by George Moore
The trouble he took to manage everything was touching. On Sunday, when Kate was at church, he was down at the railway station trying to find out what were the best arrangements he could make. And on Monday morning when they were all assembled on the platform to bid good-bye to their fellow-workers, it was curious to see this huge man, who at a first impression would be taken for a mere mass of sensuality, rushing about putting buns and sandwiches in paper bags for his poor chorus-girls, encouraging them with kind words, and when the train began to move, waving them large and unctuous farewells with his big hat.
Since the first shock of the threatened break-up of the tour Kate had gradually grown accustomed to the idea and now wept in silence. Without precisely suffering from any pangs of fear for the future, an immense sadness seemed to ache within her very bones. All things were passing away. The flock of girls in whose midst she had lived was gone; a later train would take Mortimer to London; Bret was bidding them good-bye; Beaumont was consulting a Bradshaw. How sad it seemed! The theatre and artists were vanishing into darkness like a dream. Not a day, nor an hour, could she see in front of her.
‘What shall we do now?’ she whispered to Dick, as she trotted along by his side.
‘Well, I haven’t quite made up my mind. I was thinking last night that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make up a little entertainment — four or five of us — and see what we could do in the manufacturing towns. Lancashire is, you know, honeycombed with them. Our travelling expenses would amount to a mere nothing. We must have someone to operate on the piano. I wonder if Montgomery would care about coming with us.’
Kate thought that he would, and as she happened at that moment to catch sight of the long tails of the Newmarket coat at the other side of the station, she begged Dick to call to the erratic musician. No sooner was the proposition put forward than it was accepted, and in five minutes they were at luncheon in a ‘pub,’ arranging the details of the entertainment.
‘We shall want an agent-in-advance, a bill-poster, or something of that kind,’ said Montgomery.
‘I’ve thought of that,’ replied Dick; ‘Williams is our man, he’ll see to all that; and I don’t know if you know, but he can sing a good song on his own account.’
‘Can he? Well, then, we can’t have anyone better — and what shall we take out?’
‘Well, we must have a little operetta, and I don’t think we can do better than Offenbach’s Breaking the Spell.’
‘Right you are,’ said Montgomery, pulling out his pocket-book. ‘Breaking the Spell, so far so good; now we must have a song or a character sketch to follow, and I don’t think it would be a bad idea if we rehearsed a comedietta. What do you say to The Happy Pair?’
‘Right you are, pencil it down, can’t do better, it always goes well; and then I can sing between “The Men of Harlech.”’
Montgomery looked a little awry at the idea of having to listen to ‘The Men of Harlech,’ sung by Dick, but in the discussion that followed as to what Kate was to do, ‘The Men of Harlech’ was forgotten.
As Dick anticipated, Williams declared himself delighted to accompany them in the double capacity of bill-poster and occasional singer; and after a fortnight’s rehearsal at Rochdale, the Constellation Company started on its wanderings. Many drinks had been consumed in seeking for the name; many strange combinations of sound and sense had been rejected, and it was not until Dick began to draw lines on a piece of paper, affixing names to the end of each, that the word suggested itself. What joy! What rapture! A rush was made to the printers, and in a few hours the following bill was produced:
XXI
AS THE CONSTELLATION Company drove to the station, Kate noticed that Rochdale and Hanley were not unlike, and the likeness between the two towns set her thinking how strange it was. Here was the same red town, narrow streets, built of a brick that, under a dull sky, glared to a rich geranium hue. The purplish tints of Hanley alone were wanting, but the heavy smoke-clouds, and the tall stems of the chimneys, were as numerous in Rochdale as in her native place. And, coincidence still more marvellous, Nature had apparently aided and abetted what man’s hand had contrived, for in either town a line of hills swept around the sky. The only difference was, that the characteristics of Rochdale were not so marked as those of Hanley. The hills were not so high, nor were they in such close array as those of the Staffordshire town, and the Lancashire valley was not so deep and trench-like as the one that engirdles the potteries. It may be that as much smoke hung over it, but the smoke did not seem so black and poisonous, at least not to Kate’s eyes; and, as the train sped along a high embankment a group of factory chimneys emerged from a fold in the hills, and comparing the two landscapes it seemed to her there were more fields in the Lancashire valley, water-courses, trees and hedges — stunted hedges, it is true — but she did not remember any hedges about Hanley. At one moment she was minded to turn to Dick and to call his attention to the likeness in the country they were travelling through to the country she had come from; had she been alone with him she might have asked him, but he was now busy talking of the comic songs and sketches in which they were to act. ‘The Mulligan Guards’ was one of the items on their programme, and she and Dick were going to sing it together. This would be the first time they had ever sung together. Dick had very little voice, but he was a good actor, and she thought they would be able to make a success of it. He called her attention and the attention of the other members of the Constellation Company to the scattered towns and villages they were passing through.
