Part 6

"The part was not a difficult one, but very important," Burleigh continued. "I had to look fierce, and bear aloft a huge red and gold affair. This was referred to once or twice as 'yon gonfalon of Diabolus,' so I suppose that's what it was. I only had to go on the stage twice. In the last scene, where the Wizard got thrown down, there was a high bridge at the back of the stage. It was steep on the sides, shaped a good deal like the Chinese bridge in a blue willow-ware plate; don't you remember? I had to hold this bridge for the Wizard at the head of my minions, and was doing it with dignity and grace. My instructions were to stay there until the Queen of the Fairies should point at me and say 'Avaunt, vile blood-fiends, to the shades below'; then to retire with signs of rage and terror, while the Hosts of Light came up the other side of the bridge. Now I was watching and listening to the Queen carefully, and I am sure she never pointed at me, or opened her head about 'avaunting.' I think myself that my fatal beauty in the red tights had made an impression on her, and she didn't want me to leave. She probably couldn't find it in her heart to call me a blood-fiend; at any rate there was some hitch, for the Hosts of Light began coming up the bridge ahead of time. Of course, I wasn't going to avaunt without orders, so I stood there waiting for my cue. The leading angel called me a most vile name, in an anxious undertone, and poked his spear violently in the pit of my stomach. He hurt me like the devil, so I promptly smashed him on the head with the Gonfalon of Diabolus, and bowled him down among the advancing Hosts of Light, to their utter confusion. The next minute something lit on the back of my neck, and that is all I know. I believe it was a sandbag hove from the wings, and that I was dragged out by the heels."

"You were, you were," Holworthy shouted at the recollection, "but it was done so quickly that half of the audience didn't see it."

"When I came to," Ned went on, "I was on my face behind the scenes, with four or five able-bodied Irishmen sitting on my back. The 'super' captain was going to turn me over to the cop; but I begged pardon all round, paid for the leading angel's broken head, and finally managed to smooth things over."

"They are pretty careful how they take amateur supes at any of the theatres now. Nothing like the battle of Philippi can ever occur again," said Rattleton, regretfully.

"Give us that, Ned," said Stoughton; "I guess some of these fellows have never heard an accurate account by one of the heroes."

"That was truly the grandest suping event in history," said Burleigh, refilling his glass, and returning to his position by the fire. "It was just after that new theatre was opened, way down there on Washington Street. It was a cheap shrine, but I tell you, now, Melpomene was right in it. The owners had no idea of making it a low-down variety hall, not much. They were going to give high-class performances and educate the masses. One of the first things they had there was a Shakespearean revival, run by a peripatetic star named Riley. The fellows used to go in and supe all the time. They rather liked to have Harvard men for two reasons: first, because it was cheap, and, in the second place, I think Riley's manager rather expected us to bring all our friends and relatives there to see us act, and give the place a boom.

"The first night of _Julius Caesar_ came on Jim de Laye's twenty-first birthday, and he was going to give a dinner, after which we intended to fill a box at the show and give Caesar a good send-off. I went in town to get the box, and at the office I heard the manager, or some official, complaining about lack of supes. I made inquiries, and it ended in my contracting to furnish him with ten good men and true for that evening at reasonable rates. He gave me as a bonus a few tickets for any of my family or 'lady friends.' It showed how green he was to take ten of 'de Ha'vards' at once. They never would have done that anywhere else in town.

"The other chaps all fell in with the arrangement, and we had the dinner at Parker's early. A man does not get to be twenty-one years old every day in the year, so we took pains to see that Jim did it properly.

"That lazy goat on the sofa there (pointing to Rattleton) had not been seen in Cambridge that afternoon, and knew nothing about the suping arrangement. Of course, he was late to dinner, as usual, and of course, as usual, he turned up with that d----d dog of his. After dinner, when we adjourned to the theatre, we wanted him to leave Blathers behind at Parker's, but he insisted on taking the pup along, wrapped in his overcoat. He assured us that Blathers would keep perfectly quiet, and no one would ever know he was there. We might have known better, but I suppose we were in a yielding mood. De Laye and two or three others brought bottles of fizz in their overcoats. They said it was always well to propitiate the natives, and thought such provisions might be popular with the Thespians. Jim swore he'd make noble Romans of every man of 'em. We got there early, and Blathers was tied up and hidden away under Jack's coat in a corner of the dressing-room. In the performance we all did our parts like little men. Rome was proud of her citizens that day. As for our mob-work, that showed positive genius."

