CHAPTER THIRTY-NINTH

I Am too Dull to Understand a Premonition--By Mr. Daly's Side I See the Destruction of the Fifth Avenue Theatre by Fire.

How shall I call that strange influence that dumbly tries to warn, to prepare?

Many of us have had experience of this nameless something whose efforts are but rarely heeded. The something that one morning suddenly fills the mind with thoughts of some friend of the far past, who is almost entirely forgotten--persistent thoughts not to be shaken off.

You speak of the matter, and your family exclaim: "What on earth ever brought him to your mind?" and that night you either hear of the old friend's death or he sends you a letter from the other side of the world.

I had an acquaintance who one day found herself compelled, as it were, to talk of thefts, of remarkable robberies. She seemed unable to turn her mind to any other subject. If she looked at a lock, she thought how easy it would be to force it; at a window, how readily a man might enter it. Her people laughed and told her she was hoodooed; but next day she was robbed of every jewel she had in the world. What was it that was trying dumbly to warn her?

It was on the 1st of January that my mind became subject to one of those outside seizures. The snow was banked high in the streets--had been so for days. The unexpected sale of the house in Twenty-first Street had forced me to new quarters; I was at that moment in Twenty-fourth Street. As I raised my head from kissing my mother a Happy New Year, I remarked: "The streets are in a terrible condition for a great fire--are they not?"

"Let us hope there won't be a great fire," replied mother, and began to pour out the coffee.

A little later the French lady coming in, to pass the compliments of the day, I was immediately moved to ask her if our fire service here was not superior to that of Paris? And I was greatly pleased at her joyous acquiescence, until I discovered that her remarks had reference to our larger fireplaces--there are always certain drawbacks accompanying a foreign landlady.

Then I went to the matinee--for, lo, the poor actress always does double work on days of festivity for the rest of the world, and all occasions of legalized feasting find her eating "a cold bite." We were doing a play called "False Shame," known in England as "The White Feather," a very light three-act play. The dresses and scenery were beautiful; Mr. Daly provided me with one gown--a combination of sapphire-blue velvet and Pompadour brocade that came within an ace of making me look handsome, like the rest.

He remarked upon its effect, and I told him I felt compelled to look well, since I had nothing else to do; but the day had gone by when such remarks could anger him. He laughed good-humoredly and said: "All the same, Miss, that scene at the organ is mighty pretty and taking, too."

For, look you, in the theatre "a little knowledge is not a dangerous thing." Complete knowledge is, of course, preferable; but, ah, how far a very little will go, and here was my poor tum-tumming, "one _and_ two _and_ three _and_," filling Mr. Daly's very soul with joy, because forsooth, in a lovely old English interior, all draped in Christmas greens, filled with carved-wood furniture, big logs burning in an enormous fireplace, wax candles in brass sconces, two girls are at the organ in dinner dress, who, nervously anxious about a New Year carol, with which they are going to surprise their guests at mid-night, seize the moment before dinner to try said carol over.

Miss Davenport, regal in satin, stood, music in hand, the fire-light on her handsome face. I, seated at the organ in my precious blue and brocade, played the accompaniment, and sang alto, and, though terror over this simple bit of work brought me to the verge of nervous prostration, the scene was, from the front, like a stolen peep into some beautiful private home, and it brought an astonishing amount of applause. But if I had not "_one_ two threed" in Cincinnati on that grinning old piano, where would the organ-scene have been? Ah, a little knowledge, if spread ever so thin by a master hand like Mr. Daly's, will prove useful.

So don't refuse to learn a little because you fear you cannot afford to study thoroughly--if you are an actress.

While I was sitting through a long wait that day I fell into a brown study. The theatre dresser, who was very fond of me and gave me every spare moment of her time, came into my room and twice addressed me before I came out of my reverie.

"What in the world are you thinking of, Miss Clara?" she asked, and I answered with another question: "Mary, were you ever in a great fire?"

"No," she said; "were you?"

"Yes," I answered; "I have been twice burned out from shelter at dead of night," and I told her of that hotel fire at 3 A.M., where there was but one stairway to the street; of the mad brutality of the men; of the terrible and the ludicrous scenes; of my own escape, quite alone, in bare feet and one white garment; of my standing across a leaking hose, while a strange man pulled my right arm, frantically crying, "You come with me! my mother's got a blanket to wrap you up in!" and Mr. Ellsler, who had just arrived, seized my left arm, dragging me his way and shouting, "Come over to the house and get to bed quick, before you die of exposure!" while I felt the water spraying my forlornly shivering shins, and was more nearly torn asunder than was ever the Solomon baby.

