despair. She seemed to divine his retrospection. “But I can’t help
it! I don’t do it on purpose--though I know people say I do. _You_
don’t--don’t think I’m ‘the Wrecker’?” She aimed the word at him like a
blow, and while he sought an answer: “You don’t believe me. You don’t
trust me. You’re wondering now whether I let Hemming make love to me.
Hemming!”--she leaned toward him with a savage head shake. “I may not
know a good hat when I see one, but I know a good man!”
The spur pricked. The mare bounded. She was rods away before Walter
realized he was deserted. Then he followed. The girl turned and
motioned him back.
“Go away, go away!” she cried. There was something at once so imperious
and so entreating in voice and gesture that he involuntarily halted,
and she wheeled and spurred on at a gallop.
If she had not ridden so headlong she must have shrieked. The tempest
in her was too much for expression. She saw, subconsciously, a gray
blur of olive trees streaming past, with here and there the richer note
of orange orchards, and always the road before her, an intense white
line over and around the smooth-topped hills. She did not slacken pace
at the passing phaëtons, though these may have contained people whom
she knew. She dared not look behind her, through a stifling hope and
doubt that Walter had followed. She breasted the last hill crest, where
the road lifts out of the gardens and orchards of Monticito to the
high, wind-raked bluff above the sea.
Here she reined in and turned and looked back down the long, straight
stretch of road she had come. Empty, far as eye could see. She
listened, breathlessly, but the interminable whisper of the eucalyptus
leaves above her head was the only sound. And she had thought so surely
he would follow!
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed--crying like a man, with
deep chest respirations that shook her whole body. The mare, feeling a
relaxed rein, moved a few steps. The girl’s hands fell from her face.
She looked seaward through the slim, swaying eucalyptus trees. The
tears rolled down her cheeks to the corners of her twitching mouth.
Mechanically she wiped them away with the wrist of her red glove. It
left odd, bloodlike streaks on her tawny skin. They gave a menacing
look to her despair. She was not thinking of how she looked, but of
whom she had left, of how she loved him! She was feeling, with her
blind forsakenness, that if Walter gave her up she was lost. If he
only knew how little the other people mattered! How good, how awfully,
abjectly good, she could be if she had him--the only man who had never
made love to her! She remembered, with a stir of pure pleasure, how at
first she had been piqued and puzzled that he did not. Afterward, how
she had loved him for it! But since this woman, his sister, had come,
Blanche did not know how it had been brought about, but she knew that
she and Walter, who had been so close, so understanding, were apart and
at odds. He had trusted her, and now he suspected her.
She saw Lillian Gueste’s hand in it. Blanche did not reason; she only
felt, and hated the subtle and delicate treason. Did Lillian Gueste
suppose, she asked herself, that because a woman wore large hats and
loud gloves she had no right to the man she loved?
She rode along the cliff edge at a foot pace, her eyes abstractedly on
the dancing shadows of eucalyptus leaves the sun painted in the dust.
She wondered was this the close of what had been opening out before her
as her life? She thought, with her primitive reasoning, were Lillian
only out of the way--her mind did not get further than that. But
Blanche had felt from the first that Lillian Gueste had come to Santa
Barbara for no other reason than rescuing her brother, and that she did
not intend to go until she took Wallie with her. “Could she do that?”
Blanche wondered in a panic. Had an opportunity offered, she would have
pushed Lillian Gueste out of her way as she would have thrust a pebble
from her path.
The sun, falling low in the western sky, made towers of tree shadows,
and spread an iridescence over the in creeping fog, as she followed
the descending road downward toward the arroya, where a bridle path
slipped seaward under willows. She had taken that path often before. It
met the beach below what was the usual limit for riders, but she loved
the long, exciting gallop, the scramble among the rocks, the spice
of danger at the narrow turns about the two points when the tide was
coming in.
The salt smell of the sea met her, strong with reek of kelp, as she
approached its thunder through the willows. The range of sea and
sky, the free wind blowing between, gave her release from thought and
scope to act. The tide was running in high and full. Where the first
bold bluff jutted out, a distance of some six yards, the sliding foam
already lapped the rock. Once around the turn of the bluff, the beach
lay before her--a long white, empty sweep under black cliffs.
She rode at an easy canter, breathing in the stinging salt air, looking
out upon the water, where the dark “seaward line” swung with the swell
a mile out in “the channel.” She had lost the choking tears, the
despair of her first rush down the Monticito road. She felt not happy,
but wildly at liberty. The wind took her hat, and she laughed, seeing
it spin down the beach. The tingling breeze in her hair whipped out the
short, springy curls. The high animal spirits that had helped her over
situations where a less vital woman would have been overwhelmed had
begun to reassert themselves in the exercise and open air. She scanned
the empty beach perspective. What a gallop to the far point! She
touched the mare, then pulled her up sharply in the first bound. The
beach was not empty. Some one was riding--perhaps a quarter of a mile
in front of her--imperfectly to be distinguished among the scattered
rocks.
Her first thought was “Walter!” Trembling with eagerness, she peered
under a sheltering hand. The rider was a woman. In the revulsion of her
feeling, Blanche’s disappointment was an inarticulate sound. All her
misery was back upon her. Who it was, riding slowly down the beach in a
direction similar to her own, did not matter. She only wanted to avoid
being seen--hatless, red-eyed, wild--by this woman, who, being a woman,
was her natural enemy. She rode slowly, cautiously, hoping the other
would quicken her pace, and put the next point between them. The sun
had fallen into the fog, from under which the ocean thundered sullen,
gray, up the shore.
Blanche wanted to get around the next point before dusk. She saw the
horse in front--bright sorrel on the yellowish-white sand--drawing
slowly near the black shoulder of rock; finally, fairly at the turn
of it. In an instant it would be out of sight. No, it had stopped;
stood motionless a full minute; then, to the girl’s intense amazement,
wheeled and came back down the beach at a quick lope. There seemed
something of vexation in the sharp turn-about.
Had the woman seen, and come back to speak with her? Blanche wondered.
There was no avoiding the meeting. Shaking her hair over her eyes, she
rode forward. As the rider drew nearer, with a contraction of heart she
recognized Lillian Gueste. At the same instant she knew that Lillian
had not seen her.
Mrs. Gueste’s face wore a preoccupied, a vexed, a vaguely anxious,
look. The sand half quenched the sound of the horse’s coming. They
were almost abreast before she saw Blanche Remi, and then it was with
a start, a stare of keen surprise, of interrogation, that effaced the
first expression.
Blanche knew whom the questioning eyes missed. There was about them a
subtle, tantalizing suggestion of Walter, and she felt the blood run in
her temples as she bent her head in faint recognition.
Mrs. Gueste stopped.
“Where is my brother?” she said. She fairly challenged the other with
it. That she did not name him Mr. Carter was a mark of her extreme
surprise, alarm; for Blanche Remi, with discolored eyes, disheveled
hair, and the red stains across her face, looked wild enough to have
thrust a displeasing lover into the sea.
Blanche looked at and realized how she hated this woman, this unruffled
perfection. The strength of her feeling frightened herself. But her
voice was as cool as Mrs. Gueste’s.
“I have no idea,” she said, politely insolent, and made to go on.
Lillian Gueste’s sharp scrutiny had taken in all the girl’s misery, and
supposed a scene. Her idea of what had been Walter’s part in it made
her, with a revulsion of relief, almost amiable.
“You can’t get around that way,” she said, looking over her shoulder at
the point. The vexation was back on her face. “The tide is in.”
The girl’s eye ranged back along the beach. The black cliffs seemed
suddenly to have marched seaward.
“Well, you can’t get back _that_ way,” she said. “The water was up
to the second point when I came through an hour ago--it’s over the
quicksand.”
“Quicksand?” Lillian looked at her blankly. “Then what can we do?”
“Get around there,” said Blanche, waving back to the near point.
“We can’t.” Irritation and unbelief were in Mrs. Gueste’s voice.
“I’ve done it before. It’s easy. Come on.” Blanche was nonchalant in
the face of the encroaching sea. The gulls were screaming above their
heads, the sound of shattering water was in their ears, as they rode
forward.
At the shoulder of the point the wind met them, and the inrush of the
ocean. Here the beach sloped suddenly. The cliffs came out in a convex
sweep of several rods, with a sharp jut of rock thrust out from the
midst of it, like a fish’s fin. Over it, up to the cliff face, the
water fawned and leaped, and in its sucking recoil left bare for an
instant a narrow neck of sand.
Blanche looked at the bulging bluff, the sharp rock. That made it bad.
One could not make a straight dash--would have to make an angle--out
and then back; and a moment’s hesitation at the turn--well, it wouldn’t
do to meet the ebb there. Blanche knew the strength of the undertow.
With her eyes on the rising and receding water, she made a rapid
calculation for the best moment to go in. She was excited, eager for
the enterprise. She was surprised at the other woman’s pallor.
“We can’t get through there,” Lillian Gueste said, half angrily. She
looked small, pale, impotent, among the severities of waves and sky.
“Then where?” Blanche slid lightly from her saddle.
“If we should shout----” Lillian began.
Blanche almost laughed at her. Did this woman expect to be rescued?
Blanche’s experience had been that people in bad places had to get
themselves out.
“Up on the cliff you couldn’t hear a cannon fired down here,” she
said. “We _can_ get through, only you must not be afraid.” She began
loosening the lower hooks of her habit bodice.
“What are you going to do?” Lillian asked, nervously. She felt fearful
of what might happen next in these strange, perilous conditions.
“Take off my skirt. Better do the same. Then if a wave gets you you can
use your legs.”
Lillian looked at her in horror. “Oh, no!” she said, feeling somehow
insulted.
“It’s dangerous,” said Blanche, swinging into her saddle man-fashion.
In her boots and spurs, with her wide shoulders and narrow hips, she
looked a beautiful boy. “You’d better be astride, anyway,” she said.
“I can keep my saddle.” Lillian’s mouth twitched nervously. “Shall I
go first?” she said. Blanche saw her hand on the rein tremble. In her
excitement at the trick of the sea she had merged her personal attitude
toward Lillian.
“No, follow me, and do as I do. Wait until the wave breaks, and go out
with it. Then when you turn at the rock you won’t have the ebb against
you. You’ll go up with the flow. It’s perfectly safe. But you must not
hesitate a minute. When I shout, dash!”
The breakers were coming in high and quick. The neck of sand next the
cliff was seen only momently. The nose of rock was perpetually in a
boil of water.
Blanche waited, let the great seventh wave go by, and in the midst of
the surge of its recoil dashed in. She felt the mare stagger as the tow
took her. A swift, terrible force seized and snatched her seaward. She
was swept along like a drift. Then, almost touching the point of rock,
she was relinquished. With the roar of the next breaker sounding fairly
upon her, she spurred savagely. The mare plunged with a boil of water
to her knees, with a wake of white behind her. She went up the beach
with the spray of the driving ocean in her hair. She wheeled and waved
to the woman on the other side.
Through flying foam she could see Lillian Gueste’s face, a little
white, a little strained in its composure. Blanche had felt no fear
for herself, but now she had a thrill through her body, a withering
sensation in her throat, to see Lillian Gueste waiting there, hanging
on her word to make the rush. And the haunting semblance of Walter in
the fixed eyes----
“Don’t look at the water!” Blanche shouted. “Look at me! Now!” she
screamed, to make herself heard above the breaking wave. But the horse
and rider hesitated before the recoil of it; came on, seemed to hover
on the brink of it.
“Go back!” Blanche shouted, with frantic gesticulation. The ebb was
racing out. Lillian wavered, now fairly in; then the sorrel floundered
out, belly deep in the surge. Now the girl saw him close upon the point
of rock--now suddenly dragged out from it. A yard of fretted water
heaved between. Blanche sat as if hypnotized, with the sight of a
struggling horse and rider black etched on the green water. It rushed
over her all at once who it was the ebb was taking out, and she was
motionless. She saw the rider’s face turned landward with the stark
stare of the drowning appealing to her with Walter’s eyes. The next
moment she was in deep water. She breasted the current with a rush. She
saw a horse, with empty saddle, struggling, swimming, drifting out; saw
a swash of black tumble in the twisting tides that sucked it seaward.
She made a plunge and seized a skirt. Her fingers held a flow of hair.
Threshing hands caught at her stirrup. A body sprang tense to her lift.
Then the sea had them again.
