"Whom have we here?" said he. Then he looked with his spy-glass to see.
Oh, the little Irish orange-girl!"
"Whose basket outweighed Colley Cibber's salary for the first twenty years of his dramatic career," was the delicate reply to the above delicate remark. It staggered him for a moment; however, he affected a most puzzled air, then gradually allowed a light to steal into his features.
"Eh! ah! oh! how stupid I am; I understand; you sold something besides oranges!"
"Oh!" said Mr. Vane, and colored up to the temples, and cast a look on Cibber, as much as to say, "If you were not seventy-three!"
His ejaculation was something so different from any tone any other person there present could have uttered that the actress's eye dwelt on him for a single moment, and in that moment he felt himself looked through and through.
"I sold the young fops a bargain, you mean," was her calm reply; "and now I am come down to the old ones. A truce, Mr. Cibber, what do you understand by an actor? Tell me; for I am foolish enough to respect your opinion on these matters!"
"An actor, young lady," said he, gravely, "is an artist who has gone deep enough in his art to make dunces, critics and greenhorns take it for nature; moreover, he really personates; which your mere _man of the stage_ never does. He has learned the true art of self-multiplication. He drops Betterton, Booth, Wilkes, or, ahem--"
"Cibber," inserted Sir Charles Pomander. Cibber bowed.
"In his dressing-room, and comes out young or old, a fop, a valet, a lover, or a hero, with voice, mien, and every gesture to match. A grain less than this may be good speaking, fine preaching, deep grunting, high ranting, eloquent reciting; but I'll be hanged if it is acting!"
"Then Colley Cibber never acted," whispered Quin to Mrs. Clive.
"Then Margaret Woffington is an actress," said M. W.; "the fine ladies take my Lady Betty for their sister. In Mrs. Day, I pass for a woman of seventy; and in Sir Harry Wildair I have been taken for a man. I would have told you that before, but I didn't know it was to my credit," said she, slyly, "till Mr. Cibber laid down the law."
"Proof!" said Cibber.
"A warm letter from one lady, diamond buckles from another, and an offer of her hand and fortune from a third; _rien que cela."_
Mr. Cibber conveyed behind her back a look of absolute incredulity; she divined it.
"I will not show you the letters," continued she, "because Sir Harry, though a rake, was a gentleman; but here are the buckles;" and she fished them out of her pocket, capacious of such things. The buckles were gravely inspected, they made more than one eye water, they were undeniable.
"Well, let us see what we can do for her," said the Laureate. He tapped his box and without a moment's hesitation produced the most execrable distich in the language:
"Now who is like Peggy, with talent at will, A maid loved her Harry, _for want of a Bill?
"Well, child," continued he, after the applause which follows extemporary verses had subsided, "take _me_ in. Play something to make me lose sight of saucy Peg Woffington, and I'll give the world five acts more before the curtain falls on Colley Cibber."
"If you could be deceived," put in Mr. Vane, somewhat timidly; "I think there is no disguise through which grace and beauty such as Mrs.
Woffington's would not shine, to my eyes."
"That is to praise my person at the expense of my wit, sir, is it not?" was her reply.
This was the first word she had ever addressed to him. The tones appeared so sweet to him that he could not find anything to reply for listening to them; and Cibber resumed:
"Meantime, I will show you a real actress; she is coming here to-night to meet me. Did ever you children hear of Ann Bracegirdle?"
"Bracegirdle!" said Mrs. Clive; "why, she has been dead this thirty years; at least I thought so."
"Dead to the stage. There is more heat in her ashes than in your fire, Kate Clive! Ah! here comes her messenger," continued he, as an ancient man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call-boy.
"Epilogue called," said this urchin, in the tone of command which these small fry of Parnassus adopt; and, obedient to his high behest, Mrs.
Woffington moved to the door, with the Bracegirdle missive in her hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents: "The great actress will be here in a few minutes," said she, and she glided swiftly out of the room.