A Mummer's Wife Part 48

'Fo-four wheel-er--if you please.'

'Yes, that'll suit you best,' said the woman, as she went downstairs.

'You'd perhaps fall out of a hansom. If I were your husband I'd break every bone in your body.'

But Kate was now much soberer, and weak and sick she leaned back upon the hard cushions of the clattering cab. Her mouth was full of water, and the shifting angles of the streets produced on her an effect similar to sea-sickness. London rang in her ears; she could hear a piano tinkling; she saw d.i.c.k directing the movements of a line of girls. Then her dream was brought to an end by a gulp. Oh! the fearful nausea; and she did not feel better until, flooding her dress and ruining the red velvet seat, all she had drunk came up. But the vomit brought her great relief, and had it not been for a little dizziness and weakness, she would have felt quite right when she arrived at the stage-door. In a terrible state of dirt and untidiness she was surely, but she noticed nothing, her mind being now fully occupied in thinking what she should say, first to the stage-door-keeper, and then to her husband.

At the corner of Wych Street she dismissed the cab, and this done she did not seem to have courage enough for anything. She felt as if she would like to sit down on a doorstep and cry. The menacing threats, the bitter upbraidings she had intended, all slipped from her like dreams, and she felt utterly wretched.

At that moment, in her little walk up the pavement she found herself opposite a public-house. Something whispered in her ear that after her sickness one little nip of brandy was necessary, and would put her straight in a moment. She hesitated, but someone pushed her from behind and she went in. A four of brandy freshened her up wonderfully, enabling her to think of what she had come to do, and to remember how badly she was being treated. A second drink put light into her eyes and wickedness into her head, and she felt she could, and would, face the devil. 'I'll give it to him; I'll teach him that I'm not to be trodden on,' she said to herself as she strutted manfully towards the stage-door, walking on her heels so as to avoid any unsteadiness of gait.

The man in the little box was old and feeble. He said he would send her name by the first person going down; but Kate was not in a mood to brook delays, and, profiting by his inability to stop her, she banged through the swinging door and commenced the descent of a long flight of steps. Below her was the stage, and between the wings she could see the girls arranged in a semicircle. d.i.c.k, with a big staff in hand, stood in front of the footlights directing the movements of a procession which was being formed; the piano tinkled merrily on the O.P. side.

'Mr. Chappel, will you be good enough to play the "Just put this in your pocket" chorus over again?' cried d.i.c.k, stamping his staff heavily upon the boards.

'Now then, girls, I hear a good deal too much talking going on at the back there. I dare say it's very amusing; but if you'd try to combine business with pleasure---Now, who did I put in section one?'

Kate hesitated a moment, arrested by the tones of his voice, and she could not avoid thinking of the time when she used to play Clairette; besides, all the well-known faces were there. Our lives move as in circles; no matter what strange vicissitudes we pa.s.s through, we generally find ourselves gliding once more into the well-known grooves, and d.i.c.k, in forming the present company, had naturally fallen back upon the old hands, who had travelled with him in the country. They were nearly all there.

Mortimer, with his ringlets and his long nasal drawl, stood, as usual, in the wings, making ill-natured remarks. Dubois strutted as before, and tilting his bishop's hat, explained that he would take no further engagement as a singer; if people would not let him act they would have to do without him. With her dyed hair tucked neatly away under her bonnet Miss Leslie smiled as agreeably as ever. Beaumont alone seemed to be missing, and Montgomery, in all the importance of a going-to-be-produced author, strode along up and down the stage, apparently busied in thought, the tails of a Newmarket coat still flapping about his thin legs; and when he appeared in profile against the scenery he looked, as he always had done, like the flitting shadow thrown by an enormous magic-lantern.

Kate sullenly watched them, gripping the rail of the staircase tightly. The momentary softening of heart, occasioned by the remembrance of old times, died away in the bitterness of the thought that she who had counted for so much was now pushed into a corner to live forgotten or disdained. Why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you--because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she pushed past, 'There's Mrs. Lennox!'

In the middle of the stage, however, she looked round, discountenanced by the silence and the crowd, and, hoping to calm her, d.i.c.k advised her, in whispers, to go upstairs to his room. But this was the signal for her to break forth.

