When I tell you, my only friend, to whom I so rarely write and whom I more rarely see, that my lonely life has not been without love for woman, you will perhaps laugh or doubt.
“What,” you will say, “that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that there is such a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in his reading.”
True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man's counting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been more than merely passable to look at, even in my best days.
Yet I have loved a woman.
During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across the river, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday. I enjoyed the afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday. Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water.
One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source. The woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly a handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner which plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle class, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted to each other was easily discoverable.
The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good size and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in which she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntless air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened.
She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any change in health.
The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering; perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.
Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dog regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would never have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, under exactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday.
So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. The husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Monday morning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some taste for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful.
The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruption and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness which arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strange sympathy for an interest in them.
On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until they passed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk. Sometimes they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to me an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would stand out clearly against the background.
It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the health of either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale and slight, showed little change and that infrequently. But the fluctuations of the woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, were numerous and pronounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust than on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the dark crescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myself elated.
But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:
“This is one of the bad Sundays.”
There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.
What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and constancy of her devotion to her husband,—the absorption of the woman in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.
Yes, I loved her,—if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for her or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.
My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woe of my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness.
So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the couple did not appear.
For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk.
On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted there.
Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.
I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld the widower—whose name I did not and probably never shall know—upon the bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoon in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before. They walked close to each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which I observed on her finger.
I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow so speedily, had felt death—those might never have existed, so soon had they been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had worn the aspect of a perfect love.
Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, has allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.
The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life, makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold, bleak, empty, repellent.
You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to me a thing unknown.
So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper ever wrote.
[Footnote: Courtesy ofLippincott's Magazine.Copyright, 1892, by J.B. Lippincott Company.]
Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the “old school.” He railed against the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when he attitudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the brass rail, his right hand encircling a glass of foaming beer, he often clamoured for a return of the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and sighed at the departure of the “palmy days.”
A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not of “the profession.”
Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither he nor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He still waited and hoped.
For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened by a distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of his occupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearily describe as a “favourable impression.” This he ascribed to lack of opportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. and Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent for the newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought the notices of the performance. These records never contained a word of either praise or censure for Mogley.
Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a “walking gentleman.” It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz) that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her that life-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue acting. She had swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope of his triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she suffered more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied.
She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face from which the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much to Mogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of his aspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully the hard life that a player at “one-night stands” must endure in the interest of art.
This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was about to start “on the road” with the “Two Lives for One” Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or die,—perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, who in the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water, while his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the small room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street.
The “Two Lives for One” Company “collapsed,” as the newspapers say, in Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstanding the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the manager at the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough money from him to take them back to New York.
Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,—a really heartrending smile.
“Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I don't know whether I can live out the season.”
“Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!”
“I would be resigned, Tom, if only—if only you would make a success before I go.”
“If only I could get the chance, Alice!”
As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live on nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, but medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door:
“Anything yet?”
“Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is overcrowded!”
But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In the dark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor.
“Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse,” said the physician, abruptly. “I'm afraid she won't live until midnight.”
Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to “break news gently” in cases where they stand small chances of remuneration.
Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he had such good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news would reanimate her.
“Alice,” he cried, as he threw open the door, “you must get well! My chance has come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, is here.”
She sat up in bed, trembling. “What is it, Tom?”
“This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman this afternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'Silver King' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why this extravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexter explained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't be put on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too sick to walk. 'No one else knows the part,' Hexter said. Then I told him I knew the part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the piece was first produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust up-to-date' from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late dinners and too much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the piece had run more'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it. Well, Hexter said, as everything was ready to put on the piece, if I thought I was up in the part, he'd let me try it. So we went to Renshaw's room and got the part and here it is.”
“But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line.”
“Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone of power.' That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides, burlesque is the thing now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and Powers. They're the men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit in this part, my fortune is sure.”
“But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery.”
“That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries.”
Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome in the same words.
