Part 20

“I have been told by one on whose judgment I can rely that Lady Susan was speaking in sarcasm when she complimented me before the rest of the company. I did not take her as doing so for myself, I must confess. I have always believed--on insufficient evidence, I begin to fear--that her ladyship was a discriminating critic--even now if she were to assure me that she was not speaking in sarcasm----”

“Oh, lud! he is relenting,” whispered Lady Sarah.

“Did you speak, madam?” said his lordship.

“I was protesting against a too early exercise of your lordship's well-known spirit of forgiveness,” said her ladyship.

“I thank you, Lady Sarah; I am, I know, too greatly inclined to take a charitable view of--of--Why, sink me if she, too, is not trying to make me look ridiculous!” cried his lordship.

“Nay, my lord, I cannot believe that Lady Sarah would be at the pains to do for you what you can so well do for yourself,” remarked Lady Susan.

His lordship looked at her--his mouth was slightly open--then he gazed at the smiling features of the beautiful Lady Sarah, lastly at the perfectly expressionless features of Sir Francis.

“A plot--a plot!” he murmured. Then he struck a commonplace theatrical attitude, the “exit attitude” of the man who tells you that his time will come, though appearances are against him for the moment. He pointed a firm forefinger at Lady Susan, saying: “I wash my hands clear of you all. I have done with you and your plays. Get another man to fill my place if you can.”

Then he rushed out through the open door. He seemed to have a shrewd suspicion that if he were to wait another moment one at least of the girls would have an effective answer to his challenge, and it is quite likely that his suspicion was well founded. As it was, however, owing to his wise precipitancy he heard no more than the pleasant laughter--it really was pleasant laughter, though it did not sound so to him--of the two girls.

But when the sound of the slamming of the hall-door reached the library the laughter in that apartment suddenly ceased. Sir Francis Délavai looked at each of the ladies, and both of them looked at him. For some moments no word was exchanged between them. At last one of them spoke--it was, strange to say, the man.

“This is vastly fine, ladies,” he remarked. “You have got rid of your _bête-noire_, Lady Susan; that, I say, is vastly fine, but where are you to find a _bête-blanche_ to take his place?”

“Surely we can find some gentleman willing to act the part of Bellaire?” said Lady Sarah.

“Oh, there is not like to be a lack of young gentlemen willing to take the part, but we want not merely willingness, but competence as well; and the piece must be played on Wednesday, even though the part of Bellaire be left out,” said Sir Francis.

Lady Susan looked blankly at the floor. She seemed ready to renew the tears which she had wept on the shoulder of her friend a short time before.

“Have I been too hasty?” she said. “Alas! I fear that I have been selfish. I thought only of the poor figure that I should cut with such a lover--and with all the world looking on, too! I should have given more thought to your distress, Sir Francis.”

“Say no more, I pray of you; better have no play at all than one that all our kind friends will damn with the utmost cordiality and good breeding,” said Sir Francis.

“True, sir, but think of the ladies' dresses!” said Lady Sarah. “What the ladies say is, 'Better produce a play that will be cordially damned rather than deprive us of our chance of displaying our new dresses.'”

“Heavens!” cried Sir Francis, “I had not thought of the new dresses. Lady Susan, you will e'en have to face the anger of your sisters--'tis not I that will tarry for such an event. I mean to fly to Bath or Brighthelmstone, or perchance to Timbuctoo, until the storm be overpast.”

“Nay, nay, 'tis not a time for jesting, sir; let us not look at the matter from the standpoint of men, who do not stand but run away, let us be women for once, and scheme,” said Lady Susan.

“That is woman's special province,” said Sir Francis. “Pray begin, my lady--'twill be strange if your ladyship and Lady Sarah do not succeed in----”

“Psha! there is but one man in England who could play the part of Bellaire on Wednesday,” cried Lady Sarah. “Ay, sir, and he is the only one in England capable of playing it.”

“Then we shall have him on our stage if I should have to pay a thousand pounds for his services,” said Sir Francis. “But where is he to be found?”

