As regards the body of the house it lay mostly in shadows--the man-made,
daytime shadows which somehow always seem denser and blacker than those
that come in the night. The little jogs in the wall behind the boxes
were just the same as coalholes. The pitched front of the balcony
suggested a deformed upper jaw, biting down on darkness. Its stucco
facings, shining dimly, like a row of teeth, added to the illusion. At
the bottom of the pit, or the family circle, or whatever it was they
called it at the Cosmos Theater, where the light was somewhat better,
the backs of the seats showed bumpily beneath the white cloths that
covered them, like lines of graves in a pauper burying ground after a
snowstorm.
A third of the way back, in this potter’s field of dead-and-gone
laughter, a man was hunched in a despondent posture. His attitude would
make you think of a lone ghost that had answered the resurrection trump
too soon and now was overcome with embarrassment at having been deceived
by a false alarm. The brim of his hat rested on the bridge of his nose.
Belonging, as he did, to a race that is esteemed to be essentially
commercial, he had the artistic face and the imaginative eyes which, as
often as not, are found in those of his breed.
His name was Sam Verba. He was general director for Cohalan & Hymen,
producing managers. He was watching a rehearsal of a new play, though he
did not appear to be. Seemingly, if he was interested in anything at all
it was in the movements of two elderly chore-women, who dawdled about
the place deliberatively, with dust rags and brooms. Occasionally, as
one of the women raised her voice shrilly to address her distant sister,
he went “Sh-h! Sh-h!”--like a defective steam pipe. Following this the
offender would lower her voice for a space measurable by seconds.
Border lights, burning within the proscenium arch, made the stage
brightly visible, revealing it as a thing homely and nude. Stage
properties were piled indiscriminately at either side. Against the bare
brick wall at the back, segments of scenes were stacked any-which-way,
so that a strip of a drawing-room set was superimposed on a strip of a
kitchen and that in turn overlapped part of a wainscoted library, the
result being as though an earthquake had come along and shaken one room
of somebody’s house into another room and that into another, and then
had left them so. In sight were four women and nine men, who perched on
chairs or tables or roosted, crow-fashion, upon the iron steps of a
narrow staircase which ascended to the top tier of dressing rooms,
extending along a narrow balcony above. The hour was eleven o’clock in
the morning. Therefore these persons wore the injured look which people
of their nocturnal profession customarily wear upon being summoned out
of their beds before midday.
At a little table, teetering on rickety legs almost in the trough of the
footlights, sat a man hostilely considering a typewritten script, which
was so interlined, so marked and disfigured with crosses, stars, and
erasures that only one person--the author of these ciphers--might read
his own code and sometimes even he couldn’t. The man at the table was
the director, especially engaged to put on this particular piece, which
was a comedy drama. He raised his head.
“All right, children,” he said, “take the second act--from the
beginning. Miss Cherry, Mrs. Morehead--come along. Stand by, everybody
else, and, please, in Heaven’s name, remember your cues--for once.”
A young woman and a middle-aged woman detached themselves from one of
the waiting groups and came downstage. The young woman moved eagerly to
obey; she was an exceedingly pretty young woman. The other woman, having
passed her youth, strove now to re-create it in her costume. She wore a
floppy hat and a rather skimpy frock, which buttoned down her back,
school-girl fashion, and ended several inches above her ankles. Under
the light her dyed hair shone with the brilliancy of a new copper
saucepan. There were fine, puckery lines at her eyes. Her skin, though,
had the smooth texture which comes, some say, from the grease paint, and
others say from plenty of sleep.
She held in one hand a flimsy, blue-backed sheaf; it was her part in
this play. Having that wisdom in her calling which comes of long
experience, she would read from it until automatically she had acquired
it without prolonged mental effort; would let her trained and docile
memory sop up the speeches by processes of absorption. Miss Cherry
carried no manuscript; she didn’t need it. She had been sitting up
nights, studying her lines. For she, the poor thing, was newly escaped
from a dramatic school. Mrs. Morehead wanted to make a living. Miss
Cherry wanted to make a hit.
These two began the opening scene of the act and, between them, carried
it forward. Miss Cherry as the daughter, was playing it in rehearsal,
exactly as she expected to play it before an audience, putting in
gestures, inflections, short catches of the breath, emotional gasps--all
the illusions, all the business of the part. On the other hand, Mrs.
Morehead appeared to have but one ambition in her present employment and
that was to get it over with as speedily as possible. After this
contrasted fashion, then, they progressed to a certain dramatic
juncture:
“But, mother,” said Miss Cherry, her arms extended in a
carefully-thought-out attitude of girlish bewilderment, “what am I to
do?”
Mrs. Morehead glanced down, refreshing her memory by a glance into the
blue booklet.
“My child,” she said, “leave it to destiny.”
She said this in the tone of a person of rather indifferent appetite,
ordering toast and tea for breakfast.
A pause ensued here.
“My child,” repeated Mrs. Morehead, glancing over her shoulder
impatiently, but speaking still in the same voice, “leave it to
destiny.”
“Well, well--” snapped the man at the little table, “that’s the cue,
‘leave it to destiny.’ Come on, McVey? Come a-w-n, McVey? Where’s
McVey?” He raised his voice fretfully.
A nervous, thin man hurried down the stage.
“Oh, there you are. Go ahead, McVey. You’re keeping everybody waiting.
Didn’t I tell you you’d have to read the grandfather’s part to-day?”
“No, sir, you didn’t,” said McVey, aggrieved.
“Well, anyhow, I meant to,” said his superior.
“But I’m reading Miss Gifford’s part this morning,” said McVey, who was
the assistant stage manager. “She had to go to see about her costumes.”
“You’ll have to read ’em both, then,” ordered the special director.
“Anyhow, the parts don’t conflict--they’re not on the stage together
during this act. Do the best you can. Now let’s go back and take those
last two sides over again.”
Vibrantly and with the proper gesture in the proper place, Miss Cherry
repeated her speech. Wearily and without gestures, Mrs. Morehead
repeated hers. The flustered McVey, holding the absentee Miss Gifford’s
part in one hand and the mythical grandfather’s in the other, circled
upstage and, coming hurriedly down, stepped in between them.
