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My Actor-Husband

<h3>CHAPTER III</h3> THE boy Hamlet failed to attract the public. After two weeks on Broadway the notice went up. The Company was to reorganize, which, in this instance, meant reducing expenses—and "back to the woods." Will agreed to double the King with the Ghost for a small rise of salary and the condition that I be added to the roster. In return for my railroad fares I played one of the strolling players and the Player-Queen. The Company made one night stands only; we made early and long jumps to out-of-the-way towns, which Will declared were not on the map. The hotels were often so bad that we were driven to patronizing the village grocer, and to supplement our meals with chafing-dish messes. Through rain, snow and slush we plodded our way to the railroad stations; sometimes there was a hack and the women rode back and forth. The theatres were cold and the dressing-rooms filthy. The stage entrance invariably gave upon a foul-smelling alley, and a penetrating draught swept the stage when the curtain was up. Once, after Will in the character of the King had been killed by Hamlet and lay dead upon the stage, he sneezed explosively. The audience appeared to enjoy the situation. But, in spite of the physical discomforts and the stultifying grind, we were happy—we were together. By the end of the season we had saved almost three hundred dollars. Then Will played a few weeks with a summer stock company—a "summer snap," as it is termed—and in the autumn we were able to make a stand for the much-desired joint engagement. When the Company gathered at the railroad station bound for a city of the middle West, it more resembled a family party than a theatrical organization. The manager himself played a part, and his wife was the lady villain. The comédienne and the stage carpenter were man and wife, and the leading lady—a girl not much older than I—was chaperoned by her mother. Will was the leading man and I the ingénue. There was the prospect of a pleasant season ahead. I smiled a little contemptuously when I thought of Miss Burton's terrible arraignment of the stage. She had been unfortunate in her association, that was all, I told myself. The comédienne and I shared dressing-rooms. She was a beautiful woman with a strain of Latin blood. I loved her from the first moment I met her. I was disappointed in her husband; her superior breeding and education caused me to wonder at her choice. Later, when I better understood the needs of the woman, I grew to like him; he was clean-minded and sincere—virtues I later discovered to be rare ones among actors. It was about the second week of the season when our family party first showed signs of incompatibility. There had been some gossip connecting the leading lady's name with that of the manager, but as she was protected by her mother it appeared to me ridiculous and unwarranted. One night, as the curtain fell on the first act, the manager's wife ordered the leading lady's mother out of the wings. Immediately there followed a war of high-pitched voices which penetrated the walls of our aerial dressing-room. The curtain was held and the orchestra played its third overture. During the wait Margherita, my dressing-room mate, told me the circumstances of the case. The leading lady's mother was the "friend" of the "angel" of the Company; in this capacity she assumed privileges which were galling to the manager's wife. Adding to this the fact that her husband was too obviously interested in the leading lady, the outbreak was not to be wondered at. The manager himself was one of those round, flabby men, suggestive of a fat, spineless worm. Physique is often coindicant of character. This night the mother had been more obnoxious than usual. It was her habit to stand in the wings while the manager's wife was on the scene, and by petty distractions to goad the actress to expression. Gradually members of the Company were drawn into the dissension; it was an intolerable situation. Our sympathies were with the manager's wife, but we diplomatically held aloof. Matters finally reached a climax. One night during the performance there was a stage wait. In vain Will and the heavy man filled in the hiatus. The manager's wife had surprised the leading lady in the arms of her husband somewhere behind the scenes, and thereupon slapped the girl's face. A moment later she came upon the stage to play her "big" scene; she was labouring under great emotion, and I thought she had never acted so well. In a speech to me (I played her daughter)—it was part of the stage business that I take her hand in mine; I am not sure that I did not press her hand in silent sympathy. She drew me towards her; in another moment the lady villain was sobbing in my arms, and there was an emotional storm not indicated in the manuscript of the author. I led her up stage as the house fairly rose to her splendid acting. When the storms of applause had died away we went on with the scene as if nothing had happened. I wonder why it is that women invariably punish their own sex and exempt the man? Do they instinctively demand a higher code of honour from their kind while meekly acquiescent to the conventional license for men? Subsequently the "angel" joined the Company, and, to all appearances, an adjustment was reached. For a time peace was restored. The leading lady assumed an air of injured innocence, and left off rouging her cheeks to heighten the effect. Then, suddenly—or gradually, I never realized how it came about—it became obvious to all that the leading lady was "making a play" for Will. Her attentions became so marked that the men of the Company chaffed him about it, declaring the manager would presently challenge him to mortal combat, or—and what was more likely—discharge him from the Company. Will accepted their allusions in good part, but I observed the subject was distasteful to him. To me he called the woman "a little fool," and was irritated with being placed in so ridiculous a position. Indeed I think Will suffered as much as I did. Without being rude or boorish, there was nothing he could do to check her advances. She was planning her début as a star the following season, and made Will a proposition to become her leading man; she consulted him concerning the new plays which were being submitted to her, and planned for the current season special matinées of classic plays with which Will was familiar. She called him to preliminary rehearsal and discussions in her rooms at the hotel; sometimes, between the acts of the performance, called him to her dressing-room, where she received him in a state of négligé. New bits of stage business were introduced, or the old elaborated; she would run her fingers through his hair, or