'Go up to your room?' she screamed. 'Never, never! Do you suppose it is to talk to you that I came here? No, I despise you too much. I hate you, and I want every one here to know how you treat me.'

With a dull stare she examined the circle of girls who stood whispering in groups, as if she were going to address one in particular, and several drew back, frightened. d.i.c.k attempted to say something, but it seemed that the very sound of his voice was enough.

'Go away, go away!' she exclaimed at the top of her voice. 'Go away; don't touch me! Go to that woman of yours--Mrs. Forest--go to her, and be d.a.m.ned, you beast! You know she's paying for everything here. You know that you are----'

'For goodness' sake remember what you're saying,' said d.i.c.k, interrupting, and trembling as if for his life. He cast an anxious glance around to see if the lady in question was within hearing. Fortunately she was not on the stage.

The chorus crowded timidly forward looking like a school in their walking-dresses. The carpenters had ceased to hammer, and were peeping down from the flies; Kate stood balancing herself and staring blindly at those who surrounded her. Leslie and Montgomery, in the position of old friends, were endeavouring to soothe her, whilst Mortimer and Dubois argued pa.s.sionately as to when they had seen her drunk for the first time. The first insisted that when she had joined them at Hanley she was a bit inebriated; the latter declared that it had begun with the champagne on her wedding day.

'Don't you remember, d.i.c.k was married with a scratched face?'

'To judge from present appearances,' said the comedian, forcing his words slowly through his nose, 'he's likely to die with one.' At this sally three supers retired into the wings holding their sides, and Dubois, furious at being outdone in a joke, walked away in high dudgeon, calling Mortimer an unfeeling brute.

In the meantime the drunken row was waxing more furious every moment.

Struggling frantically with her friends, Kate called attention to the sticking-plaster on d.i.c.k's face, and declared that she would do for him.

'You see what I gave him last night, and he deserved it. Oh! the beast! And I'll give him more; and if you knew all you wouldn't blame me. It was he who seduced me, who got me to run away from home, and he deserts me for other women. But he shan't, he shan't, he shan't; I'll kill him first; yes, I will, and n.o.body shall stop me.'

d.i.c.k listened quite broken with shame for himself and for her; as an excuse for the absence of his wife from the theatre he had told Mortimer and Hayes that London did not agree with her, and that she had to spend most of her time at the seaside. All had condoled with him, and when they were searching London for a second lady, all had agreed that Mrs. Lennox was just the person they wanted for the part. What a pity, they said, she was not in town. At the present moment d.i.c.k wished her the other side of Jordan. For all he knew, she might remain screaming at him the whole day, and if Mrs. Forest came back--well, he didn't know what would happen; the whole game would then be up the spout. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to tell Montgomery of the danger his piece was in; he and Kate had always been friends; she might listen to him.

Such were d.i.c.k's reflections as he stood bashfully trying to avoid the eyes of his ballet-girls. For the life of him he didn't know which way to look.

In front of him was a wall of people, whereon certain faces detached themselves. He saw Dubois' mumming mug widening with delight until the grin formed a semi-circle round the Jew nose. Mortimer looked on with the mock earnestness of a tortured saint in a stained-gla.s.s window. Pity was written on all the girls' faces; all were sorry for d.i.c.k, especially a tall woman who forgot herself so completely that she threw her arms about a super and sobbed on his shoulder.

But Kate still continued to advance, although held by Montgomery and Miss Leslie. The long black hair hung in disordered ma.s.ses; her brown eyes were shot with golden lights; the green tints in her face became, in her excessive pallor, dirty and abominable in colour, and she seemed more like a demon than a woman as her screams echoed through the empty theatre.

'By Jove! we ought to put up _Jane Eyre_,' said Mortimer. 'If she were to play the mad woman like that, we'd be sure to draw full houses.'

'I believe you,' said Dubois; but at that moment he was interrupted by a violent scream, and suddenly disengaging herself from those who held her, Kate rushed at d.i.c.k. With one hand she grappled him by the throat, and before anyone could interfere she succeeded in nearly tearing the shirt from his back.

