New Faces by Myra Kelly
M >>
Myra Kelly >> New Faces
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 NEW FACES
BY
MYRA KELLY
AUTHOR OF "LITTLE CITIZENS" "WARDS OF LIBERTY" "THE ISLE OF DREAMS"
"ROSNAH" "THE GOLDEN SEASON" "LITTLE ALIENS"
[Illustration: Printers Mark]
_Illustrations by_
CHARLES F. NEAGLE
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1910, By_ G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
NEW FACES
[Illustration: "THERE'S NO QUESTION ABOUT IT," HE RETORTED. "SHE KNOWS
THAT I SHALL MARRY HER."]
"Oh give me new faces, new faces, new faces
I have seen those about me a fortnight or more.
Some people grow weary of names or of places
But faces to me are a much greater bore."
_Andrew Lang._
CONTENTS
THE PLAY'S THE THING 17
THERE'S DANGER IN NUMBERS 57
MISERY LOVES COMPANY 83
THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 115
WHO IS SYLVIA? 147
THE SPIRIT OF CECELIA ANNE 187
THEODORA, GIFT OF GOD 219
GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS 263
ILLUSTRATIONS
"There's no question about it," he retorted. "She knows that I shall
marry her."
Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he had
found for many years
Uncle Richard's face, as he met John's eyes, was a study
She swooped under the large center table, dragging Patty with her
The changeless smile and the drooping plumes made three complete
revolutions, and nestled confidingly upon the shoulder of the law
Celia Anne shut her eyes tightly and fired the rifle into the air
NEW FACES
"THE PLAY'S THE THING"
A business meeting of the Lady Hyacinths Shirt-Waist Club was in
progress. The roll had been called. The twenty members were all present
and the Secretary had read the minutes of the last meeting. These
formalities had consumed only a few moments and the club was ready to
fall upon its shirt waists. The sewing-machines were oiled and
uncovered, the cutting-table was cleared, every Hyacinth had her box of
sewing paraphernalia in her lap; and Miss Masters who had been half
cajoled and half forced into the management of this branch of the St.
Martha's Settlement Mission was congratulating herself upon the ease and
expedition with which her charges were learning to transact their
affairs, when the President drew a pencil from her pompadour and rapped
professionally on the table. In her daytime capacity of saleslady in a
Grand Street shoe store she would have called "cash," but as President
of the Lady Hyacinths her speech was:
"If none of you goils ain't got no more business to lay before the
meetin' a movement to adjoin is in order."
"I move we adjoin an git to woik," said Mamie Kidansky promptly. Only
three buttonholes and the whalebones which would keep the collar well up
behind the ears lay between her and the triumphant rearing of her shirt
waist. Hence her zeal.
Susie Meyer was preparing to second the motion. As secretary she
disapproved of much discussion. She was always threatening to resign her
portfolio vowing, with some show of reason, "I never would 'a' joined
your old Hyacinths Shirt-Waists if I'd a' known I was goin' to have to
write down all the foolish talk you goils felt like givin' up."
It seemed therefore that the business meeting was closed, when a voice
from the opposite side of the table broke in with:
"Say, Rosie, why can't us goils give a play?"
"Ah Jennie, you make me tired," protested the Secretary.
"An' you're out of order anyway," was the President's dictum.
"Where?" cried Jennie wildly, clutching her pompadour with one hand and
the back of her belt with the other, "where, what's the matter with me?"
"Go 'way back an' sit down," was the Secretary's advice, "Rosie meant
you're out of parliamentry order. We got a motion on the table an' it's
too late for you to butt in on it. This meetin' is goin' to adjoin."
But Jennie was the spokesman of a newly-born party and her supporters
were not going to allow her to be silenced. Even those Lady Hyacinths
who had not been admitted to earlier consultations took kindly to the
suggestion when they heard it.
"I don't care whether she's out of order or not," one ambitious Hyacinth
declared, "I think it would be just too lovely for anything to have a
play. They have 'em all the time over to Rivington Street an' down to
the Educational Alliance."
"Rebecca Einstein," said the Secretary darkly, "if you're goin' to fire
off your face about plays an' the Educational Alliances you can keep
your own minnits, that's all! Do ye think I'm goin' to write down your
foolishness? Well, I ain't."
Again the President plied her gavel. "Goils," she remonstrated, "this
ain't no way to act. Say, Miss Masters," she went on, "I guess the whole
lot of us is out of order now. What would you do about it if you was me?"
"I should suggest," Miss Masters answered, "that the motion to adjourn
be carried and that the whole club go into committee on the question
raised by Miss Meyer."
