Mistress Nell Part 5

Thus Strings stood blandly sucking his orange with personal satisfaction in the centre of the room, when d.i.c.k 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, a.s.suming an unconcerned and serious air, he replied: "Odd! A little the worse for wear, d.i.c.key, me and the old fiddle, but still smiling with the world."

There was a bit of a twinkle in his eye as he spoke.

d.i.c.k, ever mindful of the welfare and appearance of the theatre, unhooked from the wall a huge s.h.i.+eld, 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 d.i.c.k, "but--"

The fiddler instantly a.s.sumed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FRIEND EVEN UNTO HER WORST ENEMY.]

d.i.c.k'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.

"Oh, well, egad,--I _will_ join you, d.i.c.k," said Strings, with more patronage still than apology. He seated himself upon the table and began anew to suck his orange in philosophic fas.h.i.+on.

"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 s.h.i.+eld 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 and downs in his career as he made the confession.

"Is that where you have been, Strings, all these long days?" asked d.i.c.k, 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, d.i.c.k!

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 d.i.c.k!" 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, d.i.c.key, my boy."

As he spoke, the greenroom shook with the rounds of applause from the pit and galleries without.

"Hurrah!" he shouted, following d.i.c.k to the stage-door--his own sorrows melting before the suns.h.i.+ne 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.

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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.

d.i.c.k 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.