Chapter 6

I never saw Mary Anderson act. That seems a strange admission, but during her wonderful reign at the Lyceum Theatre, which she rented from Henry Irving, I was in America, and another time when I might have seen her act, I was very ill and ordered abroad. I have, however, had the great pleasure of meeting her and she has done me many little kindnesses. Hearing her praises sung on all sides, and her beauties spoken of everywhere, I was particularly struck by her modest evasion of publicity _off_ the stage. I personally only knew her as a most beautiful woman--as kind as beautiful--constantly working for her religion--_always_ kind, a good daughter, a good wife, a good woman.

She cheered me before I sailed for America by saying that her people would like me.

"Since seeing you in Portia and Letitia," she wrote, "I am convinced you will take America by storm." Certainly _she_ took _England_ by storm! But she abandoned her triumphs almost as soon as they were gained. They never made her happy, she once told me, and I could understand her better than most, since I had had success too, and knew that it did not mean happiness.

Henry and I were so fortunate as to gain the friendship and approval of Dr. Horace Howard Furness, perhaps the finest Shakespearean scholar in America, and editor of the Variorum Shakespeare, which Henry considered the best of all editions--"the one which counts." It was in Boston, I think, that I disgraced myself at one of Dr. Furness' lectures. He was discussing "As You Like It" and Rosalind, and proving with much elaboration that English in Shakespeare's time was pronounced like a broad country dialect, and that Rosalind spoke Warwickshire! A little girl who was sitting in the front of me had lent me her copy of the play a moment before, and now, absorbed in Dr. Furness' argument, I forgot the book wasn't mine and began scrawling controversial notes in it with my very thick and blotty fountain pen.

"Give me back my book! Give me my book!" cried the little girl. "How dare you write in my book!" she cried with rage.

Her mother tried to hush her up: "It's Miss Ellen Terry."

"I don't care! She's spoilt my nice book!"

I am glad to say that when the little girl understood, she forgave me. Still, it was dreadful of me and I did feel ashamed at the time.

_Joseph Jefferson_

In November, 1901, I wrote in my diary: "Philadelphia. Supper at Henry's. Jefferson there, sweeter and more interesting than ever--and younger."

Dear Joe Jefferson--actor, painter, courteous gentleman, _profound_ student of Shakespeare! When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was raging in America (it really _did_ rage there!) Jefferson wrote the most delicious doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule killed the Bacon enthusiasts all the more dead because it was barbed with erudition.

He said that when I first came into the box to see him as "Rip," he thought I did not like him, because I fidgetted and rustled and moved my place, as is my wicked way. "But I'll get her, and I'll hold her," he said to himself. I was held indeed--enthralled!

_The Night of the Great Blizzard_

Our first American tours were in 1883-1884; the third was in 1887-88, the year of the great blizzard. We were playing in New York when the storm began, and Henry came to fetch us at half-past ten in the morning. His hotel was near the theatre where we were to play at night. He said the weather was stormy, and we had better make for his hotel while there was time. The German actor, Ludwig Barnay, was to open in New York that night, but the blizzard affected his nerves to such an extent that he did not appear at all and returned to Germany directly the weather improved!

Most of the theatres closed for three days, but we remained open, although there was a famine in the town and the streets were impassable. The cold was intense. Henry sent Walter out to buy some violets for Barnay, and when he brought them in to the dressing-room--he had only carried them a few yards--they were frozen so hard that they could have been chipped with a hammer.

We rang up on "Faust" three-quarters of an hour late. This was not bad, considering all things. Although the house was sold out, there was hardly any audience, and only a harp and two violins in the orchestra. But discipline was so strong in the Lyceum Company that every member of it reached the theatre by eight o'clock, although some of them had had to walk from Brooklyn Bridge. The Mayor of New York and his daughter managed to reach their box somehow. Then we thought it was time to begin. A few members of Daly's company, including John Drew, came in, and a few friends. It was the oddest, sparsest audience! But the enthusiasm was terrific.

Five years went by before we visited America again. Five years in a country of rapid changes is a long time, long enough for friends to forget. But they didn't forget. This time we made new friends, too, in the Far West. We went to San Francisco, among other places. We attended part of a performance at the Chinese theatre. Oh, those rows of impenetrable faces gazing at the stage with their long, shining, inexpressive eyes. What a look of the everlasting the Chinese have! "We have been before you--we shall be after you," they seem to say.

The chief incident of the fifth American tour was our production at Chicago of Laurence Irving's one-act play "Godefroi and Yolande." I regard that little play as an inspiration. By instinct the young author did everything right.

In 1900-1 I was ill and hated the parts I was playing in America. The Lyceum was not what it had been. Everything was changed.

In 1907--only the other day--I toured in America for the first time on my own account--playing modern plays for the first time. I made new friends and found my old ones still faithful.