“And then besides—why, Alice, what's the matter?”
She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her. Slowly she opened her eyes.
“Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying.”
Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hard enough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it be without her?
The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside.
“Hexter and his Mephisto be d——d!” said Mogley. “I shall stay at home with you to-night.”
“No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before I die, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until you come to join me.”
Mogley's weaker will succumbed to hers. So, with his right hand around Mrs. Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the steeple which was visible through the narrow window, that he might know when to administer her medicine, he held his “part” in his left hand and refreshed his recollection of the lines.
At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon her cheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep, but she murmured:
“May God help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre with you. Good-bye.”
Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and then during the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper intervals.
Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw's dressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind ever turning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to the words and “business” of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights and crimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted the exaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood by, giving him hints as to new “business” invented by Renshaw.
“You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a specialty.”
“Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the part and the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do some imitations of actors.”
At eight he was ready to go on the stage.
“May God be with you!” reëchoed in his ear,—the echo of a weak voice put forth with an effort.
He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that, “owing to Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr. Thomas Mogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice, without a rehearsal.”
He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and he involuntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and delicious words reached his ears.
The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, then an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance of Mephisto.
Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminary announcement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, rather disconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes had ranged over the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the footlights, there sounded in the depths of his brain:
“My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!”
There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them on the front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant seat throughout the evening.
In all burlesques of “Faust” the rôle of Mephisto is the leading comic figure. The actor who assumes it undertakes to make people laugh.
Mogley made people laugh that night, but it was not his intentional humourous efforts that excited their hilarity. It was the man himself. They began by jeering him quietly. Then the gallery grew bold.
“Ah there, Edwin Booth!” sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft.
“Oh, what a funny little man he is!” ironically quoted another from a song in one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if elongated frame.
“He t'inks dis is a tragedy,” suggested a Bowery youth.
But Mogley tried not to heed.
In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley laboured zealously. The ribald gallery had often been his foe. Wait until such and such a scene! He would show them how a pupil of the old stock companies could play burlesque! Song and dance men from the varieties had too long enjoyed undisputed possession of that form of drama.
But, one by one, he passed his opportunities without capturing the house. Nearer came the end of the piece. Slimmer grew his chance of making the longed-for impression. The derision of the audience increased. Now the gallery made comments upon his personal appearance.
“He could get between raindrops,” yelled one, applying a recent speech of Edwin Stevens, the comic opera comedian.
And at home Mogley's wife was dying—holding to life by sheer power of will, that she might rejoice with him over his triumph. Tears blinded his eyes. Even the other members of the company were laughing at his discomfiture.
Only a little brunette in pink tights who played Siebel, and whom he had never met before, had a look of sympathy for him.
“It's a tough audience. Don't mind them,” she whispered.
Mogley has never seen or heard of the little brunette since. But he anticipates eventually to behold her ranking first after Alice among the angels of heaven.
The curtain fell and Mogley, somewhat dazed in mind, mechanically removed his apparel, washed off his “make-up,” donned his worn street attire and his haughty demeanour, and started for home.
Home! Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waiting impatiently his return, the news of his triumph.
“We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley,” said the stage manager as he reached the stage door. “Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for to-night. Here's your money now.”
Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and hastened homeward. He thought only:
“To tell her the truth will kill her at once.”
Mrs. Mogley was awake and in a fever of anticipation when Mogley entered the little room. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him with shining eyes.
“Well, how was it?” she asked, quickly.
Mogley's face wore a look of jubilant joy.
“Success!” he cried. “Tremendous hit! The house roared! Called before the curtain four times and had to make a speech!”
Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting. Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramatic illusion.
“Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to read about it in the papers!”
Mogley's heart fell. If the papers would mention the performance at all, they would dismiss it in three or four lines, bestowing perhaps a word of ridicule upon him. She was sure to see one paper, the one that the landlady's daughter lent her every day.
Mogley looked at the illuminated clock on the steeple across the way. A quarter to twelve.
