New Faces | Page 5

sent in for them? and why shouldn't I ask them up to the
house for rehearsals? There's the big music room going to waste and
those lazy beggars of servants with nothing to do, and you saw yourself
how it brightened up poor old Aunt Priscilla. She likes it--they like it--I
like it--you ought to like it. And you certainly can't object to my having
taken them en masse to see Marsden in the play. By George! I'll drag
him to theirs. We'll show him an Ophelia! that Mary Conners is a little
genius."
"She is wonderful," agreed Miss Masters. "The grace of her! The
dignity! What she herself would call the culture-an'-refinement!"
"All my discovery. That tyrant of a Rosie Rosenbaum had cast her as a
quick change, general utility woman. And in the day-time you tell me
she's a miserable little shop-girl in a Grand Street rookery!"

"That is what she used to be. But I went to the shop a day or two ago to
ask her to come up to my house to rehearse with the new Hamlet. I
watched her for a few moments before she noticed me. She was
Ophelia to the life. She conversed in blank verse. She walked about
with that little queenly air you have taught her. She was delicious,
adorable. At first she said that she could not rehearse that night, but I
told her you wished it and she came like a lamb. I often wonder if I did
a wise thing in introducing them to you. Your sort of
culture-an'-refinement' may rather upset them when the play is over and
we all settle back to the humdrum."
"You did a great kindness to me," said he, "and the best stroke of
missionary work you'll do in a dog's age. I'm going to work."
"You are not," she laughed.
"I am. Shamed into it by the Lady Hyacinths."
"Then perhaps the balance will be maintained. If you turn them against
labor they will have turned you toward it."
But Miss Masters' fears were groundless: the Lady Hyacinths though
dedicated to a flower of spring were old and wise in social distinctions.
The story of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid would have drawn
only a contemptuous "cut it out" from the lady President. Every
Hyacinth of them knew her exact place in nature's garden--all except
Mary Conners--now Ophelia--and she knew herself to be a foundling
with no place at all. The lonely woman who had adopted her was now
dead and Mary was quite alone in her little two-room tenement, free to
dream and play Ophelia to her heart's content and to an imaginary
Hamlet who was always Burgess. To her he was indeed, "The
expectancy and rose of the fair state." "The glass of fashion and the
mould of form." He was "her honoured lord"--"her most dear lord." But
in Monroe Street she never deceived him. Never handed his letters over
to interfering relatives. She could quite easily go mad and tuneful when
she knew that each rehearsal--each lesson taught by him and so quickly
learned by her--brought the days when she would never see him so
close that she could almost feel their emptiness.

It was well that she played to an idealized Hamlet for the real Hamlets
came and went bewilderingly. One of Burgess's first triumphs of tact
had been to pry the part away from the lady President and give it to the
sturdy Secretary. There followed two other claimants to the throne in
quick succession and then the lot fell to Rebecca Einstein and stayed
there. Each change in the principal role necessitated readjustment
throughout the cast and at every change the lady President was
persuaded not to over exert herself.
And still Burgess in the seclusion of the homeward bound hansom
railed and swore.
"I tell you, Margaret, that girl will ruin us. All the rest are funny.
Overwhelmingly, incredibly funny! And pathetic! Could anything be
more pathetic! But that awful President strikes a wrong note: Vulgarity.
Take her out of it and we'll have a thing the like of which New York
had never seen, for Ophelia is a genius or I miss my guess and all the
rest are darlings."
"But we can't throw out the President of the club. She must have a part.
You have moved her down from Hamlet to Laertes--to the King--"
"I did," groaned Burgess. "Will you ever forget her rendering of the
line, "Now I could do it, Pat," and then her storming up to me to know
"Who Pat was anyway?""
"I do," laughed Margaret, "and then how you moved her on to
Guildenstern and now you have got her down to Bernardo with all her
part cut out and nothing except that opening line, "Who's