Perdita (3 page)

Fearful that I was on the wrong road, I stopped at the next farm for direction. Yes, the farmer’s wife told me, I would have made better time had I turned left a mile back, but there was no sign posted, as she recalled, for everyone knew well enough the route to Marlborough. I was not more than a mile or two out of my way, if I just cared to turn Ginger around and head back. There was a tantalizing aroma of freshly-baked bread on the air, the sizzle of bacon coming from her kitchen, and a hole as big as a boot inside of me, for the day was wearing on. A feeble question as to the closest inn where I could take luncheon brought forth the hoped-for offer.

"Have you not ate yet?” she asked, astonished. "Why, miss, it’s two o’clock. I’ve fed the hands an hour ago, and am just making up a mess of beans and bacon for myself. Join me, do. I don’t get much company.”

I bolted the meal with unseemly haste, outlining as I ate that I was in a dreadful hurry, but changing some of the details to protect the guilty party. I implied I was on my way to a deathbed, which satisfied the woman as to my incoherent condition. Ginger did not increase her pace as the afternoon dragged on. Quite the contrary. I was strongly tempted to jump out and push her up the hills, of which there are an inordinate number, all of them going up, on the road from Chippenham to Marlborough. There was ample time to worry myself sick, to plan lectures for Perdita, to pity her, to wonder if I had done the right thing in not taking her home, to know I had not, yet to confirm that almost any fate was better than Mr. Croft. The sun became hot as the afternoon wore on, but when I put off my pelisse, the wind was chilly. All in all, it was about the least enjoyable drive I have ever endured.

There was some doubt too, towards its end, as to whether Ginger was going to go the course. A dead horse to cope with seemed an appropriate third calamity to visit me. When we approached the harbingers of Marlborough, Ginger was still hacking. The houses grew closer together, signs of commercial establishments sprang up—bakery, abattoir, tannery. The sun had not quite set when at last I pushed Ginger into town.

I decided to stable her at once, leave her off at the hostelry agreed upon in Chippenham, before she dropped from exhaustion. With this done, my next project was to discover my charge, before she mounted a stage, to discredit her fair reputation forever. Tuck’s Traveling Theater had their handbills posted along the main street, proclaiming Reimer’s Hall as the scene of the night’s performance. Unsure whether they had booked into an inn or planned to sleep in their caravan, I asked for the location of the hall, knowing they must show up there sooner or later, but certainly sooner than seven-thirty, the hour the show was to begin. The place was at the edge of town.

It was six-thirty when I reached it. It was not so large as to have any noble clients or anything of that sort. There would be no one to see her, if by any chance she had sweet-talked Daugherty into letting her take to the boards. I sound like a very ineffectual person to confess that, after coming so far, I was unable to gain entry into the hall, but so it was. The front door was locked, the back door was locked. I banged and hammered at both entrances, without getting an answer. The windows were too high off the ground to effect an entry in daylight. Had it been dark, I would have tried it.

I was so tired and so frustrated that in the end I decided to have some dinner, and go like a patron to the hall a quarter of an hour before the performance began. Dinner was only nominally dinner. A lone lady did not venture into a common room. I had a sandwich at a teashop, the last customer to enter, just before the door was locked. Anger was rising to the top of my emotions as I paid my way into Reimer’s Hall, reducing my cash to practically nothing. Once inside I did not take a seat, but went backstage, ready to pull Perdita by the scruff of the neck out of the disreputable place.

I blush to relate the conditions under which the troupe made their preparations. The females were wedged, three or four to a cubicle, behind hanging curtains that did not even come to the floor. There were ten or twelve inches of ankle and leg exposed. The women darted in and out with no great regard for pulling the curtain closed behind them. The place was a voyeur’s delight. There were several greasy-looking men just outside, peering greedily in each time the curtain was opened. Being a stranger in their midst, I was subjected to my share of scrutiny from the bucks. When one of them rolled up to me, with his great wadded shoulders sticking out a foot from his body, I asked in the haughtiest tone I own for Mr. Daugherty.

