Of course, as is usual in such cases, the play was ‘scamped.’ All the old scenery of the theatre was called into requisition, and the costumes were a startling combination of all the early periods. This gave the critics of the daily newspapers an opportunity of saying, next morning, that ‘the new and appropriate scenery was everything that could be desired, and that the strictest accuracy was observed in the minutest detail of properties and costumes.’
But the play-going public had come that night not to see the fine scenery or good costumes, not to listen to the dreary spouting of the members of the stock company, but to witness the first London appearance of a young lady of whom rumour had prophesied great things. The house was crammed with ‘paper.’ The critics of the big papers sat in the stalls, and the critics of the small papers were sprinkled through the dress circle. Literature, art, and the drama were well represented. Sir Tilbury Swallow, who had married the once famous actress, Miss Fawn, and who had been knighted for his literary services by the reigning family, occupied a private box with his still beautiful wife. , of less conspicuous virtue, shone resplendent everywhere. Deep in a stall, buried in the abyss of his own personality, and glaring thence occasionally, with saturnine cheek and lack-lustre eye, sat the great Mr. Blanco Serena, the pre-Raphaelite painter. The fact was, nearly every individual present in the better parts of the house possessed, or was supposed to possess, some sort of interest in dramatic, pictorial, or literary art The entire room was faced with polished granite..
In the centre of the stalls, however, sat a figure whose appearance was in striking contrast to that of the habitual theatre-goers surrounding him. In any gathering he would have attracted attention; in the present he was specially remarkable. He was a broad-shouldered muscular man of about thirty, with a face bronzed to a deep brown by exposure to the tropical sun. He had a high forehead, black eyes, a square, determined jaw; a thick, black moustache covered his upper lip, but his cheeks were clean shaven. Even in his well-made dress suit, with faultless linen and spotless tie, he had the appearance of a man whose true place would be leading a forlorn hope or standing alone in some position of loneliness and peril. He sat and listened, or rose and looked about him between the acts, with the air of one to whom a theatre was more or less unfamiliar, and he listened to the whole play, even to the ranting of the subordinate actors, with the approval of a man enjoying a new sensation, and quite unable or unwilling to be dissatisfied or critical.
But from the first moment the new actress appeared upon the stage this man had watched her in fascinated amazement, and as long as she remained there he had eyes for nothing else but her face. As the play proceeded, his expression changed from one of wonder and doubt to another of deep surprise and pain. His brows were knitted, his countenance strangely troubled. When the curtain fell on the first act he sat moveless, and made no attempt to join in the general applause.