He was so very, very funny as Major Wellington de Boots in "Everybody's Friend"; his immense self-satisfaction, his stiff little strut, his martial ardor, his wild-eyed cowardice were trying enough, but when he deliberately acted at you—oh, dear! He would look me straight in the eye and make faces at me, until I sobbed at every breath. Then he had a wretched little trick of rising slowly on his toes and sinking back to his heels again, while he cocked his head to one side so like a knowing old dicky-bird that he simply convulsed me with laughter.
I was his Mrs. Swansdown, and I had kept steady and never lost a line, until we came to the scene where, as my landlord and would-be husband, he brought some samples of wall-paper for me to choose from. Where, in heaven's name, he ever found those rolls of paper I can't imagine. They were not merely hideous but grotesque as well, and were received with shouts of laughter by the house.
With true shopman's touch, he would send each piece unrolling toward the footlights, while holding up its breadth of ugliness for Mrs. Swansdown's inspection and approval, and every piece that he thus displayed he greeted at first sight with words of hearty admiration for its beauty and perfect suitability, until, catching disapproval on the widow's face, he in the same breath, with lightning swift hypocrisy, turned his sentence into contemptuous disparagement, and fairly shook his audience with laughter at the quickness of his change of opinion.
At last he unfurled a piece of paper whose barbarity of design and criminality of color I remember yet. The dead-white ground was widely and alternately striped with a dark Dutch blue and a dingy chocolate brown, and about the blue stripes there twined a large pumpkin-colored morning-glory, while from end to end the brown stripes were solemnly pecked at by small magenta birds. The thing was as ludicrous as it was ugly—an Indian clay-idol might have cracked into smiles of derision over its artistic qualities.
Then Mr. Owens, bursting into encomiums over its desirability as a hanging for the drawing-room walls of a modest little retreat, caught my frown, and continued: "Er—er, or perhaps you'd prefer it as trousering?" then, delightedly: "Yes—yes, you're quite right, it is a neat thing—cut full at the knee, eh? Close at the foot, yes, yes, I see, regular peg-tops—great idea! I'll send you a pair at once. Oh, good Lord! what have I done! I—I—mean, I'll have a pair myself, Mrs. Swansdown, cut from this very piece of your sweet selection!"
Ah, well! that ended the scene so far as my help went. The shrieking audience drowned my noise for a time, but, alas, it recovered directly, having no hysterics to battle with, while I buried my head deep in the sofa-pillows and rolled and screamed and wept and bit my lips, clinched my hands, and vainly fought for my self-control; while all the time I saw a pair of trousers cut from that awful wall-paper, and Mr. Owens just bulged his white shiny eyes at me and pranced about and rejoiced at my downfall, while the audience, seeing what the trouble was, laughed all over again, and—and—well, "my hash" was very thoroughly "settled," even to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Owens's self.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THIRD
From the "Wild West" I Enter the Eastern "Parlor of Home Comedy"—I Make my First Appearance in "Man and Wife."
The original Fifth Avenue Theatre was a tiny affair, with but small accommodation for the public and none at all for the actor, unless he burrowed for it beneath the building; and indeed the deep, long basement was wonderfully like a rabbit-warren, with all its net-work of narrow passageways, teeming with life and action. The atmosphere down there was dreadful—I usually prefer using a small word instead of a large one, but it would be nonsense to speak of the "air" in that green-room, because there was none. Atmosphere was there stagnant, heavy, dead, with not even an electric fan to stir it up occasionally, and the whole place was filled with the musty, mouldy odor that always arises from carpets spread in sunless, airless rooms. Gas, too, burned in every tiny room, in every narrow slip of passageway, and though it was all immaculately clean, it was still wonderful how human beings endured so many hours imprisonment there.
It was on a very hot September morning that the company was called together in the green-room of the Fifth Avenue Theatre. This first "call" of the season is generally given over to greetings after the vacation, to chattings, to introductions, to welcomes, and a final distribution of parts in the first play, and a notification to be on hand promptly next morning for work. With a heavily throbbing heart I prepared for the dreaded first meeting with all these strange people, and when I grew fairly choky, I would say to myself, "What nonsense, Mr. Daly or the prompter will be there, and in the general introductions you will, of course, be included, and after that you will be all right—a smile, a bow, or a kind word will cost no more in a New York theatre than in any other one," which goes to prove what a very ignorant young person I was then. In looking back to that time, I often drop into the habit of considering myself as another person, and sometimes I am sorry for the girl of that day, and say: "You poor thing, if you had only known!" or again, "What wasted trust—what needless sorrow, too!" But I was then like the romping, trusting, all-loving puppy-dog who believes every living being his friend, until a kick or a blow convinces him to the contrary.