Books: Peg Woffington
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Charles Reade >> Peg Woffington
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Sir Charles clinched his teeth.
"I accept the delicate commission," replied he, "that you may see how
easily the man of the world drops what the rustic is eager to pick up."
"That is better," said the actress, with a provoking appearance of
good-humor. "You have a woman's tongue, if not her wit; but, my good
soul," added she, with cool _hauteur,_ "remember you have something to do
of more importance than anything you can say."
"I accept your courteous dismissal, madam," said Pomander, grinding his
teeth. "I will send a carpenter for your swain. And I leave you."
He bowed to the ground.
"Thanks for the double favor, good Sir Charles."
She courtesied to the floor.
Feminine vengeance! He had come between her and her love. All very
clever, Mrs. Actress; but was it wise?
"I am revenged," thought Mrs. Woffington, with a little feminine smirk.
"I will be revenged," vowed Pomander, clinching his teeth.
CHAPTER VII.
COMPARE a November day with a May day. They are not more unlike than a
beautiful woman in company with a man she is indifferent to or averse,
and the same woman with the man of her heart by her side.
At sight of Mr. Vane, all her coldness and _nonchalance_ gave way to a
gentle complacency; and when she spoke to him, her voice, so clear and
cutting in the late _assaut d'armes,_ sank of its own accord into the
most tender, delicious tone imaginable.
Mr. Vane and she made love. He pleased her, and she desired to please
him. My reader knows her wit, her _finesse,_ her fluency; but he cannot
conceive how god-like was her way of making love. I can put a few of the
corpses of her words upon paper, but where are the heavenly tones--now
calm and convincing, now soft and melancholy, now thrilling with
tenderness, now glowing with the fiery eloquence of passion? She told him
that she knew the map of his face; that for some days past he had been
subject to an influence adverse to her. She begged him, calmly, for his
own sake, to distrust false friends, and judge her by his own heart,
eyes, and judgment. He promised her he would.
"And I do trust you, in spite of them all," said he; "for your face is
the shrine of sincerity and candor. I alone know you.
Then she prayed him to observe the heartlessness of his sex, and to say
whether she had done ill to hide the riches of her heart from the cold
and shallow, and to keep them all for one honest man, "who will be my
friend, I hope," said she, "as well as my lover."
"Ah!" said Vane, "that is my ambition."
"We actresses," said she, "make good the old proverb, 'Many lovers, but
few friends.' And oh, 'tis we who need a friend. Will you be mine?"
While he lived, he would.
In turn, he begged her to be generous, and tell him the way for him,
Ernest Vane, inferior in wit and address to many of her admirers, to win
her heart from them all.
This singular woman's answer is, I think, worth attention.
"Never act in my presence; never try to be eloquent, or clever; never
force a sentiment, or turn a phrase. Remember, I am the goddess of
tricks. Do not descend to competition with me and the Pomanders of the
world. At all littlenesses, you will ever be awkward in my eyes. And I am
a woman. I must have a superior to love--lie open to my eye. Light itself
is not more beautiful than the upright man, whose bosom is open to the
day. Oh yes! fear not you will be my superior, dear; for in me honesty
has to struggle against the habits of my art and life. Be simple and
sincere, and I shall love you, and bless the hour you shone upon my cold,
artificial life. Ah, Ernest!" said she, fixing on his eye her own, the
fire of which melted into tenderness as she spoke, "be my friend. Come
between me and the temptations of an unprotected life--the recklessness
of a vacant heart."
He threw himself at her feet. He called her an angel. He told her he was
unworthy of her, but that he would try and deserve her. Then he
hesitated, and trembling he said:
"I will be frank and loyal. Had I not better tell you everything? You
will not hate me for a confession I make myself?"
"I shall like you better--oh! so much better!"
"Then I will own to you--"
"Oh, do not tell me you have ever loved before me! I could not bear to
hear it!" cried this inconsistent personage.
The other weak creature needed no more.
"I see plainly I never loved but you," said he.
"Let me hear that only!" cried she; "I am jealous even of the past. Say
you never loved but me. Never mind whether it is true. My child, you do
not even yet know love. Ernest, shall I make you love--as none of your
sex ever loved--with heart, and brain, and breath, and life, and soul?"
With these rapturous words, she poured the soul of love into his eyes; he
forgot everything in the world but her; he dissolved in present happiness
and vowed himself hers forever. And she, for her part, bade him but
retain her esteem and no woman ever went further in love than she would.
She was a true epicure. She had learned that passion, vulgar in itself,
is god-like when based upon esteem.
This tender scene was interrupted by the call-boy, who brought Mrs.
