A Mummer's Wife by George Moore

Author:George Moore [Moore, George (George Augustus)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2005-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

'It's damned hard, but you can't expect the man to take her out of her linen-drapery for nothing.'

The old stage-door keeper, whose attention had been concentrated on what he was eating out of a jam-pot, now suddenly woke up to the fact that the passage was blocked, and that a group of musicians with boxes in their hands were waiting to get through.

'Now, ladies, I must ask you to move on; there're a lot of people behind you.'

'Yes, get on, girls; we're all up a tree this time, and the moral of it is that we haven't yet learnt how to fall in love with the manager. The paper-collar woman has beaten us at our own game.'

A roar of laughter followed this remark, which was heard by everybody, and pushing the girls before her, Dolly cleared the way.

These girls, whose ambitions in life were first to obtain a line—that is to say, permission to shout, in their red tights, when the low comedian appears on the stage, 'Oh, what a jolly good fellow the Duke is!'—secondly, to be asked out to dinner by somebody they imagine looks like a gentleman, revolted against hearing this paper-collar woman, as they now called her, speak the long-dreamed-of, long-described phrases; and at night they did everything they dared to 'queer' her scene. They crowded round her, mugged, and tried to divert the attention of the house from her.

She had to say, 'Mr. Baillie, you've a fine head.' Baillie (patting his crown): 'Yes, a fine head!' Kate: 'A fat head.' Baillie (indignantly): 'A fat head!' Kate (hurriedly): 'I mean a broad head.' Baillie: 'Yes, a broad head.' Kate: 'A thick head.' Baillie (indignantly): 'A thick head!' Kate: 'No, no; a solid head.' And so on ad lib. for ten minutes.

The scene went splendidly. The pit screamed, and the gallery was in convulsions, and in the street next day nothing was heard but ironical references to fat and thick heads. The girls had not succeeded in spoiling the scene, for, encouraged by the applause, Kate had chaffed and mocked at the Baillie so winningly that she at once won the sympathy of the house. But the following night a tall, sour-faced girl, who wore pads, and with whom Kate had had some words concerning her coarse language, hit upon an ingenious device for 'queering the scene!' Her trick was to burst into a roar of laughter just before she had time to say, 'A fat head.' The others soon tumbled to the trick, and in a night or two they worked so well together that Kate grew nervous and she could not speak her lines. This made her feel very miserable; and her stage experience being limited, she ascribed her non-success to her own fault, until one night Dick rushed on to the stage as soon as the curtain was down, and putting up his arms with a large gesture, he called the company back.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'I've noticed that the front scene in this act has not been going as well as it used to.

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