I Go a Playing

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

I Go A Playing

BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

EVERYBODY said it was a wonderful chance for me, but mother wasn't so sure. She didn't mind the stock company, where father could take me home at night, and Anne could sit around at rehearsals; but this was different. And then I think she was afraid of Mr. Cunningham. He was supposed to have as much temper as he had professional reputation, and of course that was colossal.

I coaxed mother over at last. Tommy had the mumps, and she was so worn out with him that she gave in. The whole family had a hand in getting my costumes ready, and I borrowed Anne's feather boa, little thinking what use it would be put to!

The rehearsals were pretty bad. One morning Mr. Cunningham made me go through a six-line speech—the one where I find the revolver and take out the bullets, and then snap it at him—seventeen times. I was pretty tired, and when he said, "Now—again," I turned on him like a wildcat.

"If you make me do it again," I snapped, "I—I won't take out the bullets!"

He laughed—can you believe it? He laughed, and I fumed, and it was bedlam all around. I went home and wept it out on Tommy's pillow—which made him think he was going to die, and his poor, comical face went all mottled. But—Mr. Cunningham kept me. That's where the tragedy comes in.

He was very particular with me on the road. Once or twice he said that some day I would learn to act, and I walked on air for days. He had his private car, and was very comfortable; but the one-night stands nearly killed me. We followed right along after a monstrosity called "The Merry Maids of Manchester," and the bell-boys thought it funny that we had no poodles, and that we didn't gather to sing in the parlor and call one another by our first names.

Baldwin, the juvenile, was very nice to me, and we took long walks in the mornings, picking up post-cards to send home, and sometimes running over our scene in the second act, where my guardian—Mr. Cunningham—steps in and says: "Do you love him, Hilda? He—he is a splendid fellow." And of course every one in the audience knows the guardian is in love with me, and is going to Africa if I take Baldwin. The guardian is married, you see, and Miss D'Arcy played the wife.

The funny thing was that Baldwin was really crazy about Miss D'Arcy, and talked about her all the time.

"I wish you wouldn't," I said one day. "I know she's beautiful, and can act like a dream, and all that; but you needn't rub it in."

"How about you raving over Cunningham all the time?" he retorted sulkily; which was so absurd that I went back to the hotel without speaking to him again.

And then the awfullest thing happened! You know the scene at the beginning of the last act—when we are all at breakfast, and the wife sweeps in in a rage? Well, it starts with grapefruit, and I have a line when I taste it and say—to Mr. Cunningham:

"It's as bitter as—as you have been—to me, this last week."

Well, I put that stuff in my mouth, and at once the most dreadful pain began just in front of my ears, and seemed to go all over me. My tongue drew up and my jaws locked perfectly tight! I tried to swallow and couldn't, and there I sat, while Mr. Cunningham looked at me and waited for his cue.

At last he went on without my speaking, which caused a titter and made him wild. However, the rest of the act went well. In the farewell scene, where he goes to Africa to the war, I tried to warn him to kiss me on top of my head, because by that time I knew that I had the mumps, and I was in a fever of fright; but Mr. Cunningham's big scene always carries him off his feet, and that night, to my horror, he kissed me twice.

Hopper, the stage-manager, nearly went crazy when I told him.

"Now I'll get it!" he groaned. "No, not the mumps, but the devil! You'll have to go on—that's all. Wear a nightcap—anything—but don't put Cunningham up against a new ingénue when he's up in the air with a new play!"

"Then you'll have to cut out the grapefruit," I said with a shudder. "It will have to be bananas, and I can wear big mull ties to my garden hat in the last act and a feather boa in the second."

So we fixed it. I was not very ill, and, after all, Mr. Cunningham took the news like a lamb, even sending me some jelly his chef had made.

But a week later Baldwin stopped suddenly and made an awful face over his lemonade in the tennis scene. I knew then what had happened; and when he came to rehearsal the next morning with his neck-line entirely obliterated, and with a silk handkerchief instead of a collar, we all knew. He was quite shiny in spots—I was never like that, thank goodness! Hopper had to take his place, and Mr. Cunningham looked like a thunder-cloud.

Then he sent for me. I went in fear and trembling. He was in front of his dressing-mirror, graying his hair on top. It is naturally a little gray over his ears. When I came in he got up very courteously and drew out a chair.

"Will you wait just a moment?" he said, and finished what he was doing.

The dressing-room was a litter, of course, and right at the bottom of the mirror was a picture in a silver frame. It was a girl in a black gown, and it was exquisite—the picture, not the gown. I thought that very likely it was the girl he was in love with, for, of course, In would be in love with some one.

