I
The performance in itself was crude and commonplace, but the
demonstration in regard to it was unusual. Although this scene had been
enacted both afternoon and evening for the past six weeks, the audience
at the Vaudeville was showing its appreciation by an intent silence.
The curtain had risen upon a street scene in the metropolis at night.
Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling,
half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The
doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became
accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes
against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad
entrance-steps. As vision grew keener the form of a child was
discernible, a little match girl who was lighting one by one a few
matches and shielding the flame with both hands from the draught.
Suddenly she looked up and around. The rose window above the porch was
softly illumined; the light it emitted transfused the thickly falling
snow. Low organ tones became audible, although distant and muffled.
The child rose; came down the centre of the stage to the lowered
footlights and looked about her, first at the orchestra, then around
and up at the darkened house that was looking intently at her--a small
ill-clad human, a spiritual entity, the only reality in this artificial
setting. She grasped her package of matches in both hands; listened a
moment as if to catch the low organ tones, then began to sing.
She sang as a bird sings, every part of her in motion: throat, eyes,
head, body. The voice was clear, loud, full, strident, at times, on the
higher notes from over-exertion, but always childishly appealing. The
gallery leaned to catch every word of "The Holy City."
She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no
modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady
fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an
instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent
upwards with intent to the gallery. In any case, the gallery took the
song unto itself, and as the last words, "_Hosanna for evermore_" rang
upward, there was audible from above a long-drawn universal "Ah!" of
satisfaction.
It was followed by a half minute of silence that was expressive of
latent enthusiasm. The child was still waiting at the footlights,
evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the
gallery responded--how heartily, those who were present have never
forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of
applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine
stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an
irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more.
The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies,
boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen peeking
from the wings; hands were visible there, clapping frantically. In the
midst of the tumultuous uproar the little girl smiled brightly and ran
off the stage.
The lights were turned on. A drop-scene fell; the stage was transformed,
for, in the middle distance, swelling green hills rose against a soft
blue sky seen between trees in the foreground. Sunshine lay on the
landscape, enhancing the haze in the distance and throwing up the hills
more prominently against it. The cries and uproar continued.
Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being
enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was
considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of
the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese
wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little
Patti's struck!" It sounded ominous, and, thereupon, the Vaudeville
flocked to the dressing-room door to see--what? Merely a child in a
tantrum, a heap of rags on the floor, a little girl in white petticoats
stamping, dancing, pulling away from an old Italian woman who was trying
to robe her and exhorting, imploring, threatening the child in almost
one and the same breath.
The manager rushed to the rescue for the house was losing its head. He
seized the child by the arm. "What's the matter here, Aileen?"
"I ain't goin' ter dance a coon ter-night--not ter-night!" she cried
defiantly and in intense excitement; "he's in the box again, an' I'm
goin' to give him the Sunday-night song, like as I did before when he
give me the flowers, so now!"
Nonna Lisa, the old Italian, slipped the white dress deftly over the
mutinous head, so muffling the half-shriek. The manager laughed. "Hurry
up then--on with you!" The child sprang away with a bound. "I've seen
this too many times before," he added; "it's an attack of 'the last
night's nerves.'--Hark!"
The tumult was drowning the last notes of the orchestral intermezzo, as
the little girl, clad now wholly in white, ran in upon the stage and
coming again down the centre raised her hand as if to command silence.
With the gallery to see was to obey; the floor and balconies having
subsided the applause from above died away.
The child, standing in the full glare of the footlights with the sunny
skyey spaces and overlapping blue hills behind her, half-faced the
brilliant house as, without accompaniment, she began to sing:
"There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall."
The childish voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was
evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing
wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the
close of the first stanza the gallery experienced a turn, the audience
as a whole a sensation. Night after night the gallery gods had made it a
point to be present at that hour of the continuous performance when the
Little Patti--such was the name on the poster--sang either her famous
Irish song "Oh, the praties they are small", or "The Holy City", and
followed them by a coon dance the like of which was not to be seen
elsewhere in New York; for into it the child threw such an abandonment
of enthusiasm that she carried herself and her audience to the verge of
extravagance--the one in action, the other in expression.