Eyes, ears, lungs, full of it. Blanche felt the mare gallantly
struggling to keep footing; the steep sand seemed slipping away from
under them. Then, with a roar, the dark parted. She gasped in the air.
She saw Lillian’s face wax white at her knee. She had not strength to
lift more than the head and shoulders as she trailed the limp figure up
the beach.
Her knees tottered as she slid from the saddle. Her ears were ringing.
Or was some one, somewhere, really calling to her? A cart was plunging
and bouncing down the grassy tussocks that dip from the coast road to
the beach.
“Oh, Blair!” She cried the driver’s name in a burst of relief.
“That you, Blanche?” He had jumped out of the cart and was running
toward her. He saw the drenched figure on the sand.
“My Lord! Mrs. Gueste!”
Blanche’s clutch on his arm hurt him. “Oh, _is_ she dead?” she
entreated him.
“Not by a good deal.” He gave his flask to Blanche, and rolled his
carriage robe around Lillian. Then he stripped off his mackintosh.
“Here, girl,” he said, and Blanche thrust her arms into the sleeves.
“Saw you down there,” he said, lifting the unconscious woman’s dead
weight into the cart. His voice was matter-of-course, but his look said
she was magnificent.
“Hurry, hurry!” Blanche implored. “Take her over to the Crosbys’,
Blair! Oh, quick!”
“Well, come on, then. I’ll whirl you over in a jiffy.”
“Oh, I’m going home--I’ll ride. I’m all right,” she said, through
chattering teeth. “But she might--and Mr. Carter----”
“But, girl----”
“Oh, go, go!” She lifted herself into the saddle. Weak as she was, her
nervous excitement carried her up.
“And mind, Blair, don’t say anything--if you love me!” She almost
laughed the last words at him. Then she was off.
She chose not to take the boulevard, but cut through the town by lanes
and side streets, where in the dusk of gathering night and inclosing
fog her dripping horse, her drenched habit, would escape observation.
She shook with nervous excitement, but the fast riding kept the blood
pounding in her veins. She had no power to think coherently of what had
happened. She had seen Blair Hemming lift Lillian Gueste into his cart,
but the idea possessed her that Lillian had gone out in the tide, and
drowned with that terrible face looking back to land, with Walter’s
eyes.
She urged the exhausted horse cruelly because the face seemed to stare
at her out of the dark street ends. She seemed to look from the surface
of things into an abyss of possibility. She felt afraid of herself as
something horrible.
But as she turned into the drive between the ghostly acacias returned
the little, concrete fear lest she be seen by anyone, most of all her
mother. There were lights in the drawing-room windows that looked out
on the drive oval, and Blanche cautiously took the far side, to be
screened by the feathery palms.
Leaving the mare at the stable, and money in the stableman’s hand, she
stole tiptoe up the side stair. Once in her room, she stripped, bathed,
rubbed her damp hair dry, tossed it up gleaming on the crown of her
head, and, still in her glow and shiver of excitement, hooked herself
into a black lace dinner gown glittering with jet, fastened a diamond
crescent over her bosom, and swept in upon her mother and maiden aunt,
who were patiently, resignedly, dining without the belated equestrienne.
“Why, darling!” her mother murmured, in gratified amazement. Blanche
seldom bothered to dress for dinner, and to-night she seemed almost too
dazzling to be real. She was surprised herself at the extent to which
her bravado covered what had happened. Inwardly she was quaking. Her
ears were alert for every sound.
“Did you have a nice time?” her mother asked her.
“Oh, lovely!” said Blanche, with a shiver.
“Where did you go?”
“Down the beach.” Blanche started. Her hand poised halfway to an
olive. She heard what her ears had been pricking for--horses’ feet on
the gravel drive.
With an effort she held herself quiet.
The Spanish maid opened the dining-room door. “Some one to see you,
señora.”
Blanche, who had half risen, sank back in her chair.
“Why, who can it be?” Mrs. Remi was murmuring as she went into the hall.
Blanche sat listening, lips apart. She heard her mother exclaim; then
a man’s voice exclaimed; she knew the voice; she rose. Her heart
seemed beating in her throat. She heard her mother’s voice, perplexed,
emphatic: “But she’s all right; she’s very well. There’s _some_
mistake!”
Then Walter Carter’s, insisting: “But they were both in the water.
Hemming saw her bring Lillian out. He drove my sister home. How could
Blanche----” When she burst upon them.
“Walter!” The sight of him, wild-haired, pale, his mackintosh over his
evening clothes, his general look of catastrophe, struck her with only
one significance.
“Mrs. Gueste?” she gasped. “How is she?”
For a moment Walter could only stare at her, dazed. He had seen his
sister--drenched, disheveled, white, unconscious--carried into the
house. And here stood Blanche, vital, vigorous, self-possessed, groomed
for a function.
“My God, no--it was you!” he stammered. “But--but is there any mistake?”
The soft sound of the dining-room door closing left them alone face to
face. He came toward her. She stepped back.
“There’s no mistake. At least, we were in the water, and _she_ was
afraid.”
“But Hemming said she was washed out of the saddle--and the tow took
her out, and you went after her and got her!” He still came toward her.
It was hard to look him in the face, for the bewildered eyes reminded
her of Lillian Gueste’s look when the tide took her out from the
rocks. Blanche felt her bravado running out at her finger ends.
“But I didn’t---- I--I--oh, Walter, you don’t know what I did!” She
faltered and sobbed. She leaned against the hatrack and buried her face
in the folds of a coat.
“Why, child, you simply saved her!” His arms were around her, and
he tried to pull the cloak from her face. “She wants to see you
to-morrow. She wants to tell you----”
“Oh, no; I can’t. She wouldn’t if she knew----” Blanche’s voice was
muffled on his shoulder.
“Well, what?” he muttered, his lips against her cheek.
The answer reached him, a half smothered, almost contented whisper:
“How I hated her!”
[Illustration]
THE BLIND
In empty days now left behind,
I asked why Love was counted blind.
No answer came until I learned
What every lover has discerned:
The blind--my answer ran--are reft
Of one thing, but how much is left!
Touch, hearing, every quickened sense
Thrills with an impulse thrice intense.
And so when Love has filled the heart,
Dull man awakes in every part;
Undreamed-of potencies are rife
Within him, crying “Sweet is life!”
And if half-blindness be his lot,
What matter--since he knows it not?
M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE.
SOCIETY AND RACING
[Illustration]
A perusal of the daily papers would lead one to the belief that racing,
socially speaking, had just been discovered in New York. No account
whatsoever is taken by the cheerful metropolitan of the rest of the
country, though racing is going on from California to Washington, from
Chicago to New Orleans--indeed, it is to the South that we go for both
our hunters and our thoroughbreds. All through the Southern States
there are little sporting communities hunting a pack of hounds, whose
runs, if they took place in the neighborhood of New York, would be
reported in all our papers by the _society_, not the sporting, editor.
For our thoroughbreds we still go to Kentucky. It was only the other
day that I heard the owner of one of the great stock farms there
complaining of the ignorance and extravagance of one of our younger
Northern racing men, who sent his trainer South to _buy_, at any figure
that he chose.
Washington, though now more cosmopolitan than Southern, gives, from
the social standpoint, warm encouragement to racing. In all our cities
now there seems to be growing up a young married coterie--parallel
to the fashionable circle in New York. Such a characteristic little
group is to be found in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Baltimore and in
Washington. This coterie, which is neither of diplomacy nor yet of
old-time Washington, gives special attention to the Bennings track. Not
but what the younger diplomats are to be found there, on Saturdays,
when they are able to get away from their embassies and legations.
Miss Roosevelt is an enthusiastic spectator. Oddly enough, in contrast
to our Northern tracks, it seems to be permissible for two girls to
go alone together to Bennings without escort. Maidens of careful
upbringing may be seen stepping from the trolley at the race track as
coolly as if it were a county fair.
If the New York papers take no account, socially speaking, of all these
tracks, it is scarcely to be expected that their memories should go
back as far as Jerome Park. It was a poor course, I am told, with bad
turns and obscure corners, but prettier to look at than any we have had
since. The lawn in front of the clubhouse--which was separated from the
grand stand by the whole width of the track--was crowded by the members
of a society smaller but more complete than Morris Park or Sheepshead
has ever seen.
The opening of Belmont Park is destined, probably, to make a
difference, to emphasize again the social side of the sport. The
country club on the grounds--the club within a club, as it were--will
draw a different set of people from those whom a mere jockey club
can attract. It will be used quite independently of any question of
racing by all the little communities of Long Island. If Hempstead and
Westbury and Roslyn and Cedarhurst will come there to dine, and use
it as the object of an automobile trip or a drive, there will be a
well-established social life connected with it before the next race
meeting opens.
I do not believe that any nation derives, as a whole, quite the delight
from a race track that we do--with our Puritan traditions. To the
English it is the national sport; to the French the extravagance of the
smartest people; but to us, though both these elements may enter in,
it is an intense excitement, which many of us have been brought up to
think wicked. The mere word “horse-racing” would have struck terror to
the hearts of our grandmothers, and thus a sport perfectly harmless to
most of us has acquired a most alluring flavor of naughtiness. It is
this feeling, this common sense of emancipation, that holds together a
race-going crowd with a general sense of gayety. For as a nation we are
not conspicuous for gayety. If we do not take our amusements solemnly,
like the English, we at least take them strenuously. In this respect,
racing has changed a good deal in the last twenty years. We are a
little more serious about it than we used to be. In my recollection
of the old days at Jerome Park, the clubhouse--certainly the feminine
portion of it--took the sport itself much more lightly. The drive out
in somebody’s coach, and the wonderful clothes one could wear and see,
were the most important features of the day. You did not find the
ladies in the paddock, as you see them now. Nor did they as openly
transfer crisp bills from their own pretty purses to the bookies. Mild
“pools,” in which one _drew_ for one’s number quite irrespective of
tips and inside information, were the only ladylike form of betting.
There was something quite casual and social in the way in which
everybody sat about on the lawn, under, I verily believe, the most
brilliant parasols that the world has ever seen; the clubhouse behind
us, and on the side a long line of coaches. It was a very long line,
yet we could all tell them at a glance.
But this has changed now. Automobiles have driven out coaches. Not but
what one still sees them, beautifully appointed, at any track; but
instead of being the chosen means of locomotion for the fortunate, they
are merely a picturesque way of wasting time. The consequence is that
at Belmont Park one notices a distinct modification in the gorgeousness
of the women’s clothes. In this country we have never gone the lengths
of English women, whose clothes at Ascot and Epsom seemed to me quite
as suitable to a ballroom. Still, our best dressed women have always
felt hitherto that the races afforded a unique opportunity--especially
when approached on the top of a smart coach. At Jerome and even at
Morris Park, where New York could pour out in electric hansoms, this
was still the rule, but to Belmont Park the trip in an automobile over
dusty Long Island roads, or even on the Long Island Railroad, will not
permit the same elaborate dressing.
It is not, however, only the chance to see and wear good clothes
that gives races their charm to feminine eyes. Perhaps their chief
attraction is the flavor of the great world. The penalty of leading a
sheltered life is having a limited outlook, and the obverse of being
select is being narrow. Women are beginning to see this. Society
is unquestionably growing more and more friendly to the successful
outsider, the people who are, as the phrase is, “doing something.”
So far literary stars have had the main share of notice, but great
actresses, great artists, even great scientists, have nowadays much
more attention paid to them than the merely well-bred and socially
available can hope for. Even the most exclusive of our great ladies
no longer take pride in never having heard the name of anyone outside
their own circle. We have not become such lion hunters as the
Londoners, but we enjoy very much having pointed out to us, here a
great plunger from Chicago, there a dancer never before seen but from
across the footlights. The race track is an excellent field for such
experiences. Not, of course, that these experiences must be carried
too far. It is one thing to see the celebrities of the stage, but
quite another to hear them calling our husbands and brothers by their
first names. A recent instance of this kind has been brought to the
attention, so it is said, of the governors of Belmont Park, with the
result that box holders have been implored to be more circumspect in
their choice of guests.
But of all our tracks, Saratoga offers the most amusing phases to
the observer of things social. Smart New York appears to think that
Saratoga ceased to exist from the time when it was no longer the
Newport of our grandmothers, until rediscovered in the interests of
racing by the late Mr. William C. Whitney. The true situation is
infinitely more amusing.
