Part 6

At the present time, then, the theatre in the schools means a variety of things. It means first and foremost, as suggested by the latest college entrance requirements, the study of modern plays, side by side with the classics. It means also the improvement of English speech, through the interpretation and the reading aloud of the text. It means a study of the new art of the theatre such as the present book suggests. It means often the presentation of plays before outside audiences and the consequent strengthening of the ties that should exist between the school and the community. It may mean the co-operation of several departments of the school in the production; and, in this case, it usually results in the establishment of some kind of a workshop. And finally, in certain favored schools, it means the erection of model Little Theatres. It seems fair to suppose that this newly aroused interest in modern drama and in modern methods of production in the schools will have far-reaching results.

BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN[23]

By BOOTH TARKINGTON

[Footnote 23: Copyright, 1912, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright in Great Britain. All acting rights both amateur and professional reserved by the author.]

Since the days of Edward Eggleston, Indiana has been accumulating literary traditions until at the present time it rivals New England in the variety of its literary associations. Newton Booth Tarkington, born in Indianapolis in 1869, and continuing to make his home there still in the old family house on North Pennsylvania Street, is one of the most distinguished of the Hoosier writers. As a lad of eleven he began his friendship with James Whitcomb Riley, then a neighbor. "He acknowledges (shaking his head in reflection at the depth of it) that the spirit of Riley has exercised over him a strong, if often unconsciously felt, influence all his life." The delicious stories of Penrod and of the William Sylvanus Baxter of _Seventeen_ that Booth Tarkington has told for the unalloyed delight of old and young are said to reproduce quite accurately the author's recollection of his own boyhood pranks and associations in the Middle-Western city of his birth. Tarkington went first to Phillips Exeter Academy and later to Purdue University at Lafayette, Indiana, before he became a member of the class of '93 at Princeton. His popularity and his good fellowship are still cherished memories on the campus.

It seems that he was infallibly associated in the undergraduate mind with the singing of _Danny Deever_; so much so, that whenever he appeared on the steps at Nassau Hall there would be an immediate demand for his speciality, a demand that often caused him to retire as inconspicuously as possible from the crowd. These old days are commemorated in the following verses, a copy of which, framed, hangs on the walls of the Princeton Club in New York.

RONDEL

"The same old Tark--just watch him shy Like hunted thing, and hide, if let, Away behind his cigarette, When 'Danny Deever' is the cry.

Keep up the call and by and by We'll make him sing, and find he's yet The same old Tark.

No 'Author Leonid' we spy In him, no cultured ladies' pet: He just drops in, and so we get The good old song, and gently guy The same old Tark--just watch him shy!"

No biography of Booth Tarkington, no matter how brief, should omit to mention that he was elected to the Indiana State Legislature and sat for a time in that body, where he accumulated, no doubt, some data on the subject of Indiana politics that he may afterwards have put to literary use.

He has found the subject for most of his novels and plays[24] in contemporary American life, which he treats unsentimentally, spiritedly, and vigorously. _Beauty and the Jacobin_, like his famous and fascinating tale, _Monsieur Beaucaire_, is exceptional among his works in deserting the modern American scene for an Eighteenth Century situation. The story and the play are likely, for this reason, to be compared. The tone of _Monsieur Beaucaire_ is more urbane, more whimsical, more romantic than the mood of _Beauty and the Jacobin_ which "breaks with the pretty, pretty kind of thing. There is a new quality in the texture of the writing.... The plot here springs directly from character, and the action of the piece is inevitable. _Beauty and the Jacobin_ gives evidence of being the first conscious and determined, as it is the first consistent, effort of the author to leave the surface and work from the inside of his characters out.... The whole of the little drama is scintillant with wit, delicate and at times brilliant and somewhat Shavian, which flashes out poignantly against the sombreness of its background."[25]

[Footnote 24: For a bibliography of his works through the year 1913, see Asa Don Dickinson, _Booth Tarkington, a Gentleman from Indiana_, Garden City, no date.]

[Footnote 25: Robert Cortes Holliday, _Booth Tarkington_, Garden City and New York, 1918, pp. 155-156; p. 157.]

