Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

The prospect was not alluring to Lady Bell. It sounded like a horrible / descent and social fall. She had not even heard of Mrs. Siddons, for / Mrs. Abingdon had been the first lady in the theatrical world when Lady / Bell had been in a box at the play.

But the girl was taken with the actress, as well as tempted to close / with the first offer of shelter and support, and there was a spice of / adventure in the offer dear to the girlish heart.

"If you will let me stay with you over your first halt," Lady Bell / suggested a compromise, hesitatingly, "I shall indeed be glad of the / rest, and we could see how we-how I shall suit."

"Exactly," agreed the actress cordially; "and what am I to call my young / friend?"

"Arabella Barlowe," replied Lady Bell, hastily supplying only her first / and middle names.

"Very well, Miss Barlowe, then will you be so obliging as to take little / Henry from me, till I stretch my arms."

Lady Bell complied with the request, but, unaccustomed to the office she / had undertaken, she held the child in a constrained position, and he / immediately set up a cry.

Mr. Siddons shook his head meaningly, as if to signify his anticipation / of the failure of the scheme, and to add the reproachful reminder, "I / told you to have nothing to do with her, yet here you've gone and / engaged her as a companion, without a character from her former / mistress, on the shortest acquaintance, and that in very doubtful / circumstances where the girl is concerned. Was there ever such rashness, / or wrongheadedness heard of? What would become of you, with all your / talents, if I were not here to direct them and look after you? You know / how much the success of such an actress as you are, depends nowadays on / respectability, and now an undesirable connection may do us irreparable / injury. Yet here you go, and will take no telling. And the white-faced, / stuck-up thing is going to be useless into the bargain."

But Mrs. Siddons showed no annoyance or regret while she resumed her / charge, turning aside Lady Bell's discomfiture with a well-bred, / good-tempered observation, "When you have little ones of your own, Miss / Barlowe, you will know better how to guide them. I see that you have no / little brothers or sisters."

"Neither big nor little," admitted Lady Bell; "I was the only child in / the house of a grand-aunt."

"Poor child! poor, old-fashioned, solitary little one," lamented the / older woman, with sincere pity, thinking of her own homely, much / interested father and mother, and the many-childed sociality which had / belonged to the strolling players' troop.

At the same time Mrs. Siddons was disposed to proceed to something more / profitable than the indulgence of sensibility. She started a question of / costume, and there she found Lady Bell capable and alert, Mrs. Siddons / did not doubt in practice as well as theory, for every well-brought-up / young lady was then fairly versed in the mysteries, not merely of / clothes, but of their making.

As Lady Bell conversed with animation and skill on the difficulties of / sack-backs, girdles, _negligées_, Mrs. Siddons took her little revenge, / and nodded triumphantly to her husband. Perhaps she had a sense of one / of her weak points as an actress, that she dressed often badly, though / in some degree artistically. She might have a consciousness that it / would be better for her if she could always command the correct / judgment, delicate taste, and clever fingers of "a real lady."

The last stage in the journey of the little party brought them to the / town of Thorpe, where Mrs. Siddons was to attend a rehearsal and act the / same night, and where private lodgings, apart from the theatrical / properties-daggers, smeared with red paint, sheet-tin for thunder-were / secured, as the first lady's engagement was to last for a week.

Miss Barlowe was not wanted at the rehearsal, nor, as Mrs. Siddons / decided, after a moment's thought, to attend at the theatre at all.

But, as a resident in the actress's family, the girl had a pass to see / the play, in her travelling-dress, from a private box. She accepted the / privilege reluctantly, out of compliment to her patroness (how / proprieties were reversed! ), and under the somewhat pompous escort of / Mr. Siddons. The great object which Lady Bell proposed to herself was to / be as little seen as possible, in her shady nook of the dark little / theatre, and to get away from its crowd as quickly as she could. It was / not that she feared detection much, for she had never been within many / miles (stronger words in those days) of the town of Thorpe, and was not / acquainted with anybody in its neighbourhood; but she was ashamed of her / situation.

Lady Bell began by admiring Mrs. Siddons's wonderful beauty, and by idly / following the story behind the footlights. Before long Lady Bell had / forgotten who she was and where she was. She had forgotten Mrs. Siddons / as the lady whom Lady Bell had first seen sitting in a duffle cloak, / breakfasting in an inn-kitchen, who was like, but even more beautiful, / than Mrs. Sundon, and whose likeness to Mrs. Sundon had something to do / with the readiness with which Lady Bell had agreed to serve for a time / as a waiting gentlewoman. She had forgotten her fellow-auditors, with / whom in the utmost community of feeling, she was straining her eyes, / clasping her hands, weeping her heart out.

The girl was transported by the magic of genius into a world of which / she had never heard or dreamt-a world which penetrated through, and / reached far beyond her world of high life-the only world she had known, / or cared to know.