Saratoga, with its enormous hotels, teeming with a society busy and
well entertained, has been perfectly satisfied with itself in spite
of the fact that smart New York knew it not. The United States Hotel
has represented all that was socially delightful to many people who
never heard of the “Four Hundred.” And now suddenly into this community
comes the smartest of New York’s racing section--the Whitneys, the
Mackays, the Wilsons and the young Vanderbilts, and several more of
like sort. And not only do they come, but they come under circumstances
that render almost impossible the exclusiveness that has been regarded
as essential. This year, I believe, the Mackays and a few others are
renting separate houses, but hitherto it has been hotel life for
everybody. Hotel life, which New Yorkers so scorn! A “cottage”--_i.
e._, a suite of connecting rooms in a great caravansary--was the utmost
seclusion possible. After the publicity of the race track, this was the
only refuge. Then to meet the crowd again at dinner at Canfield’s (the
ladies penetrated no further than the dining room even in the palmy
days), and later, perhaps, to listen to the band at the Grand Union.
This is a life in contrast to the seclusion of the cliffs at Newport.
Verily racing makes strange companions.
There is something particularly gay in the atmosphere of the place.
Any serious business other than racing is so plainly lacking. As the
meeting is in summer, a great many men choose their holiday so as to
take it in. The result is that we suddenly find ourselves in the midst
of a class of idle men--at leisure and eager to be amused, almost like
a foreign community. No one who has been to Saratoga will ever repeat
the worn platitude that American men do not know how to enjoy a holiday.
We must remember, too, that for the feminine element racing is one of
the few opportunities for--can we use so ferocious a term as “gambling”
for the risking of a mild fiver on a “sure thing”? People are fond of
saying that women are born gamblers; meaning, I suppose, that they
love it better than men do. But it seems to me that this is only half
the truth. The element of chance has charms for all of us, and women
have so few opportunities to indulge it. They do not usually speculate
in Wall Street; their daily occupation is not a gamble, as so many
businesses are; the private wager is almost unknown to them. Until
bridge swept over us, women could not, while _spending_ as much money
as they pleased, have any of the fun of losing it. Perhaps, in spite of
all the talk about the intellectual stimulation of bridge, it owes some
of its popularity to the same causes that the races do.
Not but what I believe that the interest of many women is a truly
sporting one. Feminine love and knowledge of horses have increased
wonderfully in the last twenty-five years. Our mothers and grandmothers
rode, but took it as an elegant relaxation, or even as a mere means of
locomotion. In this country the true sportswoman--the woman who hunts
and drives four-in-hand and tandem--is a fairly recent development. In
England we have only to go back to the novels of Whyte Melville to see
that even in the middle of the last century she was a known type. It is
not at all uncommon for women over there to know quite as much about
horses as their brothers, to understand the horses and the cattle and
the pigs. For Englishwomen to own a racing stable is no novelty, while
here the joint experiment of two of our best known ladies was very much
talked about, and endured but a short time.
The sport is essentially a sport for men. Women are merely onlookers;
and in so far as it has a social side, even that side is controlled by
men, serving thus as the great exception to things social.
Naturally we assume that the majority of men who go into racing go
into it for the love of the sport itself. Yet we cannot look about
us and see the men who have not only no knowledge of racing, but
no knowledge of horses, even their own, without asking what is the
inducement that has led them to take it up.
There are a good many answers. In the first place, there is the
prestige. You buy a racing stable, and your name is known not only to
your equals--the other owners, the members of the jockey clubs--but to
every office boy who “plays the ponies,” to every great lady who wants
a competent guide to the paddock. Mr. Belmont may build subways and
conduct gigantic banking operations, but it is as the man who named
Belmont Park that he is known to a majority of his fellow countrymen.
The racegoing community is an epitome of all society, from the “tout”
and the beggar to the multi-millionaire. A real aristocracy can be
built on so well organized a foundation, and the owner of a great
stable has the flattery of all classes in his little world.
Then, too, it is the sign and symbol of great wealth. Some men prefer
to tell you how rich they are; others load their wives with jewels,
or endow universities. Others, again, set up a racing stable. It is a
process that sets them in a small class apart.
But even in a society as materialistic as ours, the outward symbol
is not everything. A house on the east side of the park, a perfectly
appointed carriage, a steam yacht--these are valuable instruments to
those destined to “get on,” but can by themselves affect very little
for those who are not so destined. Cold-blooded as the inter-relations
of society seem to be, they are, nevertheless, human relations, and
can never be achieved by mere things, however much we may hear to the
contrary. Knowing this, women who desire social advancement always seek
it through the means of friendships.
But men! The spectacle of a man struggling for social success was
rare a few years ago. It was always supposed to be the wives and
daughters of our self-made men who waged the combat. But nowadays,
as society and business are growing closer and closer, as more of our
great financiers take prominent social positions, as prominent social
positions become a more and more valuable asset, we find, as we are
bound to, that men desire such positions more and more.
This is the damaging suspicion that clings to men who go into racing
after a past ignorant of horseflesh--the suspicion that they are using
the sport as a means of social advancement. Many people who ought to
know will tell you that no such advantage is offered by racing, and
will point to the veterans of the turf whose names have never been
heard socially. But the answer to this is that such men had no ulterior
motive, and would not have wanted social honors, even if they had come.
Even in countries where the sport is more seriously taken than here,
this social element mingles with it. In France racing is the special
amusement of the fastest set--not of the _vieille noblesse_, but of
Monsieur Blanc of dry goods fame, of that set who has imported its
clothes and its slang from England, the set whose men cannot be told
from well-bred Englishmen, the set who has invented “le sport.” To
penetrate this set is almost impossible for a foreigner. Indeed, the
only representative of the Vanderbilt family who has gone into racing
at all has done so in France. Perhaps even for him some little aid was
necessary in that difficult circle.
In England, again, the situation is different. The turf is the serious
and respected sport of all classes. London is literally empty the day
of the Derby. Many of the most honored names in England have been, or
are, connected with a great racing stable. It is bound to have also an
important social aspect. The winning of the Derby has always been so
eagerly desired by Americans that one is justified in suspecting that
the social prominence attracts them. Yet here the very seriousness of
the English attitude toward their favorite sport is clearly to be seen.
The Englishman is quick to detect an unsportsmanlike attitude; and to
use the “sport of kings” for social purposes is a thing he finds it
hard to forgive.
Over there it is most literally the “sport of kings,” for it must, if
successfully followed, bring you sooner or later into contact with
the king himself. This apparently is not always the most agreeable of
experiences, if the story is true that one of our most conspicuous
expatriates, who has been racing over there, has been almost forced
out of it on account of a breach of etiquette. It seems he bid against
the king for the possession of a certain horse, and bid higher than
his majesty cared to go. The gentleman who was representing the king
was immensely incensed, and has taken steps to prevent such audacious
competition. Yet to republican eyes it seems rather hard that the
king’s bid should of itself preclude all others.
Here the position of racing is so much more ambiguous. It has not
the respect of the country at large. It does not make one beloved or
even celebrated in the world outside the track. No political capital
could be made out of it. As to its social uses, I think it is fair to
say that, while no social advantage necessarily follows, it offers an
immense opportunity to those clever enough to take advantage of it.
For the main difficulty in the way of the social aspirant is the first
step--is in getting to know two or three of the right people--two
or three are often sufficient. A large yacht may be a powerful
recommendation, but let her owner once fill her with the wrong people,
and he were better without her. To make yourself conspicuous is fatal
unless your companions are those whom the world envies. To advertise
yourself is, alas! too often to advertise your undesirable friendships.
Many men seem to think that a coach is the safe road to success, and
will drive round and round the park secure in the knowledge that their
appointments are perfect and their horses the best, not knowing that
the effect is being ruined by their guests, who are evidently unknown
to the world of fashion. The idea seems to be that it is quite safe to
begin with “frumps,” that they are better than no one. But this is a
great mistake. Solitude has its dignity. Common friends have none at
all. It is not easy to progress from them to the more exclusive. Once
you have identified yourself with the wrong people, the right ones
insist on believing that that is the kind you really prefer.
For the rich bachelor there are just two avenues of social ambition.
He may become attentive to a smart girl not so accustomed to attention
as to be overcritical, or if he is above this sort of thing, I know of
nothing so hopeful as racing. Here is a sport in which he may become
known without forming undesirable social ties, without proclaiming his
acquaintance with undesirable people. There is a chance for him to meet
men of the best position in an atmosphere congenial to friendship--a
mutual interest in a great sport. At the same time there is no role in
which a man may appear better than in that of a straightforward and
generous sportsman.
[Illustration]
OUR LADY OF SUCCOR
BY GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE
[Illustration]
She looked up from the fire she was kindling in the small wood heater;
a stout, rosy-faced old woman, the sole occupant of the humble little
eating house at Socorro Junction. The Spanish name means succor, and
probably marks the place where some man or party in dire need was
rescued. The man who entered had a muffled feminine figure clinging
to his arm, and he glanced about suspiciously as he asked, in a voice
which held a sharp note of anxiety: “Is this an eating house--a hotel?”
“This here’s the Wagon Tire House,” returned its proprietor, rising and
shaking the piñon slivers from her checked apron.
“Have you rooms--a parlor--some place where this lady can be alone?”
Without awaiting an answer, he turned and whispered to the veiled
woman, who shuddered and shrank; but whether from his touch or with
fear of publicity was not apparent. “Take off your things--put back
that infernal veil,” he muttered, angrily. “There’s nothing here to
hurt you.”
The removal of the wraps showed a round, innocent face, with its own
pretensions to beauty. Such prettiness as it held, however, was just
now stricken out of it by the blanched terror which dominated every
curve and line.
“No, sir,” said the old woman, surveying them both. “This ain’t rightly
a hotel. I’ve----”
“Why do you call it one, then?” interrupted the man, angrily. He placed
his companion in a chair, and stood between her and the proprietor of
the eating house. “Who are you, anyhow?” he asked, as he removed his
shining silk hat, and mopped his brow with a snowy handkerchief.
“I’m Huldy Sarvice. Most folks calls me Aunt Huldy,” she returned,
looking her guest up and down.
The man did not volunteer any return information; but Huldah, who was
given to communing with herself in regard to her patrons and summing
them up instantly, supplied the deficiency with the muttered statement:
“And you’re a gambler. Everything about you jest hollers ‘Gambler.’”
Her eye fell upon the little figure behind the tall, black-clad one.
It rested a moment on the crude, pathetically approbative countenance
which should have been rosy and smiling, “You’re----” she halted in her
unspoken sentence. “I’m blessed if I know what you are. You don’t look
like no sport’s wife. You sure don’t look like anything worse. I guess
you’re just a fool. Poor little soul! I see mighty deep waters in front
of your feet.”
Even while these things were flitting through Aunt Huldah’s mind, she
had been automatically answering “yes” and “no” to the somewhat heated
inquiries of her would-be guest. Now, with a quick patter of little
running feet, a small Mexican boy, with half a pie, burst in from the
kitchen, followed closely by the irate cook, who was also his mother.
Huldah held her plump sides and shook with mirth as the little rascal
doubled and turned among the chairs and table legs, snatching a hasty
bite now and again from his stolen pie. Nobody knew better than the
proprietor of the Wagon Tire House--kind, motherly soul--that the
threats the Mexican woman hurled after her offspring were threats only.
At last, when the final morsel was bolted, Jose permitted himself to
be caught, and burst into loud conventional sobs as his mother berated
him. The slim, pale little woman crouching in her chair, her great
furred cloak--painfully new, as was all the rest of her expensive
wear--drawn tight around her, watching this scene with wide, horrified
eyes, sprang up and, in spite of the man’s restraining hand, ran to the
child.
“Oh! Don’t strike him!” she cried, kneeling before the boy, her face
bathed in tears. “You’ll be sorry--sorry--if you do! I had a little
boy--a baby--and I used to--to forget sometimes and--and be harsh----”
The man caught her shoulder and attempted to raise her. She shook him
off almost as though she had not noticed it.
“Louise! Louise!” he said. “This is ridiculous. Sit down. She isn’t
going to hurt the child.”
But the kneeling woman went on exactly as though she had not heard.
“You mustn’t strike him. If anything should happen----” she hesitated.
“My little boy----”
She stole a look over her shoulder at the angry man.