“My love,” he said, “I promised Hexter I would meet him to-night at the Five A's Club, to arrange about salary and so forth. I'll be gone only an hour. Can you do without me that long?”
“Yes, go; and don't let him have you for less than fifty dollars a week.”
Shortly after midnight the dramatic editor of that newspaper Miss Jones daily lent to Mrs. Mogley, having sent up the last page of his notice of the new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to the side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings, and a coat frayed at the edges.
“I'm Mr. Thomas Mogley,” said this apparition.
“Ah! Have a cigarette, Mr. Mogley?” replied the dramatic editor, absently, lighting one himself.
“Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading comedian of the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the —— Theatre. I played Mephisto.” (He had begun his speech in a dignified manner, but now he spoke quickly and in a quivering voice.) “I was a failure—a very great failure. My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I was a failure, it would kill her, so I told her I made a success. I have really never made a success in my life. She is sure to read your paper to-morrow. Will you kindly not speak of my failure in your criticism of the performance? She cannot live later than to-morrow morning, and I should not like—you see—I have never deigned to solicit favours from the press before, sir, and—”
“I understand, Mr. Mogley. It's very late, but I'll see what I can do.”
Mogley passed out, walking down the five flights of stairs to the street, forgetful of the elevator.
The dramatic editor looked at his watch. “Half-past twelve,” he said; then, to a man at another desk:
“Jack, I can't come just yet. I'll meet you at the club. Order devilled crabs and a bottle of Bass for me.”
He ran up-stairs to the night editor. “Mr. Dorney, have you the theatre proofs? I'd like to make a change in one of the theatre notices.”
“Too late for the first edition, my boy. Is it important?”
“Yes, an exceptional case. I'll deem it a personal favour.”
“All right. I'll get it in the city edition. Here are the proofs.”
“Let's see,” mused the dramatic editor, looking over the wet proofs. “Who covered the —— Theatre to-night? Some one in the city department. I suppose he 'roasted' Gugley, or whatever his name is. Ah, here it is.”
And he read on the proof:
“The revival of an ancient burlesque on 'Faust' at the —— Theatre last night was without any noteworthy feature save the pitiful performance of the part of Mephisto by a doleful gentleman named Thomas Mogley, who showed not the faintest of humour and who was tremendously guyed by a turbulent audience. Mr. Mogley was temporarily taking the place of William Renshaw, a funmaker of more advanced methods, who will appear in the rôle to-night. There are some pretty girls and agile dancers in the company.”
Which the dramatic editor changed to read as follows:
“The revival of a familiar burlesque on 'Faust' at the —— Theatre last night was distinguished by a decidedly novel and original embodiment of Mephisto by Thomas Mogley, a trained and painstaking comedian. His performance created an abundance of merriment, and it was the manifest thought of the audience that a new type of burlesque comedian had been discovered.”
All of which was literally true. And the dramatic editor laughed over it later over his bottle of white label at the club.
By what power Mrs. Mogley managed to keep alive until morning I do not know. The dull gray light was stealing into the little room through the window as Mogley, leaning over the bed, held a fresh newspaper close to her face. Her head was propped up by means of pillows. She laughed through her tears. Her face was all gladness.
“A new—comedian—discovered,” she repeated. “Ah, Tom, at last! That is what I lived for! I can die happy now. We've made a—great—hit—Tom—”
The voice ceased. There was a convulsion at her throat. Nothing stirred in the room. From the street below came the sound of a passing car and a boy's voice, “Morning papers.” Mogley was weeping.
The dead woman's hand clutched the paper. Her face wore a smile.
This is no fable; it is the hardest kind of fact. I met Craddock not more than a week ago. His inebriety prevented his recognizing me.
What a joyous, hopeful man he was upon the day of his marriage! He looked toward the future as upon a cloudless spring dawn one looks forward to the day.
He had sown his wild oats and had already reaped a crop of knowledge. “I have put the past behind me,” he said. And he thought it would stay there.
