The stage-door was up a narrow and dirty court leading from the Strand. At the opening of the court stood a stout fair man, who looked like a German, and whose coarse, swollen face and dull eyes bore witness to a life of low dissipation. He was respectably but not well dressed, and he swung the cheap and showy walking-stick in his hand slowly backwards and forwards, in a stolidly swaggering and aggressive manner. I should not have noticed him so particularly, but for the fact that he filled the narrow entrance to the passage so completely that I had to ask him to let me pass. Instead of immediately complying, he looked at me from my feet to my head with surly, half-tipsy insolence, and gave a short thick laugh.
'Oh, so you're one of the swells, I suppose, who come hanging round stage-doors to tempt hard-working respectable women away from their lawful husbands! But it won't do. I tell you it won't do!'
I pushed him aside with one vigorous thrust and went up the court, followed by the outraged gentleman, who made no attempt to molest me except by a torrent of abusive eloquence, from which I gathered that he was the husband of one of the actresses at the theatre, and that she did not appreciate the virtues of her lord and master as he considered she ought, but that, nevertheless, he persisted in affording her the protection of his manly arm, and would do so in spite of all the d----d 'mashers' in London.
At this point the stage-doorkeeper came out of his little box, and informed the angry gentleman that if he went on disgracing the place by his scandalous conduct his wife's services would be dispensed with; 'and if there's no money for her to earn, there'll be no beer for you to drink, Mr. Ellmer,' continued the little old man, with more point than politeness.
The threat had instant effect. Mr. Ellmer subsided into indignant mumbling, and went down the court again.
I had forgotten myself in interest at the rout of Mr. Ellmer, to whom I had taken a rabid dislike, and was standing in the full, if feeble light of the gas over the stage-door, when an inner door was thrust open, and the next moment Fabian Scott was shaking my hand heartily.
'Hallo, Harry! I am glad to see you again. I was afraid you were going away without a word to your old friends; but you were always better than your reputation. Got over your accident all right--eh?'