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