by Unknown
Charles. Yes, but only to the next station.
Mrs. Page (grown humble in her misfortune). Even for that moment of your company I shall be grateful. Dame, this gentleman turns out to be a friend of Beatrice.
Dame. So he said, but I suspicioned him.
Mrs. Page. Well, he is. Mr. Roche, this is my kind Dame. I must put a few things together.
Dame. If I can help ——
Mrs. Page. You can send on my luggage tomorrow; but here is one thing you might do now. Run down to the Rectory and tell them why I can’t be there for the cutting-out.
Dame. I will.
Mrs. Page. I haven’t many minutes. Goodbye, you dear, for I shall be gone before you get back. I’ll write and settle everything. (With a last look round) Cosy room! I have had a lovely time.
(Her face quivers a little, but she does not break down. She passes, a courageous figure, into the bedroom. The slippers plop as she mounts the steps to it. Her back looks older than we have seen it; at least such is its intention.)
Dame (who has learned the uselessness of railing against fate). Dearie dear, what a pity.
Charles (less experienced). It’s horrible.
Dame (wisely turning fate into a gossip). Queer to think of a lady like Mrs. Page having a daughter that jumps about for a living. (Good God, thinks Charles, how little this woman knows of life.) What I sometimes fear is that the daughter doesn’t take much care of her. I dare say she’s fond of her, but does she do the little kind things for her that a lady come Mrs. Page’s age needs?
Charles (wincing). She’s not so old.
Dame (whose mind is probably running on breakfast in bed and suchlike matters). No, but at our age we are fond of — of quiet, and I doubt she doesn’t get it.
Charles. I know she doesn’t.
Dame (stumbling among fine words which attract her like a display of drapery). She says it’s her right to be out of the hurly-burly and into what she calls the delicious twilight of middle-age.
Charles (with dizzying thoughts in his brain). If she is so fond of it, isn’t it a shame she should have to give it up?
Dame. The living here?
Charles. Not so much that as being middle-aged.
Dame. Give up being middle-aged! How could she do that?
(He is saved replying by Mrs. Page, who calls from the bedroom.)
Mrs. Page. Dame, I hear you talking, and you promised to go at once.
(The Dame apologises, and is off. Charles is left alone with his great resolve, which is no less than to do one of the fine things of history. It carries him toward the bedroom door, but not quickly; one can also see that it has a rival who is urging him to fly the house.)
Charles (with a drum beating inside him). Beatrice, I want to speak to you at once.
Mrs. Page (through the closed door). As soon as I have packed my bag.
Charles (finely). Don’t pack it.
Mrs. Page. I must.
Charles. I have something to say.
Mrs. Page. I can hear you.
Charles (who had been honourably mentioned for the school prize poem). Beatrice, until now I hadn’t really known you at all. The girl I was so fond of, there wasn’t any such girl.
Mrs. Page. Oh yes, indeed there was.
Charles (now in full sail for a hero’s crown). There was the dear woman who was Rosalind, but she had tired of it. Rosalind herself grew old and gave up the forest of Arden, but there was one man who never forgot the magic of her being there; and I shall never forget yours. (Strange that between the beatings of the drum he should hear a little voice within him calling, ‘Ass, Charles, you ass!’ or words to that effect. But he runs nobly on.) My dear, I want to be your Orlando to the end. (Surely nothing could be grander. He is chagrined to get no response beyond what might be the breaking of a string.) Do you hear me?
Mrs. Page. Yes. (A brief answer, but he is off again.)
Charles. I will take you out of that hurly-burly and accompany you into the delicious twilight of middle-age. I shall be staid in manner so as not to look too young, and I will make life easy for you in your declining years. (‘Ass, Charles, you ass!’) Beatrice, do come out.
Mrs. Page. I am coming now. (She comes out carrying her bag.) You naughty Charles, I heard you proposing to mamma.
(The change that has come over her is far too subtle to have grown out of a wish to surprise him, but its effect on Charles is as if she had struck him in the face.
Too subtle also to be only an affair of clothes, though she is now in bravery hot from Mdme. Make-the-woman, tackle by Monsieur, a Rosalind cap jaunty on her head, her shoes so small that one wonders if she ever has to light a candle to look for her feet. She is a tall, slim young creature, easily breakable; svelte is the word that encompasses her as we watch the flow of her figure, her head arching on its long stem, and the erect shoulders that we seem, God bless us, to remember as a little hunched. Her eyes dance with life but are easily startled, because they are looking fresh upon the world, wild notes in them as from the woods. Not a woman this but a maid, or so it seems to Charles.
She has been thinking very little about him, but is properly gratified by what she reads in his face.)
Do I surprise you as much as that, Charles?
(She puts down her bag, Beatrice Page’s famous bag. If you do not know it, you do not, alas, know Beatrice. It is seldom out of her hand, save when cavaliers have been sent in search of it. She is always late for everything except her call, and at the last moment she sweeps all that is most precious to her into the bag, and runs. Jewels? Oh no, pooh; letters from nobodies, postal orders for them, a piece of cretonne that must match she forgets what, bits of string she forgets why, a book given her by darling What’s-his-name, a broken miniature, part of a watch-chain, a dog’s collar, such a neat parcel tied with ribbon (golden gift or biscuits? she means to find out some day), a purse, but not the right one, a bottle of frozen gum, and a hundred good-natured scatter-brained things besides. Her servants (who all adore her) hate the bag as if it were a little dog; swains hate it because it gets lost and has to be found in the middle of a declaration; managers hate it because she carries it at rehearsals, when it bursts open suddenly like a too tightly laced lady, and its contents are strewn on the stage; authors make engaging remarks about it until they discover that it has an artful trick of bursting because she does not know her lines. If you complain, really furious this time, she takes you all in her arms. Well, well, but what we meant to say was that when Beatrice sees Charles’s surprise she puts down her bag.)
Charles. Good God! Is there nothing real in life.
(She curves toward him in one of those swallow-flights which will haunt the stage long after Beatrice Page is but a memory. What they say and how they said it soon passes away; what lives on is the pretty movements like Beatrice’s swallow-flights. All else may go, even the golden voices go, but the pretty movements remain and play about the stage for ever. They are the only ghosts of the theatre.)
Mrs. Page. Heaps of things. Rosalind is real, and I am Rosalind; and the forest of Arden is real, and I am going back to it; and cakes and ale are real, and I am to eat and drink them again. Everything is real except middle-age.
(She puts her hand on his shoulder in the old, dangerous, kindly, too friendly way. That impulsive trick of yours, madam, has a deal to answer for.)
Charles. But you said ——
(She flings up her hands in mockery; they are such subtle hands that she can stand with her back to you, and, putting them behind her, let them play the drama.)
Mrs. Page. I said! (She is gone from him in another flight.) I am Rosalind and I am going back. Hold me down, Charles, unless you want me to go mad with glee.
Charles (gripping her). I feel as if in the room you came out of you have left the woman who went into it five minutes ago.
Mrs. Page (slipping from him as she slips from all of us). I have, Charles, I have. I left the floppy, sloppy old frump in a trunk to be carted to the
nearest place where they store furniture; and I tell you, my friend (she might have said friends, for it is a warning to the Charleses of every age), if I had a husband and children I would cram them on top of the cart if they sought to come between me and Arden.
Charles (with a shiver). Beatrice!
Mrs. Page. The stage is waiting, the audience is calling, and up goes the curtain. Oh, my public, my little dears, come and foot it again in the forest, and tuck away your double chins.
Charles. You said you hated the public.
Mrs. Page. It was mamma said that. They are my slaves and my playthings, and I toss them nuts. (He knows not how she got there, but for a moment of time her head caressingly skims his shoulder, and she is pouting in his face.) Every one forgives me but you, Charles, every one but you.
Charles (delirious). Beatrice, you unutterable delight ——
Mrs. Page (worlds away). Don’t forgive me if you would rather not,
Here’s a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate.
Charles (pursuing her). There is no one like you on earth, Beatrice. Marry me, marry me (as if he could catch her).
Mrs. Page (cruelly). As a staff for my declining years?
Charles. Forget that rubbish and marry me, you darling girl.
Mrs. Page. I can’t and I won’t, but I’m glad I am your darling girl. (Very likely she is about to be delightful to him, but suddenly she sees her spoil-sport of a bag.) I am trusting to you not to let me miss the train.
Charles. I am coming with you all the way (as if she needed to be told). We had better be off.
Mrs. Page (seizing the bag). Charles, as we run to the station we will stop at every telegraph post and carve something sweet on it—’From the East to Western Ind’ —
Charles (inspired). ‘No jewel is like Rosalind’ —
Mrs. Page. ‘Middle-age is left behind’ —
Charles. ‘For ever young is Rosalind.’ Oh, you dear, Motley’s the only wear.
Mrs. Page. And all the way up in the train, Charles, you shall woo me exquisitely. Nothing will come of it, but you are twenty-three again, and you will have a lovely time.
Charles. I’ll win you, I’ll win you.
Mrs. Page. And eventually you will marry the buxom daughter of the wealthy tallow-chandler ——
Charles. Never, I swear.
Mrs. Page (screwing her nose). And bring your children to see me playing the Queen in Hamlet.
(Here Charles Roche, bachelor, kisses the famous Beatrice Page. Another sound is heard.)
Charles. The whistle of the train.
Mrs. Page. Away, away! ‘Tis Touchstone calling. Fool, I come, I come. (To bedroom door) Ta-ta, mamma.
(They are gone.)
THE WILL
The scene is any lawyers office.