"How Marc Antony's speech over the body did go!" chuckled Rattleton from the sofa.

"The stage-manager was delighted and complimented us, and so did Riley himself. Jack Rat had made friends with Riley very early in the game. He had invited him out to lunch in Cambridge, and had hinted at getting him to coach the Pudding show. Moreover, Jack and I had steered several large parties in to Riley's performances, and Riley knew it. It was a lucky thing for us, as it turned out, that he and Jack had got so chummy.

"All went well until the battle scene. They had put us all on the same side; in fact, we constituted the entire army of Brutus--that was another evidence of greenness in the management. The battle had been raging mildly for some time. We had marched and counter-marched, and had been reviewed and exhorted two or three times, without even getting a glimpse of the enemy. At last it came to the scene where Brutus' aggregation gets driven across the stage by Antony's offering a desperate resistance. Cassius had been killed, young Cato was going to be captured, and everything was going to the bow-wows. While we were standing in the wings along with Antony's army, waiting to go on, Jim de Laye said, 'Hang it, let's put a little real good acting into this thing; these stage scraps are too woodeny.' Of course I did my best to restrain this idea among my companions, but it became popular at once in spite of anything I could say. I must confess I always had rather a desire myself to see that oily-mouthed peep of a Marc Antony well thrashed. The next minute we had to go across the back of the stage, hotly contesting every inch of the way with our trusty wooden brands, two up and two down. About half way over, that crazy Jim de Laye opened the ball by smiting his man hip and thigh and other parts, in the most life-like manner. The other supe hit back in just anger, and there was an instant rally of the Brutus forces. My man was a little fellow, and I did him up in time to see an entirely new feature introduced in the scene. Marc Antony himself suddenly appeared, hard pressed by a togaed citizen. The way he got there was this--correct me, Jack, if I make any mistake in this part of the history. Blathers, as I told you, had been left curled up under a coat in the dressing-room. Some of the employees had found him there, however, untied him, and started in to play with him. Mr. Blathers, finding himself in strange company, slipped away from them and went looking for his master. Just as the battle scene began, he arrived at the wings, where Marc Antony was waiting to go on. Antonius was in very bad humor about something. He asked in fluent Latin, 'What the ---- that dog was doing there?' and made a kick at Blathers. I guess Blathers was in much the same mood, for he turned around and effected a prompt connection with the calf of Marc Antony's leg. He was a disappointed dog; he got his mouth full of horsehair. Antony wasn't touched, and let Blathers have it with the other foot.

"Now, Jack had not been assigned to the army, and was off duty in that scene. He was standing in the wings in Roman citizen's clothes, trying to flirt with the vestal virgins.

"Hold on," interrupted Jack, "you told me to correct any mistake. That's one."

"Well, perhaps they were not. You know more about that than I do," admitted Ned. "Any way, he turned around just in time to see his faithful hound doing somersaults from Marc Antony's toe. I'll do Jack the justice to say that he is generally slow to wrath--he is too lazy--but when that ugly pup of his is concerned, he loses his head.

"He not only lost his head that time, but tried to knock off Marc Antony's too. Marc went, staggering out into the field of battle, and Jack, the fool, followed him up. As I said, the battle had opened in earnest all along the line when this happened, and the house was already on it's feet. It was a good, warm house. It was mainly from Sou' Boston, and had taken about thirty-five seconds to get on to the magnificent realism of the scene. It went wild with delight at this addition to the affair. Blathers rallied and flew out on the stage to the support of Jack's charge. This time he tore all the padding off Marc's legs, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the audience.

