‘DAYS THAT ARE OVER, DREAMS THAT ARE DONE.’
There was excitement and agitation in Cibber Street, Leicester Square,
that essentially dramatic, musical, and terpsichorean nook in the great
forest of London. La Chicot had narrowly escaped death. It had been all
but death at the moment of the accident. It might be absolute death at
any hour of the night and day that followed the catastrophe. At least
this is what the inhabitants of Cibber Street told each other, and they
were one and all as graphic and as full of detail as if they had just
left La Chicot’s bedside.
‘She has never stirred since they laid her in her bed,’ said the
shoemaker’s wife, at the dingy shop for ladies’ boots, two doors from
the Chicot domicile; ‘she lies there like a piece of waxwork, pore
thing, and every five minutes they takes and wets her lips with a
feather dipped in brandy; and sometimes she says “more, more,” very
weak and pitiful!’
‘That looks as if she was sensible, at any rate,’ answered the good
woman’s gossip, a letter of lodgings at the end of the street.
‘I don’t believe it’s sense, Mrs. Bitters; I believe it’s only an
inward craving. She feels that low in her inside that the brandy’s a
relief to her.’
‘Have they set her leg yet?’
‘Lord love you, Mrs. Bitters, it’s a compound fracture, and the
swelling ain’t begun to go down. They’ve got a perfessional nurse from
one of the hospitals, and she’s never left off applying cooling lotion,
night or day, to keep down the inflammation. The doctor hasn’t left the
house since it happened.’
‘Is it Mr. Mivart?’
‘Lor, no; it’s quite a stranger; a young man that’s just been walking
the orspital, but they say he’s very clever. He was at the Prince
Frederick when it happened, and see it all; and helped to bring her
home, and if she was a duchess he couldn’t be more careful over her.’
‘Where’s the husband?’ asked Mrs. Bitters.
‘Away in the country, no one knows where, for she hasn’t sense to tell
’em, pore lamb. But from what Mrs. Evitt tells me, they was never the
happiest of couples.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Mrs. Bitters, with an air of widest worldly experience,
‘dancers and such like didn’t ought to marry. What do they want with
’usbands, courted and run after as they are? Out every night too, like
Tom cats. ’Ow can they make a ’ome ’appy?’
‘I can’t say as I ever thought Mr. Chicot ’ad a ’appy look,’ assented
the shoemaker’s wife. ‘He’s got a way of walking with his eyes on the
ground and his hands in his pockets, as if he didn’t take no interest
in life.’
Thus, and in various other manners, was the evil fate of La Chicot
discussed in Cibber Street and the surrounding neighbourhood. Everybody
was interested in her welfare. If she had been some patient domestic
drudge, a devoted wife and mother, the interest would have been mild in
comparison, the whole thing tame and commonplace. But La Chicot--whose
name was on the walls in capitals three feet high, whose bold, bright
face smiled on the foot passenger at every turn in the road--La Chicot
was a personage, and whether she was to draw the lot of life or death
from fate’s mysterious urn was a public question.
It had been as the scene-shifter had shrewdly prophesied. She had
been drunk, and the stage-carpenter had been drunk, and the result
had been calamity. There had been a perennial supply of champagne
in La Chicot’s dressing-room during the last week, thanks to the
liberality of an anonymous admirer, who had sent a three-dozen case of
Rœderer, pints--fascinating little gold-tipped bottles that looked as
innocent as flowers or butterflies. La Chicot had an idea that a pint
of champagne could hurt nobody. Of a quart she opined, as the famous
glutton did of a goose, that it was too much for one and not enough for
two.
She naturally suspected that the anonymous champagne came from the
unknown giver of the bracelet, but she was not going to leave the case
unopened on that account. It was very pleasant to have an admirer who
gave so freely and asked nothing. Poor fellow! It would be time enough
to snub him when he became obtrusive. In the meanwhile she accepted his
bounty as unquestioningly as she received the gifts of all-bounteous
nature--the sun that warmed her, the west wind that fanned her cheek,
the wallflowers and primroses at the street corners that told her
spring was abroad in the land.
