Alexanders Bridge | Page 8

on
in town; especially, he knew everything that was not printed in the
newspapers. The nephew of one of the standard Victorian novelists,
Mainhall bobbed about among the various literary cliques of London
and its outlying suburbs, careful to lose touch with none of them. He
had written a number of books himself; among them a "History of
Dancing," a "History of Costume," a "Key to Shakespeare's Sonnets," a
study of "The Poetry of Ernest Dowson," etc. Although Mainhall's
enthusiasm was often tiresome, and although he was often unable to
distinguish between facts and vivid figments of his imagination, his
imperturbable good nature overcame even the people whom he bored

most, so that they ended by becoming, in a reluctant manner, his
friends. In appearance, Mainhall was astonishingly like the
conventional stage-Englishman of American drama: tall and thin, with
high, hitching shoulders and a small head glistening with closely
brushed yellow hair. He spoke with an extreme Oxford accent, and
when he was talking well, his face sometimes wore the rapt expression
of a very emotional man listening to music. Mainhall liked Alexander
because he was an engineer. He had preconceived ideas about
everything, and his idea about Americans was that they should be
engineers or mechanics. He hated them when they presumed to be
anything else.
While they sat at dinner Mainhall acquainted Bartley with the fortunes
of his old friends in London, and as they left the table he proposed that
they should go to see Hugh MacConnell's new comedy, "Bog Lights."
"It's really quite the best thing MacConnell's done," he explained as
they got into a hansom. "It's tremendously well put on, too. Florence
Merrill and Cyril Henderson. But Hilda Burgoyne's the hit of the piece.
Hugh's written a delightful part for her, and she's quite inexpressible.
It's been on only two weeks, and I've been half a dozen times already. I
happen to have MacConnell's box for tonight or there'd be no chance of
our getting places. There's everything in seeing Hilda while she's fresh
in a part. She's apt to grow a bit stale after a time. The ones who have
any imagination do."
"Hilda Burgoyne!" Alexander exclaimed mildly. "Why, I haven't heard
of her for--years."
Mainhall laughed. "Then you can't have heard much at all, my dear
Alexander. It's only lately, since MacConnell and his set have got hold
of her, that she's come up. Myself, I always knew she had it in her. If
we had one real critic in London--but what can one expect? Do you
know, Alexander,"-- Mainhall looked with perplexity up into the top of
the hansom and rubbed his pink cheek with his gloved finger,--"do you
know, I sometimes think of taking to criticism seriously myself. In a
way, it would be a sacrifice; but, dear me, we do need some one."

Just then they drove up to the Duke of York's, so Alexander did not
commit himself, but followed Mainhall into the theatre. When they
entered the stage-box on the left the first act was well under way, the
scene being the interior of a cabin in the south of Ireland. As they sat
down, a burst of applause drew Alexander's attention to the stage. Miss
Burgoyne and her donkey were thrusting their heads in at the half door.
"After all," he reflected, "there's small probability of her recognizing
me. She doubtless hasn't thought of me for years." He felt the
enthusiasm of the house at once, and in a few moments he was caught
up by the current of MacConnell's irresistible comedy. The audience
had come forewarned, evidently, and whenever the ragged slip of a
donkey-girl ran upon the stage there was a deep murmur of approbation,
every one smiled and glowed, and Mainhall hitched his heavy chair a
little nearer the brass railing.
"You see," he murmured in Alexander's ear, as the curtain fell on the
first act, "one almost never sees a part like that done without smartness
or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish,--the Burgoynes have been
stage people for generations,--and she has the Irish voice. It's delightful
to hear it in a London theatre. That laugh, now, when she doubles over
at the hips--who ever heard it out of Galway? She saves her hand, too.
She's at her best in the second act. She's really MacConnell's poetic
motif, you see; makes the whole thing a fairy tale."
The second act opened before Philly Doyle's underground still, with
Peggy and her battered donkey come in to smuggle a load of potheen
across the bog, and to bring Philly word of what was doing in the world
without, and of what was happening along the roadsides and ditches
with the first gleam of fine weather. Alexander, annoyed by Mainhall's
sighs and exclamations, watched her with keen, half-skeptical