Peg Woffington Part 34

"I never doubted that, James."

So then the poor things fell on their knees upon the public road, and thanked G.o.d. If any man had seen them, he would have said they were mad.

Yet madder things are done every day by gentlemen with faces as grave as the parish bull's. And then they rose and formed their little plans.

Triplet was for devoting four-fifths to charity, and living like a prince on the remainder. But Mrs. Triplet thought the poor were ent.i.tled to no more than two-thirds, and they themselves ought to bask in a third, to make up for what they had gone through; and then suddenly she sighed, and burst into tears. "Lucy! Lucy!" sobbed she.

Yes, reader, G.o.d had taken little Lucy! And her mother cried to think all this wealth and comfort had come too late for her darling child.

"Do not cry. Lucy is richer, a thousand times, than you are, with your twenty thousand pounds."

Their good resolutions were carried out, for a wonder. Triplet lived for years, the benefactor of all the loose fish that swim in and round theaters; and, indeed, the unfortunate seldom appealed to him in vain.

He now predominated over the arts, instead of climbing them. In his latter day he became an oracle, as far as the science of acting was concerned; and, what is far more rare, he really got to know _something_ about it. This was owing to two circ.u.mstances: first, he ceased to run blindfold in a groove behind the scenes; second, he became a frequenter of the first row of the pit, and that is where the whole critic, and two-thirds of the true actor, is made.

On one point, to his dying day, his feelings guided his judgment. He never could see an actress equal to his Woffington. Mrs. Abington was grace personified, but so was Woffington, said the old man: and Abington's voice is thin, Woffington's was sweet and mellow. When Jordan rose, with her voice of honey, her dewy freshness, and her heavenly laugh, that melted in along with her words, like the gold in the quartz, Triplet was obliged to own her the G.o.ddess of beautiful gayety; but still he had the last word: "Woffington was all _she_ is, except her figure. Woffington was a Hebe; your Nell Jordan is little better than a dowdy."

Triplet almost reached the present century. He pa.s.sed through great events, but they did not excite him; his eye was upon the arts. When Napoleon drew his conquering sword on England, Triplet's remark was: "Now we shall be driven upon native talent, thank Heaven!" The storms of Europe shook not Triplet. The fact is, nothing that happened on the great stage of the world seemed real to him. He believed in nothing where there was no curtain visible. But even the grotesque are not good in vain. Many an eye was wet round his dying bed, and many a tear fell upon his grave. He made his final exit in the year of grace 1799. And I, who laugh at him, would leave this world to-day to be with him; for I am tossing at sea--he is in port.

A straightforward character like Mabel's becomes a firm character with years. Long ere she was forty, her hand gently but steadily ruled Willoughby House, and all in it. She and Mr. Vane lived very happily; he gave her no fresh cause for uneasiness. Six months after their return, she told him what burned in that honest heart of hers, the truth about Mrs. Woffington. The water rushed to his eyes, but his heart was now wholly his wife's; and grat.i.tude to Mrs. Woffington for her n.o.ble conduct was the only sentiment awakened.

"You must repay her, dearest," said he. "I know you love her, and until to-day it gave me pain; now it gives me pleasure. We owe her much."

The happy, innocent life of Mabel Vane is soon summed up. Frank as the day, constant as the sun, pure as the dew, she pa.s.sed the golden years preparing herself and others for a still brighter eternity. At home, it was she who warmed and cheered the house, and the hearth, more than all Christmas fires. Abroad, she shone upon the poor like the sun. She led her beloved husband by the hand to Heaven. She led her children the same road; and she was leading her grandchildren when the angel of death came for her; and she slept in peace.

Many remember her. For she alone, of all our tale, lived in this present century; but they speak of her as "old Madam Vane"--her whom we knew so young and fresh.

She lies in Willoughby Church--her mortal part; her spirit is with the spirits of our mothers and sisters, reader, that are gone before us; with the tender mothers, the chaste wives, the loyal friends, and the just women of all ages.

RESURGET.

