one of my 'late nights.' I took a cab and went to the station-house. The
case had been reported by a policeman at Ninth and Locust Streets, who
had called for a patrol-wagon. From him I got the story. He had seen the
thing happen.
“He was walking down Locust at half-past twelve that night, and was
opposite the Midnight Mission, when his attention was attracted to
the only two persons who were at that moment on the other side of the
street. One was a man of the appearance of a vagabond, coming from Ninth
Street. The other was a woman, who had come from Tenth Street, and who
seemed to walk with great difficulty, as if ready to sink at every step
from weakness.
“The woman dropped her head as she neared the man. The man peered into
her face, in the manner of one who had acquired the habit of examining
the countenances of passers-by.
“The two met under the gas-lamp that is so conspicuous a night feature
of the north side of Locust Street, between Ninth and Tenth.
“The woman gave no attention to the man. So exhausted was she that she
leaned helplessly against the fence. The man ran forward, shrieking like
a lunatic.
“'Jeannie!'
“The woman lifted her eyes in a dull kind of amazement and whispered:
“'Donald!'
“She fell back, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her lips
a dozen times, with a half-savage gladness, crying and laughing
hysterically, as women do.
“When the policeman had reached the pair, the woman had seen the last of
this world.
“Afterward we found that she had been discharged from the municipal
hospital, where she had been in the smallpox ward two weeks before; and
we surmised that she had virtually had nothing to eat since then.
“At the station-house the man explained that the woman was his runaway
wife. He had started in search of her two years before, with no other
clue as to her whereabouts than the knowledge that she had sailed for
America with a man named Ferriss--”
“What?” cried Max. “Was the name Archibald Ferriss? That was the name of
the man who died in the Denver lazaretto--”
But Max was stopped by Breffny, who almost shouted in excitement:
“And the name of the son of McKeown & Ferriss, of Glasgow, in whose
shipyard was employed as timekeeper the Donald Wilson--”
“Donald Wilson was the name of the man who met his wife that night in
front of the Midnight Mission,” said I, in further confirmation.
It was remarkable. One of the three chapters of this tragic story had
entered into the experience of each of us three who sat there emptying
stone mugs. Now, for the first time, was the story complete to each of
us.
“But what became of the man?” asked Breffny.
“When the police lieutenant spoke of having her body interred in
Potter's Field, the husband spoke up indignantly. He brought forth two
gold pieces, saying:
“'I have the money for her grave. I saved this through all my
wanderings, because I thought that when I should find her she might be
homeless and hungry and in need.'
“So he had her buried respectably in the suburbs somewhere, and I was
too busy at that time to follow up his subsequent movements. It is
enough for the story that he found his wife.”
XXIV. -- NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN
It was not his real name or his stage name, but it was the one under
which he was best known by those who best knew him. It had been thrown
at him in a café one night by a newspaper man after the performance,
and had clung to him. Its significance lay in the fact that his
“gags”--supposedly comic things said by presumably comic men in nominal
opera or burlesque--invariably were old. The man who bestowed the title
upon him thought it a fine bit of irony.
Newgag received it without expressed resentment, but without mirth, and
he bore its repetition patiently as seasons went by. He was accustomed
to enduring calmly the jests, the indignities that were elicited by
his peculiar appearance, his doleful expression, his slow and bungling
speech and movement, his diffident manner.
He was one of the forbearing men, the many who are doomed to continual
suffering of a kind that their sensitiveness and timidity make it the
more difficult for them to bear.
Undying ambition burned beneath his undemonstrative surface; dauntless
courage lay under his lack of ability.
He was an extremely spare man, of extraordinary height, and the bend of
his shoulders gave to his small head a comical thrust forward. His black
hair was without curl, and it would tolerate no other arrangement than
being combed back straight. It was allowed to grow downward until
it scraped the back of Newgag's collar, a device for concealing the
meagreness of his neck.
