“I beg of you, dear lady,” he said gently, “just one drop in memory of my friend.”
The implied sanctity of the appeal could not be denied. Both my wife and I partook of half a glass, and though I am by nature an abstainer, I must acknowledge that it tasted very good. Old Brancker’s hand trembled as he poured out the Chartreuse. He drank his at a gulp, and as though the emotion were not yet stilled, he had another one. Then he rose, and, taking my wife’s arm, he led her to the easy chair by the fire. I was rather proud of my intimate knowledge of the old actor’s possessions, and I pointed out the snuff-box which Nellie Farren had given him, and the photograph of Irving, with its inscription “To my dear old friend.”
Brancker sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps one does not boast of these associations. Perhaps it is vulgar, but I knew how interested Alice would be. When we had done a round of the rooms, whither in his fatherly way he had conducted my wife by the arm, and occasionally rested his hand ever so lightly on her shoulder, we returned to the dining-room, and Alice said:
“Now show me this little white frock!”
He bowed, and without a word went out into the hall, and returned with the frock, which he spread reverently over the back of a chair.
“How perfectly sweet!” said my wife.
For a few moments he buried his head in his hands, and Alice and I were silent. I could not but observe the interesting mise-en-scène in which I found myself. The dim recesses of the room, heavy with memories. My wife cozily curled up in the high arm-chair, the firelight playing on her fresh, almost childlike, face, a simple ring sparkling on her finger, and on the pearly glint of her diaphanous gown. On the other side of the table where the little glasses stood, the clear-cut features and long snow-white hair of the old actor, silhouetted against a dark cabinet. And then, like some fragile ghost recalled to bear witness to its tragic past, the dim outline of the child’s white frock.
“It was before your time, mes enfants, long, long before your time,” he said suddenly. “You would not remember the famous Charles Carside Company who starred the provinces. We became known as the Capacity Company. The title was doubly-earned. We always played to full houses, and in those days—”
He turned to me with a penetrating, almost challenging look, and added: