Chapter XI Stage Children. My “Little Breeches” in “Miss Multon”
In the play of “Miss Multon” a number of children are required for the first act. They are fortunately supposed to be the children of the poor, and they come to a Christmas party. As I had that play in my repertoire for several years, I naturally came in contact with a great number of little people, and that’s just what they generally were, little men and women, with here and there at long intervals a real child.
They were of all kinds and qualities,—some well-to-do, some very poor, some gentle and well-mannered, some wild as steers, some brazen-faced and pushing, some sweet and shy and modest. I had one little child—a mere tot—take hold of the ribbon with which I tied my cape and ask me how much it was a yard; she also inquired about the quality of the narrow lace edge on my handkerchief, and being convinced that it was real, sharply told me to look out “it didn’t get stoled.” One little girl came every night, as I sat waiting for my cue, to rub her fingers up and down over the velvet collar of my cape. Touching the soft yielding surface seemed to give her exquisite pleasure, and I caught the same child standing behind me when I wore the rich red dress, holding her hands up to it, as to a fire, for warmth. Poor little soul! she had sensibility and imagination both.
The play requires that one child should be very small; and as it was no unusual thing for the little one to get frightened behind the scenes, I used to come to the rescue, and as I found a question about “Mamma” won their attention the quickest, I fell into the habit of saying, first thing: “Where’s mamma? Is she here? Show me, where.” And having once won attention, it had gone hard with me indeed had I failed to make friends with the youngster.
One Monday evening as I came to my place, I saw the new baby standing all forlorn, with apparently no one at all to look after her, not even one of the larger children. She was evidently on the very verge of frightened tears, and from old habit I stooped down and said to her, “Where’s mamma, dear?”
She lifted two startled blue eyes to my face and her lips began to tremble. I went on, “Is mamma here?” The whole little face drew up in a distressed pucker, and with gasps she whispered, “She’s in er box.”
I raised my head and glanced across the stage. An old gentleman sat in the box opposite, and I knew a merry young party had the one on our own side, so I answered: “Oh, no, dear, mamma’s not in the box; she’s—” when the poor baby cried, “Yes, she is, my mamma’s in a box!” and buried her curly head in the folds of my skirt and burst into sobs.
At that moment a hard-voiced, hard-faced, self-sufficient girl pushed forward, and explained in a patronizing way: “Oh, she’s too little to say it right. She ain’t got no mother; she’s dead, and it’s the coffin Annie means by the box.”
Oh, poor baby, left behind! poor little scrap of humanity!
In another city the child was older, nearly five, but so very small that she did nicely in the tiny trousers (it is a boy’s part, as I should have said before), and when the act was over, I kissed the brightly pretty face and offered her a little gift. She put out her hand eagerly, then swiftly drew it back again, saying, “It’s money.”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s for you, take it.”
She hung her head and murmured, “It’s money, I dar’sent.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“’Cause we’re too poor,” she replied, which was certainly the oddest reason I ever heard advanced for not accepting offered money. I was compelled to hurry to my dressing-room to prepare for the next act; but I saw with what disappointed eyes she followed me, and as I kept thinking of her and her queer answer I told my maid to go out and see if the pretty, very clean little girl was still there, and, if so, to send her to my room. Presently a faint tap, low down on the door, told me my expected visitor had arrived. Wide-eyed and smiling she entered, and having some cough drops on my dressing-table, I did the honours. Cough drops of strength and potency they were, too, but sweet, and therefore acceptable to a small girl. She looked at them in her wistful way, and then very prettily asked, “Please might she eat one right then?”
I consented to that seemingly grave breach of etiquette, and then asked if her mother was with her.
“Oh, no! Sam had brought her.” (Sam was the gas man.)
“Why,” I went on, “did you not take that money, dear?” (her eyes instantly became regretful). “Don’t you want it?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” she eagerly answered. “Yes, ma’am, I want it, thank you; but you see I might get smacked again—like I did last week.”
Our conversation at this embarrassing point was interrupted by the appearance of Sam, who came for the little one. I sent her out with a message for the maid, and then questioned Sam, who, red and apologetic, explained that “the child had never seen no theatre before; but he knew that the fifty cents would be a godsend to them all, and an honest earned fifty cents, too, and he hoped the kid hadn’t given me no trouble,” and he beamed when I said she was charming and so well-mannered.
“Yes,” he reckoned, “they aimed to bring her up right. Yer see,” he went on, “her father’s my pal, and he married the girl that—a girl—well, the best kind of a girl yer can think of” (poor Sam), “and they both worked hard and was gettin’ along fine, until sickness come, and then he lost his job, and it’s plumb four months now that he’s been idle; and that girl, the wife, was thin as a rail, and they would die all together in a heap before they’d let any one help ’em except with work.”
