cast, but so vividly supplemented with descriptions of the leading
lady's clothes that it hardly required any effort of the imagination to
conjure up the rest. The postures and the chief garments of Pilate--he
was eating pomegranates when the curtain rose, and listening to scandal
from his slave-maidens about Mary Magdalene--were at once recognised in
their resemblance to those of the photographs, and in the thrill of
this satisfaction any discrepancies in cut and texture passed generally
unobserved. A silent curiosity settled upon the house, half reverent, as
if with the Bible names came thronging a troop of sacred associations
to cluster about personalities brusquely torn out of church, and people
listened for familiar sentences with something like the composed gravity
with which they heard on Sundays the reading of the second lesson.
But as the stage-talk went on, the slave-maidens announcing themselves
without delay comfortably modern and commonplace, and Pilate a cynic and
a decadent, though as distinctively from Melbourne, it was possible to
note the breaking up of this sentiment. It was plain after all that no
standard of ideality was to be maintained or struggled after. The relief
was palpable; nevertheless, when Pilate's wife cast a shrewish gibe
at him over the shoulder of her exit, the audience showed but a faint
inclination to be amused. It was to be a play evidently like any other
play, the same coarse fibre, the same vivid and vulgar appeals. It is
doubtful whether this idea was critically present to anyone but Stephen
Arnold, but people unconsciously tasted the dramatic substance
offered them, and leaned back in their chairs with the usual patient
acknowledgment that one mustn't expect too much of a company that
found it worth while to come to Calcutta. The house grew submissive
and stolid, but one could see half-awakened prejudices sitting in the
dress-circle. The paper-chasing Secretary said to the most intelligent
of his party that on the whole he liked his theology neat, forgetting
that the preference belonged to Mr. Andrew Lang in connection with
a notable lady novelist; and the most intelligent--it was Mrs.
Barberry--replied that it did seem strange. The depths under the gallery
were critically attentive, though Llewellyn Stanhope felt them hostile
and longing for verbal brick-bats; and the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank
into the farthest corner of Surgeon-Major Livingstone's box, and knew
all the misery