the theatre was full,—crowded from floor to ceiling; the lights were turned low to give the stage full prominence,—and a large audience packed close in pit and gallery as well as in balcony and stalls, listened with or without interest, whichever way best suited their different temperaments and manner of breeding, to the well-worn famous soliloquy in hamlet—“to be or not to be.” it was the first night of a new rendering of shakespeare’s ever puzzling play,—the chief actor was a great actor, albeit not admitted as such by the petty cliques,—he had thought out the strange and complex character of the psychological dane for himself, with the result that even the listless, languid, generally impassive occupants of the stalls, many of whom had no doubt heard a hundred hamlets, were roused for once out of their chronic state of boredom into something like attention, as the familiar lines fell on their ears with a slow and meditative richness of accent not commonly heard on the modern stage. this new hamlet chose his attitudes well; instead of walking, or rather strutting about, as he uttered the soliloquy, he seated himself and for a moment seemed lost in silent thought;—then, without changing his position he began, his voice gathering deeper earnestness as the beauty and solemnity of the immortal lines became more pronounced and concentrated.
“to die—to sleep;—
to sleep!—perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
must give us pause. ...”
here there was a brief and impressive silence. in that short interval, and before the actor could resume his speech, a man entered the theatre with noiseless step, and seated himself in a vacant stall of the second row. a few heads were instinctively turned to look at him, but in the semi-gloom of the auditorium his features could scarcely be discerned, and hamlet’s sad rich voice again compelled attention.
“who would fardels bear,
to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
but that the dread of something after death,
the undiscovered country from whose bourne
no traveller returns, puzzles the will,
and makes us rather bear those ills we have
than fly to others that we know not of?
thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
and thus the native hue of resolution
is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
and enterprises of great pith and moment,
with this regard, their currents turn awry
and lose the name of action.”
the scene went on to the despairing interview with ophelia, which was throughout performed with such splendid force and feeling as to awaken a perfect hurricane of applause;—then the curtain went down, the lights went up, the orchestra recommenced, and again inquisitive eyes were turned towards the latest new-comer in the stalls who had made his quiet entrance in the very midst of the great philosophical soliloquy. he was immediately discovered to be a person well worth observing; and observed he was accordingly, though he seemed quite unaware of the attention he was attracting. yet he was singular-looking enough to excite a little curiosity even among modern fashionable londoners, who are accustomed to see all sorts of eccentric beings, both male and female, æsthetic and commonplace; and he was so distinctly separated from ordinary folk by his features and bearing, that the rather loud whisper of an irrepressible young american woman, “i’d give worlds to know who that man is!” was almost pardonable under the circumstances. his skin was dark as a mulatto’s,—yet smooth, and healthily coloured by the warm blood flushing through the olive tint,—his eyes seemed black, but could scarcely be seen on account of the extreme length and thickness of their dark lashes,—the fine, rather scornful curve of his short upper lip was partially hidden by a black moustache; and with all this blackness and darkness about his face his hair, of which he seemed to have an extraordinary profusion, was perfectly white. not merely a silvery white, but a white as pronounced as that of a bit of washed fleece or newly-fallen snow. in looking at him it was impossible to decide whether he was old or young,—because, though he carried no wrinkles or other defacing marks of time’s power to destroy, his features wore an impress of such stern and deeply-resolved thought as is seldom or never the heritage of those to whom youth still belongs. nevertheless, he seemed a long way off from being old,—so that, altogether, he was a puzzle to his neighbours in the stalls, as well as to certain fair women in the boxes, who levelled their opera-glasses at him with a pertinacity which might have made him uncomfortably self-conscious had he looked up. only he did not look up; he leaned back in his seat with a slightly listless air, studied his programme intently, and appeared half asleep, owing to the way in which his eyelids drooped, and the drowsy sweep of his lashes. the irrepressible american girl almost forgot hamlet, so absorbed was she in staring at him, in spite of the sotto-voce remonstrances of her decorous mother, who sat beside her,—and presently, as if aware of, or annoyed by, her scrutiny, he lifted his eyes, and looked full at her. with an instinctive movement she recoiled,—and her own eyes fell. never in all her giddy, thoughtless little life had she seen such fiery, brilliant, night-black orbs,—they made her feel uncomfortable,—gave her the “creeps,” as she afterwards declared;—she shivered, drawing her satin opera-wrap more closely about her, and stared at the stranger no more. he soon removed his piercing gaze from her to the stage, for the now great “play scene” of hamlet was in progress, and was from first to last a triumph for the actor chiefly concerned. at the next fall of the curtain, a fair dissipated-looking young fellow leaned over from the third row of stalls, and touched the white-haired individual lightly on the shoulder.
