A Prodigal in Buskins

THE river boat arrived some time during the night and made fast to the levee at S——. I have a faint remembrance of turning over in my berth with a heavy weight on my conscience, when I realized that the machinery was no longer churning the blood of some hundred and odd passengers with its tedious and incessant jar.

At daybreak I went out into the frosty and still deserted streets, feeling as forlorn as possible, and every once in a while having a kind of spasm in the region of the heart; for I kept coming upon great, placards, announcing the unprecedented attractions at the——The-

atre, and away down in the bill was one line that somehow had marvelous fascination for my eyes, though Heaven knows I didn’t want to see it any oftener than was absolutely necessary!

It ran thus: —

MR. BLANK.

HIS FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE.

It is scarcely three years since I donned the buskin, but it seems at least three ages, and I shall treat the subject with that liberal justice peculiar to people who have outlived the bitterness of an experience and are beginning to cherish the memory of it.

To begin with, I had become restless at home,—I always do, — and that is what has made a prodigal of me; I suppose some of the dear fellows whom I half worshiped because they were such deliciously melancholy Hamlets, or such pathetic and lovable Romeos, had fired my young ambition, and I began to think it quite a lark when I packed my trunk to enter upon my first engagement.

Of course the parents were resigned. I have observed that it is one of the first duties of a prodigal to break in his parents. I have also observed that your orthodox prodigal must try to do something for which he is eminently unfitted, or he at once sinks into the bottomless pit of the commonplace, and ceases to be any longer an object of interest; this is probably why I felt called upon to adopt the stage as a momentary and spasmodic profession.

S—— is a particularly dull place of an early morning. I felt as though I was about to become acquainted with the cold charities of the world, and I was low-spirited in consequence.

After a while I broke my fast at a wholesome little chop-house, where a motherly waitress brought me omelet and coffee, together with the morning paper.

Of course my eye at once fell upon that ominous line, “ Mr. Blank, his first appearance on any stage; ” it was in the smallest visible type, but I saw it as soon as I had spread the paper against the sugar-bowl, and I saw little else so long as I sat in the comfortable heat of that consoling chop-house.

I wanted to confide in that motherly waitress. I wanted to ask her if she had seen the announcement that “ Mr. Blank” was about to take the most desperate and decided step of his life? and when she had assured me that she had all the morning been brooding over the mystery of Mr. Blank, and that she had the greatest sympathy for him under the peculiarly trying circumstances, and that she lived with the hope of one day clasping Blank by the hand and congratulating him upon his great and glorious success in all parts of the world! — then I was going to almost fall into her arms, exclaiming, “ Behold, I am he whom your heart yearns for! ” But some one came in at the exact moment and ordered steak and tea, so that I gave up the pleasant little episode that came so near happening at the very opening of my dramatic career.

It became necessary to report myself to the manager at the earliest convenient hour; I sought him at his hotel. I found him. in animated conversation with the first star of the new dramatic season at the —— Theatre, and with a faint heart, and a spirit of humility that argues little for a man’s manliness in this age of the world, I approached them and announced myself as the ill-fated Mr. Blank about to make his first appearance on any stage.

They showed no surprise at my discovery; they had both been informed of my intentions some weeks previous, and had each taken my measure and pronounced me a possible success on any stage.

I had recited a few lines in a manner that convinced me my voice was no longer the trusty organ I had relied upon for some years past; they had seen me walk, and were good enough to classify my gait as tolerable; they had watched me in my unconscious poses and accepted me in spite of them. I had really nothing to fear, yet I felt somewhat like a caricature of my former self, and was in a state of nervous suspense until the call for rehearsal at precisely ten o’clock, A. M. Probably there is nothing more trying to the novice than his first rehearsal, unless it he his début. Our theatre was not a large one; on the contrary, it was cozy and homelike; yet I felt lost in it when the company assembled in the front seats of the parquette, chatting, lounging in an indifferent fashion, or perhaps studying their respective róles in the more secluded corners of the house.

The gentlemen of the orchestra were there, tuning their instruments, running through a few bars of the new overture, and making light of the serious life I was about to enter upon. Need I add, they were none of them prodigals?

It was dull business; three jets of gas ran out their yellow fangs from behind the long row of foot-lights; a brace of carpenters powdered our shoulders with dust and dry paint as they shifted the absurd-looking scenery that was to complete the illusion of our evening’s entertainment.

