“I am so nervous!” he said. “Just think of Andrew Robb.”
The act was rather long and though there were no signs of impatience audible in the house, yet the skilled observer of audiences would not have been completely satisfied with the quality of the silence. They were silent, it is true, and their silence probably betokened attention, but it was not as yet the throbbing palpitating silence that shows absorption. As in all first acts, a good deal of preliminary work had to be got through; the lady in the blue dress had so to characterise herself in half a dozen lines, that even if she appeared—as she probably would—in the second act in a totally different colour, there could be no mistaking that it was she; the lady in green had to be Mrs. Ashworth and no other; all the coining of personality had to take place, so that it came hot and ringing from the genuine human mint. Also the lines of circumstance had to be laid down; and it should have been clear to the mind of the skilled what the reasonable outcome must be. Only it was not quite clear; there were still nebulous points, and on the fall of the curtain Hugh instantly put his finger on what seemed to be the weak point.
“Rather long, wasn’t it?” he said. “And weren’t there too many aimless bits of talk? Oh, they were well written; I thought the dialogue excellent, just like people, but one wants plot, and one wants point.”
Peggy glanced instantaneously at her sister.
“Ah, but what seems to be pointless in a first act may prove to have very sharp points!” she said. “One can’t tell. There certainly were a lot of excursions in the dialogue, and, of course, if they prove to lead nowhere, the play is hopeless. But one has to see.”
Edith moved so that she sat in the shadow of the curtain.
“Yes, the criterion of the first act is the last,” she said. “You can’t tell if it is a good first act till you have seen the end. Don’t you think so, Mr. Grainger? I quite agree, though, that it seemed long. It seemed frightfully long to me.”
Hugh shook his head.
“No, I think you ought to know or guess at the last act from the first,” he said—“or anyhow guess two or three possible ends. Here you can’t. Look at the hero! At least, I suppose Mr. Amherst is the hero. But he never knows his mind from one minute to another. He is utterly inconsistent.”
“But isn’t it possible that his weakness of purpose may be the point of the play?”