Chapter IX: Part 9

"Shannon'll see the whole play to-night," said Sherrington, "and she'll be able to give Marvin lots of pointers to-morrow. The little girl will be all right; it's Daisy I'm more afraid of in that scene. It ought to be played high comedy, 'Lady Teazle,' way up in G--and high comedy isn't altogether in Daisy's line."

"That can't be helped now," Brackett replied; "and if the Stellar Attraction can't reach that scene it's the Stellar Attraction's own fault, isn't it? You remember, Will, how she kept telling us all the time we were writing the play that she wanted as high-toned a part as we could give her. We gave it to her, and now she's just got to stretch up to it, if she can."

"I am not afraid of that scene," Carpenter declared, "for I've always doubted whether she could really do high comedy, and that scene is written so that it will go almost as well if it's played broadly. You know there are two ways of doing Lady Teazle."

"There are no two ways about Daisy's being a great favorite," said the stage-manager. "She's accepted, and that's enough. After all, I don't suppose it matters much how she takes that scene; high or broad, the public will accept her. The part fits her like a glove, and all we've got to do is to keep everybody up to concert-pitch and get all the laughs we can. You took my advice and cut that talky scene in the third act, and now the whole act will go off like hot cakes--see if it don't. I tell you what it is, I'll teach you two boys how to write a real farce before I've done with you!"

Harry Brackett was standing almost behind Sherrington as the stage-manager made this speech. He winked at Carpenter.

"Yes," he said, a moment later, "I think it is a pretty good piece of the kind, and I hope it will fetch them. At any rate, I don't believe even our worst enemies will praise it for its 'literary merit.'"

Carpenter laughed a little bitterly. "No," he assented, "we've got it into shape now, and I doubt if anybody insults us by saying that 'Touch and Go' is 'well written.'"

"Do you remember our joke while we were working on it last winter, Will?" asked Harry Brackett. Then turning to Sherrington he explained: "We used to say that the managers wouldn't 'touch' it, so the people couldn't 'go.'"

"It's harder to touch the manager than it is to make the public go," added Carpenter. "I believe that any fool can write a play, but that only a man of great genius ever succeeds in getting his play produced."

A handsome young woman with snapping black eyes walked on the stage briskly.

"Here's the Stellar Attraction at last," said Harry Brackett; "now we can get down to business."

"Am I late?" the handsome young woman asked, as she came forward. "Everybody waiting for me?"

"You are just twenty minutes late, my dear," said the stage-manager, looking at his watch, "and we are all waiting for you."

"That's all right, then," she replied, laughing lightly; "we've got all night before us, haven't we?"

The prompter clapped his hands and called out "First act!" Two clean-shaven men of indefinite age who had been sitting in the wings rose and came forward. Mr. Dresser joined them, and his manner suggested a certain increase of his ordinary nervous tension. A well-preserved elderly lady left her seat on one side of the aisles under the proscenium box and came through the door which led from the auditorium to the stage. She was followed by a slight, graceful girl, a blonde with clear gray eyes.

"Mrs. Castleman--Miss Marvin," said the prompter, seeing them; "now we are all ready."

And then the serious business of the rehearsal began. Mrs. Castleman came down to the centre of the stage and took up a newspaper and read the date of it aloud, and remarked that it was just five years since master and mistress had parted in anger, adding that neither of them had put foot inside the old house in all the five years, and yet it was not an hour from New York. Then one of the minor actors, an awkward young fellow, one of the two who had been standing in the wings, entered with a telegram, which he gave to Mrs. Castleman. She tore it open and read it aloud; the master would arrive early that evening. Then Miss Marvin, the girl with the clear blue eyes, came forward with an open letter in her hand and told Mrs. Castleman that the mistress of the house would be home again at last late that afternoon. And thus the rehearsal went on gravely, every one intent upon the business in hand. The speeches of the actors were interrupted now and then by the stage-manager. "Take the last scene over again," he might command, whereupon the performers would resume their places as before and begin again. "Don't cross till he takes the stage, my dear. And when he says, 'What is the meaning of this?' don't be in a hurry. Wait, and then say your aside, 'Can he suspect?' in a hoarse whisper. See?"

Finally there was a jingle of sleigh-bells, and the orchestra, beginning faintly and slowly, soon worked up to a swift _forte_, and then Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance through the broad door at the back of the stage. Finding that she had taken everybody by surprise, she smiled sweetly, and said, "You didn't expect me, I see--but I hope you are all glad to see me once more."

A thin, cadaverous man with a heavy, black mustache here stepped forward to face the wife he had not seen for five years. "We are all glad to see you once more," he had to say, "very glad indeed, and we are gladder still to see that you seem to be in such excellent health and such high spirits! The separation has not dimmed the brightness of your eyes, nor--" Here the tall, gaunt actor stopped and hesitated. "I don't know what's the matter with that speech," he said, impatiently, "but I can't get it into my head. I never had such tricky lines!"

The prompter gave him the word he needed, and no one else paid any attention to this out-break.

The two authors were seated at the table in the centre of the footlights, and Harry Brackett whispered to Carpenter: "Stark is getting the big head, isn't he? The idea of a mere cuff-shooter like that taking himself seriously!"

