the proud lady in the new runabout was homeward bound from a shopping raid. it was her first voyage down-town alone with the thing. she guided the old family horse up to her curb in a graceful sweep, but, like a new elevator-boy, could not come to a stop at the stopping-place.
she could go forward or back, but she could not exactly negotiate her own stepping-block. as she blushingly struggled for it she heard the scream of a child in desperate terror. it inspired an equal terror, for it came from her own house.
she had left her two children at home, expecting playmate guests. she had extracted from them every imaginable promise to be good and to abstain from danger. but she knew how easily they romped into perils. she heard the cry again, and clutched her breast in a little death of fear as she half leaped, half toppled from her carriage and ran up the walk, leaving the horse to his own devices.
the poor woman was wondering which of her beloved had fallen on the shears or into the fire. which of the dogs had gone mad, and bitten whom. while she stumbled up the steps she heard the outcry repeated and she paused.
that voice was the voice of neither of her own children. the thought that a neighbor’s child might have perished in her home was almost more fearful still. as she fumbled at the door-knob she heard the thud of a little falling body. then there was a most dreadful silence.
she hastened to the big living-room. she thrust back the somber hanging, and stepped on the arm of her own son.
he was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. he did not move, though his wrist rolled under her foot.
she flinched away, sickened, only to behold a yet ghastlier spectacle: her daughter hung across the arm of a couch, her hair over her face, and one limp hand touching the floor. at her feet was a young nephew in a contorted huddle with his head under the table. the son of a neighbor was stretched out on a chair, his face flung far back and his eyes staring.
and on the panther-skin by the fireplace a young girl whom mrs. vickery had never seen before lay sidelong, singularly beautiful in death.
before this vision of inconceivable horror the mother stood petrified, her throat in the grip of such fright that she could not utter a sound. then her knees yielded and she sank to the side of her boy, clutched him to her breast, and cried:
“eugene! my little ’gene!”
she pressed her palsied lips to his cheek. thank god, it was still warm. he moved, he thrust her arms away, and mumbled. she bent to catch the words:
“lea’ me alone! i’m dead!”
with a sigh of infinite relief she spilled him back to the rug, where he lay motionless. she called sharply to the girl on the couch:
“dorothy! dorothy!”
a tremor ran through the child—she seemed to struggle with herself. from her cataract of curls came a sound as of torn canvas, a sound dangerously like one of those explosions of snicker that dorothy frequently emitted in church during the long prayer. but she did not look up.
half angry, half ecstatic, mrs. vickery rose and moved among the littered corpses, like edith looking for king harold’s body on hastings field. she passed by her nephew, tommy jerrems, and mrs. burbage’s boy, clyde, and proceeded to the eerie stranger on the panther-skin.
this child would have looked deader if she had not been breathing so hard, and if her exquisite face had not been so scarlet in the tangle of her hair, which was curiously adorned with bottle-straw and excelsior from a packing-case in the cellar and with artificial flowers from a last-summer’s hat of mrs. vickery’s in the attic.
mrs. vickery bent above the panting ruins, lifted one relaxed hand, and inquired, “and who are you, little girl?”
“don’t touch me, please; i’m all wet!”
mrs. vickery forgot her imagination long enough to expostulate, “why, no, you’re not, my dear!”
and now the eyes opened with the answer: “oh yes, i am, if you please. i’ve just drownded myself in the pool here—if you please.”
“oh!” mrs. vickery assented. “well, hadn’t you better get up before you catch cold?”
the answer to this question was another—a poser.
