"Miss Cleves said she couldn't make her exit on that line."
"Where is she? Tell her to come back and try it."
The battle was won without a shot being fired. Harry, almost literally knocked flat by the surprise and relief of the moment, sank into the nearest seat. Bachmann got up and lumbered off toward the stage; Harry leaned his head against the back of his chair and gave himself over to an outburst of internal mirth, at his own expense.
He raised his eyes again to the stage. Curiously enough, the first person his glance fell on was Miss Bensel, with her trim little figure and humorously plain face. It seemed to him she was smiling out at him, with a mocking little smile that drew down the corners of her mouth.
Everybody knows what happened to the play "Chances"; its history is a page of the American stage. Much has been said and written about it; it has been called a landmark, a stepping-stone, a first ditch, a guiding light, a moral victory, a glorious failure, a promising defeat and various similar things so often that people are tired of the very name of it. What actually happened to it can be told in a few words; it was well received, but not largely attended. It was withdrawn near the end of its fourth week.
The critics were unanimous in praising it. Its dialogue was hailed as the ideal dialogue of contemporary comedy. The characterization, the humor of the lines, the universality of the theme, its wonderfully logical and convincing development all received their due meed of praise. It was compared to the comedies of Clyde Fitch, of Oscar Wilde, of Sheridan, and of Congreve—yes, actually Congreve! Harry smiled when he read that, and renewed his resolution never to let the comparison apply in a personal way. But to be seriously compared to Congreve, not Congreve the man but Congreve the author—! The thought made him fairly dizzy.
But what took the eye of the critics, the best and soberest of them, that is, more than anything else was the mixture of the humorous and serious shown in the choice of the theme and its development. "To treat the element of humor," wrote one critic, "not as a colored glass through which to look at all life, as in farce, nor as a refreshing contrast to its serious side, as in the 'comic relief' of a host of plays from the Elizabethans down to the present day, but as part and parcel of the very essence of life itself, co-existent with its solemnity, inseparable from its difficulty, companion and friend to its unsolvable mystery; to put people in such a mood that they can laugh at the greatest things in their own lives, neither bitterly nor to give themselves Dutch courage, but for the pure, life giving, illuminating exaltation of laughing—this, we take it, is the whole essence and mission of comedy. And this—we say it boldly and in no spirit of empty flattery—is the type of comedy shown in Mr. Wimbourne's play."
It is not hard to see how such words should bring joy to the heart of Harry and smiles of admiration and respect to the faces of his friends, from Leo Bachmann right up to Aunt Selina. But they did not bring people to the theater. For the first three performances the attendance was satisfactory; then it began steadily to fall off and by the end of the first week it became merely a question of how long it could survive.
Leo Bachmann was, curiously enough, the least affected of all the theater crowd by the poor success of the work. He viewed the discouraging box office reports with an untroubled smile, and cheerfully began rehearsals for a new play. "Never you mind, my boy," he told Harry, "I knew I should not make money off your play. I told you so in the beginning. Never you mind! That is not your fault. It's just the way things go. I have only one word to say to you, and that is—write!" Even in his discouragement Harry could not help feeling that Mr. Bachmann was strangely calm and cheerful.