by Unknown
HARRY. No offence.
MARY ROSE. I think you are sorry for me.
HARRY. I am that.
MARY ROSE. I am sorry for me, too.
HARRY (desperately desirous to help her). If only there was something I — I know nothing about ghosts — not a thing; can they sit down? Could you — ?
(He turns the chair toward her.)
MARY ROSE. That is your chair.
HARRY. What do you mean by that?
MARY ROSE. That is where you were sitting.
HARRY. Were you in this room when I was sitting there?
MARY ROSE. I came in to look at you.
(A sudden thought makes him cross with the candle to where he had left his knife. It is gone.)
HARRY. Where is my knife? Were you standing looking at me with my knife in your hand?
(She is sullenly silent.)
Give me my knife.
(She gives it to him.)
What made you take it?
MARY ROSE. I thought you were perhaps the one.
HARRY. The one?
MARY ROSE. The one who stole him from me.
HARRY. I see. Godsake, IN a sort of way I suppose I am.
(He sits in the chair.)
MARY ROSE. Give him BACK to me.
HARRY. I wish I could. But I’m doubting he is gone beyond recall.
MARY ROSE (iunexpectedly). Who is he?
HARRY. Do you mean you have forgotten who it is you are searching for?
MARY ROSE. I knew once. It is such a long time ago. I am so tired; please can I go away and play now?
HARRY. Go away? Where? You mean back to that — that place?
(She nods.)
What sort of a place is it? Is it good to be there?
MARY ROSE. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
HARRY. It’s not just the island, is it, that’s so lovely, lovely?
(She is perplexed.)
Have you forgotten the island too?
MARY ROSE. I am sorry.
HARRY. The island, the place where you heard the call.
MARY ROSE. What is that?
HARRY. You have even forgotten the call! (With vision)
As far as I can make out, it was as if, in a way, there were two kinds of dogs out hunting you — the good and the bad.
MARY ROSE (who thinks he is chiding her). Please don’t be cross with me.
HARRY. I am far from cross with you. I begin to think it was the good dogs that got you. Are they ghosts in that place?
MARY ROSE (with surprising certainty). No.
HARRY. You are sure?
MARY ROSE. Honest Injun!
HARRY. What fairly does me is, if the place is so lovely, what made you leave it?
MARY ROSE (FRIGHTENED). I don’t know.
HARRY. DO you think you could have fallen out?
MARY ROSE. I don’t know. (She thinks his power is great.)
Please, I don’t want to be a ghost any more.
HARRY. As far as I can see, if you wasn’t a ghost there you made yourself one by coming back. But it’s no use your expecting me to be able to help you. (She droops at this and he holds out his arms.) Come to me, ghostie; I wish you would.
MARY ROSE (prim again). Certainly not.
HARRY. If you come, I’ll try to help you.
(She goes at once and sits on his knee.)
See here, when I was sitting by the fire alone I seemed to hear you as you once were saying that some day when he was a man you would like to sit on your Harry’s knee.
MARY ROSE (vaguely quoting she knows not whom). The loveliest time of all will be when he is a man and takes me on his knee instead of my taking him on mine.
HARRY. Do you see who I am now i mary rose. Nice man.
HARRY. Is that all you know about me?
MARY ROSE. Yes.
HARRY. There is a name I would like to call you by, but my best course is not to worry you. Poor soul, I wonder if there was ever a man with a ghost on his knee before.
MARY ROSE. I don’t know.
HARRY. Seems to me you ‘re feared of being a ghost. I dare say, to a timid thing, being a ghost is worse than seeing them.
MARY ROSE. Yes.
HARRY. Is it lonely being a ghost?
MARY ROSE. Yes.
HARRY. Do you know any other ghosts?
MARY ROSE. No.
HARRY. Would you like to know other ghosts?
MARY ROSE. YeS.
HARRY. I can understand that. And now you would like to go away and play?
MARY ROSE. Please.
HARRY. In this cold house, when you should be searching, do you sometimes play by yourself instead?
MARY ROSE (whispering). Don’t tell.
HARRY. Not me. You’re a pretty thing. What beautiful shoes you have.
(She holds out her feet complacently.)
MARY ROSE. Nice buckles.
HARRY. I like your hair.
MARY ROSE. Pretty hair.
HARRY. DO you mind the tuft that used to stand up at the back of — of Simon’s head?
MARY ROSE (merrily). Naughty tuft.
HARRY. I have one like that.
MARY ROSE (smoothing it down). Oh dear, oh dear, what a naughty tuft!
HARRY. My name is Harry.
MARY ROSE (liking the pretty sound). Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry.
HARRY. But you don’t know what Harry I am.
MARY ROSE. No.
