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The Man Whose Yoke Was Not Easy
by
It appeared that I could. If I could help him to any light employment, something that did not require any great physical exertion or mental excitement, he would be thankful. But he wanted me to understand that he was not, strictly speaking, a poor man; that some years before the discovery of his fatal complaint he had taken out a life insurance policy for five thousand dollars, and that he had raked and scraped enough together to pay it up, and that he would not leave his wife and four children destitute. “You see,” he added, “if I could find some sort of light work to do, and kinder sled along, you know–until–“
He stopped, awkwardly.
I have heard several noted actors thrill their audiences with a single phrase. I think I never was as honestly moved by any spoken word as that “until,” or the pause that followed it. He was evidently quite unconscious of its effect, for as I took a seat beside him on the sofa, and looked more closely in his waxen face, I could see that he was evidently embarrassed, and would have explained himself further, if I had not stopped him.
Possibly it was the dramatic idea, or possibly chance; but a few days afterward, meeting a certain kind-hearted theatrical manager, I asked him if he had any light employment for a man who was an invalid? “Can he walk?” “Yes.” “Stand up for fifteen minutes?” “Yes.” “Then I’ll take him. He’ll do for the last scene in the ‘Destruction of Sennacherib’–it’s a tremendous thing, you know. We’ll have two thousand people on the stage.” I was a trifle alarmed at the title, and ventured to suggest (without betraying my poor friend’s secret) that he could not actively engage in the “Destruction of Sennacherib,” and that even the spectacle of it might be too much for him. “Needn’t see it at all,” said my managerial friend; “put him in front, nothing to do but march in and march out, and dodge curtain.”
He was engaged. I admit I was at times haunted by grave doubts as to whether I should not have informed the manager of his physical condition, and the possibility that he might some evening perpetrate a real tragedy on the mimic stage, but on the first performance of “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” which I conscientiously attended, I was somewhat relieved. I had often been amused with the placid way in which the chorus in the opera invariably received the most astounding information, and witnessed the most appalling tragedies by poison or the block, without anything more than a vocal protest or command, always delivered to the audience and never to the actors, but I think my poor friend’s utter impassiveness to the wild carnage and the terrible exhibitions of incendiarism that were going on around him transcended even that. Dressed in a costume that seemed to be the very soul of anachronism, he stood a little outside the proscenium, holding a spear, the other hand pressed apparently upon the secret within his breast, calmly surveying, with his waxen face, the gay auditorium. I could not help thinking that there was a certain pride visible even in his placid features, as of one who was conscious that at any moment he might change this simulated catastrophe into real terror. I could not help saying this to the Doctor, who was with me. “Yes,” he said with professional exactitude; “when it happens he’ll throw his arms up above his head, utter an ejaculation, and fall forward on his face,–it’s a singular thing, they always fall forward on their face,–and they’ll pick up the man as dead as Julius Caesar.”
After that, I used to go night after night, with a certain hideous fascination; but, while it will be remembered the “Destruction of Sennacherib” had a tremendous run, it will also be remembered that not a single life was really lost during its representation.