The prompter sat at a small table in the front of the stage, and, with an air of authority, summoned the ladies and gentlemen of act first, scene first, to come on to the stage and proceed with the rehearsal of the " beautiful domestic drama ” whose innumerable attractions were but faintly shadowed forth in the small bills.

The star sat on one side of the stage, looking very much bored; the leading lady flirted with the low comedian, the heavy villain leaned against the proscenium box and was supremely happy, and the play began.

It chanced to be the last rehearsal. I was fortunately up in my part — I had been cudgeling my brains for a fortnight in advance. Most of the company was perfect or nearly so, and we recited our lines with as much freedom and as little expression as one would throw into a private résumé of the multiplication table.

The humor sounded flat enough to have discouraged the author of it from ever again perpetrating a pun; the poetry of it was given with a prosaic indifference to all inflection: the tragedy was almost comic, and the effective situations alone seemed to call for any special exertion on the part of the company, and these were looked to with as much earnestness as might he expected in the devising of a gunpowder plot.

All this while a bluish gloom pervaded the entire establishment. Not one ray of sunshine stole in to gild the gray spirit of the occasion, and when at last, after three mortal hours of inexpressible tediousness, we were dismissed in a body, and I once more saw the light of day, — when I returned to the life I seemed about bidding a long farewell to, — I hardly knew what to do with the few hours of emptiness left me before I should have to return to the theatre for my début.

I remember I walked till I was tired, and sat till I could sit no longer; so I sought my room in the hotel, where I fell upon my play book and studied to kill time; albeit I was letter-perfect in my part, and had been so for some days; in fact, it seemed as though I had been familiar with the thing from time immemorial.

I believe I passed that eventful afternoon in a state of semi-somnambulism, out of which I did not entirely waken until the fall of the green curtain on the last act of my first night.

I ate a light dinner, with my stage cues in my throat; I arrayed myself in the costume of the evening with considerable care, and repaired to the theatre about seven P. M., where, to my amazement, I found most of the members of our company already assembled and the majority of them in full dress; in fact, we might have begun our performance nearly an hour before the time appointed for the overture.

The house was still dark and a little cold. A half-dozen people were lounging at the box office, which, I observed, was not yet open; I paced up and down the green baize that covered the stage like a close-shaven sward, and wondered if I could ever get used to that sort of tiling. I was peculiarly impressionable that night, and seemed to feel the eyes of people who were behind me, and to have a painful knowledge of their thoughts concerning me.

It seemed wise for me to retire to the privacy of my dressing-room, and I at once sought the steep stairs that led to its narrow door. This room chanced to be in the second tier of small compartments, to each of which two or more actors were doomed for a season, to make what transformation in their physical aspect might he necessary to suit the requirements of their respective rôles.

There were three of us in the up-stairs room I sought, selected and grouped together because we were slim and amiable; at any rate, I cannot account for the imposition upon any other grounds.

The dressing-room was like a ship’s state-room; it might have been seven feet square; it was ceiled with rough boards and lit with a gas jet that flamed furiously right over our heads; a narrow shelf of a convenient height spanned three sides of the room, while against the fourth side, and next the door, was our solitary stool. We sat on that stool in turn, and anathematized the proprietors of the establishment for thus presuming upon the helplessness of three martyrs to circumstance.

There was no superfluous ornamentation about our dressing-room: on the bare counter stood a small wash-bowl; above it hung a cheap mirror scarcely bigger than one’s face; each of us had his box of colors, a cake of india ink, and a tooth-brush with which to apply it; a hare’s-foot or a bit of old flannel for the rouge, and a puff for the magnesia.

Our gaudy costumes, such parts of them as we had not on at the moment, were heaped in champagne baskets under foot; and when we broke the busy silence of the last half-hour before adjourning to the greenroom, where the players of the evening are supposed to be in waiting, it was to ask after a missing slipper, or to beg the loan of a rosette as a substitute for the one that had been missing for some days.

There came a rap at the door; the juvenile (who does the young lovers and the dutiful sons) wanted to borrow our eyeglasses: there came another rap a moment later; the soubrette begged Mr. Blank for a few pins, she having been unable to find any out of use among the ladies.

It was excessively hot up in our small box; there was no window through which the night air might visit and revive us. In fact, an actor has little time to devote to hygienics during the run of a play. He cannot afford to be civil, always; his mind is bent upon his lines, and any unnecessary interruption is considered a breach of professional etiquette worthy of a severe reprimand.

