When I meet some fellow-performer in the Pallinder theatricals nowadays we seldom fail to hark back to that noteworthy occasion before we have had out our talk. There were many of us and we have since scattered wide to widely differing lives, yet, I think for most this episode of the eighties probably bulks largest in the dun landscape of our respectable careers. This is no tragedy; we all married—or by far the greater number of us—and lived happily at times, at times unhappily, as people do, ever after. But we never came nearer to adventure. Reviewing that night with a friend, I am always amazed at the stirring events that took place within the notice of only one or two persons; we each cherish a different recollection. So much seems to have happened to us individually, it is after all not surprising that something tremendous should have happened to us collectively. Not long since, as we were discussing it in a company, someone said: "Wasn't it awful when I fell over the jardiniÈre right out by the footlights?" Nobody else remembered the shocking occurrence! This heroine is now a comfortable matron of forty-odd with two daughters at Bryn Mawr; she has a handsome establishment, and an excellent dressmaker; her only anxiety, I believe, is her youngest son, who is a delicate child. It is strange to think of this sensible middle-aged woman, who, like all the rest of us, has lived out her romance, seen the world, suffered who knows how many griefs and disappointments, and yet had her share of happiness, it is strange to think of her harbouring all these years the stinging memory of how she fell over the jardiniÈre. The mind has a vexatious pet-animal trick of picking up and storing away trivialities; what would we not all give to remember what is worth remembering—and to forget!

I said we were many; for, besides the cast of "Tell," "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara" demanded a practically unlimited number of young people in full dress for the ballroom scene. I have since suspected that Mazie, the diplomatic, selected the play for that very reason. She asked all the dÉbutantes, and every one else who was "anybody"; and, no matter what we said, we were all sufficiently tickled to figure so publicly in a new dress, even if only for a few minutes, and in what I have seen aptly ticketed a "thinking part." Such was my own, and I was divided between a feeling of relief that I had no speeches to remember and deliver in the hollow expectant silence of the audience-room, and an inward conviction that had I been cast for a leading rÔle, I should have done much better than anyone else. The performance was, of course, late in beginning; but everybody expected that, and although people had been invited for nine, many did not arrive until long after. To this day I can remember the look of the ballroom,[5] very high, wide, and chilly, rows of empty chairs drawn up across the floor, spirals of smilax twisted around the pillars—it was a hard place to decorate, so big and bare—and Mrs. Pallinder erect by the door, with a grove of potted plants behind her. She had to receive by herself, as Mazie took part in the second play, and did not care to dull the effect of her first costume by letting it be seen prematurely. Mazie had a fine idea of dramatic proprieties, and a certain sense of climax. The colonel did not show for some reason; I believe he was downstairs, welcoming the men as they came in, to the punchbowl on the sideboard. Mrs. Botlisch had providentially gone to bed with a bilious attack; she had entertained us with a particular account of her symptoms, remedies, and their results at luncheon. So Mrs. Pallinder received, looking rather haggard, I thought, in spite of her rouge; perhaps it was because she was not wearing those famous diamonds, and one missed their generous brilliance. Jewels were eminently suited to Mrs. Pallinder; her fair hair and clear stone-grey eyes seemed to gain a needed lustre from her necklaces and pendants, and she was the only woman I ever saw who could wear an earring gracefully. That barbaric ornament set her ear like a drop of dew on the petal of a flower—there was no hint of mutilation about it; and I believe she could have sported a stud in her nostril without offence. She was placed to the utmost advantage; her delicately classic head and white shoulders were detached upon the background of dark foliage with a charming cameo-like effect. But she was all one faint exquisitely-faded colour in an ashes-of-roses silk, and that or something else more subtle made her look strangely older. She had surrendered her diamonds with many playful-serious cautions to Mrs. Tankerville, that is, Mazie; and that young woman was decorating her languid Oriental person with them in the depths of her den of rocking-chairs and mirrors.

The Chorus of "William Tell" arrived a long while ahead of the stars, who, as we have seen, were dining with Doctor Vardaman. Even by the time the Chorus had finished dressing—there was only one of him, as I believe I have intimated elsewhere, a tall fair young man, who wore eye-glasses in private life and was a great admirer of Mazie's,—the rest of the cast had not yet put in an appearance. I suppose if we could have known what was going forward in the Swiss cottage we would have been much exercised; but we had no apprehensions, and no quick means of communication, if any doubts had assailed us. Few private houses had a telephone in those days, not even the Pallinders—which was, no doubt, owing in large part to the inconvenient habit prevailing among telephone-companies from the earliest times of demanding quarterly payments in advance, and removing the instrument if they were not forthcoming. So far from worrying, however, we found some pleasurable excitement in the long wait behind the scenes, and stealthy peeps through the eye-hole. The setting for "Tell" was the same throughout its two acts as I recall, a Swiss picture with Alps in the background, canvas trees and foliage to the front, and a "practicable" well with a gigantic sweep, whence they brought up pails of water and diluted the contents of Tell's milk-cans—he was a dairyman in the burlesque; this was the Schactenthal Waterfall, and was the subject of many noble apostrophes from all the actors; even Gessler and Jemmy had something to say about it. There was a trap-door in the floor of the stage and a servant stood to hand up buckets as they were needed.

"Most people," the Chorus remarked to me, "would have had to put up a lot of money for all this. The colonel got a carpenter from the Grand Opera House, not the head man, I suppose, but some second-best fellow they could spare, to plan and oversee it all, so that everything would be safe. That's the man over there now; he told me the bill for the lumber alone would be thirty-five or forty dollars—and it's good for nothing but kindling-wood after to-night, you know."

We were sitting together on a green baise-covered mound, very much in the way, doubtless, as we watched the men getting things in position. I had no business to be there at all, but I was dressed and ready for my part, and so alive with curiosity and excitement, I could no more stay in one place sedately than a young kitten or puppy. The stolid professionals at work on the scenery endured our presence on the principle, perhaps, that bids us to suffer fools kindly.

"The Pallinders must be awfully well off," I said. My companion eyed me soberly. The Chorus was a serious and practical young fellow; at the present time he is conducting a great milling business somewhere up in Michigan. They make two or three kinds of breakfast-foods, I think, and have been extraordinarily successful. But we were not dreaming of that the night we perched together on the make-believe mound behind the swaying drop-curtain; rather must his thoughts have been occupied with Mazie Pallinder, her long serpentine figure, and sprightly drawl. For I noticed how his eyes wandered constantly in the direction whence she might appear.

"I wish the boys would get here," he said, wrinkling his brows. "It's half-after already. They're beginning to crowd in pretty thick—last time I looked all the first fifteen rows were taken. Is—ah—is Miss Pallinder going to come and help her mother receive? I didn't see her. But if she is, I—ah—I really ought to go and speak to them."

He coloured furiously at the mere mention of her name; and it struck me as exquisitely humorous that his goddess was probably at that instant producing just such a blush on her own well-tried cheeks by what mysterious agency! Pink nail-paste and talcum-powder had a good deal to do with it, I believe.

"She isn't there, and you shouldn't go in costume anyhow. Nobody ought to be seen beforehand—Mazie says so. She's all dressed and sitting in her room until 'Mrs. Tankerville,' begins. How did it happen you didn't go to dinner at Doctor Vardaman's with the others?"

"Why, I had to go down to the train to meet Susie; she's coming on from New Haven with the two children to make us a visit. Her train was due at eight, but it's five hours late—stalled at a washout just this side of Pittsburgh, the fellow at the ticket-office told me. He said all the Pan-Handle and B. & O. trains were coming in anywhere from one to nine hours behind the schedule-time. Freshets, you know; the Ohio's on a boom. They're having an awful time in Cincinnati, they say, biggest flood in years. There, isn't that J. B.'s voice?"

I beat a hasty retreat for Mazie's room, where the entire feminine cast of "Mrs. Tankerville" was by this time collected. We had to be bestowed in some place where we could talk in safety; and no talking could be allowed "behind" while the plays were in progress, even such a scatter-brained crew as we were, knew that. But from time to time one of us would steal out to the wings, watch the familiar antics, listen to the familiar jokes a while, and bring back a report. I believe we enjoyed this excited hour or two more than anything that went before or after. In Mazie's room the gas flared high; the chairs, the lounge, the bed were heaped with finery. We pulled a big pink silk screen in front of the door so that the arriving audience, taking off its wraps in the other bedrooms, might not see us. There was a green-room atmosphere (we thought) of flowers, candy, perfume, acid gossip; and now and again we could hear one of the men rushing through the hall outside to their quarters in the wing, for a change of clothes; or a thunderous burst of laughter, "like a dam giving away," Kitty said, when the dining-room door in the hall below swung open.

"It's going all right," she reported, returning from one of these expeditions with very bright eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked distractingly neat and coquettish in her black frock, cap, and short ruffled apron as the maid; and I was afterwards told that one of the men had caught and kissed her in a dark corner behind the prompter's chair. They all seemed to be in wonderfully high spirits. "Only it's so funny the audience sometimes laugh in places where we didn't expect 'em to at all! You ought to see J. B. Taylor. He looks perfectly immense in that kilt; I didn't know he was such a big man; great big round pink arms like this! And the kilt kind of peaks down right in the middle of the back; Harry Smith called him Doctor Mary Walker; and Gessler said he ought to have a bustle—right out loud so that the people could hear! They call that gagging the part." She sent a glance of sparkling malice, suggestive, somehow, of a file of small new pins, toward Muriel. "J. B.'s the silliest—you can't help laughing to save your life."

"Did they laugh at Teddy?"

"Like everything! He's a little husky, or else it's too much dinner, his voice sounds kind of queer, but I guess that will wear off in a minute." She added in a rapid whisper, as Mazie's back was turned, "Girls, it's rich! He's got himself up to look about as fat as Mrs. Botlisch in an old gingham wrapper without corsets, you know, and he's sort of taking her off, he's simply splendid, people just roll over and laugh every time he opens his mouth."