_Beauty and the Jacobin_ was published in 1912 and has had at least one performance on the professional stage. On November 12, 1912, it was played by members of the company then acting in _Fanny's First Play_, at a matinee at the Comedy Theatre, in New York. It has always been a favorite with amateurs and quite recently was performed in St. Louis by one of the dramatic clubs of that city.

BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN

_Our scene is in a rusty lodging-house of the Lower Town, Boulogne-sur-Mer, and the time, the early twilight of dark November in northern France. This particular November is dark indeed, for it is November of the year 1793, Frimaire of the Terror. The garret room disclosed to us, like the evening lowering outside its one window, and like the times, is mysterious, obscure, smoked with perplexing shadows; these flying and staggering to echo the shiftings of a young man writing at a desk by the light of a candle._

_We are just under the eaves here; the dim ceiling slants; and there are two doors: that in the rear wall is closed; the other, upon our right, and evidently leading to an inner chamber, we find ajar. The furniture of this mean apartment is chipped, faded, insecure, yet still possessed of a haggard elegance; shamed odds and ends, cheaply acquired by the proprietor of the lodging-house, no doubt at an auction of the confiscated leavings of some emigrant noble. The single window, square and mustily curtained, is so small that it cannot be imagined to admit much light on the brightest of days; however, it might afford a lodger a limited view of the houses opposite and the street below. In fact, as our eyes grow accustomed to the obscurity we discover it serving this very purpose at the present moment, for a tall woman stands close by in the shadow, peering between the curtains with the distrustfulness of a picket thrown far out into an enemy's country. Her coarse blouse and skirt, new and as ill-fitting as sacks, her shop-woman's bonnet and cheap veil, and her rough shoes are naively denied by her sensitive, pale hands and the high-bred and in-bred face, long profoundly marked by loss and fear, and now very white, very watchful. She is not more than forty, but her hair, glimpsed beneath the clumsy bonnet, shows much grayer than need be at that age. This is ANNE DE LASEYNE_.

_The intent young man at the desk, easily recognizable as her brother, fair and of a singular physical delicacy, is a finely completed product of his race; one would pronounce him gentle in each sense of the word. His costume rivals his sister's in the innocence of its attempt at disguise: he wears a carefully soiled carter's frock, rough new gaiters, and a pair of dangerously aristocratic shoes, which are not too dusty to conceal the fact that they are of excellent make and lately sported buckles. A tousled cap of rabbit-skin, exhibiting a tricolor cockade, crowns these anomalies, though not at present his thin, blond curls, for it has been tossed upon a dressing-table which stands against the wall to the left. He is younger than MADAME DE LASEYNE, probably by more than ten years; and, though his features so strikingly resemble hers, they are free from the permanent impress of pain which she bears like a mourning-badge upon her own._

_He is expending a feverish attention upon his task, but with patently unsatisfactory results; for he whispers and mutters to himself, bites the feather of his pen, shakes his head forebodingly, and again and again crumples a written sheet and throws it upon the floor. Whenever this happens ANNE DE LASEYNE casts a white glance at him over her shoulder--his desk is in the center of the room--her anxiety is visibly increased, and the temptation to speak less and less easily controlled, until at last she gives way to it. Her voice is low and hurried._

ANNE. Louis, it is growing dark very fast.

LOUIS. I had not observed it, my sister. [_He lights a second candle from the first; then, pen in mouth, scratches at his writing with a little knife._]

ANNE. People are still crowding in front of the wine-shop across the street.

LOUIS [_smiling with one side of his mouth_]. Naturally. Reading the list of the proscribed that came at noon. Also waiting, amiable vultures, for the next bulletin from Paris. It will give the names of those guillotined day before yesterday. For a good bet: our own names [_he nods toward the other room_]--yes, hers, too--are all three in the former. As for the latter--well, they can't get us in that now.

ANNE [_eagerly_]. Then you are certain that we are safe?