“No, no, no,” barked the director, “don’t come on that way--you’ll throw
both these ladies out. Come on at the upper side of that blue chair,
Mac; that’s the door. This is supposed to be a house. You can’t walk
right through the side of a house without upsetting things. You realize
that, don’t you? Once more--back again to ‘leave it to destiny.’”
The rehearsal went on by the customary process of advancing a foot and a
half, then retreating a foot, then re-advancing two feet. The novices in
the cast were prodigal of their energy, but the veterans saved
themselves against what they knew was coming later, when they would need
all they had of strength and more, besides.
A young man let himself in through the box-office door and stood in that
drafty, inky-black space which theatrical folks call the front of the
house and the public call the back of the house. Coming out of the
sunlight into this cave of the winds, he was blinded at first. He
blinked until he peered out the shape of Verba, slumped down midway of a
sheeted stretch of orchestra chairs, and he felt his way down the center
aisle and slipped into a place alongside the silent, broody figure. The
newcomer was the author of the play, named Offutt; his age was less than
thirty; and his manner was cheerful, as befitting an author who is less
than thirty and has placed a play with an established firm.
“Well,” he said, “how’s everything going?”
“Rotten, thank you!” said Verba, continuing to stare straight ahead.
“We’re still shy one grandfather, if that should be of any interest to
you.”
“But you had Grainger engaged--I thought that was all settled last
night,” said the playwright.
“That tired business man? Huh!” said Verba expressively. “By the time
he’d got through fussing over the style of contract he wanted, in case
he liked the part and we liked him in it, and then quarrelling about the
salary he was to get, and then arguing out how high up the list his name
was to appear in the billing, your friend Grainger was completely
exhausted.
“And then, on top of that, he discovered we were going to Chicago after
the opening in Rochester, and he balked. Said his following was here in
New York. Said he’d supposed we were coming right in here after the
opening instead of fussing round on the road. Said he couldn’t think of
being kept out of New York at the beginning of the season unless he got
at least seventy-five more a week. Said he’d go back to vaudeville
first. Said he had a swell offer from the two-a-day shops anyhow.
“Then I said a few things to Grainger and he walked out on me. His
following!--do you get that? Grainger could carry all the following he’s
got in the top of his hat and still have plenty of room left for his
head. So there you are, my son--within ten days of the tryout and nobody
on hand to play dear old grandfather for you! And nobody in sight
either--in case anybody should happen to ask you.”
“Oh we’ll find somebody,” said Offutt optimistically. The young of the
playwrighting species are constitutionally optimistic.
“Oh, we will, will we? Well, for example, who?--since you’re so
confident about it.”
“That’s up to you,” countered Offutt, “I should worry!”
“Take it from me, young man, you’d better worry,” growled Verba
morosely.
“But, Verba,” contended young Offutt, “there must be somebody loose
who’ll fit the part. What with thousands of actors looking for
engagements--”
“Say, Offutt, what’s the use of going over that again?” broke in Verba
in a tone which indicated he was prepared to go over it again. “To begin
with, there aren’t thousands of actors looking for jobs. There are a
few actors looking for jobs--and a few thousand others looking for jobs
who only think they can act. Off hand, I can list you just three men fit
to play this grandfather part--or four, if you stick in Grainger as an
added starter.”
He held up a long, slender hand, ticking off the names on his fingers.
“There’s Warburton, and there’s Pell, and there’s old Gabe Clayton.
Warburton’s tied up in the pictures. Damn the movies! They’re stealing
everybody worth a hang. I got a swell offer myself yesterday from the
Ziegler crowd to direct features for ’em. The letter’s on my desk now.
Old Gabe is in a sanitarium taking the rest cure--which means for the
time being he’s practically sober, but not available for us or anybody
else. And Guy Pell’s under contract to Fructer Brothers, and you know
what a swell chance there is of their loaning him to our shop.
“That doesn’t leave anybody but Grainger, who’s so swelled up with
conceit that he’s impossible. And, anyhow he’s too young. Just as I told
you yesterday, I only figured him in as a last chance. I don’t want a
young fellow playing this part--with his face all messed up with false
whiskers and an artificial squeak in his voice. I want an old man--one
that looks old and talks old and can play old.
“He’s got to be right or nothing’s right. You may have written this
piece, boy; but, by gum, I’m responsible for the way it’s cast, and I
want a regular, honest-to-God grandfather. Only,” he added, quoting the
tag of a current Broadway story, “only there ain’t no such animal.”
“I still insist, Verba,” put in Offutt, “that you overestimate the
importance of the grandfather--he’s only a character bit.”
“Son,” said Verba, “you talk like an author! Maybe you thought he was a
bit when you wrote him in; but he’s not. He’s going to carry this play.
He’s the axle that the whole action turns on and if he’s wrong the whole
thing’s wrong. If he falls down your play falls down.”
“Well, suppose he is,” said Offutt plaintively. The bruised worm was
beginning to turn. “Am I to blame because I write a part so human and so
lifelike that nobody’s competent to do it?”
Verba gave him a sidelong glance and grinned sardonically. “Don’t ask me
whose fault it is,” he said. “I know this: In the old days actors were
actors.” Verba, who was perhaps forty-four, spoke with the air of having
known Edmund Kean intimately. “They bred real artists then--people who
had versatility and a range. You got hold of a play and you went out and
hired a bunch of troupers, and they played it for you. Now we don’t have
actors any more--we only have types.
“Everybody’s a type. A man or a woman starts out being one kind of type,
and sticks right there. Dramatists write parts for types, and managers
go out and hire types for the parts. Sometimes they can’t find the right
type and then there’s another expensive production taking a trip to its
eternal rest in the storehouse. I don’t know whose fault it is--I only
know it’s not mine. It’s hell--that’s what it is--simply hell!”
Gloom choked Verba. He stared moodily ahead of him, where the broad of a
wide, blue-ginghamed back showed above the draped tops of the next row
of seats but one. Suddenly he smote his hands together.
“Bateman!” he exclaimed. “Old Bird Bateman!”
Up from behind the next row of seats but one rose a chorelady with her
nose in the air and her clenched fists on the places where her hips
should have been--if she had any hips.
