John King, manager. A story of the stage

Front matter

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Chapter I

When John King came into this world he was as a precious jewel, firmly fixed in the rich settings of an eminently respectable life.

His mother, having descended in the Edwards line from an old puritanical stock, was a woman of unbending principles and fanatical religious faith. When she was but fourteen years of age, she united with the orthodox church, where she remained a faithful member to the day of her death.

She married, however, outside the congregation, John’s father being a Quaker, yet she had no cause to regret this action, although they could never quite agree upon matters of religion.

Each quietly maintained his course without much comment upon the subject of their unutterable convictions.

Of the two, the husband proved the most amenable to reason whenever a discussion arose between them on the contested points of their particular beliefs.

It accordingly happened that when their child came into the world, John King, Sr. surrendered the care of his soul to the mother with the dry comment, “ he may hearken entirely to thy counsel, Mary, and look jsoniewhat to my ways, in matters of religion ; for

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surely, if by following my ways he should escape Heaven, with thy voluble expounding of the Scriptures, he cannot justly get into Hell.” Half heartily she responded to the speech ? “ Nay, John, not if he listens well and heed what the good elders of our church have studied so deeply to discover ; but verily, none be so deaf as those that won’t hear.”

The first great trial of John King’s life loomed upon him in that hour when he was taught to pray. His mother who undertook the task, after the nurse had reported her bad proceedings with the boy, came into his room one night, and lifting him from the crib, stood him on the floor before her. “ John,” she commanded somewhat sternly, “ get down at once upon your little knees.” John stuck his baby fingers between his lips and stood looking up into his mother’s face grieved and defiant. All measures were used to reduce the young rebel to holy submission, who first manifested his will and lack of reverence on this occasion. Finally, the most desperate remedy for a stubborn spirit was brought into requisition, namely, a wooden paddle, which was applied somewhat vigorously to John’s bare back, horizontal. This had the effect of bringing a copious flood of tears which seemed to float the stumbling words through a perfect storm of sobs.

“ Please Dod, bless Sally and the pig.”

Sally was his nurse, and the pig, his entertainment three times a day, when Sally took him kindly out to the pen to see the animal fed.

At ten, John was as much admired for his intelligence as the grace and spirit of his deportment, whenever he was permitted to see and to enter into conversation with the ladies and gentleman who visited his father’s house. Although he was rather tall and slender for his age, he had thus early commenced to develop a fullness of the chesty and n

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squareness of the shoulders, which, taken in connection with the erectness of his carriage, gave a manly appearance to his boyish figure.

His face was rather thin, with something in the keen, sharp glance of his gray-blue eyes, the breadth of his forehead, the varying expressions which flashed over his features, which suggested a play of lightning behind the summer clouds.

He had a way when opposed, of dropping his head forward until his chin rested upon his bosom, when he would give the offender a long, slanting, sidewise look from beneath his frowning brows ; with his teeth set and his lips drawn into a hard line which spoke volumes for the defiance of his spirit and the firmness of his will. Fortunately for his success in life and the power that he manifested to shake and rule so many destinies beside his own, the heavy qualities of his nature were enlivened by a keen sense of humor, a quickness of repartee, and a kind, even affectionate disposition.

At a very fearly age, John King, Jr. evinced such powers of mimicry that his parents, condemning all levity in the character of their son which might lead him to the godless representations of the stage, removed from his observation all suggestions of such a life.

When John was but five years old, his nurse revealed to him one day a new world which lay beautifully bound in leather and gold upon the library shelves. From that day he gave her no peace until he was taken into the library every morning, where he insisted that the copies of the old books should be opened before him on a Turkish rug which covered the centre of the floor. Here he would lie for hours upon his stomach, entranced by their contents ; his little red-stockinged legs kicked up over his back, ^nd waving to and fro like a couple of blapk-knobbed

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stamens thrust out of a furbelow of his white skirts and starched pinafore. With a face flushed and eager, and his chubby fingers grasping the stiff, yellow pages, he would insist upon explanations as to why Juliet mourned and Satan fell.

Sally spelled out the words slowly beneath the pictures, making such explanations as she thought proper, and soon the child could repeat by heart all that she had taught him.

The power of analogy, which was very early developed in John’s little head, led him to discover at length, in a small statuette that stood upon the library mantle, a reproduction of an engraving in one of the books.

“ See, Sally,” he cried in hysterical childish glee, “ it’s ’Omeo on mamma’s shelf.”

