Part 32 (2/2)

They had to sit and watch a supremely skilful imitation of real life in the malign slums of London. They had to sit and listen to dialogue which burnt and blistered, which seared even the most callous heart, truths from the h.e.l.l of London forced into their ears, phrases which lashed their soft complacency like burning whips.

The act-drop came down in absolute silence after the last scene of the first act, a scene in an East-End sweater's den, so cruel and relentless in its realism that dainty women held handkerchiefs of filmy lace to their nostrils as if the very foul odour and miasma of the place might reach them.

There was a long sigh of relief as the horror was shut out. The dead, funereal silence was continued for a moment, and then everybody suddenly realized something.

The whole audience realized that they had been witnessing an artistic triumph that would always be historic in the annals of the stage.

Mary Marriott had done this thing. The fire of her incarnate pity and sorrow had played upon their heart-strings till all of them--wishful, greedy, worldly, sensual--were caught up into an extraordinary emotion of grat.i.tude and sympathy.

A burst of cheering, a thunder of applause absolutely without precedent, rang and echoed in the theatre. The evening pedestrians upon the pavements of Oxford Street heard it and halted in wonder before the facade of the theatre.

High up in the ”grid” the distant stage carpenters heard it and looked at each other in amazement. Up stone flights of stairs in far-away dressing-rooms members of the company heard it and gasped.

Mary Marriott and Aubrey Flood came before the curtain and bowed.

The full-handed thunder rose to a terrifying volume of sound, and the Duke of Paddington, forgetful of all else, leaned forward in his box and shouted with the rest.

The tears were falling down his cheeks, his voice was choked and hoa.r.s.e.

As she retired Mary Marriott looked at him and smiled a welcome!

There were only three acts.

In the course of the plot, simply but ingeniously construed, the Marquis of Wigan and Lady Augusta Decies were taken into the most awful and hopeless places of London. There was a third princ.i.p.al character, a cynical cicerone with a ruthless and bitter tongue, who explained everything to them and was the chorus of their progression.

In Doctor Davidson, a prominent socialistic leader, every one recognized a caricature of James Fabian Rose by himself, put before them to ram the message home!

The struggle in the woman's mind and heart was manifested with supreme art. Piece by piece the audience saw the old barriers of caste and prejudice crumbling away, until the culminating moment arrived when the young marquis must choose between the loss of her and the abandonment of all his life theories and the prejudices of race.

The end came swiftly and inevitably.

There was a great culminating scene, in which the girl appealed to her lover to give up almost everything--as she herself was about to do--for the cause of the people, for the cause of brotherhood and humanity. He hesitates and wavers. He is kindly and good-hearted, he wants her more than anything else, but in him caste and long training triumphs.

There is a final moment in which he confesses that he cannot do this thing.

With pain and anguish he renounces his love for her in favour of his order, the order to which she also belongs.

Even for her he cannot do it. He must remain as he has always been; he must say good-bye.

The last scene is the same as the first--it is Lady Augusta's drawing-room. Everything is over; they say farewell at the parting of the ways.

But she holds the little son by her first husband up to him.

”Good-bye, dear Charles!” she says. ”You and I go different ways for ever and a day. G.o.d bless you! But this little fellow, with the blood of our own cla.s.s in his veins, shall do what you cannot do. Good-bye!”

As the last curtain fell a tall and portly figure came into the Duke of Paddington's box.

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