Coming down from the dressing-room, I heard a low hum on the other side of the green curtain that was all that separated me from public life.

I glanced through the peephole in the middle of the curtain, and saw a wellfilled house; row upon row of faces were piled from the orchestra-rail to the very roof of the building; a hundred shelves full of wingless cherubs might have made a similar appearance if they could have managed to look equally unspiritual. Everybody was like everybody else; no one was distinguished in his or her appearance. It would temper the vanity of any man if he could see how insignificant he appears in the midst of a large audience.

The effect was at first ludicrous and then confusing; the audience seemed to resolve itself into one enormous face that winked at me with a thousand critical eyes.

I withdrew to the greenroom to compose myself; we were all there, a few sitting upon chairs or sofas, a few walking nervously up and down the floor, one or two busy at pier-glasses, studying causes and effects.

I was an object of some concern to the occupants of the greenroom; the old woman, which is by no means a disrespectful title when applied to an actress in her professional sphere, wanted to know how I felt; the light comedian trifled with my feelings in a cruel but artistic manner; the leading lady gave me a piece of advice, much in the style of a governess administering a reproof; and the singing chambermaid, who evidently had a heart, though in the play she was celebrated for her want of it, said nothing, but looked at me with melting eyes that made me feel particularly good every time they rested upon me. There was a commotion on the stage; the warning bell was sounded and we hastened into the wings, those scenic excrescences that shoot out from the sides of the stage like unfinished partitions.

A whole scene was to pass before I made my entrance in company with several others; we stood in a group at the entrance in the flat, or background of the stage-picture; our room was limited; there could not have been more than three feet of space between the scene and the rear wall of the theatre; everything was dusty, and we found some trouble in keeping ourselves respectable; so we stood in readiness to make our entrance the moment our cue should be heard; the ladies meanwhile were arranging the folds in their dresses and paying as little attention to me as possible; it was their delicate way of smoothing over the situation. I observed, however, that the stage carpenter was watching me with some interest, and the scene-shifter, who was ever my friend and who was out of employment for five minutes, drank my health silently in a mug of foaming lager.

Every word of the play could be heard where we were standing, as distinctly as though we were in the presence of the speaker; and as the applause of the house rolled out its thunder in admiration of the fine periods of our star, I settled my cravat, refastened my glove, looked down at my boots and up into the wilderness of ropes and rafters close under the roof, and then — slap, bang! much sooner than I expected — albeit for half an hour I had been waiting for it — our cue went off and we went on, one after another.

Probably our entrance was as good a one as was necessary, yet I fancy I stumbled at the threshold, or did something a little awkward; at any rate I was disconcerted, and forgot to acknowledge my reception by the audience, that was evidently disposed to treat me with some consideration.

There was a little difficulty about the volume of voice necessary to the occasion. I fancied I was howling like a dervish, yet the leading lady, who seemed to feel some personal responsibility in my deportment, whispered a word in my ear. It was enough; my face was on fire and my throat as dry as leather, yet I raised my voice a half note and put on the loud pedal.

After a half-dozen exchanges of brief and unimportant lines, I was at liberty to look natural and hold my peace till the close of the scene. It then occurred to me that I was probably the least natural of God’s creatures, and I tried to remember what people usually did with such unnecessary appendages as feet and hands.

I did n’t rock from one leg on to the other in continual unrest, as most débutants do: I did n’t, for this reason: it was considered a heinous sin, and I had been warned against it at least a hundred times during the previous week. I simply stood there like a post, without one particle of expression in any member of my body, while in my mind I was harping on my next cue, and wondering when it would make its appearance.

My guardian angel, our leading lady of grateful memory, saw that I was sinking into a state of petrifaction, and bethought herself of a test that was kill or cure in all such cases as mine. I was still unemployed, still wishing that I had something to do, so that I might appear natural; to be so in reality was out of the question.

Our leading lady seized me by the arm with some firmness and walked me down to one corner of the stage, on to the brink of the audience; the footlights flashed right under my nose; a million eyes seemed fixed upon me in morbid curiosity; my head swam; I felt an uncommon sense of lightness, and should not have been much surprised to find myself rising into the air and floating over the heads of the whole house.

At this epoch in my life the gentle lady, who had been cruel only to be kind, called me to myself with a few words of encouragement, and we withdrew into the seclusion formed by a table and one chair, near the back of the stage, where I at once became as plucky as possible, and finished my part of the scene in fine style.