The man looked me boldly up and down, hunched his wadding as though to imply my anatomy was not up to the company’s high standard, then walked away, waving a hand for me to follow in his footsteps.

Mr. Daugherty had set aside a cubbyhole for himself amidst the backstage squalor. I think it was a broom closet actually. In it he sat with a wine bottle and a glass, bent over a sheet of closely-written figures, balanced on his knee. He did not recognize me.

After repeating the ocular examination that was apparently an inevitable result of a female’s venturing behind stage, he asked "What’s your act, miss? I have all the girls I can use, unless you have something special to offer.”

“I am not looking for work, sir. I am looking for my charge, who joined you at Chippenham last night.”

He raised his brows, hunched his shoulders, threw out his hands and regarded me with a conning smile. "I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss. I was in Marlborough last night,” he said, with an Irish accent that I shan’t attempt to duplicate. It added something to his speech, but would detract from the telling to go jumbling up the letters.

"Your outfit was in Chippenham. She joined it,” I said coolly, though I did not actually
know
anything of the sort. “If you do not produce her this instant, I shall call in a constable. She is a minor, under my charge.

“A minor, you say?”

“That’s right. Any attempt to force her . . ."

“Force! Nay, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick I swear. There was no
forcing,”
he said at once, an expression of alarmed fear lighting on his visage, which was rather handsome, incidentally.

“When it is
a minor
in question, the onus falls on the older party,” I said, not sure of my legal facts, but sure Mr. Daugherty would have no notion whether they were true, nor question them, so long as they sounded bold and menacing.

He licked his lips, ran his fingers nervously through his hair, and blurted out the truth. “She’s gone to sit in the audience and see the show.”

As I turned to leave, he called after me, “But I didn’t
force
her. She came running after us!”

I knew perfectly well it was true, so said nothing, but only hurried out to scan the audience for her bold face. What an audience it was! The worst rabble ever assembled in the country, ninety percent of it male, and the other ten percent lightskirts. I felt perfectly degraded to enter the hall, but at least Perdita was sitting in a dark corner with an elderly, decent-looking woman to guard her. She tried to slink down behind the woman when she spotted me, but she knew it was futile, and finally sat up and waved instead.

Chapter Three

The show had not yet begun. I slid onto the chair beside her and got a hard hold of her arm. “Get your pelisse. We are leaving this hole, at once.”

“Must we?” she asked. “Can’t we stay and see the performance at least? It is just about to begin.”

Between a desire to see it, fatigue, the lack of anywhere to go when we left and plain dereliction of duty, I allowed myself to be talked into remaining for a while, which of course turned into the whole performance. The production owed everything but its title to John Gay’s
Beggar’s Opera.
It was so close a copy of the work that Mr. Daugherty ought to have been imprisoned as a plagiarist for daring to attach his name to it as author, and changing the title to
The Warder’s Daughter.
Mr. Daugherty played Captain Macheath, under the title of Colonel Maciver. Our leading lady of the ostrich plumes played Lucy, and a rather pretty blonde was Polly. It was an extremely entertaining performance. I doubt there was a troupe in London who could have done better. Mr. Daugherty looked very handsome in his officer’s uniform, sporting every manner of ribbon and medal.

The rivals for his affection put on an excellent cat fight, while the fellow who played the fence was masterful, a walking weasel. We were fairly well concealed in our dark corner, so that we suffered no stares or rudeness from the male audience.

It was no polite play that was put on. The ribaldry was so high at times I had to blush, and try to distract Perdita’s attention. Maciver took such freedoms with the women onstage I actually feared the police would come in and arrest him for putting on an obscene performance. When the two girls were fighting, too, it was arranged so that their dresses were half over their heads, and half down to their waists. Really quite shocking, but all done in a spirit of fun, offending no one but myself, and I was only offended from a sense of duty.

