Tales From Bohemia by Robert Neilson Stephens

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One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of
woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source. The
woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly a
handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner which
plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle class,
intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted to
each other was easily discoverable.

The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was
neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a
clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She
was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good size
and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in which
she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntless
air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened.

She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her
face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any
change in health.

The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other
indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that
I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came
over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhaps
in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering;
perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.

Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dog
regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would never
have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, under
exactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday.

So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought.
This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. The
husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Monday
morning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating and sleeping.
Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some taste
for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful.

The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man,
and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruption
and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness which
arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strange
sympathy for an interest in them.

On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until they
passed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk. Sometimes
they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would,
now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood,
and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to me
an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would stand
out clearly against the background.

It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the health
of either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale and
slight, showed little change and that infrequently. But the fluctuations of
the woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, were
numerous and pronounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust than
on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the dark
crescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myself
elated.

But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustre
of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had
returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:

"This is one of the bad Sundays."

There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.

What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and
constancy of her devotion to her husband,--the absorption of the woman
in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my
feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back
love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.

Yes, I loved her,--if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in
fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for her
or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.

My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woe
of my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness.

So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the
couple did not appear.

For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk.

On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was
looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I
sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted
there.

Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.

I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld the
widower--whose name I did not and probably never shall know--upon the
bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoon
in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty,
animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before. They walked close
to each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face.
She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which I
observed on her finger.

I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes,
the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow so
speedily, had felt death--those might never have existed, so soon had they
been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had worn
the aspect of a perfect love.

Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the
memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, has
allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.

The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life,
makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold,
bleak, empty, repellent.

You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to me
a thing unknown.

* * * * *

So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper ever
wrote.

IV

THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY [Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.
Copyright, 1892, by J.B. Lippincott Company.]

Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the "old school." He railed
against the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when he
attitudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the brass rail, his right
hand encircling a glass of foaming beer, he often clamoured for a return
of the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and sighed at the
departure of the "palmy days."

A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, was
Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage
smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the
severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed
with such of his fellow men as were not of "the profession."

Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither he
nor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He still
waited and hoped.

For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened by
a distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of his
occupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearily
describe as a "favourable impression." This he ascribed to lack of
opportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. and Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent for
the newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought the
notices of the performance. These records never contained a word of either
praise or censure for Mogley.

Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a "walking
gentleman." It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz)
that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her that
life-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue acting. She had
swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope of
his triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she suffered
more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied.

She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face from
which the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much to
Mogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of his
aspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully the
hard life that a player at "one-night stands" must endure in the interest
of art.

This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was
about to start "on the road" with the "Two Lives for One" Company,
the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or
die,--perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the
melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain, who
in the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water, while
his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the small
room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh Street.

The "Two Lives for One" Company "collapsed," as the newspapers say, in
Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this notwithstanding
the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress overtook the manager
at the railway station, as he was about to flee, and extorted enough money
from him to take them back to New York.

Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house
on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on
the bed. She smiled through her tears,--a really heartrending smile.

"Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I
don't know whether I can live out the season."

"Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!"

"I would be resigned, Tom, if only--if only you would make a success before
I go."

"If only I could get the chance, Alice!"

As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail
perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live on
nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill, but
medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of
the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman
put the question, almost before he opened the door:

"Anything yet?"

"Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is
overcrowded!"

But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In the
dark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor.

"Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse," said the physician,
abruptly. "I'm afraid she won't live until midnight."

Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to "break news gently" in
cases where they stand small chances of remuneration.

Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he had
such good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news would
reanimate her.

"Alice," he cried, as he threw open the door, "you must get well! My chance
has come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, is here."

She sat up in bed, trembling. "What is it, Tom?"

"This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman this
afternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'Silver
King' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why this
extravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexter
explained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't be
put on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too sick
to walk. 'No one else knows the part,' Hexter said. Then I told him I knew
the part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the piece was
first produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust up-to-date'
from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late dinners and
too much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the piece had run
more'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it. Well, Hexter said,
as everything was ready to put on the piece, if I thought I was up in the
part, he'd let me try it. So we went to Renshaw's room and got the part and
here it is."

