A Mummer's Wife Part 56

'I suppose it is, but I'd better wish you good-bye now--you're safe at home.'

'Oh no! come in; you look so very tired, a gla.s.s of wine will do you good.

Besides, what harm? Wasn't I your husband once?'

'Oh, Ralph! how can you?'

'Why, there's no reason why I shouldn't hear how you've been getting on.

We're just like strangers, so many things have occurred; I've married since--but perhaps you didn't hear of it?'

'Married! Who did you marry?'

'Well! I married your a.s.sistant, Hender.'

'What, Hender your wife?' said Kate, with an intonation of voice that was full of pain. A dagger thrust suddenly through her side as she went up the staircase could not have wounded her more cruelly than the news that the woman who had been her a.s.sistant now owned the house that once was hers.

The story of the dog in the manger is as old as the world.

Through the windows of the little public sitting-room nothing was visible; everything was shrouded in the yellow curtain of fog. A commercial traveller had drawn off his boots, and was warming his slippered feet by the fire.

'Dreadful weather, sir,' said the man. 'I'm afraid it won't do your cough much good. Will you come near the fire?'

'Thank you,' said Ralph.

Kate mechanically drew forward a chair. It would be impossible for them to say a word, for the traveller was evidently inclined to be garrulous, and both wondered what they should do; but at that moment the chambermaid came to announce that the gentleman's room was ready. He took up his boots and retired, leaving the two, who had once been husband and wife, alone; and yet it seemed as difficult as ever to speak of what was uppermost in their minds. Kate helped Ralph off with his great-coat, and she noticed that he looked thinner and paler. The servant brought up two gla.s.ses of grog, and when Kate had taken off her bonnet, she said: 'Do you think I'm much altered?'

'Well, since you ask me, Kate, I must say I don't think you're looking very well. You're thinner than you used to be, and you've lost a good deal of your hair.'

'I've only just recovered from a bad illness,' she said, sighing, and as she raised the gla.s.s to her lips the gaslight defined the whole contour of her head. The thick hair that used to encircle her pale prominent temples like rich velvet, looked now like a black silk band frayed and whitened at the seam.

'But what have you been doing? Have things gone pretty well with you?' said Ralph, whose breath came from him in a thin but continuous whistle. 'What happened when I got my decree of divorce?'

'Nothing particular for a while, but afterwards we were married.'

'Oh!' said Ralph, 'so he married you, did he? Well, I shouldn't have expected it of him. So we're both married. Isn't it odd? And meeting, too, in this way.'

'Yes, many things have happened since then. I've been on the stage--travelling all over England.'

'What! you on the stage, Kate?' said Ralph, lifting his head from his hand.

'Oh lord! oh lord! how--Ha! ha! oh! but I mustn't la-ugh; I won't be able to breathe.'

Kate turned to him almost angrily, and the ghost of the prima donna awakening in her, she said:

'I don't see what there is to laugh at. I've played all the leading parts, and in all the princ.i.p.al towns in England--Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds.

The Newcastle Chronicle said my Serpolette was the best they'd seen.'

Ralph looked bewildered, like a man blinded for a moment by a sudden flash of lightning. He could not at once realize that this woman, who had been his wife, who had washed and scrubbed in his little home in Hanley, was now one of those luminous women who, in clear skirts and pink stockings, wander singing beautiful songs, amid illimitable forests and unscalable mountains.

For a moment he regretted he had married Miss Hender.

'But I don't think I shall ever act again.'

'How's that?' he said with an intonation of disappointment in his voice.

'I don't know,' said Kate. 'I'm not living with my husband now, and I haven't the courage to look out for an engagement myself.'

Ralph stared at her vaguely. 'Look out for an engagement?' he repeated to himself; it seemed to him that he must be dreaming.

'Aren't you happy with him? Doesn't he treat you well?' said Ralph, dropping perforce from his dream back into reality,

'Oh yes, he has always been very good to me. I can't say how it was, but somehow after a time we didn't get on. I dare say it was my fault. But how do you get on with Miss Hender?' said Kate, partly from curiosity, half from a wish to change the conversation.

'Oh, pretty well,' said Ralph, with something that sounded, in spite of his wheezing, like a sigh.

'How does she manage the dressmaking? She was always a good workwoman, but she never had much taste, and I should fancy wouldn't be able to do much if left entirely to herself.'

'That's just what occurred. It's curious you should have guessed so correctly. The business has all gone to the dogs, and since mother's death we've turned the house into a lodging-house.'

'And is mother dead?' cried Kate, clasping her hands. 'What must she have thought of me.'

Ralph did not answer, but after a long silence he said:

'It's a pity, ain't it, that we didn't pull it off better together?'

Kate raised her head and looked at him quickly. Her look was full of grat.i.tude.

'Yes,' she said, 'I behaved very badly towards you, but I believe I've been punished for it.'

'You told me that he married you and treated you very well.'

'Oh!' she said, bursting into tears, 'don't ask me, it's too long a story; I'll tell you another time, but not now.'

It appeared to Kate that her heart was on fire and that she must die of grief. 'Was this life?' she asked herself. Oh, to be at rest and out of the way for ever! Ralph, too, seemed deeply affected; after a pause he said:

'I don't know how it was, or why, but now I come to think of it I remember that I used to be cross with you.'

'It was the asthma that made you cross, and well it might;' and she asked him if he still suffered from asthma, and he answered:

'At times, yes.'

'But the cigarettes,' she said, 'used to relieve you; do you still smoke them?'

'Yes, and sometimes they relieve me and sometimes they don't.' A long silence separated them, and breaking it suddenly he said:

'There were faults on both sides. On every side,' he added, 'for I don't exempt mother from blame either. She was always too hard upon you. Now, I should never have minded your going to the theatre and amusing yourself. I shouldn't have minded your being an actress, and I should have gone to fetch you home every evening.'

Kate smiled through her misery, and he continued, following his idea to the end:

'It wouldn't have interfered with the business if you had been; on the contrary, it would have brought us a connection, and I might have had up those plate-gla.s.s windows, and taken in the fruiterer's shop.'

Ralph stopped. The roar of London had sunk out of hearing in the yellow depths of the fog, and for some minutes nothing was heard but the short ticking of the clock. It was a melancholy pleasure to dream what might have been had things only taken a different turn, and like children making mud-pies it amused them to rebuild the little fabric of their lives; whilst one reconstructed his vision of broken gla.s.s, the other lamented over the ruins of penny journal sentiment. Then awakening by fits and starts, each confided in the other. Ralph told Kate how Mrs. Ede had spoken of her when her flight had been discovered; Kate tried to explain that she was not as much to blame as might be imagined. Ralph's curiosity constantly got the better of him, and he couldn't but ask her to tell him something about her stage experience. One thing led to another, and before twelve o'clock it surprised her to think she had told him so much.