It may be, and no doubt will be, the minute reproduction of some actual office, with all the characteristic appurtenances thereof, every blot of ink in its proper place; but for the purpose in hand any bare room would do just as well. The only thing essential to the room, save the two men sitting in it, is a framed engraving on the wall of Queen Victoria, which dates sufficiently the opening scene, and will be changed presently to King Edward; afterwards to King George, to indicate the passing of time. No other alteration is called for. Doubtless different furniture came in, and the tiling of the fireplace was renewed, and at last some one discovered that the flowers in the window-box were dead, but all that is as immaterial to the action as the new blue-bottles; the succession of monarchs will convey allegorically the one thing necessary, that time is passing, but that the office of Devizes, Devizes, and Devizes goes on.
The two men are Devizes Senior and Junior. Senior, who is middle-aged, succeeded to a good thing years ago, and as the curtain rises we see him bent over his table making it a better thing. It is pleasant to think that before he speaks he adds another thirteen and fourpence, say, to the fortune of the firm.
Junior is quite a gay dog, twenty-three, and we catch him skilfully balancing an office ruler on his nose. He is recently from Oxford —
If you show him in Hyde Park, lawk, how they will stare, Tho’ a very smart figure in Bloomsbury Square.
Perhaps Junior is a smarter figure in the office (among the clerks) than he was at Oxford, but this is one of the few things about him that his shrewd father does not know.
There comes to them by the only door into the room a middle-aged clerk called Surtees, who is perhaps worth looking at, though his manner is that of one who has long ceased to think of himself as of any importance to either God or man. Look at him again, however {which few would do), and you may guess that he has lately had a shock — touched a living wire — and is a little dazed by it. He brings a card to Mr. Devizes, Senior, who looks at it and shakes his head.
Mr. Devizes. ‘Mr. Philip Ross.’ Don’t know him.
Surtees (who has an expressionless voice). He says he wrote you two days ago, sir, explaining his business.
Mr. Devizes. I have had no letter from a Philip Ross.
Robert. Nor I.
(He is more interested in his feat with the ruler than in a possible client, but Surtees looks at him oddly.)
Mr. Devizes. Surtees looks as if he thought you had.
(Robert obliges by reflecting in the light of Surtees’s countenance.)
Robert. Ah, you think it may have been that one, Surty?
Mr. Devizes (sharply). What one?
Robert. It was the day before yesterday. You were out, father, and Surtees brought me in some letters. His mouth was wide open. (Thoughtfully) I suppose that was why I did it.
Mr. Devizes. What did you do?
Robert. I must have suddenly recalled a game we used to play at Oxford. You try to fling cards one by one into a hat. It requires great skill. So I cast one of the letters at Surtees’s open mouth, and it missed him and went into the fire. It may have been Philip Ross’s letter.
Mr. Devizes (wrinkling his brows). Too bad, Robert.
Robert (blandly). Yes, you see I am out of practice.
Surtees. He seemed a very nervous person, sir, and quite young. Not a gentleman of much consequence.
Robert (airily). Why not tell him to write again?
Mr. Devizes. Not fair.
Surtees. But she ——
Robert. She? Who?
Surtees. There is a young lady with him, sir. She is crying.
Robert. Pretty?
Surtees. I should say she is pretty, sir, in a quite inoffensive way.
Robert (for his own gratification). Ha!
Mr. Devizes. Well, when I ring show them in.
Robert (with roguish finger). And let this be a lesson to you, Surty, not to go about your business with your mouth open. (Surtees tries to smile as requested, but with poor success.) Nothing the matter, Surty? You seem to have lost your sense of humour.
Surtees (humbly enough). I’m afraid I have, sir. I never had very much, Mr. Robert.
(He goes quietly. There has been a suppressed emotion about him that makes the incident poignant.)
Robert. Anything wrong with Surtees, father?
Mr. Devizes. Never mind him. I am very angry with you, Robert.
Robert (like one conceding a point in a debating society). And justly.
Mr. Devizes (frowning). All we can do is to tell this Mr. Ross that we have not read his letter.
Robert (bringing his knowledge of the world to bear). Is that necessary?
Mr. Devizes. We must admit that we don’t know what he has come about.
Robert (tolerant of his father’s limitations). But don’t we?
Mr. Devizes. Do you?
Robert. I rather think I can put two and two together.
Mr. Devizes. Clever boy! Well, I shall leave them to you.
Robert. Right.
Mr. Devizes. Your first case, Robert.
Robert (undismayed). It will be as good as a play to you to sit there and watch me discovering before they have been two minutes
in the room what is the naughty thing that brings them here.
Mr. Devizes (drily). I am always ready to take a lesson from the new generation. But of course we old fogies could do that also.
Robert. How?
Mr. Devizes. By asking them.
Robert. Pooh. What did I go to Oxford for?
Mr. Devizes. God knows. Are you ready?