This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was about to start “on the road” with the “Two Lives for One” Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or die,—perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, who in the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water, while his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the small room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street.
The “Two Lives for One” Company “collapsed,” as the newspapers say, in Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstanding the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the manager at the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough money from him to take them back to New York.
Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,—a really heartrending smile.
“Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I don't know whether I can live out the season.”
“Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!”
“I would be resigned, Tom, if only—if only you would make a success before I go.”
“If only I could get the chance, Alice!”
As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live on nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, but medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door:
“Anything yet?”
“Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is overcrowded!”