*****
They were alone. Into the cool gloom the light of the outer day fell through windows of exquisite dyes. Jacqueline sighed with a sense of relief that was greater than she had anticipated. She made up her mind that when she left the church she would go straight to the boat. In the meantime, she felt sure that Merrington, if somewhat restless, would, at least, not pursue his determined wooing.
It nonplused her to realize in what a different spirit she was accepting that wooing. It did not seem to be within the range of her emotions to summon up against him even a pale reflection of the fierce anger with which she had met his first declaration, only two evenings before. It was hard to believe that it had been only two evenings ago. In some indefinable way, she knew him so much better to-day. During the long hours of the previous day, when she had avoided him with persistent purpose, her anger had not abated, nor yet this morning, when she turned her back on the sea, and put the breach of other surroundings between him and herself. Now she knew, with a warm wave of color, that there had been no breach all this time in her thought of him, even when she had most sought to have him think she was unmindful.
Under the force of this consideration, she slipped into a pew and sat down, watching Merrington, as he stood with his back to her, a shaft of topaz light outlining the firm, square cut of his profile and the lithe blocking of his figure. Something in his attitude of vigorous yet refined enjoyment of the painted window showed him to Jacqueline in a new phase of his character.
He turned abruptly to appeal to her, and his hand rested on hers as it lay on the top of the pew. She had withdrawn her glove, and the cool, dry touch of his flesh affected her strangely. She rose quickly, but her hand still lay beneath his.
The words he had been going to say died upon his lips. What he saw in the girl’s face made him forget the art of the world in the magnetic thrill of their young nature.
“It is another omen,” he murmured, his strong fingers closing about the slimness of her hand. “Even unconsciously we find each other.”
For a moment she did not resist his pressure. Then she drew her hand away. He noticed that she was paler than her wont.
“I am not a bit superstitious,” she said, softly but clearly. “I could never detect an omen, good or bad.”
“I have the faculty. It will serve for both.”
“You are not religious.” She spoke with a hint of reproach in the statement that was really to him a caress. He let her pass by him out into the aisle, and walked with her toward the chancel, taking up her words.
“I am reverent, and I love.”
She shook her head, but made no other answer. Her heart was beating until she dared not speak, and she walked on because she dared not stop. In the extreme corner of the chapel-like annex she came to a standstill, facing him with a timidity that appealed unnoticed.
Merrington himself had followed, his senses tingling and his vision a blur. When they stopped, his heart flamed into words.
“Do you not see that it must be, because it is?” Resting both hands on the backs of the pews between which she stood, he held her prisoner.
She implored him silently.
“You think I am not in earnest, that I am impetuous, that I do not know you, do not know my own mind, perhaps. I did not need to know you as the social man knows women. At the first moment I spoke to you I knew what it had been that, ever since I first saw you, had filled me with a newness, a joy, a something that has no name because it underlies and embraces all things—love, love, the love of a soul for a soul, of a heart for a heart, of a man for the woman of all women for him. Jacqueline!”
He bent to see her averted face, but she held up her hand, entreating. He seized it in his own.
“That avalanche I spoke of the other night is started again. You did not stop it. You cannot stop it. If you do not hear me now, the moment will come at another time. It is the fulfillment of my being, to love you as you never dreamed of love, as no one else will ever love you, and to tell you so, over and over again, until it is music in your ears.”
He was close to her. In the gathering twilight of the church her face seemed very white, and she was watching his lips with a species of enchantment. She did not see the ardor in his eyes that made them glow as with fire, but as he ceased speaking, her lashes quivered and fell.
“I shall never give you up,” he whispered, his lips near her ear. “The bud comes no surer to the tree, the rose comes no surer from the bud, than my love will awaken love in you. Is it not so?”
The swift color darkened her face to the heavy shadow about her brow, and she pressed her hand against his breast resistingly. But at the touch he took her in his arms.
“Jacqueline,” he cried, “tell me that you love me.”
She lay very still, suddenly finding it good to be thus vanquished.
“Jacqueline,” he repeated, and bent his head to catch her words.
“You are a tyrant, but I am afraid I do.”
And then, his lips on hers, their world stood still.
The Incompatibility of the Catherwoods, by Virginia Niles Leeds
W
WHEN Katherine Corning married Dick Catherwood people predicted they would not live together five years, and they didn’t. The five years were up and so was the marriage.
Dick was the most charming fellow in the world, when you were not married to him. As a companion for life he was intolerable. He was far handsomer than a Greek god, but when you find your Greek god full of mundane ungodliness you cannot help regretting that so much charm should be wasted on merely outward appearance.
Yet, in spite of her thorough understanding of his character, Katherine could not help going back sentimentally to the time she first met and loved the man from whom she was now separated. He had attracted her with a magnetism no other man had ever inspired. Shefelthim looking at the back of her head before she had ever seen his face. It was at the opera, and later, when Mrs. Wesley introduced him, she knew instinctively she had met her fate.
His wooing was prompt and picturesque. But possession with him wasennui, and in the most childish fashion he ceased to prize the thing he obtained, and treated it with as much indifference as he had sought it with zeal.
Katherine, finding marriage an irremediable failure, had at length resorted to that haven for the incompatibles—the divorce court.
From a crude Western town, where they had cyclones for breakfast, she had only recently emerged, chastened in spirit and with a very formal red-sealed document in her keeping.
It was what she had waited so patiently for, yet now that it was in her possession she felt like going into mourning. It seemed indecent to act as though nothing had happened. She kept Dick’s old letters and cried over them, and wore a picture of him—taken during their happy engagement—in a heart-shaped locket inside her bodice.
Quite unusual with young and handsome divorcées, there was no other man in the case. She had not divorced Dick to marry some one else, but because of their incompatibility, which absolutely prevented their living together in harmony.
But no sooner was she settled in her old home than she began receiving proposals. Her old beaux came flocking around her, in more or less damaged condition, and there seemed a general belief that she had divorced Dick only to try it again with a new candidate for Dick’s shoes.
Her women friends were as bad. They would not permit her to pass into retirement, but insisted upon her accepting invitations. “Now you are free,” they told her, “you must make up for that miserable period of your married life by being as gay as possible.”
They turned a deaf ear to remonstrances.
Katherine could not deny that a wonderful peace was settling over her soul, freed from the wearing grind of Dick’s perpetual bickerings, and she tried to blot out the memory of his faults and to think of him kindly as one does of the dead. But she lived in the dread of meeting him, for she knew he still wasin town, where he had remained throughout, gallantly permitting her to secure the decree without a contest. Poor Dick, how like him! For, whatever his faults, he was always a gentleman. She trembled at the thought of meeting him, for, unmarried to him, it was easier to think of his fascinations than of his shortcomings. It had never become possible for her to treat the matter as some of her similarly placed women friends and to joke flippantly about “my former.”
Among the beaux of the past who had promptly presented themselves, on her return from the West, was Willis Shaw. She had come nearer accepting him than any of the others in the old days; and had it not been for Dick and his compelling magnetism, Shaw would have won out. He had shown himself a man of worth, and had made a name for himself, remaining, as some of the others had not done in spite of protestations of hearts broken past mending, a bachelor. He was among the first to send up his card; and Katherine, in her black frock, went down with a sober face to receive him. She expected sympathy, and received—a proposal.
Shaw could not but see the shock in her face.
“Forgive me,” he begged, becoming at once as grave as she; “I have been too precipitate and have hurt you. I do not take back the words—I cannot do that; but keep them in your mind and think them over, and, when you feel ready, give me an answer. Although women parted from their husbands have come to be an everyday occurrence, I cannot help regarding them with pity. They seem so defenseless, so unprotected, and the world is so unsparing in its treatment of unprotected, defenseless things. It pains me to think of you who ought to be so tenderly cherished and shielded occupying in any way an equivocal position. But you must not think that pity is my reason for putting the question to you again. It is the same reason which prompted me five years ago, and which has never altered nor lessened in the years. I wish you could give me a different answer, for I feel that I could make you happy. You deserve happiness, and your failure to secure it makes me the more anxious to mete it out to you in fullest measure.”
He left her a shade graver than he found her, but she only came to appreciate his considerateness when other men pranced in, assumed easy positions, talked jauntily about their blighted state and made more or less rakish proposals. One had even genially suggested that if she were disappointed in him she could easily have recourse to the divorce court again. “It’s always a handy fire escape,” he added, pleasantly.
She took Dick’s picture into her confidence. Of course she had nolovefor Willis Shaw; she should never indulge in that confiding, girlish thing again; but she respected him, and felt that with him she would at least be safe. Her position certainlywasequivocal. There were always people who had been abroad or something, and had not heard of her decree, and who were forever rushing up in public places and asking how her good husband was, and if he were as devoted as ever. It would be embarrassing, of course, to have to explain that another husband was now displaying that devotion, but not nearly so embarrassing as to confess to no husband at all—even in these days of rapid conjugal changes.
Katherine was going through the tortures of the sensitive divorced. One day, returning from her lonely drive, a note was handed her, and she recognized Mrs. “Billy” Wesley’s characteristic hand.
“Mrs. William Wesley requests the pleasure of your company at dinner on Monday, November 16th, at half after seven”; then down in the left-hand corner the words: “Vaccination at ten.”
It was sure to be something out of the ordinary—all of Mrs. Billy’s affairs were—and at first she had no idea of accepting. Then Mrs. Wesley called her up on the telephone and insisted upon her coming, drawing her attention to the fact that several cases of varioloid in the upper part of town had made her hit upon the idea of the vaccination,and that it would not only be a pleasure but a precaution to accept. She also impressed upon Katherine the necessity of a sleeveless bodice for the occasion.
It was not until she had finally yielded that it suddenly occurred to Katherine that Dick would certainly be at the dinner. Mrs. Wesley had retained her friendship for both, and it would be just like her erratic fancy to bring them together. In the women of Mrs. Billy Wesley’s set that sort of thing passed forchic. At first a hot wave of resentment rose in her breast, and she was on the point of calling Mrs. Billy up and, incidentally, of calling her down; then all at once a curious reaction came about. It was no less than a mad desire to see Dick again. Theimmodestyof the thing appalled her, but the desire remained.
Not even in the rosy days of her engagement had she longed with such eagerness to spend an evening in his society, and as the night drew near she found herself making the foolish preparations of a débutante for her first ball.
She engaged a dressmaker, who turned her out a purely classic costume; and with a pedestal and the limelight upon her, she might have playedGalateawith enthusiastic applause from the house. When fully arrayed on the evening of the dinner, she surveyed herself in the glass, and trembled.
Mrs. Billy greeted her effusively. She herself was prepared for the surgical part of the entertainment with an arrangement of pearl chains which attached her bodice to her person across the upper part of the arms.
“A dream, darling!” she cried, in the caressing, coddling tone she used to all. “I vow I could eat you!” and so saying, she dipped down, kissed Katherine with a light peck on each shoulder, then passed her on, to fall on the neck of the next.
Katherine glanced about the room with a beating heart. At first she saw no one whose presence caused her agitation, and her spirits sank. Then all at once a voice fell upon her ear which sent the blood mantling to her cheeks and brought a faintness to her breast. A man had just entered, and was paying his respects to Mrs. Wesley—a man like unto whom there was not another in the room. Such an air! Such grace! Bayard himself, who, historians agree, was an ideal knight in every particular, was possessed of no more graceful bearing, comeliness of person and affability of manner.
Katherine stood up and shivered. She might have been transformed toGalateathen and there, so statuesque her pose. She was totally unconscious that every eye in the room was wandering with prying curiosity from her to Dick.
Then he saw her.
For a moment he hesitated, but a moment only.
He sped to her with as muchempressementas he had shown in the most zealous days of the courtship; his expressive eyes and face were aglow with eagerness.
Katherine remained perfectly still, but two little pulses beating visibly in her temples told whether she was indifferent. “Youwillspeak to me!” he cried, in eager entreaty, under his breath. “If you want me to die in an hour, treat me as a stranger!” He was holding out his hand, and, mechanically, and because she was suddenly aware of the scrutiny of the room, hers went out to it. When Dick clasped it, and she felt the familiar contact of his flesh, she thought she was going to faint.
“Take me away,” she gasped, “into the air.”
He drew her arm quickly through his and led her to a seat in a bay window, screened from the rest of the room by curtains.
Dick stood over her, breathing quickly. “I never thought it would be like this,” he said, brokenly. “I fancied I should never see you again, and that in time I would get over it, like other men who have lived down their sorrows. But coming upon you unexpectedly like this takes it out of me. Look up,” he begged; “let me see youreyes, and try if I cannot find there some trace of the old affection. When I see you in the flesh I forget your cruelty, your unkindness—how you have made me suffer. I can only remember the happy days when you were loving and affectionate, and wanted me by your side. Have you forgotten? Tell me that, Katherine, have you? To think that, after all your vows of love, you should have grown tired of me!”
Katherine dared steal a look at him. Reproach met her view.
Yet this was the man who had made life so unbearable that she was forced to appeal to the courts for relief! Strangely enough, she could only remember his faults in the vaguest way, and it did not seem at all incongruous that he should be reproaching her. Never was his fascination more dangerously potent, his charm of person more alluring.
“Forgive me, Dick,” she found herself murmuring.
She held out her hands, and he drew them to his breast.
She did not know what might have followed had not the voice of Billy Wesley’s butler, announcing dinner, fallen upon her ear at the moment.
“After dinner,” whispered Dick, with significance; then offering her his arm, they emerged from their retreat with assumedsang-froid.
“Been kissing and making up?” asked Mrs. Billy, with frank indelicacy; but she was not indelicate enough to place them together at dinner, although her decadent ideas made her quite capable of things of the sort. Instead, she had separated them by the entire length of the table. But over the orchids and the electric bulbs, with the glint of glass and silver between, Katherine could feel Dick’s eyes upon her, and her flesh warmed beneath that gaze asGalatea’swhen her sculptor breathed life into her with the passion of his glance. It was when the glass bells were brought in that she caught his eye fully and realized with a thrill that he had not forgotten her relish forchampignonsunder glass.
In return, she flashed him a glance letting him know she had not forgotten his partiality for canvasbacks, and after that the rest of the dinner was a telegraphic communication between the pair of recognized intimacies of their married life.
The dishes sometimes choked her with a too vital remembrance.
“But we can’t sit here all night!” exclaimed Mrs. Billy, suddenly. “There’s Dr. Webb coming to vaccinate us!”
“Madam,” said the butler, “Dr. Webb is in the drawing room.”
The men were permitted to carry their cigars with them, owing to the curtailing of the dinner, and the whole party passed into the drawing room. Dr. Webb had been dining also, and was in evening dress, a messenger having brought his instruments and the virus.
“Let’s see,” said Mrs. Billy, running her eye over her list, which she found in a rose jar, “who’s to submit first? It wouldn’t be polite for me in my own house; won’t you lead the way, Katherine?”
Katherine was just stepping boldly forward when she drew back in alarm. “Oh!” she cried, “it might hurt, and I don’t like being hurt!” and she drew her beautiful bare arm close to her, and stood nursing it.
Immediately Dick pressed forward. “And she shall not be hurt!” he proclaimed, with authority. “It would be a shame to disfigure such an arm, even as a precaution. I must ask you, Mrs. Wesley, not to insist upon Mrs. Catherwood submitting to the operation. Let me be the first victim;” and hastily throwing off his coat, he appeared before the company in his well-made waistcoat and faultless shirt sleeves. The latter he began rolling up coolly, and when the cuff refused his elbow, he drew out his penknife and slit the linen along the seam. “Now, then, doctor, I am ready for you,” he said, unconcernedly.
Everyone looked on with admiration, but particularly one to whom the sight of him in the familiarity of shirt sleeves brought back the past with even more moving and electrifying vividness.How many a time had that same splendid arm been about her, and how often had she pillowed her head in its bend!
“A fine development,” said Dr. Webb, appreciatively. He then took out his point, and with a deft touch injected the virus, while Dick looked on, smoking an Egyptian cigarette.
Emboldened by his example, Katherine insisted upon submitting next, and, reclining on a gilded couch, she bravely held out her lovely left arm. It was clear the doctor was quite as appreciative of its perfection as he had been of the one before it, though he forbore any comment. The scraping produced a faintness, and her eyes sought Dick’s pleadingly. In a flash he was at her side, and supporting her head against his shoulder, where it rested until the doctor had drawn a drop of crimson to the ivory surface. A glass of water was brought, and she quickly recovered.
The guests after that began submitting in turn, with more or less merriment in the matter, until one Mrs. St. Cyr Smith cast discredit upon the party by refusing to be vaccinated on the arm.
Discussion arose on every side, and under cover of it Dick sought Katherine.
“Come,” he begged, not feeling at all interested in the location of Mrs. St. Cyr Smith’s vaccination. “I did not finish what I had to say before dinner;” and, gently shielding her newly scratched arm, he led her back to the curtained recess.
Katherine let him guide her where he would, as completely under his spell as in the first days of his magnetic attraction.
“You were so brave,” she murmured, “and so handsome!”
He drew the curtains before he answered.
“Then youdocherish some little memory of the old days?” he asked, with indescribable persuasion. “You have not forgotten? Yet you tired of me, Katherine; cast me off like a worn glove. Oh, but you were cruel to the man you swore to love and honor!”
She tried to look him in the face, but her eyes fell before the passionate reproach of his.
“Dick,” she managed to gasp, “don’t blame it all on me. You forget how soon you tired of me.”
“I tire of you!” he cried. “Never, Katherine.” He knelt on the window seat, speaking in words that came warm and panting from his lips to her shoulder. “It isn’t possible you ever imagined such a thing? I love you now—to-night—this minute—as I have loved you always, and as it is given to man to love but once in a lifetime. I never so appreciated your beauty, never so longed for the privilege of owning it. Oh, beautifulest”—the name he had given her in the happiest days of the courtship—“I want you, want you, want you! You are the very breath of me, and unless I can have you back, I swear to put an end to myself!”
His arm found her waist as it had in the old days, and before she was aware, he had her close against him and was kissing her.
The never-to-be-forgotten essence of his lips suddenly brought her to a realizing sense of the situation. He had no right to embrace her. It was an impropriety as great as though any stranger in the room beyond had presumed upon such a liberty. In spite of all they had been to each other in the past, he was now no more to her, legally, than any of the others, and there was nothing to warrant such a course of conduct. True, his lips were dearer than anything this side of heaven, but she had thought that once before, and yet had lived to feel those same lips grow cold and passionless, those strong arms deny her protection. This sudden return to his early ardor made her the more mindful of the indifference that had followed. In his impetuosity he was forging the sequence that her mind in its wrought up state had refused to grasp. She tore herself with quickly summoned force from his embrace.
“For God’s sake,” he cried, hoarse as in the old days, when his feelings rent him, “don’t refuse me! Haven’t you made me suffer enough?”
“You forget,” she reminded him, a shiver running along her frame and her words coming thinly, “that we are legally separated, and that you have no right to the privileges you have presumed upon. You are not my husband. In the law we are strangers.”
Yet always that magnetic influence which drew her with supernatural force, and which she had to fight with all the strength of a body and a mind which had no inclination to fight; and, even while she remonstrated, she found herself drifting to him slowly, until, without power or volition of her own, she sank into his arms. He spoke mad, wild words in her ear; and she listened, thinking mad, wild things herself.
Inferior people have their place in the world. They save their superiors from grave situations. It was the Wesley butler who again interposed to save Katherine from an impending fate. He came to the curtains, coughing, in the respectful manner reserved for upper servants, to say that her maid had come for her early, as she had requested.
Dick caught her hand. “Let me take you home!” he entreated.
But the presence of Dunn, with his eyes that saw nothing and his mouth that never relaxed, helped Katherine, and she could command herself even with an upholstered lackey for inspiration.
“No,” she said, firmly; “that is out of the question.”
“But you cannot leave me like this,” he persisted, refusing to release her hand; “you will kill me with your cruelty. If you will not let me see you home, let me come to you to-morrow—you surely will not refuse me that!”
“Well,” she yielded, in a hurried undertone, “to-morrow evening at nine.” Then she passed out and made a hasty adieu to Mrs. Billy.
Dick did not stop much longer, and went to his hotel a bit fagged but exultant. He had not lost his old power over Katherine, that was clear, and he desired her with all the craving that non-possession brought him.
Meanwhile Katherine went home and thought—thought till her brows ached, and until she had sounded the very depths of her reasoning powers. The burden of her thoughts was much the same as his—that Dick had not lost his old influence. The next day found her still thinking, yet uncommonly active and busy. Indeed, it was quite the busiest, most breathless day of her life. Time went rushingly, and when nine o’clock chimed from the cathedral clock in the library she was still busy.
Dick was prompt. His eagerness manifested itself in his simultaneous ring at the bell with the chiming of the clock.
Katherine, in a brilliant evening gown, with some long-stemmed roses on her breast, heard the ring and started up with an excited flush.
Dick hurried in, groomed and perfect. He did not stop for conventionalities of greeting, but let all the high pressure under which he was laboring appear in his eloquent eyes. He had brought her violets, but he dropped them from his fingers, and held out his arms with entreaty.
“Soul of my soul,” he cried, “there are to be no more separations! You belong to me, and you cannot live without me any more than I can without you. Last night proved that, and that I have not lost your love. I have come back, and you are never going to be cruel again.” But to his astonishment Katherine did not yield to the arms that begged, did not pale to marble as she had the night before when he had brought the same influence to bear.
Instead, she stood off, without a sign of weakening, and smiled as conventionally as she would to the merest chance visitor.
The sight maddened him, and he sprang forward to take her by force.
But Katherine held off with a strange new imperiousness that was not to be trifled with. “You came for your answer this evening, Dick, and I have it ready for you—the answer that will determine the future for us both beyond a question;” then she held herself a little straighter and spoke distinctly:
“I was married to Willis Shaw at three this afternoon.”
Dramatic Flashes From London, by Alan Dale
Some plays in Paris. “Ces Messieurs” at the Gymnase, once prohibited by the Minister of Public Instruction, is unsatisfactory, but well acted. Little theaters, like the Berkeley Lyceum, immensely popular in Paris. In London one feels more at home because the dramatic atmosphere seems more wholesome. Alfred Sutro’s play at the Garrick, “The Walls of Jericho,” the most successful of the season. Other plays and some players
Some plays in Paris. “Ces Messieurs” at the Gymnase, once prohibited by the Minister of Public Instruction, is unsatisfactory, but well acted. Little theaters, like the Berkeley Lyceum, immensely popular in Paris. In London one feels more at home because the dramatic atmosphere seems more wholesome. Alfred Sutro’s play at the Garrick, “The Walls of Jericho,” the most successful of the season. Other plays and some players
T
TWO distinct sets of impressions were carried away from the Paris season by two distinctly different individuals. One pure and conventional set was borne by that extremely nice and unsophisticated young man, the King of Spain; the other by that not-so-nice, more sophisticated, less-young person whose name appears at the head of this. We jostled each other—the little juvenile king and myself. He, poor young man, was taken by thoughtful people, who had his welfare at heart, to that over-advertised home of mediocrity, the Théâtre Français, and to a “gala” performance at the Opéra; I—well, I went where I liked. Not being a young king, it was not necessary that my impressions should run along conventional grooves.
The King of Spain saw what he could see anywhere, and would probably avoid seeing in his own country. I was able to select my own dramatic fodder. Possibly we were each equally glad when we had done our duty and were allowed to proceed. If the King of Spain rejoiced more than I did, then he must have been exceedingly exultant. We found the Paris season quite disordered and fatigued. The Grand Prix was in the air; open-air vaudeville was hurling defiance at the drama; Bernhardt and Réjane were packing themselves off to London; it was all very comfortless and noisy. I felt sorry for the little King of Spain, as I saw him bowling along the Rue de Rivoli bound for the Français. I was on my way to the Gymnase to see the new shocker called “Ces Messieurs.”
The most uncomfortable and gloomiest theater in Paris has given itself up to the laudable purpose of stirring up dissension. Last year it was “Le Retour de Jerusalem” that aimed at fomenting anti-Semitic feeling; this year it is “Ces Messieurs,” the sole object of which is to stir up anti-clerical strife. Perhaps the Gymnase needs this sort of “attraction.” I cannot imagine anybody sitting tortured in its stuffy, ill-kept, poverty-stricken auditorium for mere restful enjoyment.
“Ces Messieurs,” from the pen of M. Georges Ancey, was prohibited for a long time by the minister of public instruction, a benign censor, who objected to the play because it attacked the priests. His decision was, of course, bitterly resented; and it was asserted that Molière in “Tartuffe” had done a similar thing, and was a classic. Possibly we should have urged the same arguments in New York if—let us say—Mr. Theodore Kremer had woven a brand new melodrama around the theme of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” and it had been “stopped” on the ground of impropriety.
The drama at the Gymnase seemed to me rather a pitiful effort at sensation. There is but one way of treating a priestupon the stage, and it is by placing him in juxtaposition with a woman. He is rarely allowed to be interesting in any other shape. Among actors there is a superstition that regards every play with a priest in it as “unlucky.” The cleric is supposed to “hoodoo” the drama. If I were a playwright I think I should elect to be on the “safe side.” I should take no risks, for very rarely does a priest-ridden drama succeed. “Ces Messieurs” certainly seems to be a case that justifies the actors’ superstition.
The heroine of the piece is a young widow, who, after the loss of her husband and child, has given up mundane pleasure. She lives in the provinces, with a large and singularly talky family, and has “taken up” religion. Upon the scene comes theAbbé Thibaut, a young priest with good looks and even better intentions. He is eloquent and mystic;Henrietteinterests herself in him immediately, and gives him funds for his schools and benevolent institutions.Thibautis ambitious, and he needs the money. The man and woman are soon embroiled in an “affair,” though they are both unconscious of that fact.
Other priests occur. One—the villain of the piece—reportsThibautto the other, a benevolent Monsignor, who is displayed in a luxury of “monsignor” robes. Pettiness, intrigue, jealousy, hatred, malevolence, are ascribed to theAbbé Morisson, who is as deep-dyed a villain as one could wish to find in the Third Avenue Theater or the Grand Opera House. Through a sea of talk, the audience is carried to the fourth act—which istheact—whereHenriettelearns thatThibautis to be removed from her clutches to another scene of action. Then the storm bursts, and the air is cleared with much electrical sensation.
It is not necessary to go into details. All that a woman can say who has horridly mixed up the religious with the secular, the carnal with the mystic,Henriettesays, in an ecstasy of exclamation points.Thibautwas essential to her, for she could not pray without him! He was part of her life, both earthly and heavenly. In an exasperation of anguish she develops a sort of insanity that makes a plausible excuse for the ugly irreverence and the blasphemy of the playwright.
Blasphemy always seems to me the weakest sort of sensation. Any idiot can blaspheme, and most of them do. It is the keynote of “Ces Messieurs.” The priest is the target at which the woman hurls her ugly shafts. Sensuality masquerading in the cloak of religion renders this heroine as disagreeable as any I have ever seen staged. And this—with nothing more—is M. Ancey’s case against the priests. TheAbbéhas acceptedHenriette’smoney for his works of benevolence, and she had given it not because she was actuated by religion, but because she was hopelessly in love with the priest himself, who had involuntarily inspired the sentiment.
There was nothing at all in the play but this fourth act, that gave you mingled sensations of disgust and shock. Moreover, nothing happened. AfterHenriette’sinsanity, during which she threatened the priests with all sorts of scandals, she calmed down, went back to the family, devoted the rest of her life to her little nieces and nephews, and lived happily ever afterward. The moral—as far as I could see—was that women menace the life of priests, and not, as M. Ancey tried to insist, that priests threaten the welfare of women. The minister of public instruction, who must be as silly as the London censor, objected to the piece because it was supposed to malign the priesthood, and to hold it up as something to be ousted from the domestic hearth. The piece taught me quite a different lesson. It was that priests should beware of designing but apparently perfect ladies.
Fortunately “Ces Messieurs” was well acted. Madame Andrée Mégard playedHenriettewith exquisite distinction and much dramatic power. André Hall was theAbbé Thibaut, and into the rôle he managed to infuse a good deal of picturesque mysticism. The other priests were assigned to M. Arveland to M. Jean Dax, who resisted the temptation to cheapen a cheap subject.
The cream of Paris—generally called “tout Paris,” which is quite a mistake, because the underlying milk is more important—no longer goes to the big, usual, conventional theaters. Little nooky places have become immensely popular here, and are gaining ground all the time. The Grand Guignol, the Boite a Fursy and the Mathurins are always packed to their tiny little doors, and the idea is to present varied dramatic entertainments in capsule form. It is the idea that Mr. Frank Keenan essayed so unsuccessfully at the Berkeley Lyceum in New York last season. Paris is fatigued, and finds no trouble in digesting tabloids. New York, still young, vigorous and hale, prefers its drama in lumps, and suffers from no dyspeptic results. We are not yet ready for drama in whiffs. In Paris that is the approved style of taking the medicine.
While the little King of Spain was inhaling grand opera, I took five dramatic pills at the Mathurins. It is such a tiny little place that at first I thought I had gone wrong, and was in an antechamber. Plain papered walls, ascetic chairs, a moldy piano, and a couple of usherettes seemed extremely bare. The price of admission did not suffer in the same way. It was exorbitant. The Mathurins was crowded with a swagger-looking collection of men and women. Above its doors appeared the following, that you may translate for yourselves:
Ici point de facheux, ni de mine bourrueLaissez, avant d’entrer, vos soucis dans la rue.
Ici point de facheux, ni de mine bourrueLaissez, avant d’entrer, vos soucis dans la rue.
Ici point de facheux, ni de mine bourrueLaissez, avant d’entrer, vos soucis dans la rue.
The five plays at the Mathurins were “Retour de Bal,” by Claude Real; “Oui! Benoist,” by Rito de Marghy; “Le Chasseur de Tigre Blanc,” by Tristan Bernard; “La Rupture,” by M. Nozière, and “Le Pyjama,” by Jules Rateau. Two of these, the second and fourth, were blood-curdlers, in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, with modern improvements and a Parisian outlook.
“Oui! Benoist” was a frenzied effort to be grewsome. The title represents the incessant remark of a country clodhopper to his “boss.” This “boss” was in love with a stout siren, who preferred a neurasthenic gentleman perpetually haunted by a particular melody. This melody had got on his nerves and had made him insane. (I couldn’t help wondering if he had enjoyed a season in musical comedy in New York, for, if so, I could quite understand his case.)Mathyas, as he was called, was trying to live down the melody, and nobody dared to hum it in his presence. He was made up with a white face, and dark rings under his eyes. The siren was most solicitous for his welfare.
Then came the innings ofBenoist, the jealous “boss.” There was a well upon the stage, very deep and dark, and—in dismal conspiracy—he prevailed upon the country clodhopper to go down into the well and from its depths sing up the forbidden melody till it reached the neurasthenic gentleman. The scheme worked. No sooner was the invalid upon the stage than from the bowels of the well the luckless dirge emerged. Instantly the patient was stricken. In wild insanity, he took a huge stone, and flung it into the well to kill the music.
Groans and anguish from the clodhopper. Agony all over the stage.
“Are you mortally hurt, Joseph?” asked the guilty “boss,” peering into the depths.
And from the well came up the halting murmur, “Oui, Benoist!” as the curtain fell.
The other blood-curdler was “La Rupture,” which introduced Mme. Polaire, a lady who has had a multi-colored career. At one time she was a sort of rival of Yvette Guilbert. At present she does the melodramatic upon the slightest provocation. Her “attraction” is her ugliness—her extreme and unmitigated homeliness. Even that sort of thing is popular in fatigued Paris. A woman who is homely to the verge of distraction may be as great a draw as her sister who is just as bewilderingly beautiful. It is the extremes that meet.
In “La Rupture” Mme. Polaire played the part of a woman with a poor lover. She was very fond of him, but he was impecunious, and she was expensive and terribly jealous. So she listens to the suit of a disgusting old fossil, who is smitten with her charms. Her repulsion is displayed with startling realism, and it furnishes the cue to the lover, who darts out and stabs the old man in the back. He falls dead, and there is a panic-stricken scene between the lovers. The woman is terrified; the man is horror-stricken; the corpse lies before them. There is a dark green atmosphere, full of the hoarse whispers of the guilty couple, in recrimination and disgust. There is no end to “La Rupture.” It leaves off suddenly; the curtain falls. You spear a sensation, but it is half-fraudulent.
Across the Channel, and to London. It seems healthier, even if it isn’t. At any rate, one feels more at home there. The American manager stalks through the English land, with his pocketbook in evidence, and his plans neatly newspapered. He is a bit lost in Paris, because he can’t produce the plays offered there without adapting them, and in the adaptation much is lost, and nothing takes its place. He sees a Parisian success, but the hero and heroine are never married. That is the stickler. A wedding ring would ruin them, and we have our little prejudice in favor of that magic circlet. The wedding ring may not be artistic—that is the Parisian answer to our plaints—but until we have discovered something that will aptly take its place, we prefer it. The American manager dare not fly in the face of the wedding ring, and that is why he shuffles about rather uneasily in Paris.
Sometimes he takes his adapter with him to see these French plays. Even that is unsatisfactory. The adapter is human, and he wants some work to do-o-o. He scents “possibilities,” and he is not afraid to say so. But French plays are becoming more and more impossible for New York. An American audience will not stand talk, and a French audience enjoys it when it hovers around the one eternal theme. Then the French idea of ending happily differs so essentially from the American notion, which is indissolubly allied with the wedding ring. The merry peals of nuptial bells ring no music into French ears.
The one attraction of the London season that has “attracted” is Mr. Alfred Sutro’s play at the Garrick Theater, called “The Walls of Jericho.” Mr. James K. Hackett, who has hitherto contented himself with being merely beautiful, in the rôles of fanciful and highly upholstered kings, and the daredevil idiots of cheap, book-tweaked “romance,” has secured the play for New York. Mr. Hackett will have to forego his gilt and plush adornments, the silken tights that he has worn so long and so lovingly. He will have to dress as a modern man, and to blazon forth the persistent and hackneyed criminality of that section of humanity known as “society.”
Society, as we are all aware, has an irresistible attraction for the “kid-glove” playwright. Whether it be a case of “the fox and the grapes,” or a mere gallery desire to cater to the multitude, certain it is that the dramatist, skilled or unskilled, delights in portrayal of the alleged smart set; even if he be forced to approach the tinsel glories of Mayfair and Fifth Avenue by the way of the scullery door. Even if all his “points” be obtained from a communicative Jeames or a not-too-reticent Sarah Jane, he is not dismayed.
Society must be shown up and periodically exposed; its vagaries must be held up to ridicule; it must be set forth as degenerate; it must be made to suggest the effeminacy and luxury of Rome at the time when Mr. Gibbon made it “decline and fall.” How to do this perpetually, and with a “new wrinkle”? The playwright in reality has no grudge at all against “society”—that is blissfully unaware of his very existence. His object is merely to evolve some sort of a “roast” that has a semblance of novelty. In London there are penny papers devoted purely to “society gossip” that are boons to the ambitious playwright—and to Sarah Jane.
Mr. Alfred Sutro, author of “The Walls of Jericho,” was in luck. In England at the present time there lurks a horrible disease known as “bridge.” It is a kind of mania on this side of the pond, and, although it is quite as middle class, and even lower class, as it is smart set, naturally Mr. Sutro need not notice that unimportant fact. That society plays bridge is no more remarkable than that society golfs and motors. Mr. Sutro’s point—very far-fetched, cheap and sensational—is that Mayfair has undermined and corrupted itself by the game. According to “The Walls of Jericho,” bridge seems to be responsible for childless women, sexless ladies, an unmoral outlook and other ills from which society—in novels and on the stage—is bound to suffer.
From what I have seen of the game—and I am not a card player—it seems to be nothing more than disagreeable in a very ordinary way. Every fellow hates his partner, and dogs certainly delight to bark and bite—for is it not their nature to? But, as for any illicit after-effect, I cannot imagine where it can come in. Bridge players appear to me to be far too engrossed in bickering and fault-finding to worry about immorality and laxity.
You will pardon this apparent digression. “The Walls of Jericho” being a long, preachy and rather foolish tirade against a game of cards, my apparent digression is necessary. The success of the play with the pit and gallery in London shows that the game is popular with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. Otherwise, these would fail to understand the second act, as—I candidly admit—I did.
In this act, various ladies of rank and title, including a duchess, are displayed in the act of playing bridge, inLady Alethea Frobisher’sboudoir. They are all handsomely gowned, and exceedingly “bong tong,” but nothing happens at all. Mr. Sutro undoubtedly intends that the picture shall be extremely infamous, and prepare us for the subsequent rebellion ofLady Alethea’snauseatingly right-minded husband. To my mind,Lady Aletheawas but a weak and wishy-washy version of a certainLady Teazle, and if Jericho could fall so easily there must have been Buddensiecks in those days. It deserved to fall.
I should like to come down to mere facts, but in “The Walls of Jericho” there are so few that they are scarcely worth mentioning. Viewed from the standpoint of one immune from the bridge germ, it is a dull and preachy succession of platitudes.Jack Frobisher, the righteous hero, has made his money in Queensland, with sheep. Perhaps that is why he baas through four acts. He is the husband ofAlethea. They have a son. She is too absorbed in her “set” to pay much interest to the child, who—thank goodness!—does not appear.
In the third actFrobisherannounces his intention of returning to Queensland and “nature,” and of taking her with him. Queensland, under any circumstances, must be horrible, but with such a prig as Mr. Sutro’s hero, it would be so loathsome that my sympathy was entirely withLady Alethea, when, like a Laura Jean Libbey lady, she “drew herself up to her full height” and refused to go. In the last act she changed her mind, and went.Mr. Frobisherblew the trumpet, and the walls of Jericho fell. There is the play. As the comedian in the piece remarked—and it is the only phrase you carry away—“Jericho must have been jerry-built.”
Mr. Arthur Bourchier, who, I understand, is reveling in the fact that he “discovered” Mr. Alfred Sutro, playedFrobisher. Mr. Bourchier is an actor-manager of much talk and self-importance. As the righteous husband of a butterfly wife, and the adoring father of an unseen brat, he was lacking in lightness and “sympathy.” The playwright’s point—always presuming that he had one—went hopelessly astray. Mr. Bourchier was a bore, rather than a bridge-pecked husband, and his preachiness was appallingly tedious, his delivery savoring of that supposed to be popular in the House of Commons. I could have slept through it; I think I did.
Miss Violet Vanbrugh, popular inLondon as the actor-manager’s wife, is a clever actress marred by mannerisms which would make her impossible outside of London. The affectation of her speech, the peculiarity of her stare and glare, give the casual spectator a curious sensation. There is a good deal of the freakish in her method; it is not natural, wholesome and universal. Yet beneath the surface one realizes that Miss Vanbrugh is an artist, who has evolved marvelously since New York saw her in a silly play called “The Queen’s Proctor.” The other puppets in this bridge bout included Miss Muriel Beaumont, a littleingénuewho is charming; H. Nye Chart, Sydney Valentine, O. B. Clarence—one of the conventional senile bores—and Miss Lena Halliday.
Stamped as a London success—and the stamp is genuine—it will be curious to watch the fate of “The Walls of Jericho” in New York. Possibly Mr. Hackett may do more for it than Mr. Bourchier, for he has played so many inane heroes that one more cannot hurt him; but he will have to work very hard, and I do not envy him his job.
The second play I saw after my arrival in London was “What Pamela Wanted,” at the Criterion Theater. Of course I had no idea whatPameladid want. I had a vague notion what I, myself, wanted. It was a good play, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t get it, and the piece has since been withdrawn. It was a so-called comedy from the pen of Mme. Fred de Gresac—author of “The Marriage of Kitty”—and that weakest of French writers, Pierre Veber. These twain were done into London by Charles Brookfield.
Mme. de Gresac is an amusing Parisienne, who has played some merry tunes on the marriage theme. She is a bit flighty, according to our notions, and inclined to regard the wedding ring as a huge joke, but she is really humorous, and with a clever adapter has possibilities. We realized that fact when we saw “The Marriage of Kitty.” “What Pamela Wanted” was unfortunately used as a vehicle for Miss Ethel Irving, who—unlike Marie Tempest—was by no means ready to emerge from the slough of musical comedy. In an effort to make the piece fit Miss Irving, Mr. Brookfield failed to make it fit her public.
Pamelawas introduced as a bread-and-butter miss, who, after a few moments’ talk with a strange young man, agreed to marry him, on the understanding that both should gang their ain gait.Pamelahad just left school as she met the youth, and the character, translated into English, was not plausible enough to be funny. There must be plausibility before comedy can take root. The foolish husband, jealous ofPamela, and the badly drawnPamela, jealous of the foolish husband, all leading up to a happy understanding, which was “what Pamela wanted,” left gaps in an evening’s entertainment.
The piece was eked out by conventionally stupid characters, including one of those nasty old fathers that our sense of propriety will not tolerate; the usual “dashing” young actress, a French maid, and a skittish widow. The only type that amused was a flabby dude, and this was funny only because it was so well played by Mr. Lennox Pawle. Miss Ethel Irving herself, so charming in musical comedy, was heavy, stodgy and uninteresting. As a “star,” she was so lacking in all essentials that she reminded me of New York rather than of London. She recalled my favorite “rushlights,” and I didn’t cross the Atlantic to sample them anew.