I come of an acting family. We all took to the stage as young ducks
take to the water; and though we are none of us geniuses,--yet we got
on.
My three brothers are at the present time starring, either in the
provinces or in America; my two elder sisters, having strutted and
fretted their hour upon the stage, are married to respectable City
men; I, Sybil Gascoigne, have acted almost as long as I can remember;
the little ones, Kate and Dick, are still at school, but when they
leave the first thing they do will be to look out for an engagement.
I do not think we were ever any of us very much in love with the
profession. We took things easily. Of course there were some parts we
liked better than others, but we played everything that came in our
way--Comedy, Farce, Melodrama. My elder sisters quitted the stage
before they had much time to distinguish themselves. They were each
in turn, on their marriage, honoured with a paragraph in the
principal dramatic papers, but no one said the stage had sustained an
irreparable loss, or that the profession was robbed of one of its
brightest ornaments.
I was following very much in my sisters' footsteps. The critics
always spoke well of me. I never got a slating in my life, but then
before the criticism was in print I could almost have repeated word
for word the phrases that would be used.
"Miss Gascoigne was painstaking and intelligent as usual."
"The part was safe in the hands of that promising young actress,
Sybil Gascoigne."
With opinions such as these I was well content. My salary was
regularly paid, I could always reckon on a good engagement, and even
if my profession failed me there was Jack to fall back upon, and Jack
was substantial enough to fall back upon with no risk of hurting
oneself. He was six feet two, with broad, square shoulders, and
arms--well, when Jack's arms were round you you felt as if you did
not want anything else in the world. At least, that is how I felt.
Jack ought to have been in the Life Guards, and he would have been
only a wealthy uncle offered to do something for him, and of course
such an offer was not to be refused, and the "something" turned out
to be a clerkship in the uncle's business "with a view to a
partnership" as the advertisements say. Now the business was not a
pretty or a romantic one--it had something to do with leather--but it
was extremely profitable, and as I looked forward to one day sharing
all Jack's worldly goods I did not grumble at the leather. Not that
Jack had ever yet said a word to me which I could construe into a
downright offer. He had looked, certainly, but then with eyes like
his there is no knowing what they may imply. They were dark blue
eyes, and his hair was bright brown, with a touch of yellow in it,
and his moustache was tawny, and his skin was sunburnt to a healthy
red. We had been introduced in quite the orthodox way. We had not
fallen in love across the footlights. He seldom came to see me act,
but sometimes he would drop in to supper, perhaps on his way from a
dinner or to a dance, and if I could make him stay with us until it
was too late to go to that dance, what a happy girl I used to be!
My mother, with the circumspection that belongs to mothers, told me
that he was only flirting, and that I had better turn my attention to
somebody else. Somebody else! As if any one were worth even looking
at after Jack Curtis. I pitied every girl who was not engaged to him.
How could my sisters be happy? Resigned, content, they might be; but
to be married and done for, and afterwards to meet Jack--well,
imagination failed me to depict the awfulness of such a calamity.
It was quite time he spoke--there can be no doubt of that; although
Jack Curtis was too charming to be bound by the rules which govern
ordinary mortals. Still, I could not help feeling uneasy and
apprehensive. How could I tell how he carried on at those gay and
festive scenes in which I was not included? A proud earl's lovely
daughter might be yearning to bestow her hand upon him. A duchess
might have marked him for her own. Possibly my jealous fears
exaggerated the importance of the society in which he moved, but it
seemed to me that if Jack had been bidden to a friendly dinner at
Buckingham Palace it was only what might be expected.
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."