by Unknown
The tide is going out, we mustn’t miss the post.
(They are so unhappy that they fail to grasp it, and a little petulantly he calls for CRICHTON, ever his stand-by in the hour of epigram. CRICHTON breaks through the undergrowth quickly, thinking the ladies are in danger.)
CRICHTON. Anything wrong, sir?
ERNEST (with fine confidence). The tide, Crichton, is a postman who calls at our island twice a day for letters.
CRICHTON (after a pause). Thank you, sir.
(He returns to his labours, however, without giving the smile which is the epigrammatist’s right, and ERNEST is a little disappointed in him.)
ERNEST. Poor Crichton! I sometimes think he is losing his sense of humour. Come along, Agatha.
(He helps his favourite up the rocks, and they disappear gingerly from view.)
CATHERINE. How horribly still it is.
LADY MARY (remembering some recent sounds). It is best when it is still.
CATHERINE (drawing closer to her). Mary, I have heard that they are always very still just before they jump.
LADY MARY. Don’t. (A distinct chapping is heard, and they are startled.)
LADY MARY (controlling herself). It is only Crichton knocking down trees.
CATHERINE (almost imploringly). Mary, let us go and stand beside him.
LADY MARY (coldly). Let a servant see that I am afraid!
CATHERINE. Don’t, then; but remember this, dear, they often drop on one from above.
(She moves away, nearer to the friendly sound of the axe, and LADY MARY is left alone. She is the most courageous of them as well as the haughtiest, but when something she had thought to be a stick glides toward her, she forgets her dignity and screams.)
LADY MARY (calling). Crichton, Crichton!
(It must have been TREHERNE who was tree-felling, for CRICHTON comes to her from the hut, drawing his cutlass.)
CRICHTON (anxious). Did you call, my lady?
LADY MARY (herself again, now that he is there). I! Why should I?
CRICHTON. I made a mistake, your ladyship. (Hesitating.) If you are afraid of being alone, my lady —
LADY MARY. Afraid! Certainly not. (Doggedly.) You may go.
(But she does not complain when he remains within eyesight cutting the bamboo. It is heavy work, and she watches him silently.)
LADY MARY. I wish, Crichton, you could work without getting so hot.
CRICHTON (mopping his face). I wish I could, my lady.
(He continues his labours.)
LADY MARY (taking off her oilskins). It makes me hot to look at you.
CRICHTON. It almost makes me cool to look at your ladyship.
LADY MARY (who perhaps thinks he is presuming). Anything I can do for you in that way, Crichton, I shall do with pleasure.
CRICHTON (quite humbly). Thank you, my lady.
(By this time most of the bamboo has been cut, and the shore and sea are visible, except where they are hidden by the half completed hut. The mast rising solitary from the water adds to the desolation of the scene, and at last tears run down LADY MARY’S face.)
CRICHTON. Don’t give way, my lady, things might be worse.
LADY MARY. My poor father.
CRICHTON. If I could have given my life for his.
LADY MARY. You did all a man could do. Indeed I thank you, Crichton. (With some admiration and more wonder.) You are a man.
CRICHTON. Thank you, my lady.
LADY MARY. But it is all so awful. Crichton, is there any hope of a ship coming?
CRICHTON (after hesitation). Of course there is, my lady.
LADY MARY (facing him bravely). Don’t treat me as a child. I have got to know the worst, and to face it. Crichton, the truth.
CRICHTON (reluctantly). We were driven out of our course, my lady; I fear far from the track of commerce.
LADY MARY. Thank you; I understand.
(For a moment, however, she breaks down. Then she clenches her hands and stands erect.)
CRICHTON (watching her, and forgetting perhaps for the moment that they are not just a man and woman). You’re a good pluckt ‘un, my lady.
LADY MARY (falling into the same error). I shall try to be. (Extricating herself.) Crichton, how dare you?
CRICHTON. I beg your ladyship’s pardon; but you are.
(She smiles, as if it were a comfort to be told this even by CRICHTON.)
And until a ship comes we are three men who are going to do our best for you ladies.
LADY MARY (with a curl of the lip). Mr. Ernest does no work.
CRICHTON (cheerily). But he will, my lady.
LADY MARY. I doubt it.
CRICHTON (confidently, but perhaps thoughtlessly). No work — no dinner — will make a great change in Mr. Ernest.
LADY MARY. No work — no dinner. When did you invent that rule, Crichton?
CRICHTON (loaded with bamboo). I didn’t invent it, my lady. I seem to see it growing all over the island.
LADY MARY (disquieted). Crichton, your manner strikes me as curious.
CRICHTON (pained). I hope not, your ladyship.
LADY MARY (determined to have it out with him). You are not implying anything so unnatural, I presume, as that if I and my sisters don’t work there will be no dinner for us?
CRICHTON (brightly). If it is unnatural, my lady, that is the end of it.