When at length they were separated, she stood staring and panting, every fibre of her being strained with pa.s.sion; but she did not again burst forth until someone, in a foolish attempt to pacify her, ventured to side with her in her denunciation of her husband.

'How should such as you dare to say a word against him! I will not hear him abused! No, I will not; I say he's a good man. Yes, yes! He is a good man, the best man that ever lived!' she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the boards, 'the best man that ever lived! I will not hear a word against him!

No, I will not! He's my husband; he married me! Yes he did; I can show my certificate, and that's more than any one of you can.

'I know you, a d.a.m.ned lot of hussies! I know you; I was one of you myself.

You think I wasn't. Well, I can prove it. You go and ask Montgomery if I didn't play Serpolette all through the country, and Clairette too. I should like to see any of you do that, with the exception of Lucy, who was always a good friend to me; but the rest of you I despise as the dirt under my feet; so do you think that I would permit you--that I came here to listen to my husband being abused, and by such as you! If he has his faults he's accountable to none but me.'

Here she had to pause for lack of breath; and d.i.c.k, who had been pursuing his shirt-stud, which had rolled into the foot-lights, now drew himself up, and in his stage-commanding voice declared the rehearsal to be over. A few of the girls lingered, but they were beckoned away by the others, who saw that the present time was not suitable for the discussion of boots, tights, and dressing-rooms. There was no one left but Leslie, Montgomery, d.i.c.k, Kate, and Harding, who, twisting his moustache, watched and listened apparently with the greatest interest.

'Oh, you've no idea what a nice woman she used to be, and is, were it not for that cursed drink,' said Montgomery, with the tears running down his nose. 'You remember her, Leslie, don't you? Isn't what I say true? I never liked a woman so much in my life.'

'You were a friend of hers, then?' said Harding.

'I should think I was.'

'Then you never were--Yes, yes, I understand. A little friendship flavoured with love. Yes, yes. Wears better, perhaps, than the genuine article. What do you think, Leslie?'

'Not bad,' said the prima donna, 'for people with poor appet.i.tes. A kind of diet suitable for Lent, I should think.'

'Ah! a t.i.tle for a short story, or better still for an operetta. What do you think, Montgomery? Shall I do you a book ent.i.tled _Lovers in Lent_, or _A Lover's Lent_? and Leslie will--'

'No, I won't. None of your forty days for me.'

'I can't understand how you people can go on talking nonsense with a scene so terrible pa.s.sing under your eyes,' cried the musician, as he pointed to Kate, who was calling after d.i.c.k as she staggered in pursuit of him up the stairs towards the stage-door.

'Well, what do you want me to do?'

'She'll disgrace him in the street.'

'I can't help that. I never interfere in a love affair; and this is evidently the great pa.s.sion of a life.'

Montgomery cast an indignant glance at the novelist and rushed after his friends; but when he arrived at the stage-door he saw the uselessness of his interference.

It was in the narrow street; the heat sweltered between the old houses that leaned and lolled upon the huge black traversing beams like aged women on crutches; and Kate raved against d.i.c.k in language that was fearful to hear amid the stage carpenters, the chorus-girls, the idlers that a theatre collects standing with one foot in the gutter, where vegetable refuse of all kinds rotted. Her beautiful black hair was now hanging over her shoulders like a mane; someone had trodden on her dress and nearly torn it from her waist, and, in avid curiosity, women with dyed hair peeped out of a suspicious-looking tobacco shop. Over the way, stuck under an overhanging window, was an orange-stall; the proprietress stood watching, whilst a crowd of vermin-like children ran forward, delighted at the prospect of seeing a woman beaten. Close by, in shirt-sleeves, the pot-boy flung open the public-house door, partly for the purpose of attracting custom, half with the intention of letting a little air into the bar-room.

'Oh, Kate! I beg of you not to go in there,' said d.i.c.k; 'you've had enough; do come home!'

'Come home!' she shrieked, 'and with you, you beast! It was you who seduced me, who got me away from my husband.'

This occasioned a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt in the crowd, and several voices asked for information.

'And how did he manage to do that, marm?' said one.

'With a bottle of gin. What do you think?' cried another.