Yet she was a woman, and, therefore, naturally curious about her
nameless admirer. Her splendid eyes roamed among the faces of the
audience, especially among the gilded youth in the stalls, until they
alighted on a countenance which La Chicot believed likely to be the one
she sought. It was a face that watched her with a grave attention she
had seen in no other countenance, though all were attentive--a sallow
face, of a Jewish type, black eyes, an almost death-like pallor, a
firmly-moulded mouth, the lips too thick for beauty, black hair, smooth
and sleek.
‘That is the man,’ La Chicot said to herself, ‘and he looks
inordinately rich.’
She stole a glance at him often after this, and she always saw the same
expression in the pallid Israelitish face, an intensity she had never
seen in any other countenance.
‘C’est un homme à parvenir,’ she told herself; ‘si ça était guerrier il
aurait vaincu un monde, comme Napoléon.’
The face fascinated her somehow, or, at all events, it made her think
of the man. She drank his champagne with greater gusto after this, and
on the night after her discovery, the weather being unusually sultry
for the season, she drank two bottles in the course of her toilet. When
she went down to the wings, glittering with silvery tinsel, clad in a
cloud of snowy gauze, she could hardly stand; but dancing was a second
nature with her, and she managed to get through her solos without
disgrace. There was a certain wildness, an extra audacity, a shade too
much of that peculiar quality which the English call ‘go,’ and the
French call ‘chic,’ but the audience at the Prince Frederick liked
extremes, and applauded her to the echo.
‘By Jove, she’s a wonderful woman!’ exclaimed Mr. Smolendo, watching
her from the prompter’s entrance. ‘She’s a safe draw for the next three
seasons.’
Ten minutes afterwards came the ascent through the coral caves. The
ironwork creaked, groaned, trembled, and then gave way. There was a
shrill scream from the dancer, a cry of horror from the men at the
wings, and La Chicot was lying in the middle of the stage, a confused
heap of tumbled gauze and silver, silent and unconscious, while the
green curtain came down with a run.
It was late on the night after the accident when Jack Chicot came home.
He found his wife lying in a dull stupor, as the gossips had described
her, life sustained by the frequent administration of brandy. The woman
was as near death as she could be without being ready for her grave.
A stranger was sitting by her bedside when Jack went into the room, a
young man with a gravity of face and manner which was older than his
years. The nurse was on the other side of the bed, applying a cooling
lotion to La Chicot’s burning forehead. The leg had been successfully
set that afternoon, by one of the cleverest surgeons in London, and was
suspended in a cradle under the light coverlet.
Jack went to the bedside and bent over the motionless figure, and
looked at the dull, white face.
‘My poor Zaïre, this is bad,’ he murmured, and then he turned to the
stranger, who had risen and stood beside him. ‘You are the doctor, I
suppose?’
‘I am the watch-dog, if you like. Mr. Smolendo would not trust my
inexperience with so delicate an operation as setting the broken leg.
It was a terrible fracture, and required the highest art. He sent for
Sir John Pelham, and everything has been done well and successfully.
But he allowed me to remain as surgeon in charge. Your wife’s state
is perilous in the extreme. I fear the brain is injured. I was in
the theatre when the accident happened. I am deeply interested in
this case. I have lately passed my examination creditably, and am
a qualified practitioner. I shall be glad if you will allow me to
attend your wife--under Pelham, of course. It is not a question of
remuneration,’ the young man added hurriedly. ‘I am actuated only by my
professional interest in Madame Chicot’s recovery.’
‘I have no objection to my wife’s profiting by your generous care,
provided always that Sir John Pelham approves your treatment,’ answered
Chicot, in a calmer tone than George Gerard expected from a man who
had just come home after a week’s absence to find his wife in peril of
death. ‘Do you think she will recover?’
