He took them from Castlemaine’s hand to throw to you.
He took them from Castlemaine’s hand to throw to you.
The greenroom seemed like some old forest rent by a storm. Its furniture, which was none too regular at best, either in carving or arrangement, had the irregularity which comes only with a tempest, human or divine. The table, it is true, still stood on its four oaken legs; but even it was well awry. The chairs were scattered here and there, some resting upon their backs. To add to all this, oranges in confusion were strewn broadcast upon the floor.
A storm in fact had visited the greenroom. The storm was Nell.
In the midst of the confusion, a jolly old face peeped cautiously in at the door which led to the street. At the sound of Manager Hart’s thunderous tones coming from the stage, however, it as promptly disappeared, only to return when the apparentdanger ceased. It was a rare old figure and a rare old dress and a rare old man. Yet, not an old man either. His face was red; for he was a tavern spirit, well known and well beloved,–a lover of good ale! Across his back hung a fiddle which too had the appearance of being the worse for wear, if fiddles can ever be said to be the worse for wear.
The intruder took off his dilapidated hat, hugged his fiddle closely under his arm and looked about the room, more cautiously than respectfully.
“Oons, here is a scattering of props; a warfare of the orange-wenches!” he exclaimed. “A wise head comes into battle after the last shot is fired.”
He proceeded forthwith to fill his pockets, of which there seemed to be an abundance of infinite depth, with oranges. This done, he calmly made a hole in the next orange which came to his hand and began to suck it loudly and persistently, boy-fashion, meanwhile smacking his lips. His face was one wreath of unctuous smiles. “There is but one way to eat anorange,” he chuckled; “that’s through a hole.”
At this moment, Hart’s voice was heard again upon the stage, and the new-comer to the greenroom liked to have dropped his orange. “Odsbud, that’s one of Master Hart’s love-tones,” he thought. “I must see Nell before he sees me, or it will be farewell Strings.” He hastened to Nell’s tiring-room and rapped lightly on the door. “Mistress Nell! Mistress Nell!” he called.
The door opened, but it was not Nell. Her maid pointed toward the stage. Strings–for Strings was his name, or at least none knew him by a better–accordingly hobbled across the room–for the wars too had left their mark on him–and peeped off in the direction indicated.
“Gad,” he exclaimed, gleefully clapping his hands, “there she goes on the stage as a Moorish princess.”
There was a storm of applause without.
“Bravo, Nelly, bravo!” he continued. “She’s caught the lads in the pit. Theyworship Nell out there.” The old fellow straightened up as if he felt a personal pride in the audience for evincing such good taste.
“Oons! Jack Hart struts about like a young game-cock at his first fight,” he observed. He broke into an infectious laugh, which would have been a fine basso for Nell’s laugh.
From the manager, his eye turned toward the place which he himself had once occupied among the musicians. He began to dance up and down with both feet, his knees well bent, boy-fashion, and to clap his hands wildly. “Look ye, little Tompkins got my old place with the fiddle. Whack, de-doodle-de-do! Whack, de-doodle, de-doodle-de-do!” he cried, giving grotesque imitations to his own great glee of his successor as leader of the orchestra.
Then, shaking his head, confident of his own superiority with the bow, he turned back into the greenroom and, with his mouth half full of orange, uttered the droll dictum: “It will take more than catgutand horse-hair to make you a fiddler, Tommy, my boy.”
Thus Strings stood blandly sucking his orange with personal satisfaction in the centre of the room, when Dick entered from the stage. The call-boy paused as if he could not believe his eyes. He looked and looked again.
“Heigh-ho!” he exclaimed at last, and then rushed across the room to greet the old fiddler. “Why, Strings, I thought we would never see you again; how fares it with you?”
Strings placed the orange which he had been eating and which he knew full well was none of his own well behind him; and, assuming an unconcerned and serious air, he replied: “Odd! A little the worse for wear, Dickey, me and the old fiddle, but still smiling with the world.” There was a bit of a twinkle in his eye as he spoke.
Dick, ever mindful of the welfare and appearance of the theatre, unhooked from the wall a huge shield, which mayhap had served some favourite knight of yore,and, using it as a tray, proceeded to gather the scattered fruit.
“Have an orange?” he inquired of Strings, who still stood in a reflective mood in the centre of the room, as he rested in his labours by him.
“How; do they belong to you?” demanded Strings.
“Oh, no,” admitted Dick, “but–”
The fiddler instantly assumed an air of injured innocence.
“How dare you,” he cried, “offer me what don’t belong to you?” He turned upon the boy almost ferociously at the bare thought. “Honesty is the best policy,” he continued, seriously. “I have tried both, lad”; and, in his eagerness to impress upon the boy the seriousness of taking that which does not belong to you, he gestured inadvertently with the hand which till now had held the stolen orange well behind him.