"Is Doctor Vardaman there?"

"What, behind? No. He's not here at all, one of the men told me. He had to go and sit up with some sick person, or something. Don't you want to see J. B., Muriel?"

"No," said Muriel flatly. She was looking acutely distressed, like a large sorrowing Madonna. "I think Mr. Johns must look a great deal sillier," she said with a kind of defiance. "Or that other—what is his name?—the one that pretends to be the Chorus, just one of him—he's very silly!"

"How is Bob doing?" Mazie asked.

Bob was the Chorus. He was no actor; but the part only required someone with a voice, and he had a really beautiful high sweet tenor. All he must do was to appear in season and out of season and jodel, which he did to admiration, with a perfectly grave face, for as I have said, he was of a sober disposition, and to tell the truth saw nothing comic in it. But about the seventh or eighth jodel the audience fell into paroxysms of laughter and so continued whenever the Chorus came on. Bob made one of the hits of the evening, to his own great confusion and the frank surprise of everyone else in the cast.

"Bob? Oh, all right. But that's one of the things they're laughing at; isn't that funny?"

"Why not, if he's funny?" said Muriel, puzzled.

"Oh, I don't mean funny that way, you know, I mean funny. Why don't you come and look on a while, Maze? Bob'll do better if you're there."

"Oh, I guess I don't care to," said Mazie with indolent emphasis. "I'd tear my dress or something. It's all full of ropes and nails and pegs behind there." She leaned back in her rocker, contemplating the sweeping breadths of her dull red silk train, spangled with jets; the front of her low corsage darted light from innumerable facets of jet and diamonds. In the absence of an actual tiara, her mother's diamond necklace had been fastened on a symmetrical frame of silver wire, and gleamed abroad from Mazie's dead-black hair, arranged in a forest of bangs. Without a single pretty feature, she wrought a curious illusion of dark and brilliant beauty; and Kitty gave her the tribute of an unwilling admiration. A girl, and not a handsome girl at that, who was too lazy or too stiff-necked to walk half-a-dozen steps to show herself when she was looking her best to a man, who as we all knew was in love with her, and who would be no poor match either—such a girl, I say, commanded all the respect of which Kitty's small soul was capable.

Then I adventured again, alone; and harvested a sensation. For, while I was standing in the left wings, between two blocks of scenery, with my skirts furled as close as the fashion of the day would allow, to avoid casual tacks, Teddy Johns came off, followed by a gratifying, yet somehow a little awesome, burst of applause. He stood close beside me breathing hard, for his humour was largely acrobatic, and dabbing the perspiration from his forehead and cheeks with a corner of handkerchief, daintily so as not to mar his paint. And the audience clamoured a recall. I suppose there were not more than a couple of hundred people in the ballroom, yet the noise they made was deafening in so contracted a space; there was something formidable and pitiless in that great insistent voice. Sudden comprehension of what stage-fright might be came to me, and I looked at Teddy with admiring wonder. What must it be to face that hydra of a creature, that thing of many souls fused into one unthinkable whole out there beyond the footlights!

"Weren't you frightened?" I whispered.

He turned towards me—and it was not Teddy Johns at all! It was a man I had never seen before.

I was so startled I could only gasp and stutter; the light was good enough, yet I thought it must have misled me, and peered into his face anxiously, expecting his familiar chuckle. His features were a mask of paint, apparently laid on at random, but as I know now, with real skill and knowledge of effect; he wore false eyebrows and a wig with a grotesque "slat" sunbonnet pushed halfway off, and held by the strings knotted under his chin. His body was padded shapelessly. And while I strove to find Teddy under this disguise, he suddenly bestowed on me a grin so vicious and repellent, that I almost screamed aloud. Whether that expression of amusement was involuntary on Huddesley's part, or whether he feigned it out of deliberate deviltry, I have often wondered. I must have uttered some sort of queer noise, for he said in a biting whisper: "Hold your tongue, you—fool!" and in the same breath was back on the stage, bowing to the tumult. He made the leader of the orchestra a sign, the instruments crashed out the opening bars of his song, and he began over again.

I did not faint or go into hysterics, for I was a healthy and after all a tolerably sensible young woman; but it is impossible to convey any idea of my bewilderment. Fortunately it lasted only a moment or so. Huddesley made his second exit to the right, for the sake of variety, maybe; and the Chorus, crossing the stage, stationed himself in the wings almost at my side, that he might be heard jodeling "off," in stage-phrase.

"No, that isn't Teddy," he whispered, in answer to my excited murmur. "Yo-de-la-hee-ho!—Teddy's sick, that's the doctor's man—La-he, la-he, la-he, ho!—Huddesley, you know; they got him to take Ted's place, mighty lucky he can, too—Yo-de-la—hee-ho, yo-de-la-a-a!"