“Cannot you guess, sir?” asked Lady Sarah, smiling.

Sir Francis looked puzzled, but Lady Sue started and caught her friend by the wrist.

“You do not mean----” she began.

“Lud! these girls! Here's a scheme if you will!” muttered Sir Francis.

“Ay, if you will, Sir Francis. You know that I mean Mr. O'Brien himself and none other,” cried Lady Sarah.

“Impossible!” cried Lady Susan. “My father would never consent to my acting in a play with a real actor--no, not even if he were Mr. Garrick himself. How could you suggest such a thing, Sarah?”

“What, do you mean to tell me that you would refuse to act with Mr. O'Brien?” asked Lady Sarah.

“Oh, hear the child!” cried Lady Susan. “She asks me a question to which she knows only one answer is possible, and looks all the time as though she expected just the opposite answer!”

“I know well that there are a good many ladies who would give all that they possess for the chance of acting with Mr. O'Brien, and you are among the number, my dear,” laughed Lady Sarah.

“I dare not--I dare not. And yet----” murmured the other girl.

Sir Francis had been lost in thought while the two had been bickering over the body of O'Brien. He had walked across the room and seated himself for some moments. Now he rose and held up a finger.

“Ladies, this is a serious matter for all of us,” he said. And he spoke the truth to a greater depth than he was aware of. “'Tis a very serious matter. If we get Mr. O'Brien to play the part, the piece will be the greatest success of the day. If we fail to get him, our theatricals will be damned to a certainty. Lady Susan, will you consent to play with him if his name does not appear upon the bill?”

“But every one would know Mr. O'Brien,” she faltered, after a pause that was overcharged with excitement.

“Yes, in fact; but no one will have official cognizance of him, and, as you must know, in these matters of etiquette everything depends upon official cognizance.”

“My father--”

“His lordship will have no _locus standi_ in the case. He cannot take notice of an act that is not officially recognisable,” suggested Sir Francis, the sophist.

“If you assure me---- But is't true that Mr. O'Brien only ceased to become a gentleman when he became an actor?” said Lady Susan.

“I have not heard that he relinquished the one part when he took up the other,” said Sir Francis. “I wonder that you have not met him at the houses of some of our friends--he is more popular even than Mr. Garrick. The family of O'Brien----”

“All kings, I doubt not,” said Lady Susan. “There were a good many kings in Ireland in the old days, I believe. I read somewhere that ninety-seven kings were killed in one battle, and still there were quite enough left to carry on the quarrels of the country. Oh, yes, there were plenty of kings, and their descendants have--well, descended. Mr. O'Brien descended pretty far when he became a play-actor.”

“If he condescends to take up the part of Bellaire at the eleventh hour to pluck our theatricals out of the fire we shall have every reason to be grateful to him,” said Sir Francis with a severe air of reproof. He was beginning to be tired--as others in his place have been from time to time--of the capriciousness of his company of amateurs.

“You are right, sir,” said Lady Sarah. “Come, my dear Sue, cease to give yourself the airs of those ladies who, Mr. Garrick affirms, have been the plague of his life. If Mr. O'Brien agrees to come to our rescue you should have no feeling but of gratitude to him. Surely 'twere churlish on the part of a damsel when a gallant knight rides up to her rescue to look at his horse in the mouth.”

“I am thinking of my father,” said the other. “But I am disposed to accept the risk of the situation. You will promise that his name will not appear in the bills, Sir Francis?”

“I will promise to do my best to save you from the contamination of having your name made as immortal as Mr. O'Brien's,” said Sir Francis.

Lady Sarah laughed, and so did her friend--after a pause sufficient to allow the colour that had come to her face at the stinging reproof to die away.

“I hope that you may catch your bird, sir--your eagle--your Irish eagle.”

“If I could tell him that Lady Sarah Lennox was to be in the cast of the play I should need no further lure for him,” said Sir Francis, making his most exquisite bow to her.

“Oh, sir, you overwhelm me,” said Lady Sarah, sinking in her most ravishing courtesy.

