GREEN DEVILS AND OLD MAIDSBy Emerson G. TaylorMMiss Herronguided the fat horses into the byroad with the manner of a navigating officer on the bridge of a liner. Not even after they were straightened out, and dropped their quickened gait to the usual comfortable trot, did she unclose her lips or take her gray eyes from her course.“Is anything coming behind us, Lucy?” This to the young girl beside her.“No, Cousin Agatha. He kept straight on.”“You’re sure?”“Quite sure.”“Well, that’s a mercy.” For the first time she leaned back a little. “But I wonder that John Arnold so much as dreamed of trying to pass me.”“You drive so splendidly,” replied the girl, drooping her pretty head so that the big white hat quite shaded her face. “The way you beat Mr. Arnold was fine. He looked so silly when we passed him. You’re so brave and—and skillful. It makes one feel so safe to be with you.”“Of course I’ve driven all my life,” Miss Herron admitted. “Your grand-uncle, the judge, my dear, always insisted that driving was part of a gentlewoman’s education, like household management or a knowledge of English history. A bit of a race is only amusing, but what with these automobiles, there’s no pleasure in horses at all nowadays.”“They certainlyaredangerous.”“Dangerous! They should not be allowed on the roads at all. Any more than—than drunken men. The comparison somehow pleases me, Lucy. Did you observe it?”“Yes, yes, Cousin Agatha.” The girl turned to the older lady a face very young and fair and eyes that shone. “I was laughing at it all the time.”It was a great pleasure, so Miss Herron assured all her friends, to feel sure that her little cousin was for a few months at least to be brought under the influence which had shaped the lives of her New England forebears. For the child to live in Herron House, to grow in knowledge of her race, so splendidly patriotic, so consistently rich and cultivated from the days when Barham was part of a colony, seemed to the proud old lady a real necessity for Lucy. She must never forget that she was a New England gentlewoman; she must learn the traditions, stiffen with the pride of her race. And because these things might grow dim or be clean forgotten, did she spend all her days in the noisy, extravagant city or the lazy places abroad.Miss Herron rejoiced when Lucy’s father laughed, and replied to her request by sending the child to her for a whole long summer.“She is very dear to me,” he had whispered, looking across the room towhere Lucy was chattering as she poured tea. “And very lovely, Agatha.”“She has the Herron look,” she had answered, complacently.“You’ll take ever so good care, of her?”“I may be trusted, I think, not to abuse any member of my family.”Quiet, sunny days followed. There were hours in the glowing garden, murmurous with bees, heavy with delicate perfume of box and verbena and mignonette; hours in the great old house, with its family treasures of plate and china and mahogany, where ancient Chloe and Sylvester still served as in the days when they had followed North that kindly Yankee major they had found helpless after the doings in the Shenandoah Valley. There were company at dinner, less formal gatherings on the piazza of a moonlight evening, when accredited youngsters from the summer colony amused and sometimes scandalized Miss Herron with their laughter and singing. And now and then Lucy would be carried off to other houses of Barham; whence she would return to render a supposedly exact account of all she did and said. Only twice since the first of June did Miss Herron fail in her promise to Lucy’s father and to herself. And these occasions had been within the last ten days, when her old neuralgia had laid her low. What her charge was up to at those times, Miss Herron did not care to inquire. It was ordered that not even Lucy should come near when cousin Agatha was in pain, and therefore uncertain in temper as well as a bit careless as to costume.“Tell me,” the old lady asked, after they had driven some distance along the shady road, “are you really enjoying your stay here?”“Yes, indeed. I think Barham’s just lovely.”“And what’s most lovable in it?”Lucy stole a look from under her broad hat brim, then retreated. “I don’t believe I know,” she said, simply. “It’s all——”“Charming. Of course. I’m glad you think so. We could dispense with the strangers, however. They don’t belong here. They are vulgarly rich andparvenu.”“Some of them are nice, Cousin Agatha,” the child protested, deferentially.“Who, for instance?”“All those who come to the house.”“A pack of rascals!” the old lady replied, crisply. “Laughing like—hyenas, if that’s the animal. It’s a mercy that the boys and girls are sent to good schools. They learn some decent behavior, though of course they haven’t had your advantages, my dear. But I dislike their mothers. They are rich, but they have no poise. Poise, my dear, and the marks of long descent. But the children may develop. All but one of them.”Lucy’s face grew gently mutinous. “Which is that, cousin?”“That yellow-haired boy of——” She checked her reply abruptly to listen. The horses were reined in. “My dear,” she asked, resignedly, “what was that noise I heard?”There was no mistaking that honk of the goose many times strengthened, and, following this, the low, steady sputter of a gasoline engine. The nigh horse’s ears pricked up, then were laid back; his honest mate stopped short to await developments.“I’m afraid,” ventured Lucy, “that it’s an automobile.”“The wretches, to choose this road! Are they coming? Go along, there!” cried Miss Herron to the horses, who sprang forward as she laid the whip on their fat flanks. “If we can get just beyond the woods I can turn out for it. But—oh, thewretches!”“Honk-honk!” close behind now.“Oh!” cried Lucy. She knelt up in the carriage seat, looking back along the road.“Wave to him, my child.” Miss Herron leaned back on the reins. Her thin cheeks flushed up, and her gray eyes were like coal fires. “Signal the creature to slow up.”“I am, Cousin Agatha. I am waving as hard as I can.” She was standingnow, meeting with a lithe motion of supple knees and slender hips each plunge of the hurrying carriage, one little hand on the back of the seat. And with the other, Lucy, who looked at cousin Agatha and then laughed—just a little—signaled gayly if vaguely to the driver of the coming car. This was a young man, whose hair—for he wore no hat—shone in the sun like crisp gold wire.“Honk!” spoke the horn, “honk!” and then three times more in quicker succession.Lucy laughed aloud. “Isn’t he silly?” And then waved once more.“Honk!”“Whoa!” commanded Miss Herron, drawing her steeds to the side of the road. “Stand still, and don’t be so foolish. It’s only”—she hesitated, then pronounced the word as though it profaned her speech—“an automobile.”“May I pass you?” came the driver’s voice from behind. The choking reek of the gas drifted down and enveloped them.“It’s all right,” caroled Lucy. “Come ahead!” Then she dropped down to her seat beside her companion, light as a sparrow.“Is it coming?”The horses snorted, swerved, and plunged heavily. There swept by a vision of dark green and shining brass, the chuck-chuck-chuck of machinery.“Oh, do be careful, Arch!” cried Lucy, for the ponderous machine ground through the soft bank that hemmed in the road on that side, and canted dangerously for a second or two. Then it whirled up the road, with the dust thick in its trail, and through the haze the driver’s yellow head shining. The fat horses shivered, and stood fast.“The wretch! Iknewit was young Fraser.”“It wasn’t like him,” Lucy murmured, and a hint of a smile crossed her lips, “to have driven by us so fast.”“I’d not expect it of him, certainly.”“Nor I.” And Lucy sighed in spite of herself. She was not very old.“Ha!” Miss Herron bestowed a lightning glance on her unconscious little passenger, and found it her turn to smile, but with a kind of grimness. “Indeed!” she remarked, and added, under her breath after a queer pause: “Howveryextraordinary!”They drove along quietly after that for some minutes, for Miss Herron requested silence that she might compose herself the more readily after her fright. The road led them up a gentle incline, then turned sharp to the right, and a couple of hundred yards forked to lead around both sides of a hill. It was not till the horses approached this point that their driver opened her lips. She had worn, all the time that she was quieting her nerves, a look of anxiety into the midst of which would break every now and then the kindest and briefest of whimsical smiles.“Which direction shall we take?”Lucy started from her reverie. She, too, had said no word. “This is Steven’s Forks, isn’t it? Shall we go to the right?”“Toward home, then?”“Yes,” said Lucy, eagerly, “toward home. To the right, please.”The talk brightened then. And Lucy in particular chattered away at desperate speed, exclaiming over the rolling landscape, telling her old hostess how much she had enjoyed Barham.“That is very pleasant to hear,” replied Miss Herron, graciously enough. “I am only sorry that my indisposition last week prevented our——”“Please don’t think of it, Cousin Agatha.”“No? My dear, have you ever been visited by neuralgia?”“I mean,” explained the child, eagerly and shyly together, “that it didn’t interfere with my good times at all.”“I understand. Silly girl, why don’t they teach you to say things properly! But I know exactly what you mean.”“Notreally!” A quick dismay chased away the arch gayety.“And I’m very glad if you had what you would call a good time.”“Oh, I did! It’s all been delightful,” Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, whichstretched away for a long half mile ahead of them, white and level.“A good road for those wretched machines,” observed Miss Herron. “I see one has been along it.” And she pointed to the track of broad tires they were following.“Wouldn’t a farm wagon leave those marks?”“Possibly, but——” She rose slightly in her seat, and peered ahead. She laughed aloud as she gathered up her reins and touched the horses into a brisk trot. “This may be the workings of Providence, my dear.”“Perhaps, Cousin Agatha.”“Is that thing yonder green?”“There’s only one person in it, and—and he’s getting out now. It’s stopped.”“Anything more?”“Oh!” cried Lucy, and now it was hers to stand, “I think——”“Indeed!” remarked Miss Herron. “I fancied I saw that yellow head of his.”“The workings of Providence!” Lucy sighed.“How perfectly absurd! Don’t be irreverent, miss.”As they approached the machine, young Fraser was quite invisible; but when at last Miss Herron had coaxed her horses up to it, and made them stand, he crawled out from beneath it somewhere, red-faced, dusty and with black grease on his hands.“The penalty of recklessness!” observed the old lady, surveying the boy as though he was inanimate stone. “Broken down.”“How d’ye do, Miss Herron?” said Fraser, apparently much embarrassed. “Lucy——”“Is that machine really broken?” The joyful hope in Miss Agatha’s voice was quite unconcealed. “Smashed?”“There’s something wrong, certainly,” the boy confessed, ruefully. His regard sought Lucy’s. “But just what’s amiss I can’t see.”The old lady shook her head warningly. Some outward manifestation she had to make in order to conceal the joy which, like a warm cordial, penetrated every fiber of her being as a certain plan shaped itself in her mind. This was the automobile which had frightened her horses and set her nerves twittering; and now it reposed by the roadside helpless. This was the reckless, handsome boy who had set her guests laughing on an occasion requiring a measure of decorum, since the bishop honored her house with his presence; who now, with every appearance of impotent anger, was tinkering with the vitals of a hot engine, dirty and perspiring. Miss Herron admired the idea which grew before her imagination as she would have admired a beautiful, unfolding flower.“It ought to go now,” the boy announced, after some further bungling examination. What his testing and poking was supposed to accomplish did not appear. He spoke with an odd ruefulness, and seemed to try to deepen the impression his tone conveyed by another look at Lucy eloquent of regret.“Try it,” said Miss Herron.The boy threw over the balance wheel; there came forth a clank and some faint clicks from the engine’s interior; then cold silence settled upon it again.“No go,” reported Archibald, and proceeded to explain what by rights should have come to pass. “But none of these engines are perfected,” he added.“So there you must—remain? Two miles from any assistance?”“Yes, Miss Herron.”“I rather question the willingness of any of our Barham folk to aid a shipwrecked automobile. You drive them so heedlessly, young gentleman. I confess,” she continued, judiciously, “that I rather enjoy your plight.”The boy grinned delightfully. “So do I. It isn’t often”—how express the light mockery that danced on his lips!—“that my accidents are so charmingly compensated as this is.”“I am quite serious, Mr. Fraser.”“I am equally so, Miss Herron.”A moment they regarded one another in silence. “I am inclined to offer you some assistance, I think,” the old ladyannounced, deliberately. “Merely out of common humanity. I have read that the drivers of automobiles often depend on friendly or highly paid wagoners to—to tow them. Now——”Archibald drowned the rest in thankful protestations. And——“It would be awfully kind of you, Cousin Agatha,” said little Lucy, suddenly finding her voice. “I’m sure that Archie——”“Eh?”“It would be very nice indeed,” the child contrived to say, and tried to look unconscious.“If you could help me a little,” explained Archibald, and his own cheeks flamed, though his eyes faltered not a bit. “The break isn’t very serious, I guess.”A second time Miss Herron considered in silence. She turned deliberately and looked at Lucy, who returned her questioning glance with a stare of babylike innocence; her gray eyes interrogated the boy.“If you can assure me that your machine can’t go,” said Miss Herron, “I’ll tow you.”For a brief second Archibald hesitated. Then he fumbled among the levers; raised the hood again; returned to the driver’s seat, and fingered at something the ladies could not see. “She can’t be moved,” the boy reported.From the fence along the roadside a loosened rail was wrenched; an honest cow, picketed at pasture, had her tether shortened a dozen feet in two strokes of the boy’s knife. In five minutes more, amid many warnings from Miss Herron against scratching the varnish, one end of the rail was made fast to the rear axle of the carriage, and the other to the automobile.“Now jump in,” ordered Lucy, radiant with smiles; and she pointed to the back seat.“Mr. Fraser,” her cousin amended, calmly, “will continue in his automobile. To—to steer, if necessary.”“But——”“I should prefer it, if you please.” The horses strained forward, the wheels turned; the triumphal procession was under way. “My dear,” said Miss Herron, “will you be good enough to hold your parasol over me? The sun is very uncomfortable.”All the way home, the length of Barham Street, where the people stared and laughed, young Fraser repeated all the maledictions he could remember or invent. For the dust choked him, and the view of Lucy’s back as she sat holding the parasol over her cousin did not cheer.“I’ll get even—oh, more than even!—with you, dear lady,” he promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron’s unconscious and unbending figure, “if it takes all summer. I wonder if she could have guessed. And it was planned so perfectly.”Barham laughed over the story, laughed again when at the Richmonds’ dance Lucy came back into the glare of the lights with the Fraser boy, dazzled and bright-cheeked, after half an hour’s absence in the darkness of the great garden. And how many of the gossips would have given their ears to have heard the long talk between Miss Agatha and Lucy’s father on the night of his arrival? So the slow summer drifted by.If the Revolutionary Daughters had not arranged their September meeting on the day that a freight wreck made the trains from Barham westward very late and irregular; if Miss Herron had not been waiting a fretful half hour in the dusty station for the means of reaching the meeting before it was over, when Archie Fraser drove his car thither in a search for an express package, the latter part of this story would have been very different. But as the boy stopped his panting, throbbing machine at the edge of the platform, Miss Herron looked out the window.“I am waiting for a train,” she remarked, on the heels of her stiff little greeting, “for Oldport.”Archie glanced at the old lady’s delicate dress and at the badge of gold and enamel she wore on her breast. “The R. D.’s?” he asked, respectfully.“Exactly. I am one of the charter members, as you probably are aware.And to miss the meeting is distinctly vexatious.”“I’m so sorry.” He turned to the station agent. “How late’s the train?”“Half an hour or so. She won’t make up much comin’ this far. And she’s got to let the express pass her.”Out by the platform the car murmured its steady, quiet song of power, and quivered with its singing. Archibald started, stung by a sudden hope. If only——“That will bring you to Oldport very late, I’m afraid,” he ventured, feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package could wait. “I’m very sorry. I wish——” Here he broke off his speech to gaze pensively at the automobile.