The young fellow did, and the mamma, who hadn’t taken the slightest notice of her daughter—being wrapped up in the local Methodist clergyman and the chapel people in the place—was very much astonished. She said she had never thought of such a thing; but if the young gentleman wished to marry her daughter, he had better tell her what his position was, etc.
The young gentleman told her about his family, which was a very good one—almost county people, in fact—and then, after a lot of stammering, he let out that he was only a younger son, and that he was by profession an actor.
An actor!
The doctor told me that the London doctor told him that, when Mrs. Elmore heard this, she dropped her knitting, and nearly had a fit.
It seems that she was one of the sort that look upon the theatre, and everything connected with it, as awful.
As soon as she had recovered from her horror, she told the young gentleman that, rather than allow her daughter to marry a man who was such a lost sinner, she would see her in her coffin.
The young fellow tried to argue the point a little, but it was no use. Mrs. Elmore forbade him ever to speak to her daughter again, and she went at once and packed up, and took her daughter away to another boarding-house, telling the landlady that she was surprised that she received such people as the young gentleman.
She gave the poor young lady a terrible lecture, and forbade her ever to mention the young man’s name. And then she called in her favourite clergyman, the Methodist parson, and the two of them went at the poor girl hammer and tongs, just as if she had committed some awful crime.
After that the young people didn’t meet. The young lady wouldn’t disobey her mother, and so the young fellow, who had been taking a long rest during the summer, went back to London; and in the autumn, when his theatre reopened—the one he belonged to—he began to play again, and made quite a hit. Poor fellow, it was natural he should; for the part he played was that of a young man, who loves a girl and is told he shall never have her, and isn’t able to see her. I wonder how many of the people who applauded him for that knew that he wasn’t acting at all, but just being himself?
After he was gone, and the young lady couldn’t even see him, she began to get ill, and went home, and the doctor said it was debility, and care must be taken of her or she might go into a decline.