"I move that we take our woik into committee with us," cried Miss
Kidansky, not to be deflected from her buttonholes. And from such humble
beginnings the production of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths sprang.
Hamlet was not their first choice. It was not even their tenth and to
the end it was not the unanimous choice. During the preliminary stages
of the dramatic fever Miss Masters preserved that strict neutrality
which marks the successful Settlement worker. She would help--oh, surely
she would help--the Hyacinths, but she would not lead them. She had
never questioned their taste in the shape and color of their shirt
waists. Some horrid garments had resulted but to her they represented
"self expression," and as such gave her more pleasure than any servile
following of her advice could have done. She soon discovered that the
latitude in the shirt waist field is far exceeded by that in the
dramatic and she discovered too, that the Lady Hyacinths, though they
seldom visited the theatre had strong digestions where plays were
concerned.
"East Lynne" was warmly advocated until some one discovered a
grandmother who had seen it in her youth. Then:
"Ah gee!" remarked the Lady Hyacinths, "we ain't no grave snatchers. We
ain't goin' to dig up no dead ones. Say Miss Masters, ain't there no new
plays we could give?"
Miss Masters referred them to the public library, but not many plays are
obtainable in book form, and the next two meetings were devoted to the
plays of Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, Vaughan Moody. When Miss Masters descried
this literature in the hands of the now openly mutinous Secretary she
felt the time had come to interfere with the "self activity" of her
charges. She promptly confiscated the second volume of "G.B.S." "For,"
she explained "we don't want to do anything unpleasant and the writer of
these plays himself describes them as that."
"Guess we don't," the President agreed. "We got to live up to our name,
ain't we? An' what could be pleasanter than a Hyacinth?"
"Nothing, of course," agreed Miss Masters unsteadily.
"There's one in this Ibsen book might do," Jennie suggested. "It's
called 'A Dolls' House,' that's a real sweet name."
"I am afraid it wouldn't do," said Miss Masters hastily.
"What's the matter with it?" demanded Susie Meyer.
"Well, in the first place, there are children in it--"
"Cut it! 'Nough said," pronounced the President. "Them plays wid kids in
'em is all out of style. We giv' 'East Lynne' the turn down an' there
was only one kid in that. What else have you got in that Gibson book?
Have you got the play with the Gibson goils in it? We could do that all
right, all right. Ain't most of us got Gibson pleats in our shirt
waists?"
"I don't see nothin' about goils," the Secretary made answer, "but
there's one here about ghosts. How would that do?"
"Not at all," said Miss Masters firmly.
"What's the matter with it?" asked one of the girls abandoning her
sewing-machine and coming over to the table. "I seen posters of it last
year. They are givin' it in Broadway. The costoomes would be real easy,
just a sheet you know and your hair hanging down."
"It's not about that kind of ghost," Miss Masters explained, "and I
don't think it would do for us as there are very few people in the cast
and one of them is a minister."
"Cut it," said the President briefly, "we ain't goin' to have no hymn
singin' in ours. We couldn't, you know," she explained to Miss Masters,
"the most of us is Jewesses."
"Katie McGuire ain't no Jewess," asserted the Secretary. "She could be
the minister if that's all you've got against this Gibson play. I wish
we _could_ give it. It's about the only up-to-date Broadway success we
can find. The librarian says you can't never buy copies of Julia
Marlowe's an' Ethel Barrymore's an' Maude Adams' plays. I guess they're
just scared somebody like us will come along an' do 'em better than they
do an' bust their market. Actresses," she went on, "is all jest et up
with jealousy of one another. Is there anythin' except the minister the
matter with 'Ghosts?'"
"Everything else is the matter with it," said Miss Masters. "To begin
with, I might as well tell you, it never was a Broadway success. It's a
play that is read oftener than it's acted and last year, Jennie, when
you saw the posters, it only ran for a week."
"Cut it," said the President. "We ain't huntin' frosts."
The brows of the Hyacinths grew furrowed and their eyes haggard in the
search. Everyone could tell them of plays but no one knew where they
could be found in printed form and whenever the librarian found
something which might be suitable Miss Masters was sure to know of
something to its disadvantage.
And then the real stage, the legitimate Broadway stage intervened.
Albert Marsden produced Hamlet and the Lady Hyacinths determined to
follow suit.
"It's kind of old," the President admitted, "but there must be some
style left to it. They're playin' it on Broadway right now. An' we'll
give it on East Broadway just as soon as we can git ready. Me and Mamie
went round to the library last night an' got it out. It's got a dandy
lot of parts in it: more than this club will ever need. An' it's got
lots of murders an' scraps, an' court ladies an' soldiers an' kings.
