The Master of the Shell Part 43

Railsford coloured and bit his lips. The doctor had now put the question in the very form which he had dreaded. If he could only have held his peace the matter would be at an end, perhaps never to revive again. But could he, an honest man, hold his peace?

"Excuse me," said he, in undisguised confusion; "what I said was that the imputation that I had anything to do with the outrage myself was utterly and entirely false."

"Which," said the doctor incisively, "is tantamount to admitting that the imputation that you are sheltering the real culprits is well- founded."

"At the risk of being grievously misunderstood, Doctor Ponsford,"

replied Railsford slowly and nervously, yet firmly, "I must decline to answer that question."

"Very well, sir," said the doctor briskly; "this conversation is at an end--for the present."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

"AFTER YOU."

Thanks to youth and strong const.i.tutions, Arthur and Dig escaped any very serious consequences from their night's exposure at Wellham Abbey.

They slept like dormice from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon, and woke desperately hungry, with shocking colds in their heads, and with no inclination whatever to get up and prepare their work for the following day. The doctor came and felt their pulses, and looked at their tongues, and listened to their coughs and sneezes, and said they were well out of it. Still, as they a.s.sured him with loud catarrhic emphasis that they felt rather bad still, and very shaky, he gave them leave to remain in bed for the rest of the day, and petrified them where they lay by the suggestion of a mustard poultice a-piece.

They protested solemnly that the malady from which they suffered was mental rather than physical, and required only rest and quiet to cure it. Whereat the doctor grinned, and said, "Very well." They had leave to stay as they were till the morning; then, if they were not recovered, he would try the mustard poultices. To their consternation and horror, after he had gone, they suddenly remembered that to-night was the night appointed for the first grand rehearsal of a performance proposed to be given by the Comedians of the house on the eve of speech-day at the end of the term.

The Comedians were a time-honoured inst.i.tution at Grandcourt. Any casual visitor to the school from about the middle of April onwards might at any time have been startled and horrified by finding himself suddenly face to face in a retired corner with some youthful form undergoing the most extraordinary contortions of voice and countenance.

Railsford himself used to be fond of recounting his first experience of this phenomenon. He was going down early one morning to the fields, when on the shady side of the quadrangle he encountered a boy, whom he recognised after a little scrutiny to be Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet.

The reason why he did not immediately grasp the ident.i.ty of so familiar a personage was because Sir Digby's body was thrown back, his arms were behind his back, his legs were spread out, and his head was thrown into the air, with an expression which the Master of the Sh.e.l.l had never seen there before, and never saw again. There was but one conclusion to come to: the baronet had gone mad, or he would never be standing thus in the public quadrangle at seven o'clock in the morning.

The supposition was immediately confirmed by beholding the patient's face break slowly into a horrible leer, and his mouth a.s.sume a diagonal slant, as he brought one hand in front, the index finger close to his nose, and addressed a lamp-post as follows:--

"When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David there's more in it than there is in your head."

Railsford, in alarm, was about to hasten for professional a.s.sistance for what he considered a very bad case, when Dig, catching sight of him, relieved him inexpressibly by dropping at once into his ordinary sane manner, and saying, with a blush of confusion,--

"Oh, Mr Railsford, I didn't know you were there. I was mugging up my part for the Comedians, you know. I'm Abednego Jinks, not much of a part, only you can get in a little gag now and then."

Railsford, after what he had witnessed, was prepared to admit this, and left the disciple of the dramatic Muse to himself and the lamp-post, and secretly hoped when the performance of the Comedians came off he might get an "order" for the stalls.

Although the Grandcourt House Comedians were an old inst.i.tution, they had not always been equally flouris.h.i.+ng. At Railsford's, for instance, in past years they had decidedly languished. The performances had possibly been comic, but that was due to the actors, not the author, for the scenes chosen were usually stock selections from the tragedies of Shakespeare; such, for instance, as the death of King Lear, the ghost scene in Hamlet, the conspirators' scene in Julius Caesar, and the banquet in Macbeth. But as soon, as the irrepressible Wake got hold of the reins, as of course he did, the old order changed with startling rapidity. The new director made a clean sweep of Shakespeare and all his works.

"What's the fun of doing Roman citizens in Eton jackets and white chokers," said he, "and sending everybody to sleep? Let's give them a change, and make them laugh."

As if everybody hadn't laughed for years at the Roman citizens in Eton jackets!

So he hunted about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, ent.i.tled, _After You_! with--so the description informed him--two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of- all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing.

I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very meek, were, of course, enamoured of the two old ladies, one very meek, and the other very irascible; the low comedian was, of course, the victim and the plague of both couples, and took his revenge by the usual expedient of siding with each against the other, and being appointed the heir to both. The walking gentlemen were--need it be said?--the disappointed heirs; and the maid-of-all-work, as is the manner of such persons, did everybody's work but her own.

The parts were allotted with due care and discrimination. The two funny old gentlemen were undertaken by Sherriff and Ranger, the two funny old ladies by Dimsdale and Maple, the low comedian by Sir Digby Oakshott, and the maid-of-all-work by Arthur Herapath. As for the walking gentlemen, cabmen, detective, _et hoc genus omne_, they were doled out to anyone who chose to take them. There had been no regular rehearsals yet, but private preparation, of the hole-and-corner kind I have described, had been going on for a week or so. The actors themselves had been looking forward with eagerness--not to say trepidation--to the first rehearsal, which was appointed to take place this evening in the Fourth cla.s.s-room, in the presence of Wake and Stafford, and a few other formidable critics of the upper school. Great, therefore, was the dismay when it was rumoured that the low comedian and the maid-of-all- work were on the sick list with a doctor's certificate.

