The Parsons Noseletter

Dr. and Mrs. Anton Chekov

One of the most dazzling of Shakespeare’s attributes was his ability to write brilliantly and often in so many different genres. Comedy, tragedy, history – and in many different variations. It’s as if all the Emmys of an evening were won by the same writer. In this, no one can touch him.

We close our 12^th season with a full production of two wonderful comedies, written by another classical master. Many know  Anton Chekov for his more serious work – The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters – written toward the end of the 19^th Century. In them he tells stories of sheltered households living in bubbles, ignoring the grim realities of the outside world. GB Shaw applauded Chekov’s ability to illuminate characters, like those in his own “Heartbreak House”, who sadly refused to acknowledge the coming of World War I. For many, pathos and tragedy underscore Chekov’s work, but I believe many productions miss his inherent comic, Chaplinesque tones. Is Constantin’s little play in The Seagull “dreadful” as his mother Arkadina describes, or – though painfully and comically earnest – a brilliant and prophetic attempt at a new form of theater?

In young Chekov’s “The Boor” and “The Marriage Proposal” we have “vaudeville” sketches in the direct line from the ancient Greeks to today’s stage, film and television. Yes, blindness to our blindness can be tragic – “Oedipus Rex” – but can also be comic – “The Office”. And lovers’ quarrels have been a delightful source of entertainment from “Lysistrata” to “Modern Family”. Human frailty is universal and timeless. We hear in the squabbling of Stepanovna and Lomov our own righteous exchanges. We know that as Popova and Smirnov scream at each other they’re tearing away the self imposed barriers to their own buried passion.

This is, above all else, what the classics give us – the reassurance that we are not alone. We learn, grow, and life goes on. Please join us and get to know these “trivial” masterpieces.

“Chekov Farces” “The Boor” and “The Marriage Proposal”

One hour oh so funny adaptation by Lance Davis

Featuring Barry Gordon, Dorothy Brooks, Marisa Chandler, James Calvert and Lance Davis

Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2 PM.

April 21,22,28,29,May 5,6

Saturday Soirees at 7 PM. April 21, 29,May 5.

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks Avenue, Old Pasadena, CA 91105

Buy tickets at www.parsonsnose.tix.com or call 626-403-7667

Ages 9 +. Seniors and Students especially welcome.

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens in a one hour, Readers’ Theater adaptation by Lance Davis

Saturday December 17 at 2 PM and 7 PM; Sunday,  December 18 at 2 PM

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks, Pasadena, CA 91005

PayWhatYouWill, but reservations necessary. Go to www.parsonsnose.com or call 626-403-7667.

Remember how you hated Dickens when you were in high school because you had to have fifty pages of “Great Expectations” read by Monday and his descriptions just went on and on and on? Well I have a suggestion, and you’ll really thank me. Call your local bookseller (this really is a hardcover worth owning) and order Michael Patrick Hearn’s “An Annotated Christmas Carol”.

When you get it, block out an hour in the evening, make yourself a cocoa with whipped cream, or maybe even a glass of port and piece of Stilton, and begin to read one of the greatest writers the English language has ever known. Guess what? You don’t have to rush. You don’t have a deadline. It won’t be on the test. You are now an educated adult, and you have earned the license to take your time and savor something you won’t get on television…language. Your language.

Immerse yourself in the world of London, 1842. Hear the horses, the shop bells, the chatter. Smell the smoking fires, horse dung and burnt chestnuts. Feel the chill on your nose, and maybe the drip. Feel the emotions, the pain of Belle’s parting, the loneliness of the boy Scrooge, never sent for at Chrismas.

Put yourself in Dickens’ hands, for they are very capable. Maybe on the next night you’ll pass the book back and forth with someone, taking turns reading a paragraph or two. Mark the voices and try the dialects. I’m betting it may even become a new tradition.
Merry Christmas. I hope to see you at our readings, and please, if you can, remember us in your donations.  God bless. – LD

Follow us on Twitter, if you can figure it out. (I know I’m having trouble. In Dickens’ day you would send a note in the post if you were wealthy, or one of your kids if you were not!