‘The very country for our kind of entertainment,’ he said; and all the mummers rose from their seats and gazed at the wolds and factories. Under the green waste of a wold a chimney had been run up; sheds and labourers’ cottages had followed, and in five years, if the factory prospered, this beginning would swell into a village, in twenty it would possess twenty thousand inhabitants; for just as in old times the towns followed the castles, so do they now follow in the wake of the factories. The mummers gaped and wondered at the arsenic green sides of the wolds, striped with rough stone walls or blackened with an occasional coalpit, the ridges fringed with trees blown thin by sea-breezes. In the distance, within the folds of the hills, tall chimneys clustered and great clouds of smoke hung listless in the still autumn air. Cold rays of sunlight strayed for a moment on the dead green of the fields, pale as invalids enjoying the air for the last time before a winter seclusion. And later on, when the light mists of evening descended and bore away the landscape, the phantom shapes of the wolds took on a strange appearance, producing in Kate a sensation of mobility, which to escape from, for it frightened her, she turned to Dick and asked how far they were from Bacup. He told her they would be there in about half an hour, and half an hour afterwards Williams, who had gone on in front, met them at the station, and began at once the tale of his industry, saying that he had been in every public-house, and had stood at the corners of all the principal streets distributing bills.
‘I think we shall do pretty well,’ he said; ‘my only bit of bad news is that I haven’t been able to find any lodgings for you; there’s but one hotel, and all the rooms are taken.’
Dick, who on such occasions always took time by the forelock, insisted on starting at once on their search — and up and down the murky streets of the manufacturing town they walked until it was time for them to repair to the Mechanics’ Hall, where they were going to play, and get ready for the entertainment.
‘The Mulligan Guards’ proved a great success, as did also the operetta, Breaking the Spell. Kate’s pretty face and figure won the hearts of the factory hands, and she was applauded whenever she appeared on the stage; and so frequent were the encores that it was half-past ten before they had finished their programme, and close on eleven o’clock before they got out of the hall into the street. Then the search for lodgings had to begin again. Montgomery and Williams, being single men, obtained beds, but Kate and Dick were not so easily satisfied, and they found themselves standing under a
porch with the lights going out on all sides, and the prospect of spending a wet night in the street before them. At last Dick bethought himself of the police station, but on applying to a policeman he was directed to the backdoor of a public-house. ‘He was pretty sure,’ whispered the boy in blue, ‘to get put up there.’ The door was opened with precaution, and they were allowed in. The place was full of people; it took them a long time to get served, and they were at length told that in the way of a room nothing could be done for them. Every bed in the house was occupied. Kate raised her eyes to Dick, but her look of misery was anticipated by a rough-faced carter who stood at the counter.
‘You bear up, little woman,’ he said abruptly; ‘don’t yo’ look so froightent. Yo’ shall both come up to my place, if yo’ will; it isna up to much, but oi’ll do th’ best I can for yo’.’
There was no mistaking the kindness with which the offer was made, though the idea of going to sleep at this rough man’s house for the moment staggered even the mummer. But as it was now clear that they would have either to accept their new friend’s hospitality, or spend the night on the doorstep, it did not take them long to decide on the former alternative. Their only reason for hesitating was their inability to understand what were his motives for asking them to come to his place. Then, as if divining the reason of their uncertainty, he said:
‘I know yo’ well, tho’ yo’ don’t know me. I was up at the ‘all to-night, and yo’ did make me so laugh that I wouldna’ see yo’ in the streets for nothing. Neaw, let it be yea or nay, master.’
For answer, Dick put out his hand; and when he had thanked the hospitably inclined carter, put some questions to him about the entertainment. Soon the two began to ‘pal,’ and after another drink they all went off together.
