The Merry Marauders Read online

  The Merry Marauders

  By

  Arthur J. Rees

  To

  JOHN REAY WATSON

  As a tribute of friendship and admiration

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  A Note on the Author

  I

  c/o THE MERRY MARAUDERS DRAMATIC CO.

  (On Tour).

  NORTH ISLAND MAIN TRUNK, N.Z.

  1st January, 1913.

  MY DEAR DICK:

  You will doubtless be surprised to learn that I am now a member of the profession you so greatly adorn, for the high hopes with which I accepted my uncle’s offer to leave England and join him in his Auckland business were rudely shattered when I arrived in this country. I certainly never anticipated that my share of helping Uncle Rufus to extend what he described as his ‘control of the New Zealand fruit trade’ would consist of selling threepenn’orths of apples and potatoes in a little shop in Auckland, while he hawked the same commodities round to suburban housewives in a hand-truck, and though I am not proud I unhesitatingly declined to have anything to do with such a vulgar enterprise. Uncle and I parted bad friends because I told him he had grossly deceived me and inveigled me out to New Zealand under false pretences, so I left him in order that I might find some means of livelihood more compatible with my tastes and temperament.

  Fortune threw in my way, by medium of an advertisement appearing in one of the Auckland newspapers, the opportunity which enabled me to join the Merry Marauders Dramatic Company, then about to go on tour, as advance agent, and although the manager insisted on a £30 guarantee before he would engage me, I was able to supplement my little capital to that extent by selling my watch and chain and a few other trifles of jewellery I possessed. I have always longed to enter the theatrical profession, and if I have not the ability ever to become such a star as you, there is no reason why I should not ascend fairly high in the Colonial ladder of stage renown, now that my feet are so firmly planted on the bottom rung. The position of advance agent to a company doing ‘the smalls’ in the Colonies is a most valuable foundation of experience upon which many Australasian actors have built their after fame. The manager told me this himself when I paid him my £30.

  The Merry Marauders Company with which we set out from Auckland for the King Country of the North Island, consists of thirteen members, including the manager and myself. The company is a fairly large one to go on the roads, but Hivson, the manager, says there is a lot of money in the New Zealand ‘smalls’ if they are well done, so he engaged four utility men in addition to the actors who play the hero, villain, and comedy parts, and an extra lady to support the leading lady and the soubrette. Then we have a pianist with sufficient stage experience to play parts as well. Hivson, as manager, and myself, as advance agent, complete the list. I am also to act when not in advance—small parts at first, but more important roles as I gain confidence and public approval.

  Our leading man, Irving Morrissey, is a tall, dark, cadaverous individual of forty, or thereabouts, who claims to be a wasted genius. He assured me in confidence that if he had gone to London when he was young, Sir Herbert Tree would have been compelled to hawk bootlaces for a living. I asked him why he had not sought fame in London, but he said that though he had plenty of vitality he had no energy. The surest proof of his genius, he added, was that he had never become famous, for, what, after all (he asked me) was fame, but a breath—a vapour? The breath of this man of wasted talents suggests beer, which I am told he drinks daily in large quantities in order to drown the memory of what might have been. Our leading lady is Miss Audrey Bendalind, a tall, statuesque young woman, who has asked me to use my influence with you to get her a chance in London to show the world how ‘Juliet’ should be played. She would accept a salary of £50 a night, with her fare paid over. Will you let me know when you hear of a London manager likely to close with this offer? The soubrette is a pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed girl named Ethel Laurie, who has graced the boards for four years—ever since she left the ribbon department of an Auckland drapery establishment. She aspires to play ingenue parts, and I think she would do them charmingly. Miss Bendalind looks down on Miss Laurie from her height of leading lady, but Miss Laurie has plenty of spirit, and is fully able to hold her own. Miss Gunderly, our remaining lady, is a thin dark girl with a world of woe in her tragic eyes, whose skilful portrayal of deceived rustic innocence is supposed to be based on some painful experience of her own in real life. At least, that is the impression I gathered from Hivson, who told me that like all great actresses she had gained her tragic power by going through the fire. Of the remaining members of the company only two—the villain and the comedian—call for mention, the four utility actors being wooden sort of men without any individuality, who are almost ignored by the others, owing to the lowness of their rank in the profession. Mr. Reginald Bunne, the villain, is a beetle-browed young man who has to wear a false nose in his parts owing to the natural member having been irretrievably damaged in a street brawl, in which he took for once the part of hero on behalf of a distressed damsel who was assaulted by a drunken sailor,—at any rate, that is how he accounts for the mishap. Off the stage he is very good-natured and affable. I like our comedian and stage manager, Barney King, the best of all the male members of the company, and he and I are already fast friends. He is short, stout, and genial; an excellent comedian who has packed a bewilderingly diversified stage career into his 35 years, having played in his time the widest range of parts—from leading man to the hind-quarters of a stage bullock, as he puts it—and with a fertile ingenuity for surmounting difficulty of stage production in small halls, gained during a long experience of stage-managing for New Zealand provincial companies. He has been all over New Zealand again and again in that capacity, and Hivson rightly looks upon him as a most valuable member of the Merry Marauders.

