When I meet some fellow-performer in the Pallinder theatricals nowadays
we seldom fail to hark back to that noteworthy occasion before we have
had out our talk. There were many of us and we have since scattered
wide to widely differing lives, yet, I think for most this episode
of the eighties probably bulks largest in the dun landscape of our
respectable careers. This is no tragedy; we all married--or by far the
greater number of us--and lived happily at times, at times unhappily,
as people do, ever after. But we never came nearer to adventure.
Reviewing that night with a friend, I am always amazed at the stirring
events that took place within the notice of only one or two persons; we
each cherish a different recollection. So much seems to have happened
to us individually, it is after all not surprising that something
tremendous should have happened to us collectively. Not long since, as
we were discussing it in a company, someone said: "Wasn't it awful when
I fell over the jardinière right out by the footlights?" Nobody else
remembered the shocking occurrence! This heroine is now a comfortable
matron of forty-odd with two daughters at Bryn Mawr; she has a handsome
establishment, and an excellent dressmaker; her only anxiety, I
believe, is her youngest son, who is a delicate child. It is strange
to think of this sensible middle-aged woman, who, like all the rest of
us, has lived out her romance, seen the world, suffered who knows how
many griefs and disappointments, and yet had her share of happiness,
it is strange to think of her harbouring all these years the stinging
memory of how she fell over the jardinière. The mind has a vexatious
pet-animal trick of picking up and storing away trivialities; what
would we not all give to remember what is worth remembering--and to
forget!
I said we were many; for, besides the cast of "Tell," "Mrs.
Tankerville's Tiara" demanded a practically unlimited number of young
people in full dress for the ballroom scene. I have since suspected
that Mazie, the diplomatic, selected the play for that very reason. She
asked all the débutantes, and every one else who was "anybody"; and,
no matter what we said, we were all sufficiently tickled to figure so
publicly in a new dress, even if only for a few minutes, and in what I
have seen aptly ticketed a "thinking part." Such was my own, and I was
divided between a feeling of relief that I had no speeches to remember
and deliver in the hollow expectant silence of the audience-room, and
an inward conviction that had I been cast for a leading rôle, I should
have done much better than anyone else. The performance was, of course,
late in beginning; but everybody expected that, and although people
had been invited for nine, many did not arrive until long after. To
this day I can remember the look of the ballroom,[5] very high, wide,
and chilly, rows of empty chairs drawn up across the floor, spirals of
smilax twisted around the pillars--it was a hard place to decorate, so
big and bare--and Mrs. Pallinder erect by the door, with a grove of
potted plants behind her. She had to receive by herself, as Mazie took
part in the second play, and did not care to dull the effect of her
first costume by letting it be seen prematurely. Mazie had a fine idea
of dramatic proprieties, and a certain sense of climax. The colonel
did not show for some reason; I believe he was downstairs, welcoming
the men as they came in, to the punchbowl on the sideboard. Mrs.
Botlisch had providentially gone to bed with a bilious attack; she had
entertained us with a particular account of her symptoms, remedies, and
their results at luncheon. So Mrs. Pallinder received, looking rather
haggard, I thought, in spite of her rouge; perhaps it was because she
was not wearing those famous diamonds, and one missed their generous
brilliance. Jewels were eminently suited to Mrs. Pallinder; her fair
hair and clear stone-grey eyes seemed to gain a needed lustre from
her necklaces and pendants, and she was the only woman I ever saw who
could wear an earring gracefully. That barbaric ornament set her ear
like a drop of dew on the petal of a flower--there was no hint of
mutilation about it; and I believe she could have sported a stud in
her nostril without offence. She was placed to the utmost advantage;
her delicately classic head and white shoulders were detached upon the
background of dark foliage with a charming cameo-like effect. But she
was all one faint exquisitely-faded colour in an ashes-of-roses silk,
and that or something else more subtle made her look strangely older.
