ESAU WAS THE FIRSTBORN.
"Are you trying to tell his fortune, Georgie?" said Haggard as, cigar in mouth, he entered his wife's little boudoir.
The young mother was sitting in an American rocking-chair, her baby in her lap. The little creature stared at her in that peculiar way which infants do when they are being "amused." It wasn't altogether a meaningless stare, for what it meant was very obvious indeed; this peculiar look is a threat, and may be translated thus:
"If you do not give me your entire attention, and become thoroughly absorbed in me, I will rend the air with eldritch screams, and my piercing cries shall give you the headache you deserve."
"I think I was making a fool of myself, Reginald," said young Mrs. Haggard; "I certainly was predicting all sorts of good fortune for him, in baby language."
"Yes, baby language as you call it, is one of women's ridiculous fads; the child learns it, and he'll have to unlearn it again to pick up the Queen's English. You don't mean to say that you believe in palmistry, Georgie?" continued Haggard.
"Well, everybody says there's something in it, Reginald; besides, it's only an old belief revived, and it's better fun than spirit-rapping, thought-reading, or Madam Blavatsky."
The husband sat down, and critically inspected the child.
"Poor little devil!" he said; "he's like a young bear with all his troubles to come. I'll tell you his fortune, Georgie. If he's got brains he'll have to go and live in the Law Courts, pinching and screwing to make both ends meet, starving his belly to feed his back, working early and late, and hoping for the briefs that never come. Perhaps he'll drift into something, or finding that he can't earn a farthing he may turn paper stainer in despair, and gradually get a crust by writing dull farces or novels that nobody reads; in fact he may become a modern Grub Street free lance. If he is a humbug he'll go into the Church; or he may want to wear a red coat, or a blue one, and vegetate on his pay and the trifle he would get from me."
"Poor little fellow," said his wife; "but what has he done to be disinherited?"
"He's committed the crime of existing, my dear," replied the husband. "Can't you see, dear, that every farthing we have in the world will have to go to Lucius, for he will be the head of the family. Gad," he said, "he may be a peer of the realm, though that's a rather unlikely contingency. This child, Georgie, is not born in the purple, as is his elder brother; the one is clay, the other china."
The young mother nervously clutched the child to her breast and smothered him with kisses.
"Make the most of him, my dear, lavish your affection upon him. Unless the squire means doing something for him, his fortune is what I have predicted. Younger sons in England, George, have to live on monkey's allowance—more kicks than halfpence, and if there are half-a-dozen more of them, poor little chaps, the fewer halfpence they will get and the more kicks."
Careless idle words, spoken jestingly, but every one of which went home like a barbed arrow to the mother's heart. As she buried her face in the child's neck, she thought of her vow of eternal secrecy to her cousin. It had been extracted from her when under the influence of intense fear and horror. Her cousin had only forced a solemn promise from her with the intention of covering her own ignominy. It would have needed more than even the diabolical ingenuity of a Machiavel to have extorted from any mother her adhesion to a conspiracy for the ruin of her own child. But now she saw to her horror that each and every child she might bear to her own husband would, as a matter of course, be practically disinherited in favour of the little bastard. At that instant, there dawned on her for the first time the remote possible contingency of the child who was supposed to be Haggard's firstborn son ultimately inheriting the Pit Town title; that troubled her far less than do the probabilities of his ultimate succession to the Woolsack affect young Mr. Briefless when he is first called to the bar. But that each and every one of her children should by her own deliberate act, and for the benefit of an interloper, himself but a child of shame, be deprived of what was legitimately their own, their share of their father's heritage, did seem a very bitter cup.
"I can tell you one thing, Georgie," said her husband; "your father's quite of my mind in the matter, and it is our universal respect for the law of primogeniture that has made England what she is. It's a sort of natural law of selection, and the survival of the fittest. The eldest son must be taken care of at the expense of the rest; he is the tribal chief, his brothers and sisters are but his henchmen and his slaves. Why, look at the French; since the Code Napoleon, which chopped up the land into little blocks and gave each child his share, there have been no great families in France. Money a young fellow can squander, but he cannot get rid of his ancestral acres, when they are tightly tied up to come to his eldest son. There's no way out of it, Georgie; the Warrenders and the Haggards wouldn't content themselves with turning in their graves, they'd haunt the pair of us, if we hesitated to do the regulation thing."