“but how can i get up, if you please, until you lower the curtain?”
mrs. vickery had been a parent often enough and long enough to obey the solemn behests of children without impertinent whys. she could not imagine what incantational power might reside in the roller window-shade, but she hurried to it and pulled it down.
the little girl scrambled to her feet with a smile of brave regret: “thank you ever so much! that’s not a ’maginary curtain, but only a real one. still, it will have to do, i s’pose.” then she addressed the other victims of fate, all of whom were craning their necks to peek: “now, ladies and gent’men, take your curtain calls.”
on every hand, as at a little local judgment day, the dead arose. they joined hands in a line at her signal. then she hissed from the side of her mouth, “now raise it, please.” the curtain shot up with a slap. “thank you. and if you wouldn’t mind applaudin’ a little.”
the reaction from her terror had rendered mrs. vickery almost hysterical, but she managed to keep her face straight and her hands busy while the line bowed and bowed.
once more the directress whispered to mrs. vickery, “pull the curtain down a minute, please, and let it go up again.” when this was done she said, “if you got any flowers handy, they’d be nice.”
mrs. vickery unpinned a small bouquet of violets she had presented herself with at the florist’s and tossed it at the foot of the swaying line.
the directress hissed from the other side of her mouth, “pick ’em up, ’gene, and give ’em to me.”
eugene stooped so hastily and with such rigidity of knee that an over-tried button at the back of his knickers shot across the room. dorothy, who had not ceased to giggle, whooped with joy at this, and received a glare of rebuke from the star. this did not silence dorothy. but then her parents had tried for nine years to find some way of making her stop laughing without making her begin to cry.
eugene was solemn enough and blushed to his ears as he bestowed the flowers upon the stranger, who first motioned the others back and then acknowledged the tribute alone with profound courtesies to mrs. vickery and to unseen and unheard plauditors at the right and left. her smile was the bizarre parody of innocence imitating sophistication. then she threw off the mien of artifice and became informal and a child again. the game was evidently over.
mrs. vickery, realizing now that she was the belated audience at a tragedy, assumed her most lion-hunting manner and pleaded, meekly, “won’t somebody please introduce me to mrs. siddons!”
dorothy gasped with amazement and gulped with amusement at her mother’s stupidity. but before she could make the presentation the stranger cried:
“oh, how did you know?”
“know what, my dear?”
“that my name was siddons!”
“is it, really? but i was referring to the famous actress. she’s been dead for a hundred years, i think.”
“oh yes, but i’m named after her. my middle name is mrs. siddons—of course i mean just siddons. i’m a linyural descender from her.”
dorothy broke in, seriously enough now: “why, sheila kemble, how you talk! you know you’re no such thing. your name is kemble. isn’t it, clyde?”
clyde nodded and dorothy exclaimed, “yah!”
dorothy had not the faintest idea who mrs. siddons might be, save that she was evidently a person of distinction, but dorothy had a child’s ferocious resentment at seeing any one else obtaining prestige under false pretenses. sheila regarded her with a grandmotherly pity and answered:
“my name is kemble, yes; but if you know so much, miss smarty-cat, you ought to know that mrs. siddons’s name was miss kemble before she married mr. siddons.” and now in her turn she added the deadly “yah!”
mrs. vickery, in the office of peacemaker, tried to change the subject: “?‘sheila’—what a beautiful name!” she cried. “it’s irish, isn’t it?”
“oh yes, ma’am. my papa says that if you’re a great actor you have to have a streak of either irish or jew in you!”
“indeed! and is your father a great actor?”
“is he? ask him!”
mrs. vickery was tormented with an intuitional suspicion that she was in the presence of a stage-child. she had never met one on the hither side of the footlights. it was uncanny to stumble upon it dressed like other children and playing among them as a child. there was a kind of weirdness about the encounter as if she had found a goblin or a pixie in the living-room, or a waif suspected of scarlet fever.
it was she and not the pixie that felt the embarrassment! the first defense of a person in confusion is usually a series of questions, and mrs. vickery was reduced to asking:
“what sort of plays does your father play?”
“draw’n-room commerdies mostly. people call ’em roger kemble parts.”
mrs. vickery spoke with a sudden increase of respect:
“so your father is the great roger kemble! and is your mother an actress, too?”
