THE SUSPECT.
I saw a regiment of the line go marching to Versailles;
When white along the Bois there shone the chestnut's waxen cells,
And the sun was winking on the long Lebels,
Flic flac, flic flac, on all the long Lebels!
And I saw a regiment of the line that swung in blue and red;
The youth of things, the joy of things they made my heart to beat,
And the quick-step lilting and the tramp of feet!
Flic flac, flic flac, the tramping of the feet!
Since last I saw a regiment go marching to Versailles;
And what's become of all of those that heard the music play?
They trained them for the Frontier upon an August day;
Flic flac, flic flac, all on an August day!
And there they've left them lying with their faces to Alsace;
The others—so they'd tell you—ere the chestnut's decked for Spring,
Shall march beneath some linden trees to call upon a King;
Flic flac, flic flac, to call upon a King.
"Outcast."
It is very fresh and delightful of Mr. H. H. Davies to regard seriously the love of a man for a maid. North of the river and west of Temple Bar it is the intrigues of the highly compromised middle-aged which are supposed to be most worthy of attention on the stage. But Mr. Davies (luckily) is never afraid of being young. So he starts us off with a picture of Geoffrey in the clutches of drink and drugs just because Valentine has jilted him. True that when Valentine is finally married to another man Geoffrey is still in love with her, and receives her at midnight in his rooms; but by this time Mr. Davies has given us three excellent Acts in his own best manner.
And these Acts are hardly concerned with the love of Geoffrey for Valentine at all, but with the relations between Geoffrey and Miriam, a woman of the town. She is, like Geoffrey, an outcast; but she has all the good qualities which he lacks, and she is brave and loving enough to drag him from the pit into which he was sinking. He rewards her by chasing after Valentine again (now tired of her husband)—and also by getting Mr. Davies, as I thought, a little way out of his element.
The solution of this less common triangle—man, mistress, other man's wife—I must leave to the author to reveal to you. Meanwhile I thank him for an absorbing play, in which the two chief characters were extremely well worked out. Perfectly played by Mr. Gerald du Maurier and Miss Ethel Level, they were two very human people.
By the way, in one respect Outcast must easily break all records. Never have so many stage cigarettes been lit (and thrown away) in the course of an evening. I wish that somebody who reads this and is tempted to pay a visit to Wyndham's would let me know the full number. I began counting too late.