Then there followed an important scene in which the wife gave her husband a witty and vivacious account of all her doings during the five years of their separation, ending with the startling announcement that she had spent six weeks in South Dakota and had there procured a divorce from him! But there is no need to disclose here in detail the plot of "Touch and Go," as the new American comedy unfolded itself scene by scene. As the end of the act approached Sherrington pressed the actors to play more briskly so as to bring the curtain down swiftly on an unexpected but carefully prepared tableau.

When the act was over the stage manager had the final passages repeated twice, to make sure of its going smoothly at the first performance; and then the stage was cleared so that the scene might be set for the second act.

Carpenter watched the graceful, gray-eyed girl go back into the dim auditorium and take a seat beside her mother; and his heart thumped suddenly as he found himself wondering when he would dare to tell her that he loved her and to ask her to be his wife. Then he also left the stage and dropped into the chair behind mother and daughter.

"It was very good of you to come this evening, Mrs. Loraine," he began. "I feel as if having your daughter act in this play of mine will bring me luck somehow."

"The idea!" said Miss Marvin, smilingly.

"Mary had told me how clever the piece was," the elder actress responded, "but it is really better than she said. The dialogue is very brilliant at times, and the characters are excellently contrasted--and, what is more important, the whole thing will act! The parts carry the actors; they've got something to do which is worth while doing. It will go all right to-morrow night!"

"It's a beautiful piece," Mary Marvin declared, "and I think my part is just lovely!"

And before he could say anything in fit acknowledgment, Mrs. Loraine went on: "Yes, Mary's part is charming. And I think she will play it very well, too!"

"I'm sure of it!" he cried, unhesitatingly.

"I think there is more in it than I thought at first," said Mary's mother, "now I've seen the play, and I'll go over Mary's part with her to-night and show her what can be done with it. I'm waiting for that scene in the second act with Fostelle. I think that Mary ought to share the call after that. In fact, I'm not sure that she can't take the scene away from Fostelle."

"Oh, mother," the daughter broke in, "that would never do! I should get my two weeks' notice the next morning, shouldn't I? And I don't want to be out of an engagement just at the beginning of the season when all the companies are made up."

"Are you sure that the ghost will walk every week with this Fostelle company, if you strike bad business for a month or so?" asked Mrs. Loraine, with a suggestion of anxiety in her voice.

"I think Zeke Kilburn is all right," the dramatic author responded; "he made a pile of money last year on that imported melodrama, the 'Doctor's Daughter'; and, besides, he has a backer."

Mrs. Loraine laughed gently, showing her beautifully regular teeth. She was still a handsome woman, with a fine figure and a crown of silver hair.

"A backer?" she rejoined; "but who backs the backer? I've heard your friend, Mr. Brackett, there, say that a jay and his money are soon parted."

Carpenter answered her earnestly. "I really think Kilburn is pretty solid, but I suppose that a great deal does depend on the way that the play draws. They've got open time here in New York, and if 'Touch and Go' catches on they can stay here till Christmas. So it comes down to this, that if our piece is a go the ghost will walk regularly."

"I hope it will make a hit," Mrs. Loraine answered, "for your sake, too. You haven't sold it outright, have you?"

"No, indeed," the young dramatist replied. "Harry Brackett is too old in the business for that. We've got a nightly royalty, with a percentage on the gross whenever it plays to more than four thousand dollars a week. We stand to make a lot of money--if it makes a hit. What do you think of its chances, Mrs. Loraine?"

"The first act is all right," she responded. "That's the most I can say now. But come and ask me after I've seen the third act and I'll tell you what I think, and I believe I can then prophesy its fate pretty well."

By this time the scene of the second act had been set. It represented a stone summer-house on the top of a hill overlooking the Hudson just below West Point. It was picturesque in itself, and it was ingeniously arranged to provide opportunities for effective stage business.

Carpenter accompanied Miss Marvin back to the stage when the time drew nigh for the second act to begin.

As he was passing through the door between the auditorium and the stage, he found himself face to face with Dresser, who was fidgeting to and fro.

"Oh, Mr. Carpenter," he cried, "I'm so glad to see you! I want to ask your opinion about this. After all, you know, you wrote the play, and you ought to be able to decide. In my scene with Marvin in this act, am I really in love with her then, or ain't I? Sherrington says I am, but I think it's a great deal funnier if I'm not in love with her then--it helps to work up the last act better. Now what do you think? Sherrington insists that his way of playing it is more dramatic. Well, I don't say it ain't, but it isn't half as funny, is it?"

After Carpenter had given his opinion upon this question, Dresser allowed him to escape. But he had not advanced ten yards before he was claimed by Mrs. Castleman.

"Mr. Carpenter," the elderly actress began, in her usual haughtily dignified manner, "how do you think I ought to dress this part in the first act? She's a house-keeper, isn't she? So I suppose I ought to wear an apron."

The young dramatist expressed his belief that perhaps an apron would be a proper thing for the house-keeper to wear in the first act.

"But not a cap, I hope?" urged Mrs. Castleman.

