Such was the bond he had signed, such his struggles to fulfil its obligations. One only condition he stipulated for,—he wished to go to Ireland before setting out for the States, to see the last resting-place of his poor mother ere he quitted his country, perhaps forever. Dr. Millar, too, had mentioned that a number of letters were amongst the few relics she had left, and he desired, for many reasons, that these should not fall into strangers' hands. As for Qnackinboss, he agreed to everything. Indeed, he thought that as there was no use in reaching the States before “the fall,” they could not do better than ramble about Ireland, while making some sort of preparation for the coming campaign.
“How sad this place makes me!” said Layton, as they strolled along one of the leaf-strewn alleys. “I wish I had not come here.”
“That's just what I was a-thinkin' myself,” said the other. “I remember coming back all alone once over the Michigan prairie, which I had travelled about eight months before with a set of hearty companions, and whenever I 'd come up to one of the spots where our tent used to be pitched, and could mark the place by the circle of greener grass, with a burned-up patch where the fire stood, it was all I could do not to burst out a-cryin' like a child! It's a main cruel thing to go back alone to where you 've once been happy in, and there 's no forgettin' the misery of it ever after.”
“That's true,” said Layton; “the pleasant memories are erased forever. Let us go.”
CHAPTER XXV. BEHIND THE SCENES
It is amongst the prerogatives of an author to inform his reader of many things which go on “behind the scenes” of life. Let me, therefore, ask your company, for a brief space, in a small and not ill-furnished chamber, which, deep in the recesses of back scenes, dressing-rooms, scaffolding, and machinery, is significantly entitled, by a painted inscription, “Manager's Room.” Though the theatre is a London one, the house is small. It is one of those West-End speculations which are occasionally graced by a company of French comedians, a monologist, or a conjurer. There is all the usual splendor before the curtain, and all the customary squalor behind. At the present moment—for it is growing duskish of a November day, and rehearsal is just over—the general aspect of the place is dreary enough. The box fronts and the lustre are cased in brown holland, and, though the curtain is up, the stage presents nothing but a chaotic mass of disjointed scenery and properties. Tables, chairs, musical instruments, the half of a boat, a throne, and a guillotine lie littered about, amidst which a ragged supernumerary wanders, broom in hand, but apparently hopeless of where or how to begin to reduce the confusion to order.
The manager's room is somewhat more habitable, for there is a good carpet, warm curtains, and an excellent fire, at which two gentlemen are seated, whose jocund tones and pleasant faces are certainly, so far as outward signs go, fair guarantees that the world is not dealing very hardly with them, nor they themselves much disgusted with the same world. One of these—the elder, a middle-aged man somewhat inclined to corpulency, with a florid cheek, and clear, dark eye—is the celebrated Mr. Hyman Stocmar; celebrated, I say, for who can take up the morning papers without reading his name and knowing his whereabouts; as thus: “We are happy to be able to inform our readers that Mr. Stocmar is perfectly satisfied with his after season at the 'Regent's.' Whatever other managers may say, Mr. Stocmar can make no complaint of courtly indifference. Her Majesty has four times within the last month graced his theatre with her presence. Mr. Stocmar is at Madrid, at Vienna, at Naples. Mr. Stocmar is in treaty with Signor Urlaccio of Turin, or Mademoiselle Voltarina of Venice. He has engaged the Lapland voyagers, sledge-dogs and all, the Choctaw chiefs, or the Californian lecturer, Boreham, for the coming winter. Let none complain of London in November so long as Mr. Hyman Stocmar caters for the public taste;” and so on. To look at Stocmar's bright complexion, his ruddy glow, his well-filled waistcoat, and his glossy ringlets,—for, though verging on forty, he has them still “curly,”—you'd scarcely imagine it possible that his life was passed amongst more toil, confusion, difficulty, and distraction than would suffice to kill five out of any twenty, and render the other fifteen deranged. I do not mean alone the worries inseparable from a theatrical direction,—the fights, the squabbles, the insufferable pretensions he must bear, the rivalries he must reconcile, the hates he must conciliate; the terrible existence of coax and bully, bully and coax, fawn, flatter, trample on, and outrage, which goes on night and day behind the curtain,—but that his whole life in the world is exactly a mild counterpart of the same terrible performance; the great people, his patrons, being fifty times more difficult to deal with than the whole corps itself,—the dictating dowagers and exacting lords, the great man who insists upon Mademoiselle So-and-so being engaged, the great lady who will have no other box than that occupied by the Russian embassy, the friends of this tenor and the partisans of that, the classic admirers of grand music, and that larger section who will have nothing but comic opera, not to mention the very extreme parties who only care for the ballet, and those who vote the “Traviata” an unclean thing. What are a lover's perjuries to the lies such a man tells all day long?—lies only to be reckoned by that machine that records the revolutions of a screw in a steamer. His whole existence is passed in promises, excuses, evasions, and explanations; always paying a small dividend to truth, he barely escapes utter bankruptcy, and by a plausibility most difficult to distrust, he obtains a kind of half-credit,—that of one who would keep his word if he could.