It's our play all right!"
The sea of troubles into which the Lady Hyacinths plunged with so much
enthusiasm swallowed them so completely that Miss Masters could only
stand on its shore, looking across to Denmark and wringing her hands
over the awful things that were happening in that unhappy land.
Fortunately she had a friend to whom she could appeal for succour for
the lost but still valiant Hyacinths. He was the sort of person to whom
appeals came as naturally as honors come to some men and, since he had
nothing to do and ample time and money with which to do it, he was
generally helpful and resourceful. That he had once loved Miss Masters
has nothing to do with this story. She was now engaged to be married to
a poorer and busier man, but it was to Jack Burgess that she appealed.
"Of course I know," said he when he had responded to her message and she
had anchored him with a tea-cup and disarmed him with a smile, "of
course I know what you want to say to me. Every girl who has refused me
has said it sooner or later. You are saying it later--much later--than
they generally do, but it always comes. 'You have found a wife for me.'"
"I have done much better than that," she answered, "I have found work
for you." And she sketched the distress of the Hyacinths in Denmark and
urged him to go to their assistance.
"But, my dear Margaret," he remonstrated, "What can I do? You have
always known that 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' and
yet you have let these poor innocents stir it up. I have often thought
that poor Shakespeare added that line after the first performance. I
intend to write that hint to Furniss one of these days."
"You will write it," said Margaret Masters, "with more conviction after
you have seen _my_ Denmark."
"Very well," said he, "I'll visit Elsinore to-night, but I insist upon a
return ticket."
"You will be begging for a season ticket," she laughed. "They have
reduced me to such a condition that I don't know whether they are
amusing me or breaking my heart. Tell me, come, which is it? Did you
ever hear blank verse recited with tense and reverent earnestness and a
Bowery accent?"
"I never did," said he.
* * * * *
"Shakespeare was right," whispered Burgess to Miss Masters. "There is
something rotten in Denmark. I've located it. It's the Prince." They
were sitting together in a corner of the kindergarten room of the
settlement: a large and spacious room all decked and bright with the
paper and cardboard masterpieces of the babies who played and learned
there in the mornings. Casts and pictures and green growing things added
to its charm and the Lady Hyacinths so trim and neat and earnest did not
detract from it.
The sewing-machines and the cutting-table had been cast into corners and
well in the glare of the electric light the President was exclaiming in
a voice which would have disgraced an early phonograph, "Oh that this
too too solid flesh would melt."
It was not a dress rehearsal but the too solid Prince wore his hair low
on his neck and a golden fillet bound his brows. Silent, he was noble.
His walk as he came in at the end of a procession of court ladies and
gentlemen was magnificent--slow, dejected, imperious, aloof. But
Wittenberg had a great deal to answer for, if he had contracted his
accent there.
Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, was a Hyacinth who worked daily at hooks and
buttonholes for an East Broadway tailor. On this night she wore none of
her regalia save her crown and the King had done nothing at all to
differentiate himself from Susie Lacov who officiated as waitress in a
Jewish lunchroom.
The Hyacinths had wisely decided to edit Hamlet. In this they followed
an almost universal principle and their method was also time-honored.
All the scenes in which unimportant members of the club or cast "came
out strong," were eliminated. So far the Hyacinths were orthodox, but
Rosie Rosenbaum, Prince, President and Censor, went a step further.
"Git busy. Mix her up, why don't you!" she commanded later from the
wings. The other players were laboriously wading through persiflage and
conversation. "You folks ain't _done_ nothin' the last ten minutes only
stand there and gas. Is that actin'? Maybe it's wrote in the book. What
I want to know is--is it actin'?" Burgess sat suddenly erect and his
eyes glowed. Miss Masters half rose to assume authority but he
restrained her.
"You shut up and leave me be," Polonius cried. "Ain't I got a right to
say good-bye to my son?"
"You can say good-bye all right," Rosie reminded her, "without puttin'
up that game of talk. Give him a 'I'll be a sister to you' on the cheek
an' git through sometime before to-morrow. Cut it, I tell you."
This "off with his head" attitude on the President's part delighted
Burgess. But the caste enjoyed it less and when the ghost was docked of
a whole scene it grew rebellious.
"If you give me any more of your lip," said the princely stage manager,
"I'll trow you out altogether. There's lots of people wouldn't believe
in ghosts anyway. Me grandfather seen this play in Chermany and he told
me they didn't use the ghost at all. Nothin' but a green light with a
voice comin' out of it."
