'It was arranged that I should play the music of my new opera over to Mr.
Cox. If you don't put a stop to this it will go on for ever.'
'Yes, my boy, it's getting a bit long, isn't it: just let Dubois finish and we'll go upstairs.'
The story proved a weary one; but like a long railway journey it at last drew to an end, and they went upstairs. There they found the ladies yawning and looking at the presents. Kate ran to Dick to ask him to arrange about the music, but Beaumont had been a little before her and had taken Mr. Cox out on the balcony. Bret was not in the room; Leslie did not know the music, and in the face of so many difficulties, Dick's attention soon began to wander, and Kate was left to console the disappointed musician. Once or twice she attempted to renew the subject, but was told that they were all going down to the theatre in half an hour, and that it had better be put off to another time.
Montgomery made no answer, but he could not cast off the bitter and malignant thought that haunted him, 'I'm as unfortunate in art as in love.'
XX
The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of Olivette was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all over the shop.' Kate, excited with champagne and compliments, sang the wrong music on one occasion; and to complete their misfortunes, the Liverpool public did not in the least tumble to Miss Beaumont's rendering of the part of the heroine. The gallery thought she was too fat, the papers said she was not sprightly enough, and on Wednesday night the old Cloches had to be put up. By this failure the management sustained a heavy loss. They had laid out a lot of money on dresses, property and scenery, all of which were now useless to them; and the other two operas were beginning to droop and lose their drawing power, having been on the road for the last three years. The country, too, was suffering from a great commercial crisis, and no one cared to go to the theatre. In many of the towns they visited strikes were on, and the people were convulsed with discussions, projects for resistance, and hopes of bettering their condition. Great social problems, the tyranny of capital, and such-like, occupied the minds of men, and there was naturally little taste for the laughing nonchalance of La Fille de Madame Angot or the fooling of the Baillie in the Cloches. As forty thousand men had struck work, our band of travelling actors rolled out of Leeds, and they left it bearing with them only a reminiscence of empty benches, and street-corners crowded with idling, sullen-faced men. At Newcastle they were not more fortunate, at Wigan they fared even worse, and at Hull it was equally bad. Gaiety seemed to have fled out of the North; the public-house and the platform drew away the pit and the gallery; the frequenters of the boxes and dress-circle remained at home, to talk around their firesides of their jeopardized fortunes. When the workers grow weary of work a hard time sets in for the sellers of amusement, and the fate of Morton and Cox's Operatic Company proved no exception to the rule. Money was made nowhere, and every Friday night a cheque for five-and-twenty pounds had to be sent down from London to make up the deficit in the salary list. Nevertheless for two months matters went on very smoothly. The remembrance of large profits made in preceding years was still fresh in the minds of Messrs. Morton and Cox, and they had not yet begun to grumble; but an unintermittent drain of twenty-five to forty pounds a week keeps a man from his sleep at night, and after a big failure in the city, in which Mr. Cox was muleted to the extent of a couple of thousand pounds, he wrote to Dick suggesting that he had better look out for another opera. This was welcome news to Montgomery; but no sooner had Dick raised him to the seventh heaven of bliss, than he had to knock him down to earth again: a letter arrived from Mr. Cox, saying that no opera was to be put up; that it would be useless to try anything new in such bad times; they had better try to reduce expenses instead.
'Reduce expenses? How are we to reduce expenses except by cutting down the salaries?'
'I'm sure I don't know,' said Montgomery; 'and the expense of mounting my piece would be very slight.'
Without attempting to discuss so vain a question, Dick said, 'I must speak to Hayes.'
But Hayes only pulled his silky whiskers, blinked his Chinese eyes, drank three glasses of whisky, and changed the position of his black bag several times, and the matter was scarcely alluded to again until the following fortnight, when Dick found himself forced to write to Mr. Cox demanding a cheque for thirty-five pounds, to meet Saturday's treasury and the current expenses of the following week. The cheque arrived, but the letter that came with it read very ominously indeed. It read as follows: