ESAU WAS THE FIRSTBORN.
"Are you trying to tell his fortune, Georgie?" said Haggard as, cigar in
mouth, he entered his wife's little boudoir.
The young mother was sitting in an American rocking-chair, her baby in
her lap. The little creature stared at her in that peculiar way which
infants do when they are being "amused." It wasn't altogether a
meaningless stare, for what it meant was very obvious indeed; this
peculiar look is a threat, and may be translated thus:
"If you do not give me your entire attention, and become thoroughly
absorbed in me, I will rend the air with eldritch screams, and my
piercing cries shall give you the headache you deserve."
"I think I was making a fool of myself, Reginald," said young Mrs.
Haggard; "I certainly was predicting all sorts of good fortune for him,
in baby language."
"Yes, baby language as you call it, is one of women's ridiculous fads;
the child learns it, and he'll have to unlearn it again to pick up the
Queen's English. You don't mean to say that you believe in palmistry,
Georgie?" continued Haggard.
"Well, everybody says there's something in it, Reginald; besides, it's
only an old belief revived, and it's better fun than spirit-rapping,
thought-reading, or Madam Blavatsky."
The husband sat down, and critically inspected the child.
"Poor little devil!" he said; "he's like a young bear with all his
troubles to come. I'll tell you his fortune, Georgie. If he's got brains
he'll have to go and live in the Law Courts, pinching and screwing to
make both ends meet, starving his belly to feed his back, working early
and late, and hoping for the briefs that never come. Perhaps he'll
drift into something, or finding that he can't earn a farthing he may
turn paper stainer in despair, and gradually get a crust by writing dull
farces or novels that nobody reads; in fact he may become a modern Grub
Street free lance. If he is a humbug he'll go into the Church; or he may
want to wear a red coat, or a blue one, and vegetate on his pay and the
trifle he would get from me."
"Poor little fellow," said his wife; "but what has he done to be
disinherited?"
"He's committed the crime of existing, my dear," replied the husband.
"Can't you see, dear, that every farthing we have in the world will have
to go to Lucius, for he will be the head of the family. Gad," he said,
"he may be a peer of the realm, though that's a rather unlikely
contingency. This child, Georgie, is not born in the purple, as is his
elder brother; the one is clay, the other china."
The young mother nervously clutched the child to her breast and
smothered him with kisses.
"Make the most of him, my dear, lavish your affection upon him. Unless
the squire means doing something for him, his fortune is what I have
predicted. Younger sons in England, George, have to live on monkey's
allowance--more kicks than halfpence, and if there are half-a-dozen more
of them, poor little chaps, the fewer halfpence they will get and the
more kicks."
Careless idle words, spoken jestingly, but every one of which went home
like a barbed arrow to the mother's heart. As she buried her face in the
child's neck, she thought of her vow of eternal secrecy to her cousin.
It had been extracted from her when under the influence of intense fear
and horror. Her cousin had only forced a solemn promise from her with
the intention of covering her own ignominy. It would have needed more
than even the diabolical ingenuity of a Machiavel to have extorted from
any mother her adhesion to a conspiracy for the ruin of her own child.
But now she saw to her horror that each and every child she might bear
to her own husband would, as a matter of course, be practically
disinherited in favour of the little bastard. At that instant, there
dawned on her for the first time the remote possible contingency of the
child who was supposed to be Haggard's firstborn son ultimately
inheriting the Pit Town title; that troubled her far less than do the
probabilities of his ultimate succession to the Woolsack affect young
Mr. Briefless when he is first called to the bar. But that each and
every one of her children should by her own deliberate act, and for the
benefit of an interloper, himself but a child of shame, be deprived of
what was legitimately their own, their share of their father's heritage,
did seem a very bitter cup.
"I can tell you one thing, Georgie," said her husband; "your father's
quite of my mind in the matter, and it is our universal respect for the
law of primogeniture that has made England what she is. It's a sort of
natural law of selection, and the survival of the fittest. The eldest
son must be taken care of at the expense of the rest; he is the tribal
chief, his brothers and sisters are but his henchmen and his slaves.
Why, look at the French; since the Code Napoleon, which chopped up the
land into little blocks and gave each child his share, there have been
no great families in France. Money a young fellow can squander, but he
cannot get rid of his ancestral acres, when they are tightly tied up to
come to his eldest son. There's no way out of it, Georgie; the
Warrenders and the Haggards wouldn't content themselves with turning in
their graves, they'd haunt the pair of us, if we hesitated to do the
regulation thing."
