Chapter Thirty-Ninth
I Am too Dull to Understand a Premonition—By Mr. Daly’s Side I See the Destruction of the Fifth Avenue Theatre by Fire.
How shall I call that strange influence that dumbly tries to warn, to prepare?
Many of us have had experience of this nameless something whose efforts are but rarely heeded. The something that one morning suddenly fills the mind with thoughts of some friend of the far past, who is almost entirely forgotten—persistent thoughts not to be shaken off.
You speak of the matter, and your family exclaim: “What on earth ever brought him to your mind?” and that night you either hear of the old friend’s death or he sends you a letter from the other side of the world.
I had an acquaintance who one day found herself compelled, as it were, to talk of thefts, of remarkable robberies. She seemed unable to turn her mind to any other subject. If she looked at a lock, she thought how easy it would be to force it; at a window, how readily a man might enter it. Her people laughed and told her she was hoodooed; but next day she was robbed of every jewel she had in the world. What was it that was trying dumbly to warn her?
It was on the 1st of January that my mind became subject to one of those outside seizures. The snow was banked high in the streets—had been so for days. The unexpected sale of the house in Twenty-first Street had forced me to new quarters; I was at that moment in Twenty-fourth Street. As I raised my head from kissing my mother a Happy New Year, I remarked: “The streets are in a terrible condition for a great fire—are they not?”
“Let us hope there won’t be a great fire,” replied mother, and began to pour out the coffee.
A little later the French lady coming in, to pass the compliments of the day, I was immediately moved to ask her if our fire service here was not superior to that of Paris? And I was greatly pleased at her joyous acquiescence, until I discovered that her remarks had reference to our larger fireplaces—there are always certain drawbacks accompanying a foreign landlady.
Then I went to the matinée—for, lo, the poor actress always does double work on days of festivity for the rest of the world, and all occasions of legalized feasting find her eating “a cold bite.” We were doing a play called “False Shame,” known in England as “The White Feather,” a very light three-act play. The dresses and scenery were beautiful; Mr. Daly provided me with one gown—a combination of sapphire-blue velvet and Pompadour brocade that came within an ace of making me look handsome, like the rest.
He remarked upon its effect, and I told him I felt compelled to look well, since I had nothing else to do; but the day had gone by when such remarks could anger him. He laughed good-humoredly and said: “All the same, Miss, that scene at the organ is mighty pretty and taking, too.”
For, look you, in the theatre “a little knowledge is not a dangerous thing.” Complete knowledge is, of course, preferable; but, ah, how far a very little will go, and here was my poor tum-tumming, “one and two and three and,” filling Mr. Daly’s very soul with joy, because forsooth, in a lovely old English interior, all draped in Christmas greens, filled with carved-wood furniture, big logs burning in an enormous fireplace, wax candles in brass sconces, two girls are at the organ in dinner dress, who, nervously anxious about a New Year carol, with which they are going to surprise their guests at mid-night, seize the moment before dinner to try said carol over.
Miss Davenport, regal in satin, stood, music in hand, the fire-light on her handsome face. I, seated at the organ in my precious blue and brocade, played the accompaniment, and sang alto, and, though terror over this simple bit of work brought me to the verge of nervous prostration, the scene was, from the front, like a stolen peep into some beautiful private home, and it brought an astonishing amount of applause. But if I had not “one two threed” in Cincinnati on that grinning old piano, where would the organ-scene have been? Ah, a little knowledge, if spread ever so thin by a master hand like Mr. Daly’s, will prove useful.
So don’t refuse to learn a little because you fear you cannot afford to study thoroughly—if you are an actress.
While I was sitting through a long wait that day I fell into a brown study. The theatre dresser, who was very fond of me and gave me every spare moment of her time, came into my room and twice addressed me before I came out of my reverie.
“What in the world are you thinking of, Miss Clara?” she asked, and I answered with another question: “Mary, were you ever in a great fire?”
“No,” she said; “were you?”
“Yes,” I answered; “I have been twice burned out from shelter at dead of night,” and I told her of that hotel fire at 3 A.M., where there was but one stairway to the street; of the mad brutality of the men; of the terrible and the ludicrous scenes; of my own escape, quite alone, in bare feet and one white garment; of my standing across a leaking hose, while a strange man pulled my right arm, frantically crying, “You come with me! my mother’s got a blanket to wrap you up in!” and Mr. Ellsler, who had just arrived, seized my left arm, dragging me his way and shouting, “Come over to the house and get to bed quick, before you die of exposure!” while I felt the water spraying my forlornly shivering shins, and was more nearly torn asunder than was ever the Solomon baby.
“Oh, my!” said Mary, “how dreadful!”
“Yes,” I said, musingly, “and what a fire this place would make—all these partitions of painted pine!”
“Oh, don’t!” protested Mary.
“But,” said I, “you know that’s what theatres are built for—to burn is their natural end!” and then I was called, and went up-stairs to saunter through another act of the mild little play.