"Well, I could be the voice, couldn't I?" the ghost argued; and it was
at this point that Miss Masters took charge of the meeting and
introduced Mr. Burgess.
"Who has offered," she went on in spite of his energetic pantomime of
disclaimer, "to help us with our play."
"That's real sweet of you, Mr. Burgess," said the President graciously.
"Not at all--not at all," he answered. "It will be a pleasure, I assure
you."
"You'll excuse me, I'm sure," the Secretary broke in, "if we go right on
with our woik while you're here. We're makin' our own costoomes, as
much as we can. That was one reason us young ladies chose Hamlet. It's a
play what everyone wears skoits in. It's easier for us and it ain't so
embarrassing, and I guess our folks will like it better. You _have_ to
think of your folks sometimes. Even if they are old-fashioned. Miss
Masters got us pictures of Mr. Marsden's production an' every last one
of the characters has skoits on. Hamlet's ain't no longer than a bathin'
suit, but anyway it's there. I don't think it's real refined, myself,
for young ladies to wear gents' suits on the stage."
"And of course," a gentle-eyed little girl looked up from her sewing to
remark,--"of course this club ain't formed just for makin' shirt waists.
We've got a culture-an'-refinement clause in the club constitution, so
we wouldn't want to do nothin' that wasn't real refined."
[Illustration: BURGESS GAINED AN INTEREST AND AN OCCUPATION MORE
ABSORBING THAN HE HAD FOUND FOR MANY YEARS.]
"I understand," said Burgess more at a loss than a conversation had
ever found him, "And what may I ask, is your part of the play?"
"Mamie Conners is too nervous," the lady President explained "to come
right out and act. She's 'A flourish of trumpets within an' a voice
without an' a lady of the court an' a soldier an' a choir boy at the
funeral.'"
"Ah, Miss Conners," Burgess assured this timid but versatile Hyacinth,
"that's only stage fright, all great actresses suffer from it at one
time or another."
* * * * *
During the weeks that followed, order gradually gained sway in Denmark
and Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he
had found for many years.
"My dear Margaret," he was wont to assure Miss Masters, when she
remonstrated with him upon his generosity, "Why shouldn't I order
supper to be sent in for them? and why shouldn't I ask them up to the
house for rehearsals? There's the big music room going to waste and
those lazy beggars of servants with nothing to do, and you saw yourself
how it brightened up poor old Aunt Priscilla. She likes it--they like
it--I like it--you ought to like it. And you certainly can't object to
my having taken them _en masse_ to see Marsden in the play. By George!
I'll drag him to theirs. We'll show him an Ophelia! that Mary Conners is
a little genius."
"She is wonderful," agreed Miss Masters. "The grace of her! The dignity!
What she herself would call the culture-an'-refinement!"
"All my discovery. That tyrant of a Rosie Rosenbaum had cast her as a
quick change, general utility woman. And in the day-time you tell me
she's a miserable little shop-girl in a Grand Street rookery!"
"That is what she used to be. But I went to the shop a day or two ago
to ask her to come up to my house to rehearse with the new Hamlet. I
watched her for a few moments before she noticed me. She was Ophelia to
the life. She conversed in blank verse. She walked about with that
little queenly air you have taught her. She was delicious, adorable. At
first she said that she could not rehearse that night, but I told her
you wished it and she came like a lamb. I often wonder if I did a wise
thing in introducing them to you. Your sort of culture-an'-refinement'
may rather upset them when the play is over and we all settle back to
the humdrum."
"You did a great kindness to me," said he, "and the best stroke of
missionary work you'll do in a dog's age. I'm going to work."
"You are not," she laughed.
"I am. Shamed into it by the Lady Hyacinths."
"Then perhaps the balance will be maintained. If you turn them against
labor they will have turned you toward it."
But Miss Masters' fears were groundless: the Lady Hyacinths though
dedicated to a flower of spring were old and wise in social
distinctions. The story of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid would have
drawn only a contemptuous "cut it out" from the lady President. Every
Hyacinth of them knew her exact place in nature's garden--all except
Mary Conners--now Ophelia--and she knew herself to be a foundling with
no place at all. The lonely woman who had adopted her was now dead and
Mary was quite alone in her little two-room tenement, free to dream and
play Ophelia to her heart's content and to an imaginary Hamlet who was
always Burgess. To her he was indeed, "The expectancy and rose of the
fair state." "The glass of fashion and the mould of form." He was "her
honoured lord"--"her most dear lord." But in Monroe Street she never
deceived him. Never handed his letters over to interfering relatives.