Lady Susan coloured once more, and her foot played a noiseless tattoo on the floor, for she perceived all that Sir Francis's compliment implied. Lady Sarah was the most beautiful girl in England, while Lady Susan was not even second to her, a fact of which she was as well aware as her friends.

This was how Lady Susan Fox-Strangways first met Mr. O'Brien, the actor whom Garrick had brought from Ireland in the year 1762. He good-naturedly agreed to help Sir Francis Délavai in his extremity, and his ready Irish tact enabled him to be the first to stipulate that his name should not appear in the bills--a condition with which Sir Francis complied, drawing a long breath.

“Mr. O'Brien,” he said, “should the stage ever fail you, a fortune awaits you if you undertake the duty of teaching gentlemen the art of being a gentleman.”

“Ah, sir, the moment that art enters the door the gentleman flies out by the window,” said the actor. “It is Nature, not art, that makes a gentleman.”

One can well believe that Lady Susan Fox-Strangways, with all the pride of her connection with a peerage nearly ten years old, treated Mr. O'Brien's accession to a place in the company of amateurs with some hauteur, though it was said that she fell in love with him at once. On consideration, her bearing of hauteur which we have ventured to assign to her, so far from being incompatible with her having fallen in love with him, would really be a natural consequence of such an accident, and the deeper she felt herself falling the more she would feel it necessary to assert her position, if only for the sake of convincing herself that it was impossible for her to forget herself so far as to think of an Irish play-actor as occupying any other position in regard to her than that of a diversion for the moment.

It was equally a matter of course that Lady Sarah should have an instinct of what was taking place. She had attended several of the rehearsals previously in the capacity of adviser to her friend, for Lady Susan had a high opinion of her critical capacity; but not until two rehearsals had taken place with O'Brien as Bellaire was she able to resume her attendance at Downing Street. Before half an hour had passed this astute lady had seen, first, that O'Brien made every other man in the cast seem a lout; and, secondly, that Lady Susan felt that every man in the world was a lout by the side of O'Brien.

She hoped to discover what were the impressions of O'Brien, but she found herself foiled: the man was too good an actor to betray himself. The fervour which he threw into the character when making love to Lady Susan had certainly the semblance of a real passion, but what did this mean more than that Mr. O'Brien was a convincing actor?

When she arrived at this point in her consideration of the situation Lady Sarah lost herself, and began to long with all her heart that the actor were making love to her--taking her hand with that incomparable devotion to--was it his art?--which he showed when Lady Susan's hand was raised, with a passionate glance into her eyes, to his lips; putting his arm about her waist, while his lips, trembling under the force of the protestations of undying devotion which they were uttering, were almost touching Lady Susan's ear. Before the love scene was over Lady Sarah was in love with the actor, if not with the man, O'Brien.

So was every lady in the cast. O'Brien was the handsomest actor of the day. He had been careful of his figure at a time when men of fashion lived in such a way as made the preservation of a figure well-nigh impossible. Every movement was grace itself with him, and the period was one in which the costume of a man gave him every chance of at least imitating a graceful man. All the others in the cast of the play seemed imitating the gracefulness of O'Brien, and every man of them seemed a clown beside him. They gave themselves countless graces, but he was grace itself.

Lady Sarah saw everything that was to be seen and said nothing. She was wise. She knew that in due time her friend would tell her all there was to be told.

She was not disappointed. The play was produced, and of course every one recognised O'Brien in the part, although the bill--printed in gold letters on a satin ground, with a charming allegorical design by Lady Diana Spencer, showing a dozen dainty cupids going to school with satchels--stated that Bellaire would be represented by “a gentleman.”

Equally as a matter of course a good many of the spectators affirmed that it was intolerable that a play-actor should be smuggled into a company of amateurs, some of them belonging to the best families. And then to attempt a deception of the audience by suggesting that O'Brien was a gentleman--oh, the thing was unheard of! So said some of the ladies, adding that they thought it rather sad that Lady Susan was not better-looking.

