Chapter 3

“I neffer be in Paris,” he interrupted, with a start which shocked and convinced me, slight evidence though it may seem. So I spoke on:

“What, never? Not even just that night--that 17th of February? Try to recall it, Heinrich Spellerberg. You remember she came in late, and--who would think that those soft white fingers had been strong enough?”

“Hush, my friendt! I not touch her! She kill herself--she try to hang and she shoke her neck. No, no, to you I vill not lie! You speak all true! Mein Gott! Vat vill you do?”

The man was on his knees. I thought of the circumstances, the persons concerned, the high-strung, sensitive lover of music, the coarse, derisive, perhaps faithless woman, and I replied quickly:

“What will I do? Nothing to-night. It's none of my business, anyhow. I'll sleep over it and tell you in the morning.”

I left him alone.

In the morning the professor's door stood ajar. I looked in. Man, clothes, violin case, and valise had gone. Whither I have not tried to ascertain.

When the new opera was produced that evening the ---- Theatre orchestra was unexpectedly minus two of its second violins, for Schaaf, half-distracted, was wandering the cold streets in search of his friend.

III. -- ON THE BRIDGE

When I tell you, my only friend, to whom I so rarely write and whom I more rarely see, that my lonely life has not been without love for woman, you will perhaps laugh or doubt.

“What,” you will say, “that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that there is such a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in his reading.”

True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man's counting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been more than merely passable to look at, even in my best days.

Yet I have loved a woman.

During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across the river, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday. I enjoyed the afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday. Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water.

One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source. The woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly a handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner which plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle class, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted to each other was easily discoverable.

The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good size and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in which she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntless air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened.

She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any change in health.

The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering; perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.

Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dog regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would never have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, under exactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday.

So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. The husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Monday morning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some taste for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful.

The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruption and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness which arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strange sympathy for an interest in them.

On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until they passed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk. Sometimes they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to me an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would stand out clearly against the background.

It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the health of either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale and slight, showed little change and that infrequently. But the fluctuations of the woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, were numerous and pronounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust than on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the dark crescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myself elated.

But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:

“This is one of the bad Sundays.”

There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.

What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and constancy of her devotion to her husband,--the absorption of the woman in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.

Yes, I loved her,--if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for her or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.

My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woe of my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness.

So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the couple did not appear.

For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk.

On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted there.

Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.

I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld the widower--whose name I did not and probably never shall know--upon the bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoon in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before. They walked close to each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which I observed on her finger.

I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow so speedily, had felt death--those might never have existed, so soon had they been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had worn the aspect of a perfect love.

Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, has allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.

The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life, makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold, bleak, empty, repellent.

You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to me a thing unknown.

* * * * *

So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper ever wrote.

IV. -- THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY

[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.Copyright, 1892, by J.B. Lippincott Company.]

Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the “old school.” He railed against the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when he attitudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the brass rail, his right hand encircling a glass of foaming beer, he often clamoured for a return of the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and sighed at the departure of the “palmy days.”

A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not of “the profession.”

Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither he nor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He still waited and hoped.

For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened by a distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of his occupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearily describe as a “favourable impression.” This he ascribed to lack of opportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. and Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent for the newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought the notices of the performance. These records never contained a word of either praise or censure for Mogley.

Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a “walking gentleman.” It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz) that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her that life-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue acting. She had swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope of his triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she suffered more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied.

She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face from which the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much to Mogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of his aspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully the hard life that a player at “one-night stands” must endure in the interest of art.

This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was about to start “on the road” with the “Two Lives for One” Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or die,--perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, who in the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water, while his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the small room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street.

The “Two Lives for One” Company “collapsed,” as the newspapers say, in Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstanding the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the manager at the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough money from him to take them back to New York.

Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,--a really heartrending smile.

“Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I don't know whether I can live out the season.”

“Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!”

“I would be resigned, Tom, if only--if only you would make a success before I go.”

“If only I could get the chance, Alice!”

As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live on nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, but medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door:

“Anything yet?”

“Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is overcrowded!”

But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In the dark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor.

“Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse,” said the physician, abruptly. “I'm afraid she won't live until midnight.”

Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to “break news gently” in cases where they stand small chances of remuneration.

Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he had such good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news would reanimate her.

“Alice,” he cried, as he threw open the door, “you must get well! My chance has come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, is here.”

She sat up in bed, trembling. “What is it, Tom?”

“This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman this afternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'Silver King' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why this extravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexter explained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't be put on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too sick to walk. 'No one else knows the part,' Hexter said. Then I told him I knew the part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the piece was first produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust up-to-date' from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late dinners and too much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the piece had run more'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it. Well, Hexter said, as everything was ready to put on the piece, if I thought I was up in the part, he'd let me try it. So we went to Renshaw's room and got the part and here it is.”

“But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line.”

“Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone of power.' That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides, burlesque is the thing now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and Powers. They're the men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit in this part, my fortune is sure.”

“But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery.”

“That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries.”

Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome in the same words.

“And then besides--why, Alice, what's the matter?”

She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her. Slowly she opened her eyes.

“Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying.”

Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hard enough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it be without her?

The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside.

“Hexter and his Mephisto be d----d!” said Mogley. “I shall stay at home with you to-night.”

“No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before I die, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until you come to join me.”

Mogley's weaker will succumbed to hers. So, with his right hand around Mrs. Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the steeple which was visible through the narrow window, that he might know when to administer her medicine, he held his “part” in his left hand and refreshed his recollection of the lines.

At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon her cheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep, but she murmured:

“May God help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre with you. Good-bye.”

Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and then during the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper intervals.

Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw's dressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind ever turning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to the words and “business” of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights and crimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted the exaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood by, giving him hints as to new “business” invented by Renshaw.

“You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a specialty.”

“Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the part and the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do some imitations of actors.”

At eight he was ready to go on the stage.

“May God be with you!” reëchoed in his ear,--the echo of a weak voice put forth with an effort.

He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that, “owing to Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr. Thomas Mogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice, without a rehearsal.”

He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and he involuntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and delicious words reached his ears.

The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, then an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance of Mephisto.

Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminary announcement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, rather disconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes had ranged over the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the footlights, there sounded in the depths of his brain:

“My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!”

There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them on the front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant seat throughout the evening.

In all burlesques of “Faust” the rôle of Mephisto is the leading comic figure. The actor who assumes it undertakes to make people laugh.

Mogley made people laugh that night, but it was not his intentional humourous efforts that excited their hilarity. It was the man himself. They began by jeering him quietly. Then the gallery grew bold.

“Ah there, Edwin Booth!” sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft.

“Oh, what a funny little man he is!” ironically quoted another from a song in one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if elongated frame.

“He t'inks dis is a tragedy,” suggested a Bowery youth.

But Mogley tried not to heed.

In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley laboured zealously. The ribald gallery had often been his foe. Wait until such and such a scene! He would show them how a pupil of the old stock companies could play burlesque! Song and dance men from the varieties had too long enjoyed undisputed possession of that form of drama.

But, one by one, he passed his opportunities without capturing the house. Nearer came the end of the piece. Slimmer grew his chance of making the longed-for impression. The derision of the audience increased. Now the gallery made comments upon his personal appearance.

“He could get between raindrops,” yelled one, applying a recent speech of Edwin Stevens, the comic opera comedian.

And at home Mogley's wife was dying--holding to life by sheer power of will, that she might rejoice with him over his triumph. Tears blinded his eyes. Even the other members of the company were laughing at his discomfiture.

Only a little brunette in pink tights who played Siebel, and whom he had never met before, had a look of sympathy for him.

“It's a tough audience. Don't mind them,” she whispered.

Mogley has never seen or heard of the little brunette since. But he anticipates eventually to behold her ranking first after Alice among the angels of heaven.

The curtain fell and Mogley, somewhat dazed in mind, mechanically removed his apparel, washed off his “make-up,” donned his worn street attire and his haughty demeanour, and started for home.

Home! Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waiting impatiently his return, the news of his triumph.

“We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley,” said the stage manager as he reached the stage door. “Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for to-night. Here's your money now.”

Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and hastened homeward. He thought only:

“To tell her the truth will kill her at once.”

Mrs. Mogley was awake and in a fever of anticipation when Mogley entered the little room. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him with shining eyes.

“Well, how was it?” she asked, quickly.

Mogley's face wore a look of jubilant joy.

“Success!” he cried. “Tremendous hit! The house roared! Called before the curtain four times and had to make a speech!”

Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting. Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramatic illusion.

“Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to read about it in the papers!”

Mogley's heart fell. If the papers would mention the performance at all, they would dismiss it in three or four lines, bestowing perhaps a word of ridicule upon him. She was sure to see one paper, the one that the landlady's daughter lent her every day.

Mogley looked at the illuminated clock on the steeple across the way. A quarter to twelve.

“My love,” he said, “I promised Hexter I would meet him to-night at the Five A's Club, to arrange about salary and so forth. I'll be gone only an hour. Can you do without me that long?”

“Yes, go; and don't let him have you for less than fifty dollars a week.”

Shortly after midnight the dramatic editor of that newspaper Miss Jones daily lent to Mrs. Mogley, having sent up the last page of his notice of the new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to the side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings, and a coat frayed at the edges.

“I'm Mr. Thomas Mogley,” said this apparition.

“Ah! Have a cigarette, Mr. Mogley?” replied the dramatic editor, absently, lighting one himself.

“Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading comedian of the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre. I played Mephisto.” (He had begun his speech in a dignified manner, but now he spoke quickly and in a quivering voice.) “I was a failure--a very great failure. My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I was a failure, it would kill her, so I told her I made a success. I have really never made a success in my life. She is sure to read your paper to-morrow. Will you kindly not speak of my failure in your criticism of the performance? She cannot live later than to-morrow morning, and I should not like--you see--I have never deigned to solicit favours from the press before, sir, and--”