Dick’s eye fell upon it, and so did Strings’s. There was a moment’s awkwardness, and then both burst into a peal of joyous laughter.
A FRIEND EVEN UNTO HER WORST ENEMY.
A FRIEND EVEN UNTO HER WORST ENEMY.
“Oh, well, egad,–Iwilljoin you, Dick,” said Strings, with more patronage still than apology. He seated himself upon the table and began anew to suck his orange in philosophic fashion.
“But, mind you, lad; never again offer that which is not your own, for there you are twice cursed,” he discoursed pompously. “You make him who receives guilty of your larceny. Oons, my old wound.” He winced from pain. “He becomes an accomplice in your crime. So says the King’s law. Hush, lad, I am devouring the evidence of your guilt.”
The boy by this time had placed the shield of oranges in the corner of the room and had returned to listen to Strings’s discourse. “You speak with the learning of a solicitor,” he said, as he looked respectfully into the old fiddler’s face.
Strings met the glance with due dignity.
“Marry, I’ve often been in the presence of a judge,” he replied, with great solemnity. His face reflected the ups anddowns in his career as he made the confession.
“Is that where you have been, Strings, all these long days?” asked Dick, innocently.
“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed Strings, with sadly retrospective countenance. “Travelling, lad–contemplating the world, from the King’s highways. Take note, my boy,–a prosperous man! I came into the world without a rag that I could call my own, and now I have an abundance. Saith the philosopher: Some men are born to rags, some achieve rags and some have rags thrust upon them.”
“I wish you were back with us, Strings,” said the boy, sympathetically, as he put a hand upon Strings’s broad shoulder and looked admiringly up into his face.
“I wish so myself,” replied the fiddler. “Thrice a day, I grow lonesome here.” A weather-beaten hand indicated the spot where good dinners should be.
“They haven’t all forgot you, Strings,” continued his companion, consolingly.
“Right, lad!” said Strings, musingly, as he lifted the old viol close against his cheek and tenderly picked it. “The old fiddle is true to me yet, though there is but one string left to its dear old neck.” There was a sob in his voice as he spoke. “I tell you, a fiddle’s human, Dick! It laughs at my jokes alone now; it weeps at my sorrows.” He sighed deeply and the tears glistened in his eyes. “The fiddle is the only friend left me and the little ones at home now, my lad.”
“–And Dick!” the boy suggested, somewhat hurt. He too was weeping. “It’s a shame; that’s what it is!” he broke out, indignantly. “Tompkins can’t play the music like you used to, Strings.”
“Oons!” exclaimed the fiddler, the humour in his nature bubbling again to the surface. “It’s only now and then the Lord has time to make a fiddler, Dickey, my boy.”
As he spoke, the greenroom shook with the rounds of applause from the pit and galleries without.
“Hurrah!” he shouted, followingDick to the stage-door–his own sorrows melting before the sunshine of his joy at the success of his favourite. “Nell has caught them with the epilogue.” He danced gleefully about, entering heartily into the applause and totally forgetful of the fact that he was on dangerous ground.
Dick was more watchful. “Manager Hart’s coming!” he exclaimed in startled voice, fearful for the welfare of his friend.
Strings collapsed. “Oh, Lord, let me be gone,” he said, as he remembered the bitter quarrel he had had with the manager of the King’s House, which ended in the employment of Tompkins. He did not yearn for another interview; for Hart had forbidden him the theatre on pain of whipping.
“Where can you hide?” whispered Dick, woefully, as the manager’s voice indicated that he was approaching the greenroom, and that too in far from the best of humour.
“Behind Richard’s throne-chair! It has held sinners before now,” added the fiddler as he glided well out of sight.
Dick was more cautious. In a twinkling, he was out of the door which led to the street.
The greenroom walls looked grim in the sputtering candle-light, but they had naught to say.
The door from the stage opened, and in came Nell. There was something sadly beautiful and pathetic in her face. She had enjoyed but now one of the grandest triumphs known to the theatre, and yet she seemed oblivious to the applause and bravas, to the lights and to the royalty.
A large bouquet of flowers was in her arms–a bouquet of red roses. Her lips touched them reverently. Her eyes, however, were far away in a dream of the past.
“From the hand of the King of England!” she mused softly to herself. “The King? How like his face to the youthful cavalier, who weary and worn reined in his steed a summer’s day, now long ago, and took a gourd of water from my hand. Could he have been the King? Pooh, pooh! I dream again.”
She turned away, as from herself, with a heart-heavy laugh. The manager entered from the stage.
“See, Jack, my flowers,” she said, again in an ecstasy of happiness. “Are they not exquisite?”
“He took them from Castlemaine’s hand to throw to you,” snarled Hart, jealously.