The first impulse was to postpone the date, but on Wake representing that there was no evening for ten days on which they could get the use of the room, it was resolved to do the best they could with the parts they had, and read the missing speeches from the book. Although the house generally was excluded from the rehearsals, the Fourth-form boys managed to scramble in on the strength of the cla.s.s-room in which the performance was to take place being their own. And besides the invited guests named above, it was frequently found, at the end of a performance, when the gas was turned up, that the room was fuller of Juniors and Babies than it had been when the curtain rose.

On the present occasion, not being a full-dress rehearsal, there was no curtain, nor was there anything to distinguish the actors from their hearers, save the importance of their faces and the evident nervousness with which they awaited the signal to begin.

And here let me give my readers a piece of information. A screaming farce is ever so much more difficult to act than a tragedy of Shakespeare. Any--well, any duffer can act Brutus or Richard the Third or the Ghost of Banquo, but it is reserved only to a few to be able to do justice to the parts of Bartholomew b.u.mblebee or Miss Anastatia Acidrop. And when one comes to compare the paltry exploits and dull observations of the old tragedy heroes with the n.o.ble wit and sublime actions of their modern rivals it is not to be wondered at! So it happened on the present occasion.

_After You_ was far too ambitious a flight for the Comedians at Railsford's; they had far better have stuck to _King Lear_. In the first place, none of the characters seemed to understand what was expected of them. Sherriff, the funny, irascible old gentleman, skulked about in the back of the scene, and tapped his fingers lightly on the top of his hat, and stamped his foot gently, with the most amiable of smiles on his countenance. His one idea of irascible humour seemed to be to start every few moments to leave the room, and then stop short half-way to the door, and utter a few additional remarks over his shoulder, and then to make again for the door with a noise which sounded half-way between a sneeze and the bleating of a goat.

Maple also, who personated Miss Olive Omlett, the meek, elderly lady, appeared to have come with a totally erroneous conception of the _role_ of that inoffensive character. He delivered his speeches in a voice similar to that in which boys call the evening papers at a London railway station, and lost no opportunity of clutching at his heart-- which, by the way, Maple wore on his right flank--and of rising up from, and sitting down on, his chair at regular intervals while anybody else was addressing him.

Then, greatly to the chagrin of the director, the jokes which seemed so good in print never came off right in the speaking. Those which were delivered right, n.o.body--least of all the actors--seemed to see, and the others came to grief by being mauled in the handling. When, for instance, on the meek gentleman observing, "Oh, my poor head!" Miss Acidrop ought to have made a very witty and brilliant point by retorting, "There's nothing in that!" she entirely spoiled the fun by saying, "That's nothing to do with it!" and when loud laughter should have been created by the irascible man walking off with the meek man's hat on his head, they both quitted the scene with no hats on their heads at all.

This was dispiriting, and the absence of the low comedian and the maid- of-all-work tended still further to mar the success of the rehearsal.

For Wake had to read these parts from the book, and at the same time coach the other actors. Thus, for instance, in the famous speech of Abednego Jinks the low comedian already cited, it rather broke up the humour of that masterpiece of declamation to hear it delivered thus:--

"When Abednego Jinks--(Oh, that won't do, Ranger! Take your hand out of your waistcoat and look more like a fool. Yes, that's better. Now, where's the place? Oh yes)--when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy (Oh, no, no, no! Didn't I tell you you needn't start up from your chair as if I was going to cut your throat? Sit steady, and gape at me like an idiot! That's the style!)--Tommy, my boy, Tommy, my boy, To--(Where on earth's the place? Oh yes)--when Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy--"

"Oughtn't you to look funnier than that, yourself?" interposed Ranger, relaxing his own expression to ask the question.

"Oh, of course; only I'm reading just now. Oakshott will have to get that up, of course. Now begin again. Go on; look a fool.--That'll do.--When Abednego Jinks says a thing, Tommy, my boy--(I say, screw your chair round a bit, and face the audience)."

"For mercy's sake," said Stafford, who was getting rather tired of the whole thing, "do tell us what happens when Abednego Jinks says a thing!"

"Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David--(Do look rather more vacant, old man)."

"My dear fellow," once more interposed the prefect, "Ranger could not possibly look a more utter idiot than he looks this minute. What is he to take his affidavit about? I do so want to know."

"You may take your Alfred David, Tommy, my boy (Oh no, that's wrong)-- Tommy, my boy, you may take your Alfred David."

"Yes, yes--go on," urged Stafford.

"There's more in it than there is in your head."

"More in what? the affidavit?" asked Ranger solemnly.

"No, that's not what you say; you say, 'You don't say so.'"

"I think," said Stafford, "that what he did say was a good deal funnier than what he ought to say. What's the good of saying, 'You don't say so,' when everyone of us here can swear you did? I don't see the joke in it myself. Do any of you?"

"No; was it meant for one?" asked someone gravely.

"It's not written down in the book that anyone's to grin," said Maple, hastily referring to his copy.

"Oh, that's all right--only I wish you'd look alive and get to some of the jokes. I thought you said it was a funny piece."

"So it is," replied Wake, rather dismally; "it's full of points."

"They must all be crowded up to the end, then," said Stafford.

If Wake had not had a soul above difficulties he might have been tempted to abandon his labour of Hercules on the spot; and, indeed, it is probable his "troupe" would have struck, and so saved him the trouble of deciding, had not an extraordinary and dramatic change suddenly come over the aspect of affairs. The rehearsal was dragging its slow length along, and everybody, even the amiable Stafford, was losing his temper, when the door flew open, and two young persons entered and made their way boldly up to the stage.

As all the room was dark except the part allotted to the actors, it was not till these intruders had mounted the platform and honoured the company with two ceremonious bows that their ident.i.ty became apparent.