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BETWEEN THE ACTS |
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FLAV. Seven he said, and there’s the clock’s word for it. But Valentine—where’s Valentine? La! How my heart beats! Yet it’s not the time o’ day, for I’m often afoot before the sun’s up in the meadows . . . See—the fine folk passing! All a-tiptoeing like peacocks with spread tails! And I in my petticoat that looked so fine by my Aunt’s cracked mirror. Why, here it’s a dish clout . . . And they heap their hair up like a birthday cake stuck about with candles. . . . That’s a diamond—that’s a ruby . . . Where’s Valentine? The Orange Tree in the Mall, he said. The tree—there. Valentine—nowhere. That’s a courtier, I’ll warrant, that old fox with his tail between his legs. That’s a serving wench out without her master’s knowledge. That’s a man with a broom to sweep paths for the fine ladies’ flounces . . . La! the red in their cheeks! They never got THAT in the fields, I warrant! O faithless, cruel, hard-hearted Valentine. Valentine! Valentine! (She wrings her hands, turning from side to side.) Didn’t I leave my bed a-tiptoe and steal like a mouse in the wainscot for fear of waking Aunt? And lard my hair from her powder box? And scrub my cheeks to make ’em shine? And lie awake watching the stars climb the chimney pots? And give my gold guinea that Godfather hid behind the mistletoe last Twelfth Night to Deb so she shouldn’t tell on me? And grease the key in the lock so that Aunt shouldn’t wake and shriek Flavvy! Flavvy! Val, I say Val—That’s him coming. . . . No, I could tell him a mile off the way he strides the waves like what d’you call him in the picture book. . . . That’s not Val. . . . That’s a cit; that’s a fop; raising his glass, prithee, to have his fill of me . . . I’ll be home then . . . No, I won’t . . . That’s to play the green girl again and sew samplers . . . I’m of age, ain’t I, come Michaelmas? Only three turns of the moon and I inherit . . . Didn’t I read it in the Will the day the ball bounced on top of the old chest where Aunt keeps her furbelows, and the lid opened? . . .” All I die possessed of to my Daughter . . .” So far I’d read when the old lady came tapping down the passage like a blind man in an alley. . . . I’m no castaway, I’d have you know, Sir; no fishtailed mermaid with a robe of sea weed, at your mercy. I’m a match for any of ’em—the chits you dally with, and bid me meet you at the Orange Tree when you’re drowsing the night off spent in their arms. . . . Fie upon you, Sir, making sport with a poor girl so. . . . I’ll not cry, I swear I won’t. I’ll not brew a drop of the salt liquid for a man who’s served me so. . . . Yet to think on’t—how we hid in the dairy the day the cat jumped. And read romances under the holly tree. La! how I cried when the Duke left poor Polly. . . . And my Aunt found me with eyes like red jellies. “What stung, niece?” says she. And cried “Quick Deb, the blue bag.” I told ye . . . La, to think I read it all in a book and cried for another! . . . Hist, what’s there among the trees? It’s come—it’s gone. The breeze is it? In the shade now—in the sun now. . . . Valentine on my life! It’s he! Quick, I’ll hide. Let the tree conceal me! (Flavinda hides behind the tree.) He’s here . . . He turns . . . He casts about . . . He’s lost the scent . . . He gazes—this way, that way. . . . Let him feast his eyes on the fine faces—taste ’em, sample ’em, say: “That’s the fine lady I danced with . . . that I lay with . . . that I kissed under the mistletoe . . .” Ha! How he spews ’em out! Brave Valentine! How he casts his eyes upon the ground! How his frowns become him! “Where’s Flavinda?” he sighs. “She I love like the heart in my breast.” See him pull his watch out! “O faithless wretch!” he sighs. See how he stamps the earth! Now turns on his heel. . . . He sees me—no, the sun’s in his eyes. Tears fill ’em . . . Lord, how he fingers his sword! He’ll run it through his breast like the Duke in the story book! . . . Stop, Sir, stop! (She reveals herself) VALENTINE. . . . O Flavinda, O! FLAVINDA. . . . O Valentine, O! (They embrace) The clock strikes nine. “All that fuss about nothing!” a voice exclaimed. People laughed. The voice stopped. But the voice had seen; the voice had heard. For a moment Miss La Trobe behind her tree glowed with glory. The next, turning to the villagers who were passing in and out between the trees, she barked: “Louder! Louder!” For the stage was empty; the emotion must be continued; the only thing to continue the emotion was the song; and the words were inaudible. “Louder! Louder!” She threatened them with her clenched fists. Digging and delving (they sang), hedging and ditching, we pass. . . . Summer and winter, autumn and spring return . . . All passes but we, all changes . . . but we remain forever the same . . . (the breeze blew gaps between their words.) “Louder, louder!” Miss La Trobe vociferated. Palaces tumble down (they resumed), Babylon, Nineveh, Troy . . . And Caesar’s great house . . . all fallen they lie . . . Where the plover nests was the arch. . . . through which the Romans trod . . . Digging and delving we break with the share of the plough the clod . . . Where Clytemnestra watched for her Lord . . . saw the beacons blaze on the hills . . . we see only the clod . . . Digging and delving we pass. . . . and the Queen and the Watch Tower fall . . . for Agamemnon has ridden away. . . . Clytemnestra is nothing but. . . . The words died away. Only a few great names—Babylon, Nineveh, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Troy—floated across the open space. Then the wind rose, and in the rustle of the leaves even the great words became inaudible; and the audience sat staring at the villagers, whose mouths opened, but no sound came. And the stage was empty. Miss La Trobe leant against the tree, paralyzed. Her power had left her. Beads of perspiration broke on her forehead. Illusion had failed. “This is death,” she