I come to her last, who went first; but I could not have stayed by the others, when once I had laid my darling asleep. It seemed for a while as if the events of our tale did her harm; but it was not so in the end.

Not many years afterward, she was engaged by Mr. Sheridan, at a very heavy salary, and went to Dublin. Here the little girl, who had often carried a pitcher on her head down to the Liffey, and had played Polly Peachum in a booth, became a lion; dramatic, political and literary, and the center of the wit of that wittiest of cities.

But the Dublin ladies and she did not coalesce. They said she was a naughty woman, and not fit for them morally. She said they had but two topics, "silks and scandal," and were unfit for her intellectually.

This was the saddest part of her history. But it is darkest just before sunrise. She returned to London. Not long after, it so happened that she went to a small church in the city one Sunday afternoon. The preacher was such as we have often heard; but not so this poor woman, in her day of sapless theology, ere John Wesley waked the snoring church. Instead of sending a dry clatter of morality about their ears, or evaporating the Bible in the thin generalities of the pulpit, this man drove G.o.d's truths home to the hearts of men and women. In his hands the divine virtues were thunderbolts, not swans' down. With good sense, plain speaking, and a heart yearning for the souls of his brethren and his sisters, he stormed the bosoms of many; and this afternoon, as he reasoned like Paul of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, sinners trembled--and Margaret Woffington was of those who trembled.

After this day, she came ever to the narrow street where shone this house of G.o.d; and still new light burst upon her heart and conscience.

Here she learned why she was unhappy; here she learned how alone she could be happy; here she learned to know herself; and, the moment she knew herself, she abhorred herself, and repented in dust and ashes.

This strong and straightforward character made no attempt to reconcile two things that an average Christian would have continued to reconcile.

Her interest fell in a moment before her new sense of right. She flung her profession from her like a poisonous weed.

Long before this, Mrs. Vane had begged her to leave the stage. She had replied, that it was to her what wine is to weak stomachs. "But," added she, "do not fear that I will ever crawl down hill, and unravel my own reputation; nor will I ever do as I have seen others--stand groaning at the wing, to go on giggling and come off gasping. No! the first night the boards do not spring beneath my feet, and the pulse of the public beat under my hand, I am gone! Next day, at rehearsal, instead of Woffington, a note will come, to tell the manager that henceforth Woffington is herself--at Twickenham, or Richmond, or Harrow-on-the-Hill, far from his dust, his din, and his glare--quiet, till G.o.d takes her. Amid gra.s.s, and flowers, and charitable deeds."

This day had not come. It was in the zenith of her charms and her fame that she went home one night after a play, and never entered a theater, by the front door or back door, again. She declined all leave-taking and ceremony.

"When a publican shuts up shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I.

Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more guineas, and the world loses in me, what? another old glove, full of words; half of them idle, the rest wicked, untrue, silly, or impure. _Rougissons, taisons-nous, et partons."_

She now changed her residence, and withdrew politely from her old a.s.sociates, courting two cla.s.ses only, the good and the poor. She had always supported her mother and sister; but now charity became her system. The following is characteristic:

A gentleman who had greatly admired this das.h.i.+ng actress met one day, in the suburbs, a lady in an old black silk gown and a gray shawl, with a large basket on her arm. She showed him its contents--worsted stockings of prodigious thickness--which she was carrying to some of her _proteges._

"But surely that is a waste of your valuable time," remonstrated her admirer. "Much better buy them."

"But, my good soul," replied the representative of Sir Harry Wildair, "you can't buy them. n.o.body in this wretched town can knit worsted hose except Woffington."

Conversions like this are open to just suspicion, and some did not fail to confound her with certain great sinners, who have turned austere self-deceivers when sin smiled no more. But this was mere conjecture.

The facts were clear, and speaking to the contrary. This woman left folly at its brightest, and did not become austere. On the contrary, though she laughed less, she was observed to smile far oftener than before. She was a humble and penitent, but cheerful, hopeful Christian.

