THE BLACK BUILDING BY THE RIVER.
Richard Thornton was by no means an early riser. He was generally one
of the last of those gentlemen who shuffled into the orchestra at the
ten o’clock rehearsal of a new melodrama, in which all the effect of
a murder or an abduction depended upon the pizzicato twittering of
violins, and the introduction of explosive chords at particular crises
in the action of the piece. Mr. Thornton was a sluggard, who complained
most bitterly of the heartlessness of stage managers and prompter’s
minions, who seemed to take a malicious delight in nailing cruel slips
of paper to the door-post of the Phœnix; terrible mandates, wherein the
Full Band was called at ten; “no ten minutes;” the meaning of this last
mysterious clause being that the ten minutes’ grace which is usually
accorded to the tardy performer shall on this occasion be cut off and
done away with.
But Richard was out for a holiday now. The eyes of Messrs. Spavin and
Cromshaw would fain have followed him in his Parisian wanderings, to
see that he did double work for his double wage; but the proprietors
of the Royal Waterloo Phœnix not being blessed with the gift of
clairvoyance, Mr. Thornton defied and snapped his fingers at them,
secure in the consciousness of his own value.
“If J. T. Jumballs, the author of all the original dramas they have
done at the Phœnix for the last ten years, understood French, he’d
do ‘Raoul’ for two pound ten,” thought Richard, as he stood before
his looking-glass in the blazing August sunshine, rubbing his chin
contemplatively, and wondering whether the bristles would be too strong
if he let them stop till another morning.
If the honest truth is to be recorded, it must be acknowledged that
Mr. Thornton was by no means too scrupulous in the performance of
his toilet. He had a habit of forgetting to shave until his chin
was covered by an appearance of red stubble, dappled here and there
by patches of blue and brown, for his beard was wont to crop up in
unexpected hues, which surprised even himself. He sympathized with the
great lexicographer in not having any overstrained partiality for clean
linen, and, indeed, usually wore a coloured shirt, the bosom of which
was arabesqued with stray splashes of whitewash and distemper, to say
nothing of occasional meandering evidences of the numerous pints of
porter imbibed by the young artist during his day’s labour. When Mr.
Thornton bought a new suit of clothes he put them on, and wore them
continuously; and ate and drank and painted in them until they were so
worn and frayed, and enfeebled by ill treatment, that they began to
drop away from him in rusty fragments like the withered leaves which
fall from a sturdy young oak. There were people who declared that Mr.
Thornton slept in his ordinary costume; but of course this was a cruel
slander.
To walk eight or nine miles a day to and fro between the place of your
abode and the scene of your occupation; to paint the best part of the
scenery for a large theatre in which new pieces are brought out pretty
frequently; to play second fiddle, and attend early rehearsals upon
cold mornings; to jot down the music cues in a melodrama, or accompany
Mr. Grigsby in his new comic song, or Madame Rosalbini in her latest
cachuca; and to adapt a French drama, now and then, by way of adding a
few extra pounds to your income, is not exactly to lead an idle life;
so perhaps poor Richard Thornton may be forgiven if his friends had
occasion to laugh at his indifference upon the subject of soap and
water. They even went so far as to call him “Dirty Dick,” in their
more facetious moments; but I don’t think the obnoxious _sobriquet_
wounded Richard’s feelings. Everybody liked him and respected him as a
generous-hearted, genial-tempered, honourable-minded fellow, who would
scarcely have told a lie to save his life, and who scorned to drink a
pint of beer that he couldn’t pay for, or to accept a favour which he
didn’t mean to return.
People at the Phœnix knew that Richard Thornton’s father had been a
gentleman, and that the young man had a certain pride of his own. He
was the only man in the theatre who neither abused nor flattered his
employers. The carpenters and gasmen touched their caps when they
talked to him, though he was shabbier than any of those _employés_;
the little ballet girls were fond of him, and came to tell him
their troubles when the cruel stage-manager had put their names
down for shilling fines in a horrible book which was to be seen on
the treasury table every Saturday morning. The old cleaners of the
theatre told Mr. Thornton about their rheumatic knee-joints, and came
to him for sympathy after dreary hours of scouring. He had patience
with and compassion for every one. People knew that he was kind and
tender-hearted; for his pencil initials always appeared in some obscure
corner of every subscription list, against a sum which was bulky when
taken in relation to the amount of his salary. People knew that he was
brave, for he had once threatened to fling Mr. Spavin into the pit when
that gentleman had made some insinuation impeaching Richard’s honour
as to the unfair use of gold-leaf in the Enchanted Caves of Azure
Deep. They knew that he was dutiful, and kind, and true to the old
music-mistress with whom he lived, and whom he helped to support. They
knew that when other men made light of sacred things, and were witty
and philosophical upon very solemn subjects, Richard Thornton would
leave the assembly gravely and quietly, how eloquent or lively soever
he might have been before. People knew all this, and were respectful to
the young scene-painter, in spite of the rainbow smears of paint upon
his shabby coat, and the occasional fringe of mud upon the frayed edges
of his trousers.
