Ten minutes later, after I had watched the Southerner dip out the dripping mass of laundry and put it through the wringer, we were conducted into the dark kitchen with its odor of cabbage, and ascended by a wabbly stairway to the loft, one half of which was given to Squeems for his abode. A greasy, sour odor of cooking permeated the room. It was lighted by two narrow panes of glass fitted to a makeshift frame, and covered by a curtain of imitation tapestry, with the design of a red Swiss house half buried amid gray bushes and a row of stiff, brown poplars. A cot bed stood in a corner with a bundle of warm quilts in confusion on it, for evidently our host had little skill in his housekeeping. A packing case, on end, with the open side towards us, had been skilfully transformed into book shelf, storage place and desk. A short row of text books was ranged on the packing case. Besides a kitchen chair there was no other seat, save a tin-covered trunk from which Squeem had to take a few dishes, an oil stove and a bread tin,—his dining apparatus,—before it could be utilized for a seat.
The following half hour was spent by Quarles and the Southerner in the pronunciation, the translation, and oratorical interpretation, not only of the chorus part of the play, which would be sung, but of the Blind Prophet’s thrilling lines, which Quarles recited before Squeem with even more spirit than he had to me, for, he explained, as we left the house:
“That poor fellow may be in the back-waters of college, but he’s got a really excellent mind. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him come near to leading his class in scholarship. I like him—that Squeem,” and then my blind companion quoted, with great impressiveness, “‘Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon his throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his ... originality.’”
Then the night of the Greek play arrived in which Quarles and his strange friend were to appear.
My wife and I sat in the gallery, in Assembly Hall, amongst the vast throng of spectators.
A dark, green curtain covered the stage. The white interior of the hall, with soaring ceiling panels, dotted with flaming rows of electric lights, the paintings on the gallery walls of presidents and benefactors of the college, the ushers in evening dress, fine, manly samples of youth, the well-dressed women in their opera costumes: all this was a glorious show to look upon, in itself. But when a group of gowned students took their places, in chairs, near the stage, and were followed by the orchestra, and the musical director,—then the programs fluttered, expectantly, even in the hands of the professors and invited guests from other colleges, who had come to enjoy the literary treat of the much-heralded play.
The leader, with a gentle tap on his rack, brought the musicians into position. A stroke of the wand in the air, and the instruments began with the introductory theme, a droning chant, with wild whisperings in the background, as the violins tried to paint for our senses the chatter of the fierce Fates that were to hound King Œdipus to his horrid death, in payment to their stern laws for his unconscious sin.
Then, as the haunting prelude paused on a wailing minor, as if to tell us that forever and forever man’s despair should continue—under the rule of the Fates, the lights in the hall were darkened, amidst a silence. There was a pause, and then, as the heavy curtains were drawn aside while the drums crashed forth a suggestion of impending strife, we looked upon a marvelous palace front in ancient Boeotian Thebes. Austere gloom, the fluted, pillared doorway with the brazen door bespoke, though the sky was tinted as if for a sunrise, or sunset. Then before our eyes, in that ancient world was unfolded the grim lesson that even unconscious sin must pay at last the uttermost farthing.
Quarles, transformed into a bearded, led prophet, spake his lines with heart-ringing pathos. But as for “Squeem” among the bearded men, who chanted their parrotish gossip, I could not distinguish him.
Heaps on heaps of color were massed on the stage, with a studied effort to inflame the imaginations of the audience. When it seemed that the finest effects of grouping and harmonies of color had been obtained, other actors would suddenly appear and make the splendor of the setting pass belief.