Woffington a note from the manager, informing her there would be no
rehearsal. This left her at liberty, and she proceeded to take a somewhat
abrupt leave of Mr. Vane. He was endeavoring to persuade her to let him
be her companion until dinner-time (she was to be his quest), when
Pomander entered the room.
Mrs. Woffington, however, was not to be persuaded, she excused herself on
the score of a duty which she said she had to perform, and whispering as
she passed Pomander, "Keep your own counsel," she went out rather
precipitately.
Vane looked slightly disappointed.
Sir Charles, who had returned to see whether (as he fully expected) she
had told Vane everything--and who, at that moment, perhaps, would not
have been sorry had Mrs. Woffington's lover called him to serious
account--finding it was not her intention to make mischief, and not
choosing to publish his own defeat, dropped quietly into his old line,
and determined to keep the lovers in sight, and play for revenge. He
smiled and said: "My good sir, nobody can hope to monopolize Mrs.
Woffington. She has others to do justice to besides you."
To his surprise, Mr. Vane turned instantly round upon him, and, looking
him haughtily in the face, said: "Sir Charles Pomander, the settled
malignity with which you pursue that lady is unmanly and offensive to me,
who love her. Let our acquaintance cease here, if you please, or let her
be sacred from your venomous tongue."
Sir Charles bowed stiffly, and replied, that it was only due to himself
to withdraw a protection so little appreciated.
The two friends were in the very act of separating forever, when who
should run in but Pompey, the renegade. He darted up to Sir Charles, and
said: "Massa Pomannah she in a coach, going to 10, Hercules Buildings.
I'm in a hurry, Massa Pomannah."
"Where?" cried Pomander. "Say that again."
"10, Hercules Buildings, Lambeth. Me in a hurry, Massa Pomannah."
"Faithful child, there's a guinea for thee. Fly!"
The slave flew, and, taking a short cut, caught and fastened on to the
slow vehicle in the Strand.
"It is a house of rendezvous," said Sir Charles, half to himself, half to
Mr. Vane. He repeated in triumph: "It is a house of rendezvous." He then,
recovering his _sang-froid,_ and treating it all as a matter of course,
explained that at 10, Hercules Buildings, was a fashionable shop, with
entrances from two streets; that the best Indian scarfs and shawls were
sold there, and that ladies kept their carriages waiting an immense time
in the principal street, while they were supposed to be in the shop, or
the show-room. He then went on to say that he had only this morning heard
that the intimacy between Mrs. Woffington and a Colonel Murthwaite,
although publicly broken off for prudential reasons, was still
clandestinely carried on. She had, doubtless, slipped away to meet the
colonel.
Mr. Vane turned pale.
"No! I will not suspect. I will not dog her like a bloodhound," cried he.
"I will!" said Pomander.
"You! By what right?"
"The right of curiosity. I will know whether it is you who are imposed
on, or whether you are right, and all the world is deceived in this
woman."
He ran out; but, for all his speed, when he got into the street there was
the jealous lover at his elbow. They darted with all speed into the
Strand; got a coach. Sir Charles, on the box, gave Jehu a guinea, and
took the reins--and by a Niagara of whipcord they attained Lambeth; and
at length, to his delight, Pomander saw another coach before him with a
gold-laced black slave behind it. The coach stopped; and the slave came
to the door. The shop in question was a few hundred yards distant. The
adroit Sir Charles not only stopped but turned his coach, and let the
horses crawl back toward London; he also flogged the side panels to draw
the attention of Mr. Vane. That gentleman looked through the little
circular window at the back of the vehicle, and saw a lady paying the
coachman. There was no mistaking her figure. This lady, then, followed at
a distance by her slave, walked on toward Hercules Buildings; and it was
his miserable fate to see her look uneasily round, and at last glide in
at a side door, close to the silk-mercer's shop.
The carriage stopped. Sir Charles came himself to the door.
"Now, Vane," said he, "before I consent to go any further in this
business, you must promise me to be cool and reasonable. I abhor
absurdity; and there must be no swords drawn for this little hypocrite."
"I submit to no dictation," said Vane, white as a sheet.
"You have benefited so far by my knowledge," said the other politely;
"let me, who am self-possessed, claim some influence with you."
"Forgive me!" said poor Vane. "My ang--my sorrow that such an angel
should be a monster of deceit." He could say no more.
They walked to the shop.
"How she peeped, this way and that," said Pomander, "sly little Woffy!
"No! on second thoughts," said he, "it is the other street we must
reconnoiter; and, if we don't see her there, we will enter the shop, and
by dint of this purse we shall soon untie the knot of the Woffington
riddle."