“What,” I asked, “did the child mean by getting a smacking last week?”
“Oh,” he answered, “the kid gets pretty hungry, I suppose, and t’other day when she was playin’ with the Jones child, there in the same house, Mrs. Jones asks her to come in and have some dinner; and as she lifted one of the covers from the cooking-stove, the kid says: ‘My, you must be awful rich, you make a fire at both ends of your stove at once. My mamma only makes a fire under just one hole, ’cause we don’t have anything much to cook now ’cept tea.’ The speech reached the mother’s ears, and she smacked the child for lettin’ on to any one how poor they are. Lord, no, Miss, she dar’sent take no money, though God knows they need it bad enough.”
With dim eyes I hurriedly scribbled a line on a bit of wrapping paper, saying:—“This little girl has played her part so nicely that I want her to have something to remember the occasion by, and since I shall not be in the city to-morrow, and cannot select anything myself, I must ask you to act for me.” Then I folded it about a green note, and calling back the child, I turned her about and pinned both written message and money to the back of her apron. The little creature understood the whole thing in a flash. She danced about joyously: “Oh, Sam,” she cried, “the lady’s gived me a present, and I can’t help myself, can I?”
And Sam wiped his hand on his breeches leg, and, clearing his throat hard, asked “if I’d mind shakin’ hands?”
And I didn’t mind it a bit. Then, with clumsy care, he wrapped the child in her thin bit of a cape, and led her back to that home which gave lodgement to both poverty and pride.
While the play was new, in the very first engagement outside of New York, I had a very little child for that scene. She was flaxen blond, and her mother had dressed her in bright sky-blue, which was in itself an odd colour for a little boy to wear. Then the small breeches were so evidently mother-made, the tiny bits of legs surmounted with such an enormous breadth of seat, the wee Dutch-looking blue jacket, and the queer blue cap on top of the flaxen curls, gave the little creature the appearance of a Dutch doll. The first sight of her, or, perhaps, I should say “him,” the first sight of him provoked a ripple of merriment; but when he turned full about on his bits of legs and toddled up stage, giving a full, perfect view of those trousers to a keenly observant public, people laughed the tears into their eyes. And this baby noted the laughter, and resented it with a thrust-out lip and a frowning knit of his level brows that was funnier than even his blue clothing—and after that one Parthian glance at the audience, he invariably toddled to me, and hid his face in my dress. From the very first night the child was called “Little Breeches,” and to this day I know her by no other name.
Time passed by fast—so fast; years came, years went. “Miss Multon” had been lying by for a number of seasons. “Renée de Moray,” “Odette,” “Raymonde,” etc., had been in use; then some one asked for “Miss Multon,” and she rose obediently from her trunk, took her manuscript from the shelf, and presented herself at command. One evening, in a Southern California city, as I left my room ready for the first act of this play, the door-man told me a young woman had coaxed so hard to see me, for just one moment, that ignoring orders he had come to ask me if he might bring her in; she was not begging for anything, just a moment’s interview. Rather wearily I gave permission, and in a few moments I saw him directing her toward me. A very slender, very young bit of a woman, a mere girl, in fact, though she held in her arms a small white bundle. As she came smilingly up to me, I perceived that she was very blond. I bowed and said “Good evening” to her, but she kept looking in smiling silence at me for a moment or two, then said eagerly, “Don’t you know me, Miss Morris?”
I looked hard at her. “No,” I said; “and if I have met you before, it’s strange, for while I cannot remember names, my memory for faces is remarkable.”
“Oh,” she said, in deep disappointment, “can’t you remember me at all—not at all?”
Her face fell, she pushed out her nether lip, she knit her level, flaxen brows.
I leaned forward suddenly and touched her hand, saying, “You are not—you can’t be—my little—”
“Yes, I am,” she answered delightedly. “I am Little Breeches.”
“And this?” I asked, touching the white bundle.
“Oh,” she cried, “this is my Little Breeches; but I shan’t dress him in bright blue.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “how old are you, and how old am I?”
“Well,” she replied, “I’m almost eighteen, and as you look just exactly as you did when I saw you last, it doesn’t matter, so far as I can see, how many years have passed.” (Oh, clever Little Breeches!)
Then, having had Little Breeches 2d kissed and honestly admired, she trotted away satisfied; and only as I made my entrance on the stage did it occur to me that I had not asked her name; so she ends as she began, simply Little Breeches.