Part 17 (1/2)

It became expedient that Will appeal to his father for financial a.s.sistance, a resort which he postponed as long as possible, since the old gentleman invariably accompanied his grudging remittances with advice, censure and no little contumely. Will could not understand why he was not ”snapped up” at once, so he expressed it. He had made good in his last engagement, had kept himself well advertised (_vide_ the press-agent) and it would appear that, as a natural sequence, his services should be in demand. He commented on the statement made by several managers, viz.: they had nothing in his line. It was evident that in making a p.r.o.nounced success in a certain _genre_ of plays he had become identified with the one type of hero and the managers could ”see”

him in no other. Managers are, with rare exceptions, an unimaginative lot. In no other way can one explain the deluge of plays patterned on the same type: for example, let a manager by hit or miss produce successfully a play built around the Far West, immediately there spring up a dozen of the ilk. Or, again, let a play of farcical construction score a hit; the public is immediately surfeited with a run of farces.

So with the actor. Let him once become identified with heroes of romantic drama and the manager fears to entrust him with the dress-suit role, and vice versa.

More and more I was impressed with the ephemeral quality of the actor's success. At best the actor's is an aleatory profession and, as in all games of chance, the losses score highest.

It was well along in the autumn when Will signed and immediately began rehearsals. The star was a petulant little lady who, by grace of her marriage with a manager, had been hoisted to her present position, a position to which she was not equal either by training, personality or talent. For several seasons the husband-manager had invested--and lost--large sums of money in the attempt to build up a following for his wife. The present venture was a kind of last straw. That there was more or less ”feeling” between the couple was evinced by their frequent _pa.s.sages d'armes_ of a personal nature, at rehearsals. Accustomed as he was to the thoroughness of the stage-management under which he had worked during the past two seasons, Will found the hit and miss methods of his new affiliation disconcerting and irritating. In addition to this, the husband-manager-director had a picturesque if not a literate command of the language. He was in the habit of standing in the centre aisle or at the back of the theatre and shouting his directions to the members on the stage. When, as sometimes happened, a member resented the manager's method of criticism in no uncertain terms, that personage would back down and with tearful, if blasphemous, appeal explain himself. On opening nights, in response to the persistent calls from the claque, the manager reluctantly (!) appeared before the curtain to bow his acknowledgment--in s.h.i.+rt sleeves--his air of exhaustion contrasting sharply with his jaws which worked a piece of chewing-gum like a ticket-chopper in rush hours. It would seem that the vanity of actors is not an exclusive attribute.

The metropolitan reception of the play and star was not one of unmitigated joy. The husband-manager, not liking the opinions of the press, talked back both in print and from the stage. Two ghastly weeks in New York, playing to a papered house or empty seats, and the company took to the coal regions. Another fortnight was spent sparring for open time, reluctantly doled out to the weak, and the company gave up the ghost. Obviously Will had entered upon a cycle of bad luck. I took upon myself to look for an engagement. Not only on account of the material consideration, but because the emptiness and loneliness of my life had become no longer endurable. Self-imposed tasks palled. My mind refused to concentrate upon the line of study I had outlined. ”And thus the native hue of resolution is sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought.”

The career I once planned for myself had been consigned to the dump heap of lost illusions. I could not touch the clay which once had thrilled me with ambition.

Will went about with me on my visits to various managers. He encouraged me in my intention and I was glad to interest him, to take him out of himself, as it were. His run of hard luck had preyed on his nerves and frayed his temper. There was reason for me to suspect he was drinking more than was good for him. Finally there came an offer of a small part in a musical comedy which had settled down for a run in New York. The fact that I was possessed of no great amount of vocal equipment did not preclude me from the field. The manager intimated that what I lacked in voice I made up in pulchritude, though I recall he referred to it as ”shape.” The salary was to be thirty-five dollars a week. The gowns were furnished--those worn by my predecessor--though I was called upon to supply my own shoes, silk hose and gloves. In reality I was to be nothing more than a show-girl, with a few lines to speak.

