The Beckoning Dream

He took in the pleasing sight that the actress playing Belinda presented to the world in boy’s clothes; lustrous raven hair, deep violet eyes, a kissable mouth and a body to stiffen a man’s desire simply by looking at it!

“Aye,” agreed Black Wig, who was also appreciating Belinda. “And a new playwright, too. The bills proclaim that he is one Will Wagstaffe.”

“Will Wagstaffe!” Blond Wig began to laugh. “You jest, Hal.”

“Nay, Stair, for that is what the playbill saith. And the doxy who affects the boy is none other than Mistress Cleone Dubois, who made a hit, a very hit, as Clarinda in Love’s Last Jest by that same Wagstaffe whilst thou were out of town.”

“Did she so? I do not believe in Will Wagstaffe, and nor should you,” exclaimed Blond Wig. “But I have a mind to play a jest of my own.”

The action of the play had come close to them whilst they spoke, as Belinda and Lackwit sparred. Blond Wig picked a fruit from the basket that the orange girl had left before them, and threw it straight at Belinda, whom nothing daunted, either as Belinda playing a boy on the stage or in her true nature when not an actress. On seeing the orange coming, she caught it neatly and flung it back at Blond Wig as hard as she could.

He retaliated by rolling it across the stage towards her as though it were a bowling ball. Mr Betterton, the doyen of all Restoration actors, who was playing Lackwit, jumped dexterously over it, so that it arrived at Belinda’s feet.

She bent down, picked it up, and examined it before beginning to peel and eat it, segment by segment, exclaiming as she did so, “Why, Sir Lackwit, I do believe that the fruit thou hast refused is better than the wit. For that is dry, and this orange is juicy. I shall tell my Mistress Belinda that whilst you may have pith and self-importance, you lack the true Olympian oil which the Gods bestow on their favourites.

“But for the orange peel, this,” and she threw the shards of the peel straight at Blond Wig, who was on his feet applauding her improvisation, as were the rest of the audience.

“The doxy is wittier than the man who writes her lines,” exclaimed Blond Wig after bowing to the audience, who applauded him as heartily as they had rewarded Belinda. “And if you and the audience cannot see the jest in a man who writes plays calling himself Will Wagstaffe why, then, you and they are duller than I thought.”

“Enough of this,” whispered Betterton to Cleone as they grappled together in a mock and comic wrestling match. “Improvisation is well enough, and one of Rochester’s Merry Gang interfering with the action on stage may have to be endured, but you need not encourage him.”

“Need I not? But the audience, who is our master, approved.”

“Aye so, but we risk every fool in town wanting to be part of the play.” He turned himself back into Lackwit again in order to declaim in the direction of the pit, “Why, I vow thou art as soft as a very girl, Master Lucius. You need some lessons in hardening thyself.”

“Dost think that thou are the man to give me them, Sir Lackwit?”

The pit roared again. Some of the bolder members threw pennies on to the stage at Belinda’s feet. Blond Wig had produced a fan and waved it languidly in her direction.

“I vow and declare, Hal,” he whispered to Black Wig, “Master Wagstaffe is as bawdily witty as his master, the other Will.”

“And what Will is that, Stair?”

“Why, Shakespeare, man. Will Shakespeare. He who wags the staff. Is all the world as thick as a London fog in winter, these days?”

Black Wig couldn’t think of a witty answer to that. He might be Henry Bennett, m’lord Arlington, King Charles II’s Secretary of State who ruled England, but his wit was long term, carefully thought out, unlike that of his friend Blond Wig, otherwise Sir Alastair Cameron. Stair Cameron was known for his cutting tongue as well as his reputation for courage and contempt for everything and everybody. He was also known for his success with women.

And now, if Lord Arlington knew his man, his latest female target would be the pretty doxy on the stage who was back in skirts again, teasing and tempting Lackwit—as well as every red-blooded man in the audience. Her charms were such that she might even attract the attention of the King himself.

The pretty doxy on the stage was well aware that Blond Wig was making a dead set at her, as the saying went. At the end of the first Act, he bought a posy from a flower girl and tossed it to her as she left the stage.

She tossed it back at him.

In the second Act, he kissed his hand to her whenever the action on stage brought her near him.

Halfway through the third Act, Belinda pretended to woo Lackwit, and to allow him to woo her, her true lover, Giovanni Amoroso, being concealed behind a hedge to enjoy the fun. At the point when Lackwit had worked himself into a lather of desire, Blond Wig drew off one of his perfumed gloves and slung that in Belinda’s direction at the very climax of her scene with Lackwit.

“Why, what have we here?” she extemporised, holding up the glove. “What hath Dan Cupid sent me as a love token?” She sniffed at it. “Fie upon him, it hath a vile stink. He may have it back.”