Carpenter doubted if a cap would be necessary.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Castleman. "You see, I have always hitherto been associated with the legitimate, and I really don't quite know what to do with this sort of thing." Then she suddenly paused, only to break out again impetuously: "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carpenter, really I did not mean to imply that this charming play of yours is not legitimate--"

The dramatic author laughed. "You needn't apologize," he declared; "I'm inclined to think that 'Touch and Go' is so illegitimate now that its own parents can't recognize it!"

At last the rehearsal of the second act began, the two authors sitting at the little table with the stage-manager.

Sherrington consulted them once or twice in regard to the omission of a line here and there.

"Cut it down to the bone when you can--that's what I say," he explained; "what you cut out can't make people yawn."

But once he stopped the rehearsal to suggest that a speech be written in. "You've got to make that complication mighty clear," he declared, "and this is the place to do it, I think. If you want them to understand that Dresser here is going to mistake Marvin for Fostelle in the next scene, you had better give him another line now to lead up to it."

The two authors consulted hastily, and Carpenter, drawing out a note-book and a pencil, hurriedly wrote a sentence, which he showed to Brackett.

"That'll do it," said Sherrington; and he read it aloud to Dresser, who borrowed Carpenter's pencil and wrote in the line on the manuscript of his part, wondering aloud whether he should ever remember it on the first night.

A few minutes later Sherrington again interrupted the actors to insist that the sunset effect should be adjusted carefully to accompany the spoken dialogue.

"I want a soft, rosy tinge on Fostelle in this scene," he explained.

"Quite right," laughed the black-eyed star; "that ought to be becoming to my style of beauty."

"And I want it to contrast with the blue moonlight in the scene with Marvin," said the stage-manager.

"Quite right again," Miss Daisy Fostelle commented. "I'll take the centre of the stage, and you will order calciums for one!"

"We had better go back to your entrance, I think," Sherrington decided, "and take the whole scene over."

The actors and actresses obediently resumed the positions they had occupied when Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance in that act. The cue for her entrance was given, and she came forward with a burst of artificial laughter.

"That laugh was very good," Sherrington declared--"better than it was last time; but you must make it as hollow as you can. Remember the situation: your best young man has gone back on you and you are trying to keep a stiff upper-lip--but your heart is breaking all the same. See?"

The star repeated the laugh, and it was more obviously artificial.

"That's it, my dear," said the stage-manager. "Now keep it up till you cross, and then drop into that chair there, and then you let the laugh die away into a sob."

The star went back to the rustic gate by which she had entered, laughed again, and came forward; then she crossed the stage, sank upon a seat, and choked with a sob.

Carpenter stepped forward and whispered into Sherrington's ear, whereupon Miss Fostelle sat upright instantly and very suspiciously asked, "What's that? I'd rather have you say it out loud than whisper it!"

The young dramatist explained at once.

"I was only suggesting to Sherrington that perhaps it would be better if that seat were turned a little so that you were not so sideways: then the audience would get a full view of your face here."

"It would be a pity to deprive them of that, I'll admit," said the mollified actress, as she and the stage-manager slightly turned the rustic chair.

Then she dropped into the seat and repeated her sob.

Miss Marvin stepped upon the stage, and remarked to space, "What a lovely evening, and how glorious the sunset!" Then she stood silently watching.

Miss Daisy Fostelle sobbed again, and, in tones heavy-laden with tears, she said, "What have I to live for now?" Looking back at the other actress she remarked, in her ordinary voice, "You will give me time to pick myself up here, won't you?" Then she went on, in the former tear-stained accents, "What have I left to live for now? My heart is broken! My heart is broken!" Again she resumed her every-day tones to ask the stage-manager: "Is that all right? Am I far enough around now?"

Thus they came to perhaps the most important scene of the play--that between the Stellar Attraction (as Brackett liked to call her) and the girl Carpenter was in love with. Both actresses were well fitted to the characters they had to perform. Carpenter, who had no liking for Daisy Fostelle, was a little surprised at the judgment and skill with which she carried off the _bravura_ passages of her part; and he was not a little charmed with the delicate force the gentle Mary Marvin revealed in the contrasting character.

And so the rehearsal proceeded laboriously, Sherrington directing it autocratically, ordering certain scenes to be played more rapidly and seeing that others were taken more slowly, so that the spectators might have time to understand the situation. Now and then either Carpenter or Brackett made a suggestion or a criticism, but both yielded to Sherrington, if he was insistent. The stage-manager kept the whole company of actors up to their work, and imposed on them his understanding of that work, much as the conductor of an orchestra leads his musicians at the performance of a symphony.

When the whole act had been rehearsed, and the final scene was repeated three or four times until it ran like well-oiled clockwork, the stage was cleared so that the scenery of the third act might be set.

Sherrington accompanied Miss Marvin through the door behind the proscenium box into the dark auditorium.

"You will play that scene very well," he said, "but you've got to have confidence."

"It is a beautiful part, isn't it?" she responded, with enthusiasm. "I never had a part I could enjoy playing so much."

