'And now,' said Tom, 'for my surprise.'
He called a coach and we drove not knowing whither; he was taking us to Drury Lane.
We were to celebrate our wedding-day by going to the Play.
For my own part I had never—for reasons which you will understand—been allowed to go to the Play. To sober-minded merchants the Play was a thing abhorrent: a hot-bed of temptation: the amusements of Prodigals and Profligates. Therefore I had never seen the Play. Nor had Alice or her sister-in-law, while Tom, who had once played in the orchestra, had never seen the Play since his debts carried him off to the King's Bench.
We found good places in the Boxes: the House was not yet half full and the candles were not all lighted: many of the seats were occupied by footmen waiting for their mistresses to take them: in the Pit the gentlemen, who seemed to know each other, were standing about in little knots conversing with the utmost gravity. One would have thought that affairs of state were being discussed: on the contrary, we were assured, they were arguing as to the merits or the blemishes of the piece, now in its third night.
Presently the musicians came in and the cheerful sound of tuning up began: then the House began to fill up rapidly; and the orange girls made their way about the Pit with their baskets, and walked about the back of the boxes calling out their 'fine Chaney orange—fine Chaney orange.' Why do I note these familiar things? Because they were not familiar to me: because they are always connected in my mind with what followed.
The play was 'The Country Girl.' The story is about an innocent Country Girl, an heiress, who knows nothing of London, or of the world. Her guardian wants to marry her himself for the sake of her money, though he is fifty and she is twenty: as he cannot do so without certain papers being drawn up, he makes her believe that they are married by breaking a sixpence, and brings her to London with him. How she deceives him, pretends this and that, makes appointments and writes love-letters under his very nose, wrings his consent to a subterfuge and marries the man she loves—these things compose the whole play.
The first Act, I confess, touched me little. The young fellow, the lover, talks about the girl he loves: her guardian is introduced: there is no action: and there were no women. I felt no interest in the talk of the men: there was an old rake and a young rake; the soured and gloomy guardian, and the lover. They did not belong to my world, either of the City or of St. George's Fields.
But in the second Act the Country Girl herself appeared and with her as a foil and for companion the town woman. Now the Country Girl, Peggy by name, instantly, on her very first appearance, ravished all hearts. For she was so lovely, with her light hair hardly dressed at all, hanging in curls over her neck and shoulders, her bright eyes, her quick movements, that no one could resist her. She brought with her on the stage the air of the country; one seemed to breathe the perfumes of roses and jessamine. And she was so curious and so ignorant and so innocent. She had been taken, the evening before, to the Play: she found the actors 'the goodliest, properest men': she liked them 'hugeously': she wants to go out and see the streets and the people. Her curmudgeon of a guardian comes in and treats her with the barbarity of a natural bad temper irritated by jealousy. There was a charming scene in which the Country Girl is dressed as a boy so that she may walk in the Park without being recognised by her lover—but she is recognised and is kissed by the very man whom her guardian dreads. There is another in which she is made to write a letter forbidding her lover ever to see her again: this is dictated by the guardian: when he goes to fetch sealing-wax she writes another exactly the opposite and substitutes it. Now all this was done with so much apparent artlessness and so much real feminine cunning that the play was charming whenever the Country Girl was on the stage.
It was over too soon.