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"You're right!" said the stage-manager, frantically pushing his hands through his rebellious hair. "You're right! But there might be some one at the organ who could tell us how the stage came to be suddenly darkened. Now Mauclair is nowhere to be found. Do you understand that?" Mauclair was the gas-man, who dispensed day and night at will on the stage of the Opera.
"What on earth is the matter?" said Kathleen. "Please, Miss," said the blue-coat, "your mother said there's a gas-man down here and I've been sent by headquarters to take him in charge. I think he's a sneak thief." "There's no such person here, officer," said Kathleen. Eliza still kept her sovereign wits about her.
Some person unknown must have interfered with the gas-man and his staff ... and that person unknown was obviously working on behalf of the kidnapper ... But what a funny idea to kidnap a performer on the stage! ... Send for the doctor of the theater, please." And Mifroid repeated, "Curious, decidedly curious business!"
The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gas-man at the Opera and of his two assistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine! ... What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again? ... She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe ... They took the train one day from "the northern railway station of the world." ... Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the same time! ... Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music! ...
When he had presents from the front, which happened every night, he gave them at once to the call-boy or the gas-man. To the women-folk, especially the plainer ones, he was always delightful. Never was any man more adored by the theater staff. And children, my own Edy included, were simply daft about him.
They were throwing pebbles on the top of the gasometer, and the grimy gas-man in change bade them desist. They watched him oil a turncock sunk in the ground between two furze-bushes. "Cokey, what's that for?" said Stalky. "To turn the gas on to the kitchens," said Cokey. "If so be I didn't turn her on, yeou young gen'lemen 'ud be larnin' your book by candlelight."
This series of little essays was printed in the New Monthly Magazine in 1826, beginning in January. I. THAT A BULLY is ALWAYS A COWARD. New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826. Hickman. This would be Tom Hickman, the pugilist. In Hazlitt's fine account of "The Fight," Hickman or the Gas-Man, "vapoured and swaggered too much, as if he wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the fight."
Thoroughly amused at the situation which compelled him to bring up the rear of the procession like the piano-tuner or the gas-man, Edestone marched along at the side of an attendant in livery, who evidently looked upon him as a clever vaudeville artist that had been brought in to entertain the company.
I was still a stranger in the theater, and in awe of Henry Irving personally; but I plucked up courage, and said: "I am very nervous about my first appearance with you. Couldn't we rehearse our scenes?" "We shall be all right!" he answered, "but we are not going to run the risk of being bottled up by a gas-man or a fiddler." When I spoke, I think he was conducting a band rehearsal.
The gas-man had his work to do over because some of the drop-lights were not in the centre of the ceilings. I tremble to think of what might have been if I had left the painter to his own devices.
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