Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

She was not three steps away, and from the trim leather leggings, above which her kilted skirt swirled, to the thick sweater and Tam that she wore, she seemed to Van Mater the most dashingly correct damsel he had ever seen. The foggy air had brought a delicious color to her cheeks and brightness to her eye which made her seem a very creature of the out-of-doors, and Van Mater stared, charmed and arrested.

“Evidently you don’t recognize me,” she suggested. “I was the third bridesmaid – the one in pink – the homely one, you know.”

She eyed him with a wicked satisfaction while the color rose to his face. He had a disagreeable recollection, since she identified herself so minutely, that he had rather passed that particular bridesmaid over with scant attention, amazing as it now seemed. Then he recovered himself, and with that gallant movement of the arm which seems the perfect expression of deference, removed his soft cap and bowed low, as he said:

“Of course – I remember you perfectly now, Miss – ah.”

He tried, as he took her extended hand, to mumble something unintelligible enough to pass for her name, looking at her with an admiration purposely open in the hope of distracting her attention, but the ruse was of no avail. She only smiled into his face with impish delight.

“You people from the East are so dreadfully disingenuous,” she complained. “Why not confess frankly that, so far as you are concerned, I belong to the ‘no name’ series?”

Her eyes were dancing, and suddenly Van Mater felt as if he had known her always – eons before he had known himself in his present incarnation.

“To think that I shouldn’t have recognized you in the pink gown,” he murmured, with well-feigned surprise. “And to think that I’m no more surprised than I am to have you suddenly bob up here in the wet, after your wanderings of perhaps a hundred lifetimes! I can’t seem to recall the date and planet upon which we last met,” he continued, apologetically, “but I fancy that we picked mushrooms in those old times – that the earth and air were all sopping, just as they are now.”

“You write books – you know you do!”

“Well – it’s a decent enough occupation!”

“Yes,” uncertainly. “Still, writers aren’t usually very sincere; they don’t mean what they say. They spin copy as a spider does a web!”

“Writers not sincere – don’t mean what they say!” he echoed. “Why, my dear young lady, you’re all wrong. They usually mean so much that they can’t begin to say it – and as for sincerity, they’re the sincerest people in the world!”

“That is, while it lasts!” he added to himself, but his listener, who had stooped to the ground and was now holding up a particularly large and luscious mushroom, was all unconscious of his reservation.

“Look out! You’re stepping on them!” she cried, excitedly, and for the next ten minutes they wandered about with eyes bent on the earth in fascinated absorption. Van Mater at last straightened up with such a thrill of satisfaction as he had not experienced since boyhood.

“My pail’s full,” he called, seating himself on one of the projecting bowlders. “So come and show me where to pick the beefsteaks.”

She pointed upward. Where the hill humped itself against the sky the blurred figure of a cow was visible. Van Mater tried again.

“You might come and rest,” he coaxed, pointing to another bowlder that cropped out in friendly nearness to his own. With a last lingering scrutiny of the ground about, she came, seating herself beside him. Then, with her chin resting on her hands, she surveyed him with a sort of boyish sang-froid.

“We’re right cozy for acquaintances of a half hour’s standing,” she remarked, at last. “But, then, I’ve heard about you for so long. You see, Corny told Beth, and she has – well – mentioned you to me.”

“Pooh – that’s nothing! I tell you, I’ve known you for centuries. I remember that when I heard of one of those theosophist fellows marrying a girl he’d known for a thousand years or so, I roared. Now I understand it!” (Very solemnly.)

She did not speak, and he began again with increased seriousness:

“Really, I’m in earnest, you know. I’ve the most curious sense of – well, of companionship with you – as if we’d known each other indefinitely, as if – ”

She interrupted rather hastily.

“Honestly?”

Tersely – “Upon my soul.”

She rose somewhat hurriedly. “It’s going to rain!”

“Never mind. I have a conundrum. Why is love like a mushroom?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Because it’s easily crushed, I suppose, and you’re never quite sure of it.”

“Wrong. Because it springs up in a night – that is, in an hour,” he answered, impressively.

The drops began to fall softly, swiftly, easily, as if they would never more be stanched.

“Come,” she said, but her cheeks were more richly colored than before.

“Isn’t this heavenly?” he murmured, as they vanished down the road in a blur of rain. She did not answer, but her eyes were shining.