But this tour was chiefly momentous to me because at Pittsburg I was married for the third time, and married to an American, Mr. James Usselman of Indiana, who acts under the name of James Carew.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Alexander had just succeeded Terriss as our leading young man.

[2] Wenman had a rolling bass voice of which he was very proud. He was a valuable actor, yet somehow never interesting. Young Norman Forbes-Robertson played Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek with us on our second American tour.

[3] Once when Allen was rehearsing the supers in the Church Scene in "Much Ado about Nothing," we overheard him "show the sense" in Shakespeare like this:

"This 'Ero, let me tell you, is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords. A wanton is a kind of--well, you know--she ain't what she ought to be!"

Allen would then proceed to read the part of Claudio: "... not to knit my soul to an approved wanton."

Seven or eight times the supers clapped their "'ands to their swords" without giving Allen satisfaction.

"No, no, no, that's not a bit like it, not a bit! If any of your sisters was 'ere and you 'eard me call 'er ---- ----, would yer stand gapin' at me as if this was a bloomin' tea party?"

THE HERITAGE OF HAM

BY

LIEUTENANT HUGH M. KELLY, U. S. A.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR S. COVEY

"To be hanged by the neck until dead." Well, no one was surprised. It was a foregone conclusion. Desertion to the enemy in time of war is one of the crimes military that cuts a man off from any chance for clemency. When he lifts his hands against his former comrades, he is as one already dead; that is, if he is caught. Private Wilson made the fatal mistake of being caught. The result was inevitable.

Though Private Wilson was expecting these very words, the sound of them, cutting the absolute silence, sent a cold contraction to his heart, and his thick lips drew themselves over his white teeth. Doubtless, if it had been possible, he would have turned pale; but since he was as black as the proverbial ace of spades, this was out of the question. Private Wilson belonged to the 19th Cavalry, which, as the initiated know, is a negro regiment.

There was no movement in the still line of the squadron when the fatal order was read, except a slight tremor, almost imperceptible, like the first faint rustling of leaves in the dead quiet that precedes a storm. Then from the right of "B" Troop there came a deep, indrawn breath, and the first sergeant's horse sprang sideways, in amazement, against that of the guidon. The animal was accustomed to being treated as tenderly as an infant, and now, for no fault whatever, he had received a rough pressure from his rider's knees, and a sharp dig from the spurs. The first sergeant was old Jeremiah Wilson, and the prisoner, standing to the "front and center" in the gathering dusk, and hearing his fate pronounced, was Jeremiah's son.

Sergeant Wilson was the one man in the squadron who had hoped against hope, and now that hope was dead. It died hard, and its death was recorded in that contraction of the knees and dig of the spurs. The guidon paid no attention. In his heart he believed that the sentence was just; but his pity went out to the old soldier on his right. His eyes, however, were fixed on Private Wilson, as were those of the rest of the squadron. The prisoner had acquired a new status. Here was a human being within two weeks of the solution of the greatest of all mysteries. He was worth looking at. The condemned man saw the interest shown in him, and, upheld by the feeling of self-importance inherent in the negro character, and always brought to the surface by applause or other manifestation of unusual attention, bore himself jauntily.

There was nothing of this to sustain his old father. He had participated in executions before. For him there were no visions of walking to death with a "firm tread," as the papers say, and "dying game" before the admiring eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was steel-ribbed facts. He could hear the bang of the trap, the snap of the rope, and the quivering creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the lonely, hopeless years. Besides, the dishonor of it. What irony to parade with thirty years of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be pointed out as the father of a man hanged for deserting to the Filipinos!

The officers went to the front and center and the formation was over. Private Wilson departed to his closely guarded prison, and old Jeremiah took the troop to quarters and dismissed it. For the first time in twenty years he forgot to "open chamber and magazine," and publish the details for the next day. He wanted to be alone; away from the pitying eyes of the black men of the troop.

He had honestly believed that there were grounds for hope. He could not see now, in the face of the evidence, how the court could have given "Buff" the extreme penalty. He thought he had explained the circumstances so clearly. Hadn't he told the tribunal of the baleful influence of Mercedes Martinez? how this _mestiza_, had lured his boy to his downfall? He thought he had shown positively, by his testimony, that this woman had terrible "voodoo" powers and had _conjured_ "Buff." Hadn't they apparently listened with wonder while he related the charms that had been brought to bear on his son? the devils that had pursued him; the angels that had beckoned him away to the hills; the divine call he had received to be the George Washington of the Filipinos, and lead them to freedom?