On hearing these words, which for the first time in her life brought
the real state of things home to her, it is hardly an exaggeration to
say that young Mrs. Haggard's heart died within her. Was it not her duty
to her child, to her husband, and to herself, to instantly make a clean
breast of the whole mystery? Perhaps it was, but she struggled fiercely
against the natural impulse to adopt this simple course. The fact has
been insisted upon that secrecy was foreign to Georgie Haggard's nature;
she hated deception and the very idea of anything which was underhand.
Had she given way to her natural impulse, and then and there told her
husband the truth, the dark web of intrigue which surrounded her
innocent life would have been torn aside and dispersed at once and for
ever. But with Georgie, unhappily for herself, her promise bound her as
tightly as the most terrible oath. She had promised never to reveal
Lucy's secret, and come what might, should this moral Juggernaut crush
her, her child, and her offspring yet unborn, yet she would be true to
it; her word, once plighted, should be kept to the bitter end.
"I think it's cruel, Reginald," she said, and the tears were in her
eyes, "cruel and wicked too. What has he done, poor little fellow, that
he should be made to inherit a sort of curse?"
But before her husband could answer this very natural objection, the
door was flung violently open and the child Lucius, his face suffused
with angry colour, bounced into the room. To his breast he clutched a
tiny white kitten, it was quite young, its eyes not being yet open.
"Dad," he cried in a tone of rage, "Auntie says I shan't see the tittens
drowned. I do want so much to see them drowned. I hate Auntie Lucy, and
I hate Fanchette."
Fanchette now appeared upon the scene, indignant and out of breath. The
child, tossing the kitten from him, sprung upon Haggard's lap, and again
expressed his intense desire to be present at the execution of the
kittens.
"Dad," he said in a tone of affectionate entreaty, "I never seed a
titten drowned."
Perhaps it was natural after all. Just in the same way as an adult goes
to an execution, because he "never has seen one, you know"--he forgets
that it is "a thing to shudder at not to see"--so the little Lucius was
anxious to assist at the immolation of the kittens.
"No, my man, you mustn't be cruel," and then Haggard attempted to argue
with the child. But the little fellow pleaded, looking up into Haggard's
face with his big brown eyes.
"Me tiss oo, dad," he said, and he did so vehemently. Haggard stroked
the child's long golden curls, and placed him gently on the floor.
"Can't be done, my man," he said. At once the child's face changed and
became frightful to behold; the corners of his mouth went down, the
whites of his eyes became injected, the tears coursed freely down his
cheeks, he clenched his little fists and screamed aloud in his rage and
fury.
"Debil!" he shouted in his passion, and he shook his fists at Haggard in
impotent rage.
"Take him away, Fanchette," said Haggard with a laugh.
The _bonne_ smiled and caught the infuriated child up in her arms.
"_Ah ma foi, monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_après tout, c'est naturel, il
aime le spectacle, le beau bébé_."
"Well, he's not to have the spectacle, mind that, Fanchette."
The child and the one kitten undoomed to a watery grave were carried off
by the _bonne_.
"That chap's a devil of a temper, Georgie," said the husband with a
laugh. "Case in point, my dear," he continued; "we keep one kitten and
drown the rest, and there doesn't seem anything very horrible about it
after all; and that's what we of the upper classes, Georgie, have
morally to do with our own offspring. It's on exactly that same
principle that little Lucius will have to get our money and our land,
while _that_ poor little chap and his brothers and sisters, if he should
have the misfortune to have any, will have to rub along as best they
can. You and I, Georgie, will have morally to perform the functions of
the stony-hearted gardener."
Haggard kissed his wife, then he ran his hand meditatively over the
infant's soft scalp; he began to whistle a tune, and left the room.
It may be very unnatural, it may be very inartistic, but this being
merely a veracious chronicle, it has to be told that Georgie loved the
little Lucius quite as much and with exactly the same affection that she
felt for the infant she fondled on her lap. Totally inexplicable, you
will say; but so it was.
Georgie had never grudged to the little Lucius his share of her own and
her husband's affection. She and her husband were young people; they
might have a large family growing up round them, but they were wealthy,
and they had large expectations, so that a child more or less to people
in their position in life did not very much matter. But to give a little
stranger a full share in the domestic pie is one thing, and to rob one's
own children for the sake of the same little stranger is another. The
more Georgie thought the matter over the more monstrous and impossible
seemed her position. She would make an appeal to her cousin's mercy, to
her cousin's sense of justice. But she felt morally certain that Lucy
would never consent to an _éclaircissement_, or to the making a clean
breast of the whole long-buried scandal to her cousin's husband.
