"No, oh, no! I mean Mr.--er--er," and I trailed off helplessly.
"Mr. Seymour?" offered a lady.
"No, no! that's not it!" I cried; "why, goodness mercy me! you all know
whom I mean--the--the actor with the _hungry eyes_?"
"Oh, Barrett!" they shouted, all save one voice, that with a mighty laugh
cried out: "That's my brother Larry, God bless him! no one could miss
that description, for sure he looks as hungry to-day as ever he did when
he felt hungry to his heart's core!"
And so it was that I first met poor Joe Barrett, who worshipped the
brother whose sore torment he was. For this great, broad-shouldered,
ruddy-faced fellow with the boyish laugh had ever in his veins the
craving for liquor--that awful inherited appetite that can nullify prayer
and break down the most fixed determination.
"Ah!" he cried to me, "no one, no one can ever know how good Larry has
been to me, for while he is fighting and struggling to rise, every little
while some lapse of mine drags him back a bit. Yet he never casts me
off--never disowns me. He has had to discharge me for the sake of
discipline here, but he has re-engaged me. He has sent me away, but he
has taken me back again. I promise, and fail to keep my promise. I fall,
and he picks me up. Through the cursed papers I have dragged my brother
through the mud, but the sweet Saviour could hardly forgive me more fully
than Larry does, for, look you, he never forgets that I am the son of my
father, who was accursed before me, while he is the son of our poor
mother--blessed be her name! It isn't that I don't try. I keep straight
until the agony of longing begins to turn into a mad desire to do bodily
harm to someone--anyone, and then, fearing worse, I drink my fill, and
the papers find me out, and are not content to tell of the disgraceful
condition of Joseph Barrett, but must add, always, 'the brother of the
prominent actor, Mr. Lawrence Barrett.' Poor Larry! poor little delicate
chap that he used to be, with his big, brainy head--too heavy for his
weak neck and frail body to carry."
And then he told me of their sorrowful life, their poverty. The
often-idle father and his dislike for the delicate boy, whose only moment
of happiness was when the weary mother, the poor supper over, sat for a
little to breathe and rest, and held his heavy head upon her loving
breast, while Joe sang his songs or told all the happenings of the day.
That happy Joe, who had no pride and was quite as satisfied without a
seat to his small trousers as with one! Then he told me how hard it was
for Lawrence to learn; how he had to grind and grind at the simplest
lesson, but once having acquired it, it was his for life.
"Why, even now," said he, "in confidence I'm telling you, my brother is
studying like a little child at French, and it does seem that he cannot
learn it. He works so desperately over it, a doctor has warned him he
must choose between French and his many 'parts' or break down from
overwork. But he _will_ go on hammering at his _parlez-vous_ until he
learns them or dies trying."
"If you were to live with your brother, might not that help to keep you
strong?" I asked.
"Now, my dear little woman," he smiled, "Larry is human, in some
respects, if he is almost God-like toward me. Remember he has a young
family now, and though his wife is as good as gold and always patient
with me, I am not the kind of example a man would care to place before
his little ones, and as Lawrence is devoured with ambition for them and
their future, he rightly guards them from too close contact with the drag
and curse of his own life, in whom he, and he alone, can see the sturdy
tow-headed brother of the old boyish days, who saved him from many and
many a kick and thump his delicate body could ill have borne."
Joe told me of his dead wife--Viola Crocker that was--the niece of Mrs.
Bowers and Mrs. Conway; of their happiness and their misery. Describing
himself as having been "in heaven or in hell--without any betwixts and
betweens." His devotion to me was very great. He was "hard-up" for money,
as the men express it, but he would manage to bring me a single rose or
one bunch of grapes or a half-dozen mushrooms or some such small offering
every day; and learning of his bitter mortification because he could not
hire a carriage to take me out to see the curious old French cemetery, I
made him supremely happy by expressing a desire to ride in one of those
funny bob-tailed, mule-drawn street-cars--the result being a trip by my
mother, Mr. Barrett, and myself to the famous cemetery.
I don't know that I ever heard anyone sing Irish and Scottish ballads
more tenderly, more pathetically than did Joe Barrett, and as my mother
was very fond of old songs, he used to sit and sing one after another for
her. That day there was no one in the crawling little car but we three,
and presently he began to sing. But, oh, what was it that he sang? Irish,
unmistakably--a lament, rising toward its close into the _keen_ of some
clan. It wrung the very heart.
"Don't!" I exclaimed. My mother's face was turned away, my throat ached,
even Joe's eyes had filled. "What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know its name," he answered, "I have always put it on programmes
as 'A Lament.' I learned it from an Irish emigrant-lad, who was from the
North, and who was dying fast from consumption and home-hunger. Is not
that wail chilling? As he gave the song it seemed like a message from the
dying."
At the end of our stroll among the flowers and trees and past those
strange stone structures that look so like serious-minded bake-ovens,
having to wait for a car, we sat on a stone bench, and in that quiet city
of the dead Joe's voice rose, tenderly reverent, in that simple air that
was yet an anguish of longing, followed by a wail for the dead.
My mother wept silently. I said, softly: "It's a plaint and a farewell,"
and Joe brought his eyes back from the great cross, blackly silhouetted
against the flaming sky, and slowly said: "Beloved among women, it is a
message--a message from the dying or the dead, believe that."
And a time came when--well, when _almost_ I did believe that.
Later on, when Mr. Barrett stood second only to Mr. Booth in his
profession, well established, well off, well dressed, polished and
refined of manner, aye, and genial, too, to those he liked, I came by
accident upon a most gracious act of his and, following it up, found him
deep in a conspiracy to deceive a stricken woman into receiving the aid
her piteous determination to stand alone made impossible to offer openly.