By some strange law of compensation, this man, who sees a very dark side of human nature,—sees it in its low intrigues, unworthy pursuits, falsehoods, and depravities,—who sees even the “great” in their moods of meanness,—this man, I say, has the very keenest relish for life, and especially the life of London. He knows every capital of Europe: Paris, from the Chaussée d'Antin to the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse; Vienna, from the Hof to the Volksgarten; Rome, from the Piazza di Spagna to the Ghetto; and yet he would tell you they are nothing, all of them, to that area between Pall Mall and the upper gate of Hyde Park. He loves his clubs, his dinners, his junketings to Richmond or Greenwich, his short Sunday excursions to the country, generally to some great artiste's villa near Fulham or Chiswick, and declares to you that it is England alone offers all these in perfection. Is it any explanation, does it give any clew to this gentleman's nature, if I say that a certain aquiline character in his nose, and a peculiar dull lustre in the eye, recall that race who, with all the odds of a great majority against them, enjoy a marvellous share of this world's prosperity? Opposite to him sits one not unworthy—even from externals—of his companionship. He is a very good-looking fellow, with light brown hair, his beard and moustaches being matchless in tint and arrangement: he has got large, full blue eyes, a wide capacious forehead, and that style of head, both in shape and the way in which it is set on, which indicate a frank, open, and courageous nature. Were it not for a little over-attention to dress, there is no “snobbery” about him; but there is a little too much velvet on his paletot, and his watch trinkets are somewhat in excess, not to say that the gold head of his cane is ostentatiously large and striking. This is Captain Ludlow Paten, a man about town, known to and by everybody, very much asked about in men's circles, but never by any accident met in ladies' society. By very young men he is eagerly sought after. It is one of the best things coming of age has in its gift is to know Paten and be able to ask him to dine. Older ones relish him full as much; but his great popularity is with a generation beyond that again: the mediaevals, who walk massively and ride not at all; the florid, full-cheeked, slightly bald generation, who grace club windows of a morning and the coulisses at night. These are his “set,” par excellence, and he knows them thoroughly. As for himself or his family, no one knows, nor, indeed, wants to know anything. The men he associates with chiefly in life are all “cognate numbers,” and these are the very people who never trouble their heads about a chance intruder amongst them; and although some rumor ran that his father was a porter at the Home Office, or a tailor at Blackwall, none care a jot on the matter: they want him; and he could n't be a whit more useful if his veins ran with all the blood of all the Howards.
There is a story of him, however, which, though I reveal to you, is not generally known. He was once tried for a murder. It was a case of poisoning in Jersey, where the victim was a well-known man of the Turf, and who was murdered by the party he had invited to spend a Christmas with him. Paten was one of the company, and included in the accusation. Two were banged; Paten and another, named Collier, acquitted. Paten's name was Hunt, but he changed it at once, and, going abroad, entered the Austrian service, where, in eight years, he became a lieutenant. This was enough for probation and rank, and so he returned to England as Captain Ludlow Paten. Stocmar, of course, knew the story: there were half a dozen more, also, who did, but they each and all knew that poor Paul was innocent; that there was n't a fragment of evidence against him; that he lost—actually lost—by Hawke's death; that he was carried tipsy to bed that night two hours before the murder; that he was so overcome the next morning by his debauch that he was with difficulty awakened; that the coroner thought him a downright fool, he was so stunned by the event; in a word, though he changed his name to Paten, and now wore a tremendous beard, and affected a slightly foreign accent, these were disguises offered up to the mean prejudices of the world rather than precautions of common safety and security.