The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies

"Lucy! And you wept over her so in your letters?"

"Crocodile's tears. Heavens, are women to have no lives of their own?"

"Oh, why did you not write to me of your difficulties?" he groaned. "I would have come over and fetched you – we would have borne poverty together."

"Yes," the Prince said mockingly. "''E was werry good to me, 'e was.' Do you think I could submit to government by a prig?"

He started as if stung. The little tinselled figure, looking taller in its swashbuckling habits, stared at him defiantly.

"Tell me," he said brokenly, "have you made a living?"

"No. If truth must be told, Lucy Gray – docked at the tail, sir – hasn't made enough to keep Lucy Grayling in theatrical costumes. I got plenty of kudos in the Provinces, but two of my managers were bogus."

"Yes?" he said vaguely.

"No treasury, don't you know? Ghost didn't walk. No oof, rhino, shiners, coin, cash, salary!"

"Do I understand you have travelled about the country by yourself?"

"By myself! What, in a company? You've picked up Irish in America. Ha! ha! ha!"

"You know what I mean, Lucy." It seemed strange to call this new person Lucy, but "Miss Grayling" would have sounded just as strange.

"Oh, there was sure to be a married lady – with her husband – in the troupe, poor thing!" The Prince had a roguish twinkle in the eye. "And surely I am old enough to take care of myself. Still, I felt you wouldn't like it. That's why I was anxious to get a London appearance – if only in East-end pantomime. The money's safe, and your notices are more valuable. I only want a show to take the town. I do hope George won't disappoint me. I thought you were he."

"Who is George?" he said slowly, as if in pain.

The shrill clamour of the bell answered him.

"There he is!" said the Prince joyfully. "George is only Georgie Spanner, stage-manager of the Oriental. I have been besieging him for two days. Bella Bright, who had to play Prince Prettypet, has gone and eloped with the property-man, and as soon as I heard of it, I got a letter of introduction to Georgie Spanner, and he said I was too little, and I said that was nonsense – that I had played in burlesque at Eastbourne – Come in!"

"Are you at home, miss?" said the maid, putting her head inside the door.

"Certainly, Fanny. That's Mr. Spanner I told you of – " The girl's head looked puzzled as it removed itself. "And so he said if I would put my things on, he would try and run down for an hour this evening, and see if I looked the part."

"And couldn't all that be done at the theatre?"

"Of course it could. But it's ten times more convenient for me here. And it's very considerate of Georgie to come all this way – he's a very busy man, I can tell you."

The street-door slammed loudly.

A sudden paroxysm shook Frank's frame. "Lucy, send this man away – for God's sake." In his excitement he came nearer, he laid his hand pleadingly upon the glittering shoulder. The Prince trembled a little under his touch, and stood as in silent hesitancy. The stairs creaked under heavy footsteps.

"Go to your room," he said more imperatively. Even in the wreck of his ideal, it was an added bitterness to think that limbs whose shapeliness had never even occurred to him, should be made a public spectacle. "Put on decent clothes."

It was the wrong chord to touch. The Prince burst into a boisterous laugh. "Silly old MacDougall!"

The footsteps were painfully near.

"You are mad," Frank whispered hoarsely. "You are killing me – you whom I throned as an angel of light; you who were the first woman in the world – "

"And now I'm going to be the Principal Boy," she laughed quietly back. "Is that you, dear old chap? Come in, George."

The door opened – Frank, disgusted, heart-broken, moved back towards the window-curtains. A corpulent, beef-faced, double-chinned man, with a fat cigar and a fur overcoat, came in.

"How do, Lucy? Cold, eh? What, in your togs? That's right."

"There, you bad man! Don't I look ripping?"

"Stunning, Lucy," he said, approaching her.

"Well, then, down on your knees, George, and apologise for saying I was too little."

"Well, I see more of you now, he! he! he! Yes, you'll do. What swell diggings!"

"Come to the fire. Take that easy-chair. There, that's right, old man. Now, what is it to be? There's tea laid – you've let it get cold, unpunctual ruffian. Perhaps you'd like a brandy and soda better?"

"M' yes."