"Oh, my!" said Mary, "how dreadful!"

"Yes," I said, musingly, "and what a fire this place would make--all these partitions of painted pine!"

"Oh, don't!" protested Mary.

"But," said I, "you know that's what theatres are built for--to burn is their natural end!" and then I was called, and went up-stairs to saunter through another act of the mild little play.

I owned but little jewelry then, but what I had was noticeably good. My rings, including the handsome pearl one Mr. Daly had given me as a souvenir of "47," I had to remove from my fingers for the last act, and when the curtain had fallen and I had rushed myself into street garments, and was leaving the dressing-room in haste to join my waiting mother at dinner, Mary called to me: "Miss Clara, you are leaving your diamond rings--but never mind," she picked them up and dropped them, one by one, into a little box: "I'll lock the door myself, you run along, the rings will be safe enough--run!" and the answering words I heard swiftly leaving my lips were absolutely involuntary and dictated by no thought of mine. They were:

"Yes, as far as theft is concerned, they are safe enough, but in case of fire? Better give them to me, Mary. Oh!" for the girl had dropped one on the floor. It was a bit of Oriental enamel set about with tiny sparks of diamonds. I put the others on, but would not wait for her to pick up the rolling truant, and away I went.

At the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street I came to a stand-still before two great snow-banks, and I thought again what they might mean in case of a fire.

I reached home at a brisk pace, ran up-stairs, threw off my cloak, and had drawn my dress-waist half off, when, without a preliminary knock, the door was flung open and my landlord, Mr. Bardin, white with the excitement that had wiped out his knowledge of English, stood gesticulating wildly and hurling French at me in seething masses. I caught "_le feu!_" "_le feu!_" many times repeated; then "_le theatre!_" and with a cry I seized his arm and shook him.

"What is it?" I cried, "do you mean fire?"

He nodded, and again came the words: "_le theatre!_"

"Good heaven and earth! you don't mean _my_ theatre, do you?" and then two great horses, hurling a fire-engine around the corner into our street made swift and terrifying answer. With a piercing cry I caught up my cloak, and throwing off somebody's restraining hands I dashed down-stairs and into the street, racing like mad, giving sobbing cries, and utterly unconscious for over two blocks' space that my waist was unclosed and my naked throat and chest were bare to the wintry wind.

At the corner of the street at Sixth Avenue I wrung my hands in anguish, crying, "Oh, dear God! I knew it! I knew it!" for there, stalled in the snow, was the engine, so desperately needed a little further on! And as I resumed my run I said to myself: "What is it that has tried so hard to tell me--to warn me? Tried all the day--and I would not understand--and now it's too late!"

Why I ran I do not know--it was not curiosity. I felt, somehow, that if I could get there in time I might do something--God knows what! As I neared the theatre the crowd grew more dense, yet to my gasping: "Please, oh, please!" an answer came in a quick moving aside to let pass the woman with the white, tear-wet face. I broke through the cordon and was making for the stage-door, when a rough hand caught me by the shoulder. There was an oath, and I was fairly hurled back toward the safety line.

"Oh, let me alone!" I cried, "I want to go to my room! It will take me but a moment!"

Again the rough hand reached out for me, when a strange man threw his arm in front of me protectingly: "Take care what you're about!" he said. "Be a little gentle--she has a right close to the line, she's one of the company! Can't you see?"

"Oh," grunted the policeman, "well, I didn't know, and I couldn't let her kill herself!"

"No," said the stranger, "but you had no call to pitch her about as you did!" And just then a long, thin hand caught mine, and Mr. Daly's voice said: "Come here, child!" and he led me across the street and up some steps, and there, opposite the burning building, I could realize the madness of my act in trying to enter. The front of the building stood firm, but beyond it, within, all was seething flame. It was like some magnificent spectacular production--some Satanic pantomime and ballet, and every now and then a whirling flame, crowned with myriad sparks, sprang madly up into the very sky like some devilish _premiere danseuse_; while the lesser fiends joined hands and circled frenziedly below.