murmured, “death.” Then suddenly, as the illusion petered out, the cows took up the burden. One had lost her calf. In the very nick of time she lifted her great moon-eyed head and bellowed. All the great moon-eyed heads laid themselves back. From cow after cow came the same yearning bellow. The whole world was filled with dumb yearning. It was the primeval voice sounding loud in the ear of the present moment. Then the whole herd caught the infection. Lashing their tails, blobbed like pokers, they tossed their heads high, plunged and bellowed, as if Eros had planted his dart in their flanks and goaded them to fury. The cows annihilated the gap; bridged the distance; filled the emptiness and continued the emotion. Miss La Trobe waved her hand ecstatically at the cows. “Thank Heaven!” she exclaimed. Suddenly the cows stopped; lowered their heads, and began browsing. Simultaneously the audience lowered their heads and read their programmes. “The producer,” Mrs. Elmhurst read out for her husband’s benefit, “craves the indulgence of the audience. Owing to lack of time a scene has been omitted; and she begs the audience to imagine that in the interval Sir Spaniel Lilyliver has contracted an engagement with Flavinda; who had been about to plight her troth; when Valentine, hidden inside the grandfather’s clock, steps forward; claims Flavinda as his bride; reveals the plot to rob her of her inheritance; and, during the confusion that ensues, the lovers fly together, leaving Lady Harpy and Sir Spaniel alone together.” “We’re asked to imagine all that,” she said, putting down her glasses. “That’s very wise of her,” said Mrs. Manresa, addressing Mrs. Swithin. “If she’d put it all in, we should have been here till midnight. So we’ve got to imagine, Mrs. Swithin.” She patted the old lady on the knee. “Imagine?” said Mrs. Swithin. “How right! Actors show us too much. The Chinese, you know, put a dagger on the table and that’s a battle. And so Racine . . .” “Yes, they bore one stiff,” Mrs. Manresa interrupted, scenting culture, resenting the snub to the jolly human heart. “T’other day I took my nephew—such a jolly boy at Sandhurst—to Pop Goes the Weasel. Seen it?” She turned to Giles. “Up and down the City Road,” he hummed by way of an answer. “Did your Nanny sing that!” Mrs. Manresa exclaimed. “Mine did. And when she said ‘Pop’ she made a noise like a cork being drawn from a ginger-beer bottle. Pop!” She made the noise. “Hush, hush,” someone whispered. “Now I’m being naughty and shocking your aunt,” she said. “We must be good and attend. This is Scene Three. Lady Harpy Harraden’s Closet. The sound of horses’ hooves is heard in the distance.” The sound of horses’ hooves, energetically represented by Albert the idiot with a wooden spoon on a tray, died away. LADY H. H. Half-way to Gretna Green already! O my deceitful niece! You that I rescued from the brine and stood on the hearthstone dripping! O that the whale had swallowed you whole! Perfidious porpoise, O! Didn’t the Horn book teach you Honour thy Great Aunt? How have you misread it and misspelt it, learnt thieving and cheating and reading of wills in old boxes and hiding of rascals in honest time-pieces that have never missed a second since King Charles’s day! O Flavinda! O porpoise, O! SIR S. L. (trying to pull on his jack boots) Old—old—old. He called me “old”—“To your bed, old fool, and drink hot posset!” LADY H. H. And she, stopping at the door and pointing the finger of scorn at me said “old” Sir—“woman” Sir—I that am in the prime of life and a lady! SIR S. L. (tugging at his boots) But I’ll be even with him. I’ll have the law on’ em! I’ll run ’em to earth . . . (He hobbles up and down, one boot on, one boot off) LADY H. H. (laying her hand on his arm) Have mercy on your gout, Sir Spaniel. Bethink you, Sir—let’s not run mad, we that are on the sunny side of fifty. What’s this youth they prate on? Nothing but a goose feather blown on a north wind. Sit you down, Sir Spaniel. Rest your leg—so— (She pushes a cushion under his leg) SIR S. L. “Old” he called me . . . jumping from the clock like a jack-inthe-box . . . And she, making mock of me, points to my leg and cries “Cupid’s darts, Sir Spaniel, Cupid’s darts.” O that I could braise ’em in a mortar and serve ’em up smoking hot on the altar of—O my gout, O my gout! LADY H. H. This talk, Sir, ill befits a man of sense. Bethink you, Sir, only t’other day you were invoking—ahem—the Constellations. Cassiopeia, Aldebaran; the Aurora Borealis . . . It’s not to be denied that one of ’em has left her sphere, has shot, has eloped, to put it plainly, with the entrails of a time-piece, the mere pendulum of a grandfather’s clock. But, Sir Spaniel, there are some stars that—ahem—stay fixed; that shine, to put it in a nutshell, never so bright as by a sea-coal fire on a brisk morning. SIR S. L. O that I were five and twenty with a sharp sword at my side! LADY H. H. (bridling) I take your meaning, Sir. Te hee—To be sure, I regret it as you do. But youth’s not all. To let you into a secret, I’ve passed the meridian myself. Am on t’other side of the Equator too. Sleep sound o’ nights without turning. The dog days are over. . . . But bethink you, Sir. Where there’s a will there’s a way. SIR S. L. God’s truth Ma’am . . . ah my foot’s like a burning, burning horseshoe on the devil’s anvil ah!