“I beg your par-r-don?” she inquired, quivering with a grand, indignant
politeness; “was you referrin’ to me as an ould boid?”
“Madam,” said Verba, “resume your pleasures. I wasn’t thinking of you.”
“Thin why was you lookin’ at me whin you said it? You may be the owner
of this bum dump, f’r all I care, but job or no job, let me tell you
this, young man--there’s no black Prowtestant Jew alive kin call me out
of me own name an’----”
“Oh, shut up,” said Verba, without heat. He got on his feet. “Come on,
Offutt, the lady thinks I’m trying to flirt with her and between the
three of us, we’re breaking up rehearsals. Let’s get out--I’ve got an
idea.” In the half light his eyes shone like a cat’s.
Outside, on the hot pavement, he took Offutt by the lapels of his coat.
“Boy,” he said, “did you ever hear of Burton Bateman--better known as
Old Bird Bateman?”
Offutt shook his head.
“Never did,” he confessed.
“You’re too young at this game to remember, I guess,” said Verba. “Well,
then, did you ever hear of the Scudder Stock Company?”
“Of course I’ve heard of that,” said Offutt. “It was long before my time
though.”
“It was long before everybody’s time,” assented Verba. “Ten years is the
same as a century on this street. But twenty-five years ago Burt Bateman
played leads with the Scudder Stock Company--yes; and played juveniles
and walking gentlemen and friends of the family and long-lost heirs and
Dutchmen and Irishmen and niggers--played high-comedy parts and
low-comedy parts--played anything there was to play.
“He wasn’t one of your single-barrelled modern types and none of your
old-time ranting scenery-biters either; he was an actor. If he’d come
along a little later they’d have made a star out of him and probably
ruined him. You’d have remembered him then. But he never was a star. He
never was featured even. He just kept right on being an actor. And gee,
how he could eat up an old man’s part!”
“You speak of him as though he were dead,” said Offutt.
“He might as well be--he’s forgotten,” said Verba, unconsciously coining
all Broadway’s epitaph for all Broadway’s tribe. “I haven’t seen him for
fifteen years, but I understand he’s still alive--that is, he hasn’t
quit breathing. Somebody was telling me not long ago they’d crossed his
trail ’way downtown.
“You see, Burt Bateman was a character in his way, just as old Nate
Scudder was one in his way. I guess that’s why they hung together so
long. When the theatrical district started to move uptown Nate wouldn’t
move with it. It moved from Fourteenth Street to Twenty-third, and from
there to Thirty-fourth, and from there to Forty-second--and it’s still
headed north. But Scudder stayed where he was. And it broke him--broke
his heart, too, I guess. Anyhow, he died and his organisation
scattered--all but Bateman. He wouldn’t scatter. The heirs fell out and
the estate--what was left of it--got tied up in litigation; and it’s
been tied up ever since.”
He turned and waved a long arm at a passing taxi. The driver curved his
machine up to the curb.
“Come on!” said Verba, making to cross the sidewalk.
“Come on where?” asked Offutt.
“We’re going to University Place--you and me,” said Verba, quickened and
alive all over with his inspiration. “We’re going down to Scudder’s
Theater. Didn’t know there was such a theater as Scudder’s, did you?
Well, there is--what’s left of it. We’re going down there to find Old
Bird Bateman. That’s where he was, last accounts. And if the booze
hasn’t got him he’s going to play that damn grandfather in this show of
yours.”
“Can he do it?”
Verba halted with one foot in the taxi.
“Can he do it? Watch him, boy--that’s all! Just watch him. Say, it’s a
notion--digging that old boy out of the graveyard.
“You never heard of him and I’d forgotten him; but you take a lot of
these old-timers who don’t think there’ve been any actors since Fanny
Davenport and Billy Florence--they’ll remember him. And you bet they’ll
come to see him. We’ll give this town a sensation--and that’s what it
loves, this town--sensations.”
Once upon a time--that was when he was a green reporter newly come to
town--Offutt had known, more or less minutely, almost every prowlable
inch of the tip of the long seamy tongue of rock that is called
Manhattan Island. Now, as a story-writer and a play-writer, he only went
down there when he sought for local colour in Greenwich Village, or
around Washington Square or on the lower East Side. As for Verba, he
found his local colour, ready-mixed, in scene-painters’ pots and make-up
boxes. Being a typical New Yorker--if there is such a thing--he was as
insular, as provincial, as closely bound to his own briefened ranging
ground as none but a typical New Yorker can be. To him this wasn’t a
metropolis of five boroughs, many bridges and five-and-a-half millions.
To him this was a strip of street, something less than two miles long,
with shorter stretches of street meeting it at right angles, east and
west, as ribs meet a spine. His map of New York would have resembled a
codfish’s skeleton, its head aiming toward far-away Harlem, the fork in
its tail pointing to the distant Battery. To him therefore Twenty-third
Street was Farthest South. What might lie below was in the Antarctic
Circle of community life.
They crossed Twenty-third Street and invaded a district grown strange to
his eyes--a district where tall loft buildings, the successors to the
sweatshops of an earlier, but not very much earlier, day, mounted, floor
by floor, above the humbler roofs of older houses. They crossed
Fourteenth, the taxi weaving a way through dense masses of men who
gabbled in strange tongues among themselves, for lunch-time had come
and the garment workers, the feather-workers and the fur-workers,
deserting their work benches for an hour, had flocked into the open,
packing the sidewalks and overflowing upon the asphalt, to chaffer and
gossip and take the air. Just below Fourteenth Street they swung
eastward and turned into University Place, which is a street of past
memories and present acute activities, and, in a minute, obeying Verba’s
instructions, their driver brought them to a standstill before a certain
number.
“Give it the once-over,” advised Verba as he climbed out and felt in his
pocket for the fare. “You can figure for yourself how far out of the
world it is--nobody’s had the nerve to try to open it up as a
moving-picture palace. And that’s the tip-off on any shack in this burg
that’ll hold a crowd, a screen and a projecting machine all at the same
time.”
