It
is not difficult, indeed, to foresee such a situation, in which Dick
Halward should be confronted, as if by magic, with the very words of the
letter he has so carefully destroyed. I am far from saying that this
scene would, in fact, have justified its amazing antecedents; but it
would have shown a realization on the author's part that he must at any
rate attempt some effect proportionate to the strain he had placed upon
our credulity. Mr. Jerome showed no such realization. He made the man
who handed Dick the copy of the letter explain beforehand how it had
been obtained; so that Dick, though doubtless surprised and disgusted,
was not in the least thunderstruck, and manifested no emotion. Here,
then, Mr. Jerome evidently missed a scene rendered obligatory by the law
of the maximum of specifically dramatic effect.
* * * * *
The third, or structural, class of obligatory scenes may be more briefly
dealt with, seeing that we have already, in the last chapter, discussed
the principle involved.
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