“is my mother an actress? why, mrs. vickery, didn’t you ever hear of miss polly farren?”
it would have been hard indeed to escape the name of miss polly farren. it was incessantly visible in newspapers and magazines, and on bill-boards in letters a yard high, with colossal portraits attached. mrs. vickery had seen polly farren act. a girlish, hoydenish thing she was, who made even the women laugh and love her. mrs. vickery felt at first a pride in meeting any relative of hers. then a chill struck her. she lowered her voice lest the children hear:
“but miss farren isn’t your mother?”
“indeed and she is! and i’m her daughter.”
“and roger kemble is your father?”
“yes, indeedy. we’re all each other’s.”
mrs. vickery turned dizzy; the room began to roll like a merry-go-round—without the merriment. sheila, never realizing the whirl she had started, brought it to a sudden and gratifying stop by her next chatter.
“you see, when mamma married papa” (mrs. vickery’s relief was audible) “they wanted to travel as mr. and mrs. kemble, but the wicked old manager objected. he said mamma’s name was a household word, and she was worth five hunderd a week as polly farren and she wasn’t worth seventy-five as mrs. kemble.”
mrs. vickery, whose husband was proud of his hundred a week, was awestruck at the thought of a woman who earned five hundred.
of course it was wicked money, but wasn’t there a lot of it? she was reassured wonderfully, and, though a trifle tinged with shame for her curiosity, she baited the child with another question:
“and have you been on the stage, too?”
“indeed, i have! oh yes, mrs. vickery. i was almost born on the stage—they tell me. i don’t ’member much about it myself. but i ’member bein’ carried on when i was very young. they tell me i behaved perf’ly beau’fully. and then once i was one of the little princes that got smothered in the tower, at a benefit, and then once we childern gave a childern’s performance of ‘the rivals.’ and i was mrs. mallerpop.”
mrs. vickery shook her head over her in pity and sighed, “you poor child!”
sheila gasped, “oh, mrs. vickery!” her eyes were enlarged with wonder and protest as if she had been struck in the face.
mrs. vickery hastened to explain: “to be kept up so late, i mean: and—and—weren’t you frightened to death of all those people?”
“frightened? why, they wouldn’t hurt me. they always applauded me and said, ‘oh, isn’t she sweet!’?”
mrs. vickery had read much about the woes of factory children and of the little wretches who toil in the coal-mines, and she had heard of the agitation to forbid the appearance of children on the stage. the tradition of misery was so strong that she was blinded for the moment to the extraordinary beauty, vigor, and vivacity of this example. she felt sorry for her.
sheila had encountered such mysterious pity once or twice before and she flamed to resent it. but even as eloquence rushed to her lips she remembered her mother’s last words as she kissed her good-by—they had been an injunction to be polite at all costs.
the struggle to defend her mother’s glory and to obey her mother’s self-denying ordinance was so bitter that it squeezed a big tear out of each big eye.
mrs. vickery, seeming to divine the secret of her plight, cuddled her to her breast with a gush of affectionate homage. reassured by this surrender, sheila became again a child.
and now dorothy, with that professional jealousy which actors did not invent and do not monopolize, that jealousy which is seen in animals and read of in gods—dorothy stood aloof and pouted at the invader of her mother’s lap. her lip crinkled and she batted out a few tears of her own till her mother stretched forth an arm and made a haven for her at her bosom. then mrs. vickery spoke between the two wet cheeks pressed to hers:
“and now what was this wonderful game where so many people got killed? was it a war or a shipwreck or—or what?”
sheila forgot her tears in the luxury of instructing an elder. with unmitigated patronage, as who in her turn should say, “you poor thing, you!” she exclaimed: “why, don’t you know? it’s the last ack of ‘hamlet!’?”