ParsonsNoseProd; https://twitter.com/#!/ParsonsNoseProd/

#Pasadena

Written by Dion Boucicault; adapted by Lance Davis

Saturdays November 12, 19 and 26 at 2 PM and 7 PM

Sundays November 13, 20 and 27 at 2 PM

Tickets $20 Adults; $10 Students and Over 60

Tickets: www.parsonsnose.com or 626-403-7667

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 South Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105

Running time 1 hour plus intermission

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Some years ago I toured in a summer stock production of “The Streets of New York” with Farley Granger and Orson Bean. (Stories to tell there!)  It was a great favorite on the circuit. Today’s audiences readily enjoyed the interactive “boos” and “yays” of the melodramatic form.

“Streets” was written in 1857 by the great 19th Century Irish actor and playwright Dionysus Boucicault, taken from a French play, “The Poor of Paris” by Edward Nus. Boucicault added a “fire” scene to accommodate the popular demand for spectacle, and also changed the local references to the city it played, in London “The Poor of London,” “The Poor of Liverpool,” “The Poor of Dublin.” The word “Poor” was also changed to “Streets” in several productions.

Boucicault was a true man of the theater. Born in 1820 in Dublin to a relatively well –to –do family, he became an actor, then playwright and producer with a keen sense of the audience’s taste. The stock market crashes of 1837 and 1857 set the scene for the play. As in Dickens, the shocking financial reversals of the wealthy and their newfound appreciation for the core values of the impoverished were favorite themes of the melodramas of the day. Boucicault also had an innate sense of comedy which we see not only in “Streets” but in his hit comedy “London Assurance” – revived on Broadway in 2009 – and his career vehicle for the great 19th Century American star Joseph Jefferson, “Rip Van Winkle,” which Parson’s Nose revived in 2005.

I hope you enjoy my version of the play. I think it’s in the spirit of Boucicault, though admittedly I’ve incorporated Parson’s Nose “panto” touches. It’s been great fun to insert, as he did, local references, to Pasadena and its citizens. I’ve tried to offer it with a kind humor, and trust our audiences to receive with same. Thanks in advance to Mayor Bill Bogaard for allowing the use of his name as the villain banker. I assured him that though Aloysius receives most of the “boos” in the piece his actions can be attributed not only to greed but to a misplaced love of his wicked daughter.

Please join us for an hour, bring your whole family, and relish the interactive cheers and hisses of our theater heritage. This is what theater does best. No screens!

Mayor Bogaard visits Parson's Nose!

In 1835 the Ukrainian writer Nicolai Gogol asked his friend Pushkin for a Russian story he could develop into a play. Pushkin gave him a true incident in which he was mistaken for a Government Inspector, Gogol seized the moment and in a whirlwind of brilliance penned a comedy of farcical greed that became a classic, finding new interpretations from Meyerhold to Basil Fawlty.

Classics resonate far beyond their original intention. This story of small town corruption, paranoia and arrogance is as relevant to today’s audience as to that of Czarist Russia. A tyrranical mayor and his cronies rule with iron fists, taking advantage of the citizenry and the equally corrupt business class. The mistaken visitor is just as arrogant and shallow as his hosts, and it is pointed out by D.R. Mirsky “The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters.”

We are all pushing and shoving at the trough, and move from victim to oppressor with remarkable dexterity, not only in government, but in all our social institutions and activities. The light Gogol shines on a rural town on the road to St. Petersburg spreads across societies and centuries to blind us here and now. Luckily, he does it with humor and sympathy.

Please join us October 8 and 9 for a one hour look at this marvelous comedy, adapted by Lance Davis. Go to Tickets on this website, or call 626-403-7667 for reservations.

The Dromio Twins

Language was the television of everyday life in Elizabethan times. People delighted in hearing new words and phrases, then using them in their own speech. In Love’s Labors Lost and Twelfth Night characters carry notepads to write down new words and phrases they can incorporate. Much like our “whatever…”.

We can understand many of the 400-year-old words just by their usage. “Hast” means “has”. “Doth” means “does”. “Ne’er” means “never”. And some, once we know their meaning, add a whole new understanding. For example “wherefore” doesn’t mean “where”, it means “why”. So when Juliet in Romeo and Juliet leans out on her balcony and says “Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?,” she’s not saying “Where are you?” but “O why do you have to be Romeo Montague whom I can never marry?”

