Mrs. Bradshaw, one day, said laughingly to me: "By your looks you seemed to disagree with Mrs. Ellsler's remarks this morning. She, too, thinks a woman is not fit for Juliet until she has learned much of nature and the world."
"But," I objected, lamely, "while they are learning so much about the world they are forgetting such a lot about girlhood!"
Her laughter confused and distressed me. "I can't say it!" I cried, "but you know how very forward Juliet is in speech? If she knew, that would become brazen boldness! It isn't what she knows, but what she feels without knowing that makes the tragedy!" And what Mrs. Bradshaw meant by muttering, "Babes and sucklings—from the mouths of babes and sucklings," I could not make out; perhaps, however, I should say that my mate Annie played few blankverse parts after Balthazar.
Then, one Saturday night, we were all corralled by the prompter before we could depart for home, and were gravely addressed by the manager—the whole thing being ludicrously suggestive of the reading of the riot act; but after reminding us that Mr. James E. Murdoch would begin his engagement on Monday night, that the rehearsals would be long and important, he proceeded to poison the very source of our Sunday's rest and comfort by fell suggestions of some dire mishap threatening the gentleman through us. We exchanged wondering and troubled glances. What could this mean?
Mr. Ellsler went on: "You all know how precise Mr. Murdoch has always been about your readings; how exacting about where you should stand at this word or at that; how quickly his impatience of stupidity has burst into anger; but you probably do not know that since his serious sickness he is more exacting than ever, and has acquired the habit, when much annoyed, of—of—er—well, of having a fit."
"O-h!" it was unanimous, the groan that broke from our oppressed chests. Stars who gave us fits we were used to, but the star who went into fits himself—good heavens! good heavens!
Rather anxiously, Mr. Ellsler continued: "These fits, for all I know, may spell apoplexy—anyway, he is too frail a man to safely indulge in them; so, for heaven's sake, do nothing to cross him; be on time, be perfect—dead letter-perfect in your parts; write out all his directions if necessary; grin and bear anything, so long as he doesn't have a fit! Good-night."
The riot act had been read, the mob dispersed, but the nerve of the most experienced was shaken by the prospect of acting a whole week with a gentleman who, at any moment, might get mad enough to have a fit.
Think, then, what must have been the state of mind of my other ballet-mate, Hattie, who, in her regular turn, had received a small part, but of real importance, and who had to address her lines to Mr. Murdoch himself. Poor girl, always nervous, this new terror made her doubly so. She roused the star's wrath, even at rehearsal.
"Speak louder!" (imperatively). "Will you speak louder?" (furiously). "Perhaps, in the interest of those who will be in front to-night, I may suggest that you speak loud enough to be heard by—say—the first row!" (satirically). Now a calmly controlled body is generally the property of a trained actress, not of a raw ballet-girl, and Hattie's restless shifting about and wriggling drove him into such a rage that, to the rest of us, he seemed to be trembling with inchoate fits, and I saw the property man get his hat and take his stand by the stage-door, ready to fly for the doctor, or, as he called him, "the fit sharp."