She rang the bell. "So glad – because there's only tea for two, and I know my friend would prefer tea," with a sneering intonation. "Let me introduce you – Mr. Redhill, Mr. Spanner, you have heard of Mr. Spanner, the celebrated author and stage-manager?"

The celebrated author and stage-manager half rose in his easy-chair, startled, and not over-pleased. The pale-faced rival visitor, half hidden in the curtains, inclined his head stiffly, then moved towards the door.

"Oh, no, don't run away like that, without a cup of tea, in this bitter weather. Mr. Spanner won't mind talking business before you, will you, George? Such a dear old friend, you know."

It was a merry tea-party. Lucy rattled away bewitchingly, overpowering Mr. Spanner like an embodied brandy and soda. The slang of the green room and the sporting papers rolled musically off her tongue, grating on Frank's ear like the scraping of slate pencils. He had not insight enough to divine that she was accentuating her vulgar acquirements to torture him. Spanner went at last – for the Oriental boards claimed him – leaving behind him as nearly definite a promise of the part as a stage-manager can ever bring himself to utter. Lucy accompanied him downstairs. When she returned, Frank was still sitting as she had left him – one hand playing with the spoon in his cup, the rest of the body lethargic, immobile. She bent over him tenderly.

"Frank!" she whispered.

He shivered and looked up at the lovely face, daubed with rouge and pencilled at the eyebrows with black – as for the edification of the distant "gods." He lowered his eyes again, and said slowly: "Lucy, I have come back to marry you. What date will be most convenient to you?"

"You want to marry me," she echoed in low tones. "All the same!" A strange wonderful light came into her eyes. The big lashes were threaded with glistening tears. She put her little hand caressingly upon his hair, and was silent.

"Yes! it is an old promise. It shall be kept."

"Ah!" She drew her hand away with an inarticulate cry. "Like a duty dance, but you do not love me?"

He ignored the point. "I am rich now – my father has unexpectedly become Lord Redhill – you probably heard it!"

"You don't love me! You can't love me!" It sounded like the cry of a soul in despair.

"So there's no need for either of us to earn a living."

"But you don't love me! You only want to save me."

"Well, of course Lord Redhill wouldn't like his daughter-in-law to be – "

"The Principal Boy – ha! ha! ha! But what – ho! ho! ho! I must laugh, Frank, old man, it is so funny – what about the Principal Boy? Do you think he'd cotton to the idea of marrying a peer in embryo! Not if Lucy Gray knows it; no, by Jove! Why, when your coronet came along, I should have to leave the stage, or else people 'ud be saying I couldn't act worth a cent. They'd class me with Lady London and Lady Hansard – oh, Lord! Fancy me on the Drury Lane bills – Prince Prettypet, Lady Redhill. And then, great Scot, think whom they'd class you with. Ha! ha! ha! No, my boy, I'm not going to marry a microcephalous idiot. Ho! ho! ho! I wish somebody would put all this in a farce."

"Do I understand that you wish to break off the engagement?" Frank said slowly, a note of surprise in his voice.

"You've hit it – now that I hear about this peerage business – why didn't you tell me before? I'm out of all the gossip of court circles, and it wasn't in the Era. No, I might have redeemed my promise to a commoner, but a lord, ugh! I never had your sense of duty, Frank, and must really cry 'quits.' Now you see the value of secret engagements – ours is off, and nobody will be the wiser – or the worse. Now get thee to his lordship – concealment, like a worm i' the bud, no longer preying upon thy damask cheek. I was alway sorry you had to keep it from the old buffer. But it was for the best, wasn't it? – ha! ha! – it was for the best! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!"

Frank fled down the staircase followed by long peals of musical laughter. They followed him into the bleak night, which had no frost for him; but they became less musical as they rang on, and as the terrified maid and the landlady strove in vain to allay the hysterical tempest.

