The Strollers Part 45

"It kept you busy, Francois. There was the little peasant girl on the Rhine. What flaxen hair she had and eyes like the sky! Yet a word of praise--a little flattery--"

"My lord was irresistible," said the valet with mild sarcasm.

"Let me see, Francois, what became of her?"

"She drowned herself in the river."

"That is true. I had forgotten. Well, life is measured by pleasures, not by years, and I was the prince of c.o.xcombs. Up at ten o'clock; no sooner on account of the complexion; then visits from the tradespeople and a drive in the park to look at the ladies. It was there I used to meet the English actress. 'Twas there, with her, I vowed the park was a garden of Eden! What a scene, when my barrister tried to settle the case! Fortunately a marriage in England was not a marriage in France. I saw her last night, Francois"--with an insane look--"in the flesh and blood; as life-like as the night before we took the stage for Brighton!" Suddenly he shrieked and a look of terror replaced the vain, simpering expression.

"There, Francois!" Glancing with awe behind him. And truly there stood a dark shadow; a gruesome presence. His face became distorted and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

The valet gazed at him with indifference. Then he went to an inner room and brought a valise which he began packing carefully and methodically. After he had completed this operation he approached the dressing table and took up a magnificent jeweled watch, which he examined for a moment before thrusting it into his pocket. A snuff box, set with diamonds, and several rings followed. Francois with the same deliberation opened a drawer and took out a small box which he tried to open, and, failing, forced the lid with the poker. At this, my lord opened his eyes, and, in a weak voice, for his strength had nearly deserted him, demanded:

"What are you doing, Francois?"

"Robbing you, my lord," was the slow and dignified response.

The marquis' eyes gleamed with rage. He endeavored to call out, but his voice failed him and he fell back, trembling and overcome.

"Thief! Ingrate!" he hissed, hoa.r.s.ely.

"I beg you not to excite yourself, my lord," said the stately valet.

"You are already very weak and it will hasten the end."

"Is this the way you repay me?"

"My lord will not need these things soon."

"Have you no grat.i.tude?" stammered the marquis, whose physical and mental condition was truly pitiable.

"Grat.i.tude for having been called 'idiot,' 'dog,' and 'blockhead'

nearly all my life! I am somewhat lacking in that quality, I fear."

"Is there no shame in you?"

"Shame?" repeated Francois, as he proceeded to ransack another drawer.

"There might have been before I went into your service, my lord. Yes; once I felt shame for you. It was years ago, in London, when you deserted your beautiful wife. When I saw how she worshiped you and what a n.o.ble woman she was, I confess I felt ashamed that I served one of the greatest blackguards in Europe--"

"Oh, you scoundrel--" exclaimed the marquis, his face becoming a ghastly hue.

"Be calm, my lord. You really are in need of all your energy. For years I have submitted to your shameful service. I have been at the beck and call of one of the greatest roues and villains in France.

Years of such a.s.sociation would somewhat soil any nature. Another thing, my lord, I must tell you, since you and I are settling our last accounts. For years I have endured your miserable King Louis Philippe.

A king? Bah! He fled from the back door! A coward, who shaved his whiskers for a disguise."

"No more, rascal!"

"Rascal yourself, you worn-out, driveling breath of corruption! It is so pleasant to exercise a gentleman's privilege of invective! Ah, here is the purse. _Au revoir_, my lord. A pleasant dissolution!"

But by this time the marquis was speechless, and Francois, taking the valise in hand, deferentially left the room. He locked the door behind him and thrust the key into his pocket.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE OLD CEMETERY

The engagement at the new St. Charles was both memorable and profitable, The Picayune, before the fifties, an audacious sheet, being especially kind to the players. "This paper," said a writer of the day, "was as full of witticisms as one of Thackeray's dreams after a light supper, and, as for Editors Straws and Phazma, they are poets who eat, talk and think rhyme." The Picayune contained a poem addressed to Miss Carew, written by Straws in a cozy nook in the veranda at the Lake End, with his absinthe before him and the remains of an elaborate repast about him. It was then quite the fashion to write stanzas to actresses; the world was not so prosaic as it is now, and even the president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, penned graceful verses to a fair ward of Thalia.

