Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 24, 1898)
THE COU I - c 1 miniiyiia the girt sits up in tho bunk, calinly lmTTTirnTTN r,-rT.-rT smoothing out tho feathers of her absurd t THE PASSING SHOW: Where. O where. Mrs. Fisk. are $ W I LLA GATHER 8 tue usual cheap affections of surpriso f and terror which stage ladies assume witnessing a tight? Sho knows well She has been with us again, that ro- enough, that knowing lady, that girls markable woman, Minnie Maddein who are brought up in tho slums of Lon Fiske, more remarkable, more hopeful, don see too much righting to be astoc more different from all other players isbed at it. After tho painter's have than ever. She appeared hero this sea- been ejected she thanks the young man eon in her two new plays, "A Bit of Old and lies down to sleep. But sleep doesn't Chelsea," and "Love Will Find a Way." come bo readily to the poor artist, toss The tirst is a one act piece. The cur- ing about down there on his 6ofa. So tain rises on a sculptor's studio m Lon he lifts up his voice and in that stillness don. The sculptor is on his knees be- broken only by tho roar of London witb fore the grate in the twilight, burning out, he tells herof his sweotheart, whom old letters, eingiug "Oft in the Stilly he i3 soon te marry, of her charms and Night" as he Borts and tears. From his her goodness. Minnie draws the covers comments on the letters and love tokens up to her chin and lies very straight and you gather that he is a susceptiole very still, clutching the side of tho young man, that he has been in love and trunk with her hand. She 6tands it has been loved a great many times, pretty well, she does, but tinally sho in terrupts his raptures. "O yes. she's your girl, that's what you mean. I sup pose sho don't swear?" "Swear! who? Millicent?" "0 you needn't bo so shocked. She would swear just as bad as I do If she'd Women like him, on long or short ac quaintance; it is very nocessary that one should know that. The sculptor is about to be married, and he is making a bcrnt offering of these letters to the mmiI fhincr." found at last after so manv mistakes. When the last piece of note been brought up in our court and hadn't paper has fluttered into the tlames, ho been always tied up in white paper to gets up and looks out of the window, keep her clean." The stage settings in this piece are very The artist drops off to sleep, but Min effective. The window is a huge one, nie doesn't. She lies there stiff and such as you see in studios, and outside still, thinkin?, thinking. You can hear of it wintry London, a cold clear sky her think. Thinking that this is no with an indefinable effect of distance in place for her, that there is a distance it, the tall stone buildings that look like betweer her and all these beautiful steel in the hard white light of the elec- things that she can never cross, that tries, and swinging in the storm the this man is for girls who were not lights themselves, tho "iron lillies of tho brought up in courts and who never Strand "as Mr. Le Gallienne calls them, felt the world's rough hand. Present It is a wonderful bit of scenic paintirgl ly the young man mutters his bweet with its effect of vastness cold. It is heart's name in his sleep. Then the like Broadway on a winter night when girl gets right up without a word. She you are a stranger there. As the young cou.es down the ladder and puts on that man looks out into the street he notices pathetic little hat and str ps her flower a womac lying there and dashes out to basket over her 6houldeis. Sho takes help her. In a moment ho returns, up the artist's great coat and gently bearing in hiB arms a frail little figure throws it over him. Sho pauses a ma that we all know so well, and of which ment and takes a bunch of flowers from we are all a little afraid, despite ite her basket. seeming fragility. He places her in a "He was awful kind to me. but it chair before the fire, and when the heat aint like me to stay where I'm not revives her, she asks for h3r hat and her wanted. There are tho best I've got; flowers, for ehe is a flower girl. The flowers don't last long here in London." obliging artist dashes cut again and re- She lays them on his pillow and then turns with a big basket and a hat Oh, Eoee out of the door, without turning to such a hat, Buch a pathetic, bedraggled look back, without any effort at theatric little hat. Knowing people tell me that effect, just as quiet and hopelessly as in London flower girls actually do wear though hundreds of eyes were not juEt such hats, which