And she slung it back at Blond Wig, who rose and bowed to her.

M’lord Arlington applauded him vigorously, whispering to his friend as he did so, “The wench will serve us well, will she not? Old Gower hath the right of it again. A pretty wit and a quick one. As quick as thine, Stair, I do declare.”

“But shallow, like all women’s wit, I dare swear. But I agree, she will do as well as another—and better than some. And mayhap she will tell me who Will Wagstaffe is, and where I may find the fellow.”

“Hipped on Wagstaffe, Stair?”

“Aye, hipped on any pretty wit—particularly one of whom I do not know.”

“Make the doxy thine, friend Stair, and she will tell thee all. Look, Lackwit hath learned that he truly lacks wit, and that Amoroso and Belinda are about to sing their love duet to signify that the play is over, and that he was cuckolded before he even wed his Mistress and made her wife!”

The play was, indeed, ending. Belinda was reciting the Epilogue, a poem in which she averred that she had followed the beckoning dream which led towards true love, and might now marry Amoroso.

“Truly a dream, that,” Stair whispered to Arlington. “But not the kind one of which the lady speaks. I can think of no nightmare more troubling than that which ends in marriage.”

The Epilogue over, Mistress Dubois, Betterton, and the pretty boy who played Amoroso linked hands and were bowing to the audience, which was on its feet again, applauding the actors. Blond Wig was shouting huzzahs at Belinda, who refused to look at him.

“To the devil with him,” hissed Belinda, or rather Mistress Cleone Dubois, to Betterton. “He tried to ruin all my best scenes. Another courtier come to entertain himself by destroying us.”

“He got no change from you, Cleone, my pretty dear. On the contrary, your quick wits had them laughing at him as much as you.”

“And who the devil is he? I know his friend, Sir Hal Bennett, late made Lord Arlington, but not the human gadfly in the blond wig.”

Betterton smiled and bowed, his head almost touching his knees before he led the company offstage, before saying, “Sir Alastair, known as Stair Cameron, Baronet. Rochester’s friend—everybody’s friend, aye, and enemy, too, gossip hath it. Avoid him like the plague that hath just left us. He would be no friend of thine, Cleone—or of any woman’s. Mark me this, he will be in the Green Room this evening, to pursue you further.”

“May God forbid,” Cleone shuddered. She trusted no man, least of all those who infested Charles’s court. “I want naught of him.”

But he wasn’t in the Green Room. Sam Pepys was there, and Lord Arlington, who bowed at Cleone and said in a butter-melting voice, “My felicitations, Mistress Dubois. You have grown since I last saw thee at Sir Thomas Gower’s when you were Mistress Wood. A very child, were you not?”

He tittered a little behind a fine white handkerchief edged with lace. “You look about you, mistress. Is it my friend you seek?”

The violet eyes were hard upon him. “Nay, m’lord. Unless it is to teach him manners—if indeed it were possible to teach him anything.”

Sam Pepys, standing by them, gave a jolly guffaw. “Come, come, mistress, you are too harsh. Stair Cameron is a right good fellow.”

Cleone rounded on him, shaking her fan in his direction, Belinda’s fan. She knew who Sam Pepys was. The Secretary to the Navy, a womaniser and a gossip—but there was no harm in him.

“Fie upon you, too, sir. What, I wonder, would you say, if Stair Cameron entered your office and upset the contents of your inkpot on your newly written letter to your master, the King, ruining it? Would you think the destruction of your work a jolly jest to be applauded? For such were the offences he committed against me!”

Lord Arlington clapped his hands together, and even Sam himself joined in the joke. “Why, madam,” m’lord offered, “you are as spirited a lady as you were a lass. I should introduce you to Sir Stair. How the fur and the feathers would fly, for I vow that in spirit you are well matched.”

Cleone stared at him, nothing daunted by his name or his position, something that pleased the man before her mightily. Oh, he had plans for Mistress Wood, also named Mistress Dubois, great plans. And now he could go to Sir Thomas Gower, his spymaster supreme, to tell him that Cleone Dubois was a lass of spirit who would serve them well.

What she said next had him laughing again behind his lace-gloved hand. “For,” smiled Cleone, “it would please me greatly never to see Sir Stair Cameron again, either on stage, or off it. Unless it were to hand him such a congé from a woman as he has never received before. But enough of him. To talk of him wearies me. What thought you of the play, m’lord?”

Graciously, m’lord Arlington told the lady that he had enjoyed it, his smooth face even smoother than usual.

And all the time he was laughing to himself as he thought of the delightful possibility that the spirited lady and her tormentor might soon meet again—and wondered which of them would come off the best, as the fur and the feathers would inevitably fly like the orange, the posy and the perfumed glove!