“The sweeter, then!” and Nell broke into a tantalizing laugh. “Mayhap he was teaching the player-king to do likewise, Jack,” she added, roguishly, as she arranged the flowers in a vase.
“I am in no mood for wit-thrusts,” replied Hart as he fretfully paced the room. “You played that scene like an icicle.”
“In sooth, your acting froze me,” slyly retorted Nell, kindly but pointedly. She took the sweetest roses from the bunch, kissed them and arranged them in her bosom.
This did not improve Hart’s temper.
Strings seized the opportunity to escape from his hiding-place to the stage.
“I say, you completely ruined my work,” said Hart. “The audience were rightly displeased.”
“With you, perhaps,” suggested Nell. “I did not observe the feeling.”
Hart could no longer control himself. “You vilely read those glorious lines:
“See how the gazing People crowd the Place;All gaping to be fill’d with my Disgrace.That Shout, like the hoarse Peals of Vultures rings,When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings.”
“See how the gazing People crowd the Place;All gaping to be fill’d with my Disgrace.That Shout, like the hoarse Peals of Vultures rings,When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings.”
“And how should I read them, dear master?” she asked demurely of her vainglorious preceptor.
“Like I read them, in sooth,” replied he, well convinced that his reading could not be bettered.
“Like you read them, in sooth,” replied Nell, meekly. She took the floor and repeated the lines with the precise action and trick of voice which Hart had used. Every “r” was well trilled; “gaping” was pronounced with an anaconda-look,as though she were about to swallow the theatre, audience and all; and, as she spoke the line, “When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings,” she raised her arms and shoulders in imitation of some barn-yard fowl vainly essaying flight and swept across the room, the picture of grace in ungracefulness.
“’Tis monstrous!” exclaimed Hart, bitterly, as he realized the travesty. “You cannot act and never could. I was a fool to engage you.”
Nell was back by the vase, toying with the flowers. “London applauds my acting,” she suggested, indifferently.
“London applauds the face and figure; not the art,” replied Hart.
“London is wise; for the art is in the face and figure, Master Jack. You told me so yourself,” she added, sharply, pointing her finger at her adversary in quick condemnation. She turned away triumphant.
“I was a fool like the rest,” replied Hart, visibly irritated that he could not get the better of the argument.
“Come, don’t be angry,” said Nell. Her manner had changed; for her heart had made her fearful lest her tongue had been unkind. “Mayhap Almahyde is the last part Nell will ever play.” She looked thoughtfully into the bunch of roses. Did she see a prophecy there?
He approached the table where she stood. “Your head is turned by the flowers,” he said, bitterly. “An honest motive, no doubt, prompted the royal gift.”
Nell turned sharply upon him. Her lips trembled, but one word only came to them–“Jack!”
Hart’s eyes fell under the rebuke; for he knew that only anger prompted what he had said. He would have struck another for the same words.
“Pardon, Nell,” he said, softly. “My heart rebukes my tongue. I love you!”
Nell stepped back to the mirror, contemplating herself, bedecked as she was with the flowers. In an instant she forgot all, and replied playfully to Hart’s confession of love: “Of course, you do. How could you help it? So do others.”
“I love you better than the rest,” he added, vehemently, “better than my life.” He tried to put his arms about her.
Nell, however, was by him like a flash.
“Not so fast, dear sir,” she said, coyly; and she tiptoed across the room and ensconced herself high in the throne-chair.
Hart followed and knelt below her, adoring.
“Admit that I can act–a little–just a little–dear Hart, or tell me no more of love.” She spoke with the half-amused, half-indifferent air of a beautiful princess to some servant-suitor; and she was, indeed, most lovable as she leaned back in the great throne-chair. She seemed a queen and the theatre her realm. Her beautiful arms shone white in the flickering candle-light. Her sceptre was a rose which the King of England had given her.
Hart stepped back and looked upon the picture. “By heaven, Nell,” he cried, “I spoke in anger. You are the most marvellous actress in the world. Nature, art and genius crown your work.”
Nell smiled at his vehemence. “I beginto think that you have taste most excellent,” she said.
Hart sprang to her side, filled with hope. As the stage-lover he ne’er spoke in tenderer tones. “Sweet Nell, when I found you in the pit, a ragged orange-girl, I saw the sparkle in your eye, the bright intelligence, the magic genius, which artists love. I claimed you for my art, which is the art of arts–for it embraces all. I had the theatre. I gave it you. You captured the Lane–then London. You captured my soul as well, and held it slave.”
“Did I do all that, dear Jack?” she asked, wistfully.
“And more,” said Hart, rapturously. “You captured my years to come, my hope, ambition, love–all. All centred in your heart and eyes, sweet Nell, from the hour I first beheld you.”