—what’s your meaning? LADY H. H. My meaning, Sir? Must I disrupt my modesty and unquilt that which has been laid in lavender since, my lord, peace be to his name—’tis twenty years since—was lapped in lead? In plain words, Sir, Flavinda’s flown. The cage is empty. But we that have bound our wrists with cowslips might join ’em with a stouter chain. To have done with fallals and figures. Here am I, Asphodilla— but my plain name Sue. No matter what my name is—Asphodilla or Sue—here am I, hale and hearty, at your service. Now that the plot’s out, Brother Bob’s bounty must go to the virgins. That’s plain. Here’s Lawyer Quill’s word for it. “Virgins . . . in perpetuity . . . sing for his soul” And I warrant you, he has need of it . . . But no matter. Though we have thrown that to the fishes that might have wrapped us in lamb’s-wool, I’m no beggar. There’s messuages; tenements; napery; cattle; my dowry; an inventory. I’ll show you; engrossed on parchment; enough I’ll warrant you to keep us handsomely, for what’s to run of our time, as husband and wife. SIR S. L. Husband and wife! So that’s the plain truth of it! Why, Madam, I’d rather lash myself to a tar barrel, be bound to a thorn tree in a winter’s gale. Faugh! LADY H. H. . . . A tar barrel, quotha! A thorn tree—quotha! You that were harping on galaxies and milky ways! You that were swearing I outshone ’em all! A pox on you—you faithless! You shark, you! You serpent in jack boots, you! So you won’t have me? Reject my hand do you? (She proffers her hand; he strikes it from him.) SIR S. L. . . . Hide your chalk stones in a woollen mit! pah! I’ll none of ’em! Were they diamond, pure diamond, and half the habitable globe and all its concubines strung in string round your throat I’d none of it . . . none of it. Unhand me, scritch owl, witch, vampire! Let me go! LADY H. H. . . . So all your fine words were tinsel wrapped round a Christmas cracker! SIR S. L. . . . Bells hung on an ass’s neck! Paper roses on a barber’s pole . . . O my foot, my foot . . . Cupid’s darts, she mocked me . . . Old, old, he called me old . . . (He hobbles away) LADY H. H. (left alone) All gone. Following the wind. He’s gone; she’s gone; and the old clock that the rascal made himself into a pendulum for is the only one of ’em all to stop. A pox on ’em— turning an honest woman’s house into a brothel. I that was Aurora Borealis am shrunk to a tar barrel. I that was Cassiopeia am turned to a she-ass. My head turns. There’s no trusting man nor woman; nor fine speeches; nor fine looks. Off comes the sheep’s skin; out creeps the serpent. Get ye to Gretna Green; couch on the wet grass and breed vipers. My head spins . . . Tar barrels, quotha. Cassiopeia . . . Chalk stones . . . Andromeda . . . Thorn trees. . . . Deb, I say, Deb (She holloas) Unlace me. I’m fit to burst . . . Bring me my green baize table and set the cards. . . . And my fur lined slippers, Deb. And a dish of chocolate. . . . I’ll be even with ’em . . . I’ll outlive ’em all. . . Deb, I say! Deb! A pox on the girl! Can’t she hear me? Deb, I say, you gipsy’s spawn that I snatched from the hedge and taught to sew samplers! Deb! Deb! (She throws open the door leading to the maid’s closet) Empty! She’s gone too! . . . Hist, what’s that on the dresser? (She picks up a scrap of paper and reads) “What care I for your goose-feather bed? I’m off with the raggle-taggle gipsies, O! Signed: Deborah, one time your maid.” So! She that I fed on apple parings and crusts from my own table, she that I taught to play cribbage and sew chemises . . . she’s gone too. O ingratitude, thy name is Deborah! Who’s to wash the dishes now; who’s to bring me my posset now, suffer my temper and unlace my stays? . . . All gone. I’m alone then. Sans niece, sans lover; and sans maid.
The scene ended. Reason descended from her plinth. Gathering her robes about her, serenely acknowledging the applause of the audience, she passed across the stage; while Lords and Ladies in stars and garters followed after; Sir Spaniel limping escorted Lady Harraden smirking; and Valentine and Flavinda arm in arm bowed and curtsied. “God’s truth!” cried Bartholomew catching the infection of the language. “There’s a moral for you!” He threw himself back in his chair and laughed, like a horse whinnying. A moral. What? Giles supposed it was: Where there’s a Will there’s a Way. The words rose and pointed a finger of scorn at him. Off to Gretna Green with his girl; the deed done. Damn the consequences. “Like to see the greenhouse?” he said abruptly, turning to Mrs. Manresa. “Love to!” she exclaimed, and rose. Was there an interval? Yes, the programme said so. The machine in the bushes went chuff, chuff, chuff. And the next scene? “The Victorian age,” Mrs. Elmhurst read out. Presumably there was time then for a stroll round the gardens, even for a look over the house. Yet somehow they felt—how could one put it—a little not quite here or there. As if the play had jerked the ball out of the cup; as if what I call myself was still floating unattached, and didn’t settle. Not quite themselves, they felt. Or was it simply that they felt clothes conscious? Skimpy out-of-date voile dresses; flannel trousers; panama hats; hats wreathed with raspberry-coloured net in the style of the Royal Duchess’s hat at Ascot seemed flimsy somehow. “How lovely the clothes were,” said someone, casting a last look at Flavinda disappearing. “Most becoming. I wish . . .” Chuff, chuff, chuff went the machine in the bushes, accurately, insistently. Clouds were passing across the sky. The weather looked a little unsettled. Hogben’s Folly was for a moment ashen white. Then the sun struck the gilt vane of Bolney Minster. “Looks a little unsettled,” said someone. “Up you get . . . Let’s stretch our legs,” said another voice. Soon the lawns were floating with little moving islands of coloured dresses. Yet some of the audience remained seated. “Major and Mrs. Mayhew,” Page the reporter noted, licking his pencil. As for the play, he would collar Miss Whatshername and ask for a synopsis. But Miss La Trobe had vanished. Down among the bushes she worked like a nigger. Flavinda was in her petticoats. Reason had thrown her mantle on a holly hedge. Sir Spaniel was tugging at his jack boots. Miss La Trobe was scattering and foraging. “The Victorian mantle with the bead fringe . . . Where is the damned thing? Chuck it here . . . Now the whiskers . . .” Ducking up and down she cast her quick bird’s eye over the bushes at the audience. The audience was on the move. The audience was strolling up and down. They kept their distance from the dressing-room; they respected the conventions. But if they wandered