The curtain drew up on the first tableau. Joan sang appropriate words in the sweetest tones of her rich contralto voice, her eyes, like those of the audience, riveted on the face of the little invalid as he lay on his truckle bed. White-cheeked, bandaged, reclining, the transformation in the child’s appearance was astounding. Considered as a piece of stage-craft, Joan had every reason to congratulate herself on the result, but the mother’s heart felt a pang of dismay. The representation was too life-like! Just so would the darling look if the illness were real, not imaginary. In the afternoon he had not looked so ghastly. Was the double excitement too much for his strength? Joan’s eyes turned from the stage to the first row of seats, where her husband had his place. Geoffrey looked worried; his brows contracted as he watched his son. Unconsciously Joan quickened the pace of the last verse of her song. She was anxious to get to the second tableau, to see Jack sitting up, smiling, his eyes alert.
The curtain fell. A low murmur from the audience swelled into somewhat forced applause. The villagers also, Joan realised, had felt the scene to be almost too realistic. Behind the scenes Honor as nurse and Pixie as mother propped the child’s back with cushions, and showered kisses on his white cheeks.
“Smile, Jackey, smile!” they cried. “Now you are a getting-well boy, and all the people will see you, and be so pleased! Just once more, darling, and then away we go, driving off home to supper in the car. Now a big smile!”
The curtain rose. Jack smiled his sweet, baby smile, and the audience burst into cheers of hearty relief. Every one was smiling—not only the invalid, but also the mother, the father, the neat, complacent nurse. Esmeralda’s voice swelled in glad content. That last scene had been horrible; never, never again would she attempt to simulate so dreadful a reality! What a comfort to see the darling once more bonnie and smiling. Half an hour more and he would be safe in bed.
The curtain fell, was lifted again in response to a storm of applause, the piano strummed out the first bars of “God Save the King,” and the audience, stumbling to their feet, began to join in the strain.
Suddenly, startlingly, a shriek rent the air, rising shrill above the heavy chorus of voices—the piercing, treble shrieks of a young child, followed by loud cries for help and a stampede of feet behind the curtain.
The music ceased. Geoffrey Hilliard and his wife rushed with one accord up the steps leading to the platform, the village doctor edged his way hurriedly through the crowded hall, the real parish nurse, wearing for the first time her new uniform, followed in his wake. And still the treble shrieks continued—the terrible, childish shrieks. The women in the audience shivered and turned pale. Master Jack! And only a moment before he had been playing at sickness. It was ill-work trifling with serious things. The pretty lamb! What could have happened?
Behind the curtain all was horror and confusion, a ghastly nightmare exaggeration of the scene just depicted. There on the same bed lay Jack, writhing in torture, the bandages charred and blackened, a terrible smell of burning in the air. Bending over him in torment stood the real father and mother; coming forward with calm, capable help came the veritable nurse.
How had it happened? How? By what terrible lapse of care had the precious child been allowed to fall into danger?
The mother’s glance was fierce in its wrath and despair, but the explanation when it came was but too simple. Jack had been bidden to sit still in bed until his clothes should be brought; from the adjoining dressing-room. But for a moment Pixie had left his side, but in that moment a child-like impatience and restlessness had asserted itself with fatal consequences. Jack had leapt up, rushed to the table, clutched at a glass of milk placed ready for his own refreshment, and in so doing had brought his bandaged head across the flame of an open candle, one of the small “properties” of the cottage scene. In an instant he was in flames; he threw up his little arm and the sleeve of the nightshirt caught the blaze; he ran shrieking to and fro, dodging pursuit, fighting, struggling, refusing to be held. For a moment the beholders had been too aghast for action; then Pixie leapt for the blankets, while Stanor overtook the child, tripped him up, wrapped and pressed and wrapped again; unfolded with trembling hands—