Once, when the safety slide had not yet been slipped into place, one of the lions took up a position at the wrong end of the cage, and refused to budge. The villain, with Lillian in his arms, had twice vowed he would fling her to the beasts, and was ready to vow again, when somebody behind the scenes had an inspiration. Two men from the wings rushed upon the villain, and while the fierce struggle for the child held the audience, the stage-hands persuaded the lion to be reasonable.
The heroine in “Her First False Step” was a tall, handsome woman, Helen Ray. Lillian and Dorothy played her two little girls. In one scene Dorothy and her “mother” are out in the snow, as Lillian rushes in, to find them. She has a lollypop for Dorothy, who claps her hands with joy while Lillian kneels by Miss Ray, saying: “Oh, mother, what are you doing out here in the cold snow?” Often it was cold enough, too. The air, not the snow. The latter was swept up every night, to be used at the next performance. Sometimes other things were swept up with it, and were likely to hit them on the head—nails, bits of wood, a little dry mouse.
A real romance goes with the “False Step” season—one with a “happy-ever-after” ending. In one of the larger towns, a young actor from another company came to a matinée and was much struck by the beauty of Helen Ray, whom he had never met. That night he managed to come again, and next day at rehearsal time was lingering around the stage entrance. Dorothy, with a beloved Teddybear, was playing just outside. He struck up an acquaintance with her, and was invited in, to see her other possessions. A very few minutes later he had met Helen Ray. When the season had ended, they were married. At last accounts they were still married—and happy—after more than twenty-five years.
Lillian and Dorothy, at the theatre before the others, had diversions of their own. Both dearly loved lemon sticks, especially if oranges went with them. To suck orange juice through a lemon stick was pure delight. They would run across the dressing-room and jam their oranges against the wall.
In a corner of the first-act-set, they would set up a play-house. They did not play at “acting,” like other children. They would put on long dresses, and play at “keeping house”—having a home. When it came time for the performance, they hurried, not very eagerly, to change into the costumes required for their parts. They were not unhappy. They did not reflect much whether they liked what they were doing, or not. They just did it. The parts they played were always sad—pathetic, but not more so than their lives. They did not know that, but their mother did.
If one might have looked into Mary Gish’s heart at this time, just what would one have found there? Chiefly, of course, devotion to her children—thought of their immediate welfare and needs. After that? Was it to equip them for the career of actresses—a life which, unless they were at the top, was hardly to be called enviable, and even at its best was one of impermanent triumphs and fitful rewards? She knew pretty well that with their special kind of beauty, which each day she saw develop—their flair for subtle phases of human portrayal—given health, they could count on at least reasonable success. Did she greatly desire that? I think not. I think she considered it, but that her real purpose was to keep her children and herself on the stage only until by close, the very closest, economy, she had saved enough to establish herself in a permanent business which would give them a home, where they could go to school and grow into normal, or what she regarded as normal, womanhood. I think the old prejudice which she had shared with her family as to the theatre, did not die easily, and that for years she felt herself more or less “beyond the pale,” willing to stay there only because it meant a livelihood, with the possibility of something better, something with a home in it, not too far ahead. We shall see the effort she made in this direction, by and by, and what came of it—how the web of circumstance had its will with her, as with us all.
A SCENE FROM “HER FIRST FALSE STEP”
Whatever her plan, Mary Gish saw that she must educate her children. Herself reared in a town that rather specializes in education, she had known the advantage of excellent public schools. That her children should have less than herself was a distressing thought. From little books, at every spare moment, she taught them. In every town of importance, she made it her business to learn what she could of its history, its population, its industries, and of these she told them in as interesting a form as she could invent. In the South, she told them of the war; when it was possible, showed them landmarks, often taking them on little excursions.