Barrie, J M - Half Hours

by Half Hours

  LADY SIMS (nervously). Yes, Harry.

  SIR HARRY (jovially, but with an inquiring eye). What a different existence yours is from that poor lonely wretch's.

  LADY SIMS. Yes, but she has a very con tented face.

  SIR HARRY (with a stamp of his foot}. All put on. What?

  LADY SIMS (timidly). I didn't say anything.

  SIR HARRY (snapping). One would think you envied her.

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  LADY SIMS. Envied? Oh no but I thought she looked so alive. It was while she was working the machine. SIR HARRY. Alive! That 's no life. It is you that are alive. (Curtly) I 'm busy, Emmy. (He sits at his writing-table.) LADY SIMS (dutifully). I 'm sorry; I '11 go, Harry (inconsequentially). Are they very expensive ? SIR HARRY. What? LADY SIMS. Those machines ?

  (When she has gone the possible meaning of her question startles him. The curtain hides him from us, but we may be sure that he will soon be bland again. We have a comfort- able feeling, you and 7, that there is nothing of HARRY SIMS in us.)

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  Two middle-aged ladies are drinking tea in the parlour of a cottage by the sea. It is far from London, and a hundred yards from the cry of children, of whom middle-aged ladies have often had enough. Were the room MRS. PAGE'S we should make a journey through it in search of character, but she is only a bird of passage; nothing of herself here that has not strayed from her bedroom except some cushions and rugs: touches of character after all maybe, for they suggest that MRS. PAGE likes to sit soft.

  The exterior of the cottage is probably picturesque, with a thatched roof, but we shall never know for certain, it being against the rules of the game to step outside and look. The old bowed window of the parlour is of the en gaging kind that still brings some carriage folk

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  to a sudden stop in villages, not necessarily to sample the sweets of yester-year exposed within in bottles; its panes are leaded; but MRS. QUICKLY will put something more modern in their place if ever her ship comes home. The y will then be used as the roof of the hen-coop, and ultimately some lovely lady, given, like the chickens, to 'picking up things,' may survey the world through them from a window in May fair. The parlour is, by accident, like some woman's face that scores by being out of draw ing. At present the window is her smile, but one cannot fix features to the haphazard floor, nor to the irregular walls, which neverthe less are part of the invitation to come and stay here. There are two absurd steps leading up to MRS. PAGE'S bedroom, and perhaps they are what give the room its retroussee touch. There is a smell of sea-weed; twice a day Neptune comes gallantly to the window and hands MRS. PAGE the smell of sea-weed. He knows probably that she does not like to have to go far for her sea-weed. Perhaps he

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  also suspects her to be something of a spark, and looks forward to his evening visits, of which we know nothing.

  This is a mere suggestion that there may be more in MRS. PAGE (when the moon is up, say) than meets the eye 9 but we see at present only what does meet the eye as she gossips with her landlady at the tea-table. Is she good-looking? is the universal shriek; the one question on the one subject that really thrills humanity. But the question seems beside the point about this particular lady, who has so obviously ceased to have any interest in the answer. To us who have a few moments to sum her up while she is still at the tea-table (just time enough for sharp ones to form a wrong impression), she is an indolent, sloppy thing, this MRS. PAGE of London, decidedly too plump, and averse to pulling the strings that might contract her; as MRS. QUICKLY may have said, she has let her figure go and snapped her fingers at it as it went. Her hair is braided back at a minimum of labour (and the brush

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  has been left on the parlour mantelpiece). She wears at tea-time a loose and dowdy dressing- gown and large flat slippers. Such a lazy woman (shall we venture?) that if she were a beggar and you offered her alms, she would ask you to put them in her pocket for her.

  Yet we notice, as contrary to her type, that she is not only dowdy but self-consciously enamoured of her dowdiness, has a kiss for it so to speak. This is odd, and perhaps we had better have another look at her. The thing waggling gaily beneath the table is one of her feet, from which the sprawling slipper has dropped, to remain where it fell. It is an uncommonly pretty foot, and one instantly wonders what might not the rest of her be like if it also escaped from its moorings.

  The foot returns into custody, without its owner having to stoop, and MRS. PAGE crosses with cheerful languor to a chair by the fire. She has a drawling walk that fits her gown. There is no footstool within reach, and she pulls another chair to her with her feet and

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  rests them on it contentedly. The slippers almost hide her from our view.

  DAME QUICKLY. You Mrs. Cosy Comfort.

  MRS. PAGE (whose voice is as lazy as her walk). That 's what I am. Perhaps a still better name for me would be Mrs. Treacly Contentment. Dame, you like me, don't you? Come here, and tell me why.

  DAME. What do I like you for, Mrs. Page? Well, for one thing, it's very kind of you to let me sit here drinking tea and gossiping with you, for all the world as if I were your equal. And for another, you always pay your book the day I bring it to you, and that is enough to make any poor woman like her lodger.

  MRS. PAGE. Oh, as a lodger I know I 'm well enough, and I love our gossips over the tea-pot, but that is not exactly what I meant. Let me put it in this way: If you tell me what you most envy in

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  me, I shall tell you what I most envy in you.

  DAME (with no need to reflect). Well, most of all, ma'am, I think I envy you your contentment with middle-age.

  MRS. PAGE (purring). I am middle-aged, so why should I complain of it ?

  DAME (who feels that only yesterday she was driving the youths to desperation). You even say it as if it were a pretty word.

  MRS. PAGE. But isn't it ?

  DAME. Not when you are up to the knees in it, as I am.

  MRS. PAGE. And as I am. But I dote on it. It is such a comfy, sloppy, pull-the-cur- tains, carpet-slipper sort of word. When I wake in the morning, Dame, and am about to leap out of bed like the girl I once was, I suddenly remember, and I cry "Hurrah, I 'm middle-aged.'

  DAME. You just dumbfounder me when you tell me things like that. (Here is some thing she has long wanted to ask.) You

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  can't be more than forty, if I may make

  so bold ? MRS. PAGE. I am forty and a bittock, as the

  Scotch say. That means forty, and a

  good wee bit more. DAME. There ! And you can say it without

  blinking. MRS. PAGE. Why not? Do you think I

  should call myself a 30-to-45, like a

  motor-car? Now what I think I

  envy you for most is for being a grand mamma. DAME (smiling tolerantly at some picture the

  words have called up) . That 's a cheap

  honour. MRS. PAGE (summing up probably her whole

  conception of the duties of a grandmother).

  I should love to be a grandmamma, and

  toss little toddlekins in the air. DAME (who knows that there is more in it than

  that). I dare say you will be some day. (The eyes of both turn to a photograph on the mantelpiece. It represents

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  a pretty woman in the dress of Rosa lind. The DAME fingers it for the hundredth time, and MRS. PAGE regards her tranquilly.) DAME. No one can deny but your daughter

  is a pretty piece. How old will she be

  now? MRS. PAGE. Dame, I don't know very

  much about the stage, but I do know

  that you should never, never ask an

  actress's age. DAME. Surely when they are as young and

  famous as this puss is. MRS. PAGE. She is getting on, you know.

  Shall we say twenty -three ? DAME. Well, well, it 's true you m
ight be

  a grandmother by now. I wonder she

  doesn't marry. Where is she now ? MRS. PAGE. At Monte Carlo, the papers say.

  It is a place where people gamble. DAME (shaking her head). Gamble? Dear,

  dear, that 's terrible. (But she knows of

  a woman who once won a dinner service

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  without anything untoward happening after wards.) And yet I would like just once to put on my shilling with the best of them. If I were you I would try a month at that place with her. MRS. PAGE. Not I, I am just Mrs. Cosy Com fort. At Monte Carlo I should be a fish out of water, Dame, as much as Beatrice would be if she were to try a month down here with me.