But of the success of the entertainment there could not be a doubt. It was the talk of the town for a month, and every one noticed--even her own father--that Lady Susan was looking extremely thin and very pale.

Lady Sarah said that she had taken the diversion of the theatricals too seriously.

“I saw it from the first, my dear Sue,” she said.

Sue sprang from her chair, and it would be impossible for any one to say now that she was over pale.

“You saw it--you--what was it that you saw from the first?” she cried.

Lady Sarah looked at her and laughed.

“Ah, that is it--what was it that I saw from the first?” she said. “What I was going to say that I saw was simply that you were throwing yourself too violently into the production of the play. That was why you insisted on poor Lord B------'s getting his _congé_. It was a mistake--I saw that also.”

“When did you see that?”

“When I saw you taking part in that love scene with Mr. O'Brien.”

“What mean you by that, Lady Sarah?”

“Exactly what you fancy I mean, Lady Susan.”

Lady Susan gazed at her blankly at first, then very pitifully. In another moment she had flung herself on her knees at the feet of her friend and was weeping in her lap.

The friend was full of sympathy.

“You poor child!” she murmured, “how could you help it? I vow that I myself--yes, for some minutes--I was as deep in love with the fellow as you yourself were. But, of course, you were with him longer--every day. Lud! what a handsome rascal he is, to be sure. His lordship must take you to the country without delay. Has the fellow tried to transfer the character in the play beyond the footlights?”

“Never--never!” cried Susan. “Sir Francis was right--he is a gentleman. That is the worst of it!”

“Oh, lud! the worst of it? Are you mad, girl?”

“I am not mad now, but I know that I shall be if he remains a gentleman--if he refrains from telling me that he loves me--or at least of giving me a chance of telling him that I love him. That would be better than nothing--'twould be such a relief. I really do not think that I want anything more than to be able to confess to him that I love him--that 'tis impossible that I should love another.”

“The sooner you go to the country the better 'twill be for yourself and all of us--his lordship especially. Good heavens, child, you must be mad! Do you fancy that his lordship would give his consent to your marriage with a strolling player, let him be as handsome as Beelzebub?”

“He is not a strolling player. Mr. O'Brien is in Mr. Garrick's company, and every one knows that he is of good family. I have been searching it out for the past week--all about the O'Briens--there were a great many of them, all of them distinguished. If it had not been that King James was defeated by William, in Ireland, Mr. O'Brien's grandfather would have been made a duke. They were all heroes, the O'Briens. And they were just too sincere in their devotion to the losing side--that was it--the losing side was always the one they took up. And yet you call him a strolling player!”

“I take back the insinuation and offer him my apologies; he is not a strolling player because he doesn't stroll--would to Heaven he did! Oh, my poor Sue, take a stroll into the country yourself as soon as possible and try to forget this dreadfully handsome wretch. You would not, I am sure, force me to tell his lordship what a goose his daughter is like to make of herself.”

At this point there was a dramatic scene, one that was far more deeply charged with comedy of a sort than any to be found in Mr. Whitehead's play. Lady Susan accused her dear friend of being a spy, of extorting a confession from her under the guise of friendship, which in other circumstances--the rack, the wheel, the thumbscrew, in fact the entire mechanism of persuasion employed by the Spanish Inquisition--would have been powerless to obtain. Lady Sarah on her side entreated her friend not to show herself to be even a greater goose than her confession would make her out to be. For several minutes there was reproach and counter-reproach, many home truths followed home thrusts; then some tears, self-accusation, expressions of sympathy and tenderness, followed by promises of friendship beyond the dreams of Damon and Pythias; lastly, a promise on the part of Sue that she would take the advice of her devoted Sarah and fly to the country without delay.

Strange to say, she fled to the country, and, stranger still, the result was not to cure her of her infatuation for the handsome actor. For close upon a year she did not see him, but she was as devoted to him as she had been at first, and no day passed on which she failed to think of him, or to spend some hours writing romantic verses, sometimes in the style of Waller in his lyrics, sometimes in the style (distant) of Mr. Dryden in his pastorals: she was Lesbia, and Mr. O'Brien was Strephon.