“ Why so it is,” declared the stupid Sally, who had never thought of it before, “ la ! how bright the young un’s gettin’ ; sure and he’ll be bustin’ his hid wid too much thinkin ! I must take the buks away from him. John,” she continued, “give the buks to Sally, like a little man ; you’re gettin’ too lamed for your age.”

But John held on to the covers of the book with such determination that Sally, who feared she might tear the leaves, fell to expostulating.

“Now Johnnie, like a little man, let Sally have the buk ; if you don’t you’ll get wather in your brain instid of sinse and grow foolish instid of wise ; then you’ll die, and go to Purgatory, most like ; or ye’ll sit in the corner all yer life, as Kate’s baby did ; a sucking yer little thumbs.”

“ Gif me pictures on the shelf, Sally.”

“ Holy smote ! that bes no picture at all, but a statute ; and it is not me that’ll be afther laying a finger on it for yes.”

John got upon his feet in childish wrath ; he stamped upon the floor.

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II

“ I will have it, Sally ; it’s iny Mamma’s ’omeo,” and, in an unguarded moment he lost his old possessions ; as Sally took this opportunity to seize the book and thrust it out of sight. In c/ontempt of these proceedings, with that quick readiness to see the point of advantage which never quite deserted him through all his later career, he climbed quickly into a chair that happened to stand beneath the mantel, and before Sally could prevent him, he had seized Romeo by one leg. Sally turning from the book case gave a scream ; John started fearfully backward, lost his balance, and the child and statue came down in a general crash, where the former aroused the household with his cries of rage, and pain, and the later, stately lovers, lay scattered in ruins about him, like a fatal prophecy of his life.

At twelve John proved such an annoyance to the governess employed for home instruction, it was determined to send him to a private school kept by an orthodox clergyman by the name of Patterson.

King’s parents having designed him for the ministry, a profession which by nature he was the least qualified to fill, the rigid denial of the free exercise of his mind in channels that would have produced a healthy developement of its most noble faculties, was cramped by a denial of pleasure common to youth, and thus embittered by a solemn and bigoted education.

They were not made of that malleable stuff which could be moulded by a boy’s will. The more wayward his impulses, the more determined they became to fashion his mind by the unbending principles of religion into that solemn and holy character, befitting the profession to which they had unitedly dedicated him.

He was accordingly sent to Mr. Patterson’s school, he being a man who added to his renown for piety the reputation of a strict disciplinarian. It thus happened that, followed by his father’s counsel and his mother’s prayers and tears, John entered the Patterson school at the age of thirteen. It was a journey of some fifty miles from the old homestead ; so that John was denied the pleasure of frequent home visits ; thus the first links which bound the boy to old ties and kindred, was early broken. That he might feel less lonely on the way, his father and mother accompanied him the entire journey and so personally supervised his proper establishment in the school.

John’s introduction to Mr. Patterson passed with no further comment than that he should receive a goodly and Godly education. With more tears on separating from his parents, who left him with many carefully considered admonitions as to what he should and should not do, John was put to bed in company with a plump little fellow of twelve, who began by staring at him with big, round blue eyes, and ended by making himself disgustingly familiar with all his possessions.

The boys of the school when they met in the classroom, ranged from the ages of eleven to seventeen. John King made himself popular with the elder portion of the school, and became a sort of leader and director of the younger members of it. From first to last he was not a favorite with Mr. Patterson, who endeavored to treat the boy with justice, but ever manifested toward him a cold and dignified formality he believed to be necessary to hold in check a certain freedom which strongly characterized his speech and manner.

His keen appreciation of a practical joke, and the recklessness which led him to engage in any daring scheme, and contrived to upset the law and order of the school, soon brought him into bad repute in the ^Stitpation of its master. Hence, it happened within

JOHN KING, Managed. 13

sixteen months, the secret antagonism of their natures was openly betrayed in a quarrel.

The result of a stormy interview with his teacher was John’s arrival at home upon the following day.

“John,” said his father seriously, after sorrowfully greeting the boy. “ Thy mother and I have been greatly concerned about thee ; as from several letters written by thy pious instructor, it appeareth thou hast carried thyself in a high and ungodly fashion at school.”

Whereupon John commenced to pour his complaints into the sympathetic ears of his mother, making so strong a case against Mr. Patterson that she conceived herself to be grossly insulted in the person of her son.

“ Poor child,” she commenced, with an odd stiffening and whitening of her features, so observable in her son when struggling to repress an exhibition of strong excitement.

“ Did you have no sauce upon the table, love, for tea ?”

