Chapter 2

'For hours, Ralph?' Kate repeated, and she looked at the clock and saw that she had not been asleep for more than half an hour. Without contradicting him--for of what use would that be, only to make matters worse?--she arranged the pillows and settled the blankets about him, and thinking it would be advisable to say something, she congratulated him on seeming so much better.

'Better! If I'm better, it's no thanks to you,' he said. 'You must have been mad to leave the window open so long.'

'You wanted it open; you know very well that when you're very bad like that you must have change of air. The room was so close.'

'Yes, but that is no reason for leaving it open half an hour.'

'I offered to shut it, and you wouldn't let me.'

'I dare say you're sick of nursing me, and would like to get rid of me. The window wasn't a bad dodge.'

Kate remained silent, being too indignant for the moment to think of replying; but it was evident from her manner that she would not be able to contain herself much longer. He had hurt her to the quick, and her brown eyes swam with tears. His head lay back upon the built-up pillows, he fumed slowly, trying to find new matter for reproach, and breath wherewith to explain it. At last he thought of the cigarettes.

'Even supposing that you did not remember how long you left the window open, I cannot understand how you forgot to send for the cigarettes. You know well enough that smoking is the only thing that relieves me when I'm in this state. I think it was most unfeeling--yes, most unfeeling!' Having said so much, he leaned forward to get breath, and coughed.

'You'd better lie still, Ralph; you'll only make yourself bad again. Now that you feel a little easier you should try to go to sleep.'

So far she got without betraying any emotion, but as she continued to advise him her voice began to tremble, her presence of mind to forsake her, and she burst into a flood of tears.

'I don't know how you can treat me as you do,' she said, sobbing hysterically. 'I do everything--I give up my night's rest to you, I work hard all day for you, and in return I only receive hard words. Oh, it's no use,' she said; 'I can bear it no longer; you'll have to get someone else to mind you.'

This outburst of passion came suddenly upon Mr. Ede, and for some time he was at a loss how to proceed. At last, feeling a little sorry, he resolved to make it up, and putting out his hand to her, he said:

'Now, don't cry, Kate; perhaps I was wrong in speaking so crossly. I didn't mean all I said--it's this horrid asthma.'

'Oh, I can bear anything but to be told I neglect you--and when I stop up watching you three nights running----'

These little quarrels were of constant occurrence. Irritable by nature, and rendered doubly so by the character of his complaint, the invalid at times found it impossible to restrain his ill-humour; but he was not entirely bad; he inherited a touch of kind-heartedness from his mother, and being now moved by Kate's tears, he said:

'That's quite true, and I'm sorry for what I said; you are a good little nurse. I won't scold you again. Make it up.'

Kate found it hard to forget merely because Ralph desired it, and for some time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place by him. The next step to reconciliation was more easy. Kate was not vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical sobbing, peace was restored. Ralph began to speak of his asthma again, telling how he had fancied he was going to die, and when she expressed her fear and regret he hastened to assure her that no one ever died of asthma, that a man might live fifty, sixty, or seventy years, suffering all the while from the complaint; and he rambled on until words and ideas together failed him, and he fell asleep. With a sigh of relief Kate rose to her feet, and seeing that he was settled for the night, she turned to leave him, and passed into her room with a slow and dragging movement; but the place had a look so cold and unrestful that it pierced through even her sense of weariness, and she stood urging her tired brains to think of what she should do. At last, remembering that she could get a pillow from the room they reserved for letting, she turned to go.

Facing their room, and only divided by the very narrowest of passages, was the stranger's apartment.

Both doors were approached by a couple of steps, which so reduced the space that were two people to meet on the landing, one would have to give way to the other. Mr. and Mrs. Ede found this proximity to their lodger, when they had one, somewhat inconvenient, but, as he said, 'One doesn't get ten shillings a week for nothing.'

