White Ashes Part 44

"Yes," said the girl. "For now that I come to think of it, I remember that the conflagration hazard in the congested district is not a thing one can precisely calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. Isn't that so?"

Smith looked at her, turning in the taxi to do so. By the flash of a street lamp that they were pa.s.sing he could see she was smiling whimsically.

"Where did you get that?" he demanded.

"Don't you recall?" she rejoined. "Whether it's greatly to his credit or not, I can't judge, but certainly he himself hath said it."

"That's true," her companion admitted, with a laugh. "I remember now.

But how in the world did you happen to?"

"Should an humble apprentice--an ignorant pupil--forget the first pearl of wisdom that fell from the master's lips? It was the first speech of Mr. Richard Smith that I ever heard repeated--the first time I ever heard his name mentioned."

"If I'd had any idea it would have lived so long, I certainly would have tried to say something more eloquent," the other returned.

"However, I still stand by the sentiment. And incidentally, I don't mind saying that if Boston is going to burn, I hope it does so inside of the next two or three months--before Mr. Osgood puts the Guardian back with a half a million dollars' liability scattered about down town."

"Don't talk of so terrible a possibility as the burning of Boston,"

said the girl. "There has been one very great fire here. Surely there will never be another."

"Surely not," agreed Smith. "At least for the sake of your fellow citizens and my fellow underwriters I cordially hope not. But here we are, apparently."

The taxi was coming to a stop across the street from the Aquitaine, and in front of the theater where already a crowd was congregating. The avenue between the theater itself and the Common was filled with cabs and motor cars moving spasmodically about under the autocracy of a large mounted policeman whose voice easily defied the whirring motors.

In the raw northeast wind there was the unpleasant smell and oily smoke of burnt-out gasolene.

Smith and Helen, disembarking at the curb, managed to avoid the worst of the melee; and presently, when their coats were checked and out of the way, they reached their seats just as Christopher Sly began his opening speech. The prologue soon played itself through, and the house, now completely filled, burst audibly into speech, as though a long departed sense had been suddenly and miraculously restored. From all sides the swelling tide surged forth, and Helen listened for a moment before she herself spoke.

"You would certainly suppose that no one of them had been allowed to speak for the last five years, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"Oh, well," Smith answered, "perhaps every one of them has some one he's as glad to talk to as I am to you. Although, come to think of it, I hear several voices not possessed by my s.e.x, and I don't know but that I would really rather listen to you."

"But you won't have the opportunity," the girl rejoined. "No, this is your party, and you must be as agreeable and entertaining as you possibly can. You may begin by telling me all about the actors to-night. Why does the star choose to play such a part as old Sly? It surely isn't the star part, is it?"

"It is the tradition--or years ago it used to be. Very few actors do it now; in fact, this is the first time I've seen the star play it for years. It's well done, too, and I haven't seen it well done since old George Clark had his last curtain. This man is a good man."

"He is indeed. I noticed in the _Transcript_ he was English. Is she his wife? I gathered that she was."

"Yes. They've been playing together in London for several years now, and this is their first trip to America. I fancy that he is the real brains and ability of the combination, and her reputation seems mainly to rest on adding obedience and decorative embellishment to his effects. And she certainly is decorative, don't you think?"

"Yes--in a certain way. Tell me--do they always play Shakespeare? I was in London two years ago, but I don't recall hearing anything about them at that time. I should think I would if they'd been there."

"That's odd. I should surely have thought you'd have heard of them.

They've been well known over there for some years. I suppose, though, they play the provinces, like every one else. No, they don't play Shakespeare all the time, by any means; they couldn't do it and live."

"You mean that they couldn't get audiences? Why, some actors do.

Mantell, for instance--and Sothern and Marlowe. They seem to go on year after year, and they must be at least moderately successful, or they wouldn't keep it up."

"Mantell ought to; he is a real actor--of the traditional school, of course--but great, all the same. It has always seemed to me that his Lear was one of the fine performances of the stage to-day. But even Mantell has to travel halfway across the country every season; he couldn't stay in New York--no, nor in intellectual and appreciative Boston, either. And I doubt whether a man would fare much better trying to play nothing but Shakespeare in London. No, this man can play virtually anything; he made his first big hit--in recent years, that is--playing Maldonado in Pinero's 'Iris.'"