But in the meantime she had improved so much in her acting that when Lady Sarah, who had within the year married Sir Thomas Bunbury, ventured to rally her upon her infatuation of the previous spring, she was able to disarm her suspicions by a flush and a shrug, and a little contemptuous exclamation or two.

“Ah, my dear one, did not I give you good advice?” cried Lady Sarah. “I was well assured that my beloved Sue would never persevere in a passion that could only end in unhappiness. But indeed, child, I never had the heart to blame you greatly, the fellow is handsome as Apollo and as proud as Apolyon. He has broken many hearts not accounted particularly fragile, during the year.”

“Is't possible? For example?--I vow that I shall keep their names secret.”

Lady Sarah shook her head at first, but on being importuned whispered a name or two of ladies of their acquaintance, all of whom--according to Lady Sarah--had fallen as deep as was possible in love with O'Brien. Her ladyship was so intent on her narration of the scandals that she quite failed to see the strange light that gleamed in her friend's eyes at the mention of every name--a rather fierce gleam, with a flash of green in it. She did not notice this phenomenon, nor did she detect the false note in the tribute of laughter which her friend paid to her powers of narration.

But Lady Sue, when the other had left her, rushed to her room and flung herself on her bed in a paroxysm of jealousy. She beat her innocent pillow wildly, crying in the whisper that the clenching of her teeth made imperative--“The hussies! Shameless creatures! Do they hope that he will be attracted to them? Fools!--they are fools! They do not know him as I know him. They think that he is nothing but a vain actor--Garrick, or Barry, or Lewes. Oh, they do not know him!”

She lay there in her passion for an hour, and if it was her maid who discovered her at the end of that time, it is safe to assume that the young woman's flesh was black and blue in places for several days afterwards. The pinch and the slipper were among the most highly approved forms of torture inflicted upon their maids at that robust period of English history. The French Revolution was still some way off.

A few weeks later Lady Susan was sitting to Sir Joshua Reynolds for a group, in which he painted her with her friend Lady Sarah Bunbury and Mr. Henry Fox; and it was the carrying out of this scheme that put quite another scheme into the quick brain of the first-named lady. Painting was in the air. She possessed a poor print of Mr. O'Brien, and she had found an immense consolation in gazing upon it--frequently at midnight, under the light of her bedroom candle. The sight of the life-like portraits in Sir Joshua's studio induced her to ask herself if she might not possess a picture of her lover that would show him as he really was in life, without demanding so many allowances as were necessary to be made for the shortcomings of the engraver of a print. Why should she not get Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint for her the portrait of Mr. O'Brien?

The thought was a stimulating one, and it took possession of her for a week. At the end of that time, however, she came to the conclusion that it would be unwise for her to employ Sir Joshua on a commission that might possibly excite some comment on the part of her friends should they come to learn--and the work of this particular painter was rather inclined to be assertive--that it had been executed to her order. But she was determined not to live any longer without a portrait of the man; and, hearing some one mention at Sir Joshua's house the name of Miss Catherine Read, who was described as an excellent portrait painter, she made further inquiry, and the result was that she begged her father, the Earl of Ilchester, who was devoted to her, to allow her to have her portrait done by Miss Read, to present to Lady Sarah on her birthday.

Of course Miss Read was delighted to have the patronage of so great a family--she had not yet done her famous pastel of the Duchess of Argyll--and Susan, accompanied by her footman, lost no time in beginning her series of sittings to the artist to whom Horace Walpole referred as “the painteress.”

She was both patient and discreet, for three whole days elapsed before she produced a mezzotint of Mr. O'Brien.

“I wonder if you would condescend to draw a miniature portrait of his lordship's favourite actor from so poor a copy as this, Miss Read?” she said. “Have you ever seen this Mr. O'Brien--an Irishman, I believe he is?”

Miss Read assured her that Mr. O'Brien was her favourite actor also. The print produced was indeed a poor one; it quite failed to do justice to the striking features of the original, she said.