SOME FEMININE STARS

By Alan Dale

Advertised personalities. Enormous sums squandered on theatrical impossibilities. Amelia Bingham’s pluck and restlessness. “Nancy Stair” rather tiresome. Lesser lights in star-dom.

Three thin, anæmic, bedraggled plays, each with a heralded, exultant feminine “star” skewered to its bloodless pulp, dropped into this metropolis just ahead of the reluctant crocus. Three highly advertised “personalities” tried to weather out a veritable emaciation of drama, and the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. Slowly but surely is knowledge being forced upon the deluded manager, and he is learning to appreciate the vital truth of the much battered Shakespearian quotation, “The play’s the thing.” No trumped-up interest in one particular puppet will take the place of the drama itself. This is a pity. It is easier to create a marionette than it is to construct a play.

The three highly advertised “personalities” that reached us at crocus time were owned and engineered by Miss Amelia Bingham, Miss Mary Mannering and Miss Virginia Harned. I mention them in the order in which they appeared, which is not necessarily that of superior merit. They came in at the fag end of a tired season, dragging a load of pitiful dramatic bones. Hope ran high, but fell in sheer despondency. In spite of the fact that the poet prefers to picture hope as springing, I think that in this case it may be better portrayed as running. There is a sensation of panic in the race.

Miss Bingham came to town with a very swollen “comedy-drama,” called “Mademoiselle Marni,” from the pen of a “monsoor,” programmed as Henri Dumay – said to be an American “monsoor” at that. This actress affects French plays for reasons that have never been explained, and that certainly do not appear. As a “star,” she is of course entitled to treat herself to any luxury that may seem to tempt her histrionic appetite, and the Gallic siren evidently appeals to her. It is not likely that there will be international complications, although the provocation must at times be keen.

“Mademoiselle Marni” was one of those impossible chromos that might have been designed for the mere purpose of giving one’s sense of humor a chance to ventilate itself. In the serious theater-goer – and one is bound to consider him – it awoke amazement. How is it that at rehearsal a dozen presumably sane people can “pass” such an effort, he must have asked himself? Why is it that in a theatrical venture that costs a great deal of money, there are no misgivings? The serious theater-goer is never able to answer these questions.

It is almost proverbial that the most hopeless sort of theatrical enterprise – if conventional – never languishes for lack of funds. Try and start a solid business scheme, in which you can calculate results in black and white, and the difficulties and discouragements will be almost insuperable. Endeavor to obtain money for an invention or innovation that has success written across it in luminous letters, and you will “strike a snag,” as the rude phrase goes, with marvelous celerity. But a bad play – one that to the unsophisticated theater-usher or to the manager’s scrubwoman must perforce appear as such – experiences no such fate. This is one of the marvels of theaterdom.

In the case of “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham herself must have spent an enormous sum that she would probably have hesitated to invest in some enterprise sane or possible. The play was a turgid coagulation of illogical episodes lacking in all plausibility. This particular actress is generally happy when she can select for herself a character that is beloved by all the masculine members of the cast. Apparently, she “sees” herself in this rôle. She likes to appear as the personification of all the virtues, self-sacrificing and otherwise, and this idiosyncrasy is, of course, frequently fatal to sustained interest. We do not care for these sensational paragons.

In “Mademoiselle Marni” Miss Bingham played the part of a very beautiful French actress, of whom everybody said: “Oh, what a woman!” (Perhaps the audience also echoed that phrase, but with quite a different significance.) She was exquisitely in love with Comte Raoul de Saverne, who was engaged to another, and was “ordered” away from her by the father of that other. This parent was a very wicked baron, and just as Mlle. Marni in an ecstasy of rage was about to strike him, somebody called out: “Do not hit him; he is your father.”

We discovered that Mlle. Marni was the wicked baron’s illegitimate child. As he had been saying extremely pretty things to her – for she was so bee-yoo-ti-ful! – you will readily perceive that fastidious people might find this “situation” what some critics love to call “unpleasant.” Wicked barons, viewed in the process of admiring their own daughters, are not exactly long-felt wants upon the New York stage. However, this episode was scarcely offensive, for it was so exuberantly silly that nobody could take it seriously.

Later on, Mlle. Marni gambled on the stock exchange, and made two million dollars in a few minutes, so that she could get even with the wicked baron, and force him to recall Raoul. In this act the actress wore black velvet, and looked every inch French – Bleecker Street French. It was the “big” scene, and was considered very strenuous by those acting in it. To those in the audience, it merely accentuated the cheap vulgarity of the play, that had no redeeming point, either literary or dramatic. It was, in fact, a forlorn hope.