I looked at the generous, prosperous, intellectual, intensely active
gentleman, surrounded by clever wife and the pretty, thoroughly educated
daughters, who were chaperoned in all their walks to and from park or
music-lesson or shopping-trip, and I wondered at the distance little
"Larry," with the heavy head and frail body, had traveled, and bowed
respectfully to such magnificent energy.
Even then there arose a cry from the profession that Mr. Barrett was
dictatorial, that he assumed airs of superiority. Mr. Barrett was
wrapped up, soul and body, in the proper production of the play in hand.
He was keenly observant and he was sensitive. When an actor had his mind
fixed upon a smoke or a glass of beer, and cared not one continental
dollar whether the play failed or succeeded, so long as he got his
"twenty dollars per--," Mr. Barrett knew it, and became "dictatorial" in
his effort to force the man into doing his work properly. I worked with
him, both as a nobody and as somebody, and I know that an honest effort
to comprehend and carry out his wishes was recognized and appreciated.
As for his airs of superiority--well, the fact is he was superior to
many. He was intellectual and he was a student to the day of his death.
When work at the theatre was over he turned to study. He never was well
acquainted with Tom and Dick, nor yet with Harry. His back fitted a
lamp-post badly. He would not have known how "to jolly the crowd." He was
not a full, voluminous, and ready story-teller for the boys, who called
him cold and hard. God knows he had needed the coldness and the so-called
hardness, or how could he have endured the privations of the long journey
from his weary mother's side to this position of honor.
Cold, hard, dictatorial, superior? Well, there is a weak lean-on-somebody
sort of woman, who will love any man who will feed and shelter her--she
doesn't count. But when a clear-minded, business-like, clever woman, a
wife for many years, loves her husband with the tenderest sentiment and
devotion, I'm ready to wager something that it was _tenderness_ and
_devotion_ in the husband that first aroused like sentiments in the wife.
Mrs. Barrett was shrewd, far-seeing, business-like--a devoted and
watchful mother, but her love for her husband had still the freshness,
the delicate sentiment of young wifehood. When she thought fit, she
bullied him shamefully; when she thought fitter, she "guyed" him
unmercifully. Think of that! And it was delightful to see the great,
solemn-eyed personification of dignity smilingly accepting her buffets.
But, oh, to hear that wife tell of the sorrows and trials they had faced
together, of their absurd makeshifts, of their small triumphs over
poverty, of Lawrence's steady advance in his profession, of that
beautiful day when they moved into a little house all by themselves, when
he became, as he laughingly boasted, "a householder, not a forlorn,
down-trodden boarder!"
Their family, besides themselves, then consisted of one little girl and
Lawrence's beloved old mother, and he had a room to study in in peace,
and the two women talked and planned endlessly about curtains and
furniture, and--oh, well, about some more very small garments that would,
God willing, be needed before a very great while. And one day Lawrence
looked about his little table, and said: "It's too good, it can't last,
it can't!" and the women kissed him and laughed at him; yet all the time
he was right, it did not last. An awful bolt seemed to fall from the blue
sky. It was one of those pitiful disasters that sometimes come upon the
very old--particularly to those who have endured much, suffered much, as
had the elder Mrs. Barrett in the past.
I wept as I heard the story of the devoted son's dry-eyed agony, of the
awful fears his condition aroused in the minds of those close to him, and
then suddenly she, the wife, had been stricken down, and her danger and
that of the tiny babe had brought him to his old self again.
He worked on then for some months, grateful for the sparing of his dear
ones, when quite suddenly and painlessly the stricken old mother passed
from sleep to life everlasting. Then when Joseph was to be summoned--Joe
who worshipped the mother's footprint in the dust--he was not to be
found. He had fallen again into disgrace, had been discharged, had
disappeared, no one knew whither.
"Oh, dear Father!" cried Mrs. Barrett, "what did not Lawrence suffer for
Joe! knowing what his agony would be when he knew all--but we could do no
more. The funeral took place. White as marble, Lawrence sent us all
home, and himself waited till the last clod of earth was piled upon the
grave; then waited till the men had gone, waited to kneel and pray a
moment before leaving the old mother there alone. And as he knelt he
noted how nearly dark it was, and thought he must not linger long or the
gates would be locked upon him. As he rose from his knees, he was
startled to see, through the dusk, a tall form coming toward him. It
would dodge behind a monument, and after a moment's pause would come a
little nearer. Suddenly the drooping, lurching figure became familiar to
him. With a groan he hid himself behind a tombstone and waited--waited
until suspicion became certainty, and he knew that the bent, weary
funeral guest was his brother, Joe!
"He held his peace until the wanderer found his way along the darkening
path to that pathetic stretch of freshly broken earth, where, with an
exceeding bitter cry, he flung his arms above his head and fell all his
length along the grave that held the sweetest and the holiest thing God
had ever given him, an honest, loving mother, and clutched the damp clods
in his burning hands, and gasped out: 'Oh, mother! I have hungered and I
have tramped with the curse upon me, too; I have hungered and tramped so
far, so far, hoping just to be in time to see your dear face once more,
and now they've shut you away from me, from the bad boy you never turned
your patient eyes away from! Oh, mother! whatever can I do without you,
all alone! all alone!'
"At that child-like cry from the broken man, prostrate on the grave,
Lawrence Barrett's heart turned to water, and kneeling down he lifted to
his breast the tear-blurred, drink-blemished face of his brother, and
kissed him as his mother might have done. Thus they prayed together for
the repose of the soul of their beloved, and then, with his arm about the
wanderer, to steady his failing steps, Lawrence led him to his little
home, and, as they entered, he turned and said: 'Joe, can't you take back
those words, "all alone," can't you?' and Joe nodded his head, and
throwing his arms about his brother's neck, answered: 'Never alone, while
my little brother Larry lives and forgives!'"