He married one of the sweetest and best of women. The match was an ideal one—exceptionally so. His wife's mother objected to it and moved away on account of it. “That's a detail,” said Craddock.
There are details and details. The importance of any one of them depends on circumstances.
Craddock had all the qualities and attributes requisite to make him a son-in-law to the liking of his mother-in-law—lack of money.
So she went to live in Boston, maintained a chilly correspondence with her daughter, and bided her time.
Craddock had had his old loves, a fact that he did not attempt to conceal from his wife. She insisted upon his telling her about them, although the narration put her into manifest vexation of mind. Such is the way of young wives.
There was one love about which Craddock said less than about any of the others, because it had encroached more upon his life than any of them. It had nearly approached being a serious affair. He had a delicacy concerning the mention of it, too, for he flattered himself that the flame, although entirely extinguished upon his own side, yet smouldered deep in the heart of the woman. Therefore, he spoke of that episode in vague and general terms.
Strange as it seemed to Craddock, clear as it is to any student of men and women, it was this amour that excited the most curiosity in the mind of his wife.
“What was her name?” asked the latter.
“Agnes Darrell.”
“I don't think she has a pretty name, at all events.”
“Oh, that was only her stage name. I really don't remember what her real name was.”
This was a judicious falsehood.
“Well, I'm sorry that you ever made love to actresses. I'm afraid I can't think as much of you after knowing—”
“After knowing that the first sight of you drove the memory of all actresses and other women in the world out of my head,” cried Craddock, with a merry fervour that made his speech irresistible.
So they persisted in being extremely happy together for three years, to the grinding chagrin of Craddock's mother-in-law in Boston.
One July Friday, Craddock's wife was at the seashore, while Craddock, who ran down each Saturday to remain with her until Monday, was battling with his work and the heat and the summer insects, in his office in the city. Mrs. Craddock received her mail, two letters addressed to her at the seaside, two forwarded from the city whither they had first come.
Of the latter one was a milliner's announcement of removal. The other was in a large envelope, and the address was in a chirography unknown to her. The large envelope contained a smaller one.
This second envelope was addressed to Miss Agnes Darrell, —— Hotel, Chicago, in the handwriting of Craddock.
The feelings of Craddock's wife are imaginable. She took from this already opened second envelope the letter that it contained. It also was in Craddock's penmanship. She succeeded in a semistupefied condition in reading it to the end.
“May 13.
“My Dearest Agnes:—I have just a moment in which to tell you the old story that one heart, thousands of miles east of you, beats for you alone. With what joy do I anticipate the early ending of the season, when, like young Lochinvar, you will come out of the West. I shall contrive to be with you as often as possible this summer. With renewed vows of my unalterable devotion, I must hastily say good night.
“Yours always,
“Jack.”
Any who seek a new emotion would ask for nothing more than Craddock's wife then experienced. It was not until the first shock had given away to a calm, stupendous indignation that she began to comment upon the epistle in detail.
“May 13th—at that very time Jack was sighing at the thought of my being away from him during the hot weather and telling me how he would miss me. All deception! His heart at that very time was beating for her alone. And he would contrive to see her as often as possible this summer—during my absence!”
It was then that Craddock's wife learned the great value of pride and anger as a compound antidote to overwhelming grief in certain circumstances.
When Craddock, quite unarmed, rushed to meet her at the seashore upon the next evening, she was en route for Boston.
In several ensuing years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that every communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three years and all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house for his wife and himself, in trying to cross her path that he might have a moment's hearing, he came back home and went to the dogs.
He would have killed himself had not hope remained—the hope that some chance turn of events would bring him face to face with her, that he might know wherefore his punishment. He would have proudly resolved to forget her, and he would have striven day and night to make a name that some day would reach her ears whereever she might go, had he not felt that some terrible mistake had taken her from him; time would eventually rectify matters. As hope bade him live and as his inability to forget her made it impossible for him to put his thoughts upon work, he became a drunkard.