“It’s very annoying,” said Miss Herron.The station agent winced, as though she had laid a lash across his shoulders, and in his awkward fashion endeavored to apologize for his road’s remissness. Like a tradesman reproved by his best customer, he promised Miss Herron that “it shouldn’t happen again.” It was quite in keeping with her character that she was graciously pleased to accept the man’s excuses. And then the agent, fired into an expansive cheerfulness by her kindness, said that which won him the mysterious present he received the following Christmas.“Why can’tyoutake Miss Herron over, Mr. Fraser—hey? I guess that there autobile——”“That——”“Autobile,” repeated the agent, sturdily. “She’ll beat most o’ the trains onthisroad.”“The very thing!” He made a mental promise never to forget this man’s kindness and tact. “Oldport! It wouldn’t take us an hour; and it’s the best piece of road in the State.”“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Herron, gently scornful. “In an—automobile!”“Please come,” he begged. “It would be such an honor, and a pleasure, too.”“I shouldpreferthe train.” But the very fact that she let a note of argument and protest come into her voice gave Archibald instant encouragement.The station agent, warned by a furious wink, came nobly to the fore. “I’m afraid the train ain’t goin’ to do ye much good, ma’am. Not for some time, anyway. I never see such a road’s this.”“I’ll go very carefully,” Archie went on, recklessly promising.“Of course, you know, I dislike those machines, but,” Miss Herron confessed, with a fair show of sincerity, “I am rather eager to be present at this meeting.” She surveyed with critical eye the deep-cushioned seats, the heavy springs, then the tiller and the various start-and-stop levers. “You think there’ll be no danger?”“Not the least. I’m sure you’d not be afraid, Miss Herron.”“I am afraid,” she replied, tartly, “of nothing that man can devise. Be so good as to lend me your arm, Mr. Fraser.”He charmed her by his deferential escort across the platform; he protected the rustling silk of her skirt from any possible fleck of dirt as she mounted to her place; he was solicitous, as a gentleman should be, concerning the dust cloth, and deft as a footman in arranging it. Clearly, as Miss Herron perceived, the boy appreciated the honor she was doing him, and so far earned her approval. Nor were his manners wholly uncouth.Archie drew on his gauntlets and settled himself, hands on tiller and throttle. “Are you quite ready?” He could not hide his smile. A sweet hour was to follow.“I am waiting,” she answered.“Go, then.”The ponderous machine leaped forward as if released from a spring, gathering power and speed each half second. Miss Herron laid her hand on the driver’s arm.“Not too fast—all at once,” she said. “I——”“She’ll do better when we strike the good road,” the driver replied. “This sand checks her badly.”It was so lovely a revenge that lay now in his hand to inflict. This old lady had towed him home once, thelaughingstock of the village; she had brought to naught at the same time the scheme which had cost Lucy and himself such a deal of planning. The machine was to be abandoned, they had arranged in that runaway afternoon when Miss Herron kept her room; the carriage was to overtake him in his distress; he was to drive home with the two ladies, holding Lucy’s hand on the back seat, and convincing Miss Herron of his superior qualifications to marry into her family. But all this had in the sequel come to less than nothing. It was Miss Herron also who, Archie was convinced, had been at the bottom of his father’s sudden determination to attach him to the Paris branch of the Fraser business, and so banish him from all that was dearest and best in the world.Now, by blessed good luck, Miss Herron was quite in his power to frighten soundly and to land at the gathering of the elect, blown, dusty and disheveled. If he had been more than twenty, he would have thought and acted otherwise than he did; but the likely outcome of his plan never troubled the boy, if indeed it entered his honest head at all. “I’ll scare her,” remarked Archie, grinning silently, “good and hard.”But, even as he plotted, he wooed her with his politest phrases; laughed, but not too loudly, at the little sparkles of wit, accepted with naïve delight her comments on the skill in driving that a boy of his age could show. For five minutes or so they ran quietly and steadily along a featureless road through barren pastures. There was time enough for his plan to blossom, for Oldport was nearly thirty miles away, and there intervened a village through which to drive at illegal speed.But by slow degrees, without at all perceiving how it came about, Archie found that somehow his passenger was a very delightful old lady. What had become of the absurd starchiness, which before had so maddened him, of the stiff pride, which had condescended to him as though Fraser & Co. were creatures far beneath the regard of a New England old maid? She asked him questions, she was as interested as could be in his father’s plans for him.“Where will you live in Paris?” asked Miss Herron.“Oh, over in the Quarter, I hope. It’d be more fun there than in the other house.”“The other house?”“Ours, you know. Father likes to have his own place when he’s over.”“Indeed?”“We only lease it,” Archie explained, ingenuously. “It’s up near the Arch.”“Indeed! That should be extremely pleasant.”“I hate the idea of going,” the boy blurted out. He looked straight ahead; a slow flush darkened his fair skin.“Yes?”“Unless,” he murmured, suddenly inspired to madness, “unless——”Miss Herron readjusted the dust cloth. The boy felt a quick irritation at her apparent inattention; but the purpose, born of her apparent readiness to hear and approve him, held. “I want Lucy to go, too, Miss Herron,” he announced, bluntly enough.“Indeed!”“Lucy!” he cried. “I do love her so! Please say that I can have her. Please say——”“Do I understand,” she asked, and the boy could not comprehend why her old voice shook so, “that you are making a formal proposal for the hand of Miss Lucy Herron?”“Yes,” he cried, jubilantly. “Oh, say I may ask her.”“If you had intended so far to honor us,” the old lady replied, icily, “I should have thought that you would have approached the subject withsomedegree of formality.”“Miss Herron!”“To speak of such matters in an—automobile is to treat them very unbecomingly. It is not,” she continued, and all her unbending rigidity of demeanor was behind her words, “dignified.”“Being dignified,” cried Archie, hotly, “hasn’t anything to do with being in love.” Was it a smile that lighted upher craggy features, like sunshine on granite. “You don’t understand.”“Apparently not. I am quite unused to the ways of modern youth. The world’s moved very fast in recent years. In an—automobile—as it were.”“But Lucy——”“Well, Mr. Fraser?”“I——”“Let us not refer to her, I beg.”“Not ever again?” he asked, but with no hint of disappointment.“I am surprised that you so much as dreamed of it under the present circumstances,” she replied, tartly.Archie laughed shortly. “Please forget that I so far forgot myself,” he begged. “Itwaswrong, under the present circumstances.” All the boy’s sunny malice shone from his clear eyes. “I ought to have remembered my real duty and pleasure.”“And that,” Miss Herron asked, for once caught unawares, as it appeared, “is what?”“Watch!” said Archie, briefly.They had come by now to the beginning of the solid macadam road that runs across the county, to the joy of the chauffeur as to the corresponding dismay of the truck farmers for whom it was constructed. There was nothing ahead to break the long, hard track. Archie reached down beside him, though his eyes never left his course or one hand the steering wheel, and set his hand to some lever. The song of the great machine was for a second broken; then a new song of the road began, louder and fiercer than the first and in quicker measure. Miss Herron felt as she did the first time she descended in the express elevator of a high office building. She was conscious that her hat was tugging at its pins. She settled herself back deeper in the seat and braced her feet stiffly, only to bounce up as they ran over some stick.“Oh!” she gasped. “Ahem!”“Sit tight,” counseled Archie, suavely. “We’ll get there in time, all right, if nothing happens.”“If anything breaks,” she remarked, “you can usually get somebody to tow the machine home.”“People are very charitable. Yes, Miss Herron.”“Up to a point.”And to that Archie had no rejoinder. It was perhaps as well that he did not see the smile that his passenger wore. It might have taken the edge off his revenge.The houses commenced to appear at more frequent intervals now, and took on a character a little different from the old weather-grayed dwellings of the open country. There showed a white, slim church spire above the trees.“Scarborough,” said Archie, and made the horn speak.“You’ll be careful?” she asked. “Through the village——”“Honk! honk!” This for a couple of children, who, starting to run across the road, doubled back like rabbits. Miss Herron caught just a glimpse of their white faces, and the end of their father’s torrent of imprecation. Now it was the horse of a baker’s wagon that climbed the bank by the roadside in two leaps and pranced shiveringly. Some boys cheered and then flung stones.“Dear me!” ejaculated Miss Herron. “I rather hope we’ll meet nobody I know.”“The sheriff himself couldn’t stop us now.”“But——”“Honk! honk!”“Oh, Mr. Fraser!” They missed by a foot a carriage that was beginning slowly to turn around, and was nearly straight across the road when Archie twitched the automobile aside as if it was a polo pony.“The stupid creatures!” cried Miss Herron, indignantly, when her heart commenced to beat again, “to block the way!”“Thatwasa close shave,” commented Archie.“Not too recklessly, Mr. Fraser.”“I must get you to the meeting, ma’am.”“But the risk——”“If I can’t have Lucy,” the boy declared, sullenly, “I don’tcare what happens.”“Assure me,” demanded his passenger,after a brief moment, during which with no slackening of speed the great machine tore down Scarborough’s main street like a green tornado, “that you retain entire control of the thing.”“Oh, yes.”Another pause. “I suggested that you make no mention of Miss Lucy.”“I can’t have her?”“How fastcanthe automobile go?” asked Miss Herron, ignoring the boy’s question.“Some faster than this. But Lucy can——”“Let us not discuss the matter, please.”“I can’t have her?”“I beg, Mr. Fraser, Ibegyou to center your attention on driving your machine.”“Well, I will, then. I’ll drive her,” said the boy, grimly, “good and fast.” They came again to the open, but the road continued hard and broad, with only long curves around the base of a hill now and then. The wind blew the old lady’s hair into disarray, her dress was gray with dust, her eyes smarted terribly; she gave from time to time a little gasp—or was it a laugh?—and clutched at Archie’s arm, which held so rigid and strong to the tiller wheel. “This’ll be her finish, all right,” he thought. “Cross old cat. Scared?” he asked of her.“I beg pardon?”“You’re not scared, I suppose?” he said, mockingly.“I have been accustomed to fast driving, Mr. Fraser, all my life.”It was because she made that reply that Archie, quite desperate by now, dared what finally did occur. And this was occasioned by his spying in the distance another big car headed as he was, but moving less rapidly. In a minute he was alongside, and jammed on the brakes. The other driver, who was heavily mustached, red-faced and had three airy young damsels stowed in the tonneau, looked up in surprise.“Hello, Isidore!”“Hello! Hello, Mr. Fraser!”“I’ll race you to the bridge.”“Go on, now! Watcher think I got here?” But the girls chorused delightedly, and teased their driver—all but one, and she leaned forward to whisper confidingly, with her arms around his fat neck. Miss Herron surveyed the landscape.“’Fraid cat!” giggled the girl. “You’re afraid, Mr. Mayer.”“I ain’t, only——”“One!” cried Archie, releasing his steed again. “Two!”“Leggo, May!” grunted the other.“And——”“Three!” yelled Mayer. “To the bridge!”By mere good luck the highway was empty, for to think that any cart or carriage could be passed was absurd. Side by side the huge machines, scarlet, green, alive with shining brass, tore along with the roar of express trains between the ditch and the bank. The slightest swerve at such speed meant death. The chatter of the careless girls dwindled, the faces of the rival drivers grew pale and tense.“Oh, be careful!” murmured Miss Herron. “It’s very dangerous.”“Very,” replied Archie. “Promise me Lucy and I’ll slow up.”A sudden little shriek of joy and some handclapping from Mayer’s tonneau interrupted what the old lady might have answered. Glancing over, Miss Herron perceived that their rival had drawn ahead a yard or more, that the girls were crying taunts at her. Not far away now there showed a gleam of the river. And then Archie encountered the greatest surprise of his life.“Saucy things!” remarked his passenger, and fell silent again.“Come on!” called the prettiest of the three, through her hollowed hands. “Old freight car!”“Archie!”“Yes, Miss Herron?”“Can’t you—— Oh!”“What, ma’am?” From the tail of his eye he was aware that Miss Agatha was wringing her hands.“Archie, theymustn’tbeat us!”“I guess I’ll crowd him.”“Oh!”The time was ripe, he thought. “Giveme Lucy,” he repeated, doggedly, “or I’ll foul him.”He had expected to frighten her. He had told himself what fun it would be to hear her give her agitated assent, with the fear of death on her if she refused. It was to be a fine revenge. But Miss Herron only raised a warning forefinger.“Archie Fraser,” she said, in trembling tones, “if—if you take the dust from those common young women and that vulgar man, I’ll never forgive you.”“Great heavens, Miss Herron! I—I——”“Beat ’em!” she ordered truculently.He stuck blindly to his point: “Lucy?”“Beat ’em!Show me,” she declaimed, in trumpet tones, “that the man who wants to marry a Herron has some courage in him. Now!”The road narrowed just ahead, where it led through a cut in the hill and then down to the bridge. On either side the banks rose eight or ten feet, and very steep, and beyond was a sharp curve. Archie made his horn speak angrily, as once more he came abreast of his rival, favored by the fact that Mayer had struck a strip of newly repaired and soft roadway some yards long. A second later he was leading.“Pull up!” he bellowed hoarsely, crouching forward over his tiller still lower. He dropped his hand to the emergency brake. The cut was not six rods off. Once more the girls cried out, but this time in shrill fear. Miss Herron remained calm as the Sphinx.“Honk!” from Mayer, and the click of levers. His machine slid along in a cloud of dust. “You win!”It was ten minutes before the victors exchanged a single word. They rattled over the long bridge, steered up the streets of Oldport to the place where the Daughters were in session. Then Archie lay back with a sigh.“You weren’t scared a bit!” he exclaimed, frankly doleful.The old lady straightened her hat, lightly brushed off the top layer of dust from the front of her dress, then gave the briefest of queer little laughs. “It is one of the traits of my family,” she said, “never to be surprised at anything. And another,” she added, descending majestically from the automobile, “is to make the best of circumstances which appear to be inevitable.”The boy blinked. “I don’t understand,” he stammered.Miss Herron touched him on the arm. “I trust, then, that Lucy will express herself to you more clearly. In case—if you should venture to ask her a question.”And with that the old lady minced her way up the steps of the house to disappear within doors.“Good Lord!” exclaimed Archie, as the light began to break.
GREEN DEVILS AND OLD MAIDSBy Emerson G. Taylor
By Emerson G. Taylor
MMiss Herronguided the fat horses into the byroad with the manner of a navigating officer on the bridge of a liner. Not even after they were straightened out, and dropped their quickened gait to the usual comfortable trot, did she unclose her lips or take her gray eyes from her course.
Miss Herronguided the fat horses into the byroad with the manner of a navigating officer on the bridge of a liner. Not even after they were straightened out, and dropped their quickened gait to the usual comfortable trot, did she unclose her lips or take her gray eyes from her course.
“Is anything coming behind us, Lucy?” This to the young girl beside her.“No, Cousin Agatha. He kept straight on.”“You’re sure?”“Quite sure.”“Well, that’s a mercy.” For the first time she leaned back a little. “But I wonder that John Arnold so much as dreamed of trying to pass me.”
“Is anything coming behind us, Lucy?” This to the young girl beside her.
“No, Cousin Agatha. He kept straight on.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Well, that’s a mercy.” For the first time she leaned back a little. “But I wonder that John Arnold so much as dreamed of trying to pass me.”
“You drive so splendidly,” replied the girl, drooping her pretty head so that the big white hat quite shaded her face. “The way you beat Mr. Arnold was fine. He looked so silly when we passed him. You’re so brave and—and skillful. It makes one feel so safe to be with you.”
“Of course I’ve driven all my life,” Miss Herron admitted. “Your grand-uncle, the judge, my dear, always insisted that driving was part of a gentlewoman’s education, like household management or a knowledge of English history. A bit of a race is only amusing, but what with these automobiles, there’s no pleasure in horses at all nowadays.”
“They certainlyaredangerous.”