Mr. Daly never spoke a word. He had not released my fingers, and so we stood, hand in hand, watching silently over the torment of his beloved theatre--the destruction of his gathered treasures. I looked up at him. His face gleamed white in the firelight; his eyes were wide and strained; his fingers, icy cold, never lessened their clinching grasp on mine. Then came the warning cry firemen are apt to give when they know the roof is going. I had heard it often, and understood that and their retreating movement. Mr. Daly did not, and when, with a crackling crash, the whole roof fell into the roaring depths, his hand, his body, relaxed suddenly; a sort of sobbing groan escaped his pale lips. But when the column of glowing sparks flew high into the air he turned away with a shiver and gave not one other look at the destroyed building.

Not one word was spoken on the subject. Glancing down he noticed I had no rubbers on and that streams of water were running in the street:

"Go home, child!" he said, speaking quickly and most kindly. A crowd of reporters came up to him: "Yes," he said, "in one moment, gentlemen," then to me: "Hurry home, get something to eat--you could have had no dinner!"

He gave one heavy sigh, and added: "I'm glad you were with me, it would have been worse alone." He pushed me gently from him. As I started down the street he called: "I'll send you word some time to-night what we're to do."

I left him to the reporters; I had not spoken one word from the moment I had begged to enter my dressing-room. I felt strangely sad and forlorn as I dropped, draggled and tired, into a chair. I said to mother: "It's gone! the only theatre in New York whose door was not barred against me, and--I--I think that at this moment I know just how a dog feels who has lost a loved master," and, dropping my face upon my hands, I wept long over the destruction of my first dramatic home in New York, the little Fifth Avenue Theatre.

CHAPTER FORTIETH

We Become "Barn-stormers," and Return to Open the New Theatre--Our Astonishing Misunderstanding of "Alixe," which Proves a Great Triumph.

My first thought on awaking the next morning was one of dismay, on recalling the destruction of the little "P.H.C."--that being the actors contraction of Mr. Daly's somewhat grandiloquent "Parlor Home of Comedy." My grief over the burning of the pretty toy theatre was very real, and I would have been an astonished young woman had anyone prophesied that for me, personally, the disaster was to prove a piece of unqualified good luck.

And, by the way, that expression "good luck" reminds me of one of the incidents of the fire. That morning, when the firemen went to the ruins to examine into the state of the standing front wall, they looked upward, and there, all alone, on the burned and blackened space, smiling down in friendly fashion upon them, was the picture of Clara Morris--a bit charred as to frame and smoky as to glass, but the photograph (one taken by Kurtz), absolutely uninjured, being the one and only thing saved from the ruins. The firemen very naturally wanted it for their engine-house, and Mr. Daly said that for it many were claiming, pleading, demanding, bartering--but all in vain. His superstition was aroused. Not for anything in the world, he cried, would he part from his "luck," as he ever after called the rescued picture. So there again appeared the malice of inanimate things, for how else could one account for the plunging of that line, the entire length of the staircase, of splendidly framed pictures of loveliness, into the fiery depths, while the plain and unimportant one kept its place in calm security?

Mr. Daly had a very expensive company on his hands. He had amazed other managers by his "corner" on leading men. With three already in his company he had not hesitated to draw on Boston for Harry Crisp, and on Philadelphia for Mr. Louis James; and when he added such names as George Clark, Daniel Harkins, George DeVere, James Lewis, William Lemoyne, William Davidge, A. Whiting, Owen Fawcett, George Parkes, F. Burnett, H. Bascombe, J. Beekman, Charles Fisher, George Gilbert, etc., one can readily understand that the salary of the men alone must have made quite an item in the week's expenses, and added to the sharp necessity of getting us to work as quickly as possible. And in actual truth the ruins of the little theatre were not yet cold when Mr. Daly had, by wire, secured a week for us, divided between Syracuse and Albany, and we were scrambling dresses together and buying new toilet articles--rouge, powders, and pomades, and transforming ourselves into "strolling players"; though, sooth to say, there was precious little "strolling" done after we started, for we were all rushing for rooms, for food, for trains, through a blizzard that was giving us plenty of delaying snow-drifts. And while the company was cheerfully "barn-storming," Mr. Daly was doing his best to find shelter for us in New York, engaging the little one-time church on Broadway. He had painters, paper-hangers, scrub-women, upholsterers, climbing over one another in their frantic efforts to do all he desired to have done in about one-half the regulation time allowed for such work; and while they toiled day and night with much noise and great demonstration of haste, he sat statue-still in a far corner, mentally reviewing every manuscript in his possession, searching eagerly for the one that most nearly answered to the needs of the moment. Namely, a play that required a strong cast of characters (he had plenty of men and women), little preparation, and scanty scenery (since he was short of both time and money). And, finding "Alixe," then known as "The Countess de Somerive," he stopped short. The action of the play covered but one day--that was promising. There were but three acts--good; but two scenes--better! A conventional chateau garden-terrace for one act, and a simply elegant morning-room or stately drawing-room, according to managerial taste, could stand for the other two acts. A strong and dramatic work--requiring the painting of but two scenes. The play was found! The company was ordered home to rehearse it.