Carpenter was about to leave the stage to tell Mary what a delight it was to him to hear her speak the words he had written, when his collaborator tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned Harry Brackett whispered in his ear:

"Look out for the Stellar Attraction. I'm afraid she has just dropped on Marvin's part. If she once suspects that the little girl may get that scene away from her, she can make herself mightily disagreeable all round. I guess we had better go up and tell her she is a greater actress than Charlotte Cushman."

Carpenter laughingly answered: "Take care she doesn't drop on you! It would be worse if she thought you were guying her."

"There's no danger of that," Harry Brackett returned. "That Stellar Attraction of ours is a boa-constrictor for flattery--there isn't anything she won't swallow."

The two dramatic authors found Miss Daisy Fostelle standing in the wings and discussing with Dresser the personal peculiarities of another member of the dramatic profession.

As Carpenter and Brackett came up the actress was saying: "Why, she had the cheek actually to tell me I was more amusing off the stage than on--the cat! But I got even with her. I told her I was sorry I couldn't return the compliment, for she was even less amusing on the stage than off!"

The two dramatists joined in the laugh, and then Harry Brackett began.

"Is it your hated rival you are having fun with?" he asked. "Well, if she comes to see you in this play to-morrow they'll have to put a waterproof carpet into the private box, for she will weep bitter tears of despair while she's watching you in this second act of ours."

Miss Daisy Fostelle snapped her big black eyes at him and smiled with pleasure.

"Yes," she admitted. "I don't believe she will really enjoy that scene--and yet she'll have to give me a hand at the end of the act."

"She'll go through the motions, perhaps," Brackett returned, "but she won't burst a hole in her gloves." Then he slyly nudged his collaborator.

"The fact is," began Carpenter, thus admonished, "I was just going to tell Harry Brackett here that maybe we have made a mistake in writing you a high-comedy part like this--"

The actress flashed a suspicious glance at him, but he went on as if unconscious of this.

"We can see now," he continued, "that you are going to play this part so well that you will make a great hit in it, and then the critics will all be after you to play Lady Teazle and Rosalind. They'll tell you that you are only wasting your talents in modern plays and that you ought to devote yourself to the legitimate."

The suspicion faded from Miss Daisy Fostelle's face and the smile of pleasure reappeared.

"That's so," Harry Brackett declared. "You will make such a hit in this part, I'm afraid, that Sheridan and Shakespeare will be good enough for you next season. Now that would be taking the bread out of our mouths!"

The actress laughed easily. "I don't think you would starve," she returned; "and I might, maybe--if I took to the legitimate. Not that it would be my first attempt, either, for I played Ariel in the 'Tempest' when I was a mere child. And it wasn't easy, I can tell you. Ariel's a real hard part, I think; there's a certain swing to the words, too, and you can't make up a line of your own if you get stuck, as I could in this piece of yours."

"No," Brackett confessed, solemnly, "the dialogue of 'Touch and Go' is not as rhythmic as the dialogue of the 'Tempest.'"

"And I've played Francois in 'Richelieu,' too," continued Miss Fostelle. "But I don't think I really like any of those Shakespearian parts."

"No," Brackett confessed again, with fearless gravity, "Francois is not one of Shakespeare's best parts. It wasn't worthy of you, no matter how inexperienced you were. But Rosalind, now, as Carpenter suggests, and Beatrice--"

Carpenter here guessed from Dresser's spasmodic manner that the actor was about to intervene in the conversation, and not knowing what might be the result, the younger of the dramatists dropped out of the group and managed to draw Dresser away with him.

After they had exchanged a few words Carpenter looked into the auditorium to discover where Mary Marvin might be. He saw that she was by the side of her mother, and that Mrs. Loraine and Sherrington were still engaged in an earnest conversation. He made a movement as if to leave Dresser, whereupon the comedian begged him for a moment's interview.

"It's about that speech of mine in the third act that I want to make a suggestion," said the actor. "It's a very good speech, too, and I think I can get three laughs out of it, easy. You know the speech. I mean the one about the three old maids: 'There were three old maids in our town; one was as plain as a pikestaff, and the other was as homely as a hedge fence, and the third was as ugly as sin; and whenever they all three walked out together every clock in the place stopped short. Their parents had christened them Faith and Hope and Charity; but the boys always called them Battle and Murder and Sudden Death.' Now, don't you think it would help to ring out the point more if the orchestra was to play 'Grandfather's Clock' very gently just as I say that 'every clock in the place stopped short'? What do you think? That's my own idea!"

The dramatist said nothing for a second or two, and then told the actor to consult the stage-manager, who was just returning to begin the rehearsal of the third act.

The new scene had been set swiftly and the furniture was already in place. The first of the actors to enter was the cadaverous and irritable Stark. He began glibly enough, but soon hesitated for a word, and then broke out impatiently, regardless of the presence of the two authors: "Oh, I can't get that line into my head! And I don't know what it means, either! How can you expect a man to speak such rubbish?"

As before, nobody paid any attention to this petulance, and the actor went on with his part without further comment.