Gradually the infant on her lap, her husband's legitimate heir, dozed
gently off; Mrs. Haggard placed him in his cot and proceeded to darken
the room; as she did so the door opened and her cousin's smiling face
appeared.
"I want to talk to you, Lucy; I want to talk to you about baby," said
Georgie with gravity.
"Nothing the matter with him, dear, I hope, is there?"
"Oh, he's well enough as to his bodily health. It's his future I'm
alarmed about. What do you suppose my husband told me to-day, Lucy? He
told me, as a matter of course, that my baby was to be sacrificed to
Lucius, because, forsooth, Lucius is the elder. I nearly told him then,
Lucy. I _must_ tell him, I shall have to tell him sooner or later."
"And when you do so, Georgie, you will have the satisfaction of seeing
the last of your cousin. When I told you that I would fling myself into
the lake if you betrayed me, it was not the mere idle vapouring of a
foolish girl. I said it, and I meant it. Do you think for one single
instant that your husband would keep my secret? The scandal has blown
over, Georgie; you and I are its sole depositories. My secret and my sin
are both dead, buried for ever in the silent past. You swore you would
never betray me, Georgie, and having sworn it you must keep your oath.
Don't think for an instant that any ambition on my part, Georgie, makes
me wish to see Lucius supplant your children. Oh that he were only dead,
then at all events I should be safe."
Gradually, however, the girl became calmer, her manner to Georgie got
softer and more caressing. "Keep my secret, Georgie dear," she said;
"it'll be another twenty years before your children are men and women. I
may be dead before that, please God I shall. Anyhow there'll be quite
time enough to take your husband into our confidence, if it must be so.
But I couldn't face him yet, and I couldn't face uncle. I must hold you
to your promise, Georgie. You swore never to betray me, and you never
shall."
Reginald Haggard's wife pleaded with the girl; she argued, she
entreated, but she never threatened.
"It may come out after all, Lucy," she said, "and then think of the
shame, the disgrace and the scandal."
"The only way in which it could come out, dear, would be if Capt knew
something about it. He evidently has no suspicion, or he would have come
to us for hush-money long ago. Besides, Georgie, there's hope left to me
yet," and here the girl's face grew almost diabolical as she hissed
across the table in a low whisper, "_Lucius is but a little child, dear;
he may die!_"
"I can't believe, Lucy, that the worst of mothers could deliberately
wish for her own child's death. You took a base advantage of my
affection in entrapping me into a promise of secrecy."
"An oath, my dear."
"An oath or a promise, whichever you like, Lucy. I'll keep your secret,
you may rely on that, whatever it may cost me. But I love the child
(and you know you can trust me, Lucy Warrender), so be you sure of this.
You dared to wish for the child's death. Should any danger menace him
from you--you his own mother, worthless woman that you are--that instant
your secret shall be a secret no longer. I will sacrifice my own
happiness, the future of my own children, to you; for your sake I have
deceived my husband, and I will go on deceiving him, but I will protect
the child's life from you, Lucy Warrender, at whatever cost. Your very
presence is a danger to him. After what you've told me, it is impossible
that you and he can live under the same roof. You hate him, your own
unhappy friendless child. I banish you from his presence, Lucy, from
this day forth."
Lucy Warrender gazed at her cousin in astonishment; their _rôles_ were
changed; no longer young Mrs. Haggard looked at her cousin with patient
pleading eyes; her foot beat the floor with suppressed excitement, and
though she never raised her voice, she continued in an angry but
determined tone:
"Yes, Lucy, you must go, and quickly; you shall no longer poison my home
with your presence. You have brought sufficient misery to me and mine."
There was a something in the way young Mrs. Haggard had spoken that
convinced Lucy Warrender of her sincerity.
Her cousin turned and left the room without a word.
That same evening Miss Warrender announced her intention of making a
long-postponed visit to some friends in town. In vain her uncle
remonstrated, and pointed out that her presence was expected with the
rest of the family at Walls End Castle.
