he wished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living
in town and sought the quietude of the hills.
“Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be
willin' to paht with it,” explained Pop.
The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell
it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal
hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition
of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded.
Pop no longer had to fear arrest for trespass. His gold field was now
legally his. But he was still kept uneasy by his inability to make his
gold marketable. His uneasiness increased as September approached. He
had applied to the purchase of the field the sum saved to cancel the
mortgage upon his house at the rear end of the town.
The three days before the foreclosure of the mortgage were days of
exquisite anguish to Pop. When the foreclosure came and he and his
goods were turned out on the banks of the creek to make room for the
mill-owner's improvements, his mental turmoil ended. He took the crisis
calmly.
“Jes' wait,” he said to a neighbour who had stopped at sight of the
moving-out. “Wait till I get dat ere goal on de mahket. I'll bull' a
mill dat'll drive dis yer mill out o' d' business. Den I'll done buy
back dis yer ol' home.”
But the next day, when the unexpected happened,--when builders began to
tear down his house,--the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a
day of moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on
the bank of the creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the
mill-owner. Now more than ever had he a special purpose for enriching
himself by means of his treasure across the hill.
The coming of two circuses in succession had taken the interest of the
boys away from Pop during August and part of September. Now they turned
again to him for amusement. First they besieged the abandoned stable to
which he had conveyed his goods, and in which he slept,--for he had not
found will to betake himself from the town he had so long inhabited, and
his shanty in the field remained unoccupied. His purchase of the land
had betrayed to general knowledge the location of his treasure, of which
he continued to bring in new specimens.
One October day he had just come from vainly attempting to induce the
postmaster to join him in the enterprise of exploiting his gold-field.
In front of the post-office, he was met by some boys coming noisily from
school. They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket.
As the town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in
refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented
themselves with retaliating in words only,
“Say, Pop,” cried one of them, “you'd better keep an eye on your
gold-field. Nick Hennessey knows where it is, and he's gittin' up a
diggin' party to take a wagon out some night and bring away all your
gold.”
The boys, laughing at this quickly invented announcement, ran off after
a hand-organ. The old man stood perfectly still, or as nearly so as the
feebleness of his legs would permit.
That evening Pop was missing from the town. And when Abraham Wesley, who
had often lent his shotgun to the old man, went to look for that weapon,
intending to shoot glass balls in the fairgrounds across the river, the
fowling-piece too was missing.
Pop had gone out to protect his possession. Three nights passed and
three days. The few country folk and others who travelled that way
during this time saw the old man walking about in his field or sitting
in front of his shanty, his shotgun on his shoulders, his eyes fixed
suspiciously on all who might become intruders. Night and day he
patrolled his little domain.
At dusk of the third day a lively party was returning to the town in
a wagon from a search for nuts. The full moon was rising and the
merrymakers were singing. One of the girls was thirsty. When she saw the
shanty in the rugged field, she asked a young man to get her a glass of
water at the hut. The wagon stopped and the youth climbed astride the
rail fence. Suddenly an unnaturally shrill and excited voice was heard:
“Hyah, you, doan' come no farder! Dese yer's my premises!”
From behind the empty shanty appeared the thin old negro, bareheaded,
his shotgun at his shoulder, a striking figure against the rising moon.
The young man descended from the fence into the field. There came a
flash and a crack from Pop Thornberry's gun. The youth felt the sting of
a piece of birdshot in his leg. Howling and limping, he turned quickly
over the fence into the wagon, which made a hasty flight.
The next morning some idlers went out from the town to the scene of the
adventure. They found the old man lying hatless in the middle of
the field, face downwards, upon the shotgun. He had died of sheer
exhaustion, on guard--and on his own land, as befit an honest citizen
who had never intruded upon the peace of other men.
XXI. -- AT THE STAGE DOOR
[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.Copyright, 1892, by J. B.
Lippincott Company.]
First let me explain how I came to be sitting in so unsavoury a place as
Gorson's “fifteen cent oyster and chop house” that night. Most newspaper
men--the rank and file--receive remuneration by the week. Those not
given over to domesticity, those who enjoy that alluring regularity
identical with liberty, fare sumptuously, as a rule, on “pay-day.”
Thereafter the quantity and quality of the good things of life that they
enjoy diminish daily until the next pay-day.
