“How could he? He had a wife in Cork. Yes, I forgot to say pa was Irish. I’ve always gone by my mother’s married name, but you can have my father’s name if you wish!”
“You Yankee yumorist!” Tony blew a playful puff of smoke at him. “Well, you’ll see it if you come across the old ‘Eagle’ playbills or those of Flippance’s Fit-Up for that matter, for we did all pa’s plays—ma had played them so long she knew all the parts. Pa sent her a lawyer’s letter—for she didn’t even trouble to change the titles or the author’s name—but she defied him to wash his dirty linen in court, knowing how virtuous his ‘Eagle’ public was, and that it might ha’ ruined him and his moral melodramas.”
“They seem a funny lot—stage folk,” Will commented.
Will, relieved, said he was glad Mr. Flippance didn’t approve of such morals.
“Morals!” Tony glared at him. “Who’s talking of morals? Men will be men and women women whether they’re pro’s or public. You didn’t find America a Sunday-school, I reckon?”
Will, coughing over his liquor, supposed a man could have his fun anywhere.
“That’s what I say!” said the Showman. “And on the other hand I’ve known actors as respectable as your rat-catcher. I’m one of ’em myself, as I told you just now. I’d seen too many dead flies in the honey—and my Polly’s as pure as her poor dead mother. No, it ain’t their morals that bother me, it’s their ways. Holy Moses! To think of the time I had travelling round managing these sons of dragons and hell-cats! I envied ma and Flippance in the churchyard under their favourable stone notices. The jealousies! The cat-and-dog bickerings! The screams and hysterics! Who should play this or that, who should be largest on the programmes and posters, who should stand in the limelight, who should take the call—they never quarrelled who should take the bird: that’s the hiss in our lingo. They were always hissing at one another, or at the poor manager, that’s me! I’ve seen the leading man and the leading lady take their call hand in hand, and the moment the curtain was down resume spitting fire at each other. It wasn’t that they had any vanity, they said, it was only that their position demanded they should take calls singly or be printed larger than each other. Cocks and catamarans! I tell you if I hadn’t swopped with Duke for his marionettes, I should have had little rose-bushes growing out of me now, and that favourable stone notice over me. Oh, the peace of it—it’s Sunday all the week!”