CHAPTER 20: Ruin! Tribulation!

It was weary work, rallying the Natives of Peru to fight the Spanish conquerors. Not that Tory was unaccustomed to battling the Spanish, but aboard the Blesséd Providence they had never compounded the work with all these fancy speeches. She found Pizarro a silly piece of work, which Jack did not dispute, but it had been a huge success when England was battling Napoleon, and the spectacle filled the house.

Tory had not much acting to trouble her. Jack had to deliver the most impassioned verse as the heroic Peruvian general, Rolla, under a light application of burnt cork. She had mostly to embody all that the Natives were fighting to protect — hearth, home, purity. And to keep herself from laughing at how easily her own ancestors might have made these speeches about the conquering English. But Jack’s gamble paid off. At the end of the performance, Plumleigh, who had gone on for Pizarro, came out to announce a second performance for the following week.

Later, after the interlude and the songs and the after-piece, when she had excavated through the layers of gilt and paint to become herself, again, Tory trotted upstairs to Jack's office. She smiled when she noticed the three ancient juggling pins left to him from his father roped together and hung up on the wall beside his desk. Beneath it, she saw one of Mr. Ashbrook’s odd paintings pinned on the wall, a sort of seascape in blues and greens, with the stars floating under water and the sea creatures — if such they were — dancing in the sky. But only Mr. Ingram was there, sitting at Jack's desk, the box with the night's proceeds at one hand while he pored over notes and charts for their next performance.

He directed Tory downstairs again and into the wings, where she found Jack kneeling in a litter of sawdust with Alphonse beside him attempting to adjust some piece of stage machinery. Jack was back in his street clothes, but he and Alphonse had both cast aside their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves to fuss with some recalcitrant tackle for raising and lowering scenes, a project that appeared to require a hand saw, a hammer, several wedge-shaped blocks of wood, and the presence of Trot, the call-boy, standing nearby to try the ropes. The company could not afford a full-time carpenter, of course, but Jack and Alphonse had done all their stage-building in the islands.

"Ah, the heroine of the Americas!" Jack hailed her when he saw her. "I knew you would be a sensation."

"Very nicely played, Mrs. Lightfoot," Trot put in.

"All I had to do was keep out of the way," Tory noted. "As I suspect I ought to do now." 

Jack smiled apologetically and held up his hands befouled with sawdust and grime from the stage floor. "Aye, we’ve some business to finish up here before I can get away," he agreed. "Can you find your way back with the others?"

And so she crossed the rear of the backstage to the ladies’ dressing room again, just as Jenny emerged.

"May I escort you back to the dressmaker’s?" Tory called as she came up beside her. "The hero of Peru has matters of state to attend to."

"You had best keep an eye on him, now all of Thornhampton has seen him in Rolla’s tunic," Jenny declared.

Tory laughed. "You are on your way home, are you not?"

"I’m meeting Kit later; there’s nothing quite so cheering as a taproom full of dazzled admirers on a play night. But first I must see Owen safely tucked in for the night," she added, nodding back toward the dressing room. "It takes that child forever to change her dresses."

Tory had often wondered at the incongruous match of Jenny and Violet, but it was clear Jenny was very fond of the girl.

"It’s very kind of you to wait for her," Tory said.

"Well, Swan and I must look after the young ones, especially now that Aunt Hat is gone," Jenny shrugged. "In a way, I suppose Violet is the daughter I shall never have. There is so much foolishness poured into the heads of young girls. I hope by my example, at least, to teach the poor thing to behave with some sense in the world, although I must confess with Owen, it’s an uphill battle."

At that moment, Mr. Ashbrook emerged from the wings on his way to the stairs at the end of the little corridor where they were standing. He wore a paint-splattered old countryman’s smock that hung almost to his knees. A splotch of bright blue stiffened the end of one lock of the dark straw-colored hair that he shook back from his spectacles as he passed them, but he smiled, oblivious to his unkempt looks.

"Ladies," he nodded to them, tipping an imaginary hat.

"Still hard at work, Mr. Ashbrook?" Tory sallied. The man haunted the upper regions of the theatre like a bat, living in the paint-room and working at all hours of the night and day.

"Just beginning, I’m afraid, Mrs. Lightfoot. I had to come down tonight to see how my scenes were received."

"They were a triumph," said Jenny. "Your Temple of the Sun had the locals utterly bedazzled. Ought you not to be out enjoying yourself tonight?"    

Ashbrook paused and gave her a curious look. "But I enjoy my work, Mrs. Kennett. It is a great privilege to be allowed to continue at it. I mustn’t waste a single moment." And with another smile, he excused himself and hurried up the stairs.

"What an odd fellow," said Jenny, gazing up after him. "Has he no other life but this?"

"I don’t believe he has the means," Tory confided. "Anyway, I like him. Always a friendly word for everyone and absolutely sure of what he wants to do in life." Indeed, she envied that about him.

"However strange it may be," mused Jenny. "Must he wear those spectacles all the time? They give him such an owlish look."

"I don’t think he can see much without ‘em."

"Ah. That would explain a lot about his work." Jenny glanced again at Tory with a sparkle in her mismatched eyes. "And how is your own little opus coming along, my dear?"

