Kate Crossett—Comedienne

Prologue

At St. Rose's there was always excitement in the middle of the morning, when old Tim's crusty voice could be heard “whoaing” to Ginger, who, to tell the truth, needed no adjuration to stop, and when he, alighting from the covered wagon which plied between the academy and the town, stamped up the stone steps and into the waxed hardwood hall of the building.

Tim was the one creature upon whom the sisters had never been able to enforce their rule of quiet; while acknowledging them his spiritual overseers next to Father Paul himself, he still maintained an independent spirit. He testified to his manhood by refusing to step softly, to speak gently to the ancient nag, or perceptibly to lower his voice in addressing Mother Veronica. Consequently, his advent with that of the morning mail was always known at St. Rose's to the uttermost classroom. And always a little flutter ran through the building, from rooms in which sat “the big girls,” who would be “young ladies and out in the world” next year, down to those in which were the tiniest pupils, whose chubby cheeks had not yet lost the stain of tears over their separation from their home.

The fact that the mail would not be distributed until noon, when all classes were dismissed and the girls had half an hour in the gardens before dinner, was no preventive of excitement—rather a cause. There were thirty minutes of suppressed anticipation to be endured before they could file through the corridors and pause at Mother Veronica's desk in her austere little office to receive the communications, the superscriptions of which her sharp eyes, behind their bone-bowed glasses, had already keenly noted. And woe to the girl—most likely of the graduating class, “next year to be a young lady and out in the world”—who received a letter with a superscription requiring explanation.

Kate Crossett was not one of these. She was only nine, and it would be at least eight years before the sisters at St. Rose's would put upon her the seal “finished” and send her forth. That she was excited about the reception of mail indicated chiefly that she had an inordinate capacity for excitement. In the two years in which she had dwelt at St. Rose's there had been but four handwritings directed to her—her mother's, fine, sloping, so sloping as to look almost running; her father's, bold and brilliant, with old-school tendency to shading and flourishing; the round, smeared chirography of the little girl who had been her bosom friend before St. Rose's immured her, and the terse, English, literary script of her present bosom friend, Allison Ware.

Allison Ware was twenty-three to Kate's nine, but she regarded him as quite the most satisfactory playmate of her experience. He kept his high place in her regard probably by the infrequency of his appearances. He had come three or four times with her father, and had captivated Kate's fancy.

To-day—three weeks before Christmas it was—Kate's hopes were dashed by the letters she received. There was one from her mother, still known on the stage by her maiden name of Dempsey—of “the” Dempseys, as one was always informed when reference was made to her, “the” Dempseys who had managed the Dublin Theatre, who had supported Kean and Garrick, and who had always been among the reliable props of the British stage.

Mrs. Crossett, or Miss Dempsey, regretted in her hasty, eager handwriting that she was not going to be at St. Rose's for the Christmas play, on the twentieth, before the school adjourned for the holidays. She was sure that her darling would acquit herself with credit; and she could not tell her little daughter how sorry mother was not to see her first public appearance. Little daughter must remember to do exactly as Sister Mary Regina, stage manager for the academy performance, directed; she must also remember that it was a very high honor to be chosen to play the part of a herald angel, and she must strive to act with the sweetness and reverence that a herald angel would naturally feel. Poor mother's heart was fairly broken to think that she could not be with her precious pet for Christmas; some day there would be no more of these lonely, miserable holidays, but she and Kate would live together in a dear little house in the country, with a dear little pony in the stable stall, and dear little chickens in the poultry yard, and dear little roses climbing over the doors and windows, and they would be as happy as never was. And meantime they would bear their separation bravely, and Kate must not sulk or feel neglected because she had to spend her Christmas vacation at the academy, and the writer was always Kate's devoted and loving mamma, with ten thousand kisses, Delia Dempsey Crossett.