Upon this August morning Mr. Thornton made very short work of his
toilet.
“I won’t go out to breakfast,” he thought, “though I can get two
courses and a dessert in the Palais Royal, to say nothing of half a
bottle of sour claret, for fifteen pence. I’ll get some coffee and
rolls, and go to work at some of the scenes for ‘Raoul.’”
He rang a bell near his bed, pushed a table to the window, which looked
out into the quadrangle of the hotel, and sat down with a battered tin
box of water-colours and a few squares of Bristol board before him. He
had to ring several times before one of the waiters condescended to
answer his summons, but he worked away cheerily, smoking as he worked,
at a careful water-coloured copy of a rough pencil sketch which he had
made a couple of nights before in the pit of the theatre.
He didn’t leave off to eat his breakfast when it came, by-and-by; but
ate his rolls and drank his coffee in the pauses of his work, only
laying down his brush for a minute or so at a time. The scene was a
street in old Paris, the houses very dark and brown, with over-hanging
latticed windows, exterior staircases, practicable bridges, and all
sorts of devices which called for the employment of a great deal of
glue and pasteboard in Richard’s model. This scene was only one out of
eight, and the young scene-painter wanted to take perfect models of
all the eight scenes back to the Phœnix. He had M. Michel Lévy’s sixty
centimes edition of the new play spread open before him, and referred
to it now and again as he painted.
“Humph! Enter _Raoul_ down staircase in flat. _Raoul’s_ a doctor, and
the house with the staircase is his. The house at the corner belongs
to _Gobemouche_, the comic barber, and the practicable lattice is
_Madeline’s_. She’ll come to her window by-and-by to talk to the
doctor, whom she thinks a very excellent man; though he’s been giving
her mild doses of _aqua tofana_ for the last three weeks. _Catherine
de Medicis_ comes over the practicable bridge, presently, disguised
as a nun. I wonder how many melodramas poor _Catherine_ has appeared
in since she left this mortal stage? Did she ever do anything except
poison people, I wonder, while she was alive? She never does anything
else at the Porte Saint Martin, or on the Surrey side of the Thames.
I must sketch the costumes, by-and-by. _Raoul_ in black velvet
and scarlet hose, a pointed beard, straight eyebrows, short black
hair,—austere and dignified. Cromshaw will do _Raoul_, of course; and
Spavin will play the light-comedy soldier who gets drunk, and tears
off _Catherine’s_ velvet mask in the last scene. Yes, that’ll be a
great scene on our side of the water. _Charles the Ninth_—he’s a muff,
so anybody can play him—has just finished reading the arsenicated
edition of a treatise on hawking, closes the last page of the book,
feels the first spasm. _Catherine_, disguised as a nun, has been
followed by Spavin—by the comedy-soldier, I mean—to the Louvre, after a
conversation having been overheard between her and _Raoul_. The _King_,
in the agonies of spasmodic affection, asks who has murdered him. ‘That
woman—that sorceress—that fiend in human form!’ cries the soldier,
snatching the mask from _Catherine’s_ face.—‘Merciful Heaven, it is my
mother!’ shrieks the _King_, falling dead with a final spasm. That ‘It
is my mother!’ ought to be good for three rounds of applause at least.
I dare say Spavin will have the speech transferred from the _King’s_
part to his own. ‘Merciful Heaven, it is _his_ mother!’ would do just
as well.”
Poor Richard Thornton, not having risen very early, worked on till past
five o’clock in the afternoon before his model was finished. He got
up with a sigh of relief when the pasteboard presentment of the old
Parisian street stood out upon the little table, square and perfect.
He filled his pipe and walked up and down before the table, smoking and
admiring his work in an innocent rapture.
“Poor Nelly,” he thought presently. “I promised I would call in the
Rue de l’Archevêque to-day, to pay my respects to the old chap. Not
that he’d particularly care to see me, I dare say, but Nell is such a
darling. If she asked me to stand on my head, and do poor old Goffie’s
gnome-fly business, I think I should try and do it. However, it is
too late to call upon Mr. Vandeleur Vane to-day, so I must put that
off till to-morrow. I must drop in again at half-price at the Porte
Saint Martin, to have another look at the scene in eight compartments.
That’ll be rather a poser for the machinist at the Phœnix, I flatter
myself. Yes, I must have one more look at it, and—Ah! by the bye,
there’s the Morgue!”
