Chapter IX (6)

“Billy didn’t seem to love the baby as he--as--and Colonel Emerson is very fond of children--he’s devoted to my baby--or I thought he was. And he said that it was cause enough for me to leave Billy. And if I should leave him--if I should leave Billy--if I should get a divorce from him--he said--Colonel Emerson said----”

“Don’t tell me what he _said_, honey child,” urged Huldah. “What’d he _do_? Where’s your baby?”

Oh, then the poor little mother clung with strangling sobs to the stronger, older woman. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “He got me all these nice things--ain’t my clothes awfully pretty?--and he promised we’d bring the baby with us. He says he’s taking me to his mother, and that I can stay there until I get my divorce--because, you know, Billy has treated me awfully mean, and he don’t care--Billy--he don’t care a thing on earth about me nor the baby any more.”

She reiterated these last words with a piteous look of entreaty into the kind gray eyes bent upon her, repeated them as a little child repeats a lesson which has been laboriously taught to it. Huldah looked at her with infinite pity. “Where’s your baby?” she repeated.

“That’s what scares me!” cried the wife of Billy Gaines. “He said--Colonel Emerson said--when he met me at the station, and he hadn’t sent for the baby like he promised to--that he was going to have some man that he knew go and get the boy and take it to his mother’s house, but that it wouldn’t do for it to travel with us, because we could be traced by it. I”--the pretty lips trembled--“I never was away from my baby a night in my life. I don’t know if anybody knows where to get his little night drawers. He always wears a little sack, extra, at night, because he’s a great one for throwing his arms out and getting the covers off them----”

She was running on like a crazed thing, with these little fond details, when Huldah Sarvice’s strong voice interrupted her. “Thank God!” said the old woman, heaving a mighty sigh of relief. “If you’re a good mother, you’re worth savin’. I’m goin’ right over now an’ telegraft to your husband.”

“Oh, no! Don’t do that!” cried the other. “He’ll be killed. You mustn’t. Don’t. He’ll be killed!”

“Killed!” snorted Huldah. Hers was the rough-and-ready code of the West. “Killed--and serve him right!”

“I don’t mean Colonel Emerson,” remonstrated the frantic girl. “Sometimes I think he’s a bad man--an awful man--anyhow, he’ll just have to stand it if anything happens. It’s Billy I’m thinking about. The colonel has shot three or four men--he’ll kill my poor Billy----”

Huldah smiled to herself in the gathering darkness. The problem was becoming easier and easier. But the girl’s strangled, sobbing voice went on: “And I couldn’t bear to see Billy. I don’t dare to have him see me when he knows about this. I can’t face him. If you say you’re going to telegraph to him, I’ll run right straight to Colonel Emerson and get him to take me away somewhere.”

Huldah puckered her lips--had she been a man she would have whistled. She saw no way but to go with the girl and fight it out with her tempter. “Come,” she said, a little roughly for Huldah. “I’ll go back with you.”

She whom the old woman would have saved turned like a hunted thing, as to elude her benefactress. Huldah clung to her arm, and they struggled thus to the doorway. Here the thunder of engines toward Magdalena once more arrested the attention of the proprietor of the Wagon Tire House. It had increased to a deafening uproar; the rain fell like bullets; and even as they drew back, frightened, there was no street to be seen--only a flood of swirling yellow water, running like a tail race between the lodging rooms and the little eating house. “My Lord!” groaned Huldah. “I might ’a’ knowed ’twa’n’t engines. Hit’s a cloudburst, above--the big arroyo’s up.”

It was true. The red gash which through nine-tenths of the year lay dry and yawning beside the tracks of the little Magdalena Branch railway was brimmed with the same tide which swept the street. And down it, as they looked, came a wall of writhing, tormented water, nearly five feet high.

There had been a cloudburst in the mountains above, whence came such trickle as fed the arroyo in the dry season. Twice before had this thing happened, and the little eating house stood upon stilts of cottonwood logs to be above the flood line, while the lodging house was on higher ground.

The watching women saw the flood reach the railway track, beat upon its embankment with upraised, clinched hands, tear at it with outspread fingers in an access of fury, wrench up the rails yet bolted to the ties, and fling them forward on its crest as it plunged on. The two little houses, standing isolated from the town and nearer to the railroad tracks than any other, were now in an open waste of water, the current sweeping swiftly between them, an eddy lapping in their back yards.

As Huldah saw Manuelita’s frightened face at a window of the Wagon Tire House, she made a trumpet of her plump hands and shouted: “Don’t you be scared, Manuelita--hear? Keep up the fire, and make a b’iler of coffee. I’ll be over soon’s I can git thar!”

Billy Gaines’ wife looked down at the water with relief. “He can’t come across that,” she murmured.

“No, he can’t,” agreed Aunt Huldah. “An’ you come an’ lay down on my bed. Slip off your shoes, an’ loosen your clothes, but don’t undress. This house is safe, I reckon; but no knowin’ what might happen.”

All that night Huldah Sarvice worked, with the strength of a man and the knowledge of a seasoned frontiers-woman. The injured were brought to the lodging house or the eating house, just as it happened. When a hastily improvised boat came to their aid, she went in it over to see that some refreshment was prepared for the workers; and later, when the sullen flood receded to a languid swell, she paddled back and forth on foot, her petticoats gathered in one sweep of her arm, and whatever was necessary to carry held fast with the other.

