SCENE II.
Along one of the tortuous passages leading to the dressing-rooms, a gentleman is conducting a lady, preceded by the dresser. They have evidently come from the audience part of the theatre, as they are both in modern evening dress. Presently the dresser pauses at a door, and after tapping, enters; and returns to invite the lady to invade the sacred precincts of the dressing-room of Miss Fonblanque, the representative of Lady Teazle. After a few whispered words to her escort, the lady accepts the invitation, and in another moment is clasped in the embrace of the actress. ‘My dear Julia!’
‘My darling Emily!’
Certainly, Lady Teazle fully deserved the rapturous praises of Montmorency. Her lovely dark eyes shone all the brighter from the contrast to the powdered wig; while her splendid figure was displayed to the utmost advantage by means of her handsome brocaded dress.
‘And so you recognised me under these tinsel robes, Julia?’
‘Your voice is unmistakable; I should have known it anywhere, Emily.—When do you intend to return to your own sphere?’
‘First tell me, Julia, how you managed to penetrate these sacred precincts?’
‘Oh! my husband, who knows everybody, said he could at once accomplish it, directly I told him you were my old schoolfellow at Barbadoes.—Now, answer me my question, there’s a dear!’
‘I have found my proper sphere; I am free, popular, and admired. Instead of one admirer, I have hundreds, and the number is increasing nightly. What can woman wish for more?’
‘I’ll tell you, Emily: a nice husband, and domestic bliss.’
The actress indulged in a scarcely audible sigh. ‘That might have been my lot. I mean the domestic bliss part of the affair, if I had not had it dinned into my ears from morning till night that there was only one road to happiness—a union with Mr Stanley, whom I have never seen.’
‘You might have liked him very much.’
‘Impossible, my dear Julia. The very fact of a man being ticketed like a prize animal at a show, and then his being introduced to you as your certain and future husband, would be quite sufficient to make me detest him.—No, Julia; when I marry, I will myself make the selection, and he must be one who is ignorant that his intended is a rich heiress.’
‘That will not be a very easy matter to accomplish, Emily.’
‘Listen, Julia, and I’ll tell you a secret. There is a young man acting in this company—a Mr Percy Montmorency. He is all I could wish—handsome, clever, accomplished, and vastly agreeable.’
‘Then you have made your selection?’
‘Not so, Julia. His profession renders our union impossible. He may be heir to a peerage; he may be a lawyer’s clerk. There is the most delightful mystery as to our antecedents, we play-actors! For instance, who would suppose that I was the rich West Indian heiress, who utilised her amateur theatrical talents, and adopted her present profession? And all in order to escape being pestered into an unwelcome and distasteful marriage. Heigh-ho! I wish I had never seen this captivating fellow.’
Mrs Sydney sighed as she rejoined: ‘Ah, Emily, there is the danger of your present mode of life. Before you know where you are, finding yourself over head and ears in love with some handsome fellow, even of whose very name you are ignorant. As to the position in society of his progenitors, that is a point which would require the research of the Society of Antiquaries.’
The actress looked solemnly in the face of her friend, and taking both her hands within her own, replied: ‘Julia, there is a fascination in the life of a successful actress, of which you can form no conception. There is the delight of selecting the costume you are to wear on the eventful evening. No trifle to a woman, as you will admit. Then there is the actual pleasure of wearing it, not for the sake of some half-dozen friends, whose envy in consequence is a poor reward, but the object of admiration to hundreds of spectators nightly! Then, instead of monotonous domesticity, executing crewel-work to the accompaniment of the snoring in an armchair of a bored husband, we have the nightly welcome from a thousand pair of hands, and the final call before the curtain amidst an avalanche of flowers! Your name on every tongue, your photo. in every print-shop in London, and your acts and deeds the subject of conversation at every dinner-table in the metropolis!’
Mrs Sydney shook her head with a melancholy smile as the actress finished her oration. ‘I am still unconverted, Emily.’
‘Quite right, Julia. If we were all actresses, there would be no audiences.’
The inexorable call-boy here put a compulsory finish to the interview between the two friends, with the words ‘Lady Teazle.’