LOUIS. I am certain only that they cannot murder us day before yesterday. [_As he bends his head to his writing a woman comes in languidly through the open door, bearing an armful of garments, among which one catches the gleam of fine silk, glimpses of lace and rich furs--a disordered burden which she dumps pell-mell into a large portmanteau lying open upon a chair near the desk. This new-comer is of a startling gold-and-ivory beauty; a beauty quite literally striking, for at the very first glance the whole force of it hits the beholder like a snowball in the eye; a beauty so obvious, so completed, so rounded, that it is painful; a beauty to rivet the unenvious stare of women, but from the full blast of which either king or man-peasant would stagger away to the confessional. The egregious luster of it is not breathed upon even by its overspreading of sullen revolt, as its possessor carelessly arranges the garments in the portmanteau. She wears a dress all gray, of a coarse texture, but exquisitely fitted to her; nothing could possibly be plainer, or of a more revealing simplicity. She might be twenty-two; at least it is certain that she is not thirty. At her coming, LOUIS looks up with a sigh of poignant wistfulness, evidently a habit; for as he leans back to watch her he sighs again. She does not so much as glance at him, but speaks absently to MADAME DE LASEYNE. Her voice is superb, as it should be; deep and musical, with a faint, silvery huskiness._]

ELOISE [_the new-comer_]. Is he still there?

ANNE. I lost sight of him in the crowd. I think he has gone. If only he does not come back!

LOUIS [_with grim conviction_]. He will.

ANNE. I am trying to hope not.

ELOISE. I have told you from the first that you overestimate his importance. Haven't I said it often enough?

ANNE [_under her breath_]. You have!

ELOISE [_coldly_]. He will not harm you.

ANNE [_looking out of the window_]. More people down there; they are running to the wine-shop.

LOUIS. Gentle idlers! [_The sound of triumphant shouting comes up from the street below._] That means that the list of the guillotined has arrived from Paris.

ANNE [_shivering_]. They are posting it in the wine-shop window. [_The shouting increases suddenly to a roar of hilarity, in which the shrilling of women mingles._]

LOUIS. Ah! One remarks that the list is a long one. The good people are well satisfied with it. [_To ELOISE_] My cousin, in this amiable populace which you champion, do you never scent something of--well, something of the graveyard scavenger? [_She offers the response of an unmoved glance in his direction, and slowly goes out by the door at which she entered. Louis sighs again and returns to his scribbling._]

ANNE [_nervously_]. Haven't you finished, Louis?

LOUIS [_indicating the floor strewn with crumpled slips of paper_]. A dozen.

ANNE. Not good enough?

LOUIS [_with a rueful smile_]. I have lived to discover that among all the disadvantages of being a Peer of France the most dangerous is that one is so poor a forger. Truly, however, our parents are not to be blamed for neglecting to have me instructed in this art; evidently they perceived I had no talent for it. [_Lifting a sheet from the desk._] Oh, vile! I am not even an amateur. [_He leans back, tapping the paper thoughtfully with his pen._] Do you suppose the Fates took all the trouble to make the Revolution simply to teach me that I have no skill in forgery? Listen. [_He reads what he has written._] "Committee of Public Safety. In the name of the Republic. To all Officers, Civil and Military: Permit the Citizen Balsage"--that's myself, remember--"and the Citizeness Virginie Balsage, his sister"--that's you, Anne--"and the Citizeness Marie Balsage, his second sister"--that is Eloise, you understand--"to embark in the vessel _Jeune Pierrette_ from the port of Boulogne for Barcelona. Signed: Billaud Varennes. Carnot. Robespierre." Execrable! [_He tears up the paper, scattering the fragments on the floor._] I am not even sure it is the proper form. Ah, that Dossonville!

ANNE. But Dossonville helped us--

LOUIS. At a price. Dossonville! An individual of marked attainment, not only in penmanship, but in the art of plausibility. Before I paid him he swore that the passports he forged for us would take us not only out of Paris, but out of the country.

ANNE. Are you sure we must have a separate permit to embark?

LOUIS. The captain of the _Jeune Pierrette_ sent one of his sailors to tell me. There is a new Commissioner from the National Committee, he said, and a special order was issued this morning. They have an officer and a file of the National Guard on the quay to see that the order is obeyed.

ANNE. But we bought passports in Paris. Why can't we here?

LOUIS. Send out a street-crier for an accomplished forger? My poor Anne! We can only hope that the lieutenant on the quay may be drunk when he examines my dreadful "permit." Pray a great thirst upon him, my sister! [_He looks at a watch which he draws from beneath his frock._] Four o'clock. At five the tide in the river is poised at its highest; then it must run out, and the _Jeune Pierrette_ with it. We have an hour. I return to my crime. [_He takes a fresh sheet of paper and begins to write._]

ANNE [_urgently_]. Hurry, Louis!