"I couldn't stand it, uncle," she said; "we are quiet enough and dull
enough here, heaven knows; but a month at the Castle would be too
dreadful. Besides it is Georgie who is the old lord's favourite. I don't
think I'm in his good books at all. I've put off and put off this visit
so long, that if I don't make it now, I never shall. And even London out
of the season is to my mind preferable to the oppressive magnificence of
the Castle. Lord Pit Town is Reginald's relative, not mine; I should
only be in the way, Uncle."
And so it was arranged.
Lucy went to her friends in town, and from their house she commenced a
round of visits. She corresponded regularly enough with her cousin, and
there was nothing very remarkable about the letters that were
interchanged. Not one word was dropped by either cousin on the subject
of the family secret. Perhaps a letter written about this time from Lord
Spunyarn to his friend Haggard may throw a little light upon the way in
which Miss Warrender amused herself.
"The Club House,
"Royal Yacht Squadron, Ryde.
"13th August, 18--.
"DEAR HAGGARD,
"Here I am swaggering about this place in a blue coat and brass
buttons, like the other sham sailors. I'm quite out of the hunt
here, however, for I can't pretend to understand the jargon of
the thing. Old and new measurements, tonnage, time allowances
and movable ballast, are all a sealed book to me. Of course I go
on to the balcony with the other idiots to stare at the matches,
and, like them, I have to pretend to manifest an intelligent
interest.
"To use a nautical simile your wife's cousin is 'carrying on'
here. If I didn't know her so well I should think she meant
marrying. Half the men here, including old Marlingspike, the
venerable commodore, dance attendance upon her from morning till
night, and she certainly looks a very bright little, tight
little craft in her nautical get-up, which is the regulation
thing with the women here. They say that little Jack Hornpiper
proposed to her the other day; it looks rather like it, for he
has suddenly started for a lengthened cruise in the
Mediterranean.
"I suppose by this you have begun wiring into Pit Town's grouse,
though I hear he does not keep a very big head of game on the
place. When Hetton comes into it, it won't be much better, for
of course all his spare cash will go in horses. I too have an
invite for Walls End, but it is only just for the festivities,
which everybody declares are given in honour of your wife and
her boy, and to spite Hetton. He, of course, is furious. He
swore at first he wouldn't put in an appearance at all, but a
good many of the people here are going, and Hetton'll have to
show, if only to keep his Jews quiet. The Barringtons, who as
you know were never great favourites, have been quite the rage
here since Miss Warrender's arrival. They are asked everywhere
and go everywhere for the lady's sake, which is very good of
them. The Charmington is going to astonish us all in a
three-nights engagement at the local theatre; her benefit is
announced under the special patronage of H.R.H. She has gone off
terribly, but her hair is more luxuriant and golden than ever.
"Miss Warrender bids me tell you that she shall make a final
attempt to _rescue_ Hetton on her arrival at Pit Town's place.
For your sake, old fellow, I hope she won't succeed, but I have
known more unlikely things happen even than this.
"Sincerely yours,
"SPUNYARN."
Lucy Warrender enjoyed herself thoroughly during her stay at Ryde. Mr.
Hornpiper's misfortune had been a true bill. Lucy Warrender encouraged
everybody, and it was not her fault if enthusiasts like little Hornpiper
cut short the delightful period of their acquaintance with the lady by
proposing to her.
It has been said that a ship is a prison, to which is added the
possibility of being drowned; this is particularly the case in regard to
a yacht. Theoretically, yachting is a delightful pastime; practically,
it is an exceedingly expensive foible, combining the maximum of probable
discomfort and boredom with the not unremote contingency of possible
danger. Given the most delightful weather, a big and well-found yacht
and a really good cook, given that the cruise has been a short one, that
everybody has done his or her best to make things comfortable; yet how
uncommonly glad we all are to bid our host and his dear delightful
daughters good-bye--and how uncommonly glad they must be to see the last
of us. If any of our friends were to invite us to come and stay with
them and eat tinned provisions for a fortnight, we should indignantly
decline, but if we are asked to do it on board a friend's yacht, we
accept with effusion, and for at least a week or two before we brag of
the high old time we are going to have. I am afraid Lucy Warrender and
her friends the Barringtons were only fine-weather sailors after all,
but they were very popular.
There was no false pride about Lucy Warrender. When she met her old
friend and rival, Mrs. Charmington, upon the pier, she shook hands with
her at once. In the days when Mrs. Charmington was a leader in society,
little Jack Charmington, her husband, had been tacitly ignored; but now
his wife was very glad indeed to have him constantly at her elbow, and
she introduced him to everybody.
