by Unknown
ROGER. I hate your feeling it in that way, father.
MR. TORRANCE. I don’t say it is a palatable draught, but when the war is over we shall all shake down to the new conditions. No fear of my being sarcastic to you then, Roger. I’ll have to be jolly respectful.
ROGER. Shut up, father!
MR. TORRANCE. You’ve begun, you see. Don’t worry, Roger. Any rawness I might feel in having missed the chance of seeing whether I was a man — like Coxon, confound him!
—’is swallowed up in the pride of giving the chance to you.
I’m in a shiver about you, but — It’s all true, Roger, what your mother said about 2nd Lieutenants. Till the other day we were so little of a military nation that most of us didn’t know there WERE 2nd Lieutenants. And now, in thousands of homes we feel that there is nothing else. 2nd Lieutenant! It is like a new word to us — one, I dare say, of many that the war will add to our language. We have taken to it, Roger, If a son of mine were to tarnish it — ; —
ROGER (GROWLING). I’ll try not to.
MR. TORRANCE. If you did, I should just know that there had been something wrong about me, ROGER (GRUFFLY). You ‘re all right.
MR. TORRANCE. If I am, you are. (IT IS A WINNING FACE THAT MR. TORRANCE TURNS ON HIS SON.) I suppose you have been asking yourself of late, what if you were to turn out to be a funk!
ROGER. How did you know?
MR. TORRANCE. I know because you are me. Because ever since there was talk of this commission I have been thinking and thinking what were you thinking — so as to help you.
(This itself is a help, roger’s hand — but he withdraws it hurriedly.)
ROGER (WISTFULLY). They all seem to be so frightfully brave, father.
MR. TORRANCE. I expect that the best of them had the same qualms as you before their first engagement.
ROGER. I — I kind of think, father, that I won’t be a funk.
MR. TORRANCE. I kind of think so too, Roger, (MR.
TORRANCE FORGETS HIMSELF.) Mind you don’t be rash, my boy; and for God’s sake, keep your head down in the trenches.
(roger has caught him out. He points a gay finger at his anxious father.)
ROGER. You know you laughed at mother for saying that!
MR. TORRANCE. Did I? Your mother thinks that I have an unfortunate manner with you.
ROGER (MAGNANIMOUSLY). Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the father-and-son complication.
MR. TORRANCE. That is really all it is. But she thinks I should show my affection for you more openly.
ROGER (WRIGGLING AGAIN). I wouldn’t do that. Of course for this once — but in a general way I wouldn’t do that. WE know, you and I.
MR. TORRANCE. As long as we know, it’s no one else’s affair, is it?
ROGER. That’s the ticket, father.
(It is to be feared that MR. torrance is now taking advantage of his superior slyness.)
MR TORRANCE. STILL, BEFORE YOUR MOTHER — TO PLEASE HER —
EH?
ROGER (FALTERING). I suppose it would.
MR. TORRANCE. Well, what do you say?
ROGER. I know she would like it.
MR. TORRANCE. Of course you and I know that such display is all bunkum — repellent even to our natures.
ROGER. Lord, yes!
MR. TORRANCE. But to gratify her?
ROGER. I should be so conscious.
MR. TORRANCE. So should I.
ROGER (CONSIDERING IT). How far would you go?
MR. TORRANCE. Oh, not far. Suppose I called you ‘Old Rogie’? There’s not much in that.
ROGER. It all depends on the way one says these things.
MR. TORRANCE. I should be quite casual.
ROGER. Hum. What would you like me to call you?
MR. TORRANCE (SEVERELY). It isn’t what would I like. But I dare say your mother would beam if you called me ‘dear father.’ ROGER. I don’t think so.
MR. TORRANCE. You know quite well that you think so, Roger.
ROGER. It’s so effeminate.
MR. TORRANCE. Not if you say it casually.
ROGER (WITH SOMETHING VERY LIKE A SNORT). How does one say a thing like that casually?
MR. TORRANCE. Well, for instance, you could whistle while you said it — or anything of that sort.
ROGER. Hum. Of course you — if we were to — be like that, you wouldn’t DO anything.
MR. TORRANCE. How do you mean?
ROGER. You wouldn’t paw me?
MR. TORRANCE (WITH SOME NATURAL INDIGNATION). Roger! you forget yourself. (BUT APPARENTLY IT IS FOR HIM TO CONTINUE.)
That reminds me of a story I heard the other day of a French general. He had asked for volunteers from his airmen for some specially dangerous job — and they all stepped forward. Pretty good that. Then three were chosen and got their orders and saluted, and were starting off when he stopped them.
‘Since when,’ he said, ‘have brave boys departing to the post of danger omitted to embrace their father?’ They did it then. Good story?
ROGER (LOWERING). They were French.
MR. TORRANCE. Yes, I said so. Don’t you think it’s good?
ROGER. Why do you tell it to me?
MR. TORRANCE. Because it’s a good story.
ROGER (STERNLY). You are sure that there is no other reason?
(mr torrance tries to brazen it out, but he looks guilty.) YOU KNOW, FATHER, THAT IS BARRED.
