The least of the strollers’ troubles at this crucial period of their wanderings were the bad roads or the effects of song and log-cabin upon the “amusement world,” the greatest being a temperance orator who thundered forth denunciations of rum and the theater with the bitterness of a Juvenal inveighing profligate Rome. The people crowded the orator’s hall, upon the walls of which hung the customary banners: a serpent springing from the top of a barrel; the steamboat, Alcohol, bursting her boiler and going to pieces, and the staunch craft, Temperance, safe and sound, sailing away before a fair wind. With perfect self-command, gift of mimicry and dramatic gestures, the lecturer swayed his audience; now bubbling over with witty anecdotes, again exercising his power of graphic portraiture. His elixir vitae––animal spirits––humanized his effort, and, as Sir Robert Peel played upon the House of Commons “as on an old fiddle,” so John B. Gough (for it was the versatile comic singer, actor and speaker) sounded the chords of that homely gathering.
Whatever he was, “poet, orator and dramatist, an English Gavazzi,” or, “mountebank,” “humbug,” or “backslider,” Mr. Gough was, even at that early period, an antagonist not to be despised. He had been out of pocket and out at the elbows––indeed, his wardrobe 195 now was mean and scanty; want and privation had been his companions, and, from his grievous experiences, he had become a sensational story-teller of low life and penury. Certainly Barnes had reason to lament the coincidence which brought players and lecturer into town at the same time, especially as the latter was heralded under the auspices of the Band of Hope.
The temperance lectures and a heavy rain combined to the undoing of the strollers. Majestically the dark clouds rolled up, outspread like a pall, and the land lay beneath the ban of a persistent downpour. People remained indoors, for the most part, and the only signs of life Barnes saw from the windows of the hotel were the landlord’s Holderness breed of cattle, mournfully chewing their monotonous cuds, and some Leicester sheep, wofully wandering in the pasture, or huddled together like balls of stained cotton beneath the indifferent protection of a tree amid field.
Exceptional inducements could not tempt the villagers to the theater. Even an epilogue gained for them none of Mr. Gough’s adherents. “The Temperance Doctor” failed miserably; “Drunkard’s Warning” admonished pitiably few; while as for “Drunkard’s Doom,” no one cared what it might be and left him to it.
After such a disastrous engagement the manager not only found himself at the end of his resources, but hopelessly indebted, and, with much reluctance, laid the matter before the soldier who had already advanced 196 Barnes a certain sum after their conversation on the night of the country dance and had also come to his assistance on an occasion when box-office receipts and expenses had failed to meet. Moreover, he had been a free, even careless, giver, not looking after his business concerns with the prudent anxiety of a merchant whose ventures are ships at the rude mercy of a troubled sea. To this third application, however, he did not answer immediately.
“Is it as bad as that?” he said at length, thoughtfully.
“Yes; it’s hard to speak about it to you,” replied the manager, with some embarrassment, “but at New Orleans––”
The soldier encountered his troubled gaze. “See if you can sell my horse,” he answered.
“You mean––” began the other surprised.
“Yes.”