Kate lingered a moment on the threshold, and then, with the hand in which she held the novel she had been reading, she picked up her skirt and stepped across the way.

II

At first she could not determine who was passing through the twilight of the room, but as the blinds were suddenly drawn up and a flood of sunlight poured across the bed, she fell back amid the pillows, having recognized her mother-in-law in a painful moment of semi-blindness. The old woman carried a slop-pail, which she nearly dropped, so surprised was she to find Kate in the stranger's room.

'But how did you get here?' she said hastily.

'I had to give Ralph my pillow, and when he went to sleep I came to fetch one out of the bedroom here; and then I thought I would be more comfortable here--I was too tired to go back again--I don't know how it was--what does it matter?'

Kate, who was stupefied with sleep, had answered so crossly that Mrs. Ede did not speak for some time; at last, at the end of a long silence, she said:

'Then he had a very bad night?'

'Dreadful!' returned Kate. 'I never was so frightened in my life.'

'And how did the fit come on?' asked Mrs. Ede.

'Oh, I can't tell you now,' said Kate. 'I'm so tired. I'm aching all over.'

'Well, then, I'll bring you up your breakfast. You do look tired. It will do you good to remain in bed.'

'Bring me up my breakfast! Then, what time is it?' said Kate, sitting up in bed with a start.

'What does it matter what the time is? If you're tired, lie still; I'll see that everything is right.'

'But I've promised Mrs. Barnes her dress by tomorrow night. Oh, my goodness! I shall never get it done! Do tell me what time it is.'

'Well, it's just nine,' the old woman answered apologetically; 'but Mrs. Barnes will have to wait; you can't kill yourself. It's a great shame of Ralph to have you sitting up when I could look after him just as well, and all because of the mummer.'

'Oh, don't, mother,' said Kate, who knew that Mrs. Ede could rate play-actors for a good half-hour without feeling the time passing, and taking her mother-in-law's hands in hers, she looked earnestly in her face, saying:

'You know, mother, I have a hard time of it, and I try to bear up as well as I can. You're the only one I've to help me; don't turn against me. Ralph has set his mind on having the rooms let, and the mummer, as you call him, is coming here to-day; it's all settled. Promise me you'll do nothing to unsettle it, and that while Mr. Lennox is here you'll try to make him comfortable. I've my dressmaking to attend to, and can't be always after him. Will you do this thing for me?' and after a moment or so of indecision Mrs. Ede said:

'I don't believe money made out of such people can bring luck, but since you both wish it, I suppose I must give way. But you won't be able to say I didn't warn you.'

'Yes, yes, but since we can't prevent his coming, will you promise that whilst he's here you'll attend to him just as you did to the other gentleman?'

'I shall say nothing to him, and if he doesn't make the house a disgrace, I shall be well satisfied.'

'How do you mean a disgrace?'

'Don't you know, dear, that actors have always a lot of women after them, and I for one am not going to attend on wenches like them. If I had my way I'd whip such people until I slashed all the wickedness out of them.'

'But he won't bring any women here; we won't allow it,' said Kate, a little shocked, and she strove to think how they should put a stop to such behaviour. 'If Mr. Lennox doesn't conduct himself properly--'

'Of course I shall try to do my duty, and if Mr. Lennox respects himself I shall try to respect him.'

She spoke these words hesitatingly, but the admission that she possibly might respect Mr. Lennox satisfied Kate, and not wishing to press the matter further, she said, suddenly referring to their previous conversation:

'But didn't you say that it was nine o'clock?'

'It's more than nine now.'

'Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! how late I am! I suppose the two little girls are here?'

'They just came in as I was going upstairs; I've set them to work.'

'I wish you'd get the tea ready, and you might make some buttered toast; Ralph would like some, and so should I, for the matter of that.'

Then Ralph's voice was heard calling, and seeing what was wanted, she hastened to his assistance.

'Where were you last night?' he asked her.

