"Civility, ma'am? Why, she has saved me from despair--from starvation, perhaps."
"Poor thing! Well, indeed, sir, you looked--you looked--what a shame! and you a poet."
"From an epitaph to an epic, madam."
At this moment a figure looked in upon them from the garden, but retreated unobserved. It was Sir Charles Pomander, who had slipped away, with the heartless and malicious intention of exposing the husband to the wife, and profiting by her indignation and despair. Seeing Triplet, he made an extemporaneous calculation that so infernal a chatterbox could not be ten minutes in her company without telling her everything, and this would serve his turn very well. He therefore postponed his purpose, and strolled away to a short distance.
Triplet justified the baronet's opinion. Without any sort of sequency he now informed Mrs. Vane that the benevolent lady was to sit to him for her portrait.
Here was a new attention of Ernest's. How good he was, and how wicked and ungrateful she!
"What! are you a painter too?" she inquired.
"From a house front to an historical composition, madam."
"Oh, what a clever man! And so Ernest commissioned you to paint a portrait?"
"No, madam; for that I am indebted to the lady herself."
"The lady herself?"
"Yes, madam; and I expected to find her here. Will you add to your kindness by informing me whether she has arrived? Or she is gone--"
"Who, sir? (Oh, dear! not my portrait! Oh, Ernest!)"
"Who, madam!" cried Triplet; "why, Mrs. Woffington!"
"She is not here," said Mrs. Vane, who remembered all the names perfectly well. "There is one charming lady among our guests, her face took me in a moment; but she is a titled lady. There is no Mrs. Woffington among them."
"Strange!" replied Triplet; "she was to be here; and, in fact, that is why I expedited these lines in her honor."
"In _her_ honor, sir?"
"Yes, madam. Allow me:
'Brights being, thou whose radiant brow--'"
"No! no! I don't care to hear them now, for I don't know the lady."
"Well, madam, but at least you have seen her act?"
"Act! you don't mean all this is for an actress?"
_"An_ actress? _The_ actress! And you have never seen her act? What a pleasure you have to come! To see her act is a privilege; but to act with her, as _I_ once did! But she does not remember that, nor shall I remind her, madam," said Triplet sternly. "On that occasion I was hissed, owing to circumstances which, for the credit of our common nature, I suppress."
"What! are you an actor too? You are everything."
"And it was in a farce of my own, madam, which, by the strangest combination of accidents, was damned!"
"A play-writer? Oh, what clever men there are in the world--in London, at least! He is a play-writer, too. I wonder my husband comes not. Does Mr. Vane--does Mr. Vane admire this actress?" said she, suddenly.
"Mr. Vane, madam, is a gentleman of taste," said he, pompously.
"Well, sir," said the lady, languidly, "she is not here." Triplet took the hint and rose. "Good-by," said she, sweetly; and thank you kindly for your company, "Triplet, madam--James Triplet, of 10, Hercules Buildings, Lambeth.
Occasional verses, odes, epithalamia, elegies, dedications, squibs, impromptus and hymns executed with spirit, punctuality and secrecy.
Portraits painted, and instruction in declamation, sacred, profane and dramatic. The card, madam" (and he drew it as doth a theatrical fop his rapier) "of him who, to all these qualifications adds a prouder still--that of being, "Madam, "Your humble, devoted and grateful servant, JAMES TRIPLET."
He bowed in a line from his right shoulder to his left toe, and moved off. But Triplet could not go all at one time out of such company; he was given to return in real life, he had played this trick so often on the stage. He came back, exuberant with gratitude.
"The fact is, madam," said he, "strange as it may appear to you, a kind hand has not so often been held out to me, that I should forget it, especially when that hand is so fair and gracious. May I be permitted, madam--you will impute it to gratitude rather than audacity--I--I--"
(whimper), "madam" (with sudden severity), "I am gone!"
These last words he pronounced with the right arm at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the fingers pointing horizontally. The stage had taught him this grace also. In his day, an actor who had three words to say, such as, "My lord's carriage is waiting," came on the stage with the right arm thus elevated, delivered his message in the tones of a falling dynasty, wheeled like a soldier, and retired with the left arm pointing to the sky and the right hand extended behind him like a setter's tail.
Left to herself, Mabel was uneasy. "Ernest is so warm-hearted." This was the way she put it even to herself. He admired her acting and wished to pay her a compliment. "What if I carried him the verses?" She thought she should surely please him by showing she was not the least jealous or doubtful of him. The poor child wanted so to win a kind look from her husband; but ere she could reach the window Sir Charles Pomander had entered it.
Now Sir Charles was naturally welcome to Mrs. Vane; for all she knew of him was, that he had helped her on the road to her husband.
_Pomander._ "What, madam! all alone here as in Shropshire?"
_Mabel._ "For the moment, sir."
_Pomander._ "Force of habit. A husband with a wife in Shropshire is so like a bachelor."
_Mabel._ "Sir!"
_Pomander._ "And our excellent Ernest is such a favorite!"
_Mabel._ "No wonder, sir!"
_Pomander._ "Few can so pass from the larva state of country squire to the butterfly nature of beau."