Now at that time, to my own great anxiety, I was by way of standing on very dangerous ground. The public had favored me almost extravagantly from the very first performance of _Anne Sylvester_, but the critics, at least the most important two, seemed to praise my efforts with a certain unwilling drag of the pen. Nearly all their kind words had the sweetness squeezed out of them between "buts" and "ifs," and, most wounding of all, my actual work was less often criticized than were my personal defects. Occasionally an actress's work may be too good for her own welfare. You doubt that? Yet I know an actress, still in harness, who in her lovely prime made so great a hit, in the part of an adventuress, that she has had nothing else to act since. Whenever a play was produced with such a character in it, she was sent for. But if she was proposed for a loyal wife, a gentle sweetheart, a modern heroine, the quick response invariably was: "Oh, she can't play anything but the adventuress."

There is nothing more fatal to the artistic value, to the future welfare of a young player, than to be known as "a one-part actress"; yet that was the very danger that was threatening me at the time of the burning of the home theatre. Following other parts known as strong, _Jezebel_, the half-breed East Indian, a velvet-footed treachery and twice would-be murderess, and _Cora_, the quadroon mad-woman, were in a fair way to injure me greatly. Already one paper had said: "Miss Morris has a strange, intuitive comprehension of these creatures of mixed blood."

But worse than that, the most powerful of the two critics I dreaded had said one morning: "Miss Morris played with care and much feeling. The audience wept _copiously_" (to anyone who has long read the great critic, that word "copiously" is tantamount to his full signature, so persistently does he use it), "but her performance was flecked with those tigerish gleams that seem to be a part of her method. She will probably find difficulty in equaling in any other line her success as _Cora_."

No animal had ever a keener sense of approaching danger than I had, when my professional welfare was threatened, and these small straws told me plainly which way the wind was beginning to blow, and now, looking back, I am convinced that just one more "tigerish part" at that time would have meant artistic ruin to me, for, figuratively speaking, pens were already dipped to write me down "a one-part actress."

Then, one bitter cold day we returned to New York and Mr. Daly, sending for me, said he must ask a favor of me. A form of speech that literally made me "sit up straight"--yes, and gasp, too, with astonishment. With a regretful sigh he went on: "I suppose you know you are a strong attraction?"

I smiled broadly at his evident disapproval of such knowledge on my part, and he continued: "But in this play there is no part for you--yet I greatly need all my strongest people in this first cast. Of course as far as ability is concerned you could play the _Countess_ and make a hit, but she's too old--so you'll not play the mother to marriageable daughters under my management, even in an emergency. Now I have Miss Morant, Miss Davenport and Miss Dietz, but--but I must have your name, too."

I nodded vigorously--I understood. And having seen the play in Paris, where it was one of the three pieces offered for an evening's programme, I mentally reviewed the cast and presently made answer, cheerfully and honestly: "Oh, yes! I see--it's that--'er--_Aline?_ _Justine?_ No, no! _Claudine?_ that's the name of the maid. You want me to go on for that? All right! anything to help!"

He leaned forward, asking, eagerly: "Do you mean that?"

"Of course I do!" I answered.

"Ah!" he cried, "you don't guess well, Miss Morris, but you've the heart of a good comrade, and now I'm sure you will do as I ask you, and play _Alixe_ for me?"

I sprang to my feet with a bound. "_Alixe?_" I cried. "I to play that child? oh, impossible! No--no! I should be absurd! I--I--I know too much--oh, you understand what I mean! She is a little convent-bred bit of innocence--a veritable baby of sixteen years! Dear Mr. Daly don't you see, I should ruin the play?"