“Dangerous! They should not be allowed on the roads at all. Any more than—than drunken men. The comparison somehow pleases me, Lucy. Did you observe it?”
“Yes, yes, Cousin Agatha.” The girl turned to the older lady a face very young and fair and eyes that shone. “I was laughing at it all the time.”
It was a great pleasure, so Miss Herron assured all her friends, to feel sure that her little cousin was for a few months at least to be brought under the influence which had shaped the lives of her New England forebears. For the child to live in Herron House, to grow in knowledge of her race, so splendidly patriotic, so consistently rich and cultivated from the days when Barham was part of a colony, seemed to the proud old lady a real necessity for Lucy. She must never forget that she was a New England gentlewoman; she must learn the traditions, stiffen with the pride of her race. And because these things might grow dim or be clean forgotten, did she spend all her days in the noisy, extravagant city or the lazy places abroad.
Miss Herron rejoiced when Lucy’s father laughed, and replied to her request by sending the child to her for a whole long summer.
“She is very dear to me,” he had whispered, looking across the room towhere Lucy was chattering as she poured tea. “And very lovely, Agatha.”
“She has the Herron look,” she had answered, complacently.
“You’ll take ever so good care, of her?”
“I may be trusted, I think, not to abuse any member of my family.”
Quiet, sunny days followed. There were hours in the glowing garden, murmurous with bees, heavy with delicate perfume of box and verbena and mignonette; hours in the great old house, with its family treasures of plate and china and mahogany, where ancient Chloe and Sylvester still served as in the days when they had followed North that kindly Yankee major they had found helpless after the doings in the Shenandoah Valley. There were company at dinner, less formal gatherings on the piazza of a moonlight evening, when accredited youngsters from the summer colony amused and sometimes scandalized Miss Herron with their laughter and singing. And now and then Lucy would be carried off to other houses of Barham; whence she would return to render a supposedly exact account of all she did and said. Only twice since the first of June did Miss Herron fail in her promise to Lucy’s father and to herself. And these occasions had been within the last ten days, when her old neuralgia had laid her low. What her charge was up to at those times, Miss Herron did not care to inquire. It was ordered that not even Lucy should come near when cousin Agatha was in pain, and therefore uncertain in temper as well as a bit careless as to costume.
“Tell me,” the old lady asked, after they had driven some distance along the shady road, “are you really enjoying your stay here?”
“Yes, indeed. I think Barham’s just lovely.”
“And what’s most lovable in it?”
Lucy stole a look from under her broad hat brim, then retreated. “I don’t believe I know,” she said, simply. “It’s all——”
“Charming. Of course. I’m glad you think so. We could dispense with the strangers, however. They don’t belong here. They are vulgarly rich andparvenu.”
“Some of them are nice, Cousin Agatha,” the child protested, deferentially.
“Who, for instance?”
“All those who come to the house.”
“A pack of rascals!” the old lady replied, crisply. “Laughing like—hyenas, if that’s the animal. It’s a mercy that the boys and girls are sent to good schools. They learn some decent behavior, though of course they haven’t had your advantages, my dear. But I dislike their mothers. They are rich, but they have no poise. Poise, my dear, and the marks of long descent. But the children may develop. All but one of them.”
Lucy’s face grew gently mutinous. “Which is that, cousin?”
“That yellow-haired boy of——” She checked her reply abruptly to listen. The horses were reined in. “My dear,” she asked, resignedly, “what was that noise I heard?”
There was no mistaking that honk of the goose many times strengthened, and, following this, the low, steady sputter of a gasoline engine. The nigh horse’s ears pricked up, then were laid back; his honest mate stopped short to await developments.
“I’m afraid,” ventured Lucy, “that it’s an automobile.”
“The wretches, to choose this road! Are they coming? Go along, there!” cried Miss Herron to the horses, who sprang forward as she laid the whip on their fat flanks. “If we can get just beyond the woods I can turn out for it. But—oh, thewretches!”
“Honk-honk!” close behind now.
“Oh!” cried Lucy. She knelt up in the carriage seat, looking back along the road.
“Wave to him, my child.” Miss Herron leaned back on the reins. Her thin cheeks flushed up, and her gray eyes were like coal fires. “Signal the creature to slow up.”
“I am, Cousin Agatha. I am waving as hard as I can.” She was standingnow, meeting with a lithe motion of supple knees and slender hips each plunge of the hurrying carriage, one little hand on the back of the seat. And with the other, Lucy, who looked at cousin Agatha and then laughed—just a little—signaled gayly if vaguely to the driver of the coming car. This was a young man, whose hair—for he wore no hat—shone in the sun like crisp gold wire.
“Honk!” spoke the horn, “honk!” and then three times more in quicker succession.
Lucy laughed aloud. “Isn’t he silly?” And then waved once more.
“Honk!”
“Whoa!” commanded Miss Herron, drawing her steeds to the side of the road. “Stand still, and don’t be so foolish. It’s only”—she hesitated, then pronounced the word as though it profaned her speech—“an automobile.”
“May I pass you?” came the driver’s voice from behind. The choking reek of the gas drifted down and enveloped them.
“It’s all right,” caroled Lucy. “Come ahead!” Then she dropped down to her seat beside her companion, light as a sparrow.
“Is it coming?”
The horses snorted, swerved, and plunged heavily. There swept by a vision of dark green and shining brass, the chuck-chuck-chuck of machinery.
“Oh, do be careful, Arch!” cried Lucy, for the ponderous machine ground through the soft bank that hemmed in the road on that side, and canted dangerously for a second or two. Then it whirled up the road, with the dust thick in its trail, and through the haze the driver’s yellow head shining. The fat horses shivered, and stood fast.
“The wretch! Iknewit was young Fraser.”
“It wasn’t like him,” Lucy murmured, and a hint of a smile crossed her lips, “to have driven by us so fast.”
“I’d not expect it of him, certainly.”
“Nor I.” And Lucy sighed in spite of herself. She was not very old.
“Ha!” Miss Herron bestowed a lightning glance on her unconscious little passenger, and found it her turn to smile, but with a kind of grimness. “Indeed!” she remarked, and added, under her breath after a queer pause: “Howveryextraordinary!”
They drove along quietly after that for some minutes, for Miss Herron requested silence that she might compose herself the more readily after her fright. The road led them up a gentle incline, then turned sharp to the right, and a couple of hundred yards forked to lead around both sides of a hill. It was not till the horses approached this point that their driver opened her lips. She had worn, all the time that she was quieting her nerves, a look of anxiety into the midst of which would break every now and then the kindest and briefest of whimsical smiles.
“Which direction shall we take?”
Lucy started from her reverie. She, too, had said no word. “This is Steven’s Forks, isn’t it? Shall we go to the right?”
“Toward home, then?”
“Yes,” said Lucy, eagerly, “toward home. To the right, please.”
The talk brightened then. And Lucy in particular chattered away at desperate speed, exclaiming over the rolling landscape, telling her old hostess how much she had enjoyed Barham.
“That is very pleasant to hear,” replied Miss Herron, graciously enough. “I am only sorry that my indisposition last week prevented our——”
“Please don’t think of it, Cousin Agatha.”
“No? My dear, have you ever been visited by neuralgia?”
“I mean,” explained the child, eagerly and shyly together, “that it didn’t interfere with my good times at all.”
“I understand. Silly girl, why don’t they teach you to say things properly! But I know exactly what you mean.”
“Notreally!” A quick dismay chased away the arch gayety.
“And I’m very glad if you had what you would call a good time.”
“Oh, I did! It’s all been delightful,” Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, whichstretched away for a long half mile ahead of them, white and level.
“A good road for those wretched machines,” observed Miss Herron. “I see one has been along it.” And she pointed to the track of broad tires they were following.
“Wouldn’t a farm wagon leave those marks?”
“Possibly, but——” She rose slightly in her seat, and peered ahead. She laughed aloud as she gathered up her reins and touched the horses into a brisk trot. “This may be the workings of Providence, my dear.”
“Perhaps, Cousin Agatha.”
“Is that thing yonder green?”
“There’s only one person in it, and—and he’s getting out now. It’s stopped.”
“Anything more?”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, and now it was hers to stand, “I think——”
“Indeed!” remarked Miss Herron. “I fancied I saw that yellow head of his.”
“The workings of Providence!” Lucy sighed.
“How perfectly absurd! Don’t be irreverent, miss.”
As they approached the machine, young Fraser was quite invisible; but when at last Miss Herron had coaxed her horses up to it, and made them stand, he crawled out from beneath it somewhere, red-faced, dusty and with black grease on his hands.
“The penalty of recklessness!” observed the old lady, surveying the boy as though he was inanimate stone. “Broken down.”
“How d’ye do, Miss Herron?” said Fraser, apparently much embarrassed. “Lucy——”
“Is that machine really broken?” The joyful hope in Miss Agatha’s voice was quite unconcealed. “Smashed?”
“There’s something wrong, certainly,” the boy confessed, ruefully. His regard sought Lucy’s. “But just what’s amiss I can’t see.”
The old lady shook her head warningly. Some outward manifestation she had to make in order to conceal the joy which, like a warm cordial, penetrated every fiber of her being as a certain plan shaped itself in her mind. This was the automobile which had frightened her horses and set her nerves twittering; and now it reposed by the roadside helpless. This was the reckless, handsome boy who had set her guests laughing on an occasion requiring a measure of decorum, since the bishop honored her house with his presence; who now, with every appearance of impotent anger, was tinkering with the vitals of a hot engine, dirty and perspiring. Miss Herron admired the idea which grew before her imagination as she would have admired a beautiful, unfolding flower.
“It ought to go now,” the boy announced, after some further bungling examination. What his testing and poking was supposed to accomplish did not appear. He spoke with an odd ruefulness, and seemed to try to deepen the impression his tone conveyed by another look at Lucy eloquent of regret.
“Try it,” said Miss Herron.
The boy threw over the balance wheel; there came forth a clank and some faint clicks from the engine’s interior; then cold silence settled upon it again.
“No go,” reported Archibald, and proceeded to explain what by rights should have come to pass. “But none of these engines are perfected,” he added.
“So there you must—remain? Two miles from any assistance?”
“Yes, Miss Herron.”
“I rather question the willingness of any of our Barham folk to aid a shipwrecked automobile. You drive them so heedlessly, young gentleman. I confess,” she continued, judiciously, “that I rather enjoy your plight.”
The boy grinned delightfully. “So do I. It isn’t often”—how express the light mockery that danced on his lips!—“that my accidents are so charmingly compensated as this is.”
“I am quite serious, Mr. Fraser.”
“I am equally so, Miss Herron.”
A moment they regarded one another in silence. “I am inclined to offer you some assistance, I think,” the old ladyannounced, deliberately. “Merely out of common humanity. I have read that the drivers of automobiles often depend on friendly or highly paid wagoners to—to tow them. Now——”
Archibald drowned the rest in thankful protestations. And——
“It would be awfully kind of you, Cousin Agatha,” said little Lucy, suddenly finding her voice. “I’m sure that Archie——”
“Eh?”
“It would be very nice indeed,” the child contrived to say, and tried to look unconscious.
“If you could help me a little,” explained Archibald, and his own cheeks flamed, though his eyes faltered not a bit. “The break isn’t very serious, I guess.”
A second time Miss Herron considered in silence. She turned deliberately and looked at Lucy, who returned her questioning glance with a stare of babylike innocence; her gray eyes interrogated the boy.
“If you can assure me that your machine can’t go,” said Miss Herron, “I’ll tow you.”
For a brief second Archibald hesitated. Then he fumbled among the levers; raised the hood again; returned to the driver’s seat, and fingered at something the ladies could not see. “She can’t be moved,” the boy reported.
From the fence along the roadside a loosened rail was wrenched; an honest cow, picketed at pasture, had her tether shortened a dozen feet in two strokes of the boy’s knife. In five minutes more, amid many warnings from Miss Herron against scratching the varnish, one end of the rail was made fast to the rear axle of the carriage, and the other to the automobile.
“Now jump in,” ordered Lucy, radiant with smiles; and she pointed to the back seat.
“Mr. Fraser,” her cousin amended, calmly, “will continue in his automobile. To—to steer, if necessary.”
“But——”
“I should prefer it, if you please.” The horses strained forward, the wheels turned; the triumphal procession was under way. “My dear,” said Miss Herron, “will you be good enough to hold your parasol over me? The sun is very uncomfortable.”
All the way home, the length of Barham Street, where the people stared and laughed, young Fraser repeated all the maledictions he could remember or invent. For the dust choked him, and the view of Lucy’s back as she sat holding the parasol over her cousin did not cheer.
“I’ll get even—oh, more than even!—with you, dear lady,” he promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron’s unconscious and unbending figure, “if it takes all summer. I wonder if she could have guessed. And it was planned so perfectly.”
Barham laughed over the story, laughed again when at the Richmonds’ dance Lucy came back into the glare of the lights with the Fraser boy, dazzled and bright-cheeked, after half an hour’s absence in the darkness of the great garden. And how many of the gossips would have given their ears to have heard the long talk between Miss Agatha and Lucy’s father on the night of his arrival? So the slow summer drifted by.
If the Revolutionary Daughters had not arranged their September meeting on the day that a freight wreck made the trains from Barham westward very late and irregular; if Miss Herron had not been waiting a fretful half hour in the dusty station for the means of reaching the meeting before it was over, when Archie Fraser drove his car thither in a search for an express package, the latter part of this story would have been very different. But as the boy stopped his panting, throbbing machine at the edge of the platform, Miss Herron looked out the window.
“I am waiting for a train,” she remarked, on the heels of her stiff little greeting, “for Oldport.”
Archie glanced at the old lady’s delicate dress and at the badge of gold and enamel she wore on her breast. “The R. D.’s?” he asked, respectfully.
“Exactly. I am one of the charter members, as you probably are aware.And to miss the meeting is distinctly vexatious.”
“I’m so sorry.” He turned to the station agent. “How late’s the train?”
“Half an hour or so. She won’t make up much comin’ this far. And she’s got to let the express pass her.”
Out by the platform the car murmured its steady, quiet song of power, and quivered with its singing. Archibald started, stung by a sudden hope. If only——
“That will bring you to Oldport very late, I’m afraid,” he ventured, feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package could wait. “I’m very sorry. I wish——” Here he broke off his speech to gaze pensively at the automobile.
“It’s very annoying,” said Miss Herron.
The station agent winced, as though she had laid a lash across his shoulders, and in his awkward fashion endeavored to apologize for his road’s remissness. Like a tradesman reproved by his best customer, he promised Miss Herron that “it shouldn’t happen again.” It was quite in keeping with her character that she was graciously pleased to accept the man’s excuses. And then the agent, fired into an expansive cheerfulness by her kindness, said that which won him the mysterious present he received the following Christmas.
“Why can’tyoutake Miss Herron over, Mr. Fraser—hey? I guess that there autobile——”
“That——”
“Autobile,” repeated the agent, sturdily. “She’ll beat most o’ the trains onthisroad.”
“The very thing!” He made a mental promise never to forget this man’s kindness and tact. “Oldport! It wouldn’t take us an hour; and it’s the best piece of road in the State.”
“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Herron, gently scornful. “In an—automobile!”
“Please come,” he begged. “It would be such an honor, and a pleasure, too.”
“I shouldpreferthe train.” But the very fact that she let a note of argument and protest come into her voice gave Archibald instant encouragement.
The station agent, warned by a furious wink, came nobly to the fore. “I’m afraid the train ain’t goin’ to do ye much good, ma’am. Not for some time, anyway. I never see such a road’s this.”
“I’ll go very carefully,” Archie went on, recklessly promising.