“You’ll get your death, Aunt Huldah,” remonstrated the agent, when she had struggled across to the station to send a telegram to Billy Gaines.

“I reckon not,” she returned, with twinkling eye. “Seems like you can’t drown me. I’ve been flooded out six times; twict at El Captain, once at Blowout and now three times here; and I ain’t drownded yet. This is a good long telegraft that I’m a-sendin’; but I reckon the railroad won’t grudge it to me.”

“You bet they won’t,” returned the boy, heartily, as he addressed himself to his key. “I’ll add a message of my own to a fellow I know at El Paso, and get him to hunt Billy up if he’s on duty to-night.”

Huldah beamed. “That’s awful good of you,” she returned; “but if you had seen that little woman over there a runnin’ from one window to another, a wringin’ her hands and carryin’ on so that I’m ’most afraid to leave her alone, you’d be glad to do it.”

As she splashed back to her tired helpers and the injured at the Wagon Tire House, the old woman muttered to herself: “He’s a good boy. It’s better to have good friends than to be rich;” and never reflected for an instant that no personal benefit had been conferred upon herself in the matter.

With the simple wisdom of a good woman who knows well the human heart, Huldah set poor Louise Gaines to attending upon the worst injured of the flood sufferers, and took her promptly in to see the one corpse which so far had been found floating in an eddy after the waters receded a little. It was that of a young Mexican girl from the village above. The little fair woman went down on her knees beside the stretcher. “Oh, I wish it was me!” she cried. “Why couldn’t it have been me? She’s young, and I expect she wanted to live--why didn’t God take me?”

“Now, now,” remonstrated Aunt Huldah, with a touch of wholesome sternness. “I didn’t bring you in here to carry on about your own troubles--that’s selfish. I brung you to make this poor girl look fit to be laid away. You can do it better’n I can, and there’s nobody else for to do it. Likely her folks is all drownded, too.”

And Billy Gaines’ wife rose up and wiped her eyes, and went to work in something of the spirit that Huldah had hoped.

It was five o’clock in the gray of the morning when the wrecking train from El Paso came through; and Billy Gaines was aboard it. The poor little wife had had attacks of hysteric terror all night long at the thought of his coming; and now she lay exhausted and half sleeping upon the lounge in the dining room. Huldah herself felt a little qualm of fear as she opened the kitchen door to the tall figure buttoned in the big ulster. For the first time, she wondered where the man Emerson was, and hoped that he had taken the one train which left Socorro going northward, just before the flood struck them. But the hope was a faint one; more likely he was up in the town, cut off from them temporarily by the water which still ran between; and when he and Billy Gaines met, she doubted not that there would be another bloody reckoning such as the West knows well.

If she had doubted, her questions would have been answered when she looked into the frank gray eyes of the man who met her, a trifle stern and very resolute. “I’ve come for my wife,” he said, breathing a little short, “and if Jim Emerson’s in the house, I want to see him.”

“Come in here,” said the old woman, drawing the newcomer into a small section of chaos which was generally known as the pantry. “I remember you now, an’ I guess you’re a decenter man than the run of ’em; but I want to have a word with you before you go in to that poor girl. You see, I want to be sure that you’ve looked on both sides of it. You pass all right among the men--I hear you well spoke of--but how many things can you ricollect that you’ve done that are jest as bad as what she’s done?”

“Plenty,” said Billy Games, almost with impatience. “I understand, Aunt Huldah.”

“Mebby you do,” said the old woman; “but I want to be sure. Where was you when this poor little soul was left to herself--and that scoundrel?”

“I was over in Mexico on a six weeks’ hunting trip.”

“You was! Well, then, after all, who done this thing--who’s really to blame?”

“I am--you bet,” came the deep-voiced answer. “I don’t hold it against you a bit, Aunt Huldah; but you’re working on the wrong trail. You think you’ve got a great big job ahead of you trying to make me see this thing right. But I’ll remind you that it’s eight hours from El Paso here--eight night hours--and your telegram was pretty complete. You left the man out; and so will I--until I meet him.” The firm jaw squared itself heavily; and Huldah sighed as she realized that the law of blood for honor must be met.

The man had carried one arm almost as though it were injured; and she now glanced down at it as he moved it and fumbled in the folds of his big overcoat. His voice softened beautifully. “I’ve got something here,” he said, “that ought to show you that I know and understand, and am going to behave myself.”

He opened his great cloak and showed, lying upon his breast asleep, a baby of about two years old, who stirred, put up a wandering little hand and murmured: “Daddy,” as he settled himself for a longer nap.

“Bless his heart!” murmured Huldah, in the richest tones of her strong, heartsome voice. She wiped the tears from her eyes on a corner of the check apron. “I guess you’ll do, Billy. You seem to have the makin’s of a tol’able decent feller in you. You’ve got the only medicine right there that your poor little, half crazy wife needs.” And she pushed him toward the door of the deserted dining room.

There was a long, agonized cry: “O--o--oh, Billy!” Then the big voice talked brokenly and gently for a time, choking sobs interrupting it; and Huldah could hear, at first, the thin, shrill terror of the woman’s tones, very sharp and pleading; finally an eloquent silence.

She glanced in to see Billy Gaines sitting with what she called “both of his children--for the little woman’s ’most as much of a baby as her boy”--asleep; the mother with her head upon his shoulder, while the child lay in the laps of both of them.

“Lord, but that’s a sight for sore eyes!” she ruminated, as she lifted the coffee boiler from the stove and sent Manuelita to lie down and get a rest.