Dresser then entered, and the two men proceeded to misunderstand each other in the most elaborate fashion. The character which Stark represented had reason to believe that the character that Dresser represented was the uncle of the character that Daisy Fostelle represented and was also a soldier. In like manner Dresser had reason to believe that Stark was the lady's uncle and also a sailor. They addressed each other, therefore, in sailor talk and in soldier talk; and the fun waxed fast and furious. At the height of the misunderstanding Daisy Fostelle entered unexpectedly and found herself instantly immeshed in the humorous complication, with no possibility of plausible explanation.

Once the stage-manager reminded Dresser that he had omitted a phrase. "You left out 'Confound it, man!'" he said.

"I know it," the actor explained, "but I wanted to save it to use in my next speech. It goes better there--you see if it does not."

And Sherrington decided that "Confound it, man!" was more effective in the later speech; so the transposition was authorized, to Dresser's satisfaction.

The stage-manager had this important scene of mutual misunderstanding between Stark and Dresser and Daisy Fostelle repeated twice, until every word fell glibly and every gesture seemed automatic. And so the rehearsal went to the end, Sherrington applying the finishing touches, and seeming at last to be fairly well satisfied with the result of his labors.

The final lines of the comedy were, of course, to be delivered by the star; but when the cue was given to her Miss Fostelle simply said "Tag!" everybody being aware that it is very unlucky to speak the last speech of a play at a rehearsal--as unlucky as it is to put up an umbrella on the stage, or to quote from "Macbeth."

"That will do," said the stage-manager; "I think it will be all right to-morrow night."

And with that the rehearsal concluded and the company began to disperse.

"I hope it is all right," Harry Brackett remarked to Carpenter, "and I think it is. But I shall have a great deal more confidence after the man in the box-office shakes hands with me cordially, say, next Wednesday or Thursday, and inquires about my health. He'll know by that time whether we've got a good thing or not!"

Carpenter helped Miss Marvin to put on her light cape. Then, after her mother had joined them, they said good-night to the others and left the theatre together.

When they came out into the warm night the street was quieter than it had been when Carpenter entered the theatre. There were fewer cable-cars passing the door, and the trains on the elevated road in the avenue were now infrequent. The lights had been turned out in front of the variety show across the way, and evidently the grand sacred concert was over. The moon had sunk, and before they had gone a block the bell of the church tolled the hour of midnight.

The young man who was walking by the side of Mrs. Loraine broke the silence at last.

"Well," he asked, "what do you think of the play now?"

"I think it is a good piece of its kind," the elder actress answered--"a very good piece of its kind; and it is well staged; and it will be well acted, too. Sherrington knows how to get his best work out of everybody. Yes, it will be a success."

"Is it good for three months here now?" the young author asked, "and for the rest of the season on the road?"

"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Loraine; "yes, indeed. It's safe for a hundred nights here at least!"

They paused at the corner to wait for a cable-car, and Sherrington joined them.

This gave Carpenter a chance to lead the daughter away from the mother half a dozen steps.

"I'm so glad mother thinks the play will go," the girl began. "And mother is a very good judge, too. You ought to make a lot out of it."

The young dramatist felt that he had his chance at last.

"I've wanted to make money mainly for one reason," he returned; "I wanted to ask you to take half of it."

"Half of it?" she echoed, as though she did not understand.

"Oh, well--all of it," he responded, swiftly; "and me with it."

"Mr. Carpenter!" she cried, and her blushes made her look even lovelier than before.

"Won't you marry me?" he asked, ardently.

"Oh, I suppose I've got to say yes," she answered, "or else you'll go down on your knees here in the street!"

(1895.)

A CANDLE IN THE PLATE

Little Miss Peters had given a last look to the dinner-table with its effective decoration of autumn leaves, and she had made sure that the cards were in their proper places. She had glanced at herself in the mirror of the music-room as she passed through, and she had smiled to see the little spot of color burning in her cheek. She had taken her place modestly behind her employer, the portly hostess, and she had seen the guests arrive one by one. She had remarked the cheerful eagerness of the young Irishman for whose sake the company had gathered, and she had frankly admired his good looks. Now she was sitting silently in her seat at the table, and she was wondering what the stranger would think of them all.

It would not be quite fair to the worthy widow to say that Mrs. Canton's dinners were always ponderous; but it might be admitted that, although the cooking was ever excellent and the guests were selected from the innermost circle of Society, the bill of fare was monotonous and the conversation often lacked variety. That evening, however, there were several present who had not before been honored with invitations to dine in that exclusive mansion. Few people of fashion were back in town so early in October, and it had not been easy for Mrs. Canton to make up her complement of guests when she found that she had suddenly to honor a letter of introduction Lord Mannington had given to the Honorable Gilbert Barry, brother of Lord Punchestown. She had heard that the handsome Irishman had been a great success at Lenox, and that all the girls were wild about him. In Mannington's letter she was informed that the young man went in for slumming and all that sort of thing, and that he had been living in Toynbee Hall; she was besought, therefore, to make him acquainted with the people in New York most interested in the elevation of the lower classes.