Nell’s look was far away. “Is love so beautiful?” she murmured softly. Her eye fell upon her sceptre-rose. “Yea, I begin to think it is.” She mused a moment, until the silence seemed to awaken her. She looked into Hart’s eyes again,sadly but firmly, then spoke as with an effort: “You paint the picture well, dear Jack. Paint on.” Her hand waved commandingly.
“I could not paint ill with such a model,” said he, his voice full of adoration.
“Well said,” she replied; “and by my troth, I have relented like you, dear Jack. I admit you too can act–and marvellously well.” She took his trembling hand and descended from the throne. He tried once again to embrace her, but she avoided him as before.
“Is’t true?” he asked, eagerly, without observing the hidden meaning in her voice.
“’Tis true, indeed–with proper emphasis and proper art and proper intonation.” She crossed the room, Hart following her.
“I scarce can live for joy,” he breathed.
Nell leaned back upon the table and looked knowingly and deeply into Hart’s eyes. Her voice grew very low, but clear and full of meaning.
“In faith,” she said, “I trow and sadlyspeak but true; for I am sad at times–yea–very sad–when I observe, with all my woman’s wiles and arts, I cannot act the hypocrite like men.”
“What mean you, darling cynic?” asked he, jocosely.
“Darling!” she cried, repeating the word, with a peculiar look. “To tell two girls within the hour you love each to the death would be in me hypocrisy, I admit, beyond my art; but you men can do such things with conscience clear.”
Hart turned away his face. “She’s found me out,” he thought.
“Nell, I never loved the Spanish dancing-girl. You know I love but you.”
“Oh, ho!” laughed Nell. “Then why did you tell her so?–to break her heart or mine?”
The manager stood confused. He scarce knew what to say.
“You are cruel, Nell,” he pleaded, fretfully. “You never loved me, never.”
“Did I ever say I did?”
Hart shook his head sadly.
“Come, don’t pout, Jack. An armisticein this, my friend, for you were my friend in the old days when I needed one, and I love you for that.” She placed her hands kindly on the manager’s shoulders, then turned and began to arrange anew the gift-flowers in the vase.
“I’ll win your life’s love, Nell, in spite of you,” he said, determinedly.
She turned her honest eyes upon him. “Nay, do not try; believe me, do not try,” she said softly.
“Nell, you do not mean–?” His voice faltered.
“You must not love me,” she said, firmly; “believe me, you must not.”
“I must not love you!” His voice scarcely breathed the words.
“There, there; we are growing sentimental, Jack,–and at our age,” she replied. She laughed gaily and started for her tiring-room.
He followed her.
“Sup with me, Nell,” he pleaded. “No word of this, I promise you.”
“Heyday, I’ll see how good you are, Jack,” she answered, cordially.
“My second bid to sup to-night,” she thought. “Who sets the better feast?”
The tiring-room door was open; and the little candles danced gleefully about the make-up mirror, for even candles seemed happy when Nell came near. The maid stood ready to assist her to a gown and wrap, that she might leave the theatre.
Nell turned. Hart still stood waiting. The spirit of kindness o’er-mastered her.
“Your hand, friend, your hand,” she said, taking the manager’s hand. “When next you try to win a woman’s love, don’t throw away her confidence; for you will never get it back again entire.”
Hart bowed his head under the rebuke; and she entered her room.
Flowers and Music feed naught but Love.
Flowers and Music feed naught but Love.
The manager stood a moment looking through the half-closed door at Nell. There was a strange mingling of contending forces at work in his nature. To be sure, he had trifled with the affections of the Spanish dancing-girl, a new arrival from Madrid and one of the latest attractions of the King’s House; but it was his pride, when he discovered that Nell’s sharp eyes had found him out, that suffered, not his conscience. Was he not the fascinating actor-manager of the House? Could he prevent the ladies loving him? Must he be accused of not loving Nell, simply because his charms had edified the shapely new-comer? Nell’s rebuke had depressed him, but there was a smouldering fire within. “’Slife!” he muttered. “If I do not steal my way into Nell’s heart, I’ll abandon the rouge-box and till the soil.”
As he approached his tiring-room, he bethought him that it would be well first to have an oversight of the theatre. He turned accordingly and pulled open the door that led to the stage.
As he did so, a figure fell into the greenroom, grasping devotedly a violin, lest his fall might injure it. Strings had been biding his time, waiting an opportunity to see Nell, and had fallen asleep behind the door.
“How now, dog!” exclaimed the manager when he saw who the intruder was.
Strings hastened to his feet and hobbled across the room.
“I told you not to set foot here again,” shouted Hart, following him virulently.
Strings bowed meekly. “I thought the King’s House in need of a player; so I came back, sir,” said he.
Hart was instantly beside himself. “Zounds!” he stormed. “I have had enough impudence to contend with to-night. Begone; or up you go for a vagrant.”
“I called on Mistress Gwyn, sir,” explained Strings.
“Mistress Gwyn does not receive drunkards,” fiercely retorted Hart; and he started hastily to the stage-door and called loudly for his force of men to put the fiddler out.
Nell’s door was still ajar. She had removed the roses from her hair and dress. She caught at once her name. Indeed, there was little that went on which Nell did not see or hear, even though walls intervened. “Who takes my name in vain?” she called. Her head popped through the opening left by the door, and she scanned the room.
As her eye fell upon the old fiddler, who had often played songs and dances for her in days gone by, a cry of joy came from her lips. She rushed into the greenroom and threw both arms about Strings’s neck. “My old comrade, as I live,” she cried, dancing about him. “I am joyed to see you, Strings!”
Turning, she saw the manager eying them with fiery glances. She knew thesituation and the feeling. “Jack, is it not good to have Strings back?” she asked, sweetly.
Hart’s face grew livid with anger. He could see the merry devil dancing in her eye and on her tongue. He knew the hoyden well. “Gad, I will resign management.” He turned on his heel, entered his tiring-room and closed the door, none too gently. He feared to tarry longer, lest he might say too much.
Nell broke into a merry laugh; and the fiddler chuckled.
“You desert me these days, Strings,” she said, as she leaned against the table and fondly eyed the wayfarer of the tattered garments and convivial spirits.
“I don’t love your lackey-in-waiting, Mistress Nell,” said he, with a wink in the direction of the departed manager.
“Poor Jack. Never mind him,” she said, with a roguish laugh, though with no touch of malice in it, for there was devil without malice in Nell’s soul.
As she again sought the eyes of the fiddler, her face grew thoughtful. Shespoke–hesitated–and then spoke again, as if the thought gave her pain. “Have you kept your word to me, Strings, and stopped–drinking?” she asked. The last word fell faintly, tremblingly, from her lips–almost inaudibly.
“Mistress Nell, I–I–” Strings’s eyes fell quickly.
Nell’s arm was lovingly about him in an instant. “There, there; don’t tell me, Strings. Try again, and come and see me often.” There was a delicacy in her voice and way more beautiful than the finest acting. The words had hurt her more than him. She changed her manner in an instant.
Not so with Strings. The tears were in his eyes. “Mistress Nell, you are so good to me,” he said; “and I am such a wretch.”
“So you are, Strings,” and she laughed merrily.
“I have taught my little ones at home who it is that keeps the wolf from our door,” he continued.
“Not a word of that!” she exclaimed,reprovingly. “Poor old fellow!” Her eyes grew big and bright as she reflected on the days she had visited the fiddler’s home and on the happiness her gifts had brought his children. For her, giving was better than receiving. The feeling sprang from the fulness of her own joy at seeing those about her happy, and not from the teachings of priests or prelates. Dame Nature was her sole preceptor in this.
“I’ll bring the babes another sugar plum to-morrow. I haven’t a farthing to-night. Moll ran away with the earnings, and there is no one left to rob,” she said.
“Heyday,” and she ran lightly to the vase and caught up the flowers. “Take the flowers to the bright eyes, to make them brighter.” They would at least add cheerfulness to the room where Strings lived until she could bring something better.
As she looked at the roses, she began to realize how dear they were becoming to herself, for they were the King’s gift; and her heart beat quickly and she touched the great red petals lovingly with her lips.
Strings took the flowers awkwardly; and, as he did so, something fell upon the floor. He knelt and picked it up, in his eagerness letting the roses fall.
“A ring among the flowers, Mistress Nell,” he cried.
“A ring!” she exclaimed, taking the jewel quickly. Her lips pressed the setting. “Bless his heart! A ring from his finger,” she continued half aloud. “Is it not handsome, Strings?” Her eyes sparkled brightly and there was a triumphant smile upon her lips.
The fiddler’s face, however, was grave; his eyes were on the floor.
“How many have rings like that, while others starve,” he mused, seriously.
Nell held the jewel at arm’s length and watched its varying brightness in the candle-light. “We can moralize, now we have the ring,” she said, by way of rejoinder, then broke into a ringing laugh at her own way-of-the-world philosophizing. “Bless the giver!” she added, in a mood of rhapsody.
She turned, only again to observe thesad countenance of Strings. “Alack-a-day! Why do you not take the nosegay?” she asked, wonderingly; for she herself was so very happy that she could not see why Strings too should not be so.
“It will not feed my little ones, Mistress Nell,” he answered, sadly.