"You must know Jack, Miss Warrender," she said, as they shook hands. "I
don't know what I should do without him, my dear," she continued. "He
always leads the applause in front, you know, and he talks to the
professional people for me, when I have the misfortune to meet them in
the daytime."
"Doosid responsible position, Miss Warrender, I can tell you; one needs
a constitution of iron, Miss Warrender; they're so awfully hospitable,
that talking with them first always means drinking with them afterwards.
It's bad enough for my wife to have quitted the scenes of her former
triumphs for the coarser joys of the play-house. But dramatic talent, my
dear young lady, will assert itself. If my wife had been Empress of all
the Russias, sooner or later her destiny would have declared itself, and
she would have sought the only sphere which could content a woman of her
talent and ambition."
Now Mrs. Charmington's talents as an actress were microscopical. She was
good looking, she had a decently good memory, and she was a dogged,
plodding woman, with a good eye to the main chance. Her principle was to
buy a fairly good article, to pay a good price for it, and then to make
her little experiment upon the body of the vile, by hacking her piece
through the provinces, say for six months; and then producing it for a
short London season. There is no doubt that by time and patience it is
possible to get even a little child to recite a piece of poetry with a
certain amount of effect, and so it was with Mrs. Charmington. It must
be remembered first, that Mrs. Charmington did not buy rubbish. She went
to the great Mr. Breitmann, and she made a bargain with him. Breitmann
was a man of five-and-forty; he stood six feet in his stockings, he was
fair, with a quantity of light curly hair, and he had big fat fingers,
which were perpetually playing upon an imaginary pianoforte; when they
weren't running over an invisible keyboard, Mr. William Breitmann was
engaged in extending them separately, one after the other, in a
succession of violent cracks. Now the reason Mrs. Charmington went to
Mr. Breitmann was, that Breitmann was a particularly independent person,
who declined dancing gratuitous attendance upon Mrs. Charmington or
anybody else. In vain had she favoured him with a royal command,
written upon crocodile paper, headed by a magnificent monogram,
illuminated in many colours, in which Mr. Breitmann was informed that
"Mrs. Charmington would be pleased if Mr. Breitmann would kindly call
upon her on Tuesday, at three, as she wished to talk over a matter of
business with him." A rude and cruel answer, short and to the point,
came by return of post:
"MADAM,
"I have no business with you.
"Yours obediently,
"W. BREITMANN."
Then she sent an ambassador. Jack Charmington called four times upon the
dramatist at his club, but even then, after bribing the page boy to
indiscreetly admit that the great Breitmann was on the premises, he
still found him sufficiently difficult to approach. As Jack stood in the
little bare den marked "Strangers' Room," he heard voices in loud
talking, with occasional shouts of laughter; then he heard a gruff and
angry voice grunt in an irritated manner, "Charmington, what is
Charmington? I don't know Charmington. Tell him to go to----." And here
a door slammed violently.
The page boy entered the strangers' room and communicated to Mr.
Charmington the fact that the great man was busy.
"Did you tell him I wanted to see him on business?"
"They all say that, sir," replied the boy; "he's a very busy gentleman
Mr. Breitmann, sir, if you please."
Charmington then sat down and wrote a polite note, in which he informed
Mr. Breitmann that he desired a short interview with him on a matter of
vital importance to them both. A second half-crown was administered to
the page boy, and in a few moments the door of the strangers' room was
violently flung open, and Mr. Breitmann himself suddenly burst in.
Breitmann never entered a room, he always burst in. The suddenness of
his entry startled Charmington considerably; he was still more
astonished at the tone in which Breitmann addressed him. That gentleman
carried poor Jack's note in his hand.
"What is your vital business, sir? I have no vital business with you."
"My wife wrote to you, Mr. Breitmann, yesterday, asking you to call on
her."
This only seemed to exasperate Mr. Breitmann still more.
"I have no business with your wife. I am not a ladies' man. Why should I
call on your wife when I have no business? What do you mean by coming
here and bullying me because I won't call on your wife?"
"My wife is a very prominent person, Mr. Breitmann."
"I have seen your wife, sir, and if you wish, I will tell you what I
think of her."
He hardly gave poor little Charmington time to assent to this
proposition, when he continued, his voice changing from a shout to a
scream:
"Sir, your wife is a fool!" Then he proceeded to crack his fingers
violently, one after another. "Now, sir," he continued, "I wish you
good-morning; my time is fully occupied in my businesses and in
protecting my copyrights."
