Sheaves. Ðдвард БенÑон
spurt of indignation. “Or am I?” she demanded, turning to Edith.
“I suppose everybody who is very young like that thinks other people rather conventional,” she said. “But to be conventional in that sense is unfortunately necessary, if one is to do anything with life. One has to choose one’s line and stick to it, and not mind about other lines—disregard them, in fact.”
“But he didn’t call you conventional,” said Peggy, still humorously indignant. “Besides, I want people to work. It makes them happy.”
“Ah, it makes you happy, you mean; and, of course, many people would be happier if they did work. But I am not sure that working may not be a sort of substitute only for the great thing.”
“What’s the great thing?”
“Why, living. I never feel sure that working is not a sort of drug that makes us dream we are living. To be really alive matters so much more than anything.”
Peggy looked at her in some alarm.
“Pray say none of those dangerous things to Hugh,” she said, “or we shall certainly never hear him in Tristan!”
“I am afraid he thinks of them for himself,” said she. “But the mistake he makes is in thinking that working interferes with living. It doesn’t. People who can’t live only get a substitute for it in work which will make them happy, but people who are really alive are not less so by working.”
“Ah, that is much sounder!” said Peggy. “Here we are in the queue already. It appears to extend from the Circus to Hyde Park Corner.”
Edith gave a little groan; something, either the discussion at dinner, or those with whom she had discussed, had completely taken her mind off what was coming. The sight of the queue, however, recalled her.
“Aren’t you hugely excited?” continued Peggy. “How can you help being? And yet you look as if you were going out for a drive in the country to see the place where Izaak Walton was born.”
“I feel as if I were going to see the place where Edith Allbutt was buried,” remarked that lady, “and it appears to me to be gruesomely interesting. And the whole world seems to be coming to the funeral service.”
“Ah, but not a soul guesses who Andrew Robb is!” said Peggy. “I feel sure of that.”
“But Mr. Grainger, probably among many more, said that it was quite obvious there couldn’t be an Andrew Robb. It did seem unlikely when he mentioned it.”
“But if it’s a huge and howling success, as I know it will be,” said Peggy, “won’t you unmask Andrew?”
Edith shook her head.
“Not till the play is established,” she said. “When it has run fifty nights I will.”
Again she groaned slightly.
“It hasn’t run one yet,” she said tragically, “and perhaps it won’t. Oh, Peggy, I know I have fallen between several large hard stools. ‘Gambits’ isn’t risky, so one section of the audience will yawn; it isn’t melodramatic, so another section will cough; it doesn’t contain any horse-play, so a third will fidget. I quite realise that now, and I shall join in the booing myself. How do you boo? Never mind, I shall soon know. And at the dress rehearsal this morning nobody appeared to know one single line of his part, and the curtain stuck at the end of the second act.
“Ah, but, as told you, a brilliant dress rehearsal means failure!” said Peggy. “And isn’t it just possible that a section of the audience will like a play because it is neither indecent nor farcical?”
“I don’t think so,” said Edith. “But in any case I shall be a Turveydrop of deportment, and shall join in the booing.”
“That will be insincere,” said Peggy.
They were in plenty of time for the rise of the curtain, and indeed the orchestra had only just begun to play what was called an “arrangement” from “La Tosca” when they took their places. Hugh, who with masculine cunning had directed his cabman to have nothing to do with the queue, but to drive boldly up the centre of Piccadilly and stop in the middle of it opposite the theatre, had got there before them, and was already in the box, watching the rapid filling-up of the theatre. Certainly the production of this piece had roused considerable interest, and some minutes before the curtain rose the house was packed in every corner, while the shrill buzz of conversation, always so eager and expectant on a first night, nearly drowned the arrangement from “La Tosca.” For London, whatever its faults may be, is, like Athens, passionately fond of anything new, and the production by one of the best-known actor-managers in the middle of the season of a play about the author of which nothing was known was an event that thoroughly aroused its curiosity. The stalls and boxes were crammed, the pit was one huddle of close-packed faces, and the gallery was as if a swarm of bees had settled on it. Higher and more shrill rose the buzz of conversation from all parts of the huge hothouse, glittering with lights. Then suddenly the lights went out, the orchestra stopped, a rustle of settlement sounded in the darkened theatre, and the curtain went up. Hugh, too, settled down with a sigh of contented expectancy.
“I am so nervous!” he said. “Just think of Andrew Robb.”
The act was rather long and though there were no signs of impatience audible in the house, yet the skilled observer of audiences would not have been completely satisfied with the quality of the silence. They were silent, it is true, and their silence probably betokened attention, but it was not as yet the throbbing palpitating silence that shows absorption. As in all first acts, a good deal of preliminary work had to be got through; the lady in the blue dress had so to characterise herself in half a dozen lines, that even if she appeared—as she probably would—in the second act in a totally different colour, there could be no mistaking that it was she; the lady in green had to be Mrs. Ashworth and no other; all the coining of personality had to take place, so that it came hot and ringing from the genuine human mint. Also the lines of circumstance had to be laid down; and it should have been clear to the mind of the skilled what the reasonable outcome must be. Only it was not quite clear; there were still nebulous points, and on the fall of the curtain Hugh instantly put his finger on what seemed to be the weak point.
“Rather long, wasn’t it?” he said. “And weren’t there too many aimless bits of talk? Oh, they were well written; I thought the dialogue excellent, just like people, but one wants plot, and one wants point.”
Peggy glanced instantaneously at her sister.
“Ah, but what seems to be pointless in a first act may prove to have very sharp points!” she said. “One can’t tell. There certainly were a lot of excursions in the dialogue, and, of course, if they prove to lead nowhere, the play is hopeless. But one has to see.”
Edith moved so that she sat in the shadow of the curtain.
“Yes, the criterion of the first act is the last,” she said. “You can’t tell if it is a good first act till you have seen the end. Don’t you think so, Mr. Grainger? I quite agree, though, that it seemed long. It seemed frightfully long to me.”
Hugh shook his head.
“No, I think you ought to know or guess at the last act from the first,” he said—“or anyhow guess two or three possible ends. Here you can’t. Look at the hero! At least, I suppose Mr. Amherst is the hero. But he never knows his mind from one minute to another. He is utterly inconsistent.”
“But isn’t it possible that his weakness of purpose may be the point of the play?”
“I never thought of that. Oh, but how interesting if it is so! But it can’t be, because that would make him like a real person, and modern plays never resemble real people in any way. No; I bet you it is a bad play. Mr. Amherst is going to develop some totally new and overpowering characteristic which will make the whole of the first act a waste of time. Do bet!”
“On the possible