Vane leaned heavily on his tormentor.
"I am faint," said he.
"Lean on me, my dear friend," said Sir Charles. "Your weakness will leave
you in the next street."
In the next street they discovered--nothing. In the shop, they found--no
Mrs. Woffington. They returned to the principal street. Vane began to
hope there was no positive evidence. Suddenly three stories up a fiddle
was heard. Pomander took no notice, but Vane turned red; this put Sir
Charles upon the scent.
"Stay!" said he. "Is not that an Irish tune?"
Vane groaned. He covered his face with his hands, and hissed out:
"It is her favorite tune."
"Aha!" said Pomander. "Follow me!"
They crept up the stairs, Pomander in advance; they heard the signs of an
Irish orgie--a rattling jig played and danced with the inspiriting
interjections of that frolicsome nation. These sounds ceased after a
while, and Pomander laid his hand on his friend's shoulder.
"I prepare you," said he, "for what you are sure to see. This woman was
an Irish bricklayer's daughter, and 'what is bred in the bone never comes
out of the flesh;' you will find her sitting on some Irishman's knee,
whose limbs are ever so much stouter than yours. You are the man of her
head, and this is the man of her heart. These things would be monstrous,
if they were not common; incredible, if we did not see them every day.
But this poor fellow, whom probably she deceives as well as you, is not
to be sacrificed like a dog to your unjust wrath; he is as superior to
her as you are to him."
"I will commit no violence," said Vane. "I still hope she is innocent."
Pomander smiled, and said he hoped so too.
"And if she is what you think, I will but show her she is known, and,
blaming myself as much as her--oh yes! more than her!--I will go down
this night to Shropshire, and never speak word to her again in this world
or the next."
"Good," said Sir Charles.
"'Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte est pour le sot, L'honndete homine
trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.'
Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Then follow me."
Turning the handle gently, he opened the door like lightning, and was in
the room. Vane's head peered over his shoulder. She was actually there!
For once in her life, the cautious, artful woman was taken by surprise.
She gave a little scream, and turned as red as fire. But Sir Charles
surprised somebody else even more than he did poor Mrs. Woffington.
It would be impertinent to tantalize my reader, but I flatter myself this
history is not written with power enough to do that, and I may venture to
leave him to guess whom Sir Charles Pomander surprised more than he did
the actress, while I go back for the lagging sheep.
CHAPTER VIII.
JAMES TRIPLET, water in his eye, but fire in his heart, went home on
wings. Arrived there, he anticipated curiosity by informing all hands he
should answer no questions. Only in the intervals of a work, which was to
take the family out of all its troubles, he should gradually unfold a
tale, verging on the marvelous--a tale whose only fault was, that
fiction, by which alone the family could hope to be great, paled beside
it. He then seized some sheets of paper fished out some old dramatic
sketches, and a list of _dramatis personae,_ prepared years ago, and
plunged into a comedy. As he wrote, true to his promise, he painted,
Triplet-wise, that story which we have coldly related, and made it
appear, to all but Mrs. Triplet, that he was under the tutela, or express
protection of Mrs. Woffington, who would push his fortunes until the only
difficulty would be to keep arrogance out of the family heart.
Mrs. Triplet groaned aloud. "You have brought the picture home, I see,"
said she.
"Of course I have. She is going to give me a sitting."
"At what hour, of what day?" said Mrs. Triplet, with a world of meaning.
"She did not say," replied Triplet, avoiding his wife's eye.
"I know she did not," was the answer. "I would rather you had brought me
the ten shillings than this fine story," said she.
"Wife!" said Triplet, "don't put me into a frame of mind in which
successful comedies are not written." He scribbled away; but his wife's
despondency told upon the man of disappointments. Then he stuck fast;
then he became fidgety.
"Do keep those children quiet!" said the father.
"Hush, my dears," said the mother; "let your father write. Comedy seems
to give you more trouble than tragedy, James," added she, soothingly.
"Yes," was his answer. "Sorrow comes somehow more natural to me; but for
all that I have got a bright thought, Mrs. Triplet. Listen, all of you.
You see, Jane, they are all at a sumptuous banquet, all the _dramatis
personae,_ except the poet."
Triplet went on writing, and reading his work out: "Music, sparkling
wine, massive plate, rose-water in the hand-glasses, soup, fish--shall I
have three sorts of fish? I will; they are cheap in this market. Ah!
Fortune, you wretch, here at least I am your master, and I'll make you
know it-- venison," wrote Triplet, with a malicious grin, "game, pickles
and provocatives in the center of the table; then up jumps one of the
guests, and says he--"
"Oh dear, I am so hungry."
