If Wake had not had a soul above difficulties he might have been tempted to abandon his labour of Hercules on the spot; and, indeed, it is probable his “troupe” would have struck, and so saved him the trouble of deciding, had not an extraordinary and dramatic change suddenly come over the aspect of affairs. The rehearsal was dragging its slow length along, and everybody, even the amiable Stafford, was losing his temper, when the door flew open, and two young persons entered and made their way boldly up to the stage.
As all the room was dark except the part allotted to the actors, it was not till these intruders had mounted the platform and honoured the company with two ceremonious bows that their identity became apparent. Arthur and Dig, after twelve hours in bed, had become weary unto death; and when, presently, from the room below arose the voices and laughter of the Comedians, they kicked the clothes off them, and mutually agreed—colds or no colds—they could stand, or rather lie, it no longer.
“Wouldn’t they grin if we turned up?” said Arthur; “I vote we do.”
“All serene,” said Dig; “we may as well get up.”
Dig meant the term “get up” in the professional sense. He accordingly arrayed himself, to the best of his lights, in the garb of a low comedian; that is, he put on a red dressing-gown, flannel drawers, and a very tall collar, made out of cardboard; and blacked a very fine moustache on his lip with a piece of coal. Arthur, meanwhile, had a more delicate task to perform in extemporising the toilet of a maid-of-all-work. An ulster belonging to Tilbury supplied him with a dress, and by turning up the sleeves, and arranging his night-dress apron-wise over the front, he managed to give a fair idea of the kind of character he aimed to personate. He then ruffled up his hair, and brought as much of it as he was able down in the front for a fringe, surmounting it all with a handkerchief shaped to represent a cap. Finally, he smudged his face over with coal dust, and secured one of Mrs Hastings’s mops and a pail from the cupboard at the end of the corridor, and pronounced himself ready for the fray.
It need hardly be said that the apparition of these two extraordinary figures created a sensation among the jaded Comedians and their friends. The sudden restoration to health of the two invalids was less astonishing, perhaps, than their strange get-up, or the spirit with which they proceeded to throw themselves into their respective parts.
Wake, with a smile of relief, shut up his book and retired among the audience.
Dig knew his part well, and acted it with such a depth of low comedy that it mattered little what mistakes or blunders the funny irascible and the funny meek gentlemen and ladies made. He uttered the greatest commonplaces a leer and a wink, which imported a vast deal of meaning into the words, and had evidently so well studied his part that he could not even sit down on the chair or walk out of the room without tumbling on all fours or upsetting one or two of the other actors.
Wake suggested mildly that he was overdoing it, but was voted down by an indignant chorus of admirers, who urged the low comedian on to still further extravagance, until, had his part been that of a clown, he could scarcely have thrown more dramatic intensity into it.
He was ably and gallantly backed up by the maid-of-all-work, who was evidently convinced that the main duty and occupation of such functionaries is to upset everything; to clatter up and down the rooms in hob-nail boots; to flourish her mop in her master’s and mistress’s faces, and otherwise assert her noble independence of the ordinary laws governing domestic servants. In these ambitions she succeeded to a moral; and when, in addition, thanks to the cold in her head, she pronounced all her m’s b’s and her n’s d’s, the result was exhilarating in the extreme.