"But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line."

"Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone of power.'
That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides, burlesque is the
thing now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and Powers. They're
the men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit in this part, my
fortune is sure."

"But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery."

"That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries."

Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome in
the same words.

"And then besides--why, Alice, what's the matter?"

She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her.
Slowly she opened her eyes.

"Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying."

Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hard
enough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it be
without her?

The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside.

"Hexter and his Mephisto be d----d!" said Mogley. "I shall stay at home
with you to-night."

"No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before I
die, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until you
come to join me."

Mogley's weaker will succumbed to hers. So, with his right hand around Mrs.
Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the steeple
which was visible through the narrow window, that he might know when to
administer her medicine, he held his "part" in his left hand and refreshed
his recollection of the lines.

At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon her
cheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep, but she
murmured:

"May God help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre with
you. Good-bye."

Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and then
during the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper intervals.

Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw's
dressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind ever
turning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to the
words and "business" of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights and
crimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted the
exaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood by,
giving him hints as to new "business" invented by Renshaw.

"You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a specialty."

"Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the part
and the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do some
imitations of actors."

At eight he was ready to go on the stage.

"May God be with you!" reëchoed in his ear,--the echo of a weak voice put
forth with an effort.

He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that, "owing
to Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr. Thomas
Mogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice, without a
rehearsal."

He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and he
involuntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and delicious
words reached his ears.

The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, then
an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance of
Mephisto.

Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminary
announcement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, rather
disconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes had ranged
over the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the footlights, there
sounded in the depths of his brain:

"My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!"

There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them on
the front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant seat
throughout the evening.

In all burlesques of "Faust" the rôle of Mephisto is the leading comic
figure. The actor who assumes it undertakes to make people laugh.

Mogley made people laugh that night, but it was not his intentional
humourous efforts that excited their hilarity. It was the man himself. They
began by jeering him quietly. Then the gallery grew bold.

"Ah there, Edwin Booth!" sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft.

"Oh, what a funny little man he is!" ironically quoted another from a song
in one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if elongated frame.

"He t'inks dis is a tragedy," suggested a Bowery youth.

But Mogley tried not to heed.

In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley laboured
zealously. The ribald gallery had often been his foe. Wait until such and
such a scene! He would show them how a pupil of the old stock companies
could play burlesque! Song and dance men from the varieties had too long
enjoyed undisputed possession of that form of drama.

But, one by one, he passed his opportunities without capturing the house.
Nearer came the end of the piece. Slimmer grew his chance of making the
longed-for impression. The derision of the audience increased. Now the
gallery made comments upon his personal appearance.

"He could get between raindrops," yelled one, applying a recent speech of
Edwin Stevens, the comic opera comedian.

And at home Mogley's wife was dying--holding to life by sheer power of
will, that she might rejoice with him over his triumph. Tears blinded
his eyes. Even the other members of the company were laughing at his
discomfiture.

Only a little brunette in pink tights who played Siebel, and whom he had
never met before, had a look of sympathy for him.

"It's a tough audience. Don't mind them," she whispered.

Mogley has never seen or heard of the little brunette since. But he
anticipates eventually to behold her ranking first after Alice among the
angels of heaven.

The curtain fell and Mogley, somewhat dazed in mind, mechanically removed
his apparel, washed off his "make-up," donned his worn street attire and
his haughty demeanour, and started for home.

Home! Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waiting
impatiently his return, the news of his triumph.

"We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley," said the stage manager as
he reached the stage door. "Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for to-night.
Here's your money now."

Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and hastened
homeward. He thought only:

"To tell her the truth will kill her at once."

Mrs. Mogley was awake and in a fever of anticipation when Mogley entered
the little room. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him with shining
eyes.

"Well, how was it?" she asked, quickly.

Mogley's face wore a look of jubilant joy.

"Success!" he cried. "Tremendous hit! The house roared! Called before the
curtain four times and had to make a speech!"

Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting.
Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramatic
illusion.

"Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to read
about it in the papers!"

Mogley's heart fell. If the papers would mention the performance at all,
they would dismiss it in three or four lines, bestowing perhaps a word
of ridicule upon him. She was sure to see one paper, the one that the
landlady's daughter lent her every day.