And now this!
A woman sobbed outright at the close of the second verse. The gallery
heard--it hated hysterics--and considered whether it should look upon
itself as cheated and protest, or submit quietly to being coerced into
approval. The scales had not yet turned, when someone far aloft drew a
long breath in order to force it out between closed teeth, and this in
sign of disapproval. That one breath was, in truth, indrawn, but whether
or no there was ever an outlet for the same remained a question with the
audience. A woollen cap was deftly and unexpectedly thrust between the
malevolent lips and several pair of hands held it there until the little
singer left the stage.
What appeal, if any, that childish voice, dwelling melodiously on the
simple words, made to the audience as a whole, cannot be stated because
unknown; but that it appealed powerfully by force of suggestion, by the
power of imagination, by the law of association, by the startling
contrast between the sentiment expressed and the environment of that
expression, to three, at least, among the many present is a certainty.
There is such a thing in our national life--a constant process, although
often unrecognized--as social anastomosis: the intercommunication by
branch of every vein and veinlet of the politico-social body, and
thereby the coming into touch of lives apparently alien. As a result we
have a revelation of new experiences; we find ourselves in subjection to
new influences of before unknown personalities; we perceive the
opening-up of new channels of communication between individual and
individual as such. We comprehend that through it a great moral law is
brought into operation both in the individual and the national life. And
in recognition of this natural, though oft hidden process, the fact that
to three men in that audience--men whose life-lines, to all appearance,
were divergent, whose aims and purposes were antipodal--the simple song
made powerful appeal, and by means of that appeal they came in after
life to comprehend something of the workings of this great natural law,
need cause no wonderment, no cavilling at the so-called prerogative of
fiction. The laws of Art are the laws of Life, read smaller on the
obverse.
The child was singing the last stanza in so profound a silence that the
fine snapping of an over-charged electric wire was distinctly heard:
"Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved
And we must love him too,
And trust in his redeeming blood,
And try his works to do."
The little girl waited at the footlights for--something. She had done
her best for an encore and the silence troubled her. She looked
inquiringly towards the box. There was a movement of the curtains at the
back; a messenger boy came in with flowers; a gentleman leaned over the
railing and motioned to the child. She ran forward, holding up the skirt
of her dress to catch the roses that were dropped into it. She smiled
and said something. The tension in the audience gave a little; there was
a low murmur of approval which increased to a buzz of conversation; the
conductor raised his baton and the child with a courtesy ran off the
stage. But there was no applause.
During the musical intermezzo that followed, the lower proscenium box
was vacated and in the first balcony one among a crowd of students rose
and made his way up the aisle.
"Lien's keller, Champ?" said a friend at the exit, putting a hand on his
shoulder; "I'm with you."
"Not to-night." He shook off the detaining hand and kept on his way. The
other stared after him, whistled low to himself and went down the aisle
to the vacant seat.
At the main entrance of the theatre there was an incoming crowd. It was
not late, only nine. The drawing-card at this hour was a famous Parisian
singer of an Elysee _cafe chantant_. The young fellow stepped aside,
beyond the ticket-office railing, to let the first force of the
inrushing human stream exhaust itself before attempting egress for
himself. In doing so he jostled rather roughly two men who were
evidently of like mind with him in their desire to avoid the press. He
lifted his hat in apology, and recognized one of them as the occupant of
the proscenium box, the gentleman who had given the roses to the little
singer. The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure
was a priest.
The sight of such a one in that garb and that environment, diverted for
the moment Champney Googe's thoughts from the child and her song. He
scanned the erect figure of the man who, after immediate and courteous
recognition of the other's apology, became oblivious, apparently, of his
presence and intent upon the passing throng.
The crowd thinned gradually; the priest passed out under the arch of
colored electric lights; the gentleman of the box, observing the look on
the student's face, smiled worldly-wisely to himself as he, too, went
down the crimson-carpeted incline. Champney Googe's still beardless lip
had curled slightly as if his thought were a sneer.