Somehow I managed to make my reappearance in the next scene with considerable composure; the audience had little terror for me then, and in order to make as much of the experience as possible, f began to fret myself about my fellow-actors, though they were as kindly disposed toward me as any novice could wish.

I felt that I was doing with indifferent success what they had achieved reputation with, and the consequence was a general flagging of the enthusiasm awakened by my exit with my life at the conclusion of the first scene. In the interval at the close of the first act I was the recipient of much kindly encouragement, and likewise a little advice concerning a few stage improprieties that only an actor can have knowledge of. I discovered that there are certain rules that must be observed; most of them traditional, probably; but tlie stage as yet has not been sufficiently naturalized to admit of their repeal. When one of the ladies dropped her glove and I was just stooping to get it for her, she immediately checked me, assuring me that I must never stoop on the stage when it was not absolutely necessary; she had no further use for the glove in that scene; one of the supernumeraries would gather it up with any other articles shed during the action of the play; the property would thus be restored to the owners thereof, and the artistic effect of the drama would in no wise be disturbed.

I was cautioned against haste in my speech, eagerness to begin my lines before the curtain had fairly reached the dome of the proscenium, and above all, I was urged to avoid betraying any consciousness of the audience, which is, to say the least, thoroughly unprofessional.

These precepts were scarcely committed when the warning bell summoned us to appear for the second act. The extreme novelty of my position was rapidly wearing off; I ran my eye over my play book to freshen my memory, though I observed the majority of the actors preferred trusting entirely to their memory, they finding the book an embarrassment rather than a benefit.

My chief scene in act second was a brief but animated interview with the leading lady; in the play she was about to drown herself or do something equally unladylike, and it was my lot to dissuade her from her fell purpose. 1 rushed on at the right moment with a confused idea of what I was to do and say; somehow my lines had become hopelessly mixed; she saw the nature of the disorder, and her attention was henceforth divided between her own premeditated end and the most suitable way of getting me safely back into my dressing-room.

I fancy much of my discomfiture was occasioned by the unexpected recognition of a friend’s face, that seemed to shine out like an apparition from the chaotic confusion of faces filling the auditorium.

If that man had been dispatched as an ambassador from the people to confront me in the moment of my triumph and wrest from me the very motive power of my being, he could not have thrown me into a more complete state of stupefaction.

The leading lady, who by this time had given up all thought of her own misfortune, and was in the deepest distress at my miserable condition, clutched me by the arm with such vigor that I was upon the point of screaming out; she saved me by sheer force of will. I felt that it was impossible not to obey her, though she said nothing that was not set down to her; she spoke her lines and wrung from me my replies with her nervous grip upon my arm and her compelling eyes transfixing me like daggers, her sympathetic lips seeming to form for me the words I was unconsciously uttering, and, having brought our astonishing scene to a conclusion without alarming the audience, she walked me off from the stage and deposited me upon the nearest piece of furniture available, where I sank back trembling in every muscle, and folded in a sheet of cold sweat.

Probably I was but one remove from a stage fright; possibly there is nothing more agonizing in the whole round of human experiences than this sudden and unaccountable nervous prostration that has sometimes visited an actor after many years of varied success. I sincerely hope it comes not the second time to any given victim, for there is cruelty enough in it to last a man his lifetime.

Before our five acts were over, I had outgrown the old conditions and seemed to have become a new man entirely. I fancied the world looked different to me; I believed I had cut loose from society and set myself face to face with the great public.

Between the fourth and last acts I stood at the edge of the drop-curtain and had an oblique glimpse of the house; there was a triangular slice of the parquette, the tip end of the dresscircle, and one of the crescent horns of the gallery visible; the proscenium box was right before me, and I exchanged ominous glances with its occupants. Looking curiously upon the handfuls of people that were seated within range of my limited vision, T saw those whom I had known in private life, and somehow they seemed to be set apart from me; there was a yawning gulf full of musicians, and a flaming sword of foot-lights that separated us, perhaps forever. I felt that probably those friends would not regard me in the same light as had been their wont; they might try, and fail, for our lives went apart from the day of my début, and we met no more on the common ground of social equality. I had become the property of the public, subject to its critical or curious whims; in a word, I was an actor, though a poor one; but my short-comings did not exempt me from all the petty annoyances the actor is subjected to.

Stripped of every remnant of privacy, naked to the inspection of impudent and prying eyes, henceforth I could not fail to awaken some little interest in the bosom of my neighbor, from the mere fact that I was an actor, though, Heaven knows, in our several callings I can see nothing but a distinction without a difference.