"The stage-manager yelled for the policeman, and went tearing about after him. 'Colonel' Dixey, of Kentucky, who was also off duty in this scene, had enticed the cop into a distant corner, along with the departed Caesar and a bottle of fizz. J. Caesar was a tragedian who would have been dear to the heart of a _Puck_ artist. He was a thirsty soul with a radiant nose and a beery eye. Shortly after his death he had attached himself to Colonel Dixey and his overcoat, and the Colonel had warmly requited his affection. In fact, Dixey devoted two whole bottles to the good work, and at the end of the fourth act Caesar had had some difficulty in doing his own ghost. He was free after that, and during this last act, he and the Colonel had let in the blue-coat, and retired into a secluded nook among the scenery. The Colonel had filled Caesar up to the brim, and had got the law pretty well zigged, too, when the manager brought the news of battle. All three rushed to the front, the cop, of course, getting there last. The conflict was at its height, when dead Caesar appeared, boiling drunk, and took sides with inspiring shouts against his own avengers. Dixey pitched in too, and these reinforcements turned the tide at once. Brutus was victorious at all points. We rushed Marc Antony and his gang clear off the field, and destroyed the flying remnants behind the wings. The audience fairly howled and encored wildly.

"The cop was utterly useless, he grabbed the small man that I had floored in the beginning of the row, clubbed him a little, and hung on to him like grim death. The manager was crazy, and told him to send for a hurry-up wagon, and run us all in. We showed the law great respect, though, after the shindy was over; called him sergeant and offered to support him in maintaining the peace. He didn't know exactly who was responsible, so he contented himself with shaking the little man some more, and declaring that he could 'attend to this business alone, and didn't want no help, see?' Marc Antony wanted the blood of Jack and Blathers, but Riley, the star, who played Brutus, was inclined to think that Antony was to blame for the whole thing. You see Antony had got more applause than Brutus all through. His great speech had had a particular success, probably due to our able presentation of the populace. Riley sat on Marc first, and then they both went for Caesar, who was maudlin in the corner. He had got a helmet on, wrong side before, and was begging us with tears in his eyes to go 'once more into the breach, dear friends, or close the wall with our English dead.' When Brutus cursed him he drew himself up and hiccoughed, 'Et tu, Brute,--hic--well--hic you seen me at Philippi anyhow.'

"Riley went back on the stage and made a little speech, and the audience cheered him to the echo. Then the play went on, Brutus died like a man, and all the principals, including J. Caesar and Blathers, were called before the curtain. Jack made it up with Marc Antony, and after the show we consoled the vanquished army with what was left of the champagne. Most of the supes were Irish, anyway, and had enjoyed the pleasantry."

IN THE EARLY SIXTIES.

It was ten o'clock and time for John Stuart Mill to give place to Mary Jane, so Stoughton threw the former into an arm-chair and took the latter from the mantel-piece. He filled and lighted her affectionately, and the content of the evening pipe came upon him. Then he bethought him of beer and pleasant converse, and strolled around to the Pudding in pursuit thereof.

There he found the usual ten o'clock "resting convention" in session beneath its blue cloud of nicotine. The "earnest resters," as Burleigh termed them, were stretched about in various attitudes, more of laziness than repose. They were just then engaged in the popular pastime of blackguarding the last number of the _Lampoon_ for the benefit of Hudson, one of the editors.

"Hullo, Dick," remarked that gentleman, glad to change the subject as Stoughton entered, "we knew you were coming; smelt Mary Jane as soon as you turned the corner."

"Did you, really," replied Stoughton, making room for himself on the sofa by removing Rattleton's legs to a neighboring chair, and spilling the dog Blathers on the floor. "What was that chum of yours doing in the building last night? Were you also engaged in the unseemly disturbance?"

"No," answered Hudson, "I had nothing to do with it. I decline all responsibility for Edward Burleigh. I am not my room-mate's keeper."

"I heard him carolling on the stairs at an hour when singing should be left to the little birds. He hammered on my door for a while, but I knew enough not to get up. I wonder he didn't raise the proctor. He shouted, through my key-hole, something about the war being over."