The Mexican woman’s doubled fist came down, unclinched and became
fingers, which fumbled at her kitchen apron. “Is your young son dead,
señora?” she asked, in an awed voice.
“Louise!” remonstrated the man.
The girl whom he addressed shivered, caught the boy in her arms, and
sobbed wildly: “No, no--not dead, I wish he were. I wish I were dead!”
The man leaned down and lifted her bodily to her feet. “Here,” he said,
pushing her not overgently back into the chair, “you sit down and
get your nerves quiet.” He turned almost savagely to Huldah Sarvice,
demanding: “There is surely some place you can give us where my wife
can be alone. You see how it is here.”
Huldah nodded, looking at her visitor with shrewd, kindly eyes. “I
’spect your wife”--she put a little stress on the two words, and the
girl winced, her pale face reddening--“I jest think she’s better off
here among people.”
The man made a muttered objection, but Huldah went serenely on: “My
lodgin’ rooms is acrost the street, and I don’t know’s I’ve got a
vacant one. They’s a man with a broken leg in one of ’em, an’ a feller
that’s been drinkin’ a little too much is in another. Two more of ’em
is locked up by the men that rents ’em. Best sit here till I can git
you a little supper; mebby that’ll cheer her up some.”
All the time she talked, Aunt Huldah had been watching the little
woman’s face and behavior, which were those of a creature under some
desperate pressure; and as she concluded and turned back to her fire
building, she made her decision. “That man--husband or not--has done
something that she’s knownst to. He’s a gambler; mebby he’s knifed some
feller acrost the cards; mebby he’s gone further. But my guess is that
she knows of some crime he’s done, an’ he’s hangin’ onto her for fear
she’ll tell.”
She rose from the now kindled fire for another covert survey of her
guests, who were deep in a whispered conference. “Yes, and she’d jest
about do it, too. She wants to give him away.” Again, after a moment of
keen observation on her way to the kitchen, she added: “An’ he knows
it.”
As she went on with her supper, aided by the Mexican woman, who was
used to her habit of arguing with herself aloud, she muttered: “What
next, then?” and answered her own question: “Why, her life ain’t safe
with him--not a minit!”
Having come to which conclusion, she gave her helper a few hasty
directions, wiped her hands on her apron and marched back to the front
room, where all day long the dining table stood set out with its
pink mosquito-net covering. “I’ve got a room of my own,” she began,
abruptly. “’Tain’t much of a place, but there’s a bed in it, where your
wife could lay down.”
The two were on their feet in a moment. Huldah laid hold of the
cringing little shoulder nearest her, and turned to the door. “It’ll
be nigh to three hours,” she observed, “till the south-bound comes
through. I shan’t be usin’ the room, and she might as well git a little
rest there.”
“I’ll take her over, and stay with her,” agreed the man, reaching for
his hat.
“No--no, sir, that was not my offer,” objected the old woman. “My room
and my bed she can have--because she needs ’em. But it ain’t fixed up,
and I’ll jest have to ask you to let her go by herself.”
The man’s pale countenance went a shade whiter; a peculiar trick he
had of showing his teeth without smiling became suddenly apparent. It
rendered his handsome face repulsive for the moment, as he grasped the
arm which was not clinging to Aunt Huldah. “Come back here. Sit down.
What do you mean by pretending that you--that I----”
He jerked the girl toward him with such force that she cried out
faintly, and Huldah’s gray eyes, the one beautiful feature of her
homely countenance, narrowed and sparkled. “You go and get us something
to eat,” he blustered. “Food is what she needs. She isn’t well enough
to be alone; and you won’t let me take her over and stay with her.”
“Please go away,” begged the sobbing girl, looking pleadingly at
Huldah. “You--it only makes it worse. I--I’m all right here. Please go
away.”
And Huldah went, glancing back to see that the man had seated himself
once more in front of the huddled figure, looming above her, bending
toward her; and that urgent whispered parley had begun again.
The proprietor of the Wagon Tire House was just turning her sizzling
steak in its skillet when the door behind her opened a crack, and the
gambler, as she had mentally dubbed him, put his head through.
“Come here,” he said.
Huldah grunted. “I am here,” she returned. “What is it you want?”
“I want to speak to you”--impatiently.
“Speak,” suggested the old woman.
“But I’ve got something to say that I don’t care to yell to every fool
on the street.” He stared malevolently at the broad, blue calico back
and half turned to retrace his steps; but no, he needed a woman’s
help--he must have it; and he finally began, in an anxious, reluctant
half whisper: “What do you think of her? Is she really sick?”
“I think she’ll die, all right,” answered the old woman, without
turning her head or glancing up from her cooking.
“You do!” sneered the man, with a sudden loudness of tone. “You think
she’ll die! You women are always using that word. I never saw a woman
in a tight place yet but what she began whining that she believed it
would kill her--that she’d die.”
“Well, and they die, too, sometimes--don’t they?”
A little sound or movement in the room behind him brought the man’s
glance around with such a malignant scowl that Huldah, noting it,
deemed her time to speak out had come. “See here, sir,” she began,
turning away from the stove--“Manuelita, tend to that steak, and don’t
let it burn, for goodness’ sake--see here, sir, you know a lot more’n I
do about what ails that woman in there. But I know enough to know that
she’s goin’ to die if she’s driv’ like you’ve been drivin’ her.”
“Like I’ve been driving her!” echoed the man, angrily. “She’s the one
that’s making it hot for me. There’s nothing the matter with her.”
“All right,” returned Huldah, applying herself once more to the
cooking. “If there’s nothing the matter of her, what did you come
out here to ask me about it for?” Sudden rage mastered her as she
worked over the steak gravy. She whirled and shook a finger at her
interlocutor so sharply that he drew back. “I tell you that little
creatur’ in the room behind you is a-goin’ to die if she ain’t let up
on,” she finished, impressively.
Fear, indecision and rage contended upon the man’s face. “Oh, Lord!”
he ejaculated, “if one woman can’t raise enough row, there’s always
another to help her. Well, come in here. You can take her over. To
your own room, mind--nowhere else. And let nobody else see her or
talk to her. You’ll come right back, and not stay with her.” He looked
at Huldah Sarvice’s strong, benevolent face, which smiled upon him
inscrutably. “I expect I’m a fool to risk it,” he muttered. “But--well,
come in.”
“Stay with her!” echoed Huldah, tossing up her head with a peculiar,
free motion which belonged to her in times of excitement. “Stay with
her? _I_ don’t want to stay with your wife. I’ve got my work to do. I
don’t spy on nobody--no matter how bad things looks for ’em.”
She had spoken the latter words in an undertone, as she gathered the
drooping girl and her belongings upon a capable arm. Now, as a heavy,
drumming roar became audible, she added, in excitement: “Land sakes!
There’s a train. No, it can’t be no train; but for sure them’s engines
out on the Magdalena Branch! I’ve got to fly ’round and git supper for
them train crews. All the boys o’ the Magdalena Branch eats with me.”
She made as though to release her charge, saying sharply: “I guess I
ain’t hardly time to take your wife acrost--let alone hangin’ ’round to
chat with her.”
“Hi, colonel! That big trunk of yours bu’st open when we tried to get
it off the freight,” announced a man’s voice in the doorway. “Want to
come over and see to it?”
This was the help that Huldah could have asked for. The man addressed
as “colonel” turned from one to the other with a worried look. “I guess
I’ve got to,” he replied to the brakeman. “How bad is it?”
“I didn’t see it,” returned the other, “but Billy said it was plumb
bu’st, and the things fallin’ out. It’ll have to be roped, I guess.”
As the men hurried away in the direction of the station, Huldah turned
briskly and tightened her arm about the girl. “Now, honey,” she
whispered. And they hastened across the straggling red mud road in the
face of a shower whose large drops were beginning to pelt down like
hail. Aunt Huldah gathered up her petticoats and ran. “I’ll have to
git them winders shut,” she panted. “I hope to gracious Manuelita’s got
the sense to shut ’em in the other house.”
The roaring of engines which Huldah had mentioned as on the Magdalena
Branch came more distinctly now. “Looks like there must be three
or four of ’em--engines--one right behind t’other,” the old woman
muttered. “I’ll jest git you fixed comfortable over here, honey, and
shut them winders, an’ then I must run back.”
But when she would have done so, the girl clung to her with shaking
hands. “Oh, don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “Don’t let that man know where
I am. Hide me.”
“He ain’t your husband, then?” hazarded Huldah.
“No--no--no!” moaned the girl. “My husband’s a freight conductor on
this road--Billy Gaines. You’ve seen him. He told me about you and the
Wagon Tire House--about your having a wagon tire in front of it to beat
on to call to meals. I expect he’s eaten many a meal here. He might
come now; and then if he saw me--and that man--and--oh, hide me!”
Aunt Huldah let the head rest upon her shoulder, the shamed face
hidden. “Who is this feller they call colonel, child?” she asked,
gently.
“He owned--the house we lived in--in El Paso,” came the muffled
explanation. “He’s rich, and--and very refined.”
“I know a place that’s full of jest such refined fellers,” muttered
Huldah, angrily.
“Billy didn’t seem to love the baby as he--as--and Colonel Emerson is
very fond of children--he’s devoted to my baby--or I thought he was.
And he said that it was cause enough for me to leave Billy. And if I
should leave him--if I should leave Billy--if I should get a divorce
from him--he said--Colonel Emerson said----”
“Don’t tell me what he _said_, honey child,” urged Huldah. “What’d he
_do_? Where’s your baby?”
Oh, then the poor little mother clung with strangling sobs to the
stronger, older woman. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “He got me all
these nice things--ain’t my clothes awfully pretty?--and he promised
we’d bring the baby with us. He says he’s taking me to his mother, and
that I can stay there until I get my divorce--because, you know, Billy
has treated me awfully mean, and he don’t care--Billy--he don’t care a
thing on earth about me nor the baby any more.”
She reiterated these last words with a piteous look of entreaty into
the kind gray eyes bent upon her, repeated them as a little child
repeats a lesson which has been laboriously taught to it. Huldah looked
at her with infinite pity. “Where’s your baby?” she repeated.
“That’s what scares me!” cried the wife of Billy Gaines. “He
said--Colonel Emerson said--when he met me at the station, and he
hadn’t sent for the baby like he promised to--that he was going to have
some man that he knew go and get the boy and take it to his mother’s
house, but that it wouldn’t do for it to travel with us, because we
could be traced by it. I”--the pretty lips trembled--“I never was away
from my baby a night in my life. I don’t know if anybody knows where to
get his little night drawers. He always wears a little sack, extra, at
night, because he’s a great one for throwing his arms out and getting
the covers off them----”
She was running on like a crazed thing, with these little fond details,
when Huldah Sarvice’s strong voice interrupted her. “Thank God!” said
the old woman, heaving a mighty sigh of relief. “If you’re a good
mother, you’re worth savin’. I’m goin’ right over now an’ telegraft to
your husband.”
“Oh, no! Don’t do that!” cried the other. “He’ll be killed. You
mustn’t. Don’t. He’ll be killed!”
“Killed!” snorted Huldah. Hers was the rough-and-ready code of the
West. “Killed--and serve him right!”
“I don’t mean Colonel Emerson,” remonstrated the frantic girl.
“Sometimes I think he’s a bad man--an awful man--anyhow, he’ll just
have to stand it if anything happens. It’s Billy I’m thinking about.
The colonel has shot three or four men--he’ll kill my poor Billy----”
Huldah smiled to herself in the gathering darkness. The problem was
becoming easier and easier. But the girl’s strangled, sobbing voice
went on: “And I couldn’t bear to see Billy. I don’t dare to have him
see me when he knows about this. I can’t face him. If you say you’re
going to telegraph to him, I’ll run right straight to Colonel Emerson
and get him to take me away somewhere.”
Huldah puckered her lips--had she been a man she would have whistled.
She saw no way but to go with the girl and fight it out with her
tempter. “Come,” she said, a little roughly for Huldah. “I’ll go back
with you.”
She whom the old woman would have saved turned like a hunted thing, as
to elude her benefactress. Huldah clung to her arm, and they struggled
thus to the doorway. Here the thunder of engines toward Magdalena
once more arrested the attention of the proprietor of the Wagon Tire
House. It had increased to a deafening uproar; the rain fell like
bullets; and even as they drew back, frightened, there was no street
to be seen--only a flood of swirling yellow water, running like a
tail race between the lodging rooms and the little eating house. “My
Lord!” groaned Huldah. “I might ’a’ knowed ’twa’n’t engines. Hit’s a
cloudburst, above--the big arroyo’s up.”
