SHORT STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2325, 22 September 1898, Page 50

SHORT STORY.

• TO GRATIFY A WHIM.

, 1 put down the four-act farcical comedy with a mournful wag of the head. Milly came to summon me to supper. She glanced from the MS. to my face and divined my poor thoughts. . jfcMilly," I said softly, " I have read your father's play—* The Bag Doll.' " "Yes." Her monosyllabic reply was expressionless. Wsttching her, I found my ■own throat swallowing a responsive lump. "It's no good, my dear girl," I added, walking towards her with the offer of comfort in my outstretched arms. "If anything, it's —it's inferior to the others." She shrank slightly from me. > " Don't say it ! " she murmured, and hid her tears. " But it's the unfortunate truth," I urged. " Don't tell him. You won't tell father that? Promise me!" she entreated. I looked at her hesitatingly. " You remember what happened when you said his last play was worthless," she continued breathlessly. The fit that followed, the weeks of anxious nursing and perpetual fear that he would never mentally recover! Now he is weaker than ever. A second shock would kill him. For seven months he has toiled over that play, nursing his mind with the certainty that at last he had hit upon an idea that would capture the public fancy ; that at last, after 17 years of ineffectual efforts, he would step with a bound from the cold, weary earth to the topmost rung of the ladder of popularity; and now" —her tears gushed forth unrestrainedly—"you will kill him! "she cried. "You must not tell him the truth. Oh, you won't, you couldn't! Can you ? Will you? " She had caught me in her imploring arms and her eyes shot their appeal to my writhing heart. " Dear sweetheart," I replied, sadly enough, " you know I would perjure my soul to save you from this torment, but " " Then you will tell him that his play has something to recommend it?" she hastily interrupted. " You will let him think that he has not lived and toiled in vain. You are a promising dramatic critic with a great future before you —all the papers say so — and father has implicit faith in your judgment. And, surely, it doesn't matter, the lie, I mean, since the doctor says that any day now tlic —the worst may happen." "When I have praised the play, dear," I said, "he will want it produced. He will send it to a manager with a recommendation that, on the strength of my eulogy, he will force from me. The manager will return it, perhaps, with courteous thanks. What then, Milly? Will not the second shock be greater than would be the first? " Her brows contracted painfully. " Look here, little woman," I added anxious to put a truce to the agony of mind, " I will think it over. Now let us go into s\ipper with cheerful faces, or your father will suspect something."

The hand of poverty was upon the house in which I had taken refuge when, in the glow of hopeful youth I raided London with yen and paper. But while with the help of fs<-.od' friends I made headway with such as I was prepared to wield, it was an unhappy fact that my enthusiasm for my adopted profession stimulated a dormant desire "in my landlord's breast to write a successful play. It had been his ambition while I was in the cradle, and his fatuous devotion to it had ruined him and his family. Originally a man of mental and physical strength, a severe shock had shattered both in a second of time, and his wife had died under the blow, while the invalid survived.