The old soldier's pride in his son's physical perfection had always blinded him to the fact that the private was constantly in trouble, and was known as a "bad egg." If any one had told him that he was an object of pity because of his boy's worthlessness, he would have sputtered with indignation. He never realized that Buff escaped many a "bawling out" because the officers respected the father's long years of faithful service and did not want to humiliate him. He knew that his boy flew high occasionally, but that was because he was "jess nachally sprightly and full o' devilment." No one could deny that Private Wilson was one of the finest animals, physically, that ever wore the uniform; or that he had gained a wide reputation among his comrades and the Filipinos on account of his terrible abilities in a hand-to-hand engagement. It was this very notoriety that had attracted the insurgents' attention to him, and led to his downfall.

The little brown men stood in awe of this black demon, and wanted him on their side. His military training and reputation as a fighter would be of inestimable value. With their usual craft the insurgent officials went about to wean the soldier from his allegiance, and by the aid of the _mestiza_ beauty, Mercedes Martinez, succeeded in their purpose. Between retreat and reveille of one July night, Private Wilson, led by visions of love and a brigadier-general's star, took to the hills. He longed to emulate the black renegade, Fagan, but having none of Fagan's "foxiness" or ability, he was soon laid by the heels. Men of his own squadron took him. He demanded at first to be treated as befitted his rank; but none of his self-importance went with his black captors. "We'll brigidiale-gene'al yer, yer black scound'al," they remarked cheerfully, as they stripped off his tinsel stars. "Yer oughter be lynched."

They "Gen'al Wilsoned" him until he was sick of it and begged them to stop. Then, when they got back to the station, they popped him into the "jigger" along with privates charged with sassing the cook and other heinous offenses--a most humiliating experience for a brigadier general. Now he must die; and it came to him that it was as hard for a general officer to die as ever it was for a private.

When his son had disappeared, old Sergeant Wilson had borne himself proudly, even in the face of rumors and insinuations. His boy would not desert. That he might have gone outside the lines to see some "lady friend" and been captured, yes; but no desertion. Even when tales of his lurid doings out in the province began to come in, old Jeremiah had not faltered in his faith. They were lies, all of them, or it was some other man. Nor when Buff was taken, with his patent-leather boots and tin stars, was the old man shaken; for the explanation that the private gave as to how he had been conjured was easier for Wilson to believe than that his "baby" had been false to his salt. But now the case was different. The disgrace of being parent to a "bobtailed" and condemned criminal was as the bitterness of death.

Up to now, for all his hard sixty years of life, he had carried himself like a lance. The whiteness of age in his woolly hair was not reflected in the iron spirit that upheld his wrinkled body. But the shame of those words spoken on parade had undone that, as suddenly as ashes crumble before the touch.

The days immediately following the publishing of Buff's sentence were nightmares of pain and humiliation. The old negro could hardly bring himself to go to headquarters at first sergeant's call. When he did go, he moved heavily, like a man asleep, and with his eyes fixed on the ground, that he might not meet the curious, pitying glances of his fellow soldiers.

After a week of this, old Jeremiah began to make mistakes at drill and mistakes in his troop papers; a thing hitherto unknown. Finally Lieutenant Perkins, the troop commander, lost his patience at some bull the old sergeant made, and called him down roughly, in the presence of the troop.

"Look here, Sergeant Wilson, I won't have any more of this. I'll bust you higher than a kite. I don't care if you've had fifty years of service. If you are mooning about that worthless boy of yours, you had better get over it. It's a damn good riddance, and you know it as well as I do. You'll have to take a brace or something will drop."

If Perkins had not been born several degrees north of Mason and Dixon's line he would have known better than that; as it was, he did not understand these negroes. He hadn't the faintest conception of how to handle these simple-hearted black men. He was not popular with them at any time, and this unheard-of piece of cruelty cut every tender-hearted trooper as deeply as if it had been aimed at him personally. This was the first break, and, as a consequence, something did drop, in a way that Perkins hardly expected.

The old sergeant made no reply to this reprimand, but simply stood at attention, though his black, weazened face worked and his lips trembled. It was the first time since he was a buck private that he had been spoken to in such a manner. For the first time, the yoke of discipline galled him. The bitterness of his inferiority and servitude was as wormwood within him. The harsh injustice of such treatment in this, his black hour, after years of faithful work, aroused in him a demon of resentment that made him long to strike back.

The occurrence startled him from his lethargy. He suddenly realized that his son's few remaining hours on earth were slipping by, and the boy had not been comforted. When this came to him, his self-reproach cut him sharply, and he resolved to make amends at once. He obtained permission from the officer of the day, and that evening, after retreat, went to see Buff.

He found the general plucked of his plumage. The prospect of death so close to him had narrowed the black boy's perspective. "The worldly hope men set their hearts upon" had turned ashes, and it were hard to find "a man who looked so wistfully on the day" as this doomed soldier. He wanted to live. Every atom of animal strength in his perfect body was charged with a desire to exist. This living, day after day, in close proximity to the grave had tended to a simplification of ideas. He had harked back to childhood, and when his father came, the prisoner, in his clanking irons, turned to him as a pickaninny might have done for protection from some bugaboo.

