A Mummer's Wife Part 42

It was usual for d.i.c.k, when he came in at night, to tell what Kate termed 'the news.' It amused her to hear what had been done at the theatre, what fresh companies had come to town. On this occasion it surprised him that she took so little interest in the conversation, and after hazarding a few remarks, he said:

'But what's the matter, dear? Aren't you well?'

'Oh yes, I'm quite well,' Kate answered stolidly.

'Well, what's the matter? You don't speak.'

'I'm tired, that's all.'

'And how's the baby?'

'I think she's asleep; don't wake her.'

But d.i.c.k went over, and holding a candle in one hand he looked long and anxiously at his child.

'I'm afraid the little thing is not well; she's fidgeting, and is as restless as possible.'

'I wish you'd leave her alone; if she awakes, it's I who will have the trouble of her, not you. It's very unkind of you.'

d.i.c.k looked at his wife and said nothing; but as she continued to speak, the evidences of drink became so unmistakable that he said, trying not to offend her:

'I'm afraid you've been drinking a little too much of the brandy the doctor ordered you.'

At this accusation, Kate drew herself up and angrily denied having touched a drop of anything that day.

'How dare you accuse me of being drunk? You ought to respect me more.'

'Drunk, Kate? I never said you were drunk, but I thought you might have taken an overdose.'

'I suppose you'll believe me when I tell you that I've not had a teaspoonful of anything.'

'Of course I believe you, dear,' said d.i.c.k, who did not like to think that Kate was telling him a deliberate lie, and to avoid further discussion he suggested bed. Kate did not answer him, and he heard her trying to get undressed, and wondering at her clumsiness he asked himself if he should propose to unlace her stays for her. But he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. She tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking she might break them and accuse him of unwillingness to come to her a.s.sistance, he said, 'Shall I----'

But she cut him short. 'Let me alone, let me alone!' she cried, and d.i.c.k kicked off his shoes.

'How can you be so unkind, or is it that you've no thought for that poor sick child?' she said; and d.i.c.k answered:

'I a.s.sure you, my dear, it couldn't be helped; the shoe slipped off unexpectedly,' and as if the world had set its face against her, Kate burst into tears. At first d.i.c.k tried to console her, but seeing that this was hopeless, he turned his face to the wall and went to sleep.

She had not drawn the curtains of the window, and the outlines of the room showing through the blue dusk frightened her, so ghostlike did they appear.

The cradle stood under the window, the child's face just visible on the pallor of the pillow. 'Baby is asleep,' she said; 'that's a good sign,' and watched the cradle, trying to remember how long it was since baby had had her bottle; and while wondering if she could trust herself to wake when baby cried she began to notice that the room was becoming lighter. 'It cannot be the dawn,' she thought; 'the dawn is hours away; we're in December. Besides, the dawn is grey, and the light is green, a sort of pantomime light,' she said. It seemed to her very like a fairy tale. The giant snoring, and her baby stirring in her cradle with the limelight upon her, or was she dreaming? It might be a dream out of which she could not rouse herself. But the noise she heard was d.i.c.k's breathing, and she wished that Ralph would breathe more easily. Ralph, Ralph! No, she was with d.i.c.k.

d.i.c.k, not Ralph, was her husband. It was with a great effort that she roused herself. 'It was only a dream' she murmured. 'But baby is crying.

Her cry is so faint,' she said; and, slinging her legs over the side of the bed, she tried to find her dressing-gown, but could not remember where she had laid it 'Baby wants her bottle,' she said, and sought for the matches vainly at first, but at last she found them, and lighted a spirit lamp.

