A Mummer's Wife Part 23

'And what time is it now?'

'About four. Don't you think you'll be able to hold out till then?'

'Oh, dear me, yes; I'm not very hungry.'

'And I'll lend you anything you want for to-night.'

'Thanks, it's very kind of you.' Kate fell to wondering if her kindness had anything to do with d.i.c.k, and with the view to discovering their secret, if they had one, she watched them during dinner, and was glad to see that Mr.

Frank Bret occupied the prima donna's entire attention.

Soon after dinner the party dispersed.

'You'll not be able to buy anything to-night,' d.i.c.k said, and Kate answered:

'Leslie said she'd lend me a nightgown.'

'And to-morrow you'll buy yourself a complete rig-out,' and he gave her five-and-twenty pounds and told her to pal with Leslie, that she was the best of the lot. It seemed to her quite a little fortune, and as d.i.c.k had to go to London next morning, she sent up word to Leslie to ask if she would come shopping with her. The idea of losing her lover so soon frightened her, and had it not been for the distraction that the buying of clothes afforded her the week she spent in Derby would have been intolerable. Leslie, it is true, often came to sit with Kate, and on more than one occasion went out to walk with her. But there were long hours which she was forced to pa.s.s alone in the gloom of the hotel sitting-room, and as she sat making herself a travelling dress, oppressed and trembling with thoughts, she was often forced to lay down her work. She had to admit that nothing had turned out as she had expected; even her own power of loving appeared feeble in comparison to the wealth of affection she had imagined herself lavishing upon d.i.c.k. Something seemed to separate them; even when she lay back and he held her in his arms, she was not as near to him as she had dreamed of being; and try as she would, she found it impossible to wipe out of her mind the house in Hanley. It rose before her, a dark background with touches of clear colour: the little girls working by the luminous window with the muslin curtains and the hanging pot of greenstuff; the stiff-backed woman moving about with plates and dishes in her hands; the invalid wheezing on the little red calico sofa. The past was still reality, and the present a fable. It didn't seem true: lying with a man who was still strange to her; rising when she pleased; getting even her meals when she pleased. She could not realize the fact that she had left for ever her quiet home in the Potteries, and was travelling about the country with a company of strolling actors. The spider that had spun itself from the ceiling did not seem suspended in life by a less visible thread than herself. Supposing d.i.c.k were never to return! The thought was appalling, and on more than one occasion she fell down on her knees to pray to be preserved from such a terrible misfortune.

But her hours of solitude were not the worst she had to bear. Impelled by curiosity to hear all the details of the elopement, and urged by an ever-present desire to say unpleasant things, Miss Beaumont paid Kate many visits, and sitting with her thick legs crossed, she insinuated all she dared. She did not venture upon a direct statement, but by the aid of a smile and an indirect allusion it was easy to suggest that love in an actor's heart is brief. As long as Miss Beaumont was present Kate repressed her feelings, but when she found herself alone tears flowed down her cheeks, and sobs echoed through the dusty sitting-room.

It was in one of these trances of emotion that d.i.c.k found her when he returned, and that night she accompanied him to the theatre. The piece played was _Les Cloches de Corneville_. Miss Beaumont as Germaine disappointed her, and she could not understand how it was that the Marquis was not in love with Serpolette. But the reality that most grossly contradicted her idea was that d.i.c.k should be playing the part of the Baillie; and when she saw her hero fall down in the middle of the stage and heard everybody laugh at him, she felt both ashamed and insulted. The romantic character of her mind a.s.serted itself, and, against her will, forced her to admire the purple-cloaked Marquis. Then her thoughts turned to considering if she would be able to act as well as any one of the ladies on the stage. It did not seem to her very difficult, and d.i.c.k had told her that, with a little teaching, she would be able to sing as well as Beaumont. The sad expression that her face wore disappeared, and she grew impatient for the piece to finish so that she might speak to d.i.c.k about taking lessons. They were now in the third act, and the moment the curtain was rung down she hurried away, asking as she went the way to the stage-door. It was by no means easy to find. She lost herself once or twice in the back streets, and when she at last found the right place, the hall-keeper refused her admittance.

'Do you belong to the company?'

After a moment's hesitation Kate replied that she did not; but that moment's hesitation was sufficient for the porter, and he at once said, 'Pa.s.s on; you'll find Mr. Lennox on the stage.'

