THE playhouse in Portugal Street was rocking to an applause so frantic that it seemed as though the walls would fall like those of Jericho. Miss Polly, Miss Lucy and all the company stood on the stage to receive the plaudits—Diana like to faint with her emotion. The lights, the faces swam about her in a glittering whirl, and she saw all, yet not one distinctly. The crowd shouted for “Polly! Polly!” and, Walker relinquishing her hand, she stood alone a moment, the lovely mark for all the cries and cheering. What does a woman feel when she knows herself a queen enthroned and crowned by an adoring people? Surely something of this triumph must a player taste that has topped her part and outshone the stars, and knows her every smile, her every look a conquest.
The crowd cried for the author, coupling his name with Polly’s, and Mr. Gay, exquisitely fine in a purple coat laced with gold, came forward and taking her finger tips led her forward to the footlights and bowed first to her, then to the audience. Such a scene was scarce known as the two fronted the London public and the gallery screamed till ’twas hoarse for one song more—They would, they must hear that silver voice again. Mr. Gay turned to her, bowing:
“Will you oblige our patrons, Madam?” and instantly the orchestra broke forth and her clear voice out-soared it all, and she trilled and laughed, and threw her sweet glances with a kind of surprise and joy about the house, seeming to receive as well as give a heartfelt pleasure. And since they still would not be quieted she stretched her arms as if to embrace the charming persons that were so kind to her, and then slowly and reluctant passed up the stage and disappeared from their eyes.
Twice they recalled her, and at last when the curtain was forced to be dropt ’twas extreme difficult to clear the house of the enthusiasts. Behind the scenes Mr. Gay claspt the girl by both hands and in his joy and excitement saluted her on the blushing cheek, nor did she draw back.
“My dear, I thank you cordially,” says he, “You bettered my creation. You added graces of your own that I dreamed but could not embody in pen and ink. You assured my success with your own.”
“And mine!” cries Mr. Rich, joining them. “Never was such a bumper house. I saw her Grace of Queensbury break her fan applauding. And as for the gallery—six women were dragged out fainting with the press. And yet so far as the audience was concerned you might hear a pin drop at any moment. Your Benefit’s ensured, Mrs. Fenton.”
They were so occupied with the young beauty that neither observed Mrs. Bishop hovering near with a sullen air as of one neglected.
“Since Mrs. Fenton did not perform the whole opera herself, I trust, gentlemen, to hear that the other performers did not wholly displease you.”
They turned somewhat shamed, and Diana with them.
“Indeed, Mrs. Bishop, your voice was divine,” she cried;— “Little could I have done but that your presence gave me confidence and the beauty of your singing was a lesson in every note. I thank you sincerely.”
’Twas generous, for the petty malice of the woman had impeded her more than once had she not been rather Polly than Diana all that night. The two gentlemen expressed their acknowledgments to Mrs. Bishop and all the company in terms so handsome as almost to satiate even the vanity of the player—the most avid vanity of the world.
But when Diana turned away to her dressing-room she saw before her a gallant figure with his sword by his side. At first in the flickering candlelight she knew not the gentleman and ’twas Miss Polly greeted him all sparkling smiles and delight, the glow of the applauding house still upon her. My Lord Baltimore stepped forward, bowing low, and instantly Polly vanished and Diana, cold and haughty as when the huntsman surprised her in her forest pool, stood before him. She said not a word and made as though to pass to her dressing-room.
“Madam, I am come for the answer to all my words writ and spoken. Give me but a tithe of the courtesy you bestow on the public and at least deign a reply. If I am not odious in your eyes, pity the madness that has reduced me to this plea. I love you. Does this avowal excite no generous emotion?”
They stood in the angle of the wall, and the players were still engaged behind the dropt curtain with their friends who swarmed upon the stage to rejoice with them.
How far was his Lordship sincere? Diana might ask herself this, but ’twas more than he himself could answer! He writhed in a flame of desire but the mask of his composure hid it, and ’tis well known that desire and the heart need have little in common unless it be rooted in a love native to all the higher and nobler sensibilities. No woman had ever yet flouted him. A passion of anger and incredulity that it now could be, fanned the flame of desire and made it dangerous. Reason was routed, honour—for he knew himself bound in honour to another—vanquished.
My Lady Fanny had been within his sight all that evening, beautiful and glittering. He had seen her blue eyes turn his way and hastily averted—those bright audacious eyes that never dropt before another. But the magic of her presence was evaporated. He saw her and marvelled that she had swept him away into an emotion he was now incapable of feeling. Diana stood before him, and to hold that proud but shy beauty in his arms, to know it his and his only, to have those lips against his own, that velvet cheek pressed to his, and more than all this, to know himself the conqueror where he had been disdained,—there was nothing in heaven nor earth that he would not have given at that moment to bend her to his will, and none the less because her bright graces had made her this night the idol of the only world he valued. Her possession would exalt him beyond all former successes. Not a man but would envy him,—not a tongue but would tell his triumph.
He prest nearer to her.
“I loved you before your success, Madam, therefore you know my love honest, and your success I value not because it does but give you hundreds of lovers more to plunge me in jealousy and despair. Yet tonight—though I had rehearsed all your charms and each a dagger in my heart, I discovered something—O how can I name the unspeakable!—even more bewitching. Indeed you are a jewel a King might wear in his crown. Beloved, worshipt, O hear your adorer. My dearest life, I entreat!”
She drew herself back against the wainscot and stood there quivering, but with a courage that surprised herself after to recall it. ’Twas the courage of the deer at bay.
“My Lord, I have returned you no answer and you had done better to take that as it was meant. But since it is not so I will ask you this. What do you offer me?”
The clear candour of her tone together with her direct gaze for a moment nonplussed him, but he recovered his coolness quickly. Aha! so the sweet frost-piece could traffic against her virtue! Then the bargain was all but sealed.
“Madam, my whole heart. My adoration. My entire and eternal devotion. And more.”
“What more, Sir?”
“Madam, yourself shall write what conditions you will and this hand subscribe them unread—even to the half of my kingdom, as another lover said long since.”
“That lover addrest his offer to his wife, my Lord, if I remember the Scripture rightly. Do you?”
There was a moment’s silence. It came so unexpected. His outstretched hand fell by his side—his eye wavered. What? But no, ’twas impossible. She was but setting her merit high that there might be margin for a descent when the terms were fixed. To parley was the beginning of surrender.
“My charmer knows there is nothing I can refuse her. I am acquiescent to her lightest command. And if a mere ceremony which is nothing in the eye of true affection can solace her timid scruples I own ’tis a matter to be considered——”
“Your Lordship had not already considered it?”
“Why no—I own it. ’Tis love that’s all to my mind,—the true union of two minds and bodies formed to harmonize for eternity. What should a currish parson have to do between my charmer and me? And how could he still further strengthen a bond that only death can end? My restless days and miserable nights teach me that my darling is all to me. Can any foolish ceremony bind me to more? All I have and am is yours. Take and use me as you will.”
“In short, your Lordship offers me the position of your mistress. Setting aside all protestations it comes to this.”
“Why that harsh name that the world misuses, my beloved? It is true you shall be my mistress for I will be the humblest and faithfullest of all your servants. But what I offer you is to be my heart’s empress, and these blushing hesitating questions of yours assure me that I am not odious to my angel.”
He prest nearer and took her hand. She twitcht it sharply away. Certainly there was neither blushing nor hesitating on the lady’s part whatever he might choose to call it.
“I put these questions that they might strip your protestations of glitter and show them as they are. What you offer me is contempt and shame and the laughter of men and the mocking of women, and to be flung to another or to the gutter when you weary of me. I am a simple girl, my Lord, but honest, and I refuse your offers now and hereafter. And if you answered to my test and offered me your name as well as what you are pleased to call your heart, I would refuse and despise it as I do yourself.”
She flung from him magnificent, and he heard the door shut and the key turn behind her.
Deadly pale and dangerous my Lord stood there. That he did not believe her assertion was nothing, for he was convinced that the ring was all she asked. For an instant he hated her, who had thus humbled him, and then again the tide of longing rolled back upon his seared heart, with the passion for revenge, the longing that in turn he might humble her and see her yet entirely at his feet and in vain. ’Twas so mingled with the sensual passion that he could not as yet tear them apart in his distracted mind. And as he stood there, outwardly calm and composed in appearance, a very great nobleman, Mrs. Bishop came tripping up, her vast hoop swinging, on her way to her dressing-room.
“What, my Lord, waiting for Polly? Has she not past this way?”
There was a sneer under the lightness. The woman could recall when he had waited there for her and not in vain.
“I have not seen her, Miss Lucy!” says he, calling her familiarly by her stage name. “Nor did I so desire. I waited here to tell the seductive Lucy Lockit that I have not seen nor could imagine a part better played than that of the forlorn mistress of Macheath.”
Even such as my Lord Baltimore may fail in tact sometimes. A sullen fire lit in the lady’s fine eyes.
“Why, my Lord, I have had such practice in the past of the deserted one—’twas yourself taught me you know, that ’tis no wonder I should succeed. There are Macheaths at Court as well as in Newgate though their booty is hearts not purses.”
“Amoret—Amoret!” says he shaking his finger at her and laughing— “When the summer is past ’tis past and the flowers drop. But you’ll own you were happy while it lasted, and is that nothing to be grateful for? I made you happy—you owned it a thousand times. Would you now repay me with anger?”