  DAME (less in disparagement of local society than of that sullen bore the sea 9 and bliss fully unaware that it intrudes even at Monte Carlo). Yes, I 'm thinking she would find this a dull hole. (In the spirit of adventure that has carried the English far) And yet, play-actress though she be, I would like to see her, God forgive me.

  (She is trimming the lamp when there is a knock at the door. She is pleasantly flustered, and indicates with a gesture that something is con-

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  slantly happening in this go-ahead village.} DAME. It has a visitor's sound.

  (The lodger is so impressed that she takes her feet off the chair. Thus may MRS. QTJICKLY'S ancestors have stared at each other in this very cottage a hundred years ago when they thought they heard Napoleon tapping.)

  MRS. PAGE (keeping her head). If it is the doctor's lady, she wants to arrange with me about the cutting out for the mothers' meeting.

  DAME (who has long ceased to benefit from these gatherings). Drat the mothers' meetings.

  MRS. PAGE. Oh no, I dote on them. (She is splendidly active; in short, the spirited woman has got up.) Still, I want my evening snooze now, so just tell her I am lying down. DAME (thankful to be in a plot). I will.

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  MRS. PAGE. Yes, but let me lie down first, so that it won't be a fib.

  DAME. There, there. That 's such a middle- aged thing to say.

  (In the most middle-aged way MRS. PAGE spreads herself on a couch. They have been speaking in a whisper y and as the DAME goes to the door we have just time to take note that MRS. QUICKLY whispered most beautifully: a softer whisper than the DAME'S, but so clear thai it might be heard across a field. This is the most tell-tale thing we have discovered about her as yet.

  Before MRS. QUICKLY has reached the door it opens to admit an impatient young man in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, all aglow with rain drops. Public school (and the par ticular one) is written on his forehead, and almost nothing else; he has scarcely yet begun to surmise that any-

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  thing else may be required. He is modest and clear-eyed, and would ring for his tub in Paradise; (reputably athletic also), with an instant smile always in reserve for the antagonist who accidentally shins him. Whatever you, as his host, ask him to do, he says he would like to awfully if you don't mind his being a priceless duffer at it; his vocabulary is scanty, and in his engaging mouth 'priceless 9 sums up all that is to be known of good or ill in our varied existence; at a pinch it would suffice him for most of his simple wants, just as one may traverse the con tinent with Combien? His brain is quite as good as another's, but as yet he has referred scarcely anything to it. He respects learning in the aged, but shrinks uncomfortably from it in contemporaries, as persons who have somehow failed. To hi m the proper way to look upon ability is as some-

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  thing we must all come to in the end. He has a nice taste in the arts that has come to him by the way of socks, spats and slips, and of these he has a large and happy collection, which he laughs at jollily in public (for his sense of humour is sufficient), but in the privacy of his chamber he some times spreads them out like troutlet on the river's bank and has his quiet thrills of exultation. Having lately left Oxford, he is facing the world confidently with nothing to impress it except these and a scarf he won at Fives (beating Hon. Billy Minhorn). He has not yet decided whether to drop into business or diplomacy or the bar. (There will be a lot of fag about this); and all unknown to him there is a grim piece of waste land waiting for him in Canada, which he will make a hash of, or it will make a man of him Billy will be there too.)

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  CHARLES (on the threshold). I beg your pardon awfully, but I knocked three times.

  DAME (liking the manner of him, and indeed it is the nicest manner in the world). What 's your pleasure ?

  CHARLES. You see how jolly wet my things are. (These boys get on delightful terms of intimacy at once.) I am on a walking tour not that I have walked much (they never boast; he has really walked well and far) and I got caught in that shower. I thought when I saw a house that you might be kind enough to let me take my jacket off and warm my paws, until I can catch a train.

  DAME (unable to whisper to MRS. PAGE 'He is good-looking 9 ). I 'm sorry, sir, but I have let the kitchen fire out.

  CHARLES (peeping over her shoulder). This fire ?

  DAME. This is my lodger's room.

  CHARLES. Ah, I see. Still, I dare say that if he knew (He has edged farther

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  into the room, and becomes aware that there is a lady with eyes dosed on the sofa.) I beg your pardon; I didn't know there was any one here.