“But there’s the colonel,” she pursued. “There’s goin’ to be awful times when him and Billy Gaines meets.” Then she smiled at herself and went on: “Jest listen to a old woman like me tryin’ to tell how it ort to come out. We’re all God’s children. I reckon the colonel’s His child”--she seemed to have a little doubt upon this point--“an’ I reckon God’ll take care of him.”

As if in answer to her half-spoken thought, there came the tramp of stumbling feet, somebody beat upon the door, and a voice called: “Mrs. Sarvice! Aunt Huldah! We’ve just found another body over by the railroad tracks. Can we bring him in here, or shall we take it over to the other house?”

Huldah hurried out, to turn down the blanket they had drawn over the stark form and look upon the dead gambler’s face. “Carry him to the lodgin’ house, pore feller,” she said, gently.

God had taken care of the colonel.

ELUSION

Cleavage of sea and sky,
Ever elusive line,
Though I follow it far,
Far as the Ultimate Isles,
Never it seems more nigh,--
Shifting shadow and shine,--
Dim as a distant star
That beckons and beguiles

Dawn-dream of my heart,
Dusk-dream of my soul,
Though I follow thee long
Into the night’s deep shades,
Never attained thou art,
Never I gain the goal;
Thou art like a song
That ever and ever evades.

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

LONDON’S STAGNANT THEATRICAL SEASON

BY ALAN DALE

London has begun to howl sensationally about the American Theatrical Syndicate, and to discuss the possibilities of its invasion of London.

Of course this is the warm season, when snake stories and sea-serpent legends are distinctly in order. Therefore the machinations of the American Theatrical Syndicate have made good reading, and plenty of space has been given to the subject. One journalist has suggested that the playwrights of England and the United States form a league, destined to break up the trust, very much after the style of the Authors’ Society in France. “Why should they not form themselves into a society,” asks this writer, “for the protection not only of their own interests, but of the interests of the theater, of the interests of the actors, and of the interests of the public? As the trust snaps up an actor when once his reputation is established, so it deals with dramatists. Once a dramatist has made a mark, the trust practically buys him up; that is to say, it makes him an offer outright for all his work to come. That is part of the infernal system.”

All of which is quite good, and true, and logical. It reads remarkably well, with just the spice of wholesome plaint that one loves to excavate. After a month of continuous theater-going in London, however--from the Strand to Piccadilly Circus, and from Piccadilly Circus to Shaftesbury Avenue--I can’t help reflecting that if _the_ syndicate or any syndicate had been let loose in London this year, with the option of cornering everything in sight, the fact remains that there is scarcely a production in London worth transplanting. Furthermore, the fear that an American invasion would deal a death-blow to London art seems absurd. I haven’t found any art to death-blow.

Nearly everything that London writers have said of the syndicate is true, and, perhaps, not stringent enough, but--with an accent on the “but”--how it could possibly harm London goodness only knows. Never has theatrical entertainment in the English metropolis been at a lower ebb. A few of its features will be done in New York this year, and they will prove exactly what I have said. English playwrights seem to be suffering from too much money, for they apparently lack the stimulus to struggle. That money may, of course, have been contributed by American managers, who buy “pig-in-a-poke” fashion, but if that be so, there are not enough “independent” playwrights to form a society. As for leaguing themselves with American playwrights--well, puzzle: find the American playwrights.

The saddest case of perverted humor I have sampled in a very long time is that of J. M. Barrie’s play--or whatever it chooses to call itself--entitled “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire,” at the Duke of York’s Theater. Barrie must, indeed, be very “comfortably fixed,” for no other condition could conceivably call forth such a miserable guy on the theater-going public as this “three-act page from a daughter’s diary.” Naturally it has attracted a good deal of attention, for Barrie has done noble things in his day, and “The Little Minister” still lives as a monumentally delightful achievement. But “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is a “satire” built on such a weak and irritating foundation that it is difficult to consider it except with contempt--which is a cruel way of looking at Barrie.

The heroine, or central figure, or point of attack, in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is a romantic young girl, who has been to so many “matinées” that she has grown to look upon life as a theatrical performance. At first you think that _Amy Grey_ is going to be extremely amusing, as she chats satirically of her life, with her boon companion--another matinée fiend. _Amy’s_ father and mother return from India after an absence of a good many years, and Barrie plunges into a plot.

The stagestruck girl has always heard that when a woman visits a man’s rooms at midnight there are illicit relations that should be immediately broken up. She hears her mother promise to call upon _Stephen Rollo_ at midnight, and assumes, with much girlish glee, that her mother needs rescuing. The entire motive of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” lurks in Barrie’s effort to be funny around this cruelly topsy-turvy, and rather nauseating, idea.

The principal act occurs in the “man’s rooms”--with the girl, the mother and the man. Barrie, in a positive ecstasy of ghoulish “humor,” allows the mother to understand the girl’s idea. She clamors for her daughter’s love, and believes that the best way to secure it will be to feign guilt, so that the girl can “rescue” her. This she does. _Amy_ believes that she has saved her mamma from a horrible fate--mamma caters diligently to that suggestion--and the play ends with _Amy’s_ betrothal to the man in the case.

In this play Barrie has violated sheer decency of sentiment. It is all very well to shower satire upon the matinée girl--she can stand it, and has stood it full many a time and oft--but to mix her up in the imaginary adultery of her own mother--and as a joke, saving the mark!--gives one such a disagreeable shock, that recovery from its effects is quite out of the question. To be even more delicately humorous, Barrie might have introduced the grandmother under similarly suspicious circumstances.