“Never fear, John, if thou art a trifle thin, a change of pasture maketh a fat calf ; and thou wilt at once be well sauced and goosed by thy mother’s kindly hand. Yet I would admonish thee that unless thou settest thy head upon some plan of life, thou wilt not, like a fragrant herb, bloom in the garden of thy mother’s heart, but grow as a poisonous nettle, bestowing upon all the woman’s anxious love the smart and sting of thy misbehavior.

“ With thy mother’s consent, thou shalt have for two years the bent of thy will, unless it run to extravagance in living or lateness of hours or ungodly sports. At the end of such time, thou and I shall have some friendly talk together concerning thy future. There, lad ! thou hast nothing to frown about.

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look up and give thine old father thy hand on the contract."

John gave both hands to his father, his face lightening into a sort of radiance, which eloquently pronounced his relief from expected rebuke, since the closing remarks had softened and atoned for the slight censure manifested at the commencement of the monologue. Rushing from his father, he seized his mother’s head in his arms, and hugged it tight against his shoulder, brushing his cheek caressingly against her yet bright auburn hair.

“ And thou, mother ?’’ he queried, using, as he occasionally did, the grave quaker dialect. “ What sayest thou, dear, to my father’s promise ?’’

“ That I do not fully approve it," she managed to articulate with some difficulty, from the cause of her lips being muffled by their hard pressure against his shoulder.

“ Let me go, John ;’’ she continued to gently struggle to extricate herself. But he held her as before, saying : “ Nay, nay, mother, listen to my heart, and answer me kindly, surely my father knows me better than thou dost, and is a wise man."

“ Thou art a foolish lad," she managed to say, at length getting free of the embrace, and putting up her thin, ladylike hands to brush back her ruffled hair.

“ To give you your liberty as thy father has just now done, is like letting a young colt out of the pasture. I cannot quarrel with thy father’s purpose, but be sure, John, that so long as thou remainest a child beneath my roof, for my own part I shall shirk no responsibility concerning you, because you are strong in the rein and hard on the bit."

John King, Sr., rose from his chair, turning his back upon his wife as he walked to the window, where he struggled to subdue that inner disturbance of his feel-

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*5 ings which in their lives together had occasionally arisen, when, in an instance like the present, he had to encounter the opposition of a dogmatic will.

Mrs. King resumed her knitting ; the silence between the three for a few seconds being broken only by the sharp clinking of her needles. Then John King, Sr., turned around with a sly twinkle of humor in his gray eyes.

“Well, Mary!” he smiled pleasantly, “if thou and the boy have settled it between thee, I will leave you to fight it out together.”

Chapter II

During the two years while John remained home on probation, he made some progress in the study of literature, and displayed such aptitude in scribbling that his father was led to believe his son might enter with some credit upon a literary career.

It is so easy while sitting sheltered by the home fireside to imagine what one can. do, or what^one’s children may do or become out in the great world. Perhaps it is well that the aspirant for worldly place and distinctions sees the successes but not the risk to be incurred when entering upon any line of life beset with competition, and requiring great experience in all its details to bring the individual to any degree of prominence.

However, John scribbled with a mind set toward journalism. His work displayed the practical bent of his intellect and so related to history, science, recent discoveries and current events. The library became inundated with sheets of reasons why archaeology and i6

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geology had not established in fact the beginning of man : Or why the currency question must continue to be a troublesome problem until some new financial system" should be discovered to regulate it according to the supply and demand. Most of the stuff he wrote was worthless, but the scales were before the eyes of the ambitious logician and his enamored parents. He was by the end of the second year grown to the full stature of a man, having developed the bass note in his voice, and a shade of down was just appearing upon his upper lip, and the smooth peachy sides of his fair face.

He was what his boyhood promised, exceedingly good looking in person and rather frank and winning in his manners. As he grew older, however, he manifested a little less humor and more dignity in his behavior. At this period of his life, his character seemed to have developed that steadiness which made him appear a very promising young man.

It was June, the library windows were open, and Mrs. King with her maid in tow, each armed with brooms and dust brush, with their heads tightly bandaged in aprons, marched through the house searching for the invisible speck. . . John came in from the

garden with a bunch of Baltimore Belles in his hand, that he proceeded to arrange in a green vase that decorated one corner of the mantlepiece. It was not sufficiently satisfactory to his artistic sense that they were roses whose fragrance filled the room, he stood-, pulling up one stem and thrusting down another so as to make the most harmonious display of their beauty, when his father entered the room where he stood some moments watching his son’s manoeuvres.

“ Thou hast something of the woman in thee, lad," he'finally remarked.