He answered, rather coldly: "You are not given to ruining plays. The part does not amount to much. Good heavens! I admit it does not suit you, but think of my position; give me the benefit of your name as _Alixe_ for one single week, and on the second Monday night Miss Jewett shall take the part off your hands."

"But," I whimpered, "the critics will make me the butt of their ridicule, for I can't make myself look like an _Alixe_."

"Oh, no they won't!" he answered, sharply. "Of course you won't expect a success, but you need fear no gibes for trying to help me out of a dramatic hole. Will you help me?" And of course there was nothing to do but swallow hard and hold out my hand for the unwelcome part.

Imagine my surprise when, on my way to rehearsal, I saw posters up, announcing the production of the play of "Alixe." I met Mr. Daly at the door and said: "Why this play was always called 'The Countess of Somerive.'"

"Yes," he replied, "I know--but 'Alixe' looks well, it's odd and pretty--and well, it will lend a little importance to the part!"--which shows how heavy were the scales upon our eyes while we were rehearsing the new play.

Everyone sympathized with me, but said a week would soon pass, and I groaned and ordered heelless slippers, and flaxen hair parted simply and waved back from the temples to fall loosely on the shoulders, to avoid the height that heels and the fashionable chignon would give me, while a thin, white nun's veiling gown, high-necked and long-sleeved, over a low-cut white silk lining, buttoned at the back and finished with a pale blue sash and little side pocket, completed the costume, I prepared for the character. I was beginning to understand, as I studied her, and shamefacedly--to love!

Oh, yes, one often feels dislike or liking for the creature one is trying to represent. Just at first I said to myself, here is a modern _Ophelia_, but I was soon convinced that the innocence of _Alixe_ was far more perfect than had been that of Shakespeare's weakling, who, through the training of court life, the warnings of a shrewd brother, and the admonitions of a tricky father, had learned many things--was ductile in stronger hands and could play a part; could lead a lover on to speech, without giving slightest hint of the hateful watching eyes she knew were upon him.

Poor "Rose of May," whose sweetness comes to us across the ages! As the garden-spider's air-spun silken thread is cast from bough to twig across the path, so her fragile thread of life looped itself from father to lover, to brother, to queen, and all the web was threaded thick with maiden's tears, made opalescent by rosy love, green hope, and violet despair. But each one she clung to raised a hand to brush the fragile thing aside, and so destroyed it utterly. Yet that tangled wreck of beauty, sweetness, and "a young maid's wits," remains one of the world's dearest possessions--the fair _Ophelia_!

But this modern maid was yet unspotted by the world. She found all earth perfect, as though God had just completed it, and loved ardently and without shame, as the innocent do love. For this pure flower of crime was ignorant, to the point of bliss, of evil in the world about her. While her adored mother was to her as the blessed Madonna herself.

More and more convincing, as I carefully studied the part, became that perfect innocence. Not cold or reserved, but alive with faith, quivering, too, with girlish mirth, yet innocent. And as with roots deep in rankest, blackest ooze and mud, the lily sends up into the sunlit air its stainless, white-petaled blossom, to float in golden-hearted beauty upon the surface of the stream, so all sweet and open-hearted _Alixe_ floated into view.

And I was expected to act a part like that! I worried day and night over it. Should I do this, should I do that? No--no! she was not coy--detestable word. I recalled the best _Ophelia_ I had ever seen--a German actress. Would she do for a model? Perhaps--no! she was mystic, strange, aloof!

Oh, dear! and then, by merest accident, my mind wandered away to the past, and I said to myself, it should not be so hard. Every woman has been innocent. I was innocent enough when my first sweetheart paused at my side to say to me the foolish old words that never lose sweetness and novelty. I recalled with what open pleasure I had listened, with what honest satisfaction I accepted his attention. With a laugh I exclaimed: "I didn't even have sense enough to hide my gratification and pride, or to _pretend the least bit_." I stopped suddenly--light seemed to come into my mind. Innocence is alike the world over, I thought; it only differs in degree. I sprang to my feet! I cried joyously: "I have caught the cue, I do believe--_I won't act at all!_ I'll just speak the lines sincerely and simply and leave the effect to Providence."

