CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND

I Recall Mr. John E. Owens, and How He "Settled my Hash."

Just previous to my coming East I met, for the first time, Mr. John E. Owens. He was considered a wealthy man, and was at the height of his popularity as a comedian. He was odd, even his marriage seemed an expression of eccentricity, and one felt as if one had received a dash of cold water in the face when the hot-tempered, peppery, and decidedly worldly Mr. Owens presented the little orthodox Quakeress, with a countenance of gentle severity, as his wife.

She wore the costume of her people, too, and watched him above her knitting-needles with folded lips and condemning eye as he strutted and fumed and convulsed his audience. She was said to be a most tender and gentle nurse and, indeed, a devoted wife, but she certainly seemed to look down upon theatrical life and people.

Mr. Owens was telling me she was a clever business woman, with a quick eye for a good investment, when I jestingly answered: "That seems to be a peculiarity of the sect--thee will recall the fact that William Penn showed that same quality of eye in his beautiful and touching relations with the shrewd and knowing Indians," and in the middle of his laugh, his mouth shut suddenly, his eyes rolled: "Oh, Lord!" he said, "you've done for yourself--she heard you, your fate's fixed!"

"But," I exclaimed, "I was just joking."

"No go!" he answered, mournfully, "the eye that can see the main chance so clearly is blind to a joke. She has you down now on her list of the ungodly. No use trying to explain--I gave that up years ago. Fact of the matter is, when that Quakeress-wife of mine puts her foot down--I--well, I take mine up, but hers stays right there."

Mr. Owens was of medium height and very brisk in all his movements, walking with a short and quick little step. He had a wide mouth, good teeth, and a funny pair of eyes. The eyeballs were very large and round, and he showed an astonishing amount of their whites, which were of an unusual brilliancy and lustre; this, added to his power of rolling them wildly about in their sockets, made them very funny; indeed, they reminded many people of a pair of large peeled onions.

I think his most marked peculiarity was his almost frantic desire to provoke laughter in the actors about him. He would willingly throw away an entire scene--that is, destroy the illusion of the audience--in order to secure a hearty laugh from some actor or actress whom he knew not to be easily moved to laughter; and what was more astonishing still, if an actress in playing a scene with him fell from tittering into helpless laughter and failed to speak her lines, he made no angry protest, but regarded the situation with dancing eyes and delighted smiles, seeming to accept the breakdown as proof positive that he was irresistible as a fun-maker.

For some reason I never could laugh at "Solon Shingle." Mr. Owens had opened in that part, and as I stood in the entrance watching the performance, my face was as grave as that of the proverbial judge. He noticed it at once, and paused a moment to stare at me. Next morning, just as he entered and crossed to the prompt-table at rehearsal, I, in listening to a funny story, broke out in my biggest laugh. Open flew the star's eyes, up slid his eyebrows.

"Ha! ha!" said he, "ha! ha! there's a laugh for you--by Jove, that's a laugh as is a laugh!"

I turned about and faced him. He recognized me instantly. "Well, blast my cats!" he exclaimed, "say, you young hyena, you're the girl that wouldn't laugh at me last night. I thought you couldn't, and just listen to your roars now over some tomfoolery. What was the matter with me, if you please, mum?"

I stood in helpless, awkward embarrassment, then, drawing in his lip and bulging out his eyes until they threatened to leap from their places, he advanced upon me, exclaiming: "Spare me these protestations and explanations, I beg!" then tapped me on the chest with his forefinger and, added, in a different tone: "My young friend, I'll make you laugh or I'll cut my throat!" next turned on his heel, and called: "Everybody ready for the first act? Come on, come on, let's get at it!"

Rehearsal began and Mr. Owens did not have to cut his throat.

Funny in many things, it was the old farce of "Forty Winks" that utterly undid me, and not only sat me violently and flatly down upon the entrance floor, but set me shrieking with such misguided force that next day all the muscles across and near my diaphragm were too lame and sore for me to catch a breath in comfort. Perhaps that's not the right word, and I may not be locating the lamed muscles properly, but if you will go to see some comedian who will make you laugh until you cry, and cry until you scream, and laugh and cry and scream until you only breathe in gasps and sobs, you will next morning know exactly which muscles I have been referring to--even if you haven't got a diaphragm about you.