She had surrendered her diamonds with many playful-serious cautions to
_Mrs. Tankerville_, that is, Mazie; and that young woman was decorating
her languid Oriental person with them in the depths of her den of
rocking-chairs and mirrors.
The Chorus of "William Tell" arrived a long while ahead of the stars,
who, as we have seen, were dining with Doctor Vardaman. Even by the
time the Chorus had finished dressing--there was only one of him, as
I believe I have intimated elsewhere, a tall fair young man, who wore
eye-glasses in private life and was a great admirer of Mazie's,--the
rest of the cast had not yet put in an appearance. I suppose if we
could have known what was going forward in the Swiss cottage we would
have been much exercised; but we had no apprehensions, and no quick
means of communication, if any doubts had assailed us. Few private
houses had a telephone in those days, not even the Pallinders--which
was, no doubt, owing in large part to the inconvenient habit prevailing
among telephone-companies from the earliest times of demanding
quarterly payments in advance, and removing the instrument if they
were not forthcoming. So far from worrying, however, we found some
pleasurable excitement in the long wait behind the scenes, and stealthy
peeps through the eye-hole. The setting for "Tell" was the same
throughout its two acts as I recall, a Swiss picture with Alps in the
background, canvas trees and foliage to the front, and a "practicable"
well with a gigantic sweep, whence they brought up pails of water and
diluted the contents of _Tell's_ milk-cans--he was a dairyman in the
burlesque; this was the _Schactenthal Waterfall_, and was the subject
of many noble apostrophes from all the actors; even _Gessler_ and
_Jemmy_ had something to say about it. There was a trap-door in the
floor of the stage and a servant stood to hand up buckets as they were
needed.
"Most people," the Chorus remarked to me, "would have had to put up a
lot of money for all this. The colonel got a carpenter from the Grand
Opera House, not the head man, I suppose, but some second-best fellow
they could spare, to plan and oversee it all, so that everything would
be safe. That's the man over there now; he told me the bill for the
lumber alone would be thirty-five or forty dollars--and it's good for
nothing but kindling-wood after to-night, you know."
We were sitting together on a green baise-covered mound, very much in
the way, doubtless, as we watched the men getting things in position.
I had no business to be there at all, but I was dressed and ready for
my part, and so alive with curiosity and excitement, I could no more
stay in one place sedately than a young kitten or puppy. The stolid
professionals at work on the scenery endured our presence on the
principle, perhaps, that bids us to suffer fools kindly.
"The Pallinders must be awfully well off," I said. My companion eyed me
soberly. The Chorus was a serious and practical young fellow; at the
present time he is conducting a great milling business somewhere up in
Michigan. They make two or three kinds of breakfast-foods, I think,
and have been extraordinarily successful. But we were not dreaming of
that the night we perched together on the make-believe mound behind the
swaying drop-curtain; rather must his thoughts have been occupied with
Mazie Pallinder, her long serpentine figure, and sprightly drawl. For
I noticed how his eyes wandered constantly in the direction whence she
might appear.
"I wish the boys would get here," he said, wrinkling his brows. "It's
half-after already. They're beginning to crowd in pretty thick--last
time I looked all the first fifteen rows were taken. Is--ah--is Miss
Pallinder going to come and help her mother receive? I didn't see her.
But if she is, I--ah--I really ought to go and speak to them."
He coloured furiously at the mere mention of her name; and it struck me
as exquisitely humorous that his goddess was probably at that instant
producing just such a blush on her own well-tried cheeks by what
mysterious agency! Pink nail-paste and talcum-powder had a good deal to
do with it, I believe.
"She isn't there, and you shouldn't go in costume anyhow. Nobody ought
to be seen beforehand--Mazie says so. She's all dressed and sitting in
her room until 'Mrs. Tankerville,' begins. How did it happen you didn't
go to dinner at Doctor Vardaman's with the others?"