The scales loosened a trifle over Mr. Daly's eyes at the last rehearsal but one. He was down in the orchestra speaking to the leader when I came to the end of the act, and the words: "The mother whom I have insulted? That young girl, then, is my sister--the sister whose happiness I have stolen? whose future I have shattered? What--is--there--left--for--me to live for?"

Mr. Daly glanced up, and said, sharply: "What's that? 'er, Miss Morris, what are you going to do there as the curtain falls? I--I haven't noticed that speech before. Go back a bit, Mr. Fisher, Miss Morant, back to the Count's entrance; let me hear that again."

We went over the scene again: "H-e-m-m!" said Mr. Daly; "you've not answered my question, Miss Morris. What do you do at the fall of the curtain?"

"Nothing, sir," I answered, "just stare dazedly at space, I think--swaying a little perhaps."

"I want you to fall!" he declared.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "please, don't you think that would be rather melodramatic? If she could stand while receiving that awful shock about her mother's shame she would hardly fall afterward, from mere horror of her own thoughts?"

"I know all that, but let me tell you there's always great effect in a falling body. At any rate you can sink into a chair--and so get the suggestion of collapse."

"There is no chair," I answered, cheerfully.

"Well," he replied, testily, "there can be one, I suppose. Here, boy, bring a large chair and place it behind Miss Morris."

"Mr. Daly," I argued, "if I fall heavily, as I must, for effect, the chair will jump, and that will be funny--see."

I fell--it did start backward, but Mr. Daly was equal to the emergency. "Take off the castors and place the chair hard against the end of the piano; now try!"

I did; the chair was firm as a rock. It was settled; I did as I was told, and fell at the end of the act ever after. And Mr. Daly came and patted me on the back, and said, kindly: "Don't fret; I honestly believe there's something in the little part after all. That speech made me feel creepy."

But the scales on my own eyes were still firm and tight, and all I could see in the play was the strength, power, and passion of the scenes between the _Count_ and _Countess_, and the probable hit of Mr. Louis James in his part of the _Duc de Mirandol_. The fate of this play rested in other hands than mine, thank goodness, and I rejoiced in the freedom from responsibility my small part gave me, and planned what I would do when Miss Jewett took _Alixe_.

The great night came. Another small auditorium awaited the coming of our patrons. There was a smell of scarce dried paint in front of the curtain and of scrubbing-soap behind it; but all was bright and fresh, and the house was soon packed with a brilliant audience. As the play to be produced had but a small cast, and as Mr. Daly was anxious that the entire company should share in this house-warming, he had invited Mr. John Brougham to write a sort of prologue, giving a few apt lines to every member of the company, and then to proceed to the play. This was done--but, alas! Mr. Brougham's work was utterly unworthy of him. There was not one flash of his wonderful wit. He confined himself to comments upon the fire, after this manner; I spoke, saying:

"I can't remember half the things I lost, I fear----"

_Mr. Lewis_ (breaking in). "One article you have not lost----"

_C. M._ "What?"

_Lewis._ "'L'Article 47,' my dear."

Then Miss Jewett came forward to exclaim:

"My lovely 'peau de soie,' The sweetest thing in silk I ever saw!"

It was only spoken one night. But the audience was so heartily kind to us all that many of us had tears of sheer gratitude in our eyes. We were in evening dress and were formed in a crescent-like line from box to box, as the heavy red curtains parted revealing us, and Mr. Daly was very proud of his family of manly-looking men and gracious women, and the audience greeted the assembled company heartily. But that was nothing to the welcome given as each favorite actor or actress stepped forward to speak--and I was happy, happy, happy! when I found myself counted in as one of them, with the welcome to the beautiful Davenport, Jewett, Dietz, to the ever-favored Mrs. Gilbert, no longer, no heartier than my own! And as I bowed low and gratefully, for just one moment I could not help wishing that I had an important part to play, instead of the childish thing awaiting me.

The prologue being over, Mr. Daly, with a frowning, disappointed face, told those of the play to make all possible haste in changing their dresses, that they might get to work and rub out the bad impression already made.