Pay-day with us was Friday. This was Thursday night. I having gone to
unusual lengths of good cheer in the early part of that week, had
now fallen low, and was duly thankful for what I could get--even at
Gorson's.
As my glance wandered over my table, over the beer-bottles and the
oysters, beyond the crowd of ravenous and vulgar eaters and hurrying
waiters, to the street door, some one opened that door from the outside
and entered. An odd looking personage this some one.
A person very tall and conspicuously thin. These peculiarities were
accentuated by the dilapidated frock coat that reached to his knees, and
thus concealed the greater portion of his gray summer trousers, which
“bagged” exceedingly and were picturesquely frayed at the bottom edges,
as I could see when he came nearer to me. He wore a faded straw hat,
which looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite
its angularity of outline and its wanness, had that expression of
complacency which often relieves from pathos the countenances of
harmlessly demented people. His hair was gray, but his somewhat
formidable looking moustache was still dark. He carried an unadorned
walking-stick and under his left arm was what a journalistic eye
immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man's aspect of extreme
poverty, I deduced that his manuscripts were never accepted.
As he passed the cashier's desk, he stopped, lowered his body, not by
stooping in the usual way, but by bending his knees, and with a quick
sweep of his eyes by way of informing himself whether or not he was
observed, he picked up a cigar stump that some one had dropped there.
Then he walked with a rather shambling but self-important gait to the
table next mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and
sat down upon it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the
limited bill of fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in
his ordering, through a hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl of
oatmeal.
A bowl of oatmeal is the least expensive item on the bill of fare at
Gorson's. When I hear a man ordering oatmeal in a cheap eating-house, my
heart aches for him. I had just the money and the intention to procure
another bottle of beer and another box of cigarettes. The sum required
to obtain these necessaries of life is exactly the price of a bowl of
oatmeal and a steak at Gorson's. So I hastily arose to go, and on my
way out I had a brief conversation with the bellicose-appearing waiter,
which resulted in my unknown friend's being overwhelmed with amazement
later when the waiter brought him a warm steak with his oatmeal and said
that some one else had already paid his bill. I did not wait to witness
this result, for the man looked one of the sort to put forth a show of
indignation at being made an object of charity.
An hour later I saw him walking with an air of consequence up Broadway,
smoking what was probably the bit of cigar he had picked up in the
restaurant. He still carried his manuscript, which was wrapped in a
soiled blue paper. As I was hurrying up-town on an assignment for the
newspaper, I could not observe his movements further than to see that
when he reached Fourteenth Street he made for one of the benches in
Union Square.
It was by the size, shape, and blue cover that I recognized that
manuscript two days later upon the desk of the editor of the Sunday
supplementary pages of the paper, as I was submitting to that personage
a “special” I had written upon the fertile theme, “Producing a
Burlesque.”
“May I ask what that stuff is wrapped in blue?”
“Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental
depression brought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about
Beautiful Women of History, part in prose and part in doggerel.”
“Of course you'll reject it?”
“Naturally. I'll ease his mind by telling him the subject lacks
contemporaneousness. Have a cigarette? By the way, have you any special
interest in the rubbish?”
“No; I only think I've seen it before somewhere. What's the writer's
name and address?”
“It's to be called for. He didn't leave any address. From that fact and
his appearance, I infer that he doesn't have any permanent abode. Here's
his name,--Ernest Ruddle. Not half as much individuality in the name as
in the man. I remember him because he had a straw hat on.”
The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday
article saw the light for the first time on the following Monday night.
There being no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the
town--represented by the critics and the sporting and self-styled
Bohemian elements--was there. The performance was to have a popular
comedian as the central figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce
a once favourite comic-opera prima donna, who had been abroad for some
years. This stage queen had once beheld the town at her feet. She
had abdicated her throne in the height of her glory, having made the
greatest success of her career on a certain Monday night, and having
disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly afterward materializing in
Paris.
There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as
the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had
seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she
had grown a bit passée; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had
met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked “as rosy
and youthful as ever.” Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot
of masculinity classified under the general head of “men about town,”
crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at
length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab
tights, she had a long and noisy reception.
My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage manager
had served to obtain for me an unusual privilege,--that of witnessing
the first night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across
the stage and the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish
haze, a familiar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top
gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in
some risk of decapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at
once distinguished it from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous
faces that rose back of it. The face was that of my man of the
restaurant and of the blue-covered manuscript.
