Chapter 111.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 24

Chapter 111.

rS damp breath revived him, and his eyes, as they once more regained perception, fell on a little oblong patch of white lying in the gutter. For the moment he left it to lie, or to be swept away, under the impression that it was some superannuated tram-car ticket which had got lodged by accident in the folds of his coat; but as the flicker-

ing flame o£ the gas-lamps suddenly revealed the word " Garrick," he stooped hastily to recover it, and then, taking out his handkerchief, wiped away the stains it had contracted as carefully as if it had been some sentient thing. True, it had lain perdti in his pocket this age past, but very far from forgotten. It was associated in his mind with a pleasant reminiscence, a genial little quarter of an hour, and such memories had come to be so rare, so very rare, for John Masson. It seemed to him that for its weight in gold — aud feather-light as that might be, it was still, under the circumstances, a consideration — he would not have lost that little strip of pasteboard ; v and now, for its better security, he took out his pocket-book, and deposited it in one of its innermost recesses. The very contact of the scrap had imparted a vague sense of consolation only dull despair knows, like a sun-gilded spot upon a dungeon wall, and thrilled some slumbering chord in his being, so that he shook off his oppression, and once more strove to resume his way.

A dozen paces took him back into the main street. The clocks chimed eight, and some sudden connection of ideas, born in his mind doubtless of that treasure just slipped into his pocket-boo d, reminded him that he was within a stone's throw of the Garrick's Fields Theatre. Eight ! Precisely at that instant, then, the curtain was rising on the first scenes of the play of the night, " A New Way to Pay Old Debts." How John was aware of that he could not have told for his life. He simply imbibed the contouts day by day of eveKa-theatrical announcement in London as unconsciously as he breathed, aud now he saw clearly, as iE his bodily eyes were assisting him — memory could do nothing, for the drama itself he had never been given an opportunity of seemg — the quaint old alehouse at the village street corner facing across the green, the crested gates of the gabled Tudor mausion half hidden amid towering elms. A familiar scene enough, .but one of which playgoers never tire ; a scene which does duty in many a tragedy and comedy, and has so frequently served for Massinger's thrilling old drama here at Garrick's Fields, where it is a prime favourite. What do these North Londoners know or care that no West End management dares to essay, in these times of operaboufTe and eup-and-saucer trifles, this production of a brain which generations ago mouldered to Mother Earth, but which itself lives and promises to endure while human nature cares to consider its own lights and shadows, its frailties

and its better parts ? " Orphee aux Enfers" and " Madame Angot " might be inspiriting, like Chateau Lafitte, for Webt End loungers, but Garrick's Fields preferred more body, and protested energetically if it was not giveu. " Caste" and " Society" met with infinitesimal sympathy there, and sensation itself had to be more the actor's work than the scene-painter's and mechanical carpenter's. To-night, being Saturday night, was a redletter one for Garrick's Fields, and a vast audience was packed inside the theatre to see its idol enact the part of Sir Giles Overreach. And John was withiu two hundred yards of the spot. What was there to prevent him from going in, too ? His aching head and unstrung nerves, which would have sufficiently deterred many a man and sent him from the theatre doors as he would have gone from the portals of purgatory, had little weight with John Masson ; his passion for the stage dominated him, and what many hold for simply a distraction came to him a consolation _ at his worst need, and he was glad to buy it even at its dearest price. Had he been reduced to absolutely his last sixpence, and the ultimatum of its spending had lain between a seat in the gallery and a loaf of bread, the theatre till would have received that sixpence. Bu f . yonder at the Garrick's Head Theatre no such dire alternatives mocked him—he had but to knock and its doors would be opened to him ; and he took out his pocket-book once more, and drew from it the card, walked on with almost elastic btep till he reached the strikingly unpastorallooking neighbourhood of the old playhouse, and, making for the pit door, presented his open sesame. '' More room in the circle, sir," said the guardian of that " dark entry," appraising his man's personnel, and deciding that, the shiny condition of his coat seams notwithstanding, take him for all in all he would not discredit that more patrician division of the house. " Pit full ? " inquired John. " Chock," answered the other, " in the sitting way. You might be able to stand." Intimating that he preferred trying to going up higher, Masson passed in. The atmosphere, or its absence, in the Black Hole of Calcutta could have been hardly more objectionable than the obscurity under the dress circle. John Masson, however, besides being undesirous of courtingrecognition, was fastidious in his method of enjoying such banquets as this one he had come to feast on, and he found his content infinitely increased by haviug his own eyes on a level with 1 those of the performers. The rear of the stalls had in more piping times been his. favourite point of vie w, but Garrick's Fields had lent itself to no such base infringement of privilege as stalls. Had it made the attempt there would have been riot indeed, but Espingham had resisted all such seductive snares, and the Garrick's Fields pit remained a pit indeed, where the last comer was the worst served, and had to be thankful and happy as John was now when he slipped into the one vacancy the wall offered, and so found some sort of anchorage.