Mr. Thornton finished his pipe and rubbed his chin with a reflective
air.
“Yes, I must have a look at the Morgue before I go,” he thought; “I
promised that old nuisance, J. T. Jumballs, that I’d refresh my memory
about the Morgue. He’s doing a great drama in which one-half of the
_dramatis personæ_ recognize the other half dead on the marble slabs.
He’s never been across the Channel, and I think his notions of the
Morgue are somewhat foggy. He fancies it’s about as big as Westminster
Abbey, I know, and he wants the governors to give him the whole depth
of the stage for his great scene, and set it obliquely, like the
Assyrian hall in ‘Sardanapalus,’ so as to give the idea of illimitable
extent. I’m to paint the scene for him. ‘_The interior of the Morgue by
lamplight. The meeting of the living and the dead._’ That’ll be rather
a strong line for the bill, at any rate. I’ll go and have some dinner
in the Palais Royal, and then go down and have a look at the gloomy
place. An exterior wouldn’t be bad, with Notre Dame in the distance,
but an _interior_—Bah! J. T. J. is a clever fellow, but I wish his
genius didn’t lie so much in the charnel-house.”
He put on his hat, left his room, locked the door, and ran down the
polished staircase, whistling merrily as he went. He was glad to
be released from his work, pleased at the prospect of a few hours’
idleness in the foreign city. Many people, inhabitants and visitors,
thought Paris dull, dreary, and deserted in this hot August weather,
but it was a delightful change from the Pilasters and the primeval
solitudes of Northumberland Square, that quaint, grim quadrangle of big
houses, whose prim middle-class inhabitants looked coldly over their
smart wire window-blinds at poor Richard’s shabby coat.
Mr. Thornton got an excellent dinner at a great bustling restaurateur’s
in the Palais Royal, where for two francs one might dine upon all
the delicacies of the season, in a splendid saloon, enlivened by the
martial braying of a brass band in the garden below.
The _carte de jour_ almost bewildered Richard by its extent and
grandeur, and he chose haphazard from the catalogue of soups which
the obliging waiter gabbled over for his instruction. He read all
the pleasing by-laws touching the non-division of dinners, and the
admissibility of exchanges in the way of a dish for a dessert, or
a dessert for a dish, by payment of a few extra centimes. He saw
that almost all the diners hid themselves behind great wedges of
orange-coloured melon at an early stage of the banquet, and generally
wound up with a small white washing-basin of lobster salad, the
preparation of which was a matter of slow and solemn care and thought.
He ordered his dinner in humble imitation of these accomplished
_habitués_, and got very good value for his two francs. Then he paid
his money; bowed to the graceful lady who sat in splendid attire in
a very bower of salads and desserts, and went down a broad staircase
that led into a street behind the Palais Royal, and thence to the Rue
Richelieu.
He treated himself to a cup of coffee and a cigar at a café in the
Place de la Bourse, and then strolled slowly away towards the Seine,
smoking, and dawdling to look at this and that as he walked along. It
was nearly eight o’clock, therefore, when he emerged, from some narrow
street, upon the quay, and made his way towards that bridge beneath
whose shadow the Morgue hides, like some foul and unhallowed thing. He
did not much like the task which Mr. Jumballs had imposed upon him,
but he was too good-natured to refuse compliance with the transpontine
dramatist’s desire, and far too conscientious to break a promise once
made, however disagreeable the performance of that promise might prove.
He walked on resolutely, therefore, towards the black shed-like
building.
“I hope there are no bodies there to-night,” he thought. “One glance
round the place will show me all I want to see. I hope there are no
poor dead creatures there to-night.”
He stopped before going in, and looked at a couple of women who were
standing near, chattering together with no little gesticulation.
He asked one of these women the question, Were there any bodies in the
Morgue?
Yes,—the women both answered with one voice. There had not long been
brought the body of a gentleman, an officer it was thought, poisoned in
a gaming-house. A murder, perhaps, or a suicide; no one knew which.
Richard Thornton shrugged his shoulders as he turned away from the idle
gossips.
“Some people would call me a coward if they knew how I dislike going
into this place,” he thought.
He threw away his cigar, took off his hat, and slowly crossed the dark
threshold of the Parisian dead-house.
When he came out again, which was not until after the lapse of at least
a quarter of an hour, his face was almost as white as the face of the
corpse he had left within. He went upon the bridge, scarcely knowing
where he went, and walking like a man who walks in his sleep.
Not more than half a dozen yards from the Morgue he came suddenly upon
the lonely figure of a girl, whose arm rested on the parapet of the
bridge, and whose pale face was turned towards the towers of Notre Dame.
She looked up as he approached, and called him by his name.
“_You_ here, Eleanor?” he cried. “Come away, child; come away, for
pity’s sake!”