It is all very well to write caviare, but the caviare must be fresh and not putrid. Barrie’s “humor” in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” has the taint of decay--as it had the germ of acute dyspepsia in that atrocity produced in New York under the title of “Little Mary.” Real humor attacks hereditary sentiment with delicacy, and a certain amount of timidity. To completely realize this you have but to study George Bernard Shaw, who, while he flouts a thousand traditions, and is rarely amusing unless he is flouting, does so with a keen appreciation of what he is doing. The redoubtable George may even scoff occasionally at filial sentiment, but he would never dredge humor from the imaginary sin of a mother, used as a joke to please her own stagestruck daughter. At the close of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” one wondered what _Amy_, after her marriage to the man in the case, would think of the maudlin situation. And this, please your grace, has been announced as Barrie’s crowning fantasy! Fortunately, we have “Peter Pan” to hear from in New York. Not having seen that, I pin my faith to it, for I want to hold on to Barrie a bit longer, in spite of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire.”

This “page from a daughter’s diary” was preceded by a sketch, also by Barrie, entitled “Pantaloon,” and programed as “a plea for an ancient family.” There is no need to discuss this one-act trifle, with its pathos and bathos, in extraordinary blend, and no single salient idea to carry it through. The elopement of _Harlequin_ and _Columbine_, with the jilting of _Clown_, and the distress of _Pantaloon_ may perchance be a “plea for an ancient family,” and as there are all sorts of pleas, you are possibly allowed to pay your money and take your choice.

It was Ellen Terry who played _Alice_, in the “Sit-by-the-Fire” affair. Poor Ellen Terry! To my mind it was sad and disheartening. Why should an actress who has had such a joyous career as that which fell to Miss Terry’s lot, elect, in her ultra maturity, to play a bad part in a bad play--and not too well? There is tragedy in this continued, and--I should say--unnecessary service. Probably there are still roles that Miss Terry might acceptably play, but as the forty-year-old mother in this wretched piece one could but feel sorry for her--and sorry for those who saw her. I have heard that Miss Ethel Barrymore plays the part in the United States. I can’t believe it until I see it.

Miss Irene Vanbrugh--you remember her in “The Gay Lord Quex”--was the matinée girl, with much force. There are flashes of humor in the part, and Miss Vanbrugh made the most of them. For the benefit of those who may see “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” on the American side of the pond, the rest of the cast was made up of Aubrey Smith, A. E. Mathews, Kenneth Douglas, Lettice Fairfax--who was once in Augustin Daly’s New York company--Dora Hole, Edith Craig and Hilda Trevelyan.

Always at this time of year there is an influx of foreign actresses into London. They come; they are seen; but they never conquer. They must be awfully tired of it, for history has such a sad way of repeating itself. This year, however, one French actress has made a good deal of a stir, but under such distinctly new conditions that the stir is quite intelligible. This young woman, Madame Simone Le Bargy, of whom I wrote you last year when I reviewed “Le Retour de Jerusalem” from Paris, was brought to London by George Alexander, the actor-manager of the St. James Theater, _not_ for a season “on her own,” but as his leading lady, and in English, too!

A French actress in English! Could anything be more unusual? Sarah Bernhardt, who has been cavorting around the English-speaking world for portentous yet vulgar fractions of a century, never managed to acquire even a suspicion of English; Rêjane, who has done London and New York pretty thoroughly, would have an artistic fit at the idea of juggling with English, at her time of life; Jane Hading, Jeanne Granier and others are quite willing to play anywhere, but it must be in French.

Madame Simone Le Bargy played the leading rôle in “The Man of the Moment,” at the St. James Theater, and was duly and unselfishly boomed by Mr. George Alexander, as “of the Gymnase Théâtre, Paris. Her first appearance in England.” The piece was an adaptation, by Harry Melvill, of “L’Adversaire,” by Alfred Capus and Emmanuel Arène. The English actor-manager was a wise man in his London generation. He had a weak play, most indifferently adapted, but he had Le Bargy, and for a while she caught the town.

While English leading ladies must have fumed at Alexander’s neglect of “home talent,” Madame Le Bargy showed that it is quite possible not only to play with grace and facility in a foreign language, but actually to prove more intelligible than a good many London actresses who flatter themselves that they speak good English. Madame Le Bargy’s English was an absolute revelation. Naturally it had an accent--a delightful one--and Paris was stamped on everything she said, but compared with Mrs. Fiske in New York, or Miss Ashwell in London, Madame Le Bargy’s diction was wonderful. Every word she uttered was intelligible. She rattled off various speeches almost as quickly as she might have done in French, but never once did their meaning miscarry. I’ve seen all sorts of foreign actresses waylay the English language--Modjeska and Janauschek being in the list--but seldom have such results as those given by this little, thin, nervous Frenchwoman been attained.

Oddly enough, it is said that Madame Le Bargy had never been in London before, and that she had acquired English in France. In which case, I would suggest that half a dozen popular New York actresses--I won’t mention names--should sail for France at an early date, and see if they could learn English there. It is as difficult to acquire in London as it is in New York.