Timidly she walked up a narrow pa.s.sage filled with men talking at the top of their voices, and from thence made her way into the wings. There she was told that Mr. Lennox was up in his room, but would be down shortly.

For a moment Kate could not realize where she was, so different was the stage now from what it had been whenever she had seen it before. The present aspect was an entirely new one.

It was dark like a cellar, and in the flaring light that spurted from an iron gas-pipe, the stage carpenter carried rocking pieces of scenery to and fro. The auditorium was a round blank overclouded in a deep twilight, through which Kate saw the long form of a grey cat moving slowly round the edge of the upper boxes.

Getting into a corner so as to be out of the way of the people who were walking up and down the stage, she matured her plans for the cultivation of her voice, and waited patiently for her lover to finish dressing. This he took some time to do, and when he did at length come downstairs, he was of course surrounded; everybody as usual wanted to speak to him, but, gallantly offering her his arm, and bending his head, he asked in a whisper how she liked the piece, and insisted on hearing what she thought of this and that part before he replied to any one of the crowd of friends who in turn strove to attract his attention. This was very flattering, but she was nevertheless obliged to relinquish her plan of explaining to him there and then her desire to learn singing. He could not keep his mind fixed on what she was saying. Mortimer was telling a story at which everybody was screaming, and just at her elbow Dubois and Montgomery were engaged in a violent argument regarding the use of consecutive fifths. But besides these distractions there was a tall thin man who kept nudging away at d.i.c.k's elbow, begging of him to come over to his place, and saying that he would give him as good a gla.s.s of whisky as he had ever tasted. n.o.body knew who the man was, but d.i.c.k thought he had met him somewhere up in the North.

'I've been about, gentlemen, in America, and in France, and I lead a bachelor life. My house is across the way, and if you'll do me the honour to come in and have a gla.s.s with me, I shall feel highly honoured. If there's one thing I do enjoy more than another, it's the conversation of intellectual men, and after the performance of to-night I don't see how I can do better than to come to you for it. But,' he continued gallantly, 'if I said just now that I was a bachelor, it is, I a.s.sure you, not because I dislike the s.e.x. My solitary state is my misfortune, not my fault, and if these ladies will accompany you, gentlemen, need I say that I shall be charmed and honoured?'

'We'll do the honouring and the ladies will do the charming,' Mortimer said, and on these words the whole party followed the tall thin man to his house, a small affair with a porch and green blinds such as might be rented by a well-to-do commercial traveller.

The furniture was mahogany and leather, and when the sideboard was opened, the acrid odour of tea and the sickly smells of stale bread and rank b.u.t.ter were diffused through the room; but these were quickly dominated by the fumes of the malt. A bottle of port was decanted for the ladies. To the host nothing was too much trouble; his guests must eat as well as drink, and he went down to the kitchen and helped the maid-servant to bring up all the eatables that were in the house--some cold beef and cheese--and after having partaken of these the company stretched themselves in their chairs.

Hayes drank his whisky in silence, while Montgomery, his legs thrown over the arm of his chair, tried to get in a word concerning the refrain of a comic song he had just finished scoring; but as the song was not going to be sung in any of the pieces they were touring with, no one was interested, and Mortimer's talk about the regeneration of the theatre was becoming so boring that Leslie and Beaumont had begun to think of bedtime, and might have taken their departure if Dubois had not said that all the great French actresses had lovers and that the English would do well to follow their examples. A variety of opinions broke forth, and everyone seemed to wake up; anecdotes were told that brought the colour to Kate's cheeks and made her feel uncomfortable. Dubois had lived a great deal in France; it was not certain that he had not acted in French, and sitting with his bishop's hat tilted on the back of his head, he related that Agar had described George Sand as a sort of pouncing disease that had affected her health more than all her other lovers put together. Dubois was declared to have insulted the profession; d.i.c.k agreed that Dubois did not know what he was talking about--George Sand was a woman, not a man--and Montgomery, who had a sister-in-law starring in Scotland, refused to be appeased until he was asked to accompany Leslie and Bret in a duet. The thin man, as everybody now called him, said he had never been so much touched in his life, a statement which Beaumont did her best to justify by going to the piano and singing three songs one after another. The third was a signal for departure, and while Montgomery vowed under his breath that it was quite enough to have to listen to Beaumont during business hours, d.i.c.k tried to awaken Hayes. He had fallen fast asleep. Their kind host said that he would put him up for the night, but the mummers thought they would be able to get him home. So, bidding the kindest of farewells to their host, whom they hoped they would see the following evening at the theatre, they stumbled into the street, pushing and carrying the drunken man between them. It was very hard to get Hayes along; every ten or a dozen yards he would insist on stopping in the middle of the roadway to argue the value and the sincerity of the friendship his comrades bore for him. Mortimer strove to pacify him, saying that he would stand in a puddle all night if by doing so he might prove that he loved him, and Dubois entreated him to believe him when he said that to sit with him under a cold September moon talking of the dear dead days would be a bliss that he could not forego. But the comedian's jokes soon began to seem idle and flat, and the ladies proposed to walk on in front, leaving the gentlemen to get their friend home as best they could.