LOUIS. Watch for Master Spy.

ANNE. I cannot see him. [_There is silence for a time, broken only by the nervous scratching of Louis's pen._]

LOUIS [_at work_]. Still you don't see him?

ANNE. No. The people are dispersing. They seem in a good humor.

LOUIS. Ah, if they knew--[_He breaks off, examines his latest effort attentively, and finds it unsatisfactory, as is evinced by the noiseless whistle of disgust to which his lips form themselves. He discards the sheet and begins another, speaking rather absently as he does so._] I suppose I have the distinction to be one of the most hated men in our country, now that all the decent people have left it--so many by a road something of the shortest! Yes, these merry gentlemen below there would be still merrier if they knew they had within their reach a forfeited "Emigrant." I wonder how long it would take them to climb the breakneck flights to our door. Lord, there'd be a race for it! Prize-money, too, I fancy, for the first with his bludgeon.

ANNE [_lamentably_]. Louis, Louis! Why didn't you lie safe in England?

LOUIS [_smiling_]. Anne, Anne! I had to come back for a good sister of mine.

ANNE. But I could have escaped alone.

LOUIS. That is it--"alone"! [_He lowers his voice as he glances toward the open door._] For she would not have moved at all if I hadn't come to bully her into it. A fanatic, a fanatic!

ANNE [_brusquely_]. She is a fool. Therefore be patient with her.

LOUIS [_warningly_]. Hush.

ELOISE [_in a loud, careless tone from the other room_]. Oh, I heard you! What does it matter? [_She returns, carrying a handsome skirt and bodice of brocade and a woman's long mantle of light-green cloth, hooded and lined with fur. She drops them into the portmanteau and closes it._] There! I've finished your packing for you.

LOUIS [_rising_]. My cousin, I regret that we could not provide servants for this flight. [_Bowing formally._] I regret that we have been compelled to ask you to do a share of what is necessary.

ELOISE [_turning to go out again_]. That all?

LOUIS [_lifting the portmanteau_]. I fear--

ELOISE [_with assumed fatigue_]. Yes, you usually do. What now?

LOUIS [_flushing painfully_]. The portmanteau is too heavy. [_He returns to the desk, sits, and busies himself with his writing, keeping his grieved face from her view._]

ELOISE. You mean you're too weak to carry it?

LOUIS. Suppose at the last moment it becomes necessary to hasten exceedingly--

ELOISE. You mean, suppose you had to run, you'd throw away the portmanteau. [_Contemptuously._] Oh, I don't doubt you'd do it!

LOUIS [_forcing himself to look up at her cheerfully_]. I dislike to leave my baggage upon the field, but in case of a rout it might be a temptation--if it were an impediment.

ANNE [_peremptorily_]. Don't waste time. Lighten the portmanteau.

LOUIS. You may take out everything of mine.

ELOISE. There's nothing of yours in it except your cloak. You don't suppose--

ANNE. Take out that heavy brocade of mine.

ELOISE. Thank you for not wishing to take out my fur-lined cloak and freezing me at sea!

LOUIS [_gently_]. Take out both the cloak and the dress.

ELOISE [_astounded_]. What!

LOUIS. You shall have mine. It is as warm, but not so heavy.

ELOISE [_angrily_]. Oh, I am sick of your eternal packing and unpacking! I am sick of it!

ANNE. Watch at the window, then. [_She goes swiftly to the portmanteau, opens it, tosses out the green mantle and the brocaded skirt and bodice, and tests the weight of the portmanteau._] I think it will be light enough now, Louis.

LOUIS. Do not leave those things in sight. If our landlord should come in--

ANNE. I'll hide them in the bed in the next room. Eloise! [_She points imperiously to the window. ELOISE goes to it slowly and for a moment makes a scornful pretense of being on watch there; but as soon as MADAME DE LASEYNE has left the room she turns, leaning against the wall and regarding Louis with languid amusement. He continues to struggle with his ill-omened "permit," but, by and by, becoming aware of her gaze, glances consciously over his shoulder and meets her half-veiled eyes. Coloring, he looks away, stares dreamily at nothing, sighs, and finally writes again, absently, like a man under a spell, which, indeed, he is. The pen drops from his hand with a faint click upon the floor. He makes the movement of a person suddenly awakened, and, holding his last writing near one of the candles, examines it critically. Then he breaks into low, bitter laughter._]

ELOISE [_unwillingly curious_]. You find something amusing?