He had a smooth, pale face, slanting from ears to nose like a wedge,
and the dimness of the blue eyes added to its introspective cast. He
blushed, as a rule, when he met new acquaintances or was addressed
suddenly. He had a gloomy look and a hesitating way of speech. An
amusing spectacle was his mechanical-looking smile, which, when he
became conscious of it, passed through several stages expressive of
embarrassment until his normal mournful aspect was reached.
As he usually appeared in a sack coat when off the stage, the length of
his legs was divertingly emphasized. After the fashion of great actors
of a bygone generation, he wore a soft black felt hat, dinged in the
crown from front to rear.
He had entered “the profession” from the amateur stage, by way of the
comic opera chorus, and to that chance was due his being located in
the comic opera wing of the great histrionic edifice. He had originally
preferred tragedy, but the first consideration was the getting upon
the stage by any means. Having industriously worked his way out of the
chorus, he had been reconciled by habit to his environment, and had
come to aspire to eminence therein. He had reached the standing of a
secondary comedian,--that is to say, a man playing secondary comic rôles
in the pieces for which he is cast. He was useful in such companies as
were directly or indirectly controlled by their leading comedians,
for there never could be any fears of his outshining those autocratic
personages. Only in his wildest hopes did he ever look upon the centre
of the stage as a spot possible for him to attain.
His means of evoking laughter upon the stage were laborious on his part
and mystifying to the thoughtful observer. He took noticeable means to
change from his real self. It mattered not what was the nature of the
part he filled, he invariably assumed an unnatural, rasping voice; he
stretched his mouth to its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of
his lips; he turned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an
abnormal angle) and bowed his arms. Brought up in the school which
teaches that to make others laugh one must never smile one's self,
he wore a grotesquely lugubrious and changeless countenance. Such was
Newgag in his every impersonation. When he thought he was funniest, he
appeared to be in most pain and was most depressing.
“My methods are legitimate,” he would say, when he had enlisted one's
attention and apparent admiration across a table bearing beer-bottles
and sandwiches. “The people want horse-play nowadays. But when I've got
to descend to that sort of thing, I'll go to the variety stage or circus
ring at once--or quit.”
“That's a happy thought, old man,” said a comedian of the younger
school, one night, when Newgag had uttered his wonted speech. “Why don't
you quit?”
Such a speech sufficed to rob Newgag of his self-possession and to
reduce him to silence. He could not cope with easy, offhand,
impromptu jesters. In truth, no one tried more than Newgag to excel in
“horse-play,” but his temperament or his training did not equip him for
excelling in it; he defended the monotony, emptiness, and toilsomeness
of his humour on the ground that it was “legitimate.”
One night Newgag drank two glasses of beer in rapid succession and
looked at me with a touching countenance.
“Old boy,” he said, in his homely drawl, “I'm discouraged! I begin to
think I'm not in it!”
“Why, what's wrong?”
“Well, I've dropped to the fact that, after all these years in the
business, I can't make them laugh.”
I was just about to say, “So you've just awakened to that?” but pity and
politeness deterred me. Every one else had known it, all these years.
Newgag, to be sure, should naturally have been, as he was, the last to
discover it.
Newgag thus went one step further than any comedian I have ever known.
Having detected his inability to amuse audiences, he confessed it.
People who know actors and read this will already have said that it is
a fiction, and that Newgag's admission is false to life. Not so; I am
writing not about comedians in general, but about Newgag.
That he had come to so exceptional a concession marked the depth of his
despair. I tried to cheer him.
“Nonsense, my boy! They give you bad parts. Go out of comic opera. Try
tragedy.”
I had spoken innocently and sincerely, but Newgag thought I was jesting.
Instead of his usual attempt at lofty callousness, however, he smiled
that dismal, marionette-like smile of his. That gave me an idea, of
which I said nothing at the time.
Several months afterward, a manager, who is a friend of mine, was
suddenly plunged in distress because of the serious illness of an actor
who was to fill a part in a new American comedy that the manager was to
produce on the next night.