One noon, a few days after the opening performance, several members of the company were late for rehearsal and Barnes strode impatiently to and fro, glancing at his watch and frowning darkly. To avenge himself for the remissness of the players, he roared at the stage carpenters who were constructing a balcony and to the supers who were shifting flats to the scenery room. The light from an open door at the back of the stage dimly illumined the scene; overhead, in the flies, was intense darkness; while in front, the auditorium yawned like a chasm, in no wise suggestive of the brilliant transformation at night.

"Ugh!" said Susan, standing in one of the entrances. "It is like playing to ghosts! Fancy performing to an audience of specters!

Perhaps the phantoms of the past really do a.s.semble in their old places on occasions like this. Only you can't hear them applaud or laugh."

"Are you looking for admirers among ghosts?" remarked Hawkes, ironically.

"Don't," she returned, with a little shiver.

"So, ladies and gentlemen, you are all here at last?" exclaimed Barnes, interrupting this cheerful conversation. "Some of you are late again to-day. It must not happen again. Go to Victor's, Moreau's, or Miguel's, as much as you please. If you have a headache or a heartache in consequence, that is your own affair, but I am not to be kept waiting the next day."

"Victor's, indeed!" retorted the elastic old lady. "As if--"

"No one supposed, Madam, that at your age"--began the manager.

"At my age! If you think--"

"Are you all ready?" interrupted Barnes, hastily, knowing he would be worsted in any argument with this veteran player. "Then clear the stage! Act first!" And the rehearsal began.

If the audience were specters, the performers moved, apparently without rhyme or reason, mere shadows on the dimly lighted stage; enacting some semblance to scenes of mortal life; their jests and gibes, unnatural in that comparatively empty place; their voices, out of the semi-darkness, like those of spirits rehearsing acts of long ago. In the evening it would all become an amusing, bright-colored reality, but now the barrenness of the scenes was forcibly apparent.

"That will do for to-day," said the manager at the conclusion of the last act. "To-morrow, ladies and gentlemen, at the same time. And any one who is late--will be fined!"

"Changing the piece every few nights is all work and no play,"

complained Susan.

"It will keep you out of mischief, my dear," replied Barnes, gathering up his ma.n.u.scripts.

"Oh, I don't know about that!" returned Miss Susan, with a defiant toss of the head, as she moved toward the dressing-room where they had left their wraps. It was a small apartment, fairly bright and cheery, with here and there a portrait against the wall. Above the dressing-table hung a mirror, diamond-scratched with hieroglyphic scrawls, among which could be discerned a transfixed heart, spitted like a lark on an arrow, and an etching of Lady Gay Spanker, with cork-screw curls. Taglioni, in pencil caricature, her limbs "divinely slender," gyrated on her toes in reckless abandon above this mute record of names now forgotten.

"What lovely roses, Constance!" exclaimed Susan, as she entered, bending over a large bouquet on one of the chairs. "From the count, I presume?"

"Yes," indifferently answered the young girl, who was adjusting her hat before the mirror.

"How attentive he is!" cooed Susan, her tones floating in a higher register. "Poor man! Enjoy yourself while you may, my dear," she went on. "When youth is gone, what is left? Women should sow their wild oats as well as men. I don't call them wild oats, though, but paradisaical oats. The Elysian fields are strewn with them."

As she spoke, her glance swept her companion searchingly, and, in that brief scrutiny, Susan observed with inward complacency how pale the other was, and how listless her manner! Their common secret, however, made Susan's outward demeanor sweetly solicitous and gently sympathetic. Her mind, pa.s.sing in rapid review over recent events, dwelt not without certain satisfaction upon results. True, every night she was still forced to witness Constance's success, which of itself was wormwood and gall to Susan, to stand in the wings and listen to the hateful applause; but the conviction that the sweets of popular favor brought not what they were expected to bring, was, in a way, an antidote to Susan's dissatisfaction.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and can sometimes be made annoying; in Susan's case it was a weapon sharpened with honeyed phrase and consolatory bearing, for she was not slow to discover nor to avail herself of the irritating power this knowledge gave her.