Perhaps if Miss Amelia Bingham would not select her own plays, she would fare better. She is by no means lacking in histrionic ability. She has done many good things in her day. But the temptation of the self-made “star” to see nothing but her own part in the drama that she buys, is very acute. A satisfactory ensemble, a logical story, a set of plausible characters and a motive are all overlooked. Her own “personality” is her sole anxiety, and – well, it is not enough. Miss Bingham was assisted by Frederic de Belleville, Frazer Coulter and others less known to fortune and to fame, but “Mademoiselle Marni” was not accepted. It was staged “regardless,” but even that fact did not count in its favor. Miss Bingham’s pluck and recklessness were alone in evidence.

Scarcely more felicitous was Miss Mary Mannering with “Nancy Stair.” Miss Mannering is not as good an actress as Miss Bingham. She is one of the “be-stars-quickly.” A year or two more in some good company would have been of inestimable advantage to her, but the lower rungs of the ladder are not in great demand to-day. That ladder is top-heavy. The upper rungs are worn by the futile grasp of the too ambitious; the lower ones are neglected.

It was Paul M. Potter who tapped on the book cover of Elinor Macartney Lane’s novel, with his not very magic wand, and tried to coax forth a play. Exactly why he did this was not made clear, for the day of the book play is over, and there was nothing in “Nancy Stair” that overtopped the gently commonplace. Mr. Potter’s play was by no means lacking in interest, but we are exceedingly tired of the ubiquitous heroine of tawdry “romance” who does unsubtle things, in an unsubtle way, to help out certain unsubtle “complications.” If I mistake not, these very novels are beginning to pall, as such stupid, meaningless vaporings should do. One cannot resist the belief that one-half of them are written with an eye upon the gullible playwright, for a play means larger remuneration than any novel could ever hope to secure.

It is not necessary to rehearse the story of “Nancy Stair.” I can assume that you have read it, though if you are like me, you haven’t. I look upon Mr. Julius Cahn’s “Official Theatrical Guide” as rich and racy literature compared with these fatiguing attempts to invent impossible people, and drag them through a jungle of impossible happenings – simply because Mr. Anthony Hope, a few years ago, achieved success by similar means, which at that time had a semblance of novelty. I may be “prejudiced,” but then I have at least the courage of my own prejudices. In “Nancy Stair” Mr. Potter even seemed to belittle opportunities that might have raised his play from the dull level of conventionality.

One episode in which Nancy, afraid that her lover has murdered the Duke of Borthwicke, enters the presence of the corpse, and there forges a letter in the interests of Danvers, might have been made into something strongly emotional, creepy and Sarah Bernhardtian. This incident in itself was so striking, and it seemed to be so new – though I believe that Mr. Potter himself repudiates the notion that there can be anything new in the drama – that it was almost criminal to slight it. Nothing was made of it. It almost escaped attention. Instead, we got a crew of comic opera Scotchmen singing songs, and an absurd picture of Robert Burns, who was injected pell-mell into the “romance.” It was disheartening.

Those who had read the book complained bitterly of the “liberties” that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those “liberties” and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that confront you on the stage. And when you don’t read a book, the play made therefrom lacks lucidity, and you experience the need of a “key.” I should imagine that the dramatization of a novel killed its sale. Who, after viewing “Nancy Stair” as a play, would tackle it as a novel? Of course, when a book is dramatized after it has had a stupendous sale, the author cannot complain. He has no excuse for protesting. This is a somewhat interesting topic.

Miss Mannering coped with Nancy as she would cope with Camille or Juliet, or any character quite outside of her range of ability. In light comedy episodes, she is quite acceptable. She is a very pretty, graceful, distinguished young woman, but her “emotion” is absurd. Her dramatic fervor is such an exceedingly stereotyped affair that you can watch it in a detached mood. You can pursue your own thoughts while she is “fervoring,” and she will not interrupt them. Miss Mannering is emotional in a conventional stage way, and she knows a few tricks. But the subtlety that comes from experience, the quality that nothing but a long and arduous apprenticeship can produce, are leagues beyond her ken. It is a pity, but the “be-stars-quickly” all suffer in this identical way and there is no remedy.