“The Man of the Moment” was saved from rapid extinction by the little Gymnase actress. It had four acts, through two of which you could have slept comfortably while various alleged French characters sat round drawing rooms and talked endlessly about nothing whatsoever. Then, in the third act, you learned that _Marianne Darlay_, the wife of _Maurice_, had been lured to infidelity by a dark gentleman named _Langlade_. As she still loved her husband, and didn’t love _Langlade_, this little escapade failed entirely to interest. The “great scene” occurred when the wife gave herself away to the husband, and the play ended with a vista of divorce. Divorce, in real life, may be a serenely satisfactory settlement of domestic wrangles, but on the stage its unromantic practicality has not yet succeeded in appealing, except in farce. “The Man of the Moment” had no dramatic action, and no movement of any sort. You were unable to sympathize with the woman, or to feel much interest in the man. In fact, “The Man of the Moment” must have been so-called because he had none.

Capus in French is always exhilarating. The “chatter” is refreshing and genuinely amusing, but translated into English, it seemed extremely dull. Mr. Melvill did poor Capus into the sort of language that is encountered in burlesque at little Mr. Weber’s music hall. The result was fatal. Yet, in addition to Madame Le Bargy’s very excellent work, there was George Alexander, whose efforts were most praiseworthy. He seemed perfectly satisfied to take what was assuredly second place in the cast. “The Man of the Moment” was beautifully put on, as is every production at the St. James Theater. George Alexander is one of the few London actors who have not been to the United States within the last decade--in fact, he has never been, except as a member of Irving’s forces, many years ago--and the abstinence seems to agree with him. He does more, and he does it more luxuriously, than the traveling English actor whom we have seen so often. Perhaps it is true, after all, that a rolling stone gathers no moss--though I should hate to believe that there could possibly be anything in a popular proverb.

While one little foreign actress was capturing London by her clever manipulation of London’s language, others were not as happy. Eleanora Duse’s season at the Messrs. Shubert’s new Waldorf Theater, in the new street called Aldwych, on the Strand, must have been very discouraging to the haughty lady herself. In fact, it is asserted that she will never again appear in England. Half-filled houses are something that must be distressing to the “artistic temperament,” and Duse played to a most elongated series of them. Few people seemed to know that she was in London. In New York we, in our occasionally provincial appreciation of an actress whom we are unable to understand--and probably _because_ we can’t understand her--go into ecstasies over Duse, and pack the theater to overflowing. London is too sophisticated. Duse made no stir at all this time. Even the critics gave her but merely polite attention. Possibly in English she could charm the English-speaking world. But, save in the case of Madame Simone Le Bargy, nobody seems to think that worth while. Perhaps it isn’t.

As for the tireless Sarah--she gets on one’s nerves. After a brief season at the Coronet Theater, in Notting Hill, where she produced her own version of “Adrienne Lecouvreur,” and Victor Hugo’s “Angelo”--which fell flat as a pancake--Sarah rushed through the English provinces with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, in their freak performance of “Pelleas and Melisande.” In a manufacturing town, like Birmingham, for instance, Maeterlinck, at advanced prices, seemed like some ghastly joke! Sarah visits England annually, in a veritable desperation of energy, but it is very seldom worth her while. This year she was less interesting than Madame Le Bargy; and the same may be said of Réjane.

I had not been in London very long before I found myself battling with the musical comedy whirlpool. It hedged me in; panic-stricken, I tried to get myself free. A dreadful sensation of helplessness overcame me. In a condition of numbed protest, I was carried along with the torrent, and it was a long time before I finally emerged. My system being impoverished and quite run down by a strenuous musical-comedy dose in New York, I was not in the state of mind to render the continued ordeal endurable.

Yet a very estimable gentleman, Max Beerbohm, who is supposed to write fantasy, whimsicality or oddity, has undertaken to champion musical comedy. The championship of “Max,” however, is a sort of “swan song” for musical comedy. He says: “Were musical comedy other than it is, the highest intellects in the land would be deprived of an incomparable safety valve. And what would become of that ‘fifty millions--mostly fools’--who find in musical comedy an art-form conducted precisely on the level of their understanding? I have no sympathy at all with the growls so constantly emitted by professional critics of this art-form. Of course musical comedy might be made a vehicle for keen satire, for delicate humor, for gracious lyricism, and what not. But I prefer that it should remain as it is. Let us continue to cry aloud for a serious drama, by all means, but long live mere silliness in mere entertainment.”

One could almost regret that this writer had no “job” in New York City as a “press agent.” He writes with such _verve_ on topics of which he is avowedly ignorant, for at the beginning of his defense, he says: “Nor do I ever see a musical comedy of my own accord.” That is it. That is precisely it. It is so easy to speak of an “art-form,” or an “incomparable safety valve,” when you’d run a mile or jump into anything to avoid it.

There are four musical-comedy productions in London that a sheer sense of duty compelled me to see. Such a list! It was unescapable. No self-deception or hypocrisy could possibly excuse a traveling critic from sampling this quartet. One can always elude a solitary performance, for it proves nothing and makes no point. But four of a kind at one fell swoop! Surely, if four West End theaters can devote themselves irrevocably to this “art-form,” one has no right to balk, or to look the other way. The four affairs in question are “The Little Michus,” at Daly’s, “Lady Madcap,” at the Prince of Wales’, “The Spring-Chicken,” at the Gaiety, and “The Catch of the Season,” at the Vaudeville. Three of them are scheduled for production in New York, but I should say that one only has a fighting chance, and that “The Catch of the Season.”