This question was asked deliberately, with intense earnestness. Gerard
saw that the eyes which looked at him were watching for the answering
look in his own eyes, waiting as for the sentence of doom.
That look set the surgeon wondering as to the relations between
husband and wife. A minute ago he had wondered at Chicot’s coldness--a
tranquillity that seemed almost indifference. Now the man was all
intensity. What did the change mean?
‘Am I to tell you the truth?’ asked Gerard.
‘By all means.’
‘Remember I can give you only my opinion. It is an obscure case. The
injury to the brain is not easily to be estimated.’
‘I will take your opinion for what it is worth. For God’s sake be
candid.’
‘Then in my opinion the chances are against her recovery.’
Jack Chicot drew a long breath, a strange shivering sigh, which the
surgeon, clever as he was, knew not how to interpret.
‘Poor thing!’ said the husband, after a brief silence, looking down at
the dull, blank face. ‘And three years ago she and I came out of the
Mairie very happy, and loving each other dearly! _C’est dommage que
cela passe si vite._’
These last words were spoken too low for Gerard to hear. They were a
brief lament over a love that was dead.
‘Tell me about the accident,’ said Jack Chicot, sitting down in the
chair Gerard had vacated. ‘You were in the theatre, you say. You saw it
all.’
‘I did, and it was I who picked your wife up. I was behind the scenes
soon enough for that. The panic-stricken wretches about were afraid to
touch her.’
Gerard told everything faithfully. Jack Chicot listened with an
unchanging face. He knew the worst that could be told him. The details
could make little difference.
‘I said just now that in my opinion the chances were against your
wife’s recovery,’ said Gerard, full of earnestness, ‘but I did not
say the case was hopeless. If I thought it were, I should not be so
anxious to undertake the care of your wife. I ask you to let me watch
her because I entertain the hope--a faint hope at present, I grant--of
curing her.’
Jack Chicot gave a little start, and looked curiously at the speaker.
‘You must be tremendously in love with your profession, to be so
anxious about another man’s wife?’ he said.
‘I am in love with my profession. I have no other mistress. I desire no
other!’
‘Well, you may do all you can to snatch her from the jaws of death,’
said Chicot. ‘Let her have her chance, poor soul. That is only fair.
Poor butterfly! Last night the star of a crowded theatre, the delight
of every eye; to-night to lie thus, a mere log, living and yet dead. It
is hard.’
He walked softly up and down the room, deep in thought.
‘Do you know I implored her to refuse that ascent?’ he said. ‘I had a
foreboding that harm would come of it.’
‘You should have forbidden it,’ said the surgeon, with his fingers on
the patient’s wrist.
‘Forbidden! You don’t know my wife.’
‘If I had a wife she should obey me.’
‘Ah! that’s a common delusion of bachelors. Wait till you have a wife,
and you will tell a different story.’
‘She will do for to-night,’ said Gerard, taking up his hat, yet
lingering for one long scrutiny of the white, expressionless face on
the pillow. ‘Mrs. Mason knows all she has to do; I will be here at six
to-morrow morning.’
‘At six! You are an early riser.’
‘I am a hard worker. One is impossible without the other. Good-night,
Mr. Chicot; I congratulate you upon your power to take a great trouble
quietly. There is no better proof of strong nerve.’
Jack fancied there was a hidden sneer in this parting compliment, but
it made very little impression upon him. The perplexity of his life was
big enough to exclude every other thought. ‘You had better go to bed,
Mrs. Mason,’ he said to the nurse. ‘I shall sit up with my wife.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I could not feel that I was doing my duty if
I indulged myself with a night’s rest while the case is so critical;
by-and-by I shall be thankful to get an hour’s sleep.’
‘Do you think Madame Chicot will ever be better?’
The nurse looked down at her white apron, sighed gently, and as gently
shook her head.
‘We always like to look at the bright side of things, sir,’ she
answered.
‘But is there any bright side to this case?’
