by Unknown
MR MORLAND. WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING OVER, FANNY?
MRS MORLAND. IT IS THIS WEEK’S Punch, SO VERY AMUSING.
MR AMY. AH, Punch, IT ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE.
MR MORLAND. NO, INDEED.
MRS MORLAND.! DISAGREE. YOU TWO TRY IF YOU CAN LOOK AT THIS PICTURE WITHOUT LAUGHING.
(They are unable to stand the test.)
MR MORLAND.! THINK! CAN SAY THAT! ENJOY A JOKE AS MUCH AS EVER.
MRS MORLAND. You LIGHT-HEARTED OLD MAN!
MR MORLAND (humorously). NOT SO OLD, FANNY. PLEASE TO REMEMBER THAT! AM TWO MONTHS YOUNGER THAN YOU.
MRS MORLAND. How CAN! FORGET IT WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN CASTING IT UP AGAINST ME ALL OUR MARRIED LIFE?
MR MORLAND (not without curiosity). FANNY AND! ARE SEVENTY-THREE; YOU ARE A BIT YOUNGER, GEORGE,! THINK?
MR AMY. OH YES, OH DEAR YES.
MR MORLAND. You NEVER SAY PRECISELY WHAT YOUR AGE IS.
MR AMY.! AM IN THE LATE SIXTIES.! AM SURE! HAVE TOLD YOU THAT BEFORE.
MR MORLAND. IT SEEMS TO ME YOU HAVE BEEN IN THE SIXTIES LONGER THAN IT IS USUAL TO BE IN THEM.
MRS MORLAND (with her needles). James!
MR MORLAND. No offence, George. I was only going to say that at seventy-three I certainly don’t feel my age. How do you feel, George, at — at sixty-six? (More loudly, as if mr amy were a little deaf.) Do you feel your sixty-six years?
MR AMY (testily). I am more than sixty-six. But I certainly don’t feel my age. It was only last winter that I learned to skate.
MR MORLAND. I still go out with the hounds. You forgot to come last time, George.
MR AMY. If you are implying anything against my memory, James.
MR MORLAND (peering through his glasses). What do you say?
MR AMY. I was saying that I have never used glasses in my life.
MR MORLAND. If I wear glasses occasionally it certainly isn’t because there is anything defective in my eyesight. But the type used by newspapers nowadays is so vile —
MR. amy. There I agree with you. Especially Bradshaw.
MR MORLAND (not hearing him). I say the type used by newspapers of to-day is vile. Don’t you think so?
MR AMY. I have just said so. (Pleasantly) You are getting rather dull of hearing, James.
MR MORLAND. I am? I like that, George! Why, I have constantly to shout to you nowadays.
MR AMY. What annoys me is not that you are a little deaf, you can’t help that. But from the nature of your replies I often see that you are pretending to have heard what I said when you did not. That is rather vain, James.
MR MORLAND. Vain! Now you brought this on yourself, George. I have got something here I might well be vain of, and I meant not to show it to you because it will make you squirm.
(mrs morland taps warningly.)
MR MORLAND. I didn’t mean that, George. I am sure that you will be delighted. What do you think of this?
(He produces a water-colour which his friend examines at arm’s length.)
Let me hold it out for you, as your arms are so short.
(The offer is declined.)
MR AMY (with a sinking). Very nice. What do you call it?
MR MORLAND. Have you any doubt? I haven’t the slightest. I am sure that it is an early Turner.
MR AMY (paling). Turner!
MR MORLAND. What else can it be? Holman suggested a Gurton or even a Dayes. Absurd! Why, Dayes was only a glorified drawingmaster. I flatter myself I can’t make a mistake about a Turner. There is something about a Turner difficult to define, but unmistakable, an absolute something. It is a charming view, too; Kirkstall Abbey obviously.
MR AMY. Rivaulx, I am convinced.
MR MORLAND. I say Kirkstall.
MRS MORLAND (with her needles). James I mr morland. Well, you may be right, the place doesn’t matter.
MR AMY. There is an engraving of Rivaulx in that Copperplate Magazine we were looking at. (He turns up the page.) I have got it, Rivaulx. (He brightens.) Why, this is funny.
It is an engraving of that very picture. Hello, hello, hello.
(Examining it through his private glass.) And it is signed E. Dayes.
(MR. MORLAND holds the sketch so close to him that it brushes his eyelashes.) I wouldn’t eat it, James. So it is by Dayes, the drawingmaster, after all. I am sorry you have had this disappointment.
(mrs morland taps warningly, but her husband is now possessed.)
MR MORLAND. You sixty-six, Mr. Amy, you sixty-six!
MR AMY. James, this is very painful. Your chagrin I can well understand, but surely your sense of manhood — I regret that I have outstayed my welcome. I bid you good afternoon. Thank you, Mrs. Morland, for your unvarying hospitality.
MRS MORLAND. I shall see you into your coat, George.
MR AMY. It is very kind of you, but I need no one to see me into my coat.