Offutt looked, and marvelled that he had never noticed this place before
since surely, covering assignments or on exploration jaunts, he must
have passed it by a score of times. It stood midway of the block. On one
side of it was a little pawnshop, its single grimy window filled with
the strange objects which persons acquire, seemingly, for pawning
purposes exclusively--sword-canes and mandolins with mother-of-pearl
insets in them, and moss-agate cuff buttons. On the other side was a
trunk store with half of its wares cluttering the narrow-door passage
and signs everywhere displayed to inform the public that the proprietor
was going out of business and must sell his stock at an enormous
sacrifice, wherefore until further notice, perfectly ruinous prices
would prevail. It appears to be a characteristic of all trunk-stores
that their proprietors are constantly going out of business and that
their contents, invariably, are to be had below cost.
Between these two establishments gaped a recessed and cavernous entryway
flanked by two big stone pillars of a dropsical contour and spanned over
at the top by a top-heavy cornice ponderously and painfully Corinthian
in aspect. The outjutting eaves rested flat on the coping stones and
from there the roof gabled up sharply. Old gates, heavily chained and
slanting inward, warded the opening between the pair of pillars, so that
the mouth of the place was muzzled with iron, like an Elizabethan
shrew’s.
Above, the building was beetle-browed; below, it was dish-faced. A
student of architectural criminology would pause before this façade and
take notes.
The space inclosed within the skewed and bent gate pickets was a snug
harbor for the dust of many a gritty day. There were little grey drifts
of it at the foot of each of the five steps that led up to the flagged
floor level; secretions of grime covered the barred double doors on
beyond the steps, until the original colour was only to be guessed at;
scraps of dodgers, pieces of newspaper and tattered handbills adhered to
every carved projection at the feet of the columns, like dead leaves
about tree boles in the woods.
On the frieze overhead might be made out, in lettering that once had
been gold-leafed, the line: Scudder’s Family Theatre. The words were
scarcely decipherable now. Bill-posters had coated every available inch
of space with snipes and sheets.
Verba shook the gates until the hasps gritted and the chains clanged.
“Nobody at home,” he said. “I guess the sheriff locked her up when the
lawsuits started and then threw away the key. Well, let’s scout round.
Somebody’s sure to know our man; they told me Bateman was a neighborhood
character down here. A cop ought to be able to help us--only I don’t see
one. Maybe they don’t have cops in this street.”
Speculatively his eyes ranged the vista up and down the block and
opposite. He pointed to a saloon diagonally across the way, next door to
the first corner south.
“When in doubt,” he said, “ask everybody’s friend. Come on; we’ll go
over and brace the barkeep.”
A young man, with a humorous slant to his eyebrows and dark hair combed
back from the forehead in neatly ornate scallops, pulled down the front
of a reasonably clean white jacket and spread both hands on the bar,
awaiting their pleasure.
“Mister Wine Clerk,” said Verba, using the ceremonial title of his
Tenderloin range, “we’re trying to find an old boy named Bateman--Burton
Bateman, retired actor by profession. Ever hear of him?”
“Sure!” assented the barkeeper. “He’s part of the fixtures--Old Bird is;
but he ain’t about now. To ketch him, you’ve come an hour late.”
“Lives round here somewhere, doesn’t he?”
“Search me,” said the young man succinctly. “I guess he don’t exactly
live anywhere--not in a regular lodging house or anything like that.
See? I never asked him--him being sort of touchy about his private
affairs--but I guess he sleeps in some hole somewhere. He mostly does
his scoffin’ here though--as a guest of the house.”
“Does his what here?” asked Verba.
“His scoffin’--his feedin’. See?” The young man flirted a thumb in the
direction of the free-lunch counter.
“Oh! He eats here?”
“You said it! The boss--man that owns this liquor store--is a kind of an
old-timer round here himself. I’ve heard him say he knowed The Bird away
back yonder when the old theatre ’crost the street was runnin’ and
things was breakin’ better for the old boy than what they do now. So he
stakes him to a drink every now and then--Old Bird won’t take a piece of
change, but he will take a drink--and he lets him browse off the free
lunch all he’s a mind to.
“He comes driftin’ in here twicet a day regular and fills up on chow for
nothin’! But he’s been here already and left to-day--’bout an hour ago.
I figure he won’t be back now till ’long about four or five o’clock.”
Verba became cognisant of a tugging at his coat. An incredibly small,
incredibly ragged boy, with some draggled first editions under his arm,
had wormed silently in between his legs and was looking up at him with
one eye. The boy had only one eye to look with. The other eye was a
flattened slit over a sunken socket.
“Mister! Say, Mister!” beseeched the gamin earnestly. “Gimme fi’ cent
and I’ll--”
“Hey, you, Blinky!” interposed the barkeeper, bending over the bar to
see the small intruder. “Beat it!”
There was a scurrying thud of bare feet on the tiled floor and the
wizened intruder magically had vanished between the swinging doors.
“You gents can sit down and wait if you want to,” said the barkeeper.
“It’s liable to be a long time though. Or I can tell Old Bird, when he
comes in, somebody’s askin’ for him and try to hold him for you. I could
’phone you even, if it’s important--if you’ll gimme your number.”
“It is important--in a way,” said Verba. “Suppose we do that,
Offutt--give the wine clerk our telephone number.”
He laid a coin and a card on the bar. The young man regarded the name
and the address on the card briefly.
“All right!” he said, depositing the coin in his pocket and the card
against the mirror at his back. “I won’t forget. The old boy don’t have
many people lookin’ for him. Fact is, I don’t remember he ever had
anybody lookin’ for him before. Are you gents friends of his?... No?
Well, anyhow, I’ll fix it.”
“Funny old sneezer!” he continued. “Dippy a little up here, I guess.”
He tapped himself on the forehead.
“If he had a habit I’d say sometimes he was hopped. F’r instance, he’ll
come in here and spiel off something to me ’bout havin’ been in his
Louie Kahn’s drawin’-room--anyhow, that’s what it sounds like. The only
Louie Kahn round here that I know of runs a junk shop over in Ninth
Street. And it’s a cinch that Louie Kahn ain’t got no drawin’-room. Or
he’ll tell me he’s been spendin’ the day on the seabeach. Only yes’day
he was handin’ me that junk.”
“Mightn’t he have taken a little run down to Coney?” suggested Verba
hopefully.