This was not from the comedy, but from one of the boys.
"And so am I," cried a girl.
"That is an absurd remark, Lysimachus," said Triplet with a suspicious
calmness. "How can a boy be hungry three hours after breakfast?"
"But, father, there was no breakfast for breakfast."
"Now I ask you, Mrs. Triplet," appealed the author, "how I am to write
comic scenes if you let Lysimachus and Roxalana here put the heavy
business in every five minutes?"
"Forgive them; the poor things are hungry."
"Then let them be hungry in another room," said the irritated scribe.
"They shan't cling round my pen, and paralyze it, just when it is going
to make all our fortunes; but you women," snapped Triplet the Just, "have
no consideration for people's feelings. Send them all to bed; every man
Jack of them!"
Finding the conversation taking this turn, the brats raised a unanimous
howl.
Triplet darted a fierce glance at them. "Hungry, hungry," cried he; "is
that a proper expression to use before a father who is sitting down here,
all gayety" (scratching wildly with his pen) "and hilarity" (scratch) "to
write a com--com--" he choked a moment; then in a very different voice,
all sadness and tenderness, he said: "Where's the youngest--where's Lucy?
As if I didn't know you are hungry."
Lucy came to him directly. He took her on his knee, pressed her gently to
his side, and wrote silently. The others were still.
"Father," said Lucy, aged five, the germ of a woman, "I am not tho very
hungry.
"And I am not hungry at all," said bluff Lysimachus, taking his sister's
cue; then going upon his own tact he added, "I had a great piece of bread
and butter yesterday!"
"Wife, they will drive me mad!" and he dashed at the paper.
The second boy explained to his mother, _sotto voce:_ "Mother, he _made_
us hungry out of his book."
"It is a beautiful book," said Lucy. "Is it a cookery book?"
Triplet roared: "Do you hear that?" inquired he, all trace of ill-humor
gone. "Wife," he resumed, after a gallant scribble, "I took that sermon I
wrote."
"And beautiful it was, James. I'm sure it quite cheered me up with
thinking that we shall all be dead before so very long."
"Well, the reverend gentleman would not have it. He said it was too hard
upon sin. 'You run at the Devil like a mad bull,' said he. 'Sell it in
Lambeth, sir; here calmness and decency are before everything,' says he.
'My congregation expect to go to heaven down hill. Perhaps the chaplain
of Newgate might give you a crown for it,' said he," and Triplet dashed
viciously at the paper. "Ah!" sighed he, "if my friend Mrs. Woffington
would but drop these stupid comedies and take to tragedy, this house
would soon be all smiles."
"Oh James!" replied Mrs. Triplet, almost peevishly, "how can you expect
anything but fine words from that woman? You won't believe what all the
world says. You will trust to your own good heart."
"I haven't a good heart," said the poor, honest fellow. "I spoke like a
brute to you just now."
"Never mind, James," said the woman. "I wonder how you put up with me at
all--a sick, useless creature. I often wish to die, for your sake. I know
you would do better. I am such a weight round your neck."
The man made no answer, but he put Lucy gently down, and went to the
woman, and took her forehead to his bosom, and held it there; and after a
while returned with silent energy to his comedy.
"Play us a tune on the fiddle, father."
"Ay, do, husband. That helps you often in your writing."
Lysimachus brought him the fiddle, and Triplet essayed a merry tune; but
it came out so doleful, that he shook his head, and laid the instrument
down. Music must be in the heart, or it will come out of the
fingers--notes, not music.
"No," said he; "let us be serious and finish this comedy slap off.
Perhaps it hitches because I forgot to invoke the comic muse. She must be
a black-hearted jade, if she doesn't come with merry notions to a poor
devil, starving in the midst of his hungry little ones."
"We are past help from heathen goddesses," said the woman. "We must pray
to Heaven to look down upon us and our children."
The man looked up with a very bad expression on his countenance.
"You forget," said he sullenly, "our street is very narrow, and the
opposite houses are very high."
"James!"
"How can Heaven be expected to see what honest folk endure in so dark a
hole as this?" cried the man, fiercely.
"James," said the woman, with fear and sorrow, "what words are these?"
The man rose and flung his pen upon the floor.
"Have we given honesty a fair trial-- yes or no?"
"No!" said the woman, without a moment's hesitation; "not till we die, as
we have lived. Heaven is higher than the sky; children," said she, lest
perchance her husband's words should have harmed their young souls, "the
sky is above the earth, and heaven is higher than the sky; and Heaven is
just."
