His Majesty's Well-Beloved. Emma Orczy
of what you had suspected long since.
But you would not let any one see your heart. No! not even me, your devoted Bondsman, who would gladly die to save You from pain. Yet I could not bring my heart to condemn Mr. Betterton utterly. I did not believe even then that he had been unfaithful – led away no doubt by the glamour of the society Beauty, by the talk and the swagger of all the idle Gentlemen about town – but not unfaithful. His was not a Nature to love more than the once, and he loved You, Mistress – loved You from the moment that he set eyes on You, from the moment that he knew your Worth. His fancy had perhaps been captured by the beautiful Lady Barbara, his Heart wherein your image was eternally enshrined, had been momentarily bewitched by her wiles; but he was not responsible for these Actions – that I could have sworn even then.
Mr. Betterton is above all an Artist, and in my humble judgment Artists are not to be measured by ordinary standards. Their mind is more fanciful, their fancy more roving; they are the Butterflies of this World, gay to look at and light on the wing.
You never told me, Mistress, what course You adopted after that eventful afternoon; nor would I have ventured to pry into your secrets. That You and Mr. Betterton talked the whole matter over, I make no doubt. I could even tell You, methinks, on which day the heart to heart talk between You took place. That there were no Recriminations on your part I dare aver; also that Mr. Betterton received his final dismissal on that day with a greater respect than ever for You in his Heart, and with deep sorrow weighing upon his Soul.
After that, his visits to the house became more and more infrequent; and at first You would contrive to be absent when he came. But, as I have always maintained, his love for You still filled his innermost Being, even though the Lady Barbara ruled over his fancy for the time. He longed for your Presence and for your Friendship, even though at that time he believed that You had totally erased his image from your Heart.
And so, when he came, and I had perforce to tell him that You were absent, he would linger on in the hope that You would return, and he would go away with a bitter sigh of regret whenever he had failed to catch a glimpse of You.
You never told me in so many Words that you had definitely broken off your Engagement to Mr. Betterton, nor do I believe that such was your intention even then. Mistress Euphrosine certainly never realised that You were smarting under so terrible a blow, and she still spoke glibly of your forthcoming marriage.
It was indeed fortunate for You, fortunate for us all, that both she and Mr. Baggs were too self-absorbed – he in his Business and she in her Piety – and too selfish, to be aware of what went on around them. Their self-absorption left You free to indulge in the luxury of suffering in silence; and I was made almost happy at times by an occasional surreptitious pressure of your Hand, a glance from your Eyes, telling me that my Understanding and Sympathy were not wholly unwelcome.
CHAPTER III
A CRIMINAL FOLLY
In June, you made your debut upon the stage, dear Mistress. Though You only played a small Part, your Grace and Charm soon won universal approval. I have so often told You of my feelings, my hopes, my tremors and my joy on the occasion when first I saw You upon the boards, that I will not weary You with the re-telling of them once again. Securely hidden behind a pillar, I only lived through the super-acuteness of my Senses, which drank in your Presence from the moment when You stepped out from behind the Curtain and revealed your gracious personality to an admiring Audience.
As long as I live, every word which You spoke on that day will continue to ring in mine ear, and ere mine eyes close for ever in their last long Sleep, I shall see your exquisite Image floating dreamlike before their gaze.
From that day onward, I saw you more seldom than I had been wont to do before. Your Success at the new Theatre had been so pronounced that Sir William Davenant soon entrusted You with more important parts. Thus your time was greatly taken up both with Performances and with Rehearsals and with the choosing and trying on of dresses. Of necessity, your work threw you often in the company of Mr. Betterton, he being the leading Actor in Sir William's Company, and the most popular as he was the most eminent of His Majesty's Well-Beloved Servants. In fact, his Fame at this time was reaching its Apogee. He was reckoned one of the Intimates of His Majesty himself; Gentlemen and Noblemen sought his company; great Ladies were zealous to win his favours.
Needless to say that concurrently with his rise to pre-eminence, an army of Enemies sprung up around him. Hungry curs will ever bay at the moon. Set a cat upon a high post and in a moment others will congregate down below and spit and yowl at their more fortunate kind. Scandal and spite, which had never been so rife as in these days, fastened themselves like evil tentacles on Mr. Betterton's fair Name.
He was too proud to combat these, and You too proud to lend an ear to them. You met him now upon an easy footing of Friendship, of gentle gratitude as of a successful Pupil towards a kindly Teacher. To any one who did not know You as I do, You must at that time have seemed completely happy. You were independent now, earning a good salary, paying Mistress Euphrosine liberally for the lodgings which she placed at your disposal; free to come and go as You pleased, to receive the visits of Gentlemen who were desirous of paying their respects to You. You were, in fact, Mistress Saunderson, the well-known Actress, who was busy climbing – and swiftly, too – the Ladder of Fame.
Of your proposed Marriage with Mr. Betterton there was of course no longer any talk. For some reason best known to herself, and which I myself never tried to fathom, even Mistress Euphrosine had ceased to speak of it.
Did she, within the depths of her ambitious and avaricious Heart, harbour the belief that her Brother would one day wed one of those great Ladies, who were wont to hang entranced upon his lips, when he spoke the immortal words of the late Mr. William Shakespeare or of Mr. John Dryden? I know not; nor what benefit she would have derived from it if such an unlikely Event had indeed taken place.
Towards me, she was still frigidly contemptuous. But as to that, I did not care. I was determined to endure her worst gibes for the sake of dwelling under the same roof which still had the privilege of sheltering You.
It was one day early in September – just something over a year ago, in fact – that my Lord Stour called at the house of Mr. Theophilus Baggs. I knew him at once for the Cavalier who was ever in attendance upon the Lady Barbara Wychwoode and whom rumour had assigned to her as her future Husband.
Frankly, I had never liked him from the first. I thought him overbearing and arrogant. His manner towards those who were inferior to him in station was always one of contempt. And I often wondered how Mr. Theophilus Baggs, who was an Attorney of some standing in the City of London, could endure the cool insolence wherewith young Gentlemen like my Lord Stour and others were wont to treat him. Not only that, but he seemed to derive a sort of gratification from it, and was wont to repeat – I was almost going to say that he would boast of – these acts of overbearance to which he was so often subjected.
"Another of the stiff-necked sort," he would say after he had bowed one of these fine Gentlemen obsequiously out of his office. "An honest, God-fearing Man is as dirt beneath the feet of these Gallants."
My Lord Stour, of a truth, was no exception to the rule. I have since been assured that he was quite kindly and gracious in himself, and that his faults were those of the Milieu in which he had been brought up, rather than of himself.
Of course, You, dear Mistress, were out of the house during the whole of that never-to-be-forgotten day of which I am about to speak, and therefore knew nothing of the terrible Event which then occurred and which, in my humble judgment, completely revolutionized Mr. Betterton's character for the time being. But Fate had decreed that I should see it all. Every moment of that awful afternoon is indelibly graven upon my Memory. I had, however, neither the Chance nor the Opportunity to speak to You of it all. At first I did not think that it would be expedient. The humiliation which Mr. Betterton was made to endure on that day was such that I could not bear to speak of it, least of all to You, who still held him in such high esteem. And later on, I still thought it best to be silent. Mr. Betterton and You seemed to have drifted apart so completely, that I did not feel that it would do any good to rake up old hurts, and to submit them to the cruel light of day.
But