Will was in front the night I made my debut. After the performance we went to a restaurant, there to talk it over. Congratulating me on my ”getting away with it” and telling me how ”peachy” I looked, he laughingly predicted a line of Johnnies at the stage door, flowers, and the usual perquisites of the chorus girl.... ”If you weren't wise to the game, I'd give you a few pointers,” he said, ... ”but” ... and here he reached across the table and patted me on the hands.... ”I reckon you're equal to any situation, old pard.... Just sit tight until I again land on my feet and then you can cut it out, if you like.”

I did not find myself subjected to any fierce onslaughts on the part of the Johnnies or _viveurs_ about town. Once or twice I received a note accompanied with flowers. The former I destroyed; the latter I promptly presented to the least pretty of my five dressing-room mates. She wore them on the stage and made eyes at the donor, who occupied an upper box, much to my amus.e.m.e.nt and to his confusion. I discouraged intimacies of all kinds, with one exception. But of this more hereafter. The stage director never attempted to chuck me under the chin or call me ”baby,”

as he did other members of the cast. I had had my little run-in with him at rehearsal when he essayed to yell at me after the manner of his kind.

I stopped short, the orchestra petered out in discord and, walking to the ap.r.o.n of the stage, I modulated my voice, so that it reached him quietly but effectively, where he stood in the back of the theatre. ”Mr.

M----,” I had said, ”if you have any further suggestion to offer, you will please do so in a less offensive manner. My hearing is good and I believe I have the average amount of intelligence.” There was an ominous silence and the martinet started down the aisle. Behind me I heard a buzz of approbation from the girls who had suffered at his hands. Just why the bully changed his mind I never knew. At any rate the rehearsal was continued. Later the manager chaffed me about the incident. The manager was an undeveloped little person--as if some hereditary blight had nipped him in the bud--distinctly Semitic in all his traits. Will had known him from the time he had abandoned haberdashery for theatrical management; indeed, I believe he had been a member of the manager's first venture into the field.

One feature which stands out most prominently in retrospect was my adaptability to my surroundings. Conditions which once had shocked me no longer left an impression. Obviously the finer edge of my nature had worn blunt. Things appeared to me in a kind of impersonal light. My present path had been chosen from necessity; a part of the scheme of things, yet a thing apart. The commonplace round of concerns and duties went on, but life, real life, for the time being lay fallow.

Occasionally, when I caught myself dropping into the slang and jargon I had absorbed from my fellow workers, I mused a bit and pulled myself up with a sharp curb. But, as I have said, I was no longer disturbed or impressed with conditions which once had sent the blood to my cheeks.

The easy familiarity between the s.e.xes which I had thought sufficiently deplorable in the ”legitimate” branch of the theatrical profession was in the comic opera world flagrantly increased. I have heard a distinction made between immorality and unmorality, but I fail to observe any slight deviation from the general result. Vulgar stories, steeped in s.m.u.t, went the rounds. Each new one was welcomed and pa.s.sed down the line. If one betrayed her disapproval by ignoring the _raconteur_, she was laughed down and thereafter referred to as ”very up-stage.” In the dressing-rooms modesty of person was an unknown quant.i.ty. Not infrequently I found ”extra” gentlemen performing lady's maid service for one of the girls. On one occasion when I slipped on the iron stairway leading to the stage, badly wrenching my ankle, a st.u.r.dy stage-hand picked me up, carried me to my dressing-room, and, before I realized what he was about, had pulled off my shoe and was in way of removing my stocking when I protested. ”O, well, if you're that fussy--”

he said as he went out....

One of the most pernicious influences to be contended against by the girl who tries to go straight is the never-ceasing topic of ”men” and ”money.” The man behind the bankroll is the basis, in one form or another, of all the chorus-girl conversations. To be picked out by a man of means to marry, or, failing this, to be set up in a ”swell” apartment and ”put it all over” the girls of her acquaintance, is the hope which springs eternal in the chorus-girl breast. Even in hard times, when the champagne appet.i.te needs must be quenched with beer, she dreams of diamonds. Standing in the wings, waiting for the cue, one hears an exchange of banter such as this: ”Heard you was at the Abbaye last night.... Where'd you pick him up?... Say, don't you believe anything he tells you! Henny knows all about him and he says that for a tight-wad he's got Russell Sage skinned to death!” Or ... ”I was at Morrisheimer's to-day; they're havin' a sale of models. I gotta three-piece velvet suit for thirty-five dollars, marked down from seventy.” ... ”Say! He must be good to you. Why don't you introduce me to some of your gentlemen friends?”