But really the mad absurdities Mr. Owens indulged in that night might have made the very Sphinx smile stonily. As a miserly old man, eating his bread-and-cheese supper in his cheap little bedroom, and retiring for the night only to be aroused by officers who are in pursuit of a flying man, and think they have now found him. Not much to go upon, that, but, oh, if you could have seen his ravening hunger; have seen his dog-like snaps at falling crumbs; his slanting of the plate against the light to see if any streak of butter was being left; his scooping up of bread-crumbs from his red-handkerchief lap, and eager licking up of the same; have seen him sorting out his money and laying aside the thin, worn pennies to give the waiter; breaking off the hardened grease that in melting had run down the candle's side, putting it away in his valise, "to grease his boots next winter" (a line he introduced for my especial benefit).

Having gone up-stage and taken off his shoes, he suddenly bethought him that there might be a few crumbs on the floor, and taking his candle, down he came to look, and turning his back to the audience, they screamed with sudden laughter, for two shining bare heels were plainly showing through his ragged black woollen socks. He paid no heed, but sought diligently, and when he found a crumb he put his finger to his lip to moisten it, and pouncing upon the particle, conveyed it to his mouth, and mumbled so luxuriously one almost envied him. Then, remarking that it was too cold to undress, he undressed, and as his coat came off he started toward a chair, saying, querulously: "He couldn't abide a man that wasn't neat and careful about his clothes," and down he pitched the coat in a heap upon the floor in front of the chair. His vest he dumped beside another seat, as he dolorously declared: "He had neat habits ever since his mother had taught him to put his clothes carefully on the chair at night."

And so he went up and down and about, until that stage was one litter of old clothes. Blowing out his candle he got into bed, and, shivering with cold, tried frantically to pull the clothes over his poor shoulders--but all in vain. At last a tremendous jerk brought the quilt and sheet about his shoulders, only to leave his ancient black feet facing the audience, all uncovered. And so went on the struggle between feet and shoulders until, worn out, the old man finally "spooned" himself with knees in chest, and so was covered and fell asleep, only to be aroused by officers, and turned into driveling idiocy by a demand "for the girl."

It was at the point when, sitting up in bed, trying, with agonizing modesty, to keep covered up, his eyes whitely and widely rolling, he pleadingly asked: "N-n-now I, leave it to you--do I look like a seducer?" that my knees abandoned me to my fate, and sat me down with a vicious thud that nearly shook the life out of me. And John Owens sat in bed and saw my fall and rejoiced with a great joy, and said: "Blast my cats--look at the girl! there, now, that's something like laughing. I'd take off my hair and run around bald-headed for her!"

I was called upon to play blind _Bertha_ to Mr. Owens's _Caleb Plummer_ in the "Cricket on the Hearth," and I was in a great state of mind, as I had only seen one or two blind persons, and had never seen a blind part acted. I was driven at last by anxiety to ask Mr. Owens if he could make any suggestions as to business, or as to the walk or manner of the blind girl. But he was no E. L. Davenport, he had no desire to teach others to act, and he snappishly answered: "No--no! I can't suggest anything for you to do--but I can suggest something for you not to do! For God's sake don't go about playing the piano all evening--that's what the rest of 'em do!"

"The piano?" I repeated, stupidly.

"Yes," he said, "the piano! D----d if they don't make me sick! Here they go--all the '_Berthas_'!"

He closed his eyes, screwed up his face dismally, and advancing, his hands before him, began moving them from left to right and back, as though they were on a keyboard. It was very ridiculous.

"And that's what they call blindness--playing the piano and tramping about as securely as anybody!"

Ah, ah! Mr. Owens, you did make a suggestion after all, though you did not mean to do it, but I found one all the same in that last contemptuous sentence, "_tramping about as securely as anybody_." It quickened my memory--I recalled the piteous uncertainty of movement in the blind; the dread hesitancy of the advancing foot, unless the afflicted one was on very familiar ground. I tried walking in the dark, tried walking with closed eyes. It was surprising how quickly my fears gathered about my feet. Instinctively I put out one hand now and then, but the fear of bumping into something was as nothing to the fear of stepping off or down, or falling through the darkness--oh!

