Berenice

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

“

You may not care for the play,” Ellison said eagerly. “You are of the old world, and Isteinism to you will simply spell chaos and vulgarity. But the woman! well, you will see her! I don’t want to prejudice you by praises which you would certainly think extravagant! I will say nothing.”

Matravers smiled gravely as he took his seat in the box and looked out with some wonder at the ill-lit, half-empty theatre.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I am very much out of place here, yet do not imagine that I bring with me any personal bias whatever. I know nothing of the play, and Isteinism is merely a phrase to me. To-night I have no individuality. I am a critic.”

“So much depends,” Ellison remarked, “upon the point of view. I am afraid that you are the last man in the world to have any sympathy with the decadent.”

“I do not properly understand the use of the word ‘decadent,’” Matravers said. “But you need not be alarmed as to my attitude. Whatever my own gods may be, I am no slave to them. Isteinism has its devotees, and whatever has had humanity and force enough in it to attract a following must at least demand a respectful attention from the Press. And to-night I am the Press!”

“I am sorry,” Ellison remarked, glancing out into the gloomy well of the theatre with an impatient frown, “that there is so bad a house to-night. It is depressing to play seriously to a handful of people!”

“It will not affect my judgment,” Matravers said.

“It will affect her acting, though,” Ellison replied gloomily. “There are times when, even to us who know her strength, and are partial to her, she appears to act with difficulty,—to be encumbered with all the diffidence of the amateur. For a whole scene she will be little better than a stick. The change, when it comes, is like a sudden fire from Heaven. Something flashes into her face, she becomes inspired, she holds us breathless, hanging upon every word; it is then one realizes that she is a genius.”

“Let us hope,” Matravers said, “that some such moment may visit her to-night. One needs some compensation for a dinnerless evening, and such surroundings as these!”

He turned from the contemplation of the dreary, half-empty auditorium with a faint shudder. The theatre was an ancient and unpopular one. The hall-mark of failure and poverty was set alike upon the tawdry and faded hangings, the dust-eaten decorations and the rows of bare seats. It was a relief when the feeble overture came to an end, and the curtain was rung up. He settled himself down at once to a careful appreciation of the performance.

Matravers was not in any sense of the word a dramatic critic. He was a man of letters; amongst the elect he was reckoned a master in his art. He occupied a singular, in many respects a unique, position. But in matters dramatic, he confessed to an ignorance which was strictly actual and in no way assumed. His presence at the New Theatre on that night, which was to become for him a very memorable one, was purely a matter of chance and good nature. The greatest of London dailies had decided to grant a passing notice to the extraordinary series of plays, which in flightier journals had provoked something between the blankest wonderment and the most boisterous ridicule. Their critic was ill—Matravers, who had at first laughed at the idea, had consented after much pressure to take his place. He felt himself from the first confronted with a difficult task, yet he entered upon it with a certain grave seriousness, characteristic of the man, anxious to arrive at and to comprehend the true meaning of what in its first crude presentation to his senses seemed wholly devoid of anything pertaining to art....