Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/280

256 For thirty years she had served them, through sunshine and shadow, in beautiful youth and beautiful age, in health and sickness. As it chances every night that hundreds in the slowly emptying aisles look back at the grouped figures of the scene, so did they look back that night; and they saw no figure there who had given them nobler or more devoted service than the Mary Netley of the evening, and they who saw her then saw her never again; from them, and from us all, the rare genius, the fascinations of her art, the wondrous melody of her voice, the odd, dainty ways, the plain face, and all that lends grace to comedy, are gone. Yet the loiterers in the aisles that night flung back to her no word of farewell, for no sign of parting was in her eyes, no hint of separation on her lips. But Mary Gannon, as the curtain slowly fell, looked on her audience with more real sorrow than she had ever feigned, and until the last moment the brave smile was on her lips, and if her hands trembled up to her parched throat, no man saw the meaning thereof, for art was stronger than death in this great artist's heart, and the tender eyes were filled with only their usual grave humanity; and so, slowly dying where she stood, she smiled down upon her life-long friends her old, sweet, good-night smile, and solemnly, yet uttering no word, she bade them good-night and farewell together.

When she laid aside her stage-dresses a few moments later, she said, "I have worn them for the last time;" and as she silently, tearfully folded them away, they who saw her then knew that in the act she folded away the recollections of all her noble, useful and beautiful years.

Then she went home to set her house in order, and to wait, with grave and patient dignity, for death. And when it came, it found her ready.

A few nights later, when a crowded house witnessed a new actress play Mary Gannon's part in "Rosedale," an inconstant public were for once loyal to an old favorite even in death; and when a murmur ran through the house, saying, "The King is dead," there fell a silence on the multitude, and in memory of her, no one answering, cried, "Long live the King."