I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could
command most of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from
parquet to roof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much
sang-froid and a London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous
dialogue, came toward the footlights to sing. While the conductor of
the orchestra poised his baton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she
began:
“I'm one of the swells
Whose accent tells
That we've done the Contenong.”
When she had sung only to this point, people in the audience were
exchanging significant smiles. There was no doubt of it; Louise Moran's
voice had lost its beauty. The years and joys of life abroad had done
their work. We now knew why she had given up comic opera and had gone
into burlesque. The house was so taken by surprise that at the end of
her second stanza, where applause should have come, none came. There was
no occasion for her to draw upon her supply of “encore verses.”
Unprepared for the chilling silence that followed her song, she bestowed
upon the audience a look of mingled astonishment, pain, and resentment.
But she recovered self-possession promptly and delivered the few spoken
lines preceding her exit gaily enough. Her face clouded as soon as she
was off the stage. She abused her maid in her dressing-room and sent the
comedian's “dresser” out for some troches. The state of her mind was
not improved by the sound of a hail-storm-like sound that came from
the direction of the stage shortly after,--the applause at the leading
comedian's entrance.
As the newspapers said the next day, the only honours of that
performance were with the comedian. The star of Louise Moran had set.
Not only was her singing-voice a ruin, but the actress had grown coarse
in visage. The once willowy outlines of her figure had rounded vulgarly.
On the face, audacity had taken place of piquancy. Even the dark gray
eyes, which somehow seemed black across the footlights, had lost some
lustre.
Why had the once lovely creature come back from Europe to disturb the
memories of her other radiant self, and to turn those dainty photographs
of her earlier person into lies?
Every man in the house was thinking this question at the end of the
first act.
She had another solo to sing in the second act. It was while she was
attempting this that my glance strayed to the man in the gallery. His
face this time surprised me.
It wore a look of ineffable sympathy and sorrow. Surely tears were
falling from the sad eyes.
This pity touched me. It was so solitary. The feeling of the rest of the
audience was plainly one of resentful derision at being disappointed.
After the performance I waited for the comedian. He was called before
the curtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few
faint cries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had
summoned the manager to her dressing-room. While she hastily assumed
her wraps for the street, she was excitedly complaining of the musical
director “for not knowing his business,” the comedian for “interfering”
in her scenes, the composer for writing the music too high, and the
librettist for supplying such “beastly rubbish” in the way of dialogue.
“Very well; I'll call a rehearsal to-morrow at ten,” the conciliatory
manager replied. “You talk to Myers” (the musical director) “yourself
about it. And you can introduce those two songs you speak of. Myers will
fix the other music to suit your voice.”
“And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once,” she
commanded, “and see that that song and dance clown” (the comedian)
“never comes on the stage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't
go on at all. That's settled!”
The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab was
waiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which
the stage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way
from a main street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad
paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street
does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness
thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp
that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned
street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it
eventually reaches another main street.
This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadows
opposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not
think that within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic
realm which the people “in front” idealize into a wonderful inaccessible
country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and
before the playworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of
terrestrial beer and sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from
the crowds of men and women in the theatre and from the illumined street
in front.
The ordinary world, when passing this strange place, peers in curiously
from the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street
to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic
opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the
up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate
players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere
trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence.
These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and
before the actors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge
in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is
constantly opening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a
few bold youths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying
to look like men of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of
these young men struck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash
attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon
the stage door, my man of the restaurant, and the manuscript, and the
gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was
cold, he shivered perceptibly.
“Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?” I said, aloud.
The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon
his seat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat:
“Oh, he's waiting for Miss Moran. She didn't always go home from the
theatre in a cab. She acquired the habit abroad, I suppose. How she's
changed. I knew her in other days.”
“Really? I didn't know that. Tell me about her.”
“It's a common story. She's the result of a mercenary mother's schemes.