Another cla.s.s of detractors took a somewhat opposite ground. They accused her of bigotry for advising a young female friend against the stage as a business. But let us hear herself. This is what she said to the girl:

"At the bottom of my heart, I always loved and honored virtue. Yet the tendencies of the stage so completely overcame my good sentiments that I was for years a worthless woman. It is a situation of uncommon and incessant temptation. Ask yourself, my child, whether there is nothing else you can do, but this. It is, I think, our duty and our wisdom to fly temptation whenever we can, as it is to resist it when we cannot escape it."

Was this the tone of bigotry?

Easy in fortune, penitent, but cheerful, Mrs. Woffington had now but one care--to efface the memory of her former self, and to give as many years to purity and piety as had gone to folly and frailty. This was not to be! The Almighty did not permit, or perhaps I should say, did not require this.

Some unpleasant symptoms had long attracted her notice, but in the bustle of her profession had received little attention. She was now persuaded by her own medical attendant to consult Dr. Bowdler, who had a great reputation, and had been years ago an acquaintance and an admirer.

He visited her, he examined her by means little used in that day, and he saw at once that her days were numbered.

Dr. Bowdler's profession and experience had not steeled his heart as they generally do and must do. He could not tell her this sad news, so he asked her for pen and paper, and said, I will write a prescription to Mr. ----. He then wrote, not a prescription, but a few lines, begging Mr. ---- to convey the cruel intelligence by degrees, and with care and tenderness. "It is all we can do for her," said he.

He looked so grave while writing the supposed prescription, that it unluckily occurred to Mrs. Woffington to look over him. She stole archly behind him, and, with a smile on her face--read her death warrant.

It was a cruel stroke! A gasping sigh broke from her. At this Dr.

Bowdler looked up, and to his horror saw the sweet face he had doomed to the tomb looking earnestly and anxiously at him, and very pale and grave. He was shocked, and, strange to say, she, whose death-warrant he had signed, ran and brought him a gla.s.s of wine, for he was quite overcome. Then she gave him her hand in her own sweet way, and bade him not grieve for her, for she was not afraid to die, and had long learned that "life is a walking shadow, a poor, poor player, who frets and struts his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."

But no sooner was the doctor gone than she wept bitterly. Poor soul!

she had set her heart upon living as many years to G.o.d as she had to the world, and she had hoped to wipe out her former self.

"Alas!" she said to her sister, "I have done more harm than I can ever hope to good now; and my long life of folly and wickedness will be remembered--will be what they call famous; my short life of repentance who will know, or heed, or take to profit?"

But she soon ceased to repine. She bowed to the will of Heaven, and set her house in order, and awaited her summons. The tranquillity of her life and her courageous spirit were unfavorable to the progress of disease, and I am glad to say she was permitted to live nearly three years after this, and these three years were the happiest period of her whole life. Works of piety and love made the days eventful. She was at home now--she had never been at home in folly and loose living. All her bitterness was gone now, with its cause.

Reader, it was with her as it is with many an autumn day; clouds darken the sun, rain and wind sweep over all--till day declines. But then comes one heavenly hour, when all ill things seem spent. There is no more wind, no more rain. The great sun comes forth--not fiery bright indeed, but full of tranquil glory, and warms the sky with ruby waves, and the hearts of men with hope, as, parting with us for a little s.p.a.ce, he glides slowly and peacefully to rest.

So fared it with this humble, penitent, and now happy Christian.

A part of her desire was given her. She lived long enough to read a firm recantation of her former self, to show the world a great repentance, and to leave upon indelible record one more proof, what alone is true wisdom, and where alone true joys are to be found.

She endured some physical pain, as all must who die in their prime. But this never wrung a sigh from her great heart; and within she had the peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.ses all understanding.

I am not strong enough to follow her to her last hour; nor is it needed.

Enough that her own words came true. When the great summons came, it found her full of hope, and peace, and joy; sojourning, not dwelling, upon earth; far from dust and din and vice; the Bible in her hand, the Cross in her heart; quiet; amid gra.s.s, and flowers, and charitable deeds.