'I slept in the stranger's room; I thought you'd not require me, and I was more comfortable there. The bed in the back room is all ups and downs.'

He was breathing heavily in a way that made her fear he was going to have another attack.

'Is mother in a great rage because I won't let her in?' he said presently.

'She's very much cut up about it, dear; you know she loves you better than anyone in the world. You'd do well to make it up with her.'

'Well, perhaps I was wrong,' he said after a time, and with good humour, 'but she annoys me. She will interfere in everything; as if I hadn't a right to let my rooms to whom I please. She pays for all she has here, but I'd much sooner she left us than be lorded over in that way.'

'She doesn't want to lord it over you, dear. It's all arranged. She promised me just now she'd say nothing more about it, and that she'd look after Mr. Lennox like any other lodger.'

On hearing that his mother was willing to submit to his will, the invalid smiled and expressed regret that the presence of an extra person in the house, especially an actor, would give his wife and mother more work to do.

'But I shall soon be well,' he said, 'and I dare say downstairs looking after the shop in a week.'

Kate protested against such imprudence, and then suggested she should go and see after his breakfast. Ralph proffered no objection, and bidding him goodbye for the present, she went downstairs. Annie was helping Mrs. Ede to make the toast in the front kitchen; Lizzie stood at the table buttering it, but as soon as Kate entered they returned to their sewing, for it was against Kate's theories that the apprentices should assist in the household work.

'Dear mother,' she began, but desisted, and when all was ready Mrs. Ede, remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. And the moment she was gone Kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. Like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. She lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, hoping that Mrs. Ede would not keep her waiting long; and then, as her thoughts detached themselves, she remembered the actor whom they expected that afternoon. The annoyances which he had unconsciously caused her had linked him to her in a curious way, and all her prejudices vanished in the sensation of nearness that each succeeding hour magnified, and she wondered who this being was who had brought so much trouble into her life even before she had seen him. As the word 'trouble' went through her mind she paused, arrested by a passing feeling of sentimentality; but it explained nothing, defined nothing, only touched her as a breeze does a flower, and floated away. The dreamy warmth of the fire absorbed her more direct feelings, and for some moments she dozed in a haze of dim sensuousness and emotive numbness. As in a dusky glass, she saw herself a tender, loving, but unhappy woman; by her side were her querulous husband and her kindly-minded mother-in-law, and then there was a phantom she could not determine, and behind it something into which she could not see. Was it a distant country? Was it a scene of revelry? Impossible to say, for whenever she attempted to find definite shapes in the glowing colours they vanished in a blurred confusion.

But amid these fleeting visions there was one shape that particularly interested her, and she pursued it tenaciously, until in a desperate effort to define its features she awoke with a start and spoke more crossly than she intended to the little girls, who had pulled aside the curtain and were intently examining the huge theatrical poster that adorned the corner of the lane. But as she scolded she could not help smiling; for she saw how her dream had been made out of the red and blue dresses of the picture.

The arrival of each new company in the town was announced pictorially on this corner wall, and, in the course of the year, many of the vicissitudes to which human life is liable received illustration upon it. Wrecks at sea, robberies on the highways, prisoners perishing in dungeons, green lanes and lovers, babies, glowing hearths, and heroic young husbands. The opera companies exhibited the less serious sides of life--strangely dressed people and gallants kissing their hands to ladies standing on balconies.

The little girls examined these pictures and commented on them; and on Saturdays it was a matter of the keenest speculation what the following week would bring them. Lizzie preferred exciting scenes of murder and arson, while Annie was moved more by leavetakings and declarations of unalterable affection. These differences of taste often gave rise to little bickerings, and last week there had been much prophesying as to whether the tragic or the sentimental element would prove next week's attraction. Lizzie had voted for robbers and mountains, Annie for lovers and a nice cottage. And, remembering their little dispute, Kate said:

'Well, dears, is it a robber or a sweetheart?'