“Of course, you know, I dislike those machines, but,” Miss Herron confessed, with a fair show of sincerity, “I am rather eager to be present at this meeting.” She surveyed with critical eye the deep-cushioned seats, the heavy springs, then the tiller and the various start-and-stop levers. “You think there’ll be no danger?”
“Not the least. I’m sure you’d not be afraid, Miss Herron.”
“I am afraid,” she replied, tartly, “of nothing that man can devise. Be so good as to lend me your arm, Mr. Fraser.”
He charmed her by his deferential escort across the platform; he protected the rustling silk of her skirt from any possible fleck of dirt as she mounted to her place; he was solicitous, as a gentleman should be, concerning the dust cloth, and deft as a footman in arranging it. Clearly, as Miss Herron perceived, the boy appreciated the honor she was doing him, and so far earned her approval. Nor were his manners wholly uncouth.
Archie drew on his gauntlets and settled himself, hands on tiller and throttle. “Are you quite ready?” He could not hide his smile. A sweet hour was to follow.
“I am waiting,” she answered.
“Go, then.”
The ponderous machine leaped forward as if released from a spring, gathering power and speed each half second. Miss Herron laid her hand on the driver’s arm.
“Not too fast—all at once,” she said. “I——”
“She’ll do better when we strike the good road,” the driver replied. “This sand checks her badly.”
It was so lovely a revenge that lay now in his hand to inflict. This old lady had towed him home once, thelaughingstock of the village; she had brought to naught at the same time the scheme which had cost Lucy and himself such a deal of planning. The machine was to be abandoned, they had arranged in that runaway afternoon when Miss Herron kept her room; the carriage was to overtake him in his distress; he was to drive home with the two ladies, holding Lucy’s hand on the back seat, and convincing Miss Herron of his superior qualifications to marry into her family. But all this had in the sequel come to less than nothing. It was Miss Herron also who, Archie was convinced, had been at the bottom of his father’s sudden determination to attach him to the Paris branch of the Fraser business, and so banish him from all that was dearest and best in the world.
Now, by blessed good luck, Miss Herron was quite in his power to frighten soundly and to land at the gathering of the elect, blown, dusty and disheveled. If he had been more than twenty, he would have thought and acted otherwise than he did; but the likely outcome of his plan never troubled the boy, if indeed it entered his honest head at all. “I’ll scare her,” remarked Archie, grinning silently, “good and hard.”
But, even as he plotted, he wooed her with his politest phrases; laughed, but not too loudly, at the little sparkles of wit, accepted with naïve delight her comments on the skill in driving that a boy of his age could show. For five minutes or so they ran quietly and steadily along a featureless road through barren pastures. There was time enough for his plan to blossom, for Oldport was nearly thirty miles away, and there intervened a village through which to drive at illegal speed.
But by slow degrees, without at all perceiving how it came about, Archie found that somehow his passenger was a very delightful old lady. What had become of the absurd starchiness, which before had so maddened him, of the stiff pride, which had condescended to him as though Fraser & Co. were creatures far beneath the regard of a New England old maid? She asked him questions, she was as interested as could be in his father’s plans for him.
“Where will you live in Paris?” asked Miss Herron.
“Oh, over in the Quarter, I hope. It’d be more fun there than in the other house.”
“The other house?”
“Ours, you know. Father likes to have his own place when he’s over.”
“Indeed?”
“We only lease it,” Archie explained, ingenuously. “It’s up near the Arch.”
“Indeed! That should be extremely pleasant.”
“I hate the idea of going,” the boy blurted out. He looked straight ahead; a slow flush darkened his fair skin.
“Yes?”
“Unless,” he murmured, suddenly inspired to madness, “unless——”
Miss Herron readjusted the dust cloth. The boy felt a quick irritation at her apparent inattention; but the purpose, born of her apparent readiness to hear and approve him, held. “I want Lucy to go, too, Miss Herron,” he announced, bluntly enough.
“Indeed!”
“Lucy!” he cried. “I do love her so! Please say that I can have her. Please say——”
“Do I understand,” she asked, and the boy could not comprehend why her old voice shook so, “that you are making a formal proposal for the hand of Miss Lucy Herron?”
“Yes,” he cried, jubilantly. “Oh, say I may ask her.”
“If you had intended so far to honor us,” the old lady replied, icily, “I should have thought that you would have approached the subject withsomedegree of formality.”
“Miss Herron!”
“To speak of such matters in an—automobile is to treat them very unbecomingly. It is not,” she continued, and all her unbending rigidity of demeanor was behind her words, “dignified.”
“Being dignified,” cried Archie, hotly, “hasn’t anything to do with being in love.” Was it a smile that lighted upher craggy features, like sunshine on granite. “You don’t understand.”
“Apparently not. I am quite unused to the ways of modern youth. The world’s moved very fast in recent years. In an—automobile—as it were.”
“But Lucy——”
“Well, Mr. Fraser?”
“I——”
“Let us not refer to her, I beg.”
“Not ever again?” he asked, but with no hint of disappointment.
“I am surprised that you so much as dreamed of it under the present circumstances,” she replied, tartly.
Archie laughed shortly. “Please forget that I so far forgot myself,” he begged. “Itwaswrong, under the present circumstances.” All the boy’s sunny malice shone from his clear eyes. “I ought to have remembered my real duty and pleasure.”
“And that,” Miss Herron asked, for once caught unawares, as it appeared, “is what?”
“Watch!” said Archie, briefly.
They had come by now to the beginning of the solid macadam road that runs across the county, to the joy of the chauffeur as to the corresponding dismay of the truck farmers for whom it was constructed. There was nothing ahead to break the long, hard track. Archie reached down beside him, though his eyes never left his course or one hand the steering wheel, and set his hand to some lever. The song of the great machine was for a second broken; then a new song of the road began, louder and fiercer than the first and in quicker measure. Miss Herron felt as she did the first time she descended in the express elevator of a high office building. She was conscious that her hat was tugging at its pins. She settled herself back deeper in the seat and braced her feet stiffly, only to bounce up as they ran over some stick.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Ahem!”
“Sit tight,” counseled Archie, suavely. “We’ll get there in time, all right, if nothing happens.”
“If anything breaks,” she remarked, “you can usually get somebody to tow the machine home.”
“People are very charitable. Yes, Miss Herron.”
“Up to a point.”
And to that Archie had no rejoinder. It was perhaps as well that he did not see the smile that his passenger wore. It might have taken the edge off his revenge.
The houses commenced to appear at more frequent intervals now, and took on a character a little different from the old weather-grayed dwellings of the open country. There showed a white, slim church spire above the trees.
“Scarborough,” said Archie, and made the horn speak.
“You’ll be careful?” she asked. “Through the village——”
“Honk! honk!” This for a couple of children, who, starting to run across the road, doubled back like rabbits. Miss Herron caught just a glimpse of their white faces, and the end of their father’s torrent of imprecation. Now it was the horse of a baker’s wagon that climbed the bank by the roadside in two leaps and pranced shiveringly. Some boys cheered and then flung stones.
“Dear me!” ejaculated Miss Herron. “I rather hope we’ll meet nobody I know.”
“The sheriff himself couldn’t stop us now.”
“But——”
“Honk! honk!”
“Oh, Mr. Fraser!” They missed by a foot a carriage that was beginning slowly to turn around, and was nearly straight across the road when Archie twitched the automobile aside as if it was a polo pony.
“The stupid creatures!” cried Miss Herron, indignantly, when her heart commenced to beat again, “to block the way!”
“Thatwasa close shave,” commented Archie.
“Not too recklessly, Mr. Fraser.”
“I must get you to the meeting, ma’am.”
“But the risk——”
“If I can’t have Lucy,” the boy declared, sullenly, “I don’tcare what happens.”
“Assure me,” demanded his passenger,after a brief moment, during which with no slackening of speed the great machine tore down Scarborough’s main street like a green tornado, “that you retain entire control of the thing.”
“Oh, yes.”
Another pause. “I suggested that you make no mention of Miss Lucy.”
“I can’t have her?”
“How fastcanthe automobile go?” asked Miss Herron, ignoring the boy’s question.
“Some faster than this. But Lucy can——”
“Let us not discuss the matter, please.”
“I can’t have her?”
“I beg, Mr. Fraser, Ibegyou to center your attention on driving your machine.”
“Well, I will, then. I’ll drive her,” said the boy, grimly, “good and fast.” They came again to the open, but the road continued hard and broad, with only long curves around the base of a hill now and then. The wind blew the old lady’s hair into disarray, her dress was gray with dust, her eyes smarted terribly; she gave from time to time a little gasp—or was it a laugh?—and clutched at Archie’s arm, which held so rigid and strong to the tiller wheel. “This’ll be her finish, all right,” he thought. “Cross old cat. Scared?” he asked of her.
“I beg pardon?”
“You’re not scared, I suppose?” he said, mockingly.
“I have been accustomed to fast driving, Mr. Fraser, all my life.”
It was because she made that reply that Archie, quite desperate by now, dared what finally did occur. And this was occasioned by his spying in the distance another big car headed as he was, but moving less rapidly. In a minute he was alongside, and jammed on the brakes. The other driver, who was heavily mustached, red-faced and had three airy young damsels stowed in the tonneau, looked up in surprise.
“Hello, Isidore!”
“Hello! Hello, Mr. Fraser!”
“I’ll race you to the bridge.”
“Go on, now! Watcher think I got here?” But the girls chorused delightedly, and teased their driver—all but one, and she leaned forward to whisper confidingly, with her arms around his fat neck. Miss Herron surveyed the landscape.
“’Fraid cat!” giggled the girl. “You’re afraid, Mr. Mayer.”
“I ain’t, only——”
“One!” cried Archie, releasing his steed again. “Two!”
“Leggo, May!” grunted the other.
“And——”
“Three!” yelled Mayer. “To the bridge!”
By mere good luck the highway was empty, for to think that any cart or carriage could be passed was absurd. Side by side the huge machines, scarlet, green, alive with shining brass, tore along with the roar of express trains between the ditch and the bank. The slightest swerve at such speed meant death. The chatter of the careless girls dwindled, the faces of the rival drivers grew pale and tense.
“Oh, be careful!” murmured Miss Herron. “It’s very dangerous.”
“Very,” replied Archie. “Promise me Lucy and I’ll slow up.”
A sudden little shriek of joy and some handclapping from Mayer’s tonneau interrupted what the old lady might have answered. Glancing over, Miss Herron perceived that their rival had drawn ahead a yard or more, that the girls were crying taunts at her. Not far away now there showed a gleam of the river. And then Archie encountered the greatest surprise of his life.
“Saucy things!” remarked his passenger, and fell silent again.
“Come on!” called the prettiest of the three, through her hollowed hands. “Old freight car!”
“Archie!”
“Yes, Miss Herron?”
“Can’t you—— Oh!”
“What, ma’am?” From the tail of his eye he was aware that Miss Agatha was wringing her hands.
“Archie, theymustn’tbeat us!”
“I guess I’ll crowd him.”
“Oh!”
The time was ripe, he thought. “Giveme Lucy,” he repeated, doggedly, “or I’ll foul him.”
He had expected to frighten her. He had told himself what fun it would be to hear her give her agitated assent, with the fear of death on her if she refused. It was to be a fine revenge. But Miss Herron only raised a warning forefinger.
“Archie Fraser,” she said, in trembling tones, “if—if you take the dust from those common young women and that vulgar man, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Great heavens, Miss Herron! I—I——”
“Beat ’em!” she ordered truculently.
He stuck blindly to his point: “Lucy?”
“Beat ’em!Show me,” she declaimed, in trumpet tones, “that the man who wants to marry a Herron has some courage in him. Now!”
The road narrowed just ahead, where it led through a cut in the hill and then down to the bridge. On either side the banks rose eight or ten feet, and very steep, and beyond was a sharp curve. Archie made his horn speak angrily, as once more he came abreast of his rival, favored by the fact that Mayer had struck a strip of newly repaired and soft roadway some yards long. A second later he was leading.
“Pull up!” he bellowed hoarsely, crouching forward over his tiller still lower. He dropped his hand to the emergency brake. The cut was not six rods off. Once more the girls cried out, but this time in shrill fear. Miss Herron remained calm as the Sphinx.
“Honk!” from Mayer, and the click of levers. His machine slid along in a cloud of dust. “You win!”
It was ten minutes before the victors exchanged a single word. They rattled over the long bridge, steered up the streets of Oldport to the place where the Daughters were in session. Then Archie lay back with a sigh.
“You weren’t scared a bit!” he exclaimed, frankly doleful.
The old lady straightened her hat, lightly brushed off the top layer of dust from the front of her dress, then gave the briefest of queer little laughs. “It is one of the traits of my family,” she said, “never to be surprised at anything. And another,” she added, descending majestically from the automobile, “is to make the best of circumstances which appear to be inevitable.”
The boy blinked. “I don’t understand,” he stammered.
Miss Herron touched him on the arm. “I trust, then, that Lucy will express herself to you more clearly. In case—if you should venture to ask her a question.”
And with that the old lady minced her way up the steps of the house to disappear within doors.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Archie, as the light began to break.
TWO SORROWSBefore Love came my eyes were dim with tears,Because I had not known her gentle face;Softly I said: “But when across the yearsHer smile illumes the darkness of my place,All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”Now Love is mine—she walks with me for ayeDown paths of primrose and blue violet;But on my heart at every close of dayA grief more keen than my old grief is set,—I weep for those who have not found Love yet!Charles Hanson Towne.
Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears,Because I had not known her gentle face;Softly I said: “But when across the yearsHer smile illumes the darkness of my place,All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”Now Love is mine—she walks with me for ayeDown paths of primrose and blue violet;But on my heart at every close of dayA grief more keen than my old grief is set,—I weep for those who have not found Love yet!
Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears,Because I had not known her gentle face;Softly I said: “But when across the yearsHer smile illumes the darkness of my place,All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”
Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears,
Because I had not known her gentle face;
Softly I said: “But when across the years
Her smile illumes the darkness of my place,
All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”
Now Love is mine—she walks with me for ayeDown paths of primrose and blue violet;But on my heart at every close of dayA grief more keen than my old grief is set,—I weep for those who have not found Love yet!
Now Love is mine—she walks with me for aye
Down paths of primrose and blue violet;
But on my heart at every close of day
A grief more keen than my old grief is set,—
I weep for those who have not found Love yet!
Charles Hanson Towne.
LOVE AND MUSHROOMSBy Frances WilsonVVan Mater, out on the coast for the melancholy purpose of witnessing what he conceived to be Corny Graham’s crowning indiscretion—that is to say, his marriage—found himself lingering for the purpose of basking in California’s smiles. The writing instinct, which in the little old town on Manhattan would keep his hand traveling back and forth across the paper for days at a stretch, here languished and drowsed like some heavy-eyed, faintly smiling lotus eater.He had, to be sure—in a spurt of energy that subsided almost as quickly as it came—begun a song to that sybaritic state, in which it was represented as a lady around whose neck hungA chain ablaze with diamond daysAll on the seasons strung,which he thought sounded rather well.Then, unfortunately, the rains set in and the result was a mental washout that carried the last vestige of his poetical idea out into the vasty deep where individual ideas become world-thought, though there was a moment when he had an inspiration—something about keeping Lent, which should typify the rains. But this, too, drifted off like a chip on an ocean, and the song became mere literary junk.Probably the law of compensation is responsible for the fact that, while the coast’s dazzling summer is flawed by trade winds, its rainy season is tempered by mushrooms. At least, so thought Van Mater. Connoisseur that he was in the joys of living, he confessed to a new sensation when, for the first time, he found himself plodding over the seared, round-shouldered hills, spongy with the supererogatory wetness of a three days’ downpour. The rain had ceased temporarily, but the sky wore a look of ineffable gloom, and the feathery mist trailed along the earth like an uneasy ghost.Some swarthy, dark-eyed Portuguese children, met on the road the day before, had proffered him their pail of spoil, and as he examined its contents he understood, for the first time, what a mushroom really ought to be. Their dank odor—the odor of germinating things—seemed to come from down in the earth where the gnomes are supposed to foregather; and Van Mater’s thoughts reverted with withering scorn to certain woodeny, tan objects that had been foisted upon him from time to time as mushrooms—always, he now triumphantly recalled, to his own inward amazement.Why, when and where mushrooms had won their vogue with epicures, he had often dumbly wondered, though he had remained silent lest he expose a too abysmal ignorance. Now he chuckled hilariously. It was his acceptance of those frauds—those mere shells from which the souls had fled—that displayed ignorance! In future he would know better, and he tossed the children a quarter and went his way, in a pleasant anticipation of the manner in which he would carelessly throw off to certain admiring friends:“But I never eat mushrooms, save they come straight to the table from the soil, picked within an hour of the time when the rain ceases. Those things?Why, my dear fellow, you might as well eat so much gristle. Talk about the bouquet of wine! Why, the bouquet of the mushroom is as delicate and elusive as—as——” The simile failed to materialize, but he went on eloquently: “You can no more preserve it than you can the dew upon a plum.” All of which sounded so well that he speculated anxiously upon the probability of any of the said fellows divining how very little he knew about the matter, after all. They were so deuced knowing, some of them; but it seemed a pity to let an idea like that, what had actually leaped from his brain full-fledged, go to waste. Decidedly, it was worth the risk.His mind again reverted to the subject with pleasant anticipation when, the next afternoon, clad in knickers and a Norfolk, with a cap pulled rakishly over his eyes, he trudged over the hills to which the children had directed him. Soon, however, everything was blotted from his consciousness save a section of brown hill, over which his eyes roved eagerly in search of the small, Japanese-looking fungi.“Mushroom or toadstool?” was his stern inward query, as the pert little parasols became more and more numerous; and he did not realize that he had spoken aloud until a gush of laughter caused him to raise his eyes hastily.She was not three steps away, and from the trim leather leggings, above which her kilted skirt swirled, to the thick sweater and Tam that she wore, she seemed to Van Mater the most dashingly correct damsel he had ever seen. The foggy air had brought a delicious color to her cheeks and brightness to her eye which made her seem a very creature of the out-of-doors, and Van Mater stared, charmed and arrested.“Evidently you don’t recognize me,” she suggested. “I was the third bridesmaid—the one in pink—the homely one, you know.”She eyed him with a wicked satisfaction while the color rose to his face. He had a disagreeable recollection, since she identified herself so minutely, that he had rather passed that particular bridesmaid over with scant attention, amazing as it now seemed. Then he recovered himself, and with that gallant movement of the arm which seems the perfect expression of deference, removed his soft cap and bowed low, as he said:“Of course—I remember you perfectly now, Miss—ah.”He tried, as he took her extended hand, to mumble something unintelligible enough to pass for her name, looking at her with an admiration purposely open in the hope of distracting her attention, but the ruse was of no avail. She only smiled into his face with impish delight.“You people from the East are so dreadfully disingenuous,” she complained. “Why not confess frankly that, so far as you are concerned, I belong to the ‘no name’ series?”Her eyes were dancing, and suddenly Van Mater felt as if he had known her always—eons before he had known himself in his present incarnation.“To think that I shouldn’t have recognized you in the pink gown,” he murmured, with well-feigned surprise. “And to think that I’m no more surprised than I am to have you suddenly bob up here in the wet, after your wanderings of perhaps a hundred lifetimes! I can’t seem to recall the date and planet upon which we last met,” he continued, apologetically, “but I fancy that we picked mushrooms in those old times—that the earth and air were all sopping, just as they are now.”“You write books—you know you do!”“Well—it’s a decent enough occupation!”“Yes,” uncertainly. “Still, writers aren’t usually very sincere; they don’t mean what they say. They spin copy as a spider does a web!”“Writers not sincere—don’t mean what they say!” he echoed. “Why, my dear young lady, you’re all wrong. They usually mean so much that they can’t begin to say it—and as for sincerity, they’re the sincerest people in the world!”“That is, while it lasts!” he added to himself, but his listener, who had stooped to the ground and was now holding up a particularly large andlusciousmushroom, was all unconscious of his reservation.“Look out! You’re stepping on them!” she cried, excitedly, and for the next ten minutes they wandered about with eyes bent on the earth in fascinated absorption. Van Mater at last straightened up with such a thrill of satisfaction as he had not experienced since boyhood.“My pail’s full,” he called, seating himself on one of the projecting bowlders. “So come and show me where to pick the beefsteaks.”She pointed upward. Where the hill humped itself against the sky the blurred figure of a cow was visible. Van Mater tried again.“You might come and rest,” he coaxed, pointing to another bowlder that cropped out in friendly nearness to his own. With a last lingering scrutiny of the ground about, she came, seating herself beside him. Then, with her chin resting on her hands, she surveyed him with a sort of boyishsang-froid.“We’re right cozy for acquaintances of a half hour’s standing,” she remarked, at last. “But, then, I’ve heard about you for so long. You see, Corny told Beth, and she has—well—mentioned you to me.”“Pooh—that’s nothing! I tell you, I’ve known you for centuries. I remember that when I heard of one of those theosophist fellows marrying a girl he’d known for a thousand years or so, I roared. Now I understand it!” (Very solemnly.)She did not speak, and he began again with increased seriousness:“Really, I’m in earnest, you know. I’ve the most curious sense of—well, of companionship with you—as if we’d known each other indefinitely, as if——”She interrupted rather hastily.“Honestly?”Tersely—“Upon my soul.”She rose somewhat hurriedly. “It’s going to rain!”“Never mind. I have a conundrum. Why is love like a mushroom?”She wrinkled her brow. “Because it’s easily crushed, I suppose, and you’re never quite sure of it.”“Wrong. Because it springs up in a night—that is, in an hour,” he answered, impressively.The drops began to fall softly, swiftly, easily, as if they would never more be stanched.“Come,” she said, but her cheeks were more richly colored than before.“Isn’t this heavenly?” he murmured, as they vanished down the road in a blur of rain. She did not answer, but her eyes were shining.
LOVE AND MUSHROOMSBy Frances Wilson
By Frances Wilson
Van Mater, out on the coast for the melancholy purpose of witnessing what he conceived to be Corny Graham’s crowning indiscretion—that is to say, his marriage—found himself lingering for the purpose of basking in California’s smiles. The writing instinct, which in the little old town on Manhattan would keep his hand traveling back and forth across the paper for days at a stretch, here languished and drowsed like some heavy-eyed, faintly smiling lotus eater.
He had, to be sure—in a spurt of energy that subsided almost as quickly as it came—begun a song to that sybaritic state, in which it was represented as a lady around whose neck hung
A chain ablaze with diamond daysAll on the seasons strung,
A chain ablaze with diamond daysAll on the seasons strung,
A chain ablaze with diamond days
All on the seasons strung,
which he thought sounded rather well.
Then, unfortunately, the rains set in and the result was a mental washout that carried the last vestige of his poetical idea out into the vasty deep where individual ideas become world-thought, though there was a moment when he had an inspiration—something about keeping Lent, which should typify the rains. But this, too, drifted off like a chip on an ocean, and the song became mere literary junk.
Probably the law of compensation is responsible for the fact that, while the coast’s dazzling summer is flawed by trade winds, its rainy season is tempered by mushrooms. At least, so thought Van Mater. Connoisseur that he was in the joys of living, he confessed to a new sensation when, for the first time, he found himself plodding over the seared, round-shouldered hills, spongy with the supererogatory wetness of a three days’ downpour. The rain had ceased temporarily, but the sky wore a look of ineffable gloom, and the feathery mist trailed along the earth like an uneasy ghost.
Some swarthy, dark-eyed Portuguese children, met on the road the day before, had proffered him their pail of spoil, and as he examined its contents he understood, for the first time, what a mushroom really ought to be. Their dank odor—the odor of germinating things—seemed to come from down in the earth where the gnomes are supposed to foregather; and Van Mater’s thoughts reverted with withering scorn to certain woodeny, tan objects that had been foisted upon him from time to time as mushrooms—always, he now triumphantly recalled, to his own inward amazement.
Why, when and where mushrooms had won their vogue with epicures, he had often dumbly wondered, though he had remained silent lest he expose a too abysmal ignorance. Now he chuckled hilariously. It was his acceptance of those frauds—those mere shells from which the souls had fled—that displayed ignorance! In future he would know better, and he tossed the children a quarter and went his way, in a pleasant anticipation of the manner in which he would carelessly throw off to certain admiring friends:
“But I never eat mushrooms, save they come straight to the table from the soil, picked within an hour of the time when the rain ceases. Those things?Why, my dear fellow, you might as well eat so much gristle. Talk about the bouquet of wine! Why, the bouquet of the mushroom is as delicate and elusive as—as——” The simile failed to materialize, but he went on eloquently: “You can no more preserve it than you can the dew upon a plum.” All of which sounded so well that he speculated anxiously upon the probability of any of the said fellows divining how very little he knew about the matter, after all. They were so deuced knowing, some of them; but it seemed a pity to let an idea like that, what had actually leaped from his brain full-fledged, go to waste. Decidedly, it was worth the risk.
His mind again reverted to the subject with pleasant anticipation when, the next afternoon, clad in knickers and a Norfolk, with a cap pulled rakishly over his eyes, he trudged over the hills to which the children had directed him. Soon, however, everything was blotted from his consciousness save a section of brown hill, over which his eyes roved eagerly in search of the small, Japanese-looking fungi.
“Mushroom or toadstool?” was his stern inward query, as the pert little parasols became more and more numerous; and he did not realize that he had spoken aloud until a gush of laughter caused him to raise his eyes hastily.
She was not three steps away, and from the trim leather leggings, above which her kilted skirt swirled, to the thick sweater and Tam that she wore, she seemed to Van Mater the most dashingly correct damsel he had ever seen. The foggy air had brought a delicious color to her cheeks and brightness to her eye which made her seem a very creature of the out-of-doors, and Van Mater stared, charmed and arrested.
“Evidently you don’t recognize me,” she suggested. “I was the third bridesmaid—the one in pink—the homely one, you know.”
She eyed him with a wicked satisfaction while the color rose to his face. He had a disagreeable recollection, since she identified herself so minutely, that he had rather passed that particular bridesmaid over with scant attention, amazing as it now seemed. Then he recovered himself, and with that gallant movement of the arm which seems the perfect expression of deference, removed his soft cap and bowed low, as he said:
“Of course—I remember you perfectly now, Miss—ah.”
He tried, as he took her extended hand, to mumble something unintelligible enough to pass for her name, looking at her with an admiration purposely open in the hope of distracting her attention, but the ruse was of no avail. She only smiled into his face with impish delight.
“You people from the East are so dreadfully disingenuous,” she complained. “Why not confess frankly that, so far as you are concerned, I belong to the ‘no name’ series?”
Her eyes were dancing, and suddenly Van Mater felt as if he had known her always—eons before he had known himself in his present incarnation.
“To think that I shouldn’t have recognized you in the pink gown,” he murmured, with well-feigned surprise. “And to think that I’m no more surprised than I am to have you suddenly bob up here in the wet, after your wanderings of perhaps a hundred lifetimes! I can’t seem to recall the date and planet upon which we last met,” he continued, apologetically, “but I fancy that we picked mushrooms in those old times—that the earth and air were all sopping, just as they are now.”
“You write books—you know you do!”
“Well—it’s a decent enough occupation!”
“Yes,” uncertainly. “Still, writers aren’t usually very sincere; they don’t mean what they say. They spin copy as a spider does a web!”
“Writers not sincere—don’t mean what they say!” he echoed. “Why, my dear young lady, you’re all wrong. They usually mean so much that they can’t begin to say it—and as for sincerity, they’re the sincerest people in the world!”
“That is, while it lasts!” he added to himself, but his listener, who had stooped to the ground and was now holding up a particularly large andlusciousmushroom, was all unconscious of his reservation.
“Look out! You’re stepping on them!” she cried, excitedly, and for the next ten minutes they wandered about with eyes bent on the earth in fascinated absorption. Van Mater at last straightened up with such a thrill of satisfaction as he had not experienced since boyhood.
“My pail’s full,” he called, seating himself on one of the projecting bowlders. “So come and show me where to pick the beefsteaks.”
She pointed upward. Where the hill humped itself against the sky the blurred figure of a cow was visible. Van Mater tried again.
“You might come and rest,” he coaxed, pointing to another bowlder that cropped out in friendly nearness to his own. With a last lingering scrutiny of the ground about, she came, seating herself beside him. Then, with her chin resting on her hands, she surveyed him with a sort of boyishsang-froid.
“We’re right cozy for acquaintances of a half hour’s standing,” she remarked, at last. “But, then, I’ve heard about you for so long. You see, Corny told Beth, and she has—well—mentioned you to me.”
“Pooh—that’s nothing! I tell you, I’ve known you for centuries. I remember that when I heard of one of those theosophist fellows marrying a girl he’d known for a thousand years or so, I roared. Now I understand it!” (Very solemnly.)
She did not speak, and he began again with increased seriousness:
“Really, I’m in earnest, you know. I’ve the most curious sense of—well, of companionship with you—as if we’d known each other indefinitely, as if——”
She interrupted rather hastily.
“Honestly?”
Tersely—“Upon my soul.”
She rose somewhat hurriedly. “It’s going to rain!”
“Never mind. I have a conundrum. Why is love like a mushroom?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Because it’s easily crushed, I suppose, and you’re never quite sure of it.”
“Wrong. Because it springs up in a night—that is, in an hour,” he answered, impressively.
The drops began to fall softly, swiftly, easily, as if they would never more be stanched.
“Come,” she said, but her cheeks were more richly colored than before.
“Isn’t this heavenly?” he murmured, as they vanished down the road in a blur of rain. She did not answer, but her eyes were shining.
SOME FEMININE STARSBy Alan DaleAdvertised personalities. Enormous sums squandered on theatrical impossibilities. Amelia Bingham’s pluck and restlessness. “Nancy Stair” rather tiresome. Lesser lights in star-dom.TThreethin, anæmic, bedraggled plays, each with a heralded, exultant feminine “star” skewered to its bloodless pulp, dropped into this metropolis just ahead of the reluctant crocus. Three highly advertised “personalities” tried to weather out a veritable emaciation of drama, and the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. Slowly but surely is knowledge being forced upon the deluded manager, and he is learning to appreciate the vital truth of the much battered Shakespearian quotation, “The play’s the thing.” No trumped-up interest in one particular puppet will take the place of the drama itself. This is a pity. It is easier to create a marionette than it is to construct a play.The three highly advertised “personalities” that reached us at crocus time were owned and engineered by Miss Amelia Bingham, Miss Mary Mannering and Miss Virginia Harned. I mention them in the order in which they appeared, which is not necessarily that of superior merit. They came in at the fag end of a tired season, dragging a load of pitiful dramatic bones. Hope ran high, but fell in sheer despondency. In spite of the fact that the poet prefers to picture hope as springing, I think that in this case it may be better portrayed as running. There is a sensation of panic in the race.Miss Bingham came to town with a very swollen “comedy-drama,” called “Mademoiselle Marni,” from the pen of a “monsoor,” programmed as Henri Dumay—said to be an American “monsoor” at that. This actress affects French plays for reasons that have never been explained, and that certainly do not appear. As a “star,” she is of course entitled to treat herself to any luxury that may seem to tempt her histrionic appetite, and the Gallic siren evidently appeals to her. It is not likely that there will be international complications, although the provocation must at times be keen.“Mademoiselle Marni” was one of those impossible chromos that might have been designed for the mere purpose of giving one’s sense of humor a chance to ventilate itself. In the serious theater-goer—and one is bound to consider him—it awoke amazement. How is it that at rehearsal a dozen presumably sane people can “pass” such an effort, he must have asked himself? Why is it that in a theatrical venture that costs a great deal of money, there are no misgivings? The serious theater-goer is never able to answer these questions.It is almost proverbial that the most hopeless sort of theatrical enterprise—if conventional—never languishes for lack of funds. Try and start a solid business scheme, in which you can calculate results in black and white, and the difficulties and discouragements will be almost insuperable. Endeavor to obtain money for an invention or innovation that has success written across it in luminous letters, and you will “strike a snag,” as the rude phrase goes, with marvelous celerity. But a bad play—one that to the unsophisticatedtheater-usher or to the manager’s scrubwoman must perforce appear as such—experiences no such fate. This is one of the marvels of theaterdom.In the case of “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham herself must have spent an enormous sum that she would probably have hesitated to invest in some enterprise sane or possible. The play was a turgid coagulation of illogical episodes lacking in all plausibility. This particular actress is generally happy when she can select for herself a character that is beloved by all the masculine members of the cast. Apparently, she “sees” herself in this rôle. She likes to appear as the personification of all the virtues, self-sacrificing and otherwise, and this idiosyncrasy is, of course, frequently fatal to sustained interest. We do not care for these sensational paragons.In “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham played the part of a very beautiful French actress, of whom everybody said: “Oh, what a woman!” (Perhaps the audience also echoed that phrase, but with quite a different significance.) She was exquisitely in love withComte Raoul de Saverne, who was engaged to another, and was “ordered” away from her by the father of that other. This parent was a very wicked baron, and just asMlle. Marniin an ecstasy of rage was about to strike him, somebody called out: “Do not hit him; he is your father.”We discovered thatMlle. Marniwas the wicked baron’s illegitimate child. As he had been saying extremely pretty things to her—for she was so bee-yoo-ti-ful!—you will readily perceive that fastidious people might find this “situation” what some critics love to call “unpleasant.” Wicked barons, viewed in the process of admiring their own daughters, are not exactly long-felt wants upon the New York stage. However, this episode was scarcely offensive, for it was so exuberantly silly that nobody could take it seriously.Later on,Mlle. Marnigambled on the stock exchange, and made two million dollars in a few minutes, so that she could get even with the wicked baron, and force him to recallRaoul. In this act the actress wore black velvet, and looked every inch French—Bleecker Street French. It was the “big” scene, and was considered very strenuous by those acting in it. To those in the audience, it merely accentuated the cheap vulgarity of the play, that had no redeeming point, either literary or dramatic. It was, in fact, a forlorn hope.Perhaps if Miss Amelia Bingham would not select her own plays, she would fare better. She is by no means lacking in histrionic ability. She has done many good things in her day. But the temptation of the self-made “star” to see nothing but her own part in the drama that she buys, is very acute. A satisfactoryensemble, a logical story, a set of plausible characters and a motive are all overlooked. Her own “personality” is her sole anxiety, and—well, it is not enough. Miss Bingham was assisted by Frederic de Belleville, Frazer Coulter and others less known to fortune and to fame, but “Mademoiselle Marni” was not accepted. It was staged “regardless,” but even that fact did not count in its favor. Miss Bingham’s pluck and recklessness were alone in evidence.Scarcely more felicitous was Miss Mary Mannering with “Nancy Stair.” Miss Mannering is not as good an actress as Miss Bingham. She is one of the “be-stars-quickly.” A year or two more in some good company would have been of inestimable advantage to her, but the lower rungs of the ladder are not in great demand to-day. That ladder is top-heavy. The upper rungs are worn by the futile grasp of the too ambitious; the lower ones are neglected.It was Paul M. Potter who tapped on the book cover of Elinor Macartney Lane’s novel, with his not very magic wand, and tried to coax forth a play. Exactly why he did this was not made clear, for the day of the book play is over, and there was nothing in “Nancy Stair” that overtopped the gently commonplace. Mr. Potter’s play was by no means lacking in interest, but we are exceedingly tired of the ubiquitous heroine of tawdry “romance”who does unsubtle things, in an unsubtle way, to help out certain unsubtle “complications.” If I mistake not, these very novels are beginning to pall, as such stupid, meaningless vaporings should do. One cannot resist the belief that one-half of them are written with an eye upon the gullible playwright, for a play means larger remuneration than any novel could ever hope to secure.It is not necessary to rehearse the story of “Nancy Stair.” I can assume that you have read it, though if you are like me, you haven’t. I look upon Mr. Julius Cahn’s “Official Theatrical Guide” as rich and racy literature compared with these fatiguing attempts to invent impossible people, and drag them through a jungle of impossible happenings—simply because Mr. Anthony Hope, a few years ago, achieved success by similar means, which at that time had a semblance of novelty. I may be “prejudiced,” but then I have at least the courage of my own prejudices. In “Nancy Stair” Mr. Potter even seemed to belittle opportunities that might have raised his play from the dull level of conventionality.One episode in whichNancy, afraid that her lover has murdered theDuke of Borthwicke, enters the presence of the corpse, and there forges a letter in the interests ofDanvers, might have been made into something strongly emotional, creepy and Sarah Bernhardtian. This incident in itself was so striking, and it seemed to be so new—though I believe that Mr. Potter himself repudiates the notion that there can be anything new in the drama—that it was almost criminal to slight it. Nothing was made of it. It almost escaped attention. Instead, we got a crew of comic opera Scotchmen singing songs, and an absurd picture ofRobert Burns, who was injected pell-mell into the “romance.” It was disheartening.Those who had read the book complained bitterly of the “liberties” that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those “liberties” and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that confront you on the stage. And when you don’t read a book, the play made therefrom lacks lucidity, and you experience the need of a “key.” I should imagine that the dramatization of a novel killed its sale. Who, after viewing “Nancy Stair” as a play, would tackle it as a novel? Of course, when a book is dramatized after it has had a stupendous sale, the author cannot complain. He has no excuse for protesting. This is a somewhat interesting topic.Miss Mannering coped withNancyas she would cope withCamilleorJuliet, or any character quite outside of her range of ability. In light comedy episodes, she is quite acceptable. She is a very pretty, graceful, distinguished young woman, but her “emotion” is absurd. Her dramatic fervor is such an exceedingly stereotyped affair that you can watch it in a detached mood. You can pursue your own thoughts while she is “fervoring,” and she will not interrupt them. Miss Mannering is emotional in a conventional stage way, and she knows a few tricks. But the subtlety that comes from experience, the quality that nothing but a long and arduous apprenticeship can produce, are leagues beyond her ken. It is a pity, but the “be-stars-quickly” all suffer in this identical way and there is no remedy.Robert Loraine as the “hero” gave a far better performance. It was theatrical, but satisfactory. The lateRobert Burnswas played by T. D. Frawley in a deliciously Hibernian way. Poor Bobbie would have had a fit if he could have seen his nationality juggled with in this manner. If Mr. Frawley had warbled “The Wearing o’ the Green” the illusion would have been complete. Mr. Andrew Mack could have done nothing better—for Ireland.“The Lady Shore” was the title of Miss Virginia Harned’s massive production at the Hudson Theater. JaneShore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against the courtesan, when we meet her in everyday life, the fact remains that for the stage there is no character in greater demand by “star” actresses and “romantic” playwrights. They seem to find a peculiar interest in a woman who has “lived”—no matter how. If, in ransacking history, they are lucky enough to discover a courtesan who can be billed as a “king’s favorite,” they appear to smack their lips exultantly. One is almost inclined to believe that dead-and-gone kings must have chosen “favorites” merely for the sake of to-day’s stage.As soon as the playwright has excavated a courtesan, he begins to think of the best way of whitewashing her. For she must be offered up as more sinned against than sinning. Of course. The playwright wastes his substance thinking up excuses for her. He is quite willing—nay, anxious—that she shall go wrong, but he prefers that she shall be driven to it by untoward circumstances. He is desirous that we shall sympathize with her, to the point of tears, in the last act. It is very kind of him to do such charitable deeds in history’s name, and we realize how exceedingly unselfish he is. Just the same, this mania for resurrecting defunct courtesans seems a trifle neurasthenic. It appears to indicate a hysterical sympathy, on the part of the playwright, with dead characters whom, in life, he would hesitate at asking to dinneren famille.The two women who built up “The Lady Shore” smashed history into smithereens in their rabid and frenzied effort to make her an exquisite impersonation of nearly all the virtues. It was, in fact, grotesque and ludicrous. With any old history book staring them in the face, they treated Jane Shore precisely as though she were the heroine of a dime novel. They had no qualms. They lopped great wads from her past, and huge excrescences from her present, and by the time that she had reached the last act, the audience sat dazed at the delicate beauty of her character. No masculine playwright could have done as much. Possibly if the purifiers of Lady Jane Shore elected to dramatize the career of Messalina, they would make of her a combination of Joan of Arc and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.TheJane Shoreat the Hudson Theater was married to a brute of a husband, but she left him simply because she was driven to it, poor girl! She became the mistress ofEdward IV., apparently because she yearned to be a mother to his children. She was always rescuing the little princes from theDuke of Gloucester. She sat besideEdward IV., in the council chamber of Westminster Palace, so that she could beseech him to pardon delinquents who were brought before him in a procession of fifteenth century “drunk and disorderly.”There never was a more perfect lady. The playwrights unfortunately omitted to picture her teaching a Sunday school, and I can only imagine that they must have forgotten to do so.Jane Shore’slove forEdward IV.was depicted in such lily tints that you simply hated the memory of your history book that said such rude things about her life after the sovereign’s death. The historical “penance” that on the stage seemed so effective was, as we know, really unavailing. Dramatic license is a great thing, and it is pardonable when it is used with discrimination. But made to do duty as a daub, it is unjustifiable. What is the use of going down into history as one thing, if you are to be bobbed up on the stage, after the passage of centuries, as another? To the feminine playwright, the line that separates saints from sinners is an invisible boundary.As a play, “The Lady Shore” was mere melodrama, of a somewhat incoherent nature. Perhaps if the central character had been imaginary—and it was nearly that—the melodrama would have been all the better for it. Whynot invent a good new character, instead of revamping a bad old one? Why not exercise the imagination upon some original creation, instead of straining it around a type that lurks in the libraries? The authors of “The Lady Shore” might have used their labors more advantageously. It is always a futile task to rewrite history. History is cold, and unbudgingly accurate. Why trifle with it?Miss Virginia Harned, however, escaped from her play. She is an emotional actress of considerable force, as she showed us in her production of “The Lady of the Camelias.” She has the power of repression. She is artistic, sincere and graceful. Her work in this diffuse play proved that beyond the peradventure of a doubt, so that her engagement at the Hudson Theater need not be unduly deplored. TheGloucesterof John Blair was extremely amusing. Such aRichard, the most imaginative imaginer could never have dreamed of! He played the part as though theDuke of Gloucesterwere an Ibsen gentleman, battling with a dark green matinée. Mr. Loraine came from “Nancy Stair” to “The Lady Shore,” and wasEdward IV.It would be interesting to know which “heroine” he really preferred. The little princes in the tower seemed to deserve their fate. They were arguments in favor of race suicide.Two other celestial bodies of the feminine gender, fixed for one brief week apiece on the theatrical “concave,” moved quickly in the direction of “the road.” These more or less heavenly lights were Miss Odette Tyler and Miss Eugenie Blair, who appeared at those kaleidoscopic theaters called “combination houses.” Miss Tyler used to be something of a Broadway “favorite”—a term that has lost a good deal of its significance. She appeared in the little Yorkville Theater on the highroad to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, in a play of her own, called “The Red Carnation.”No purpose would be served in analyzing this uncanny, chaotic mass, even were it possible to do so. Miss Tyler placed herself amid French revolutionary surroundings, and was seen as a remarkable “romantic” French woman, with a strong American accent and an emphatic New York manner. She fluttered through Paris in 1793, evidently convinced that it was just as “easy” as New York in 1905. She had a caramel demeanor and ice-cream allurements. She kittened and frivoled through the Reign of Terror with an archness that was commendable, though somewhat misplaced, and she let loose a lay figure labeledMarie Antoinettethat was designed to frame her own accomplishments.Familiar as we are with the French revolution, used as a stage motive, “The Red Carnation” threw such a new light upon it all, that we were a trifle dumfounded. Miss Tyler gracefully revised it for us, and made it appear as a somewhat gay and frolicsome time. Moreover, it had all the modern improvements. It seemed to be steam-heated and electric-lighted, and althoughMarie Antoinettedid not make her entrance in an automobile, you felt that it was waiting outside. Historians, interested in the French revolution, might get some valuable sidelights from Miss Odette Tyler’s idea of it. The actress herself has an agreeable personality and considerable ability.The other “star” to whom I have fitfully alluded—Miss Eugenie Blair—has much vogue outside of New York. She came to the Murray Hill Theater with a version of Wilkie Collins’ much-abused “New Magdalen,” which was called “Her Second Life.” This being her life number two, you felt a distinct sensation of relief that you were spared a glimpse at lives numbers one and three. It was such a very crude performance that I should not have dragged it into this record had it not been for the fact that Miss Blair was part of the singular display of celestial bodies that I have tried to indicate in this article. She is a weighty actress corporeally, if not artistically, and poorMercy Merrickfared rather badly. This Wilkie Collins heroine has been neglected of late, in favor of such base subterfugesas figures of theNancy Staircaliber, but certain signs point to revivals of “The New Magdalen,” which as an emotional story has seldom been surpassed. Compared with the pitiful puppet “romances” of to-day, this genuine piece of throbbing fiction seems to be in distinctly another class.Mr. Frank Keenan, with whose praiseworthy effort to emulate the tactics of M. Antoine in Paris my readers are familiar, gave up the Berkeley Lyceum ghost, unable to weather the storm and stress of experiment. While admiring Mr. Keenan’s energy, and appreciating the little one-act bills that he offered with such rapid-transit celerity, it is impossible to avoid deprecating the lack of logical foresight that he manifested.He trifled with our young affections, aroused our enthusiasm and inspired in us the belief that a permanent institution was inevitable, and then—quietly dropped out. In other walks of life, people who make experiments have generally supplied themselves with the wherewithal to wait while their schemes approach fruition. Rome was not built in a day, but if the builders thereof had been actors, Rome never would have been built at all! The actor, who is usually a singularly unbalanced person, looks for immediate success, and can endure nothing else.Why Mr. Keenan should have expected to jump into a whirlwind of instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothing that is out of the conventional rut succeeds at the start. There must be patience, perseverance and a struggle. Otherwise life would be very easy, which it is not. The rosy little scheme at the Berkeley Lyceum had attracted considerable attention. Critics paid homage to every change of bill, anxious to chronicle success, and looking with glad eyes at the possible advent of a new impetus to the jaded theatrical machine. They had worked themselves into the most appreciative state of mind. Lo, and behold! After a few weeks, M. Antoine’s American imitator evaporated. Lack of funds!What a dismal lack of those funds there must have been when the enterprise started! Who but an actor would embark upon a scheme, and project such radiant promises in the interests of those who are tired of wallowing in the trough of vulgar “popularity,” when it was apparent that, without that popularity, the thing couldn’t last more than a month? Mr. Keenan should apologize to M. Antoine, of Paris. He took his name in vain. People with new ideas, opposed to the conventionality of the old ones, expect naturally to bide their time before the public unhesitatingly accepts them. If Mr. Keenan had engaged in his alluring pursuit, willing and even anxious to “lose money” before he made it, a very different story would have been told.People ask why dramatic chroniclers grow cynical. The answer is simple. They feel that they are persistently “jollied” along, and they assuredly are. It was so in the case of the Berkeley Lyceum plan that fell through simply because money failed to pour into the box office, and M. Antoine, of Paris, lacked the vitality of Barnum & Bailey’s circus! It was so last year when Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld tried to “elevate” the stage with the Century Players. This is an age of get-rich-quickly, and there is no other object. Actors talk of art, and of unconventionality; they inveigh against commercialism and pose most picturesquely. But they are in such a hurry to spear the florid, bloated body of easy success that they cannot wait. Mr. Frank Keenan went direct from M. Antoine’s Parisian plan to vaudeville!The little play upon which he relied to turn the tide of dollars in his direction was called “A Passion in a Suburb,” and was described as “a psychological study of madness,” by Algernon Boyesen. It was horror for the sake of horror, which is always distressing, and it was a failure. It was food neither for the elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startlingtrain of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not enlivening. It is ghoulish.I have devoted much space to Mr. Frank Keenan and his plan. I was sorry for him until I thought it all over. Then I couldn’t help feeling a bit sore. It was all very foolish. The bubble was pricked so quickly! It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as “quick returns.”De mortuis nil nisi bonum.(I think I have, though!)That a one-act play is fully able to create a veritable sensation, as keen as any that a five-act drama might evoke, was instanced at the Manhattan Theater, when Mrs. Fiske produced a little drama, written by herself, and called “A Light from St. Agnes.” I think I may say that it was the finest and most artistic one-act play that I have ever seen—and I’ve seen a few in my day. It aroused a matinée audience, on a warm afternoon, to an ecstasy of enthusiastic approval, because it appealed directly to the artistic fiber.It was not a case for cold analytic judgment. It was not an occasion when long-haired critics could draw a diagram, and prate learnedly of “technique” and other topics that often make critics such insensate bores. “A Light from St. Agnes” was recognized intuitively as great. The soul of an audience never makes a mistake, though the brain frequently errs. A brain might perhaps prove that this play was artistically admirable, but the soul reached that conclusion instantly and unreasoningly. The effect was marvelous.I wonder if you quite grasp my meaning. You know there are some things that refuse to be reduced to diagram form. They decline to answer to the call of a, b and c. They won’t be x’d and y’d algebraically. Very material people of course rebel at this. They want everything cut and dried. They would dissect the soul with a scalpel, and reduce psychic effects to the medium of pounds and ounces. That is what certain reviewers tried to do with “A Light from St. Agnes.”Their material eyes saw that the end of the little play was murder; that its motive was a sacrilegious robbery—the theft of a diamond cross from the body of a woman lying dead in a church; that the man was a drink-besotted ruffian; that the woman was his illicit partner; that the atmosphere was assuredly brutal. Material eyes saw all this. Material senses reasoned that, given all these qualities, such a play must be horrible, and unduly strenuous. But intuition set all this reasoning awry. You see, intuition doesn’t reason; itknows. It is better to know than to reason. Get a dozen people to prove to you that “A Light from St. Agnes” was a dismal and unnecessary tragedy. Oh, they might be able to do it. Then go and see it, and you will understand precisely what I am driving at.Plays that appeal to intuition are the most wonderful offerings that the theater can make. Nothing can stay their effect; nobody can successfully argue against them. Rare indeed they are. When some playwright, as the result of a genuine emotion, makes a drama, in the sheer delight of that emotion, and with a disregard for conventionality, and no hope of box-office approval—then you get a work of art. Incidentally, I may remark that such a work of art is so irresistible that it literally forces the box office to tinkle. It would be a pity if it didn’t.The scene of “A Light from St. Agnes” is laid in a Louisiana village called Bon Hilaire.MichelandToinetteoccupy a rude hut, in the vicinity of St. Agnes’ Church. The light from the church sometimes irradiates the sordid, loathsome room. In fact,Toinetteplaces her couch in such a position that the light may shine upon her eyes, and awaken her in time to callMichel, her befuddled partner.A woman who has tried to reform the lawless life of this section of Louisiana has died. Her body lies in thechurch.ToinetteandMichelhave both been cynically amused, in their reckless way, at her efforts, unavailing, to reform them. And she is dead!Father BertrandvisitsToinette, and tells her this. The peasant laughs. The priest gives her a crucifix that the woman left for her, and its influence—though the playwright is far too subtle even to suggest this—is the “moral” of the little play for those who want their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed.The drama moves quickly. The drama is tragedy.Michelreturns, more hopelessly intoxicated than ever. She lies on the rude couch, seeking sleep. He talks, as he plies himself with drink. The subject is the dead woman in the church of St. Agnes. Some one had placed a lily in her hand. He hopes that nobody will ever dare to place a lily in his! There are long silences; significant pauses. Through the open window he looks into the church. He sees the dead woman, laid out on a gold-embroidered cloth. On her breast is a cross of diamonds.More long silences; more significant pauses. He must possess that diamond cross. Why not? He hated the dead woman. He would steal into the church and rob the body; nay, more, he would hurl insults at it.Toinettehas the crucifix. Perhaps it is that; perhaps it is the awakening of some forgotten instinct within her. The horror of the man’s intention convulses her. There is a terrible conflict between the two. It is the very intensity of drama. The audience, wrought up, holds its breath. ThenToinette, by a ruse, escapes from the man, and, rushing from the dwelling, gives an alarm. The bells ring, in wildest chime.Michelrealizes that he is trapped; that the woman has undone him. He goes after her, finds her, brings her back. He wrestles with her, forces her back upon the rude couch, and plunges his knife into her throat.The stage is in darkness. Yet you can dimly see him hovering over the body; you watch him in a sort of fascination, as he washes the blood from his hands, and then furtively, in the silence, steals away.Toinettelies, extended on the couch, motionless—dead. From the window the light from St. Agnes creeps into the room. It is cast tenderly overToinette’sbody, which it irradiates strangely as the curtain falls slowly.One must “describe” plays, even when in so doing one runs the risk of doing them an injustice. My recital of the story of “A Light from St. Agnes” sounds bald, as I recall the effect that the play produced. I insist that never for one moment was it “morbid” or unnecessarily horrible. It rang true, without one hysterical intonation. It was sincere, dignified, artistic, beautiful. It was admirably staged; it was acted by John Mason, William B. Mack and Fernanda Eliscu with exquisite appeal.Mrs. Fiske scored heavily as a playwright. There were two other one-act dramas from her pen—“The Rose” and “The Eyes of the Heart.” The latter made an excellent impression, but it was in “A Light from St. Agnes” that she stamped herself indelibly upon the season.
SOME FEMININE STARSBy Alan Dale
By Alan Dale
Advertised personalities. Enormous sums squandered on theatrical impossibilities. Amelia Bingham’s pluck and restlessness. “Nancy Stair” rather tiresome. Lesser lights in star-dom.
Threethin, anæmic, bedraggled plays, each with a heralded, exultant feminine “star” skewered to its bloodless pulp, dropped into this metropolis just ahead of the reluctant crocus. Three highly advertised “personalities” tried to weather out a veritable emaciation of drama, and the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. Slowly but surely is knowledge being forced upon the deluded manager, and he is learning to appreciate the vital truth of the much battered Shakespearian quotation, “The play’s the thing.” No trumped-up interest in one particular puppet will take the place of the drama itself. This is a pity. It is easier to create a marionette than it is to construct a play.
The three highly advertised “personalities” that reached us at crocus time were owned and engineered by Miss Amelia Bingham, Miss Mary Mannering and Miss Virginia Harned. I mention them in the order in which they appeared, which is not necessarily that of superior merit. They came in at the fag end of a tired season, dragging a load of pitiful dramatic bones. Hope ran high, but fell in sheer despondency. In spite of the fact that the poet prefers to picture hope as springing, I think that in this case it may be better portrayed as running. There is a sensation of panic in the race.
Miss Bingham came to town with a very swollen “comedy-drama,” called “Mademoiselle Marni,” from the pen of a “monsoor,” programmed as Henri Dumay—said to be an American “monsoor” at that. This actress affects French plays for reasons that have never been explained, and that certainly do not appear. As a “star,” she is of course entitled to treat herself to any luxury that may seem to tempt her histrionic appetite, and the Gallic siren evidently appeals to her. It is not likely that there will be international complications, although the provocation must at times be keen.
“Mademoiselle Marni” was one of those impossible chromos that might have been designed for the mere purpose of giving one’s sense of humor a chance to ventilate itself. In the serious theater-goer—and one is bound to consider him—it awoke amazement. How is it that at rehearsal a dozen presumably sane people can “pass” such an effort, he must have asked himself? Why is it that in a theatrical venture that costs a great deal of money, there are no misgivings? The serious theater-goer is never able to answer these questions.
It is almost proverbial that the most hopeless sort of theatrical enterprise—if conventional—never languishes for lack of funds. Try and start a solid business scheme, in which you can calculate results in black and white, and the difficulties and discouragements will be almost insuperable. Endeavor to obtain money for an invention or innovation that has success written across it in luminous letters, and you will “strike a snag,” as the rude phrase goes, with marvelous celerity. But a bad play—one that to the unsophisticatedtheater-usher or to the manager’s scrubwoman must perforce appear as such—experiences no such fate. This is one of the marvels of theaterdom.
In the case of “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham herself must have spent an enormous sum that she would probably have hesitated to invest in some enterprise sane or possible. The play was a turgid coagulation of illogical episodes lacking in all plausibility. This particular actress is generally happy when she can select for herself a character that is beloved by all the masculine members of the cast. Apparently, she “sees” herself in this rôle. She likes to appear as the personification of all the virtues, self-sacrificing and otherwise, and this idiosyncrasy is, of course, frequently fatal to sustained interest. We do not care for these sensational paragons.
In “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham played the part of a very beautiful French actress, of whom everybody said: “Oh, what a woman!” (Perhaps the audience also echoed that phrase, but with quite a different significance.) She was exquisitely in love withComte Raoul de Saverne, who was engaged to another, and was “ordered” away from her by the father of that other. This parent was a very wicked baron, and just asMlle. Marniin an ecstasy of rage was about to strike him, somebody called out: “Do not hit him; he is your father.”
We discovered thatMlle. Marniwas the wicked baron’s illegitimate child. As he had been saying extremely pretty things to her—for she was so bee-yoo-ti-ful!—you will readily perceive that fastidious people might find this “situation” what some critics love to call “unpleasant.” Wicked barons, viewed in the process of admiring their own daughters, are not exactly long-felt wants upon the New York stage. However, this episode was scarcely offensive, for it was so exuberantly silly that nobody could take it seriously.
Later on,Mlle. Marnigambled on the stock exchange, and made two million dollars in a few minutes, so that she could get even with the wicked baron, and force him to recallRaoul. In this act the actress wore black velvet, and looked every inch French—Bleecker Street French. It was the “big” scene, and was considered very strenuous by those acting in it. To those in the audience, it merely accentuated the cheap vulgarity of the play, that had no redeeming point, either literary or dramatic. It was, in fact, a forlorn hope.
Perhaps if Miss Amelia Bingham would not select her own plays, she would fare better. She is by no means lacking in histrionic ability. She has done many good things in her day. But the temptation of the self-made “star” to see nothing but her own part in the drama that she buys, is very acute. A satisfactoryensemble, a logical story, a set of plausible characters and a motive are all overlooked. Her own “personality” is her sole anxiety, and—well, it is not enough. Miss Bingham was assisted by Frederic de Belleville, Frazer Coulter and others less known to fortune and to fame, but “Mademoiselle Marni” was not accepted. It was staged “regardless,” but even that fact did not count in its favor. Miss Bingham’s pluck and recklessness were alone in evidence.
Scarcely more felicitous was Miss Mary Mannering with “Nancy Stair.” Miss Mannering is not as good an actress as Miss Bingham. She is one of the “be-stars-quickly.” A year or two more in some good company would have been of inestimable advantage to her, but the lower rungs of the ladder are not in great demand to-day. That ladder is top-heavy. The upper rungs are worn by the futile grasp of the too ambitious; the lower ones are neglected.
It was Paul M. Potter who tapped on the book cover of Elinor Macartney Lane’s novel, with his not very magic wand, and tried to coax forth a play. Exactly why he did this was not made clear, for the day of the book play is over, and there was nothing in “Nancy Stair” that overtopped the gently commonplace. Mr. Potter’s play was by no means lacking in interest, but we are exceedingly tired of the ubiquitous heroine of tawdry “romance”who does unsubtle things, in an unsubtle way, to help out certain unsubtle “complications.” If I mistake not, these very novels are beginning to pall, as such stupid, meaningless vaporings should do. One cannot resist the belief that one-half of them are written with an eye upon the gullible playwright, for a play means larger remuneration than any novel could ever hope to secure.
It is not necessary to rehearse the story of “Nancy Stair.” I can assume that you have read it, though if you are like me, you haven’t. I look upon Mr. Julius Cahn’s “Official Theatrical Guide” as rich and racy literature compared with these fatiguing attempts to invent impossible people, and drag them through a jungle of impossible happenings—simply because Mr. Anthony Hope, a few years ago, achieved success by similar means, which at that time had a semblance of novelty. I may be “prejudiced,” but then I have at least the courage of my own prejudices. In “Nancy Stair” Mr. Potter even seemed to belittle opportunities that might have raised his play from the dull level of conventionality.
One episode in whichNancy, afraid that her lover has murdered theDuke of Borthwicke, enters the presence of the corpse, and there forges a letter in the interests ofDanvers, might have been made into something strongly emotional, creepy and Sarah Bernhardtian. This incident in itself was so striking, and it seemed to be so new—though I believe that Mr. Potter himself repudiates the notion that there can be anything new in the drama—that it was almost criminal to slight it. Nothing was made of it. It almost escaped attention. Instead, we got a crew of comic opera Scotchmen singing songs, and an absurd picture ofRobert Burns, who was injected pell-mell into the “romance.” It was disheartening.
Those who had read the book complained bitterly of the “liberties” that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those “liberties” and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that confront you on the stage. And when you don’t read a book, the play made therefrom lacks lucidity, and you experience the need of a “key.” I should imagine that the dramatization of a novel killed its sale. Who, after viewing “Nancy Stair” as a play, would tackle it as a novel? Of course, when a book is dramatized after it has had a stupendous sale, the author cannot complain. He has no excuse for protesting. This is a somewhat interesting topic.
Miss Mannering coped withNancyas she would cope withCamilleorJuliet, or any character quite outside of her range of ability. In light comedy episodes, she is quite acceptable. She is a very pretty, graceful, distinguished young woman, but her “emotion” is absurd. Her dramatic fervor is such an exceedingly stereotyped affair that you can watch it in a detached mood. You can pursue your own thoughts while she is “fervoring,” and she will not interrupt them. Miss Mannering is emotional in a conventional stage way, and she knows a few tricks. But the subtlety that comes from experience, the quality that nothing but a long and arduous apprenticeship can produce, are leagues beyond her ken. It is a pity, but the “be-stars-quickly” all suffer in this identical way and there is no remedy.
Robert Loraine as the “hero” gave a far better performance. It was theatrical, but satisfactory. The lateRobert Burnswas played by T. D. Frawley in a deliciously Hibernian way. Poor Bobbie would have had a fit if he could have seen his nationality juggled with in this manner. If Mr. Frawley had warbled “The Wearing o’ the Green” the illusion would have been complete. Mr. Andrew Mack could have done nothing better—for Ireland.
“The Lady Shore” was the title of Miss Virginia Harned’s massive production at the Hudson Theater. JaneShore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against the courtesan, when we meet her in everyday life, the fact remains that for the stage there is no character in greater demand by “star” actresses and “romantic” playwrights. They seem to find a peculiar interest in a woman who has “lived”—no matter how. If, in ransacking history, they are lucky enough to discover a courtesan who can be billed as a “king’s favorite,” they appear to smack their lips exultantly. One is almost inclined to believe that dead-and-gone kings must have chosen “favorites” merely for the sake of to-day’s stage.
As soon as the playwright has excavated a courtesan, he begins to think of the best way of whitewashing her. For she must be offered up as more sinned against than sinning. Of course. The playwright wastes his substance thinking up excuses for her. He is quite willing—nay, anxious—that she shall go wrong, but he prefers that she shall be driven to it by untoward circumstances. He is desirous that we shall sympathize with her, to the point of tears, in the last act. It is very kind of him to do such charitable deeds in history’s name, and we realize how exceedingly unselfish he is. Just the same, this mania for resurrecting defunct courtesans seems a trifle neurasthenic. It appears to indicate a hysterical sympathy, on the part of the playwright, with dead characters whom, in life, he would hesitate at asking to dinneren famille.
The two women who built up “The Lady Shore” smashed history into smithereens in their rabid and frenzied effort to make her an exquisite impersonation of nearly all the virtues. It was, in fact, grotesque and ludicrous. With any old history book staring them in the face, they treated Jane Shore precisely as though she were the heroine of a dime novel. They had no qualms. They lopped great wads from her past, and huge excrescences from her present, and by the time that she had reached the last act, the audience sat dazed at the delicate beauty of her character. No masculine playwright could have done as much. Possibly if the purifiers of Lady Jane Shore elected to dramatize the career of Messalina, they would make of her a combination of Joan of Arc and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.
TheJane Shoreat the Hudson Theater was married to a brute of a husband, but she left him simply because she was driven to it, poor girl! She became the mistress ofEdward IV., apparently because she yearned to be a mother to his children. She was always rescuing the little princes from theDuke of Gloucester. She sat besideEdward IV., in the council chamber of Westminster Palace, so that she could beseech him to pardon delinquents who were brought before him in a procession of fifteenth century “drunk and disorderly.”
There never was a more perfect lady. The playwrights unfortunately omitted to picture her teaching a Sunday school, and I can only imagine that they must have forgotten to do so.Jane Shore’slove forEdward IV.was depicted in such lily tints that you simply hated the memory of your history book that said such rude things about her life after the sovereign’s death. The historical “penance” that on the stage seemed so effective was, as we know, really unavailing. Dramatic license is a great thing, and it is pardonable when it is used with discrimination. But made to do duty as a daub, it is unjustifiable. What is the use of going down into history as one thing, if you are to be bobbed up on the stage, after the passage of centuries, as another? To the feminine playwright, the line that separates saints from sinners is an invisible boundary.
As a play, “The Lady Shore” was mere melodrama, of a somewhat incoherent nature. Perhaps if the central character had been imaginary—and it was nearly that—the melodrama would have been all the better for it. Whynot invent a good new character, instead of revamping a bad old one? Why not exercise the imagination upon some original creation, instead of straining it around a type that lurks in the libraries? The authors of “The Lady Shore” might have used their labors more advantageously. It is always a futile task to rewrite history. History is cold, and unbudgingly accurate. Why trifle with it?
Miss Virginia Harned, however, escaped from her play. She is an emotional actress of considerable force, as she showed us in her production of “The Lady of the Camelias.” She has the power of repression. She is artistic, sincere and graceful. Her work in this diffuse play proved that beyond the peradventure of a doubt, so that her engagement at the Hudson Theater need not be unduly deplored. TheGloucesterof John Blair was extremely amusing. Such aRichard, the most imaginative imaginer could never have dreamed of! He played the part as though theDuke of Gloucesterwere an Ibsen gentleman, battling with a dark green matinée. Mr. Loraine came from “Nancy Stair” to “The Lady Shore,” and wasEdward IV.It would be interesting to know which “heroine” he really preferred. The little princes in the tower seemed to deserve their fate. They were arguments in favor of race suicide.
Two other celestial bodies of the feminine gender, fixed for one brief week apiece on the theatrical “concave,” moved quickly in the direction of “the road.” These more or less heavenly lights were Miss Odette Tyler and Miss Eugenie Blair, who appeared at those kaleidoscopic theaters called “combination houses.” Miss Tyler used to be something of a Broadway “favorite”—a term that has lost a good deal of its significance. She appeared in the little Yorkville Theater on the highroad to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, in a play of her own, called “The Red Carnation.”
No purpose would be served in analyzing this uncanny, chaotic mass, even were it possible to do so. Miss Tyler placed herself amid French revolutionary surroundings, and was seen as a remarkable “romantic” French woman, with a strong American accent and an emphatic New York manner. She fluttered through Paris in 1793, evidently convinced that it was just as “easy” as New York in 1905. She had a caramel demeanor and ice-cream allurements. She kittened and frivoled through the Reign of Terror with an archness that was commendable, though somewhat misplaced, and she let loose a lay figure labeledMarie Antoinettethat was designed to frame her own accomplishments.
Familiar as we are with the French revolution, used as a stage motive, “The Red Carnation” threw such a new light upon it all, that we were a trifle dumfounded. Miss Tyler gracefully revised it for us, and made it appear as a somewhat gay and frolicsome time. Moreover, it had all the modern improvements. It seemed to be steam-heated and electric-lighted, and althoughMarie Antoinettedid not make her entrance in an automobile, you felt that it was waiting outside. Historians, interested in the French revolution, might get some valuable sidelights from Miss Odette Tyler’s idea of it. The actress herself has an agreeable personality and considerable ability.
The other “star” to whom I have fitfully alluded—Miss Eugenie Blair—has much vogue outside of New York. She came to the Murray Hill Theater with a version of Wilkie Collins’ much-abused “New Magdalen,” which was called “Her Second Life.” This being her life number two, you felt a distinct sensation of relief that you were spared a glimpse at lives numbers one and three. It was such a very crude performance that I should not have dragged it into this record had it not been for the fact that Miss Blair was part of the singular display of celestial bodies that I have tried to indicate in this article. She is a weighty actress corporeally, if not artistically, and poorMercy Merrickfared rather badly. This Wilkie Collins heroine has been neglected of late, in favor of such base subterfugesas figures of theNancy Staircaliber, but certain signs point to revivals of “The New Magdalen,” which as an emotional story has seldom been surpassed. Compared with the pitiful puppet “romances” of to-day, this genuine piece of throbbing fiction seems to be in distinctly another class.
Mr. Frank Keenan, with whose praiseworthy effort to emulate the tactics of M. Antoine in Paris my readers are familiar, gave up the Berkeley Lyceum ghost, unable to weather the storm and stress of experiment. While admiring Mr. Keenan’s energy, and appreciating the little one-act bills that he offered with such rapid-transit celerity, it is impossible to avoid deprecating the lack of logical foresight that he manifested.
He trifled with our young affections, aroused our enthusiasm and inspired in us the belief that a permanent institution was inevitable, and then—quietly dropped out. In other walks of life, people who make experiments have generally supplied themselves with the wherewithal to wait while their schemes approach fruition. Rome was not built in a day, but if the builders thereof had been actors, Rome never would have been built at all! The actor, who is usually a singularly unbalanced person, looks for immediate success, and can endure nothing else.
Why Mr. Keenan should have expected to jump into a whirlwind of instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothing that is out of the conventional rut succeeds at the start. There must be patience, perseverance and a struggle. Otherwise life would be very easy, which it is not. The rosy little scheme at the Berkeley Lyceum had attracted considerable attention. Critics paid homage to every change of bill, anxious to chronicle success, and looking with glad eyes at the possible advent of a new impetus to the jaded theatrical machine. They had worked themselves into the most appreciative state of mind. Lo, and behold! After a few weeks, M. Antoine’s American imitator evaporated. Lack of funds!
What a dismal lack of those funds there must have been when the enterprise started! Who but an actor would embark upon a scheme, and project such radiant promises in the interests of those who are tired of wallowing in the trough of vulgar “popularity,” when it was apparent that, without that popularity, the thing couldn’t last more than a month? Mr. Keenan should apologize to M. Antoine, of Paris. He took his name in vain. People with new ideas, opposed to the conventionality of the old ones, expect naturally to bide their time before the public unhesitatingly accepts them. If Mr. Keenan had engaged in his alluring pursuit, willing and even anxious to “lose money” before he made it, a very different story would have been told.
People ask why dramatic chroniclers grow cynical. The answer is simple. They feel that they are persistently “jollied” along, and they assuredly are. It was so in the case of the Berkeley Lyceum plan that fell through simply because money failed to pour into the box office, and M. Antoine, of Paris, lacked the vitality of Barnum & Bailey’s circus! It was so last year when Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld tried to “elevate” the stage with the Century Players. This is an age of get-rich-quickly, and there is no other object. Actors talk of art, and of unconventionality; they inveigh against commercialism and pose most picturesquely. But they are in such a hurry to spear the florid, bloated body of easy success that they cannot wait. Mr. Frank Keenan went direct from M. Antoine’s Parisian plan to vaudeville!
The little play upon which he relied to turn the tide of dollars in his direction was called “A Passion in a Suburb,” and was described as “a psychological study of madness,” by Algernon Boyesen. It was horror for the sake of horror, which is always distressing, and it was a failure. It was food neither for the elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startlingtrain of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not enlivening. It is ghoulish.
I have devoted much space to Mr. Frank Keenan and his plan. I was sorry for him until I thought it all over. Then I couldn’t help feeling a bit sore. It was all very foolish. The bubble was pricked so quickly! It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as “quick returns.”De mortuis nil nisi bonum.(I think I have, though!)
That a one-act play is fully able to create a veritable sensation, as keen as any that a five-act drama might evoke, was instanced at the Manhattan Theater, when Mrs. Fiske produced a little drama, written by herself, and called “A Light from St. Agnes.” I think I may say that it was the finest and most artistic one-act play that I have ever seen—and I’ve seen a few in my day. It aroused a matinée audience, on a warm afternoon, to an ecstasy of enthusiastic approval, because it appealed directly to the artistic fiber.
It was not a case for cold analytic judgment. It was not an occasion when long-haired critics could draw a diagram, and prate learnedly of “technique” and other topics that often make critics such insensate bores. “A Light from St. Agnes” was recognized intuitively as great. The soul of an audience never makes a mistake, though the brain frequently errs. A brain might perhaps prove that this play was artistically admirable, but the soul reached that conclusion instantly and unreasoningly. The effect was marvelous.
I wonder if you quite grasp my meaning. You know there are some things that refuse to be reduced to diagram form. They decline to answer to the call of a, b and c. They won’t be x’d and y’d algebraically. Very material people of course rebel at this. They want everything cut and dried. They would dissect the soul with a scalpel, and reduce psychic effects to the medium of pounds and ounces. That is what certain reviewers tried to do with “A Light from St. Agnes.”
Their material eyes saw that the end of the little play was murder; that its motive was a sacrilegious robbery—the theft of a diamond cross from the body of a woman lying dead in a church; that the man was a drink-besotted ruffian; that the woman was his illicit partner; that the atmosphere was assuredly brutal. Material eyes saw all this. Material senses reasoned that, given all these qualities, such a play must be horrible, and unduly strenuous. But intuition set all this reasoning awry. You see, intuition doesn’t reason; itknows. It is better to know than to reason. Get a dozen people to prove to you that “A Light from St. Agnes” was a dismal and unnecessary tragedy. Oh, they might be able to do it. Then go and see it, and you will understand precisely what I am driving at.
Plays that appeal to intuition are the most wonderful offerings that the theater can make. Nothing can stay their effect; nobody can successfully argue against them. Rare indeed they are. When some playwright, as the result of a genuine emotion, makes a drama, in the sheer delight of that emotion, and with a disregard for conventionality, and no hope of box-office approval—then you get a work of art. Incidentally, I may remark that such a work of art is so irresistible that it literally forces the box office to tinkle. It would be a pity if it didn’t.
The scene of “A Light from St. Agnes” is laid in a Louisiana village called Bon Hilaire.MichelandToinetteoccupy a rude hut, in the vicinity of St. Agnes’ Church. The light from the church sometimes irradiates the sordid, loathsome room. In fact,Toinetteplaces her couch in such a position that the light may shine upon her eyes, and awaken her in time to callMichel, her befuddled partner.
A woman who has tried to reform the lawless life of this section of Louisiana has died. Her body lies in thechurch.ToinetteandMichelhave both been cynically amused, in their reckless way, at her efforts, unavailing, to reform them. And she is dead!Father BertrandvisitsToinette, and tells her this. The peasant laughs. The priest gives her a crucifix that the woman left for her, and its influence—though the playwright is far too subtle even to suggest this—is the “moral” of the little play for those who want their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed.
The drama moves quickly. The drama is tragedy.Michelreturns, more hopelessly intoxicated than ever. She lies on the rude couch, seeking sleep. He talks, as he plies himself with drink. The subject is the dead woman in the church of St. Agnes. Some one had placed a lily in her hand. He hopes that nobody will ever dare to place a lily in his! There are long silences; significant pauses. Through the open window he looks into the church. He sees the dead woman, laid out on a gold-embroidered cloth. On her breast is a cross of diamonds.
More long silences; more significant pauses. He must possess that diamond cross. Why not? He hated the dead woman. He would steal into the church and rob the body; nay, more, he would hurl insults at it.Toinettehas the crucifix. Perhaps it is that; perhaps it is the awakening of some forgotten instinct within her. The horror of the man’s intention convulses her. There is a terrible conflict between the two. It is the very intensity of drama. The audience, wrought up, holds its breath. ThenToinette, by a ruse, escapes from the man, and, rushing from the dwelling, gives an alarm. The bells ring, in wildest chime.Michelrealizes that he is trapped; that the woman has undone him. He goes after her, finds her, brings her back. He wrestles with her, forces her back upon the rude couch, and plunges his knife into her throat.
The stage is in darkness. Yet you can dimly see him hovering over the body; you watch him in a sort of fascination, as he washes the blood from his hands, and then furtively, in the silence, steals away.Toinettelies, extended on the couch, motionless—dead. From the window the light from St. Agnes creeps into the room. It is cast tenderly overToinette’sbody, which it irradiates strangely as the curtain falls slowly.
One must “describe” plays, even when in so doing one runs the risk of doing them an injustice. My recital of the story of “A Light from St. Agnes” sounds bald, as I recall the effect that the play produced. I insist that never for one moment was it “morbid” or unnecessarily horrible. It rang true, without one hysterical intonation. It was sincere, dignified, artistic, beautiful. It was admirably staged; it was acted by John Mason, William B. Mack and Fernanda Eliscu with exquisite appeal.
Mrs. Fiske scored heavily as a playwright. There were two other one-act dramas from her pen—“The Rose” and “The Eyes of the Heart.” The latter made an excellent impression, but it was in “A Light from St. Agnes” that she stamped herself indelibly upon the season.