Then I resolved to play _Bertha_ with open eyes. It was much the more difficult way, but I was well used to taking infinite pains over small matters, and believing that the open, unseeing eye was far more pathetic than the closed eye, I proceeded to work out my idea of how to produce the unseeing look. By careful experiment I found that if the eyes were very calm in expression, very slow in movement, and at all times were raised slightly above the proper point of vision, the effect was really that of blindness.

It was unspeakably fatiguing to keep looking just above people's heads, instead of into their faces, as was my habit, but where is the true actor or actress who stops to count the cost in pain or in inconvenience when striving to build up a character that the public may recognize? Says the ancient cook-book: "First catch your hare, and then--"; so with the actor, first catch your idea, your desired effect, and _then_ reproduce it (if you can). But in the case of blind _Bertha_ I must have reproduced with some success the effect I had been studying, for an old newspaper clipping beside me says that: "The doubting, hesitating advance of her foot, the timid uncertainty of her occasional investigating hand spelled blindness as clearly as did her patient unseeing eyes," and for my reward that wretched man amused himself by pulling faces at me and trying to break me down in my singing of "Auld Robin Grey," until I was obliged to sing with my eyes tight shut to save myself from laughter; and when the curtain had fallen he said to me: "I'll settle your hash for you some night, young woman, you see if I don't--you just wait now!" And the next season, in Cincinnati, in very truth, he did "settle my hash" for me, to his great delight and my vexation.

He was so very, very funny as _Major Wellington de Boots_ in "Everybody's Friend"; his immense self-satisfaction, his stiff little strut, his martial ardor, his wild-eyed cowardice were trying enough, but when he deliberately acted _at_ you--oh, dear! He would look me straight in the eye and make faces at me, until I sobbed at every breath. Then he had a wretched little trick of rising slowly on his toes and sinking back to his heels again, while he cocked his head to one side so like a knowing old dicky-bird that he simply convulsed me with laughter.

I was his _Mrs. Swansdown_, and I had kept steady and never lost a line, until we came to the scene where, as my landlord and would-be husband, he brought some samples of wall-paper for me to choose from. Where, in heaven's name, he ever found those rolls of paper I can't imagine. They were not merely hideous but grotesque as well, and were received with shouts of laughter by the house.

With true shopman's touch, he would send each piece unrolling toward the footlights, while holding up its breadth of ugliness for _Mrs. Swansdown's_ inspection and approval, and every piece that he thus displayed he greeted at first sight with words of hearty admiration for its beauty and perfect suitability, until, catching disapproval on the widow's face, he in the same breath, with lightning swift hypocrisy, turned his sentence into contemptuous disparagement, and fairly shook his audience with laughter at the quickness of his change of opinion.

At last he unfurled a piece of paper whose barbarity of design and criminality of color I remember yet. The dead-white ground was widely and alternately striped with a dark Dutch blue and a dingy chocolate brown, and about the blue stripes there twined a large pumpkin-colored morning-glory, while from end to end the brown stripes were solemnly pecked at by small magenta birds. The thing was as ludicrous as it was ugly--an Indian clay-idol might have cracked into smiles of derision over its artistic qualities.

Then Mr. Owens, bursting into encomiums over its desirability as a hanging for the drawing-room walls of a modest little retreat, caught my frown, and continued: "Er--er, or perhaps you'd prefer it as trousering?" then, delightedly: "Yes--yes, you're quite right, it _is_ a neat thing--cut full at the knee, eh? Close at the foot, yes, yes, I see, regular peg-tops--great idea! I'll send you a pair at once. Oh, good Lord! what have I done! I--I--mean, I'll have a pair myself, _Mrs. Swansdown_, cut from this very piece of your sweet selection!"

Ah, well! that ended the scene so far as my help went. The shrieking audience drowned my noise for a time, but, alas, _it_ recovered directly, having no hysterics to battle with, while I buried my head deep in the sofa-pillows and rolled and screamed and wept and bit my lips, clinched my hands, and vainly fought for my self-control; while all the time I saw a pair of trousers cut from that awful wall-paper, and Mr. Owens just bulged his white shiny eyes at me and pranced about and rejoiced at my downfall, while the audience, seeing what the trouble was, laughed all over again, and--and--well, "my hash" was very thoroughly "settled," even to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Owens's self.