Maid Marian, and Other Stories

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The first thing I wanted to find was a fellow about my size and general appearance. He wasn't easy to find. Some of them were as tall as I, but too broad; some were just my shape, but too tall. At last I found him. He was pretty nearly my double by the time we had made up alike. He was exactly five feet seven—my height to a dot—and we were the same shape and size, and the calves of our legs looked as if we were twin brothers. This was a great point, because it was very important that our legs should resemble each other—and the resemblance was startling. Sometimes I could hardly tell which pair belonged to him and which to me, but it was all one, as they were both remarkably fine-looking pairs of legs, particularly in white silk tights and red silk stockings.

He was a pleasant fellow, too. His first name was Ted, and mine was Ned; our last names are unimportant—no matter about mine certainly—and we were advertised in the bills as

THE GREAT VALBELLA BROTHERS!!!
Unequaled Gymnasts! Exquisite Clog Dancers!

and a great deal else, which isn't worth putting down here. We certainly made a sensation the first night we appeared in our great specialty. It was in a big opera house, and every seat was filled; and immediately after the first part, "by the whole company," in which Ted and I had stood in the background, I sawing away on the big 'cello with a stop on it, and Ted making believe to blow the clarionet, both of us joining in the singing as occasion required, our turn came to appear.

We had rehearsed pretty well, and when the big curtain rolled up, and Ted and I bounded out on the stage dressed in a kind of jockey costume—white silk tights with red silk stockings, blue satin shirts with jockey caps of blue and red, and jockeys' whips in our hands—we both felt pretty cool. Then we began our clog dance. It was the finest kind of clog dancing, I will say, although I did part of it myself, and then we introduced a new feature, singing while the clogs rattled on the floor, and every muscle moving alike. Of course it took—the singing as much as the dancing—and the people hurrahed and clapped and shouted, and wouldn't leave off until we had gone over it three times, and the end man had come on the stage and asked permission for the other performers to go home and go to bed, as the audience seemed fully satisfied with the Valbella Brothers. Then they laughed, and we got back to our dressing-room, when old Sam Stacker stood ready to hug us both.

But it was at the last scene that our really great performance came off. I had a pretty hard time making Sam Stacker agree to the expense for this act, but as we were playing a two weeks' engagement, I finally bullied him into it. It required cutting away some of the flies temporarily, and putting in a twenty-foot-square skylight over the stage. This skylight opened in two sections, and after our second appearance, more clog dancing and more scientific ground-tumbling, a big red balloon descended slowly from the roof. At the bottom of this was a double trapeze, and as soon as the balloon came within reach the Valbella Brothers sprang up—we had to get rid of some weights pretty cleverly to make the balloon rise, because we couldn't manage the sand-bags commonly used—grabbed at the trapeze, and performed the double-trapeze act while the great illuminated balloon rose slowly in the air up—up, up, through the roof. Of course on the outside two or three fellows stood on the roof, and we threw them a rope with which they held on to the balloon while we jumped off; and then the gas was let out, and the balloon folded up and laid away for the next day, because after the first night we had to give two performances—one in the afternoon and one in the evening—to satisfy the people, and then the "standing-room only" sign was out before the doors were opened.

Nothing like the applause on that first night was ever known before. The people yelled and stamped and shouted, and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs. After a considerable time had passed, Sam Stacker came to the foot-lights and made a speech. Sam never lost a chance of making a speech. He said the balloon couldn't rise more than six miles in the air, and neither one of the Valbella brothers could swim a stroke, and if we were killed he intended to support our wives and children during the rest of his natural life. We didn't either of us have a wife and children, but Sam didn't stick at a little thing like that. "Anything to advertise," was Sam's motto. "I'd let them durned newspapers say I choked my mother, beat the ladies in the company every time I got drunk, gambled on a coffin, and stole the cents off a dead man's eyes, just to get the 'ad.'" As Sam was the kindest, gentlest, softest-hearted old ruffian that ever lived, there was, unfortunately, no chance of any of this sort of thing being printed about him, and this grieved him sincerely. Meanwhile Ted and I were drinking ginger-pop behind the scenes, and hearing every word Sam was saying. Then Sam made his bow, and retired to find our mangled remains, according to his alleged anticipations; and finding us whole and sound, punishing the ginger beer, he led us before the curtain, and we received what the newspapers the next day called "a magnificent ovation." And old Sam Stacker almost cried with pleasure when he counted up the box receipts and took us up to his hotel and gave us champagne as if it was Apollinaris water.