MR MORLAND. You will never see your way into it by yourself.
(This unworthy remark is perhaps not heard, for MRS.
MORLAND succeeds once more in bringing the guest back.)
MR. AMY. James, I cannot leave this friendly house in wrath.
MR MORLAND. I am an irascible old beggar, George. What I should do without you —
MR AMY. Or I without you. Or either of us without that little old dear, to whom we are a never-failing source of mirth.
(The little old dear curtseys, looking very frail as she does so.)
Tell Simon when he comes that I shall be in to see him tomorrow. Goodbye, Fanny; I suppose you think of the pair of us as in our second childhood?
MRS MORLAND. Not your second, George. I have never known any men who have quite passed their first.
(He goes smiling.)
MR MORLAND (ruminating by the fire). He is a good fellow, George, but how touchy he is about his age! And he has a way of tottering off to sleep while one is talking to him.
MRS MORLAND. He is not the only one of us who does that.
(She is standing by the window.)
MR MORLAND. What are you thinking about, Fanny?
MRS MORLAND. I was thinking about the apple-tree, and that you have given the order for its destruction.
MR MORLAND. It must come down. It is becoming a danger, might fall on some one down there any day.
MRS MORLAND. I quite see that it has to go. (She can speak of mary rose without a tremor now.) But her tree! How often she made it a ladder from this room to the ground!
(mr morland does not ask who, but he very nearly does so.)
MR MORLAND. Oh yes, of course. Did she use to climb the apple-tree? Yes, I think she did.
(He goes to his wife, as it were for protection.)
MRS. MORLAND (not failing him). Had you forgotten that also, James?
MR MORLAND. I am afraid I forget a lot of things.
MRS. MORLAND. Just as Well.
MR MORLAND. It is so long since she — how long is it, Fanny?
MRS MORLAND. Twentyfive years, a third of our lifetime. It will soon be dark; I can see the twilight running across the fields. Draw the curtains, dear.
(He does so and turns on the lights; they are electric lights now.)
Simon’s train must be nearly due, is it not?
MR MORLAND. In ten minutes or so. Did you forward his telegram?
MRS MORLAND. No, I thought he would probably get it sooner if I kept it here.
MR. MORLAND. I dare say. (He joins her on the sofa, and she sees that he is troubled.)
MRS MORLAND. What is it, dear?
MR MORLAND. I am afraid I was rather thoughtless about the apple-tree, Fanny. I hurt you.
MRS MORLAND (brightly). Such nonsense! Have another pipe, James.
MR MORLAND (doggedly). I will not have another pipe. I hereby undertake to give up smoking for a week as a punishment to myself. (His breast swells a little.)
MRS MORLAND. You will regret this, you know.
MR MORLAND (his breast ceasing to swell). Why is my heart not broken? If I had been a man of real feeling it would
have broken twentyfive years ago, just as yours did.
MRS MORLAND. Mine didn’t, dear.
MR MORLAND. In a way it did. As for me, at the time I thought I could never raise my head again, but there is a deal of the old Adam in me still. I ride and shoot and laugh and give pompous decisions on the bench and wrangle with old George as if nothing much had happened to me. I never think of the island now; I dare say I could go back there and fish.
(He finds that despite his outburst his hand has strayed towards his tobacco-pouch.) See what I am doing! (He casts his pouch aside as if it were the culprit.) I am a man enamoured of myself. Why, I have actually been considering, Fanny, whether I should have another dress suit.
MRS MORLAND (picking up the pouch). And why shouldn’t you?
MR MORLAND. At my age! Fanny, this should be put on my tombstone: ‘In spite of some adversity he remained a lively old blade to the end.’ mrs morland. Perhaps that would be a rather creditable epitaph for any man, James, who has gone through as much as you have. What better encouragement to the young than to be able to tell them that happiness keeps breaking through?
(She puts the pipe, which she has been filling, in his mouth.)
MR MORLAND. If I smoke, Fanny, I shall despise myself more than ever.
MRS MORLAND. To please me.
MR MORLAND (as she holds the light). I don’t feel easy about it, not at all easy. (With a happy thought) At any rate, I won’t get the dress suit.
MRS MORLAND. Your dress suit is shining like a mirror.
MR MORLAND. Isn’t it! I thought of a jacket suit only. The V-shaped waistcoat seems to be what they are all wearing now.
MRS MORLAND. Would you have braid on the trousers?
MR MORLAND. I was wondering. You see — Oh, Fanny, you are just humouring me.
MRS MORLAND. Not at all. And as for the old Adam in you, dear Adam, there is still something of the old Eve in me. Our trip to Switzerland two years ago, with Simon, I enjoyed every hour of it. The little card parties here, am I not called the noisy one? think of the girls I have chaperoned and teased and laughed with, just as if I had never had a girl myself.
MR MORLAND. Your brightness hasn’t been all pretence?
