A Mummer's Wife Part 18

Kate was too occupied with her own thoughts to notice that she was being laughed at, and she said instantly, 'I want to see Mr. Lennox; will you tell him I'm here?'

'Mr. Lennox is on the stage; unless yer on in the piece I don't see 'ow it's to be done.'

At this rebuff Kate looked round the grinning faces, but at that moment a rough-looking fellow of the same cla.s.s as the speaker ascended from the cellar-like opening, and after nudging his 'pal,' touched his cap, and said with the politeness of one who had been tipped, 'This way, marm. Mr. Lennox is on the stage, but if you'll wait a minute I'll tell 'im yer 'ere. Take care, marm, or yer'll slip; very arkerd place to get down, with all 'em baskets in the way. This company do travel with a deal of luggage. That's Mr. Lennox's--the one as yer 'and is on.'

'Oh, indeed!' Kate said, stopping on her way to read Mr. Lennox's name on the basket.

'We piles 'em 'gainst that 'ere door so as to 'ave 'em 'andy for sending down to the station ter-morrow morning. But if you will remain here a moment, marm, I'll run up on the stage and see if I can see 'im.'

The mention made by the scene-shifter of the approaching removal of d.i.c.k's basket frightened her, and she remembered that she had scarcely spoken to him since last night. He had been obliged to go out in the morning before breakfast; and though he had tried hard to meet her during the course of the day, fate seemed to be against them.

She was in a large, low-roofed storeroom with an earthen floor. The wooden ceiling was supported by an endless number of upright posts that gave the place the appearance of a ship. At the farther end there were two stone staircases leading to opposite sides of the stage. In front of her were a drum and barrel, and the semi-darkness at the back was speckled over with the sparkling of the gilt tinsel stuff used in pantomimes; a pair of lattice-windows, a bundle of rapiers, a cradle and a breastplate, formed a group in the centre; a broken trombone lay at her feet. The odour of size that the scenery exhaled reminded her of Ralph's room; and she wondered if the swords were real, what different uses the tinsel paper might be put to; until she would awake from her dream, asking herself bitterly why he did not come down to see her. In the pause that followed the question, she was startled by a prolonged shout from the chorus. The orchestra seemed to be going mad; the drum was thumped, the cymbals were clashed, and back and forward rushed the noisy feet, first one way, then the other; a soprano voice was heard for a moment clear and distinct, and was drowned immediately after in a general scream. What could it mean? Had the place taken fire? Kate asked herself wildly.

'The finale of the act 'as begun, marm; Mr. Lennox will be hoff the stage directly.'

'Has nothing happened? Is the--?'

The scene-shifter's look of astonishment showed Kate that she was mistaken, but before they had time to exchange many words, the trampling and singing overhead suddenly ceased, and the m.u.f.fled sound of clapping and applause was heard in the distance.

'There's the act.' said Bill; 'he'll be down now immediately; he'll take no call for the perliceman,' and a moment after a man attired in knee-breeches, with a huge cravat wound several times round his throat, came running down the stone staircase. 'Oh, 'ere he is,' said Bill. 'I'll leave yer now, marm.'

'And so you found your way, dear?' said d.i.c.k, putting out his arm to draw Kate towards him.

But he looked so very strange with the great patches of coa.r.s.e red on his cheeks, and the deep black lines drawn about his eyes, that she could not conceal her repulsion, and guessing the cause of her embarra.s.sment, he said, laughing:

'Ah! I see you don't know me! A good makeup, isn't it? I took a lot of trouble with it.'

Kate made no answer; but the sound of his voice soothed her, and she leaned upon his arm.

'Give me a kiss, dear, before we go up,' he said coaxingly.

Kate looked at him curiously, and then, laughing at her own foolishness, said, 'Wait until you have the soldier's dress on.'

At the top of the staircase the piled-up side-scenes made so many ways and angles that Kate had to keep close to d.i.c.k for fear of getting lost.