A sigh of satisfaction escaped him when the first words — those of young Allworth in response to my lady's bidding to make choice of a profession : N

Any form you please I will put on ; but, might I make my choice, With humble emulation I would follow The path my lord marks to me— met his ear, and told him that the first entrance of the terrible Sir Giles was yet to come.

A thunder of applause greeted Espingham's appearance when a little later he stepped upon the stage, hushing at his first utterance to breathless silence, aud —

Still cloistered up ! fell in a rasping growl from the callous-hearted curmudgeon's lips, followed by the acrid chuckle of enjoyment gleaned from assurance of the widow's grief for the loss of a generous and noble-minded husband. Every eye follows that gaunt figure with a sort of fascination as he retires up the stage in conversation with Allworth, hardly to be broken even by the inimitable playing of the Justice Greedy of the night, who, eVer eager to " give thanks," pesters Sir Giles with his own special form of original hin —

Pull paste, too. Sir Ciiles. A ponderous chine of beet : A pheasant larded ! And red deer, too, Sir Giles, and bak'd in puff paste : All bnsinebs set aside, let us give thanks here — till the miser, turning upon the glutton, snarls him to silence.

On the Garrick's Fields boards the corncdy was played true to every word of its original five acts. No choppings and changings were tolerated, and the interest in it never flagged. The toils .and troubles of workaday life were all forgotten, merged in enjoyment of that accurate picture of fellow humanity which for the moment seemed to them as real as their own. The strong sense of this prevailed equally on both sides of the curtain. The " star " system was not tolerated at Garrick's Fields, and Sir Giles, great as he might be, was a man among men and women — not a sole living one among puppets — and the spirit of his impersonation animated" the whole to vivid reality. The inieusity of truth became at times painful, brought as it was to the very outer hem of Nature's modesty, though by the actor's marvellous inspiration aud sympathetic power never once overstepping it. The close of each act brought him before the curtain, summoned thither by the hands and cheers of his worshippers, and thence they dismissed him again in the storm of groans and hisses which he accepted with the comfortable smile of the man who has received his crowning reward.

Here was an actor indeed, John thought, all his bodily exhaustion forgotten as he wedged himself more securely up against his own allotted portion of wall, all his fatigue kept in check by the overwhelming interest of the moment, and his indignation wrought to boiling pitch when the baffled, furious old sinner strains the cracking sinews of his life by his defiance of those who have trapped him, and his grip, suddenly stricken powerless, relaxing on the hilt of his half-drawn sword, the hissing venom of his execrations changed to the wail of impotence and of abject fear :

Ha ! lam feeble, Some undone widow sits upon mine arm ! And so, his head sunk upon his breast, his glazing eye glaring hideously reproachful at bis daughter, he drops, with a curse upon his livid, foaming' lips, a senseless mass to the ground. And so, vice duly finding its punishment, and virtue, though perhaps rather crookedly, assisted to its crown, the gods are satisfied, and trundle, little upon the order of their going, down the gallery staircase, to join issue with the stream of departing groundlings. A group, however, collecting at the stair foot bars further egress, and to jjhe shouted demand of £ What's up ?" in tones of edstermongerian hoarseness and volume, the answer ascends that " A cove's fainted ! "

The prevailing pesbimist theories of the crowd drive it direct to the conclusion that drink is the head and front of the catastrophe, and with unanimous Recommendations to those nearest

the prostrate man to " Pick him up ! " aud " Chuck him out ! " some hurry on, and some swell the throng immediately surrounding him. He lies across a low treacherous step in the dark passage, as if that might have tripped him up. Apparently of twenty-five to thirty years of age, aud clad in raiment, so the general if unspoken opinion goes, that was> never cut out in Cierkenwell. Opportunity, however* for any sort of minute discussion is interfered with by the pit cheque-taker, who elbowing aside the crowd, and summarily dispersing the bulk of it, approaches the prostrate man, and at once recognises him. " I thought," he muttered to himself, " that he looked fitter for his bed than anywhere else when he went in. Here ! some of you lend a hand and bring him along," he added, himself pioneering the way to one of the refreshmentroom settees, when he had superintended the careful lifting of the unconscious burden by half-a-dozen strong arms. " He's off the line somehow," said one of his bearers as they laid him down, and whose worldly calling was a railway porter. "If you'd asked me," he went on, continuing to regard him with compassionate curiosity, " I shouldn't be setting it to too much, but too little — eh, mate ? "

