THE PRODIGAL SON.
BY DUTTON COOK, AUTHOR OF “PAUL FOSTER’S DAUGHTER,” &c
“A lytel misgoyng in the gynning causeth mykel errour in the end.”—Chaucer’s “Testament of Love.”
CHAPTER XXII. “RENÉ!"
The address of Mr. Tacker, the stage-manager, while it may have been successful in allaying to a great extent the alarm of the audience, certainly did not do justice to the real state of the case behind the curtain. A crowd surrounded the senseless form of Mademoiselle Boisfleury. She had not moved since her fall. She had moaned for some minutes, evidently in acute suffering. This expression of pain was not loud, but it was intense. Great agony masters the strength, and forbids any noisy or prolonged cry—and these feeble moans had ceased as she became insensible.
“She is dead!” cried several of the women who surrounded her, all looking from one to the other, trembling; some were crying violently—while others with stronger minds, or with less feeling probably, were emphatically denouncing it as a shame that Grimshaw should have allowed her to swing from that rope, as they had known very well all along that an accident was sure to come of it at some time or other. It was necessary to abuse some one. If a fellow creature suffers, it is always indispensable that we should look about and see whom we can conveniently denounce as the cause of the suffering. Perhaps the corps de ballet had no great reason to love Grimshaw—he often fined them, and bullied tnem, and swore at them, and stopped their salaries—though he did now and then talk to them “affably,” and thank them for their exertions, and invite them to a cham supper. So when an event of this kind happened, it seemed only natural on their parts to give him the full odium of the occurrence. He had all the profit—he ought to have all the loss; so they argued—not reasonably perhaps—but then women are not always reasonable; and as for logic from coryphées, of course that’s out of the question. They did not remember at the moment that any one of them would have been only too delighted to play the part of Fiametta, and to accomplish Mademoiselle Boisfleury’s feat, if permitted to appear in a grand new dress for the occasion—the dress of course provided by Grimshaw—and find a slight addition to the salary to be received from the treasury on Saturday night. Certainly it was more convenient to abuse Grimshaw, who was on the spot, under their eyes, than an incoherent public who had roared for a “sensation” ballet, and were now scattered over the town, ornamenting many British homes, voting the whole thing very horrid and shocking,