got tickets for my mother and me, and sent us to the opera to hear Parepa and Wachtel. I was radiant with delight; but, alas, when did I ever have such high spirits without a swift dampening down. Elaborately dressed as to hair, all the rest of my little best was singularly plain for the opera. Still I was happy enough and greatly excited over our promised treat.

Mother and I set out to go to Miss Linda Dietz's home, where we were to pick her up, and, under escort of her brother, go over to the Academy of Music. We could not afford a carriage, so we had to take one of the 'busses then in existence. Mr. Daly had sent me, with my box tickets, a pair of white gloves, and with extreme carefulness I placed them in my pocket, drawing on an old pair to wear down to Fifteenth Street, where I would don the new ones at Miss Dietz's house. How I blessed my fore-thought later on!

Long skirts were worn, so were bustles. A man in the omnibus was in liquor; he sat opposite me, right by the door. I signaled to stop. Mother pa.s.sed out before me--I descended. The man's feet were on my dress-skirt.

I tried to pull it free--he stupidly pulled in the door. The 'bus started--I was flung to the pavement!

I threw my head back violently to save my face from the cobbles, my hands and one knee were beating the cruel stones. Mother screamed to the driver, a gentleman sprang to the horses, stopped them, picked me up, and even then had to thrust the drunken man's feet from my torn flounce. I had faintly whispered: "My gla.s.s--my fan!" and the gentleman, placing me in mother's arms, went out into the street and found them for me. I sat on a bench in the Park: I was shaken and bruised and torn and muddy, but I would not go home--not I, I was going to hear Parepa and Wachtel!

The gentleman simply would not leave us; he gave me his arm to Miss Dietz's house, and I needed its aid, for each moment proved I was worse hurt than I had at first thought. There, however, when with my heartiest thanks we parted from our good Samaritan, the Dietz family, with dismayed faces, received us. They were kindness personified. I was sponged and arnicaed and plastered and sewed and brushed, and at last my ankle's hurt being acknowledged, it was tightly bound. The new white gloves safely came forth, and "Dietzie and Morrie" (our nicknames for each other) set forth, with brother Frank and mother in attendance, and arrived at the crowded Academy just as the curtain rose. We went quite wild with delight over the old moss-draped "Il Trovatore." I broke my only handsome fan--applauding. Suddenly "Dietzie" saw me whiten--saw me close my eyes.

She thought it was the pain of my ankle, but it was a sudden memory of _Cora_ and the mad-scene. As the whirlwind of applause roared about me, I sickened with a mortal terror of the ordeal awaiting me. I hope I may always thrust Satan behind me with the whole-hearted force I used in thrusting "L'Article 47" behind me on that occasion. I returned to "Il Trovatore." I enjoyed each liquid jewel of a note, helped to raise the roof, afterward declined supper, hastened home, romped my dog, and put her to bed. Got into a dressing-gown, locked myself in my room, and had it out with _Cora_, from A to Z. Tried this walk and that crouch; read this way and that way. Found the exact moment when her mind began to cloud, to waver, to recover, to break finally and irretrievably.

Determined positively just where I should be at certain times; allowed a margin for the impulse or inspiration of the moment, and at last, with the character crystal-clear before me, I ended my work and my vigil.

After turning out the gas I went to the window and looked at the sky. The stars had gone in; low down in the east a faint, faint band of pink held earth and sky together. I was calm and quite ready to rest. All my uncertainty was at an end. What the public would do I could not know; what I would do was clear and plain before me at last.

Poor Mr. Daly! I sighed, for I knew _his_ anxiety and uneasiness were not allayed. Bertie, tired of waiting for me, had curled her loving little body up in my pillow--a distinct breach of family discipline. A few moments later, feeling her small tail beating a blissful tattoo on my feet, I muttered, laughingly: "A little prayer, a little dog, and a little rest," and so sank into the sound sleep I so desperately needed, in preparation for the ever-to-be-dreaded first night of "L'Article 47"

of the French Penal Code.

The house was packed. Well-known people were seen all through the theatre. Act I. represented the French Court with a trial in full swing--it played for one hour, lacking three minutes. I was on the stage ten minutes only. I was told Mr. Daly shook his head violently at the curtain's fall.

The next act I was not in at all, but it dragged, and when that was over Mr. Daly's peculiar test of public feeling showed the presence of disappointment. Like many other managers, he often placed men here and there to listen to the comments made by his patrons, but his quickest, surest way of judging the effect a new play was making, was by watching and listening at the very moment of the curtain's fall. If the people instantly turned to one another in eager speech, and a bee-like hum of conversation arose, he nodded his head with pleased satisfaction--he knew they were saying, "How lovely!" "That was a fine effect!" "We've had nothing better for a long time!" "It's just divine!" "It's great!" etc.

When they spoke slowly and briefly, he shook his head; but when they sat still and gazed steadily straight ahead of them, he called a new play for rehearsal next morning.

That second act had made him shake his head; the third came on with _Cora's_ rejected love, her strangling tears of self-pity, her whirlwind of pa.s.sion, ending with that frantic and incredible threat. The people caught at it! I suppose the swiftness of its action, the heat and fury following so close upon the two slow, dull acts, pleased and aroused them. The curtain went up and down, up and down, call after call, and when at last it was allowed to remain down, myriads of bees might have been swarming in front, and Mr. Daly, nodding and smiling as I rushed past on my way to change my gown, said: "Hear 'em--hear the bees buzz--that's good! Now if only you----"

I waited not for the rest--too well I knew how to complete the sentence: "If only I could safely hive those swarming bees" for him. Could I? Oh, could I? for the moment was at hand, the "mad-scene," so dreaded, so feared!