“What on earth shall I do?” he asked.
“Play the part yourself, as Hoyt does in such an emergency--or get
Newgag.”
“Who's Newgag?”
“He's a friend of mine, out of a position. I met him to-day very much
frayed.”
“Bring him to me.”
Newgag was overwhelmed when I told him of the opportunity.
“I never acted in straight comedy,” he said. “I can't do it. I might as
well try to play Juliet.”
“He wants you only to speak the lines, that's all. You're a quick study,
you know. Come on!”
I had almost to drag the man to the manager. He allowed himself, in a
semistupefied condition, to be engaged. He took the part, sat up all
night in his boarding-house and learned it, went to rehearsal almost
letter-perfect in the morning, and nervously prepared to face the ordeal
of the evening.
At six o'clock, he wished to go to the manager and give up the part.
“I can never do it,” he wailed to me. “I haven't had time to form
a conception of it and to get up byplay. You see, it's an eccentric
character part,--a man from the country whom everybody takes for a fool,
but who shows up strong at the last. I can't--”
“Oh, don't act it. You're only engaged in the emergency, you know.
Simply go on and say your lines and come off.”
“That's all I can do,” he said, with a dubious shake of the head. “If
only I'd had time to study it!”
American plays had taken foothold, and this premier of a new one by an
author of two previous successes drew a “typical first night audience.”
Newgag, having abandoned all idea of making a hit, or of acting the part
any further than the mere delivery of the speeches went, was no longer
inordinately nervous. When he first entered he was a trifle frightened,
and his unavoidable lack of prepared stage business made him awkward and
embarrassed for a time. The awkwardness remained, but the embarrassment
eventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained
his actual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so,
exhibiting his characteristic perfunctory smile.
He received a special call before the curtain after the third act. He
had no thought that it was meant for him until the stage manager pushed
him out from the wings. He came back looking distressed.
“Are they guying me?” he asked the stage manager.
The papers agreed the next day that one of the hits of the performance
was made by Newgag “in an odd part which he had conceived in a
strikingly original way, and impersonated with wonderful finish and
subtle drollery.”
“What does it mean?” he gasped.
I enlightened him.
“My boy, you simply played yourself. Did it never occur to you that
in your own person you're unconsciously one of the drollest men I ever
saw?”
“But I didn't act!”
“You didn't. And take my advice--don't!”
And he doesn't. Upon the reputation of his success in that comedy he
arranged with another manager to appear in a play especially written for
him. He is a prosperous star now. Whatever his play or part he always
presents the same personality on the stage and he has made that
personality dear to many theatre-goers. He does not appear too
frequently or too long in any one place; hence he is warmly welcomed
wherever and whenever he returns. He is classed among leading actors,
and the ordinary person does not stop sufficiently long to observe that
he is no actor at all.
“This isn't exactly art,” he said to me, the other night, with a tinge
of self-rebuke. “But it's success.”
And the history of Newgag is the history of many.
XXV. -- AN OPERATIC EVENING
I
_A Desperate Youth_
The second act of “William Tell” had ended at the Grand Opera House.
The incandescent lights of ceiling and proscenium flashed up, showering
radiance upon the vast surface of summer costumes and gay faces in the
auditorium. The audience, relieved of the stress of attention, became
audible in a great composite of chatter. A host streamed along the
aisles into the wide lobbies, and thence its larger part jostled through
the front doors to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule. Many passed
on into the wide sidewalk, where the electric light poured its rays upon
countless promenaders whose footfalls incessantly beat upon the aural
sense. Scores of bicyclists of both sexes sped over the asphalt up and
down, some now and then deviating to make way for a lumbering yellow
'bus or a hurrying carriage.
Men and women, young people composing the majority, strolled to and fro
in the roomy lobby that environs the auditorium on all sides save that
of the stage. A group of enthusiasts stood between the rear door of the
box-office and the wide entrance to the long middle aisle.
“How magnificently Guille held that last note!”