On hearing these words, which for the first time in her life brought the real state of things home to her, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that young Mrs. Haggard's heart died within her. Was it not her duty to her child, to her husband, and to herself, to instantly make a clean breast of the whole mystery? Perhaps it was, but she struggled fiercely against the natural impulse to adopt this simple course. The fact has been insisted upon that secrecy was foreign to Georgie Haggard's nature; she hated deception and the very idea of anything which was underhand. Had she given way to her natural impulse, and then and there told her husband the truth, the dark web of intrigue which surrounded her innocent life would have been torn aside and dispersed at once and for ever. But with Georgie, unhappily for herself, her promise bound her as tightly as the most terrible oath. She had promised never to reveal Lucy's secret, and come what might, should this moral Juggernaut crush her, her child, and her offspring yet unborn, yet she would be true to it; her word, once plighted, should be kept to the bitter end.
"I think it's cruel, Reginald," she said, and the tears were in her eyes, "cruel and wicked too. What has he done, poor little fellow, that he should be made to inherit a sort of curse?"
But before her husband could answer this very natural objection, the door was flung violently open and the child Lucius, his face suffused with angry colour, bounced into the room. To his breast he clutched a tiny white kitten, it was quite young, its eyes not being yet open.
"Dad," he cried in a tone of rage, "Auntie says I shan't see the tittens drowned. I do want so much to see them drowned. I hate Auntie Lucy, and I hate Fanchette."
Fanchette now appeared upon the scene, indignant and out of breath. The child, tossing the kitten from him, sprung upon Haggard's lap, and again expressed his intense desire to be present at the execution of the kittens.
"Dad," he said in a tone of affectionate entreaty, "I never seed a titten drowned."
Perhaps it was natural after all. Just in the same way as an adult goes to an execution, because he "never has seen one, you know"—he forgets that it is "a thing to shudder at not to see"—so the little Lucius was anxious to assist at the immolation of the kittens.
"No, my man, you mustn't be cruel," and then Haggard attempted to argue with the child. But the little fellow pleaded, looking up into Haggard's face with his big brown eyes.
"Me tiss oo, dad," he said, and he did so vehemently. Haggard stroked the child's long golden curls, and placed him gently on the floor.
"Can't be done, my man," he said. At once the child's face changed and became frightful to behold; the corners of his mouth went down, the whites of his eyes became injected, the tears coursed freely down his cheeks, he clenched his little fists and screamed aloud in his rage and fury.
"Debil!" he shouted in his passion, and he shook his fists at Haggard in impotent rage.
"Take him away, Fanchette," said Haggard with a laugh.
The bonne smiled and caught the infuriated child up in her arms.
"Ah ma foi, monsieur," she exclaimed, "après tout, c'est naturel, il aime le spectacle, le beau bébé."
"Well, he's not to have the spectacle, mind that, Fanchette."
The child and the one kitten undoomed to a watery grave were carried off by the bonne.
"That chap's a devil of a temper, Georgie," said the husband with a laugh. "Case in point, my dear," he continued; "we keep one kitten and drown the rest, and there doesn't seem anything very horrible about it after all; and that's what we of the upper classes, Georgie, have morally to do with our own offspring. It's on exactly that same principle that little Lucius will have to get our money and our land, while that poor little chap and his brothers and sisters, if he should have the misfortune to have any, will have to rub along as best they can. You and I, Georgie, will have morally to perform the functions of the stony-hearted gardener."
Haggard kissed his wife, then he ran his hand meditatively over the infant's soft scalp; he began to whistle a tune, and left the room.
It may be very unnatural, it may be very inartistic, but this being merely a veracious chronicle, it has to be told that Georgie loved the little Lucius quite as much and with exactly the same affection that she felt for the infant she fondled on her lap. Totally inexplicable, you will say; but so it was.
Georgie had never grudged to the little Lucius his share of her own and her husband's affection. She and her husband were young people; they might have a large family growing up round them, but they were wealthy, and they had large expectations, so that a child more or less to people in their position in life did not very much matter. But to give a little stranger a full share in the domestic pie is one thing, and to rob one's own children for the sake of the same little stranger is another. The more Georgie thought the matter over the more monstrous and impossible seemed her position. She would make an appeal to her cousin's mercy, to her cousin's sense of justice. But she felt morally certain that Lucy would never consent to an éclaircissement, or to the making a clean breast of the whole long-buried scandal to her cousin's husband.