“my dear el-râmi! you here? at a theatre? why, i should never have thought you capable of indulging in such frivolity!”
“do you consider hamlet frivolous?” queried the other, rising from his seat to shake hands, and showing himself to be a man of medium height, though having such peculiar dignity of carriage as made him appear taller than he really was.
“well, no!”—and the young man yawned rather effusively, “to tell you the truth, i find him insufferably dull.”
“you do?” and the person addressed as el-râmi smiled slightly. “well,—naturally you go with the opinions of your age. you would no doubt prefer a burlesque?”
“frankly speaking, i should! and now i begin to think of it, i don’t know really why i came here. i had intended to look in at the empire—there’s a new ballet going on there—but a fellow at the club gave me this stall, said it was a ‘first-night,’ and all the rest of it—and so——”
“and so fate decided for you,” finished el-râmi sedately. “and instead of admiring the pretty ladies without proper clothing at the empire, you find yourself here, wondering why the deuce hamlet the dane could not find anything better to do than bother himself about his father’s ghost! exactly! but, being here, you are here for a purpose, my friend;” and he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “look!—over there—observe her well!—sits your future wife;” and he indicated, by the slightest possible nod, the american girl before alluded to. “yes,—the pretty creature in pink, with dark hair. you don’t know her? no, of course you don’t—but you will. she will be introduced to you to-night before you leave this theatre. don’t look so startled—there’s nothing miraculous about her, i assure you! she is merely miss chester, only daughter of jabez chester, the latest new york millionaire. a charmingly shallow, delightfully useless, but enormously wealthy little person!—you will propose to her within a month, and you will be accepted. a very good match for you, vaughan—all your debts paid, and everything set straight with certain jews. nothing could be better, really—and, remember,—i am the first to congratulate you!”
he spoke rapidly, with a smiling, easy air of conviction; his friend meanwhile stared at him in profound amazement and something of fear.
“by jove, el-râmi!”—he began nervously—“you know, this is a little too much of a good thing. it’s all very well to play prophet sometimes, but it can be overdone.”
“pardon!” and el-râmi turned to resume his seat. “the play begins again. insufferably dull as hamlet may be, we are bound to give him some slight measure of attention.”
vaughan forced a careless smile in response, and threw himself indolently back in his own stall, but he looked annoyed and puzzled. his eyes wandered from the back of el-râmi’s white head to the half-seen profile of the american heiress who had just been so coolly and convincingly pointed out to him as his future wife.
“i don’t know the girl from adam,”—he thought irritably, “and i don’t want to know her. in fact, i won’t know her. and if i won’t, why, i sha’n’t know her. will is everything, even according to el-râmi. the fellow’s always so confoundedly positive of his prophecies. i should like to confute him for once and prove him wrong.”
thus he mused, scarcely heeding the progress of shakespeare’s great tragedy, till, at the close of the scene of ophelia’s burial, he saw el-râmi rise and prepare to leave the auditorium. he at once rose himself.
“are you going?” he asked.
“yes;—i do not care for hamlet’s end, or for anybody’s end in this particular play. i don’t like the hasty and wholesale slaughter that concludes the piece. it is inartistic.”
“shakespeare inartistic?” queried vaughan, smiling.
“why, yes, sometimes. he was a man, not a god;—and no man’s work can be absolutely perfect. shakespeare had his faults like everybody else, and with his great genius he would have been the first to own them. it is only your little mediocrities who are never wrong. are you going also?”
“yes; i mean to damage your reputation as a prophet, and avoid the chance of an introduction to miss chester—for this evening, at any rate.”
he laughed as he spoke, but el-râmi said nothing. the two passed out of the stalls together into the lobby, where they had to wait a few minutes to get their hats and overcoats, the man in charge of the cloak-room having gone to cool his chronic thirst at the convenient “bar.” vaughan made use of the enforced delay to light his cigar.
“did you think it a good hamlet?” he asked his companion carelessly while thus occupied.
