“Romeo and Juliet” in a country theatre is not always an entrancing spectacle, and Lord Cecil only wondered how long he should stand it. He was rather surprised at the air of elegance perceptible, and still more surprised at the crowded state of the house, and he congratulated himself, as he looked round at the well-dressed and aristocratic audience, that he had come in evening dress, for he had at one time thought of retaining his morning clothes.
He settled himself in his box—he had arrived during the entr’acte—and looked at the programme.
“Juliet—Doris Marlowe.”
The name struck him at once as a pretty one, and he did not trouble to read the rest of the cast. Then the curtain drew up on the balcony scene, and, leaning forward carelessly, he looked at the stage and saw, there in the balcony—the girl for whom he had been seeking, the girl with the dark hair and blue eyes!
For a moment he thought he was dreaming, and the color rushed to his face. Then he looked again, “all his soul in his eyes,” and saw that he was not dreaming, but that it was in solemn truth she, herself.
If he had had any doubts her voice would have dispelled them. He would have remembered and recognized those musical tones if he had heard them fifty years hence instead of as many hours.
He was amazed, bewildered, engrossed, but not too engrossed to be aware that the “Juliet” he looked upon, Miss Doris Marlowe, was a great actress.
If she moved the rest of the vast audience, imagine how she moved him who had been thinking of her and longing to see her!
His heart beat wildly, the color came and went in his face; he was lost to everything but that bright, celestial, and yet purely human, being on the stage, then rendering the exquisite lines of her part; and it was not until he caught one or two curious glances directed at him that he drew back a little and tried to look simply interested like the rest.
The drop scene went down on the act, and he, to use his own phrase, “pulled himself together.”