I owned but little jewelry then, but what I had was noticeably good. My rings, including the handsome pearl one Mr. Daly had given me as a souvenir of “47,” I had to remove from my fingers for the last act, and when the curtain had fallen and I had rushed myself into street garments, and was leaving the dressing-room in haste to join my waiting mother at dinner, Mary called to me: “Miss Clara, you are leaving your diamond rings—but never mind,” she picked them up and dropped them, one by one, into a little box: “I’ll lock the door myself, you run along, the rings will be safe enough—run!” and the answering words I heard swiftly leaving my lips were absolutely involuntary and dictated by no thought of mine. They were:
“Yes, as far as theft is concerned, they are safe enough, but in case of fire? Better give them to me, Mary. Oh!” for the girl had dropped one on the floor. It was a bit of Oriental enamel set about with tiny sparks of diamonds. I put the others on, but would not wait for her to pick up the rolling truant, and away I went.
At the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street I came to a stand-still before two great snow-banks, and I thought again what they might mean in case of a fire.
I reached home at a brisk pace, ran up-stairs, threw off my cloak, and had drawn my dress-waist half off, when, without a preliminary knock, the door was flung open and my landlord, Mr. Bardin, white with the excitement that had wiped out his knowledge of English, stood gesticulating wildly and hurling French at me in seething masses. I caught “le feu!” “le feu!” many times repeated; then “le théâtre!” and with a cry I seized his arm and shook him.
“What is it?” I cried, “do you mean fire?”
He nodded, and again came the words: “le théâtre!”
“Good heaven and earth! you don’t mean my theatre, do you?” and then two great horses, hurling a fire-engine around the corner into our street made swift and terrifying answer. With a piercing cry I caught up my cloak, and throwing off somebody’s restraining hands I dashed down-stairs and into the street, racing like mad, giving sobbing cries, and utterly unconscious for over two blocks’ space that my waist was unclosed and my naked throat and chest were bare to the wintry wind.
At the corner of the street at Sixth Avenue I wrung my hands in anguish, crying, “Oh, dear God! I knew it! I knew it!” for there, stalled in the snow, was the engine, so desperately needed a little further on! And as I resumed my run I said to myself: “What is it that has tried so hard to tell me—to warn me? Tried all the day—and I would not understand—and now it’s too late!”
Why I ran I do not know—it was not curiosity. I felt, somehow, that if I could get there in time I might do something—God knows what! As I neared the theatre the crowd grew more dense, yet to my gasping: “Please, oh, please!” an answer came in a quick moving aside to let pass the woman with the white, tear-wet face. I broke through the cordon and was making for the stage-door, when a rough hand caught me by the shoulder. There was an oath, and I was fairly hurled back toward the safety line.
“Oh, let me alone!” I cried, “I want to go to my room! It will take me but a moment!”
Again the rough hand reached out for me, when a strange man threw his arm in front of me protectingly: “Take care what you’re about!” he said. “Be a little gentle—she has a right close to the line, she’s one of the company! Can’t you see?”
“Oh,” grunted the policeman, “well, I didn’t know, and I couldn’t let her kill herself!”
“No,” said the stranger, “but you had no call to pitch her about as you did!” And just then a long, thin hand caught mine, and Mr. Daly’s voice said: “Come here, child!” and he led me across the street and up some steps, and there, opposite the burning building, I could realize the madness of my act in trying to enter. The front of the building stood firm, but beyond it, within, all was seething flame. It was like some magnificent spectacular production—some Satanic pantomime and ballet, and every now and then a whirling flame, crowned with myriad sparks, sprang madly up into the very sky like some devilish première danseuse; while the lesser fiends joined hands and circled frenziedly below.
Mr. Daly never spoke a word. He had not released my fingers, and so we stood, hand in hand, watching silently over the torment of his beloved theatre—the destruction of his gathered treasures. I looked up at him. His face gleamed white in the firelight; his eyes were wide and strained; his fingers, icy cold, never lessened their clinching grasp on mine. Then came the warning cry firemen are apt to give when they know the roof is going. I had heard it often, and understood that and their retreating movement. Mr. Daly did not, and when, with a crackling crash, the whole roof fell into the roaring depths, his hand, his body, relaxed suddenly; a sort of sobbing groan escaped his pale lips. But when the column of glowing sparks flew high into the air he turned away with a shiver and gave not one other look at the destroyed building.
Not one word was spoken on the subject. Glancing down he noticed I had no rubbers on and that streams of water were running in the street:
“Go home, child!” he said, speaking quickly and most kindly. A crowd of reporters came up to him: “Yes,” he said, “in one moment, gentlemen,” then to me: “Hurry home, get something to eat—you could have had no dinner!”
He gave one heavy sigh, and added: “I’m glad you were with me, it would have been worse alone.” He pushed me gently from him. As I started down the street he called: “I’ll send you word some time to-night what we’re to do.”
I left him to the reporters; I had not spoken one word from the moment I had begged to enter my dressing-room. I felt strangely sad and forlorn as I dropped, draggled and tired, into a chair. I said to mother: “It’s gone! the only theatre in New York whose door was not barred against me, and—I—I think that at this moment I know just how a dog feels who has lost a loved master,” and, dropping my face upon my hands, I wept long over the destruction of my first dramatic home in New York, the little Fifth Avenue Theatre.