by Unknown
MABEL (looking around her curiously). A pretty little room; I wonder who is the owner?
PURDIE. It doesn’t matter; the great thing is that we have escaped Joanna.
MABEL. Jack, look, a man!
(The term may not be happily chosen, but the person indicated is Lob curled up on his chair by a dead fire. The last look on his face before he fell asleep having been a leery one it is still there.)
PURDIE. He is asleep.
MABEL. Do you know him?
PURDIE. Not I. Excuse me, sir, Hi! (No shaking, however, wakens the sleeper.)
MABEL. Darling, how extraordinary.
PURDIE (always considerate). After all, precious, have we any right to wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in his house?
MABEL (who comes of a good family). I think he would expect it of us.
PURDIE (after trying again). There is no budging him.
MABEL (appeased). At any rate, we have done the civil thing.
(She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven’t drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird’s nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and what has spirited them away?
PURDIE. Perhaps they have only gone to bed. Ought we to knock them up?
MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done). I think not, dear. I suppose we have run away, Jack — meaning to?
PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... (He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB’S leer. It has not left his face but it has shifted.) He is not shamming, do you think?
MABEL. Shake him again.
PURDIE (after shaking him). It’s all right. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
MABEL. Poor little Joanna! Still, if a woman insists on being a pendulum round a man’s neck ...
PURDIE. Do give me a chance, Mabel. If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
(JOANNA comes through the curtains so inopportunely that for the moment he is almost pettish.)
May I say, this is just a little too much, Joanna!
JOANNA (unconscious as they of her return to her dinner gown). So, sweet husband, your soul is still walking alone, is it?
MABEL (who hates coarseness of any kind). How can you sneak about in this way, Joanna? Have you no pride?
JOANNA (dashing away a tear). Please to address me as Mrs. Purdie, madam. (She sees LOB.) Who is this man?
PURDIE. We don’t know; and there is no waking him. You can try, if you like.
(Failing to rouse him JOANNA makes a third at table. They are all a little inconsequential, as if there were still some moonshine in their hair.)
JOANNA. You were saying something about the devotion of a lifetime; please go on.
PURDIE (diffidently). I don’t like to before you, Joanna.
JOANNA (becoming coarse again). Oh, don’t mind me.
PURDIE (looking like a note of interrogation). I should certainly like to say it.
MABEL (loftily). And I shall be proud to hear it.
PURDIE. I should have liked to spare you this, Joanna; you wouldn’t put your hands over your ears?
JOANNA (alas). No, sir.
MABEL. Fie, Joanna. Surely a wife’s natural delicacy ...
PURDIE (severely). As you take it in that spirit, Joanna, I can proceed with a clear conscience. If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime — (He reels a little, staring at LOB, over whose face the leer has been wandering like an insect.)
MABEL. Did he move?
PURDIE. It isn’t that. I am feeling — very funny. Did one of you tap me just now on the forehead?
(Their hands also have gone to their foreheads.)
MABEL. I think I have been in this room before.
PURDIE (flinching). There is something coming rushing back to me.
MABEL. I seem to know that coffee set. If I do, the lid of the milk jug is chipped. It is!
JOANNA. I can’t remember this man’s name; but I am sure it begins with L.
MABEL. Lob.
PURDIE. Lob.
JOANNA. Lob.
PURDIE. Mabel, your dress?
MABEL (beholding it). How on earth...?
JOANNA. My dress! (To PURDIE.) You were in knickerbockers in the wood.
PURDIE. And so I am now. (He sees he is not.) Where did I change? The wood! Let me think. The wood ... the wood, certainly. But the wood wasn’t the wood.
JOANNA (revolving like one in pursuit). My head is going round.
MABEL. Lob’s wood! I remember it all. We were here. We did go.
PURDIE. So we did. But how could...? where was...?
JOANNE. And who was...?
MABEL And what was...?
PURDIE (even in this supreme hour a man). Don’t let go. Hold on to what we were doing, or we shall lose grip of ourselves. Devotion. Something about devotion. Hold on to devotion. ‘If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime...’ Which of you was I saying that to?
MABEL. To me.
PURDIE. Are you sure?
MABEL (shakily). I am not quite sure.
PURDIE (anxiously). Joanna, what do you think? (With a sudden increase of uneasiness.) Which of you is my wife?
JOANNA (without enthusiasm). I am. No, I am not. It is Mabel who is your wife!
MABEL. Me?
PURDIE (with a curious gulp). Why, of course you are, Mabel!