“What good taste and artistic sense Madame Kronold has!”
“Del Puente hasn't been in better voice in years.”
“But you know, Mademoiselle Islar is decidedly a lyric soprano.”
These were some of the scraps of the conversation of that group. A
lithe, athletic-looking man of thirty stood mechanically listening
to them, as he stroked his black moustache. He was in summer attire,
evidently disdaining conventionalities, preferring comfort.
Suddenly losing interest in the conversation in his vicinity, he started
toward the Montgomery Avenue side of the lobby, with the apparent
intention of breathing some outside air at one of the wide-barred exits,
where children stood looking in from the sidewalk, and catching what
glimpses they could of the audience through the doorways in the glass
partition bounding the auditorium.
He by chance cast his glance up the unused staircase leading to the
balcony from the northern part of the lobby. He saw upon the third step
a young woman in a dark flannel outing-dress, her face concealed by a
veil. She seemed to be watching some one among those who stood or moved
near the Montgomery Avenue exits, which had wire barriers.
“By Jove!” he said, within himself, “surely I know that figure! But I
thought she had gone to the Catskills, and I never supposed her capable
of wearing negligee clothes at the theatre. There can be no mistaking
that wrist, though, or that turn of the shoulders.”
He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admired
shoulders.
She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was
half-uttered.
“Why, Harry--Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?”
“Why, Amy--that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing
here? Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm
all the more glad to see you.”
While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact
of which he was conscious despite her veil.
“I'm not here--as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with
my cousins--except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home
for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely
closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia
all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this
morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she
thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and
Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay
up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a
friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?”
“But I know nothing to tell,” said the bewildered doctor. “What does all
this subterfuge, this mystery mean?”
Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam
mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of
the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the
style that “came in” with this summer.
“I may as well tell you all,” she answered, presently. “I may need your
assistance, too. I can rely upon you?”
“Through fire and water.”
“I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide.”
“Good gracious!”
“Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton.”
“What! You don't mean it?”
There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption.
Miss Winnett made no comment thereupon, but continued:
“I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I
did, and then I had a suspicion--but I won't mention that--”
“No, you needn't. Your fortune--pardon me, I simply took the privilege
of an old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on.”
“Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom's
wife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you
know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as
here. You can't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much
he--he really wished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he
left me, vowing that he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide.
He swore a terrible oath that my next message from him would be found
in his hands after his death. And he set to-night as the time for the
deed.”
“But why couldn't he have done it there and then?”
“How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs
in order before putting an end to his life.”
She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty in
restraining a smile.
“You don't imagine for a moment,” he said, “that the young man intended
keeping his oath.”
“Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it.”
“Well?”
“Well, I couldn't sleep with the thought that a man was going to kill
himself on my account. It makes me shudder. I'd see his face in my
dreams every night of my life. Then if a note were really found in
his hands, addressed to me, the whole thing would come out in the
newspapers, and wouldn't that be horrible? Of course I couldn't tell
my cousins anything about his threat, so I invented my excuse quickly,
packed a small handbag, disguised myself with Cousin Laura's hat and
veil, and took the same train that Tom took. I've kept my eye on him
ever since, and he has no idea I'm on his track. The only time I lost
was in hurrying home with my handbag to see my aunt, but I didn't even
do that until I'd followed him on Chestnut Street to the down-town
box-office of this theatre and seen him buy a seat, which I later found
out from the ticket-seller was for to-night. So here I am, and there he
is.”
“Where?”
“Standing over there by that wire thing like a fence next the street.”
The doctor looked over as she motioned. He soon recognized the slender
figure, the indolent attitude of Tom Appleton, the blasé young man whom
he was so accustomed to meeting at billiard-tables, in clubs, or hotels.
A tolerant, amiable expression saved the youth's smooth, handsome face
from vacuity. He was dressed with careful nicety.
“But,” said Haslam, “a man about to take leave of this life doesn't
ordinarily waste time going to the opera.”