'We're not sure,' exclaimed both children in a disappointed tone of voice; 'we can't make the picture out.' Then Lizzie, who cared little for uncertainties, said:

'It isn't a nice picture at all; it is all mixed up.'

'Not a nice picture at all, and all mixed up?' said Kate, smiling, yet interested in the conversation. 'And all mixed up; how is that? I must see if I can make it out myself.'

The huge poster contained some figures nearly life-size. It showed a young girl in a bridal dress and wreath struggling between two police agents, who were arresting her in a marketplace of old time, in a strangely costumed crowd, which was clamouring violently. The poor bridegroom was being held back by his friends; a handsome young man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the mêlée. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded with the announcement that _Madame Angot_ would be played at the Queen's Theatre. After a few moments spent in examining the picture Kate said it must have something to do with France.

'I know what it means,' cried Lizzie; 'you see that old chap on the right? He's the rich man who has sent the two policemen to carry the bride to his castle, and it's the young fellow in the corner who has betrayed them.'

The ingenuity of this explanation took Kate and Annie so much by surprise that for the moment they could not attempt to controvert it, and remained silent, whilst Lizzie looked at them triumphantly. The more they examined the picture the more clear did it appear that Lizzie was right. At the end of a long pause Kate said:

'Anyhow, we shall soon know, for one of the actors of the company is coming here to lodge, and we'll ask him.'

'A real actor coming here to lodge?' exclaimed Annie. 'Oh, how nice that will be! And will he take us to see the play?'

'How silly of you, Annie!' said Lizzie, who, proud of her successful explanation of the poster, was a little inclined to think she knew all about actors. 'How can he take us to the play? Isn't he going to act it himself? But do tell me, Mrs. Ede--is he the one in the cocked hat?'

'I hope he isn't the fat man who has lost his wig,' Annie murmured under her breath.

'I don't know which of those gentlemen is coming here. For all I know it may be the policeman,' Kate added maliciously.

'Don't say that, Mrs. Ede!' Annie exclaimed.

Kate smiled at the children's earnestness, and, wishing to keep up the joke, said:

'You know, my dear, they are only sham policemen, and I dare say are very nice gentlemen in reality.'

Annie and Lizzie hung down their heads; it was evident they had no sympathies with policemen, not even with sham ones.

'But if it isn't a policeman, who would you like it to be, Lizzie?' said Kate.

'Oh, the man in the cocked hat,' replied Lizzie without hesitation.

'And you, Annie?'

Annie looked puzzled, and after a moment said with a slight whimper:

'Lizzie always takes what I want--I was just going--'

'Oh yes, miss, we know all about that,' returned Lizzie derisively. 'Annie never can choose for herself; she always tries to imitate me. She'll have the man who's lost his wig! Oh yes, yes! Isn't it so, Mrs. Ede? Isn't Annie going to marry the man who's lost his wig?'

Tears trembled in Annie's eyes, but as she happened at that moment to catch sight of the young man in white, she declared triumphantly that she would choose him.

'Well done, Annie!' said Kate, laughing as she patted the child's curls, but her eyes fell on the neglected apron, and seeing how crookedly it was being hemmed, she said:

'Oh, my dear, this is very bad; you must go back, undo all you have done this morning, and get it quite straight.'

She undid some three or four inches of the sewing, and then showed the child how the hem was to be turned in, and while she did so a smile hovered round the corners of her thin lips, for she was thinking of the new lodger, asking herself which man in the picture was coming to lodge in her house.

Mrs. Ede returned, talking angrily, but Kate could only catch the words 'waiting' and 'breakfast cold' and 'sorry.' At last, out of a confusion of words a reproof broke from her mother-in-law for not having roused her.

'I called and called,' said Kate, 'but nothing would have awakened you.'

'You should have knocked at my door,' Mrs. Ede answered, and after speaking about open house and late hours she asked Kate suddenly what was going to be done about the latchkey.