“oh, i see! of course! how perfectly stupid of me!”
sheila endeavored to comfort her: “oh no, it wasn’t stupid a tall, mrs. vickery, if you’ll pardon me for cont’adictin’, but—well, you see, we got no real paduction, no costumes or scenery or anything.”
mrs. vickery said: “that doesn’t matter; but who was who? you see, i got in so late the usher didn’t give me a program.”
sheila was rejoiced at this collaboration in the game. she explained: “oh, the p’ograms didn’t arrive in time from the pwinter, and so we had a ’nouncement made before the curtain. he’s a most un’liable pwinter and i sent the usher for the p’ograms and he never came back. ’gene was hamlet and he was awful good. he read the silloloquy out of the book there. he reads very well. and dorothy was his mother, the queen, and she was awful good, too—very good, indeed, ’ceptin’ for gigglin’ in the serious parts, and after she was dead.”
dorothy giggled and wriggled again, to show how it was done. after this interruption was quelled sheila went on:
“tommy jerrems was laertes and he was awful good. the duel with ’gene was terrible. i’m afraid one of your umbrellas was bent—the poisoned one. tommy didn’t want to die and i had to hit him with a hassock, and then he was so long dyin’, he held up the whole paformance. but he was very good. and cousin clyde he was the wicked king, and he was awful good, but then, o’ course, he comes of our family, and you’d naturally expeck him to be good.”
mrs. vickery suppressed a gasp of protest from dorothy, who was intolerant of self-advertisement, and said: “but you were dead, too, sheila. who were you?”
“why, i was ophelia, o’ course!”
“oh! but i thought ophelia died long before the rest, and was buried, and hamlet and laertes fought in her grave, and—”
“oh yes, that’s the way it is in the old book. but i fixed it up so’s ophelia only p’tended to die—or, no, i mean they thought she was dead, and they buried another lady, thinkin’ she was her—and all the while ophelia is away in a kind of a—a—insanitarum gettin’ cured up. and she comes home in the last ack to s’prise everybody, and she enters, laughing, and says, ‘well, caitiffs and fellow-countrymen, i’m well again!’ and she sees everybody lyin’ around dead—and then she goes mad all over again and drownds herself in the big swimmin’-pool—or i guess it’s a—a fountain—near the throne.”
“oh, i see,” said mrs. vickery. “that sounds ever so much better.”
“well,” said sheila, shrugging her impudent little shoulders like any other jackanapes of a reviser, “as my papa says, ‘it sort of knits things together better and bolsters up the finish.’ you know it’s kind of bad to leave the leading lady out of the last ack. it makes the audience mad, you know.”
“yes, i know! and was it you who screamed so at the end of the play?”
sheila hung her head and tugged at a button on mrs. vickery’s waist as she confessed: “well, i did my best. o’ course i’m not very good—yet.”
dorothy was so matter-of-fact that she would not tolerate even self-depreciation. she exploded:
“why, sheila kemble, you are so! she was wonderful, mamma! and she was so mad crazy she gave me the creeps. and when finally she plounced down and died, all us other deaders sat up and felt so scared we fell over again. she went mad simply lovely.”
and tommy jerrems added his posy: “i bet you could ’a’ heard her holler for three blocks.”
“i bet i did!” mrs. vickery sighed, remembering the fright she had had from that edged cry.
the other children fell into a wrangle celebrating sheila as a person of amazing learning, powers of make-believe and command, and sheila, throned on mrs. vickery’s lap, sat twisting her fingers in the pleasant confusion of one who is too truthful to deny and too modest to confess a splendid achievement. now and then she heaved the big lids from her eyes and mrs. vickery read there rapture, deprecation, appeal for applause, superiority to flattery, self-confidence, and meekness. and mrs. vickery felt that those eyes were born to persuade, to charm, to thrill and compel.
at last mrs. vickery said, mainly for politeness’ sake, “i wish i could have seen the performance.”
the hint threw a bombshell of energy into the troupe. the mummers all began to dance and stamp and shriek, “oh, let’s do it again! let’s! oh, let’s!”
every one shouted but sheila. her silence silenced the others at last. she already knew enough to be silent when others were noisy and to shriek when others were silent. then like a leaderless army the children urged her to take the crown.
sheila thought earnestly, but shook her head: “it isn’t diggenafied to play two a day.” this evoked such a tomblike sigh that she relented a trifle: “we might call this other one a matinée, though, and call the other one a evening paformance.”