However, at last they arrived in the wings, where gaslights were burning blankly on the whitewashed walls. A crowd of loud-voiced, perspiring girls in short fancy petticoats and with bare necks and arms, pushed their way towards the mysterious and ladder-like staircases and scrambled up them.

Ange Pitou had taken off his c.o.c.ked hat and was sharing a pint of beer with Clairette. It being her turn to drink, she said:

'Noe, hold my skirts in, there's a dear; this beer plays the devil with white satin.'

'It isn't on your skirts it will go if you spill it,' Ange replied, 'but into your bosom. Stop a second, and I'll give the bottom of the pot a wipe, then you'll be all right.'

In the meanwhile Pomponet and La Rivodiere were engaged in a violent quarrel.

'Just you understand,' shouted Mortimer: 'if you want to do any clowning you'd better fill your wig with sawdust. It had better be stuffed with something.'

This sally was received with smacks of approbation from a circle of supers, who were waiting in the hopes of hearing some spirited dialogue.

'Clowning! And what can you do? I suppose your line is the legitimate. Go and play Don John again, and you'll read us the notices in the morning.'

'Notices ... talking of notices, you never had one, except one to quit from your landlady, poor woman!' replied Mortimer in his most nasal intonation of voice.

Enchanted at this witticism, the supers laughed, and poor Dubois would have been utterly done for if d.i.c.k had not interposed.

'What do you think, dear?' he said, drawing her aside; 'shall I go and make my change now? I don't come on till the end of the act, and we'll be able to talk without interruption till then.'

She had expected him to explain the rights and wrongs of that terrible quarrel that so providentially had pa.s.sed off without bloodshed, and he seemed to have forgotten all about it.

'But those two gentlemen--the actors--what will happen? Are they going to go away?'

'Lord, no! of course it is riling to have a fellow mugging behind you with his wig when you're speaking, but one must go in for a bit of extra clowning on Sat.u.r.day night.'

All this was Greek to her, and before she could ask d.i.c.k to explain he had darted down a pa.s.sage. When he was with her it was well enough, but the moment his protection was withdrawn all her old fears returned to her. She did not know where to stand. The scene-shifters had come to carry away the scenes that were piled up in her corner, and one of the huge slips had nearly fallen on her. A troop of girls in single coloured gowns and poke bonnets had stopped to stare at her. She remembered their appearance from Thursday, but she had not seen their vulgar, everyday eyes, nor heard until now their coa.r.s.e, everyday laughs and jokes. Amid this group Lange, fat and lumpy, perorated.

'The most beastly place I ever was in, my dear. I always dread the week here. Just look round the house. I don't believe there's a man in front who has a quid in his pocket. Now at Liverpool there are lots of nice men. You should have seen the things I had sent me when I was there with Harrington's company--and the bouquets! There were flowers left for me every day.'

What all this meant Kate did not know, and she did not care to guess. For a moment the strange world she found herself in had distracted her thoughts, but it could do so no longer; no, not if it were ten times as strange. What did she care for these actresses? What was it to her what they said or what they thought of her? She had come to look after her lover; that was her business, and that only. He was going away to-morrow, and they had arranged nothing! She did not know whether he was going to remain, or if he expected her to follow him. She hated the people around her; she hated them for their laughter, for their fine clothes; she hated them above all because they were all calling for him. It was Mr. Lennox here and d.i.c.k there. What did they want with him? Could they do nothing without him? It seemed to her that they were all mocking her, and she hated them for it.

The stage was now full of women. The men stood in the wings or ran to the ends of distant pa.s.sages and called, 'd.i.c.k, d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k!'

The orchestra had ceased playing, and the noise in front of the curtain was growing every moment angrier and louder.

At last d.i.c.k appeared, looking splendid in red tights and Hessian boots. He caught hold of two or three girls, changed their places, peeped to see if Montgomery was all right, and gave the signal to ring up.