"Yes," said Hudson, "that was what he told me when he woke me up by sitting on my chest. He was going to carry the good news all through the Yard, but I persuaded him to go to bed and wait until morning."

"Where had he been?"

"Well, you see, Jack Randolph carried him off yesterday evening to a meeting of the Southern Club, as an invited guest, to span the bloody chasm with him. They spanned it a good many times there, I guess, and then as it was a beautiful moonlight night and perfect sleighing, they decided that the bloody chasm ought to be spanned in Brookline and other neighboring towns. So they got a cutter, and must have conducted spanning operations on a wide scale all over the country, for they didn't get back until dawn. George Smith, the policeman, says he saw them sitting on the steps of Harvard Hall, singing 'John Brown's Body' and 'Dixie,' and hymns of peace while the sun rose."

"I deny the aspersion on the Southern Club," exclaimed 'Colonel' Dixey, from the other end of the long sofa. "I was present at the meeting, and we had nothing to induce sunrise hymns. I don't know what Jack and Ned did afterwards, but they didn't get it at the Southern Club."

This somewhat veiled assertion raised an incredulous chorus: "Oh, Dixey, may you be forgiven." "Come, come, Colonel, do you mean to persuade us that an organization containing at least three members from Kentucky is run on a cold-water basis?" "Where is the glory of your old commonwealth?" "Bet the meeting was full of rum--rum and rebellion! Don't deny it, Colonel." "Drink and treason!"

"Neither, sir, neither," replied Dixey to this chaff. "I grieve to hear such narrow-minded accusations. Prexy was there and made a speech.--Oh, Holworthy! You know that man we saw yesterday in the Transept of Memorial? He was at the Southern Club with Prexy."

"Oh, yes," said Holworthy, "who was he?"

"A grad. from Georgia. I have forgotten his name."

"I thought he was a grad., and not a stranger, for he didn't have a guide book, and didn't ask us to show him the "_campus_." Had he been a soldier?"

"Didn't say. If so, he was probably a Confed."

"Well, he looked like an interesting old cock anyway," said Holworthy to the others. "He was standing before one of the tablets with his hat off. Somehow, when we saw him, our own hats felt so uncomfortable that we took them off, too, as we passed through."

"Holly made up all sorts of poetry about him," added Dixey.

"No, I didn't; but I do think he did the right thing in uncovering."

"Of course he did," said Ernest Gray, emphatically. "No man ought to keep his hat on in that transept."

"Oh, now you've done it, Hol," groaned Stoughton. "You have started the 'Only Serious.'"

"We get too careless going back and forth in it every day," continued Gray. "We don't fully appreciate it, or we forget what it means."

"Forget what it means! Great Scott, Ernest, have you never heard a Class Day oration or poem? What would our inspired youths do without the poor, hard-worked old transept? How did they ever get inspired before it was built? Don't we have our hearts fired all up at least once a year on that subject?"

"Except those of us who may have been previously fired by the Dean," put in Rattleton, with a contemplative sigh over eminent possibilities.

"Well, it is a pity then that the Class Day conflagration doesn't last a little longer. I don't believe in keeping sentiment for special occasions. It would be better for all hands to preserve a little of it throughout the year, and in this place, of all others, I should think at least a little reverence for the past might be kept alive. But one might suppose that there was no such thing as reverence at Harvard nowadays."

"Hooray!" "Hear, hear!" "Go it, old man!" "Good for the Only Serious!" "Pegasus in a canter!"

"That's right," answered Gray warmly, to this burst of invidious encouragement. "Laugh at anything that is serious or the least approach to feeling; it is the fashion."

"Brought on by over-doses of gush," remarked Stoughton, knocking the ashes contemptuously out of Mary Jane.

"Of course, there is a lot of twaddle talked about such things," answered Gray, "and I acknowledge that exaggeration tends to cheapen patriotism, but the existence of a lot of tinsel in the world doesn't make gold less valuable, does it?"

"Quite true," assented Hudson, "and because Dick Stoughton smokes such a pipe as Mary Jane, there is no reason why we should all give up tobacco. That is a better simile than yours."