'One must get the water warmed, cold milk would kill her;' and while the water was heating she walked up and down the room rocking her baby, talking to her, striving to quiet her; and when she thought the water was warm she tried to prepare baby's milk as the doctor had ordered it. Her hope was that she had succeeded in mixing the milk and water in right proportions, for the last time she had given the baby her bottle she was afraid the water was not warm enough. Perhaps that was why baby was crying, or it might be merely a little wind that was troubling her. She held the baby upright, hoping that the pain would pa.s.s away with a change of position, and she walked up and down the room rocking the child in her arms and crooning to her for fully half an hour. At last the child ceased to wail, and she laid her in her cradle and sat watching, thinking that if she were to lose her baby she must go mad.... She had lost d.i.c.k's love, and if the baby were taken away there would be nothing left for her to live for.

'Nothing left for me to live for,' she repeated again and again, till the cold winter's night striking through her nightgown reminded her that she was risking her life, which she had no right to do, for baby needed her.

'Who would look after poor baby if I were taken away?' she asked, and shaking with cold, was about to crawl into bed; but on laying her knee on the bedside she remembered that a little spirit often saved a human life; and going to the chest of drawers took out the bottle she had hidden from d.i.c.k and filled a gla.s.s.

The spirit diffused a grateful warmth through her, and she drank a second gla.s.s slowly, thinking of her child and husband, and how good she intended to be to both of them, until ideas became broken, and she tumbled into bed, awaking d.i.c.k, who was soon asleep again, with Kate by his side watching a rim of light rising above a dark chimney stack and wondering what new shows must be preparing. Already the rim of light had become a crescent, and before her eyes closed in sleep the full moon looked down through the window into the cradle, waking the sleeping child. But her cries were too weak; her mother lay in sleep beyond reach of her wails, heart-breaking though they were. The little blankets were cast aside, and the struggle between life and death began: soft roundnesses fell into distortions; chubby knees were wrenched to and fro, muscles seemed to be torn, and a few minutes later little Kate, who had known of this world but a ray of moonlight, died--a glimpse of the moon was all that had been granted to her. After watching for an hour or more, the moon moved up the skies; and in Kate's dream the moon was the great yellow witch in the pantomime, who, before striding her broomstick, cries back: 'Thou art mine only, for ever and for ever!'

XXIV

The pa.s.sing of a funeral in our English streets is so common a sight that hea.r.s.es and plumes and mutes and carriages filled with relatives garbed in c.r.a.pe have almost ceased to remind us that our dust too is on the way to the graveyard; and it is not until we catch sight of a man walking in the carriage way carrying a brown box under his arm that we start like someone suddenly stung and remember the mystery of life and death. Even d.i.c.k remembered it, and wondered as he plodded after little Kate's coffin why it was that she should have been called out of the void and called back into the void so quickly. 'Whether our term be but a month or ninety years, life and death beckon us but once,' he said, and he fell to envying Kate her tears, tears seeming to him more comforting than thoughts, and he would gladly have shed a few to help the journey away: not a long one, however, for the Lennoxes lived in an unfrequented part of the town by the cemetery.

'We shall soon be there,' he whispered, and Kate, raising her weeping face, looked round.

All the shops were filled with funeral emblems, wreaths of everlasting flowers, headstones with dates in indelible ink, crosses of consolation, and kneeling angels.

'If we only had money,' Kate cried, 'to buy a monument to put on her grave,' and she called upon d.i.c.k to admire a kneeling angel.

'It's very beautiful,' d.i.c.k said, 'I wish we had the money to buy it. Poor little Kate! it's a pity she didn't live; she was very like you, dear.'

He had been offered an engagement for Kate to play the part of the Countess in _Olivette_, and had accepted it, hoping in the meanwhile to be able to persuade her to take it. It was rather hard to ask her to play the day after the funeral, but there was no help for it. The company would arrive in town to-morrow, and d.i.c.k thought it would be a pity to let the chance slip. But her grief was so great that he had not dared to speak to her about it.

'Did you ever see so many graves?' she asked. 'We shall never be able to find her when we come to seek the grave out. An angel--a headstone, at least, would be a help. Oh, d.i.c.k, she continued, 'to think they'll put her down into the ground, and that we shall perhaps never even see her grave again. We may be a hundred miles from here tomorrow, or after.'

d.i.c.k, who had had credit of the undertaker, looked around uneasily; but seeing that Kate had not been overheard, he said:

'Poor little thing! It's sad to lose her, isn't it? I should have liked to have seen her grow up.'

The coffin was first deposited in the middle of the church, and d.i.c.k twisted the brim of his big hat nervously, troubled by the service the parson in a white flowing surplice read from the reading-desk. Kate, on the contrary, appeared much consoled, and prayed silently, and the parson mumbled so many prayers that d.i.c.k began to consider the time it would take to learn a part of equal length. And all this while the little brown box remained like a piece of lost luggage, lonely in the greyness of this station-house-looking church; and when the mutes came to claim it Kate again burst into tears. Her tears reminded the parson that he was here to console, and in soft and unctuous words he a.s.sured the weeping mother that her child had only been removed to a better and brighter world, and that we must all submit to the will of G.o.d. But in the porch his attention was drawn from the weeping mother to the weather. 'A little more of this' he thought, 'and others will be doing for me what I'm now doing for others.'

But there being no help for it, he followed the procession through the tombstones, his white surplice blowing, d.i.c.k wondering how the little grave had been found amongst so many, but the s.e.xton knew. The parson sprinkled earth upon the coffin, and the sound of the withdrawn ropes cut the mother's heart even more than the rattle of the earth and stones on the coffin lid. Kate threw some flowers into the grave, and it seemed to d.i.c.k certain that if she didn't pull herself together she would not be able to play the Countess in _Olivette_ on the morrow. She was so fearfully haggard and worn that he doubted if any amount of rouge would make her look the part.

He would have done anything in the world for his little girl while she was alive, but now that she was dead--Besides, after all, she was only a baby.

For some time past this idea had occurred to him as an excellent argument to convince Kate that there was really no reason why she should not go to rehearsal on the following morning. If he had not yet spoken in this way it was only because he was afraid that she would round on him, and call him a heartless beast, and he would do anything to evade a sulky look; and now, when the funeral was over and they were walking home wet, sorrowful, and tired, it was curious to watch how he gave his arm to Kate, and the timidity with which he introduced the subject. At first he only spoke of himself, and his hopes of being able to obtain a better part and a higher salary in the new drama. But mention to a mummer who is lying on his death-bed that a new piece is going to be produced, and he will not be able to resist asking a question or two about it; and Kate, weary as she was, at once p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, and said:

'Oh, they're going to do a new piece! You didn't tell me that before.'

'It was only decided last night,' replied d.i.c.k.

The spell was now broken, and when they reached home and had dinner the conversation was resumed in a strain that might be considered as being almost jovial after the mournful tones of the last few days. d.i.c.k felt as if a big weight had been lifted from his mind, and the thought again occurred to him that there was no use in making such a fuss over a baby that was only three weeks old. Kate, too, seemed to be awakening to the conviction that there was no use in grieving for ever. The state of torpor she had been living in--for to stifle remorse she had been drinking heavily on the quiet--now began to wear off, and her brain to uncloud itself; and d.i.c.k, surprised at the transformation, could not help exclaiming:

'That's right, Kate; cheer up, old girl. A baby three weeks old isn't the same as a grown person.'

'I know it isn't, but if you only knew--I'm afraid I neglected the poor little thing.'

'Nonsense!' replied d.i.c.k, for having an eye constantly on the main chance, he wished to avoid any fresh outburst of grief. 'You looked after it very well indeed; besides, you'll have another,' he added with a smile.

'I want no other,' replied Kate, vexed at being misunderstood, and yet afraid to explain herself more thoroughly.

At last d.i.c.k said:

'I wish there was a part for you in the new piece.'

'Yes, so do I. I haven't been doing anything for a long while now.'