"Why, I had to go down to the train to meet Susie; she's coming on from
New Haven with the two children to make us a visit. Her train was due
at eight, but it's five hours late--stalled at a washout just this side
of Pittsburgh, the fellow at the ticket-office told me. He said all
the Pan-Handle and B. & O. trains were coming in anywhere from one to
nine hours behind the schedule-time. Freshets, you know; the Ohio's on
a boom. They're having an awful time in Cincinnati, they say, biggest
flood in years. There, isn't that J. B.'s voice?"
I beat a hasty retreat for Mazie's room, where the entire feminine
cast of "Mrs. Tankerville" was by this time collected. We had to be
bestowed in some place where we could talk in safety; and no talking
could be allowed "behind" while the plays were in progress, even such a
scatter-brained crew as we were, knew that. But from time to time one
of us would steal out to the wings, watch the familiar antics, listen
to the familiar jokes a while, and bring back a report. I believe we
enjoyed this excited hour or two more than anything that went before or
after. In Mazie's room the gas flared high; the chairs, the lounge,
the bed were heaped with finery. We pulled a big pink silk screen
in front of the door so that the arriving audience, taking off its
wraps in the other bedrooms, might not see us. There was a green-room
atmosphere (we thought) of flowers, candy, perfume, acid gossip; and
now and again we could hear one of the men rushing through the hall
outside to their quarters in the wing, for a change of clothes; or a
thunderous burst of laughter, "like a dam giving away," Kitty said,
when the dining-room door in the hall below swung open.
"It's going all right," she reported, returning from one of these
expeditions with very bright eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked
distractingly neat and coquettish in her black frock, cap, and short
ruffled apron as the maid; and I was afterwards told that one of the
men had caught and kissed her in a dark corner behind the prompter's
chair. They all seemed to be in wonderfully high spirits. "Only it's
so funny the audience sometimes laugh in places where we didn't expect
'em to at all! You ought to see J. B. Taylor. He looks perfectly
_immense_ in that kilt; I didn't _know_ he was such a big man; great
big round pink arms like this! And the kilt kind of peaks down right
in the middle of the back; Harry Smith called him Doctor Mary Walker;
and _Gessler_ said he ought to have a bustle--right out loud so that
the people could hear! They call that _gagging_ the part." She sent a
glance of sparkling malice, suggestive, somehow, of a file of small new
pins, toward Muriel. "J. B.'s the _silliest_--you can't help laughing
to save your life."
"Did they laugh at Teddy?"
"Like everything! He's a little husky, or else it's too much dinner,
his voice sounds kind of queer, but I guess that will wear off in a
minute." She added in a rapid whisper, as Mazie's back was turned,
"Girls, it's _rich_! He's got himself up to look about as fat as Mrs.
Botlisch in an old gingham wrapper without corsets, you know, and he's
sort of taking her off, he's simply _splendid_, people just roll over
and laugh every time he opens his mouth."
"Is Doctor Vardaman there?"
"What, behind? No. He's not here at all, one of the men told me. He had
to go and sit up with some sick person, or something. Don't you want to
see J. B., Muriel?"
"No," said Muriel flatly. She was looking acutely distressed, like a
large sorrowing Madonna. "I think Mr. Johns must look a great deal
sillier," she said with a kind of defiance. "Or that other--what is his
name?--the one that pretends to be the Chorus, just one of him--he's
_very_ silly!"
"How is Bob doing?" Mazie asked.
Bob was the Chorus. He was no actor; but the part only required someone
with a voice, and he had a really beautiful high sweet tenor. All he
must do was to appear in season and out of season and jodel, which he
did to admiration, with a perfectly grave face, for as I have said, he
was of a sober disposition, and to tell the truth saw nothing comic
in it. But about the seventh or eighth jodel the audience fell into
paroxysms of laughter and so continued whenever the Chorus came on. Bob
made one of the hits of the evening, to his own great confusion and the
frank surprise of everyone else in the cast.
"Bob? Oh, all right. But that's one of the things they're laughing at;
isn't that funny?"