“ It is not a bad element, is it, father ?" responds the son. Without heeding the question he proceedea

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to deliver himself of the matter uppermost in his thoughts.

“ I have something to tell thee that may please thee, my boy.”

John turned about looking earnestly in his father’s face.

“ I have written my cousin, Alice Beecham, concerning thee ; she is accounted, I believe, to have some art with her pen, and I thought perhaps she might put thee in the way of thy desires.”

“Thank you, sir,” responded John warmly, “you could have done nothing that would suit me better.”

“ Come here, lad, and sit down ; we will talk it over between us and then refer it to thy mother, who at last being satisfied that thou dost not care to preach, may be willing to see thee embarked in some other honorable and prosperous career.”

“ Thy cousin Alice,” continued the old gentleman^ when they were seated together, “is a young woman of exceptional character and assured position as the wife of a prosperous Boston banker. Her home and influence will afford some privileges which could not otherwise be obtained ; and she has, upon the strength of my correspondence and some of thy work which I filched to send her, John, already signified her interest so far as to get the engagement upon a small magazine.”

“ It is excellent, sir !” responded John, with such enthusiasm as to leave no doubt in his father’s mind regarding the satisfaction this news gave him.

John King, eager to rush in upon so inviting a prospect as the present opportunity promised, set out immediately for his cousin’s house in Boston, where he arrived in due time at the station and was safely delivered by the cabman at the door of the imposing

echam mansion on Beacon Street.

He was told by Mrs. Beecham’s servants that the

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lady of the house was out but would presently return, whereupon he was ceremoniously ushered into the magnificent mansion of the Beecham’s.

John felt immediately impressed by new surroundings which so greatly contrasted in its display of wealth with the appeapance of quiet grandeur in which he had been bred.

The windows were curtained with costly satin, behind which floated the gaudy texture of the most delicate lace.

There was in the carpets and furniture an almost gorgeous effect of blue and gold, which extended to the arch doorways of the music room and library. John, who had never seen his father’s cousin Alice, formed a very imposing idea of the mistress of such a mansion. He imagined that he must offer her some very grave and elaborate account of his appearance in her house before he was expected.

He seated himself somewhat gingerly in the springy depths of one of the chair to await her arrival. As he sat thinking he began to speak the words softly, that he might hear how they would impress a listener.

He had about concluded the form of his reception speech, when a folding door was pushed open behind him, and a low browed madonna faced woman stood in the entrance, which evidently opened from this room into the conservatory, as her black robed figure and the ivory whiteness of her face and hands seemed cut out out sharply against the green background of growing shrubs and flowers.

“ This is ?” she inquired with deliberate speech, and clear cut musical cadence.

“ John King, madam ; Mrs. Beecham’s cousin,” he replied rising, and blushing as he bowed himself before her.

“ I am Mrs. Beecham,” she answered. “You must pardon my unavoidable neglect of you. Cousin John,

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I really had an important engagement, that could not be very well postponed ; and then, my poor lad, I have had the bad grace to forget the hour of your arrival : but if I can be pardoned, I will endeavor to atone in the future for my short comings in point of cousinly favors. Please be seated, John. I have a friend in the conservatory to whom I would like to introduce you directly.”

As she made this statement she sat down, taking care to arrange her skirts properly, indicating at the same time by a wave of her hand a corner of the satin tete-^-tete, which he should occupy at her side.

John, who had ever been dominant in all previous situations, now encountered a very oppressive air of culture and refinement in the person of his beautiful cousin, that rendered him at once self conscious and so awkward ; he tripped against a jardiniere which happened to be standing near the tete-a-tete, as he attempted to seat himself upon it.

“ Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Beecham, I feel like a clown,” he blurted out frankly, blushing more furiously than before.

“ Don’t begin the acquaintance by abusing yourself ; I assure you I am prepared to pardon much in a young man toward whom I have the most cousinly intentions to be kind.”

This speech delivered in a tone of light banter, was far from reinstating John, who had fallen for the first time in his own estimation, and was greatly distressed to find himself so ruled and disconcerted by a person who was scarcely more than a stranger, although connected by ties of blood and bound to him by promises of friendship. Conscious that she was regarding him somewhat quizzically ; he had no doubt that she thought him a “ cad,” with whom she would be exceedingly bored. The reflection only served to increase his confusion. Alice Beecham, without appearing to notice how her presence affected him, began to make kind inquiries concerning his father and mother and the manner of his life at home. Two things made a lasting impression upon John’s imaginative mind at this first interview. For a long time they were the significant emblems of her life. They were the ^heavy jet cross suspended upon her bosom by a narrow guard of black velvet, and a white ascension lily lying in her lap, looking as if it were engraved against the blackground of her dress, the green stem lightly resting in fingers almost as delicate as the waxy petals of the flower.

