Multitude and Solitude

What play do they play? Some confounded play or other. Let's send for some cards. I ne'er saw a play had anything in't. A True Widow.

Roger Naldrett, the writer, sat in his box with a friend, watching the second act of his tragedy. The first act had been received coldly; the cast was nervous, and the house, critical as a first-night audience always is, had begun to fidget. He watched his failure without much emotion. He had lived through his excitement in the days before the production; but the moment interested him, it was so unreal. The play was not like the play which he had watched so often in rehearsal. Unless some speech jarred upon him, as failing to help the action, he found that he could not judge of it in detail. In the manuscript, and in the rehearsals, he had tested it only in detail. Now he saw it as a whole, as something new, as a rough and strong idea, of which he could make nothing. Shut up there in the box, away from the emotions of the house, he felt himself removed from time, the only person in the theatre under no compulsion to attend. He sat far back in the box, so that his friend, John O'Neill, might have a better view of the stage. He was conscious of the blackness of John's head against the stage lights, and of a gleam of gilt on the opposite boxes. Sometimes when, at irregular intervals, he saw some of the cast, on the far left of the stage, he felt disgust at the crudity of the grease paint smeared on their faces.

Sometimes an actor hesitated for his lines, forgot a few words, or improvised others. He drew in his breath sharply, whenever this happened, it was like a false note in music; but he knew that he was the only person there who felt the discord. He found himself admiring the address of these actors; they had nerve; they carried on the play, though their memories were a whirl of old tags all jumbled together. It was when there was a pause in the action, through delay at an entrance, that the harrow drove over his soul; for in the silence, at the end of it, when those who wanted to cough had coughed, there sometimes came a single half-hearted clap, more damning than a hiss. At those times he longed to be on the stage crying out to the actors how much he admired them. He was shut up in his box, under cover, but they were facing the music. They were playing to a cold wall of shirt-fronts, not yet hostile, but puzzled by the new mind, and vexed by it. They might rouse pointed indifference in the shirt-fronts, they might rouse fury, they would certainly win no praise. Roger felt pity for them. He wished that the end would come swiftly, that he might be decently damned and allowed to go.

Towards the middle of the act the leading lady made a pitiful brave effort to save the play. She played with her whole strength, in a way which made his spirit rise up to bless her. Her effort kept the house for a moment. That dim array of heads and shirt-fronts became polite, attentive; a little glimmer of a thrill began to pass from the stalls over the house, as the communicable magic grew stronger. Then the second lady, who, as Roger knew, had been feverish at the dress rehearsal, struggled for a moment with a sore throat which made the performance torture to her. Roger heard her voice break, knowing very well what it meant. He longed to cry out to comfort her; though the only words which came to his heart were: "You poor little devil." Then a man in the gallery shouted to her to "Speak up, please." Half a dozen others took up the cry. They wreaked on the poor woman's misfortune all the venom which they felt against the play. Craning far forward, the author saw the second lady bite her lip with chagrin; but she spoke up like a heroine. After that the spell lost hold. The act dragged on, people coughed and fidgeted; the play seemed to grow in absurd unreality, till Roger wondered why there was no hissing. The actors, who had been hitherto too slow, began to hurry. They rushed through an instant of dramatic interest, which, with a good audience, would have gone solemnly. The climax came with a rush, the act ended, the last speech was spoken. Then, for five, ten, fifteen, twenty fearful seconds the curtain hesitated. The absurd actors stood absurdly waiting for the heavy red cloth to cloak them from the house. Something had jammed, or the flyman had missed his cue. When the curtain fell half the house was sniggering. The half-dozen derisive claps which followed were intended for the flyman.

The author's box happened to be the royal box, with a sitting-room beyond it, furnished principally with chairs and ash-trays. When the lights brightened, Roger walked swiftly into the sitting-room and lighted a cigarette. John O'Neill came stumbling after him.

"It's very good. It's very good," he said with vehemence. "It's all I thought it when you read it. The audience don't know what to make of it. They're puzzled by the new mind. It's the finest thing that's been done here since poor Wentworth's thing." He paused for a second, then looked at Roger with a hard, shrewd, medical look. "I don't quite like the look of your leading lady. She's going to break down."

"They'll never stand the third act," said Roger. "There'll be a row in the third act."

At this moment the door opened. Falempin, the manager of the theatre, a gross and cheerful gentleman, with the relics of a boisterous vinous beauty in his face, entered with a mock bow.

"Naldrett," he said, with a strong French accent, "you are all right. Your play is very fine. Very interesting. I go to lose four thousan' poun' over your play. Eh? Very good. What so? Som' day I go to make forty thousan' poun' out of your play. Eh? It is all in a day's work. The peegs" (he meant his patrons, the audience) "will not stan' your third act. It is too--it is too--" He shook his head over the third act. "Miss Hanlon, pretty little Miss Hanlon, she go into hysterics."

"Could I go round to speak to her?" Roger asked.

"No good," said Falempin. "She cannot see any one. She will not interrupt her illusion."

"What happened to the curtain?" O'Neill asked.

"Ah, the curtain. It was absurd. I go to see about the curtain. We meet at Philippi. Eh? There will be a row. But you are all right, Naldrett. You know John O'Neill. Eh? Mr. O'Neill he tell you you are all right." He bowed with a flourish of gloved hands, and vanished through the stage door.

"John," said Roger, "the play's killed. I don't mind about the play; but I want to know what it is that they hate."

"They hate the new mind," said Roger. "They've been accustomed to folly, persiflage, that abortion the masculine hero, and justifications of their vices. They like caricatures of themselves. They like photographs. They like illuminated texts. They decorate their minds just as they do their homes. You come to them out of the desert, all locusts and wild honey, crying out about beauty. These people won't stand it. They are the people in Frith's Derby Day. Worse. They think they aren't."

"I'm sorry about Falempin," said Roger. "He's a good fellow. I shall lose him a lot of money."

"Falempin's a Frenchman. He would rather produce a work of art than pass his days, as he calls it, selling 'wash for the peegs.' What is four thousand to a theatre manager? A quarter's rent. And what is a quarter's rent to anybody?"

"Well," said Roger, "it's a good deal to me. Let's go round the house and hear what they say."

They thrust their cigarettes into ash-trays, and passed through the stalls to the foyer. The foyer of the King's was large. The decorations of mirrors, gilt, marble, and red velvet, gave it that look of the hotel which art's temples seldom lack in this country. It is a concession to the taste of the patrons; you see it in theatres and in picture galleries, wherever vulgarity has her looking-glasses. There were many people gathered there. Half a dozen minor critics stood together comparing notes, deciding, as outsiders think, what it would be safe to say. Roger noticed among them a short, burly, shaggy-haired man, who wore a turned-down collar. He did not know the man; but he knew at once, from his appearance, that he was a critic, and a person of no distinction. He was about to look elsewhere, when he saw, with a flush of anger, that the little burly man had paused in his speech, with his cigarette dropped from his mouth, to watch them narrowly, in the covert manner of the ill-bred and malignant. Roger saw him give a faint nudge with his elbow to the man nearest to him. The man turned to look; three of the others turned to look; the little man's lips moved in a muttered explanation. The group stared. Roger, who resented their impertinence, stared back so pointedly that their eyes fell. O'Neill's hands twitched. Roger became conscious that this was one of O'Neill's feuds. They walked together past the group, with indifferent faces. As they passed, the little man, still staring, remarked, "One of that school." They heard his feet move round so that he might stare after them. O'Neill turned to Roger.

"Do you know who that is?"

"No."

"That's O'Donnell, of The Box Office. He's the man who did for poor Wentworth's thing. I called him out in Paris. He wouldn't come."

"Really, John?"

"Oh, you're too young; you don't remember. He wrote everywhere. He wrote a vile tract called Drama and Decency. He nearly got Wentworth prosecuted."

"I've heard of that! So O'Donnell wrote that?"

"He did."

"Who are the others?"

"Obscure dailies and illustrateds."

A little grey man, with nervous eyes, came up to Roger, claiming acquaintance on the strength of one previous meeting. He began to talk to Roger with the easy patronage of one who, though impotent in art himself, and without a divine idea in him, has the taste of his society, its gossip, its critical cant, and an acquaintance with some of its minor bards.

"You mustn't be discouraged," he said, with implied intellectual superiority; "I hear you have quite a little following. How do you like the acting? I don't like Miss Hanlon's acting myself. Did you choose her?" As he spoke his eyes wandered over O'Neill, who stood apart, with his back half turned to them. It was evident that he knew O'Neill by sight, and wished to be introduced to him. Roger remembered how this man had called O'Neill a charlatan. An insult rose to his lips. Who was this fumbling little City man, with his Surrey villa and collection of Meryon etchings, to patronise, and condemn, and to bid him not to be discouraged?

"Yes," he said coldly. "I wrote the play for her. She's the only tragic actress you've had here since Miss Cushman."

The little City man smiled, apparently by elongating his eyes. He laid up, for a future dinner table, a condemnation of this young dramatist, as too "opinionated," too "crude."

"Yes?" he answered. "By the way--my daughter is here; she wants so much to talk to you about the play. Will you come?"

Roger had met this daughter once before. He saw her now, an anæmic girl, in a Liberty dress, standing with her nose in the air, amid a mob of first-nighters. She, too, wished to patronise him and to criticise the oracle. The superiority of a girl of nineteen was more than he could stand.