He was about to rush from the room.
"It's about that I wanted to see you," said Jack.
"Have you been infringing my copyrights then?" replied the other in a
terrible voice.
"No, I want to buy one," said Charmington.
"Ah," replied Breitmann, in a calmer tone, "then you _have_ business.
Sit down. What do you want to buy?"
"Well, I don't exactly know," replied Charmington.
"Well, tell me how much you want to spend, five thousand--ten thousand?"
And then they went to business. It was explained to Mr. Breitmann that
Mrs. Charmington was anxious to purchase one of his new and original
dramas, one of those extraordinary combinations of melodramatic
impossibility, which however appeal, and not in vain, to the eye and to
the heart, which never fail to fill the pockets of their fortunate
purchasers, and which have rendered the name of Breitmann a household
word.
For thirty years it had been Mr. Breitmann's misfortune to fight
incompetency in some shape or other. It had fallen to his lot to
manipulate vast armies of theatrical supernumeraries and to teach them
to perform the apparently impossible feat of being in two places at
once. Mr. Breitmann's struggles with the British super had taught him
one great secret: the British super, like the British donkey, never does
what he is told until the person in authority over him loses his temper.
So Breitmann, to avoid loss of time, used to begin by losing his temper
at once; so terrible were his ebullitions of wrath, that nobody ever
attempted to argue with him, and he always carried his point. Finding
his tactics invariably successful within the walls of the theatre, he
adopted them with similar success in ordinary life, and the time he
saved was enormous.
His negotiations with Mrs. Charmington, her husband and her solicitor,
were over in forty-eight hours; a satisfactory bargain was concluded
between them for the purchase of "Ethel's Sacrifice," a melodrama of
thrilling interest, originally written as a novel by Robinson. Robinson
had submitted the manuscript to Breitmann, and then for a fortnight the
pair had "collaborated." What took place during that dreadful fortnight
is only known to the two collaborators. Robinson at its commencement was
a bright-eyed young fellow, full of enthusiasm, poetry and romance; at
the end of the fortnight all the enthusiasm, poetry and romance had been
knocked out of him. "Ethel's Sacrifice" had been altered, tinkered,
transposed, cut and filled with comic incidents of the most every-day
description, incidents from which the poetic soul of the unhappy
Robinson revolted. Then "Ethel's Sacrifice" was gabbled through one
summer's evening at a remote provincial theatre, and "Ethel's
Sacrifice," by Messrs. Robinson and Breitmann, became a marketable
security, duly protected by act of parliament. A nervous invalid left
London for prolonged mental rest and change of scene--that was Robinson;
his collaborator calmly returned to his multifarious business
engagements and the onerous duties of the protection of his innumerable
copyrights.
Now Mr. Breitmann not only sold "Ethel's Sacrifice" to the Charmingtons,
but he sold them the benefits of his own personal skill in its
production. When the bills said that "Ethel's Sacrifice" was produced
under the personal supervision of Mr. William Breitmann, the knowing
ones jumped at once to the correct conclusion that "Ethel's Sacrifice"
would be a success. Mr. Breitmann had stipulated with Mrs. Charmington
that he should not deliver to her the complete drama until she herself
was letter-perfect in the title _rôle_.
"You're never perfect, you know," he had said to her, "and you won't be
till you've played the thing in the provinces for six months; that's the
curse of amateurs, they never are perfect."
"But I'm not an amateur, Mr. Breitmann," the lady had retorted
indignantly.
"Pardon me, dear lady," he said, "but you are nothing else. You have
played four original parts, specially written for you mind, in the
whole of your stage experience; of course you're an amateur, but you are
a big success. And," and here he cracked his fingers very slowly, "you
are a fine woman, yes, a fine stage presence of a woman," said he
appreciatively, as he looked her all over, much as a dealer might look
over a horse--a dealer who was selling a horse, not a dealer who was
buying one.
Mrs. Charmington fought hard to get hold of the beautiful type-printed
copy of "Ethel's Sacrifice," which young Robinson, in elaborate morning
costume and a flower in his button-hole, had read to her so
delightfully; but all in vain. Mr. Breitmann kept it carefully locked up
in one of the numerous tin boxes which made his rather grim-looking
study so much resemble a lawyer's office.
"You'll find this quite enough to occupy you for the next three months,
my dear," said Breitmann decisively, using the affectionate method of
address invariable in the profession.