This sentence of Lord Mannington's letter it was that had caused Mrs. Canton to invite Rupert de Ruyter, the novelist, for she happened to have read one of his stories about the wretched creatures living down in the Italian quarter, and she was sure he would be able to tell Mr. Barry all that the young Irishman might want to know about the slums of New York. She had been fortunate enough to get the Jimmy Suydams, too; and she knew that Mrs. Jimmy took such an interest in the poor, acting as patroness so often, and all that. Then when little Miss Peters had come in to write the invitations and to balance the check-book and to answer the accumulated notes, Mrs. Canton, having gone over the list, looked at the pretty young secretary for a minute without speaking, and then said, "It won't be easy to get just the people one wants. Why shouldn't you come, Miss Peters? You belong to one of those things, you know, what do you call them--Working Girls' Clubs--don't you?"

"I'm a working girl myself, am I not?" Miss Peters answered. "And I reckon I'm very glad I've gotten the work to do."

"Then you can tell him anything Mr. de Ruyter doesn't know about these sort of people. How absurd for the younger brother of a peer to bother himself about such things over here, isn't it?" Mrs. Canton had returned. "Then that's settled."

Although the Southern girl had not relished the way the invitation had been proffered, she had not declined it, glad to get a glimpse again of the life of luxury to which she had been a stranger since she had been earning her own living; and thus it was that she was sitting silently in her seat at the dinner-table that evening in October, with Gilbert Barry and Rupert de Ruyter opposite to her. She did not seem to notice how the young Irishman glanced across the table at her more than once with obvious admiration, or how he tried to lure her into the conversation.

It irritated Miss Peters to have Rupert de Ruyter monopolize the talk. His rather rasping voice sawed her nerves, and she detested the way he thrust forward his square chin. She listened while he chattered along, not boasting exactly, yet managing to convey the impression that he knew more than any one else. Now and again he did bring forth a picturesque fact, for which he had the kodak eye of a reporter. He had the happy-go-lucky facility of the newspaper man, and he rattled away with more than one absurd misapprehension of the reality, until he reminded her of a singer with a fine voice but unable to avoid false notes.

"I don't pretend to know New York inside-out and upsidedown," he was saying; "but it is a most fascinating study, this polyglot city of ours, and the more you push your investigations the more likely you are to make surprising discoveries. You know we have an Italian quarter here?"

This was addressed, perhaps, to the British guest, but it was Mrs. Jimmy Suydam who answered it.

"Of course we do," she said; "haven't we all read that thrilling story you wrote about it?--the story with the startling title--_A Vision of Black Despair_."

The author flushed with pride that so handsome a woman and so exclusive a leader of Society should thus praise one of his writings.

Mr. Jimmy Suydam leaned over to Mrs. Canton, at whose left he was sitting, and said, "I don't see how my wife does it, do you? She keeps up with everything, you know--reads all the books--and all that."

"I didn't mean to remind you of that little thing of mine," continued De Ruyter, with a self-satisfied air that made little Miss Peters feel as though she would like to stick a pin in him. "That's neither here nor there, though I spent two days down in the Italian quarter getting up the local color for it. But what you didn't know, any of you, I am certain, is that part of the soil of this city was imported from Italy."

"Really, now," commented the British guest, "that is very interesting, indeed. It would be from a religious motive, I suppose--just as some of the mediaeval cemeteries had earth brought from the Holy Land?"

"That would be a more romantic reason, no doubt," the story-teller explained. "But the real one is very prosaic, I fear. The Italian soil here in New York was brought over as ballast by the ships that were going to take back our bread-stuffs. There is lot after lot upon the Harlem that has been filled in with this ballast--stones mostly, but some of it is earth."

"Genoa the superb providing a foundation for imperial New York," said the young Irishman, with a little flourish--and Miss Peters guessed that De Ruyter made a mental note of the figure for future elaboration. "And has New York a volcano under the city like Naples, now?--like every great town in Europe for the matter of that. Have you a seething mass of want and misery and discontent, such as boiled over in Paris under the Commune? That's what I'm wanting to find out."

"We have a devil's cauldron of our own, if that's what you mean," responded De Ruyter; "and we have people from every corner of the globe here now helping to keep the pot a-boiling. We have Russian Jews by the thousand, living just as they did in the Pale. We have Chinese enough to support a Chinese theatre. We have so many Syrians now that they are pre-empting certain blocks for themselves. We have Irish peasants so timid and suspicious that they won't go to the hospital when they are almost dying, because they believe the doctors keep a Black Bottle to be administered to troublesome patients."

"I should think they would be ever so much more comfortable in a roomy hospital than in their stuffy little tenement-house rooms," said Mrs. Jimmy; "and they can't get decent nursing in their own homes, can they?"

"The poor are a most unreasonable lot--and ungrateful, too," added Mr. Suydam; "that's what I think."

"They are not so badly off in their tenement-houses as you might think," explained De Ruyter. "They help each other with the children when there's sickness."

"The universal freemasonry of motherhood," commented Gilbert Barry; and again Miss Peters suspected the story-teller of making a mental record of the phrase.

"They are impossible to understand," De Ruyter declared.

"Why?" asked Miss Peters, suddenly, across the table, to the surprise of everybody. The young Irishman smiled encouragingly, as though he had been regretting that this pretty girl refused to talk.

"Why are they impossible to understand?" repeated the American story-teller. "I don't know, I'm sure. They are conundrums, all of them, and I am ready to give them up."