too far, if they began exploring the grounds, going over the house, then. . . . Chuff, chuff, chuff went the machine. Time was passing. How long would time hold them together? It was a gamble; a risk. . . . And she laid about her energetically, flinging clothes on the grass. Over the tops of the bushes came stray voices, voices without bodies, symbolical voices they seemed to her, half hearing, seeing nothing, but still, over the bushes, feeling invisible threads connecting the bodiless voices. “It all looks very black.” “No one wants it—save those damned Germans.” There was a pause. “I’d cut down those trees . . .” “How they get their roses to grow!” “They say there’s been a garden here for five hundred years . . .” “Why even old Gladstone, to do him justice . . .” Then there was silence. The voices passed the bushes. The trees rustled. Many eyes, Miss La Trobe knew, for every cell in her body was absorbent, looked at the view. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Hogben’s Folly; then the vane flashed. “The glass is falling,” said a voice. She could feel them slipping through her fingers, looking at the view. “Where’s that damned woman, Mrs. Rogers? Who’s seen Mrs. Rogers?” she cried, snatching up a Victorian mantle. Then, ignoring the conventions, a head popped up between the trembling sprays: Mrs. Swithin’s. “Oh Miss La Trobe!” she exclaimed; and stopped. Then she began again; “Oh Miss La Trobe, I do congratulate you!” She hesitated. “You’ve given me . . .” She skipped, then alighted—“Ever since I was a child I’ve felt . . .” A film fell over her eyes, shutting off the present. She tried to recall her childhood; then gave it up; and, with a little wave of her hand, as if asking Miss La Trobe to help her out, continued: “This daily round; this going up and down stairs; this saying ‘What am I going for? My specs? I have ’em on my nose.’ . . .” She gazed at Miss La Trobe with a cloudless old-aged stare. Their eyes met in a common effort to bring a common meaning to birth. They failed; and Mrs. Swithin, laying hold desperately of a fraction of her meaning, said: “What a small part I’ve had to play! But you’ve made me feel I could have played . . . Cleopatra!” She nodded between the trembling bushes and ambled off. The villagers winked. “Batty” was the word for old Flimsy, breaking through the bushes. “I might have been—Cleopatra,” Miss La Trobe repeated. “You’ve stirred in me my unacted part,” she meant. “Now for the skirt, Mrs. Rogers,” she said. Mrs. Rogers stood grotesque in her black stockings. Miss La Trobe pulled the voluminous flounces of the Victorian age over her head. She tied the tapes. “You’ve twitched the invisible strings,” was what the old lady meant; and revealed—of all people—Cleopatra! Glory possessed her. Ah, but she was not merely a twitcher of individual strings; she was one who seethes wandering bodies and floating voices in a cauldron, and makes rise up from its amorphous mass a recreated world. Her moment was on her—her glory. “There!” she said, tying the black ribbons under Mrs. Rogers’ chin. “That’s done it! Now for the gentleman. Hammond!” She beckoned Hammond. Sheepishly he came forward, and submitted to the application of black side whiskers. With his eyes half shut, his head leant back, he looked, Miss La Trobe thought, like King Arthur—noble, knightly, thin. “Where’s the Major’s old frock coat?” she asked, trusting to the effect of that to transform him. Tick, tick, tick, the machine continued. Time was passing. The audience was wandering, dispersing. Only the tick tick of the gramophone held them together. There, sauntering solitary far away by the flower beds was Mrs. Giles escaping. “The tune!” Miss La Trobe commanded. “Hurry up! The tune! The next tune! Number Ten!” “Now may I pluck,” Isa murmured, picking a rose, “my single flower. The white or the pink? And press it so, twixt thumb and finger. . . .” She looked among the passing faces for the face of the man in grey. There he was for one second; but surrounded, inaccessible. And now vanished. She dropped her flower. What single, separate leaf could she press? None. Nor stray by the beds alone. She must go on; and she turned in the direction of the stable. “Where do I wander?” she mused. “Down what draughty tunnels? Where the eyeless wind blows? And there grows nothing for the eye. No rose. To issue where? In some harvestless dim field where no evening lets fall her mantle; nor sun rises. All’s equal there. Unblowing, ungrowing are the roses there. Change is not; nor the mutable and lovable; nor greetings nor partings; nor furtive findings and feelings, where hand seeks hand and eye seeks shelter from the eye.” She had come into the stable yard where the dogs were chained; where the buckets stood; where the great pear tree spread its ladder of branches against the wall. The tree whose roots went beneath the flags, was weighted with hard green pears. Fingering one of them she murmured: “How am I burdened with what they drew from the earth; memories; possessions. This is the burden that the past laid on me, last little donkey in the long caravanserai crossing the desert. ‘Kneel down,’ said the past. ‘Fill your pannier from our tree. Rise up, donkey. Go your way till your heels blister and your hoofs crack.’” The pear was hard as stone. She looked down at the cracked flags beneath which the roots spread. “That was the burden,” she mused, “laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must remember; what we would forget.” She looked up. The gilt hands of the stable clock pointed inflexibly at two minutes to the hour. The clock was about to strike. “Now comes the lightning,” she muttered, “from the stone blue sky. The thongs are burst that the dead tied. Loosed are our possessions.” Voices interrupted. People passed the stable yard, talking. “It’s a good day, some say, the day we are stripped naked. Others, it’s the end of the day. They see the Inn and the Inn’s keeper. But none speaks with a single voice. None