Every important occasion seems to have its touch of the ridiculous, and so had this one. The "bustle"--the big wire affair, extending to the bottom of the skirt, had reached its hideous apogee of fashion at that time, yet what possible relation could there be between that teetering monstrosity and grace or sentiment or tragedy? Surely, I thought, this girl-pupil, brought straight from convent-school to country-home, might reasonably be bustleless--and I should look so much smaller--so much more graceful! But--Mr. Daly? Never--never! would he consent to such a breach of propriety! Fashion his soul loved! He pored over her plates! he bowed to her mandates!

My courage having failed me, when I hurried to my room I put on the obnoxious structure; but one glimpse of that camel-like hump on the back of _Alixe_, and the thought of the fall in the chair made me desperate. I tore the mass of wire off, and decided to keep out of sight till the last moment, and then make a rush for the stage.

"Ready, Miss Morris?"

"Ready!" I answered, as the question was asked from door to door.

In a few moments the call-boy came back again: "Are you ready? Everyone is out there but you."

"Oh, yes!" I said, showing myself to him, but still not leaving the shelter of my room; and I heard him saying: "Yes, sir, she's all ready, I saw her."

The curtain rose. Only a few lines were spoken before my entrance. I dared wait no longer--heavens! no! for there was Mr. Daly coming for me. I gathered up my skirts as bunchily as I could and ran out; but I could not deceive Mr. Daly. In an instant he missed the necessary camel's hump. "Good heaven and earth!" he shouted, "you've left your bustle!"

I broke into a run. "Wait!" he cried, loudly. He dashed into my open room, caught the big bustle up, and dragging it like a great cage behind him, came plunging down the entrance to me, crying: "Wait--wait!" and waving the other hand commandingly above his head.

I heard my music; I sprang to the platform I had to enter from. "That's me!" I cried. "Wait!" he ordered and reached out to catch me. I evaded his grasp and skipped through the door, leaving but a fold of my skirt in his hand. I was on the stage--and joy, oh, joy! I was without a bustle!

Mr. Daly did not like being laughed at, but when he glanced down and saw the thing he was dragging behind him, after the manner of a baby's tin wagon, he had to laugh, and verily there were others who laughed with him, while the scandalized dresser carried the rejected article back to a decent seclusion.

There is no manager, star, or agent alive whose experience will enable him to foresee the fate of an untried play. A very curious thing is that what is called an "actor's" play--one, that is, that actors praise and enjoy in the rehearsing, is almost always a failure, while the managerial judgment has been reversed so often by the public, that even the most enthusiastic producer of new plays is apt "to hedge" a bit, with: "Unless I deceive myself, this will prove to be the greatest play," etc.; while the mistakes made by actors and managers both anent the value of certain parts are illustrated sufficiently by E. H. Sothern, C. W. Couldock, Joseph Jefferson--all three of whom made immense hits in parts they had absolutely refused to accept, yielding only from necessity or obligingness, and to their own astonishment finding fame in presenting the unwelcome characters. And to the misjudged _Lord Dundreary_, _Asa Trenchard_, etc., that night was added the name of _Alixe_.

Refined, intensely modern, the play was nevertheless a dread tragedy, and being French it almost naturally dealt with the breaking of a certain great commandment. And now--see: we actors thought that the stress and power of the play would be shown in the confession of the wife and in the scene of wild recrimination between her and the _Comte de Somerive_, when they met after eighteen years of separation. But see, how different was the view the public took. In the very first place then, when I escaped the bustle, and entered, straight, and slim, art had so reduced my usual height and changed my coloring, that until I spoke I was not recognized. The kindly welcome then given me calmed my fears, and I said to myself: "I can't be looking ridiculous in the part, or they would not do that!" And women, at least, can understand how my very soul was comforted by the knowledge. And just then a curious sense of joy seemed to bubble up in my heart. The sudden relief, the feeling of irresponsibility, the first-night excitement. Perhaps one, perhaps all together caused it. I don't know--I only know that meaning no disrespect, no irreverence, I could have sung aloud from the Benedicite: "_Omnia opera Domini!_" "Bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever!"

And the audience accepted the joyous little maid almost from the first girlish, love-betraying words she spoke, and yet--so sensitive is an audience at times--while still laughing over her sweet ignorance, they thrilled with a nameless dread of coming evil. They seemed to see the blue sky darkening, the threatening clouds piling up silently behind the white-robed child, whose perfect innocence left her so alone! Before the first act ended we discovered that the tragedy was shifting from the sinful mother and was settling down with crushing weight upon the shoulders of the stainless child. Indeed, the whole play was like a dramatization of the awful words: "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children!"