HARRY. And this brings us no nearer what’s to be done with you. I would willingly stay here though I have my clearing in Australy, but you ‘re just a ghost. They say there are ways of laying ghosts, but I am so ignorant.
MARY ROSE (imploringly). Tell me.
HARRY. I wish I could; you are even more ignorant than I am.
MARY ROSE. Tell me.
HARRY. All I know about them for certain is that they are unhappy because they can’t find something, and then once they’ve got the thing they want, they go away happy and never come back.
MARY ROSE. Oh, nice!
HARRY. The one thing clear to me is that you have got that thing at last, but you are too dog-tired to know or care. What you need now is to get back to the place you say is lovely, lovely.
MARY ROSE. Yes, yes.
HARRY. It sounds as if it might be Heaven, or near thereby.
(She wants him to find out for her.)
Queer, you that know so much can tell nothing, and them that know nothing can tell so much. If there was any way of getting you to that glory place!
MARY ROSE. Tell me.
HARRY (desperate). He would surely send for you, if He wanted you.
MARY ROSE (crushed). Yes.
HARRY. It’s like as if He had forgotten you.
MARY ROSE. Yes.
HARRY. It’s as if nobody wanted you, either there or here.
MARY ROSE. Yes. (She rises.) Bad man.
HARRY. It’s easy to call me names, but the thing fair beats me. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, but a mere man is so helpless. How should the likes of me know what to do with a ghost that has lost her way on earth? I wonder if what it means is that you broke some law, just to come back for the sake of — of that Harry? If it was that, it’s surely time He overlooked it.
MARY ROSE. Yes.
(He looks at the open window.
HARRY. What a night of stars! Good old glitterers, I dare say they are in the know, but I am thinking you are too small a thing to get a helping hand from them.
MARY ROSE. Yes.
(The call is again heard, but there is in it now no unholy sound. It is a celestial music that is calling for Mary Rose, Mary Rose, first in whispers and soon so loudly that, for one who can hear, it is the only sound in the world. Mary Rose, Mary Rose. As it wraps her round, the weary little ghost knows that her long day is done. Her face is shining. T he smallest star shoots down for her, and with her arms stretched forth to it trustingly she walks out through the window into the empyrean. The music passes with her.
HARRY he
ars nothing, but he knows that somehow a prayer has been answered.)
CURTAIN
SHALL WE JOIN THE LADIES?
For the past week the hospitable Sam Smith has been entertaining a country house party, and we choose to raise the curtain on them towards the end of dinner. They are seated thus, the host facing us:
CAST
Host (Mr. Dion Boucicault)
Lady Jane (Miss Fay Compton)
Lady Wrathie (Miss Sybil Thorndike)
Sir Joseph (Mr. Cyril Maude)
Mr. Preen (Sir Charles Hawtrey)
Mrs. Preen (Lady Tree)
Miss Vaile (Miss Marie Lohr)
Mr. Vaile (Mr. Nelson Keys)
Mrs. Bland (Miss Madge Titheradge)
Mr. Gourlay (Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson)
Capt. Jennings Mr. Leon Quartermaine) Miss Isit (Miss Irene Vanbrugh)
Mrs. Castro (Miss Lillah McCarthy)
Butler (Sir Gerald du Maurier)
Maid (Miss Hilda Trevelyan)
This is the first act of an unfinished play originally produced at the opening of the Royal Dramatic Academy’s Theatre, which accounts for the brilliancy of the cast, and the brilliancy of the cast excuses the proud author for giving it in full.
SHALL WE JOIN THE LADIES?
Smith is a little old bachelor, and sits there beaming on his guests like an elderly cupid. So they think him, but they are to be undeceived. Though many of them have not met until this week, they have at present that genial regard for each other which steals so becomingly over really nice people who have eaten too much.
Dolphin, the butler, is passing round the fruit. The only other attendant is a maid in the background, as for an emergency, and she is as interested in the conversation as he is indifferent to it. If one of the guests were to destroy himself, Dolphin would merely sign to her to remove the debris while he continued to serve the fruit.
In the midst of hilarity over some quip that we are just too late to catch, the youthful Lady Jane counts the company and is appalled.
Lady Jane. We are thirteen, Lady Wrathie.
(Many fingers count.)
Lady Wrathie. Fourteen.
Capt. Jennings. Twelve.
Lady Jane. We are thirteen.
Host. Oh dear, how careless of me. Is there anything I can do?
Sir Joseph (of the city). Leave this to me. All keep your seats.
Mrs. Preen (perhaps rather thankfully). I am afraid Lady Jane has risen.
(Lady Jane subsides.)
Lady Wrathie. Joseph, you have risen yourself.
(Sir Joseph subsides.)
Mrs. Castro (a mysterious widow from Buenos Ayres). Were we thirteen all those other nights?