'You're thinking of your beds,' d.i.c.k cried, and that reminded him that the hotel-keeper had told him that he shut his doors at eleven and would open them for no one before morning.

'What are we to do?' asked Leslie; 'it's very cold.'

'We'll ring him up,' said Dubois.

'But if he doesn't answer?' suggested Bret.

'I'll jolly soon make him answer,' said d.i.c.k. 'Now then, Hayes, wake up, old man, and push along.'

'Pou-sh-al-long! How can--you--talk to me like that? Yer--yer--shunting me--me--for one of those other fellows.'

'We'll talk about that in the morning, old man. Now, Mortimer, you get hold of his other arm and we'll run him along.'

Mr. Hayes struggled, declaring the while he would no longer believe in the world's friendship; but with Montgomery pushing from behind, the last hundred yards were soon accomplished, and the drunken burden deposited against the wall of the pa.s.sage.

d.i.c.k pulled the bell; the whole party listened to the distant tinkling, and after a minute or two of suspense, Mortimer said:

'That won't do, d.i.c.k; ring again. We shall be here all night.'

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, went the bell, and a husky voice, issuing from the dark shadow of the wall, said:

'I rang for another whisky, waiter, that's all.'

'The still-room maid has gone to sleep, sir,' Mortimer answered; and the bell was rung again and again, and whilst one of the company was pulling at the wire, another was hammering away with the knocker. All the same, no answer could be obtained, and the mummers consulted Leslie and Bret, who proposed that they should seek admittance at another hotel; Dubois, that they should beg hospitality of the other members of the company; Montgomery, that they should go back to the theatre. But the hotel-keeper had no right to lock them out, and they had a perfect right to break into his house, and the chances they ran of 'doing a week' were anxiously debated as they searched for a piece of wood to serve as a ram. None of sufficient size could be found, much to the relief of the ladies and Dubois, who strongly advised d.i.c.k to renounce this door-smashing experiment.

'Oh, d.i.c.k, pray don't,' whispered Kate. 'What does it matter; it will be daylight in a few hours.'

'That's all very well, but I tell you he has no right to lock us out; he's a licensed hotel-keeper. Are you game, Mortimer? We can burst in the door with our shoulders.'

'Game!' said Mortimer, in a nasal note that echoed down the courtyard; 'partridges are in season in September. Here goes!' and taking a run, he jumped with his full weight against the door.

'Out of the way,' cried d.i.c.k, breaking away from Kate, and hurling his huge frame a little closer to the lock than the comedian had done.

The excitement being now at boiling pitch, the work was begun in real earnest, and as they darted in regular succession out of the shadow of the b.u.t.tress across the clear stream of moonlight flowing down the flagstones, they appeared like a procession of figures thrown on a cloth by a magic-lantern. Mr. Hayes' white stocking served for a line, and b.u.mp, b.u.mp, they went against the door. Each effort was watched with different degrees of interest by the ladies. When little Dubois toddled forward, and sprang with what little impetus his short legs could give him, it was difficult not to laugh, and when Montgomery's reed-like shanks were seen pa.s.sing, Kate clung to Miss Leslie in fear that he would crush his frail body against the door; but when it came to the turn of any of the big ones, the excitement was great. Mortimer and Bret were watched eagerly, but most faith was placed in d.i.c.k, not only for his greater weight, but for his superior and more plucky way of jumping. Springing from the very middle of the pa.s.sage, his head back and his shoulder forward, he went like a thunderbolt against the door. It seemed wonderful that he did not bring down the wall as well as the woodwork, and a round of applause rewarded each effort. Hayes, who fancied himself in bed, and that the waiter was calling him at some strange hour in the morning, shouted occasionally the most fearful of curses from his dark corner. The noise was terrific, and the clapping of hands, shrieks of laughter, and cries of encouragement reverberated through the echoing pa.s.sage and the silent moonlight.