with a voice free from the old vibrations. Always I hear corrupt murmurs; the chink of gold and metal. Mad music. . . .” More voices sounded. The audience was streaming back to the terrace. She roused herself. She encouraged herself. “On little donkey, patiently stumble. Hear not the frantic cries of the leaders who in that they seek to lead desert us. Nor the chatter of china faces glazed and hard. Hear rather the shepherd, coughing by the farmyard wall; the withered tree that sighs when the Rider gallops; the brawl in the barrack room when they stripped her naked; or the cry which in London when I thrust the window open someone cries . . .” She had come out on to the path that led past the greenhouse. The door was kicked open. Out came Mrs. Manresa and Giles. Unseen, Isa followed them across the lawns to the front row of seats. The chuff, chuff, chuff of the machine in the bushes had stopped. In obedience to Miss La Trobe’s command, another tune had been put on the gramophone. Number Ten. London street cries it was called. “A Pot Pourri.” “Lavender, sweet lavender, who’ll buy my sweet lavender” the tune trilled and tinkled, ineffectively shepherding the audience. Some ignored it. Some still wandered. Others stopped, but stood upright. Some, like Colonel and Mrs. Mayhew, who had never left their seats, brooded over the blurred carbon sheet which had been issued for their information. “The Nineteenth Century.” Colonel Mayhew did not dispute the producer’s right to skip two hundred years in less than fifteen minutes. But the choice of scenes baffled him. “Why leave out the British Army? What’s history without the Army, eh?” he mused. Inclining her head, Mrs. Mayhew protested after all one mustn’t ask too much. Besides, very likely there would be a Grand Ensemble, round the Union Jack, to end with. Meanwhile, there was the view. They looked at the view. “Sweet lavender . . . sweet lavender. . . .” Humming the tune old Mrs. Lynn Jones (of the Mount) pushed a chair forward. “Here Etty,” she said, and plumped down, with Etty Springett, with whom, since both were widows now, she shared a house. “I remember . . .” she nodded in time to the tune, “You remember too—how they used to cry it down the streets.” They remembered— the curtains blowing, and the men crying: “All a blowing, all a growing,” as they came with geraniums, sweet william, in pots, down the street. “A harp, I remember, and a hansom and a growler. So quiet the street was then. Two for a hansom, was it? One for a growler? And Ellen, in cap and apron, whistling in the street? D’you remember? And the runners, my dear, who followed, all the way from the station, if one had a box.” The tune changed. “Any old iron, any old iron to sell?” “D’you remember? That was what the men shouted in the fog. Seven Dials they came from. Men with red handkerchiefs. Garotters, did they call them? You couldn’t walk—O, dear me, no—home from the play. Regent Street. Piccadilly. Hyde Park Corner. The loose women . . . And everywhere loaves of bread in the gutter. The Irish you know round Covent Garden . . . Coming back from a Ball, past the clock at Hyde Park Corner, d’you remember the feel of white gloves? . . . My father remembered the old Duke in the Park. Two fingers like that—he’d touch his hat . . . I’ve got my mother’s album. A lake and two lovers. She’d copied out Byron, I suppose, in what was called then the Italian hand. . . .” “What’s that? ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road.’ I remember the bootboy whistled it. O, my dear, the servants . . . Old Ellen . . . Sixteen pound a year wages . . . And the cans of hot water! And the crinolines! And the stays! D’you remember the Crystal Palace, and the fireworks, and how Mira’s slipper got lost in the mud?” “That’s young Mrs. Giles . . . I remember her mother. She died in India . . . We wore, I suppose, a great many petticoats then. Unhygienic? I dare say . . . Well, look at my daughter. To the right, just behind you. Forty, but slim as a wand. Each flat has its refrigerator . . . It took my mother half the morning to order dinner. . . . We were eleven. Counting servants, eighteen in family. . . . Now they simply ring up the Stores . . . That’s Giles coming, with Mrs. Manresa. She’s a type I don’t myself fancy. I may be wrong . . . And Colonel Mayhew, as spruce as ever . . . And Mr. Cobbet of Cobbs Corner, there, under the Monkey Puzzle Tree. One don’t see him often . . . That’s what’s so nice— it brings people together. These days, when we’re all so busy, that’s what one wants . . . The programme? Have you got it? Let’s see what comes next . . . The Nineteenth Century . . . Look, there’s the chorus, the villagers, coming on now, between the trees. First, there’s a prologue. . . .” A great box, draped in red baize festooned with heavy gold tassels had been moved into the middle of the stage. There was a swish of dresses, a stir of chairs. The audience seated themselves, hastily, guiltily. Miss La Trobe’s eye was on them. She gave them ten seconds to settle their faces. Then she flicked her hand. A pompous march tune brayed. “Firm, elatant, bold and blatant,” etc. . . . And once more a huge symbolical figure emerged from the bushes. It was Budge the publican; but so disguised that even cronies who drank with him nightly failed to recognize him; and a little titter of enquiry as to his identity ran about among the villagers. He wore a long black many-caped cloak; waterproof; shiny; of the substance of a statue in Parliament Square; a helmet which suggested a policeman; a row of medals crossed his breast; and in his right hand he held extended a special constable’s baton (loaned by Mr. Willert of the Hall). It was his voice, husky and rusty, issuing from a thick black cotton-wool beard that gave him away. “Budge, Budge. That’s Mr. Budge,” the audience whispered. Budge extended his truncheon and spoke: It ain’t an easy job, directing the traffic at ‘Yde Park Corner. Buses and ‘ansom cabs. All a-clatter on