" True for you, Bill," nodded his companion, thus addressed. " You aud me's carried portmantie.s betwixt us many's the time 'arf his size as has weighed a precious sight heavier. Look ! see ! ain't he a coiniu' to ? '*

And indeed faint signs of returning animation began to reward the endeavours of the women busied in administering restoratives to the stranger. "Go round, there's my angel," said the cheque-taker to one of the girls who presided at the bar, "and ask Mr Espingham to step here. He won't be out of his dressing-room yet. I've a notion he may be able to tell us who the young man is." And in a few minutes Erpingham, attired in an interesting combination of garments, of which Jacobean trunk-hose aud a seedy brown overcoat of the later Victorian era made the chief constituent parts, stood beside the couch, scanning the white face pillowed on it. " He presented your card for a pass, sir," said the cheque-taker to his chief, " and so I fancied he might be a friend of yours." " Why, to be sure ! " cried Espiugham, as the full light of pleasurable recognition chased the perplexed knitting of his brows. "My friend of the Merlin, as I live ! Mr — Mr John — what is it ? Masson, of course — Masson. How is it with you, sir ?" he went on, dropping into the old stage play parlance, which was second nature with him.

A quivering of the eyelids as the sound of his own name fell upon his ear was followed by a dim smile when John's eyes opened and rested on the features of his quondam acquaintance, which were filled with kindly solicitude.

" Sir Giles Over — Over," he faltered, bewilderedly passing his hand acrosb his forehead. " Overreach. No less a man, by your good leave," answered the actor ; " and yet I hope a better one too, at your service. So that's right. Now you look bravely. A little more of this," he went on, filling up the liqeuer glass from which John had been administered to, "and Richard will be himself again " ; and as Masson obeyed, Espingham also recruited his own exhausted nature. " Here's health to you, and prosper " He stopped short, glanced over John's figure as he rose slowly from the couch and emptied his glass in silence. " And so my Sir Giles was too much for you," he said, as he set it down. " Over — overreached you, in short," he went on, with a smile in which something like gratification lurked. " Well, lam flattered — proud, I would say. The elder Mr Kean, as I make no doubt you aware, possessed equally the knack of it "

" Of— of ? " stammered Masson, whose intellect was still a trifle astray.

" Of terrifying his audience into fits when he played Sir Giles, and sending the ladies home in hysterics." " Oh, yes ; I expect that was it, you know," speculatively said John. "Not a doubt of it. Yes; it is a grand performance," and now he spoke heartily ; " and I have to thank you indeed for this night's gratification." " The thanks are due all to you," answered Espingham, taking Masson's proffered hand, " that you should have tacked out of course so far as our unmodish Garrick's fields. Twickenham, I think I remember me you said, was your home."

" It was."

Espingham bo <ved. " The very haunt of the Muses. Though 'tis true here you have classic ground that rivals Twitnam's own dainty clay. But no matter about that. The glory of the moon and of the stars— /V/*c£« Jut-ant. Eh, Mr Mahsou ? And the fact, to Richard Espiugham's heart, remains that you have come so far to see a rogue and vagabond like himself mime it up in the wilds of this far north." " A choice of locality that has rested entirely with yourself, I imagine," smiled Masson. " I conceive the world is all before you, where to choose for the scene of your triumphs."

" You are not alone in your view," answered Espingham, his dark, brilliant eyes growing fixed and dreamy for a moment, " and there are many who blame mo not a little for failing to grasp at the West End laurels which are field out to me — absolutely waved in my face. And I may be unwise — mundanely speaking, I think I am ; but your actor, sir, has his mission to fulfil here below every whit as much as your parson, and my niche in the Thespian temple is here. ' A poor thing,' as Touchstone says, and he was a wise fool, you'll grant me, possibly a poor thing, but, mine own, let him who dares contest it with me. Will you come home, and break bread with me, sir ? My humble shelter stands hard by ; and of Saturday nights, since the day of rest and unhurried digestion supervenes, a broil upon the fire — one which the Merlin's self could not rival. Cannot. l tempt you ?"

Hardly with the broil. For his very existence, it seemed to John that he could not have touched food, nevertheless the temptation was not small. "It is so late," was his feeble rejoinder ; and then the midnight clocks began to chime as without further parley he followed Espingham through the theatre's dim passages, stumbling as he went, despite his host's warnings, over £he uncleared stage lumber, reaching, at last, the manager's dressing-room, where the transformation of what still remained sartorially of Sir Giles into Richard Espingham was effected ; and the two sallied forth into the night.