I knew what was coming before he said it. I clasped my hands tight together to keep me from crying, and my feet felt numb and cold. I was horribly, awfully afraid of him, and yet I had the most dreadful inclination to pat down his hair where he had rumpled it up in the back.

"Now, Miss Eleanor," he said, turning around and facing me, "I'll tell you why I want to talk to you. You are looking ill and tired: what would the little mother say to me?"

That was the worst thing he could have said. I choked up in a minute, and put my head down on the back of my chair.

"I—k-know I can't act!" I sobbed. "But it—it's mean to put it off on mother!"

"You can act," he said very gently. "That's the trouble. In fairness to you, I'll have to tell you that. But it's a hard life, and—I want you to give it up. You're too young, and you've been too much sheltered, to—"

"I'm twenty-one, Mr. Cunningham," I broke in defiantly. "Even grown people get the mumps. I'm not a child: I'm as old as—the girl in that picture."

I rushed out then, and in the first act, where I have the scene with my guardian's wife, I burst into real tears at the end, and got a curtain-call. I was very unhappy; there were a number of things—but it doesn't matter. One thing was certain—I hated Mr. Cunningham! And I was not going home!

It was within a week of the New York opening that the next blow came. You remember, there's a wedding in the first act, with tables all around covered with presents. Miss D'Arcy comes on and glances over them. She says:

"What an ugly fork! Asparagus, or pickles?"

When she said "pickles," she was looking straight at me, and her face changed until it was dreadful. She gave a sort of clutch at her neck, and then she went on; but when we had a minute alone, back center, she glared at me.

"You wretched girl!" she said, picking up a silver candlestick and pretending to show it to me. "I—you have spoiled the whole trip. I am going to Mr. Cunningham to-night to tell him I won't stand it!"

"You need not," I said, taking the candlestick and looking at it. "I am going home to-night. Anyhow, you didn't get the mumps from me. I never go near you. It must have been Baldwin."

She was furious, of course, and it being her cue for a storm, she never did better. Mr. Cunningham looked quite pleased, and I sat back in the wings, trying to make out a time-table and wondering if the girl who understudied me would make a hit.

I left at four the next morning, without telling any one. In the yards we passed the Undine, Mr. Cunningham's car. And—the queerest thing—he was still up, pacing the floor in the drawing-room end, with his head bent and his hands in his pockets. I thought of the lady in the black dress, and then—because I was tired and frightened, I suppose—I leaned back and cried.

I was quite ill for a day or two at home. Then, nothing terrible occurring. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, and to forget that my theatrical career had died of the mumps. But the day before the New York opening, I heard Ella admit some one. I had just time to slip a picture I had been looking at under some of Tommy's stockings I had been mending, when he came in. It was Mr. Cunningham!

I shook hands with him, and tried to hide the basket with his picture and the stockings. Mr. Cunningham did not sit down. He stood by the fire and looked down at me severely.

"You're a bad child," he said at last; "a runaway. What made you do it, Eleanor?"

"I had to," I pleaded. "It was too dreadful—every one getting sick and blaming it on me. Won't you take off your overcoat and—and have some tea?"

I was quite breathless with excitement and reaction, and I was still terribly afraid of him. My hands shook so that I could hardly pour the tea. He dropped into a chair and looked around.

"Jove, what a thing it is to be in a real home again!" he said, looking very human indeed with his feet out before him. "I always pictured you doing something like this—tea and mending—instead of roaming around the country with a theatrical company."

I gave him his tea, squeezing a bit of lemon in, and then—suddenly—he clapped his hand to his left ear, and I knew it had come. He waited until he could speak, and then all he said was "Good Lord!"

He looked at me helplessly. There were only two things I could do—laugh or cry. I had cried so much that now I laughed—laughed while I knew that there would be no New York opening; laughed while the great Mr. Cunningham glared at me; laughed until he looked injured and then got over it and laughed himself.

"Well!" he said, when we both dried our eyes and got our breath. "I never expected to laugh over a tragedy like this. You make me do anything you want, Eleanor."

"Oh, I hope you won't be very ill," I said quickly.

"But I shall be; I'm sure to. I always have things hard," he replied, getting up and coming over to me. "I took you very hard indeed, Eleanor. I don't care anything about 'The Pillars of Society.' I only know I want my little ward again. Eleanor, the day you left I was wild. I can't act—I can't live without you, dear. Why, see—you've put your mark on me!"

When he said that, what could I do? Anyhow, I forgot completely that this was the greatest tragedian of his time. All I knew was that he was lonely, and that I—well, that I didn't hate him. He crushed me to him—I'll admit that; but Anne told it as a great joke, when the engagement was announced, that as she came into the hall she heard me say:

"Of course you may. I'm not afraid. I've had them!"