“I take back the insinuation and offer him my apologies; he is not a strolling player because he doesn't stroll—would to Heaven he did! Oh, my poor Sue, take a stroll into the country yourself as soon as possible and try to forget this dreadfully handsome wretch. You would not, I am sure, force me to tell his lordship what a goose his daughter is like to make of herself.”
At this point there was a dramatic scene, one that was far more deeply charged with comedy of a sort than any to be found in Mr. Whitehead's play. Lady Susan accused her dear friend of being a spy, of extorting a confession from her under the guise of friendship, which in other circumstances—the rack, the wheel, the thumbscrew, in fact the entire mechanism of persuasion employed by the Spanish Inquisition—would have been powerless to obtain. Lady Sarah on her side entreated her friend not to show herself to be even a greater goose than her confession would make her out to be. For several minutes there was reproach and counter-reproach, many home truths followed home thrusts; then some tears, self-accusation, expressions of sympathy and tenderness, followed by promises of friendship beyond the dreams of Damon and Pythias; lastly, a promise on the part of Sue that she would take the advice of her devoted Sarah and fly to the country without delay.
Strange to say, she fled to the country, and, stranger still, the result was not to cure her of her infatuation for the handsome actor. For close upon a year she did not see him, but she was as devoted to him as she had been at first, and no day passed on which she failed to think of him, or to spend some hours writing romantic verses, sometimes in the style of Waller in his lyrics, sometimes in the style (distant) of Mr. Dryden in his pastorals: she was Lesbia, and Mr. O'Brien was Strephon.
But in the meantime she had improved so much in her acting that when Lady Sarah, who had within the year married Sir Thomas Bunbury, ventured to rally her upon her infatuation of the previous spring, she was able to disarm her suspicions by a flush and a shrug, and a little contemptuous exclamation or two.
“Ah, my dear one, did not I give you good advice?” cried Lady Sarah. “I was well assured that my beloved Sue would never persevere in a passion that could only end in unhappiness. But indeed, child, I never had the heart to blame you greatly, the fellow is handsome as Apollo and as proud as Apolyon. He has broken many hearts not accounted particularly fragile, during the year.”
“Is't possible? For example?—I vow that I shall keep their names secret.”
Lady Sarah shook her head at first, but on being importuned whispered a name or two of ladies of their acquaintance, all of whom—according to Lady Sarah—had fallen as deep as was possible in love with O'Brien. Her ladyship was so intent on her narration of the scandals that she quite failed to see the strange light that gleamed in her friend's eyes at the mention of every name—a rather fierce gleam, with a flash of green in it. She did not notice this phenomenon, nor did she detect the false note in the tribute of laughter which her friend paid to her powers of narration.
But Lady Sue, when the other had left her, rushed to her room and flung herself on her bed in a paroxysm of jealousy. She beat her innocent pillow wildly, crying in the whisper that the clenching of her teeth made imperative—“The hussies! Shameless creatures! Do they hope that he will be attracted to them? Fools!—they are fools! They do not know him as I know him. They think that he is nothing but a vain actor—Garrick, or Barry, or Lewes. Oh, they do not know him!”
She lay there in her passion for an hour, and if it was her maid who discovered her at the end of that time, it is safe to assume that the young woman's flesh was black and blue in places for several days afterwards. The pinch and the slipper were among the most highly approved forms of torture inflicted upon their maids at that robust period of English history. The French Revolution was still some way off.
A few weeks later Lady Susan was sitting to Sir Joshua Reynolds for a group, in which he painted her with her friend Lady Sarah Bunbury and Mr. Henry Fox; and it was the carrying out of this scheme that put quite another scheme into the quick brain of the first-named lady. Painting was in the air. She possessed a poor print of Mr. O'Brien, and she had found an immense consolation in gazing upon it—frequently at midnight, under the light of her bedroom candle. The sight of the life-like portraits in Sir Joshua's studio induced her to ask herself if she might not possess a picture of her lover that would show him as he really was in life, without demanding so many allowances as were necessary to be made for the shortcomings of the engraver of a print. Why should she not get Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint for her the portrait of Mr. O'Brien?