This was the first of the letters which Kate had opened. She proceeded to pull a long face, in which was threatened an outbreak of tears before she looked at the others. Kate was wholeheartedly devoted to her mother, and had looked forward since September to having the Christmas holiday like the last Christmas holiday, with that dearly loved, satisfying companion, in all the half-awesome and half-lovely, altogether entrancing surroundings of a New York hotel.

“Oh, mamma can't come to our Bethlehem play, and can't have me for Christmas. She's out in Cleveland, and has got to stay!”

The threatened tears began, but Sister Mary Regina, who had been watching the round, speaking, little face with sympathetic amusement, had a conciliatory suggestion.

“Why don't you read your other letters, Kate, my dear?” she remarked. “Maybe there will be something in them to help you bear your disappointment.”

It was characteristic of Kate that she did not believe consolation possible at that moment. With her the instant was always eternal. She gave vent to this opinion by remarking: “I don't want anything but my mamma.” But, having thus displayed her skepticism of substitute joys, she opened her father's letter, and her face grew brilliant with delight immediately.

“Oh, sister!” she cried rapturously. “Daddy's coming for the play! Daddy's going to take me for Christmas week”—she was reading, as hastily as a somewhat recent acquaintance with the art of chirography permitted, her father's epistle, and was declaring these things as she read—“to stay with him in New York! He says”—she stumbled along through Mortimer Crossett's heavy pages—“that mamma has kindly consented, and that he hopes to be able to win the consent of our kind teachers. Oh, sister, sister! Do you think Mother Veronica will let me go?”

“I think,” replied Sister Mary Regina, concealing a sparkle in her young, gray eyes behind a pair of discreet, downcast lids, “that it will depend very largely upon your deportment and your standing in your studies during the rest of the term.”

“Oh, sister, I will be good! I will be just as good! And really I didn't mean to slap Henrietta that day when she cheated in parcheesi. My hand just went out before I knew what it was going to do.”

“Just as your tongue is now running on before you know what it is going to say.” Sister Mary Regina's voice was a little stern, her eyes had lost their amused light. “Had you not promised not to refer to Henrietta's mistake again?”

“Oh, sister,” wailed Kate Crossett, “I shan't ever speak again until I have counted thirty; that is, if I am in a good humor. When I am cross or angry, I will count sixty.”

“An admirable resolution,” declared the sister, the corners of her mouth twitching again.

“And, now, do you think reverend mother will let me go?” Kate was balancing on one foot in her eagerness, and her eyes were bright and dark.

“Run along, Kate, run along. You'll get no air before your dinner if you stand here asking me questions about something that depends altogether on your own behavior. Run along, child; run along.”

“Oh, sister,” declared Kate fervently, hurling herself upon the sister, “I just love you. You're the sweetest thing!”

Sister Mary Regina could not refrain from giving her impetuous adorer a little hug and a little kiss, before she turned her shoulders around, and headed her for the door into the dismantled gardens, where the girls were running about in the bright December sunshine.

That afternoon, in consultation with her superior, she could not forbear giving voice to some doubts and misgivings that had assailed her.

“It is going to be a great responsibility, bringing up little Kate Crossett,” she said. 'Do you not feel it so, reverend mother? The child is so affectionate, so impulsive. It seems a dreadful thing that her parents could not have given her the normal home life. She's the sort of child who needs it.”

“It is our mission to see that she suffers no ill from not having it,” declared the mother superior.

“Yes, but that's the responsibility I spoke of. How people with a child like that could separate! It is incomprehensible to me.”

“I hope,” said Mother Veronica impressively, “that any divorce would seem equally incomprehensible to you, daughter.”

Sister Mary Regina was discreetly silent. Although she was not an elderly woman, she had not entered the order when she was a very young girl, nor had she been brought up in the conventual atmosphere; or, indeed, in the Roman faith. Some of the beliefs and prejudices of her earlier—less worthy days, Mother Veronica would have called them—still remained with her. But Mother Veronica was a disciplinarian who had no intention of allowing error to live in the midst of her community, even though it did not try to voice itself.

“I said,” she repeated, with some emphasis, “that I hoped any divorce would seem equally incomprehensible to you, my daughter.”