Old Jeremiah sat on the cot, while Buff occupied a small stool directly in front of him. They talked in low tones, of ordinary subjects, at first; then gradually went back through the years. The white-haired old negro and the young soldier both smiled as they recalled childish escapades of the latter, 'way back in "God's country." They lost themselves in reminiscence, and forgot the present, until the wan moon, coming up, cast the shadows of the bars in the window across them. Then with a shiver they remembered.

Suddenly the private began to talk of his death, and as he spoke the terror of it grew on him. This man, known to have killed more than one American soldier and to be absolutely fearless in battle, quaked with abject fright. He would contend gladly in a contest against hopeless odds; but at the thought of his end creeping on him thus, slowly, inexorably his soul writhed in terror. He leaned forward and pressed his face on his father's knees.

"Oh, paw, ain't yer gwine ter help me? Won't you do somethin' fer me? Ah doan' wanter die yit. Tain't my time ter die. Ah nevah meant no hahm, paw. Ef they'll just give me one moah chanst, ah'll do anything they say. Honest, ah will. Gawd! paw, yer ain't gwine ter let 'em kill me, is yer?"

The soldier raised his head and looked into the sergeant's black face as though the latter were omnipotent, and only had to say the word to make him free. Then, with a shivering sigh, he laid his head on his father's knees again.

"Sh--sh," the old sergeant said softly, "Sh--sh"; and that was all he could do; but his wrinkled hand wandered tenderly over the prisoner's black, kinky hair, and tears rolled down his seamed face.

When Buff's panic wore off a bit, he was made to lie down, and Jeremiah, sitting beside him, crooned softly, as the old black mammies do to the little children. By the time call to quarters sounded, the condemned man's quiet breathing told that his earthly troubles were forgotten, for a time at least.

After this visit, Sergeant Wilson's apparent neglect of his duties became more pronounced than ever. The simplest orders and directions received from his troop's commander, he either forgot to perform or executed in such a bunglesome manner as to drive Lieutenant Perkins' irritable nature to the verge of hysteria. The latter, with his narrow sympathies, could make no allowance for the old negro's state of mind, and his "roasts" became more frequent and rougher with each repetition. The sergeant took it all with apparent resignation; but within him the troubled spirit was surging to and fro. How could he be expected to copy troop returns and muster rolls, with that cry--"Gawd, paw, yer ain't gwine ter let 'em kill me, is yer?" ringing in his ears, hour by hour? It was the unfairness of it that aroused his resentment.

If the "ole Cap'n" were only here, all would be well. It was another cruel stroke that he should be absent on detached service just when Jeremiah needed him most.

Soldiers are a peculiar breed. They are more nearly like children in certain characteristics than any other class of men. They are so accustomed to being taken care of by their officers that they look to the latter for everything. When they find one who they know will stand up for them, and whom they can trust, their faith and confidence in him are absolute. They will follow him through fire and flood, and obey any order that he may give, in the blind belief that he knows what is best for them. This is true of white soldiers, and much more so of the darkies. This is the feeling that old Jeremiah and the men of the troop held for Captain North, whom they all called the "ole Cap'n."

In all the years these two had served together, since the battle of the Rosebud, when Lieutenant John T. North earned a medal of honor for "bringing in Private J. Wilson, 19th Cavalry, who was wounded, under a heavy fire from the Indians, at the imminent risk of his own life," the sergeant had never received a harsh word or a rebuke that he did not know was merited. But the sullen fury that this young prig aroused in him was unbearable. He felt that his inherent subordination to discipline was being torn to shreds.

This went on for three days. The discipline in the troop was growing ragged with startling rapidity, and Perkins felt it. The men, under the constant abuse heaped upon one whom they respected and pitied, were growing sullen and restive. Each of these soft-hearted troopers was gradually acquiring and nursing a personal grudge. They were forgetting their ideas of the fitness of things. They lost sight of everything except a clearly monumental piece of injustice.

Instead of meeting the issue fairly, and acknowledging the error of his position, Perkins became obstinately harsher and harsher. Not only was he unnecessarily abusive to old Jeremiah, but his treatment of the whole troop was stern to a degree. Finally, on this third day, after a violent harangue in presence of the troop, he reduced the old negro from first sergeant to sergeant.

This was the second break, and when Perkins went that morning to inspect the old church that served as quarters, he found the men congregated in little groups in the squad room. There was not the usual loud-voiced chatter and laughter, but a sullen murmur that dropped to quick silence when he entered. This was bad. There was nothing specific, but he instinctively felt that he was losing his hold. He chafed to do something to "smash these niggers," but there was nothing to seize upon; so he swore at a man loudly for not having his clothing arranged properly, and ordered him to the guard-house. When the officer left, the same ominous murmur arose in the quarters.