Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1461 page)

‘Very nicely written, miss; and very nicely composed indeed! I suppose — in fact, I’m sure Mr Dunball’ — Here a creaking was heard, as of some strong wooden construction being gradually rent asunder. It was Mr Dunball himself, squeezing his way out of the branch bank box, and coming to examine the advertisement.

He read it all through very attentively, following each line with his forefinger; and then cautiously and gently laid the cardboard down on the counter. When I state that neither Mr Dunball nor his assistant were quite certain what a ‘Roscius of the English stage’ meant, or what precise branch of human attainment Mr Wray designed to teach in teaching ‘Elocution’, I do no injustice either to master or man.

‘So you want this hung up in the window, my — in the window, miss?’ asked Mr Dunball. He was about to say, ‘my dear’; but something in the girl’s look and manner stopped him.

‘If you could hang it up without inconvenience, sir.’

‘May I ask what’s your name? and where you come from?’

‘My name is Annie Wray; and the last place we came from was Stratford-upon-Avon.’

‘Ah! indeed — and Mr Wray teaches, does he? — elocution for half-a-crown — eh?’

‘My grandfather only desires to let the inhabitants of this place know that he can teach those who wish it, to speak or read with a good delivery and a proper pronunciation.’

Mr Dunball felt rather puzzled by the straightforward, self-possessed manner in which he — a branch banker, a chemist, and a municipal authority — was answered by little Annie Wray. He took up the advertisement again; and walked away to read it a second time in the solemn monetary seclusion of the back shop.

The young assistant followed. ‘I think they’re respectable people, sir,’ said he, in a whisper; ‘I was passing when the old gentleman went into No. 12, yesterday. The wind blew his cloak on one side, and I saw him carrying a large cash box under it — I did indeed, sir; and it seemed a heavy one.’

‘Cash box!’ cried Mr Dunball. ‘What does a man with a cash box want with elocution, and two-and-sixpence an hour? Suppose he should be a swindler!’

‘He can’t be, sir: look at the young lady! Besides, the people at No. 12 told me he gave a reference, and paid a week’s rent in advance.’

‘He did — did he? I say, are you sure it was a cash box?’

‘Certain, sir. I suppose it had money in it, of course?’

‘What’s the use of a cash box, without cash?’ said the branch banker, contemptuously. ‘It looks rather odd, though! Stop! maybe it’s a wager. I’ve heard of gentlemen doing queer things for wagers. Or, maybe, he’s cracked! Well, she’s a nice girl; and hanging up this thing can’t do any harm. I’ll make enquiries about them, though, for all that.’

Frowning portentously as he uttered this last cautious resolve, Mr Dunball leisurely returned into the chemist’s shop. He was, however, nothing like so ill-natured a man as he imagined himself to be; and, in spite of his dignity and his suspicions, he smiled far more cordially than he at all intended, as he now addressed little Annie Wray.

‘It’s out of our line, miss,’ said he; ‘but we’ll hang the thing up to oblige you. Of course, if I want a reference, you can give it? Yes, yes! of course. There! there’s the card in the window for you — a nice prominent place (look at it as you go out) — just between the string of corn plasters and the dried poppy-heads! I wish Mr Wray success; though I rather think Tidbury is not quite the sort of place to come to for what you call elocution — eh?’

‘Thank you, sir; and good morning,’ said little Annie. And she left the shop just as composedly as she had entered it.

‘Cool little girl, that!’ said Mr Dunball, watching her progress down the street to No. 12.

‘Pretty little girl, too!’ thought the assistant, trying to watch, like his master, from the window.

‘I should like to know who Mr Wray is,’ said Mr Dunball, turning back into the shop, as Annie disappeared. ‘And I’d give something to find out what Mr Wray keeps in his cash box,’ continued the banker-chemist, as he thoughtfully re-entered the mahogany money chest in the back premises.

You are a wise man, Mr Dunball; but you won’t solve those two mysteries in a hurry, sitting alone in that branch bank sentry-box of yours! — Can anybody solve them? I can.

Who is Mr Wray? and what has he got in his cash box? — Come to No. 12, and see!

II

Before we go boldly into Mr Wray’s lodgings, I must first speak a word or two about him, behind his back — but by no means slanderously. I will take his advertisement, now hanging up in the shop window of Messrs Dunball and Dark, as the text of my discourse.

Mr Reuben Wray became, as he phrased it, a ‘pupil of the late celebrated John Kemble, Esquire’ in this manner. He began life by being apprenticed for three years to a statuary. Whether the occupation of taking casts and clipping stones proved of too sedentary a nature to suit his temperament, or whether an evil counsellor within him, whose name was VANITY, whispered: — ’Seek public admiration, and be certain of public applause,’ — I know not; but the fact is, that, as soon as his time was out, he left his master and his native place to join a company of strolling players; or, as he himself more magniloquently expressed it, he went on the stage.

Nature had gifted him with good lungs, large eyes, and a hook nose; his success before barn audiences was consequently brilliant. His professional exertions, it must be owned, barely sufficed to feed and clothe him; but then he had a triumph on the London stage, always present in the far perspective to console him. While waiting this desirable event, he indulged himself in a little intermediate luxury, much in favour as a profitable resource for young men in extreme difficulties — he married; married at the age of nineteen, or thereabouts, the charming Columbine of the company.