At last d.i.c.k's turn came again, and enraged by past failures, he put forth his whole strength and jumped from the white stocking with his full weight against the door. It gave way with a crash, and at that moment the proprietor appeared, holding a candle in his hand.

Everybody made a rush, and picking up d.i.c.k, who was not in the least hurt, they struck matches on the wall and groped their way up to their rooms, heedless of the denunciations of the enraged proprietor, who declared that he would take an action against them all. In his dressing-gown, and by the light of his candle, he surveyed his dismantled threshold, thinking how he might fasten up his house for the night. The first object he caught sight of was Mr. Hayes' white stocking. As he did so a wicked light gleamed in his eyes, and after a few efforts to awake the drunkard he walked to the gateway and looked up and down the street to see if a policeman were in sight. In real truth he was doubtful as to his rights to lock visitors out of their hotel, and, did not feel disposed to discuss the question before a magistrate. But what could be said against him for requesting the removal of a drunken man? He did not know who he was, nor was he bound to find out.

So argued the proprietor of the Hen and Chickens, and Mr. Hayes, still protesting he did not want to be called before ten, was dragged off to the station.

Next morning the hotel-keeper denied knowing anything whatever about the matter. It was true he had called the policeman's attention to the fact that there was a man asleep under the archway, but he did not know that the man was Mr. Hayes. This story was rejected by the company, and vowing that they would never again go within a mile of his shop, they all went to see poor Hayes pulled out before the beak. It was a forty-shilling affair or the option of a week, and in revenge, d.i.c.k invited last night's party to dinner at a restaurant. They weren't going to put their money into the pocket of that cad of an inn-keeper. Hayes was the hero of the hour, and he made everybody roar with laughter at the way in which he related his experiences. But after a time d.i.c.k, who had always an eye to business, drew his chair up to Mortimer's, and begged of him to try to think of some allusions to the adventures which could be worked into the piece. The question was a serious one, and until it was time to go to the theatre the art of gagging was warmly argued. Dubois held the most liberal views. He said that after a certain number of nights the author's words should be totally disregarded in favour of topical remarks. Bret, who was slow of wit, maintained that the dignity of a piece could only be maintained by sticking to the text, and cited examples to support his opinion. It was, however, finally agreed that whenever Mortimer came on the stage, he should say, 'Derby isn't a safe place to get drunk in,' and that Dubois should reply, 'Rather not.'

Owing to these little emendations, the piece went with a scream, the receipts were over a hundred, and Morton and c.o.x's Operatic Company, having done a very satisfactory week's business, a.s.sembled at the station on Sunday morning bound for Blackpool.

Kate and d.i.c.k jumped into a compartment with the same people as before, plus a chorus-girl who was making up to Montgomery in the hopes of being allowed to say on the entrance of the duke, 'Oh, what a jolly fellow he is!' Mortimer shouted to Hayes, who always went with the pipe-smokers, and d.i.c.k spoke about the possibility of producing some new piece at Liverpool.

Dubois, Mortimer, Bret, and the chorus-girl settled down to a game of nap.

d.i.c.k, Leslie, and Montgomery were singing tunes or fragments of tunes to each other, and talking about 'effects' that might be introduced into the new piece. But would d.i.c.k produce a new piece?

The conversation changed, and it was asked if no money could be saved this trip in the taking of the tickets, and d.i.c.k was closely questioned as to when, in his opinion, it would be safe to try their little plant on again.

Instead of answering he leant back, and gradually a pleasant smile began to trickle over his broad face. He was evidently maturing some plan. 'What is it, d.i.c.k? Do say like a good fellow,' was repeated many times, but he refused to give any reply. This aroused the curiosity of the company, and it grew to burning pitch when the train drew up at a station and d.i.c.k began a conversation with the guard concerning the length of time they would have at Preston, and where they would find the train that was to take them on to Blackpool.

'You'll have a quarter of an hour's wait at Preston. You'll arrive there at 4.20 and at thirty-five past you'll find the train for Blackpool drawn up on the right-hand side of the station.'

'Thanks very much,' replied d.i.c.k as he tipped the guard; and then, turning his head towards his friends, he whispered, 'It's as right as a trivet; I shall be back in a minute.'

'Where's he off to?' asked everybody.