The part, which was a formidable little volume, was just about twice as
long as the Church catechism. To do Mrs. Charmington justice she set to
work with a will; she was actually letter-perfect when the play was read
to her company for the first time by Mr. Robinson at the Stoke Pogis
theatre, where the talented little band of actors that supported Mrs.
Charmington were playing at the time.
"At ten on Monday, if you please, ladies and gentlemen," said Robinson,
"we will rehearse Acts I., II. and III. Mr. Breitmann will be present."
Everybody was punctual, and Mr. Breitmann _was_ present. For five mortal
hours he abused the company individually and collectively; he pervaded
the theatre, he shrieked from the lighted rake of gas jets which
illuminated the centre of the stage, he objurgated from the author's
table, he used the most horrible language when he suddenly appeared in
the stalls, he had the presumption to order Mrs. Charmington not to
"mince," and he told her that "it wasn't a time for mincing;" he
insisted on the minuet in the second act being repeated six times, and
then he informed the infuriated stage manager that "it wasn't good
enough even for Whitechapel." But the climax was reached at Mrs.
Charmington's great scene with her leading man, at the conclusion of the
third act. Ethel (Mrs. Charmington) has to fling herself into the arms
of her confiding husband; she proceeded to do so in her usual
perfunctory and society manner.
"Good heavens! madam," shrieked the indignant Breitmann, "that won't do.
Stand here," said he in his ferocious voice, "and look at me." He rushed
at the leading man, he plunged his face into that gentleman's shirt
front, he gripped the gentleman's muscular shoulders with tremendous
energy, and his back went up and down with convulsive sobs.
"There, ma'am," he said triumphantly; "try again." She tried again, but
Breitmann vociferated all the more.
"It's no good, my dear; you must clutch and nestle. I wouldn't give
that," and here he snapped his fingers, "for a woman who can't clutch
and nestle; try it with me."
Breitmann took up the position of the leading man. Mrs. Charmington gave
one tearful glance at her husband, then she rushed into Breitmann's arms
and did her best to clutch and to nestle. But he was not even then
satisfied.
"Go home, my dear," he said, "and practise it with your husband."
What a situation for one who has been a queen of society. When Mrs.
Charmington, almost heart-broken, reached her lodgings she informed her
husband that it was more than she could bear.
"The idea of the wretch actually teaching me my business before my whole
company, and then ordering me to go home and learn to 'clutch and
nestle.'"
"Dev'lish sensible idea I think, Julia," said Charmington, who was in
love with his wife before all things; "you can't do better than begin at
once," and the little man drew himself up to his full height of five
foot six and extended his arms like a mechanical doll.
"Don't remind me of my humiliation, Jack; it's too much, too much to
bear," and the beauty flung herself into an easy chair and burst into
floods of tears.
But Julia Charmington, wise woman that she was, did as she was bid; she
clutched and she nestled all that afternoon, and she had her reward. For
six whole months she delighted all the great provincial towns and
watering-places of the United Kingdom with "Ethel's Sacrifice," and she
reaped a golden harvest. When she came to town for the season she
scored a decided success, and all the leading Dailies joined in the
chorus of adulation. The fair Julia got a good round sum from the
photographers for the right to represent her in her four elaborate
costumes; the particular triumph of the sun-artist being the
representation of her nestling and clutching scene. Even the dramatic
critic of the great morning journal went into ecstasies over this.
"Mrs. Charmington," he said, "has made real progress. It has been the
fashion to go to see this lady from curiosity, but last night she scored
a genuine success in 'Ethel's Sacrifice,' a thrilling melodrama by
Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson, which was seen in London for the first
time. The house was crowded with the well-known faces so familiar to us
at all important _premières_. In her great scene in the third act, Mrs.
Charmington took every one by surprise. Thoroughly spontaneous and
unaffected, quite free from staginess and straining after effect, the
audience thoroughly appreciated the genuine burst of feeling of the
young wife," and so on, and so on, for a column and a half.
Messrs. Breitmann and Robinson bowed their thanks to an enthusiastic
call; and Breitmann, his face wreathed in smiles and cracking his
fingers violently, as was his custom, whispered to his collaborator,
"She's only a 'mug,' after all, my boy, but I'm proud of her; it's the
nestling and clutching that fetched them." And then he went off to the
Convivial Cannibals, where he ate an enormous tripe supper, and was more
jovial and violent than ever.