She very obviously waited for a reply.

“Divorce, yes,” said Sister Mary Regina finally. “But 1 should be deceiving you, reverend mother, if I pretended to think that every separation is unwarranted. And, after all, the Church, itself, does not deny relief of separation when conditions are impossible.”

“But this affair of the Crossetts',” said Mother Veronica, steering away from the slightly dangerous topic of permissible separations, “is an affair of divorce. Mrs. Crossett, though I understand that she was born in the Church, has been so willful a daughter of it as to appeal to the civil courts to dissolve the indissoluble union.”

“I did not know,” murmured Sister Mary Regina. “I thought they had merely separated.”

Delia Crossett quietly fainted against the back of her chair.

“To be sure,” admitted Mother Veronica handsomely, “I am not sure that she could be denied the rites of the Church on that account. The man whom she married—married in the civil sense, I mean—was already divorced from another woman. Consequently, of course, the Church would not recognize her marriage—Kate's mother—to him. Consequently, there having been no marriage, from the Church's point of view, there could be no divorce; and Mrs. Crossett, I suppose, would still be entitled to participate in the blessings of her religion.”

“In the world,” observed Sister Mary Regina demurely, “I think that many women would forego the blessings of religion rather than admit themselves not to have been the legitimate wives of the fathers of their children.”

“My daughter!” Mother Veronica's voice was almost the voice of one about to hurl “the dreadful curse of Rome.” But she modified her rebuke of her younger charge, recalling in time the disadvantages under which one so lately saved from heresy had labored.

In theatrical circles they talked more freely of the affairs of Kate's father and mother than at the school. Every one knew Delia Dempsey when, some twelve years before, she had fallen victim to Mortimer Crossett's undeniable charms. Every one liked and respected Delia. She was that rara avis, a strictly virtuous woman who judged no other woman's virtue. The theatrical life which her family had lived for generations had given her a tolerance of other people's unconventionalities, unknown in any other profession. Her own native uprightness had kept her “straight” among all the temptations of her career. When she fell in love with Mortimer Crossett, she had had a real struggle with her conscience before permitting herself to marry him, so keen was her sense of another woman's rights in him.

But Mortimer had succeeded in explaining to her that early marriage of his as the chivalrous folly of a boy entrapped by a designing older woman—poor, maligned Mrs. Lee, keeper of the boarding house in Medena, where Mortimer Crossett once fell ill, and was left behind by his company, to be nursed back to health by his drab little landlady. She, poor soul, had felt that the gates of paradise opened before her when her handsome and winning young convalescent proposed to her.

Doubtless Mortimer had been right in calling the proposal the chivalric impulse of a boy, but never was human being less fitted, physically, mentally, or temperamentally, for the part of the elderly siren than Mrs. Lee. She had accepted him with adoring gratitude for his condescension. She had married him in a dream of humble happiness. She had been content to work for him, to wait on him, to slave for him. And when he finally regained strength to go back to his profession, she saw him depart with an aching premonition of final separation.

She had made no protest when he had begged her to divorce him. She had done as he asked as simply as if he had requested a favorite dish for dinner, or the readjustment of the reading lamp.

It was hard that even for two or three years another woman should have thought of that humble, patient, deserted creature as Delia Dempsey thought of her. By the end of two or three years, Delia was much better able to interpret her husband's version of his first marriage than she had been during her brief engagement.

With all his charm, which even his enemies accorded to him; with all his wit, his good looks, his talent, Mortimer Crossett was a disappointment in every relation of life. Responsibility was something he could not understand, whether it was responsibility to a wife, a tailor, a manager, a playwright, or the public. Often, he only half learned his parts. He was guilty of the crime of interpolation. He was late to rehearsals. He had been known to appear upon the stage, more than once, half intoxicated; and occasionally his understudies had reason to rejoice when intoxication, which even politeness could not describe as “semi,” prevented his appearing at all. He lightheartedly contracted debt, and failed to pay it.

