Volume I Part 2 (2/2)

'Not a drop, thank you.'

'Then you have taken the pledge?'

'Oh no!' said the lady, laughing; 'I am not so bad as to require that. I am never tempted to drink. If I thought it would do me any good, I would take a gla.s.s of wine; but I find I am better without it, and so I don't.'

'What, then, will you take?'

'A cup of tea.'

'A cup of tea-how provoking! That's about the only thing we can't give you here.'

'Well, then, I will put up with a gla.s.s of water and a sandwich.'

The Mayor was shocked; he had never heard such a request from a lady before. In his distress he appealed to the Vicar for aid. His reverence was equal to the occasion, actually going so far as to quote St. Paul, and to tell how he recommended Timothy to take a gla.s.s of wine for his stomach's sake and his often infirmities. His reverence did more: he enforced his argument by example, taking a gla.s.s himself, and at the same time recommending the rest of the committee to do the same. 'Fine port that,' said he, smacking his lips and holding up the gla.s.s to the light to see the beeswing.

'Yes,' said the Mayor; 'it was a present to the Corporation from Sir Watkin Strahan.'

The lady coloured as she heard the name. It was observed by the committee, whose inferences were not of the most charitable construction.

Everyone knew that Sir Watkin was rather fast, and was supposed to have great weaknesses as far as actresses were concerned. The situation was becoming embarra.s.sing.

'Had we not better be moving?' asked the lady, rising from her seat.

'Well,' said the Mayor, 'if we start at once, we shall get to the station in ample time.'

The procession was then formed, the Mayor and the lady walking first, the Vicar and the Town Clerk bringing up the rear. Only one of the committee had gone home. He was new to his office; he had made a lot of money in the shoe trade, and had recently retired from business, and was rather doubtful as to the propriety of being seen by daylight walking with an actress in the streets.

On they went. The general public, consisting of school-boys out of school, and of the usual loafers who stand idle all the day long in the market-place, or at the corners of public-houses and livery stables, were not a little shocked as the actress from the Royal Theatre, Covent Garden, walked along the streets as an ordinary Mrs. Jones or Brown might have done.

'Well, I would 'ave 'ad a cab, at any rate,' said the ostler of the leading hotel in the town, as the party pa.s.sed, a remark cordially accepted by his hearers, a seedy and bloated set of horsey-looking men, who seemed to have nothing particular to do, and took a long time to do it in.

''Ow the d.i.c.kens are fellows like me to get a livin' if tip-top actresses like that 'ere young ooman take to walkin'? It's wot I call downright mean. She's been 'ere and took a lot of money out o' the town, and han't spent a blessed bob on a cab.' Here the speaker, overcome with emotion, dived into the pockets of his ragged corduroys, and finding unexpectedly there the price of a pot of beer, repaired to the neighbouring bar, there to solve the question he had anxiously asked; or to forget it, as he took long draughts of his favourite beverage.

Meanwhile the actress and her attendant guardian angels continued walking, she rapidly striving to recollect old shops and old faces, whilst they mechanically uttered the unmeaning nothings that at times-and the present was one of them-are quite as acceptable as real talk. As if by magic, the news spread that the actress was walking to the station, and great was the joy of the young men who served in all the fine shops in the market-place, who had never seen a real live actress from London in the daytime before, and whose remarks were of a highly complimentary order. The shop-girls, who stared, were equally excited, but perhaps a little more disposed to be critical. Further from the town centre the excitement was less evident. People in the genteel villas scarce deigned to turn their heads. To be emotionless and self-possessed is the object of gentility all the world over. People in genteel villas are not easily excited. In the low neighbourhood nearer the station, inhabited by guards and porters and stokers and signalmen, where engines are perpetually whistling and screaming and letting off steam, there was no excitement at all. In such places, during business hours, one has something to think of besides actors and actresses, and so the station yard was very quickly gained. Only were to be seen a few young swells of the town, who turned very red if the actress looked their way, simply gazing respectfully from afar, wis.h.i.+ng that they had been walking with the actress instead of the Town Clerk, the Vicar, or the Mayor. The latter worthy was a little proud of his position. He had by his side and under his protection one whom he remarked, aside to his friends, was not only an actress, but a deuced fine woman. The influence of a fine woman on the male mind, especially in the provinces, where overpowering female beauty is scarce, is marvellous. Even the reverend Vicar was not insensible to its fascination; while the Town Clerk, who was a bachelor, was, therefore, very legitimately in the seventh heaven, wherever that may be; and when Sir Watkin Strahan's family coach, with the three old maids of that old family, drove up, those excellently disposed ladies, to whom all Sloville was in the habit of grovelling, for the first time in their lives almost found themselves slighted, though as to what there was extraordinary to look at in that actor-woman from London they could none of them see.

Suddenly the aspect of affairs was changed.

Just outside the railway-station, on the bare earth, sweltering in the summer sun, was a bundle of rags. The actress was the first to perceive it

'What is that?' she exclaimed,

'A bundle of rags,' said one.

'And of very dirty ones too,' said another.

'Good heavens,' said the lady, 'it is a living child.'

'A child! Impossible.'

<script>