“Go to Coney--him!” scoffed the barkeeper. “Where’d he raise the coin
for carfare down to Coney? You can take it from me, gents, Old Bird
forgot what the sad sea waves sound like, long time ago. I’ll lay you a
little eight-to-five he ain’t been a quarter of a mile away from this
liquor store in ten years.... Well, good day, gents.”
“It strikes me, Verba,” began Offutt as they passed out, “that possibly
we’re only wasting our time. If what that gabby young drink wrestler
just said is right we’re--”
Something wriggled at his knees and caromed off against Verba. A single
bright, greedy eye appraised them both with an upward flash.
“Mister! Mister, listen!” pleaded a voice, the owner of which managed
somehow to be in the path of both of them at once. “I heard yous
spielin’ in there. I know where Old Boid is. I kin show yous where he
is.”
“Where is he?” demanded Verba.
“Gimme fi’ cent--gimme ten cent--first. It’s a secrut. It’s worth ten
cent.”
“It is,” agreed Verba gravely. “It’s worth all of ten cents now and
it’ll be worth a quarter more to you, sonny, if you deliver the goods.”
He tendered the advance instalment of the fee, and a hand, all claws
like a bird’s foot, snatched it away from him.
Blinky carefully pouched the dime in some unfathomable inner recess of
his rags. Having provided against any attempt to separate him from the
retainer in the event of the negotiations falling through, his code of
honour asserted itself.
“It’s a secrut. See? They ain’t nobody but me and two-t’ree udder kids
wise to it. Yous gotta swear yous won’t tell ’im nor nobody ’twas me
tipped yous off. If yous did it’d spoil me graft--he’d be sore. See?
Cold nights he lets us kids bunk in there wit’ ’im. And daytimes we
plays audiunce for ’im. See?”
“You play what for him?” asked Offutt.
“C’mon, an’ I’ll show yous,” bade Blinky. “Only yous is gotta lay dead
w’ile it’s comin’ off. See?”
“We’ll lay dead,” pledged Verba.
Satisfied, Blinky led the way. Mystified, they followed. He led them
back across University Place again; and on past Scudder’s Family
Theatre, with the lowering stone frontal bone above and, below, the wide
maw, bitted and gagged by its scold’s bridle of snaffled iron; and on
round the corner below into a fouled, dingy cross street.
Beyond the canvas marquee of a small walled-in beer garden the child
went nimbly through a broken panel in a short stretch of aged and
tottery wooden fencing. Wriggling through the gap behind him they found
themselves in a small inclosure paved with cracked flagging. Confronting
them was a short flight of iron steps, leading up to a wide,
venerable-appearing doorway, which once, as the visible proof showed,
had been sealed up with plank shorings, nailed on in vertical strips.
“One of the old side entrances to Scudder’s,” said Verba. “Where the
carriages used to wait, I guess. The plot thickens--eh, Offutt?”
Offutt nodded, his eyes being on their small guide. A little sense of
adventure possessed them both. They had the feeling of being
co-conspirators in a little intrigue.
“Wotcher waitin’ fur?” demanded Blinky. “Stick wit’ me and don’t make no
noise.” He climbed the iron steps and shoved the nail-pocked door ajar.
“Watch yer step!” he counselled as he vanished within. “It’s kind o’
dark in yere.”
Kind o’ dark was right. Straining their eyes they stumbled along a black
passage, with Blinky going on ahead silently. They turned once to the
left and once to the right and emerged, where the light was somewhat
clearer, into the shelter of a recess just behind the lower boxes of the
abandoned playhouse.
“Wow!” said Verba in a sort of reverential undertone, as though he stood
in the presence of death. “I haven’t been here in twenty-odd years. Why,
the last time I was here I was a kid!”
Veritably he did stand in the presence of death. The place looked dead
and smelled dead and was dead. The air was heavy-laden with bone-yard
scents--rot and corrosion and rust and dust. With the taints of moulded
leather and gangrened metal, of worm-gnawed woodwork and moth-eaten
fabrics, arose also from beneath their feet that other stench which
inevitably is begotten of neglect and lonesomeness within any spot
inclosed by walls and a roof, provided sun and wind and human usage are
excluded from it long enough. Offutt sniffed and, over Verba’s shoulder,
looked about him.
He could make out his immediate surroundings fairly well, for the
curtains that had guarded the windows in the hip roof and round one
upper side of the building were turned by decay into squares of
lace-work, patterned with rents and with cracks; and in some instances
they had fetched away from their fastenings altogether.
Through the glass panes, and through the grime that bleared the glass, a
measure of daylight filtered, slanting in pale bluish streaks, like
spilt skim milk, on vistas of the faded red-plush chairs; on the
scrolled and burdened decorations of the proscenium arch; on the seamy,
stained curtain; on the torn and musty hangings of the boxes; on an
enormous gas chandelier which, swinging low over the pit from the domed
ceiling above, was so clumped with swathings of cobweb that it had
become a great, dangling grey cocoon.
Curving in wide swings from above their heads to the opposite side ran
three balconies, rising one above the other, and each supported by many
fat pillars. The spaces beneath these galleries were shadowy and dark,
seeming to stretch away endlessly. So, too, was the perspective of the
lower floor, at the back, elaborated by the gloom into a vast, yawning
mouth which fairly ached with its own emptiness. But at the front the
screened angles of sunlight, stippled as they were with billions of
dancing motes, brought out clearly enough the stage of the old theatre
and, down under the lip of the stage, the railed inclosure of the
orchestra and, at either side, the scarred bulkheads and fouled drapings
of the stage boxes, upper tier and lower tier.
Close at hand Offutt was aware of crawling things which might be
spiders, and a long grey rat which scuffled across the floor almost
beneath his feet, dragging its scaled tail over the boards with a nasty
rasping sound. He heard other rats squealing and gnawing in the
wainscoting behind him. He was aware, also, of the dirt, which scabbed
and crusted everything. And he felt as though he had invaded the vault
of an ancient tomb. Sure enough, in a manner of speaking, he had done
just that.
“Some place--huh, mister?” said the small gutter-sparrow proudly, and,
though he spoke in a whisper, Offutt jumped. “Stick yere, yous two,”
ordered the child. “Somethin’ll be comin’ off in a minute.”
