It was before I came to New York that I one night saw a really fine
performance almost ruined by a single interruption. It was a domestic
tragedy of English rural life, and one act began with a tableau copied
exactly from a popular painting called "Waiting for the Verdict," which
was also the title of the play.
The scene gave an exterior view of the building within which the husband
and father was being tried for his life on a charge of murder. The
trembling old grandsire leaned heavily on his staff; the devoted wife
sat wearily by the closed iron gate, with a babe on her breast, tired
but vigilant; a faithful dog stretched himself at her feet, while his
shaggy shoulders pillowed the head of the sleeping child, who was the
accused man's darling.
The curtain rose on this picture, which was always heartily greeted, and
often, so well it told its pathetic story, a second and a third round of
applause greeted it before the dialogue began. The manager's little
daughter, who did the sleeping child, contracted a cold and was advised
not to venture out of the house for a fortnight, so a substitute had to
be found, and a fine lot of trouble the stage-manager had. He declared
half the children of Columbus had been through his sieve; and there was
the trouble--they all went through, there was no one left to act as
substitute. But at last he found two promising little girls, sisters
they were, and very poor; but the mother vowed her children must be in
bed at nine, theatre or no theatre; yes, she would like to have the
money, but she'd do without it rather than have a child out of bed at
all hours. At first she held out for nine o'clock, but at last yielded
the additional half-hour; and to the great disappointment of the younger
child, the elder one was accepted, for the odd reason that she looked so
much younger than her sister.
The company had come from Cleveland, and there were the usual slight
delays attendant on a first night; but the house was "good"; the star
(Mr. Buchanan) was making a fine impression, and the play was evidently
a "go." The big picture was looked forward to eagerly, and when it was
arranged, we had to admit that the pale, pinched little face of the
strange child was more effective as it rested on the dog's shoulder than
had been the plump, smiling face of the manager's little one. The
curtain went up, the applause followed; those behind the scenes crowded
to the "wings" to look on; no one noted that the hands of the clock
stood at 9.40; no one heard through the second burst of applause the
slam of the stage door behind the very, very small person who entered,
and silently peering this way and that, found her stern, avenging way to
the stage, and that too-favoured sister basking in the sunlight of
public approval.
The grandsire had just lifted his head and was about to deliver his
beautiful speech of trust and hope, when he was stricken helpless by the
entrance upon the stage of a boldly advancing small person of most
amazing appearance. Her thin little legs emerged from the shortest of
skirts, while her small body was well pinned up in a great blanket
shawl, the point of which trailed fully a quarter of a yard on the floor
behind her. She wore a woman's hood on her head, and from its cavernous
depth, where there gleamed a pale, malignant small face, a voice
issued--the far-reaching voice of a child--that triumphantly
commanded:--
"You, Mary Ann, yu're ter get up out of that an' com' home straight
away--an' yu're ter go ter bed, too,--mother says so!" and the small
Nemesis turned on her heel and trailed off the stage, followed by
laughter that seemed fairly to shake the building. Nor was that all. No
sooner had Mary Ann grasped the full meaning of this dread message than
she turned over on her face, and scrambling up by all fours, she eluded
the restraining hands of the actress-mother and made a hasty exit to
perfect shrieks of laughter and storms of applause; while the climax was
only reached when the dog, trained to lie still so long as the pressure
of the child's head was upon his shoulder, finding himself free, rose,
shook himself violently, and trotted off, waving his tail pleasantly as
he went.
That finished it; the curtain had to fall, a short overture was played,
and the curtain rose again without the complete tableau, and the action
of the play was resumed; but several times the laughter was renewed. It
was only necessary for some person to titter over the ludicrous
recollection, and instantly the house was laughing with that person. The
next night the manager's child, swathed in flannel, with a mouth full of
cough-drops, held the well-trained dog in his place until the proper
moment for him to rise, and the play went on its way rejoicing.
And just to show how long-lasting is the association of ideas, I will
state that years, many years afterward, I met a gentleman who had been
in the auditorium that night, and he told me he had never since seen a
blanket shawl, whether in store for sale or on some broad back, that he
had not instantly laughed outright, always seeing poor Mary Ann's
obedient exit after that vengeful small sister with her trailing shawl.
_CHAPTER VIII