II.
I am taking my wife and two girls to Baltimore for the Christmas week. Last year we had our Christmas dinner with Irving. This year he has said, “Let us all sup together. The theatres are open on Christmas day; we must, therefore, have our pudding for supper after we have seen the last of poor old Louis.”
“Awkward night for ladies getting to the ‘Maryland,’” says the guide.
They are well provided with cloaks and furs and snow-boots, or rubbers (an absolute necessity and a great comfort in America), and we all push along after the guide, across the departure platform, into the snowy night,—the flakes fall in blinding clouds; over railway tracks which men are clearing,—the white carpet soft and yielding; between freight-cars, through open sheds,—the girls enjoying it all, as only young people can enjoy a snow-storm.
The flickering light of our guide’s lantern is at length eclipsed by the radiance of a well-illuminated cabin.
“This is the office; you can wait here; they’ll tell you when the ‘Maryland’s’ reported.”
A snug room, with a great stove in the centre. The men who are sitting around it move to make way for us. They do not disguise their surprise at the arrivals: an English family (one of them very young, with her hair blowing about her face), with snow enough falling from their cloaks to supply material for a snow-balling match. We are evidently regarded as novel visitors. Track laborers and others follow us in. They carry lamps, and their general appearance recalls the mining scene in “The Danites,” at the London Olympic. Our entrance seems as much of a surprise to the others as the arrival of “the school-marm” was to the men in the Californian bar-room.
Presently a smart official (not unlike a guard of the Midland Railway in England as to his uniform) enters. There is a swing in his gait and a lamp in his hand, as a smart writer might put it.
“That gentleman will tell you all about the train,” says one of the Danites, speaking in the shadow of the stove.
“The ‘Maryland,’” I say, addressing the officer; “I want to get on board her special train from Boston.”
“Guess I can’t help that! I want to get some cars off her, that’s all I know,” is the response, the speaker eying me loftily, and then pushing his way towards a lookout window on the other side of the cabin.
“Oh, thank you very much!” I say. “You are really too good. Is there any other gentleman here who is anxious to tell me where I shall find the ‘Maryland’s’ quay, and explain how I am to get on board the special express, which takes a day to do a five hours’ journey?”
“I’ll show you,” says my surly friend, turning round upon me and looking me all over. “I am the guard.”
“Thank you.”
“Here she comes!” he exclaims.
I forgive him, at once, his brusqueness. He, too, has, of course, been waiting six hours for her.
A hoarse whistle is heard on the river. The guard opens the cabin-door. In rushes the snow and the wind. The guard’s lantern casts a gleam of light on the white way.
“Be careful here,” he says, assisting my girls over a rough plank road.
It is an open quay over which we are pushing along. The guard, now full of kind attention, holds up his lamp for us, and indicates the best paths, the snow filling our eyes and wetting our faces. Now we mount a gangway. Then we struggle down a plank. There are bustle and noise ahead of us, and the plash “of many waters.”
“Hatton!” shouts the familiar voice of Bram Stoker, through the darkness.
“Here we are!” is the prompt reply.
A stalwart figure pushes through the snow, and the next moment my wife is under the protection of a new guide. We feel our way along mazy passages,—now upwards, now downwards,—that might be mysterious corridors leading to “dungeons beneath the castle moat,” the darkness made visible by primitive lamps. Presently we are on the floating raft, and thence we mount the steps of a railway car.
What a change of scene it is!—from Arctic cold to summer heat; from snow and rough ways to a dainty parlor, with velvet-pile carpets, easy-chairs, and duplex lamps; and from the Danites to Irving, Abbey, Loveday, and Miss Terry. They welcome us cheerily and with Christmas greetings.
“Oh, don’t mind the snow; shake it off,—it will not hurt us! Come, let me help you. Of course, you all wear snow-boots,—Arctic rubbers, eh? That’s right; off with them first!” And before we have done shaking hands she is disrobing the girls, and helping them off with their wraps and shoes,—this heroine of the romantic and classic drama, this favorite of English play-goers, who is now conquering the New World as surely as she has conquered the Old.
Every one in the theatrical profession knows how kindly and natural and human, as a rule, are, and have ever been, the great women of the English stage. But the outside public has sometimes strange opinions concerning the people of this other side of the curtain, this world of art. Some of them would be surprised if they could see Ellen Terry attending upon my three fellow-travellers; giving them refreshment, and, later on, helping to put them to bed. They would be interested, also, to have seen her dispensing tea to the members of the company, or sitting chatting in their midst about the journey and its incidents. Just as womanly and tender as is her Desdemona, her Portia, her Ophelia; so is she off the stage,—full of sympathy, touched to the quick by a tale of sorrow, excited to the utmost by a heroic story. Hers is the true artistic temperament. She treads the path of the highest comedy as easily and with the same natural grace, as she manifests in helping these girls of mine, from New York, to remove their snowy clothes, and as naturally as she sails through these very practical American cars to make tea for her brother and sister players, who love her, and are proud of her art.