Gradually the infant on her lap, her husband's legitimate heir, dozed gently off; Mrs. Haggard placed him in his cot and proceeded to darken the room; as she did so the door opened and her cousin's smiling face appeared.
"I want to talk to you, Lucy; I want to talk to you about baby," said Georgie with gravity.
"Nothing the matter with him, dear, I hope, is there?"
"Oh, he's well enough as to his bodily health. It's his future I'm alarmed about. What do you suppose my husband told me to-day, Lucy? He told me, as a matter of course, that my baby was to be sacrificed to Lucius, because, forsooth, Lucius is the elder. I nearly told him then, Lucy. I must tell him, I shall have to tell him sooner or later."
"And when you do so, Georgie, you will have the satisfaction of seeing the last of your cousin. When I told you that I would fling myself into the lake if you betrayed me, it was not the mere idle vapouring of a foolish girl. I said it, and I meant it. Do you think for one single instant that your husband would keep my secret? The scandal has blown over, Georgie; you and I are its sole depositories. My secret and my sin are both dead, buried for ever in the silent past. You swore you would never betray me, Georgie, and having sworn it you must keep your oath. Don't think for an instant that any ambition on my part, Georgie, makes me wish to see Lucius supplant your children. Oh that he were only dead, then at all events I should be safe."
Gradually, however, the girl became calmer, her manner to Georgie got softer and more caressing. "Keep my secret, Georgie dear," she said; "it'll be another twenty years before your children are men and women. I may be dead before that, please God I shall. Anyhow there'll be quite time enough to take your husband into our confidence, if it must be so. But I couldn't face him yet, and I couldn't face uncle. I must hold you to your promise, Georgie. You swore never to betray me, and you never shall."
Reginald Haggard's wife pleaded with the girl; she argued, she entreated, but she never threatened.
"It may come out after all, Lucy," she said, "and then think of the shame, the disgrace and the scandal."
"The only way in which it could come out, dear, would be if Capt knew something about it. He evidently has no suspicion, or he would have come to us for hush-money long ago. Besides, Georgie, there's hope left to me yet," and here the girl's face grew almost diabolical as she hissed across the table in a low whisper, "Lucius is but a little child, dear; he may die!"
"I can't believe, Lucy, that the worst of mothers could deliberately wish for her own child's death. You took a base advantage of my affection in entrapping me into a promise of secrecy."
"An oath, my dear."
"An oath or a promise, whichever you like, Lucy. I'll keep your secret, you may rely on that, whatever it may cost me. But I love the child (and you know you can trust me, Lucy Warrender), so be you sure of this. You dared to wish for the child's death. Should any danger menace him from you—you his own mother, worthless woman that you are—that instant your secret shall be a secret no longer. I will sacrifice my own happiness, the future of my own children, to you; for your sake I have deceived my husband, and I will go on deceiving him, but I will protect the child's life from you, Lucy Warrender, at whatever cost. Your very presence is a danger to him. After what you've told me, it is impossible that you and he can live under the same roof. You hate him, your own unhappy friendless child. I banish you from his presence, Lucy, from this day forth."
Lucy Warrender gazed at her cousin in astonishment; their rôles were changed; no longer young Mrs. Haggard looked at her cousin with patient pleading eyes; her foot beat the floor with suppressed excitement, and though she never raised her voice, she continued in an angry but determined tone:
"Yes, Lucy, you must go, and quickly; you shall no longer poison my home with your presence. You have brought sufficient misery to me and mine."
There was a something in the way young Mrs. Haggard had spoken that convinced Lucy Warrender of her sincerity.
Her cousin turned and left the room without a word.
That same evening Miss Warrender announced her intention of making a long-postponed visit to some friends in town. In vain her uncle remonstrated, and pointed out that her presence was expected with the rest of the family at Walls End Castle.
