Thus, and in various other manners, was the evil fate of La Chicot discussed in Cibber Street, and the surrounding neighbourhood. Everybody was interested in her welfare. If she had been some patient domestic drudge, a devoted wife and mother, the interest would have been mild in comparison, the whole thing tame and commonplace. But La Chicot—whose name was on the walls in capitals three feet high, whose bold bright face smiled on the foot passenger at every turn in the road—La Chicot was a personage, and whether she was to draw the lot of life or death from fate’s mysterious urn was a public question.
It had been as the scene-shifter had shrewdly prophesied. She had been drunk, and the stage-carpenter had been drunk, and the result had been calamity. There had been a perennial supply of champagne in La Chicot’s dressing-room during the last week, thanks to the liberality of an anonymous admirer, who had sent a three-dozen case of Roederer, pints—fascinating little gold-tipped bottles that looked as innocent as flowers or butterflies. La Chicot had an idea that a pint of champagne could hurt nobody. Of a quart she opined, as the famous glutton did of a goose, that it was too much for one and not enough for two.
She naturally suspected that the anonymous champagne came from the unknown giver of the bracelet, but she was not going to leave the case unopened on that account. It was very pleasant to have an admirer who gave so freely and asked nothing. Poor fellow! It would be time enough to snub him when he became obtrusive. In the meanwhile she accepted his bounty as unquestioningly as she received the gifts of all-bounteous nature—the sun that warmed her, the west wind that fanned her cheek, the wallflowers and primroses at the street corners that told her spring was abroad in the land.
Yet she was a woman, and, therefore, naturally curious about her nameless admirer. Her splendid eyes roamed among the faces of the audience, especially among the gilded youth in the stalls, until they alighted on a countenance which La Chicot believed likely to be the one she sought. It was a face that watched her with a grave attention she had seen in no other countenance, though all were attentive—a sallow face, of a Jewish type, black eyes, an almost deathlike pallor, a firmly-moulded mouth, the lips too thick for beauty, black hair, smooth and sleek.
“That is the man,” La Chicot said to herself, “and he looks inordinately rich.”
She stole a glance at him often after this, and she always saw the same expression in the pallid Israelitish face, an intensity she had never seen in any other countenance.
“C’est un homme à parvenir,” she told herself, “si ça était guerrier il aurait vaincu un monde, comme Napoléon.”
The face fascinated her somehow, or, at all events, it made her think of the man. She drank his champagne with greater gusto after this, and on the night after her discovery, the weather being unusually sultry for the season, she drank two bottles in the course of her toilet. When she went down to the wings, glittering with silvery tinsel, clad in a cloud of snowy gauze, she could hardly stand; but dancing was a second nature with her, and she managed to get through her solos without disgrace. There was a certain wildness, an extra audacity, a shade too much of that peculiar quality which the English call “go,” and the French call “chic,” but the audience at the Prince Frederick liked extremes, and applauded her to the echo.
“By Jove, she’s a wonderful woman,” exclaimed Mr. Smolendo, watching her from the prompter’s entrance. “She’s a safe draw for the next three seasons.”
Ten minutes afterwards came the ascent through the coral caves. The ironwork creaked, groaned, trembled, and then gave way. There was a shrill scream from the dancer, a cry of horror from the men at the wings, and La Chicot was lying in the middle of the stage, a confused heap of tumbled gauze and silver, silent and unconscious, while the green curtain came down with a run.
It was late on the night after the accident when Jack Chicot came home. He found his wife lying in a dull stupor, as the gossips had described her, life sustained by the frequent administration of brandy. The woman was as near death as she could be without being ready for her grave. A stranger was sitting by her bedside when Jack went into the room, a young man with a gravity of face and manner which was older than his years. The nurse was on the other side of the bed, applying a cooling lotion to La Chicot’s burning forehead. The leg had been successfully set that afternoon, by one of the cleverest surgeons in London, and was suspended in a cradle, under the light coverlet.
Jack went to the bedside, and bent over the motionless figure, and looked at the dull white face.
“My poor Zaïre, this is bad,” he murmured, and then he turned to the stranger, who had risen and stood beside him. “You are the doctor, I suppose?”
“I am the watchdog, if you like. Mr. Smolendo would not trust my inexperience with so delicate an operation as setting the broken leg. It was a terrible fracture, and required the highest art. He sent for Sir John Pelham, and everything has been done well and successfully. But he allowed me to remain as surgeon in charge. Your wife’s state is perilous in the extreme. I fear the brain is injured. I was in the theatre when the accident happened. I am deeply interested in this case. I have lately passed my examination creditably, and am a