Mrs. Preen. We always had a guest or two from outside, you remember.
Miss Isit (whose name obviously needs to be queried). All we have got to do is to make our number fourteen.
Vaile. But how, Miss Isit?
Miss Isit. Why, Dolphin, of course.
Mrs. Preen. It’s too clever of you, Miss Isit. Mr. Smith, Dolphin may sit down with us, mayn’t he?
Mrs. Castro. Please, dear Mr. Smith; just for a moment. That breaks the spell.
Sir Joseph. We won’t eat you, Dolphin. (But he has crunched some similar ones.)
Host. Let me explain to him. You see, Dolphin, there is a superstition that if thirteen people sit down at table something staggering will happen to one of them before the night is out. That is it, isn’t it?
Mrs. Bland (darkly). Namely, death.
Host (brightly). Yes, namely, death.
Lady Jane. But not before the night is out, you dear; before the year is out.
Host. I thought it was before the night is out.
(Dolphin is reluctant.)
Gourlay. Sit here, Dolphin.
Miss Vaile. No, I want him.
Miss Isit. It was my idea, and I insist on having him.
Mrs. Castro (moving farther to the left). Yes, here between us.
(Dolphin obliges.)
Mrs. Preen (with childish abandon). Saved.
Host. As we are saved, and he does not seem happy, may he resume his duties?
Lady Wrathie. Yes, yes; and now we ladies may withdraw.
Preen (the most selfish of the company, and therefore perhaps the favourite). First, a glass of wine with you, Dolphin.
Vaile (ever seeking to undermine Preen’s popularity). Is this wise?
Preen (determined to carry the thing through despite this fellow). To the health of our friend Dolphin.
(Dolphin’s health having been drunk, he withdraws his chair and returns to the sideboard. As Miss Isit and Mrs. Castro had made room for him between them exactly opposite his master, and the space remains empty, we have now a better view of the company. Can this have been the author’s object?)
Sir Joseph (pleasantly detaining the ladies). One moment. Another toast. Fellow-guests, tomorrow morning, alas, this party has to break up, and I am sure you will all agree with me that we have had a delightful week. It has not been an eventful week; it has been too happy for that.
Capt. Jennings. I rise to protest. When I came here a week ago I had never met Lady Jane. Now, as you know, we are engaged. I certainly call it an eventful week.
Lady Jane. Yes, please, Sir Joseph.
Sir Joseph. I stand corrected. And now we are in the last evening of it; we are drawing nigh to the end of a perfect day.
Preen (who is also an orator). In seconding this motion ——
Vaile. Pooh. (He is the perfect little gentleman, if socks and spats can do it.)
Sir Joseph. Though I have known you intimately for but a short time, I already find it impossible to call you anything but Sam Smith.
Mrs. Castro. In our hearts, Mr. Smith, that is what we ladies call you also.
Preen. If I might say a word ——
Vaile. Tuts.
Sir Joseph. Ladies and gentlemen, is he not like a pocket edition of Mr. Pickwick?
Gourlay (an artist). Exactly. That is how I should like to paint him.
Mrs. Blank. Mr. Smith, you love, we think that if you were married you could not be quite so nice.
Sir Joseph. At any rate, he could not be quite so simple. For you are a very simple soul, Sam Smith. Well, we esteem you the more for your simplicity. Friends all, I give you the toast of Sam Smith.
(The toast is drunk with acclamation, and Dolphin, who has paid no attention to it, again hovers round with wine.)
Host (rising in answer to their appeals and warming them with his Pickwickian smile). Ladies and gentlemen, you are very kind, and I don’t pretend that it isn’t pleasant to me to be praised. Tell me, have you ever wondered why I invited you here?
Miss Isit. Because you like us, of course, you muddle-headed darling.
Host. Was that the reason?
Sir Joseph. Take care, Sammy, you are not saying what you mean.
Host. Am I not? Kindly excuse. I dare say I am as simple as Sir Joseph says. And yet, do you really know me? Does any person ever know another absolutely? Has not the simplest of us a secret drawer inside him with — with a lock to it?
Miss Isit. If you have, Mr. Smith, be a dear and open it to us.
Mrs. Castro. How delicious. He is going to tell us of his first and only love.
Host. Ah, Mrs. Castro, I think I had one once, very nice, but I have forgotten her name. The person I loved best was my brother.
Preen. I never knew you had a brother.
Host. I suppose none of you knew. He died two years ago.
Sir Joseph. Sorry, Sam Smith.
Mrs. Preen (drawing the chocolates nearer her). We should like to hear about him if it isn’t too sad.
Host. Would you? He was many years my junior, and as attractive as I am commonplace. He died in a foreign land. Natural causes were certified. But there were suspicious circumstances, and I went out there determined to probe the matter to the full. I did, too.