As the play went on and the impetuous grief of the child changed into proud self-restraint, while her agonizing jealousy of her adored mother developed, Mr. Daly, with wide, bright eyes, exclaimed: "I must have been blind--stone-blind! Why _Alixe_ is the bone and marrow, the heart and soul of this play!"

Certainly the audience seemed to share his belief, for it called and called and called again for that misunderstood young person, in addition to the hearty approval bestowed upon the other more prominent characters. It was a very fine cast, Miss Fanny Morant making a stately and powerful _Comtesse de Somerive_, while Mr. Louis James gave a performance of the _Duc de Mirandol_ that I never saw even approached again. Every other actor made of him either a fool or a brute, while James made of him a delightful enigma--a sort of well-bred simpleton, rattle-brain, and braggart, who at the last moment shows himself, beneath all disguise, a brave and loyal gentleman.

But the greatest triumph for _Alixe_ followed in that act--the last--in which she does not speak at all. She had been able to bear loss, sorrow, renunciation, but as in olden times poison-tests were kept, crystal cups of such rare purity they shattered under contact with an evil liquid--so her pure heart broke at contact with her mother's shame. Poor, loving, little base-born! Pathetic little marplot! Seeing herself as only a stumbling-block to others, she sought self-effacement beneath the gentle waters of the lily-pond. And early in that last act, as her drowned body, carried in the arms of the two men who had loved her, was laid before the starting eyes of the guilty mother, and the loving, forgiving, pleading letter of the suicide was read above her, actual sobs rose from the front of the house. It _was_ a heart-breaking scene.

But when the curtain fell, oh! what a very whirlwind broke loose in that little theatre! The curtain shot up and down, up and down, and then, to my amazement, Mr. Daly signaled for me to go before the curtain, and I couldn't move. He stamped his foot and shouted: "Come over here and take this call!" and I called back: "I can't! I am all pinned up, so I can't walk!"

For, that my skirts might not fall away from my ankles, when I was being carried across the stage, I had stood upon a chair and had my garments tightly wound about me and securely fastened, and unfortunately the pins were behind--and I all trussed up, nice and tight and helpless.

Mr. Daly came tearing over to me, and down he went upon his knee to try to free me, but a muttered "D----n!" told me that he could not find the pins, and the applause, oh, the precious applause that was being wasted out there! Suddenly he rose--tossed that extraordinary hat of his off, picked me up in his arms and carried me like a big property doll to the curtain's side, signaled it up, and, with his arm about me, supported me on to the stage. Oh, but I was proud to stand there with him, for in those days he would not make the simplest speech; would not show himself even. Why, at the banquet of his own giving, he hid behind a big floral piece and made Mr. Oakey Hall speak for him. And yet he had been pleased enough with my work to bring me there himself. I saw his hand upon my shoulder, and suddenly I stooped my head and kissed it, in purest gratitude.

Afterward, when I had been unpinned, as we walked through the entrance together, he said, with a gleeful laugh: "This is the third and greatest, but we share it."

"The third what?" I asked.

"The third surprise," he answered. "First you surprised the town in 'Man and Wife'; second, you surprised _me_ in 'L'Article 47'; now 'Alixe'--the greatest of all--surprises you as well as me!"

He stopped, stepped in front of me and asked: "What do you most wish for?"

I stared at him. He added, "About your home, say?"

And swiftly I made answer: "A writing-desk; why?"

He laughed a little and said: "Good-night, now. Oh, by the way, there's a forfeit against you for not wearing your bustle to-night."

But I was not greatly alarmed or excited--not half so much as I was next day, about four o'clock, when some men drove up and insisted upon leaving in my room a handsome inlaid desk that was taller than I was. At first I protested, but a card, saying that it was "A souvenir of 'Alixe,' from your manager and friend, A. Daly," changed my bearing to one of most unseemly pride.

In the next ten days I wrote I think to every soul I knew, and kept up my diary with vicious exactitude, just for the pleasure of sitting before the lovely desk, that to-day stands in my "den" in the attic. Its mirror-door, is dim and cloudy, its sky-blue velvet writing-leaf faded to a silvery gray, but even so it still remains "A souvenir of 'Alixe,' from A. Daly."