"Of course I did, when I had made up my mind to," said the actress, *****ly.
"Sir Charles has left London for a fortnight, so, if he is the only obstacle, I hope you will know me every night."
"Why, you sent me no flowers yesterday or to-day."
"But I will to-morrow."
"Then I am sure I shall know your face again; good-by. Won't you see me in the last act, and tell me how ill I do it?"
"Oh, yes!" and he hurried to his box, and so the actress secured one pair of hands for her last act.
He returned to the green-room, but she did not revisit that verdant bower. The next night, after the usual compliments, she said to him, looking down with a sweet, engaging air:
"I sent a messenger into the country to know about that lady."
"What lady?" said Vane, scarcely believing his senses.
"That you were so unkind to me about."
"I, unkind to you? what a brute I must be!"
"My meaning is, you justly rebuked me, only you should not tell an actress she has no heart--that is always understood. Well, Sir Charles Pomander said she married a third in two months!"
"And did she?"
"No, it was in six weeks; that man never tells the truth; and since then she has married a fourth."
"I am glad of it!"
"So am I, since you awakened my conscience."
Delicious flattery! and of all flattery the sweetest, when a sweet creature does flattery, not merely utters it.
After this, Vane made no more struggles; he surrendered himself to the charming seduction, and as his advances were respectful, but ardent and incessant, he found himself at the end of a fortnight Mrs. Woffington's professed lover.
They wrote letters to each other every day. On Sunday they went to church together in the morning, and spent the afternoon in the suburbs wherever grass was and dust was not.
In the next fortnight, poor Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with an eighty-fathom line, sir!
"She is religious," said he, "she loves a church much better than a playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And she is breaking me of swearing--by degrees. She says that no fashion can justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked.
And she is frankness and simplicity itself."
Another thing that charmed him was her disinterestedness. She ordered him to buy her a present every day, but it was never to cost above a shilling. If an article could be found that cost exactly tenpence (a favorite sum of hers), she was particularly pleased, and these shilling presents were received with a flush of pleasure and brightening eyes. But when one day he appeared with a diamond necklace, it was taken very coldly, he was not even thanked for it, and he was made to feel, once for all, that the tenpenny ones were the best investments toward her favor.
Then he found out that she was very prudent and rather stingy; of Spartan simplicity in her diet, and a scorner of dress off the stage. To redeem this she was charitable, and her charity and her economy sometimes had a sore fight, during which she was peevish, poor little soul.
One day she made him a request.
"I can't bear you should think me worse than I am, and I don't want you to think me better than I am."
Vane trembled.
"But don't speak to others about me; promise, and I will promise to tell you my whole story, whenever you are entitled to such a confidence.
"When shall I be entitled to it?"
"When I am sure you love me."
"Do you doubt that now?"
"Yes! I think you love me, but I am not sure.
"Margaret, remember I have known you much longer than you have known me.
"No!"
"Yes! Two months before we ever spoke I lived upon your face and voice.
"That is to say you looked from your box at me upon the stage, and did not I look from the stage at you?"
"Never! you always looked at the pit, and my heart used to sink."
"On the 17th of May you first came into that box. I noticed you a little, the next day I noticed you a little more; I saw you fancied you liked me, after a while I could not have played without you."
Here was delicious flattery again, and poor Vane believed every word of it.
As for her request and her promise, she showed her wisdom in both these.
As Sir Charles observed, it is a wonderful point gained if you allow a woman to tell her story her own way.
How the few facts that are allowed to remain get molded and twisted out of ugly forms into pretty shapes by those supple, dexterous fingers!
This present story cannot give the life of Mrs. Woffington, but only one great passage therein, as do the epic and dramatic writers; but since there was often great point in any sentences spoken on important occasions by this lady, I will just quote her defense of herself. The reader may be sure she did not play her weakest card; let us give her the benefit.
One day she and Kitty Clive were at it ding-dong; the green-room was full of actors, male and female, but there were no strangers, and the ladies were saying things which the men of this generation only think; at last Mrs. Woffington finding herself roughly, and, as she thought, unjustly handled, turned upon the assembly and said: "What man did ever I ruin in all my life? Speak who can!"
And there was a dead silence.
"What woman is there here at as much as three pounds per week even, that hasn't ruined two at the very least?"
Report says there was a dead silence again, until Mrs. Clive perked up, and said she had only ruined one, and that was his own fault!
Mrs. Woffington declined to attach weight to this example. "Kitty Clive is the hook without the bait," said she; and the laugh turned, as it always did, against Peggy's antagonist.
Thus much was speedily shown to Mr. Vane, that, whatever were Mrs.
Woffington's intentions toward him, interest had at present nothing to do with them; indeed it was made clear that even were she to surrender her liberty to him, it would only be as a princess, forging golden chains for herself with her own royal hand.