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"What?" he exclaimed. "I have been out to call at the Villa Mimosa," Richard repeated. "I don't see anything extraordinary in that." "Did you see Miss Fedora?" "Rather! And thank you for telling me her name, at any rate. We sat on the terrace and chatted for a quarter of an hour. She gave me to understand, though, that the old man was dead against me. It all seems very mysterious.
Is Langdon Mitchell's version of "Vanity Fair" sufficiently a work of art to exist without the co-operation of Mrs. Fiske? When Duse electrified her audiences in such plays as The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Fedora, were the dramatists responsible for the effect?
She was Phèdre or Marguerite Gautier, she was Adrienne Lecouvreur, Fédora, La Tosca, the actual woman, and she was also that other actual woman, Sarah Bernhardt. Two magics met and united, in the artist and the woman, each alone of its kind.
In "Fédora" we have a sheer, undisguised piece of stagecraft, without even the amount of psychological intention of Mr. Pinero, much less of Sudermann. It is a detective story with horrors, and it is far too positive and finished a thing to be transformed into something not itself. Sardou is a hard taskmaster; he chains his slaves.
About this stage of our search your father goes up to a young fellow with an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that is like a fedora except for a few inches taken out of its height, and says to him, Tei-ko-ku Hotel, which would mean the Imperial Hotel if he had pronounced it right, and the boy turns around and says, "Do you want ze Imperialee Hoter?"
Fedora glanced at the watch upon her wrist and held out her hand to Lady Weybourne. "I am sorry," she said, "but I must hurry away now. It is very kind of you to ask me to come and see you, Lady Weybourne. I shall be charmed." Richard ignored her fingers. "I am going to see you down to your car, if I may," he begged. They left the room together.
A few months later this man escaped to a passing whaler, and the story of the massacre of the captain and crew of the Fedora was made known to the commodore of the Australian station, who despatched a gunboat "to apprehend the murderers and bring them to Sydney for trial."
"I shall be very pleased," she agreed. They found a window table and Lane ordered tea. Fedora was inclined to be silent at first, but Lady Weybourne was quite content to chatter. By degrees Fedora, too, came back to earth and they had a very gay little tea-party. At the end of it they all strolled back into the rooms together.
Richard, on the other hand, was more serious. He took Hunterleys on one side as they waited for the cars. "We are on our way to Biarritz," he said, "by easy stages. The yacht will meet us there and we are going to sail at once for America." "Fedora doesn't mind?" Hunterleys asked. "Not in the least," Richard declared exultantly.
"Fédora" is a play written for Sarah Bernhardt by the writer of plays for Sarah Bernhardt, and it contains the usual ingredients of that particular kind of sorcery: a Russian tigress, an assassination, a suicide, exotic people with impulses in conflict with their intentions, good working evil and evil working good, not according to a philosophical idea, but for the convenience of a melodramatic plot.
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