'I suppose he will have to have his latchkey,' Kate answered.

'I shall not close my eyes,' Mrs. Ede returned, 'until I hear him come into the house. He won't be bringing with him any of the women from the theatre.'

Kate assured her that she would make this part of the bargain, and somewhat softened, Mrs. Ede spoke of the danger of bad company, and trusted that having an actor in the house would not be a reason for going to the theatre and falling into idle habits.

'One would have thought that we heard enough of that theatre from Miss Hender,' she interjected, and then lapsed into silence.

Miss Hender, Kate's assistant, was one of Mrs. Ede's particular dislikes. Of her moral character Mrs. Ede had the gravest doubts; for what could be expected, she often muttered, of a person who turned up her nose when she was asked to stay and attend evening prayers, and who kept company with a stage carpenter?

Mrs. Ede did not cease talking of Hender till the girl herself came in, with many apologies for being an hour behind her time, and saying that she really could not help it; her sister had been very ill, and she had been obliged to sit up with her all night. Mrs. Ede smiled at this explanation, and withdrew, leaving Kate in doubt as to the truth of the excuse put forward by her assistant; but remembering that Mrs. Barnes's dress had been promised for Tuesday morning, she said:

'Come, we're wasting all the morning; we must get on with Mrs. Barnes's dress,' and a stout, buxom, carroty-haired girl of twenty followed Kate upstairs, thinking of the money she might earn and of how she and the stage carpenter might spend it together. She was always full of information concerning the big red house in Queen Street. She was sure that the hours in the workroom would not seem half so long if Kate would wake up a bit, go to the play, and chat about what was going on in the town. How anyone could live with that horrid old woman always hanging about, with her religion and salvation, was beyond her. She hadn't time for such things, and as for Bill, he said it was all 'tommy-rot.'

Hender was an excellent workwoman, although a lazy girl, and, seeing from Kate's manner that the time had not come for conversation, applied herself diligently to her business. Placing the two side-seams and the back under the needle, she gave the wheel a turn, and rapidly the little steel needle darted up and down into the glistening silk, as Miss Hender's thick hands pushed it forward. The work was too delicate to admit of any distraction, so for some time nothing was heard but the clinking rattle of the machine and the 'swishing' of the silk as Kate drew it across the table and snipped it with the scissors which hung from her waist.

But at the end of about half an hour the work came to a pause. Hender had finished sewing up the bodice, had tacked on the facings, and Kate had cut out the skirt and basted it together. The time had come for exchanging a few words, and lifting her head from her work, she asked her assistant if she could remain that evening and do a little overtime. Hender said she was very sorry, but it was the first night of the new opera company; she had passes for the pit, and had promised to take a friend with her. She would, therefore, have to hurry away a little before six, so as to have her tea and be dressed in time.

'Well, I don't know what I shall do,' said Kate sorrowfully. 'As for myself, I simply couldn't pass another night out of bed. You know I was up looking after my husband all night. Attending a sick man, and one as cross as Mr. Ede, is not very nice, I can assure you.'

Hender congratulated herself inwardly that Bill was never likely to want much attendance.

'I think you'd better tell Mrs. Barnes that she can't expect the dress; it will be impossible to get it done in the time. I'd be delighted to help you, but I couldn't disappoint my little friend. Besides, you've Mr. Lennox coming here to-day ... you can't get the dress done by to-morrow night!'

Hender had been waiting for a long time for an opportunity to lead up to Mr. Lennox.

'Oh, dear me!' said Kate, 'I'd forgotten him, and he'll be coming this afternoon, and may want some dinner, and I'll have to help mother.'

'They always have dinner in the afternoon,' said Miss Hender, with a feeling of pride at being able to speak authoritatively on the ways and habits of actors.

'Do they?' replied Kate reflectively; and then, suddenly remembering her promise to the little girls, she said:

'But do you know what part he takes in the play?'