Wild Wings | Page 6

out of it. That's one sure thing."
Phil smiled at Tony as he spoke, and Dick, settling himself in the small
seat beside Ted, felt a small barbed dart of jealousy prick into him.
Tony and Phil were obviously exceedingly good friends. They had, he
knew, seen much of each other during the past four years, with only a
river between. Phil was Tony's own kind, college-trained, with a
certified line of good old New England ancestry behind him. Moreover,
he was a darned fine fellow--one of the best, in fact. In spite of that
hateful little jabbing dart, Dick 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