nursed, sustained by his heroic little daughter Milly. My mind revolved around these recollections while I watched the invalid choking over the nourishment that, with the thread of a tenacious desire, kept soul to body. What a mere thread it was even my unprofessional eyes could detect ; and I could snap it with a word condemnatory to the worthless farce that lay in my room. Watching the feeble movements of his slrengthless limbs, listening to .the gasping, consumptive breath and dry, hard cough, I told myself that the doctor's diagnosis was only too certain. "He might go off this very night," I thought. " Death can hold no terror to his body. What can he want with life? Only the success of his farce, a hidden suggestion that he has justified the labour of nis lifetime." "I have read your play, sir," I said suddenly. The invalid half raised himself from the couch], his eyes gleaming expectantly. I saw an unnatural pink steal over my sweetheart's face ; but she hid her frightened , eyes. " And I must admit that it might be worse," I added, with professional gravity. " Ah ! " It was a cry of relief rather than a word that broke from the invalid's lips. " Which, from you, Richard, means that it's fit for the stage?" He was sitting upright now, breathing quickly, hai*sh, wispy breaths without power or goodness. "There will naturally be some difficulty in placing it. That is," — I hastened to add, warned by the sudden lividness of his lips — " although you may find a manager willing to produce it, yet " The Rag Doll " will have to wait it's turn, and you must be prepared for an exercise of patience." "Not if you take it in hand, Richard." His eyes were inordinately bright. The fever of long-delayed success was upon him. " You know all these theatre managers. They know you, and what you are certain to become, a great dramatic critic. Be- ] sides, haven't they always too many doubtful plays on their hands not to give precedence to an assured success — assured by a critic who knows his public and has proved it, again and again! Come nearer, Richard ; my breath is short." I obeyed, prepared for the worst. It i came. I " Take the play, boy. Take it this very day -and find a ,home for it. lam dying, but 1 won't die until I've seen, my farce acted. But be quick, Richard. Don't waste an hour, not a minute. You will do this? A few days ago I entrusted you with my daughter's life ; now I give my other child, my " Rag Doll " into your charge. Take her, as you are going to take Milly — for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. Only do it at once! The sand runs low. But I will live until the first night of my play. I will live, I tell you ! " Raising my head I encountered my sweetheart's plaintively beseeching eyes. " Your play, sir, has already been accepted by the manager of the Century Theatre," I replied quickly, " and will be produced at an early date. It mattered not that the Century Theatre had no manager, the ill-starred house possessed a landlord, and that very day I engaged it for the Saturday night. A subsequent 48 hours' unremitting work — with the cry of " Just to satisfy the whim of a dying man " — found me in possession of a voluntary cast whose names would delight the best-established playwright. Then, having the had parts typed, and finding sufficient stock scenery for our modern play, I went home and reported progress. "Will you order me a cab," said Milly's father. " Never ! " I exclaimed. " You do not dream of going." < " Of course I intend to be present," he declared. " Have I toiled so long, been so often rebuffed, waited so patiently, to sit J at home at last and hear, only in imagina- j tion, the thunders of applause that to- j morrow will crown my struggle with a triumph as complete as it is laggard?" - The unusual effort ended in a fit of coughing that reduced him to helplessness. " Cross the threshold of this door tomorrow and you will never recross it alive," said the doctor. Then he turned to me. "You sign his death-warrant if you permit it,' he added. " It is signed already," whispered Milly to me presently. "He has known so little happiness in his life, you will not deny him this? " "We shall be publicly held responsible for the result, dear," I replied. "Does it matter?" she asked, wistfully. "We shall be morally innocent, you know. j Does it matter what the cold hard woi'ld says? " I went to the printers, post haste, and increased my original order of 50 programmes to 500, the capacity of the theatre, plus a number of flaring placards, with which I hoped to draw an audience with the promise of a night's entertainment free of cost ! There was a grim humour in all these tinsel arrangements for the benefit of a man who might be in another world before the curtain went up. ;

Very mingled were my feelings when I went to the theatre to stage-manage the fust production of "The Rag Doll," and I was thankful for the hundred and one matters that engaged my attention before the laising of the curtain. At half-past 7 I peeped in front. The house was fairly full. I walked to the footlights. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, "some explanation of our singular conduct in asking you here to-night is necessary, and much apology, I fear, will be needed before the night is out." Then I shortly explained the circumstances, and appealed to all that was highest and best in them to give the farce such a reception as should send the dying author (shortly expected in the vacant box) to the deep that knoweth no awakening with contentment within his Aveary heart. I had barely finished before Milly and her father appeared in the stage box amid a perfect hail of applause from the watchful audience, and I rang the curtain ujj^

I will not attempt to describe the play in detail. Every playgoer is now familiar with the plot of "The Rag Doll." Nor will I dwell upon my bewildered feelings when it first dawned upon me that the cheering in front was too spontaneous to be artificial, and the alternating silences too sustained and intense to be merely the outcome of my appeal. With the first hint at the real turn of affairs, and the hundredth glance of apprehension at the stage box, I hastened round to the front. Was I dreaming? The thing seemed incredible. Could I rely upon the veracity of my ears? As for my senses, they went the way of the audience. Now I was shrieking with inevitable laughter, now lost in the pathos of a human flash, wondering, marvelling at the ingenuity of the brain that could concoct such droll situations, such living predicaments in quick rotation, with such, simple, lonely, yet such human touches. Why, the play almost amounted to genius! I heard it asserted everywhere, from stall to gallery. I rushed to the stage box. The invalid grasped my hand. "You were right, Richard," he cried. " You foresaw all this at a single reading of the manuscript. Wonderful ! How can I thank you for this great moment of overflowing joy? " I reddened, hypocritically, to my hairroots. But I could not mar that mortal joy by explanation while the audience cheered frantically. "Author! Author! they shrieked." "A speech ! " You mustn't attempt to respond ! " I cried. " I will go and speak to them." But they ignored me, though I stood alone before the fallen curtain. All eyes were turned to the stage box where an elderly gentleman was coughing violently while he swayed to and fro in imminent danger, I knew, of his life. The tumult in the theatre hushed. A terrible, suggestive silence reigned. Presently came a thin voice. " Friends, I thank you ! " Then) the 'author fell backwards into Milly's arms. The cheering was renewed with double vehemence. The fate of the play was assured. And the author — lived to write a second successful farce, a miracle unscientifically ascribed by the doctor to " the cussedness of human nature." But there were people who scouted the vhole thing as a most audacious advertising coup, and it is to refute that calumny that I now confess how inept was my boasted critical faculty in the case of the farcical "Rag Doll."