"Isn't it because you persist in approaching them as though they were strange, wild beasts?" the young woman went on. "You speak of them just as if they were different from us. But they are not, are they? They have their feelings just like we have; they fall in love and they get married and they quarrel and they die, just like we do. There is not more crime in the tenement-houses than there is in the rest of the city--not if you remember how many more people live in the tenement-houses. There isn't less joy there, or less sorrow either. There is quite as much happiness, I reckon, and a good deal more fun. They are not the lower animals; and it just makes me mad all over when I hear them spoken of in that way. They are human beings, after all--and if you can't understand them it's because you're not ready to go to them as your equals."

"That's what I say," the Irishman agreed; "we must approach them on the plane of human sympathy--that's the only way to get them to open their hearts."

"Why should we expect them to open their hearts to us?" Miss Peters continued. "We don't open ours to strangers, do we?"

"That's quite true," admitted Barry. "Sometimes I wonder if it isn't impertinent we are when we thrust ourselves into a poor man's room. I doubt we should like him to thrust himself into ours."

"I think that is a most amusing suggestion of yours," Mrs. Jimmy declared. "I shall look forward with delight to the day when the Five Points send missionaries up to Fifth Avenue."

"What an absurd idea!" cried Mrs. Canton, in disgust.

"Come now," the Irishman returned, "I deny that the suggestion is mine; but it is not so absurd--really, it isn't. There's lots of things they can teach us. I don't know but what we have more to learn from them than they have from us--really I don't. Christianity, now--practical Christianity--'inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these,' and all that sort of thing--well, there's more of that among the poor than there is among the rich, I'm thinking."

"If you want to pick up picturesque bits of low life in New York," broke in De Ruyter, "you must get a chance to see a candle in the plate."

"A candle in the plate?" echoed Barry. "I've never heard of it."

"It sounds like the title of a tale of superstition transplanted from Europe and surviving here in America," said Mrs. Jimmy.

"It's not a superstition, it's only a custom," De Ruyter explained; "and whether it's a transplanted survival or not I can't say. You see I've never seen the thing myself, but I've been told about it. I hear that down in the tenement-house region, when a family can't pay the rent and the landlord puts their scant furniture out on the sidewalk, and they don't know where to lay their heads that night, then one of the neighbors takes a candle and lights it and sticks it up on a plate, and takes his stand on the sidewalk; and this is a sign to everybody that there is a family in sore distress, and so the passers-by drop in a penny or two until there is enough to pay the arrears of rent and let the poor mother and children go back."

Mrs. Jimmy Suydam laughed a little bitterly. "That sort of thing may be possible on Cherry Hill," she said, "but it would never do on Murray Hill, would it? Just imagine how absurd a broken millionaire would look standing at a street corner with a little electric light on a silver salver, expecting the multi-millionaires going by to drop in a check or two to pay his rent for him!"

"I thought I had a quaint little silhouette of metropolitan life for you," De Ruyter responded, smiling back; "but you spoil the picture if you guy it like that."

"Very curious it is," said Barry--"very curious, indeed. 'How far a little candle throws its beams.' I don't think that the custom was exported from Ireland or from England--at least, I do not recall anything analogous."

"I've heard an old Irishwoman complain that the law was harder here on the tenant than it was in the old country," Miss Peters asserted; and then she appended an imitation of the old Irishwoman's speech: "'Sure, they'd boycott the landlord there, that's what they'd do, or they'd shoot the agent, maybe; but here ye can't--there's the police, bad cess to 'em!'"

"Have you ever seen the candle in the plate?" Barry asked her, across the table.

"Never," she answered.

"But you have heard of it?" De Ruyter inquired.

"Never before to-night," was her reply.

"You don't mean to say you don't believe that there is any such custom?" Mrs. Jimmy asked. "Thus all our illusions are shattered one by one."

"Of course, I don't know," the girl responded; "I haven't been working down there very long--only since last February. But it sounds like it was a fake, as we used to say in the newspaper office when I was a reporter."

Mrs. Jimmy Suydam had never met Miss Peters before, and now she examined the girl curiously, wondering what sort of being a woman was who had been a reporter and was now living among the poor, and who happened also to be dining at Mrs. Canton's.

The hostess was just then explaining to Mr. Suydam in a whisper that Miss Peters was a Southern girl of excellent family, who used to write those "Polly Perkins" articles for the _Dial_ on Sunday, but who had given it up last winter, and now acted as her secretary.

"A fake?" repeated the Irishman, gleefully; "that's one of your Americanisms, isn't it? I must remember that. A fake--what does it mean exactly?"

"It means the thing that is not," De Ruyter explained, with a trace of acerbity in his voice. "Miss Peters disbelieves in the existence of the candle in the plate, and she was too polite to call my story a lie, so she said it was a fake."

"Oh, Mr. De Ruyter," was her retort, "and you used to be a newspaper man yourself once!"

"Your newspapers, now," Barry broke in, "I confess they puzzle me. They are so clever, you know, and so up-to-date, and all that; but you never know what to believe in them, do you? And then they do such dreadful things."

