CHAPTER VI
"ODETTE" IN THE WEST. A CHILD'S FIRST PLAY
An odd and somewhat touching little incident occurred one evening when we were in the far Northwest. There was a blizzard on just then, and the cold was something terrible. I had a severe attack of throat trouble, and my doctor had been with me most of the day. His little boy, hearing him speak of me, was seized with a desire to go to the theatre, and coaxed so well that his father promised to take him.
The play was "Odette." The doctor and
his pretty little son sat in the end seats of the parquet circle, close to the stage and almost facing the whole house. The little fellow watched his first play closely. As the comedy bit went on, he smiled up at his father, saying audibly, "I like her—don't you, papa?"
Papa silenced him, while a few people who had overheard smiled over the child's unconsciousness of observers. But when I had changed my dress and crept into the darkened room in a robe de chambre; when the husband had discovered my wrong-doing and was driving me out of his house, a child's cry of protest came from the audience. At the same moment, the husband raised his hand to strike. I repelled him with a gesture and went staggering off the stage; while that indignant little voice cried, "Papa! papa! can't you have that man arrested?" and the curtain fell.
One of the actors ran to the peep-hole in the curtain, and saw the doctor leading out
the little man, who was then crying bitterly, the audience smiling and applauding him, one might say affectionately.
A bit later the doctor came to my dressing-room to apologize and to tell me the rest of it. When the curtain had fallen, the child had begged: "Take me out—take me out!" and the doctor, thinking he might be ill, rose and led him out. No sooner had they reached the door, however, than he pulled his hand away, crying: "Quick, papa! quick! you go round the block that way, and I'll run round this way, and we'll be sure to find that poor lady that's out in the cold—just in her nighty!"
In vain he tried to explain, the child only grew more wildly excited; and finally the doctor promised, if the child would come home at once, only two blocks away, he would return and look for the lady—in the nighty. And he had taken the little fellow home and had seen him fling himself into his mother's arms, and with tears and sobs