The leading Elizabethan playwrights were poets, and used poetic imagery and technique in their work. (Can you imagine if TV was in poetry form? “Glee” is considered radical enough!) In an example from this month’s reading of “A Comedy of Errors”, Shakespeare doesn’t just say Aegeon’s wife is “pregnant”. He says she is under “the pleasing punishment that women bear.” The image adds the much richer idea that “yes, pregnancy’s brutal, but worth it”.

Of course some of his vocabulary is new to us, but quickly becomes familiar and part of the fun of language. Several words found in many of his works are: Ducats = gold coins; Marks = larger gold coins!; Cozenage = trickery; Mountebank = swindler; Signior = Mister; Coxcomb = dandy; Pate = head; Tartar = Mongolian tribesman.

Come join us for the new season, this Saturday and Sunday! You’ll love it.

Please take 5 minutes to hear our greatest writer muse on the false glamour of leadership.

Click here:

Henry V \”Ceremony\”

(image: lautrec: bernhardt in Phedre)

Just on a lark I was listening to some Edison cylinders made in early 20th century. One was a recording of Sarah Bernhardt’s “Phedre” by Racine, a contemporary of Moliere. Moliere didn’t have much luck with tragedy. It was performed, in the 17th Century, in a declamatory style that his comedies were praised for avoiding. Indeed his style was a brilliant mixture of outrageous Italian “commedia dell arte” and everyday, almost naturalistic delivery, which we try to incorporate into our work at Parson’s Nose.

But it was fascinating to listen to Bernhardt building her speeches, especially as she crescendoes at the end. Though at first her delivery seems formal – it is rhymed 17th century poetry after all – you can hear the absolute commitment and passion, masterfully calibrated, that pours from her soul.This is the incorporation of technique and suppressed emotion that so many of our “method” actors can’t do, and what the classics demand. A film script gives at the most ten lines of a monologue to work through, with as many takes as the director allows. A classic theater monologue demands the ability to deliver three times that – (read below) – and make it understood, without microphones, in a 1500 seat house, and make it believable, and do it again for the evening performance. As in musical comedy, you have to be an athlete.

I’ve always thought France must be a wonderful place to be an actress. They do madness so well. Isabelle Adjani’s made a career of it (see “Claudine Claudel” or was that Huppert?, “La Reine Margot”) and Kristin Scott Thomas has always had a lot of fun over there. She seems to return to England and America when she wants to do something relatively staid. Adjani, as I recall, was one of the youngest actresses admitted to the Comedie Francaise, from its school, but preferred going into film. And now Scott Thomas is returning to her theater roots.

So grab a wine, or an iced tea, have a listen, read along, and see if you can keep up. She’s quite something.

Click here for Sarah Bernhardt\’s \”Phedre\” on Edison cylinder

PHEDRE
Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée.
Je l’aime, non point tel que l’ont vu les enfers,
Volage adorateur de mille objets divers,
Qui va du Dieu des morts déshonorer la couche ;
Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche,
Charmant, jeune, traînant tous les coeurs après soi,
Tel qu’on dépeint nos Dieux, ou tel que je vous voi.
Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage,
Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage,
Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots,
Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos.
Que faisiez-vous alors ? Pourquoi sans Hyppolyte
Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il l’élite ?
Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors
Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords ?
Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète,
Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite.
Pour en développer l’embarras incertain,
Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main.
Mais non, dans ce dessein je l’aurais devancée :
L’amour m’en eût d’abord inspiré la pensée.
C’est moi, Prince, c’est moi dont l’utile secours
Vous eût du Labyrinthe enseigné les détours.
Que de soins m’eût coûté cette tête charmante !
Un fil n’eût point assez rassuré votre amante.
Compagne du péril qu’il vous fallait chercher,
Moi-même devant vous j’aurais voulu marcher ;
Et Phèdre, au Labyrinthe avec vous descendue,
Se serait avec vous retrouvée ou perdue.

HIPPOLYTE
Dieux ! qu’est-ce que j’entends ? Madame, oubliez-vous
Que Thésée est mon père et qu’il est votre époux ?

PHEDRE
Et sur quoi jugez-vous que j’en perds la mémoire,
Prince ? Aurais-je perdu tout le soin de ma gloire; ?