has strengthened watching her; goes out into that big my determination to go there. The wintry, pitiless London you can see sculptor and Minnie have tea very com- through tho window there, that Loni.on fortably together and she tells him very where indeed flowers do not last long, simply and naturally what a bad day it and all jour sympathy and all your has been for her and how poorly the imagination goes out or that door with flowers sold, and how she lives in some her. awful court or other with her mother. I wonder where we hive another ac She feels strangely happy and comfort- tress who could play this unpretentious able in thiB warm, bright room, and she little piece in so untheatric a manner, likes being waited on by this handsome wno could mat e one know what it feels young gentleman, the like of whom she uke to be a flower girl. You see that has never spoken to before. When the penetrating intellect of hers is tike a tea is over they discover that it is two search light, she has only to turn it o'clock in the morning and ehe can't upon acharacter to master it. She ma afford a cab. and one of the afjjtV tfriaXces ental and emotional condi friendfl haB Btolen his hat. She caWtiw; before your eyes, and when all is proposes to just stay them all aJ-'gpNftjfcer modernness is the compelling says she'll sbep in a corner or aajr .'wwiii her acting. She throws aside place The astonished artists as jU uiiitione, traditions of elocution and and remarks that he'll seek sheltergtfajiift business and the lofty manners one of his friends. Minnie sayajaWgilragedy queens. She comes down eo home alone if he does, shell MMOMr side, into me puising cumprci 6 . i nnl otiJBarllftiL ntiuant Sim has thnt ardent IB llbA.UIl M..W HUw . - ly whicn is tne very root 01 an art and, in another form, of iti art. for that matter. for lurnicg bduuu; .-., 7 .ttj see why she will disturb mm ff Finally he lets down a sort of el u..t, ,m thn wa and .Minnie ai to it by means of a stepladder aoifc :. lnnn nn Vita ant ..t;o lioa nown iu oiccw " "',' . .1 .. nra fdirifortabl V jusi as iucj . . ' J--Ti-1 down to sleep the artist's friend?! painteis, very much intoxicaieu in on him and a veritable bedlam fa One of them puts on innies u- atnrtn to CO UP the stf p The artist snatches the hat and to: up to the girl and knocKs inj w down. During the scuffle which! m&& . LiopjMr 11 1 ii CrVfe"?- vHUfjb r '"'Bfe ' L" s "aMHaE jpj? y..Kf aaaaam-: lKjfilto sm'.Kiv, .... .- wv t re Will rind a way, snoim- a lame girl, rich, well edu- ounded by everj luxury but ;e all of Mrs. Fiske's charac- i; a psychological study, a study Harping effect of a physical upon the mind." Tho first act Madeline in the bosom of her family in which she is toler- ied, indulged, everything but loved, and it is for love that she is starv ing, it is of pity that ehe is dying. Her gay and beautiful sister, wishing to bo agreeable, tells her that sho baa bought some new waltzes and wouldn't she liko to hear them? "O yes," replies Madeline with asper ity, "waltzing is my favorite pastime." Later tho family convertatioa turns upon marriago and Madeline remarks that sho has been thinking of marrying herself, lately. Her father breaks out in indulgent laughter "You marry, Madeline, you?" "Yes I, why not I? Isthis," throwing her crutch passionately against her breast, "is this always to como between me and everything that tills a woman's life?" This is about tho usual tomperaturoof Madeline's relations with her family. They irritato her at every turn and ehe is in tho habit of being irritated and is continually looking for irjuries. They don't love hor and sho knows it. She can only remember ore being who has ever loved her, the physician who has always tended her, who brought her through all her childish illnesses, who has exhausted every resource of medi cine to cure hor lameness, and who, fail ing in that, by his very devotion, has kept life struggling in her frail little body. She says to him: "Do you know jou are tho only friend I have ever had in ail my Ii'eT When I was a little child I used to Ho tossing in my suffer ing and listening for the sound of your horses hoofs, and the hours 6eemed O, so long! and I used to be so jealous, so afraid that you might like one of your other patients better than me. And when I went abroad I was almost glad that tho great doctors there could not cure me. It would have broken my heart if they had succeeded where you had failod. But now, now I am a wo man, and if you cannot cure me, can you not at least kill me? I have borne this