MABEL. I believe I am!
PURDIE. And yet how can it be? I was running away with you.
JOANNA (solving that problem). You don’t need to do it now.
PURDIE. The wood. Hold on to the wood. The wood is what explains it. Yes, I see the whole thing. (He gazes at LOB.) You infernal old rascal! Let us try to think it out. Don’t any one speak for a moment. Think first. Love ... Hold on to love. (He gets another tap.) I say, I believe I am not a deeply passionate chap at all; I believe I am just .... a philanderer!
MABEL. It is what you are.
JOANNA (more magnanimous). Mabel, what about ourselves?
PURDIE (to whom it is truly a nauseous draught). I didn’t know. Just a philanderer! (The soul of him would like at this instant to creep into another body.) And if people don’t change, I suppose we shall begin all over again now.
JOANNA (the practical). I daresay; but not with each other. I may philander again, but not with you.
(They look on themselves without approval, always a sorry occupation. The man feels it most because he has admired himself most, or perhaps partly for some better reason.)
PURDIE (saying goodbye to an old friend). John Purdie, John Purdie, the fine fellow I used to think you! (When he is able to look them in the face again.) The wood has taught me one thing, at any rate.
MABEL (dismally). What, Jack?
PURDIE. That it isn’t accident that shapes our lives.
JOANNA. No, it’s Fate.
PURDIE (the truth running through him, seeking for a permanent home in him, willing to give him still another chance, loth to desert him). It’s not Fate, Joanna. Fate is something outside us. What really plays the dickens with us is some thing in ourselves. Something that makes us go on doing the same sort of fool things, however many chances we get.
MABEL. Something in ourselves?
PURDIE (shivering). Something we are born with.
JOANNA. Can’t we cut out the beastly thing?
PURDIE. Depends, I expect, on how long we have pampered him. We can at least control him if we try hard enough. But I have for the moment an abominably clear perception that the likes of me never really tries. Forgive me, Joanna — no, Mabel — both of you. (He is a shamed man.) It isn’t very pleasant to discover that one is a rotter. I suppose I shall get used to it.
JOA
NNA. I could forgive anybody anything tonight. (Candidly.) It is so lovely not to be married to you, Jack.
PURDIE (spiritless). I can understand that. I do feel small.
JOANNA (the true friend). You will soon swell up again.
PURDIE (for whom, alas, we need not weep). That is the appalling thing. But at present, at any rate, I am a rag at your feet, Joanna — no, at yours, Mabel. Are you going to pick me up? I don’t advise it.
MABEL. I don’t know whether I want to, Jack. To begin with, which of us is it your lonely soul is in search of?
JOANNA. Which of us is the fluid one, or the fluider one?
MABEL. Are you and I one? Or are you and Joanna one? Or are the three of us two?
JOANNA. He wants you to whisper in his ear, Mabel, the entrancing poem, ‘Mabel Purdie.’ Do it, Jack; there will be nothing wrong in it now.
PURDIE. Rub it in.
MABEL. When I meet Joanna’s successor —
PURDIE (quailing). No, no, Mabel none of that. At least credit me with having my eyes open at last. There will be no more of this. I swear it by all that is —
JOANNA (in her excellent imitation of a sheep). Baa-a, he is off again.
PURDIE. Oh Lord, so I am.
MABEL. Don’t, Joanna.
PURDIE (his mind still illumined). She is quite right — I was. In my present state of depression — which won’t last — I feel there is something in me that will make me go on being the same ass, however many chances I get. I haven’t the stuff in me to take warning. My whole being is corroded. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about—’The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’
JOANNA. For ‘dear Brutus’ we are to read ‘dear audience’ I suppose?
PURDIE. You have it.
JOANNA. Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves?
PURDIE. We have the power right enough.
JOANNA. But isn’t that rather splendid?
PURDIE. For those who have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first time that she has not married a better man.) I am afraid there is not much fight in me, Mabel, but we shall see. If you catch me at it again, have the goodness to whisper to me in passing, ‘Lob’s Wood.’ That may cure me for the time being.
MABEL (still certain that she loved him once but not so sure why.) Perhaps I will ... as long as I care to bother, Jack. It depends on you how long that is to be.
JOANNA (to break an awkward pause). I feel that there is hope in that as well as a warning. Perhaps the wood may prove to have been useful after all. (This brighter view of the situation meets with no immediate response. With her next suggestion she reaches harbour.) You know, we are not people worth being sorrowful about — so let us laugh.