HIPPOLYTE
Madame, pardonnez. J’avoue, en rougissant,
Que j’accusais à tort un discours innocent.
Ma honte ne peut plus soutenir votre vue ;
Et je vais…

PHEDRE
Ah ! cruel, tu m’as trop entendue.
Je t’en ai dit assez pour te tirer d’erreur.
Hé bien ! connais donc Phèdre et toute sa fureur.
J’aime. Ne pense pas qu’au moment que je t’aime,
Innocente à mes yeux je m’approuve moi-même,
Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison
Ma lâche complaisance ait nourri le poison.
Objet infortuné des vengeances célestes,
Je m’abhorre encor plus que tu ne me détestes.
Les Dieux m’en sont témoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc
Ont allumé le feu fatal à tout mon sang,
Ces Dieux qui se sont fait une gloire; cruelle
De séduire le coeur d’une faible mortelle.
Toi-même en ton esprit rappelle le passé.
C’est peu de t’avoir fui, cruel, je t’ai chassé.
J’ai voulu te paraître odieuse, inhumaine.
Pour mieux te résister, j’ai recherché ta haine.
De quoi m’ont profité mes inutiles soins ?
Tu me haïssais plus, je ne t’aimais pas moins.
Tes malheurs te prêtaient encor de nouveaux charmes.
J’ai langui, j’ai séché, dans les feux, dans les larmes.
Il suffit de tes yeux pour t’en persuader,
Si tes yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder.
Que dis-je ? Cet aveu que je viens de te faire,
Cet aveu si honteux, le crois-tu volontaire ?
Tremblante pour un fils que je n’osais trahir,
Je te venais prier de ne le point haïr.
Faibles projets d’un coeur trop plein de ce qu’il aime !
Hélas ! je ne t’ai pu parler que de toi-même.
Venge-toi, punis-moi d’un odieux amour.
Digne fils du héros qui t’a donné le jour,
Délivre l’univers d’un monstre qui t’irrite.
La veuve de Thésée ose aimer Hippolyte !
Crois-moi, ce monstre affreux ne doit point t’échapper.
Voilà mon coeur. C’est là que ta main doit frapper.
Impatient déjà d’expier son offense,
Au-devant de ton bras je le sens qui s’avance.
Frappe. Ou si tu le crois indigne de tes coups,
Si ta haine m’envie un supplice si doux,
Ou si d’un sang trop vil ta main serait trempée,
Au défaut de ton bras prête-moi ton épée.
Donne.

Friday, May 27 at 12:10

Saturday, May 28 at 7 PM

Lineage Performing Arts Center

89 South Fair Oaks, Pasadena, CA 91105

Chambord, 1670

In October, 1670, the French had just defeated the Turks and the Turkish ambassador had visited the French court with great hooha, so of course everyone was enamored of all things Turkish. King Louis XIV decided to take everyone out to the magnificent chateau Chambord for a hunting trip – a lovely time of the year in the Loire Valley, unless you’re a deer – and asked Moliere (playwright), Lully (composer) and Beauchamp (choreographer) to whip up one of those “comedie-ballets” he loved so much. “And put some Turks in it.”

Now the “comedy-ballet” was a form all it’s own, and from what I can make of it was like a sophisticated version of The Lucy Show. It must have taken hours, probably with breaks for crepes? There was a loose plot to the “book” – more schtick than plot – with lengthy interludes of song and dance. The book just happened to be written by one of the greatest comic writers in history, the music by one of the greatest composers, and the dance by the fellow who gave us the original five positions of the feet in ballet. (For more on the atmosphere of this kind of event, get the Gerard Depardieu film “Vatel” on Netflix. Fascinating.)

So it’s not one of Moliere’s “great comedies” like “The Miser” or “School for Wives” or “Tartuffe”. It’s more like something they all put together for The Kennedy Awards. And Louis loved these things, one reason being that he was a pretty good hoofer himself. And though these “comedie ballets” work very well on a level of “spectacle” you can almost feel the same tension brewing between the collaborators that happens in a high school, or for that matter, Broadway musical. The writer thinks the music is way too loud and too much, the choreographer wants the music to slow down for his dancers, the composer is seriously considering moving into “opera” where he only has to worry about sopranos. One fun thing is that Louis probably knew all this. Another is that they couldn’t leave. Another is that Moliere even comments on this tension in the play itself, pitting artists against one another.

