Well, there came a night when we expected Jack to supper and he appeared not. Only, in his place, a few lines to say that he was going to start at once for his holiday. A friend had just invited him to join him on his yacht. He added in a postscript: "I will write later." He did not write. Hours, days, weeks passed, and not a word did we hear. "It is a break-off," said my mother consolingly. "He had got tired of us all, and he thought this the easiest way of letting us know. I told you there was an understanding between him and Isabel Chisholm—any one could see that with half an eye."
I turned away shuddering.
"Terrible gales," said my father, rustling the newspaper comfortably in his easy chair. "Great disasters among the shipping. I shouldn't wonder if the yacht young what's-his-name went out in were come to grief."
I grew pale, and thin, and dispirited. I knew the ladies of our company made nasty remarks about me. One day I overheard two of them talking.
"She never was much of an actress, and now she merely walks through her part. They never had any feeling for art, not one of those Gascoigne girls."
No feeling for art! What a low, mean, spiteful, wicked thing to say.
And the worst of it was that it was so true.
I resolved at once that I would do something desperate. The last piece brought out at our theatre had been a "frost." It had dragged along until the advertisements were able to announce "Fifteenth Night of the Great Realistic Drama." And various scathing paragraphs from the papers were pruned down and weeded till they seemed unstinted praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the curtain fell," became briefly "Enthusiastic cheers."
But nobody was deceived. One week the public were informed that they could book their seats a month in advance; the next that the successful drama had to be withdrawn at the height of its popularity, owing to other arrangements. What the other arrangements were to be our manager was at his wit's end to decide. There only wanted three weeks to the close of the season. Fired with a wild ambition born of suspense and disappointment, I suggested that Shakespeare should fill the breach. "Romeo and Juliet," with me, Sybil Gascoigne, as the heroine.
"Pshaw!" said our good-humoured manager, "you do not know what you are talking about. Juliet! You have not the depth, the temperament, the experience for a Juliet. She had more knowledge of life at thirteen than most of our English maids have at thirty. To represent Juliet correctly an actress must have the face and figure of a young girl, with the heart and mind of a woman, and of a woman who has suffered."
"And have I not suffered? Do you think because you see me tripping through some foolish, insipid rôle that I am capable of nothing better? Give me a chance and see what I can do."