Daughters of England

by Philippa Carr

  “And this,” went on Kitty, “is Lord Rosslyn.”

  “I am enchanted,” he said, looking at me.

  As for myself, I was still in a state of exultation. This was how people behaved in court circles, I imagined. One would have to remember that they did not really mean what they said, but such flattery was very pleasant to hear.

  “Let us take this small table,” he said. “It will be pleasant to sup à trois. Pray be seated, ladies, and I shall see that we receive the necessary attention.”

  Kitty and I obeyed and he went off.

  She was smiling at me. “I can see why you find this evening’s entertainment amusing.”

  “I have never before known anything like it,” I told her.

  “You must not think an actress’s life is all gaiety and attention from charming lords. It has its darker side.”

  “It was the play that excited me,” I said. “This is just amusing and everything is so new to me.”

  “Those who praise you to your face often have a very different tale to tell when you are absent. But tonight you have had a glimpse of a kind of theater.” She leaned on the table and looked at me very seriously. “You will be the one to make up your mind what you will do. If you are born to be an actress and do not use your gifts, you could spend a lifetime frustrated and regretful.”

  A man came to the table. It was Lord Donnerton.

  “There you are, my love,” he said to Kitty. “I was looking for you.” He sat down beside Kitty and smiled at me.

  “No need to introduce the young lady,” he said. “Your performance was wonderful, my dear.”

  So this was the man whom Kitty had married and, if I had read her aright, she was already regretting have done so.

  He went on: “Rosslyn is getting something for you, he tells me. He’ll get one of the men to bring it over.”

  He was right. Lord Rosslyn soon joined us and with him was one of the serving men, carrying a tray.

  It was a merry evening, although I did not understand some of what was said. They came from a different world from the one I knew and I had to realize, I told myself, that after tonight I might never have another glimpse of it.

  Lord Rosslyn paid a great deal of attention to me and I noticed that Kitty was a little uneasy about that. I wanted to tell her that, although I could not help being delighted by it, I did not take his flattery seriously.

  But there was something more than that on her mind. Kitty was not a happy woman.

  The supper was over and people were beginning to move out of the dining room.

  Kitty said: “I think it is time you were taken home, Sarah. Although your parents agreed to your staying for supper, they would not want you to be too late home.”

  “I shall escort Mistress Sarah,” said Lord Rosslyn, and, turning to me: “Are you ready?”

  “It is a very short distance from the house,” said Kitty.

  “I dare say I shall be wishing it were longer,” said Lord Rosslyn, smiling at me.

  I said: “It is very gracious of Lord Rosslyn to offer, but it really is not necessary.”

  “It is necessary for my pleasure,” he said. “Come, Mistress Sarah, I shall take you to your home.”

  “You see,” said Kitty, “I am right, am I not? What did I tell you? Never ‘May I?,’ always ‘I shall.’ Methinks my lord is a very forceful gentleman.”

  “As ever, Mistress Kitty, you have assessed the situation accurately.”

  “Get your cloak,” said Kitty to me.

  “I shall await you here,” added Lord Rosslyn.

  So, he would escort me home, I thought. Well, it was gracious of him. After all, he was a noble lord and I but the agent’s daughter. I believed such distinctions were very important in the world of which I had just had a glimpse.

  I said goodbye to Sir Henry and Lady Willerton, thanked them for a most enjoyable evening and told them that someone was going to escort me home.

  They nodded, relieved, I was sure, to be free of the need to concern themselves with me. Lady Willerton told me how pleased she was that I had come, for I had contributed a great deal to the success of the play.

  Lord Rosslyn was waiting for me.

  “Now you shall guide me,” he said, “and together we will undertake this perilous journey across the fields to your home.”

  “It is not very far and it was not really necessary for you to come.”

  “It is very necessary and I would not be deprived of it for a king’s ransom. Come.”

  Kitty was beside us. She was wearing a black velvet cloak and her eyes were sparkling with mischief.

  “Lady Donnerton,” said Lord Rosslyn, and it was the first time I had seen him taken aback.

  “The fancy took me for a little walk,” said Kitty, “so I have decided to accompany you.”

  As I had guessed, life returned to exactly what it had been before the summons had come to act in a play at Willerton House.

  The world seemed a very drab place now. I had to help my mother in the kitchen and learn the duties of a housewife. I was no longer a child. She would like me to marry in a year or so. My mother had the very man in sight. He was Jacob Summers of Runacres Farm on the Willerton estate. My father said that Runacres was the most prosperous of all the farms on the estate and the reason was that William Summers—father of Jacob, Thomas, David, Rebecca and Esther—was the best farmer in the district.

  My father approved of the Summers family because of their skill in tilling the land; my mother because, like herself, they deplored the turn to what they called Licentious Living and adhered as firmly to the Puritan way of life as she did.

  So she had chosen the eldest son of that dismal household to be my husband.

  As for me, I considered the possibility with acute distaste. It was not that Jacob was unpleasant; he was a very ordinary young man, but I had found him excessively dull, even before that wondrous night. Now I regarded the prospect of spending my life with him as something not to be taken seriously for a moment.

  Weeks went by. I saw Maria occasionally, but since we had ceased to be in the schoolroom together, our friendship was gradually fading. The Willertons were away a great deal. In fact, it seemed that they were rarely at home. I had begun to believe that that glorious adventure was an isolated incident in my life and I should never know the like again.

  It must have been three months after that occasion when I heard that the Willertons were back at the House and there was once more entertaining. Foolishly, I hoped that there would be another play and I should be asked to perform. Several days passed. The house party would soon be over, for they rarely lasted more than four or five days, and the Willertons would then go back to their London residence, and here we should settle down to the old dull routine. I told myself I was a fool to have believed that playing the waif had been a turning-point in my life.

  And then, as had happened on another occasion, a serving man came to the house with a note for me. My heart leaped when I saw that it was from Kitty. She wanted to see me at the Capulet balcony as before, she said. We could talk there.

  Another play, I thought! A part for me!

  Eagerly I kept the tryst, and with what joy I greeted her. I saw at once that she was different. Her expression was strained; she had lost weight and her face seemed a little drawn. The hopes I had harbored that she had come to tell me there was to be another play vanished.

  I said: “Something is wrong.”

  She nodded. “Yes, very wrong. I am very uncertain. I thought of you. I have thought of you a good deal. You remind me of what I was…once…when I was about your age. All the opposition I had to face. Now I have to face a decision.”

  “And you want to talk to me about it!”

  She laughed. Then she said: “I want to talk to you about something else.”

  She was staring straight ahead.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It seems to me that my position is not unlike yours. We are both prisoners.” />
  “Prisoners!”

  She was silent for a few seconds, then she went on: “Yes, prisoners—held captive by circumstances. We have come to a point in our lives when we have to make a choice. This way…or that? To accept what fate has given us or break out and make our own way.”

  I had no idea what she meant, and I must have looked very puzzled.

  “Oh,” she cried, “how foolish of me. I talk in riddles and you think I am crazy. Perhaps I am. Let me tell you something. I want to go back to the stage, but I am married to Lord Donnerton. Lady Donnerton could not be an actress, could she? The wife of one of the foremost peers in the land! You see, it could not be.”

  “Could it not?”

  She shook her head. “There are rules…obligations. I should never have married him, Sarah.”

  “Why did you?”

  She looked at me and gave one of her laughs, but this one was without mirth.

  “Why does one do these things? He was very eager. I thought it would be foolish to go on refusing. I considered all the advantages. I told myself that one day I should regret it if I did not take this chance of wealth and comfort. He is a kind man. He would have looked after me always. But I cannot endure this life, Sarah. I am bored…bored…so hideously bored.”

  “So you are going to leave him and go back to the theater.”

  “I have to, Sarah. I want the excitement…that feeling that comes to you when there is a sudden hush, and the play begins. You understand?”

  “I think so.”

  She turned to me, smiling. “I knew you would. Perhaps that is why I came. That…and something else.”

  She was biting her lips and staring ahead.

  “When are you going back to the stage?” I asked.

  “Soon.”

  “What does Lord Donnerton say?”

  “He does not know yet. He has been good to me, Sarah…but he does not understand. He never will.”

  “No, I suppose he could not.”

  “But you do.”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “All you have seen is an amateur attempt on an improvised stage and people pretending to act for fun. Most of them would have been booed off the London stage in five minutes. But we kept it going, you and I between us, Sarah, and I think some of them actually enjoyed our little piece for what it was. Well, Sarah, you are an actress. That is why I am telling you all this. You know what I am talking about. Few would. Not the people I am now surrounded with, that is. They would think I was crazy, giving up a life of luxury for one of uncertainty. But I have to do it. Sarah, I’d rather die than go on like this.”

  “Then you must do it,” I said.

  She seized me suddenly and kissed me. I saw tears in her eyes.

  “I am going to, Sarah,” she said. “I am going back where I belong. Do you think it strange that I should come and talk to you like this?”

  “I…I am not sure.”

  “I have been thinking such a lot about you.”

  I looked at her in amazement.

  “Yes,” she went on, “I have. You would think I had troubles enough of my own, and in a way they are linked. In you I see myself. I was always acting when I was a little girl. It was born in me, as it is in you. Of course, when I was growing up, there were no theaters.”

  “No. In my childhood neither.”

  “But you were young when the King came back.”

  “I was eleven.”

  “And now you are fifteen. It has worked well for you. I remember the day. There was rejoicing throughout the land. Not with everyone, of course. But there were many of us who were tired of being Puritans. We wanted some life…some gaiety. The theaters were opened and women were allowed to appear on the stage. When I heard that I came to London. My family were against it. They wanted me to settle down and marry. I could have done. There was someone very eager to marry me, but I knew what it would be like. Prayers morning and evening. A sober life, regular churchgoing, gloom and so-called virtue I could not endure. And in London the theaters were open. I ran away from home, Sarah. I came to London. I had a good friend who helped me. She had always wanted to be an actress and I was fortunate to have her. I cannot explain to you the wondrous feeling of stepping on to a stage for the first time.”

