I gave a bound and a rush that carried me half, across the stage before the manager caught me—and so I made my entrance on the stage, and danced and marched and sang with the rest, and all unconsciously took my first step upon the path that I was to follow through shadow and through sunshine—to follow by steep and stony places, over threatening bogs, through green and pleasant meadows—to follow steadily and faithfully for many and many a year to come.
On our first salary day, to the surprise of all concerned, I did not go to claim my week's pay. To everyone who spoke to me of the matter, I simply answered: "Oh, that will be all right." When the second day came I was the last to present myself at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler was there and he opened the door and asked me to come in. As I signed my name on the salary list I hesitated perceptibly and he laughingly said: "Don't you know your own name?" Now on the first day of all, when the stage-manager had taken down our names, I had been gazing at the scenery and when he called out: "Little girl, what is your name?" I had not heard, and someone standing by had said: "Her name is Clara—Clara Morris, or Morrisey, or Morrison, or something like that," and he dropped the last syllable from my name Morrison, and wrote me down Morris; so when Mr. Ellsler put his question, "Don't you know your name?" that was certainly the moment when I should have spoken—but I was too shy, and there and thereafter held my peace, and have been in consequence Clara Morris ever since.
I having signed for and received my two weeks' salary, Mr. Ellsler asked why I had not come the week before, and I told him I preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. And he gravely nodded and said "it was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time"—and, though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me.
Then he said: "You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went on alone and unrehearsed the other night you proved you had both adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theatre. Will you come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in September next?"
I think it must have been my ears that finally stopped my ever-widening smile while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.
"To be sure," said he, "to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her, then, and let me know whether you can or not."
Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe that Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death everyone must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that 90-in-the-shade summer day, racing along in a whirl of short skirts, with the boyish, self-kicking gait peculiar to running girls of thirteen.
One man, a tailor, ran out hatless and coatless and looked up the street anxiously in the direction from which I came. A big boy on the corner yelled after me: "S-a-a-y, Sis, where's the fire?" but you see they did not know that I was carrying home my first earnings—that I was clutching six damp one-dollar bills in the hands that had been so empty all my life! Poor little hands that had never held a greater sum than one big Canadian penny, that had never held a dollar bill till they had first earned it. But if the boy was blind to what I held, so was I blind to what the future held—which made us equal.
I had meant to take off my hat and smooth my hair, and in a decorous and proper manner approach my mother and deliver my nice little speech, and then hand her the money. But, alas! as I rushed into the house I came upon her unexpectedly—for, fearing dinner was going to be late, she was hurrying things by shelling a great basket of peas as she sat by the dining-room window. At sight of her tired face, all my nicely planned speech disappeared. I flung my arm about her neck, dropped the bills on top of the empty pods, and cried with beautiful lucidity: "Oh, mother! that's mine—and it's all yours!"
She kissed me, but to my grieved amazement put the money back into my hand, folding my four stiff, unwilling fingers over it, as she said: "No, you have earned this money yourself—you are the only one who has the right to use it—you are to do with it exactly as you please."