It was true. The red gash which through nine-tenths of the year lay dry
and yawning beside the tracks of the little Magdalena Branch railway
was brimmed with the same tide which swept the street. And down it, as
they looked, came a wall of writhing, tormented water, nearly five feet
high.
There had been a cloudburst in the mountains above, whence came such
trickle as fed the arroyo in the dry season. Twice before had this
thing happened, and the little eating house stood upon stilts of
cottonwood logs to be above the flood line, while the lodging house was
on higher ground.
The watching women saw the flood reach the railway track, beat upon
its embankment with upraised, clinched hands, tear at it with
outspread fingers in an access of fury, wrench up the rails yet bolted
to the ties, and fling them forward on its crest as it plunged on. The
two little houses, standing isolated from the town and nearer to the
railroad tracks than any other, were now in an open waste of water, the
current sweeping swiftly between them, an eddy lapping in their back
yards.
As Huldah saw Manuelita’s frightened face at a window of the Wagon Tire
House, she made a trumpet of her plump hands and shouted: “Don’t you be
scared, Manuelita--hear? Keep up the fire, and make a b’iler of coffee.
I’ll be over soon’s I can git thar!”
Billy Gaines’ wife looked down at the water with relief. “He can’t come
across that,” she murmured.
“No, he can’t,” agreed Aunt Huldah. “An’ you come an’ lay down on my
bed. Slip off your shoes, an’ loosen your clothes, but don’t undress.
This house is safe, I reckon; but no knowin’ what might happen.”
All that night Huldah Sarvice worked, with the strength of a man and
the knowledge of a seasoned frontiers-woman. The injured were brought
to the lodging house or the eating house, just as it happened. When a
hastily improvised boat came to their aid, she went in it over to see
that some refreshment was prepared for the workers; and later, when the
sullen flood receded to a languid swell, she paddled back and forth on
foot, her petticoats gathered in one sweep of her arm, and whatever was
necessary to carry held fast with the other.
“You’ll get your death, Aunt Huldah,” remonstrated the agent, when she
had struggled across to the station to send a telegram to Billy Gaines.
“I reckon not,” she returned, with twinkling eye. “Seems like you can’t
drown me. I’ve been flooded out six times; twict at El Captain, once at
Blowout and now three times here; and I ain’t drownded yet. This is a
good long telegraft that I’m a-sendin’; but I reckon the railroad won’t
grudge it to me.”
“You bet they won’t,” returned the boy, heartily, as he addressed
himself to his key. “I’ll add a message of my own to a fellow I know at
El Paso, and get him to hunt Billy up if he’s on duty to-night.”
Huldah beamed. “That’s awful good of you,” she returned; “but if you
had seen that little woman over there a runnin’ from one window to
another, a wringin’ her hands and carryin’ on so that I’m ’most afraid
to leave her alone, you’d be glad to do it.”
As she splashed back to her tired helpers and the injured at the Wagon
Tire House, the old woman muttered to herself: “He’s a good boy. It’s
better to have good friends than to be rich;” and never reflected for
an instant that no personal benefit had been conferred upon herself in
the matter.
With the simple wisdom of a good woman who knows well the human
heart, Huldah set poor Louise Gaines to attending upon the worst
injured of the flood sufferers, and took her promptly in to see the
one corpse which so far had been found floating in an eddy after the
waters receded a little. It was that of a young Mexican girl from the
village above. The little fair woman went down on her knees beside the
stretcher. “Oh, I wish it was me!” she cried. “Why couldn’t it have
been me? She’s young, and I expect she wanted to live--why didn’t God
take me?”
“Now, now,” remonstrated Aunt Huldah, with a touch of wholesome
sternness. “I didn’t bring you in here to carry on about your own
troubles--that’s selfish. I brung you to make this poor girl look fit
to be laid away. You can do it better’n I can, and there’s nobody else
for to do it. Likely her folks is all drownded, too.”
And Billy Gaines’ wife rose up and wiped her eyes, and went to work in
something of the spirit that Huldah had hoped.
It was five o’clock in the gray of the morning when the wrecking train
from El Paso came through; and Billy Gaines was aboard it. The poor
little wife had had attacks of hysteric terror all night long at the
thought of his coming; and now she lay exhausted and half sleeping
upon the lounge in the dining room. Huldah herself felt a little qualm
of fear as she opened the kitchen door to the tall figure buttoned in
the big ulster. For the first time, she wondered where the man Emerson
was, and hoped that he had taken the one train which left Socorro going
northward, just before the flood struck them. But the hope was a faint
one; more likely he was up in the town, cut off from them temporarily
by the water which still ran between; and when he and Billy Gaines met,
she doubted not that there would be another bloody reckoning such as
the West knows well.
If she had doubted, her questions would have been answered when she
looked into the frank gray eyes of the man who met her, a trifle stern
and very resolute. “I’ve come for my wife,” he said, breathing a little
short, “and if Jim Emerson’s in the house, I want to see him.”
“Come in here,” said the old woman, drawing the newcomer into a small
section of chaos which was generally known as the pantry. “I remember
you now, an’ I guess you’re a decenter man than the run of ’em; but I
want to have a word with you before you go in to that poor girl. You
see, I want to be sure that you’ve looked on both sides of it. You pass
all right among the men--I hear you well spoke of--but how many things
can you ricollect that you’ve done that are jest as bad as what she’s
done?”
“Plenty,” said Billy Games, almost with impatience. “I understand, Aunt
Huldah.”
“Mebby you do,” said the old woman; “but I want to be sure. Where was
you when this poor little soul was left to herself--and that scoundrel?”
“I was over in Mexico on a six weeks’ hunting trip.”
“You was! Well, then, after all, who done this thing--who’s really to
blame?”
“I am--you bet,” came the deep-voiced answer. “I don’t hold it against
you a bit, Aunt Huldah; but you’re working on the wrong trail. You
think you’ve got a great big job ahead of you trying to make me see
this thing right. But I’ll remind you that it’s eight hours from El
Paso here--eight night hours--and your telegram was pretty complete.
You left the man out; and so will I--until I meet him.” The firm jaw
squared itself heavily; and Huldah sighed as she realized that the law
of blood for honor must be met.
The man had carried one arm almost as though it were injured; and she
now glanced down at it as he moved it and fumbled in the folds of his
big overcoat. His voice softened beautifully. “I’ve got something
here,” he said, “that ought to show you that I know and understand, and
am going to behave myself.”
He opened his great cloak and showed, lying upon his breast asleep, a
baby of about two years old, who stirred, put up a wandering little
hand and murmured: “Daddy,” as he settled himself for a longer nap.
“Bless his heart!” murmured Huldah, in the richest tones of her strong,
heartsome voice. She wiped the tears from her eyes on a corner of the
check apron. “I guess you’ll do, Billy. You seem to have the makin’s
of a tol’able decent feller in you. You’ve got the only medicine right
there that your poor little, half crazy wife needs.” And she pushed him
toward the door of the deserted dining room.
There was a long, agonized cry: “O--o--oh, Billy!” Then the big voice
talked brokenly and gently for a time, choking sobs interrupting it;
and Huldah could hear, at first, the thin, shrill terror of the woman’s
tones, very sharp and pleading; finally an eloquent silence.
She glanced in to see Billy Gaines sitting with what she called “both
of his children--for the little woman’s ’most as much of a baby as her
boy”--asleep; the mother with her head upon his shoulder, while the
child lay in the laps of both of them.
“Lord, but that’s a sight for sore eyes!” she ruminated, as she lifted
the coffee boiler from the stove and sent Manuelita to lie down and get
a rest.
“But there’s the colonel,” she pursued. “There’s goin’ to be awful
times when him and Billy Gaines meets.” Then she smiled at herself
and went on: “Jest listen to a old woman like me tryin’ to tell how
it ort to come out. We’re all God’s children. I reckon the colonel’s
His child”--she seemed to have a little doubt upon this point--“an’ I
reckon God’ll take care of him.”
As if in answer to her half-spoken thought, there came the tramp of
stumbling feet, somebody beat upon the door, and a voice called:
“Mrs. Sarvice! Aunt Huldah! We’ve just found another body over by the
railroad tracks. Can we bring him in here, or shall we take it over to
the other house?”
Huldah hurried out, to turn down the blanket they had drawn over the
stark form and look upon the dead gambler’s face. “Carry him to the
lodgin’ house, pore feller,” she said, gently.
God had taken care of the colonel.
[Illustration]
ELUSION
Cleavage of sea and sky,
Ever elusive line,
Though I follow it far,
Far as the Ultimate Isles,
Never it seems more nigh,--
Shifting shadow and shine,--
Dim as a distant star
That beckons and beguiles
Dawn-dream of my heart,
Dusk-dream of my soul,
Though I follow thee long
Into the night’s deep shades,
Never attained thou art,
Never I gain the goal;
Thou art like a song
That ever and ever evades.
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
LONDON’S STAGNANT THEATRICAL SEASON
BY ALAN DALE
[Illustration]
London has begun to howl sensationally about the American Theatrical
Syndicate, and to discuss the possibilities of its invasion of London.
Of course this is the warm season, when snake stories and sea-serpent
legends are distinctly in order. Therefore the machinations of the
American Theatrical Syndicate have made good reading, and plenty of
space has been given to the subject. One journalist has suggested
that the playwrights of England and the United States form a league,
destined to break up the trust, very much after the style of the
Authors’ Society in France. “Why should they not form themselves into
a society,” asks this writer, “for the protection not only of their
own interests, but of the interests of the theater, of the interests
of the actors, and of the interests of the public? As the trust snaps
up an actor when once his reputation is established, so it deals with
dramatists. Once a dramatist has made a mark, the trust practically
buys him up; that is to say, it makes him an offer outright for all his
work to come. That is part of the infernal system.”
All of which is quite good, and true, and logical. It reads remarkably
well, with just the spice of wholesome plaint that one loves to
excavate. After a month of continuous theater-going in London,
however--from the Strand to Piccadilly Circus, and from Piccadilly
Circus to Shaftesbury Avenue--I can’t help reflecting that if _the_
syndicate or any syndicate had been let loose in London this year,
with the option of cornering everything in sight, the fact remains
that there is scarcely a production in London worth transplanting.
Furthermore, the fear that an American invasion would deal a death-blow
to London art seems absurd. I haven’t found any art to death-blow.
Nearly everything that London writers have said of the syndicate is
true, and, perhaps, not stringent enough, but--with an accent on the
“but”--how it could possibly harm London goodness only knows. Never
has theatrical entertainment in the English metropolis been at a lower
ebb. A few of its features will be done in New York this year, and they
will prove exactly what I have said. English playwrights seem to be
suffering from too much money, for they apparently lack the stimulus to
struggle. That money may, of course, have been contributed by American
managers, who buy “pig-in-a-poke” fashion, but if that be so, there are
not enough “independent” playwrights to form a society. As for leaguing
themselves with American playwrights--well, puzzle: find the American
playwrights.
The saddest case of perverted humor I have sampled in a very long
time is that of J. M. Barrie’s play--or whatever it chooses to call
itself--entitled “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire,” at the Duke of York’s
Theater. Barrie must, indeed, be very “comfortably fixed,” for no other
condition could conceivably call forth such a miserable guy on the
theater-going public as this “three-act page from a daughter’s diary.”
Naturally it has attracted a good deal of attention, for Barrie has
done noble things in his day, and “The Little Minister” still lives as
a monumentally delightful achievement. But “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is
a “satire” built on such a weak and irritating foundation that it is
difficult to consider it except with contempt--which is a cruel way of
looking at Barrie.
The heroine, or central figure, or point of attack, in
“Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is a romantic young girl, who has been to so
many “matinées” that she has grown to look upon life as a theatrical
performance. At first you think that _Amy Grey_ is going to be
extremely amusing, as she chats satirically of her life, with her boon
companion--another matinée fiend. _Amy’s_ father and mother return from
India after an absence of a good many years, and Barrie plunges into a
plot.