"I fear you will find few Americans prepared to defend our newspapers," said the story-teller, always a little ashamed that he had once been a reporter. "But what sort of a dreadful thing have you in mind just now?"

"Things quite inconceivable, you know," the Irishman explained; "a thing like this, for example. A year or two ago a man gave me a copy of one of your New York papers--the _Dial_, I think it was. I read it with great interest, as one would the writing of some strange tribe of savages, don't you know? It was so very extraordinary."

As the guest made this plain statement, little Miss Peters happened to catch the eye of the handsome Mrs. Jimmy Suydam, and they exchanged an imperceptible smile.

"What shocked me the most," Barry continued, "was a long article from some special commissioner, with headings in huge letters--"

"Scare-heads they call them," explained De Ruyter.

"Scare-heads?" repeated the Irishman. "That's the very name for them. Scare-heads--delicious! This article, then, had scare-heads galore, and it described how a suicide had been identified. It seems some poor girl of the working-class had got into trouble, and sooner than bring disgrace on her family she had jumped into the river here--Hudson's River, isn't it? She had carefully arranged so that there was no clew by which she could be traced. But she had not counted on the devilish ingenuity of the special commissioner, a woman, too--at least I suppose it was a woman, since the thing was signed 'Polly Perkins.'"

Mrs. Jimmy saw the blood rise in the cheeks of Miss Peters, until the little Southern girl was as red as any of the maple-leaves that decked the cloth between the two women. She noticed that Rupert De Ruyter was staring into his plate with ill-concealed embarrassment, and that Mrs. Canton seemed a little uneasy.

"It seems that the poor creature's body was sent to the Morgue," Barry continued, "and no one claimed it, so it was buried at the cost of the county. And there's where the diabolical cunning of this reporter was exercised. She guessed that the girl's family would want to see the body laid away in holy ground, and so she went to the burying. And she hit it, for there were two women there in deep black, the mother of the poor wretch and the sister, not afraid to show their bitter grief when they thought they were unknown and unwatched. The spy tracked them to their house and she found out their names, and she put the whole story in the paper! I suppose it broke the mother's heart, and the sister's, to see the dead girl's shame brought home to her and to them when they thought it was buried in the grave with her body. I don't deny that the female detective showed a deal of skill; but what a pitiful thing! To risk breaking two loving hearts--and for what purpose?"

There was a moment's silence when the Irishman asked this unanswerable question. Then Miss Peters raised her head and looked him in the eye.

"That was what is called a 'beat.' No other paper had the news," she said; "and the reporter who wrote that story got a raise of five dollars a week."

"Faith, she deserved it," Barry returned. "It was blood-money she was taking, I'm thinking."

"That's what I think now," Miss Peters replied. "I wish I had thought so then. I wrote that article, and that is one reason why I am living down there among the poor, to try and make it up to them. Of course, I can't undo the wrong I did; but I mean to do my best."

Then there was another silence, broken by Mrs. Jimmy, who turned to Mrs. Canton and asked if she was going to take a box at the horse-show.

When the ladies left the dining-room Barry took the chair by the side of Suydam.

"What's the name of that pretty little girl?" he asked. "Peters, isn't it? I say, it was awfully plucky of her to tell us that she was 'Polly Perkins,' wasn't it, now? I like her; she's a trump! And that fair hair of hers is very fetching, isn't it?"

(1897.)

MEN AND WOMEN AND HORSES

Merrymount Morton walked briskly down Madison Avenue that warm November evening, when there was never a foretaste of winter in the intermittent breezes that blew gently across the city from river to river; and as he crossed the side streets one after another he saw the full moon in the east, low and large and mellow. On the brow of Murray Hill he checked his pace for a moment in frank enjoyment of the vista before him, differing in so many ways from the scenes which met his vision in the little college town of New England where he earned his living, and where he had spent the most of his life. The glow of the great town filled the air, and the roar of the city arose all about him. It seemed to him almost as though he could feel the heart of the metropolis throbbing before him. He caught himself wondering again whether he had not erred in accepting the professorship he had been so glad to get when he came back from Germany, and whether his life would not have been fuller and far richer had he come to New York, as once he thought of doing, and had he resolutely struck out for himself in the welter and chaos of the commercial capital of the country.

Down at the foot of the slope a cluster of electric lights spelled out the name of a trivial extravaganza then nearing its hundredth performance in the lovely Garden Theatre, and the avenue hereabouts had a strange, unnatural brilliance. High up in the pure dark blue the beautiful tower rose in air, its grace made visible by many lights of its own. The avenue was clogged with carriages, and the arcade before the theatre and under the tower was thick with men who carried under their arms folded card-board plans of the great amphitheatre, and who vociferously proffered tickets for the horse-show. So far remote from the current of fashion was Merrymount Morton that he had not been aware that the horse-show week was about to come to a glorious end. But he was familiar enough with New York to know that the horse-show was also an exhibition of men and women, and that the human entries were quite as important as the equine, and rather more interesting. He had never happened to be in the city at this season of the year; and although he had intended to spend the evening at the College Club, he seized the occasion to see a metropolitan spectacle which chanced to be novel to him.