He might not have done so had he been you or I; but he was only Craddock, and whether or not you find his offence beyond the extent of palliation, the fact is that he drank himself penniless and entirely beyond the power of his own will to resume respectability.
Naturally his friends abandoned him.
“Craddock is making a beast of himself,” said one who had formerly sat at his table. “To give him money merely accelerates the process.”
“When a man loses all self-respect, how can he expect to retain the sympathy of other people?” queried a second.
“I never thought much of a man who would go to the gutter on account of a woman. It shows a lack of stamina,” observed a third.
All of which was true. But particular cases have exceptionally aggravating circumstances. Special combinations may produce results which, although seemingly under human control, are almost, if not quite, inevitable.
One day Craddock's wife came back to him. In Paris she had made a discovery. She had kept the letter from Jack to the actress in a box that always accompanied her. Opening this box suddenly, her eye fell upon the postmark, stamped upon the envelope. She had never noticed this before. She knew that the date written above the letter itself was incomplete, the year not being indicated. According to the postmark, the year was 1875.
That was four years before Jack married her; two years before he first saw her.
She had always supposed the sending of the letter to her to be the act of some jealous rival of Jack's for the actress's affection. Now she knew not to what it might have been attributable.
When she arrived at the hospital where Craddock was recovering from the effects of an unconscious attempt at suicide, she was ten years older, in fact, than when she had left him; twenty years older in appearance. She took him home and has been trying to make a man of him. She manifests toward him limitless patience and tenderness, and she tolerates uncomplainingly his bi-weekly carousals. But she can afford to, having come into possession of a small fortune at her mother's recent death.
Craddock is amiably content with her. He cannot bring himself to regard her as the beautiful young bride of his youth. So little remains of her former charm, her former vivacity and girlishness, that it seems as if Craddock's wife of other times had died.
A few days ago, I met at the Sheepshead Races apasséeactress who was telling about the conquests of her early career.
“There was one young fellow awfully infatuated with me,” she said, “who used to write me the sweetest letters. I kept them long after he stopped caring for me, until he was married; then I destroyed them. I found one short one, though, in an old handbag some years after, and, just for a joke I mailed it to his wife at his old address. I don't suppose it ever reached her, though, or he would have acknowledged it, for the sake of old times. I wonder whatever became of Jack Craddock. People used to say he had a bright future—I say, tell that messenger-boy to come here! I'm going to put five on Tenny for this next race. And you'll lend me the five, won't you?”
A chance in life is like worldly greatness—to which, indeed, it is commonly a requisite preliminary. Some are born with it, some achieve it, and some have it thrust upon them.
There is a youth who has had it thrust upon him. What he will do with it remains to be seen. Know the story, which is true in every detail save in two proper names:
The midnight train from New York, which crawls out of the Jersey City ferry station at 12:25, is usually doleful, especially in the ordinary cars. One who cannot sleep easily therein has a weary two or three hours' time to Philadelphia. Almost any equally wakeful companion is then a source of joy.
A girl of medium size, wearing a veil, and being rather carelessly attired in dark clothes which fitted a charming figure, walked jauntily up the aisle, saw that no seat was entirely vacant, and therefore, after a hasty glance at me, sat down beside me.
Had not the two very young men in the seat behind us drunk too much wine that night in New York, the girl and I might never have exchanged a word. But the conversation of the youths was such as to cause between us the intercommunication of smiles, and eventually of speeches.
Then casual observations about the fulness of the car, the time of the train, and our respective destinations,—mine being Philadelphia, hers being Baltimore, led to the revelation that she was a constant traveller, because she was an actress. She had been a soubrette in musical farce, but lately she had belonged to a variety and burlesque company. She had gone upon the stage when she was thirteen, and she was now twenty.
“What kind of an act do you do?” I asked, in the language of the variety “profession.”
