And there came a day when she thought her joy was complete.
Charles Hart came to her lodging and, when she had let him in and he had kissed her, declaring that she was a mighty pretty creature in her smock sleeves and bodice, he held her at arms’ length and said in his loud booming voice: “News, Nelly! At last you are to be an actress.”
“You are insolent, sir!” she cried in mock anger, her eyes flashing. “Would you insult me? What am I indeed, if I am not an actress!”
“You are my mistress, for one thing.”
She caught his hand and kissed it. “And that is the best part I have yet been called upon to play.”
“Sweet Nelly,” he murmured as though in an aside. “How this wench delights me!”
“As yet!” she answered promptly. “I beg of you to tell me quickly. What part is this?”
But Charles Hart never spoiled his effects. “You must first know,” he said, “that we are to play Dryden’s Indian Emperor, and I am to take the part of Cortes.”
She knelt and kissed his hand in half-mocking reverence. “Welcome to the conquering hero,” she said. Then she leaped to her feet. “And what part for Nelly?”
He folded his arms and stood smiling at her. “The chief female role,” he said slowly, “is Almeria. Montezuma will sigh for her favors; Mohun will play Montezuma. She however longs for Cortes.”
“She cannot help that, poor girl,” said Nell. “And right heartily will she love her Cortes. I will show the King and the Duke, and all present, that never was man loved as my Cortes.”
“Ann Marshall is to play Almeria. Nay, ’tis not the part for you. You are young yet to take it. Oh, you are learning … learning … but an orange-girl does not become an actress in a matter of weeks. Nay, there is another part—a beautiful part for a beautiful girl—that of Cydaria. I have said Nelly shall play Cydaria, and I have made Tom Killigrew, Mohun, Lacy, and the rest agree that you shall do this.”
“And this Cydaria—she is of small account beside that other, played by Mrs. Ann Marshall?”
“Hers is the sympathetic part, Nelly. There is a pink dress come from the Court—a present from one of the ladies. You will well become it and, as you are the Emperor’s daughter, you shall wear plumes in your hair. There is something else, Nelly. Cydaria wins Cortes in the end.”
“Then,” declaimed Nell, dropping a curtsy, “I must be content with Cortes-Hart and revel in this minor part.”
She was dressed in the flowery gown, her chestnut curls arranged over her shoulders. In the tiring room the others looked at her with envy.
“An orange-girl not long ago,” whispered Peg Hughes. “Now, fa la, she is given the best parts. She’ll be putting Mrs. Marshall’s nose out of joint ere long, I’ll warrant.”
“You know the way to success on the stage surely,” said Mary Knepp. “No matter whether you be actress or orange-girl—the way’s the same. You go to bed with one who can give you what you want, and in the dead of night you ask for it.”
Nell overheard that. “I thank you for telling me, Mrs. Knepp,” she cried. “For the life of me I could not understand how you ever came to get a part.”
“Am I a player’s whore?” demanded Mrs. Knepp.
“Ask me not,” said Nell. “Though I have seen you acting in such a manner with Master Pepys from the Navy Office as to lead me to believe you may be his.”
Ann Marshall said: “Stop shouting, Nelly. You’re not an orange-girl now. Keep your voice for your part. You’ll need it.”
Nell for once was glad to subside. She was sure that she would acquit herself well in her part, but she was experiencing a strange fluttering within her stomach which she had rarely known before.
She turned from Mrs. Knepp and whispered her lines to herself:
“Thick breath, quick pulse and beating of my heart,
All sign of some unwonted change appear;
I find myself unwilling to depart,
And yet I know not why I should be here.
Stranger, you raise such torments in my breast …”
These were her words on her first meeting with Cortes when she falls in love with him at first sight. She thought then of the first time she had seen Charles Hart. Had she felt thus then? Indeed she had not. She did not believe she would ever feel as Cydaria felt; Cydaria is beside herself with passion; wretched and unhappy in her love for the handsome stranger, fearing her love will not be returned, jealous of those whom he has loved before. There was no jealousy in Nell; love for her was a joyous thing.
She could wish for a merry part, one in which she could strut about the stage in breeches, make saucy quips to the audience, dance and sing.
But she must go onto the stage and play Cydaria.
The audience was dazzling that day. The King was present, and with him the most brilliant of his courtiers.
Nell came on the stage in her Court dress, and there was a gasp of admiration as she did so. She glimpsed her companions with whom she had once sold oranges, and saw the envy in their faces.
She knew that Mary Knepp and the rest of them would be waiting, eagerly hoping that she would be laughed off the stage. They would, backstage, be aware of the silence which had fallen on the audience as she entered. There was one thing they had forgotten; orange-girl she may have been a short while ago, but now she was the prettiest creature who ever graced a stage, and in her Court dress she could vie with any of the ladies who sat in the boxes.
She went through her lines, giving them her own inimitable flavor which robbed them of their tragedy and made a more comic part of the Princess than was intended; but it was no less acceptable for all that.
She enjoyed the scenes with Charles Hart. He looked handsome indeed as the Spanish adventurer, and she spoke her lines with fervor. When he sought to seduce her and she resisted him, she did so with a charming regret which was not in the part. It called forth one or two ribald comments in the pit from those of the audience who followed the course of actors’ and actresses’ lives with zest.
“Nay, Nelly,” called one bright fellow. “Don’t refuse him now. You did not last night, so why this afternoon?”
Nell’s impulse was to go the front of the stage and retort that it was no wish of hers to refuse such a handsome fellow and she would never have thought of doing it. The fellow in the pit must blame Master Dryden for that.
But Cortes’ stern eyes were on her. My dearest Cortes-Charles, thought Nell; he lives in the play; it is this story of Princes that is real to him, not the playhouse.
“‘Our greatest honor is in loving well,’” he was saying. And she smiled at him and came back with:
“Strange ways you practice there to win a heart
Here love is nature, but with you, ’tis art.”
No one had taken any notice of the interruption. There was nothing unusual in such comments on the actors and their private lives, and the play went on until that last scene when Almeria (Ann Marshall) brought out her dagger and, for love of Cortes, prepares to stab Cydaria.
There were cries of horror from the pit, cries of warning: “Nelly, take care! That whore is going to stab thee.”
Nell reeled, placed the sponge filled with blood which she had concealed in her hand on her bosom, and squeezed it; she was about to fall to the floor when Cortes rescued her. There was a sigh of relief throughout the house, which told Nell all she wished to know; she had succeeded in her first big part.
When Almeria stabbed herself, and Charles Hart and Nell Gwyn left the stage arm-in-arm, the applause broke out.