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AT THE PLAY.

“THE INVISIBLE FOE.”

MR. H.B.  IRVING has elected to play villain in a new mystery play by Mr. WALTER HACKETT.  Essential elements of the business as follows:  Obstinate old millstone of a shipbuilder, Bransby, who simply will not give up shipbuilding for aeroplane making (and no wonder in these days!); nephew Stephen, with an unwholesome hankering after power and a complete inability to see the obvious; nephew Hugh, lieutenant lately gazetted, with much more wholesome and intelligent hankering after Helen Bransby; Clerk, mouldy, faithful, one who discovers deficit in the West African ledger to the extent of ten thousand pounds.

The false entries are in the hand of Hugh, but Stephen’s sinister eye and shocking suit of solemn black promptly give him away to the audience, while with a gorgeous fatuity he gives himself away to his uncle by writing out his brother’s resignation of the King’s Commission (in itself an odd thing to do) in the very hand he had so adroitly practised in order to manipulate the ledger.  Whereupon, at Bransby’s dictation, Stephen writes a full confession, leaving the house in an acutely disgruntled frame of mind.  The old man puts the confession quite naturally (the firm is like that) between the leaves of his David Copperfield, and dies of heart failure.

So Stephen is again up on Hugh at the turn.  Indeed in the six months that have elapsed between Acts I. and II. many things have happened, and neglected to happen. Stephen has become by common report a great man, pillar of the house of Bransby, which now makes aeroplanes like anything.  He has been too busy getting power even to look into his uncle’s papers (though executor), or to have the West African ledger taken back to the office, or, queerest of all, to discover and destroy that damning confession.  However, having got his power, he now proceeds to consolidate it by trying to find the missing document.

On the same day Helen arrives unexpectedly, urged thereto by a vague impression inspired by her dead father that Hugh’s innocence will be established by something found in the fateful room; also Hugh, who had enlisted and now comes back from France a sergeant, with the same idea in his head and from the same source.  As we had all seen the paper’s hiding-place I found it a little difficult to be impressed by the elaborate efforts, unconscionably long drawn out, of the departed spirit to disclose the matter to Helen and Hugh; while the masterly inactivity of Stephen, who was trying to find his document by pure reason (mere looking for it would not occur to his Napoleonic brain), confirmed the opinion I had earlier formed of that solemn ass.  However, his invisible foe does contrive to get his message through to the lovers and smash up Stephen and his bubble of power.