the cobbles. Keep to the right, can’t you? Hi there, Stop! (He waved his truncheon) There she goes, the old party with the umbrella right under the ‘orse’s nose. (The truncheon pointed markedly at Mrs. Swithin) She raised her skinny hand as if in truth she had fluttered off the pavement on the impulse of the moment to the just rage of authority. Got her, Giles thought, taking sides with authority against his aunt. Fog or fine weather, I does my duty (Budge continued). At Piccadilly Circus; at ‘Yde Park Corner, directing the traffic of ‘Er Majesty’s Empire. The Shah of Persia; Sultan of Morocco; or it may be ‘Er Majesty in person; or Cook’s tourists; black men; white men; sailors, soldiers; crossing the ocean; to proclaim her Empire; all of ’em Obey the Rule of my truncheon. (He flourished it magnificently from right to left) But my job don’t end there. I take under my protection and direction the purity and security of all Her Majesty’s minions; in all parts of her dominions; insist that they obey the laws of God and Man. The laws of God and Man (he repeated and made as if to consult a Statute; engrossed on a sheet of parchment which with great deliberation he now produced from his trouser pocket) Go to Church on Sunday; on Monday, nine sharp, catch the City Bus. On Tuesday it may be, attend a meeting at the Mansion House for the redemption of the sinner; at dinner on Wednesday attend another— turtle soup. Some bother it may be in Ireland; Famine. Fenians. What not. On Thursday it’s the natives of Peru require protection and correction; we give ’em what’s due. But mark you, our rule don’t end there. It’s a Christian country, our Empire; under the White Queen Victoria. Over thought and religion; drink; dress; manners; marriage too, I wield my truncheon. Prosperity and respectability always go, as we know, ‘and in ‘and. The ruler of an Empire must keep his eye on the cot; spy too in the kitchen; drawing-room; library; wherever one or two, me and you, come together. Purity our watchword; prosperity and respectability. If not, why, let ’em fester in . . . (He paused—no, he had not forgotten his words) Cripplegate; St. Giles’s; Whitechapel; the Minories. Let ’em sweat at the mines; cough at the looms; rightly endure their lot. That’s the price of Empire; that’s the white man’s burden. And, I can tell you, to direct the traffic orderly, at ‘Yde Park Corner, Piccadilly Circus, is a whole-time, white man’s job. He paused, eminent, dominant, glaring from his pedestal. A very fine figure of a man he was, everyone agreed, his truncheon extended; his waterproof pendant. It only wanted a shower of rain, a flight of pigeons round his head, and the pealing bells of St. Paul’s and the Abbey to transform him into the very spit and image of a Victorian constable; and to transport them to a foggy London afternoon, with the muffin bells ringing and the church bells pealing at the very height of Victorian prosperity. There was a pause. The voices of the pilgrims singing, as they wound in and out between the trees, could be heard; but the words were inaudible. The audience sat waiting. “Tut-tut-tut,” Mrs. Lynn–Jones expostulated. “There were grand men among them . . .” Why she did not know, yet somehow she felt that a sneer had been aimed at her father; therefore at herself. Etty Springett tutted too. Yet, children did draw trucks in mines; there was the basement; yet Papa read Walter Scott aloud after dinner; and divorced ladies were not received at Court. How difficult to come to any conclusion! She wished they would hurry on with the next scene. She liked to leave a theatre knowing exactly what was meant. Of course this was only a village play. . . . They were setting another scene, round the red baize box. She read out from her programme: “The Picnic Party. About 1860. Scene: A Lake. Characters—” She stopped. A sheet had been spread on the Terrace. It was a lake apparently. Roughly painted ripples represented water. Those green stakes were bulrushes. Rather prettily, real swallows darted across the sheet. “Look, Minnie!” she exclaimed. “Those are real swallows!” “Hush, hush,” she was admonished. For the scene had begun. A young man in peg-top trousers and side whiskers carrying a spiked stick appeared by the lake. EDGAR T. . . . Let me help you, Miss Hardcastle! There! (he helps Miss Eleanor Hardcastle, a young lady in crinoline and mushroom hat to the top. They stand for a moment panting slightly, looking at the view.) ELEANOR. How small the Church looks down among the trees! EDGAR. . . . So this is Wanderer’s Well, the trysting-place. ELEANOR. . . . Please Mr. Thorold, finish what you were saying before the others come. You were saying, “Our aim in life . . .” EDGAR. . . . Should be to help our fellow men. ELEANOR (sighing deeply) How true—how profoundly true! EDGAR. . . . Why sigh, Miss Hardcastle?—You have nothing to reproach yourself with—you whose whole life is spent in the service of others. It was of myself that I was thinking. I am no longer young. At twenty-four the best days of life are over. My life has passed (he throws a pebble on to the lake) like a ripple in water. ELEANOR. Oh Mr, Thorold, you do not know me. I am not what I seem. I too— EDGAR. . . . Do not tell me, Miss Hardcastle—no, I cannot believe it—You have doubted? ELEANOR. Thank Heaven not that, not that . . . But safe and sheltered as I am, always at home, protected as you see me, as you think me. O what am I saying? But yes, I will speak the truth, before Mama comes. I too have longed to convert the heathen! EDGAR. . . . Miss Hardcastle . . . Eleanor . . . You tempt me! Dare I ask you? No—so young, so fair, so innocent. Think, I implore you, before you answer. ELEANOR. . . . I have thought—on my knees! EDGAR (taking a ring from his pocket) Then. . . . My mother with her last breath charged me to give this ring only to one to whom a lifetime in the African desert among the heathens would be— ELEANOR (taking the ring) Perfect happiness! But hist! (She slips