The stagestruck girl has always heard that when a woman visits a
man’s rooms at midnight there are illicit relations that should be
immediately broken up. She hears her mother promise to call upon
_Stephen Rollo_ at midnight, and assumes, with much girlish glee, that
her mother needs rescuing. The entire motive of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire”
lurks in Barrie’s effort to be funny around this cruelly topsy-turvy,
and rather nauseating, idea.
The principal act occurs in the “man’s rooms”--with the girl, the
mother and the man. Barrie, in a positive ecstasy of ghoulish “humor,”
allows the mother to understand the girl’s idea. She clamors for her
daughter’s love, and believes that the best way to secure it will be to
feign guilt, so that the girl can “rescue” her. This she does. _Amy_
believes that she has saved her mamma from a horrible fate--mamma
caters diligently to that suggestion--and the play ends with _Amy’s_
betrothal to the man in the case.
In this play Barrie has violated sheer decency of sentiment. It is
all very well to shower satire upon the matinée girl--she can stand
it, and has stood it full many a time and oft--but to mix her up in
the imaginary adultery of her own mother--and as a joke, saving the
mark!--gives one such a disagreeable shock, that recovery from its
effects is quite out of the question. To be even more delicately
humorous, Barrie might have introduced the grandmother under similarly
suspicious circumstances.
It is all very well to write caviare, but the caviare must be fresh
and not putrid. Barrie’s “humor” in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” has the
taint of decay--as it had the germ of acute dyspepsia in that atrocity
produced in New York under the title of “Little Mary.” Real humor
attacks hereditary sentiment with delicacy, and a certain amount of
timidity. To completely realize this you have but to study George
Bernard Shaw, who, while he flouts a thousand traditions, and is rarely
amusing unless he is flouting, does so with a keen appreciation of what
he is doing. The redoubtable George may even scoff occasionally at
filial sentiment, but he would never dredge humor from the imaginary
sin of a mother, used as a joke to please her own stagestruck daughter.
At the close of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” one wondered what _Amy_,
after her marriage to the man in the case, would think of the maudlin
situation. And this, please your grace, has been announced as Barrie’s
crowning fantasy! Fortunately, we have “Peter Pan” to hear from in New
York. Not having seen that, I pin my faith to it, for I want to hold on
to Barrie a bit longer, in spite of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire.”
This “page from a daughter’s diary” was preceded by a sketch, also by
Barrie, entitled “Pantaloon,” and programed as “a plea for an ancient
family.” There is no need to discuss this one-act trifle, with its
pathos and bathos, in extraordinary blend, and no single salient idea
to carry it through. The elopement of _Harlequin_ and _Columbine_, with
the jilting of _Clown_, and the distress of _Pantaloon_ may perchance
be a “plea for an ancient family,” and as there are all sorts of pleas,
you are possibly allowed to pay your money and take your choice.
It was Ellen Terry who played _Alice_, in the “Sit-by-the-Fire” affair.
Poor Ellen Terry! To my mind it was sad and disheartening. Why should
an actress who has had such a joyous career as that which fell to Miss
Terry’s lot, elect, in her ultra maturity, to play a bad part in a
bad play--and not too well? There is tragedy in this continued, and--I
should say--unnecessary service. Probably there are still roles that
Miss Terry might acceptably play, but as the forty-year-old mother in
this wretched piece one could but feel sorry for her--and sorry for
those who saw her. I have heard that Miss Ethel Barrymore plays the
part in the United States. I can’t believe it until I see it.
Miss Irene Vanbrugh--you remember her in “The Gay Lord Quex”--was the
matinée girl, with much force. There are flashes of humor in the part,
and Miss Vanbrugh made the most of them. For the benefit of those who
may see “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” on the American side of the pond, the
rest of the cast was made up of Aubrey Smith, A. E. Mathews, Kenneth
Douglas, Lettice Fairfax--who was once in Augustin Daly’s New York
company--Dora Hole, Edith Craig and Hilda Trevelyan.
Always at this time of year there is an influx of foreign actresses
into London. They come; they are seen; but they never conquer. They
must be awfully tired of it, for history has such a sad way of
repeating itself. This year, however, one French actress has made a
good deal of a stir, but under such distinctly new conditions that
the stir is quite intelligible. This young woman, Madame Simone Le
Bargy, of whom I wrote you last year when I reviewed “Le Retour de
Jerusalem” from Paris, was brought to London by George Alexander, the
actor-manager of the St. James Theater, _not_ for a season “on her
own,” but as his leading lady, and in English, too!
A French actress in English! Could anything be more unusual? Sarah
Bernhardt, who has been cavorting around the English-speaking world for
portentous yet vulgar fractions of a century, never managed to acquire
even a suspicion of English; Rêjane, who has done London and New York
pretty thoroughly, would have an artistic fit at the idea of juggling
with English, at her time of life; Jane Hading, Jeanne Granier and
others are quite willing to play anywhere, but it must be in French.
Madame Simone Le Bargy played the leading rôle in “The Man of the
Moment,” at the St. James Theater, and was duly and unselfishly boomed
by Mr. George Alexander, as “of the Gymnase Théâtre, Paris. Her first
appearance in England.” The piece was an adaptation, by Harry Melvill,
of “L’Adversaire,” by Alfred Capus and Emmanuel Arène. The English
actor-manager was a wise man in his London generation. He had a weak
play, most indifferently adapted, but he had Le Bargy, and for a while
she caught the town.
While English leading ladies must have fumed at Alexander’s neglect
of “home talent,” Madame Le Bargy showed that it is quite possible
not only to play with grace and facility in a foreign language, but
actually to prove more intelligible than a good many London actresses
who flatter themselves that they speak good English. Madame Le Bargy’s
English was an absolute revelation. Naturally it had an accent--a
delightful one--and Paris was stamped on everything she said, but
compared with Mrs. Fiske in New York, or Miss Ashwell in London,
Madame Le Bargy’s diction was wonderful. Every word she uttered was
intelligible. She rattled off various speeches almost as quickly
as she might have done in French, but never once did their meaning
miscarry. I’ve seen all sorts of foreign actresses waylay the English
language--Modjeska and Janauschek being in the list--but seldom have
such results as those given by this little, thin, nervous Frenchwoman
been attained.
Oddly enough, it is said that Madame Le Bargy had never been in London
before, and that she had acquired English in France. In which case, I
would suggest that half a dozen popular New York actresses--I won’t
mention names--should sail for France at an early date, and see if they
could learn English there. It is as difficult to acquire in London as
it is in New York.
“The Man of the Moment” was saved from rapid extinction by the little
Gymnase actress. It had four acts, through two of which you could
have slept comfortably while various alleged French characters sat
round drawing rooms and talked endlessly about nothing whatsoever.
Then, in the third act, you learned that _Marianne Darlay_, the wife
of _Maurice_, had been lured to infidelity by a dark gentleman named
_Langlade_. As she still loved her husband, and didn’t love _Langlade_,
this little escapade failed entirely to interest. The “great scene”
occurred when the wife gave herself away to the husband, and the play
ended with a vista of divorce. Divorce, in real life, may be a serenely
satisfactory settlement of domestic wrangles, but on the stage its
unromantic practicality has not yet succeeded in appealing, except in
farce. “The Man of the Moment” had no dramatic action, and no movement
of any sort. You were unable to sympathize with the woman, or to feel
much interest in the man. In fact, “The Man of the Moment” must have
been so-called because he had none.
Capus in French is always exhilarating. The “chatter” is refreshing and
genuinely amusing, but translated into English, it seemed extremely
dull. Mr. Melvill did poor Capus into the sort of language that is
encountered in burlesque at little Mr. Weber’s music hall. The result
was fatal. Yet, in addition to Madame Le Bargy’s very excellent work,
there was George Alexander, whose efforts were most praiseworthy. He
seemed perfectly satisfied to take what was assuredly second place in
the cast. “The Man of the Moment” was beautifully put on, as is every
production at the St. James Theater. George Alexander is one of the
few London actors who have not been to the United States within the
last decade--in fact, he has never been, except as a member of Irving’s
forces, many years ago--and the abstinence seems to agree with him. He
does more, and he does it more luxuriously, than the traveling English
actor whom we have seen so often. Perhaps it is true, after all, that
a rolling stone gathers no moss--though I should hate to believe that
there could possibly be anything in a popular proverb.
While one little foreign actress was capturing London by her clever
manipulation of London’s language, others were not as happy. Eleanora
Duse’s season at the Messrs. Shubert’s new Waldorf Theater, in the new
street called Aldwych, on the Strand, must have been very discouraging
to the haughty lady herself. In fact, it is asserted that she will
never again appear in England. Half-filled houses are something that
must be distressing to the “artistic temperament,” and Duse played to a
most elongated series of them. Few people seemed to know that she was
in London. In New York we, in our occasionally provincial appreciation
of an actress whom we are unable to understand--and probably _because_
we can’t understand her--go into ecstasies over Duse, and pack the
theater to overflowing. London is too sophisticated. Duse made no
stir at all this time. Even the critics gave her but merely polite
attention. Possibly in English she could charm the English-speaking
world. But, save in the case of Madame Simone Le Bargy, nobody seems to
think that worth while. Perhaps it isn’t.
As for the tireless Sarah--she gets on one’s nerves. After a brief
season at the Coronet Theater, in Notting Hill, where she produced her
own version of “Adrienne Lecouvreur,” and Victor Hugo’s “Angelo”--which
fell flat as a pancake--Sarah rushed through the English provinces
with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, in their freak performance of “Pelleas and
Melisande.” In a manufacturing town, like Birmingham, for instance,
Maeterlinck, at advanced prices, seemed like some ghastly joke! Sarah
visits England annually, in a veritable desperation of energy, but it
is very seldom worth her while. This year she was less interesting than
Madame Le Bargy; and the same may be said of Réjane.
I had not been in London very long before I found myself battling with
the musical comedy whirlpool. It hedged me in; panic-stricken, I tried
to get myself free. A dreadful sensation of helplessness overcame
me. In a condition of numbed protest, I was carried along with the
torrent, and it was a long time before I finally emerged. My system
being impoverished and quite run down by a strenuous musical-comedy
dose in New York, I was not in the state of mind to render the
continued ordeal endurable.
Yet a very estimable gentleman, Max Beerbohm, who is supposed to write
fantasy, whimsicality or oddity, has undertaken to champion musical
comedy. The championship of “Max,” however, is a sort of “swan song”
for musical comedy. He says: “Were musical comedy other than it is, the
highest intellects in the land would be deprived of an incomparable
safety valve. And what would become of that ‘fifty millions--mostly
fools’--who find in musical comedy an art-form conducted precisely on
the level of their understanding? I have no sympathy at all with the
growls so constantly emitted by professional critics of this art-form.
Of course musical comedy might be made a vehicle for keen satire, for
delicate humor, for gracious lyricism, and what not. But I prefer
that it should remain as it is. Let us continue to cry aloud for a
serious drama, by all means, but long live mere silliness in mere
entertainment.”
One could almost regret that this writer had no “job” in New York
City as a “press agent.” He writes with such _verve_ on topics of
which he is avowedly ignorant, for at the beginning of his defense,
he says: “Nor do I ever see a musical comedy of my own accord.” That
is it. That is precisely it. It is so easy to speak of an “art-form,”
or an “incomparable safety valve,” when you’d run a mile or jump into
anything to avoid it.
There are four musical-comedy productions in London that a sheer
sense of duty compelled me to see. Such a list! It was unescapable.
No self-deception or hypocrisy could possibly excuse a traveling
critic from sampling this quartet. One can always elude a solitary
performance, for it proves nothing and makes no point. But four of a
kind at one fell swoop! Surely, if four West End theaters can devote
themselves irrevocably to this “art-form,” one has no right to balk,
or to look the other way. The four affairs in question are “The Little
Michus,” at Daly’s, “Lady Madcap,” at the Prince of Wales’, “The
Spring-Chicken,” at the Gaiety, and “The Catch of the Season,” at the
Vaudeville. Three of them are scheduled for production in New York, but
I should say that one only has a fighting chance, and that “The Catch
of the Season.”
It had the usual array of sponsor-meddlers--two for the pieces, one
for the lyrics, two for the music; and its aim is higher than that of
the conventional brand, for it is a modernization of the Cinderella
story--a story that has never shown any sign of age, and probably never
will. Nobody has tried to do anything clever with Cinderella. There
is no satire, very little humor and nothing in the least skittish. It
is just pretty, and at this Vaudeville Theater it is Miss Ellaline
Terriss, London’s sample Christmas card beauty, who does the Cinderella
act. It is not necessary to say very much more about “The Catch of
the Season.” Its music is trivial, and its book is worse. But its
specialties please, and one can sit through this little entertainment
without that sense of degradation that the brand sometimes induces.