“excellent,” replied el-râmi. “the leading actor has immense talent, and thoroughly appreciates the subtlety of the part he has to play;—but his supporters are all sticks,—hence the scenes drag where he himself is not in them. that is the worst of the ‘star’ system,—a system which is perfectly ruinous to histrionic art. still—no matter how it is performed, hamlet is always interesting. curiously inconsistent, too, but impressive.”
“inconsistent? how?” asked vaughan, beginning to puff rings of smoke into the air, and to wonder impatiently how much longer the keeper of the cloak-room meant to stay absent from his post.
“oh, in many ways. perhaps the most glaring inconsistency of the whole conception comes out in the great soliloquy, ‘to be or not to be.’”
“really?” and vaughan became interested. “i thought that was considered one of the finest bits in the play.”
“so it is. i am not speaking of the lines themselves, which are magnificent, but of their connection with hamlet’s own character. why does he talk of a ‘bourne from whence no traveller returns,’ when he has, or thinks he has, proof positive of the return of his own father in spiritual form;—and it is just concerning that return that he makes all the pother? don’t you see inconsistency there?”
“of course,—but i never thought of it,” said vaughan, staring. “i don’t believe any one but yourself has ever thought of it. it is quite unaccountable. he certainly does say ‘no traveller returns,’—and he says it after he has seen the ghost too.”
“yes,” went on el-râmi, warming with his subject. “and he talks of the ‘dread of something after death,’ as if it were only a ‘dread,’ and not a fact;—whereas if he is to believe the spirit of his own father, which he declares is ‘an honest ghost,’ there is no possibility of doubt on the matter. does not the mournful phantom say—
“‘but that i am forbid
to tell the secrets of my prison-house,
i could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres;
thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
and each particular hair to stand on end. ...’?”
“by jove! i say, el-râmi, don’t look at me like that!” exclaimed vaughan uneasily, backing away from a too close proximity to the brilliant flashing eyes and absorbed face of his companion, who had recited the lines with extraordinary passion and solemnity.
el-râmi laughed.
“did i scare you? was i too much in earnest? i beg your pardon! true enough,—‘this eternal blazon must not be, to ears of flesh and blood!’ but, the ‘something after death’ was a peculiarly aggravating reality to that poor ghost, and hamlet knew that it was so when he spoke of it as a mere ‘dread.’ thus, as i say, he was inconsistent, or, rather, shakespeare did not argue the case logically.”
“you would make a capital actor,”—said vaughan, still gazing at him in astonishment. “why, you went on just now as if,—well, as if you meant it, you know.”
“so i did mean it,” replied el-râmi lightly—“for the moment! i always find hamlet a rather absorbing study; so will you, perhaps, when you are my age.”
“your age?” and vaughan shrugged his shoulders. “i wish i knew it! why, nobody knows it. you may be thirty or a hundred—who can tell?”
“or two hundred—or even three hundred?” queried el-râmi, with a touch of satire in his tone;—“why stint the measure of limitless time? but here comes our recalcitrant knave”—this, as the keeper of the cloak-room made his appearance from a side-door with a perfectly easy and unembarrassed air, as though he had done rather a fine thing than otherwise in keeping two gentlemen waiting his pleasure. “let us get our coats, and be well away before the decree of fate can be accomplished in making you the winner of the desirable chester prize. it is delightful to conquer fate—if one can!”
his black eyes flashed curiously, and vaughan paused in the act of throwing on his overcoat to look at him again in something of doubt and dread.
at that moment a gay voice exclaimed:
“why, here’s vaughan!—freddie vaughan—how lucky!” and a big handsome man of about two or three and thirty sauntered into the lobby from the theatre, followed by two ladies. “look here, vaughan, you’re just the fellow i wanted to see. we’ve left hamlet in the thick of his fight, because we’re going on to the somers’s ball,—will you come with us? and i say, vaughan, allow me to introduce to you my friends—mrs. jabez chester, miss idina chester—sir frederick vaughan.”
for one instant vaughan stood inert and stupefied; the next he remembered himself, and bowed mechanically. his presentation to the chesters was thus suddenly effected by his cousin, lord melthorpe, to whom he was indebted for many favours, and whom he could not afford to offend by any show of brusquerie. as soon as the necessary salutations were exchanged, however, he looked round vaguely, and in a sort of superstitious terror, for the man who had so surely prophesied this introduction. but el-râmi was gone. silently and without adieu he had departed, having seen his word fulfilled.