  Such, Dick, is the Merry Marauders Dramatic Company, which left Auckland this evening by the Main Trunk express bound south for the King Country. We shall play at Pukekohe and Ngaruawahia—these Maori names are supposed to be pronounced as they are spelt, if that is any guide to you—and one or two other towns along the line on our way down, but after we have done the bigger settlements of the King Country our destination will be wherever our fancy takes us. There is no ‘booking dates’ in the New Zealand back-blocks, and the length of the tour will depend entirely on circumstances. We are all in excellent health and spirits in the beautiful New Zealand climate; our life is a free and open one; and if the provincial New Zealand public only show a proper appreciation of the dramatic abilities of our talented combination I look forward to the time of my life.

  One thing is certain; we shall have some adventures on the road that should be worth relating, and I will keep an observant eye open for your benefit, Dick.

  Yours in anticipation,

  VAL.

  II

  TANGANUI,

  KING COUNTRY, N.Z.

  8th January, 1913.

  MY DEAR DICK:

  Have you ever ridden in a hearse? I do not mean as an inside passenger whose destination is the Underground, but have you ever taken a hearse along Piccadilly when no ‘taxi’ was available? Of course you haven’t, so I know it will interest you to hear the circumstances in which I was thankful to avail myself of that means of conveyance for the eleven members of the Merry Marauders Dramatic Company over seventeen miles of rough road in t
he interior of New Zealand. Eleven, I said? I meant twelve, for I didn’t count the manager of the company, who is now no other than myself. Yes; twelve souls in all, distributed as outsides and insides, for the men of the company, with a chivalry I had scarcely expected to find in the Colonies, courteously gave up the inside places to the ladies so that they could view the beautiful scenery en route more comfortably through the plate-glass sides of the hearse than the top, where the what-do-you-call-ems—the plumes—were but a poor substitute for strap-hangers, considering the bumpy nature of the road. However, the dear fellows did not complain, but made the lonely way ring with their merry songs as we dashed along at quite a brisk rate. I sat on the box seat with Irving Morrissey, our leading man (who hardly knows one end of a horse from another, but insisted on driving because he said it was not likely he’d get another chance of driving a hearse,) to distribute dodgers of the evening’s performance to any wayfarers we might happen to come across.

  “It isn’t exactly the turn-out you’d choose to go coaching to Brighton,” remarked Morrissey to me as we started away from the Pukerunui hotel, with Mr. Kelly, the landlord, waving good-bye from the door. “But it is better than walking, anyhow. Good luck to old Kelly, I say.” I earnestly endorsed the wish, and with reason, for, indeed, if it had not been for the kindness of that country hotel-keeper, our company would have been faced with the alternative of walking 150 miles back to Auckland, or of settling in Pukerunui and growing kumeras, the Maori sweet potato.

  The misfortune which had reduced us to this pass and elevated me to managerial rank was due to the truly awful conduct of Hivson, our former manager, who, after we had played Current Cash to a crowded house in Pukerunui, used our current cash to play three-handed solo whist with a couple of Jewish commercial travellers staying at the same hotel, when he was in such a state that he had to shut one eye to distinguish the ace from the deuce. Barney King, our comedian, who was downstairs late yarning with the landlord, and saw the last of the deplorable game—though he did not get there, in time, worse luck, to prevent the last of our performance takings and our fares to the next town falling into the hands of the Jews—declares that Hivson was finally cleared out through his eyes magnifying three small hearts in his own hand to a royal abondance. However that may be, Hivson lost every penny we had taken since leaving Auckland. He confessed the sad story to us the next morning, when he abjectly implored our forgiveness and bitterly cursed himself for not having gone an open misère on one particular hand he had held, which his half-drunken morning recollection now saw as an invincible combination. His might-have-been achievements were more exasperating than sad to us when we discovered that the Jewish birds of prey had winged their flight in the night and left us without a feather to fly with; salaries unpaid; no fares to the next town, and a sixteen-stone strange landlord to face, who had not yet seen the colour of our money.

  Hivson said that the best thing would be to disband the company at once, and as none of us had friends who could be touched by telegraph for funds, there didn’t seem anything else to do. We, therefore, agreed to the proposal, and Hivson immediately set forth on his walk back to Auckland. He seemed so full of contrition for his misconduct that we all forgave him, and Barney King, who is the best-hearted fellow in the world, pressed into his hand a little book called ‘Through Picturesque New Zealand on Foot,’ calling his attention to a particular passage which stated that the route through the King Country to Auckland offered scenic charms to the pedestrian second to none in the world. Poor Hivson seemed truly grateful for the book, which, he said, would doubtless give him some useful hints on how to live on the way, and after exacting our solemn promise to write to his wife to apprise her of his impending return, as soon as we could afford a stamp, he departed, fairly content with our forgiveness. None of us volunteered to accompany him, though several of our company lived in Auckland, and Hivson had sufficient perception left of what was due by him to us—about the only acknowledgment of indebtedness we were ever likely to receive from him, by the way—to refrain from questioning us about our future movements. I noticed Oscar Grayson, who plays the old men parts, furtively examining the soles of his boots as if he were thinking of following Hivson’s example; but I knew we men had to consider the girls of the company, whose nightly sacrifices on the stage in the cause of melodramatic love did not necessarily equip them for long distance pedestrianism off it.

