BY
JOHN MASEFIELD
Author of "The Everlasting Mercy," "The Widow
in the Bye Street," "The Daffodil Fields,"
"Captain Margaret," etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
TO
MY WIFE
MULTITUDE AND SOLITUDE
What play do they play? Some confounded play or other.
Let's send for some cards. I ne'er saw a play had anything in't.
A True Widow.
Roger Naldrett, the writer, sat in his boxwith a friend, watching the second act of histragedy. The first act had been receivedcoldly; the cast was nervous, and the house, critical asa first-night audience always is, had begun to fidget.He watched his failure without much emotion. He hadlived through his excitement in the days before theproduction; but the moment interested him, it was sounreal. The play was not like the play which he hadwatched so often in rehearsal. Unless some speechjarred upon him, as failing to help the action, he foundthat he could not judge of it in detail. In the manuscript,and in the rehearsals, he had tested it only in detail.Now he saw it as a whole, as something new, asa rough and strong idea, of which he could makenothing. Shut up there in the box, away from the emotionsof the house, he felt himself removed from time, theonly person in the theatre under no compulsion toattend. He sat far back in the box, so that his friend,John O'Neill, might have a better view of the stage.He was conscious of the blackness of John's head againstthe stage lights, and of a gleam of gilt on the oppositeboxes. Sometimes when, at irregular intervals, he sawsome of the cast, on the far left of the stage, he feltdisgust at the crudity of the grease paint smeared on theirfaces.
Sometimes an actor hesitated for his lines, forgot afew words, or improvised others. He drew in hisbreath sharply, whenever this happened, it was like afalse note in music; but he knew that he was the onlyperson there who felt the discord. He found himselfadmiring the address of these actors; they had nerve;they carried on the play, though their memories were awhirl of old tags all jumbled together. It was whenthere was a pause in the action, through delay at anentrance, that the harrow drove over his soul; for in thesilence, at the end of it, when those who wanted tocough had coughed, there sometimes came a singlehalf-hearted clap, more damning than a hiss. At those timeshe longed to be on the stage crying out to the actors howmuch he admired them. He was shut up in his box,under cover, but they were facing the music. Theywere playing to a cold wall of shirt-fronts, not yethostile, but puzzled by the new mind, and vexed by it.They might rouse pointed indifference in the shirt-fronts,they might rouse fury, they would certainly winno praise. Roger felt pity for them. He wished thatthe end would come swiftly, that he might be decentlydamned and allowed to go.
Towards the middle of the act the leading lady madea pitiful brave effort to save the play. She played withher whole strength, in a way which made his spirit riseup to bless her. Her effort kept the house for amoment. That dim array of heads and shirt-fronts becamepolite, attentive; a little glimmer of a thrill began topass from the stalls over the house, as the communicablemagic grew stronger. Then the second lady, who, asRoger knew, had been feverish at the dress rehearsal,struggled for a moment with a sore