  “I know it,” I cried. “I know it well. I do not have to experience it to know.”

  “It is because of what happened to me that I think of you. I can see myself in you. I see you staying here. There would be no easy way out for you. I feel a responsibility towards you. Does that seem crazy?”

  “No…no,” I cried excitedly. “It seems good and kind and caring.”

  “I am not sure about that. But I think you will never truly be happy if you do not try that way of life for which you were born.”

  “How?” I cried. “How?”

  “I told you I was going back. What would you think of coming with me?”

  A tremendous excitement was overtaking me. I was trembling.

  “It is something not to be decided hastily,” she said. “You are very young. Perhaps I am wrong to suggest it. Yes, I am. I take too much upon myself. Forget I said it. I just came to tell you I shall be going away. You will not see me at Willerton House again.”

  “No, no,” I cried. “Please do not forget it. I want to hear more. I must hear more.”

  She turned to me and smiled quite radiantly. Her moods changed from extremes in a very short time. She was so volatile. She was an actress, of course. I supposed that, in truth, she acted all the time. It was second nature to her. Perhaps I was a little like that myself.

  She said: “Yes, of course, you must have your chance…just as I did. I believe I should never forgive myself if I did not do all I could to help you. Sarah, are you going to live all your life here? Imagine it. You marry, you bring children into the world, you keep house, you give orders to your servants, life goes by, quickly, colorless, predictable, like the past when it was considered a sin to smile. Sarah, are you going to live your life…regretting?”

  “No!” I said vehemently. “No!”

  “Then you are going to try your luck on the stage?”

  “Yes,” I said fervently. “Yes!”

  She was smiling again. “Then…how?”

  “You are going to tell me.”

  “You could come to London with me.”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “Your parents…they would have to be told,” she said.

  “They would never allow it. At least, my mother never would. And the theater! She would think I was walking straight into Hell.”

  “Ah, there’s the rub. How then, Sarah?”

  “I only know they will never allow me.”

  “So you will ‘let “I dare not” wait upon “I would”?’ Then you are right to give up. What you will need in life, dear child, is something more than the natural gifts with which fate has endowed you. If you are to be successful there must be the determination to succeed. If you are going to turn away at the first hurdle, then, my dear Sarah, the best thing is to give up before you start. You need all the courage, all the willpower, everything you have, if you are to succeed in life and, believe me, one of the most difficult professions in which to succeed is that of the theater.”

  “Tell me what I have to do.”

  She looked at me steadily and I saw alarm in her eyes.

  “Dear God,” she murmured. “What have I done? I have meddled too far. I should have said nothing. She must work out her own salvation. What am I doing? I am acting God.”

  “No…no…you are kind. You are helping me. I am frustrated. I do not know what I should do.”

  “You must be sure of what you want, Sarah. You must think…think seriously. Is this a passing fancy? I detect something special in you, or so I think, something that tells me you are not just a stage-struck girl seeking excitement, having an idea that perhaps you will make a grand marriage…tired of life on this estate, with its occasional glimpses into a dif
ferent way of living.”

  “I know in my heart,” I said. “Please. Please help me. You understand what it means to me.”

  “Then,” she said, “we must consider deeply and there is little time. Ask yourself. Is this thing vital to you? That is the heart of the matter. If it is, and you are old enough to know…as I did at your age…you must do all in your power to bring it to pass. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I do. I want this more than I have ever wanted anything. If I missed it I should be unhappy for the rest of my life.”

  “If you are sure…and only then we will plan.”

  “Please…please…let us plan.”

  “Then you must come to London.”

  “With you?”

  “Of course. And I shall be leaving soon. I have to tell my husband. He will be sad, but he will recover. It is a task I do not relish, but it has to be done. He will understand, I think. He knows I fret for the stage. My dear Sarah, you must tell your parents.”

  “If I do they will never let me go.”

  “They should at least have a chance of denying you.”

  “They would most certainly do all in their power to stop me. I believe they might well do so.”

  “Then we shall have to make careful plans.” She looked at me steadily. “It will be your first test,” she went on. “You will have to be ready to tackle all the difficulties which will await you. Your career will have to come first with you. If it does not, there is little hope for you.”

  “You believe that I should tell them, I see. I know they will refuse to let me go.”

  “The decision is yours, not theirs.”

  “You mean I should run away from home?”

  “We shall have to see. It depends on your determination. If they tell you they refuse to let you go and you accept that, you will have made a great discovery. You would never succeed in overcoming the difficulties which you would have to face. Therefore it is better that you do not attempt them and that would be an end of the matter. We are staying at Willerton only a few more days. Before I leave we must have made our plans. You must speak to your parents without delay. I shall be here at this time tomorrow. Come here and we will plan how we shall go on from there. Sarah, be absolutely sure in your mind. There must be no shadow of a doubt—then and only then shall we plan together. Only you can know how deep this determination is within you.”