And he got a good wife. Many people, I know, will refuse to believe this, — it is a truth, nevertheless. The one redeeming success of the vast social failure which his whole existence was doomed to represent, was this very marriage of his with a strolling Columbine. She, poor girl, toiled as hard and as cheerfully to get her own bread after marriage, as before; trudged many a weary mile by his side from town to town, and never uttered a complaint; praised his acting; partook his hopes; patched his clothes; pardoned his ill-humour; paid court for him to his manager; made up his squabbles; — in a word, and in the best and highest sense of that word, loved him. May I be allowed to add, that she only brought him one child — a girl? And, considering the state of his pecuniary resources, am I justified in ranking this circumstance as a strong additional proof of her excellent qualities as a married woman?

After much perseverance and many disappointments, Reuben at last succeeded in attaching himself to a regular provincial company — Tate Wilkinson’s at York. He had to descend low enough from his original dramatic pedestal before he succeeded in subduing the manager. From the leading business in Tragedy and Melodrama, he sank at once, in the established provincial company, to a ‘minor utility’ — words of theatrical slang signifying an actor who is put to the smaller dramatic uses which the necessities of the stage require. Still, in spite of this, he persisted in hoping for the chance that was never to come; and still poor Columbine faithfully hoped with him to the last.

Time passed — years of it; and this chance never arrived; and he and Columbine found themselves one day in London, forlorn and starving. Their life at this period would make a romance of itself, if I had time and space to write it; but I must get on, as fast as may be, to later dates; and the reader must be contented merely to know that, at the last gasp — the last of hope; almost the last of life — Reuben got employment, as an actor of the lower degree, at Drury Lane.

Behold him, then, now — still a young man, but crushed in his young man’s ambition for ever — receiving the lowest theatrical wages for the lowest theatrical work; appearing on the stage as soldier, waiter, footman, and so on; with not a line in the play to speak; just showing his poverty-shrunken carcase to the audience, clothed in the frowsiest habiliments of the old Drury Lane wardrobe, for a minute or two at a time, at something like a shilling a night — a miserable being, in a miserable world; the World behind the Scenes!

John Philip Kemble is now acting at the theatre: and his fame is rising to its climax. How the roar of applause follows him almost every time he leaves the scene! How majestically he stalks away into the Green Room, abstractedly inhaling his huge pinches of snuff as he goes! How the poor inferior brethren of the buskin, as they stand at the wing and stare upon him reverently, long for his notice; and how few of them can possibly get it! There is, nevertheless, one among this tribe of unfortunates whom he has really remarked, though he has not yet spoken to him. He has detected this man, shabby and solitary, constantly studying his acting from any vantage-ground the poor wretch could get amid the dust, dirt, draughts, and confusion behind the scenes. Mr Kemble also observes, that whenever a play of Shakespeare’s is being acted, this stranger has a tattered old book in his hands; and appears to be following the performance closely from the text, instead of huddling into warm corners over a pint of small beer, with the rest of his supernumerary brethren. Remarking these things, Mr Kemble over and over again intends to speak to the man, and find out who he is; and over and over again utterly forgets it. But, at last, a day comes when the long-deferred personal communication really takes place; and it happens thus: —

A new Tragedy is to be produced — a pre-eminently bad one, by-the-by, even in those days of pre-eminently bad Tragedy-writing. The scene is laid in Scotland; and Mr Kemble is determined to play his part in a Highland dress. The idea of acting a drama in the appropriate costume of the period which that drama illustrates, is considered so dangerous an innovation, that no one else dare follow his example; and he, of all the characters, is actually about to wear the only Highland dress in a Highland play. This does not at all daunt him. He has acted Othello, a night or two before, in the uniform of a British General Officer, and is so conscious of the enormous absurdity of the thing, that he is determined to persevere, and start the reform in stage costume, which he was afterwards destined so thoroughly to carry out.

The night comes; the play begins. Just as the stage waits for Mr Kemble, Mr Kemble discovers that his goatskin purse — one of the most striking peculiarities of the Highland dress — is not on him. There is no time to seek it — all is lost for the cause of costume! — he must go on the stage exposed to public view as only half a Highlander! No! Not yet! While everybody else hurries frantically hither and thither in vain, one man quickly straps something about Mr Kemble’s waist, just in the nick of time. It is the lost purse! and Roscius after all steps on the stage, a Highlander complete from top to toe!

On his first exit, Mr Kemble inquires for the man who found the purse. It is that very poor player whom he has already remarked. The great actor had actually been carrying the purse about in his own hands before the performance; and, in a moment of abstraction, had put it down on a chair, in a dark place behind the prompter’s box. The humble admirer, noticing everything he did, noticed this; and so found the missing goatskin in time, when nobody else could.

‘Sir, I am infinitely obliged to you,’ says Mr Kemble, courteously, to the confused, blushing man before him — ’You have saved me from appearing incomplete, and therefore ridiculous, before a Drury Lane audience. I have marked you, sir, before; reading, while waiting for your call, our divine Shakespeare — the poetic bond that unites all men, however professional distances may separate them. Accept, sir, this offered pinch — this pinch of snuff.’

When the penniless player went home that night, what wonderful news he had for his wife! And how proud and happy poor Columbine was, when she heard that Reuben Wray had been offered a pinch of snuff out of Mr Kemble’s own box!

But the kind-hearted tragedian did not stop merely at a fine speech and a social condescension. Reuben read Shakespeare, when none of his comrades would have cared to look into the book at all; and that of itself was enough to make him interesting to Mr Kemble. Besides, he was a young man; and might have capacities which only wanted encouragement.

‘I beg you to recite to me, sir,’ said the great John Philip, one night; desirous of seeing what his humble admirer really could do. The result of the recitation was unequivocal: poor Wray could do nothing that hundreds of his brethren could not have equalled. In him, the yearning to become a great actor was only the ambition without the power.