“Not you—not you!” she cried with a sudden fierce tenderness— “ ’Tis that partial little devil I loathe, that wins all hearts, that has stole yours from me.”
“My dear, it left you long since. Don’t the swallows fly away with the summer? My heart has wings. I never pretended otherwise to my Amoret.”
“You did. You swore—but why waste breath? You have no heart. You never had. But let me tell you this, my Lord—this smooth-faced little devil is my abhorrence. She hath pushed me down on the stage. Do you think I didn’t see that all the world looked at her tonight and I was but her foil? She has made a fool of Rich, of Gay, of Walker—of all the persons who could advance or help me. If I could ruin her this minute and drag her in the dirt with a wish, I would do it. Some day I will do it, though she be a duchess’s favourite, and a nobleman’s——”
She spit out the hateful word and made to thrust by him. He caught her hand as she past and stared in her face.
“And some day you may do it, my girl!” said he. Then released her and walked back with his easy languid step to the stage.
When Diana’s chair set her down at Queensbury House, the Duchess, the Duke, and Bolton were assembled in the library, and Pompey summoned her to an audience. The excitement of the night had passed off and her lovely brow was sweetly serene as she entered. She was much more at her ease with the imperious Kitty now, having received much kindness from her and understanding her moods perhaps better than did any other creature. For others made her Grace a goddess and when that is done a goddess the lady will be. But Diana met her with a cheerful and grateful simplicity and a warm sunshine of affection tempered with the awe due to such commanding rank and power. ’Twas human—that sums it up, and the proud Duchess sought the poor player’s company in odd hours, would have her sing for her, read to her while she worked her jonquils, and let some crumbs of sincere liking fall from her high table to this humble dependent. For so she considered her as yet.
“Come hither, my Polly, my charming Polly, that has made Gay Rich and Rich Gay,” she cried, with her loud hearty laugh. “Why, what don’t I and all the world owe to you for this success? The town is run mad over you—’Tis Polly, Polly on every tongue, and Mr. Gay is gone to bed perfectly exhausted with plaudits and triumph. Not but what the piece is supreme. There is not its like in the English language. It hath a French sparkle and—but I rave, and what I would say is that with another Polly it could not so have smote the heart however it dazzled the brain. What say you, Queensbury?”
The Duke, good easy man, would say nothing but what his wife said.
“My dear, you are ever in the right. A more bewitching Polly couldn’t be imagined. In every scene Mrs. Diana triumphed. My felicitations attend you, Madam. But won’t you come with me one moment, my dear, to the next room, for sure you forget you desired Mr. Rich’s company to drink a bumper to our success, and the little gift is prepared there that you would honour him with.”
The Duchess ran off like a girl.
“Wait till I come back, Mrs. Di. ’Twon’t be long first.”
She was alone with his Grace of Bolton. He rolled a chair forward for her and she untied her satin hood and it fell back on her shoulders. Her face was pale now as if with fatigue and the coral of her lips showed lovely against the ivory. A shadow under her eyes enhanced their soft fire, and the delicatest little tendrils of hair imaginable made her white brows whiter. Most lovely the feathering of each fine-pencilled eyebrow that gave an air of nobility and distinction to the whole face.
The changeable girl—the infinite variety of her! Miss Polly was left in Portugal Street and the charming creature sat there in soft remote beauty—the chaste and gentle Diana.
The Duke approached his own chair to hers and leaned forward.
“Madam, though I be the last to express it, I am one of the most ardent of your admirers. Tonight was a delight so high that I venture to predict you have conferred immortality on Mr. Gay’s fine piece, and that it will be performed and delighted in when all we who applauded tonight are dust.”
There was always a background of sadness to my Lord Duke’s thoughts. He could not escape the shadow of his darkened life.
Her own face saddened.
“ ’Tis indeed a very brief triumph,” she said, “I tasted it for a moment, but your Grace is right. The triumph is Mr. Gay’s, for he may well be immortal, but we players are the sparks from a dying fire. Others will sing the songs and hear the laughter, and we in the dust.”
“O Madam, forgive me,” he cried, his dark face softening instantly.— “Why, what a wretch am I to poison your young rejoicing with my melancholy. Life is sweet, and sure few ever had a sweeter cup poured than this of yours—all beauty and genius and a harvest of enchanted hearts. Rejoice in it and forget everything but the happiness you deserve and give.”
She looked at him with an expression that pitied him and herself though for very different reasons. She could not be so long in the Duchess’s house without knowing somewhat of his story, and when they had met, as they did sometimes in her Grace’s presence, he paid her a distant but deep courtesy that was like cold water applied to a burning wound after the blows her self-respect must daily sustain elsewhere.
“He does not treat me as a player,” was her thought, “but as a woman that may deserve courtesy as much as another.”