the ring into her pocket) Here’s Mama! (They start asunder) (Enter Mrs. Hardcastle, a stout lady in black bombazine, upon a donkey, escorted by an elderly gentleman in a deer-stalker’s cap) MRS. H. . . . So you stole a march upon us, young people. There was a time, Sir John, when you and I were always first on top. Now . . . (He helps her to alight. Children, young men, young women, some carrying hampers, others butterfly nets, others spy-glasses, others tin botanical cases arrive. A rug is thrown by the lake and Mrs. H. and Sir John seat themselves on camp stools.) MRS. H. . . . Now who’ll fill the kettles? Who’ll gather the sticks? Alfred (to a small boy), don’t run about chasing butterflies or you’ll make yourself sick . . . Sir John and I will unpack the hampers, here where the grass is burnt, where we had the picnic last year. (The young people scatter off in different directions. Mrs. H. and Sir John begin to unpack the hamper) MRS. H. . . . Last year poor dear Mr. Beach was with us. It was a blessed release. (She takes out a black-bordered handkerchief and wipes her eyes). Every year one of us is missing. That’s the ham . . . That’s the grouse . . . There in that packet are the game pasties . . . (She spreads the eatables on the grass) As I was saying poor dear Mr. Beach . . . I do hope the cream hasn’t curdled. Mr. Hardcastle is bringing the claret. I always leave that to him. Only when Mr. Hardcastle gets talking with Mr. Pigott about the Romans . . . last year they quite came to words. . . . But it’s nice for gentlemen to have a hobby, though they do gather the dust—those skulls and things. . . . But I was saying—poor dear Mr. Beach. . . . I wanted to ask you (she drops her voice) as a friend of the family, about the new clergyman—they can’t hear us, can they? No, they’re picking up sticks. . . . Last year, such a disappointment. Just got the things out . . . down came the rain. But I wanted to ask you, about the new clergyman, the one who’s come in place of dear Mr. Beach. I’m told the name’s Sibthorp. To be sure, I hope I’m right, for I had a cousin who married a girl of that name, and as a friend of the family, we don’t stand on ceremony . . . And when one has daughters—I’m sure I quite envy you, with only one daughter, Sir John, and I have four! So I was asking you to tell me in confidence, about this young—if that’s-his-name—Sibthorp, for I must tell you the day before yesterday our Mrs. Potts happened to say, as she passed the Rectory, bringing our laundry, they were unpacking the furniture; and what did she see on top of the wardrobe? A tea cosy! But of course she might be mistaken . . . But it occurred to me to ask you, as a friend of the family, in confidence, has Mr. Sibthorp a wife? Here a chorus composed of villagers in Victorian mantles, side whiskers and top hats sang in concert: O has Mr. Sibthorp a wife? O has Mr. Sibthorp a wife? That is the hornet, the bee in the bonnet, the screw in the cork and the drill; that whirling and twirling are for ever unfurling the folds of the motherly heart; for a mother must ask, if daughters she has, begot in the feathery billowy fourposter family bed, O did he unpack, with his prayer book and bands; his gown and his cane; his rod and his line; and the family album and gun; did he also display the connubial respectable tea-table token, a cosy with honeysuckle embossed. Has Mr. Sibthorp a wife? O has Mr. Sibthorp a wife? While the chorus was sung, the picnickers assembled. Corks popped. Grouse, ham, chickens were sliced. Lips munched. Glasses were drained. Nothing was heard but the chump of jaws and the chink of glasses. “They did eat,” Mrs. Lynn Jones whispered to Mrs. Springett. “That’s true. More than was good for them, I dare say.” MR. HARDCASTLE . . . (brushing flakes of meat from his whiskers) Now . . . “Now what?” whispered Mrs. Springett, anticipating further travesty. Now that we have gratified the inner man, let us gratify the desire of the spirit. I call upon one of the young ladies for a song. CHORUS OF YOUNG LADIES . . . O not me . . . not me . . . I really couldn’t . . . No, you cruel thing, you know I’ve lost my voice . . . I can’t sing without the instrument . . . etc., etc. CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN. O bosh! Let’s have “The Last Rose of Summer.” Let’s have “I never loved a Dear Gazelle.” MRS. H. (authoritatively) Eleanor and Mildred will now sing “I’d be a Butterfly.” (Eleanor and Mildred rise obediently and sing a duet: “I’d be a Butterfly.”) MRS. H. Thank you very much, my dears. And now gentlemen, Our Country! (Arthur and Edgar sing “Rule Britannia.”) MRS. H. . . . Thank you very much. Mr. Hardcastle— MR. HARDCASTLE (rising to his feet, clasping his fossil) Let us pray. (the whole company rise to their feet) “This is too much, too much,” Mrs. Springett protested. MR. H. . . . Almighty God, giver of all good things, we thank Thee; for our food and drink; for the beauties of Nature; for the understanding with which Thou hast enlightened us (he fumbled with his fossil) And for thy great gift of Peace. Grant us to be thy servants on earth; grant us to spread the light of thy . . . Here the hindquarters of the donkey, represented by Albert the idiot, became active. Intentional was it, or accidental? “Look at the donkey! Look at the donkey!” A titter drowned Mr. Hardcastle’s prayer; and then he was heard saying: . . . a happy homecoming with bodies refreshed by thy bounty, and minds inspired by thy wisdom. Amen. Holding his fossil in front of him, Mr. Hardcastle marched off. The donkey was captured; hampers were loaded; and forming into a procession, the picnickers began to disappear over the hill. EDGAR (winding up the procession with Eleanor) To convert the heathen! ELEANOR. To help our fellow men! (The actors disappeared into the bushes.) BUDGE. . . . It’s time, gentlemen, time ladies, time to pack up and be gone. From where I stand, truncheon in hand, guarding respectability, and prosperity, and the purity of Victoria’s land, I see before me—(he pointed: there was Pointz Hall; the rooks cawing; the smoke rising)
