But that move to Columbus was a startling event in my life. It meant leaving my mother and standing quite alone. She was filled with anxiety, principally for my physical welfare, but I felt, every now and then, my grief and fright pierced through and through with a delicious thrill of importance. I was going to be just like a grown-up, and would decide for myself what I should wear. I might even, if I chose to become so reckless, wear my Sunday hat to a rehearsal; and when my cheap little trunk came, with C. M. on the end, showing it was my very own, I stooped down and hugged it. But later, when my mother with a sad face separated my garments from her own, taking them from her trunk, where they had always rested before, I burst into sobs and tears of utter forlornness.
The Columbus trip had a special effect upon the affairs of the ballet. We had received $3 a week salary, but every one of us had had some home assistance. Now we were going to a strange city, and no one on earth could manage to live on such a salary as that, so our stipend was raised to $5 a week, and the three of us (we were but three that season) set to work trying to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board-bill, her basket-bill, her wash-bill, and all the small expenses of the theatre—powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc., to say nothing at all of shoes and clothing—all out of $5 a week.
Of course there was but one way to do it, and that was by doubling-up and sharing a room with some one, and that first season I was very lucky. Mrs. Bradshaw found a house where the top floor had been finished off as one great long room, running the entire length of the building from gable to gable, and she offered me a share in it.
Oh, I was glad! Blanche and I had one-half the room, and Mrs. Bradshaw and the irrepressible little torment and joy of her life, small Jack, had the other half. No wonder I grew to reverence her, whose character could bear such intimate association as that. I don't know what her religious beliefs were. She read her Bible Sundays, but she never went to church, neither did she believe in a material hell; but it was not long before I discovered that when I said my prayers over in my corner, she paused in whatever she was doing, and remained with downcast eyes—a fact that made me scramble a bit, I'm afraid.
There was but one thing in our close companionship that caused her pain, and that was the inevitable belief of strangers, that I was her daughter and Blanche her protegée—they being misled by the difference in our manner toward her. In the severity of my upbringing I had been taught that it was nothing short of criminal to be lacking in respect for those who were older than myself; therefore I was not only strictly obedient to her expressed wishes, but I rose when she entered a room, opened and closed doors, placed chairs at table, gave her precedence on all occasions, and served her in such small ways as were possible; while Blanche ignored her to such a degree that one might have mistaken her for a stranger to our little party.
Poor mother! the tears stood thick in her brave eyes when the landlady, on our third day in her house, remarked to her, patting me on the shoulder as she spoke: "You have a most devoted little daughter, here!"
And there was a distinct pause, before she answered, gently: "You mistake—I have a devoted little friend here, in Clara, but Blanche is my daughter!" She was a singular being, that daughter. It is seldom indeed that a girl, who is not bad, can yet be such a thorn in the side of a mother. She was a most disconcerting, baffling creature—a tricksy, elfish spirit, that delighted in malicious fun. Pleasure-loving, indolent, and indifferent alike to praise or blame, she (incredible as it seems) would willingly give up a good part to save herself the trouble of playing it. I recall a trick she once performed in my favor. I thought the Player-Queen in "Hamlet" was a beautiful part, and I hungered to play it; but it belonged to Blanche, and, of course, she was cast for it; but said she: "You could have it, for all I'd care!" Then, suddenly, she added: "Say, you may play it with the next Hamlet that comes along!"
I pointed out the impossibility of such an assertion coming true, but she grinned widely at me and chewed her gum as one who knew many things beyond my ken, and counselled me to "watch out and see what happened." I watched out, and this happened:
When the mimic-play was going on before the King and Court, my impish friend Blanche, as the Player-Queen, should have said: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a widow, ever I be wife!"
Instead of which, loudly and distinctly, she proclaimed: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a wife, ever I be widowed!"