When the curtain came down at intermission, I took the opportunity to quiz Perdita as to what she had been doing all day. She had skipped out of the George the night before as soon as she heard me snore. I do not
snore
actually, but groan in my sleep sometimes when I am troubled. She nipped over to the Red Lion and joined Tuck’s outfit. She had got a letter from Daugherty in her pocket, left off at the inn before his departure, inviting her. It is
almost
incredible she had accomplished so much during a brief talk at a window, but I have learned to believe the incredible from her. When she showed them the letter, she was taken aboard with no trouble.

"He has a deal of gall, asking you to join him!”

“I told him I was an actress,” she confessed. “But a very high class tragic actress.”

“Fool! What was the point asking you to join this farcical play then?”

“He said he would write a great tragedy for me. Something like
Macbeth,
as I already know the lines.”

“Yes, and call it Macheath, as he changed Gay’s character’s name.”

“Meanwhile he said I could sing or dance. They have songs after the ballad opera. He is very nice, and he is
not
married to Phoebe either, though she is jealous as a green cow of him. Phoebe is the leading lady."

“I don’t suppose you happened to take our money when you left the inn?”

“Good gracious no! I could not leave you stranded and penniless! I forgot all about the money,” she added, to defeat her claim. “I expect we will have to stay overnight at Marlborough, and hire a carriage back to Chippenham tomorrow to await Aunt Maude.”

“The money is gone. Stolen from the inn, every sou of it. I have two shillings to my name. Do you think Daugherty might lend us a few pounds?”

"They are very short of funds. He says the play made Gay rich, and Daugherty poor. I don’t know what it means, but they are going to sleep overnight in their carriages. They aren’t even dormeuses, but they have got pillows and things to make quite a comfortable bed. I’m sure he would let you stay too, if you like,” she offered.

“How exceedingly kind of him!” I answered ironically, but in fact this low means of spending the night was something of a relief, the alternative being the open road or the almshouse.

Perdita did not reply, nor even hear me. Her eyes had strayed off to the side of the hall, where some new arrivals were making a grand and noisy entrance. It was only two people, two gentlemen, but they managed to make such a to do that every head in the place turned to stare at them, including my own. One would think they set out to claim as much notice as possible. They were outfitted in a manner at odds with every other man in the place. They wore fashionable black evening clothes, a triangle of pristine white shirt-front highly visible across the hall. They talked and laughed noisily, not noticing or caring that everyone was observing them. They were not observing much of anything, I think, for they appeared to have taken on a deal of wine. Their barbering, their general get-up and behavior did not speak of the provinces. This pair had come from London, to go slumming in the countryside. They were, unfortunately, both young and handsome.

One was dark and heavy-set, with broad shoulders but a trim waist. The other was taller, more aristocratic-looking somehow, with a thin, chiselled face and a slighter build. Before we had more time to observe them, the curtain opened and Lucy came rushing on to the stage, in a pucker because Macivor had been thrown into gaol. She looked wantonly attractive, in a low-cut white blouse, topped off with a tight-fitting weskit that was pulled in to display her tiny waist, which was made to appear even smaller by the generous swell of bosoms and hips on top and bottom. The city visitors actually let out whistles and howls of appreciation. Their vociferous praise incited the other men in the hall to emulate them. The rest of the play was pure farce. There were catcalls, foot stompings, shouts, whistles, and at the end a shower of coins rained on the stage. I wished I could dart up, collect them, and flee this den of lechery. The newcomers had removed the last vestige of decency from the evening. I knew I was attending an orgy.

"Perdita, we must leave now,” I said. I could not trust the smiles she was throwing to the two bucks. Our only salvation was that they never once removed their eyes from the stage. "Let us go to that carriage you mentioned and make ourselves comfortable.”

"I had better check with Mr. Daugherty first,” she replied.

This sounded reasonable, but I had no thought of letting her go alone. “They don’t like strangers backstage during the performance,” she said.

The older woman who had been sitting with her was the group’s seamstress, who had earlier explained grandly that she was "the wardrobe mistress.” A spade would doubtlessly be termed "an earth-turning utensil” by Tuck’s troupe. "I'll go with her,” she volunteered. "I have to get the costumes and check them out for rips. That Phoebe has her gowns so tight she splits a seam every performance.”