If Miss Farren had been a little less virtuous and a little more human she would run a better chance of obtaining the sympathy of such people as are capable of differentiating between a woman's virtue and the virtues of womankind. She seemed to think that the sole duty of a woman is to be discreet in regard to herself—to give no one a chance of pointings finger of scorn at her; and it really seemed as if this was also the creed of the noble people with whom she associated. Every one seemed to be so paralysed by her propriety as to be incapable of perceiving how contemptible a part she was playing. An honest woman, with the instincts of goodness and with some sense of her duty, would, the moment a married man offers her his devotion, send him pretty quickly about his business. The most elementary sense of duty must suggest the adoption of such a course of treatment in regard to an illicit admirer. But Miss Farren had no such sense. She met the philandering of her lover with smiles and a virtuous handshake. She accepted his offer of an adoring friendship for the present with a reversion of the position of Countess of Derby on the death of the existing holder of the title and its appurtenances; and people held her up, and continue to hold her up, as an example of all that is virtuous and amiable in life!
She was also commended for her patience, as Lord Derby was for his constancy. They had both great need of these qualities, for the unhappy barrier to their union showed no signs of getting out of their way, either by death or divorce. She became strangely discreet, taking, in fact, a leaf out of Miss Farren's book of deportment, and never giving her husband a chance of freeing himself from the tie that bound him nominally to her. It must have been very gratifying to the actress to perceive how effective was the example she set to the Countess in regard to the adherence to the path of rectitude.
What was the exact impression produced upon Lord Derby by all this decorum it would be difficult to say. He may have been pleased to discover that he was married to a lady to whom his honour was more precious than he had any reason or any right to believe it to be. But assuredly a less placid gentleman would have found himself wishing now and again that—well, that matters had arranged themselves differently.
The years went by without bringing about a more satisfactory modus vivendi than was in existence when Lord Derby originally offered his heart and hand (the latter when it should become vacant) to the actress. Lady Derby was in wretched health, but still showed no more inclination to die than does a chronic invalid. Miss Farren continued to drive her splendid chariot, with its coachmen on the hammer-cloth and its footmen clinging on to the straps behind, down to the stage-door of the theatre, and to fill the house every night that she played. Her popularity seemed to grow with years, and she appeared in a wide range of characters, making her audiences accept as correct her reading of every part, though the best critics—Walpole was about the worst—of her art had a good deal to say that was not quite favourable to her style. Only once, however, did she make a flagrant error on the stage, and this was when she was misguided enough to put on men's garments in representing the part of Tracy Lovell in Colman's play, The Suicide.
By this unhappy exhibition which she made of herself she disillusioned those of her admirers who fancied that she was a model of grace from the sole of her feet to the crown of her head. She never repeated this performance. Had she done so in Lord Derby's presence, his constancy would have been put to a severer test than any to which he had been previously subjected. The best judges of what constitutes grace in a woman were unanimous in their advice to the lady never to forsake the friendly habiliments which she was accustomed to wear, and never to allow her emulation of the perpetually chaste goddess to lead her to adopt even for an hour the convenient garb in which she went a-hunting.
And while his fiancée was moving from triumph to triumph, putting every other actress in the shade, the Earl of Derby was putting on flesh. But as his flesh became more visible so did his faith. He was a model of fidelity. His name was never associated with the name of any other lady—not even that of his wife—during his long years of probation, and twenty years form a rather protracted period for a man to wait in order to marry an actress. It was not to be wondered if the spectacle of the devoted young peer waiting for the beautiful girl in the green room, which was allowed to the habitués of that fascinating apartment during the earlier years of this strange attachment, produced quite a different effect upon people from that which was the result of witnessing a somewhat obese, elderly gentleman panting along by the side of a chaste lady of forty. Nor was it remarkable that, on seeing one day by the side of Miss Farren, a gallant young man whose walk and bearing suggested to elderly spectators a rejuvenated Lord Stanley, they should rub their eyes and ask what miracle was this that time and true love had wrought.
The only miracle that time had wrought was to make the son of the Earl of Derby twenty-one years of age and rather interested in the personnel of green rooms. He had been introduced to Miss Farren by his father; but to his honour be it said, he made no attempt to take his father's place in regard to the lady, except as her escort to her house in Green Street. The gossip that suggested such a possibility was just what one might expect to find in one of Walpole's letters.
At last the shameful, if virtuous, devotion of twenty years was rewarded by the announcement of the death of the wretched Countess whose desertion dated from the day her husband met the actress. Miss Farren, with that extraordinary bad taste which characterised every period of her intimacy with Lord Derby, took an ostentatious farewell of the stage, and proved by the faltering of her voice, her emotion, and her final outburst in tears, that time had not diminished from the arts of her art. Of course, there was a scene of intense emotion in the theatre, which was increased when King led her forward and Wroughton spoke a rhymed and stagey farewell in her presence. Four of its lines were these:
But ah! this night adieu the joyous mien,
When Mirth's lov'd fav'rite quits the mimic scene,