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Updated: May 14, 2025
A sort of lethargy had gripped the stalls. The dress-circle was coughing. Up in the gallery there was grim silence. Sir Chester Portwood was an actor-manager who had made his reputation in light comedy of the tea-cup school.
The air was heavy with the smell of burning paint. "Where's Sir Portwood Chester?" enquired her companion of the stage-hand, who hurried beside them. "'Opped it!" replied the other briefly, and coughed raspingly as he swallowed smoke. "Strange," said the man in Jill's ear, as he pulled her along. "This way. Stick to me. Strange how the drama anticipates life!
Our anticipation is heightened, too, when we see Sir Fletcher Portwood and Mrs. Cloys set off upon her track. This gives us a definite point to which to look forward, while leaving the actual course of events entirely undefined. It fulfils one of the great ends of craftsmanship, in foreshadowing without forestalling an intensely interesting conjuncture of affairs.
The one thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood play was heaviness, and "Tried by Fire" was grievously heavy. It was a poetic drama, and the audience, though loth to do anybody an injustice, was beginning to suspect that it was written in blank verse. The acting did nothing to dispel the growing uneasiness.
He had come to the theatre that night in an aggrieved mood, for managers usually put him in the dress-circle. He got out his pencil again. Another phrase had occurred to him, admirable for the opening of his article. "At the Leicester Theatre," he wrote, "where Sir Chester Portwood presented 'Tried by Fire, dulness reigned supreme. . . ." But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over.
It rose to the dress-circle, and the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent gallery. And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded abruptness, the gallery ceased to be silent. "Fire!" Sir Chester Portwood, ploughing his way through a long speech, stopped and looked apprehensively over his shoulder.
The Leicester Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest theatrical knight, Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following; and, whatever might be the fate of the play in the final issue, it would do at least one night's business.
"Do you wish to stop and see the conflagration?" he asked. Jill shivered. She was more shaken than she had realized. "I've seen all the conflagration I want." "Same here. Well, it's been an exciting evening. Started slow, I admit, but warmed up later! What I seem to need at the moment is a restorative stroll along the Embankment. Do you know, Sir Portwood Chester didn't like the title of my play.
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