OU may have met them drifting along Broadway—men whose names were once in the lights, women who were the toast of the town. Something, they tell you, is gone from their theater; something they find it hard to define. But they who have followed it from Union Square to Madison, thence north to Herald and finally to Long Acre, feel that in each of the neighborhoods it deserted it left a little of its glamour, a little of its romance. They shake their heads and travel on, seeking one more engagement, one more opportunity to wrest a living from their profession before the final curtain falls. Unless you wish to encounter heartbreak, do not inquire too closely into their fate. It is an alien land through which they wander now, a "show me" country where the cry is ever for youth.
On a humid August afternoon Nellie Wayne was walking up Broadway—our Nellie of the magic voice. Your father will remember her if you do not. At the old Fourteenth Street Theater early in the 80's she first flashed on the town, and thereafter for twenty years her name was synonymous with beauty. Lady Teazle, Viola, Rosalind, Camille—it mattered not in which guise the young men saw her first, from that moment her portrait adorned their bureaus and her lovely face often haunted their dreams.
It was at that forgotten playhouse, the Standard, that she appeared in the comedies and melodramas written by the brilliant Charlie Farren. She was Charlie's wife then, and when the critics urged her back to the classics she only laughed, for to her Charlie's poorest line was better than at his best. Late in the 90's Charlie died, and in the hour of her sorrow she first began to realize that something almost as precious had left her, too—her stock in trade, her youth. One black morning a manager offered her a mother rôle, and though she at first indignantly refused, she took it in the end and so started down the long slope beyond the hilltop.
She was well down that slope this August afternoon, a woman of—well, no one could say precisely how many years; but sixty-eight is a good guess. A beauty still, her age considered; tall, with the carriage of a great lady and a face but faintly lined. Though her hair was snow white, a youthful sparkle lingered in her eyes. Yes, a fine figure of a woman, but lacking something—hope, high spirits, a real destination along this famous thoroughfare. Once, when she walked on Broadway, twenty blocks down, people nudged one another and turned to stare; but now in the cold, fishy eyes about her gleamed no faintest spark of recognition. Well down the slope, indeed.
A stocky, prosperous-looking man was standing on the corner of Forty-fourth Street, gazing out across the alien tide that drifted by him; a gray-haired man who seemed lonesome on that crowded corner. Suddenly he chanced to see Nellie Wayne. His face lighted and he strode boldly through the horde of lesser creatures between and seized both her hands.
"Nellie!" he cried. She looked up, startled. Old memories of her golden past flooded her heart and her eyes filled with the quick tears of the artist.
"Tom! Tom Kerrigen!"
"Nellie, is it you? Fine and blooming as ever!"
To have some one step out of the mob and tell her that! Life was worth living, after all.
"Tom—where from? Where to?"
"From Denver. I've been living out there since I closed here—ten years ago."
"In business, Tom?"
He shook his head.
"Retired." They walked along together through the Wednesday matinée throng. "I decided it wasn't any game for an honest man any more."
She glanced up at him, a little breathless, thrilled. It was wonderful just to see him again. Charlie's best friend, Square Tom Kerrigen, a dazzling figure on the old Broadway, a patron of the drama, front row on the aisle every opening night; Square Tom, whose establishment just off Fifth Avenue was the favorite resort of the men about town whose gaming instincts were active and who preferred to play where the game was fair.
"Nothing but crooks in my business today," Tom was saying. "The dirty outcasts of Europe—the scum of the earth. I saw it coming—no Americans left. Besides, I wouldn't pay tribute to any man living, in uniform or out. So I quit when it stopped being a gentleman's game. I dropped it. Denver was my old town—my daughter's out there. But I had to come back for one more look at the big street. And I'm sorry I did. I've spoiled it all." He turned to her wistfully. "Where's our Broadway, Nellie?"
She shrugged her shoulders.