"I couldn't stand it, uncle," she said; "we are quiet enough and dull enough here, heaven knows; but a month at the Castle would be too dreadful. Besides it is Georgie who is the old lord's favourite. I don't think I'm in his good books at all. I've put off and put off this visit so long, that if I don't make it now, I never shall. And even London out of the season is to my mind preferable to the oppressive magnificence of the Castle. Lord Pit Town is Reginald's relative, not mine; I should only be in the way, Uncle."
And so it was arranged.
Lucy went to her friends in town, and from their house she commenced a round of visits. She corresponded regularly enough with her cousin, and there was nothing very remarkable about the letters that were interchanged. Not one word was dropped by either cousin on the subject of the family secret. Perhaps a letter written about this time from Lord Spunyarn to his friend Haggard may throw a little light upon the way in which Miss Warrender amused herself.
"The Club House,
"Royal Yacht Squadron, Ryde.
"13th August, 18—.
"Dear Haggard,
"Here I am swaggering about this place in a blue coat and brass buttons, like the other sham sailors. I'm quite out of the hunt here, however, for I can't pretend to understand the jargon of the thing. Old and new measurements, tonnage, time allowances and movable ballast, are all a sealed book to me. Of course I go on to the balcony with the other idiots to stare at the matches, and, like them, I have to pretend to manifest an intelligent interest.
"To use a nautical simile your wife's cousin is 'carrying on' here. If I didn't know her so well I should think she meant marrying. Half the men here, including old Marlingspike, the venerable commodore, dance attendance upon her from morning till night, and she certainly looks a very bright little, tight little craft in her nautical get-up, which is the regulation thing with the women here. They say that little Jack Hornpiper proposed to her the other day; it looks rather like it, for he has suddenly started for a lengthened cruise in the Mediterranean.
"I suppose by this you have begun wiring into Pit Town's grouse, though I hear he does not keep a very big head of game on the place. When Hetton comes into it, it won't be much better, for of course all his spare cash will go in horses. I too have an invite for Walls End, but it is only just for the festivities, which everybody declares are given in honour of your wife and her boy, and to spite Hetton. He, of course, is furious. He swore at first he wouldn't put in an appearance at all, but a good many of the people here are going, and Hetton'll have to show, if only to keep his Jews quiet. The Barringtons, who as you know were never great favourites, have been quite the rage here since Miss Warrender's arrival. They are asked everywhere and go everywhere for the lady's sake, which is very good of them. The Charmington is going to astonish us all in a three-nights engagement at the local theatre; her benefit is announced under the special patronage of H.R.H. She has gone off terribly, but her hair is more luxuriant and golden than ever.
"Miss Warrender bids me tell you that she shall make a final attempt to rescue Hetton on her arrival at Pit Town's place. For your sake, old fellow, I hope she won't succeed, but I have known more unlikely things happen even than this.
"Sincerely yours,
"Spunyarn."
Lucy Warrender enjoyed herself thoroughly during her stay at Ryde. Mr. Hornpiper's misfortune had been a true bill. Lucy Warrender encouraged everybody, and it was not her fault if enthusiasts like little Hornpiper cut short the delightful period of their acquaintance with the lady by proposing to her.
It has been said that a ship is a prison, to which is added the possibility of being drowned; this is particularly the case in regard to a yacht. Theoretically, yachting is a delightful pastime; practically, it is an exceedingly expensive foible, combining the maximum of probable discomfort and boredom with the not unremote contingency of possible danger. Given the most delightful weather, a big and well-found yacht and a really good cook, given that the cruise has been a short one, that everybody has done his or her best to make things comfortable; yet how uncommonly glad we all are to bid our host and his dear delightful daughters good-bye—and how uncommonly glad they must be to see the last of us. If any of our friends were to invite us to come and stay with them and eat tinned provisions for a fortnight, we should indignantly decline, but if we are asked to do it on board a friend's yacht, we accept with effusion, and for at least a week or two before we brag of the high old time we are going to have. I am afraid Lucy Warrender and her friends the Barringtons were only fine-weather sailors after all, but they were very popular.
There was no false pride about Lucy Warrender. When she met her old friend and rival, Mrs. Charmington, upon the pier, she shook hands with her at once. In the days when Mrs. Charmington was a leader in society, little Jack Charmington, her husband, had been tacitly ignored; but now his wife was very glad indeed to have him constantly at her elbow, and she introduced him to everybody.