"But go back to Sothern and Marlowe. They go on Shakespearing, world without end."

"If you can call it Shakespeare. I have never been able to see much in their way of doing it. Marlowe does some things well, but I confess that to see her now as Juliet is too great a strain on me. As for Sothern, he's a good romantic actor, but not a Shakespearean one."

"They play this---'The Taming of the Shrew'--do they not? It seems to me they were here last spring."

"Quite likely. I think they try. One wet and miserable night I went to see. But remembering, as I did, the immortal Katherine of Rehan and the hardly less magnificent Petruchio of Skinner, I never should have gone. There was only one redeeming feature."

"What was that?"

"When the scene comes, watch how this man carries Katherine off.

That's one great test. See if he backs her up onto a bench; see if he guides her premeditated fall to the precise center of equilibrium of his shoulders; see if he staggers painfully off with his knees tottering, almost flapping beneath him. By heavens, I have seen Skinner abduct a one hundred and sixty pound Katherine with as little effort as if she had been a wicker basket full of eggsh.e.l.ls!"

"Is this dramatic criticism?" asked Helen, maliciously.

"Perhaps not of the academic brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and wrong. But here's the curtain going up."

The curtain rose on Signor Baptista's house, and for the next half hour farce comedy supreme held the audience in its grasp.

"Katherine is very good, don't you think?" queried Helen, when once more the inane wanderings of the orchestra began to compete with the conversation.

"Very good indeed; I like her rages."

"I have always been sorry that I never saw Ada Rehan; every one who ever saw her says just as you do that no one could equal her."

"I'm sure no one could. I have seen her sit with her hands in her lap and tears--genuine tears--streaming down her cheeks for very rage when Petruchio harries her in this act. Heavens! but she was in a fine fury! Do you know that the only objection I ever had to this play was that I grew sorry for Katherine--sorry to see her proud neck bent to any yoke, so to speak."

"She is made finally to like it, though."

"Yes; she is--in the play. But I never could more than half believe that she actually liked it, for all that. Oh, I've no doubt it's wrong to prefer ungoverned wrath to sane and controlled sobriety; but she was so magnificent in her savagery that it seemed a shame she had to be tamed at all. Like the lions and the other animals that they train to jump through hoops, you miss something, you know; some splendid essence has evaporated, and I for one am sorry to watch it go."

"They tell me," said the girl, demurely, "that under the proper conditions and auspices young ladies are secretly glad to be subjugated."

"I suppose they have it naturally--cradle of the race, and all that sort of thing. Just the same, I still continue to prefer Katherine in her first state."

"You speak of her as though she were an etching."

"She suggests one, in that gown she wore in the last act--or would, except for the color."

"From that rather supercilious remark I should gather that you do not admire colored etchings."

"Hybrid affairs, don't you think?"

But before this subject could be pursued, the play once more resumed the center of the stage.

It is the immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ign.o.ble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower cla.s.s; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any likeness to its real self.

Played rightly, however, Petruchio becomes not a brawler, not a kind of d.a.m.n-my-eyes bully and braggart, but a practical idealist, a man who, happening by chance upon a creature of stupendous undirected power, sets himself to the direction of that power toward nature's, if not humanity's, ends. At the first he cares nothing for Katherine save that the rumor of her fire and spirit has pleased his wild fancy. And never is there the faintest hint of the sentimentalist about him; his is never the softness of the lover, but rather the careful prudence of the utilitarian. Yet he unstintedly admires Katherine; this is somehow felt to be so by his rather pompous implication that he would hardly be taking all this trouble about the woman were she not the makings of a royal mate, fit even for his sky-wide vision and heart and humor.

Perhaps in Elizabethan days most of this was lost; possibly during the author's own life the play a.s.sumed rather the wild gayety and license of a farce, and all the comedy had to wait in abeyance for the years to bring it into its own. Undoubtedly very few, if any, of the auditors of Shakespeare's time felt the compunction to which Smith confessed when the pride of a proud woman was seen dragged at a man's chariot wheel. What the women of those days thought about it is not so certain, but probably it was pretty much what they think to-day.

Certainly Helen's expressed view was in approximate accordance with the presumably unexpressed opinion of Elizabethan ladies; and to this, in the intermission before the last act, Smith called her attention.