Looking out at the edge of the curtain I nodded to a young fellow I knew, and he nodded back, to the admiration of several young fellows in his immediate vicinity; they seemed to be filled with unnecessary emotion, and perhaps felt themselves remotely associated with the profession in consequence of that casual recognition.

I began to grow philosophical, and thought little of my kind, that so small a thing should have its visible effect in a half-dozen breasts that ought to have been less susceptible.

But I had charity for them; I had done the same thing myself, more than once, and had felt my hair rise all over my head when a certain actor gave me a look of recognition which was observed, and perhaps coveted, by the several comrades who surrounded me. There was n’t much time for moralizing between the acts, so I stopped it and read over my last scene for the twentieth time, getting more and more confused forever.

Having been congratulated in the early part of the evening I was left almost to myself as the play drew to its close; every one had duties that fully occupied his or her attention; even the singing chambermaid lost interest in me, and the scene-shifter seemed inclined to let me go my way since he had watched me through the trying ordeal of the first entrance and the exit that followed it.

These exits were something harrowing; it seemed as though nothing but a miracle could carry me safely over the three paces that lay between me and the wings, beyond which I was as bold as a lion. Neither is it any wonder that it is as it is; as well think of concluding a poem with a weak line or two, as of slinking off from the stage without making a point of it.

It is one proof of an artist that his entrances and exits are in themselves artistic, forming a fitting opening and close to the business of the scene. One’s feet seem glued to the stage just at the moment when a light and graceful step is necessary, and somehow you are never so conscious of your complete unfitness for any part as at the moment when you are about to conclude a scene in it. This is of course the result of nervousness, and may be overcome in time.

At last, after three hours and a half of the utmost animation, the green curtain was about to fall on my first night. I do not remember any walk in life to which I have been introduced where the nervous energies of a man are so taxed; we had not one moment that we could call our own, from the hour of dressing to the last tap of the prompter’s bell at the end of the closing scene.

Then everything seemed to fray out. The audience deserted us. We were of no further interest to them. They returned into the world and forgot us. We hurried to our dressing-rooms, put off our stage-characters with our clothes, donned citizen’s apparel, and went into the street.

The lights burned low in the empty house; the curtain was rung up as soon as the audience had dispersed, and when I passed out on to the stage again, the great auditorium yawned like a cavern full of shadows and silence.

The stage carpenter said good night civilly, in a voice that echoed through the deserted galleries; one or two of the minor members of the company seemed inclined to make friendly advances, but I discovered that we had all sunk into the commonplace world again, and we could not hope for a complete resurrection until the place was again magnetized by the enthusiastic multitude who would probably assemble on the following evening.

At the door, five or six youngsters were lounging, and as I passed them, they gossiped together in an audible undertone which I could not avoid interpreting. Well! little fellows, thought I, you do not care much for me now, but if I should make one palpable hit, you would follow me a block or so in the fullness of your admiration.

I was tired and hungry; I sought my hospitable chop-house and awoke the motherly waitress from a nap in the corner. Over oysters and coffee my soul revived ; I wanted to tell the good soul all about it; I felt that I must talk to somebody or die, and so I talked stage to her. But, bless her soul! she never went to the play-house, and though she sympathized with me to a considerable extent, it was only because she was so brimful of sympathy that you might tap her on any side and she would respond with admirable but incomprehensible promptness.

So I went to my room, and as the night was clear and the rim of the moon hung low in the horizon, I leaned over the window to see that strip of yellow gold go down beyond the hill.

It was a time to send pleasant mental telegrams to the dear ones who were perhaps dreaming of the prodigal out in the world again.

A great multitude of frogs sang joyously; I think there was no other sound on my side of the world. I blessed God with the gratefulest heart that ever yearned and was satisfied, and concluded by writing a letter home while the spirit was on me, hopeful, healthful, hearty.

When I was dropping off into sleep the town clock struck three, and I concluded the programme of the début with this high-flown period: Alas for the joyous amateur who sports with fair women and brave men of Ms acquaintance in the drawing-rooms of his neighbor! who plays at playing in a dainty drama after his own heart, and thinks he is solving the mystery of the profession, but the truths of which he is in no wise aware of; for the end of that amateur shall be egotism and vainglory!

Perhaps I was too philosophical on short notice; I know that I was very sleepy, and what can you expect from a fellow with one foot in the profession?

Charles Warren Stoddard.