‘That rests with Providence, sir. It is a very bad case.’
‘Well,’ said Jack Chicot, ‘we must be patient.’
He seated himself in the chair by the bedside and remained there all
night, never sleeping, hardly changing his attitude, sunk to the bottom
of some deep gulf of thought.
Day came at last, and soon after daybreak came George Gerard, who found
no change either for better or worse in his patient, and ordered no
change in the treatment.
‘Sir John Pelham is to be here at eleven,’ he said. ‘I shall come at
eleven to meet him.’
The great surgeon came, made his inspection, and said that all was
going on well.
‘We shall make her leg sound again,’ he said, ‘I have no fear about
that; I wish we were as certain about the brain.’
‘Do you think the brain is seriously hurt?’ asked Chicot.
‘We can hardly tell. The iron struck her head as she fell. There is
no fracture of the skull, but there is mischief of some kind--rather
serious mischief, I fear. No doubt a good deal will depend on care
and nursing. You are lucky to have secured Mrs. Mason; I can highly
recommend her.’
‘Frankly, do you think my wife will recover?’ asked Chicot, questioning
Sir John Pelham to-day as earnestly as he had questioned George Gerard
last night.
‘My dear sir, I hope for the best; but it is a bad case.’
‘That must mean that it is hopeless,’ thought Chicot, but he only bowed
his head gently, and followed the surgeon to the door, where he tried
to slip a fee into his hand.
‘No, no, my dear sir, Mr. Smolendo will arrange that little matter,’
said the surgeon, rejecting the money, ‘and very properly too, since
your wife was injured in his service.’
‘I would rather have paid her debts myself,’ answered Chicot, ‘though
Heaven knows how long I could have done it. We are never very much
beforehand with the world. Oh, by the way, how about that young man
upstairs, Mr. Gerard? Do you approve his treatment of the case?’
‘Very much so; a remarkably clever young man--a man who ought to make
rapid way in his profession.’
Sir John Pelham gave a compassionate sigh at the end of his speech,
remembering how many young men he had known deserving of success,
and how few of them had succeeded, and thinking what a clever and
altogether commendable young man he must himself have been to be one of
the few.
After this Jack Chicot allowed Mr. Gerard to prescribe for his wife
with perfect confidence in the young man’s ability. Sir John Pelham
came once a week, and gave his opinion, and sometimes made some slight
change in the treatment. It was a lingering, wearying illness, hard
work for the nurse, trying work for the watcher. The husband had taken
upon himself the office of night nurse. He watched and ministered to
the invalid every night, while Mrs. Mason enjoyed four or five hours’
sleep. Mr. Smolendo had suggested that they should have two nurses. He
was willing to pay for anything that could ameliorate the sufferer’s
condition, though La Chicot’s accident had almost ruined his season. It
had not been easy to get a novelty strong enough to replace her.
‘No,’ said Jack Chicot, ‘I don’t want to take more of your money than
I can help; and I may as well do something for my wife. I’m useless
enough at best.’
So Jack went on drawing for the comic periodicals, and worked at night
beside his wife’s bed. Her mind had never awakened since the accident.
She was helpless and unconscious now as she had been when they brought
her home from the theatre. Even George Gerard was beginning to lose
heart, but he in no way relaxed his efforts to bring about a cure.
In the day Jack went for long walks, getting as far away from that
close and smoky region of Leicester Square as his long legs would take
him. He tramped northward to Hampstead and Hendon, to Highgate, Barnet,
Harrow; southward to Dulwich, Streatham, Beckenham; to breezy commons
where the gorse was still golden, to woods where the perfume of pine
trees filled the warm, still air; to hills below which he saw London
lying, a silent city, wrapped in a mantle of blue smoke.