Quite frequently, as she talked with him, she would turn her face toward the conservatory, as if anticipating the appearance in the drawing room of some person or persons whom they could plainly hear moving about among the plants. All at once two men came into the line of vision ; the low murmur of their voices shaped into audible speech caused John to turn instinctively toward them. One of them was a gentleman of Mrs, Beecham’s age; he was evidently engaged in discussing the qualities of some plant he held in his hand with the other, who looked like a gardener, when catching the inviting look of his hostess, he smilingly nodded to his companion and entered the room. Mrs. Beecham arose. John followed her example.

“ John King,” she said, fixing her eyes intently upon the face of the gentleman as he approached them ; “ this is pur rector, Mr. Astor.”

For the first time in his life, John King felt the presence of great and godlike virtue in a man. He perceived in this man such an assemblage of rare quali ties impressed upon the clear cut and clean-shaven features that he could not well describe them ; but there seemed to emanate from the rector’s strong, quiet face, a beauty which transformed his firm lips

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into lines of light when he smiled. There was something magnetic and gentle in his greeting of the young man, whose hand he grasped warmly in his own, searching his face with tender inquiry.

** It is my cousin, Mr. Astor,” explained Mrs. Beecham, speaking of John, but still looking at the rector.

‘‘ Ah ! I am happy to make the young man’s acquaintance,” then turning toward her, but still retaining his warm hold of John’s hand, ‘‘does he belong to us, Mrs. Beecham ?” he inquired.

“ Well, well, John,” smiled Mrs. Beecham, in half serious reproof, as she resumed her seat, “ what shall I offer in defense of your father’s quaker methods of sitting in the house of worship in silence ; or your mother’s, your dear, good mother’s, habit of praying on her feet ?”

Somehow John could not, little as he sympathized with it, bear the slightest fling of sarcasm at his mother’s faith. He bridled a little in a boyish way.

“ Mrs. Beecham, I have not studied these things too deeply I will allow, but my mother relies upon St. Paul, I believe, who does not accept the public prayers of woman.”

Alice Beecham dropped her white eyelids. So that their black lashes swept the pale oval of her cheek. “ My St. Paul has taught me to pray,” she replied in a low, sweet voice. A moment of silence fell between them, during which the rector sat gazing out of the opposite window, grave and thoughtful.

After this day, John’s life was for sixteen months like a long, sweet, tormenting dream. Introduced by Alice Beecham into the broad arena of a new exist, ence, where superficial refinement had the effect of polishing his manner, and intellectual culture of broadening and deepening his powers of reflection 3,nd analysis, he saw the goal ahead and entered the

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race ; but the object he ran for was beyond pursuit ; it lived in a boy’s dream of all human perfection as embodied in the person and character of his cousin Alice. From his earliest years, John had associated the impulses of affection with all that was ennobling in nature ; the tender, self-sacrificing love of his ^father and mother, as manifested toward each other, and their combined efforts in furthering his own interests was a sort of a model upon which he erected his sense of attachment to others. To him Alice Beecham became that sweet, impossible ideal, to whom he dared not raise his eyes too boldly, although his soul was ever in a flame whose burning incense was fanned by the white \yings of her affable presence in his thoughts. Day and night, night and day, in his dreams even, she visited him.

He worked very hard during the week and walked to church with Mrs. Beecham on Sunday. Here, from the beautiful Episcopal service, he received the strongest religious impressions of his life. He believed he had arrived at that point where his heart was offered in humble adoration to Almighty God, who alone can order the affections and govern the wills of unruly men. - Instead, it was the sensuous magnificence and imposing church and church service that impressed him, the alluring and devotional nature of a woman he worshiped.

The hot blood would leap from his heart to his face, surging over it from brow to chin as he felt the thrilling touch of her hand upon his shoulder, the sweet scent of her warm breath upon his cheek, as she leaned gently forward to direct his attention to the prayers and responses they were to utter together. His religion, instead of presenting an abstract deity, represented nothing higher for his contemplation than the kneeling figure of the woman at his side, with her black robes trailing about her and her

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saintly face bent upon her bosom. It was a holy picture shrined in the rich, warm shadows of the great church, he could never efface from memory. The sound of the fair penitent’s voice in meek confession uttering the lines —

“ We have erred and strayed from thy ways.”

What was it in her voice that always so strongly affected him as she uttered these words :