She could quite easily go mad and tuneful when she knew that each
rehearsal--each lesson taught by him and so quickly learned by
her--brought the days when she would never see him so close that she
could almost feel their emptiness.
It was well that she played to an idealized Hamlet for the real Hamlets
came and went bewilderingly. One of Burgess's first triumphs of tact had
been to pry the part away from the lady President and give it to the
sturdy Secretary. There followed two other claimants to the throne in
quick succession and then the lot fell to Rebecca Einstein and stayed
there. Each change in the principal role necessitated readjustment
throughout the cast and at every change the lady President was persuaded
not to over exert herself.
And still Burgess in the seclusion of the homeward bound hansom railed
and swore.
"I tell you, Margaret, that girl will ruin us. All the rest are funny.
Overwhelmingly, incredibly funny! And pathetic! Could anything be more
pathetic! But that awful President strikes a wrong note: Vulgarity. Take
her out of it and we'll have a thing the like of which New York had
never seen, for Ophelia is a genius or I miss my guess and all the rest
are darlings."
"But we can't throw out the President of the club. She must have a part.
You have moved her down from Hamlet to Laertes--to the King--"
"I did," groaned Burgess. "Will you ever forget her rendering of the
line, "Now I could do it, Pat," and then her storming up to me to know
"Who Pat was anyway?""
"I do," laughed Margaret, "and then how you moved her on to Guildenstern
and now you have got her down to Bernardo with all her part cut out and
nothing except that opening line, "Who's there?" and the other: "'Tis
now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.""
"Yes, and she ruins them. I've drilled her and drilled her till my
throat is sore and still she says it straight through her nose just as
though she were delivering an order of 'ham and' at her hash battery.
Just the same truculent 'Don't you dare to answer back' attitude. She's
impossible. She must be removed."
Meanwhile the Lady Hyacinths scattering to their different homes
discussed their mentor. Ophelia and Horatio and Hamlet were going
through Clinton Street together. Ophelia was still at Elsinore but
Horatio was approaching common ground again.
"I suppose he's Miss Masters' steady," said he to Hamlet. "He wouldn't
come down here every other night just to help us goils out."
But Ophelia was better informed. She knew Miss Masters to be engaged to
quite another person.
"Then I know," cried Horatio triumphantly. "He's stuck on Rosie
Rosenbaum. It's her brings him."
Ophelia said nothing, and Horatio having experienced an inspiration, set
about strengthening it with proof.
"It's Rosie sure enough. Ain't he learned her about every part in the
play? Don't he keep takin' her off in corners an' goin' 'Who's there,
'Tis now struck twelve' for about an hour every night? I wouldn't have
nothin' to do with a feller that kept company that way, but I s'pose
it's the style on Fifth Avenue. You know how I tell you, Ham, in the
play that there's lots of things goin' on what you ain't on to. Well
it's so. None of you was on to Rosie an' his nibs. You didn't ever guess
it did you 'Pheleir?"
"No," admitted Ophelia. "No, I never did."
"Well it's so. You watch 'em. The style in wives is changin'. Actresses
is goin' out an' the 'poor but honest workin' goil' is comin' in. One of
our salesladies has a book about it. "The Bowery Bride" its name is. All
about a shop goil what married a rich fellow and used to come back to
the store and take her old friends carriage ridin'. If Rosie Rosenbaum
tries it on me, I'll break her face. If she comes round me," cried the
Prince's fellow student: "with carriages and a benevolent smile, I'll
claw the smile off of her if I have to take the skin with it!"
When Horatio and Hamlet left her, she wandered disconsolate, down to the
river. But no willow grows aslant that brook, no flowers were there with
which to weave fantastic garlands.
"I've gone crazy all right," said poor Ophelia as she watched the lights
of the great bridge, "but I don't drown myself until Scene VII. And I'm
goin' up to his house to-morrow night to learn to act crazy. I guess I
don't need much learning."
* * * * *
The performance of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths is still remembered by
those who saw it as the most bewildering entertainment of their
theatrical experience. The play had been cut down to its absolute
essentials and the players, though drilled and coached in their lines
and business, had been left quite free in the matters of interpretation
and accent. The result was so unique that the daily press fell upon it
with whoops of joy and published portraits of and interviews with the
leading characters. People who had thought that only ferries and docks
lay south of Twenty-third Street penetrated to the heart of the great
East Side and went home again full of an altruism which lasted three
days. And on the last night of the "run" of three nights, Jack Burgess
brought Albert Marsden to witness it. Other spectators had always
emerged dumb or inarticulate from the ordeal but the great actor was not
one of them. He was blusterous and garrulous and, to Burgess' amazement,
not at all amused.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9