(The ladies succeed in laughing though not prettily, but the man has been too much shaken.)
JOANNA (in the middle of her laugh). We have forgotten the others! I wonder what is happening to them?
PURDIE (reviving). Yes, what about them? Have they changed!
MABEL. I didn’t see any of them in the wood.
JOANNA. Perhaps we did see them without knowing them; we didn’t know Lob.
PURDIE (daunted). That’s true.
JOANNA. Won’t it be delicious to be here to watch them when they come back, and see them waking up — or whatever it was we did.
PURDIE. What was it we did? I think something tapped me on the forehead.
MABEL (blanching). How do we know the others will come back?
JOANNA (infected). We don’t know. How awful!
MABEL. Listen!
PURDIE. I distinctly hear some one on the stairs.
MABEL. It will be Matey.
PURDIE (the chink beginning to close). Be cautious both of you; don’t tell him we have had any ... odd experiences.
(It is, however, MRS. COADE who comes downstairs in a dressing-gown and carrying a candle and her husband’s muffler.)
MRS. COADE. So you are back at last. A nice house, I must say. Where is Coady?
PURDIE (taken aback). Coady! Did he go into the wood, too?
MRS. COADE (placidly). I suppose so. I have been down several times to look for him.
MABEL. Coady, too!
JOANNA (seeing visions). I wonder ... Oh, how dreadful!
MRS. COADE. What is dreadful, Joanna?
JOANNA (airily). Nothing. I was just wondering what he is doing.
MRS. COADE. Doing? What should he be doing? Did anything odd happen to you in the wood?
PURDIE (taking command). No, no, nothing.
JOANNA. We just strolled about, and came back. (That subject being exhausted she points to LOB). Have you noticed him?
MRS. COADE. Oh, yes; he has been like that all the time. A sort of stupor, I think; and sometimes the strangest grin comes over his face.
PURDIE (wincing). Grin?
MRS. COADE. Just as if he were seeing amusing things in his sleep.
PURDIE (guardedly). I daresay he is. Oughtn’t we to get Matey to him?
MRS. COADE. Matey has gone, too.
PURDIE. Wha-at!
MRS. COADE. At all events he is not in the house.
JOANNA (unguardedly). Matey! I wonder who is with him.
MRS. COADE. Must somebody be with him?
JOANNA. Oh, no, not at all.
(They are simultaneously aware that someone outside has reached the window.)
MRS. COADE. I hope it is Coady.
(The other ladies are too fond of her to share this wish.)
MABEL. Oh, I hope not.
MRS. COADE (blissfully). Why, Mrs. Purdie?
JOANNA (coaxingly). Dear Mrs. Coade, whoever he is, and whatever he does, I beg you not to be surprised. We feel that though we had no unusual experiences in the wood, others may not have been so fortunate.
MABEL. And be cautious, you dear, what you say to them before they come to.
MRS. COADE. ‘Come to’? You puzzle me. And Coady didn’t have his muffler.
(Let it be recorded that in their distress for this old lady they forget their own misadventures. PURDIE takes a step toward the curtains in a vague desire to shield her; — and gets a rich reward; he has seen the coming addition to their circle.)
PURDIE (elated and pitiless). It is Matey!
(A butler intrudes who still thinks he is wrapped in fur.)
JOANNA (encouragingly). Do come in.
MATEY. With apologies, ladies and gents ... May I ask who is host?
PURDIE (splashing in the temperature that suits him best). A very reasonable request. Third on the left.
MATEY (advancing upon Lob). Merely to ask, sir, if you can direct me to my hotel?
(The sleeper’s only response is a alight quiver in one leg.)
The gentleman seems to be reposing.
MRS. COADE. It is Lob.
MATEY. What is lob, ma’am?
MRS. COADE (pleasantly curious). Surely you haven’t forgotten?
PURDIE (overriding her). Anything we can do for you, sir? Just give it a name.
JOANNA (in the same friendly spirit). I hope you are not alone: do say you have some lady friends with you.
MATEY (with an emphasis on his leading word). My wife is with me.
JOANNA. His wife! ... (With commendation.) You have been quick!
MRS. COADE. I didn’t know you were married.
MATEY. Why should you, madam? You talk as if you knew me.
MRS. COADE. Good gracious, do you really think I don’t?
PURDIE (indicating delicately that she is subject to a certain softening). Sit down, won’t you, my dear sir, and make yourself comfy.
MATEY (accustomed of late to such deferential treatment). Thank you. But my wife ...