* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“THE TRUTH ABOUT THE RUSSIAN DANCERS.”

With that uncanny tuition of his Sir JAMES BARRIE has, of course, hit on the precise truth.  Russian dancers are not born but made—­by the Maestro, which I take it is (broadly speaking) Italian for Producer and Presenter.

When Karissima goes on a visit to the stately home of the Veres the peace of that ancient haunt of the conventionally correct is queerly broken.  Young Lord Vere loses his heart.  However, that might just as easily or more easily have happened if the Gaiety had been invited.  But a dreadful change comes to Uncle Bill—­he buys his clothes ready-made (at La boutique fantasque, for a guess, or possibly Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY’S), grows dundrearies and goes hopelessly off his game at golf.

Karissima, poor dear, can’t walk or talk or putt, for that matter, except with her toes. Bill calls this last cheating, but young Vere thinks it simply adorable—­as do we all. Lady Vere, his mother, can’t get used to being kissed by Karissima, who will stand upon her lightly with one foot, oddly waving the other meanwhile in the air.  Besides it takes too long and is rather too demonstrative.  And couldn’t Karissima dear just try to walk with her soles really flat on the ground in the solid English county way?  Certainly. Karissima will try, to please Madame, and with painful effort achieves a half-dozen clumsy steps till unconquerable habit and Mr. ARNOLD BAX’S allusively witty music lift her on tiptoe again.  And really she is such a darling that the once reluctant dowager finally consents to the marriage; wedding bells forthwith (within); a white-haired clergyman, surprised at nothing, as becomes the very best type of padre, appears; follow corps de ballet bridesmaids; and Bill gives her away.

Karissima, says Vere to Maestro later in the evening, is depressed.  Because she hasn’t a child.  They both tremendously want a child. Maestro, silently showing his watch-dial, would seem to wish to suggest that they were unreasonably impatient. Karissima also pleads.  Well, he will see what he can do.  But there’s an awful penalty.  For a new Russian dancer cannot be made unless another surrenders life.  Anyway he fetches his black bag.  And Karissima dances down the main staircase with her babe, who grows apace and is shortly seen prancing in the garden (on his toes—­“Thank Heaven!” says the Maestro).

And Karissima dies and is brought in on her bier, and dances (she would!) her own funeral service. Maestro’s heart is touched; he lies down in her stead, and she, dancing on a carpet of thistle-down shot with stars (I think), and her lord (I am sure), perpetually exclaiming, “How perfectly topping!”—­both achieve an enviable immortality.