She's not as old as people think, you know. Her career has been
eventful, which makes it seem long. But I was in the cast, playing a
small part in the first play she ever appeared in, and that was only
twelve years ago. She was about twenty-one then. She waited on customers
in her mother's little stationery store, until one day she eloped with a
poor young fellow whom she loved, in order to escape a rich old man whom
her mother had selected for a son-in-law. She could have endured
poverty well enough, if the mother hadn't done the
'I--forgive--and--Heaven--bless--you--my--children' act, after which she
succeeded in making the girl quarrel with her husband continually. She
was a schemer, that mother. A theatrical manager, whom she knew, was
introduced to the girl, who was more beautiful then than ever afterward.
The mother managed to have the girl's husband discharged from the bank
where he was employed on the same day that the manager made the girl an
offer to go on the stage. The boy naturally wanted to keep his wife with
him, but the mother told him he was a fool.
“'I'll travel with her,' she said, 'and you stay here and get another
situation.' The wife, intoxicated at the prospects of stage triumphs,
urged, and the boy gave in.
“A year or so after that, the girl had drifted completely out of the
husband's life, as they say in society plays, the mother managed to
bring about the estrangement so promptly.
“The husband stayed at home and got work in a railroad office or
somewhere, so as to earn money with which to drink himself to death--I
say, let's go in here and eat. If we go to the club, I'll be bored to
death with congratulations.”
We turned into a lighted vestibule and mounted the stairs to a modest
little café over a Broadway saloon. There, over the cigars and Pilsner
presently the comedian continued the story:
“When the husband learned that to his charming mother-in-law's
machinations he owed the loss of his position and his wife, he bided his
time, like a sensible fellow, and one day he called upon the old lady at
her flat. Without a word, he proceeded to pull out much of her hair and
otherwise to disfigure her permanently, which, as she was a vain woman,
made her miserable the rest of her days. Then he disappeared, and has
not been heard of since. It seems strange the thing never got into the
newspapers. By the way, you won't print this story, my boy, until she or
I leave the profession.”
“Why not? Are you the only man who knows it?”
“No; it was general gossip in the profession at that time.”
“How did you get it so straight?”
“She told me. I knew her well in those days. Oh, use the story if you
like, only don't credit it to me. She's very mad because I made a hit
to-night and she didn't.”
“But what was the name of her husband?”
“Poor devil!--his name was--what was it, anyhow? By Jove, I can't think
of it! It'll come back to me, though, and I'll let you know later. He
had literary aspirations, by the way. She used to laugh at the poetry he
had written about her. Poor boy!”
The next night, radical changes having been effected in the burlesque,
the prima donna made a more creditable showing. I happened to be at the
stage door again when she came out with her maid after the performance,
as I had under my guidance one of the newspaper's artists, who had been
making some sketches of life behind the scenes. She was in a gayer mood
than that in which she had been on the previous night.
As she was entering the cab, I heard a muffled exclamation, which came
from the shadow opposite the stage door. Dimly in that shadow could
be seen a form with arms outstretched toward the woman, as in an
involuntary gesture. The cab rolled away. The form emerged from the
darkness and wearily strode by. It was that of my manuscript man. He had
the same straw hat, stick, and frock coat.
“That queer old chap must be really in love with her,” I thought,
smiling. Such things often happen. I knew a gallery god--but that will
keep. Evidently here was an amusing case, not without its aspect of
pathos.
Being in that vicinity on the following night, I strolled up to the
stage door, merely to see whether the straw hat would be there again.
There it was, patiently waiting, scourged by the most ferocious of
January winds.
Doubtless the man came here every night to catch a glimpse of his
divinity. He was quite unobtrusive, and I was probably the only one who
noticed his constant attendance. I learned at the newspaper office that
he had called for the rejected manuscript bearing his name,--Ernest
Ruddle. Then for a time I neither saw nor thought of him.
One night, in the last of January,--the coldest of that savage
winter,--I happened again to be in the corridor leading to the stage
door, having come from within the theatre in advance of my friend the
comedian, with whom I was to have supper at the Actors' Athletic Club.
The actress's cab was waiting. The dark little portion of the world back
there was deserted.
Along the corridor, through which the sound of chorus girls' laughter
came, strolled the comedian, his cigar already lighted and behind it his
cheerful, hearty, smooth-shaven visage appearing ruddy from the recent
washing off of “make-up.”
“Hello!” he began, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pockets. “By
the way, while I think of it, I just passed Miss Moran coming from the
dressing-room, and suddenly that name came back to me, the name of her
husband. It was a peculiar name,--Ernest Ruddle.”