prolong the kisses which the rôle demanded; or, in his embrace, she would draw her body close to his and writhe about him to a point of indecency. In countless, intangible ways she brought her blandishments to bear upon him. Will declared she was playing him against the manager, whose relations with her had become strained since his wife had interfered. In all things she was aided and abetted by her mother, who fawned on Will and made his position the more equivocal. My own emotions were confused; it was inconceivable that I should be jealous of the woman. No, the sensation she aroused was nothing more than disgust. To be jealous of my husband connoted a lack of faith, and he had done nothing to betray my trust in him. Jealousy had always appeared to me a debasing and an undignified emotion.... I resented the position in which my husband was placed; I would not add to his discomfiture by hectoring. I had promised myself when I married that never should I be jealous when I saw my husband making stage-love to another woman—perhaps in the back of my mind was the hope that I should always be the other woman, his leading lady. Nevertheless, I was determined to stand the test without flinching. It was high time that I began to realize that the conditions which confronted me were but a part of the game—the game! The word was reminiscent of Miss Burton. I fought down the suggestion blindly, passionately.... I began to dread going to the theatre; often, while I was making up, I found Margherita's eyes fastened wistfully upon me—they told how she longed to comfort me. Unhappily I could not talk about the thing which was troubling me. What was there to say? There are emotions which never find tangible expression. Then the idea of asking my husband to resign from the Company suggested itself. I endeavoured to look at the question from a material standpoint: it would not be easy to find another engagement in mid-season, besides, there were the expensive railroad fares back to New York—we were then touring California—and probably another separation.... Perhaps it was the strain of hard travel, or it may have been the certainty of my condition which I had heretofore only suspected, or a combination of both, which made me lose my self-control. I had always believed strongly in the influence of suggestion upon the unborn child, and the unclean atmosphere in which I was living preyed upon my mind until it became an obsession. I grew to hate the woman and her witch-like mother. We had had some racking railroad jumps, and the loss of sleep was telling on every member of the Company; the leading lady was stimulating on champagne. Her mother stood in the wings, bottle and glass in hand, and applied the restorative whenever the girl came off the stage. One night, under the influence of the wine, she became more brazen in her advances to Will; she took liberties which made even her mother, watching in the wings, gasp with amusement. Something she said sotto voce to her mother reached my ears. I began to watch her. As the act progressed she elaborated the detail with ever-increasing audacity, and, when the action required her to throw herself in Will's arms, she flung me a look of laughing defiance, coincident with a broad wink to her mother—old Hecate of the wings—then fed upon his lips like a vampire sucking blood. I am not sure that I responded to the cue which some seconds later brought her into my arms. (We were fellow Nihilists under arrest.) The contact of her hand against mine ... Will told me afterwards he would never have believed me possessed of such physical strength. I choked her.... I drove my nails into her flesh.... I dragged her to the wings and beat her with my fists.... I vented upon her the long pent-up fury.... Oh, the shame, the ignominy of it! I, who resented a vicious influence upon my unborn child—I, its mother, had descended to the level of a fishwife!... It was Margherita who brought me back to consciousness; it was she who restored to me a modicum of my self-respect. I believe she was secretly pleased at what I had done. That night, as she sat beside my bed, she told me something of herself. As a young girl she possessed a wonderful singing voice. Her parents—poor Italians—who came to America when she was a babe in arms, could not afford proper masters. She went on the stage to support herself, hoping to earn enough to pay for her musical education. Her beauty attracted a patron "of the arts"; at least, that is the way he was referred to in the newspapers. But it was not Margherita's art that he cared about—it was the woman. He considered his money a fair exchange for her body; Margherita was not willing to pay the price. She struggled on, and one day, after several years of hazardous existence, she found herself stranded in a far Western city without money, without friends. In a state of despondency she had walked to the outskirts of the town, and there in a lonely wood she sat down to fight out a choice between life and death. In a moment of emotion she burst forth into song; her troubled soul found solace in Gounod's Ave Maria. At the end her voice broke, and she sobbed. A hand was laid on her shoulder. It was a big hand, strong and sinewy. The man that went with it was big—"big all the way through," Margherita said proudly. They were married not long after; ever since he had remained at her side, helping to fight for a clean career ... making her life's work his.... Dear Margherita! I can see you now, with your glorious black eyes, your coronet of raven hair with the poppies over your pretty ear.... Oh, the pity of it! Weakened by the hardships and privation her life entailed, she died a few years later.... When Will came into the room that night, he held a paper in his hand. It was our resignation. His eyes twinkled with humour when he told Margherita that he was taking the bull by the horns, and sparing us the ignominy of dismissal. I was glad to see he was not angry with me. Then Margherita whispered something into his ear. He came to the bed and took me in his arms, and what he said concerns only a man and wife.... Margherita stole away, but before she went she kissed us both, and there were tears in her eyes. On the way back to New York, Will and I sat hand in hand looking out at the monotonous stretch of desert-land. "I'm glad to have it over—I'm glad that's out of our life," he reiterated, pressing my hand. "It was rotten!" Suddenly he burst out laughing. He continued long and sonorously. "Do you know, girlie," he said, "do you know that with a little more fullness of figure and a pair of two-inch heels, you'd make a grand Lady Macbeth? Phew!" and he laughed again. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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