He could not tell her this sad news, so he
asked her for pen and paper, and said, I will write a prescription to Mr.
----. He then wrote, not a prescription, but a few lines, begging Mr.
---- to convey the cruel intelligence by degrees, and with care and
tenderness. "It is all we can do for her," said he.
He looked so grave while writing the supposed prescription, that it
unluckily occurred to Mrs. Woffington to look over him. She stole archly
behind him, and, with a smile on her face--read her death warrant.
It was a cruel stroke! A gasping sigh broke from her. At this Dr. Bowdler
looked up, and to his horror saw the sweet face he had doomed to the tomb
looking earnestly and anxiously at him, and very pale and grave. He was
shocked, and, strange to say, she, whose death-warrant he had signed, ran
and brought him a glass of wine, for he was quite overcome. Then she gave
him her hand in her own sweet way, and bade him not grieve for her, for
she was not afraid to die, and had long learned that "life is a walking
shadow, a poor, poor player, who frets and struts his hour upon the
stage, and then is heard no more."
But no sooner was the doctor gone than she wept bitterly. Poor soul! she
had set her heart upon living as many years to God as she had to the
world, and she had hoped to wipe out her former self.
"Alas!" she said to her sister, "I have done more harm than I can ever
hope to good now; and my long life of folly and wickedness will be
remembered--will be what they call famous; my short life of repentance
who will know, or heed, or take to profit?"
But she soon ceased to repine.
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