by George Moore
Leslie smiled at the lovers, and moving towards the card-players, she placed her arm round Bret’s shoulders and examined his hand. Then the three men raised their heads. Dubois, with the cynicism of the ugly little man who has ever had to play the part of the disdained lover both in real or fictitious life, giggled, leered, and pointed over his shoulder. Montgomery smiled too, but a close observer would detect in him the yearnings of a young man from whose plain face the falling fruit is ever invisibly lifted. Bret looked round also, but his look was the indifferent stare of one to whom love has come often, and he glanced as idly at the picture as a worn-out gourmet would over the bill of fare of a table d’hôte dinner.
A moment after all eyes were again fixed on the game, and Dick began to speak to Kate of the clothes she would have to buy in Derby.
‘I can give you twenty pounds to fit yourself out. Do you think you could manage with that?’
‘I’m afraid I’m putting you to a lot of expense, dear.’
‘Not more than you’re worth. You don’t know what a pleasant time we shall have travellin’ about; it’s so tiresome bein’ always alone. There’s no society in these country towns, but I shan’t want society now.’
‘And do you think that you won’t get tired of me? Will you never care again for any of these fine ladies?’ and her brilliant eyes drew down Dick’s lips, and when they entered a tunnel the temptation to repeat the kiss was great, but owing to Dubois’s attempt to light matches it ended in failure. Dick bumped his head against the woodwork of the carriage; Kate felt she hated the little comedian, and before she recovered her temper the train began to slacken speed, and there were frequent calls for Dick from the windows of the different compartments.
‘Is the railway company going to stand us treat this journey?’ shouted Mortimer.
‘Yes,’ replied Dick, putting his head out, ‘seven the last time and seven this; we should have more than a couple of quid.’
When the train stopped and a voice was heard crying, ‘All tickets here!’ he said to Dubois, Bret, and Montgomery, ‘Now then, you fellows, cut off; get Mortimer and a few of the chorus-men to join you; we’re seven short.’
As they ran away he continued to Leslie: ‘I hope Hayes won’t bungle it; he’s got the tickets to-day.’
‘You shouldn’t have let him take them; you know he’s always more or less drunk, and may answer forty-two.’
‘I can’t help it if he does; I’d something else to look after at Hanley.’
‘Tickets!’ said the guard.
‘Our acting manager has them; he’s in the end carriage.’
‘You know I don’t want anything said about it; Hayes and I are old pals; but it’s a damned nuisance to have an acting manager who’s always boozed. I have to look after everythin’, even to making up the returns. But I must have a look and see how he’s gettin’ on with the guard,’ said Dick, jumping up and putting his head out of the window.
After a moment or two he withdrew it and said hastily, ‘By Jove! there’s a row on. I must go and see what’s up. I bet that fool has gone and done something.’
In a minute he had opened the carriage door and was hurrying down the platform.
‘Oh, what’s the matter? — do tell me,’ said Kate to Miss Leslie. ‘I hope he won’t get into any trouble.’
‘It’s nothing at all. We never, you know, take the full number of tickets, for it is impossible for the guard to count us all; and besides, there are some members who always run down the platform; and in that way we save a good deal of coin, which is spent in drinks all round.’ But guessing what was passing in Kate’s mind Leslie said: ‘It isn’t cheating. The company provides us with a carriage, and it is all the same to them if we travel five-and-thirty or forty-two.’
XII
THE REST OF the journey was accomplished monotonously, the conversation drifting into a discussion, in the course of which mention was made of actors, singers, theatre, prices of admission, ‘make-ups,’ stage management, and music. It was in Birmingham that Ashton, Leslie’s understudy, sang the tenor’s music instead of her own in the first act of the Cloches: and poor So-and-so, who was playing the Grenicheux — how he did look when he heard his B flat go off!
‘Flat,’ murmured Montgomery sorrowfully, ‘isn’t the word. I assure you it loosened every tooth in my head. I broke my stick trying to stop her, but it was no bloody good.’
Then explanations of how the different pieces had been produced in Paris were volunteered, and the talents of the different composers were discussed; and all held their sides and roared when Dubois, who, Kate began to perceive, was the company’s laughingstock, declared that he thought Offenbach too polkaic.
At last the train rolled into Derby, and Dick asked a red pimply-faced man in a round hat if he had secured good places for his posters.
‘Spiffing,’ the man answered, and he saluted Leslie. ‘But I couldn’t get you the rooms. They’re let; and, between ourselves, you’ll ‘ave a difficulty in finding what you want. This is cattle-show week. You’d better come on at once with me. I know an hotel that isn’t bad, and you can have first choice — Beaumont’s old rooms; but you must come at once.’
Kate was glad to see that Mr. Bill Williams, the agent in advance, did not remember her. She, however, recognized him at once as the man who had sent Dick to her house.