The gramophone took up the strain: Through pleasures and palaces, etc. There’s no place like Home. BUDGE. . . . Home, gentlemen; home, ladies, it’s time to pack up and go home. Don’t I see the fire (he pointed: one window blazed red) blazing ever higher? In kitchen; and nursery; drawing-room and library? That’s the fire of ‘Ome. And see! Our Jane has brought the tea. Now children where’s the toys? Mama, your knitting, quick. For here (he swept his truncheon at Cobbet of Cobbs Corner) comes the bread-winner, home from the city, home from the counter, home from the shop. “Mama, a cup o’ tea.” “Children, gather round my knee. I will read aloud. Which shall it be? Sindbad the sailor? Or some simple tale from the Scriptures? And show you the pictures? What none of ’em? Then out with the bricks. Let’s build: A conservatory. A laboratory? A mechanics’ institute? Or shall it be a tower; with our flag on top; where our widowed Queen, after tea, calls the Royal orphans round her knee? For it’s ‘Ome, ladies, ‘Ome, gentlemen. Be it never so humble, there’s no place like ‘Ome.” The gramophone warbled Home, Sweet Home, and Budge, swaying slightly, descended from his box and followed the procession off the stage. There was an interval. “Oh but it was beautiful,” Mrs. Lynn Jones protested. Home she meant; the lamplit room; the ruby curtains; and Papa reading aloud. They were rolling up the lake and uprooting the bulrushes. Real swallows were skimming over real grass. But she still saw the home. “It was . . .” she repeated, referring to the home. “Cheap and nasty, I call it,” snapped Etty Springett, referring to the play, and shot a vicious glance at Dodge’s green trousers, yellow spotted tie, and unbuttoned waistcoat. But Mrs. Lynn Jones still saw the home. Was there, she mused, as Budge’s red baize pediment was rolled off, something—not impure, that wasn’t the word—but perhaps “unhygienic” about the home? Like a bit of meat gone sour, with whiskers, as the servants called it? Or why had it perished? Time went on and on like the hands of the kitchen clock. (The machine chuffed in the bushes.) If they had met with no resistance, she mused, nothing wrong, they’d still be going round and round and round. The Home would have remained; and Papa’s beard, she thought, would have grown and grown; and Mama’s knitting—what did she do with all her knitting?—Change had to come, she said to herself, or there’d have been yards and yards of Papa’s beard, of Mama’s knitting. Nowadays her son-inlaw was clean shaven. Her daughter had a refrigerator. . . . Dear, how my mind wanders, she checked herself. What she meant was, change had to come, unless things were perfect; in which case she supposed they resisted Time. Heaven was changeless. “Were they like that?” Isa asked abruptly. She looked at Mrs. Swithin as if she had been a dinosaur or a very diminutive mammoth. Extinct she must be, since she had lived in the reign of Queen Victoria. Tick, tick, tick, went the machine in the bushes. “The Victorians,” Mrs. Swithin mused. “I don’t believe” she said with her odd little smile, “that there ever were such people. Only you and me and William dressed differently.” “You don’t believe in history,” said William. The stage remained empty. The cows moved in the field. The shadows were deeper under the trees. Mrs. Swithin caressed her cross. She gazed vaguely at the view. She was off, they guessed, on a circular tour of the imagination— one-making. Sheep, cows, grass, trees, ourselves—all are one. If discordant, producing harmony—if not to us, to a gigantic ear attached to a gigantic head. And thus—she was smiling benignly— the agony of the particular sheep, cow, or human being is necessary; and so—she was beaming seraphically at the gilt vane in the distance—we reach the conclusion that ALL is harmony, could we hear it. And we shall. Her eyes now rested on the white summit of a cloud. Well, if the thought gave her comfort, William and Isa smiled across her, let her think it. Tick tick tick the machine reiterated. “D’you get her meaning?” said Mrs. Swithin alighting suddenly. “Miss La Trobe’s?” Isa, whose eyes had been wandering, shook her head. “But you might say the same of Shakespeare,” said Mrs. Swithin. “Shakespeare and the musical glasses!” Mrs. Manresa intervened. “Dear, what a barbarian you all make me feel!” She turned to Giles. She invoked his help against this attack upon the jolly human heart. “Tosh,” Giles muttered. Nothing whatever appeared on the stage. Darts of red and green light flashed from the rings on Mrs. Manresa’s fingers. He looked from them at Aunt Lucy. From her to William Dodge. From him to Isa. She refused to meet his eyes. And he looked down at his blood-stained tennis shoes. He said (without words) “I’m damnably unhappy.” “So am I,” Dodge echoed. “And I too,” Isa thought. They were all caught and caged; prisoners; watching a spectacle. Nothing happened. The tick of the machine was maddening. “On, little donkey” Isa murmured, “crossing the desert . . . bearing your burden . . .” She felt Dodge’s eye upon her as her lips moved. Always some cold eye crawled over the surface like a winter blue-bottle! She flicked him off. “What a time they take!” she exclaimed irritably. “Another interval,” Dodge read out, looking at the programme. “And after that, what?” asked Lucy. “Present time. Ourselves,” he read. “Let’s hope to God that’s the end,” said Giles gruffly. “Now you’re being naughty,” Mrs. Manresa reproved her little boy, her surly hero. No one moved. There they sat, facing the empty stage, the cows, the meadows and the view, while the machine ticked in the bushes. “What’s the object,” said Bartholomew, suddenly rousing himself, “of this entertainment?” “The profits,” Isa read out from her blurred carbon copy, “are to go to a fund for installing electric light in the Church.”
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