“Oh, I can do almost anything,” she said, in a tone of a self-possessed, careless, and vivacious woman. “I sing well enough, and I can dance anything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind of step, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn't learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm not afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. There's no fake about my whistle; it's the real thing. I can whistle any sort of music that goes.”
“Your company appears in Baltimore this week?”
“Oh, no! I've left the company. You see, I've been off for six weeks on account of illness, and now I'm going over to Baltimore to my father's funeral. He is to be buried to-morrow. See, here's the telegram. I've been having hard lines lately. I've not had any sleep for three days, and I won't get to Baltimore till daylight. I want to start back to New York to-morrow night, if I can raise the stuff. I had just enough money to get a ticket to Baltimore, and now I'm dead broke.”
Then she laughed and got me to untie her veil. When it was removed, I saw a frank young face with an abundance of soft brown hair. About the light blue eyes were the marks of fatigue, and the colour of the cheeks further confirmed her account of loss of sleep.
Her feet pattered softly upon the floor of the car.
“I'm doing a single shuffle,” she said, in explanation of the movement of her feet. “If you could do one too, we might do a double.”
“Do you do your act alone on the stage?” I asked, “or are you one of a team?”
“We're a team. My side partner's a man. It pays better that way. We get $40 a week and transportation. I used to get only $12 except when I stood around and posed, then I got $35 and had to pay my own railroad fare. You can bet I have a good figure, when I get $35 for that alone! I handle the money of the team and I divide it even between us. I don't believe in the man getting nine-tenths of the stuff, do you? Besides, I'm older than my partner is. I put him in the business.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, I picked him up on the street in New York. I saw that he had a good voice and was a bright kid, so I took him for my partner.”
“But tell me how it came about.”
She was quite willing to do so. And the rumbling of the wheels, the rush of the train over the night-swathed plains of New Jersey, accompanied her voice. All the other passengers were sleeping. To the following effect was her narrative:
At evening a crowd of boys had gathered at the corner of Broadway and a down-town street. One of them—ragged, unkempt, but handsome—was singing and dancing for the diversion of the others. That way came the variety actress, then out of an engagement. She stopped, heard the boy sing, and saw him dance. She pushed through the crowd to him.
“How did you learn to dance?” she asked.
“Didn't ever learn,” he said, with impudent sullenness.
“Who taught you to sing?”
“None o' yer business.”
“But who did teach you?”
“Nobody.”
“What's your name?”
“None of your business.”
“Will you come along with me into the restaurant over there?”
“No.”
But presently he was induced to go, although he continued to answer her questions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the “Ladies' Entrance,” and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been “put” with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and hands and to call upon her that evening at the theatrical boarding-house on Twenty-seventh Street where she was living. Then she left him.
When he called, she took him to her room and induced him to allow her to comb his hair. A deal of persuasion was necessary to this. Then she took him out and bought him a cheap suit of clothes on the Bowery. A half-hour later he was standing with her in the wings at Miner's Variety Theatre. A man and woman were doing a song and dance upon the stage.
“Watch that man,” the actress said to the boy of the streets. “I want you to do that sort of an act with me one of these days.”
When he had thus received his first lesson, she led him back to the theatrical boarding-house, and in her room he showed her what ability he had picked up as a singer and dancer. She secured a room for him in the house, and she had the precaution to lock him in lest he should take fright at his novel change of surroundings and flee in the night. When she released him on the next morning she found him docile and cheerful.
She escorted him into the big dining-room to breakfast.
“Who's your friend, Lil?” asked a certain actor whose name is known from Portland to Portland.
“He's my new side partner,” she said, looking at the boy, who was not in the least abashed at the bold gaze of the negligently dressed soubrettes and the chaffing comedians who sat at the tables.
Everybody laughed. “What can he do?” was the general question.
“Get out there and show them, young one,” she said, pointing to the centre of the dining-room.
The boy obeyed without timidity. When he had sung and danced, there was hilarious applause.
“Good for the kid,” said the well-known actor. “What are you going to do with him, Lil?”
