A Silent Singer

by Clara Morris

And these cruelly crossed eyes made MacIlhenny a veritable joy to the street boys, who would follow him, performing warlike dances, and then rush before him and wait at street corners with ostentatiously crossed forefingers between which they gravely spat to avert the ill-luck his glance might put upon them.

Poor man! In no limb, no feature had he been spared—so that the final touch of common, coarse ugliness was found in the shining baldness of the top of his head, and the little flounce of brick-red hair with which he seemed to be modestly trying to cover its startling nudity.

With such a body to dwell in, one can hardly wonder that his mind should become distorted and develop only in one direction, as it were, and such a direction, for the ambition of MacIlhenny, this poor, cross-eyed, bowlegged Scotchman of the lower laboring class—this excellent cutter of stone, was to be the greatest tragic-actor of his day!

Nor was his ambition of the mere “I wish I were!” or “I would like to be!” order. It was a devouring passion.

A strong word, “devouring,” but since Webster says it means, among other things, “to consume ravenously, to prey upon, to swallow up, to appropriate greedily,” it is the right word, for his mad ambition, even in its beginning, appropriated greedily all his small savings, all his spare time. It consumed his sense of duty toward his wife—he had no sense of the ridiculous to consume. It preyed upon his heart as well as his mind, and finally it swallowed up his very life.

Many of the old acting plays he knew by heart, had memorized literally from cover to cover, while his knowledge of Shakespeare’s unacted plays was greater than most actors’ knowledge of the acting ones. Quite naturally he was given over to the habit of quoting, in season and out of season, and it was an indulgence in this habit that brought the stonecutter into touch with the actors of the city.

There was a saloon not far from the theatre, and MacIlhenny, being at work near by, went in one noon for his mid-day beer. There was a party of actors there eagerly discussing the morning news of the death of one of their profession, a very well known and successful actor. Now, as they all knew, one of this party had been the envious enemy of the dead man, and now, instead of a respectful silence, they were astonished to see him assuming deep grief. There was a great pulling of moustaches and exchanging of glances, but no one replied, and the hypocrite burst out again, first with fulsome praise, and then with exaggerated expressions of sorrow. The last word was barely spoken, when a voice with a burr in it gravely and most distinctly remarked: “The tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow!”

There was an instant of surprised silence, in which every one recognized the exquisite fitness of the quotation, and then a roar of laughter—another and another! Many beers were thrust upon the Scotch stonecutter, who knew his Shakespeare so well—and—and—oh! poor MacIlhenny! Straightway he neglected his work; he loitered too long at his nooning. He could not tear himself away from the actors, who listened to his quotations and laughed at his antics, as children might laugh at the capers of a monkey. But MacIlhenny left them with a wild gleam in his poor, crossed eyes, with jumping, twitching muscles about his thin lips, fairly drunk with excitement.

It was on one of these occasions that he saw his landlord ahead of him in the public street—a rotund, little person who seemed to have had one story left off when he was built. He knew it, too, and tried, with piled up dignity and high silk hat, to make up the missing height. And it was to this dignified, black-croated, slow-moving, old gentleman that MacIlhenny roared: “Turn, hell-hound, turn! Turn, I say! I want to hand you me month’s rent and save a trip to your house to-morrow!”

That was one of his out of season quotations, for the dignified old party was no hell-hound, but MacIlhenny had just been discussing Macbeth, and showing how poorly Mr. Booth understood that character, admitting that the “laddie did his best, and meant well, still he (MacIlhenny) was the one man living who had got inside the part”!