IV

The Oriental, on Boxing Night, was like a baker's oven for temperature, and an unopened sardine-barrel for populousness. The East-end had poured its rollicking multitudes into the vast theatre, which seethed over with noisy vitality. There was much traffic in ginger beer, oranges, Banbury cakes, and "bitter." The great audience roared itself hoarse over old choruses with new words. Lucy Gray, as Prince Prettypet, made an instant success. The mashers of the Oriental ogled her in silent flattery. Her clear elocution, her charming singing voice, her sprightly dancing, her chic, her frank vulgarity, when she "let herself go," took every heart captive. Every heart, that is, save one, which was filled with sickness and anguish, and covered with a veil of fine linen. The heir of the house of Redhill cowered at the back of the O.P. stage-box – the only place in the house disengaged when he drove up in a mistaken dress-suit. It was the first time he had seen Prince Prettypet since the merry tea-party, and he did not know why he was seeing her now. He hoped she did not see him. She pirouetted up to the front of his box pretty often during the evening, and several times hurled ancient wheezes at the riotous funnymen from that coign of vantage. Spoken so near his ear, the vulgar jokes tingled through him like lashes from a whip. Once she sang a chorus, winking in his direction. But that was the business of the song, and impersonal. He saw no sure signs of recognition, and was glad.

When, during the gradual but gorgeous evolution of the Transformation Scene, he received a note from her, he remained glad. It ran, "The bearer will take you behind. I have no one to see me home. Always your friend – Lucy." He went "behind," following his guide through a confusion of coatless carpenters waving torches of blue and green fire from the wings, and gauzy, highly coloured Whitechapel girls ensconcing themselves in uncomfortable attitudes on wooden pedestals, which were mounting and descending.

Georgie Spanner was bustling about, half crazed, amid a hubbub perfectly inaudible from the front; but he found time to scowl at Frank, as that gentleman stumbled over the pantaloon and fell against a little iron lever, whose turning might have plunged the stage in darkness. Frank found Lucy in a tiny cellar with whitewashed walls and a rough counter, on which stood a tin basin and a litter of "make up" materials. She had "changed" before he came. It was the first time for years he had seen her in her true womanly envelope. Assuredly she had grown far lovelier, and her face was flushed with triumph; otherwise it was the old Lucy. The Prince was washed off with the paint.

Frank's eyes filled with tears. How hard he had been on her! Nay, had he not misjudged her? She looked so frail, so little, so childish, what guile could she know? It was all mere surface-froth on her lips! How narrow to set up his life, his ideals, as models, patterns! The poor little thing had her own tastes, her own individuality! How hard she worked to earn her own living! He bent down and kissed her forehead, remorsefully, as one might kiss an overscolded child. She drew his head down lower and kissed him – passionately – on the lips. "Let us wait a little," she said, as he spoke of sending for a hansom. "Sloman, the lessee, gives a little supper on the stage after the show – he'll be annoyed if I don't stay. He'll be delighted to have you."

The pantomime had gone better than anyone had expected. It had been insufficiently rehearsed, and though everybody had said "it'll be all right at night" – in the immemorial phrase of the profession – they had said it more automatically than confidently. Consequently everyone was in high feather, and agreeably surprised at the accuracy of the prophesying. Even Georgie Spanner ceased to scowl under the genial influences of success and Sloman's very decent champagne. The air was full of laughter and gaiety, and everybody (except the clown) cracked jokes. The leading ladies made themselves pleasant, and did not swear. Everybody seemed to have acquired a new respect for Lucy, seeing her with such a real Belgravian swell. Probably she would soon have a theatre of her own.

It was the Prig's first excursion into Bohemia, and he thought the natives very civil-spoken, naïve, and cordial. Frank had no doubt now that Lucy was right, that he was a Prig to want to redeem mankind. And the conviction that he lacked worldly wisdom was sealed for aye.

V

So he married her.

An Odd Life

It was the most curious case of croup I had ever attended. Not that there was anything unusual about the symptoms – they were so correct as to be devoid of the slightest interest. Certainly they were not worth while being called up for in the middle of the night. The patient it was that attracted my attention. He was a handsome baby of one year and nine months – by name Willy Streetside – with such an expression of candour and intelligence that I was moved to see him suffer. I sat down by his bedside, took his poor little feverish hand, and felt the weak quick pulse, and knew it had not much longer to beat. I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. He seemed to be an orphan, in charge of a strange, silent serving-man, apparently the only other occupant of the luxurious and artistically furnished flat. I judged Downton to be a man of some culture, from the latest magazines strewn about the bedroom; but I could not help thinking that a female, more familiar with infantile ailments, might have been more useful. Apathetic and torpid though I was, from eighteen hours' continuous activity in a hundred sickrooms, my eyes filled with tears, and I sat for an instant, holding the little hand, listening to the poor child's painful breathing, and speculating on the mystery of that existence so early recalled. All his organs were sound. But for this accidental croup, I told myself, he might have lived till eighty. "Poor Willy Streetside!" I murmured, for his curious name clung to my memory.