But once the curtain was raised, he was surrounded by half a dozen persons all wanting to speak to him. Ridding himself of them he contrived to get to Kate's side, but they had not exchanged half a dozen words before the proprietor asked if he could 'have a moment.' Then Hender turned up, and begged of Kate to come and see the dressing-rooms, but fearing to miss him, she declared she preferred to stay where she was. Nevertheless, it was difficult not to listen to her friend's explanations as to what was pa.s.sing on the stage, and in one of these unguarded moments d.i.c.k disappeared. It was heart-breaking, but she could do nothing but wait until he came back.

Like an iron, the idea that she was about to lose her lover forced itself deeper into her heart. The fate of her life was hanging in the balance, and the few words that were to decide it were being delayed time after time, by things of no importance. d.i.c.k had now returned, and was talking with the gas-man, who wanted to know if the extra 'hand' he had engaged was to be paid by the company or the management. Every now and again an actress or an actor would rush through the wings and stare at her; sometimes it was the whole chorus, headed by Miss Beaumont, whose rude remarks reached her ears frequently.

She tried to retreat, but the rude eyes and words followed her.

Occasionally the voice of the prompter was heard: 'Now then, ladies, silence if you please; I can't hear what's being said on the stage.' No one listened to him, and, like animals in a fair, they continued to crush and to crowd in the pa.s.sage between the wings and the whitewashed wall. A tall, fat girl stood close by; her hand was on her sword, which she slapped slowly against her thighs. The odour of hair, cheap scent, necks, bosoms and arms was overpowering, and to Kate's sense of modesty there was something revolting in this loud display of body. A bugle call was soon sounded in the orchestra, and this was the signal for much noise and bustle. The conspirators rushed off the stage, threw aside their cloaks, and immediately after the soft curling strains of the waltz were heard; then the bugle was sounded again, and the girls began to tramp.

'Cue for soldiers' entrance,' shouted the prompter.

'Now then, ladies, are you ready?' cried d.i.c.k, as he put himself at the head of the army.

'Yes,' was murmured all along the line, and seeing her hero marching away at the head of so many women, any one of whom he could have had for the asking, it crossed her mind that it was unnatural for him to stoop to her, a poor little dressmaker of Hanley, who did not know anything except, perhaps, how to st.i.tch the seams of a skirt. But after what had befallen her last night, it did not seem possible that her fate was to be left behind, st.i.tching beside Hender and the two little girls, Annie and Lizzie; st.i.tching bodice after bodice, skirt after skirt, till the end of her days, remembering always something that had come into her life suddenly and had gone out of it suddenly. 'It cannot be,' she cried out to herself--'it cannot be!' And she remembered that he had said that her ear was true, and her voice as pure as Leslie's. 'A little throaty,' he had said, 'but that can be improved.' What he meant by throaty she did not know, but no matter; and to convince herself that he had spoken truly she sang the refrain of the waltz till the gas-man pulled a rope and brought the curtain down. She was about to rush on the stage to speak to d.i.c.k, but the gas-man stopped her.

'You must wait a moment, there's a call,' he said. Up went the curtain; the house burst into loud applause. Down went the curtain; up it went again.

This time only the princ.i.p.als came on, and while they were bowing and smiling to the audience a great herd of females poured through the wings, and Kate found herself again among courtesans, conspirators, seducers, and wandering minstrels.

'Who is she?' they asked as they went by. And Kate heard somebody answer, 'A spoon of d.i.c.k's,' and unable to endure the coa.r.s.e jeering faces, which the strange costumes seemed to accentuate, she took advantage of a sudden break in the ranks and ran through the wings towards the back of the stage.

'What's the matter, dear?' he said, drawing her to him.

'Oh, d.i.c.k, you shouldn't neglect me as you do! I've been waiting here among those horrid girls nearly an hour for you, and you're talking to everybody but me.'

'It wasn't my fault, dear; I was on in the last act. They couldn't have finished it without me.'

'I don't know, I don't know; but you're going away to-morrow, and I shall never see you again. It's very hard on me that this last night--night-- that----'