LOUIS. Myself. One of my mistakes, that is all.

ELOISE [_indifferently_]. Your mirth must be indefatigable if you can still laugh at those.

LOUIS. I agree. I am a history of error.

ELOISE. You should have made it a vocation; it is your one genius. And yet--truly because I am a fool I think, as Anne says--I let you hector me into a sillier mistake than any of yours.

LOUIS. When?

ELOISE [_flinging out her arms_]. Oh, when I consented to this absurd journey, this _tiresome_ journey--with _you_! An "escape"? From nothing. In "disguise." Which doesn't disguise.

LOUIS [_his voice taut with the effort for self-command_]. My sister asked me to be patient with you, Eloise--

ELOISE. Because I am a fool, yes. Thanks. [_Shrewishly._] And then, my worthy young man? [_He rises abruptly, smarting almost beyond endurance._]

LOUIS [_breathing deeply_]. Have I not been patient with you?

ELOISE [_with a flash of energy_]. If _I_ have asked you to be anything whatever--with me!--pray recall the petition to my memory.

LOUIS [_beginning to let himself go_]. Patient! Have I ever been anything but patient with you? Was I not patient with you five years ago when you first harangued us on your "Rights of Man" and your monstrous republicanism? Where you got hold of it all I don't know--

ELOISE [_kindling_]. Ideas, my friend. Naturally, incomprehensible to you. Books! Brains! Men!

LOUIS. "Books! Brains! Men!" Treason, poison, and mobs! Oh, I could laugh at you then: they were only beginning to kill us, and I was patient. Was I not patient with you when these Republicans of yours drove us from our homes, from our country, stole all we had, assassinated us in dozens, in hundreds, murdered our King? [_He walks the floor, gesticulating nervously._] When I saw relative after relative of my own--aye, and of yours, too--dragged to the abattoir--even poor, harmless, kind Andre de Laseyne, whom they took simply because he was my brother-in-law--was I not patient? And when I came back to Paris for you and Anne, and had to lie hid in a stable, every hour in greater danger because you would not be persuaded to join us, was I not patient? And when you finally did consent, but protested every step of the way, pouting and--

ELOISE [_stung_]. "Pouting!"

LOUIS. And when that stranger came posting after us so obvious a spy--

ELOISE [_scornfully_]. Pooh! He is nothing.

LOUIS. Is there a league between here and Paris over which he has not dogged us? By diligence, on horseback, on foot, turning up at every posting-house, every roadside inn, the while you laughed at me because I read death in his face! These two days we have been here, is there an hour when you could look from that window except to see him grinning up from the wine-shop door down there?

ELOISE [_impatiently, but with a somewhat conscious expression_]. I tell you not to fear him. There is nothing in it.

LOUIS [_looking at her keenly_]. Be sure I understand why you do not think him a spy! You believe he has followed us because you--

ELOISE. I expected that! Oh, I knew it would come! [_Furiously._] I never saw the man before in my life!

LOUIS [_pacing the floor_]. He is unmistakable; his trade is stamped on him; a hired trailer of your precious "Nation's."

ELOISE [_haughtily_]. The Nation is the People. You malign because you fear. The People is sacred!

LOUIS [_with increasing bitterness_]. Aren't you tired yet of the Palais Royal platitudes? I have been patient with your Mericourtisms for so long. Yes, always I was patient. Always there was time; there was danger, but there was a little time. [_He faces her, his voice becoming louder, his gestures more vehement._] But now the _Jeune Pierrette_ sails this hour, and if we are not out of here and on her deck when she leaves the quay, my head rolls in Samson's basket within the week, with Anne's and your own to follow! _Now_, I tell you, there is no more time, and _now_--

ELOISE [_suavely_]. Yes? Well? "Now?" [_He checks himself; his lifted hand falls to his side._]

LOUIS [_in a gentle voice_]. I am still patient. [_He looks into her eyes, makes her a low and formal obeisance, and drops dejectedly into the chair at the desk._]

ELOISE [_dangerously_]. Is the oration concluded?

LOUIS. Quite.