It had the usual array of sponsor-meddlers--two for the pieces, one for the lyrics, two for the music; and its aim is higher than that of the conventional brand, for it is a modernization of the Cinderella story--a story that has never shown any sign of age, and probably never will. Nobody has tried to do anything clever with Cinderella. There is no satire, very little humor and nothing in the least skittish. It is just pretty, and at this Vaudeville Theater it is Miss Ellaline Terriss, London’s sample Christmas card beauty, who does the Cinderella act. It is not necessary to say very much more about “The Catch of the Season.” Its music is trivial, and its book is worse. But its specialties please, and one can sit through this little entertainment without that sense of degradation that the brand sometimes induces. That is a good deal. For New York many alterations will be made--I write in the future tense, though when these lines are read, they can be translated into the past--and I hope a happy one--new music will be introduced, and Miss Edna May placed in Ellaline Terriss’ dainty shoes.

Of “The Little Michus,” at Daly’s, and “The Spring Chicken,” at the Gaiety, I am scarcely able to write. Two weeks have elapsed since I saw them, and not a single impression of consequence remains. I remember that I was unutterably bored, but I can’t quite recall which was the duller performance of the two. At the time I compared them both with “The Cingalee,” the New York failure of which I correctly prophesied last summer. I should like to suggest that even in the musical-comedy line I am still able to scent novelty, whenever the slightest aroma occurs. It is the expectation of this that keeps me alive during a performance. Without that expectation I should honestly stay away, for I have arrived at a stage when I am not courting martyrdom.

The George Edwardes shows have of late displayed a marked tendency to a sort of stupefying monotony. Either the fear of risking a new idea, or the hope that the old ones have not become too abjectly ancient, has kept them in the one groove. It is quite remarkable when you come to think of it. Even the supply of people has comparatively failed. The Gaiety girls have married--some of them have even taken unto themselves peers--and a new stock has neglected to materialize. In “The Little Michus,” which is supposed to detail the experiences of two young girls who look precisely alike, but who have been changed at birth, these two prominent rôles were intrusted to Adrienne Augarde and Mabel Green--the latter absolutely unknown. In “The Spring Chicken,” which, I may add, is just as calamitous as its title, it was Miss Gertie Millar who had to uphold the traditions of the Gaiety. A pretty girl, a bright little actress and a fairly melodious warbler is Miss Millar, but George Edwardes used to do better than this.

“Lady Madcap” was the best of the three George Edwardes shows in London. Probably that is why it has been left untouched by the American manager. I do not say that any of these entertainments are worth exporting. To trot such drivel across the Atlantic Ocean, while the United States still has its lunatic asylums with numbers of patients ready and willing to do just such work, seems to me like the sorriest sort of jest. Yet “The Catch of the Season” and “Lady Madcap” have their good points.

What is possibly the best song in London this season occurs in “Lady Madcap.” It is sung by Maurice Farkoa, and is called “I Love You in Velvet.” It has pretty music, clever words and much “catchiness,” and it is so admirably and artistically sung that it redeemed the musical comedy itself, and made it quite endurable.

The star of the performance is J. P. Huntley, a prime London favorite and one who has been very well received in New York. Huntley, like a good many other comedians, is far more useful for flavoring purposes than for a steady diet. There was such a dose of him in “Lady Madcap” that he grew to be a terrible bore. This young actor is to leave the George Edwardes forces and go to the Shubert Brothers, and I can’t help wondering which of the two parties will get tired first. I have my own ideas on the subject, but perhaps it would be advisable not to express them.

So barren is this London season that I have not been able to formulate my plan of dealing with it--you may have guessed as much! There is nothing to wax enthusiastic over, and no one performance that remains, luminous, in the mind. At the New Theater--and isn’t that an absurd title for a playhouse, that, with its actors and audiences, is aging daily?--they are playing “Leah Kleschna,” which Mr. Frohman advertises in the New York manner by a catchline from Mr. Walkley’s criticism in the London _Times_: “It hits you bang in the eye”--or something equally pretty and graphic. I am not at all sure that it does anything of the sort. It is not looked upon as an epoch-maker, and it lacks the charm of oddity and mystery that was given to it in New York by Mrs. Fiske herself.

We all thought when we saw “Leah Kleschna” at the Manhattan Theater that Mrs. Fiske played a non-star part, and subordinated herself to the others. Let me tell you, however, most emphatically, after having seen “Leah Kleschna” twice in New York and once in London, that Mrs. Fiske herself is its mainstay. She is absolutely its very backbone. Without her, at the New Theater, the piece is but a gloomy melodrama, and as such it is received by the London public. Be quite sure of that. Of course the play itself _is_ cheap, but it masquerades somewhat successfully under the guise of a study in criminology--and all that sort of thing. In New York Mrs. Fiske, by her eccentricities, and various little intellectualities that you recall when you see Miss Lena Ashwell’s tame and bloodless performance in London, helped the illusion. She never quite allowed you to believe that “Leah Kleschna” was outside of her own répertoire of peculiarities.

The play is extremely well acted in London by everybody but Miss Ashwell. She is a weak imitation of Mrs. Fiske’s many bad points--notably her indistinctness of diction. Probably Miss Ashwell never saw Mrs. Fiske in all her life, but Mr. Dion Boucicault, who staged the play in London, must have watched Mrs. Fiske attentively, and have given Miss Ashwell full particulars. At times it was quite ludicrous to listen to the English actress positively affecting the American actress’ most lamentable demerit. She bit up her words, emitted the fragments in a frenzied torrent, sank her voice at critical moments, and did all that Mrs. Fiske has been implored _not_ to do.