MRS MORLAND. No, indeed; I have passed through the valley of the shadow, dear, but I can say thankfully that I have come out again into the sunlight. (A little tremulously) I suppose it is all to the good that as the years go by the dead should recede farther from us.
MR. morland. Some say they don’t.
MRS MORLAND. You and I know better, James.
MR MORLAND. Up there in the misty Hebrides I dare say they think of her as on the island still. Fanny, how long is it since — since you half thought that yourself?
MRS MORLAND. Ever so many years. Perhaps not the first year. I did cling for a time —
MR. morland. The neighbours here didn’t like it.
MRS MORLAND. She wasn’t their Mary Rose, you see.
MR MORLAND. And yet her first disappearance —
MRS MORLAND. It is all unfathomable. It is as if Mary Rose was just something beautiful that you and I and Simon had dreamt together. You have forgotten much, but so have I. Even that room (she looks towards the little door) that was hers and her child’s during all her short married life — I often go into it now without remembering that it was theirs.
MR MORLAND. It is strange. It is rather terrible. You are pretty nigh forgotten, Mary Rose.
MRS MORLAND. That isn’t true, dear. Mary Rose belongs to the past, and we have to live in the present, for a very little longer. Just a little longer, and then we shall understand all. Even if we could drag her back to tell us now what these things mean, I think it would be a shame.
MR MORLAND. Yes, I suppose so. Do you think Simon is a philosopher about it also?
MRS MORLAND. Don’t be bitter, James, to your old wife. Simon was very fond of her. He was a true lover.
MR MORLAND. Was, was! Is it all ‘was’ about Mary Rose?
MRS MORLAND. It just has to be. He had all the clever ones of the day advising, suggesting, probing. He went back to the island every year for a long time.
MR MORLAND. Yes, and then he missed a year, and that somehow ended it.
MRS MORLAND. He never married again. Most men would.
MR MORLAND. His work took her place. What a jolly, hearty fellow he is!
MRS MORLAND. If you mean he isn’t heartbroken, he isn’t. Mercifully the wound has healed.
MR. morland. I am not criticising, Fanny. I suppose any one who came back after twentyfive years — however much they had been loved — it might — we — should we know what to say to them, Fanny?
MRS MORLAND. Don’t, James. (She rises.) Simon is late, isn’t he?
MR MORLAND. Very little. I heard the train a short time ago, and he might be here — just — if he had the luck to find a cab. But not if he is walking across the fields.
MRS MORLAND. Listen!
MR MORLAND. Yes, wheels. That is probably Simon. He had got a cab.
MRS MORLAND. I do hope he won’t laugh at me for having lit a fire in his room.
MR MORLAND (with masculine humour). I hope you put him out some bed-socks mrs morland (eagerly). Do you think he would let me? You wretch!
(She hurries out, and returns in SIMON’S arms. He is in a greatcoat and mufti. He looks his years, grizzled with grey hair and not very much of it, and the tuft is gone. He is heavier and more commanding, full of vigour, a rollicking sea-dog for the moment, but it is a face that could be stern to harshness.)
SIMON (saluting). Come ABOARD, SIR.
MRS MORLAND. Let me down, you great bear. You know how I hate to be rumpled.
MR MORLAND. Not she, loves it. Always did. Get off your greatcoat, Simon. Down with it anywhere.
MRS MORLAND (fussing delightedly). How cold your hands are. Come nearer to the fire.
MR MORLAND. He is looking fit, though.
SIMON. We need to be fit — these days.
MRS. morland. So nice to have you again. You do like duck, don’t you? The train was late, wasn’t it?
SIMON. A few minutes only. I made a selfish bolt for the one cab, and got it.
MR MORLAND. We thought you might be walking across the fields.
SIMON. No, I left the fields to the two other people who got out of the train. One of them was a lady; I thought something about her walk was familiar to me, but it was darkish, and I didn’t make her out.
MRS MORLAND. Bertha Colinton, I expect. She was in London to-day.
SIMON. If I had thought it was Mrs. Colinton I would have offered her a lift. (For a moment he gleams boyishly like the young husband of other days.) Mother, I have news; I have got the Bellerophon, honest Injun!
MRS. MORLAND. The very ship you wanted.
SIMON. Rather.
MR MORLAND. Bravo, Simon.
SIMON. It is like realising the ambition of one’s life. I’m one of the lucky folk, I admit.
(He says this, and neither of them notices it as a strange remark.)
MR MORLAND (twinkling). Beastly life, a sailor’s.
SIMON (cordially). Beastly. I have loathed it ever since I slept in the old Britannia, with my feet out at the porthole to give them air. We all slept that way; must have been a pretty sight from the water. Oh, a beast of a life, but I wouldn’t exchange it for any other in the world. (Lowering) And if this war does come —
MR MORLAND (characteristically). It won’t, I’m sure.
SIMON. I dare say not. But they say — however.
MRS MORLAND. Simon, I had forgotten. There is a telegram for you.
SIMON. Avaunt! I do trust it is not recalling me. I had hoped for at least five clear days.