“I'm going to try to get an engagement for us together in Rose St. Clair's Burlesque Company.”
“I'll help you,” said the actor. “I know Rose. I'll go and see her right away, and you come there with the kid about 11 o'clock.”
When the girl and her protégé arrived at the boarding-house of the fat manageress they found that the actor had so far kept his promise as to have inveigled her into a condition of alcoholic amiability. She asked them what they could do. Each one sang and danced, and the girl, who also whistled, outlined to the manageress her idea of an “act” in which the two should appear. There was a hitch when the question of salary arose. The girl fixed upon $40. Rose thought that amount was too large. Lil adhered to her terms, and was about to leave without having made an agreement, when the manageress called her back, and a contract for a three weeks' engagement was signed at once.
The period between that day and the beginning of the engagement, which subsequently opened at Miner's Theatre, was spent by the girl in coaching her protégé. He was a year younger than she, a fact which tended to increase the influence that she promptly obtained over him. His sullenness having been overcome, he became a devoted and apt pupil. Having beheld himself in neat clothes and acquired habits of cleanliness, he speedily developed into a handsome youth of soft disposition and good behaviour.
The new song and dance “team” was successful. The boy quickly gained applause, and especially did he easily win the liking of such women as he met or appeared before. A new world was open to him. Naturally he enjoyed the easy conquests that he made in the curious, careless circle into which he had been brought.
He is still having his “fling.” But he has been from the first most obedient and unquestioning to his benefactress. He goes nowhere, does nothing, without previously obtaining permission from her.
She is proud of the advancement that he has accomplished already, and she is determined to make him a conspicuous figure upon the stage.
What is it that actuates this girl in her endeavour to elevate this boy in the world? What the mystery that brought to the gamin this guardian angel in the form of a variety actress who mingles bright sayings with lack of grammar, who tells Rabelaisian anecdotes in one minute and philosophizes in slang about the issues of life the next?
“You're in love with him, aren't you?” I said, as the train plunged on through the darkness.
“I don't know whether I am or not. He's just a kid, you know. I suppose the proper end of such a romance is that we should marry. But then I wouldn't be married to a man that I couldn't look up to.”
“But women don't invariably love that way. I'm sure you're in love with the boy. Have you never thought as to whether you were or not?”
“Have I? I should smile! I thought of it even on the first night, after I picked him up, when I locked him in his room. But I have always regarded him in a sort of motherly way, although only a year older. It seems kind of unnatural for me to love him as a woman loves a man. If he was only older!”
“Ah, that wish is sure evidence that you love him!”
“One thing I do know is that, though he always obeys me, he doesn't care as much for me as I do for him.”
“How do you know that?”
“He wouldn't think so much of other girls if he did. He doesn't look upon me as a woman for him to fall in love with. He regards me as an older sister. Why, he never even takes a girl to supper after the performance without asking my permission.”
“And you give it?”
“Yes; but he never knows how I feel when I do.”
“And how do you feel then?”
“The first time he asked me, it was like a knife going through me. I haven't got used to it yet.”
She paused for a time before adding:
“But, anyhow, he's going to make a name for himself some day. He has it in him. I'm not the only one that thinks so. I'm trying now to get him to go to a school of acting, but he thinks variety is good enough for him. He'll get over that, though.”
She spoke so tenderly and yet so proudly of him, that I could not without a pang of pity meditate upon the probable outcome of this attachment, which, according to the logic of realists, will be the boy's eventual success in life, long after he will have forgotten the hand that lifted him out of the depth in which he first opened his eyes.
He knows nothing of his parentage. His benefactress once sought, by means of Inspector Byrnes's penetrating eye, to pierce the clouds surrounding his origin, but the inspector smiled at the hopelessness of the attempt.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“I left him in New York,” she said. “I suppose he'll blow in all his money as soon as he can possibly manage to do so.”
And she laughed and did another “shuffle” with her feet upon the floor of the car.