"Why not, if he's funny?" said Muriel, puzzled.
"Oh, I don't mean funny _that_ way, you know, I mean _funny_. Why
don't you come and look on a while, Maze? Bob'll do better if you're
there."
"Oh, I guess I don't care to," said Mazie with indolent emphasis.
"I'd tear my dress or something. It's all full of ropes and nails and
pegs behind there." She leaned back in her rocker, contemplating the
sweeping breadths of her dull red silk train, spangled with jets; the
front of her low corsage darted light from innumerable facets of jet
and diamonds. In the absence of an actual tiara, her mother's diamond
necklace had been fastened on a symmetrical frame of silver wire, and
gleamed abroad from Mazie's dead-black hair, arranged in a forest of
bangs. Without a single pretty feature, she wrought a curious illusion
of dark and brilliant beauty; and Kitty gave her the tribute of an
unwilling admiration. A girl, and not a handsome girl at that, who was
too lazy or too stiff-necked to walk half-a-dozen steps to show herself
when she was looking her best to a man, who as we all knew was in love
with her, and who would be no poor match either--such a girl, I say,
commanded all the respect of which Kitty's small soul was capable.
Then I adventured again, alone; and harvested a sensation. For, while
I was standing in the left wings, between two blocks of scenery, with
my skirts furled as close as the fashion of the day would allow, to
avoid casual tacks, Teddy Johns came off, followed by a gratifying,
yet somehow a little awesome, burst of applause. He stood close
beside me breathing hard, for his humour was largely acrobatic,
and dabbing the perspiration from his forehead and cheeks with a
corner of handkerchief, daintily so as not to mar his paint. And the
audience clamoured a recall. I suppose there were not more than a
couple of hundred people in the ballroom, yet the noise they made was
deafening in so contracted a space; there was something formidable and
pitiless in that great insistent voice. Sudden comprehension of what
stage-fright might be came to me, and I looked at Teddy with admiring
wonder. What must it be to face that hydra of a creature, that thing
of many souls fused into one unthinkable whole out there beyond the
footlights!
"Weren't you frightened?" I whispered.
He turned towards me--and it was not Teddy Johns at all! It was a man I
had never seen before.
I was so startled I could only gasp and stutter; the light was good
enough, yet I thought it must have misled me, and peered into his
face anxiously, expecting his familiar chuckle. His features were a
mask of paint, apparently laid on at random, but as I know now, with
real skill and knowledge of effect; he wore false eyebrows and a wig
with a grotesque "slat" sunbonnet pushed halfway off, and held by the
strings knotted under his chin. His body was padded shapelessly. And
while I strove to find Teddy under this disguise, he suddenly bestowed
on me a grin so vicious and repellent, that I almost screamed aloud.
Whether that expression of amusement was involuntary on Huddesley's
part, or whether he feigned it out of deliberate deviltry, I have often
wondered. I must have uttered some sort of queer noise, for he said in
a biting whisper: "Hold your tongue, you--fool!" and in the same breath
was back on the stage, bowing to the tumult. He made the leader of the
orchestra a sign, the instruments crashed out the opening bars of his
song, and he began over again.
I did not faint or go into hysterics, for I was a healthy and after all
a tolerably sensible young woman; but it is impossible to convey any
idea of my bewilderment. Fortunately it lasted only a moment or so.
Huddesley made his second exit to the right, for the sake of variety,
maybe; and the Chorus, crossing the stage, stationed himself in the
wings almost at my side, that he might be heard jodeling "off," in
stage-phrase.
"No, that isn't Teddy," he whispered, in answer to my excited murmur.
"Yo-de-la-_hee-ho_!--Teddy's sick, that's the doctor's man--La-he,
la-he, la-he, ho!--Huddesley, you know; they got him to take Ted's
place, mighty lucky he can, too--Yo-de-la--_hee_-ho, yo-de-la-a-a!"