I once asked a chorus girl of considerable notoriety how she had come to enter the profession. ”O,” she replied, ”my folks was the poor but respectable kind. There was a big family of us, and I, bein' the oldest, had to help out. I didn't get much schoolin' and, after tryin' half a dozen things like bein' a chamber maid, waitin' in a restaurant and that kind of business, I tumbled to the fact that I wusn't bad lookin'.

That's all I had; my face and my shape, and the stage was the best place to show 'em.”

My dressing-room mates were typical show-girls; maniere, self-conscious and always on parade. It was painfully evident they felt themselves above the chorus, though some of them were pleased to forget the fact that they were but recently graduated from that cla.s.s.

One of these girls afterward married an English baronet. I have since wondered what disposition was made of the baronet's mother-in-law. I made her acquaintance in the dressing-room one evening, whither she had come to mend her daughter's wardrobe. She was a splendid specimen of the complaisant stage-mamma. Clad in rusty black, her portly figure bulging from ill-fitting stays, one might mistake her for the type of scrub-woman one sees about the large office buildings of early mornings, but never, never would one suspect her of being the mother of this near-Vere-de-Vere. Voluble to a point of madness, she would acquaint you with the family history, the cause and intimate details of her husband's untimely taking off and the great hopes she entertained for her daughter's ”getting on.” Sometimes she brought with her the youngest of her offspring, a little girl of six who had already made her debut as a child-actress. Like all children of the stage, she was precocious and most unchild-like. In the enactment of laws which are aimed to protect the child-labourer, an attempt is being made to bring about an exemption of their application to the stage-child. That the child-actor receives better pay, that he or she works less hours and under more sanitary surroundings than do children in other trades and professions, cannot be gainsaid. But is the economic welfare of the child the prime and only consideration? Is the physical protection the one and uppermost consummation to be desired? What of the spiritual, the moral side of the stage-child? If environment bear the strong influence on human life we are led to believe, then should the stage-child be removed from its infectious surroundings. The old saw to the effect of pitch and defilement is here most applicable.

I have referred elsewhere to the exception I made in my discouragement of intimacies. On that morning at rehearsal when I had resented the stage-director's mode of criticism, among others who had approved my act was a girl whose face had at once attracted me. She was pretty and of less common type than the chorus averages. There was something individual about her. Her appearance was neat and I had observed that her clothes were neither so new nor so extreme as were those of her colleagues. Also I was impressed with a quiet refinement of manner and her usage of good English. As we became better acquainted she sometimes waited for me after the performance and we walked together to the underground station, where our lines diverged. Later I had asked her to dine with me on a Sunday when Will was away on a week-end motor trip.

She appeared to enjoy the home atmosphere and visited with me in the kitchen while I was preparing dinner. Feeling that with our reduced income we could not afford it, I had dispensed with a servant. And as Will rarely, if ever, dined at home, my housekeeping duties were not onerous.

”This is what I have always longed for--a little home all my own,” Leila had remarked, smiling wistfully.... It was after dinner and we had settled ourselves for a chat.

”Then, in the name of common sense, dear girl, why did you go on the stage? Home life and a stage career are as antipodal as the poles.”

”And yet you manage to blend the two rather charmingly,” she retorted.

”Absurd! I'm not trying for a career, and as for home life ... my dear child, it's the merest pretense. Half the time we are not at home and the flat has either to be let or remain closed. One never knows from day to day when the furniture will be packed off to storage.”

”Yes ... I presume you are right.... How did I come to go on the stage?... Well, I suppose it was because I wanted a career of some kind.... I wanted to _do something_; you know how empty and shallow the average girl's life is, with the endless round of parties, visits, fancy work and that sort of thing. I was an only daughter, too. Father was well-to-do and wrapped up in the affairs of the small city in which we lived. After he died, mother thought she would like to travel. We went abroad. It was over there that the idea of a career took a stronger hold on me. About the only talent I could lay any claim to was music. I had always played and sung at our home concerts and church sociables.... But mother didn't encourage me in my ambitions. She argued that, since father had left us comfortably fixed, why should I want to worry my head about work? Besides, she said my first duty was to her as long as she lived. So there it rested.... We just drifted from place to place ...