Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/267

 on the London boards; and even-handed Justice, sir, returned the poisoned chalice to his lips, causing him to lose an eye and to hobble--besides splitting up his voice--which served him right. And again I took the scorpion for the sake of the Phenomenon. I had a babe myself once, sir, though you may not think it. Gormerick (that is this faithful Hag) gave the babe Daffy's Elixir, in teething; but it died--convulsions. I comforted myself when that Phenomenon came out on my stage--in pink satin and pearls. 'Ha,' I said, 'the great York Theatre shall yet be mine!' The haunting idea became a Mania, sir. The learned say that there is a Mania called Money Mania--[Monomania??]--when one can think but of the one thing needful--as the guilty Thane saw the dagger, sir--you understand. And when the Phenomenon had vanished and gone, as I was told, to America, where I now wish I was myself, acting Rolla at New York or elsewhere, to a free and enlightened people--then, sir, the Mania grew on me still stronger and stronger. There was a pride in it, sir, a British pride.

"I said to this faithful Hag: 'What--shall I not have the York because that false child has deserted me? Am I not able to realise a Briton's ambition without being beholden to a Phenomenon in spangles?' Sir, I took the York! Alone I did it!"

"And," said Losely, feeling a sort of dreary satisfaction in listening to the grotesque sorrows of one whose condition seemed to him yet more abject than his own--"And the York Theatre alone perhaps did you."

"Right, sir," said Rugge--half-dolorously, half-exultingly. "It was a Grand Concern, and might have done for the Bank of England! It swallowed up my capital with as much ease, sir, as I could swallow an oyster if there were one upon that plate! I saw how it would be, the very first week--when I came out myself, strong--Kean's own part in the Iron Chest--Mortimer, sir; there warn't three pounds ten in the house--packed audience, sir, and they had the face to hiss me. 'Hag,' said I to Mrs. Gormerick, 'this Theatre is a howling wilderness.' But there is a fascination in a Grand Concern, of which one is the head--one goes on and on. All the savings of a life devoted to the British Drama and the production of native genius went in what I may call--a jiffey! But it