"Well, it is a good thing that Harvard men have not always been so afraid of appearing in earnest," growled Gray. "I don't believe there was so much brilliant wit wasted when men were leaving college every day to join their regiments. I wish I had been here then."

"So do I," drawled Rattleton; "what a bully excuse a fellow would have had for not getting his degree."

"What an excitement there must have been," went on Gray, without noticing the interruption. "Just think of being cheered out of the Yard when you left for the war, and then perhaps distinguishing yourself, and coming back to Class Day with your arm in a sling."

"Just think of coming back in a pine-box," added Hudson, graphically.

"Well, suppose you did? You have got to die some time, and your name would have been put on a tablet in memorial."

"Yes, but you wouldn't have been tickled by seeing it there," said the irritating Stoughton. "Half your patriotism is vanity, Ernest, you shallow theatrical poser."

"It would do you men good to read the _Memorial Biographies_," Gray continued, now thoroughly aroused, and paying no attention to the side remarks. "They ought to be part of the prescribed work for a degree."

"Yes, but as Hudson says, you couldn't do that if you were a biographee," reasoned Dane Austin, the law-school man, taking a hand in the baiting.

"It would be perfectly disgusting to hear you fellows talk this way," Gray declared, "if one didn't know that it was all affectation. I am not sure that that fact does not make it worse. You all really feel just as I do, but you are afraid to say so."

"Another appalling case of Harvard indifference," observed Stoughton.

"The modern dilettante has no noble desire for red war."

"He likes to make people believe that he has no noble desire for anything, and he has a morbid fear of being a hypocrite. As a matter of fact, you are all of you the worst kind of hypocrites, for you try to appear worse than you are."

"Oh, dear, no," Rattleton protested, lazily, "that would be too hard work for any of this crowd--except me."

"A war would be a good thing to stir you up. I almost wish the war times would come again," exclaimed Gray, hotly.

"Now you are getting right down to work," laughed Hudson. "What a rise we are getting out of our earnest young man to-night."

"You let your feelings get away with you, Gray," added Holworthy. "I don't believe it was all glory and enthusiasm in those days. You forget there was another side to it. For instance, Jack Randolph's governor was not cheered out of the Yard when _he_ left for the war."

"Yes, there _was_ another side to it," came a voice from the other end of the room, and a big arm-chair, that had been facing the fire with its back to the knot of men, was pushed around so as show its occupant. He was evidently one of that wide class known to the undergraduate as the "Old Grads." An old grad. attains his title as soon as he ceases to be a very young grad.; there is no transition degree. In this case he seemed about middle aged, perhaps fifty, with hair turning gray, and a rather deeply marked brown face. The latter was just then a little flushed, and had the expression often seen on a face that has just been looking a long time into a fire and a long way through it.

The lounging students started a little at this sudden interruption, and stirred as young men do on finding themselves suddenly in the presence of an older one. Rattleton took his long legs down from their supporting chair, Hudson pushed his hat back from his nose to its proper place, Dixey took his hands out of his pockets and sat up straight, while Dick Stoughton paused in the act of relighting Mary Jane, and when the match burnt his fingers forbore to swear. As the cause of the disturbance rose and came towards them they stood up. Hollis Holworthy showed signs of positive uneasiness. He turned bright red in the face, as he recognized the man whom he had just described as "an interesting old cock."

"I--I beg your pardon, sir," he began, "I had no idea----"

"That the old cock was present?" laughed the older man. "I assure you, my boy, that I was not in the least offended, and even had I cause for offence, I deserved it. Your remark was a retribution, a striking repetition of history. I remember once asking Holworthy of '61 who the bully old boy in the beaver hat was, and the bully old boy proved to be Holworthy '32. Thirty years are like a spy-glass--your views depend upon the end through which you look."

The thirty years melted at once beneath the laugh that followed this introduction, and, as the stranger took a chair among the group, the smoke went up again from Mary Jane and other pipes.

"Then you were in college with my father?" asked Holworthy. "You must have been here just in the time of which we were speaking."