"You must know Jack, Miss Warrender," she said, as they shook hands. "I don't know what I should do without him, my dear," she continued. "He always leads the applause in front, you know, and he talks to the professional people for me, when I have the misfortune to meet them in the daytime."
"Doosid responsible position, Miss Warrender, I can tell you; one needs a constitution of iron, Miss Warrender; they're so awfully hospitable, that talking with them first always means drinking with them afterwards. It's bad enough for my wife to have quitted the scenes of her former triumphs for the coarser joys of the play-house. But dramatic talent, my dear young lady, will assert itself. If my wife had been Empress of all the Russias, sooner or later her destiny would have declared itself, and she would have sought the only sphere which could content a woman of her talent and ambition."
Now Mrs. Charmington's talents as an actress were microscopical. She was good looking, she had a decently good memory, and she was a dogged, plodding woman, with a good eye to the main chance. Her principle was to buy a fairly good article, to pay a good price for it, and then to make her little experiment upon the body of the vile, by hacking her piece through the provinces, say for six months; and then producing it for a short London season. There is no doubt that by time and patience it is possible to get even a little child to recite a piece of poetry with a certain amount of effect, and so it was with Mrs. Charmington. It must be remembered first, that Mrs. Charmington did not buy rubbish. She went to the great Mr. Breitmann, and she made a bargain with him. Breitmann was a man of five-and-forty; he stood six feet in his stockings, he was fair, with a quantity of light curly hair, and he had big fat fingers, which were perpetually playing upon an imaginary pianoforte; when they weren't running over an invisible keyboard, Mr. William Breitmann was engaged in extending them separately, one after the other, in a succession of violent cracks. Now the reason Mrs. Charmington went to Mr. Breitmann was, that Breitmann was a particularly independent person, who declined dancing gratuitous attendance upon Mrs. Charmington or anybody else. In vain had she favoured him with a royal command, written upon crocodile paper, headed by a magnificent monogram, illuminated in many colours, in which Mr. Breitmann was informed that "Mrs. Charmington would be pleased if Mr. Breitmann would kindly call upon her on Tuesday, at three, as she wished to talk over a matter of business with him." A rude and cruel answer, short and to the point, came by return of post:
"Madam,
"I have no business with you.
"Yours obediently,
"W. Breitmann."
Then she sent an ambassador. Jack Charmington called four times upon the dramatist at his club, but even then, after bribing the page boy to indiscreetly admit that the great Breitmann was on the premises, he still found him sufficiently difficult to approach. As Jack stood in the little bare den marked "Strangers' Room," he heard voices in loud talking, with occasional shouts of laughter; then he heard a gruff and angry voice grunt in an irritated manner, "Charmington, what is Charmington? I don't know Charmington. Tell him to go to——." And here a door slammed violently.
The page boy entered the strangers' room and communicated to Mr. Charmington the fact that the great man was busy.
"Did you tell him I wanted to see him on business?"
"They all say that, sir," replied the boy; "he's a very busy gentleman Mr. Breitmann, sir, if you please."
Charmington then sat down and wrote a polite note, in which he informed Mr. Breitmann that he desired a short interview with him on a matter of vital importance to them both. A second half-crown was administered to the page boy, and in a few moments the door of the strangers' room was violently flung open, and Mr. Breitmann himself suddenly burst in. Breitmann never entered a room, he always burst in. The suddenness of his entry startled Charmington considerably; he was still more astonished at the tone in which Breitmann addressed him. That gentleman carried poor Jack's note in his hand.
"What is your vital business, sir? I have no vital business with you."
"My wife wrote to you, Mr. Breitmann, yesterday, asking you to call on her."
This only seemed to exasperate Mr. Breitmann still more.
"I have no business with your wife. I am not a ladies' man. Why should I call on your wife when I have no business? What do you mean by coming here and bullying me because I won't call on your wife?"
"My wife is a very prominent person, Mr. Breitmann."
"I have seen your wife, sir, and if you wish, I will tell you what I think of her."
He hardly gave poor little Charmington time to assent to this proposition, when he continued, his voice changing from a shout to a scream:
"Sir, your wife is a fool!" Then he proceeded to crack his fingers violently, one after another. "Now, sir," he continued, "I wish you good-morning; my time is fully occupied in my businesses and in protecting my copyrights."