Seemingly he had caught a signal or a warning not visible to the older
intruders. Leaving them, he ran briskly down a side aisle, and
apparently did not care now how much noise he might make, for he whooped
as he ran. He flung his papers aside and perched himself in a chair at
the very front of the pit. He briskly rattled the loose back of the
chair in front of him, and, inserting two dirty fingers at the corners
of his mouth, emitted the shrill whistle by which a gallery god, since
first gallery gods were created into an echoing world, has testified to
his impatient longings that amusement be vouchsafed him.
As though the whistle had been a command, the daubed old curtain
shivered and swayed. A dead thing was coming to life. Creaking
dolefully, it rolled up and up until it had rolled up entirely out of
sight.
A back drop, lowered at a point well down front, made the stage shallow.
Once upon a time this back drop had been intended to represent a stretch
of beach with blue rollers breaking on beyond. Faded as it was, and
stained and cracked and scaly as it was now, the design of the artist
who painted it was yet discernible; for he plainly had been one who held
by the pigmented principle that all sea sands be very yellow and all sea
waves be very blue.
Out of the far wings came a figure of a man, crossing the narrowed space
to halt midway of the stage, close up to the tin gutter where the
tipless prongs of many gas-jet footlights stood up like the tines in a
garden rake. Verba’s hand tightened on Offutt’s arm, dragging him
farther back into the shadows, and Verba’s voice spoke, with a soft,
tense caution, in Offutt’s ear: “Lord! Lord!” Verba almost breathed the
words out. “‘Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your--’ Look yonder,
Offutt! It’s him!”
He might have spared the urging. Offutt was looking and, without being
told, knew the man at whom he looked was the man the two of them had
come here to find. The lone gamin in the pit clapped his talons of hands
together, making a feeble, thin sound. To this applause, as to a rousing
greeting, the figure behind the footlights bowed low, then straightened.
And Offutt could see, by one of the slanting bars of tarnished daylight,
which stabbed downward through the dusk of the place, that the man up
there on the stage was a very old man, with a heavy, leonine face and
heavy brows and deep-set, big grey eyes, and a splendid massive head
mopped with long, coarse white hair; and he was dressed as a fop of
sixty years ago and he carried himself so.
The slash of indifferent sunshine, slicing into the gloom like a dulled
sword blade, rested its lowermost tip full upon him. It brought out the
bleached pallor of his skin, for his face was free from any suggestion
of make-up, and it showed the tears and frays in his costume, and the
misshapen shoes that were on his feet, and the high-shouldered,
long-tailed coat, and the soiled, collarless shirt which he wore beneath
the once gorgeous velvet waistcoat.
In one hand he held, by a dainty grip on the brim, a flat-crowned derby
hat, and between the fingers of the other hand twirled a slender black
walking stick, with the shreds of a silken tassel adhering to it. And
everything about him, barring only the shoes and the shirt, which
plainly belonged to his everyday apparel, seemed fit to fall apart with
age and with shabbiness.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said--and his voice filled all the empty
house by reason of its strength and its toned richness--“with your kind
indulgence I shall begin this entertainment with an attempt at an
imitation of the elder Sothern in his famous rôle of Lord Dundreary,
depicting him as he appeared in one of the scenes from that sterling and
popular comedy, Our American Cousin, by Tom Taylor, Esquire.”
With that, instantly stepping into character, he took a mincing, jaunty
pace or two sideways. Half turning toward an imaginary confrère and
addressing that mythical listener, he began a speech which, being pieced
together with other speeches, at once lengthened into a kind of
monologue. But he knew the lines--that was plain; and he knew the part,
too, and for the moment lived and breathed it, and in all regards
veritably was it. That, likewise, the watching pair of eavesdroppers
could realise, though neither of them was of sufficient age to remember,
even had he seen, the great craftsman whose work old Bateman now was
counterfeiting.
The interlopers looked on and, under the spell of a wizardry, forgot
indeed they were interlopers. For before their eyes they saw,
wonderfully re-created, a most notable conception, and afterward would
have sworn, both of them, that all of it--the drawl and the lisp, the
exaggerated walk, the gestures, the play of leg and arm, the swing of
body, the skew of head, the lift of eyebrow even--was as true and as
faithful to the original as any mirrored image might be to the image
itself.
How long they stood and watched neither Verba nor Offutt was
subsequently able to say with any reasonable exactitude. It might have
been four minutes; it might have been six, or even eight. When later,
taking counsel together, they sought to reckon up the time, the
estimates varied so widely they gave up trying to reconcile them.
This much, though, they were sure of--that, in his mumming, old Bateman
rose magically triumphant above the abundant handicaps of his own years
and his own physique, his garb and his environment. Doing the undoable,
he for the moment threw aside his years as one might throw aside the
weight of a worn-out garment, and for that moment, to suit his own
designs of mimicry, made floods of strength and youthfulness course
through those withered arteries.
The old man finished with a whimsical turn of his voice and a flirt of
his cane to match it. He bowed himself off with the hand which held the
hat at his breast, and promptly on the second he disappeared the ancient
curtain began to descend, Blinky meanwhile clapping with all his puny
might.
Offutt turned to his companion. Behind the shelter of the box Verba’s
lean, dark face was twitching.
“Is he there? Can he act? Was I right?” Verba asked himself each
question, and himself answered each with a little earnest nod. “Gee,
what a find!”
“Not a find, Verba,” whispered Offutt--“a resurrection--maybe. We’ve
seen a genius in his grave.”
“And we’re going to dig him up.” In his intentness Verba almost panted
it. “Wait! Wait!” he added warningly then, though Offutt had not offered
to stir. “This is going to be a Protean stunt, I take it. Let’s let him
show some more of his goods; for, by everything that’s holy, he’s got
’em!”
Up once more the curtain lifted, seemingly by its own motive power; and
now the seaside drop was raised, and they beheld that, behind it, the
stage had been dressed for another scene--a room in a French house. A
secrétaire, sadly battered and marred, stood at one side; a bookcase
with broken doors and gaping, empty shelves stood at the other,
balancing it off. Down stage was an armchair. Its tapestry upholstering
was rotted through and a freed spiral of springs upcoiled like a slender
snake from its cushioned seat. All three pieces were of a
pattern--“Louie-the-Something stuff,” Verba would have called them.
