I heard my music; I sprang to the platform I had to enter from. "That's me!" I cried. "Wait!" he ordered and reached out to catch me. I evaded his grasp and skipped through the door, leaving but a fold of my skirt in his hand. I was on the stage—and joy, oh, joy! I was without a bustle!
Mr. Daly did not like being laughed at, but when he glanced down and saw the thing he was dragging behind him, after the manner of a baby's tin wagon, he had to laugh, and verily there were others who laughed with him, while the scandalized dresser carried the rejected article back to a decent seclusion.
There is no manager, star, or agent alive whose experience will enable him to foresee the fate of an untried play. A very curious thing is that what is called an "actor's" play—one, that is, that actors praise and enjoy in the rehearsing, is almost always a failure, while the managerial judgment has been reversed so often by the public, that even the most enthusiastic producer of new plays is apt "to hedge" a bit, with: "Unless I deceive myself, this will prove to be the greatest play," etc.; while the mistakes made by actors and managers both anent the value of certain parts are illustrated sufficiently by E. H. Sothern, C. W. Couldock, Joseph Jefferson—all three of whom made immense hits in parts they had absolutely refused to accept, yielding only from necessity or obligingness, and to their own astonishment finding fame in presenting the unwelcome characters. And to the misjudged Lord Dundreary, Asa Trenchard, etc., that night was added the name of Alixe.
Refined, intensely modern, the play was nevertheless a dread tragedy, and being French it almost naturally dealt with the breaking of a certain great commandment. And now—see: we actors thought that the stress and power of the play would be shown in the confession of the wife and in the scene of wild recrimination between her and the Comte de Somerive, when they met after eighteen years of separation. But see, how different was the view the public took. In the very first place then, when I escaped the bustle, and entered, straight, and slim, art had so reduced my usual height and changed my coloring, that until I spoke I was not recognized. The kindly welcome then given me calmed my fears, and I said to myself: "I can't be looking ridiculous in the part, or they would not do that!" And women, at least, can understand how my very soul was comforted by the knowledge. And just then a curious sense of joy seemed to bubble up in my heart. The sudden relief, the feeling of irresponsibility, the first-night excitement. Perhaps one, perhaps all together caused it. I don't know—I only know that meaning no disrespect, no irreverence, I could have sung aloud from the Benedicite: "Omnia opera Domini!" "Bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever!"
And the audience accepted the joyous little maid almost from the first girlish, love-betraying words she spoke, and yet—so sensitive is an audience at times—while still laughing over her sweet ignorance, they thrilled with a nameless dread of coming evil. They seemed to see the blue sky darkening, the threatening clouds piling up silently behind the white-robed child, whose perfect innocence left her so alone! Before the first act ended we discovered that the tragedy was shifting from the sinful mother and was settling down with crushing weight upon the shoulders of the stainless child. Indeed, the whole play was like a dramatization of the awful words: "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children!"
As the play went on and the impetuous grief of the child changed into proud self-restraint, while her agonizing jealousy of her adored mother developed, Mr. Daly, with wide, bright eyes, exclaimed: "I must have been blind—stone-blind! Why Alixe is the bone and marrow, the heart and soul of this play!"
Certainly the audience seemed to share his belief, for it called and called and called again for that misunderstood young person, in addition to the hearty approval bestowed upon the other more prominent characters. It was a very fine cast, Miss Fanny Morant making a stately and powerful Comtesse de Somerive, while Mr. Louis James gave a performance of the Duc de Mirandol that I never saw even approached again. Every other actor made of him either a fool or a brute, while James made of him a delightful enigma—a sort of well-bred simpleton, rattle-brain, and braggart, who at the last moment shows himself, beneath all disguise, a brave and loyal gentleman.
But the greatest triumph for Alixe followed in that act—the last—in which she does not speak at all. She had been able to bear loss, sorrow, renunciation, but as in olden times poison-tests were kept, crystal cups of such rare purity they shattered under contact with an evil liquid—so her pure heart broke at contact with her mother's shame. Poor, loving, little base-born! Pathetic little marplot! Seeing herself as only a stumbling-block to others, she sought self-effacement beneath the gentle waters of the lily-pond. And early in that last act, as her drowned body, carried in the arms of the two men who had loved her, was laid before the starting eyes of the guilty mother, and the loving, forgiving, pleading letter of the suicide was read above her, actual sobs rose from the front of the house. It was a heart-breaking scene.
But when the curtain fell, oh! what a very whirlwind broke loose in that little theatre! The curtain shot up and down, up and down, and then, to my amazement, Mr. Daly signaled for me to go before the curtain, and I couldn't move. He stamped his foot and shouted: "Come over here and take this call!" and I called back: "I can't! I am all pinned up, so I can't walk!"
For, that my skirts might not fall away from my ankles, when I was being carried across the stage, I had stood upon a chair and had my garments tightly wound about me and securely fastened, and unfortunately the pins were behind—and I all trussed up, nice and tight and helpless.