He was about to rush from the room.
"It's about that I wanted to see you," said Jack.
"Have you been infringing my copyrights then?" replied the other in a terrible voice.
"No, I want to buy one," said Charmington.
"Ah," replied Breitmann, in a calmer tone, "then you have business. Sit down. What do you want to buy?"
"Well, I don't exactly know," replied Charmington.
"Well, tell me how much you want to spend, five thousand—ten thousand?"
And then they went to business. It was explained to Mr. Breitmann that Mrs. Charmington was anxious to purchase one of his new and original dramas, one of those extraordinary combinations of melodramatic impossibility, which however appeal, and not in vain, to the eye and to the heart, which never fail to fill the pockets of their fortunate purchasers, and which have rendered the name of Breitmann a household word.
For thirty years it had been Mr. Breitmann's misfortune to fight incompetency in some shape or other. It had fallen to his lot to manipulate vast armies of theatrical supernumeraries and to teach them to perform the apparently impossible feat of being in two places at once. Mr. Breitmann's struggles with the British super had taught him one great secret: the British super, like the British donkey, never does what he is told until the person in authority over him loses his temper. So Breitmann, to avoid loss of time, used to begin by losing his temper at once; so terrible were his ebullitions of wrath, that nobody ever attempted to argue with him, and he always carried his point. Finding his tactics invariably successful within the walls of the theatre, he adopted them with similar success in ordinary life, and the time he saved was enormous.
His negotiations with Mrs. Charmington, her husband and her solicitor, were over in forty-eight hours; a satisfactory bargain was concluded between them for the purchase of "Ethel's Sacrifice," a melodrama of thrilling interest, originally written as a novel by Robinson. Robinson had submitted the manuscript to Breitmann, and then for a fortnight the pair had "collaborated." What took place during that dreadful fortnight is only known to the two collaborators. Robinson at its commencement was a bright-eyed young fellow, full of enthusiasm, poetry and romance; at the end of the fortnight all the enthusiasm, poetry and romance had been knocked out of him. "Ethel's Sacrifice" had been altered, tinkered, transposed, cut and filled with comic incidents of the most every-day description, incidents from which the poetic soul of the unhappy Robinson revolted. Then "Ethel's Sacrifice" was gabbled through one summer's evening at a remote provincial theatre, and "Ethel's Sacrifice," by Messrs. Robinson and Breitmann, became a marketable security, duly protected by act of parliament. A nervous invalid left London for prolonged mental rest and change of scene—that was Robinson; his collaborator calmly returned to his multifarious business engagements and the onerous duties of the protection of his innumerable copyrights.
Now Mr. Breitmann not only sold "Ethel's Sacrifice" to the Charmingtons, but he sold them the benefits of his own personal skill in its production. When the bills said that "Ethel's Sacrifice" was produced under the personal supervision of Mr. William Breitmann, the knowing ones jumped at once to the correct conclusion that "Ethel's Sacrifice" would be a success. Mr. Breitmann had stipulated with Mrs. Charmington that he should not deliver to her the complete drama until she herself was letter-perfect in the title rôle.
"You're never perfect, you know," he had said to her, "and you won't be till you've played the thing in the provinces for six months; that's the curse of amateurs, they never are perfect."
"But I'm not an amateur, Mr. Breitmann," the lady had retorted indignantly.
"Pardon me, dear lady," he said, "but you are nothing else. You have played four original parts, specially written for you mind, in the whole of your stage experience; of course you're an amateur, but you are a big success. And," and here he cracked his fingers very slowly, "you are a fine woman, yes, a fine stage presence of a woman," said he appreciatively, as he looked her all over, much as a dealer might look over a horse—a dealer who was selling a horse, not a dealer who was buying one.
Mrs. Charmington fought hard to get hold of the beautiful type-printed copy of "Ethel's Sacrifice," which young Robinson, in elaborate morning costume and a flower in his button-hole, had read to her so delightfully; but all in vain. Mr. Breitmann kept it carefully locked up in one of the numerous tin boxes which made his rather grim-looking study so much resemble a lawyer's office.
"You'll find this quite enough to occupy you for the next three months, my dear," said Breitmann decisively, using the affectionate method of address invariable in the profession.