Mogley looked at the illuminated clock on the steeple across the way. A
quarter to twelve.

"My love," he said, "I promised Hexter I would meet him to-night at the
Five A's Club, to arrange about salary and so forth. I'll be gone only an
hour. Can you do without me that long?"

"Yes, go; and don't let him have you for less than fifty dollars a week."

Shortly after midnight the dramatic editor of that newspaper Miss Jones
daily lent to Mrs. Mogley, having sent up the last page of his notice of
the new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering to the
side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober countenance,
an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his surroundings,
and a coat frayed at the edges.

"I'm Mr. Thomas Mogley," said this apparition.

"Ah! Have a cigarette, Mr. Mogley?" replied the dramatic editor, absently,
lighting one himself.

"Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading comedian
of the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre. I played
Mephisto." (He had begun his speech in a dignified manner, but now he spoke
quickly and in a quivering voice.) "I was a failure--a very great failure.
My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I was a failure, it would kill her,
so I told her I made a success. I have really never made a success in my
life. She is sure to read your paper to-morrow. Will you kindly not speak
of my failure in your criticism of the performance? She cannot live later
than to-morrow morning, and I should not like--you see--I have never
deigned to solicit favours from the press before, sir, and--"

"I understand, Mr. Mogley. It's very late, but I'll see what I can do."

Mogley passed out, walking down the five flights of stairs to the street,
forgetful of the elevator.

The dramatic editor looked at his watch. "Half-past twelve," he said; then,
to a man at another desk:

"Jack, I can't come just yet. I'll meet you at the club. Order devilled
crabs and a bottle of Bass for me."

He ran up-stairs to the night editor. "Mr. Dorney, have you the theatre
proofs? I'd like to make a change in one of the theatre notices."

"Too late for the first edition, my boy. Is it important?"

"Yes, an exceptional case. I'll deem it a personal favour."

"All right. I'll get it in the city edition. Here are the proofs."

"Let's see," mused the dramatic editor, looking over the wet proofs. "Who
covered the ---- Theatre to-night? Some one in the city department. I
suppose he 'roasted' Gugley, or whatever his name is. Ah, here it is."

And he read on the proof:

"The revival of an ancient burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre last
night was without any noteworthy feature save the pitiful performance of
the part of Mephisto by a doleful gentleman named Thomas Mogley, who showed
not the faintest of humour and who was tremendously guyed by a turbulent
audience. Mr. Mogley was temporarily taking the place of William Renshaw,
a funmaker of more advanced methods, who will appear in the rôle to-night.
There are some pretty girls and agile dancers in the company."

Which the dramatic editor changed to read as follows:

"The revival of a familiar burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre last
night was distinguished by a decidedly novel and original embodiment
of Mephisto by Thomas Mogley, a trained and painstaking comedian. His
performance created an abundance of merriment, and it was the manifest
thought of the audience that a new type of burlesque comedian had been
discovered."

All of which was literally true. And the dramatic editor laughed over it
later over his bottle of white label at the club.

By what power Mrs. Mogley managed to keep alive until morning I do not
know. The dull gray light was stealing into the little room through the
window as Mogley, leaning over the bed, held a fresh newspaper close to her
face. Her head was propped up by means of pillows. She laughed through her
tears. Her face was all gladness.

"A new--comedian--discovered," she repeated. "Ah, Tom, at last! That is
what I lived for! I can die happy now. We've made a--great--hit--Tom--"

The voice ceased. There was a convulsion at her throat. Nothing stirred in
the room. From the street below came the sound of a passing car and a boy's
voice, "Morning papers." Mogley was weeping.

The dead woman's hand clutched the paper. Her face wore a smile.

V

OUT OF HIS PAST

This is no fable; it is the hardest kind of fact. I met Craddock not more
than a week ago. His inebriety prevented his recognizing me.

What a joyous, hopeful man he was upon the day of his marriage! He looked
toward the future as upon a cloudless spring dawn one looks forward to the
day.

He had sown his wild oats and had already reaped a crop of knowledge. "I
have put the past behind me," he said. And he thought it would stay there.

He married one of the sweetest and best of women. The match was an ideal
one--exceptionally so. His wife's mother objected to it and moved away on
account of it. "That's a detail," said Craddock.

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