A Mummer's Wife

by George Moore

After wading down a few sloppy streets, he stopped before a low doorway, and ushered them into what looked like an immense kitchen. They saw rafters overhead and an open staircase ascending to the upper rooms, as a ladder might through a series of lofts; and when a candle had been obtained, the first thing their host did was to pull his wife out of bed, and insist on his guests getting into it, a request which the woman joined in as heartily as her husband as soon as the reason for this unceremonious awakening had been explained to her. And so wearied out were Kate and Dick, and so tempting did any place of rest look to them, that they could offer no opposition to the kind intentions of their host and hostess, and they slept heavily until roused next morning by a loud trampling of feet passing through their room. It was the family coming down from the lofts above, and as they descended the staircase they wished their guests a broad Lancashire good-morning.

And when Kate and Dick had recovered from their astonishment, they dressed and went out to buy some provisions, which they hoped to be allowed to cook in the rough kitchen; but when they returned with their purchases they found the carter's daughter standing before an elaborately prepared breakfast, consisting of a huge beefsteak and a high pile of cakes.

'Lor, marm, why did yo' buy those things?' said the girl, disappointed.

'Well,' said Kate, 'we couldn't think of trespassing on you in that fashion. You must, you will, I hope, let us prepare our own breakfast.'

'Feyther will never 'ear of it, I know,' said the girl; and immediately after, the carter, with his brawny arms, pushed Kate and Dick down into two seats at the big table. Both cake and meat were delicious, and Dick's appetite showed such signs of outdoing the carter's that Kate, in the hope of diverting attention, commenced an interesting conversation with the buxom maiden by her side, and so successful were her efforts that a friendship was soon established between the women; and, when the morning's work was done, Mary, of her own accord, sought out Kate, and as she knitted the thick woollen stocking, was easily led into telling the inevitable love story.

We change the surroundings, but a heart bleeds under all social variations; and in this grim manufacturing town when the bridal dress was taken out of its lavender and darkness it seemed to possess a gleam of poetic whiteness that it could not have had even if set off by the pleasant verdure of a Devonshire lane.

'But you'll keep it for another; another will be sure to come by very soon,' said Kate, trying to console.

'Nay, nay, I'll have no other,' said the girl. 'I'll just keep the dress by; but I'll have no other.'

Then the talk hesitated and fell at last into a long narrative concerning tender hopes and illusions to which Kate listened, as all women do, to the story of heart-aches and deceptions; and in after years, when all other remembrances of the black country were swept away, the remembrance of this white dress remained.

From Bacup they went to Whitworth, a town in such immediate neighbourhood that it might be called a suburb of the former place, and there they played in the Co-operative Hall to an audience consisting of a factory man, two children, and a postman who came in on the free list. This was not encouraging; but they, nevertheless, resolved to try the place again; and next day at dinner-time, as the 'hands' were leaving the factories, they distributed some hundreds of bills. Dick said he should never forget it; to watch Pimply Face cutting about, shoving his bills into the women's aprons, was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life. But their efforts were all in vain. It rained, and not a soul came to see them; and, in addition to their other troubles, they found Whitworth was an awkward place to stop at. Dick and his wife had a room in a pub, but Montgomery and Williams had to walk over each evening to sleep at Bacup. One day their landlady spoke of Clayton-le-Moors, where, she said, a fair was being held, and she advised the Constellation Company to try their entertainment there. This was considered as a sensible suggestion, and the four mummers started for the fair on the top of an omnibus with their wigs and dresses and make-ups stuck under their legs. The weather at least was in their favour. The sunlight rolled over the great white sides of the booths, Aunt Sallies were being shied at, the pubs were all open, and a huge, rollicking population, fetid with the fermenting sweat of the factories, was disporting on whisky and fresh air. Never were the spirits of dejected strolling players buoyed up with a fairer prospect of a harvest.