Charles Warner, who played the father, threw himself successfully at the part, but forced us to recall his long continuous service in “Drink.” Occasionally _Kleschna_ seemed to have “jim-jams,” and one could not dissociate Mr. Warner from his well-known, world-played performance. Herbert Waring played _Raoul_ extremely well, but the _Schram_ of William Devereaux is not to be compared with the capital interpretation given to the part by William B. Mack in New York. All that Mr. Frohman could do for “Leah Kleschna” he did, but the piece needed Mrs. Fiske. Without her it is of little importance--a sort of old Adelphi play in kid gloves.

A piece that seems to have eluded the “American invasion” is “Mr. Hopkinson,” which has been running for months at Wyndham’s Theater. It is the work of Mr. R. C. Carton, who was responsible, as you may remember, for “The Rich Mrs. Repton,” which ran for three nights or so in New York last season. Perhaps the “American invasion” remembered that, for if nothing succeeds like success, certainly nothing fails like failure.

“Mr. Hopkinson,” however, would scarcely be possible for American consumption. Its hero is a cockney cad, who would hardly be intelligible in New York. New York has its own brand of cad--a highly accentuated kind--and should not be blamed for shirking the notion of fathoming the motives of the English style of blackguard. Then the part of _Hopkinson_ is played by Mr. James Welch, for whom it might have been built. I can imagine no other actor playing it, with the possible exception of Francis Wilson. The piece has simply hung onto the coat tails of little Mr. James Welch.

It is a farce filled with nasty types--all titled, of course. People who nauseate, if taken seriously, are used as the excuse for various farcical situations. _Hopkinson_ himself, who is a rich “bounder,” becomes engaged to a pretty society girl, and on the eve of the wedding she elopes. The “hero” then marries a woman whom he has jilted, and who, in her turn, has blackmailed him. Nearly all the characters in the piece are of the decadent order. They are the sort that occur seriously in “The Walls of Jericho,” at the Garrick Theater. They are, perhaps, better there, but quite unnecessary anywhere, and even improper.

“Mr. Hopkinson” has puzzled a good many people who saw it. They have wondered why it ran so long, and what there was in the piece that held it up, so to speak. Its success was simply due to James Welch, a quaint, freakish little actor--a sort of Louie Freear in trousers. Many plays of the same slight artistic value have succeeded because one actor has seemed to give a new wrinkle in comedy to the public. “Mr. Hopkinson” without James Welch would be a singularly risky proposition--worse than “Leah Kleschna” without Mrs. Fiske. Evidently the “American invasion” agreed with me--which makes it pleasant for me, don’t you think?

_FOR BOOK LOVERS_

_Archibald Lowery Sessions_

Literary preferences of well known people. How characters and
doings in real life are reflected in fiction. Robert Grant’s “The
Orchid,” William J. Locke’s “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.” The
twenty-five best selling books of the month

The public has passed a few pleasant summer hours in discussing, through the medium of various journals, what people like to read. Very interesting information comes to light regarding the sort of fiction preferred by different personalities, female chiefly, in days past and present. There seems to be no difficulty in getting hold of facts; indeed, it becomes apparently a sort of mania with some successful people to explain their own results by hunting up their early literary likes and dislikes. Perhaps stories have molded some of us more or less--in all conscience let us hope so--since we wander in such a wilderness of them.

But, really, the serious thing to be considered just now is not so much what we like to read as what we have to, if we want to be amused. For that which we write depends upon that which we are, of course, and we reap in fiction what we sow in society. Therefore, being rather commercial, rather frivolous and rather in search of new sensations, we get all our business, and small talk, and scandal back again, faithfully reproduced, from the book sellers’ counters, and must go all over it once more with as good a grace as may be.

If taste and idealism are to prevail over hard facts, somebody must see pretty strenuously to it, ere long. In the meantime we may as well settle down to a thoroughly American literary atmosphere, relieved here and there by bits of nebulous romancing which pass for idealistic production. We really don’t object. We love ourselves too well to want company. Anthony Trolloppe, and Miss Yonge, and Mrs. Oliphant, William Black and Thomas Hardy could introduce us to scores of pleasant English people, but their heroes and heroines belong to a different world altogether, and are laid on the shelf nowadays, probably never to be taken up by the mass of readers except as refreshing antiquities when American repetition finally palls on us. The best we can do for an occasional let-up is to hunt up odd people or places, now and then, and write them up. Let us hope the supply will remain inexhaustible, and that the batch of novels for this season may give us a view of life outside of prescribed limits.

* * * * *

“The Orchid,” by Robert Grant, Scribner’s, might be an authentic biography of a twentieth-century society woman, including a faithful delineation of her environment. It is not, strictly speaking, a study of character or society, but rather a photographic reproduction of people and conditions. In this fact is to be found the book’s only defect as a literary work. There is no weighing of motives or analysis of character; nothing but a plain recital of facts as they are found to exist.

Lydia Arnold, who marries for money, is divorced, and remarries for love, is cold-blooded and unscrupulous as many a social queen in real life; and her device for securing the means to support her position as the wife of her lover, revolting as it is to sensitive people, is not entirely unprecedented. It may be that the type to which she belongs is an extreme one, but the fact that she shocked her friends and associates indicates that they had not entirely outgrown their natural impulses rather than that her enormities are absolutely unknown.