A table, placed fronting the chair but much nearer the right lower
entrance than the chair was, and covered with a faded cloth that
depended almost to the floor, belonged evidently to the same set. The
scenery at the back showed a balcony, with a wide French window, open,
in the middle. Beyond the window dangled a drop, dingy and discoloured
as all the rest was, but displaying dimly a jumble of painted housetops
and, far away in the simulated distance, the Arc de Triomphe. The
colours were almost obliterated, but the suggestion of perspective
remained, testifying still to the skill of the creator.
From the wings where they had seen him vanish Bateman reappeared. The
trousers and the shoes were those he had worn before; but now, thrown on
over his shirt, was the melancholy wreck of what once had been a blue
uniform coat, with huge epaulets upon the shoulders and gold braid upon
the collar and the cuffs, and brass buttons to fasten it in
double-breasted fashion down the front. Now, though, it hung open. Some
of the buttons were missing, and the gold lacings were mere blackened
wisps of rags.
Bateman came on slowly, with dragging feet, his arms and legs and head
quivering in a violent palsy. He stared out of the window as he let
himself down carefully into the ruined armchair. His first movement
proved that he played a venerable, very decrepit man--a man near death
from age and ailments; yet by his art he managed to project, through the
fleshly and physical weaknesses of the character, a power of dignity,
of dominance, and of mental authority. He rolled his head back weakly.
“‘My child,’” he said, addressing a make-believe shape before him, “‘I
must help to receive our brave, victorious troops. See! I am fittingly
dressed to do them honour.’”
His tones were pitched in the cracked cackle of senility. He paused, as
though for an answer out of space. His inflection told as he, in turn,
replied that this answer had been a remonstrance:
“‘No, no, no!’” he said almost fiercely. “‘You must not seek to dissuade
me.’”
The words stung Verba’s memory, raising a welt of recollection there.
“I’ve got it!” he said exultantly, not forgetting, though, to keep his
voice down. “Siege of Berlin, by that French fellow--what’s his
name?--Daudet!”
“I remember the story,” answered Offutt.
“I remember the play,” said Verba. “Somebody dramatized it--Lord knows
who--and Scudder put it on here as a curtain raiser. I saw it myself,
Offutt--think of that! Sitting up yonder in the old peanut roost--a kid
no bigger than that kid down there--I saw it. And now I’m seeing it
again; seeing Burt Bateman play the part of the old paralytic--you know,
the old French officer who was fooled by his doctor and his
granddaughter into believing the French had licked the Germans, when all
the time ’twas the other way and--”
“Sh-h!” counseled Offutt.
After another little wait Bateman was going on with his scene:
“‘Listen! Listen!’” he cried, cupping a tremulous palm behind his ear.
“‘Do you not hear them far away?--the trumpets--the trumpets of
victorious France! Our forces have entered Berlin! Thank God! Thank God!
All Paris will celebrate. I must greet them from the balcony.’”
With a mighty effort he reared himself to his feet, straightening his
slanted shoulders, erecting his lolled head. His fingers fumbled at
button and buttonhole, fastening his coat at the throat. He swung one
arm imperiously, warding off imaginary hands.
“‘The trumpets! The trumpets! Hark! They come nearer and nearer! They
sound for the victory of France--for a heroic army. I will go! Doctor or
no doctor, I this day pay my homage to our glorious army. Stand back,
_ma chérie_!’”
Offutt, fifty feet away, caught himself straining his ears to hear those
trumpets too. A rat ran across his foot and Offutt never knew it.
“‘They come! They come!’” chuckled Bateman.
He dragged himself up stage, mounted the two stairs to the balcony, and
stood in the window, at attention, to salute the tri-coloured flag. Nor
did he forget to keep his face half turned to the body of the house.
He smiled; and the two unseen spies, staring at that profiled head, saw
the joy that was in the smile. Then, in the same moment, the expression
changed. Dumb astonishment came first--an unbelieving astonishment; then
blank stupefaction; then the shock of horrified understanding; then
unutterable rage.
Offutt recalled the tale from which the playlet had been evolved, and
Verba, for his part, recalled the playlet; but, had neither known what
they knew, the both of them, guided and informed only by the quality of
Bateman’s acting, still could have anticipated the climax now impending;
and, lacking all prior acquaintance with the plot of it, yet would have
read that the cripple, expecting to cheer his beloved French, saw
advancing beneath the Arc de Triomphe the heads of the conquering
Germans, and heard, above the calling bugles, not the Marseillaise, but
the strains of a Teuton marching song. His back literally bristled with
his hate. He spun about full face, a mortally stricken man. His clenched
fists rose above his head in a command.
“‘To arms! To arms!’” he screamed impotently, with the rattle already
in his throat. “‘The Prussians! The Prus--’”
He choked, tottered down the steps, reeled forward and fell headlong out
into the room, rolling in the death spasm behind the draped table; and
as, ten seconds later, the curtain began to unroll from above and
lengthen down, Offutt found himself saying over and over again,
mechanically:
“Why, he’s gone, isn’t he?”
“He kept the table between him and the house and crawled out behind
it--trust him not to spoil his picture!” explained Verba. “And trust him
to know the tricks of his trade.” He tugged at Offutt’s elbow. “Come on,
boy; I’ve seen enough and so have you, I guess. Let’s go sign him.”
He fumbled at the wall.
“Side passageway back to the stage ought to be round here somewhere.
Here it is--that’s lucky!”
Guiding himself by the touching of his outstretched hands upon the walls
of the opening, Verba felt his way behind the box, with Offutt stumbling
along in his rear. So progressing, they came to an iron-sheathed door.
Verba lifted its latch and they were in a place of rancid smells and
cluttering stage duffel. Roaches fled in front of them. On their left a
small wooden door stood partly ajar, and through the cranny they looked,
as they passed, into a dressing room, where a pallet of old hangings
covered half the floor space, and all manner of dingy stock costumings
and stage trappings hung upon hooks.
“Here’s where he must sleep,” said Verba. “What a place for a white man
to be living in!”