“Why not? He probably came here to think. One can do that well at the
opera.”
“Tom Appleton think?--I beg pardon again. But see, he's talking to a
girl now, Miss Estabrook, of North Broad Street. His smile to her is not
the kind of a smile that commonly lights up a man's face on his way to
death.”
“You don't suppose he would conceal his intentions from people by
putting on his usual gaiety, do you?” she replied, ironically; adding,
rather stiffly, “He has at least sufficiently good manners to do that,
if not sufficient duplicity.”
“I didn't mean to offend you. My motive was to comfort you with the
probability that he has changed his mind about shuffling off his mortal
coil.”
“You're not very complimentary, Doctor Haslam. Perhaps you don't think
that being jilted by me is sufficient to make a man commit suicide.”
“Frankly I don't. If I had thought so three years ago, I'd be dust or
ashes at this present moment. It can't be that you would feel hurt if
Tom Appleton there should fail to keep his oath and should continue to
live in spite of your renunciation of him?”
“How dare you think me so vain and cruel, when I've taken all this
trouble and come all this distance simply to prevent him from keeping
his oath?”
“But how in the world would you prevent him if he were honestly bent on
getting rid of himself?”
“By watching him until the moment he makes the attempt, and then rushing
up and telling him that I'd renew our engagement. That would stop him,
and gain time for me to manage so that he'd fall in love with some other
girl and release me of his own accord.”
“But think a moment. You can watch him until the opera is out and
perhaps for some time later. But if he means to die he certainly has a
sufficient share of good manners to induce him to die quietly in his own
home. So he'll eventually go home. When his door is locked, how are you
going to keep your eye on him, and how can you rush to him at the proper
moment?”
“I never thought of that.”
“No, you're a woman.”
She proceeded to do some thinking there upon the stairs.
“Oh,” she said, finally, “I know what to do. I'll follow him until he
does go home, to make sure he doesn't attempt anything before that time,
and then I'll tell the police. They'll watch him.”
“You'll probably get Mr. Tom Appleton into some very embarrassing
complications by so doing.”
“What if I do,” she said, heroically, “if I save his life? Now, will you
assist me to watch him? I'll need an escort in the street, of course.”
“I put myself at your command from now henceforth, if only for the joy
of the time that I am thus privileged to pass with you.”
She smiled pleasantly, and with pleasure, trusting to her veil to hide
the facial indication of her feelings. But Haslam's trained gray eye
noted the smile, and also what kind of smile it was, and the discovery
had a potent effect upon him. It deprived him momentarily of the power
of speech, and he looked vacantly at her while colour came and went in
his face.
Then he regained control of himself and he sighed audibly, while she
dropped her eyes.
They were still standing upon the stairs, heedless of the confusion of
vocal sounds that arose from the lobby strollers, from the boys selling
librettos, from the people returning from the vestibule in a thick
stream, from the musicians afar in the orchestra, tuning their
instruments, from the many sources that provide the delightful hubbub of
the entr'acte.
“Hush!” said Amy to Haslam. “Stand in front of me, so that Tom won't see
me if he looks up here as he passes. He's coming this way.”
Young Appleton, chaffing with the persons whom he had met at the exit,
was sharing in the general movement from the byways of the lobby to the
middle entrance of the parquet. The electric bell in the vestibule had
sounded the signal that the third act was to begin. Mr. Hinrichs had
returned to the director's stand in the orchestra and was raising his
baton.
Arrived at the middle entrance, Appleton raised his hat to those with
whom he had been talking, as if not intending to go in just then.
Mr. Hinrichs's baton tapped upon the stand, the music began, and the
curtain rose.
“Why doesn't he go in?” whispered Amy, alluding to Appleton.
But the young man yawned, looked at his watch, and departed from the
lobby--not to the auditorium, but out to the vestibule.
“He's going to leave the theatre,” said Miss Winnett, excitedly. “We
must follow.”
And she tripped hastily down the stairs, Haslam after her.
II