Nell’s heart was touched in an instant. “Too true!” she said, sympathetically, falling on her knee and lovingly gathering up the roses. “Flowers and Music feed naught but Love, and often then Love goes hungry–very hungry.” Her voice was so sweet and tender that it seemed as though the old viol had caught the notes.
“Last night, Mistress Nell,” said Strings, “the old fiddle played its sweetest melody for them, but they cried as if their tiny hearts would break. They were starving, and I had nothing but music for them.”
“Starving!” Nell listened to the word as though at first she did not realize its meaning. “What can I send?” she cried, looking about in vain and into her tiring-room.
Her eyes fell suddenly upon the rich jewel upon her finger. “No, no; I cannot think of that,” she thought.
Then the word “starving” came back to her again with all its force. “Starving!” Her imagination pictured all its horrors. “Starving” seemed written on every wall and on the ceiling. It pierced her heart and brain. “Yes, I will,” she exclaimed, wildly. “Here, Strings, old fellow, take the ring to the babes, to cut their teeth on.”
Strings stood aghast. “No, Mistress Nell; it is a present. You must not,” he protested.
“There are others where that came from,” generously laughed Nell.
“You must not; you are too kind,” he continued, firmly.
“Pooh, pooh! I insist,” said Nell as she forced the jewel upon him. “It will make a pretty mouthful; and, besides, I do not want my jewels to outshine me.”
NELL PREVENTS A QUARREL.
NELL PREVENTS A QUARREL.
Strings would have followed her and insisted upon her taking back the beautiful gift, but Nell was gone in an instant and her door closed.
“To cut their teeth on!” he repeated as he placed the jewelled ring wonderingly upon his bow-finger and watched it sparkle and laugh in the light as he pretended to play a tune. “She is always joking like that; Heaven reward her.”
He stood lost in the realization of sudden affluence.
Buckingham entered the room from the stage-door. His eyes were full of excitement. “The audience are wild over Nell, simply wild,” he exclaimed in his enthusiasm, unconscious of the fact that he had an auditor, who was equally oblivious of his lordship’s presence. “Gad,” he continued, rapturously, half aloud, half to himself, “when they are stumbling home through London fog, the greatcomédiennewill be playing o’er the love-scenes with Buckingham in a cosy corner of an inn. She will not dare deny my bid to supper, with all her impudence.Un petit souper!” He broke into a laugh. “Tis well Old Rowley was too engagedto look twice at Nelly’s eyes,” he thought. “His Majesty shall never meet the wench at arm’s length, an I can help it.”
He observed or rather became aware for the first time that there was another occupant of the room.
“Ah, sirrah,” he called, without noting the character of his companion, “inform Mistress Nell, Buckingham is waiting.”
Strings looked up. He seemed to have grown a foot in contemplation of his sudden wealth. Indeed, each particular tatter on his back seemed to have assumed an independent air.
“Inform her yourself!” he declared; and his manner might well have become the dress of Buckingham. “Lord Strings is not your lackey this season.”
Buckingham gazed at him in astonishment, followed by amusement. “Lord Strings!” he observed. “Lord Rags!”
Strings approached his lordship with a familiar, princely air. “How does that look on my bow-finger, my lord?” and heflourished his hand wearing the ring where Buckingham could well observe it.
His lordship started. “The King’s ring!” he would have exclaimed, had not the diplomat in his nature restrained him. “A fine stone!” he said merely. “How came you by it?”
“Nell gave it to me,” Strings answered.
Buckingham nearly revealed himself in his astonishment. “Nell!” he muttered; and his face grew black as he wondered if his Majesty had out-generalled him. “Damme,” he observed aloud, inspecting the ring closely, “I have taken a fancy to this gem.”
“So have I,” ejaculated Strings, as he avoided his lordship and strutted across the room.
“I’ll give you fifty guineas for it,” said Buckingham, following him more eagerly than the driver of a good bargain is wont.
Strings stood nonplussed. “Fifty guineas!” he exclaimed, aghast. This was more money than the fiddler had ever thought existed. “Now?” he asked, wonderingly.
“Now,” replied his lordship, who proceeded at once to produce the glittering coins and toss them temptingly before the fiddler’s eyes.
“Oons, Nell surely meant me to sell it,” he cried as he eagerly seized the gold and fed his eyes upon it. “Odsbud, I always did love yellow.” He tossed some of the coins in the air and caught them with the dexterity of a juggler.
Buckingham grew impatient. He desired a delivery. “Give me the ring,” he demanded.
Strings looked once more at the glittering gold; and visions of the plenty which it insured to his little home, to say nothing of a flagon or two of good brown ale which could be had by himself and his boon comrades without disparagement to the dinners of the little ones, came before him. If he had ever possessed moral courage, it was gone upon the instant. “Done!” he exclaimed. “Oons, fifty guineas!” and he handed the ring to Buckingham.