He felt for his handkerchief to wipe his soiled hands, and then together
they saw Bateman advancing toward them from out of the extreme rear of
the stage. Over his shoulders was thrown a robe of heavy ragged sacking
and upon his face he had hung a long, false beard of white hair. He
glared at them angrily. And then Offutt, in instantaneous appraisal,
interpreted most surely the look out of those staring big grey eyes.
Verba extended his hand and opened his mouth to speak; but Bateman was
already speaking.
“What business have you here?” he demanded. “Strangers are not permitted
here during performances. How came the stage doorkeeper to admit you? He
has been here too long, that doorkeeper, and he grows careless. I shall
have him discharged.”
“But, Mr. Bateman,” began Verba, half puzzled, half insistent, “I’m in
the business myself. I want to--”
“Stand aside!” ordered the old man almost violently. “You cannot have
been long in the business, young sir, else you would be more mannerly
than to interrupt an artist when his public calls for him. Out of my
way, please!”
He strutted by them in stilted vanity and gripped the lifting ropes of
the old curtain where they swung in the near angle of the wings, and
pulled downward on them with an unexpected display of muscular force.
The curtain rose; and as Blinky, still at his place, uplifted a little
yell of approbation the old man, bending his shoulders, passed out into
the centre of the French drawing-room set and, extending a quivering
hand, uttered sonorously the command:
“‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’”
“The mad scene from King Lear,” said Offutt.
“Sure--Shakspere!” agreed Verba. “Old Scudder was a bug on that Bard
stuff. So was Bateman. He used to know it from cover to cover--Othello,
Hamlet, Lear--the whole string.... Anyhow, Offutt, I’ve found the only
man to do the grandfather’s part in that show of yours, haven’t I?”
“I’m sorry to say it, Verba, but you’re wrong,” stated Offutt.
“How do you mean--I’m wrong?” demanded Verba irritably. Out of the
corner of his mouth he aimed the protest at his companion; but his
eyes, through the gap of the first entrance, were fixed on Bateman as he
strode back and forth, and his ears drank in the splendid full-lunged
volume and thrill of Bateman’s voice as the player spoke snatches from
the play. “He’s not too old--if that’s what you mean; he’s just about
old enough. And he’s all there, even if he is old. Didn’t you see the
strength he had when he hoisted up that heavy curtain?”
“I think I know where that strength came from,” said Offutt. “Just a
minute, Verba--did you ever hear of the Great Auk?”
“He was in vaudeville, wasn’t he?” asked Verba, still staring at
Bateman. “A trick juggler or something?”
Offutt forgot to smile.
“The Great Auk was a bird,” he said.
“Oh, I see; and I’ve been calling Bateman Old Bird,” said Verba. “I get
you.”
“No, you don’t get me,” went on Offutt. “The Great Auk was a rare
creature. It got rarer and rarer until they thought it had vanished.
They sent an expedition to the Arctic Circle, or wherever it was the
thing bred, to get one specimen for the museums; but they came back
without it. And now the Great Auk is an extinct species.”
“What the devil are you driving at?” snapped Verba, swinging on him.
“Listen yonder!” bade the dramatist. “That old man out yonder is telling
you, himself, in better words than I could tell you.”
He pointed a finger through the wings. Craning their necks, they heard
the deep voice speak the lines:
“‘Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.’”
Verba hearkened and he understood. After a little he nodded in gloomy
affirmation of the younger man’s belief.
“I guess you’re right, Offutt,” he said disappointedly. “I guess I’d
have seen it, too, only I was so sort of carried away. Real acting does
me that way--when I see it, which ain’t often.”
He paused a minute in uncertainty. Then resolution came to him.
“Well,” he said, “come on; there’s no use of our hanging round here any
longer. I’ll give Blinky his quarter--he certainly earned it ten times
over--and then we’ll go back uptown, and I’ll telephone Grainger he can
have his seventy-five more a week.”
“But what are we going to do about--him?” Offutt indicated whom he meant
with a wave of his arm toward the stage.
It was Verba’s turn. Verba knew the stage and its people and its ways as
Offutt would never know them. He had been an actor, Verba had, before he
turned managing director for Cohalan & Hymen.
“What are we going to do about him?” he repeated; and then, as though
surprised that the other should be asking the question: “Why, nothing!
Offutt, every haunted house is entitled to its ghost. This is a haunted
house if ever there was one; and there’s its ghost, standing out there.
You mentioned an extinct species, didn’t you? Well, you were dead right,
son. So take your good-by look now, before we go, at the last of a great
breed. There’ll be no more like him, I’m thinking.”
“But you can’t leave him here like this!” said Offutt. “His mind is
gone--you admit it yourself. They’ve got hospitals and asylums in this
state--and homes too. It would be a mercy to take him with us.”
“Mercy? It would be the dam’dest cruelty on earth!” snapped Verba. “How
long do you suppose he’d live in an asylum if we tore him up by the
roots and dragged him away from this place? A week? I tell you, a week
would be a blamed long time. No, sir; we leave him right here. And we’ll
keep our mouths shut about this too. Come on!”
He tiptoed to the iron door and opened it softly. Then, with his hand on
the latch, he halted.
Bateman was just finishing. He spoke the mad king’s mad tag-line and got
himself off the stage. He unreeled the stay rope from its chock. The
curtain rumbled down. Through it the insistent clapping of Blinky’s
skinny paws could be heard.
Smiling proudly the old man listened to the sound. He forgot their
presence behind him. He stood waiting. Blinky kept on applauding--Blinky
was wise in his part, too. Then, still smiling, Bateman stripped off his
beard, and, putting forth a bony white hand, he plucked aside the
flapping curtain and stepped forth once more.
Scrouging up behind him and holding the curtain agape, they saw him bow
low to the pit where Blinky was, and to the empty boxes, and to the
yawning emptiness of each balcony; and they knew that to him this was
not a mangy cavern of dead memories and dead traditions and dead days,
peopled only by gnawing rats and crawling vermin and one lone little
one-eyed street boy, but a place of living grandeurs and living
triumphs. And when he spoke, then they knew he spoke, not to one but to
a worshipping, clamorous host.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, with a bearing of splendid conceit, “I
thank you for the ovation you have given me. To an artist--to an artist
who values his art--such moments as this are most precious--”
“Come on, Offutt!” whispered Verba huskily. “Leave him taking his
call.”