A later hour of the same day finds our heroine on her sofa, languid from the morning's emotions, and indulging in the luxury of not feeling at all well. Her world is crumbling. She cannot do without a slave, and Robert can no longer fill quite the old rôle. Clearly a matter for counsel with her physician and friend, Dr. Cornish (Mr. Dion Boucicault), who pleasantly diagnoses middle-age and prescribes a young adorer, than which no advice could be more nicely calculated to restore her lost feeling of queenly complacency. She sends for young Rex Cunningham (Mr. Martin Lewis), a morbid egoist, who nourishes a hopeless passion for her (and others), being well aware of the paramount claims of Robert. She contrives to let him know that she is free, and the youth, whose pet hobby is hopeless passion, at once sheers off in alarm. Caroline is learning—is beginning to understand the dark philosophy of Mr. Somerset Maugham. In despair she again turns to Robert. They become engaged and promptly begin quarrelling about their houses. He objects to her Futurist bathroom; she to his, which is so like a tube station that she would bathe in constant apprehension of the sudden appearance of a young man demanding tickets. Robert begins to assert his masculine rights to control these and sundry matters. She realises (oh, venerable gag of the cynics!) that the fetters which would unite their bodies would put a barrier between their souls. The engagement is by mutual consent declared off.
Realising, however, in Chapter III., that she needs Robert's devotion more than anything else, she conceives a plot. Dr. Cornish makes an opportune call, not this time as a doctor, but as a whole-hearted admirer. With just such an one for my husband, thinks Caroline, Robert could again assume his accustomed part of loyal friend and incense-bearer. She accordingly proposes. Appreciating the difficulty of directly refusing without discourtesy, he temporises and appears to fall in with her suggestion that he shall announce their engagement to Robert and her interfering friends, who are promptly telephoned for to hear an interesting statement. But Cornish proves himself a Wolff in sheep's clothing. Instead of announcing the engagement he asserts that he has just seen Stephen Ashley, the husband: a lie which obtains credence with the others because of the dead man's amiable habit of occasionally putting about a rumour of his decease. Caroline, with superb presence of mind, seeing a glorious way out of a dilemma, adopts the lie, contrives a more or less plausible explanation, and thus establishes the status quo ante—the grass widow with the faithful and contented adorer.
The play, whose only flaw was a certain rather upsetting ambiguity (whether accidental or designed I could not quite gather) in the last few sentences before the curtain fell, was interpreted with a very fine intelligence. Miss Irene Vanbrugh's superbly trained talent showed itself in an astonishing range of moods tethered in a plausible unity of conception. Mr. Boyne, who is just coming into his own, scored bull after bull. Perhaps he didn't make Oldham quite the Englishman that the author (I should say) designed, but rather an Irishman of that delightfully faint flavour which is so entirely attractive. Miss Lillah Macarthy, as Maude Fulton, a well-preserved bachelor in the most bizarre modern mode, also a dexterous liar and officious matchmaker, played with her head in her most accomplished manner and gave full value in the general scheme to a character which the author made a person when he might have been content with a peg. Mr. Dion Boucicault's physician was as bland a humbug as ever coined guineas in Mayfair. Mr. Martin Lewis, as a profoundly silly ass, played a difficult hand without fault. Miss Nina Sevening, as a consoler of handsome men in trouble, and Miss Florence Lloyd, as Caroline's maid, competently rounded off in subsidiary rôles the work of the principals.
Yes, undoubtedly a brilliant performance.
T.
Huntsman. "Give us a bit o' room! You was nearly in my pocket that time."
Flat-race Jockey. "Room? Why, I was nearly half a length behind you."