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Mogley passed out, walking down the five flights of stairs to the street, forgetful of the elevator. The dramatic editor looked at his watch. "Half-past twelve," he said; then, to a man at another desk: "Jack, I can't come just yet. I'll meet you at the club. Order devilled crabs and a bottle of Bass for me." He ran up-stairs to the night editor. "Mr. Dorney, have you the theatre proofs?
Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waiting impatiently his return, the news of his triumph. "We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley," said the stage manager as he reached the stage door. "Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for to-night. Here's your money now." Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and hastened homeward.
Called before the curtain four times and had to make a speech!" Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting. Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramatic illusion. "Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to read about it in the papers!" Mogley's heart fell.
'Mama! returned Kate, in a tone of remonstrance. Then there was young Lukin, said Mrs Nickleby, beginning with her left thumb and checking off the names on her fingers 'Mogley Tipslark Cabbery Smifser
She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully the hard life that a player at "one-night stands" must endure in the interest of art. This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was about to start "on the road" with the "Two Lives for One" Company, the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or die, perhaps die in any event.
Each evening, when Mogley returned from his tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway, the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door: "Anything yet?" "Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession is overcrowded!" But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow.
A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures, was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated, his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not of "the profession."
"That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries." Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome in the same words. "And then besides why, Alice, what's the matter?" She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her. Slowly she opened her eyes. "Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying." Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying!
"Ah there, Edwin Booth!" sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft. "Oh, what a funny little man he is!" ironically quoted another from a song in one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if elongated frame. "He t'inks dis is a tragedy," suggested a Bowery youth. But Mogley tried not to heed. In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley laboured zealously.
Mogley?" replied the dramatic editor, absently, lighting one himself. "Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading comedian of the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the Theatre. I played Mephisto." My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I was a failure, it would kill her, so I told her I made a success. I have really never made a success in my life.
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