He made love to every woman whom he met—some sort of love. To the elderly it was the gay flattery of a spoiled young son or nephew that he offered; to servants it was the kindly sympathy that recognized sex beneath the disfiguring envelopes of cap and apron; to women of his own age and class it was the spontaneous tribute of an attractive man who simply could not resist them. He was as outrageously faithless to Delia Dempsey as any of his friends could have warned her beforehand he was going to be.

And Delia, who was a passionate and proud woman, and who, through exacting years of a career that made constant demands upon her emotions, and that offered temptations to light loving at every turn, had kept herself as untarnished as any Puritan maid, had resented his insults to her as his wife with a peculiar fervor.

At first she forgave his disloyalties, which began almost before their honeymoon was over, for the sake of the child that was coming. Surely, surely, fatherhood must make some noble impression upon that facile, but affectionate, nature. And after Kate was born, she forgave him again, for the familiar reasons which have made women bear misery since monogamy was instituted, “for the sake of the child.”

But the time had come when outraged womanhood could bear no more, and then she had divorced him. Even then, she had been too generous to cut him off from all intercourse with his little daughter. Although the court had awarded her the sole custody of the child, she conveyed to her husband, through his lawyers, the information that she would never interfere with his seeing Kate at suitable times. And Mortimer, who never lost the superficial manners of the gentleman, had replied to her kindness with an appreciative delicacy that made her cry for an afternoon, and had availed himself of her offer with the most forbearing infrequency.

During the child's babyhood, she had taken Kate with her everywhere. She paid Heaven knows what prices to procure nurses who were willing to travel wherever the chances and changes of theatrical life lead, and who were warranted to have no unconquerable aversion to one-night stands. Every minute that she could spare from the exacting requirements of her profession, she spent with the baby.

She would have given anything never to have been separated from the little object of her passionate adoration. That she finally sent Kate to a school much patronized by theatrical people was proof of the sacrificing nature of her love for the child. She saw her own nomadic existence unsuited to the needs of a little girl. She was lonelier and more miserable the first night after she had left Kate at St. Rose's than she had been even the first day after she had ordered Mortimer Crossett out of her life forever.

The conduct of Miss Kate Crossett at St. Rose's Academy between the date on which she received her father's invitation to spend Christmas week with him in New York, and the date of the play in which she was to enact the part of a herald angel, was of that exemplary kind which is seen upon the earth only in the weeks immediately preceding Christmas.

She had one disappointment in connection with the play. After all, her father was unable to be present at it. A telegram was received from him on the morning of the great day, regretting the impossibility of his reaching St. Rose's in time. Only the thought of the coming week made Kate able to endure that grief—that thought, and her tremendous interest in the part she was to play. Of all the children at St. Rose's, many of whom inherited histrionic talent, Kate was the most gifted. After seeing her act, with self-forgetfulness and fire, Sister Mary Regina shook her head wisely to Mother Veronica.

“I'd never give her another part,” she observed sagely.

“And why not?” inquired the reverend mother, with some astonishment.

“I'd try to eradicate all that theatrical inheritance,” replied Sister Mary Regina wisely. “I'd do nothing to foster it.”

“Nonsense, my dear sister,” replied the reverend mother, with some asperity. “Let every one improve the talent God has given him; only let it be to the glory of God and His Church.”

“Oh, I know that St. Rose's entertainments and pageants are very superior to those of any other convent school,” replied Sister Mary Regina daringly.

She had the courage of a woman who had brought a good deal of money to the convent. But she had gone a little too far this time.

“I do not allow any one to impugn my motives,” declared the autocrat of St. Rose's, all the more autocratically because there had been a modicum of truth in the criticism which Sister Mary Regina implied. And she designated a punishment for the younger woman, who accepted it meekly, but remained firmly convinced both of the ill-advisedness of allowing Kate Crossett to act, and of Mother Veronica's real reason for failing to admit that ill-advisedness.