‘Cattle-show week! All the rooms in the town let!’ cried Leslie, who had overheard part of Mr. Williams’s whisperings. ‘Oh dear! I do hope that my rooms aren’t let. I hate going to an hotel. Let me out; I must see about them at once. Here, Frank, take hold of this bag.’
‘There’s no use being in such a hurry; if the rooms are let they are let. What’s the name of the hotel you were speaking of, Williams?’
‘I forget the name, but if you don’t find lodgings, I’ll leave you the address at the theatre,’ said the agent in advance, winking at Dick.
‘You’re too damned clever, Williams; you’ll be making somebody’s fortune one of these days.’
Kate had some difficulty in keeping close to Dick, for he was surrounded the moment he stepped out on the platform. The baggage-man had a quantity of questions to ask him, and Hayes was desirous of re-explaining how the ticket-collector had happened to misunderstand him. Pulling his long whiskers, the acting manager walked about murmuring, ‘Stupid fool! stupid darned fool!’ And there were some twenty young women who pleaded in turn, their little hands laid on the arm of the popular fat man.
‘Yes, dear; that’s it,’ he answered. ‘I’ll see to it to-morrow. I’ll try not to put you in Miss Crawford’s dressing-room, since you don’t agree.’
‘And, Mr. Lennox, you will see that I’m not shoved into the back row by Miss Dacre, won’t you?’
‘Yes, dear — yes, dear; I’ll see to that too; but I must be off now; and you’d better see after lodgings; I hear that they are very scarce. If you aren’t able to get any, come up to the Hen and Chickens; I hear they have rooms to let there. Poor little girls!’ he murmured to Williams as they got into a cab. ‘They only have twenty-five bob a week; one can’t see them robbed by landladies who can let their rooms three times over.’
‘Just as you like,’ said Williams, ‘but you’ll have the hotel full of them.’
As they drove through the town Dick called attention to the animated appearance of the crowds, and Williams explained the advantages of the corners he had chosen; and at last the cab stopped at the inn, or rather before the archway of a stone passage some four or five yards wide.
‘There’s no inn here!’
‘Oh yes, there is, and a very nice inn too; the entrance is a little way up the passage.’
It was an old-fashioned place — probably it had been a fashionable resort for sporting squires at the beginning of the century. The hall was wainscotted in yellow painted wood; on the right-hand side there was a large brown press, with glass doors, surmounted by a pair of buffalo horns; on the opposite wall hung a barometer; and the wid
e, slowly sloping staircase, with its low thick banisters, ascended in front of the street door. The apartments were not, however, furnished with archaeological correctness.
A wall-paper of an antique design contrasted with a modern tablecloth, and the sombre red curtains were ill suited to the plate-glass which had replaced the narrow windows of old time. Dick did not like the dust nor the tarnish, but no other bed and sitting-room being available, a bargain was soon struck, and the proprietor, after hoping that his guests would be comfortable, informed them that the rule of his house was that the street door was barred and locked at eleven o’clock, and would be reopened for no one.
He was a quiet man who kept an orderly house, and if people could not manage to be in before midnight he did not care for their custom. After grumbling a bit, Dick remembered that the pubs closed at eleven, and as he did not know anyone in the town there would be no temptation to stay out.
Williams, who had been attentively examining Kate, said that he was going down to the theatre, and asked if he should have the luggage sent up.
This was an inconvenient question, and as an explanation was impossible before the hotel-keeper, Dick was obliged to wish Kate good-bye for the present, and accompany Williams down to the theatre.
She took off her bonnet mechanically, threw it on the table, and, sitting down in an armchair by the window, let her thoughts drift to those at home.
Whatever doubt there might have been at first, they now knew that she had left them — and for ever.
The last three words cost her a sigh, but she was forced to admit them. There could be no uncertainty now in Ralph’s and his mother’s mind that she had gone off with Mr. Lennox. Yes, she had eloped; there could be no question about the fact. She had done what she had so often read of in novels, but somehow it did not seem at all the same thing.
This was a startling discovery to make, but of the secret of her disappointment she was nearly unconscious; and rousing herself from the torpor into which she had fallen, she hoped Dick would not stop long away. It was so tiresome waiting. But soon Miss Leslie came running upstairs.
‘Dinner has been ordered for five o’clock, and we’ve made up a party of four — you, Dick, myself, and Frank.’
‘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 Dick, 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,’ Dick 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 Dick 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 pass 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 Dick. 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 Dick 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 Dick 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 Dick 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 asserted 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 Dick 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 Dick 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, ‘Pass on; you’ll find Mr. Lennox on the stage.’
Timidly she walked up a narrow passage 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 downsta
irs, 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 Dick’s elbow, begging of him to come over to his place, and saying that he would give him as good a glass of whisky as he had ever tasted. Nobody knew who the man was, but Dick thought he had met him somewhere up in the North.