The fiddler was still absorbed in his possessions, whispering again and againto the round bits of yellow: “My little bright-eyes will not go to bed hungry to-night!” when Manager Hart entered proudly from his tiring-room, dressed to leave the theatre.
Buckingham nodded significantly. “Not a word of this,” he said, indicating the ring, which he had quickly transferred to his own finger, turning the jewel so that it could not be observed.
“’Sdeath, you still here?” said Hart, sharply, as his eyes fell upon the fiddler.
Strings straightened up and puffed with the pomposity and pride of a landed proprietor. He shook his newly acquired possessions until the clinking of the gold was plainly audible to the manager.
“Still here, Master Hart, negotiating. When you are pressed for coin, call on me, Master Hart. I run the Exchequer,” he said, patronizingly. It was humorous to see his air of sweeping condescension toward the tall and dignified manager of the theatre who easily overtopped him by a head.
“Gold!” exclaimed Hart, as he observedthe glitter of the guineas in the candle-light. His eyes turned quickly and suspiciously upon the lordly Buckingham.
There was nothing, however, in his lordship’s face to indicate that he was aware even of the existence of the fiddler or of his gold. He sat by the table, leaning carelessly upon it, his face filled with an expression of supreme satisfaction. He had the attitude of one who was waiting for somebody or something and confidently expected not to be disappointed.
“Sup with me, Hart,” continued Strings, with the air of a boon comrade. “Sup with me–venison, capons, and–Epsom water.”
“Thank you, I am engaged to supper,” replied Hart, contemptuously, brushing his cloak where it had been touched by the fiddler, as if his fingers had contaminated it.
The insult clearly observable in the manager’s tone, however, had no effect whatever upon Strings. He tossed his head proudly and said indifferently: “Oh, very well. Strings will sup with Strings. Mycoach, my coach, I say. Drive me to my bonnie babes!”
He pushed open the door with a lordly air and passed out; and, for some seconds, they heard a mingling of repeated demands for the coach and a strain of music which sounded like “Away dull care; prythee away from me.”
Buckingham had observed the fiddler’s tilt with the manager and the royal exit of the ragged fellow with much amusement. “A merry wag! Who is that?” he asked, as Strings’s voice grew faint in the entry-way.
Hart was strutting actor-fashion before the mirror, arranging his curls to hang gracefully over his forehead and tilting now and again the big plumed hat. “A knave of fortune, it seems,” he answered coolly and still suspiciously.
“Family?” asked Buckingham, indifferently.
“Twins, I warrant,” replied Hart, in an irritated tone.
Buckingham chuckled softly.
“No wonder he’s tattered and gray,”he declared, humorously philosophizing upon Hart’s reply, though it was evident that Hart himself was too much chafed by the presence of his lordship in the greenroom after the play to know what he really had said.
An ominous coolness now pervaded the atmosphere. Buckingham sat by the table, impatiently tapping the floor with his boot, his eyes growing dark at the delay. Hart still plumed himself before the mirror. His dress was rich; his sword was well balanced, a Damascus blade; his cloak hung gracefully; his big black hat and plumes were jaunty. He had, too, vigour in his step. With it all, however, he was a social outcast, and he felt it, while his companion, whose faults of nature were none the less glaring than his own, was almost the equal of a king.
There was a tap at Nell’s door. It was the call-boy, who had slipped unobserved into the room.
“What is it, Dick?” asked Nell, sweetly, as she opened the door slightly to inspect her visitor.
“A message,–very important,” whispered Dick, softly, as he passed a note within.
“Thank you,” replied the actress; and the door closed again.
Dick was about to depart, when the alert Buckingham, rising hastily from his seat, called him.
“That was Nell’s voice?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord. She’s dressing,” answered Dick. “Good night, Master Hart,” he added, as he saw the manager.
Hart, however, was not in a good humour and turned sharply upon him. Dick vanished.
“She will be out shortly, my lord,” the manager observed to Buckingham, somewhat coldly. “But it will do you little good,” he thought, as he reflected upon his conversation with Nell.
Buckingham leaned lazily over the back of a chair and replied confidently, knowing that his speech would be no balm to the irate manager: “Nell always keeps her engagements religiously withme. We are to sup together to-night, Hart.”
“Odso!” retorted the other, drawing himself up to his full height. “You will be disappointed, methinks.”
“I trow not,” Buckingham observed, with a smile which made Hart wince. “Pepys’s wife has him mewed up at home when Nelly plays, and the King is tied to other apron-strings.” His lordship chuckled as he bethought him how cleverly he had managed that his Majesty be under the proper influence. “What danger else?” he inquired, cuttingly.
Though the words were mild, the feelings of the two men were at white-heat.
