"I've got a pin, and if ye shallna promise to restore me my richts after the next exit, ye shall feel the taste of it."
"You'll just stay where you are," came back the peremptory reply.
Deep went the pin in Jimmy's rear, and the Dragon gave such a howl that Davie's blood ran cold. Too late he remembered that it was not the Dragon's cue, and that he was making havoc of his own professional reputation. Through the canvas he felt the stern gaze of the actor-manager. He thought of pricking Jimmy only at the howling cues, but then the howl thus produced was so superior to his own, that if Jimmy chose to claim it, he might be at once engaged to replace him in the part. What a dilemma!
Poor Davie! As if it was not enough to be cut off from all the brilliant spectacle, pent in pitchy gloom and robbed of all his "fat" and his painfully rehearsed "second edition" touches. He felt like one of those fallen archangels of the footlights who live to bear Ophelia's bier on boards where they once played Hamlet.
Far different emotions were felt at the Dragon's head, where Jimmy's joy faded gradually away, replaced by a passion of indignation, as with love-sharpened eyes he ascertained for himself the true relations of the actor-manager with his "principal girl." He saw from his coign of vantage the poor modest little thing shrinking before the cowardly advances of her employer, who took every possible advantage of the stage potentialities, in ways the audience could not discriminate from the acting. Alas! what could the gentle little bread-winner do? But Jimmy's blood was boiling. Davie's great scene arrived: the battle royal between St. George and the Dragon. Sabra, bewitchingly radiant in white Arabian silk, stood under the orange-tree where the pendent fruit was labelled three a penny. Here St. George, in knightly armour clad, retired between the rounds, to be sponged by the fair Sabra, from whose lips he took the opportunity of drinking encouragement. When the umpire cried "Time!" Jimmy uttered inarticulate cries of real rage and malediction, vomiting his squibs straight at the champion's eyes with intent to do him grievous bodily injury. But squibs have their own ways of jumping, and the actor-manager's face was protected by his glittering burgonet.
At last Jimmy and Davie were duly despatched by St. George's trusty sword, Ascalon, which passed right between them and stuck out on the other side amid the frantic applause of the house. The Dragon reeled cumbrously sideways and bit the dust, of which there was plenty. Then Sabra rushed forward from under the orange-tree and encircled her hero's hauberk with a stage embrace, while St. George, lifting up his visor, rained kiss after kiss on Sabra's scarlet face, and the "gods" went hoarse with joy.
"Oh, sir!" Jimmy heard the still small voice of the bread-winner protest feebly again and again amid the thunder, as she tried to withdraw herself from her employer's grasp. This was the last straw. Anger and the foul air of his prison wrought up Jimmy to asphyxiation point. What wonder if the Dragon lost his head completely?
Davie will never forget the horror of that moment when he felt himself dragged upwards as by an irresistible tornado, and knew himself for a ruined actor. Mechanically he essayed to cling to the ground, but in vain. The dead Dragon was on its feet in a moment; in another, Jimmy had thrown off the mask, showing a shock of hair and a blotched crimson face, spotted with great beads of perspiration. Unconscious of this culminating outrage, Davie made desperate prods with his pin, but Jimmy was equally unconscious of the pricks. The thunder died abruptly. A dead silence fell upon the whole house—you could have heard Davie's pin drop. St. George, in amazed consternation, released his hold of Sabra and cowered back before the wild glare of the bloodshot eyes. "How dare you?" rang out in hoarse screaming accents from the protruding head, and with one terrific blow of its right fore-leg the hybrid monster felled Sabra's insulter to the ground.
The astonished St. George lay on his back, staring up vacantly at the flies.
"I'll teach you how to behave to a lady!" roared the Dragon.