  (But the lady on the sofa replies not, and to the DAME this is his dis missal.) DAME. The station is just round the corner,

  and there is a waiting-room there. CHARLES. A station waiting-room fire; I

  know them. Is she asleep ? DAME. Yes.

  CHARLES (who nearly always gets round them when he pouts). Then can't I stay? I won't disturb her. DAME (obdurate). I 'm sorry. CHARLES (cheerily he will probably do well on that fruit-farm). Heigho! Well, here is for the station waiting-room.

  (And he is about to go when MRS. PAGE signs to the DAME that he may stay. We have given the talk be tween the DAME and CHARLES in

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  order to get it over, but our sterner eye is all the time on MRS. PAGE. Her eyes remain closed as if in sleep and she is on the sofa prone, yet for the first time since the curtain rose she has come to life. As if she knew we were watching her she is again inert, but there was a twitch of the mouth a moment ago that let a sunbeam loose upon her face. It is gone already, popped out of the box and returned to it with the speed of thought. Notice able as is MRS. PAGE'S mischievous smile, far more noticeable is her control of it. A sudden thought occurs to us that the face we had thought stolid is made of elastic.) DAME (cleverly). After all, if you 're willing

  just to sit quietly by the fire and take

  a book

  CHARLES. Rather. Any book. Thank you

  immensely. (And in his delightful way

  of making himself at home he whips off his

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  knapsack and steps inside the fender. 'He is saucy, thank goodness, is what the DAME'S glance at MRS. PAGE conveys. That lady's eyelids flicker as if she had discovered a way of watching CHARLES while she slumbers. Anon his eye alights on the photograph that has already been the subject of conversation, and he is in stantly exclamatory.)

  DAME (warningly). Now, you promised not to speak.

  CHARLES. But that photograph. How funny you should have it.

  DAME (severely). Hsh. It 's not mine.

  CHARLES (with his first glance of interest at the sleeper). Hers?

  (The eyelids have ceased to flicker. It is placid MRS. PAGE again. Never was such an inelastic face.)

  DAME. Yes; only don't talk.

  CHARLES. But this is priceless (gazing at the photograph). I must talk. (He gives his reason.) I know her (a reason that would

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  be complimentary to any young lady). It is Miss Beatrice Page.

  DAME (who knows the creature man). You mean you 've seen her ?

  CHARLES (youthfully). I know her quite well.
I have had lunch with her twice. She is at Monte Carlo just now. (Swelling) I was one of those that saw her off.

  DAME. Yes, that 's the place. Read what is written across her velvet chest.

  CHARLES (deciphering the writing on the photograph). 'To darling Mumsy with heaps of kisses.' (His eyes gleam. Is he in the middle of an astonishing adven ture?) You don't tell me Is that ?

  DAME (as coolly as though she were passing the butter). Yes, that 's her mother. And a sore trial it must have been to her when her girl took to such a trade.

  CHARLES (waving aside such nonsense). But I say, she never spoke to me about a mother.

  DAME. The more shame to her.

  CHARLES (deeply versed in the traffic of the

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  stage). I mean she is famed as being almost the only actress who doesn't have a mother.

  DAME (bewildered). What? CHARLES (seeing the uselessness of laying pearls before this lady). Let me have a look at her.

  DAME. It is not to be thought of. (But an unexpected nod from the sleeper indicates that it may be permitted.) Oh, well, I see no harm in it if you go softly.

  (He tiptoes to the sofa, but perhaps MRS. PAGE is a light sleeper, for she stirs a little, just sufficiently to become more compact, while the slippers rise into startling prominence. Some humorous dream, as it might be, slightly extends her mouth and turns the oval of her face into a round. Her head has sunk into her neck. Simul taneously, as if her circulation were suddenly held up, a shadow passes over her complexion. This is a bad

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  copy of ike MRS. PAGE we have seen hitherto, and will give CHARLES a poor impression of her.)