(Just because he knows that he has been flaying it low, MR. torrance snaps angrily.)
MR TORRANCE. WHAT IS BARRED?
ROGER. YOU KNOW.
MR. TORRANCE (SHOUTING). I know that you are a young ass.
ROGER. Really, father —
MR. TORRANCE. Hold your tongue.
(roger can shout also.)
ROGER. I must say, father —
MR. TORRANCE. Be quiet, I tell you.
(It is in the middle of this competition that the lady who dotes on them both chooses to come back, still without her spectacles.)
MRS. TORRANCE. Oh dear! And I had hoped — Oh, John!
(MR. TORRANCE WOULD LIKE TO KICK HIMSELF.)
MR. TORRANCE. My fault.
MRS. TORRANCE. But whatever is the matter?
ROGER. Nothing, mater. (THE WAR IS ALREADY MAKING HIM QUITE CLEVER.) Only father wouldn’t do as I told him.
MR. TORRANCE. Why the dickens should I?
(ROGER IS IMPERTURBABLE; THIS WILL BE USEFUL IN FRANCE,)
ROGER. You see, mater, he said I was the head of the house.
MRS TORRANCE. YOU, ROGIE! (She goes to her husband’s side.) WHAT NONSENSE!
ROGER (GRINNING). Do you like my joke, father?
(The father smiles upon him and is at once uproariously happy. He digs his boy boldly in the ribs.)
MR. TORRANCE. Roger, you scoundrel!
MRS. TORRANCE. That’s better.
ROGER (FEELING THAT THINGS HAVE PERHAPS GONE FAR ENOUGH). I think I’ll go to my room now. You will come up, mater?
MRS. TORRANCE. Yes, dear. I shan’t be five minutes, John.
MR. TORRANCE. More like half an hour.
MRS. TORRANCE (HESITATING). There is nothing wrong, is there? I thought I noticed a — a —
MR. TORRANCE. A certain liveliness, my dear. No, we were only having a good talk.
MRS. TORRANCE. What about, John?
ROGER (HURRIEDLY). About the war.
MR. TORRANCE. About tactics and strategy, wasn’t it, Roger?
ROGER. YES.
MR. TORRANCE. The fact is, Ellen, I have been helping Roger to take his first trench. (WITH A BIG BREATH) And we took it too, together, didn’t we, Roger?
ROGER (VALIANTLY). You bet.
MR. TORRANCE (SIGHING). Though I suppose it is one of those trenches that the enemy retake during the night.
ROGER. Oh, I — I don’t know, father.
MRS. TORRANCE. Whatever are you two talking about?
MR. TORRANCE (IN HIGH FEATHER, PATTING HER, BUT UNABLE TO RESIST A SLIGHT BOAST). It is ver
y private. We don’t tell you everything, you know, Ellen.
(she beams, though she does not understand.)
ROGER. Come on, mater, it’s only his beastly sarcasm again.’Night, father; I won’t see you in the morning.
MR. TORRANCE. ‘Night.
(But roger has not gone yet. He seems to be looking for something — a book, perhaps. Then he begins to whistle — casually.)
ROGER. Goodnight, dear father.
(MR JOHN TORRANCE is left alone, rubbing his hands.)
A KISS FOR CINDERELLA
Produced at Wyndham’s Theatre on March 16, 1916, with the following cast:
Mr. Bodie... O. B. Clarence
Our Policeman.... Gerald du Maurier
Miss Thing.... Hilda Trevelyan
Man with a Coat.. J. W. Macdonald
Mrs. Maloney.... Alma Ellerslie
A Proud Wife.... Elspeth Douglas Reid
A Coster..... Ernest Graham
Marie Thérèse.... Violette Kemplen
Gladys..... Babs Farren
Delphine..... Alma Bersey
Gretchen..... Sunday Wilshin
A Godmother.... Stella Campbell
Lord Mayor.... Lyston Lyle
Lord Times... T. Gideon Warren
The Censor... D. E. Jefferies
A KING,..... William Lugg
A Queen..... Edith Johnston
A Prince..... Gerald du Maurier
A Page..... Master Ronald Hammond
A Penguin... F. Mortimer
A Maid..... Beatrice Fitzgerald
Doctor Brodie.... Henrietta Watson
Danny.... A. E. George
A Probationer.... Elizabeth Pollock
Rivals: Joan Challis, Esme Biddle, Helen Hamilton, Molly Kelly, Olive Royston, Archie Alban, Noel Barker, and Nan Wilcox.
The play ran for 156 performances. There have been several Christmas revivals.
CONTENTS
I
II
III
I
The least distinguished person in ‘Who’s Who’ has escaped, as it were, from that fashionable crush, and is spending a quiet evening at home. He is curled up in his studio, which is so dark that he would he invisible, had we not obligingly placed his wicker chair just where the one dim ray from the stove may strike his face. His eyes are closed luxuriously, and we could not learn much about him without first poking our fingers into them. According to the tome mentioned (to which we must return him before morning), Mr. Bodie is sixty-three, has exhibited in the Royal Academy, and is at present unmarried. They do not proclaim him comparatively obscure: they left it indeed to him to say the final word on this subject, and he has hedged. Let us put it in this way, that he occupies more space in his wicker chair than in the book, where nevertheless he looks as if it was rather lonely not to be a genius. He is a painter for the nicest of reasons, that it is delightful to live and die in a messy studio; for our part, we too should have become a painter had it not been that we always lost our paint-box.