The holidays began the twenty-first. Kate, intoxicated through all her chubby little body by her success as a herald angel, condoled with the girls who were going to spend the holidays in the school, and packed her bag seven times in an hour. It was not a matter of great work to pack it, for costume at St. Rose's was strictly prescribed, and two winter frocks of dark-blue serge, with heavy ulsters to match, made according to a regulation pattern, comprised the winter wardrobe of the little girls, and even of the “young ladies.” Of course, Mother Veronica could not oversee the attire of her charges when they reëntered the bosoms of their families; but, while they were with her, all vanity and competition were sternly checked.

In the middle of the afternoon, Kate was sent for, to come to the office. She bounded down the uncarpeted stairs, and across the waxed halls, her heart beating high with anticipation. But, instead of the tall figure, beginning to verge on portliness, of her father; instead of his smiling brown eyes and handsome face, she saw only his friend, Mr. Allison Ware. Although Allison Ware was a favorite of Kate's, she had never regarded him in the light of a possible substitute for her father, and her face fell when she beheld him.

She looked at him questioningly, without greeting, and Mother Veronica was compelled to call her attention to her lapse in good manners. Thus rebuked, Kate dropped her pretty little convent curtsy, and murmured her salutations; and then she looked from one to the other of her seniors with eager question in her eyes.

“I have here a note from your father, Kate,” said Mother Veronica. “He is detained in New York, but he has sent his friend, this gentleman, whom you know, and whom we have had the pleasure of seeing before at St. Rose's, in company with your father, to bring you to him.”

“Oh,” said Kate shyly, and then anxiously: “Is daddy sick?”

“No,” replied Mr. Ware reassuringly. “He is not sick, at all; but, as I have been explaining to the reverend mother, he is held up by rehearsals, and he sent me over to fetch you in place of himself. Will you come with me?”

“Yes,” answered Kate.

“Yes, what?” suggested Mother Veronica, frowning.

“Yes, Mr. Ware,” supplied Kate dutifully; and then she was dismissed to get her hat and ulster, and to start across the river with her guide.

Some misgiving seemed to cross Mother Veronica's mind as they were departing.

“I shall expect a letter from you to-morrow morning, Kate, my dear,” she said, “telling me exactly how you found your father. The Holland House, you said, I believe?”

She turned to Mr. Ware. The young man smiled, and nodded boyishly.

“That's where,” he assured her. And he and Kate started on their journey.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Mortimer Crossett's failure to appear at the play the day before, and failure to call for his daughter this afternoon, were both due to the same cause. Mr. Mortimer Crossett was indulging in a periodic spree. He had stumbled upon his young friend, Ware, two nights before, and had wept maudlin tears upon that young man's coat sleeve, over the fact that his wife had left him, and that he was deprived of the comfort and society of his daughter. He assured Mr. Ware that he was going to pull himself together in time to attend the Christmas festival at the convent the next day. And he invited the young man to spend a week with him and Kate at the Holland House.

To Mr. Ware, at twenty-three, all this had seemed funny; but when he had repeated it to his sister, the mother of children of Kate's age, his point of view had been suddenly changed. He had been informed that it would be outrageous—vile—for Mr. Crossett to appear at St. Rose's Academy in the condition in which he was sure to be. He was informed that it would be terribly pathetic if the child did not have her holiday.

He had been energetically constituted chief jailer and general guardian to Mr. Crossett. He had seen to the sending of the telegram on the morning of the play, and he had been sent after the little girl, who was nominally coming to visit her father, but who was, in reality, to spend most of her time with the kindly and energetic lady who was taking charge of her destiny.

To say that Kate had a satisfactory Christmas holiday would be to use a thin extract of milk and water of language in place of sparkling wine. Never had she known such complete joy. Mrs. Martin, Mr. Ware's sister, an English girl, whose husband was in charge of the New York end of his firm's business, had brought to her new home all the British traditions of Yuletide, and the old-fashioned house in which she lived was paradise for the little girl from the convent.