The country had an inexpressible charm for him at this period of his
life. He was not easy till he had shaken the dust of London off his
feet. He who a year ago in Paris had wasted half his days playing
billiards in the entresol of a _café_ on the Boulevard St. Michel,
or sauntering the stony length of the boulevards from the Madeleine
to the Chateau d’Eau--was now a solitary rambler in suburban lanes,
choosing every path that led him furthest from the haunts of men.
‘You are always out when I come in the daytime, Mr. Chicot,’ said
Gerard, one evening, when he had called later than usual and found Jack
at home, dusty, tired after his day’s ramble. ‘Is not that rather hard
on Madame Chicot?’
‘What can it matter to her? She does not know when I am here; she is
quite unconscious.’
‘I am not so sure of that. She seems unconscious, but beneath that
apathy there may be some struggling sense of outward things. It is my
hope that the mind is there still, under a dense cloud.’
The struggle was long and weary. There came a day on which even George
Gerard despaired. The wound in the leg had been slow to heal, and the
pain had weakened the patient. Despite all that watchful nursing could
do, she had sunk to the lowest ebb.
‘She is very weak, is she not?’ asked Jack, that summer afternoon--a
sultry afternoon late in June, when the close London street was like a
dusty oven, and faint odours from stale strawberries and half-rotten
pineapples on the costermonger’s barrows tainted the air with a sickly
sweetness.
‘She is as weak as she can be and live,’ answered Gerard.
‘You begin to lose faith?’
‘I begin to fear.’
As he spoke he saw a look of ineffable relief flash into Jack Chicot’s
eyes. His own eyes caught and fixed that look, and the two men stood
facing each other, one of them knowing that the secret of his heart was
discovered.
‘I fear,’ said the surgeon, deliberately, ‘but I am not going to leave
off trying to save her. I mean to save her life if it is in human power
to save it. I have set my heart upon it.’
‘Do your utmost,’ answered Chicot. ‘Heaven is above us all. It must be
as fate wills.’
‘You loved her once, I suppose?’ said Gerard, with searching eyes still
on the other’s face.
‘I loved her truly.’
‘When and why did you leave off loving her?’
‘How do you know that I have ever done so?’ asked Chicot, startled by
the audacity of the question.
‘I know it as well as you know it yourself. I should be a poor
physician for an obscure disease of the brain if I could not read
your secret. This poor creature, lying here, has for some time past
been a burden and an affliction to you. If Providence were to remove
her quietly, you would thank Providence. You would not lift your hand
against her, or refuse any aid you can give her, but her death would be
an infinite relief. Well, I think you will have your wish. I think she
is going to die.’
‘You have no right to talk to me like this,’ said Chicot.
‘Have I not? Why should not one man talk freely to another, uttering
the truth boldly. I do not presume to judge or to blame. Who among us
is pure enough to denounce his brother’s sin? But why should I pretend
not to understand you? Why affect to think you a loving and devoted
husband? It is better that I should be plain with you. Yes, Mr. Chicot.
I believe this business is going to end your way, and not mine.’
Jack stood looking gloomily out of the open window down into the dingy
street, where the strawberry barrow was moving slowly along, while
the costermonger’s brassy voice brayed out his strange jargon. He had
no word to answer to the surgeon’s plain speaking. The accusation was
true. He could not gainsay it.
‘Yes, I loved her once,’ he said to himself presently, as he sat by
the bedside after George Gerard had gone. ‘What kind of love was it, I
wonder? I felt my life a failure, and had abandoned all hope of ever
getting back into the beaten tracks of respectability, and it seemed
to me to matter very little what I did with my life, or what kind of
woman I married. She was the handsomest woman I had ever seen, and she
was fond of me. Why should I not marry her? Between us we could manage
to live somehow, _au jour le jour_, from hand to mouth. We took
life lightly, both of us. Those were pleasant days. Yet I look back and
wonder that I could have lived in the gutter and revelled in it. How
even a gentleman can sink when once he ceases to respect himself? When
did I first begin to be weary? When did I begin to hate her? Never till
I had met ----. Oh, Paradise, which I have seen through the half-opened
gate, shall I verily be free to enter your shining fields, your garden
of gladness and delight?’