That is a good deal. For New York many alterations will be made--I
write in the future tense, though when these lines are read, they can
be translated into the past--and I hope a happy one--new music will be
introduced, and Miss Edna May placed in Ellaline Terriss’ dainty shoes.
Of “The Little Michus,” at Daly’s, and “The Spring Chicken,” at the
Gaiety, I am scarcely able to write. Two weeks have elapsed since I saw
them, and not a single impression of consequence remains. I remember
that I was unutterably bored, but I can’t quite recall which was the
duller performance of the two. At the time I compared them both with
“The Cingalee,” the New York failure of which I correctly prophesied
last summer. I should like to suggest that even in the musical-comedy
line I am still able to scent novelty, whenever the slightest aroma
occurs. It is the expectation of this that keeps me alive during a
performance. Without that expectation I should honestly stay away, for
I have arrived at a stage when I am not courting martyrdom.
The George Edwardes shows have of late displayed a marked tendency to
a sort of stupefying monotony. Either the fear of risking a new idea,
or the hope that the old ones have not become too abjectly ancient, has
kept them in the one groove. It is quite remarkable when you come to
think of it. Even the supply of people has comparatively failed. The
Gaiety girls have married--some of them have even taken unto themselves
peers--and a new stock has neglected to materialize. In “The Little
Michus,” which is supposed to detail the experiences of two young girls
who look precisely alike, but who have been changed at birth, these two
prominent rôles were intrusted to Adrienne Augarde and Mabel Green--the
latter absolutely unknown. In “The Spring Chicken,” which, I may add,
is just as calamitous as its title, it was Miss Gertie Millar who had
to uphold the traditions of the Gaiety. A pretty girl, a bright little
actress and a fairly melodious warbler is Miss Millar, but George
Edwardes used to do better than this.
“Lady Madcap” was the best of the three George Edwardes shows in
London. Probably that is why it has been left untouched by the American
manager. I do not say that any of these entertainments are worth
exporting. To trot such drivel across the Atlantic Ocean, while the
United States still has its lunatic asylums with numbers of patients
ready and willing to do just such work, seems to me like the sorriest
sort of jest. Yet “The Catch of the Season” and “Lady Madcap” have
their good points.
What is possibly the best song in London this season occurs in “Lady
Madcap.” It is sung by Maurice Farkoa, and is called “I Love You in
Velvet.” It has pretty music, clever words and much “catchiness,” and
it is so admirably and artistically sung that it redeemed the musical
comedy itself, and made it quite endurable.
The star of the performance is J. P. Huntley, a prime London favorite
and one who has been very well received in New York. Huntley, like a
good many other comedians, is far more useful for flavoring purposes
than for a steady diet. There was such a dose of him in “Lady Madcap”
that he grew to be a terrible bore. This young actor is to leave the
George Edwardes forces and go to the Shubert Brothers, and I can’t help
wondering which of the two parties will get tired first. I have my own
ideas on the subject, but perhaps it would be advisable not to express
them.
So barren is this London season that I have not been able to formulate
my plan of dealing with it--you may have guessed as much! There is
nothing to wax enthusiastic over, and no one performance that remains,
luminous, in the mind. At the New Theater--and isn’t that an absurd
title for a playhouse, that, with its actors and audiences, is aging
daily?--they are playing “Leah Kleschna,” which Mr. Frohman advertises
in the New York manner by a catchline from Mr. Walkley’s criticism in
the London _Times_: “It hits you bang in the eye”--or something equally
pretty and graphic. I am not at all sure that it does anything of the
sort. It is not looked upon as an epoch-maker, and it lacks the charm
of oddity and mystery that was given to it in New York by Mrs. Fiske
herself.
We all thought when we saw “Leah Kleschna” at the Manhattan Theater
that Mrs. Fiske played a non-star part, and subordinated herself to
the others. Let me tell you, however, most emphatically, after having
seen “Leah Kleschna” twice in New York and once in London, that Mrs.
Fiske herself is its mainstay. She is absolutely its very backbone.
Without her, at the New Theater, the piece is but a gloomy melodrama,
and as such it is received by the London public. Be quite sure of that.
Of course the play itself _is_ cheap, but it masquerades somewhat
successfully under the guise of a study in criminology--and all that
sort of thing. In New York Mrs. Fiske, by her eccentricities, and
various little intellectualities that you recall when you see Miss
Lena Ashwell’s tame and bloodless performance in London, helped the
illusion. She never quite allowed you to believe that “Leah Kleschna”
was outside of her own répertoire of peculiarities.
The play is extremely well acted in London by everybody but
Miss Ashwell. She is a weak imitation of Mrs. Fiske’s many bad
points--notably her indistinctness of diction. Probably Miss Ashwell
never saw Mrs. Fiske in all her life, but Mr. Dion Boucicault, who
staged the play in London, must have watched Mrs. Fiske attentively,
and have given Miss Ashwell full particulars. At times it was quite
ludicrous to listen to the English actress positively affecting the
American actress’ most lamentable demerit. She bit up her words,
emitted the fragments in a frenzied torrent, sank her voice at critical
moments, and did all that Mrs. Fiske has been implored _not_ to do.
Charles Warner, who played the father, threw himself successfully
at the part, but forced us to recall his long continuous service in
“Drink.” Occasionally _Kleschna_ seemed to have “jim-jams,” and one
could not dissociate Mr. Warner from his well-known, world-played
performance. Herbert Waring played _Raoul_ extremely well, but the
_Schram_ of William Devereaux is not to be compared with the capital
interpretation given to the part by William B. Mack in New York. All
that Mr. Frohman could do for “Leah Kleschna” he did, but the piece
needed Mrs. Fiske. Without her it is of little importance--a sort of
old Adelphi play in kid gloves.
A piece that seems to have eluded the “American invasion” is “Mr.
Hopkinson,” which has been running for months at Wyndham’s Theater.
It is the work of Mr. R. C. Carton, who was responsible, as you may
remember, for “The Rich Mrs. Repton,” which ran for three nights or so
in New York last season. Perhaps the “American invasion” remembered
that, for if nothing succeeds like success, certainly nothing fails
like failure.
“Mr. Hopkinson,” however, would scarcely be possible for American
consumption. Its hero is a cockney cad, who would hardly be
intelligible in New York. New York has its own brand of cad--a highly
accentuated kind--and should not be blamed for shirking the notion of
fathoming the motives of the English style of blackguard. Then the part
of _Hopkinson_ is played by Mr. James Welch, for whom it might have
been built. I can imagine no other actor playing it, with the possible
exception of Francis Wilson. The piece has simply hung onto the coat
tails of little Mr. James Welch.
It is a farce filled with nasty types--all titled, of course. People
who nauseate, if taken seriously, are used as the excuse for various
farcical situations. _Hopkinson_ himself, who is a rich “bounder,”
becomes engaged to a pretty society girl, and on the eve of the wedding
she elopes. The “hero” then marries a woman whom he has jilted, and
who, in her turn, has blackmailed him. Nearly all the characters in the
piece are of the decadent order. They are the sort that occur seriously
in “The Walls of Jericho,” at the Garrick Theater. They are, perhaps,
better there, but quite unnecessary anywhere, and even improper.
“Mr. Hopkinson” has puzzled a good many people who saw it. They have
wondered why it ran so long, and what there was in the piece that
held it up, so to speak. Its success was simply due to James Welch,
a quaint, freakish little actor--a sort of Louie Freear in trousers.
Many plays of the same slight artistic value have succeeded because
one actor has seemed to give a new wrinkle in comedy to the public.
“Mr. Hopkinson” without James Welch would be a singularly risky
proposition--worse than “Leah Kleschna” without Mrs. Fiske. Evidently
the “American invasion” agreed with me--which makes it pleasant for me,
don’t you think?
_FOR BOOK LOVERS_
_Archibald Lowery Sessions_
[Illustration]
Literary preferences of well known people. How characters and
doings in real life are reflected in fiction. Robert Grant’s “The
Orchid,” William J. Locke’s “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.” The
twenty-five best selling books of the month
The public has passed a few pleasant summer hours in discussing,
through the medium of various journals, what people like to read. Very
interesting information comes to light regarding the sort of fiction
preferred by different personalities, female chiefly, in days past and
present. There seems to be no difficulty in getting hold of facts;
indeed, it becomes apparently a sort of mania with some successful
people to explain their own results by hunting up their early literary
likes and dislikes. Perhaps stories have molded some of us more or
less--in all conscience let us hope so--since we wander in such a
wilderness of them.
But, really, the serious thing to be considered just now is not so
much what we like to read as what we have to, if we want to be amused.
For that which we write depends upon that which we are, of course, and
we reap in fiction what we sow in society. Therefore, being rather
commercial, rather frivolous and rather in search of new sensations,
we get all our business, and small talk, and scandal back again,
faithfully reproduced, from the book sellers’ counters, and must go all
over it once more with as good a grace as may be.
If taste and idealism are to prevail over hard facts, somebody must
see pretty strenuously to it, ere long. In the meantime we may as well
settle down to a thoroughly American literary atmosphere, relieved
here and there by bits of nebulous romancing which pass for idealistic
production. We really don’t object. We love ourselves too well to
want company. Anthony Trolloppe, and Miss Yonge, and Mrs. Oliphant,
William Black and Thomas Hardy could introduce us to scores of pleasant
English people, but their heroes and heroines belong to a different
world altogether, and are laid on the shelf nowadays, probably never
to be taken up by the mass of readers except as refreshing antiquities
when American repetition finally palls on us. The best we can do for
an occasional let-up is to hunt up odd people or places, now and then,
and write them up. Let us hope the supply will remain inexhaustible,
and that the batch of novels for this season may give us a view of life
outside of prescribed limits.
* * * * *
“The Orchid,” by Robert Grant, Scribner’s, might be an authentic
biography of a twentieth-century society woman, including a faithful
delineation of her environment. It is not, strictly speaking, a study
of character or society, but rather a photographic reproduction of
people and conditions. In this fact is to be found the book’s only
defect as a literary work. There is no weighing of motives or analysis
of character; nothing but a plain recital of facts as they are found to
exist.
Lydia Arnold, who marries for money, is divorced, and remarries for
love, is cold-blooded and unscrupulous as many a social queen in real
life; and her device for securing the means to support her position as
the wife of her lover, revolting as it is to sensitive people, is not
entirely unprecedented. It may be that the type to which she belongs
is an extreme one, but the fact that she shocked her friends and
associates indicates that they had not entirely outgrown their natural
impulses rather than that her enormities are absolutely unknown.
We can understand the pessimism of Mrs. Andrew Cunningham when she
exclaimed: “The only unpardonable sin in this country is to lose one’s
money. Nothing else counts,” but the facts thus far do not justify it;
there are some former leaders of society who may be supposed to wish
that the generalization were true. They have not found it so.
* * * * *
“Wall Street” has a significance, not merely as the name of a famous
thoroughfare, but as epitomizing the forces which produce the
profoundest effects upon the industrial and even political and social
life of America. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the
activities which it represents should be resorted to for a supply of
material for interesting stories.
The latest fiction on this subject is Edwin Lefevre’s book, “The Golden
Flood,” published by McClure, Phillips & Co. The author, who has to
his credit quite a list of short Wall Street stories, is thoroughly
familiar with his ground, and possesses, besides, a genuine gift of
story-telling. “The Golden Flood” may possibly be criticised as dealing
with a somewhat impossible theme--an attempt to corner the gold supply;
but the description of the manner in which it affects “the richest man
in the world” is so absorbingly interesting that probabilities are
forgotten. The mixture of innocence and guile in young Mr. Grinnell,
assumed for the purpose of mystifying Mellen and Dawson, is a good bit
of character drawing. But, though these men in the story were worked
up to the point of believing that Grinnell practised alchemy, it is
doubtful if their prototypes in real life could be so affected. The
explanation, however, turns out to be a practical one, and it is so
timed as to sustain the interest to the end.
* * * * *
Unquestionably the best short stories of American politics so far
published are those by Elliott Flower in a volume entitled “Slaves of
Success,” L. C. Page & Co. There are eight of them, a connected series
in which John Wade and Ben Carroll are the chief actors.