We can understand the pessimism of Mrs. Andrew Cunningham when she exclaimed: “The only unpardonable sin in this country is to lose one’s money. Nothing else counts,” but the facts thus far do not justify it; there are some former leaders of society who may be supposed to wish that the generalization were true. They have not found it so.

* * * * *

“Wall Street” has a significance, not merely as the name of a famous thoroughfare, but as epitomizing the forces which produce the profoundest effects upon the industrial and even political and social life of America. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the activities which it represents should be resorted to for a supply of material for interesting stories.

The latest fiction on this subject is Edwin Lefevre’s book, “The Golden Flood,” published by McClure, Phillips & Co. The author, who has to his credit quite a list of short Wall Street stories, is thoroughly familiar with his ground, and possesses, besides, a genuine gift of story-telling. “The Golden Flood” may possibly be criticised as dealing with a somewhat impossible theme--an attempt to corner the gold supply; but the description of the manner in which it affects “the richest man in the world” is so absorbingly interesting that probabilities are forgotten. The mixture of innocence and guile in young Mr. Grinnell, assumed for the purpose of mystifying Mellen and Dawson, is a good bit of character drawing. But, though these men in the story were worked up to the point of believing that Grinnell practised alchemy, it is doubtful if their prototypes in real life could be so affected. The explanation, however, turns out to be a practical one, and it is so timed as to sustain the interest to the end.

* * * * *

Unquestionably the best short stories of American politics so far published are those by Elliott Flower in a volume entitled “Slaves of Success,” L. C. Page & Co. There are eight of them, a connected series in which John Wade and Ben Carroll are the chief actors.

Wade and Carroll represent two types of the political boss. The former is described as “politically unscrupulous, but personally honest”--a combination sometimes found; “Carroll, on the other hand, used politics for his pecuniary advantage;” he worked for his pocket all the time.

The two men personally had little love for each other, but as each controlled a part of the political machine, they were obliged to work together in order to produce results. Their methods of manipulating the machine, however, were not essentially different; if Wade had scruples about offering a man money, yet he would, for a political advantage, let him steal from others or from the State; and his willingness to practise blackmail to compass his own election to the Senate was what finally put an end to his career.

Carroll was disposed of at last also, but his downfall was due to a grossly covetous disposition.

The stories give a very convincing series of pictures of municipal and State politics; the incidents are all of them more or less familiar, but they are all of them extremely interesting, and the narrative is considerably enlivened by the introduction into it of a rather original character for a State legislature, Azro Craig, a man who is not only scrupulously honest, but has not the slightest hesitation in voting and speaking as he thinks.

* * * * *

A somewhat striking story, though one which, it is to be feared, is unlikely to attain a very wide popularity, is Evelyn Underhill’s “The Gray World,” Century Company. It is, to all intents and purposes, a study in spiritual development, the experiences of a soul in search of the beautiful, and disguised--unconsciously, of course--in minor respects, it is substantially indentical with Hawthorne’s “Artist of the Beautiful.”

There is in both the consciousness, vague at first, of a spiritual end to be achieved, and the struggle toward it, the depression and hopeless sense of defeat after each encounter with the material, and finally the successful climax of endeavor which sees, with a cheerful appreciation of true values, the obliteration of the physical means by which it has been reached. The spirit of the slum child after its plunge into the gray world, and its reincarnation in Willie Hopkinson, traveled the same road as that trod by Owen Warland. Both had to undergo this same pitying contempt on the part of their sensible friends and acquaintances, by whom they were mourned as men of promise who wasted their opportunities.

But if Owen Warland was isolated from human companionship, Willie Hopkinson had at least one comprehending friend in Hester Waring, who helped toward his final enlightenment. “She knew very well that he was one of her company; made for quiet journeyings, not for that frenzied rush to catch a hypothetical train, which is called the strenuous life.”

Because the company is so small, the story will probably be understood and enjoyed by but few; and that it is made the means of teaching a lesson, hard to learn, will be another reason for its lack of popularity. Nevertheless, it is a book that ought to be read.

What is essentially characteristic of George Barr McCutcheon’s stories, is his disregard of conventional methods in his selection of material for his plots. This is true of his Graustark stories--though some captious critics profess to see in them a similarity to Anthony Hope’s work--and the same quality is found in “The Day of the Dog.”

His latest book is “The Purple Parasol,” Dodd, Mead & Co., and it furnishes the same sort of more or less fantastic entertainment that distinguishes the author’s other stories. Few people, we imagine, would be likely to select, a purple parasol as a clew by means of which to track an eloping wife; it seems a little incongruous that a woman, in arranging an elopement, should include such an article among her effects. A purple parasol is not a necessity on such a trip, and, besides, it is apt to be conspicuous.

But Mrs. Wharton did take one, and, as luck would have it, Helen Dering also had one; therefore it is not to be wondered at that Sam Rossiter made the mistake that he did. Though his blunder was the cause of considerable unhappiness to him and some humiliation for Miss Dering, the explanations, when they came, were of the most satisfying kind.

The book is handsomely illustrated in colors by Harrison Fisher, and decorated by Charles B. Falls.

* * * * *

Alaska is a region of which much has been written in the last six or eight years, since the opening of the Klondike, but the literature on the subject, having been confined mostly to newspaper accounts of gold discoveries and the stories of Mr. Jack London and Mr. Rex E. Beach, has not been such as to impart a very wide variety of information upon important points.