This was a foundation easy to build on. One so considerate and obliging must be a great gentleman so to condescend to one in the position of an actress—whose only road to the companionship of gentlemen lay through dishonour. This man put forward no pretension to gallantry in her favour, and she must be quick to recognize the distinction between his Grace and the other men who buzzed about her. It is true, and she knew it, that he had the reputation that most men of his rank have with women, but he did not sharpen his weapons on the Duchess’s dependent. He would have despised himself otherwise since her Grace made him welcome to her rooms where she sat with Diana in private and ’tis strange how natural, simple and easy the talk of these three persons, so unlike each other, became as the days past by. Therefore his way of thinking was not unfamiliar to her. She knew that cloud on his brow, and would have given much to charm it away by some innocent kindness such as a sister might bestow, were it not for the vast distance between them of rank and sex. Still, she ventured a little, timidly.
“Your Grace, I was happy tonight, it is true, but I had scarce left the stage when fear and trouble awaited me. And so I think it will be always—brief sunshine and a cloud to swallow it up. I expect no better.
“Fear and trouble!” says the Duke earnestly, “but how and why? Sure there could be none so base as spoil your hard-earned triumph. Tell me what caused it? Now I look closer at you I see tear-marks about your eyes. Indeed this night should have been joy unmixt and perfect.”
“When is it so?” she asked, avoiding his question— “Do I not see your Grace that hath youth, health, riches, splendour—everything, sad enough sometimes? Who then shall be happy?”
“Youth, health, riches, splendour!” he repeated— “Yes, but set against them, Mrs. Fenton,—loneliness, sorrow, shame, hatred.— Do that sum in subtraction and what is left? Nothing.”
“Yet your Grace is gay often?”
“How could a man live otherwise? But my life is desolation. O fool that I am to talk thus and to a young and beautiful and happy woman. What should you know, child, of care—you that have life in radiant sunshine before you? I ask your pardon for being so selfish as to remind you that there are clouds even in a summer sky.”
“I did not need reminding. My life is a struggle too, your Grace.”
Her eyes dropt, and her cheek flushed.
“I know your reason,” he said, looking earnestly at her. “ ’Tis a hard case that men do not nor cannot distinguish a legitimate prey from one that ’tis cruelty to attempt. There have been moments when I despised my whole sex—not sparing myself—for our blindness and selfishness in this respect.”
“Not you—not yourself,” she cried eagerly. “I have never heard a word from your Grace nor seen a look that did not honour the woman you spoke with as well as yourself. I have learnt from you what a gentleman may be, whereas before I had only dreamt it. And I have thanked God for it for I am very sore beset.”
She spoke with such warmth of gratitude that the water stood in her eyes, and the Duke looked at her astonished and humbled.
“Madam, I take shame to think how little I have deserved your esteem and it gives me a pang to know you grateful for the mere absence of brutality. You must indeed have suffered if such is the case. You have no brother, no father to protect you, and no man knows better than I that your profession exposes you to insult. I beseech you to honour me by remembering that if any man insults you my sword is at your service. ’Tis no empty proffer. I mean it.”
She looked up at him with the tears dewing her long lashes.—
“Your Grace, I thank you with all my heart. It does not surprise me. From you I expect nothing but what is noble and generous. But ’tis useless. What would be thought of the poor Polly if a great Duke took sword in hand to defend her honour? What would the town say? No, I must fight my own battle. Why, the very man against whom I most needed protection might by chance be some intimate of your Grace’s.”
He caught her meaning instantly though ’twas not intended he should.
“And if it were so, Madam, I set right before even friendship. Call upon me and you shall never call in vain. I have not seen you of late without knowing that I had the honour to converse with a woman whose nature matcht her fair face, and both incomparable.”
This suddenness startled himself and her.— ’Twas not said with the idle floridness of gallantry and the composure that cares a fig for nobody, but in earnest, he leaning forward and speaking with his soul behind it. Instantly however, realizing his own manner of speaking, the Duke drew back formally, and endeavoured with a bow and a smile to make it lighter. But though Diana past on hurriedly to another subject the thing was said and to be remembered. Her heart beat a quicker measure, her spirits were hurried and uneven. She rose and but for the Duchess’s command would have retreated.
He spoke of indifferent things for a moment and then saluted her and departed, leaving his excuses for her Grace who received them carelessly when she returned to dismiss Diana to her rest. She did her the honour to kiss her on the cheek with the most obliging patronage and yet further to clasp about her neck a beautiful miniature of herself by Zincke set in pearl and enamel. Almost overwhelmed with such goodness, the girl kissed the lovely hand that bestowed such favours, and then glided away to the red velvet temple where she slept but brokenly for a voice that dumbed all the music of the night, repeating: “A woman whose nature matches her fair face and both incomparable,”—and dark eyes glowing through their sadness that winged the words. How should she rest?