Wild Wings | Page 6

acknowledged that. Ah well, there was more than a river between himself and Tony Holiday and there always would be. Who was he, nameless as he was, to enter the lists against Philip Lambert or any one else?
The car sped away, leaving Phil standing bareheaded in the sunshine, staring after it. The mocking silver lilt of Carlotta Cressy's laughter drifted back to him. He shrugged, jammed on his hat and strode off in the direction of the trolley car.
Dick Carson might just as well have spared himself the pain of jealousy. Phil had already forgotten Tony, was remembering only Carlotta, who would never deliberately do a mite of harm to the moon, would merely want to play with it at her fancy and leave it at her whim for somebody else to replace, if anybody cared to take the pains. And what was a moon more or less anyway?

CHAPTER II
WITH ROSALIND IN ARDEN
Of course it is understood that every graduating class rightfully asserts, and is backed up in its belief by doting and nobly partisan relatives and blindly devoted, hyperbolic friends, that its particular, unique and proper senior dramatics is the most glorious and unforgettable performance in all the histrionic annals of the college, a thing to make Will Shakespeare himself rise and applaud from his high and far off hills of Paradise.
Certainly Tony's class knew, past any qualms of doubt, and made no bones of proclaiming its conviction that there never had been such a wonderful "As You Like It" and that never, so long as the stars kept their seats in the heavens and senior classes produced Shakespeare--two practically synonymous conditions--would there ever be such another Rosalind as Tony Holiday, so fresh, so spontaneous, so happy in her acting, so bewitchingly winsome to behold, so boyish, yet so exquisitely feminine in her doublet and hose, so daring, so dainty, so full of wit and grace and sparkle, so tender, so merry, so natural, so all-in-all and utterly as Will himself would have liked his "right Rosalind" to be.
So the class maintained and so they chanted soon and late, in many keys, "with a hey and a ho and a hey nonino." And who so bold or malicious, or age cankered as to dispute the dictum? Is it not youth's privilege to fling enthusiasm and superlatives to the wind and to deal in glorious arrogance?
It must be admitted, however, in due justice, that the class that played "As You Like It" that year had some grounds on which to base its pretensions and vain-glory. For had not a great stage manager been present and applauded until his palms were purple and perspiration beaded his beak of a nose? Had he not, as the last curtain, descended, blown his nose, mopped his brow, exclaimed "God bless my soul!" three times in succession and demanded to be shown without delay into the presence of Rosalind?
As we know already, the great stage manager had not come over-willingly or over-hopefully to Northampton to see Tony Holiday play Rosalind. Indeed, when it had been first suggested that he do so, he had objected violently and remarked with conviction that he would "be da--er--blessed if he would." But he had come and he had been blessed involuntarily.
For he had seen something he had not expected to see--a real play, with real magic to it, such magic as all his cunning stage artifice, all the studied artistry of his fearfully and wonderfully salaried stellar attachments somehow missed achieving. He tried afterwards to explain to Carol Clay, his favorite star, just what the quality of the magic was, but somehow he could not get it into words. It wasn't exactly wordable perhaps. It was something that rendered negligible the occasionally creaking mechanism and crudeness of stage business and rendition; something compounded of dew and sun and wind, such as could only be found in a veritable Forest of Arden; something elusive, exquisite, iridescent; something he had supposed had vanished from the world about the time they put Pan out of business and stopped up the Pipes of Arcady. It was enchanting, elemental, genuine Elizabethan, had the spirit of Master Skylark himself in it. Maybe it was the spirit of youth itself, immortal youth, playing immortal youth's supreme play? Who knows or can lay finger upon the secret of the magic? The great stage manager did not and could not. He only knew that, in spite of himself, he had drunk deep for a moment of true elixir.
But as for Rosalind herself that was another matter. Max Hempel was entirely capable of analyzing his impressions there and correlating them with the cold hard business on which he had come. Even if the play had proved a greater bore than he had anticipated, the trip from Broadway to the