IT was our first separation. All day I had fought back the tears while I helped Will pack his "Taylor" trunk. Neither of us spoke; once in every little while Will would stop in the act of folding a garment, and smile at me in approval. Then his arm would steal around my shoulders and he would pat me tenderly.... I would turn away, pretending to busy myself with other things, but in reality to hide the freshet of tears his silent expression of sympathy had undammed.... Will had signed with a star to play Shakespearean répertoire. The question of wardrobe was a source of worry, until I volunteered my services; I was a good needlewoman, and, from the sketches Will made, I was able to qualify as a full-fledged costumier. For days I had pegged away, refurbishing the old and making new ones, and sometimes Will would lend a hand and run the machine over the thick seams.... I once read that the women of the Commune wove the initials of those they hated into their knitting; well, I sewed the seams of Will's dresses thick with love, and hope, and ambition ... and dampened them with tears.... Then when the expressman came for the trunk ... it seemed as if they were taking away a coffin....

Not until that night, after we had gone to bed, and I felt Will's deep, rhythmical breathing beneath my head, which lay pressed against his breast, only then did I give way to my grief. I crept to the other side of the bed and turned my face to the wall—I shook with convulsive sobs.

Now and then Will would half waken, and would reach out and dreamily pat my face and smooth back my hair, as one soothes a sorrowing child. At such times I would hold my breath, and wait until he was again quiet....

Every incident of our short married life passed in review before my burning eyes. We had closed our season late in April, and had come back to New York with less than seventy-five dollars between us. But what we lacked in money was more than balanced by our enthusiasm and illusion—the illusion of two young persons very much in love with each other. I had been in New York only once before, and the thought of living in the great city, of becoming an integral part of it, made me thrill with excitement. Will and I stood on the front of the ferry-boat and watched the panorama; he pointed out the various tall buildings with an air of familiarity. When we passed close to a great ocean liner, which was being swung into her dock by two fussy little tug-boats, even Will got excited. He told me which was "fore," and "aft," and named various other parts of the boat which I didn't understand. When we had taken our last look, he tucked my hand under his arm and told me that one day he and I should take a trip abroad....

Owing to the shortage in our money supply, we had decided to go to a theatrical boarding house. Will was depending on his father to send him an allowance throughout the summer, and while it would be sufficient for his needs, now that he was married—well, we should have a chance to test the saying that two can live as cheaply as one. Our marriage had been a secret one—besides the "star" and one or two members of the company, we had taken no one into our confidence. Will's family—his father, a sister and brother—his mother having died about the time I came into his life—all were intolerant of the stage and its people. Though I was not yet a "really truly" actress, the fact that Will had met me "in the profession" would have prejudiced them against me; added to this was the fact that Will, himself a tyro, taking a wife at the very threshold of his career would not be looked at through our love-coloured glasses. The effect my marriage might have upon my own relatives never troubled me; my father and mother belonged to that great class of incompetent parenthood which brings children into the world without any actual love for them. Never questioning their fitness for child-rearing, they divine no greater responsibility than providing bodily necessities and a more or less superficial education. When, at the restless age of sixteen, I announced my determination to become an actress, there was some surface opposition, but no effort was made to enquire into my fitness for the dramatic profession, or the fitness of the dramatic profession as a career for any innocent and unprotected young girl. I had been highly successful as an amateur, and, as it was not necessary that I earn my own living, the stage appeared to their insapient minds an interesting playground for a dilettante daughter....

One week in a theatrical boarding-house was all we could endure. I wonder why it is that the rank and file of the theatrical profession are at such pains to СКАЧАТЬ

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My Actor-Husband

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

My Actor-Husband. Anonymous
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