The main object of ridicule, however, is the “nouveau riche” Monsieur Jourdain. The middle class, merchant class, in 17^th Century France was doing quite nicely. Trade had brought great opportunities to the empire and business was booming and its benefactors were challenging the  blanket authority of the aristocracy. The wealth that had belonged to the nobility was changing hands (the Revolution is only 120 years away) and fashion ruled the times. (One of the reasons Louis created Versailles in the first place was to drag all the nobility 12 miles outside of Paris, lodge them where he pleased, and set such a high mark for fashion and lifestyle that they were continually being financially challenged and indebted to him.) So Jourdain represents this new social climber, an uncultured and uneducated boor, who is trying to buy social standing. It’s a theme often repeated since Moliere in such American TV staples as “The Jeffersons”, “The Beverly Hillbillies and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air”. And of course “be true to your roots” is the lesson we all noddingly approve. Jourdain can take all the music, dance, fencing and philosophy classes in the world but he can’t – and the nobility sitting in Chambord really enjoyed this – buy “blood.” And thanks to Moliere genius, Jourdain’s obsession becomes a rich source of comedy, while poking fun at several ancillary targets – including the King’s Turks – along the way.

An interesting side- note is that Louis did not give his approval of the play at the curtaiin. He remained silent, which had immediate repercussions to Moliere’s well established reputation. His critics were quick to pounce, anticipating his imminent downfall. He himself, reportedly, stayed inside and away from the public. It wasn’t until after the spectacle’s second performance a few days later that the King remarked for all to hear that it was one of the most delightful pieces Moliere had ever presented for him. “I only reserved my judgment to be sure I wasn’t being seduced by the skill of your players.” And of course all the critics immediately claimed it was one of his best pieces ever. Welcome to Versailles, everyone.

I hope you’ll join us for this glimpse into a wonderful entertainment. In a one hour reading we can’t do justice to its splendor, but perhaps we can introduce an appreciation for a classical work that bears further investigation. – LD

Parson’s Nose Readers’ Theater presents “The Perilous Streets of Pasadena!”

Written by Dion Boucicault; adapted by Lance Davis

Friday April 22 at 12:10; Saturday April 23 at 7 PM

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 South Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105

RSVP 626-403-7667, parsonsnose@mac.com; Running time 1 hour; Free (donations encouraged)

Some years ago  I toured in a summer stock production of “The Streets of New York” with Farley Granger and Orson Bean. What are the chances of that? It was a great favorite on the circuit. Today’s audiences readily enjoyed the interactive “boos” and “yays” of the melodramatic form.

“Streets” was written in 1857 by the great 19^th Century Irish actor and playwright Dionysus Boucicault, taken from a French play, “The Poor of Paris” by Edward Nus.  Boucicault added a “fire” scene to accommodate the popular demand for spectacle, and also changed the local references to the city it played, in London “The Poor of London,” “The Poor of Liverpool,” “The Poor of Dublin.” The word “Poor” was also changed to “Streets” in several productions.

Boucicault was a true man of the theater. Born in 1820 in Dublin to a relatively well –to –do family, he became an actor, then playwright and producer with a keen sense of the audience’s taste. The stock market crashes of 1837 and 1857 set the scene for the play. As in Dickens, the shocking financial reversals  of the wealthy and their newfound appreciation for the core values of the impoverished were favorite themes of the melodramas of the day. Boucicault also had an innate sense of comedy which we see not only in “Streets” but in his hit comedy “London Assurance” – revived  on Broadway in 2009 – and his career vehicle for the great 19^th Century American star Joseph Jefferson, “Rip Van Winkle,” which Parson’s Nose revived in 2005.

I hope you enjoy my version of the play. I think it’s in the spirit of Boucicault, though admittedly I’ve incorporated Parson’s Nose “panto” touches. It’s been great fun to insert, as he did, local references to Pasadena and its citizens. I’ve tried to offer it with a kind humor, and trust our audiences to receive with  same. Thanks in advance to Mayor Bill Bogaard for allowing the use of his name as the villain banker. I assured him that though Aloysius receives most of the “boos” in the piece his actions can be attributed not only to greed but to a misplaced love of his wicked daughter.

Please join us for an hour, bring your whole family, and relish the interactive cheers and hisses of our theater heritage.

“The Story of An Hour”

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will–as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him–sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door–you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.