  “You’d better come with me and see the landlord, Val,” said Barney King, breaking in on my worried review of the gloomy situation. “We can do nothing till we have squared him up, so we’d better do that at once.” I saw the wisdom of this advice, and reluctantly followed Barney towards the bar. The others sought the shelter of their rooms till the trying interview was over.

  The landlord was in the bar, talking to an early morning customer. The sight of his huge head and shoulders framed in the open side window—not unlike a big mastiff in his kennel—had such a disturbing effect on Barney and myself that we turned simultaneously and strode out into the street. “Let’s take a brisk five minutes walk and get the cobwebs out of our brains,” suggested Barney. “I never feel in good trim till I’ve had my morning’s walk.” I agreed that a morning walk was the best of all tonics, so we made for and easily scaled a small mountain just outside the town, which the previous day I had believed to be inaccessible. When we once more reached the hotel, with lagging footsteps, the morning had almost gone, but the landlord was still in the bar, reading the local newspaper. We took a few hesitating steps towards him. He rustled the paper, and our nerves were at such a tension that we found ourselves in the middle of the street without any hesitation at all.

  “It is disgraceful how these ignorant country hotel-keepers idle away their time while we actors sweat our brains to keep them in luxury,” declared Barney, with considerable bitterness. “I tell you, Val, doing ‘the smalls’ in New Zealand would be a profitable business if it were not for the extortionate bills of these cormorants.”

  As Mr. Kelly had generously reduced his charges to four shillings a day all round for the Merry Marauders, and had but a remote chance of collecting even that modest tariff, I thought Barney’s denunciation of the whole race of hotelkeepers was rather sweeping, but I forbore to offer any comment because he appeared so angry. I endeavoured to direct his thoughts to the business in hand by remarking that perhaps we had better get the ‘squaring up’ done without further delay.

  “If you had any common-sense you’d know that it is as much as a man’s life is worth to disturb one of these great hulking brutes of publicans while he is reading the morning paper,” retorted Barney, more crossly still. “It’s like the nerve of an English new chum, who’s been in New Zealand about five minutes, to try and teach a man who knows every hotel in the country how to approach a publican on a mission of extreme delicacy. Why, it’s part of a country publican’s religion to read the paper from the title to the imprint every day, and God help the man who disturbs him in the process. Did you observe how massive his bare arms are?”

  I had indeed been painfully impressed not only by Mr. Kelly’s arms, but by the herculean proportions of his massive bull neck and shoulders, and I said so.

  “He’s the largest publican in New Zealand—and the strongest,” said Barney. “The point is, as we wish to ask him to do us a favour, not to disturb him while he is reading his paper. Let us take another walk till he is finished.”

  We walked through the little town and inspected the contents of its half-dozen shops with minute observation. Then we put in another half-hour reading and re-reading the inscription on the Maori war memorial at the end of the street. That exhausted our opportunities for delay, and slowly we retraced our steps.

  “I think we’d better engage him in conversation before we break the news to him,” remarked Barney, as we once more neared the hotel. “Let’s try and smooth him down by praising his one-eyed town—all these old residents are as proud of their town as if they made it with their o
wn hands. Tell him he’s got quite a good settlement here.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything about a settlement if I were you,” I replied. “It will be better to keep the talk on less dangerous grounds. Hallo, there he is standing at the door!”

  His bulk loomed so large in its completeness that Barney and I would have once more shirked the task if Mr. Kelly had not seen us and beckoned. We approached, to be greeted with a cordial invitation to join him in a drink. This was heaping coals of fire on our heads with a vengeance, but we could do nothing else but accept. Mr. Kelly specially recommended his house whiskey. We drank to his health, and then there was an awkward pause. As neither Barney nor myself was able to terminate it decently by returning the landlord’s hospitality, the landlord tactfully relieved our embarrassment by pretending to tidy up his little bar. The floor creaked beneath his weighty tread as he moved about among the glasses.

  “Mr. Kelly!” said I, stimulated to desperate courage by the house whiskey, and determined to act before its strength evaporated.

  He was up at the far end of the bar when I spoke, but he was at my side as soon as I had uttered his name. It is marvellous how agile and quick some of these big men are. I noticed with dismay that he had a folded account clumsily concealed within his hand, but I was in for it now, and no further retreat was possible.

  “About our b-b-b-bill, Mr. Kelly,” I said, stuttering badly; “our little b-b-b-bill.”

  “I thought ye’d be wantin’ it,” he replied, bringing the account forth from its place of concealment and flattening out its creases with the largest palm I ever saw attached to mortal hand.

  I took the account and immediately handed it to Barney, who returned it as though it burnt him. Seeing there was no help for it, I opened the bill and made a pretence of looking at the items, but the figures danced up and down in a tremulous jig. I tried to screw up my courage to tell the landlord the truth, but the words would not come.