this was agreed to with ululation. the children set to gathering up the disjected equipment, the deadly umbrellas, and the envenomed cup. the last was a golf prize of mr. vickery’s. dropped from the nerveless hand of the dying king, it had received a bruised lip and a profound dimple.
with the humming-bird instinct, the children stood tremulously poised before one flower only a moment, then flashed to another. it was a proposal by tommy jerrems that called them away now.
tommy jerrems had frequently revealed little glints of financial promise. he had been a notorious keeper of lemonade-stands, a frequent bankrupt, a getter-up of circuses, and a zealous impresario of baseball games in which he did all the work and got none of the play. he was of a useful but unenviable type and would undoubtedly become in later life a dozen or more unsalaried treasurers and secretaries to various organizations.
tommy jerrems proposed that the play of “hamlet” should be enacted at his mother’s house as a regular entertainment with a fixed price of admission. this project was hailed with riotous enthusiasm, and king claudius turned a cart-wheel in the general direction of a potted palm—and potted it.
there was some excitement over the restoration of this alien verdure, and mrs. vickery was glad that her own home had not been re-elected as playhouse. she made a mild protest on behalf of mrs. jerrems, but she was assailed with so frenzied a horde of suppliants that she capitulated; at least she gave her consent that dorothy and eugene might take part.
there was a strenuous austrian parliament now upon a number of matters. somehow, out of the chaos, it was gradually agreed that there should be real costumes as well as what sheila called “props.” she explained that this included gold crowns, scepters, thrones, swords, helmets, spears, and what not.
suddenly sheila let out another of those heart-stopping shrieks of hers. she had been struck by a very lightning of inspiration. she seized tommy as if she would rend him in pieces and howled: “oh, tommy, tommy, tommy! you ask your mother to have the bath-tub brought down to the back parlor and filled up and then i can drownd myself in real water.”
a pack of wolves could not have fallen more noisily on a wounded brother than the children fell on this.
tommy alone was dubious. he was afraid that the bath-tub was too securely fastened to the bath-room to be uprooted. but he promised to ask his mother. sheila, the resourceful, had an alternative ready:
“well, anyway, she could have a wash-boiler brought in from the kitchen, couldn’t she?”
tommy thought mebbe she could, but would she?
mrs. vickery did not interfere. she had an idea that mrs. jerrems could be trusted to see to it that ophelia had an extra-dry drowning. mrs. jerrems was rather fond of her furniture.
money to buy gold paper for the crowns, and silver paper to make canes look like swords and curtain-poles like spears, nearly wrecked the project. but tommy thought that by patience and assiduity he could shake out of the patent savings-bank his father had given him enough dimes to subsidize the institution, on condition that he might reimburse himself out of the first moneys that were bound to flood the box-office.
there was earnest debate over the price of admission. clyde burbage suggested five pins, but sheila turned up her nose at this; it sounded amateurish. she said that her father and mother would never play in any but two-dollar theaters—or “fe-aters,” as she still called them. still, she supposed that since the comp’ny was all juveniles they’d better not charge more than a dollar for seats, and fifty cents for the nigger-heaven.
tommy jerrems, who had some bitter acquaintance with the ductile qualities of that community, emitted a long, low “whew!” he said that they would be lucky to get five cents a head in that town, and not many heads at that. this sum was reluctantly accepted by sheila, and the syndicate moved to adjourn.
sheila put her hand in mrs. vickery’s and ducked one knee respectfully. but mrs. vickery, with an impulse of curious subservience, knelt down and embraced the child and kissed her.
she had an odd feeling that some day she would say, “sheila kemble? oh yes, i knew her when she was a tiny child. i always said she would startle the world.”
she seemed even now to hear her own voice echoing faintly back from the future.
the guests made a quiet exit at the door, but they stampeded down the steps like a scamper of sheep. sheila’s piercing cry came back. it was wildly poignant, though it expressed only her excitement in a game of tag.
