Successful Recitations | Page 7

RE HENRY.
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.