He sat by the bed in thoughtful silence, till the nurse came in to take
his place, and then he went out into the dusty streets, and walked
northward in search of air. He had promised the nurse to be back at ten
o’clock, when she could have her supper and go to bed, leaving him in
charge for the night. This was the usual routine.
‘All may be over when I go home to-night,’ he said to himself, and
it seemed to him as if the past few years--the period of his married
life--were part of a confused dream.
It was all over now. Its follies and its joys belonged to the past. He
could look back and pity his wife and himself. Both had been foolish,
both erring. It was done with. They had come to the last page of a
volume that was speedily to be closed for ever. He could forgive, he
could pity and deplore all that foolish past, now that it was no longer
to fetter the future.
He rambled far that day--he was lighter of foot--the atmosphere out of
London was clearer, or it seemed clearer, than usual. He walked to
Harrow, and lay on the grass below Byron’s tomb, looking dreamily down
at the dim world of London.
It was after eleven when he got back to Cibber Street. The public house
at the corner was closed, the latest of the gossips had deserted their
door-steps. He looked up to the first-floor windows. La Chicot’s bed
had been moved into the front room, because it was more cheerful for
her, the nurse said; but it was Mrs. Mason and not La Chicot who looked
out of the window. The sickly yellow light shone through the dingy
blind, just as it always did after dark. There was nothing to indicate
any change. But all things would be the same, no doubt, if death were
in the room.
As Jack stood on the door-step feeling in his pockets for the key, the
door opened, and Desrolles, the second-floor lodger, came out.
‘I am going to see if I can get a drop of brandy at the Crown and
Sceptre,’ he said, explanatorily; ‘I’ve had one of my old attacks.’
Mr. Desrolles was a sufferer from some chronic complaint which he
alluded to vaguely, and which necessitated frequent recourse to
stimulants.
‘The Crown and Sceptre is closed,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve some brandy
upstairs; I’ll give you a little.’
‘That’s uncommonly good-natured of you,’ said Desrolles. ‘I should have
a night of agony if I couldn’t get a little brandy somewhere. How late
you are!’
‘I’ve walked further than usual. It was such a fine evening.’
‘Was it really? Hereabouts it was dull and grey. I thought we were
going to have a thunderstorm. Local, I suppose. I’ve got some good news
for you.’
‘Good news for me. The rarity of the thing will make it welcome.’
‘Your wife’s better, decidedly better. I looked in two hours ago
to inquire. The nurse thinks she has taken a turn. Mr. Gerard was
here at eight, and thinks the same. It’s wonderful. She rallied in
an extraordinary manner between three and five o’clock, took her
nourishment with an appearance of appetite for the first time since she
has been ill. Mrs. Mason is delighted. Wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘Very wonderful!’ exclaimed Jack Chicot; and who shall tell the
bitterness of heart with which he turned from the shining vision of the
future--the vision that had been with him all that evening, back to the
dreary reality of the present.
He found Mrs. Mason elated. She had never seen a more marked change for
the better.
‘She’s as weak as a new-born infant, poor dear,’ she said of her
patient, ‘but it’s just as if life was coming gently and slowly back,
like the tide coming in over the sands when it has ebbed as low as ever
it can ebb.’
The improvement continued steadily from that hour. The brain, so long
clouded, awakened as from sleep. Zaïre recovered her strength, her
senses, her beauty, her insolence and audacity. Before September she
was the old ‘Chicot;’ the woman whose portrait had flaunted on all the
walls of London. Mr. Smolendo was in raptures. The broken leg was as
sound as ever it had been. La Chicot would be able to dance early in
November. A paragraph announcing this fact had already gone the round
of the papers. Another paragraph, more familiar in tone, informed the
town that Madame Chicot’s beauty had gained new lustre during the
enforced retirement of her long illness. Mr. Smolendo knew his public.