Her father recovered within a day or two, and appeared among the Martin young folks in his familiar character of complete charmer. There were stockings hung along the edge of the queer, convoluted, white marble mantelpiece in Mrs. Martin's room; there was a big Christmas tree, which burst in radiant splendor. upon dazzled young eyes, from the dark corner of a room which had been mysteriously closed until Christmas morning; there were jests and favors for even the littlest child at the big table on Christmas day; there was a glorious sleighing party—snow having opportunely arrived for the sole purpose of making perfect Kate Crossett's holiday, as she believed—out into the suburbs, to an inn where every one had steaming hot glasses of something, the children, milk; there were theatre parties to real theatres, an intoxicating experience; there were amateur productions in the garret, in which Kate shone, both as manager and actress, thereby maintaining the proud tradition of her mother's family; there were children's dances at the home of some friends; there was, altogether, complete joy.

Kate never had again, during her childhood, so happy a holiday. The Martins moved back to England next year, and, after a little, the memory of their hospitable, wholesome gayety grew dim in her mind. She forgot their names, and had only a confused impression of chestnut curls and laughing, rosy faces. Mrs. Martin became a mere type of pleasing motherliness, losing all her individual traits, in recollection; but Allison Ware stood out in the midst of the pleasant confusion of ideas, the one clear-cut, compelling figure, to Kate's mind. She never forgot him, although she did not see him again, Absence for a time only gave him added luster in her imagination, made more graceful his slender, boyish figure; brighter his blue eyes, more infectious his laugh, more compelling his merriment. For two or three years, Christmas holidays, even those spent with her mother, were measured by the Allison Ware standard, and fell short of what holidays might be.

He wrote to her once or twice, shortly after her return to the convent, and she answered his letters with the most undiplomatic speed and fervor. She even wrote two or three after he had ceased to reply to hers. Then she relegated him to the mental region inhabited by King Arthur and Sir Launcelot, and wrote to him no more than to these other beloved heroes.

She did not talk to her mother about him, because, being a sensitive child, she had early gained the knowledge that her mother did not care to hear of those snatches of life which were lived with her father and her father's friends.

She did not talk to her father about him, because, except for the beautifully shaded letters, and the occasionally extravagant gifts, Mortimer Crossett dropped out of her life almost as completely as Allison Ware had done. He had gone to Australia on a tour, and had remained two or three years in the South Pacific; then he had made a flying visit to America, but had missed seeing Kate, who was in the mountains with her mother for the summer. Then he had gone to London, where he remained, writing less often to his daughter, and drifting toward that oblivion which is only one degree removed from the final oblivion.

Chapter I

As Kate Crossett looked at the superscriptions on the letters handed her by the village postmaster, a shadow fell upon them. It was caused by the interposition between her and the sunlight at the door of a large masculine body. It was an interposition which was not unfamiliar to Miss Crossett and her neighbors, being the person of young Mr. Elliott Ames.

“Good morning,” began Mr. Ames. “You are down for the mail?” Yet in some circle Mr. Ames had the reputation for original thought. Kate smiled, and did not make the unnecessary answer. “I don't seem to have anything, myself,” he added, which wasn't strange, as Mr. Ames' groom had brought the mail to Mr. Ames' stone palace on the hill, two miles from the post office, some two hours earlier, “so, may I walk along with you, if I promise not to interrupt your reading?”

Kate slipped the mail into the bag that swung from her arm.

“It's all for mother,” she announced, “and it will be very pleasant of you to walk along with me.”

She spoke with a conscious attempt at the lightness which, she felt, ought to characterize all her intercourse with Mr. Elliott Ames; but she was not entirely successful. It is difficult for a young lady of twenty to be completely airy in her manner when she has a burning recollection of a parting quite other than airy with the person whom she is addressing. Kate felt sure—in her pulses, if not in her mind—that she had ejected Mr. Ames from her mother's dwelling, two night before, only just in time to save him from some sort of declaration of his feelings. The emotion which had made his gray eyes black, which had made his face white, which had made his speech stammering and broken, had been unmistakable.