MACHIAVEL entered the green-room, intending to wait for Mrs. Woffington, and carry out the second part of his plan.
He knew that weak minds cannot make head against ridicule, and with this pickax he proposed to clear the way, before he came to grave, sensible, business love with the lady. Machiavel was a man of talent. If he has been a silent personage hitherto, it is merely because it was not his cue to talk, but listen; otherwise, he was rather a master of the art of speech. He could be insinuating, eloquent, sensible, or satirical, at will. This personage sat in the green-room. In one hand was his diamond snuffbox, in the other a richly laced handkerchief; his clouded cane reposed by his side.
There was an air of success about this personage. The gentle reader, however conceited a dog, could not see how he was to defeat Sir Charles, who was tall, stout, handsome, rich, witty, self-sufficient, cool, majestic, courageous, and in whom were united the advantages of a hard head, a tough stomach, and no heart at all.
This great creature sat expecting Mrs. Woffington, like Olympian Jove awaiting Juno. But he was mortal, after all; for suddenly the serenity of that adamantine countenance was disturbed; his eye dilated; his grace and dignity were shaken. He huddled his handkerchief into one pocket, his snuff-box into another, and forgot his cane. He ran to the door in unaffected terror.
Where are all his fine airs before a real danger? Love, intrigue, diplomacy, were all driven from his mind; for he beheld that approaching, which is the greatest peril and disaster known to social man. He saw a bore coming into the room!
In a wild thirst for novelty, Pomander had once penetrated to Goodman's Fields Theater; there he had unguardedly put a question to a carpenter behind the scene; a seedy-black poet instantly pushed the carpenter away (down a trap, it is thought), and answered it in seven pages, and in continuation was so vaguely communicative, that he drove Sir Charles back into the far west.
Sir Charles knew him again in a moment, and at sight of him bolted. They met at the door. "Ah! Mr. Triplet!" said the fugitive, "enchanted -- to wish you good-morning!" and he plunged into the hiding-places of the theater.
"That is a very polite gentleman!" thought Triplet. He was followed by the call-boy, to whom he was explaining that his avocations, though numerous, would not prevent his paying Mr. Rich the compliment of waiting all day in his green-room, sooner than go without an answer to three important propositions, in which the town and the arts were concerned.
"What is your name?" said the boy of business to the man of words.
"Mr. Triplet," said Triplet.
"Triplet? There is something for you in the hall," said the urchin, and went off to fetch it.
"I knew it," said Triplet to himself; "they are accepted. There's a note in the hall to fix the reading." He then derided his own absurdity in having ever for a moment desponded. "Master of three arts, by each of which men grow fat, how was it possible he should starve all his days!"
He enjoyed a natural vanity for a few moments, and then came more generous feelings. What sparkling eyes there would be in Lambeth to-day!
The butcher, at sight of Mr. Rich's handwriting, would give him credit.
Jane should have a new gown.
But when his tragedies were played, and he paid! El Dorado! His children should be the neatest in the street. Lysimachus and Roxalana should learn the English language, cost what it might; sausages should be diurnal; and he himself would not be puffed up, fat, lazy. No! he would work all the harder, be affable as ever, and, above all, never swamp the father, husband, and honest man in the poet and the blackguard of sentiment.
Next his reflections took a business turn.
"These tragedies--the scenery? Oh, I shall have to paint it myself. The heroes? Well, they have nobody who will play them as I should. (This was true!) It will be hard work, all this; but then I shall be paid for it.
It cannot go on this way; I must and will be paid separately for my branches."
Just as he came to this resolution, the boy returned with a brown-paper parcel, addressed to Mr. James Triplet. Triplet weighed it in his hand; it was heavy. "How is this?" cried he. "Oh, I see," said he, "these are the tragedies. He sends them to me for some trifling alterations; managers always do." Triplet then determined to adopt these alterations, if judicious; for, argued he, sensibly enough: "Managers are practical men; and we, in the heat of composition, sometimes _(sic?)_ say more than is necessary, and become tedious."
With that he opened the parcel, and looked for Mr. Rich's communication; it was not in sight. He had to look between the leaves of the manuscripts for it; it was not there. He shook them; it did not fall out. He shook them as a dog shakes a rabbit; nothing!
The tragedies were returned without a word. It took him some time to realize the full weight of the blow; but at last he saw that the manager of the Theater Royal, Covent Garden, declined to take a tragedy by Triplet into consideration or bare examination.
He turned dizzy for a moment. Something between a sigh and a cry escaped him, and he sank upon a covered bench that ran along the wall. His poor tragedies fell here and there upon the ground, and his head went down upon his hands, which rested on Mrs. Woffington's picture. His anguish was so sharp, it choked his breath;, when he recovered it, his eye bent down upon the picture. "Ah, Jane," he groaned, "you know this villainous world better than I!" He placed the picture gently on the seat (that picture must now be turned into bread), and slowly stooped for his tragedies; they had fallen hither and thither; he had to crawl about for them; he was an emblem of all the humiliations letters endure.