After wading down a few sloppy streets, he stopped before a low doorway, and ushered them into what looked like an immense kitchen. They saw rafters overhead and an open staircase ascending to the upper rooms, as a ladder might through a series of lofts; and when a candle had been obtained, the first thing their host did was to pull his wife out of bed, and insist on his guests getting into it, a request which the woman joined in as heartily as her husband as soon as the reason for this unceremonious awakening had been explained to her. And so wearied out were Kate and Dick, and so tempting did any place of rest look to them, that they could offer no opposition to the kind intentions of their host and hostess, and they slept heavily until roused next morning by a loud trampling of feet passing through their room. It was the family coming down from the lofts above, and as they descended the staircase they wished their guests a broad Lancashire good-morning.
And when Kate and Dick had recovered from their astonishment, they dressed and went out to buy some provisions, which they hoped to be allowed to cook in the rough kitchen; but when they returned with their purchases they found the carter’s daughter standing before an elaborately prepared breakfast, consisting of a huge beefsteak and a high pile of cakes.
‘Lor, marm, why did yo’ buy those things?’ said the girl, disappointed.
‘Well,’ said Kate, ‘we couldn’t think of trespassing on you in that fashion. You must, you will, I hope, let us prepare our own breakfast.’
‘Feyther will never ‘ear of it, I know,’ said the girl; and immediately after, the carter, with his brawny arms, pushed Kate and Dick down into two seats at the big table. Both cake and meat were delicious, and Dick’s appetite showed such signs of outdoing the carter’s that Kate, in the hope of diverting attention, commenced an interesting conversation with the buxom maiden by her side, and so successful were her efforts that a friendship was soon established between the women; and, when the morning’s work was done, Mary, of her own accord, sought out Kate, and as she knitted the thick woollen stocking, was easily led into telling the inevitable love story.
We change the surroundings, but a heart bleeds under all social variations; and in this grim manufacturing town when the bridal dress was taken out of its lavender and darkness it seemed to possess a gleam of poetic whiteness that it could not have had even if set off by the pleasant verdure of a Devonshire lane.
‘But you’ll keep it for another; another will be sure to come by very soon,’ said Kate, trying to console.
‘Nay, nay, I’ll have no other,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll just keep the dress by; but I’ll have no other.’
Then the talk hesitated and fell at last into a long narrative concerning tender hopes and illusions to which Kate listened, as all women do, to the story of heart-aches and deceptions; and in after years, when all other remembrances of the black country were swept away, the remembrance of this white dress remained.
From Bacup they went to Whitworth, a town in such immediate neighbourhood that it might be called a suburb of the former place, and there they played in the Co-operative Hall to an audience consisting of a factory man, two children, and a postman who came in on the free list. This was not encouraging; but they, nevertheless, resolved to try the place again; and next day at dinner-time, as the ‘hands’ were leaving the factories, they distributed some hundreds of bills. Dick said he should never forget it; to watch Pimply Face cutting about, shoving his bills into the women’s aprons, was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life. But their efforts were all in vain. It rained, and not a soul came to see them; and, in addition to their other troubles, they found Whitworth was an awkward place to stop at. Dick and his wife had a room in a pub, but Montgomery and Williams had to walk over each evening to sleep at Bacup. One day their landlady spoke of Clayton-le-Moors, where, she said, a fair was being held, and she advised the Constellation Company to try their entertainment there. This was considered as a sensible suggestion, and the four mummers started for the fair on the top of an omnibus with their wigs and dresses and make-ups stuck under their legs. The weather at least was in their favour. The sunlight rolled over the great white sides of the booths, Aunt Sallies were being shied at, the pubs were all open, and a huge, rollicking population, fetid with the fermenting sweat of the factories, was disporting on whisky and fresh air. Never were the spirits of dejected strolling players buoyed up with a fairer prospect of a harvest.