LADY MARY. If? Now I understand. The perfect servant at home holds that we are all equal now. I see.
CRICHTON (wounded to the quick). My lady, can you think me so inconsistent?
LADY MARY. That is it.
CRICHTON (earnestly). My lady, I disbelieved in equality at home because it was against nature, and for that same reason I as utterly disbelieve in it on an island.
LADY MARY (relieved by his obvious sincerity). I apologise.
CRICHTON (continuing unfortunately). There must always, my lady, be one to command and others to obey.
LADY MARY (satisfied). One to command, others to obey. Yes. (Then suddenly she realises that there may be a dire meaning in his confident words.) Crichton!
CRICHTON (who has intended no dire meaning). What is it, my lady?
(But she only stares into his face and then hurries from him. Left alone he is puzzled, but being a practical man he busies himself gathering firewood, until TWEENY appears excitedly carrying cocoa-nuts in her skirt. She has made better use than the ladies of her three minutes’ grace for dressing.)
TWEENY (who can be happy even on an island if CRICHTON is with her). Look what I found.
CRICHTON. Cocoa-nuts. Bravo!
TWEENY. They grows on trees.
CRICHTON. Where did you think they grew?
TWEENY. I thought as how they grew in rows on top of little sticks.
CRICHTON (wrinkling his brows). Oh Tweeny, Tweeny!
TWEENY (anxiously). Have I offended of your feelings again, sir?
CRICHTON. A little.
TWEENY (in a despairing outburst). I’m full o’ vulgar words and ways; and though I may keep them in their holes when you are by, as soon as I’m by myself out they comes in a rush like beetles when the house is dark. I says them gloating-like, in my head—’Blooming’ I says, and ‘All my eye,’ and ‘Ginger,’ and ‘Nothink’; and all the time we was being wrecked I was praying to myself, ‘Please the Lord it may be an island as it’s natural to be vulgar on.’
(A shudder passes through CRICHTON, and she is abject.)
That’s the kind I am, sir. I’m ‘opeless. You’d better give me up.
(She is a pathetic, forlorn creature, and his manhood is stirred.)
CRICHTON (wondering a little at himself for saying it). I won’t give you up. It is strange that one so common should attract one so fastidious; but so it is. (Thoughtfully.) There is something about you, Tweeny, there is a je ne sais quoi about you.
TWEENY (knowing only that he has found something in her to commend). Is there, is there? Oh, I am glad.
CRICHTON (putting his hand on her shoulder like
a protector). We shall fight your vulgarity together. (All this time he has been arranging sticks for his fire.) Now get some dry grass. (She brings him grass, and he puts it under the sticks. He produces an odd lens from his pocket, and tries to focus the sun’s rays.)
TWEENY. Why, what’s that?
CRICHTON (the ingenious creature). That’s the glass from my watch and one from Mr. Treherne’s, with a little water between them. I’m hoping to kindle a fire with it.
TWEENY (properly impressed). Oh sir!
(After one failure the grass takes fire, and they are blowing on it when excited cries near by bring them sharply to their feet. AGATHA runs to them, white of face, followed by ERNEST.)
ERNEST. Danger! Crichton, a tiger-cat!
CRICHTON (getting his cutlass). Where?
AGATHA. It is at our heels.
ERNEST. Look out, Crichton.
CRICHTON. H’sh!
(TREHERNE comes to his assistance, while LADY MARY and CATHERINE join AGATHA in the hut.) ERNEST. It will be on us in a moment. (He seizes the hatchet and guards the hut. It is pleasing to see that ERNEST is no coward.)
TREHERNE. Listen!
ERNEST. The grass is moving. It’s coming.
(It comes. But it is no tiger-cat; it is LORD LOAM crawling on his hands and knees, a very exhausted and dishevelled peer, wondrously attired in rags. The girls see him, and with glad cries rush into his arms.)
LADY MARY. Father.
LORD LOAM. Mary — Catherine — Agatha. Oh dear, my dears, my dears, oh dear!
LADY MARY. Darling.
AGATHA. Sweetest.
CATHERINE. Love.
TREHERNE. Glad to see you, sir.
ERNEST. Uncle, uncle, dear old uncle.
(For a time such happy cries fill the air, but presently TREHERNE is thoughtless.)
TREHERNE. Ernest thought you were a tiger-cat.
LORD LOAM (stung somehow to the quick). Oh, did you? I knew you at once, Ernest; I knew you by the way you ran.
(ERNEST smiles forgivingly.)
CRICHTON (venturing forward at last). My lord, I am glad.
ERNEST (with upraised finger). But you are also idling, Crichton. (Making himself comfortable on the ground.) We mustn’t waste time. To work, to work.
CRICHTON (after contemplating him without rancour). Yes, sir.
(He gets a pot from the hut and hangs it on a tripod over the fire, which is now burning brightly.)
TREHERNE. Ernest, you be a little more civil. Crichton, let me help.