"Oh, it does well enough," Tory replied carelessly. In truth, she was almost embarrassed to admit how much she enjoyed writing The Lure Of The Indies. How fun it was to write dialogue for Matty he had never had the wit to say to her, in fact. To orchestrate a romance far more delectable than anything that could have ever possibly happened between them in life. An idyllic romance that could only end in the young hero’s tragic death — that was the only destiny for perfection. Real love, thorny, perverse, hilarious, exhausting and enduring real love, the kind she shared with Jack, was far less suited to the drama. But much more entertaining in life. Love was going through every kind of hell together, that’s what Jack had told her, once. But she was not yet gifted enough to get that down on the page.

"Shall Captain Lightfoot have them swooning in their seats?"  asked Jenny.

"Captain Starhawke," Tory corrected her. "And, yes, Kit will need an army of link-boys to protect him from his adoring public."

"Mmm, he’ll enjoy that. Oh, here you are, Owen! Mrs. Hopworth will be fast asleep by now, we’ll have to rouse that sour maid of hers."

The three of them set out from the Brewhouse and down the street of brightly lit taverns and chop houses that were always busy at this hour on play nights. They rounded the corner and headed for the Tudor Inn, at the end of the next street, and the dressmaker’s, half a block beyond, where Jenny and Violet were lodging. But Tory did not stop at the inn; there was some sort of commotion further down the street and Tory hurried along with her friends to see what the matter was. A watchman was attempting to send some curious neighbors back to their beds; they all fell silent and stared as the three women strode past them and into the house.

Mrs. Hopworth, the dressmaker, was complaining to her maid in the little parlor off her shop, inside, but she bounded up when they came in, twisting the hem of her apron in both hands.

"There you are, at last!" she cried. "And all the trouble we’ve had this night on your account! The late Mr. Hopworth always advised me never to let to theatrical people. 'You never know where you are with ‘em, do ye,' said he. 'Never know what will come of it.' "

"What’s happened, Mrs. Hopworth?" asked Jenny.

"Ruin! Tribulation is what’s happened, Miss. Missus, I should say. That’s what he said."

"Who?"

"Gentleman, why, I should hardly call him such, pounding on my door after dark while you was away at your precious theatre. 'Where is Mrs. Kennett’s room,' cries he. 'She ain’t at home,' says I. 'Her room!' shouts he, fairly sweeping me out of his way as he thunders up the stairs, and all my nice things all a-tumble . . . "

But Jenny was already racing up the stairs herself, and Tory followed, dragging along an astonished Violet. The door stood open to their little room and the chaos inside. The wardrobe doors were thrown open and drawers had been pulled out of the bureau and tumbled on the floor or the beds. Bits of clothing and paste jewelry were strewn about, the little pots and jars on the vanity had been overturned, and the beds were disrupted, their linens torn away and one of the mattresses yanked sideways on its frame.

Violet let out a little cry, then dashed into the room, clutching up a discarded chemise, a stocking and a little string of cheap beads that broke in her hands. But Jenny stood rooted where she was.

"All my pretty things!" wailed Violet, flitting from wardrobe to vanity. "All spoilt!" It looked as if things had been thrown about by a willful child.

"A burglar wouldn’t do this," said Tory. "He would simply take it all. And he wouldn’t knock first and ask the landlady to let him in." She shook her head. "Is anything actually missing?"

"I’ll wager something is." Jenny’s voice was scarcely a whisper. Her face had paled, but her keen eyes were full of fire as she marched to the skewed bed.

"Who’s going to pay damages for all this trouble?" cried Mrs. Hopworth, thumping up the stairs behind them.

Tory saw Jenny crouch down by her bed, lift the corner of the mattress and slide her hand underneath. She felt all around, then stood and tugged the mattress onto the floor. But she found nothing in the slatted frame underneath or in the tangle of bedding on the floor.

"My earnings," she sighed, as Tory came up beside her. "They were never so much, a few coins I managed to hoard away as we moved from town to town. But they were mine."

Tory put her arm around her. "It’s all right, we’ll look after you. Is anything else gone?"

"The little velvet reticule I kept them in. It is worth precisely nothing, but it belonged to my mother. It’s all I have left of her."

"We’ll find the man who did it," Tory declared. "Mrs. Hopworth will describe him to the constable and we’ll —"

"I know who did it," said Jenny.

"Someone owes me compensation for all the uproar my household has been put through," Mrs. Hopworth exclaimed, at the doorway. "Theatre people! I should have known!"

"Theatre people were all at the theatre, tonight," Tory retorted. "None of us did this to your household, Mrs. Hopworth. It’s in your best interest to help us find out who did. What exactly can you tell us about him?"

"I can tell you the name he gave. Oh, yes, give a name, didn’t he? Nice as you please." She nodded at Jenny. "She knows. A Mr. Crowder, wasn’t it? Said he was your husband."

Tory spun around again toward Jenny. "He can’t get away with this!" she exploded.

"Of course he can" Jenny sighed. She had sunk down to perch on the edge of the wooden bed frame, looking limp, as if all the air had been let out of her.

"He can’t simply steal your things!"

"But they’re his things, too. I’m his wife. He owns whatever is mine." Jenny glanced up again at Tory, her expression utterly defeated. "He owns me."

Top: John Philip Kemble as Rolla in Pizarro, Sir Thomas Lawrence 1800
Above: Temple of Sun, from the play Pizarro. Illustrated London News 1856