Wade and Carroll represent two types of the political boss. The former
is described as “politically unscrupulous, but personally honest”--a
combination sometimes found; “Carroll, on the other hand, used politics
for his pecuniary advantage;” he worked for his pocket all the time.
The two men personally had little love for each other, but as each
controlled a part of the political machine, they were obliged to work
together in order to produce results. Their methods of manipulating the
machine, however, were not essentially different; if Wade had scruples
about offering a man money, yet he would, for a political advantage,
let him steal from others or from the State; and his willingness to
practise blackmail to compass his own election to the Senate was what
finally put an end to his career.
Carroll was disposed of at last also, but his downfall was due to a
grossly covetous disposition.
The stories give a very convincing series of pictures of municipal and
State politics; the incidents are all of them more or less familiar,
but they are all of them extremely interesting, and the narrative is
considerably enlivened by the introduction into it of a rather original
character for a State legislature, Azro Craig, a man who is not only
scrupulously honest, but has not the slightest hesitation in voting and
speaking as he thinks.
* * * * *
A somewhat striking story, though one which, it is to be feared, is
unlikely to attain a very wide popularity, is Evelyn Underhill’s “The
Gray World,” Century Company. It is, to all intents and purposes, a
study in spiritual development, the experiences of a soul in search
of the beautiful, and disguised--unconsciously, of course--in minor
respects, it is substantially indentical with Hawthorne’s “Artist of
the Beautiful.”
There is in both the consciousness, vague at first, of a spiritual end
to be achieved, and the struggle toward it, the depression and hopeless
sense of defeat after each encounter with the material, and finally the
successful climax of endeavor which sees, with a cheerful appreciation
of true values, the obliteration of the physical means by which it
has been reached. The spirit of the slum child after its plunge into
the gray world, and its reincarnation in Willie Hopkinson, traveled
the same road as that trod by Owen Warland. Both had to undergo this
same pitying contempt on the part of their sensible friends and
acquaintances, by whom they were mourned as men of promise who wasted
their opportunities.
But if Owen Warland was isolated from human companionship, Willie
Hopkinson had at least one comprehending friend in Hester Waring, who
helped toward his final enlightenment. “She knew very well that he was
one of her company; made for quiet journeyings, not for that frenzied
rush to catch a hypothetical train, which is called the strenuous life.”
Because the company is so small, the story will probably be understood
and enjoyed by but few; and that it is made the means of teaching
a lesson, hard to learn, will be another reason for its lack of
popularity. Nevertheless, it is a book that ought to be read.
What is essentially characteristic of George Barr McCutcheon’s stories,
is his disregard of conventional methods in his selection of material
for his plots. This is true of his Graustark stories--though some
captious critics profess to see in them a similarity to Anthony Hope’s
work--and the same quality is found in “The Day of the Dog.”
His latest book is “The Purple Parasol,” Dodd, Mead & Co., and it
furnishes the same sort of more or less fantastic entertainment that
distinguishes the author’s other stories. Few people, we imagine, would
be likely to select, a purple parasol as a clew by means of which to
track an eloping wife; it seems a little incongruous that a woman,
in arranging an elopement, should include such an article among her
effects. A purple parasol is not a necessity on such a trip, and,
besides, it is apt to be conspicuous.
But Mrs. Wharton did take one, and, as luck would have it, Helen Dering
also had one; therefore it is not to be wondered at that Sam Rossiter
made the mistake that he did. Though his blunder was the cause of
considerable unhappiness to him and some humiliation for Miss Dering,
the explanations, when they came, were of the most satisfying kind.
The book is handsomely illustrated in colors by Harrison Fisher, and
decorated by Charles B. Falls.
* * * * *
Alaska is a region of which much has been written in the last six or
eight years, since the opening of the Klondike, but the literature on
the subject, having been confined mostly to newspaper accounts of gold
discoveries and the stories of Mr. Jack London and Mr. Rex E. Beach,
has not been such as to impart a very wide variety of information upon
important points.
A book which the publishers announce as the first “to deal in any
adequate way with our great Arctic possession,” is John S. McLain’s
“Alaska and the Klondike,” McClure, Phillips & Co. Mr. McLain
accompanied the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Territories
on their visit to Alaska in 1903, and, of course, had unusual
opportunities to gather interesting facts.
The trip was a comprehensive one, and the result, now embodied in this
book, shows that its author lost no chances to observe and record
important and more or less unfamiliar matters that will entertain as
well as instruct his readers.
The book is written in a natural, unpretentious, flowing style, and
the material is skillfully handled so as to concentrate the attention
and stimulate the imagination. Besides this, there are a great many
half-tone reproductions of photographs, which help to make the
narrative more graphic.
* * * * *
“Miss Bellard’s Inspiration,” Harper’s, is William D. Howells’ latest
story. It is one which, if it could be subjected to the right kind of
adaptation, would make a successful and refreshing little comedy. For,
in spite of the shadow which Mrs. Mevison casts over the tale, the very
human qualities of Mr. and Mrs. Crombie and the self-communings of
Miss Bellard, the results of which neutralize the British directness
of Edmund Craybourne, make a delicious combination with Mr. Howells’
good-natured cynicism, which, indeed, is so good-natured as to be humor
rather that cynicism.
The story is rather a slight one, too slight, in fact, to be called
a novel; it is one which can be read in the course of a couple of
hours and with fully sustained interest to the end, when Miss Bellard
explains and acts upon her inspiration. She supplies all the novelty
in the story; she is by no means a commonplace character. Her manner
of falling in love, her reasons for breaking her engagement with
Craybourne, and the inspiration which led to its reinstatement are
not what might be expected by the veteran novel reader. But she is
vindicated in the end by the fact that she is a woman, and a beautiful
woman.
Mrs. Crombie plays her part with a good deal of sprightliness and adds
not a little to the humor of the story. Her rather fierce rebellion at
the idea of being imposed upon by her niece and her subsequent abject
surrender are all very funny, the more so because she has no idea of
being funny.
* * * * *
It seems a long time--possibly it isn’t really--- since a story
of adventure, so thoroughly good as “Terence O’Rourke, Gentleman
Adventurer,” has appeared. It is written by Louis Joseph Vance and
published by A. Wessells Company.
It is, of course, crammed full of action, one episode following
the other in quick succession without tiresome descriptions or
unnecessarily prolonged introductions; episodes that are fresh,
vivid and full of color as different as possible from the hackneyed
type that has been familiar for years. But the love interest has
not been neglected. It is a very pretty story of the loyalty of the
light-hearted Irishman, the thread of which runs through the whole
book, its climax being reserved as the hero’s reward at the end.
As the central figure in the series of adventures described is
O’Rourke, so the most conspicuously meritorious piece of literary work
is the delineation of his character. It cannot, of course, be called a
character study, inasmuch as the author’s obvious intention in writing
the tale, was to create complications for his hero to overcome rather
than to solve questions of psychology. But he has, nevertheless,
presented in the person of “the O’Rourke of Castle O’Rourke,” a clean,
generous, whole-souled Irish gentleman, one of a type that is always
lovable.
* * * * *
The title of William J. Locke’s novel, “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,”
John Lane, is somewhat misleading, for there is nothing in the book
to show that the character of Sir Marcus could be made the subject of
serious criticism. His aunt’s grim disapproval and ready suspicion of
him may fairly be attributed to causes quite foreign to the question
of his thorough respectability. It may be, however, that the reference
in the title is, not to his personal morals, but to his “History of
Renaissance Morals,” upon which he was engaged.
He was considered by his superiors steady enough to be a good
schoolmaster, and his accession to the family title does not seem
to have marked any material change in his personal habits, although
the sudden appearance of Carlotta was a disturbing influence in his
life, as it might be in that of the most sedate among us. Carlotta’s
introduction is somewhat unusual, if not improbable, but it is to be
remembered that a bright, attractive English girl, most of whose life
has been spent in a Turkish harem, cannot be expected to conform, all
at once, to English standards of conventionality.
Ordeyne’s tribulations, growing out of his enforced guardianship of
this extraordinary young woman, may be easily understood, but will
hardly be considered a reason for condoling or sympathizing with him.
The end of his “extravagant adventure” is obvious enough. It is, in
fact, the only logical conclusion under the circumstances. Naturally
Judith and Aunt Jessica disapproved, though for widely different
reasons.
* * * * *
Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith has done us all a service in his volume of short
stories to which he has given the name “At Close Range,” published
by Scribner’s. One of the principal charms of these stories lies in
the unpretentiousness of them; they are modest little tales about
modest people; people who sometimes seem to have little tenderness or
generosity about them, but who, after all, confirm the author’s theory
“that at the bottom of every heart crucible choked with life’s cinders
there can almost always be found a drop of gold.”
Each one of the stories has just the one touch of nature that always
makes its appeal irresistible. Steve Dodd, Sam Makin, Jack Stirling
and Captain Shortrode are common enough characters, and of a type from
which not much is usually looked for except the energetic pursuit of
business, but under the proper stimulus they show traits and impulses
similar to those of the Dear Old Lady.
* * * * *
The Twenty-five Best Selling Books of the Month.
“The Marriage of William Ashe,” Mrs. Humphry Ward, Harper & Bros.
“The Orchid,” Robert Grant, Chas. Scribner’s Sons.
“The Accomplice,” Frederick Trevor Hill, Harper & Bros.
“At the Sign of the Fox,” by the author of “The Garden of a
Commuter’s Wife,” Macmillan Co.
“A Dark Lantern,” Elizabeth Robins, Macmillan Co.
“The Missourian,” Eugene P. Lyle, Doubleday, Page & Co.
“Constance Trescott,” Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Century Co.
“The Clansman,” Thomas Dixon, Doubleday, Page & Co.
“Sandy,” Alice Hegan Rice, Century Co.
“The Beautiful Lady,” Booth Tarkington, McClure, Phillips & Co.
“Mrs. Essington,” Esther and Lucia Chamberlain, Century Co.
“Pam,” Bettina von Hutten, Dodd, Mead & Co.
“The Princess Passes,” C. N. and A. M. Williamson, Henry Holt & Co.
“The Purple Parasol,” George B. McCutcheon, Dodd, Mead & Co.
“The Divine Fire,” May Sinclair, Henry Holt & Co.
“The Garden of Allah,” Robert Hichens, F. A. Stokes & Co.
“The Rose of the World,” Agnes and Egerton Castle, F. A. Stokes &
Co.
“The Man on the Box,” Harold MacGrath, Bobbs-Merrill Co.
“The Master Mummer,” E. Phillips Oppenheim, Little, Brown & Co.
“The Plum Tree,” David Graham Phillips, Bobbs-Merrill Co.
“Terence O’Rourke,” Louis Joseph Vance, A. Wessells Co.
“The Memoirs of an American Citizen,” Robert Herrick, Macmillan Co.
“The Breath of the Gods,” Sidney McCall. Little, Brown & Co.
“The Image in the Sand,” E. F. Benson, J. B. Lippincott Co.
“The Great Mogul,” Louis Tracy, E. J. Clode & Co.
Transcribers’ Notes:
The articles in this magazine were written by different people, and
some of the articles contain dialect. So, inconsistent punctuation,
hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.
Some text in double-quotation marks contains double-quotation text
within single-quotation text.
In the original magazine, the articles’ titles and authors mostly were
enclosed in illustrations, while the poems’ titles followed headpieces.
In this version of this eBook, all titles are shown as normal headings,
with [Illustration] placeholders following the articles’ headings and
preceding the poems’.
In articles beginning with a quotation, the publisher omitted the
opening quotation mark.
Page 35: “We maun run for it!” was printed that way.
Page 67: Missing closing single quote added after “and my laundress.”
Page 91: “morever” may be a misprint for “moreover”.
Page 102: Missing closing single quote in the phrase beginning “‘more
life, fuller life” not remedied because the proper position is
uncertain.
Page 119: An opening double quotation mark is missing before “She held
up the decoys”, or a closing double quotation mark is missing at the
end of the quotation just before it.
Page 143: “And Huldah went” was printed that way, not as “Aunt Huldah
went.”
Page 152: “Capus in French is always exhilarating” was printed as “in
always” and has been changed here.
Page 158: “indentical” may be a misprint for “identical”.
Page 156: The introduction to “For Book Lovers” ends abruptly after the
word “month”.