Peg Woffington Part 29

"You are a fool! What do you know about women? You were with her five minutes, and she turned you inside out. My life on it, while I have been fooling my time here, she is in the field, with all the arts of our s.e.x, simplicity at the head of them."

Triplet was making a futile endeavor to convert her to his view of her rival, when a knock suddenly came to his door. A slovenly girl, one of his own neighbors, brought him a bit of paper, with a line written in pencil.

"'Tis from a lady, who waits below," said the girl.

Mrs. Woffington went again to the window, and there she saw getting out of a coach, and attended by James Burdock, Mabel Vane, who had sent up her name on the back of an old letter.

"What shall I do?" said Triplet, as soon as he recovered the first stunning effects of this _contretemps._ To his astonishment, Mrs.

Woffington bade the girl show the lady upstairs. The girl went down on this errand.

"But _you_ are here," remonstrated Triplet. "Oh, to be sure, you can go into the other room. There is plenty of time to avoid her," said Triplet, in a very natural tremor. "This way, madam!"

Mrs. Woffington stood in the middle of the room like a statue.

"What does she come here for?" said she, sternly. "You have not told me all."

"I don't know," cried poor Triplet, in dismay; "and I think the Devil brings her here to confound me. For Heaven's sake, retire! What will become of us all? There will be murder, I know there will!"

To his horror, Mrs. Woffington would not move. "You are on her side,"

said she slowly, with a concentration of spite and suspicion. She looked frightful at this moment. "All the better for me," added she, with a world of female malignity.

Triplet could not make head against this blow; he gasped, and pointed piteously to the inner door. "No; I will know two things: the course she means to take, and the terms you two are upon."

By this time Mrs. Vane's light foot was heard on the stair, and Triplet sank into a chair. "They will tear one another to pieces," said he.

A tap came to the door.

He looked fearfully round for the woman whom jealousy had so speedily turned from an angel to a fiend; and saw with dismay that she had actually had the hardihood to slip round and enter the picture again.

She had not quite arranged herself when her rival knocked.

Triplet dragged himself to the door. Before he opened it, he looked fearfully over his shoulder, and received a glance of cool, bitter, deadly hostility, that boded ill both for him and his visitor. Triplet's apprehensions were not unreasonable. His benefactress and this sweet lady were rivals!

Jealousy is a dreadful pa.s.sion, it makes us tigers. The jealous always thirst for blood. At any moment when reason is a little weaker than usual, they are ready to kill the thing they hate, or the thing they love.

Any open collision between these ladies would scatter ill consequences all round. Under such circ.u.mstances, we are pretty sure to say or do something wicked, silly, or unreasonable. But what tortured Triplet more than anything was his own particular notion that fate doomed him to witness a formal encounter between these two women, and of course an encounter of such a nature as we in our day ill.u.s.trate by "Kilkenny cats."

To be sure Mrs. Vane had appeared a dove, but doves can peck on certain occasions, and no doubt she had a spirit at bottom. Her coming to him proved it. And had not the other been a dove all the morning and afternoon? Yet, jealousy had turned her to a fiend before his eyes. Then if (which was not probable) no collision took place, what a situation was his! Mrs. Woffington (his buckler from starvation) suspected him, and would distort every word that came from Mrs. Vane's lips.

Triplet's situation was, in fact, that of AEneas in the storm.

"Olim et haec meminisse juvabit--" "But, while present, such things don't please any one a bit."

It was the sort of situation we can laugh at, and see the fun of it six months after, if not shipwrecked on it at the time.

With a ghastly smile the poor quaking hypocrite welcomed Mrs. Vane, and professed a world of innocent delight that she had so honored his humble roof.

She interrupted his compliments, and begged him to see whether she was followed by a gentleman in a cloak.

Triplet looked out of the window.

"Sir Charles Pomander!" gasped he.

Sir Charles was at the very door. If, however, he had intended to mount the stairs he changed his mind, for he suddenly went off round the corner with a businesslike air, real or fict.i.tious.

"He is gone, madam," said Triplet.

Mrs. Vane, the better to escape detection or observation, wore a thick mantle and a hood that concealed her features. Of these Triplet debarra.s.sed her.

"Sit down, madam;" and he hastily drew a chair so that her back was to the picture.

She was pale, and trembled a little. She hid her face in her hands a moment, then, recovering her courage, "she begged Mr. Triplet to pardon her for coming to him. He had inspired her with confidence," she said; "he had offered her his services, and so she had come to him, for she had no other friend to aid her in her sore distress." She might have added, that with the tact of her s.e.x she had read Triplet to the bottom, and came to him, as she would to a benevolent, muscular old woman.

Triplet's natural impulse was to repeat most warmly his offers of service. He did so; and then, conscious of the picture, had a misgiving.

"Dear Mr. Triplet," began Mrs. Vane, "you know this person, Mrs.

Woffington?"

"Yes, madam," replied Triplet, lowering his eyes, "I am honored by her acquaintance."

"You will take me to the theater where she acts?"

"Yes, madam; to the boxes, I presume?"

"No! oh, no! How could I bear that? To the place where the actors and actresses are."

Triplet demurred. This would be courting that very collision, the dread of which even now oppressed him.

At the first faint sign of resistance she began to supplicate him, as if he was some great, stern tyrant.

"Oh, you must not, you cannot refuse me. You do not know what I risk to obtain this. I have risen from my bed to come to you. I have a fire here!" She pressed her hand to her brow. "Oh, take me to her!"

"Madam, I will do anything for you. But be advised; trust to my knowledge of human nature. What you require is madness. Gracious Heavens! you two are rivals, and when rivals meet there's murder or deadly mischief."

"Ah! if you knew my sorrow, you would not thwart me. Oh, Mr. Triplet!

little did I think you were as cruel as the rest." So then this cruel monster whimpered out that he should do any folly she insisted upon.

"Good, kind Mr. Triplet!" said Mrs. Vane. "Let me look in your face?

Yes, I see you are honest and true. I will tell you all." Then she poured in his ear her simple tale, unadorned and touching as Judah's speech to Joseph. She told him how she loved her husband; how he had loved her; how happy they were for the first six months; how her heart sank when he left her; how he had promised she should join him, and on that hope she lived. "But for two months he had ceased to speak of this, and I grew heart-sick waiting for the summons that never came. At last I felt I should die if I did not see him; so I plucked up courage and wrote that I must come to him. He did not forbid me, so I left our country home. Oh, sir! I cannot make you know how my heart burned to be by his side. I counted the hours of the journey; I counted the miles.

At last I reached his house; I found a gay company there. I was a little sorry, but I said: 'His friends shall be welcome, right welcome. He has asked them to welcome his wife.'"

"Poor thing!" muttered Triplet.

"Oh, Mr. Triplet! they were there to do honor to ----, and the wife was neither expected nor desired. There lay my letters with their seals unbroken. I know all _his_ letters by heart, Mr. Triplet. The seals unbroken--unbroken! Mr. Triplet."

"It is abominable!" cried Triplet fiercely. "And she who sat in my seat--in his house, and in his heart--was this lady, the actress you so praised to me?"

"That lady, ma'am," said Triplet, "has been deceived as well as you."

"I am convinced of it," said Mabel.