"I suppose it is so," said the man, a little cowed by her. "Everybody
says so. I think so, at bottom, myself; but I can't see it. I want to see
it, but I can't!" cried he, fiercely. "Have my children offended Heaven?
They will starve--they will die! If I was Heaven, I'd be just, and send
an angel to take these children's part. They cried to me for bread--I had
no bread; so I gave them hard words. The moment I had done that I knew it
was all over. God knows it took a long while to break my heart; but it is
broken at last; quite, quite broken! broken! broken!"
And the poor thing laid his head upon the table, and sobbed, beyond all
power of restraint. The children cried round him, scarce knowing why; and
Mrs. Triplet could only say, "My poor husband!" and prayed and wept upon
the couch where she lay.
It was at this juncture that a lady, who had knocked gently and unheard,
opened the door, and with a light step entered the apartment; but no
sooner had she caught sight of Triplet's anguish, than, saying hastily,
"Stay, I forgot something," she made as hasty an exit.
This gave Triplet a moment to recover himself; and Mrs. Woffington, whose
lynx eye had comprehended all at a glance, and who had determined at once
what line to take, came flying in again, saying:
"Wasn't somebody inquiring for an angel? Here I am. See, Mr. Triplet;"
and she showed him a note, which said: "Madam, you are an angel. From a
perfect stranger," explained she; "so it must be true."
"Mrs. Woffington," said Mr. Triplet to his wife. Mrs. Woffington planted
herself in the middle of the floor, and with a comical glance, setting
her arms akimbo, uttered a shrill whistle.
"Now you will see another angel--there are two sorts of them."
Pompey came in with a basket; she took it from him.
"Lucifer, avaunt!" cried she, in a terrible tone, that drove him to the
wall; "and wait outside the door," added she, conversationally.
"I heard you were ill, ma'am, and I have brought you some physic -- black
draughts from Burgundy;" and she smiled. And, recovered from their first
surprise, young and old began to thaw beneath that witching, irresistible
smile. "Mrs. Triplet, I have come to give your husband a sitting; will
you allow me to eat my little luncheon with you? I am so hungry." Then
she clapped her hands, and in ran Pompey. She sent him for a pie she
professed to have fallen in love with at the corner of the street.
"Mother," said Alcibiades, "will the lady give me a bit of her pie?"
"Hush! you rude boy!" cried the mother.
"She is not much of a lady if she does not," cried Mrs. Woffington. "Now,
children, first let us look at--ahem--a comedy. Nineteen _dramatis
personae!_ What do you say, children, shall we cut out seven, or nine?
that is the question. You can't bring your armies into our drawing-rooms,
Mr. Dagger-and-bowl. Are you the Marlborough of comedy? Can you marshal
battalions on a turkey carpet, and make gentlefolks witty in platoons?
What is this in the first act? A duel, and both wounded! You butcher!"
"They are not to die, ma'am!" cried Triplet, deprecatingly "upon my
honor," said he, solemnly, spreading his bands on his bosom.
"Do you think I'll trust their lives with you? No! Give me a pen; this is
the way we run people through the body." Then she wrote ("business."
Araminta looks out of the garret window. Combatants drop their swords,
put their hands to their hearts, and stagger off O. P. and P. S.) "Now,
children, who helps me to lay the cloth?"
"I!"
"And I!" (The children run to the cupboard.)
_Mrs. Triplet_ (half rising). "Madam, I--can't think of allowing you."
Mrs. Woffington replied: "Sit down, madam, or I must use brute force. If
you are ill, be ill--till I make you well. Twelve plates, quick!
Twenty-four knives, quicker! Forty-eight forks quickest!" She met the
children with the cloth and laid it; then she met them again and laid
knives and forks, all at full gallop, which mightily excited the bairns.
Pompey came in with the pie, Mrs. Woffington took it and set it before
Triplet.
_Mrs. Woffington._ "Your coat, Mr. Triplet, if you please."
_Mr. Triplet._ "My coat, madam!"
_Mrs. Woffington._ "Yes, off with it-- there's a hole in it--and carve."
Then she whipped to the other end of the table and stitched like
wild-fire. "Be pleased to cast your eyes on that, Mrs. Triplet. Pass it
to the lady, young gentleman. Fire away, Mr. Triplet, never mind us
women. Woffington's housewife, ma'am, fearful to the eye, only it holds
everything in the world, and there is a small space for everything
else--to be returned by the bearer. Thank you, sir." (Stitches away like
lightning at the coat.) "Eat away, children! now is your time; when once
I begin, the pie will soon end; I do everything so quick."
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