Suddenly the baby turned his blue eyes full on me, and said:

"I suppose it's all up, doctor?"

I started violently, and let go his hand. The words were perhaps not altogether beyond the capacity of an infant; but the air of manly resignation with which they were uttered was astonishing. For more reasons than one, I hesitated.

"You need not be afraid to tell me the truth," said the baby, with a wistful smile; "I'm not afraid to hear it."

"Well – well, you're pretty bad," I stammered.

"Ah! thank you," the child replied gratefully. "How many hours do you give me?"

The baby's gravity took my breath away. He spoke with an old-world courtesy and the ingenuous stateliness of an infant prince.

"It may not be quite hopeless," I murmured.

Willy shook his head, the pretty, wan features distorted by a quaint grimace.

"I suppose I'm too young to rally," he said quietly, and closed his eyes.

Presently he re-opened them, and added:

"But I should have liked to live to see the Irish question settled."

"You would?" I ejaculated, overwhelmed.

"Yes," he said, adding with a whimsical expression in the wee blue eyes: "You mustn't think I crave for earthly immortality. I use 'settled' in a merely rough sense. My mother was an Irish poetess, over whose songs impetuous Celts still break their hearts and their heads."

I gazed speechless at this wonder-child, pushing the golden locks back from his feverish baby-brow, as if to assure myself by touching him that he was not a phantom.

"Ah, well!" he finished, "it doesn't matter. I have had my day, and mustn't grumble. I scarcely thought, when I witnessed the dissolution of the third Gladstone Government, that I should have lived to see him Premier a fourth time. Three doctors told me I was breaking up fast."

I began to be frightened of this extraordinary infant, divining some wizardry behind the candid little face – some latter-day mystery of re-incarnation, esoteric Buddhism, what-not. The child perceived my perturbation.

"You are thinking I have packed a good deal into my short life," he said, with an amused smile. "And yet some men will make a Gladstone bag hold as much as a portmanteau. Gladstone has done so; and why not I, in my humble degree?"

"True," I answered; "but you cannot begin to pack before you are born."

"You are entirely mistaken," replied the baby, "if you think I have done anything so precocious as that."

"Then you must have lived an odd life," I said, puzzled.

"You have hit it!" exclaimed the child, with a suspicion of eagerness, not unmingled with surprise. "I did not mean to tell anyone; but since you are a man of science and I am on the point of death, you may as well know you have guessed the truth."

"Have I?" I said, more bewildered than ever.

"Yes. In all these years no one has suspected it. It has been carefully kept from outsiders. But now it would, perhaps, be childish folly to be reticent about it. It is the truth – the plain, literal truth – I have lived an odd life."

"How did it begin?" I asked, scarce knowing what I said or what I meant.

"You shall know all," said Willy. "I must begin before I was born – before I could begin packing, as you put it."

His breath came and went painfully. Overwrought with curiosity as I was, I experienced a pang of compunction.

"No, no; never mind," I said; "you have not the strength to speak much – you must not waste what you have."

"It can only cost me a few minutes of life – I can spare the time," he answered, almost peevishly.

Now that he had been strung up to speaking point, he seemed to resent my diminished interest.

I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and forced him to moisten his throat.

"I can spare the time," he repeated, while an air of grim satisfaction came over the tiny features. "I have stolen plenty – I have outwitted the arch-thief himself. I have survived my own death."

"What!" I gasped. "Have you already died?"

"No, no," he replied fretfully; "I am only just going to die. That is how I have survived my death. How dull you are!"

"You were going to begin at the beginning," I murmured feebly.

"No! What is the use of beginning at the beginning?" this enfant terrible enquired, in the same peevish tones. "I was going to begin before the beginning."

"Yes, yes," I said soothingly, patting his golden curls; "you were going to begin before you were born."