The next thing to do was to distribute the handbills, and find a place where they could set up their show, and, to conduct their search more thoroughly, they separated, after having decided on a tryst. In this way the town was thoroughly ransacked; but it was not until Kate, who had gone off on her own accord, learnt from the landlord of a public-house, where she had entered to get a drink, that he had a large concert-room overhead, that there seemed to be the slightest chance of the Constellation Company being able to turn the joviality of the factory hands at the fair to any account. Matters now seemed to be looking up, and a very neat little arrangement was entered into with the proprietor of the pub. Four entertainments of ten minutes each were to be given every hour, for each of which the sum of threepence a head was to be charged, twopence to go to the artists, a penny to the landlord, who would, of course, make his ‘bit’ also out of the drink supplied. And what a success they had that day! Not only did the factory hands come in, but they paid their threepence over and over again. They seemed never to grow tired of hearing Dick and Kate sing ‘The Mulligan Guards,’ and when she called out ‘Corps’ and he touched his cap, and they broke into a dance, the delight of the workpeople knew no bounds, and they often stopped the entertainment to hand up their mugs of beer to the mummers with a ‘Ave a soop, mon.’
From twelve o’clock in the day until eleven at night the affair was kept going; Kate, Dick, and Williams dancing and singing in turn, and Montgomery all the while spanking away at the dominoes. It was heavy work, but the coin they took was considerable, and it came in handy, for in the next three towns they did very badly. But at Padiham a curious accident turned out in the end very luckily for them. There were but five people in the house, one of whom was drunk. This fellow very humorously in the middle of the entertainment declared that he was going to sing a s
ong; he even wanted to appropriate Williams’s wig, and when Dick, who was always chucker-out on such occasions, attempted to eject him, he climbed out of reach and lodged himself in one of the windows. From there he proceeded to call to the people in the street, and with such excellent result that they made £18 in the hall during the evening.
This, and similar slices of good fortune, kept the Constellation Company rolling from one adventure to another. Sometimes a wet day came to their assistance; sometimes a dispute between some factory hands and the masters brought them a little money. Their wants were simple; a bed in a pub, and a steak for dinner was all they asked for. But at last, as winter wore on, ill-fortune commenced to follow them very closely and persistently. They had been to four different towns and had not made a ten-pound note to divide between the lot of them. In the face of such adversity it was not worth while keeping on; besides, Kate’s expected confinement rendered it impossible to prolong their little tour much farther. For these reasons, one November morning the Constellation Company, hoping they would soon meet again, under more auspicious circumstances, bade each other good-bye at the railway station. Williams and Montgomery went to Liverpool, Kate and Dick to make a stay at Rochdale, where they had heard that many companies were coming. The companies came, it is true, but they were, unfortunately, filled up, and Lennox and his wife could not get an engagement in any of them. The little money saved out of their tour enabled them to keep body and soul together for about a month; but in the fifth week they were telling the landlady lies, and going through all the classic excuses — expecting a letter every day, by Monday at the very latest, etc. In the face of Kate’s approaching confinement this was a state of things that made even Dick begin to look anxiously round and fear for the safety of the future. Kate, on the contrary, although fretted and wearied, took matters more easily than might have been expected; and the changing of their last ten shillings frightened her less than had the first announcement of the possible breaking up of Morton and Cox’s Operatic Company. Bohemianism had achieved in her its last victory; and having lately seen so many of the difficulties of life solving themselves in ways that were inexplicable to her, she had unconsciously come to think that there was no knot that chance, luck, or fate would not untie. Besides, her big Dick’s resources were apparently unlimited; the present weakness of her condition tended to induce her to rely more than ever upon his protection; and in the lassitude of weak hopes, she contented herself with praying occasionally that all would yet come right. But her lover, although he told her nothing of his fears, was not so satisfied. Never before had he been quite so hard pressed. They now owed a week’s rent, besides other small debts; all of which they were unable to pay unless they pawned the remainder of their clothes. He said it would be far better for them to go to Manchester, leaving their things, to be redeemed some day, as a security with the landlady — that is to say, if they failed to get out of the house without being perceived by her. They still had half a crown, which would pay Kate’s railway fare, and as regards himself, Dick proposed that he should do the journey on foot; he would be able to walk the distance easily in three hours, and at eleven o’clock would join his wife at an address which he gave her, with many injunctions as to the story that was to be told to the landlady. So, as the clock was striking seven one cold winter’s morning, they stole quietly downstairs, Dick carrying a small portmanteau. On the table of their room a letter was left, explaining that a telegram received overnight called them to Manchester, but that they hoped to be back again in a few days — a week at latest.