The part, which was a formidable little volume, was just about twice as long as the Church catechism. To do Mrs. Charmington justice she set to work with a will; she was actually letter-perfect when the play was read to her company for the first time by Mr. Robinson at the Stoke Pogis theatre, where the talented little band of actors that supported Mrs. Charmington were playing at the time.
"At ten on Monday, if you please, ladies and gentlemen," said Robinson, "we will rehearse Acts I., II. and III. Mr. Breitmann will be present."
Everybody was punctual, and Mr. Breitmann was present. For five mortal hours he abused the company individually and collectively; he pervaded the theatre, he shrieked from the lighted rake of gas jets which illuminated the centre of the stage, he objurgated from the author's table, he used the most horrible language when he suddenly appeared in the stalls, he had the presumption to order Mrs. Charmington not to "mince," and he told her that "it wasn't a time for mincing;" he insisted on the minuet in the second act being repeated six times, and then he informed the infuriated stage manager that "it wasn't good enough even for Whitechapel." But the climax was reached at Mrs. Charmington's great scene with her leading man, at the conclusion of the third act. Ethel (Mrs. Charmington) has to fling herself into the arms of her confiding husband; she proceeded to do so in her usual perfunctory and society manner.
"Good heavens! madam," shrieked the indignant Breitmann, "that won't do. Stand here," said he in his ferocious voice, "and look at me." He rushed at the leading man, he plunged his face into that gentleman's shirt front, he gripped the gentleman's muscular shoulders with tremendous energy, and his back went up and down with convulsive sobs.
"There, ma'am," he said triumphantly; "try again." She tried again, but Breitmann vociferated all the more.
"It's no good, my dear; you must clutch and nestle. I wouldn't give that," and here he snapped his fingers, "for a woman who can't clutch and nestle; try it with me."
Breitmann took up the position of the leading man. Mrs. Charmington gave one tearful glance at her husband, then she rushed into Breitmann's arms and did her best to clutch and to nestle. But he was not even then satisfied.
"Go home, my dear," he said, "and practise it with your husband."
What a situation for one who has been a queen of society. When Mrs. Charmington, almost heart-broken, reached her lodgings she informed her husband that it was more than she could bear.
"The idea of the wretch actually teaching me my business before my whole company, and then ordering me to go home and learn to 'clutch and nestle.'"
"Dev'lish sensible idea I think, Julia," said Charmington, who was in love with his wife before all things; "you can't do better than begin at once," and the little man drew himself up to his full height of five foot six and extended his arms like a mechanical doll.
"Don't remind me of my humiliation, Jack; it's too much, too much to bear," and the beauty flung herself into an easy chair and burst into floods of tears.
But Julia Charmington, wise woman that she was, did as she was bid; she clutched and she nestled all that afternoon, and she had her reward. For six whole months she delighted all the great provincial towns and watering-places of the United Kingdom with "Ethel's Sacrifice," and she reaped a golden harvest. When she came to town for the season she scored a decided success, and all the leading Dailies joined in the chorus of adulation. The fair Julia got a good round sum from the photographers for the right to represent her in her four elaborate costumes; the particular triumph of the sun-artist being the representation of her nestling and clutching scene. Even the dramatic critic of the great morning journal went into ecstasies over this.
"Mrs. Charmington," he said, "has made real progress. It has been the fashion to go to see this lady from curiosity, but last night she scored a genuine success in 'Ethel's Sacrifice,' a thrilling melodrama by Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson, which was seen in London for the first time. The house was crowded with the well-known faces so familiar to us at all important premières. In her great scene in the third act, Mrs. Charmington took every one by surprise. Thoroughly spontaneous and unaffected, quite free from staginess and straining after effect, the audience thoroughly appreciated the genuine burst of feeling of the young wife," and so on, and so on, for a column and a half.
Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson bowed their thanks to an enthusiastic call; and Breitmann, his face wreathed in smiles and cracking his fingers violently, as was his custom, whispered to his collaborator, "She's only a 'mug,' after all, my boy, but I'm proud of her; it's the nestling and clutching that fetched them." And then he went off to the Convivial Cannibals, where he ate an enormous tripe supper, and was more jovial and violent than ever.