"With my mother," he said more gently. "She did not lead a very happy life – it enabled her to hymn the wrongs of her country. Her childhood was a succession of sorrows, her girlhood a mass of misfortunes; and when she married the man she loved, she found herself deserted by him a few months later. It was then that she first conceived the thought that has changed my life. It came to her in a moment of tears, as she sat over the ashes of her happiness. From that moment the thought never left her."

There was a wild look in the baby's eyes. I began to suspect him of premature insanity.

"What was this thought?" I murmured.

"I am coming to it. There came into her head suddenly the refrain of a song she had learnt at school: 'Life like a river with constant motion.' 'The river of life! The stream of life! How true it is!' she mused. 'How much more than mere metaphors these phrases are! Verily, one's life flows on towards the dark ocean of death, irresistibly, unrestingly, willy-nilly – whether swift or slow, whether long or short – whether it flows through pleasant champaigns or dreary marshes, past romantic castled crags, or by bleak quarries. What is the use of experience, of knowledge of past bits of the route, when no two bits are ever really alike, when the future course is hidden and is always a panorama of surprises, when no life-stream knows what awaits it round the corner every time it turns, when the scenery of the source avails one nothing in one's resistless progress towards the scenery of the mouth? What is life but a series of mistakes, whose fruit is wisdom, maybe, but wisdom overripe? We do not pluck the fruit till it will no longer serve our appetites. Nothing repeats itself on the stage of existence – always new situations and new follies. Experientia docet. Experience teaches, indeed; but her lesson is that nothing can be learnt.'"

The baby paused, and reached out his wasted hand for the glass. His pinafore and his tiny shoes on the chest of drawers caught my eye, and moistened it with the thought he would never don them again.

"As my mother brooded upon this bitter truth," he resumed, when he had refreshed himself, "and saw how sad an illustration of it was her own life – with its sufferings and its mistakes – she could not help wishing existence had been ordered otherwise. If we had had at least two lives, we might profit in the second by the first. But, she told herself, with a sigh, this was vain day-dreaming. Then suddenly the thought flashed upon her. Granting that more than one life was impossible upon this planet, why should it not be differently distributed? Suppose, instead of flowing on like a stream, one's life progressed like a London street – the odd numbers on the one side and the even on the other, so that after doing the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, &c., &c., one could return and do the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, &c., &c. Without craving from Providence more than man's allotted span, what if, by a slight re-arrangement of the years, it were possible to extort an infinitely greater degree of happiness from one's lifetime! What if it were possible to live the odd years, gleaning experience as well as joys, and then to return to the even years, armed with all the wisdom of one's age! What if her child could enjoy this inestimable privilege! The thought haunted her, she brooded on it day and night; and when I was born, she drew me eagerly towards her, as if to see some mark of promise written on my forehead. But a year passed before she dared to think her wish had found fulfilment. On the eve of my first birthday she measured and weighed me with intense anxiety, though pretending to herself she only wished to keep a register of my growth. In the morning I was more by a year's inches and pounds. I had shot up at a bound into my third year, and manifested sudden symptoms of walking and talking. She almost fainted with joy when my unexpected teeth bit her finger. She could not get my shoes on me, nor my frock. But, although my mother had made no preparations for my changed condition, she welcomed the trouble I put her to, and carefully laid aside my useless garments, knowing I should want them again. The neighbours noticed nothing; they thought me a big boy for my age, and extremely precocious. When I was in my fifth year I went on the stage as an 'infant phenomenon,' my age being attested by my certificate of birth, though you will of course see that I was really in my ninth. In the next few years I made enough money to gild my mother's few declining years; and when I retired temporarily from the boards at the advice of my critics, it was of course with the intention of studying and returning to the stage when I was younger. And so I advanced to manhood, skipping the alternate years. I rejoice to say that my mother, though she died when I was seventy-three, had the satisfaction of knowing what felicity her unselfish aspiration had brought into my life. She told me of my strange exemption from the common burden of continuous existence, as soon as I had skipped into years of discretion. Not for me did Time pass with that tragic footstep which never returns on itself; for me he was not the irrevocable, the relentless. I regretted my lost youth – but it was not with hopeless, passionate tears, with mutinous yearnings after the impossible; it was as one who waves a regretful adieu to a charming girl he will meet again."