(He is soon busy helping CRICHTON to add to the strength of the hut.)
LORD LOAM (gazing at the pot as ladies are said to gaze on precious stones). Is that — but I suppose I’m dreaming again. (Timidly.) It isn’t by any chance a pot on top of a fire, is it?
LADY MARY. Indeed, it is, dearest. It is our supper.
LORD LOAM. I have been dreaming of a pot on a fire for two days. (Quivering.) There ‘s nothing in it, is there?
ERNEST. Sniff, uncle. (LORD LOAM sniffs.)
LORD LOAM (reverently). It smells of onions!
(There is a sudden diversion.)
CATHERINE. Father, you have boots!
LADY MARY. So he has.
LORD LOAM. Of course I have.
ERNEST (with greedy cunning). You are actually wearing boots, uncle. It’s very unsafe, you know, in this climate.
LORD LOAM. Is it?
ERNEST. We have all abandoned them, you observe. The blood, the arteries, you know.
LORD LOAM. I hadn’t a notion.
(He holds out his feet, and ERNEST kneels.)
ERNEST. O Lord, yes.
(In another moment those boots will be his.)
LADY MARY (quickly). Father, he is trying to get your boots from you. There is nothing in the world we wouldn’t give for boots.
ERNEST (rising haughtily, a proud spirit misunderstood). I only wanted the loan of them.
AGATHA (running her fingers along them lovingly). If you lend them to any one, it will be to us, won’t it, father.
LORD LOAM. Certainly, my child.
ERNEST. Oh, very well. (He is leaving these selfish ones.) I don’t want your old boots. (He gives his uncle a last chance.) You don’t think you could spare me one boot?
LORD LOAM (tartly). I do not.
ERNEST. Quite so. Well, all I can say is I’m sorry for you.
(He departs to recline elsewhere.)
LADY MARY. Father, we thought we should never see you again.
LORD LOAM. I was washed ashore, my dear, clinging to a hencoop. How awful that first night was.
LADY MARY. Poor father.
LORD LOAM. When I woke, I wept. Then I began to feel extremely hungry. There was a large turtle on the beach. I remembered from the Swiss Family Robinson that if you turn a turtle over he is helpless. My dears, I crawled towards him, I flung myself upon him — (here he pauses to rub his leg) — the nasty, spiteful brute.
LADY MARY. You didn’t turn him over?
LORD LOAM (vindictively, though he is a kindly man). Mary, the senseless thing wouldn’t wait; I found that none of them would wait.
CATHERINE. We should have been as badly off if Crichton hadn’t —
LADY MARY (quickly). Don’t praise Crichton.
LORD LOAM. And then those beastly monkeys, I always understood that if you flung stones at them they would retaliate by flinging cocoa-nuts at you. Would you believe it, I flung a hundred stones, and not one monkey had sufficient intelligence to grasp my meaning. How I longed for Crichton.
LADY MARY (wincing). For us also, father?
LORD LOAM. For you also. I tried for hours to make a fire. The authors say that when wrecked on an island you can obtain a light by rubbing two pieces of stick together. (With feeling.) The liars!
LADY MARY. And all this time you thought there was no one on the island but yourself?
LORD LOAM. I thought so until this morning. I was searching the pools for little fishes, which I caught in my hat, when suddenly I saw before me — on the sand —
CATHERINE. What?
LORD LOAM. A hairpin.
LADY MARY. A hairpin! It must be one of ours. Give it me, father.
AGATHA. No, it’s mine.
LORD LOAM. I didn’t keep it.
LADY MARY (speaking for all three). Didn’t keep it? Found a hairpin on an island, and didn’t keep it?
LORD LOAM (humbly). My dears.
AGATHA (scarcely to be placated). Oh father, we have returned to nature more than you bargained for.
LADY MARY. For shame, Agatha. (She has something on her mind.) Father, there is something I want you to do at once — I mean to assert your position as the chief person on the island.
(They are all surprised.)
LORD LOAM. But who would presume to question it?
CATHERINE. She must mean Ernest.
LADY MARY. Must I?
AGATHA. It’s cruel to say anything against Ernest.
LORD LOAM (firmly). If any one presumes to challenge my position, I shall make short work of him.
AGATHA. Here comes Ernest; now see if you can say these horrid things to his face.
LORD LOAM. I shall teach him his place at once.
LADY MARY (anxiously). But how?
LORD LOAM (chuckling). I have just thought of an extremely amusing way of doing it. (As ERNEST approaches.) Ernest.
ERNEST (loftily). Excuse me, uncle, I’m thinking. I’m planning out the building of this hut.
LORD LOAM. I also have been thinking.
ERNEST. That don’t matter.
LORD LOAM. Eh?
ERNEST. Please, please, this is important.
LORD LOAM. I have been thinking that I ought to give you my boots.
ERNEST. What!
LADY MARY. Father.