I haven't said anything all this time about Jenny Hobbs, but she was a person of great importance to me just then. She was a dancer—we had quite a respectable ballet troupe with us that year. She wasn't the première danseuse, but she stood in the front row, and figured in the bills as Mlle. Celestine Buzac de la Montigny. Sam Stacker himself invented that name. He said it sounded fine. It certainly did. She had come to him one morning just before we started on the road and had asked for work. She was a modest little thing, like a plenty of other ballet girls I know; and I found out afterward she supported her bedridden sister and took care of her little brother out of her small wages. Sam was in a hurry, and told her I was his representative—a great way he had when he didn't want to be troubled with people; so I put Miss Jenny Hobbs through her paces, and saw she was a pretty good little dancer. We had as the première danseuse Mlle. Dagmar—I don't know what her name in private life was. She was a fine dancer, but a stupid creature, without any invention, and couldn't do anything she hadn't been taught; and in a company like ours, we wanted somebody who was equal to emergencies, which Dag—we called her that for short—wasn't. Jenny Hobbs was just that. She turned out a trump. Of course we couldn't bring her forward over Dag's nose, nor have her name very prominently billed; but she didn't seem to mind that, so long as she got an increase of wages, and something for her little brother to do along with the company; and she was worth all she got, and more too. She never put herself forward, but when Dagmar was ill, which at first was about twice a week regularly, she took her place, and did almost as well—so well in fact that it acted on Dag as the advertisements say Hop Bitters acts—it cured her right off of several chronic complaints of long standing, and from being ill half her time (though nobody would have suspected it from her robust appearance) she got able to dance six nights and two afternoons in the week the whole season, and never gave Jenny Hobbs another chance to take her place. Then Jenny used to suggest little alterations and improvements in the performance that Dagmar listened to readily enough, as it always brought her bouquets and applause, and Jenny actually made her think that Dagmar originated them herself.

Well, the night of our first ascent—it wasn't more than thirty-five feet—after the fellows who managed the balloon had got it anchored to the roof, and we had climbed down and had got back in the theatre and made our appearance before the foot-lights, and the curtain had been rung up and down half a dozen times, and at last the audience had dispersed, somebody inquired for Jenny—for, of course, nobody in the company ever thought of calling her by that ridiculous name Sam had given her. Just then her brother, little Jack Hobbs, tore upon the stage, yelling for somebody to go to Jenny. Of course there was a rush for her dressing-room, headed by Sam Stacker and Dag, with Ted and me following close behind. There lay Jenny on the floor in her tights and spangles, her head resting uncomfortably on a chair, and apparently in a dead faint. Nobody knew how long she had been there, as Jack, who always came to take his sister home after the performance, couldn't explain anything for sobbing and crying, except that after the balloon went up, and Sam Stacker came before the curtain and told that astounding lie about the balloon being six miles in the air, and made his magnificent offer to take care of our wives and children that didn't exist, Jenny had tumbled over, screaming, "Oh, Ted," or "Oh, Ned," Jack couldn't remember which. He hadn't been able to bring her to since. Sam slapped her hands, Dag loosened her dress, and I produced a brandy flask, which Ted was about to take out of my hand and put to her lips, but I preferred doing that myself, and quietly pushed him away while I supported her head and got a few drops of brandy between her teeth. In a few minutes of this vigorous treatment she recovered, did like all people coming out of a fainting fit—sat up, wondered where she was, had it all come back to her in a moment, and seizing Jack, began to cry hysterically. Jack yelled too, so we had a devil of a commotion for a while; but Sam, who had sublime common sense, put an end to it by calling a carriage, packing Dag and Jack and Jenny in it, and sending them off to Jenny's lodgings. Then we went to Sam's hotel and got the champagne before mentioned.

But somehow, although Sam and the other fellows—we got together a lot of them—toasted us as the Valbella Brothers, and commended forever our fraternal alliance, we didn't feel like brothers. We had been the best of friends, but that little blubbering rascal Jack Hobbs had planted something in our hearts that grew like Jonah's gourd. Which was it, Ted or Ned, that Jenny Hobbs had fainted about when we went through the roof hanging on to each other by our teeth, our legs, and everything except our hands, and doing the double-trapeze act like daisies? There was the trouble. Was it Ted or was it Ned? I had had a soft place for Jenny in my heart for a considerable time, but I had determined to wait until I found out whether I had any chance or not, and then Ted—Valbella I'll him for want of something better—had come along, and seemed to like her too. But I had not paid much attention to it until that night. Ted was good-looking—I almost groaned when I saw how good-looking he was—and a sober, honest, industrious fellow to boot.