“Your lordship’s hours are too valuable to waste,” politely suggested the manager. “I happen to know Mistress Gwyn sups with another to-night.”
“Another?” sneered his lordship.
“Another!” hotly repeated the actor.
“We shall see, friend Hart,” said Buckingham, in a tone no less agreeable, with difficulty restraining his feelings.
He threw himself impatiently into abig arm-chair, which he had swung around angrily, so that its back was to the manager.
The insult was more than Hart could bear. He also seized a chair, and vented his vengeance upon it. Almost hurled from its place, it fell back to back with Buckingham’s.
“We shall see, my lord,” he said as he likewise angrily took his seat and folded his arms.
It was like “The Schism” of Vibert.
It is difficult to tell what would have been the result, had the place been different. Each knew that Nell was just beyond her door; each hesitated; and each, with bitterness in his heart, held on to himself. They sat like sphinxes.
Suddenly, Nell’s door slightly opened. She was dressed to leave the theatre. In her hand she held a note.
“A fair message, on my honour! Worth reading twice or even thrice,” she roguishly exclaimed unto her maid as she directed her to hold a candle nearer that she might once again spell out itswords. “‘To England’s idol, the divine Eleanor Gwyn.’ A holy apt beginning, by the mass! ‘My coach awaits you at the stage-door. We will toast you to-night at Whitehall.’”
Nell’s eyes seemed to drink in the words, and it was her heart which said: “Long live his Majesty.”
She took the King’s roses in her arms; the Duke’s roses, she tossed upon the floor.
The manager awoke as from a trance. “You will not believe me,” he said to Buckingham, confidently. “Here comes the arbiter of your woes, my lord.” He arose quickly.
“It will not be hard, methinks, sir, to decide between a coronet and a player’s tinsel crown,” observed his princely rival, with a sneer, as he too arose and assumed an attitude of waiting.
“Have a care, my lord. I may forget–” Hart’s fingers played upon his sword-hilt.
“Your occupation, sir?” jeered Buckingham.
“Aye; my former occupation of a soldier”; and Hart’s sword sprang from itsscabbard, with a dexterity that proved that he had not forgotten the trick of war.
Buckingham too would have drawn, but a merry voice stayed him.
“How now, gentlemen?” sprang from Nell’s rosy lips, as she came between them, a picture of roguish beauty.
Hart’s pose in an instant was that of apology. “Pardon, Nell,” he exclaimed, lifting his hat and bowing in courtly fashion. “A small difference of opinion; naught else.”
“Between friends,” replied Nell, reprovingly.
“By the Gods,” cried Buckingham,–and his hat too was in the air and his knee too was bent before the theatre-queen,–“the rewards are worth more than word-combats.”
“Pshaw!” said Nell, as she hugged the King’s roses tighter in her arms. “True Englishmen fight shoulder to shoulder, not face to face.”
“In this case,” replied his lordship, with the air of a conqueror, “the booty cannot be amicably distributed.”
“Oh, ho!” cried Nell. “Brave generals, quarrelling over the spoils. Pooh! There is no girl worth fighting for–that is, not over one! Buckingham! Jack! For shame! What coquette kindles this hot blood?”
“The fairest maid in England,” said Hart, with all the earnestness of conviction, and with all the courtesy of the theatre, which teaches courtesy.
“The dearest girl in all this world,” said Buckingham as quickly; for he too must bow if he would win.
“How stupid!” lisped Nell, with a look of baby-innocence. “You must mean me! Who else could answer the description? A quarrel over poor me! This is delicious. I love a fight. Out with your swords and to’t like men! To the victor! Come, name the quarrel.”
“This player–” began his lordship, hotly. He caught the quick gleam in Nell’s eyes and hesitated. “I mean,” he substituted, apologetically, “Master Hart–labours under the misapprehension that you sup with him to-night.”
“Nell,” asserted the manager, defensively,“it is his lordship who suffers from the delusion that the first actress of England sups with him to-night.”
“My arm and coach are yours, madame,” pleaded his lordship, as he gallantly offered an arm.
“Pardon, my lord; Nell, my arm!” said Hart.
“Heyday!” cried the witch, bewitchingly. “Was ever maid so nobly squired? This is an embarrassment of riches.” She looked longingly at the two attending gallants. There was something in her voice that might be mockery or that might be love. Only the devil in her eyes could tell.
“Gentlemen, you tear my heart-strings,” she continued. “How can I choose between such loves? To-night, I sup at Whitehall!” and she darted quickly toward the door.
“Whitehall!” the rivals cried, aghast.
“Aye, Whitehall–with the King!”
There was a wild, hilarious laugh, and she was gone.
Buckingham and Hart stood lookinginto each other’s face. They heard the sound of coach-wheels rapidly departing in the street.