humiliation too long." The phjsician ii admirably played by Mr. Frederick de Belleville. He tells her as he has often told her before, that her affliction is purely a nervous one, that a great nervous shock, a supreme effort of will, even, would cure her lame ness. She recalls to him the time when a tenement house in which bhe was do ing charity work caught tire and she was unable to escape even to save her life and a young painter had rescued her and carried her out, and this joung painter, she tells him, she is going to marry. He is poor and cares for noth ing but his worlt. He had a wife once whom he loved, but she deserted him because of his poverty and afterwards died. She will furnish him money to go abroad and study and then he will come back and marry her and she will go out of this house that she hates and live her own life. It is to be simply a busi ness transaction. She proposes to buy her husband and her liberty as she has always bought what she wanted and the doctor, who loves her, can say nothing. The second act opens a year later upon the preparations for Madeline's wed ding. She comes in in her bridal dress, with her crutch. She is manifestly un happy. She calls the doctor, who is nover far to call, and in an incoherent fashion imparts to him her grier. She went into this matrimonial bargain coldly, with a clear conscience. But something has happened, something has wakened up, has been born in her. sae has suffered and hoped and dreamed and wept over the painter's formal let ters, she loves this man and he does not love her. The doctor springs to his feet and de clares he will stop this infamous mar riage. But she cries, "You will not, you dare not! Jn all the great things of life I have been thwarted, and you shall not take this from me! If it makes me the most wretched being in the world, it will at least make me a woman." Wheu she is left ulone.sho sits staring at tho footlights, thinking and agair. you hear her think. Then n woman steals in through tho bay window and kneels beside her, beg ging for help and pity. She ia Leslie, tho painter's wife, who, after tho manner of stage wives, did not die, and has found that plio cannot livo without him. In ono of those momonts of absolutely tranefiguring power which comes to her at will, Mrs. Fiake drives tho woman out into the night and tho storm, Hhrioking: "You shall not thwart me now, nothing shall thwart me now." Then, as sho sits thore gnsping, panting, muttering like a mad woman, she does ono of theso little things that lend such awful verity to her work, just takes her handker chief and with a quick, dtspcrato ges ture wipes her throat and hands. And. 1 assure you, ev ry being in tho house feels the cold moisturo that had gath ered on her flesh. Leslie goes out and fal's in a faint in tho snowy road The sound of sleigh bolls announces that the wedding guestB are approaching and the woman will bo run over. Madeline Bcreams again and again for help; "Father, Harry, that woman will bo run over! Sho is lying in the road!" but no one hcaia her. She looks for her crutch but someone hae mislaid it. Sho tries to stand but falls liko a broken thing. Sho drags herself on her knees to tho window and shouts and shouts, but no ono an swers and the jingle of the belli sounds nearer and nearer. Then, in thnt mo ment of desperation she rise8,8hestands she walks, Out of the window, out into the snow. And it is as though the days of the biblical miracles were como again. I remember in Kipling's story when Mulvaney is telling how Love o Women, when he is almost dead, walks up :o the porch to die in bis wife's arms, he says "the Power uphilt him." And it is just so when Madeline goes out of that window. The illusion is complete and you feel that you havn seen the dead arise and walk. In the last act, which occurs later the saxe uight, Madeline sends the painter and Leslie away together. The house is dark, the family are in bed, she sits by the window watching the re united lovers go their way: "Over the snow through the moonlight, out of my life." She sends for the doctor, who knows nothing of tho events of the night, and tells him that she haa sent the artist away. "He would never have a lame woman, that ie all," she says. Mr. de Belleville rises to a height he has not often touched in his life when he saB simply, but with all the heart in him. "Made line. I would give my life to make you walk." She rises emiling, and walks across the stage to his arms. FOR LADIES Queen quality Shoes tor $3 at. &Q$d 12213 O Street. 1 ifflZMaaaBaH ' BaaKT J