There is no spirited bidding to acquire Mr. Bodie’s canvases: he loves them at first sight himself, and has often got up in the night to see how they are faring; but ultimately he has turned cold to them, and has even been known to offer them, in lieu of alms, to beggars, who departed cursing. We have a weakness for persons who don’t get on, and so cannot help adding, though it is no business of ours, that Mr. Bodie had private means. Curled up in his wicker chair he is rather like an elderly cupid. We wish we could warn him that the POLICEMAN is coming. The POLICEMAN comes: in his hand the weapon that has knocked down more malefactors than all the batons — the bull’s-eye. He strikes with it now, right and left, revealing, as if she had just entered the room, a replica of the Venus of Milo, taller than himself though he is a stalwart.
It is the first meeting of these two, but, though a man who can come to the boil, he is as little moved by her as she by him. After the first glance she continues her reflections. Her smile over his head vaguely displeases him. For two pins he would arrest her. The lantern finds another object, more worthy of his attention, the artist. Mr. Bodie is more restive under the light than was his goddess, perhaps because he is less accustomed to being stared at. Ile blinks and sits up.
MR. BODIE (giving his visitor a lesson in manners). I beg your pardon, officer.
POLICEMAN (confounded). Not that, sir; not at all.
MR. BODIE (pressing his advantage). But I insist on begging your pardon, officer.
POLICEMAN. I don’t see what for, sir.
MR. BODIE (fancying himself). For walking uninvited into the abode of a law-abiding London citizen, with whom I have not the pleasure of being acquainted.
POLICEMAN (after thinking this out). But I’m the one as has done that, sir.
MR. BODIE (with neat surprise). So you are, I beg your pardon, officer.
(With pardonable pride in himself MR.
BODIE turns on the light. The studio, as we can now gather from its sloped roof is at the top of a house; and its window is heavily screened, otherwise we might see the searchlights through it, showing that we are in the period of the great war. Though no one speaks of MR. BODIE’S pictures as Bodies, which is the true test of fame, he is sufficiently eminent not to have works of art painted or scratched on his walls, mercy has been shown even to the panels of his door, and he is handsomely stingy of draperies. The Venus stands so prominent that the studio is evidently hers rather than his. The stove has been brought forward so that he can rest his feet on it, whichever of his easy chairs he is sitting in, and he also falls over it at times when stepping back to consider his latest failure. On a shelf is a large stuffed penguin, which is to be one of the characters in the play, and on each side of this shelf are two or three tattered magazines. We had hankered after giving
MR. BODIE many rows of books, but were well aware that he would get only blocks of wood so cleverly painted to look like books that they would deceive every one except the audience. Everything may be real on the stage except the books. So there are only a few magazines in the studio (and very likely when the curtain rings up it will be found that they are painted too). But
MR. BODIE was a reader; he had books in another room, and the careworn actor who plays him must suggest this by his manner. Our POLICEMAN is no bookman; we who write happen to have it from himself that he had not bought a book since he squeezed through the sixth standard: very tight was his waist that day, he told us, and he had to let out every button. Nevertheless it was literature of a sort that first brought him into our ken. He was our local constable: and common interests, as in the vagaries of the moon, gradually made him and us cease to look at each other askance. We fell into the way of chatting with him and giving him the evening papers we had bought to read as we crossed the streets. One of his duties was to herd the vagrant populace under our arches during air-raids, and at such times he could be properly gruff, yet comforting, like one who would at once run in any bomb that fell in his beat. When he had all his flock nicely plastered against the dank walls he would occasionally come to rest beside us, and thaw, and discuss the newspaper article that had interested him most. It was seldom a war-record; more frequently it was something on the magazine page, such as a symposium by the learned on ‘Do you Believe in Love at First Sight?’ Though reticent in many matters he would face this problem openly; with the guns cracking all around, he would ask for our views wistfully; he spoke of love without a blush, as something recognised officially at Scotland Yard.
At this time he had been in love, to his own knowledge, for several weeks, but whether the god had struck him at first sight he was not certain; he was most anxious to know, and it was in the hope of our being able to help him out that he told us his singular story. On his face at such times was often an amazed look, as if he were staring at her rather than at us, and seeing a creature almost beyond belief. Our greatest success was in saying that perhaps she had fallen in love at first sight with him, which on reflection nearly doubled him up. He
insisted on knowing what had made us put forward this extraordinary suggestion; he would indeed scarcely leave our company that night, and discussed the possibility with us very much as if it were a police case. Our POLICEMAN ‘S romance, now to be told, began, as we begin, with his climbing up into MR. BODIE’S studio, MR. BODIE having turned on the light gave him the nasty look that means ‘And now, my man, what can I do for you?’ Our POLICEMAN, however, was not one to be worsted without striking a blow. He strode to the door, as he has told us, and pointed to a light in the passage.)