By this test there was a youthful audience gathered in the Stratford Theatre on a night of late November. Great things were said to be in store for that audience. This was the first night of the first play by Richard Latham, the poet.
Those who had ways of knowing something of the play said that it was “great!” Those who had no clue to what they were to see said that Richard Latham never allowed anything to go forth over his name that was unworthy of his growing fame. Obviously, when it was not a matter of a poem in a magazine, but a play on the boards, he would be no less exacting with himself. Consequently, there was a literary and dramatic treat awaiting these first nighters.
The orchestra was playing a Schumann overture to which it was competent; the Stratford, under a renowned management, was deficient in no department. In the stage box on the right sat ex-Governor Abercrombie; with him his magnificently handsome daughter in a golden gown and brilliant jewels; her husband-elect, his battered good looks still striking, and a dark young woman in white who made an excellent foil for the golden Helen, and who might have been George Lanbury’s sister.
Miss Carrington was in the next box, decidedly the elegant old-type gentlewoman in shining silvery silk, point lace, and a few fine diamonds. With her was her nephew, Christopher Carrington, tall and straight, his face youthfully clear, radiating happiness.
A girl as sweet as a flower in pale, rose-coloured crêpe, shrank somewhat into the shadow of Miss Carrington’s shoulder. It was hard for Anne to feel that Richard would not see her and lose something from his hour of triumph. But though Richard knew precisely where Anne sat, and had made Ted Wilberforce describe to him what she wore and how she looked, it did not disturb him. He always wanted Anne, never forgot that he was denied her; this was the established condition of his days; to-night the play must be the thing.
In the box next to the author’s were Mr. and Mrs. Berkley, Joan and Antony, with Peter back of them, ready to stand if his view were impeded, striving to act as though he had spent years going to first nights in theatre boxes, devoutly hoping that his unaccustomedness to plays was not perceptible to the eyes of the audience, which he imagined were upon him. Joan alone had a divided mind. She had been persuaded to leave her baby with Bibiana. Bibiana had been a devoted nurse to little Anne, but when it came to a baby like Barbara, provided you ever could come to a baby like Barbara, the risk of leaving her was too great to get it out of mind. Joan eagerly waited for the curtain to go up, but at the same time she was wondering if the nursery window was down.
The author’s box was the stage box on the left. The audience swayed in an effort to see Latham better, but Richard sat in the shadow of the drapery, additionally screened by a tall man whom those versed in the affairs of the town recognized as Edwin Wilberforce, the painter, Richard Latham’s devoted friend.
In the front of the author’s box, leaning absorbed over its edge, utterly unconscious that people noticed her and speculated on whom she was, why she was chosen to be with Latham on this first presentation of his play, sat a little girl. She was dark, thin, not precisely pretty, but there was a ceaseless play of expression upon her eager little face that placed her beyond mere childish prettiness. She was dressed in filmy white material that threatened to be destroyed by her rapid motions. There were many in the audience who had seen the exhibition of American painters in the last week of October and the first week of November, who recognized this child as the original of “The Mystic,” Wilberforce’s picture, the finest picture of the exhibition, the one most discussed, oftenest printed in sepia-tinted Sunday supplements.
Little Anne turned at last from her absorbed yet horrified contemplation of shoulder blades and spines in the parquette below, the elevation of the box giving her ample opportunity for her study of anatomy and ethics. She looked up at Ted Wilberforce with shocked eyes and spoke to him with bated breath; Mr. Latham was lucky to be blind, after all, she felt.
“Do you s’pose, do you really, truly s’pose, they all thought there wouldn’t be anybody here but just themselves?” little Anne asked.